At the same time he scandalized the world by his riotous living and undignified familiarities.
He engaged in a foolish and undignified struggle with Crebillon (not fils), a rival set up against him by Madame de Pompadour, but a dramatist who, in part of one play, Rhadamiste et Zenobie, has struck a note of tragedy in the grand Cornelian strain, which Voltaire could never hope to echo.
But academic niceties become more figural in the present somewhat undignified and desperate scramble for respect and recognition.
I can still see undignified fifth formers being forced to put on caps before being allowed to leave.
The innovation was at first received with some disfavour; critics accustomed to polite formalism censured it as extravagant and undignified; but the freshness and beauty of its melody soon silenced all opposition, and did more than anything else throughout the 18th century to establish the principle of nationalism in musical art.
