Ink signature of Thomas Foxcroft (1697-1769), pastor of the Congregational Church in Boston, admired for his skills as a logician. Additional ink signature of Joseph E. Foxcroft (1773-1852), colonel, merchant, sheriff, state senator and postmaster from New Gloucester, Maine. Ink notations on back endpapers, including a index, in the hand of one of the two Foxcrofts. Bouhours was a Jesuit professor of rhetoric and belles lettres at the Collge de Clermont, among others. He was a friend of Boileau, La Fontaine, La Bruyre, Racine, and Bussy-Rabutin. The present work first appeared in 1687. In the "Avertissement" to the French text, he notes that he does not intend for this work to have any connection with the Port-Royal Logic, or seek to use the methods of Aristotle or Descartes the set rules governing thinking. He sought rather to show readers how to form correct judgments in matters concerning eloquence and belles-lettres. The work consists of four dialogues between two fictional persons named Eudoxe and Philanthe, in which they ponder over what makes a literary work great. Topics discussed include truthfulness, sublimity, agreeableness, clarity and intelligibility in style. The work was immensely popular, being reprinted twenty-four times in the next hundred years and being translated into English, Latin, and German. Howell, p. 529.