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Voltaire. Wherever there has been a court, it has furnished the standard of good-speaking, and with this also the standard of style for writers. The court language, however, is the language of the courtier who has no profession, and who even in conversations on scientific subjects avoids all convenient, technical expressions, because they smack of the profession; on that account the technical expression, and everything that betrays the specialist, is a blemish of style in countries which have a court culture. At present, when all courts have become caricatures of past and present times, one is astonished to find even Voltaire unspeakably reserved and scrupulous on this point (for example, in his judgments concerning such stylists as Fontenelle and Montesquieu), - we are now, all of us, emancipated from court taste, while Voltaire was its perfecter!