Dominique Bouhours

Bouhours entered the Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen, and was appointed to read lectures on literature in the Collège de Clermont at Paris, and on rhetoric at Tours and Rouen.

In 1671, Bouhours published Les Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène, which was reprinted four more times at Paris, twice at Grenoble, and afterwards at Lyon, Brussels, Amsterdam, Leiden and other cities.

His thoughts on the elusive je ne sais quoi that was in vogue in the seventeenth century, expressed through his characters, ends in assessing it a mystery that escapes a rational inquiry.

It determined by its delicate presence, its grace and invisible charm, the sense of what pleases or displeases in Nature as well as Art, and remained an essential part of the French critical vocabulary until the advent of Romanticism.

His doubts are collected under five headings: vocabulary, phrases and collocations, grammatical constructions, clarity, and stylistic consistency, in each case setting literary quotations under scrutiny.