Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/26

 when he was asked, which of his sermons he thought the best, he replied, " that which I recollect the best."

Though by taste and duty devoted to Christian eloquence, he sometimes, by way of relaxation, exercised his faculties upon other objects. It is asserted that he left in manuscript a life of Coreggio. He could not have selected for his subject a painter whose talents were more analogous to his own; for he himself was, if the expression may be allowed, the Coreggio of orators. It may be added, that as Coreggio had formed himself by opening a new track after Raphael and Titian, so Massillon, who had also found out a new walk of pulpit eloquence, might have said, on comparing himself to other orators, what Coreggio did on viewing the pictures of other artists, - "I, too, am a painter."