admiration which they have excited in me; and I take pleasure in renewing the declaration, because I

BISHOP ATTERBURY, during his exile in France, and in the course of his epistolary correspondence with his friends in England, expresses his opinion of Bossuet in the following strong terms:

"Of what I have read since I came on this side of the water, I have conceived a much greater opinion of the Bishop of Meaux than I had while in England, and give him readily the preference of all those writers of the Church of France with which I am acquainted. He is a universal genius, and manages everything he takes in hand like a master. Good sense and sound reflections attend all he says, which is expressed in the most agreeable and beautiful manner, without any of the pomp or paint of false oratory. He has particularly the secret of knowing not only what to say, but what not to say-the hardest task even of the most exact and excellent writers! I really prefer his funeral orations to those of Flechier and Bourdaloue, though I think he would have written still better had he imitated them less ;* for by that means he

* There is here a strange inconsistency between the text and the criticism of Atterbury, which seems to have escaped the translator's notice. According to the Abbé Maury, Bourdaloue was an imitator of Bossuet; according to Bishop Atterbury, Bossuet "would have written better had he imitated Bourdaloue and Flechier less!" It may be doubted whether there is any such resemblance in the eloquence of these two great preachers as to authorize the supposition that either was the imitator of the other. To me they seem to be essentially dissimilar; the one abounding more in appeals to the imagination, the other more in reasoning; the one more animated, diffuse, and prodigal of ornament, the other more simple, earnest, and practical. The difference between them has been happily expressed by

love always to revive the homage which is due to genius.

"Before him, Maillard, Menot, Corenus, Valladier, and a multitude of other French preachers, whose names at this day are obscure or ridiculous, had disgraced the eloquence of the pulpit by a wretched style, a barbarous erudition, a preposterous mythology, low buffoonery, and even sometimes by obscene details.

Bossuet appeared.

Accustomed to find himself engaged in controversy, he was perhaps indebted to the critical observations of the Protestants, who narrowly watched him,

now and then heightens his expression a little too much, and becomes unnatural."-Letter xiv. In another letter he says, "The more I read of the Bishop of Meaux, the more I value him as a great and able writer, and particularly for that talent of taking as many advantages of an adversary, and giving him as few, as any man, I believe, that ever entered the lists of controversy. There is a serious warmth in all he says, and his manner of saying it is noble and moving."-See ATTERBURY's Epistolary Correspondence.

Hallam, who says that "Bourdaloue is almost in the same relation to Bossuet as Patru to Le Maitre, though the two orators of the Pulpit are far above those of the Bar."

Bourdaloue was younger than Bossuet by only five years; but, having entered the ministry later in life, and passed its earlier years in the country, he did not become celebrated in Paris till his great rival had for twenty years borne away the palm as an orator.-Am. Ed.

for that elevated strain, that strength of reasoning, that union of logic and eloquence, which distinguished all his discourses.

Do you wish to know the revolution which he effected in the pulpit? Open the writings of Bourdaloue, of whom he was the forerunner and model. Yes; Bossuet never appears to me greater than when I read Bourdaloue, who twenty years afterward entered this new road, where he had the skill to show himself an original by imitating him, and in which he surpassed him in labour, without being capable of equalling him in genius.

Do you wish to select in more remote times another object of comparison? Place Bossuet among the most illustrious orators of the sixteenth and seyenteenth centuries. Compare the discourse which he delivered on the day of the opening of the famous Assembly of the Clergy in 1682,* with the sermon which the Bishop of Bitonto preached the third Sunday in Advent, 1546, at the opening of the Council of Trent. You would imagine that between the Bishop of Bitonto and the Bishop of Meaux there had elapsed an interval of many ages. There is not,

* BOSSUET's sermon on this occasion was preached from Num., xxiv., 5: "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" His great object was to inflame the assembly with a fiery zeal for the extirpation of the Reformed Religion in France. To this succeeded "Circular Letters of the Assembly," and in 1685 the famous "Revocation of the Edict of Nantz.".... ROBINSON'S Life of CLAUDE, p. xlii., &c.

however, the difference of a century and a half. But these two periods, so near to each other, are divided by all the distance which removes the grossest barbarism from the most refined taste.

We have, in the edition of the Council of Trent published at Louvaine in 1567, all the sermons which were delivered in the different sessions before that assembly. There are some funeral orations, and more than thirty other discourses, which were preached by the bishops, by the doctors of the faculty of Paris, or by the monks. That of the Bishop of Bitonto is the only one which hath retained some celebrity; and as it is evidently the best of all, it is by this piece that we are enabled to judge of the eloquence of the sixteenth century.

This sermon contains some beauties of oratory; but it is written without method or taste, and sometimes presents an indecent mixture of sacred Scripture and heathen mythology.

The Bishop of Bitonto says "that Nature hath given us two hands, two eyes, and two feet, in order that man may be a council in epitome while making use of all his members together; for one hand washes the other, and one foot sustains the other."*+

* Quemadmodum et ipsa natura, manus nobis geminas, geminosque oculos, pedes item geminos ideò dedisse videtur, ut quasi collecto concilio homo semper agat, nam et manus manum lavat, pes pedem sustentat. - Oratio Eb. Bitont.

The name of this famed bishop was CORNELIO MUS

We might repeat twenty examples of this sort from the same discourse. But there is need of one quotation only, in order to appreciate the merit of the orator, when we make it from Bossuet.

The ever memorable sermon of the Bishop of Meaux upon "the Unity of the Church" is not thus written.

SECTION XVII.

OF INTERROGATION.

TIME, that destroyer of ill-founded reputation, adds every day fresh lustre to the glory of Bossuet. I observe with pleasure that this great orator, whose merit hath been for some time attacked among us, is more warmly and universally admired since there has been a renunciation of the depraved taste of the eloquence of words. The vehemence which distinguishes him, as it does Demosthenes, appears to me frequently derived from accumulated interrogations, which are equally familiar to each of them.

Indeed, of all the figures of oratory, interrogation is the most overwhelming and rapid. If it be em

80.

He was reckoned one of the greatest preachers of his age. Drelincourt mentions that he is called the Chrysostom of the Italians.—Bayle's Dictionary.

See some account of his curious sermon in Father PAUL'S History of the Council of Trent, b. ii., p. 124, 125. Also in JURIEU's History.