sa partie, i. e. sa partie de boston

Page 95. 1. 24. sa consigne, his charge.

1. 24. V empereur Napoléon à Compiègne. Napoléon I divorced his first wife Joséphine Beauharnais in 1810 and married Marie-Louise of Austria, a daughter of the House of Habsburg, whom he is said to hâve overwhelmed with riches. Compiègne,

in the department of Oise, to the north-east of Paris, possesses a fine olcl ciistle. It is famous as being the place in which Joan of Arc was captured by the English.

1. 38. Bossuet (1627-1704), bishop of Meaux, the famous French preacher of the seventeenth century, author of the Oraisons Funèbres of Henriette de France, Henriette d'Angleterre, of Condé, and others.

1. 39. Racine (1639-1699), Corneille (p. 96, 1. 2), and Molière (p. 96, 1. 1) are the three greatest French dramatists of the Classical period and of ail times. Racine and Corneille were tragic authors, the latter being more heroic in style, while passion, especially that of love, forms the chief thème of the other.

Corneille's Le Ciel (1630) was the first great French tragedy in the Classical style, that is to say, observing the three unities oftime, place, and action, and was followed in rapid succession by Horace, Cinna, and Folyeucte. Corneille's numerous later plays do not reach the standard of thèse masterpieces.

Amongst Racine's secular tragédies the most famous are Andromaqne, Britannicus, and Phèdre. The subject of his last two plays, Esther and Athalie, is Biblical, Athalie being generally considered as his masterpiece.

Molière's comédies are in part farcical, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Les Précieuses ridicules being the most celebrated of his lighter comédies ; in part serions in tone, such as Le Misanthrope, Taiiufe, V Avare,

Voltaire. See note to p. 82, 1. 36.

Rousseau (1712-1778), a French writer and philosopher, whose Contrat Social did much to prépare the way for the French Révolution. His, famé as a novelist rests chiefly on La Nouvelle Héloïse. In Emile, a novel written to illustrate the author's views on the éducation of children, Rousseau lays down the principle that human nature is fundamentally good and pure and would remain so if unsullied by the contact of modem man, corrupted by over-civilization.

Montesquieu (1689-1759), a philosopher and historian. His chief Works are the Lettres Persanes, an ironical description of the manners and customs of his time from the point of view of a Persian ; Grandeur et Décadence des Romains ; and VEsprit des Lois.

Page 96. 1. 1. Molière. See note to p. 95, 1. 39.

Bt(ffon (1707-1788), the first great French naturalist who gave a distinguished literary form to his writings; author of the Histoire naturelle.

Fénelon (1651-1715), a prcacher and contemporary of Bossuet, tutor to the grandson of Louis XIV, for whose benefit he wrote his Télémaque, a charming book, full of disguised contemporary allusions. Fénelon's literary famé rests largely on the great élégance of his style.

Delille (1738-1813», a French poet of the eighteenth century, who introduced the élément of description for its own sake into French poetry.

Bernardin de Saint-Pietre (1737-1814), author of the wellknown idyllic novel Paul et Virginie, which embodies Rousseau's idea of a return to primitive nature.

1. 2. La Fontaine (1621-1695), unrivalled as a writer of fables. He contrived to imbue the somewhat dry frame-work of Aesop's thèmes with a spirit entirely his own, full of life and sympathetic charm.

Pascal. See note to p. 82, 1. 32.

La Harpe, a French critic of the eighteenth century.

1. 11. un solitaire, a diamond set by itself, not surrounded by any other stones.

1. 27. qui ra2)porfe autant qu'une terre par sa location, the hiring-out of which brings in as much as an estate.