Preface
to-day—perruque and all—might well sigh over the vanity of human pretensions. For Monsieur Perrault was a person of importance in his lifetime (1628-1703), and a big-wig in every sense of the term. Colbert made him Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, and anon Controller of Public Works—in which capacity he suggested to his architect-brother, Claude Perrault, the facade of the Louvre with its renowned colonnade. He flattered his monarch with a poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand. 'Je ne sais,' observes a circle, 'si ce roi, malgré son amour excessif pour la flatterie, fut content: les bornes étaient outre-passées.' The poem, as a poem, had little success; but by positing that the Age of Louis was the greatest in history, and suggesting that the moderns were as good as the ancients or better, it started a famous controversy. Boileau, Racine, La Bruyère, honoured him by taking the other side, and forced him to develop his paradox in a book of dialogues, Parallèles des Anciens et des Modernes. But his best answer was his urbane remark (for he kept his temper admirably) that these gentlemen did ill to dispute the superiority of the moderns while their
