I20 PREFACE

still used in common conversation. When we say of a person who keeps bad company, *il s'encanaille,' we are borrowing a word from the vocabulary of the Précieuses:

* n'avoir que le masque de la vertu,' *être sobrè dans ses discours,' * tenir bureau d'esprit,' and many other phrases we might quote, are of like origin, and must not be flung aside on the plea that when Mademoiselle de Scudéry wanted the servant to sunlOf a candie, she exclaimed,

* Inutile ! retranchez le superflu de cet ardent * !*

In the Femmes Savantes as well as in the Précieuses Ridicules, Molière's critiques were aimed neither at true wit nor at true leaming, but at their counterfeits.

^ Masson's Introduction to the History of French Literature, p. 66.