Note 46 — I. OF WORKS OF THE MIND.

All the “Keys” pretend this is a hit at the “Dictionary of the Academy,” and they may be right; for the Dictionary, only published in 1694, six years after the “Characters” first saw the light, had been expected for more than forty years. But most likely La Bruyère was thinking of the tragedy-ballet of Psyché (1671), words by Pierre Corneille and Molière, music by Quinault and Lulli; of the opera which in 1680 Racine and Boileau, joint historiographes of Louis XIV., began, and which never saw the light; and of the newly-acted Idylle sur la Paix and the Eglogue de Versailles (1685), written by Quinault, Racine, and Molière.