Note 734 — Chapter XXVIII

A very copious history of Jansenism, taking it up from the council of Trent, will be found in the fourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, p. 139-398, from which Mosheim has derived most of what we read in his Ecclesiastical History. And the History of Port-Royal was written by Racine, in so perspicuous and neat a style, that, though we may hardly think with Olivet that it places him as high in prose writing as his tragedies do in verse, it entitles him to rank in the list, not a very long one, of those who have succeeded in both. Is it not probable, that in some scenes of Athalie he had Port-Royal before his eyes? The history and the tragedy were written about the same time. Racine, it is rather remarkable, had entered the field against Nicole in 1666, chiefly indeed to defend theatrical representations, but not without many sarcasms against Jansenism.