[346] Goncourt, _Femme au 18ième siècle_, p. 256. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._,
vi. 248.

[347] _Maximes sur la Comédie_, §15, etc. They were written in reply
to a plea for Comedy by Caffaro, a Jesuit father.

[348] The letter may be conveniently divided into three parts: I. pp.
1-89, II. pp. 90-145, III. pp. 146 to the end. Of course if Rousseau
in saying that tragedy leads to pity through terror, was thinking of
the famous passage in the sixth chapter of Aristotle's _Poetics_, he
was guilty of a shocking mistranslation.

[349] Some of the arguments seem drawn from Plato; see, besides the
well-known passages in the _Republic_, the _Laws_, iv. 719, and still
more directly, _Gorgias_, 502.

[350] Yet D'Alembert in his very cool and sensible reply (p. 245)
repeats the old saws, as that in _Catilina_ we learn the lesson of the
harm which may be done to the human race by the abuse of great
talents, and so forth.

[351] _Lettre à M. J.J. Rousseau_, p. 258.

[352] D'Alembert's _Lettre à J.J. Rousseau_, p. 277. Rousseau has a
passage to the same effect, that false people are always sober, in the
_Nouv. Hél., _Pt. I. xxiii. 123.

[353] Tronchin, for instance, in a letter to Rousseau, in M.
Streckeisen-Moultou's collection, i. 325.