Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 36.djvu/76

58 but little considered; and, in fact, most of them had only the wit peculiar to their age, and not that species of wit which reaches posterity.  The graces of their feeble lays Are tarnished, and they lose their praise; None them as geniuses admit, But all agree to praise their wit. Segrais attempted one day to enter the sanctuary at the same time, repeating the following verse of Boileau:

Que Segrais dans l'églogue en charme les forêts.

Let Segrais charm the woods with rural lays.

But Criticism having, unhappily for him, read a few pages of his "Æneid" in French verse, dismissed him a little roughly, and in his place admitted Madame de la Fayette, who published the delightful romance of "Zada"; and the Princess of Cleves, under the name of "Segrais."

Pellisson is not easily excused, for having in his history of the French Academy gravely related so many puerilities, and cited as strokes of wit things which by no means deserve that name. The soft, but weak Pavillon, humbly pays his court to Madame Deshoulières, who is placed far above him. The unequal St. Èvremond does not presume to speak of poetry. Balzac, with his long-winded hyperbolical phrases, tires the patience of Benserade and Voiture, who answer him by antitheses and quibbles, which they are presently after ashamed of themselves. I went in quest of the famous Count de Bussy. Madame de Sévigné, who is beloved by all who dwell in the Temple, told me that her dear cousin, a man of