The interest here manifested in the vicious and excellent qualities of the mother-tongue was a contribution of the schools to the development of modern languages. Nor was the severity, which is here prescribed, with reference to the use of poetry, a barrier to the formation of some good poets among the Jesuits themselves. Friedrich von Spee is considered a distinguished lyric poet of the seventeenth century. Denis, as the translator of Ossian into German, helped to inaugurate the later period of German literature. In Italian prose, Bartoli, Segneri, Pallavicini, have ranked as classics; Tiraboschi, as the historian of literature; Bresciani, in our days, as the popular novelist. As writers of French prose, Bourdaloue and Bouhours appertain to the choicest circle of Louis XIV's golden age; Du Cygne, Brumoy, Tournemine, besides others already mentioned in these pages, took their place as literary critics. And, in their several national literatures, Cahours, Martin, Garucci, have attained their literary eminence as art-critics.
Reverting to solidity of thought as the basis of style, Jouvancy eliminates the false ornaments of a subtle and abrupt style, by reducing the conceptions to a dialectical analysis: "What does the thing mean?" And he gives examples.
In the second chapter of the same part, the _Ars Discendi_, he comes to the acquisition of those sciences, which are proper to a Master of Literature. He says: "The erudition of a religious master is not confined to mere command of languages, whereof we have spoken heretofore; it must rise higher to the understanding of some sciences, which it is usual to impart to youth. Such are Rhetoric, Poetry, History, Chronology, Geography, and Philology or Polymathy, which last is not so much a single science as a series of erudite attainments, whereof an accomplished person should at least have tasted." History he divides into Sacred, Universal, and Particular. "As to the histories of particular nations, writers of the respective nationalities record them;" "and if you do not add Chronology to History, you take out one of History's eyes." For Geography, he designates the books and maps which were then to be had. And, for all the branches, he indicates standard authors.