affection of the Père Bochard of the order of the Jesuits, Principal of the College of Vannes, who, interested in the talents displayed by the young Le Sage, took pleasure in cultivating his taste for literature. Our author, however, must have been late in attracting Bochard's notice; for when he came to Paris in 1693, in his twenty-fifth year, his principal object was to prosecute his philosophical studies, with what ultimate view does not appear.

With good-humour and liveliness, joined to youth, and, it is said, a remarkably handsome person, Le Sage soon felt the influence of the Parisian atmosphere, was much engaged in society, and distinguished by an intrigue with a woman of rank, who shared with him, as his biographer expresses it, her heart and fortune. How this amour terminated we are not told, but one of a better and more virtuous character succeeded. Le Sage became enamoured of a beautiful young woman, the daughter of a joiner in the Rue de la Mortellerie, married her, and, from that period, found his principal happiness in domestic affection. By this union he had three sons, whose fortunes we shall afterwards have occasion to mention, and a daughter, whose filial piety is said to have placed her sole occupation in contributing to the domestic enjoyment of her celebrated parent.

Le Sage continued after his marriage to frequent the circles of Paris, where literary men mingled as guests upon easy terms, and appears to have acquired several sincere and active friends, among whom the Abbé de Lyonne entitled himself not only to the author's personal gratitude, but to that

of posterity. He settled upon Le Sage a pension of six hundred livres, and made him, besides, many valuable presents, yet served him much more essentially by directing his attention to Spanish literature, which he was afterwards so singularly to combine with that of his own country.1

Danchel, a man of some celebrity, engaged Le Sage in a translation of the Letters of Aristenetus, which he caused to be printed at Chartres, (though the title bears Rotterdam,) in 1695.

The particular circumstances of Spain had given a strong cast of originality to the character of their literature. The close neighbourhood of so many petty kingdoms, so frequently engaged in intestine wars, occasioned numerous individual adventures, which could not have taken place under any one established and extended government. The high romantic character of chivalry which was cherished by the natives, the vicinity of the Moors, who had imported with them the wild, imaginative, and splendid fictions of Araby the Blessed-the fierceness of the Spanish passions of love and vengeance, their thirst of honour, their unsparing cruelty,placed all the materials of romance under the very eye of the author who wished to use them. If his characters were gigantic and overstrained in the conception, the writer had his apology in the temper of the nation where his scene was laid; if his incidents were extravagant and improbable, a country in which Castilians and Arragoneze, Spaniards

1 So early as 1704, Le Sage understood the language so well as to give a translation of Avellaneda's Continuation of Don Quixote, which gave so much offence to Cervantes.

and Moors, Mussulmans and Christians, had been at war for so many ages, could furnish historians with real events, which might countenance the bold

est flights of the romance. And here it is impossible to avoid remarking, that the French, the gayest people in Europe, have formed their stage on a plan of declamatory eloquence, which all other nations have denounced as intolerable; while the Spaniard, grave, solemn, and stately, was the first to introduce in the theatre all the bustle of lively and complicated intrigue;-the flight and the escape, the mask and ladder of ropes, closets, dark-lanterns, trap-doors, and the whole machinery of constant and hurried action; and that with such a profusion of invention, that the Spanish stage forms a mine in which the dramatic authors of almost all other countries have wrought for ages, and are still working, with very slight chance either of failure or detection.

Le Sage was not slow in endeavouring to turn to his own advantage his acquaintance with the Spanish drama. He translated from the original of Don Francisco de Rojas, Le Traître Puni. It was not acted, but printed in the year 1700. Another play, Don Felix de Mendoce, he translated from Lope de Vega; but this also remained unacted, and was not even printed, until the author published his Théâtre, in 1739.

Le Point d'Honneur, another translation from the Spanish, was performed at the Théâtre François, in 1702, without success. The satire turned upon the pedantic punctilios formerly annexed to the discussion of personal" dependences," as they

were called, when men quarrelled by the book, and arranged a rencontre according to the rules of logic. This fantastic humour, which, so early as the age of Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, had been successfully ridiculed on the English stage, was probably rather too antiquated to be the subject of satire on that of Paris, in the beginning of the 18th century. The Point of Honour was only twice represented.

In 1707, Don Cæsar Ursin, a comedy, translated by Le Sage from the Spanish of Calderon, was acted and condemned at the Théâtre François. To make the author some amends, the same audience received, with the most marked applause, the lively farce entitled Crispin rival de son Maître, which Garrick introduced upon the English stage under the title of Neck or Nothing. It is uncommon for a dramatic author to be applauded and condemned for two different pieces in the same day; but Le Sage's destiny was even still more whimsical. Don Cæsar, we have said, was hissed in the city, and Crispin applauded. At a representation before the court, the judgment was reversed-the play was applauded, and the farce condemned without mercy. Time has confirmed the judgment of the Parisians, and annulled that of Versailles.

Le Sage made yet another essay on the regular stage, with his comedy of Turcaret, in which he has painted the odious yet ridiculous character of a financier, risen from the lowest order of society by tricks and usury, prodigal of his newly acquired wealth upon a false and extravagant mistress of quality, and refusing to contribute even to relieve

the extreme necessity of his wife and near relations. As men of business, and a class so wealthy, the financiers have always possessed interest at court, and that interest seems to have been exerted with success to prevent so odious a personification of their body from appearing on the stage. The embargo was removed by an order of Monseigneur, dated 15th October, 1708. While the play was yet in his portfolio, Le Sage had an opportunity to show how little his temper was that of a courtier. He had been pressed to read his manuscript comedy at the Hotel de Bouillon, at the hour of noon, but was detained till two o'clock by the necessity of attending the decision of a lawsuit in which he was deeply interested. When he at length appeared, and endeavoured to plead his excuse, the Duchess of Bouillon received his apology with coldness, haughtily remarking, he had made the company lose two hours in waiting for his arrival." It is easy to make up the loss, madam," replied Le Sage; "I will not read my comedy, and you will thus regain the lost time." He left the hotel, and could never be prevailed on to return thither

Turcaret was acted, and was successful, in spite of the cabal formed against it by the exertions of those concerned in the finances. 1 The author, in

1["The French author who, in drawing character, approached the nearest to Molière, was perhaps Le Sage, in his Turcaret, which, however, is composed of many reminiscences from his great master. Both, indeed, had the common defect of painting manners, not characters, and, consequently, of producing comedies of classes, not of individuals. But this is a defect which the French public would not even perceive;