But he wrote lucid prose.

There was an ironical side to his temper, and he had an ingenious paradoxical wit, which he indulged, with no little felicity, in his early work, Dialogues of the Dead.

These conversations, though they show no dramatic power and are simply a vehicle for the author's satirical criticisms on life, are written with a light touch, and are full of surprises and unexpected turns.

The very choice of the interlocutors shows a curious fancy, which we do not associate with the geometrical intellect.

Descartes is confronted with the Third False Demetrius, and we wonder what the gourmet Apicius will find to say to Galileo.
2.
In the Dialogues of the Dead, which appeared in 1683, the Ancient and Modern controversy is touched on more than once, and it is the subject of the conversation between Socrates and Montaigne.