Nothing could have been happier or more admirably suited for their purpose than those Letters. They took up the subject for the first time in a light intelligible to all. They brought to play upon it not only a penetrating and rapid intelligence, but a brightness of wit, and a dramatic creativeness, which made the Sorbonne and its parties, the Jansenists and their friends, alive before the reader. Never was the triumph of genius over mere learned labour more complete. Arnauld, as he listened to them, must have felt his own thoughts spring up before him into a living shape, hardly less startling to himself than to his opponents.
Addressing his friend in the country, the author expresses