This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...they will give yon in length;1 and they magnify or diminish the importance of things to suit their purposes.2 To take oratory's special types, we have seen him criticize the Academy eloge;' the oraison funebre is likewise a deliverance of praise, " avec lequel on serait bien embarrassg de d6cider au juste du ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...they will give yon in length;1 and they magnify or diminish the importance of things to suit their purposes.2 To take oratory's special types, we have seen him criticize the Academy eloge;' the oraison funebre is likewise a deliverance of praise, " avec lequel on serait bien embarrassg de d6cider au juste du m6rite du defunt." Of sermons he has hardly a word to say, alluding simply to the old discourses of Maillard, Menot, Rollin and Barletta6 as seeming burlesques to-day, though sufficiently serious in their time.6 He makes frequent rapprochement between orators and poets. The former have ruined themselves in imitating the latter.7 The works of both are "ouvrages d'ostentation," 8 and have but a " general utility."9 They are alike addicted to a wearisone uniformity, orators in periods, poets in measures and cadences.10 5. Genres--Poetry, Fiction, Drama, History, Satire And Criticism. Poetry, in itself, made little or no appeal to Montesquieu. What Ste-Beuve11 has called an " exclamation memorable"--the famous dictum that the four great poets are Plato, Male-branche, Shaftesbury and Montaigne12--shows well enough where lie our author's tastes. He will value principally the poetry of thought, of philosophy, with little regard for musical or sentimental elements. He admits readily enough his own failures in this respect,13 and even when he addresses the Muses, he is careful to make a discrimination between their respective provinces: "Divines Muses, je sens que voui m'inspirez, non pas ce qu'on chante 4 Tempi sur lee chalumeaux, ou ce qu'on repute il De'los sur la lyre; vous voulez que je parle ft la raison." 14 'vn, 171. 'P. & F., n, 24. 'i, 247--But cf. 6up., p. 102. 4i, 153. 'Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. P. F., n, 31-2. 'P. & F., u, 17....
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