Note 117 — I. OF WORKS OF THE MIND.

This author was the Abbé de Villiers, who published in 1682 a poem in four cantos, LʼArt de Précher, in which he tried to imitate LʼArt poétique of Boileau, and in 1690 Réflexions sur les défauts dʼautrui, which were very successful; some suppose Father Bouhoursʼ Pensées ingénieuses des anciens et des modernes (1689) hinted at; whilst M. G. Servois, the able editor of La Bruyère in the Grands Ecrivains de la France (1865-1878), thinks that possibly the “author” was Jacques Brillon, a lawyer and indefatigable imitator, who in his youth may have been presumptuous enough to have asked La Bruyèreʼs advice on some of his literary works, the Portraits sérieux, etc., the LʼOuvrage nouveau dans le goût des Caractères de Théophraste et des Pensées de Pascal, the Théophraste moderne, etc., which three books appeared, however, after La Bruyèreʼs death, from 1696 to 1700. Adrien Baillet, an erudite scholar and fertile author, is also mentioned by some “Keys.”