Alpha Book

Great numbers of plays were written, it is true, but they were
hopelessly dull imitations of classic models. Imitative and uninspired
likewise were statues and paintings and poems. One merit they
possessed. If a French painter lacked force and originality, he could
at least portray with elegance and charm a group of fine ladies angling
in an artificial pool. Elegance, indeed, redeemed the eighteenth
century from imitative dullness and stupid ostentation: elegance
expressed more often in perfumes, laces, and mahogany than in paint or
marble. The silk-stockinged courtier accompanying his exquisitely
perfect bow with a nicely worded compliment was surely as much an
artist as the sculptor. Nor can one help feeling that the chairs of
Louis XV were made not to sit in, but to admire; for their curving
mahogany legs look too slenderly delicate, their carved and gilded
backs too uncomfortable, for mere use. Chairs and fine gentlemen were
alike useless, and alike elegant.
[Sidenote: The New Science]
More substantial were the achievements of eighteenth-century
scientists.


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