Portraits Of The Seventeenth Century - Historic And Literary - Livres de poche

il C of the Historic and Literary By C A, Translated by Katharine P. Wormeley History of the French Academy CorneiUe Mademoiselle de Scudery Moliere La Fontaine Pascal Madame de Se vignd Bossuet Boileau Racine Madame de Caylus Fenelon Comte Antoine Hamilton The Princesse des Ursins G. P. New York and London tlbe Knickerbocke 1909 FRANCOIS DE SALIQNAC DE LA MOTHE FENELON. Frontispiece From a steel engraving. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. HISTORY OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 1629- i l CORNEILLE 1606-1684 . . . . 29 If, MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY 1607-1701 . 55 IV. MOLIERE 1622-1673 . ., . 85 V. LA FONTAINE 1621-1695 . . .1411 VI. PASCAL 1623-1662 . . . 167 Vli. MADAME DE SEVIGNE 1626-1696 . .189 V U. BossuET 1627-1704 .... 217 I BOILEAU 1636-1711 .... 245 X, RACINE 1639-1691 . . . .28 XI. MADAME DE CAYLUS 1673-1729 . . 315 XII, FNELON 1651-1715 . 343 XIII. COMTE ANTOINE HAMILTON 1646-1720 . 385 XIV. THE PRINCESSE DES URSINS 1642-1722 . 405 Illustrations PAGE Franoois de Salignao de la Mothe Fe nelon .... Frontispiece From a steel engraving. Corneille 32 From an engraving of the painting by Lebrun. Mademoiselle Madeleine de Soudery . 58 From an old print. Moliere 88 From a steel engraving. La Fontaine 144 From a steel engraving. Blaise Pascal 1 70 From a steel engraving. Madame de Sevigne . . ., , 192 From a steel engraving. Comtesse de Grignan .... 208 From a steel engraving. Illustrations PAGE Jacques Benigne Bossuet . . .220 From a steel engraving. Nicolas Boileau ..... 248 From a steel engraving. Racine 286 From a steel engraving. Madame de Cay Ins . . . .318 After the painting by G. Staal. Comte Antoine Hamilton . . .388 From an old print. Princesse des Ursins . . . . 408 Frorn an old print. I. oftbe frencb Hcabem I. fbtetorg of tbe ffrencb THE short history that M. Pellisson has given of the beginning of this Association, in the form of a te Letter to a Friend, is in reality one of the most finished and most agreeable essays in our lan guage, a rare and perfect example, that shows better than all definitions what it is to write with elegance and purity in French. There are, and there were in the days of Pellisson, two sorts of elegance and ur banity in conversing and in writing one lively, more natural, easier, more familiar, also more coloured de rived from commerce with the great world and the Court by those who were born and bred to them from infancy, that, for instance, of Saint 6vremond, Bussy, Clerembault, La Rochefoucauld, Retz the other more studied, formed in the library and by reading, or by assiduous attendance in certain brilliant circles, and by intercourse with the best-qualified literary personages this last form of urbanity is that of Con rart and Vaugelas in it Pellisson excels, and is, above all others, the perfect model of his time. If, after reading some natural and living work of that period, the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz for example, 3 4 Tbfstotfi of tbe frencb BcaCemp. Pellisson Is immediately taken up, what I mean to say will be understood. We have to do with an ex cellent writer in him, but a writer of another species, of a wholly different stamp, of another origin and genus. He is not of those who, like Retz, have seen all and essayed all in action, and, daring all, risk say ing all, making to themselves a language in their own likeness, which they alone can speak with a certain air, well assured as they are of being always of a good school and agood race. Pellisson is one of those authors by profession who, having begun by the pen, never lose it from sight, and would prefer to cut themselves short, like Fontanes, of ideas or inci dents to relate, if they thought they could not gather and present them with absolute correctness and perfect elegance. Born at Beziers in 1624, of a Protestant family very distinguished in the law, he was educated in the South, and was twenty-six years of age when he came to Paris, where he was introduced into the lit erary world under the auspices of Conrart...