tiennent la main à ce que, see to it that

Page 69. — i. Fontenelle (1657-1757) a man of letters of the académie type, presenting an interesting combination of the gallant and rather affected man of the world and social lion with the scientific scholar. His chief merit was that of an élégant popularizer of science.

2. une de ses amies, Mme de Tencin, the mother who abandoned the infant d'Alembert, and of whose sweet manners the

Abbé Trublet said : Si elle eût eu intérêt de vous empoisonner, elle eût choisi le poison le plus doux.

3. Watteau (1684-1721), the chief of the group of artists known as peintres des fêtes galantes. His work, which attains the acme of daintiness and grâce, gives us only a conventional nature peopled by conventional beings.

4. Fragonard (1 732-1 806), an artist, especially successful as a genre-painter. His most characteristic work is quite in the taste of the eighteenth century, conveying a suggestion of voluptuousness expressed with very graceful and élégant art.

5. les Saint-Aubin, three brothers, contemporary with Fragonard. ' They were ail artists, particularly celebrated as illustrators and engravers.

6. Marivaux (1 688-1 763), celebrated as one of the founders of the modem novel, and as perhaps the greatest French dramatist since Molière. His novels {Marianne etc.) are distinguished by very délicate psychological analysis of character, and by the tendency to depict reality rather than romance. The French are inclined to see in him a predecessor and model of Richardson. As a dramatist they are even inclined to compare him with Shakespeare. His essentially féminine tempérament and conséquent insight into real womanliness, his délicate sentimentality, and his talent for rendering with ail its rose-color of poetic illusion the first flush of dawning passion in woman's heart, are the basis of this rather ambitious comparison.

7. Collé, an eighteenth century writer of songs and farces more witty than edifying.

8. Crébillon fils, so-called to distinguish him from his father, the tragic poet. The son, who unfilially set down French tragedy as the most perfect farce ever invented, wrote licentious taies in a very manneristic style. They are now deservedly neglected, save as a contemporary source for the study of eighteenth century morals.

Page 70. — 1. ajustement chiffonnée, what Herrick calls "a sweet disorder in the dress."