Auvergne, a province a little south of central France

Page 14. — 1. abbés commendataires, secular ecclésiastics enjoying one-third of the revenue of an abbey. They performed no functions. The worldly abbé, often irreligious in the extrême, is a familiar figure in the society of the old régime.

Page 15. — 1. Rousseau (Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778), born at Geneva. He led a wandering, poverty-stricken, and changeful life, recounted in the most remarkable of modem biographies, Les Coufessio?is. His moral life was sordid, the abandonment of his five children as foundlings being its darkest blot. His later writings show distinct traces of insanity. He wrote a Discours (1749) in which he tried to prove that letters, art and science do not render mankind better; a Discours sur V Inégalité (1754) in which he argued that uncivilized life is the happiest ; La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), an impassioned love-story; Emile (1762), a treatise on éducation, full of original views; le Contrat Social (1762), a treatise on government, full of subversive ideas. Rousseau is a prose-poet, of marvellous éloquence and passion fused with a subtle though usually sophistical logic. From him chiefiy proceeds the modem sentimental nature-cuit in its many phases. See also pp. 131 ff. and 16: ff.

2. cahiers des Etats-généraux, pétitions presented to the king in 1789 by the three orders: the nobility, the clergy, and the third estate, called collectively Etats-géncrattx.

3. Marmontel, (1 723-1 799), author of les Incas, a pseudo-historic romance, and of Contes Moraux, insipid and médiocre taies, illustrative of the cheap sensibility so much affected during the latter part of the iSth century. He is now neglected except for his pleasing Memoirs.

4. leur, note the cacophonous répétition of leur in this and the next sentences. Cf. similar fault of style on p. 70 {franges).

Pagre 16. — 1. Chateaubriand (1768-1848), a cadet of the impoverished branche cadette of a noble Breton family, was one of the greatest prose writers of the nineteenth century. He was a precursor of romanticism, of Byronic self-worship, of religio-literary dilettantism, and a suprême master of ornate description.