car

De car viennent les lois, sans car point d'ordonnance,

Et ce ne serait plus que désordre et licence. (Old Play.)

Yet a rival novelist of Mlle de Scudéry's day made war on car as archaic, and tried to write a five-volume novel without using it — though it is said that three or four "car" escaped him nevertheless.

3. propose en concours, proposes for compétition (by offering a prize for the best essay). It was awarded to the malicious wit, Rivarol. His essay, the Discours sur V universalité de la langue

française, contained the celebrated sentence : " Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français."

Page 104. — 1. le monologue d'Hamlet, " To be or not to be, etc." (Act III, se. 1). Voltaire's version may be f ound in Moland's édition, XXIV, 201.

2. Orosmane, the jealous sultan, who stabs his lady-love Zaïre in Voltaire's tragedy, is a very much classieized écho of Shakespeare's Othello.

3. Calypso, the description of the island may be found in Homer's Odyssey, V. 63 ff.

Page 105. — 1. de façon à ce qu'ils puissent, a rather clumsy and unusual phrase, resulting apparently from a fusion of the usual de façon que (which takes a finite verb) and de façon à (which takes the infinitive).

2. Mme de Sévigné {1626-96), the most charming of ail letterwriters, tender, graceful, witty, gossipy, but never empty or uninteresting.

3. Mme du Deffant (or Deffand), a most unromanfic and caustic marquise, a typical eighteenth century woman of the world, who at sixty-eight — being then blind — conceived a passion for Horace Walpole (cf. page 53, note 1). Her extensive correspondence with this récalcitrant egotist, and with other and greater men, is a most interesting epistolary monument.

Page 106. — 1. Corneille (1606-84), a great tragic poet. He is praised for the declamatory magnificence of his verse and the lof ty sentiments of his personages. He is the poet of heroism — depicting men as they ought to be, says La Bruyère. Except the Cidy his important créations are mostly derived from Greek and Roman fable and history.

2. Racine (1639-99), the sole rival of Corneille in French tragedy. He is praised for the perfection and harmony of his verse, the delicacy of his psychologie portraiture, and his poetic rendering of féminine passion. He is the poet of love — depicting humanity as it is, says La Bruyère. Neither he nor Corneille has, however, inspired any very profound enthusiasm outside of France.

Page 107. — 1. Babyloniens, it was a literary fashion, in Voltaire's day, to disguise contemporary satire under a perfectly transparent veil, by locating one's personages "somewhere east of Suez."

2. Micromégas, a giant hero in Voltaire's taie of that title.

Page 108. — 1. madame, it is said (vide Miss Canfield: " Racine and Corneille in England") that in the English adaptation of Racine's Andromaque, The Distrest Alother, the word " madam " occurs fifty-four times.

2. la Fronde, a civil war waged against the royal power by re-

bellious nobles, during the ministry of Mazarin (middle of the seventeenth century). i

Page 109. — 1. Regnard (165 5-1 709), author of comédies, with none of Molière's profundity but of an irrésistible gaiety.

2. Lesage (1668-1747), author of one of the most justly celebrated of modem novels, Gil Blas, and of Turcaret, a masterly

comedy. in which the corruption of the financial world of Lesage's day is mercilessly portrayed.