NIVERSITY OF CAL FORN A SAN D EGO 3 1822 00161 6242 &p AM presented to the LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY Mr . W-i 1 mpr "R . Shi el ds donor N ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS BY 2F. CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGC FENELOK , /t.i7~ m i 3 1822 00161 6242 TRANSLATED BY DR. HAWKESWORTH h" WITH A LIFE OF FENELON BY LAMARTINE AN ESSAY ON HIS GENIUS AND CHARACTER BY VILLEMAIN CRITICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES ETC. ETC. EDITED BT O. W. WIGHT, A. M. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUQHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY prcstf CambnDge Copyright, 1859 and 1387, * 0. W. WIGHT, EDITOR'S PREFACE. THIS first volume of such of the Works of Fenelon as we think worthy of being reproduced in English dress, is composed of: 1st, Lamartine's Life of Fenelon ; 2d, an Essay on the Genius and Character of Fenelon, by M. Villemain; 3d, Critical Opinions upon Fenelon and his Works; 4th, a Bibliographical Notice; and 5th, " The Adventures of Telemachus." Lamartine's Life of Fenelon is full in detail, most eloquent in style and matter, and heartily sympathetic. We have used the translation made in England for Mr. Bentley, but have compared it, sentence by sen- tence, with the original, and have corrected it in many places. The translation is good, and our corrections have been made in the same spirit in which we should like to be corrected ourselves. The article of M. Yillemain, which he calls a " No- tice," we have entitled an Essay on the Character and Genius of Fenelon. Lamartine judges the good Arch- bishop of Cambray from an historical and political point of view; Villemain judges him as a writer and a mor- alist, and assigns him his place in French literature. The fine article, "Fenelon," in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," has oeen literally taken, without acknow)- 6 EDITOR'S PREFACE. edgment, from this Notice of Yillemain. In our trans* lation of it we have endeavored to give the sense, but have not hoped to preserve the pleasing eloquence and delicate aesthetic finish of the original. The Critical Opinions upon Fenelon and his Works are not designed to forestall or exhaust criticism, but to show, as nearly as may be, through representative critics, in what estimation Fenelon is held by English readers. The aim of the Bibliographical Notice is to point out at a glance the subjects that engaged the attention of Fenelon, and to afford exact information in regard to the best editions of his works. " Telemachus," which forms the body of the book, is in the translation of Dr. Hawkesworth. The transla- tion is well known and excellent, but we have revised it from beginning to end. Every word of it has been compared with the original in the edition of Lefevre. Our corrections amount to thousands, but many of them are merely verbal and unimportant. Here and there the Doctor has waxed enthusiastic, and has added matter quite his own, which we have invariably elim- inated. Very often the vivacity of the original has been weakened by throwing many well-balanced pe- riods into one long, rambling sentence, "tediously drawling its ' ands.' " We have checked him in form as well as matter. But, in all fairness, we must give him a chance to be heard, and here introduce his preface : " The Telemachus of the celebrated Archbishop ot Cambray is a work of such reputation that it would be scarce less absurd to recommend it than to recom EDITOR 8 PREFACE. 7 mend the writings of Homer and Yirgil : it holds the first class among the moral works of imagination in France ; it has passed through innumerable editions art has been exhausted to adorn it, and learning to il- lustrate its beauties ; it has been translated into every language in Europe, the Turkish not excepted; and there are no less than live translations of it in our own. To translate it, indeed, is easy ; but to translate it so as to give it the same rank in a foreign language that it holds in the original, is difficult. It has generally been thought that a perfect knowledge of the corre- sponding words, through all their inflexions, in two languages, is a sufficient qualification to translate one into the other ; and, consequently, that a fine book in one language will, in the hands of a translator so quali- fied, necessarily become a fine book in another. This, however, is so far from being true, that a book which has any merit besides that of truth and sentiment in the abstract, will be bad in the version, in proportion as it is good in the original, if the translator be quali- fied only for verbal interpretation. " To translate a work of fancy, which owes great part of its power to poetical beauties and elegance of com- position, some taste for poetry and some skill in writ- ing is certainly necessary, of which all who have hith- erto translated Fenelon's Telemachus into English were totally destitute: their versions, indeed, are, in gen- eral, toe much the same ; that, one having failed, it is difficult to conceive what encouraged the hope that Another would succeed. My translation is, at least, very different from all others ; and yet I have scrupu- ously preserved, not only every incident and evorv 3 EDITOR'S PREFACE. sentiment, but even every metaphor, as far as the difc ferent genius of the two languages would admit. " To those who have read this work only as an exer- cise at school, its beauties are wholly unknown ; and among those that have learned French in this country, there is not, probably, above one in fifty who can now read it in the original with more advantages than a na- tive of France would read Pope's Rape of the Lock in a prose translation. " To both these, therefore, as well as to persons who are wholly unacquainted with the French language, this version, if I have been able to accomplish my pur- pose, may be acceptable; it may also facilitate and sweeten the labor of those that are learning it ; it may give them a relish for a book that will probably be put into their hands; and though it may not much assist them in a mere verbal construction, it may per- haps show them its insufficiency, and excite an attempt to transfuse the spirit with the sense. " My principal view, however, was much more ex- tensive than to assist learners of the French language. I have attempted to render a work full of ingenious fiction, just reasoning, important precepts, and poetical imagery, as pleasing in English as it is in French, to those who read it as their native tongue. If I have succeeded, I have not only made a valuable addition to our polite literature, but rendered my country a much more important service, by putting into the hands of our youth one of the few books which genius And learning have dedicated to virtue, which at once captivates the imagination, informs the understanding and regulates the will." EDITOR'S PREFACE. 9 WQ are sure that onr corrections are, for the most part, just such as Dr. Hawkesworth would have ac- cepted from any friend who might have assisted him in revising his work for the press. We have added, in the form of foot-notes, literal translations of those passages of the ancient authors which Fenelon formally imitated. These passages were first collected in the Hamburg edition of 1732, and have often been reproduced since. Most will thank us for giving translations of them, instead of leaving them in the Greek and Latin original. Scholars will understand us when we simply say that we have corrected the translation of Dr. Hawkes- worth by the text of Lefevre, who has himself followed that of the Abb6 Caron. We have also followed Lefevre in dividing Telem achus into eighteen instead of twenty-four books. "The manuscripts," says the French editor, "indu- bitably prove that the author divided it into eighteen books. The Marquis de Fenelon, who first introduced, in his edition of 1717, the division into twenty-four oooks, says that his uncle had thus divided 'Telema- chus,' in imitation of the 'Iliad;' but this assertion lacks valid proofs ; and although the parole of a man so justly esteemed is entitled +o great consideration, itLl the hand of the author himself must have, in this question of literary criticism, a much higher authority." O. W. WIGHT. IAOTAKT, 1868. CONTENTS Lira or FDTELON, BT LAMARTINE If EflBAT ON THE CHARACTER AND GLMU8 OF FENELON, BT VlLLEMAIN. 117 CRITICAL OPINIONS TTFON FENELON AND ma WORKS 139 IBB WORKS or FENELON .. , 149 TELEMACH US. BOOK I. TelemaehuB, conducted by Minerva under the likeness of Mentor, lands, after having suffered shipwreck, upon the island of the goddess Calypso, who is still regretting the departure of Ulysses. The goddess receives him favorably, conceives a passion for him, offers him immortality, and inquires after his adventures. He recounts hia voyage to Pylos and Lacedaemon ; his shipwreck on the coast of Sicily ; the danger he was in of being offered as a sacrifice to the manes of Anchises ; the assistance which Mentor and he gave Acestes against an incursion of barbariant>, and the gratitude of the king, who, to reward their service, gave their a Tyrian vessel, that they might return to their country 14 BOOK H. telemachna relates his being taken in tne Tyrian vessel by the fleet o. Sesostris, and carried captive into Egypt. He describes the beauty of the country, and the wise government of its king. He relates also that Mentor was sent a slave into Ethiopia ; that he was himself reduce^ to keep sheep in the deserts of Oasis ; that in this state he was com- forted by TennosiriH, a priest of Apollo, who taught him to imitate thai god, who had once been the shepherd of Ai'aietuu ; that Sesostris, liav 12 CONTENTS. ing at length heard with astonishment what his influence and example had effected among the shepherds, determined to see him, and being convinced of his innocence, promised to send him to Ithaca, but that the death of Sesostris overwhelmed him with new calamities ; and that he was imprisoned in a tower which overlooked the sea, from whence he saw Bocchoris, the new king, slain in a battle against part of his subjects, who had revolted, and had called in the Tyrians to their assistance. 166 BOOK m. felemachus relates that, the successor of Bocchoris releasing all the Tyrian prisoners, he was himself sent to Tyre, on board the vessel of Narbal, who had commanded the Tyrian fleet ; that Narbal gave him a descrip- tion of Pygmalion their king, and expressed apprehensions of danger from the cruelty of his avarice ; that he afterwards instructed him in the commercial regulations of Tyre ; and that, being about to embark in a Cyprian vessel, in order to proceed by the isle of Cyprus to Ithaca, Pygmalion discovered that he was a stranger, and ordered him to be Beized ; that his life was thus brought into the most imminent danger, but that he had been preserved by the tyrant's mistress Astarbe, that she might, in his stead, destroy a young Lyctian of whom she had been enamored, but who rejected her for another ; that he finally embarked \n a Cyprian vessel, to return to Ithaca by the way of Cyprus 185 BOOK IV. Calypso interrupts Telemachus in his relation, that he may retire to rest. Mentor privately reproves him for having undertaken the recital of hia adventures ; but as he has begun, advises him to proceed. Telemachna relates that during his voyage from Tyre to Cyprus, he dreamed that he was protected from Venus and Cupid by Minerva; that he after- wards imagined he saw Mentor, who exhorted him to fly from the isle of Cyprus ; that when he awaked, the vessel would have perished in a Btorm if he had not himself taken the helm, the Cyprians being all intox- icated with wine ; that when he arrived on the island, he saw, with horror, the most contagious examples of debauchery ; but that Hazael, the Syrian, to whom Mentor had been sold, happening to be at Cyprus at the same time, brought the two friends together, and took them on board his vessel that was bound to Crete ; that during the voyage, he bad seen Amphitrite drawn in her chariot by sea-horses a eight infi- nitely entertaining and magnificent 204 BOOK V. ttoieinachns relates, that wr.et, he arrived at Crete, he learnt that Idome- neus, the king of that island, .:ad, in consequence of a rash vow, sacri- CONTENTS. 13 flood his only BOH ; that the Cretans, to revenge the murder, had driver nim out of the country ; that after long uncertainty they were ther. assembled to elect a new sovereign ; that he was admitted into the as- sembly ; that he obtained the prize in various exercises ; having also resolved the questions that had been recorded by Minos in the book of his laws, the sages, who were judges of the contest, and all the people, seeing his wisdom, would have made him king ; that he refused the royalty of Crete to return to Ithaca ; that he proposed Mentor, but that Mentor also refused to be king ; that the Cretans then pressing Mentor to appoint a king for them, he relates to them what he heard of the virtues of Aristodemas, whom they immediately proclaimed ; that Mentor and Telemachus having embarked for Italy, Neptune, to gratify the resentment of Venus, shipwrecked them on the island of Calypso, where the goddess received them with hospitality and kindness.... 221 BOOK VI. Calypso admires Telemachus for his adventures, and exerts all her power to detain him in her island, by inciting him to return her passion ; but he is sustained by the wisdom and friendship of Mentor, as well against her artifices as against the power of Cupid, whom Venus sends to her assistance. Telemachus, however, and Eucharis become mutually enam- ored of each other, which provokes Calypso first to jealousy, and then to rage. She swears, by the Styx, that Telemachus shall leave her island, and engages Mentor to build a ship to take him back to Ithaca. She is consoled by Cupid, who excites the nymphs to burn the Tessel whicb had been built by Mentor, while Mentor was laboring to get Telemachus onboard. Telemachus is touched with a secret joy at this event. Men- tor, who perceives it, throws him from a rock into the sea, and leaps after him, that they may swim to another vessel which appeared not far distant from the shore 251 ''BOOK VII. the vessel proves to be a Tyrian, commanded by Adoam, the brother of Narbal, by whom the adventurers are kindly received. Adoatn recol lecta Telemachus, and relates the tragical death of Pygmalion ana Astarbe, and the accession of Baleazar, whom the tyrant his father had disgraced at her instigation. During a banquet which he prepares for his guests, Achitoas entertains them with music, which brings the Tri- tons, the Nereids, and other divinities of the sea, in crowds around the vessel. Mentor, taking up a lyre, plays much better than Achitoas. Adoam relates the wonders of Bcetica : he describes the soft tempera- ture of the air, and the beauties of the country, where the utmost sim- plitUy of manners secure* to the people uninterrupted tranquillity, 2Z4 14: CONTENTS BOOK VIII. Tenns, still incensed against Telemachus, requests of Jupiter that he may perish ; bat this not being permitted by the Fates, the goddess consult* with Neptune how his return to Ithaca, whither Adoara is oonducting him, may be prevented. They employ an illusive divinity to deceive Acamas the pilot, who, supposing the land before him to be Ithaca, enters full sail into the port of Salentum. Telemachus is kindly received by Idomeneus in his new city, where ho is preparing a sacrifice to Jupi- ter, that he may be successful in a war against the Maudurians. The entrails of the victims being consulted by the priest, he perceives the omens to be happy, but declares that Idomeneus will owe his good for- tune to his guests 297 BOOK IX. cbmeneus acquaints Mentor with the cause of the war: he tella him that the Mandurians ceded to him the coast of Hesperia, where he haa founded his new city as soon as he arrived ; that they withdrew to the neighboring mountains, where having been ill-treated by some of his people, they had sent deputies with whom he had settled articles of peace ; and that after a breach of that treaty, on the part of Idomeneus, by some hunters who knew nothing of it, the Mandurians prepared to attack him. During this recital, the Mandurians, having already taken arms, appear at the gates of Salentum. Nestor, Philoctetes, and Pha- lanthus, whom Idomeneus supposed to be neuter, appear to have joined them with their forces. Mentor goes out of Salentum alone, and pro- poses new conditions of peace. Telemachus seeing Mentor in the midst of the allies, is impatient to know what passes between them. He causes the gates of Salentum to be opened, and joins his friend. His presence inclines the allies to accept the terms that Mentor has offered on the part of Idomeneus. The allies enter Salentum as friends. Idotneneua confirms the propositions of Mentor ; hostages are reciprocally given ; and all parties assist at a sacrifice between the city and the camp, as a solemn ratification of the treaty 814 / BOOK .X. Wester, in the name of the allies, demands succors of Idomeneus against their enemies the Daunians. Mentor, who is desirous to establish proper regulations for the internal government of Salentum, and to employ the people in agriculture, finds means to satisfy them with a hundred noble Cretans, under the command of Telemachus. After their departure Mentor proceeds to a minute examination of the city and the port ; and Having acquainted himself with every particular, he prevails upon Ido-n CONTENTS. 15 eneus to institute new principles of government and commerce, tc divide his people into seven classes, distinguishing them with respect to their rank and quality by different habits, to retrench luxury and unne- cessary arts, and to employ the artificers in husbandry, which he brings into just reputation 889 BOOK XI. lomeneus relates to Mentor his confidence in Protesilans, and the artifices of that favorite, in concert with Timocrates, to betray him and destroy Philooles. He confesses, that being prejudiced against him by these confederates, he sent Timocrates to kill him while he was abroad with the command of a fleet upon a dangerous expedition. Timocrates hav- ing failed in his attempt, Philocles forbore to avenge himself by taking his life, but, resigning the command of the fleet to Polymenes, who had been appointed to succeed him in the written orders for his death, he retired to the isle of Samos. Idorneneus adds that he at length discov- ered the perfidy of Protesilaus, but that, even then, he could not shake off his influence. Mentor prevails upon Idomeneus to banish Protesi- laus and Timocrates to the island of Samos, and recall Philocles to hia confidence and councils. Hegesippus, who is charged with this order, executes it with joy. He arrives with his prisoners at Samos, where he finds his friend Philocles in great indigence and obscurity, but content. He at first refuses to return, but the gods having signified it to be their pleasure, he embarks with Hegesippus, and arrives at Salentum, where Idomeneus, who now sustains a new character, receives him with great friendship 864 BOOK XII. lelemachns, in the camp of the allies, gains the friendship of Philoctetes, who was not at first favorably disposed to him, on his father's account. Philoctetes relates his adventures, and introduces a particular account of the death of Hercules by the poisoned garment which the centaur Nessus had given to Dejanira. He relates how he obtained from that hero his poisoned arrows, without which the city of Troy could not have been taken ; how he was punished for betraying his secret, by various Bufferings, in the island of Lemnos ; and how Ulysses employed Neoptol- emus to engage Mm in the expedition against Troy, where he was cured of his wound... , 891 BOOK XIII. felemachus quarrels with Phalanthus about some prisoners, to which each of them lays claim : he fights and vanquishes Hippias, who, despising hi* vonth, had seized the prisoner* in question for his brother ; but being (J CONTENTS. afterwards ashatm I of his victory, he laments in secret his rashness an indiscretion, for which he is very desirous to atone. At the same time Adrastus, king of the Daunians, being informed that the allies were wholly taken up in reconciling Telemachus and Hippias, marches to attack them by surprise. After having seized a hundred of their vessels to trans- port his own troops to their camp, he first sets it on fire, and then falla upon Phalanthus' quarters. Phalanthus himself is desperately wounded, and his brother Hippias slain. Telemachus, having put on r^s divine armor, runs to the assistance of Phalanthus ; he kills Iphicles, the son of Adrastus, repulses the victorious enemy, and would have put an end to the war if a tempest had not intervened. Telemachus orders tie wounded to be carried off, and takes great care of them, partioUarly ol Phalanthus. He performs the solemnities of the funeral of llippias him- self, and having collected his ashes in a golden urn, presents them U. bis brother... 41W BOOK XIV. De.emachtis being persuaded, by several dreams, that his father Ulysse* was no longer alive, executes his design of seeking him among the dead. He retires from the camp, and is followed by two Cretans as far as i temple near the celebrated cavern ot Acherontia. He enters it, anf the French Revolution. His lamentations over the condi- 20 WOKKS OF FENELUBT. tion of the people, and the lessons he inculcates in his youthful pupil, disquiet the king, who, fearing to see the spirit of royalty degenerate in his heir, from that exaggerated virtue which, desirous of changing an empire into a Utopia, opens (though with good intent) a yawning gulf of destruction, banishes Fenelon from the seat of government. The philosopher retires weeping over the destiny of his country and his prince. He seeks and finds the consolations of religion, and in his solitude shows an example of that virtue so difficult of attainment to men of genius humility. Unable to improve the legislature, he seeks but to govern and sanctify his own spirit, and dies in his retreat the victim of inactivity and a holy sadness. His works and noble qualities expand and multiply from his tomb, as the liquid rushes from a vase, broken and crushed beneath the feet of its destroyers ; while his name becomes the type of poetry, of political wisdom, and of all goodness, during two centuries. Such is Fenelon. Shall he not be called the Pythagoras or Plato of France ? Let us now trace this life, one of the most beautiful of the latter ages. Fenelon was a descendant of a noble military family of Perigord, who, living sometimes in the camp, sometimes in the retirement of their native province, and surrounded only by rustics, were untainted by the air of courts. His father, Pons de Salignac, Comte de Fenelon, retired from the army, and married Isabelle d'Esparbes, by whom he had several children. A widower and somewhat advanced in years, he entered into a second alliance with Louise de Saint- Abre, 1 the daughter of a noble house in the same province. This union was the cause of much annoyance to his children, who murmured against the conduct of their father. They feared that the probable increase of family would so diminish the inheritance >f each, as to cause their decline from the high rank they had hitherto held in the country. Antoine de Fenelon, the uncle of these young people, having been informed of their com' 1 Louise de la Cropte, sister of the Marquis de Saiut-Abre. ED. LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTTNE. 21 plaints, wrote to his nephews, rebuking their opposition in a letter, preserved amid the family archives. " Learn," said he, " to bow with deference and respect to the wishes of your father : Providence has ever its secret intentions, unfathomable to the eyes of men. Often the fortune and exaltation of a house proceed from causes opposed to the desires of our short-sighted wisdom." It might have been said, that this uncle, gifted with prophecy, foresaw in the child still unborn, the lasting glory of their name. The first offspring of this marriage was Francis Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. The son of an old father and a youthful mother, he was endowed by nature with the mature wisdom of the one and the graces of the other. Cherished in the paternal mansion, like a late and delicate fruit, till the age of twelve years, he was brought up beneath the eyes of his parents. As he grew to maturity, the clear sense of his father and the sweet tenderness of his mother reappeared in his mind, his conduct, and his writings. Under a domestic preceptor the first food offered to his imagination was the study of sacred literature, with the Greek and Latin classics. His heart and reason, thus modelled upon all that was good and beautiful in antiquity, naturally took a noble form and coloring. It may be said that though this child was born in France during the seventeenth century, bis genius was conceived at Athens in the age of Pericles. His education was finished at the University of Cahors. The fame of his brilliant qualities, resounding from the precincts of his school, reached the ears of Antoine de Fenelon, the same uncle who had proved so true an augur before the infant's birth. This relative, having now attained a high rank in the urmy, invited his nephew to join him in Paris. The youth was destined to the priesthood, being looked upon as a lurden on the family, which they were desirous of transferring to the Church. His philosophical and theological studies were pur- lued with increased success in the eminent schools of Paris. His natural, versatile, and precocious genius developed itself more brilliantly there than at CaLors, while his talents and 82 WOKK8 OF FENELON graceful accomplishments gained the attachment of manj eminent friends. The lustre of glory and admiration, by which the young Fenelon was surrounded, excited the appre hensions of his venerable uncle, who hastened to withdraw hia nephew from the seductions of friendship and society, by sending him to the seminary of St. Sulpice, where he was to ecter on his novitiate. While Fenelon pursued his sacred studies, his uncle, desirous of teaching his own son the rudiments of war, conducted him to the siege of Candia, against the Turks. The young man fell in the first assault, struck by a ball, and expired in hia father's arms. The old warrior returned to Paris, bringing with him the body of his son. He now only possessed a daughter, whom he bestowed in marriage upon the Marquis de Montmorency-Laval, of the illustrious house bearing the same name. The loss of his only son attached Antoine de Fenelon still more strongly to his nephew. Good and pious himself, he desired for the young neophite no ecclesiastical honors, but only the reward of piety and virtue. The ardent imagination of the young priest carried him to the point of enthusiasm in his profession. He formed the resolution of leaving the cloister, to enroll himself among the missionaries who were endeavoring to convert Canada to Christianity, and of consecrating his life like the first preachers of the Gospel, to the rescue of heathen souls in the forests of the New World. He was irresistibly attracted by the resem- blance which the devotion and self-denial of these modem Thebaids bore to the apostles of old. His ardent imagination from early youth, and throughout his entire existence, mingled itself with all his dreams, and even with his virtues. Thus, omr destined to improve courts and to instruct monarchs, desired only to civilize savages in the solitude of a desert. The Governor of St. Sulpice, a wise and prudent man, informed M, Antoine de Fenelon of the resolution taken by his young pupil. The uncle remonstrated affectionately with his nephew upon this mistaken vocation, which would extinguish in th orests of America, a flame lighted by the Almighty to she*- LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 23 taaiance upon an accomplished age. Fenelon was ol>stinate t his family insisted, and sent him to the house of another uncle, the Bishop of Sarlat, who solemnly forbade his embark- ing upon this perilous enterprise, and commanded him to return to St. Sulpice, to complete his novitiate, and take the fin.il vows of his sacred order. The young man obeyed, became a priest, and remained in Paris, where for three years he employed himself on Sundays and holidays in the vestry of the Church of St. Sulpice, by instructing the children of the poor. His uncle, the Bishop of Sarlat, summoned him to his diocese from these humble avocations, to offer himself as repre- sentative of the clergy of his province at the General Assembly. The youth of Fenelon defeated his uncle's ambition, and another ecclesiastic of high birth gained the necessary votes. Fenelon, while at Sarlat, revived his earnest desire ol becoming an errant apostle for the conversion of the heathen. He wrote thus : " I meditate a great voyage. Greece opens to my footsteps; Mohammedanism recoils; the Peloponnesus becomes again free ; the Church of Corinth flourishes once more, and the voice of the Apostles is heard within her walls. I behold myself transported to those glorious lands, where amid sacred ruins I raise together the monuments and the epirit of the past. I visit the Areopagus where St. Paul announced to the sages of the world ' the unknown God.' But the profane follows the sacred, and I disdain not to descend to the Piraeus, where Socrates formed the plan of his republic. I shall not forget thee, blessed Patmos, isle consecrated by the visions of the beloved disciple! There will I kiss that earth which bore the traces of St. John's feet ; and like him ocrchance I shall see heaven opened, and behold the East and West, so long divided, once more united, and Asia, after her long night, awake to the light of day '." This letter, written to the then young Bossuet (his friend in the beginning of life, but antagonist at the end), contained a dream ne for destined to realization. The Bishop of Sarlat appeared to consent, but turned the thoughts of his nephew lo another channel by indirect means. Fenelon, recalled t< 24 WORKS OF FENELON. Paris by the archbishop, M. de Harlay, was nominated, despite his youth, Superior of the new converts to Catholicism, whose number had rapidly increased through the persecutions 01 Louis the Fourteenth. Fenelon was then only twenty-seven years of age. The austerity of his habits, the intensity of his faith, the power of his oratory, and the stern upright bent of his mind, already bestowed upon him the authority of age. Living in the Abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres (the home of his uncle, the Marquis Antoine de Fenelon, who had retired to the shade of the cloister) ; aided by the experience of the Su- perior of St. Sulpice, M. Tronson ; encouraged by Bossuet, hi& rival and friend ; holding intercourse with the rigid Duke de Beauvilliers, and the most austere intimates of Louis the Four- teenth ; his society sought by the Archbishop of Paris, who beheld in this young ecclesiastic an ornament to his diocese ; Fenelon governed the order committed to him with prema ture and consummate wisdom. Beneath the auspices of M. de Harlay, he might rapidly have aspired to the highest dignities of the Church ; but he rather preferred the then sterile friend- ship of Bossuet, the pursuits of science, and the acquirement of theological eloquence. Instead of cultivating the favor of M. de Harlay, he became the disciple of Bossuet, estimating fame beyond preferment. M. de Harlay became jealous of Bossuet, and resented this negligence on the part of the young Driest. " Monsieur 1'Abbe," said he to him one day, after com plaining of the little desire exhibited by Fenelon to please him, " you wish to be forgotten, and you shall be so !" In truth, Fenelon was passed over in the distribution of Church preferment. His uncle, the Bishop of Sarlat, was compelled, in order to support his nephew in Paris, to bestow upon him the small living of Carenac, which belonged to his own diocese. A revenue of 3000 francs, which barely sufficed for the necessities of an ascetic life, constituted the sole income possessed by Fenelon until he had reached the age of forty- two. He passed some weeks in this rural priory, and distrib- uted to the surrounding poor all that he could retrench from his own moderate expenses. He there composed verses which LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKTINE. 25 prove that the contemplation of nature increasedAis veneration for that Mighty Creator whose presence filled his solitude. Like many great spirits of all ages, Solon, Ca3sar, Cicero, Mon- tesquieu, J. J. Rousseau, Chateaubriand, he sang before he thought. In man, the music of numbers is the forerunner of eloquence, as the emotions of the heart ever precede the exer- cise of the reasoning faculties. Fenelon's verses have all the tenderness and grace of youth, but do not display that vigor of a truly poetic soul which surmounts, at the first step, all the difficulties of metrical composition, and creates, with the same effort, sentiment, word, and verse. He felt this himself, and after one or two attempts, resigned poetry to Racine, the Vir- gil of France. He next essayed prose, which he found a less laborious, less perfect, but a more complaisant instrument of thought, and did not cease to be the greatest poetical genius of his age. Fenelon once more returned to Paris, and resumed for ten years the direction of the establishment which had been com- mitted to his care, nourishing and ripening in the shade, talents and virtues which were soon to be unveiled. He prepared himself by speaking and writing upon sacred subjects, and composed for the Duchess of Beauvilliers, the mother of a young and numerous family, a treatise upon the educat : on of daughters. This work is far superior to the " Emile" of J. J. Rousseau : it displays no Utopian dream, but points out a practical and reasonable mode of education, suited to the epoch at which Fenelon wrote. We see at once that the au- thor writes not for fame, but for the true benefit of his fellcw- beings. The labors and duties of his profession were lightened by a correspondence full of pious ardor and chastened happi- ness, which he carried on with his most intimate friends, of whom he now possessed an extensive circle ; but the dearest and most constant of al' was the young Abbe de Langeron, whose memory is well worthy of being associated with that of i'enelon. Bossuet was more than a friend : he was a preceptor also ; but a master beloved as, much as he was admired. This ifreat man, then in his full vigor, and endowed with the au- Vol. I.-2 26 WORKS OF FENTJLON. thority which had increased with years, possessed at Gormigny near Paris, a country house, where he enjoyed ease and relax- ation from his labors. Fenelon, the Abb6 Fleury, the Abbe Langeron, and other chosen luminaries of the Church and of sacred literature, were admitted to the retreat of Bossuet. They there shared his se- vere leisure, listened iu confidence to his sermons, his funeral orations, and his polemic discourses. They submitted to hin> t! eir own essays, and enriched their minds by familiar inter- course with that exalted spirit, who was more sublime in pri- vate than in his pulpit, simply because he was more natural The association of such intellects ripened the ideas, enlarged the views, polished the style, and cemented the affections. As the river of knowledge had flowed through ancient Rome, so had a flood of genius, philosophy, and piety rolled into Ger- migny, with this difference, that the latter was superior, both in its men and their objects. Thus passed the happiest years of the life of Fenelon, in the enjoyments of friendship and re- tirement. In this retreat, his fame attracted neither the ap- plause nor the envy of the world. His own renown had merged in the reputation of Bossuet, and his personal ambition in the friendship of these illustrious men. His genius became the sweeter to himself from being displayed only in private. How little did Fenelon imagine that the thunderbolt was soon to burst on him from this cherished banqueting hall, where hith- erto he had breathed only peace, retirement, and happiness ! Religious warfare had scarcely been quelled in France, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes struck a fatal blow at liberty of conscience, by violating the treaty between opposing creeds, solemnly accorded by Henry the Fourth. Three hun dred thousand families were expelled, deprived of their chil dren, and their property confiscated. Millions of others, in the Protestant provinces, were placed under constraint. Some were persuaded, others compelled by force, to renounce the religion of their fathers, and adopt that of the State. Bossuet approved of these internal crusades against the Reformation. ,n his eyes the end sanctified the means. Missionaries, sup LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTTNE. 27 ported by troops and officers of the law, scoured the provinces compelling faith, converting the weak, strengthening the doubt- ful, and punishing the obstinate. That part of the kingdom where Protestantism had taken the deepest root, presented only the appearance of a vast battle-field after the victory, where ambulatory ecclesiastics, armed with the tongue and the sword, brought back all by zeal, by seduction, or by terror, into unity of faith. This was the work of Louis the Four teenth, now become old and fanatical. He thought to gain heaven himself, by offering to the Church this vast spoil of souls, crushed and terrified under his authority. Bossuet was the private counsellor of this government, so absolute in the disposal of consciences. Uniting in himself the double char- acter of a controversial priest and a statesman, he served with his whole heart and soul the Church for tne king, and the king for the Church. His vast ambition, which he concealed from himself beneath the cloak of pious zeal, induced him to maintain an equal balance between the court of Rome and the pride of Louis the Fourteenth ; swaying skilfully the alternate favor of these two powers, who mutually served while they feared each other. In the name of the king be reduced Prot- estant France to Catholicism ; but claimed in return from this French Catholicism, some temporal advantages and immunities for the king, almost verging upon the point of schism. A zealous, yet haughty servant, Bossuet commanded Rome by his services to the Church, Versailles by his ascendency at Rome, and the world by the sublimity of his genius. Without the title, he possessed all the patriarchal power in France. The Court feared while it respected him. Madame de Maintenon, though forbearing to gratify the ambition of Bossuet (who aspired to the Archbishopric of Paris and the Cardit.il's hat, but who, if raised to such an exalted position, might become too absolute, and possibly unmanageable), guided, in him, the oracle of the Church and the keeper of the king's conscience. She who had been torn from her cradle by the persecutions of She reformed faith (which her family professed), sought now, with all her influence, to imbue Louis with the ? une cruel spirit 28 WORKS OF FENELON, of intolerance. The authority of Heaven and that of the king united, sanctified, in her estimation and in the opinion of the Court, any severities used for the conversion of the multitude. A persecution, the horrors of which two centuries have been powerless to efface from the memory of the provinces, ravaged a portion of Languedoc and Vivarais. This excess of cruelty called alcud for vengeance. The cry of their victims became embarrassing to the Court, who sought to silence them, not by restoring to the sufferers liberty of conscience, but by be- stowing upon them more insinuating and humane ministers. Bossuet cast his eyes upon Fenelon. No man was so capa- ble of reassuring the terror-stricken people, of making the yoke imposed upon them appear light and easy, and of restor- ing amnesty of conscience in the provinces where persecution and preaching had so discreditably contended. At the first presentation of Fenelon to Louis the Fourteenth, by Bossuet, the sole favor he demanded of the king was, to disarm reli- gion of all coercive power ; to release Protestants from the terrors which petrified their souls, and to allow them onoe more to breathe ; to banish troops from the provinces he was about to visit ; and to let persuasion, charity, and mercy alone operate upon the minds he desired rather to enlighten than to subdue. Louis, who looked only to the end, cared little for the means that were adopted. He was charmed with the grace, modesty, and eloquence of the young ecclesiastic, and at once bestowed upon him the mission of Poitou. In this work Fenelon was aided by his two friends, the Abbe de Langeron and the Abbe Fleury, both of whom were animated by his own spirit. His presence, his mildness, and his preach ing in the country, soothed turbulent spirits, and gained mi tnerous recantations. He allowed neither the king nor Bos- 6uet to credit the sincerity of the forced abjurations which had preceded his ministry, and which had imposed a political faith upon these provinces. In his correspondence with the Courl^ he courageously upheld the right and dignity of conviction, When accused by the advocates of persecution, of a lenity wfaict allowed freodoin of belief to all, Fenelon wrote thus t* LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 29 Bossuet: "If they desire the people to abjure Christianity and to adopt the Koran, they need but to send them a troop of dragoons." Such language addressed to Bossuet himself, by a young minister aspiring to the dignities of his order, proved that he was at least two centuries in advance of hia time. " Continue," wrote he again to the king's ministers, u to supply corn ; you cannot adopt a more persuasive controversy. The people are only to be gained through conviction. Let them find as much advantage in remaining at home as peril in leaving the kingdom." Nevertheless, we discover with regret at a later period, in Fenelon's letters to Bossuet, some traces of weak concession to the merciless zeal of the pontiff, and a timid acquiescence in forcing people to heaven through the royal authority. It must be remembered, that no man escapes entirely from the prevailing opinions of his time ; least of all one who belongs to a body which trains its members in the sentiments and passions of an epoch. Upon his return from Poitou, Fenelon was recommended to Louis the Fourteenth, by the Duke de Beauvilliers, and Mad- ame de Maintenon, as an eligible preceptor for the Duke of Burgundy, the king's grandson. The Duke de Beauvilliers held the office of governor to the youthful heir to the throne. The choice reflected equal honor upon the king, the governor, and Madame de Maintenon. Fenelon seemed predestined by nature for this duty. His mind was essentially royal, and it needed but to transfuse his own spirit into that of the child born to a throne, to render him an accomplished monarch and the pastor of his people in the most ancient acceptation of the title. Fenelon never courted this elevation. Fortune herself had found him in the twilight where he sought concealment. His associates rejoiced for him, but mourned for themselves ; the Court was about to deprive them of his society. When Bossuet heard of this appointment, respecting which he had certainly been consulted, he expressed his pleasure in a short etter to Madame de Mcntmorency-Laval, the cou*in and friend i Fenelon. 30 WORKS OF FENELON. ** Y"esterday, Madame," he wrote, " I was occupied with the cares of Church and State. To-day I have leisure to think o your happiness, in which I warmly participate. Your fathei (the Marquis Antoine de Fenelon), my kind and good friend, is with me in spirit. My imagination pictures his feelings upon this occasion could he witness the public exaltation o* a merit which sought so carefully to conceal itself. Do no think, Madame, that we lose our friend. You can still enjoy his intercourse, and I, though forced by my duties to quit Paris, can sometimes return and embrace him." In this note the whole character of the man is displayed. The joy, untainted with envy, of a master who beholds his own triumph in that of his pupil ; the memory of an old friendship with the head of the family which refills his heart and would open the tomb to congratulate the dead ; and the manly tenderness of a father who in his old age sometimes needs the presence of his son. Bossuet's heart was, at times, hardened by controversy and inflated by pontifical authority, but naturally it was tender. Devoid of this sensibility, he would have been a mere rhetorician, but how could he have possessed true eloquence ? whence would have proceeded those accents which, penetrating the souls of men, drew from them cries and tears ? Fenelon's other friend, the Abbe Tronson, Director of St. Sulpice, and his spiritual adviser, addressed him in a long con- gratulatory letter, anxious and affectionate, one in which joy and fear were mingled. " The portals of earthly grandeur are opened to you," said this holy man, " but beware lest they shut out the more solid greatness of heaven. Your friends, doubt- oss, felicitate you with the assurance of this post having been bestowed unsought, and this is truly a source of consolation ; but do not plume yourself too highly upon it, we have often more to do with our own elevation than we like to believe Unknown to ourselves we assist in removing obstacles. We do not absolutely court those who can serve us, but we wil ingly display ourselves to them in the most favorable point o new. It is to these natural revealings, ki which we suffer ou/ LITE OF FENELON, BY LAMABTINE. 31 merit to appear, that may be attributed the commencement oi Dromotion. Thus no man can say he has not contributed to elevate himself." It is easy to be seen, that the scrupulous director of the conscience knew the secrets of his disciple's heart, and warned him against an ambition, created by the gift and desire of pleas- ing, which formed at once the charm and danger of Fenelon. The first thoughts of Fenelon upon attaining his new hon- ors, were directed to friendship. He appointed the Abbe Fleury, and the Abbe de Beaumont (his nephew), sub-precep- tors to the young prince ; and to the Abbe de Langeron he assigned the office of reader. Thus he concentrated all his affections in his employment, and multiplied around his pupil the same spirit under different names. The Duke de Beau- villiers, his first patron, and on whom the management of the young prince depended, left his uncontrolled education to Fene- lon, and retained merely the title of his appointment. Equally delicate and important were the duties of that office which comprised in the destiny of this child, confided to Fenelon, the future fate of a nation. It is difficult at this remote period, when the overthrow of thrones and manners have still further increased the distance, to comprehend thoroughly the court of Louis the Fourteenth. It represented a sort of Christian monarchy of Olympus, in which the king was the Jupiter, around whom revolved infe- rior gods and goddesses, deified by the adulation of the great and the superstition of the ignorant. Their virtues and their rices were alike extravagantly displayed with an audacious su- periority that seemed to place between the people and the throne, the difference exhibited in the moral system of the gods as opposed to the moral system of men. Louis the Fourteenth was looked upon as an exception to every thing, even to hu- manity itself. This king was not judged like other sublunary beings; he seemed to have a conscience, a virtue, a God, apart from the rest of mortals. It was a unique period in the history of the greatness of courts, the intoxication of courtiers, and jhe prostration of the people. 32 WORKS OF FENELON. The lustre of the throne proceeded less from the sovereign who reigned, than from the events which that reign brought forth. Complete and absolute sovereignty was ripe at this epoch, and Louis had but to gather the fruit. Of two great ministers, Richelieu and Mazarin, the former had aided despot- ism by abating the power of the nobles ; the latter had ob- tained peace and obedience by lightening the yoke of the oppressed people, by winning the parliaments, by purifying factions, by seducing the Court, by corrupting princes, and by placing, through the power of his smooth Machiavelism, France, vanquished, bought, pardoned, and wearied, within the hands of a child. The energetic and dominant nature of the Gaul displayed by Richelieu, the Greek and Italian finesse of Maza- rin, seemed to have been created in concert for the purpose of moulding the kingdom to servitude and tranquillity. The entire reign of Louis the Fourteenth is contained in the lives of these two men : the one the terror, the other the at- traction of royalty. Richelieu has been fully appreciated, and, it may be, somewhat too highly lauded ; but history has not yet accorded to Mazarin his just meed. He was the Machia- vel, unspotted with crime, of the French monarchy. After his death, Louis the Fourteenth had neither to struggle for power nor respect ; he was only called upon to reign. Owing to these two antecedents, he was not required to be a great man in order to become a great king. It was sufficient to possess an exalted heart with an upright mind, and both dwelt in Louis. His intellect was enlightened, not by genius, but by good sense. His heart was elevated, not by grandeur of soul, but by pride. Mazarin had taught him to despise men, and to believe in the divine character of hi? power. He did so believe, and therein lay his strength. The idolatry he bore towards himself served as an example foi that incense which he expected to breathe, and commanded in hi? Court. He had well learnt from his first minister, the most penetrating of statesmen, to discern the true value of men. Tc reign well, for Louis the Fourteenth, was but to be served well. He seldom made a mistake in his selections for oflica LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 33 His kingdom represented nothing more than his house, the ministers his domestics, the State his family ; in fact, the government was but a reflection of his own individual character. This character, embellished upon the surface by a remnant of the chivalry of the race of Valois, which adorned egotism in the monarch and servility in his Court, possessed nothing great beyond its personality. He thought only of himself; h was born a master, he well understood the art of command, he was polished in manners, steady in all political relations, faithful to those who served him, capable of appreciating merit, and desirous of absorbing in what he considered his own glory, the fame of all who were renowned either for great virtue or great talent. Troubles of long continuance were appeased, civil wars extinguished, peace established, and literature revived : nature, ever more productive after storms, assigned to this reign the date of French genius in literature and art. Louis, like a fortunate man, and one worthy of his fete, seized the advantages of his time, which he stimulated and encouraged by his munificence and condescension. He claimed every rising genius as a new subject. With regard to religion, he professed two faiths, the one exclusively political, which consisted in fulfilling literally, by force if necessary, his part of most Christian king, crowned son and lictor of the Church ; the other was altogether pri- vate, an inheritance from his mother, brought from Spain, scrupulous in conscience, literal in practice, and superstitious in creed. Such a piety as this, up to advanced age, exer- cised but little influence over his conduct ; it had no true ele- vation, no independence of soul, no sublime view of the Creator. It was more that of a slave who trembles, than of a king who prays. He accommodated it to all his inclinations, nd profaned it by his many weaknesses. Devoted to love more by the senses than the intellect, his intrigues were nu merous ; nevertheless, they partook but little of a libertine character. A certain sincerity of admiration, and constancy tf regard, invested them with comparative purity. It was lew 30 34 WOEK8 OF FENELOU. vice than passion ; but such an oriental passion resembled more the attachment of a sultan to his favorite, than the devo tion of a lover to Ms idol. He flattered, he adored, he in- sisted upon the Court, the army, and the people, worshipping the object of his fancy, which he soon crushed to exalt another. Thus he lived, environing his wife with his mistresses, and never thinking himself sufficiently adored unless his weaknesses were included in the worship. At length came maturity, and remorse succeeded to voluptuousness. He sought to reconcile the necessity of a favorite with the demands of devotion. A woman formed expressly by nature and art to fill such a posi- tion, attracted his regard ; he cultivated her society, but when he sought to conquer, found he could do so only by marrying her. This woman was Madame de Maintenon. At the period when Fenelon was summoned to the Court, Madame de Maintenon had reigned for several years. Her destiny was less the result of a fortunate chance, than of an ably-studied calculation. Thus crafty though virtuous women make respect an auxiliary of intrigue, and adopt this eminent example as the saint and patron of ambition. Men do not sympathize with her, as passion held no sway in her capitula- tion with the king. If she negotiated for a long time, it was but to sell herself at the highest price to a man whom she had never loved. Descended from a family persecuted and ruined for their attachment to Protestantism, brought as a child from the colonies by a relation without a home, increasing with years in all those charms which expose a young girl so early to temptation, inspiring those who beheld her with an admiration "i creased by her misfortunes, educated amid the usages of an equivocal society, living in domestic familiarity with the most , elebrated courtezan of the time, Ninon de 1'Enclos, marrying finally the old, infirm, and burlesque poet, Scarron, her chaste and melancholy beauty contrasting with the age- and ill-temper of her husband, her poverty so nobly endured, her strict aiu Irreproachable conduct amid surrounding license and seduc lions, the severe graces of her mind cultivated in the shade, LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. sheerful yet sincere piety, which formed at once the fafeguarc" of her youth and the foundation of that respect which the work! entertained for her ; all these combining causet attracted towards her the attention of those who came from the Court to relax themselves at the house of the Diogenes 01 /ie day. Having soon become the widow of Scarron, during Jie period of mourning she concealed herself in a convent from the injurious remarks of the world. Compelled to sup- plicate for the small pension to which she was entitled, as sur- viving her husband, she approached the Court, where sh formed various connections, when a fortunate opportunity occurred. A sure and devoted confidante was required, to whom could be confided the Duke du Maine, the invalid child of Madame de Montespan. Upon the presentation of the young widow to the favorite, the latter became fascinated at once, and Madame de Maintenon received the young prince from the hands of the king and his mistress. She conducted him to the baths of the Pyrenees, in order to re-establish hia health, and commence his education. The correspondence she was obliged to carry on from thence with Madame de Montespan and the king, dissipated any prejudice Louis had formed against her. She gained his confidence and won his interest No woman of her time, or perhaps of any other, wrote in a style so simple, varied, and forcible : her pen displayed the solidity of her judgment, and the capability of her mind. Good sense, clearness, and force were her muses ; these were the qualities which accorded well with the rigid and precise spirit of Louis the Fourteenth, and were at the same time those which the favorite least dreaded in a confidante. The superi- ority of her own imagination, the brightness of her sallies, her strength of passion, the sparkling flow of her conversation, secured her from all rivalry. She possessed genius and the arts of seduction, and looked without alarm upon a simple esteem. It was beneath the mask of this modest temperament and this humble assumption of the part of confidante, that the vidow insinuated hereef more and more into the friendship 01 36 WOKK8 OF FENEI.OH. the favorite and the intimacy of the king. This accordance with a liaison which scandalized all Europe, demanded conces- sions from the virtue of the confidante which were scarcely compatible with the rigor of her piety. But we have already paid that the king was an exception to the recognized rules ol morality. The new friend of Madame de Montespan and o\ the monarch satisfied her conscience by blaming, in gentlo words, a guilty intercourse which she sanctioned by her actions. Her complaisance never extended absolutely to approbation 01 connivance, and in the interviews which her charge and hei residence in the house of the favorite rendered frequent with the sovereign, she reproached him for his weakness, and urgea him to repentance. Her ripened beauty, preserved in all it* freshness by the coldness of her temperament, had at least a much effect in the king's conversion as the sternness of her language. When at length liberated by the death of the queen, he asked himself if a calm, sincere, and virtuous attachment to a woman at the same time attractive and sensi- ble, would not offer to his mind and his senses a felicity as superior as it would exceed in vtrtue the voluptuous love of nis unreformed years. The charm augmented with every interview, and the jealousy and angry reproaches of Madame de Montespan served only to increase it. She accused the friend whom she had raised from so low a condition, of ingrat itude and domestic treachery, and declared she had but availed herself of her intimacy to suborn the heart of the king by pious seductions, and to gain the place of Esther in the royal bed, from whence she should be driven with opprobrium and infamy. The predictions of despairing love were fulfilled ; the accu- sation of ingratitude proved only too just. Before many years had elapsed, Madame de Montespan was disgraced, and drag- ged out her sorrowing existence in exile, while the widow of Scanon became queen. StHl, the dignity of the throne and the pride of the monarch prevailed sufficiently over his love to prevent the public announcement of his slavery to this ne\ wife. He was contented to satisfy the demands of the Churck LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKT1NE. 37 oy obtaining the benediction of the Archbishop of Paris ou Jie night of his marriage, in presence of a few trusty courtiers. The ceremony was secret, but the connection public. Madame de Maintenon occupied in the people's eyes, the equ'rocal position of the king's revered favorite. The royal family, the court, the ministers, the clergy, the sovereign himself, all became subservient to her influence. Favorite, wife, arbitresa of the Church, oracle of the council, she was at the same time the Richelieu and the Mazarin of the king's old age. Her clever humility bowed in outward appearance to the royal authority, and while her will became the king's law, she ever induced him to draw forth her opinions as if by compulsion. It was as if a monarch had espoused his prime minister. Piety, which had succeeded to love, formed the lasting bond of this union. The Court, inspired by the example of a religious woman, governed by a master alarmed for his salva- tion, domineered over by such stern bishops as Bossuet, reprimanded by confessors, sometimes terrible as Letellier, at others, gentle as Lachaise, agitated by opposing factions, divided between ambition and mysticism, resembled more a synod than a government Versailles at that period recalls to mind the palace of the Blacquernal at Byzantium, under the sway of the Greek rulers of the Lower Empire ; where meta- physical quarrels distracted the Court and the people, and left Constantinople open to the advance of destruction and the legions of her conquerors. The king had a son who bore the title of Monseigneur. This prince, who had been educated by Bossuet and Montau- i'r, was gifted by nature with courage and intelligence ; but the Eastern jealousy of Louis withdrew him from the camp the moment he displayed ability, and banished him to Meudon, where he resided, with a single companion, almost in a state of indigence. The son ultimately consented to occupy this obscure position in order to remove from Louis the insupport- able presence of an heir to the throne. The king trembled ess before the shadow of deat-i, than before the knowledge Uiat one day he must cease to reign. The Duke of Burgundy 38 WORKS OF FENELON. the guidance of whose studies had been confided to Fenelou, was the son of Monseigneur, and grandson of the king, who, following the custom of grandfathers, preferred this child to his own son. His extreme youth removed all unpleasant feel- ings, as the great disparity of years placed a wide distance between the monarch's reign and that of this youthful suc- cessor. Some of the courtiers attached themselves to these different branches of the royal family. The greater number surrounded the king, and all paid homage to Madame de Maintenon. Such was the Court of France when Fenelon entered upon his functions as preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The disposition of this child inspired more fear than hope. " He was terrible from his birth," said St. Simon, the untaught but impressive Tacitus of the end of this reign. " In his earli- est years he caused those about him to tremble; unfeeling, displaying the most violent passion, which extended towards inanimate objects, incapable of bearing the slightest contradic- tion, even from the hours or the elements, without, giving way to a whirlwind of rage sufficient to break all the blood-vessels in his body I speak of what I have often witnessed : opin- ionated to excess ; absorbed in the pursuits of pleasure, fond of good living, following the chase with furious impetuosity, enjoying music with a sort of delirium, madly attached to play, but unable to bear loss, and when defeated, becoming positively dangerous ; in fact, abandoned to all the evil pas- sions, and transported by every corrupting pleasure; often eavage, naturally cruel; bitter in raillery, ridiculing with a remorseless power, regarding all men (irrespective of merit), from his high position, but as atoms with whom he could have no affinity. Wit and powers of penetration shone through all he did or said, even in his paroxysms of extreme violence. His repartees were marvellous, his replies always just and profound. He but glanced superficially at the most abstruse points of learning ; the extent and vivacity of his powers Avere so varied that they prevented his fixing upon any distinct oranch of knowledge, and almost rendered him incapable o' LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 39 itndy. From this abyss came forth a prince," &c. n 'hu prince was the child confided to Fenelon to remodel. The king, Madame de Maintenon, and the Duke de Beau- villicr had peen admirably guided, either by chance or discern - ment, in the selection of such a master for such a disciple Fenelon had been endowed by nature with the two attributes most requisite in those who teach the powei of command and the gift of pleasing. Dignity and fascination emanated from his whole being, nature had traced in his lineaments the beauty of his soul. His countenance expressed his genius even in moments of silence. The pencil, the chisel, and the pen of his cotemporaries, some of whom were his enemies, all agree in their delineation of Fenelon. D'Aguesseau and St. Simon have been his Vandyck and his Rubens. He lives, h speaks, and enchants in their hands. His figure was tall, elegant, and flexible in its proportion* as that of Cicero. Nobility and modesty reigned in his air and governed his motions ; the delicacy and paleness of his features added to their perfection. He borrowed none of his beauty from the carnation, owed none of it to color; it con- sisted entirely in the purity and grace of outline, and was altogether of a moral and intellectual cast. In moulding his expression, nature had employed but little physical material. We feel while contemplating this countenance, that the rare and delicate elements of which it was composed, afforded no home to the more brutal and sensual passions. They were shaped and moulded only to display a quick intelligence, and to render the soul visible. His forehead was lofty, oval, rounded in the centre, depressed and throbbing towards the temples; surmounted by fine hair of an undecided color, which the involuntary breath of inspiration agitated like a gentle wind, as it curled around the cap that covered the top of his head. His eyes, of a liquid transparency, received, like water, the various reflections of light and shadow, thought and impression. It was said that their color reflected the texture of his mind. Eyebrows arched, round, and delicate, relieved them ; long, veined, and transparent lids covered and unveiled 40 WORKS OF FENELON. alternately with a rapid movement. His aquiline uose was marked by a slight prominence, which gave energy ci expression to a profile more Greek than Roman. His mouth, the lips of which were partly unclosed, like those of a man who breathes from an open heart, had an expression, wavering between melancholy and playfulness, which revealed the free- dom of a spirit controlled by the gravity of the thoughts. It seemed to incline equally to prayer or to smiles, and breathed at the same time of heaven and earth. Eloquence or familiar conversation flowed spontaneously from every fold ; the cheeks were depressed, but unwrinkled, save at the two corners of the mouth, where benevolence had indented lines expressive of habitual graciousness. His chin, firm and somewhat promi nent, gave a manly solidity to a countenance otherwise ap- proaching to the feminine. His voice corresponded, in its sweet, grave, and winning resonance, with all the harmonious traits of his countenance. The tone conveyed as much as the words, and moved the listeners before the meaning was con- veyed to them. " This exterior," continues d'Aguesseau, " was rendered more imposing by a lustre of distinction which spread around his person, and by an indescnbable expression, at once sublime and simple, which impressed upon his character and his features an almost prophetic air. Without effort he gave a new turn to all his conceptions, which made his hearers fancy that inspiration had rendered him master of every science, and that instead of acquiring he had invented them. He was always new, ever original, imitating none, and himself inimita ble. The theatre in which he performed was not too great for BC great an actor ; he held no place there but that assigned to him by the public, and his position was worthy of his genius.'' Tc these endowments of nature, Fenelon added all those which are bestowed by a natural power of pleasing, without an effort to beguile or flatter. The desire of being loved as he hirmelf loved, was his sole art of flattery and seduction ; but in th's also lay all his power. " This power," said his friends, u became an irresistible fascination, in proportion as it wa* LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 41 involuntary." This ardent inclinatioi to please was no effort af his mind, it was simply his good fortune. Drawn towards all by his love, he drew all in turn to himself. Benevolence was so completely his essence, that in breathing he imparted it to others. The universal regard which he met with, was but the rebound of that affection he displayed towards his fellow creatures. This desire to please was no artifice ; it was ipontaneous emotion. He did not, like the ambitious, exert u only where interest beckoned, towards those who by their friendship could aid his advancement or his schemes ; it ex- tended to all, without other distinction than deference to the great and condescension to the humble. Equally anxious, said St. Simon, to delight his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors, in this desire of reciprocal love he recognized no distinctions of great and small, high or low ; he sought only to conquer hearts with his own ; he neglected none, and noticed even the uumblest domestics of the palace : nevertheless, this prodigality of regard had nothing vulgar or uniform in its expression which might have vulgarized or deteriorated its value. It was marked, distinctive, and proportioned, not in tenderness, but in familiarity of manner, according to the rank, the worth, and the degree of the individual. To some respectfully affection- ate, to others displaying ardent friendship ; giving a smile here, and a word there ; a kindly glance, a natural benevo- lence, spontaneously governed all his motions : his guide was sentiment, not form. A faultless tact (that instinct of the mind) involuntarily prevented his evincing too much consider- ation for one person, or too little for another. The measure bestowed on each was correctly proportioned. To all other charms, he joined a marvellous grace, a grace the gift of. nature, and to which good taste was added by gentle birth, Born within the ranks of the aristocracy, educated amid the distinguished, accustomed from infancy to move in a sphere above the crowd, his manners bore that undeniable stamp ol superiority which raises by its condescension, and flatters by Ha love, llis politeness never seemed an attention to all, but ft peculiar notice bestowed on each ; it imparted its own char 1 WORKS OF FENELON. acter to his genius. He never sought to dazzle by display those who might have felt obscured or humiliated under the ascendency of his talents. He suited his discourse to the capacity of his associates, equalling always, but never trying tc surpass them. The conversation which forms the true elo- quence of friendship was supereminently his. Ever adapted to the man, the hour, and the subject, it was grave, flexible, luminous, sublime, or playful, but always noble and instructive. In his most unstudied flights there was something sweet, kind, and winning, which the most humble comprehended, and which compelled them to pardon his superiority. None, con- tinues St. Simon (who dreaded his genius), could leave, or deprive themselves of the charm of his society, without wish- ing to return to it again. His conversation left that impres- sion on the soul which his voice left on the ear, and his features on the eyes, a new, powerful, and indelible stamp, which could never be effaced, either from the mind, the senses, or the heart. Some men have been greater; none have been more adapted to humanity; and none have swayed more by the power of the affections. x Such was Fenelon, when he appeared at Court, in his forty- second year. He speedily obtained dominion over all except only the envious, who could not endure superiority, and the king, who, in opposition to genius, possessed only the gift of plain common sense, and could not endure that any other than himself should be an object of general regard. Madame de Maintenon, a woman of truly superior discernment wherever ambition did not obscure her faculties, recognized at once in Fenelon the dominating mind of this secondary Court which surrounded the heir to the throne. His gentle, pure, and sincere piety, prevented any danger from the universal influ ence he exercised. She drew him into intimacy, and even wished to render him the confidant of her thoughts, in choos- ing him for her spiritual director. Such a confidence would have rendered the will of Fenelon the arbiter of the will of Madame de Maintenon, who herself ruled the disposition of the king. The oratory of a female would have become th LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKTINE. 43 racle of an age. It is believed that the comparative youth of Fenelon, and the instinctive repugnance of the monarch to Buch an alarming superiority, deterred her from the fulfilment of this intention. She confided her conscience to another, but still bestowed all her favors upon Fenelon. No mind in the Court so quickly understood, admired, and loved him. With the exception of Bossuet, all connected with the pious inter- course of Louis the Fourteenth and Madame de Maintenon, were persons of middling capacity. The genius of Fenelon soared far above this circle ; but we have already said that no man could so well adapt himself to those whom he could never raise to his own height. The greatest triumph of hi* genius consisted in forgetting itself. He confined himself, under the patronage of the Duke de Beauvillier, and the intimacy of the Duke de Chevreuse, both rather his friends than his superiors, to the delicate functions of his charge : the recital of those endeavors and successes by which the master achieved the transformation of his pupil belong rather to the studies of philosophy than the records o history. The first process adopted by Fenelon was the influ ence of his own character. He succeeded in persuading, because he had succeeded in making himself loved ; and ho became loved, from having begun by bestowing love himself. In a few years he had remodelled this rude nature, at first sterile and unproductive, but afterwards ductile and fruitful, into the Germanicus of France. This Germanicus, like he of Uome, can only be exhibited to the world for a moment ; we hall meet him again on the borders of the grave. It was in the midst of the studious leisure of this royal edu- cation, which forced upon Fenelon's mind the contemplation of the philosophy of societies, that he secretly composed, in a poetical form, his moral and political code of government. We speak of " Telemachus," which perpetuates the genius of Fenelon to all posterity. If he had merely been the lettered and elegant courtier of Madame le Maintenon's private circle, ihe exemplary and eloquent pontiff of Cambray, the tutor of a prince, carried off from his regal inheritance while yet urdei M WORKS OF FENELO.N-. age, his name would already have been forgotten. But he ha moulded his soul and genius into an imperishable poem. Hit mind is his immortal monument, and lives in this work. The exact period and method adopted by the poet in the composition of " Telemachus," have been subjects of much discussion. Some have thought that the intentions of the writer never destined it to assume the form of a book, and that it was transcribed without forethought, a page at a time, to afford introductory subjects upon Greek and Latin studies to hia pupil. The scope, the regularity, the continuity, and sublimity of the work, evidently composed from a sustained train of ideas, defeat these puerile suppositions. They are no less falsified by the nature of the subjects which Fenelon dis- cusses in Telemachus. Can any one suppose that a sensible instructor, a scrupulous guardian of the imagination of his pupil, would have bestowed upon him as the subject of his studies, and as an example of the best theories of government, the equivocal fables of the mythology, and the soft images of the amours of Eucharis? Such a conclusion is to calumniate the good sense and modesty of the poet. This book, which was in truth composed expressly for the young prince, was evidently written with the intention of fortifying his mind, when formed by manhood, against the doctrines of tyranny and the snares of voluptuousness, pictures which the master presented to his pupil, to arm him beforehand against the seductions of a throne, and the allurements of his own heart. The truth of this hypothesis is, that the instructor detached fiom time to time, a page of his manuscript suited to the age and faults of the pupil, and made him translate it, with the ntention of presenting to him in his composition, either the maxims he sought to inculcate, or the portraits of those vices he was desirous of counteracting by indirect lessons. But the entire poem, as a whole, formed the relaxation, the treasure and the secret of the poet. All the world arc acquainted with this poem Christian in its inspiration, pagan in itf, form. This original defect corre ponds perfectly with the man and the period. Fenelon, liku LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 45 his book, possessed a pagan genius and a Christian spirit. De- spite this vice of composition, which destroys the character of co-existence and nationality, which all truly monumenta. books ought to display, if they seek to be the living and eter- nal memorials of true and original thoughts, it is the most perfect treatise upon education and political economy that ex- ists in modern times : and this treatise has the unusual merit of being, at the same time, a poem, a moral essay, and a nar- rative ! It bears a threefold existence : it instructs, it inter- ests, and it charms. It is true, it lacks the melody of verse. Fenelon never possessed sufficient power of imagination to ex- ercise over his ideas that force of composition which embodies them in rhythm, or, as we may say, blends together words and images by throwing them into the mould of poetry. But his prose was intrinsically poetical ; and if it has not the perfec- tion, the cadence and harmony, it has, nevertheless, the full charm of measured numbers. It is always music, although of an uncertain sound, which flows softly and freely through tho ear. This poetry may be less durable, but is also less fatiguing, than that of Homer or Virgil. If it possesses not the lasting quality of metal, neither is it encumbered with the weight. An ordinary comprehension can follow it with less effort. Fe- nelon and Chateaubriand are poets as much through sentiment as by the power of imagery. They possess that which forms the essence of poetry, and makes the greatest poets. The only distinction is, that they speak instead of singing their stanzas. The true imperfection of this beautiful book consists not in its being written in prose, but rather in its being a copy from the antique, instead of a modern original. We can fancy our- selves reading a translation from Homer, or a continuation o* the Odyssey, by a disciple equal to his master. The places the names, the customs, the people, the events, the images, the Call es, the deities, the men, the earth, the sea, and the heaven, all are Greek and pagan ; there is nothing French, and noth- ng Christian. The whole work is a caprice of genius the Jisguise of a modern imagination beneath the fictions ana reatmente of the ancient mythology. We feel it to be a Hub- 46 WORKS OF FENELON. lime imitation, but an imitation in every line. Fenelon is here, like a second Homer, living amid another people and in another age, singing fables to a generation who no longer believe them. Herein lies the fault of the poem. This was also the vice ol the period, which, not having yet created its own poetry or its own imagery, and finding itself surrounded, upon the revival of letters, by the monuments of Greek inspiration, thought nothing could be more beautiful than to copy these vestiges ] and thus original thought remained impotent from the force of admiration. But this error explained and excused, does not render the work of Fenelon less sublime. It seems the dictation of filial piety ; we may almost say, that it is a poem containing every virtuous and religious emotion belonging to man. The poet tells us that the young Telemachus, the son of Ulysses and Penelope, conducted by Wisdom, in the shape of an old man, denominated Mentor, navigates the eastern seas in search of his father, who has been driven for ten years, by the anger of the gods, from his kingdom, the small island of Ithaca. Te- lemachus, during this long voyage, sometimes auspicious, occa- eionally the reverse, landing or driven upon numerous coasts, is often present at different forms of civilization, explained to him by his attendant guardian, Mentor. He encounters many dangers, experiences many passions ; is exposed to the snares of pride, of glory, of voluptuousness, and triumphs over all, through the assistance of that invisible Wisdom which coun- sels and protects him. Matured by years, and instructed by experience, he becomes an accomplished prince ; and, having encountered in the countries he has traversed, sometimes good kings, sometimes tyrants, and occasionally republics, he reduces the lessons which he has been taught by example, to the prac tical government of his own people. Like Emile, the plebeian Telemachus of J. J Rousseau, this poem is exclusively social and political. It is at once the critic and theorist cf society and governments. It was intended tc furnish the programme of a future reign, in which the Duke f Burgundy was tc be the Telemachus, and Fenelon the Men- LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAETINE. 47 tor. It is chiefly under this point of view that this book has exerted such a powerful influence over the mind of man. Fe- nelon was not only a poet, but also a political legislator ; a mod- ern Solon ; a living date throughout all the revolutions of society which have agitated the world since the appearance of his poem. We may say, without romance or exaggeration, that all good and all evil, all that is true, all that is false, all that is real and all that is chimerical, in the great European revolution of opinions and institutions, of which we have been the instruments, the spectators, and the victims, during a cen- tury, has flowed from this book, as from the fountain of good and evil. Telemachus is at once the grand revelation and Utopia of all classes of society. When we follow the chain attentively, link by link, from the most fanatic tribunes of the Convention to the Girondins, from the Girondins to Mirabeau, from Mirabeau to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to J. J. Rousseau, from J. J. Rousseau to Tur- got, from Turgot to Vauban, from Vauban to the preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy, we shall discover in Fenelon the first revolutionist, the first tribune of the people, the first reformer of kings, the first apostle of liberty ; and in Telemachus we shall acknowledge the evangelist of the truths and errors of modern revolutions. The politics of Fenelon were virtuous, but chimerical. Hence the summits and precipices upon which this revolution rises, or down which it plunges lower and lower at each effort to become practical. The moral principles in- culcated by Telemachus are admirable, but the ideas upon government are absurd. In Fenelon, the political transforma- tion of the world possessed its prophet ; but it was compelled to wait another century for its statesman. The good sense of Louis the Fourteenth, sharpened by the exercise of govern- ment, taught him at once the true estimate of the man and the book. " Fenelon," said he, " is the most chimerical indi- riiual in my kingdom." All his general maxims, healthy in theory, have been de- fctroyed in practice, by the imperfections inseparable from hu- manity. People ruled by their own wisdom ; patrician and 48 WORKS OF FENELON. plebeian republics ; royalties tempered by the sacerdotal 01 popular authority ; representative government ; triennial as- semblies of the states-general of the nation ; provincial admin- istrations and assemblies ; the election and deposition of princes ; the sovereignty of the people in action ; the sup- pression of hereditary succession to the throne and magisterial offices ; liberty of conscience ; perpetual peace among nations ; fraternity and equality among the citizens ; the destruction of individual wealth, under the pretext of advantage to the community ; the arbitrary dictation of the State, as to the for- tunes of its subjects ; the distribution of lands and professions by the government ; public education enforcing equalizing principles, which all the children of the kingdom were com- pelled to undergo ; the community of benefits ; the condem- nation of luxury ; the sumptuary laws, operating upon houses, lodgings, food, and elementary trades, such as agriculture, where the toils of the lower orders met with the strongest incitement from the suppression of luxury and the arts ; the maximum of price and of consumption in provisions ; a system of political economy, by turns the best or the worst ; truth, error, Utopias, inconsistencies, contradictions, illusions, possi- bility, impossibility, extended views, short-sighted systems, dreams, undefined ideas, aspirations devoid of any solid foun- dation, without aim or possibility of being reduced to action ; all contribute to render the political code inculcated by Telem- achus merely the pastoral of government. All is confused : we feel ourselves floating in an ocean of human imagination, without compass to direct us, tending towards neither pole, and without a coast to land upon. It resembles the Control Social of J. J. Rousseau, the Utopia of Plato, or that of Thomas More ; and is, in fact, a Pandemonium of empty speculations. Every thing in it is a shadow, and nothing substantial. While contemplating these four books the Republic of Plato, the Utopia of More, the Telemachus of Fenelon, and the Contrat Bocial of J. J. Rousseau we can repeat with conviction th paying of Frederic the Great, " If I had an empire to punish, wx>uld bestow the government of it upon the philosophers." LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAirTINE. 49 These philosophers, despite the grandeur of their genius, the elevation of their views, and the virtue of their designs, plan systems for humanity at large which are suited only to an ab- stract portion. Minds, without practical experience, construct their imaginary institutions upon clouds, and the moment these clouds touch the earth, their institutions melt into vapor, or fall to ruins. Fenelon, in " Telemachus," proves himsell one of those philosophers who have created for the age which they imagine, the most beautiful, but the most mistaken per spectives ; who equally mingle sound and unsound opinions ; and who have confounded a passion for ameliorating the con- dition of humanity with a passion for attaining the impossible. It is against such practical impossibilities that inexperienced rev- olution (of which they are the parent) wounds, struggles, and always destroys itself ; and it is also from the anger created by the resistance which reality offers to chimera that spring the deceptions, the frenzies, the tyrannies, and the crimes of this very spirit of change. The visionary Utopiasts, who ad- vocate a purely metaphysical form of government, and the annihilation of power, produced the crimes and anarchies of the revolution of 1793. The Utopiasts of levelling property and social communism produced the panic, the disavowal, and the adjournment of the revolution of 1848. These two dreams of Fenelon have been looked upon as serious practicalities by ehort-sighted reasoners. The saintly poet has unintentionally been the first radical and the first communist of his age. The influence of this book in matters of political economy, has been no less powerful and equally fatal ; but its errors in this respect are more easily demonstrated. The declamations against art and luxury, the sumptuary laws to regulate the consumption of articles produced by labor, which are useless in our epoch, were applicable to the primitive condition of that antiquity from which Fenelon unfortunately drew his examples and imbibed his ideas. Upon the first establishment of any community strictly pastoral and agricultural, where the earta is cultivated with difficulty, and scarcely supplies the necessary aliment of man, it becomes the enforced law and '01. I. 8 50 WORKS OF FENELON". rirtue of citizens to consume as little as possible, that their sobriety and abstemiousness may thus leave a larger portion to satisfy the wants of their brethren. The aim of such hiws was to prevent scarcity, that scourge of new-born empires, whose existence depends upon abundance of provision. Under this view, temperance, which is now a virtue confined to our- selves, became a benefit conferred on society. Abstinence was an act of devotion luxury a crime. We can thus compre- hend the usefulness of sumptuary laws in the remote periods of antiquity ; but when a community is firmly established, and has increased its productive powers by clearing land, by the acquisition of flocks and machinery, when it no longer fears scarcity, and supports its immense population by the wages paid for the various products of art, intellect, and industry ; when the luxury of one class creates the riches of another ; when each pleasure, each vanity, and each caprice of the rich, pays, voluntarily or involuntarily, a reward for the labor which has supplied it, the system of Fenelon, of Plato, and of J. J. Kousseau, appears no longer a mere absurdity, but assumes the serious aspect of a ruinous injury to the people. Consumption then becomes a virtue, and luxury proportioned to fortune supplies the necessities of the rest of mankind. This error of " Telemachus" is one of those which produced the worst evils of the Revolution, and its impression is still cmeffaced from the minds of the people, much as it has mis- guided and injured them. Such is " Telemachus," virtuous in maxim, deplorable in application. But as this poem responds by anticipation to the most noble and most legitimate instincts of justice, equality, and purity in the government of empires as it was inspired by a pious mind, and written by a poetical genius we caa imagine the effect such a book was likely to produce upon the world. But "Telemachus" contained also the secret of Fenelon. He wrote it in the palace of Louis the Fourteenth, and con sealed it from the notice of the king and the courtiers cntii oear the close of the reign. In this book there was a terrible LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTTNE. 51 accusation, -which he reserved for the period when his pupil, the Duke of Burgundy, should have attained the years of maturity, and have approached more closely to the throne. It was a sealed confidence, to remain until then unbroken, between the master and the pupil. Perhaps this book was also destined at the moment of the young prince's at cession, to proclaim a new political system to be, in fact, the pio- gramme of a Fenelonian government. It was also a sort ol indirect aspiration to the post of first minister, for which Fe- nelon might have felt a presentiment, without even acknowl- edging it to himself. The ambition which his friend, the Abbe Tronson, had warned him against, as we have already seen, that species of ambition which does not seek to aggran- dize its possessor, but which is involuntarily created and re- vealed by intellectual ability, such was that of Fen el on. There are certain men whom nature has endowed with distinct privileges. Their ambition, instead of being the offspring of passion, is the emanation of mental power. They do not aspire, but they mount by an irresistible force, as the aero- static globe rises above an element heavier than itself, by the sole superiority of specific ascendency. The very goodness of Fenelon caused him to desire some future elevation, where his benevolent spirit could shed itself with more effect upon all around him. But envy now began to penetrate into the shade where 'he had sought concealment. People began to be alarmed at the influence exercised by him, not only in the capacity of master, but as a friend, over the mind of his pupil. The increasing interest daily evinced by Madame de Maintenon for the charms of his conversation, had a powerful influence at Court. The correspondence between her and Fenelon was as frequent as it was intimate. These letters display the boldness of those councils which Fenelon gave to the woman who in her turn counselled the king. He encouraged her to reign. * You have more resolution than you believe yourself to pos- BCSS." (He wrote thus in obedience to "an expressed wish of hers that he \ould spoak the truth, no matter how severe.) ' Y>u distrust yourself, or rather, you fear entering into dis- 52 WORKS OF FENELON. suasions opposed to the inclination you have always felt for a life of tranquillity and retirement As the king ia guided much less by the force of principles than by the impul- sion of those individuals who surround him, and upon whom he bestows his authority, it becomes essential that he should be influenced upon all occasions by truly good men, who, acting in concert with you, will induce the fulfilment, in their most extended view, of those duties which he never contem- plates. Since he must be surrounded, the grand point is, how to surround him ; since he must be ruled, how to rule him. His welfare consists in his being influenced by those who are upright and disinterested. You must, then, apply yourself to the task. Give him views of peace ; induce him to ameliorate the condition of the people ; above all, to adopt principles of moderation and equity ; to suppress all harsh and violent counsels, and to hold in abhorrence acts of arbitrary authority. . . . There are at Court many people of virtuous and noble qualities, who merit your kindness and encouragement ; but you must exercise great precaution, for thousands would be- come hypocrites to please you." We see that Fenelon speaks of the errors of the king, as a man who places himself entirely in the power of Madame de Maintenon, the future mistress of his confidences ; we also see that, faithful to friendship, he sought to draw towards the virtuous section of the Court, the Dukes de Chevreuse and Beauvillier, all the favor of the sovereign ruler. We must not, however, forget that the cause of virtue was at the same time the cause of his friends and patrons. This correspondence, and this pious intercourse between Madame de Maintenon and Fenelon, gained more and more foT the future author of " Telemachus" the regard and esteem o ne who reigned with uncontrolled power: she frequently reverted with pleasure, in her advanced years, to the senti ments she had then experienced. * I have often since wondered," writes she, " why I did no 4 select the Abbe de Fenelon as the guide of my conscience when his manners charmed me so much, and when his mine LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 53 and virtues had so influenced me in his favor." She, more than any other woman in her position, required the society of a man in all points equally attractive and superior, surrounded as she was* by common -place spirits, and by empty coldness, " Ah !" (she wrote at one period to her favorite niece), " alas that I cannot give you my experience, that I could only show you the weariness of soul by which the great are devoured ; the difficulty which they find in getting through their days. Do you not see how they die of sadness in the midst of that fortune which has been a burden to them ? I have been young and beautiful ; I have tasted many pleasures ; I have been universally beloved. At a more advanced age I have passed years in the intercourse of talent and wit, and I solemnly protest to you, that all conditions leave a frightful void." This friendship of Madame de Maintenon for the most fasci- nating man in the kingdom, inspired the monarch with the idea of recompensing Fenelon for his success in the education of his grandson, by the gift of the Abbacy of Saint- Valery. The king in person announced to him his gracious intention, and made many excuses for bestowing upon his services so tardy and disproportionate a reward. All things seemed to smile upon Fenelon. The heart of Madame de Maintenon seemed to have gained for him the love of the entire Court. liut a snare was upon his path, and this snare lay in him- eelf, in his pure soul, and in his poetic imagination. He allowed himself to be seduced, not by his success, but by his piety. We have already stated at the commencement of this nar- rative, that the court of Louis the Fourteenth, in his advanced ge, resembled rather a synod than a seat of government ; and that the most subtle dogmas of orthodoxy and theology occu- oied the place of war and politics. We must now proceed to name the period when the fortune of this bright genius, and, Perhaps the destiny of France, were overthrown by the hallu- tinations of a woman and the anger of Bossuet. About that epoch there res'ded at Paris a young, beautiful, 54 WORKS OF FENELON. and rich widow, Jeanne-Marie de Latnothe. She had beeo married to M. Guyon, the son of the constructor of the canal of Briare, whom she had lost at the early age of twenty-eight. Madame Guyou was gifted by nature with beauty of a dreamy and melancholy order, a passionate soul, and an imagination sc exalted that earth could not satisfy it ; but seeking for love it mounted to heaven. She had been acquainted in Paris, before her marriage, with a young Barnabite recluse, of the name oi Lacombe. The tender piety and mystic exaltation of this monk, produced upon the heart and mind of the young neo- phyte, one of those sudden impressions wherein grace and nature seem equally mingled; as in the friendship of St. Francois de Sales and Madame de Chantal, where it was im- possible to discern whether admiration was most yielded to celestial virtue or human attraction. Madame Guyon, who had always kept up a correspondence with her religious instructor, no sooner became a widow than she retired to Gex, a little village of Bugey, on the declivity of the Jura, where Father Lacombe awaited her. The Bishop of Geneva, who held as a fief the small village of Gex, was acquainted with the name, the attractions, the talent, the fortune, and the already notorious sanctity of the young widow. He considered it as an added glory to his Church, that a woman so endowed with natural and supernatural gifts should bury all in this solitude in order to consecrate them to the service of God. lie there- fore resolved to bestow upon Madame Guyon, the direction of a convent of young girls, converted by his exertions from the schismatic doctrines of Calvin. Madame Guyon selected Father Lacombe for the superior of her convent. The intimacy of the widow and the monk, consecrated by the pious inter tourse of their mutual residence, became exalted almost to a ori of ecstasy. The ardent imagination of the woman soon surpassed that of the man ; the master changed places with the disciple, and received from the eyes and lips of his peni tent, inspirations and revelations as direct manifestations fron ueaven. This mystic commerce appeared suspicious to the minds 0> LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMA.ETINE. 55 the unsophisticated. The Bishop of Geneva, after having in- voluntarily favored it, became alarmed, and removed the monk in disgrace to Thonon, another small village in his diocese, upon the banks of the lake of Geneva. Madame Guycn im- mediately followed her spiritual friend, and retired to an Ursuline convent at Thonon, where she constantly received Father Lacombe without restraint, and continued that ecstatic intercourse which gave her complete dominion over his feebler spirit, which it both subdued and charmed. From thence she went to Grenoble, to expand the fame of her heavenly love in conference with a small number of sectarians. The forests and rocks of the Grand Chartreuse attracted her by their sub- lime grandeur, and she there seemed to resemble the Sibyl of the desert. Finally, hoping to find on the other side of the Alps, the Italian imagination more susceptible of the fire of her new doctrines, she sent her disciple, Lacombe, to preach her faith at Verceil, in Piedmont. Thither she again followed him, and wandered about in his company for several years, from Gex to Thonon, from Thonon to Grenoble, from Verceil to Turin, from Turin to Lyons, leaving the world undecided between admiration and scandal. Admiration prevailed with all who examined closely the sincerity of her enthusiasm, the austerity of her life, and the purity of her habits. Upon her return from this long pilgrimage, she published at Lyons an exposition of the Song of Solomon, and several other works upon meditation. The doctrines they inculcated were drawn from Plato, and the first Christian commentators, chiefly those belonging to Spain, that country of enthusiasm. Their object was to inculcate upon pious minds, as the type of true perfec- tion, the love of the Deity for himself alone, devoid of all de- fcire of reward or fear of punishment. She recommended also a profound and absorbing contemplation of God, wherein the aoul, drowned in the ocean of the divine essence, would con tract the sinlessness of a purely innocent spirit, and becoming incapable of ascent or fall, would cast the body aside as a worn-out vestment, leaving it at liberty to fulfil its simply ma- erial functions, wh : le the soul, exalted to heaven, would cease 56 WORKS OF FENELON. to be held responsible for its earthly tenement. It was in fact the virtue of Divinity transplanted into man, by the indissolu- ble union of man to the Divinity ; the dream of every soul upon earth, and the anticipated condition of heaven. These maxims contained sublimity and sanctity for saints, but they were replete with dangerous snares for vulgar minds. The Church became alarmed at the rumor of such doctrines, and the Cardinal Lecamus, Bishop of Grenoble, denounced them to M. de Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, at Court. Ma- dame Guyon and Father Lacombe returned to the capital. The apostle and disciple were both arrested ; the monk was inter- rogated, thrown into the Bastille, afterwards confined in the Isle of Oleron, and ultimately incarcerated in the Castle of Lourdes, amid the roughest wilds of the Pyrenees, there to linger through many long and dreary years of expiation. Madame Guyon, confined in a convent in the street of Saint- Antoine, underwent the most strict examinations of the Church, and cleared herself triumphantly from all the accusations of scandal and impiety, by which she had been assailed upon hei return to Paris. She became the example, the worship, the delight, and the admiration of the convent, which had been selected as her prison. Madame de Miramion, a person at that time also celebrated for her fervent light and zeal in the cause of piety, heard of the female captive, sought an interview with her, and became fascinated. She interceded with Madame de Maintenon to obtain the liberty of a woman so unjustly per- ^.cuted.* Madame de la Maisonfort, a relative of Madame d* Maintenon, the Duchess of Bethune, daughter of the unfortu nate Fouquet, and Madame de Beauvillier herself, the daughtej of Colbert, united their entreaties to those of Madame de Mi ramion ; Madame de Maintenon granted liberty to the protegee of such irreproachable women. In the first moment of hei freedom, Madame Guyon flew to express her gratitude to he' . iberator, Madame de Maintenon succumbed to the universa iiscination ; she felt drawn towards Madame Guyon as to the focus of piety, eloquence, and grace, which had been only ob cured by the vapors of an effervescing imagination. She ic LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKTINE. 57 iroduced her to Saint-Cyr, an establishment where she had assembled beneath her own inspection the elite of all the no- bly born young girls in the kingdom ; and engaged her to hold discourses there upon the mighty gifts of God, and to communicate her contemplative and pious thoughts upon dS vinity to the youthful residents. Madame de Maintenon stinr ulated this good work by her presence. She became th innocent accomplice of all the pious subtilties in which a mystical spirit indulged when rhapsodizing on divine love; and infected the sternest men about the Court with the same degree of admiration, including the Duke de Beauvilliei, and the Duke de Chevreuse ; and she admitted Madame Guyon to a confidential intimacy inaccessible to others. It was in such a position, and beneath such auspices, that Fenelon encoun- tered Madame Guyon. The resemblance in gentleness and elevation of these two spirits, equally pious, and guided by imaginations eqtfally ardent, established at once between Fe- nelon and Madame Guyon a spiritual intercourse, in which there was no seduction but piety, and nothing to be seduced but enthusiasm. The mystic recitals of Madame Guyon, while affording such ecstasy to Fenelon and Madame de Maintenon, appeared to them as the exhalations of a peculiar devotion, the exercise of which was suited only to the privacy of the sanctuary, and which must be carefully veiled from the gaze of the vulgar, as likely to produce only intoxication in the uneducated mind. The king, whose faith was as simple as his imagination, held a sterner opinion. " I have read extracts from the works of our friend, to the fcing," writes Madame de Maintenon, " but he tells me they kre mere ravings ; he is not yet sufficiently advanced in piety to appreciate their perfection." She adds, in another place : * The maxims of the Abbe Fenelon should not be published to those who cannot understand them. As regards Madame Guyon, we must be content to monopolize her to ourselves. The Abbe Fenelon is right in advising that her works shoulu be kept private, for they woaid preach of the liberty of th 30 58 WOEKb OF FENELON. children of God, to those who have not yet become his chil dren." We see that Fenelon opposed himself to the display of an ideal perfection likely to become a cause of offence to the weak-minded ; his spiritual accordance with Madame Guyon was less complete than that of Madame de Maintenon and the Court, and hid admiration, held in check by prudence, though enthusiastic, never reached the point of fanaticism. His strong attachment to these doctrines proceeded from his peculiar mental organization, and from a leaning to that mystical love of the Deity, in which tenderness is mixed with subtilty. Let us listen to him speaking of St. Teresa, and we shall discover in his admiration the peculiar bent and natural source of his own devotion. We shall at the same time per- ceive the reserve, the judgment, and the prudence which ever pervaded his lofty mind. " From the simple worship in which Teresa was at first ab- sorbed, God elevated her mind to the most sublime height of contemplation. She entered into that union where the virginal marriage of husband and wife commences, where she becomes all to him, he every thing to her. Revelations, the spirit of prophecy, visions which assumed no tangible form, raptures, ecstatic torments, as she herself said, in which the spirit is overwhelmed, and the body succumbs, and in which the pres- ence of God is so realized that the soul sinks overwhelmed and consumed, unable to support its burden of sublime awe ; in fact, every supernatural gift seemed poured upon her. Her directors were at first sight mistaken. They judged of her capability for the practice of virtue by the nature of lor prayers, and by the remains of that weakness and imperfection which God left, in order to humiliate her. They concluded her to be under the influence of a dangerous illusion which they desired to exorcise. Alas ! what trouble for a soul simply desirous of obedience, and influenced, as that of St. Teresa was, by terror, when she felt her mental powers completely over- turned by her instructors. 'I was,' said she, ' like one in the tnidst of a river, on the point of being drowned without hop LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAETDTE. 59 of succor. She no longer recognized herself, nor knew what she said when praying. That which had formed her consola- tion for so many years now added bitterness to her distress. In order to obey, she tore herself from her inclination, but in- voluntarily returned without the power to abandon or resume it. Assailed by these doubts, she experienced all the horrors of despair. Every thing seemed confused and terrifying ; every hope appeared to desert her. God himself, upon whom she had hitherto reposed with such confidence, had become to her as a dream ; and in her agony she cried, like Mary Mag- dalene, ' They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.' " Oh ! ye anointed of the Lord, cease not to study by inces- sant prayer and meditation the most profound and mysterious operations of his grace, since ye are its dispensers ! What does it .not cost the souls that you instruct, when the coldness of your peculiar studies and your ignorance of internal guides cause you to condemn all that has not come within the course of your experience ! Happy are the souls who find men of God, as St. Teresa ultimately did the holy Francis de Borgia and Peter of Alcantara, who smoothed the difficulties of hei path. ' Till then,' said she, ' I felt more shame in declaring my revelations than I had ever experienced in the confession of my greatest sins. 1 And shall we, too, shrink from speaking of these revelations in a century when incredulity is considered wisdom ? Shall we blush at the mention of praise for that grace which effected so much in the heart of St. Teresa ? No, no ; be silent, O century ! in which even those who believe the truths of religion, pride themselves upon rejecting without examination, as mere fables, all the miracles which God has displayed in his elected instruments. u I know that these emotions must be experienced in order to feel that they come from God. God forbid that I should auction a weak credulity in extravagant visions ! But let me neither hesitate in faith where he directly sends the revelation 1 tie who poured miraculous gifts in a stream from on high apon the first believers, has he not promised t:> shed his spirit 60 WOE.XS OF FENELOW. npon all flesh ? Has he not said, ' On my servants and on my hand-maidens ?' Although these latter times are less worthy than an earlier period of such celestial communications, must we therefore look upon them as impossible ? Is their source exhausted ? Is heaven closed against us ? Is it not rather that the unworthiness of our age renders such mercies more necessary, to enlighten the faith and increase the charity now almost extinct ? " Ah ! rather would I forget myself than forget the writings of Teresa. So simple, so earnest, so natural, that in the act of reading we forget that we read, and fancy ourselves listen- ing to her voice. Oh ! how wise and gentle are those counsels in which my soul has tasted of the hidden manna ! with what ingenuousness does she recount facts ! It is not a recital, but a picture. What a power does she possess of describing va- rious conditions ! I behold with ecstasy, that like St. Paul, words failed to express all that she conceived. What a living faith ! The heavens lay open before her. She comprehended all things, and discoursed as familiarly of the sublimest reve- lations as she did of the commonest occurrences. Imbued only with a spirit of obedience, she spoke incessantly of herself and her sublime gifts without pride or ostentation, without al- lusion to any personal superiority. Mighty soul, which esti- mates itself as nothing, and beholding God in all things, abandons itself without fear to the instruction of others ! Oh ! how dear are these instructions to all who seek to serve God in prayer, and how highly have they been lauded by the voice of the Church ! I dare not display them to the gaze of the profane. Away, away, haughty and prying spirit, seeking to read these works only to tempt God, and to despise the riches of his goodness ! Where are ye, simple and meditative souls to whom they belong ? ... If ye fully comprehend the happi- rese of dwelling in God and seeking to dwell in him only, ye will taste the centuple promise of this life ; your peace will dow on like a river, and your justice will be fathomless as the depths of the ocean." Despite the intention of the Abbe Fenelon and Madame LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 61 Quyon to keep the new doctrines which so kindled their ardent souls, confined within the precincts of St. Cyr and Versailles, their fame transpired and reached the Archbishop of Paris, Bossuet, and the Bishop of Chartres, the spiritual directo; oi Madame de Maintenon. These three oracles of the Churcfe united, and denounced Fenelon as a dangerous abettor of new and presumptuous opinions, whom it was necessary, for the safety of that religion so lately re-established, to remove from the king and his grandson. Bourdaloue, a celebrated and venerated pulpit orator, consulted upon these doctrines, replied in a stern letter : "Silence on these subjects is the best guar- dian of peace : they should only be mentioned in sacred con- fidence with spiritual directors." This private conspiracy of harsh condemnation against Fenelon smouldered for a long time before it burst into flame. Nothing up to this period indicated any plan on the part of Bossuet to lower his cherished disciple in the king's estima- tion ; he displayed only the alarmed suspicions incidental to a believer in tradition who repels with contempt and pride all new opinions ; and the anxious grief of a doctrinal instructor who beholds his pupil's faith wavering. The explosion of Bossuet's holy indignation was caused by the feelings we have described, and not by the impulse of petty jealousy ; a passion which has no existence in a haughty mind. Bossuet was equally exalted in his nature and his pride ; he envied not, he crushed at once. With the thunderbolt in hand, ambuscade Is unnecessary. Bossuet likewise sought in the beginning of this quarrel rather to suppress than condemn. He treated the visions of Madame Quyon as the errors of a diseased mind. He con- cented to see this celebrated female, and listened with indul- gence to her explanations, and expressions of regret for the troubles she had unintentionally caused. He invited her to participate in the solemnities of his private chapel, and coun- selled her to silence, obscurity, and absence from Paris and the Court, during some months. He undertook in the mean time to examine personally, and at nis leisure, her writings, and to 62 WORKS OF FENELON. pronounce upon them a final decision, to which she should nbmit with voluntary deference. He fulfilled his promise, read, and censured the books of his fair penitent. He wrote to her, and- pointed out with pious benevolence passages op- posed to reason and dangerous to morality. He conversed confidentially with Fenelon upon the aberrations of his spirit- ual friend, and conjured him to join in their condemnation. Fenelon, convinced of Madame Guyon's orthodoxy, and dis- tressed at the persecutions by which she was menaced, at- tempted, with more magnanimity than policy, to justify her in the estimation of Bossuet. Hi refused to condemn as a the- ologian that which he admired as a man, a poet, and a friend. He replied that God often chose the feeblest instruments for the manifestation of his glory ; that the spirit was impelled according to his will ; that the lofty eloquence of prophets and sibyls acknowledged not the laws which regulate the language of the schools ; and that before pronouncing the sentence of madness upon those inspired by God, time should be allowed to prove their revelations, Bossuet was overwhelmed with grief. The king, who meddled with theology, but comprehended only the discipline and infallible authority of the Church, now displayed his indignation. Madame de Maintenon, the intro- ducer of all this scandal to St. Cyr, to the Court, and the Church, trembled at the thought of appearing before his Maj - esty as the accomplice and abettor of those who had alarmed the royal conscience. She immediately abandoned her friends and withdrew from them her countenance. She did not, how- ever, at first unite with their persecutors, and continued to render in secret, justice to their intentions and their innocence; but she pressed for the assembling of a doctrinal synod to udge the question, and to relieve her of a responsibility ir. ihis affair which had become too weighty. "Yet another letter from Madame Guyon," she writes ** this woman is very troublesome ; it is true she is also deeply unfortunate ! She entreats of me to-day to procure the nomi nation of M. Tronson, a friend of Fenelon, as one of the judgea LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAETHTE. 63 t am not certain that the ting would like to offer such a mor- tification to the Archbishop of Paris . . . M. 1'Abbe de Fene- lon has too much piety not to feel that it is possible to love God for hiruse'f alone, and he has too great a mind to allow of Lis believing that we can associate this love with the most shameful vices. He is not solely the advocate of Madame Guyon. Although he is her friend, he is the defender of re- ligion and Christian perfection. I repose upon his truth be- cause I have known few men equally sincere, and I permit yoie to communicate this to him." The conferences opened under the superintendence of Bos suet, who, a stranger to all subtilties, entreated of Fenelot again to initiate him into the mystic flights of various French Spanish, and Italian works which the Church had tolerated, and which he, in his rude common sense, denominated amus- ing extravagances. Fenelon analyzed for Bossuet all the books which contained the source from whence Madame Guyon had drawn her peculiar enthusiasm, and the letter which he wrote upon them proves that he was still restrained by deference to the opinion of the Bishop of Meaux. " No longer feel anxiety on my account" (thus he writes when forwarding the volumes) ; " in your hands I am a mere child , these doctrines pass by me without leaving an impression ; one form of belief appears to me as good as another. From the moment that you spoke, all has been effaced. When even what I have read appears to me as clear as that two and two make four, I behold it less distinctly than the necessity of rejecting the guidance of my own judgment, and of preferring to it that of such a pontiff as you are ! . . . I hold too firmly by tradition ever to abandon that which in thaee days ought to be the chief column of our support." Meantime the Archbishop of Paris, impatient of the length of these conferences, delivered separately his own opinion against Madame Guyon and her doctrines. Madame de Main- tenon, fearing that Fenelon would be compromised in these denunciations 01 the Church of Paris, and torn from the Court, where she wished to retain Lim, had recourse to the seduction 84 WOEK8 OF FENELOU. of royal favor in order to detach him from Madame Guy on. The king appointed him Archbishop of Camhray. Under thii title, Madame de Maintenon hoped to associate him with those bishops who were appointed as the judges of Madame Guyon, and to compel his condemnation as a pontiff of that which he had admired as a friend. The king at once entered into this well-meaning plot, and we see here mingled all the ability of a courtier and the affection of a warm adherent. She sought at the same time to reassure the king as to the soundness of Fe nelon's doctrines, and to withdraw the latter from Madame Guyon, whom she abandoned to the bishops. Fenelon, alarmed at the prospect of a dignity which would separate him from his pupil, represented to the king that the greatest honor, in his eyes, was the tender love subsisting between himself and his grandson; and that he would not voluntarily exchange it for any other. Louis the Fourteenth answered him with great kindness, " No ; I intend that you shall still continue the preceptor of my grandson. The discipline of the Church only demands nine months' residence in your diocese. You will give the other three to your pupils here, and you will superintend at Cambray their education during the rest of the year as thoroughly as if you were at Court." Fenelon, transported by such favors, resigned, contrary to custom, an abbey which he possessed, and resisted with the most exemplary disinterestedness all the persuasions and ex- amples which encouraged him to retain these ecclesiastical revenues. He desired to carry to his bishopric no portion of the income which he considered as belonging to others, who were in necessity. The world admired, but hesitated to imi- tate his example. The king, through the instigation of Madame de Maintenon, added him to the committee of bishops appointed to investigate the doctrines of Madame Guyon ; but the conference was already dissolved, and Bossuet, sole reporter, and exclusive dictator, privately arranged the decision. Fenelon, after hav- mg discussed and succeeded in modifying the terms so for a* k> exclude all personal censure of Madame Guyon, signed thi LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 65 exposition of the purely theological principles of this manifesto. Peace seemed so thoroughly cemented between these two oracles of the faith in France, that Bossuet desired to preside in person, as consecrating pontiff, at the installation of his di&- ciple and friend. The king, his son and his grandson, with the entire Court, assembled in the chapel of St. Cyr, to witness the ceremony in which the genius of eloquence consecrated the genius of poetry. But scarcely had this peace been re-established by the in- tervention of Madame de Maintenon, the forbearance of Boa- suet, the humility of Fenelon, and the silence of Madame Guyon, when new causes of discussion sprang up between the bishops. Madame Guyon secretly evaded the offer made to her by Bossuet of a safe retreat in a convent at Meaux, the capital of his diocese. She had written to him that she would retire into solitude, far from the world and its storms ; but she still lingered at Paris, concealed among her disciples, whose devotion daily became more fervent. In the number were in- cluded Fenelon and his two friends, the Duke de Beauvillier and the Duke de Chevreuse. At this period the Archbishop of Paris died. He was a man of worldly habits, whose demeanor disquieted the con- science of the king. A successor of exalted virtue was now sought for, to purify the see. The Church nominated Bossuet, the public selected Fenelon. Madame de Maintenon hesitated between the two ; one was more dreaded, the other more loved ; suspicions of a tendency to new doctrines clung to Fe- nelon, and apprehensions of tyranny were associated with Bossuet. Madame de Maintenon bestowed the see of Paris npon M. de Noailles, an exemplary pontiff and one in favor at Court. Bossuet resented the injury with dignity, and neither abased himself to solicit nor refuse. " All things show," wrote he to his friends in Paris, " that God, as much from his mercy as his justice, designs to leave me where I am. When you desire that the/ should offer in order that I should refuse, you eek only the gratification of my vanity. It would be better vo look for the increase of humility ! there can no longer be a 66 WORKS OF FENELON. doubt that, despite the empty disquisitions of men, and accord- ing to my own wishes, I shall be interred here at the feet ol my saintly predecessors, and shall continue to work out the salvation of that flock which has been confided to me." The grandeur of this ambition lay in its frankness. Bossuet re- sented the indignity offered to his talents in the preference of M. de Noailles ; but he condescended neither to murmur nor to regret. He did not even expreso a wish : he felt his ven- geance in his superiority. Nevertheless, whether from the humiliation he experienced in being weighed in the scale against the youth of Fenelon and the mediocrity of M. de Noailles, whether from any sus- picion that the disloyal evasion of Madame Guyon and her continued residence in Paris was instigated by Fenelon, who thus betrayed the confidence he had placed in his disciple, the concealed resentment of his soul soon burst forth. He so- licited from the king the arrest of Madame Guyon, who was consequently discovered in Paris, and incarcerated in a mad- house. " How do you desire that she should be disposed of?" wrote Madame de Maintenon to the Archbishop of Paris : " and what are we to do with her friends and her papers ?" " The king remains here all day; write to him directly." "I am delighted at this arrest," also wrote Bossuet to Madame de Maintenon; "this mystery concealed many injuries to the Church." Fenelon, then at Cambray, heard with grief that his friend was to be conveyed to Vincennes. The Duke de Beauvillier now began to fear that the education of the young Duke of Burgundy would be taken out of the hands of Fenelon. " It is evident," wrote he, " that a powerful and determined intrigue exists against the Archbishop of Cambray. Madame de Maintenon obeys what has been suggested to her, and is ready to lend herself to any extreme measures in opposition to him. I behold him upon the verge of being torn from the princes, as a man suspected of inspiring them Avith dangeroui ioctrines. If this plan should succeed, my turn will follow LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKTIKE. 67 but I feel no anxiety with regard to myself. ... As to M. de Pension, I should not counsel him, even if he wished it, to announce any formal condemnation of the books of Madame Guyon. It would afford the greatest joy to the libertines of the Court, and at the same time confirm all the injurious reports which have been spread abroad to the prejudice of her anctity Would not such a step afford grounds of belief that he was an accomplice in all that they impute to this un- fortunate woman, and that policy and fear of disgrace com- pelled his abjuration ? I feel myself conscientiously forced on all occasions openly to declare whatever can justify M. de Fe- nelon ; and when he is disgraced I shall do it still more loudly, because it will then be even more evident that truth and justice alone compel my vindication. . . . ." After various examinations, Madame Guyon was transferred to the convent of Vaugirard, under the superintendence of the Cure of St. Sulpice. " For this mild treatment," wrote Mad- ame de Maintenon, " we have not the approbation of Bossuet, but for myself I feel it to be my duty as much as possible to turn aside all severities." " They desire me to condemn the person of Madame Guyon," wrote Fenelon at the same time. " When the Church issues a decree against her doctrines, I shall be ready to sign it with my blood. Beyond that, I neither can nor o Jght to agree to any thing. I have closely examined a life which has infinitely edified me. Wherefore should they wish rue to condemn her upon other points of which I know noth- iug ? Would it be right that I should help to crush an indi- v.dual whom others have united to destroy, and one to whom T have been a friend ? . . . . u As regards Bossuet, I shall only be too glad to adhere to tr e doctrines of his book if he wishes it ; but I cannot hon- es tly or in conscience join him in attacking a woman who ap- pt are to me innocent, and writings which I have abandoned to x ndemnation witho' t attaching to them my own censure. . . Bosquet is a holy pontiff, an affectionate and steadfast 'rend; but he seeks, by an excessive zeal for the Church and 68 WOKKS OF FENELON. friendship for ine, to carry me beyond due bounds. ... I be- lieve Madame de Maintenon to be influetced by the same feelings. . . . She condemns and pities me by turns, with every new impression that others convey to her. . . . All, then, as regards myself, is reduced to this, I will not speak against my conscience, nor will I consent to insult a woman whom, from what I have personally observed, I have reverenced as a saint. . . ." " If I were capable," added he, afterwards, in another letter of tender reproach to Madame de Maintenon, who persecuted him from friendship, " If I were capable of approving of a woman who preached a new gospel, I ought to be deposed and brought to the stake rather than supported as you sustain me. But I may very innocently have mistaken a person whom I believe to be devout. I have never felt any natural affection for her. I have never experienced any extraordinary personal emotion, that could influence me in her favor ; she is confident to excess ; the proof of this is manifest, since he (Bossuet) has related to you as impieties the particulars which she confided to him. ... I count her pretended prophecies and her as- sumed revelations as nothing. I have never heard her use the blasphemous images which they attribute to her, in her mys- tical disquisitions upon divine love ; I would wager my head that all this has been exaggerated ; but Bossuet is inexcusable for having repeated to you as one of Madame Guyon's doc- trines what in effect was nothing more than a dream or figur- ative expression All that has been said against her conduct is mere calumny. I feel so persuaded of her never having designed any thing evil, that I undertake to say on her part that she will give every satisfactory explanation and re- tractation. . . . Perhaps you think I say this in order to obtain her liberty, but so far from that, I promise that she shall give her explanations without quitting her prison. I will not even see her ; I will only write to her unsealed letters, which you and her accusers shall read . . , . After all that, leave her to die in pris- on j I am content that she should perish there that we shoulc lever see her again, and never more hear her name mentioned. LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. C9 M Wherefore, then, madame, do you close your heail against as, as if our religion were different from yours ? . . . Fear not that I shall oppose Bossuet ; I never even speak of him but as my master ; I willingly look upon him as the conqueror } and as one who has brought me back from my wanderings ; in all sincerity, I feel only deference and obedience towards him. . . ." Fenelon, thus placed by his own imprudence, and by the sternness of his adversaries, in such a position that his only alternative was the crime of condemning one he believed in- nocent, or the humiliation of condemning himself and drawing upon his own head the thunders of Bossuet, who then ruled the Church of France, retired in sadness, and foreboding the ruin of his cherished prospects, to the solitude of Cambray. There, in order to vindicate the purity of his faith and to clear himself from the accusations of Bossuet, he composed his book, entitled " Maxims of the Saints." This was a justifica- tion, through extracts taken from the works and opinions promulgated by the very oracles of the Church, of the disin- terested love of God ; the transcendent doctrine of the mystics of all ages. He humbly submitted his manuscript, page by page, to M. de Noailles, who promised that it should only be inspected by his theologians, and not communicated to Bossuet, He corrected from their notes every passage with which they did not agree, in the most minute point ; and his friend the Duke de Chevreuse undertook to have the book published. Bossuet, incensed at the rumor of the approaching appear- ance of a book which had been kept a profound secret from him, wrote as follows : " I feel sure that this work will be productive of enormous scandal. . . I cannot in conscience Buffer it to go forth ! . . . . God guides me to the knowledge mat they thus wish to establish presumptuous opinions, whicn would lead to the overthrow of religion. . . . This is the truth, for which I would sacrifice my life ! . . . They exclude me on this occasion, after having proffered so much submission in fcrords, simply because they feel that God, on whom 7 -ely, wil' give me the power of exploding their mine ! . . . n 70 WOKK8 OF FENELON. The anger of Bossuet upon the appearance of this book was 3ontagious. Fenelon' s justification appearel a crime against the authority of the great oracle of the Church in France. The king adopted the cause of the episcopal leader. D' Agues* seau, an impartial and contemporary historian, attributed this manifestation of anxiety by Louis the Fourteenth, to the bitter aversion he cherished against the superior qualities of Fenelon. " Whether the king feared," says D'Aguesseau, " minds of a superior order ; whether it was a refined singularity, a peculiar reserve in the manner and habits of Fenelon, which were die- pleasing to a prince whose ideas flowed in a simple and ordi- nary current ; whether it was that Fenelon, from a profound policy, sought to absorb himself in his immediate functions, and abstained from any attempt to insinuate himself into the confidence and favor of the king ; it is quite certain that Louis the Fourteenth never loved him, and felt no repugnance against sacrificing him to his enemies." Bossuet strengthened this disposition by the fears which he excited in the king's con- science. He accused himself " of a criminal complicity, in not having sooner revealed to the kiny the fanaticism of his pupil."" The Court being made aware of the king's secret antipathy, now universally joined in condemning the presumptuous arch- heretic. "A nature so happily endowed," again said D'Aguesseau, " was perverted, like that of the first man, by the voice of a woman. His talents, his ambition, his fortune, even his repu- tation, were all sacrificed, not to an illusion of the senses, but to a fascination of the mind. We behold this sublime genius, impelled to become the prophet and oracle of a sect, fertile in specious and seducing imagery. He seeks to be a philosopher, but we find him only an orator ; a character which he has pre- served in every work emanating from his pen to the close o his life." Calumny went so far as to accuse Fenelon of having flat- ^ered the king's devotion, in order to render it instrumental ir he advancement of his fortune ; and of having planned a unction of politics and mysticism, in order to establish LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 71 ihrcfugh the unseen ties of a secret language, a powerful ctibai, at the head of which he would always reign by the force and mastery of his genius. These imputations fell at once before the courage displayed by Fenelon, in braving the anger of the king, and opposing Bossuet, to support a persecuted woman, and a calumniated doctrine. He was universally abandoned. The dread of being involved in the disgrace into which he had voluntarily precipitated himself, caused every one to fear and avoid, not only any attempt in his justification, but also every emotion of pity. He remained as much isolated at Versailles *<; he had been at Cambray, while he awaited in daily expecta- tion an order to exile himself from the Court. It was in this crisis of mental distress that a fire consumed his episcopal palace of Cambray, with the furniture, books, and manuscripts, comprising all the wealth he had transported thither. He received this blow with his habitual serenity. " I had rather,'* said he to the Abbe Langeron, who hastened to inform him of this domestic calamity, " that the fire had seized my house than a poor man's cottage." In the mean while Bossuet fulminated severe censures against Fenelon's book, but at the same time continued to display the feelings of old attachment. " It is hard," said he, " to speak thus of one accustomed till now to listen as readily to my voice as I listened to his in return. God, before whom I now write, is aware of the agony which has demonstrated my deep grief, that a friend of so many years should judge me unworthy of his confidence ; I who have never even raised my voice in a whisper against him ! the friend of my whole life !..*.. a beloved adversary, who, as God is my witness, I love and cher- ish in my inmost heart !...." At the moment when Bossuet wrote these lines, the king sent an order to Fenelon, commanding him to quit Versailles, and repair to Cambray, without pausing at Paris. He forbade his going to Rome to make any appeal to the Pope for a judg- ment upon his doctrines, fearing, doubtless, that his genius and rirtue would exercise the same influence at Rome as every- Hrhere else. The king, at the same time, wrote to Rome, to 72 WORKS OF FENELON. demand from the sovereign pontiff the condemnation of the Archbishop of Cambray, promising to carry it into execution by all the power of his royal authority. The separation between Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy, his pupil, mutually lacerated their hearts. The tears of the Duke de Beauvillier, and of the Duke de Chevreuse, mingled with those of the young prince and his friend. The Duke of Burgundy in vain threw himself at the feet of the king his grandfather ^rrj'ioring him to send a counter-order, a reprieve, a pardon. " No, my son," replied the king ; " I have no power as a master to make this a matter of clemency. It touches the safety of our faith ; Bossuet is a better authority on this point than either you or I !" Madame de Maintenon was deeply distressed, but continued the more inexorable from having been an accomplice, and re- fubed to see Fenelon. The Duke de Beauvillier, faithful to virtue as to friendship, unbosomed all his feelings to the dispenser of grace. " Sire," said he to the king, " I am the work of your Majesty's hands ; you have elevated and you can abase me. In the commands of my sovereign I recognize the commands of God. I shall quit the Court, Sire, with regret for having displeased you, but with the hope and prospect of a life of greater tranquillity.' Fenelon conjured the Duke de Beauvillier and his friends to tdopt a different course, and not to involve themselves in his Aiiin. " I am here overwhelmed by the opprobriums which all have cast upon me," he wrote to these friends ; " but lot me alone be sacrificed. In a short time all the unreal dreams of this life will vanish, and we shall be reunited forever in the kingdom of truth, where we shall encounter neither error, division, nor censure ; where we shall be partakers of the peace of God ! In the mean time let us suffer, let us hold our peace ioo happy if by oeing trampled in the dust our ignominy tends o his glory !" Arrived at his diocese, Fenelon gave himself up entirely tc study and to works of charity. From this solitude emanated thousands of pages breathing the literary genius of the purest LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 73 works of antiquity, and the modern inspiration of Christian benerolence. They treat of the Divinity with a lofty power of mind and language, and often display the tenderest enthu- siasm. We feel that each word contains a prayer, or some kicense of adoration, as heat pervades vitality. We may with truth say, that Fenelon could not name God without a prayer. We shall present to the reader a few pages extracted at hazard from the multiplicity of treatises and letters in which he poured forth his thoughts : they depict his mind with more fidelity than any expressions we could select of our own. " Every thing in the universe hears the stamp of Divinity ; the heavens, the earth, plants, animals, and above all the human race. All things demonstrate a consistent design, a chain of subordinate causes, connected and guided in order, by one superior cause." . . . . " There is nothing left to criti- cise in this great work : the defects which we encountei proceed from the uncontrolled and disordered will of man, who produces them by his own blindness; or they are de- signed by that God, who is always holy and just, for the pun- ishment of the unfaithful ; and sometimes he uses the wicked as instruments to exercise and draw the good to perfection. Often that which appears to our limited view an error, proves by its ultimate purpose to be a portion of the great universal design, the sublime whole which our finite intellects are inca- pable of comprehending. Does it not occur each day that certain portions of the works of men are hastily blamed ? and does it not require a comprehensive mind to grasp the extent of their designs? This is continually evidenced in the produc- tions of painters and architects." " If the characters used in writing were of enormous size, vrieii viewed closely one alone would occupy the whole vision of a man ; it would be impossible for him to distinguish more than one at a time ; he would be incapable of assembling them in a body, or of reading their collective sense. It is the same with the great features displayed by Providence in the entire guidance of the world during a long succession cf centuries; only as a whole can it be intelligible, and the whole is too vat VOL I. 4 74 WORKS OF FENELON. for a close inspection. Every event resembles a single charac- ter, too great for the insignificance of our organs, and convey ing no meaning if separated from the rest. When, at the end of all time, we shall behold God truly as he is, and comprehend the sum of events which have fallen upon the human race from the first day of the universe to the last, and their proportionate \\m in the designs of the Almighty, then we shall exclaim, Thou only, O Lord, art wise and just !' " " But after all, the greatest defects in this creation are merely the blemishes left by God, in order to show us that he raised it from a void. There is nothing in the universe which does not and should not display these two opposite charac- iers : on one side the sea of the Great Worker, and on the >ther the mark of that nothingness from which all has pro- ceeded, and into which at any moment all may again be re- solved. It is an incomprehensible mingling of baseness and grandeur, of frailty in material, and of art in construction. The hand of God shines through all gradations, down to the organization of an earthworm ; while nothingness reveals itself everywhere, even in the sublimest and most comprehensive genius." " All that is not of God can possess only a limited perfec- tion ; and that which possesses only such a limited perfection remains always incomplete at the point where the limit reveals itself, and proves to us that much is still wanting. The crea- ture would become the Creator himself, if nothing were want- ing to him ; for he would possess the fulness of perfection, which comprises actual divinity. Since, then, we cannot be- come infinite, we must remain limited in perfection ; that is to eay, imperfect in some particular point. We may possess more or less imperfection ; but, after all, must ba ever imper- fect. It is desirable that we should always mark the precise point in which we are wanting, that penetration may declare, This is what we might still have, and what we do not possess " " Let us study creation in any way we may select ; whether we descend to the minutest detail ; whether we ex LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAETINE. 75 amine the anatomy of the most insignificant animal ; whether we closely inspect the smallest grain of corn sown in the ground, and the process by which this germ multiplies itself; whether we observe with attention the arrangement by which a rosebud expands under the rays of the sun, and closes towards the approach of night ; we shall discover a more perfect plan of arrangement and industry than in all the works of art. That which we even call the art of man, is nothing more than a feeble imitation of the great art which we denom- inate the laws of nature, and which the impious have not blushed to call blind chance." " Must we, then, wonder if poets have animated the whole universe ; if they have given wings to the wind, and arrows to the sun ; if they have painted the great rivers which rush to precipitate themselves into the sea, and the trees, which, mounting towards heaven, conquer the rays of the sun by the depth of their shade ? So natural is it to man to feel that art with which all nature is replete, that these figurative expres- sions have become colloquial. Poetry merely attributes to inanimate things the intents of that Providence which guides and sets in motion all their operations. From the figurative language of poets, these ideas have been transfused into the theology of pagans, whose ministers of religion were their bards. These have imagined the existence of an art, a power, a wisdom which they called a numen (divinity), even in crea- tures the most devoid of intelligence. With them the rivers were gods, and the fountains naiads. The woods, the moun- tains, possessed their peculiar divinities. The flowers had Flora, and the fruits Pomona. The more we study nature with an unprejudiced mind, the more do we discover in all hings a deep and inexhaustible wisdom, which is, as it were, the soul of the universe." "What follows from all this? The conclusion comes of tsclf. ' If so much thought and penetration is required,' sayn Minutiiift Felix, 'only to examine the order and wonderful de- uign of the structure of the world, how much mightier must that wisdom have been which formed all ! I we admire 76 WORKS OF FENELON. philosophers to such an extent for having merely discovered a small portion of the secrets of that power which created, must we not indeed be blind if we do not admire the Creator himself?'" "This is the grand object of the entire world in which God rtyflects himself, as it were, in a mirror before the human race. But these (I speak of philosophers) are lost in their own ideas, and all things for them are turned into vanity. From the effect of subtle reasoning, many of them have lost sight of a truth which simply and naturally, and unaided by philosophy, we may find in ourselves " " A traveller penetrating into the Sai's, the country of the ancient Thebes of a hundred gates, would find it now deserted, but would discover columns, pyramids, obelisks, and inscrip- tions in unknown characters. Is it likely that he would say, this place has never been inhabited by man ; human hands have never labored here ; it is chance which has formed these columns, which has placed them upon their pedestals, and which has crowned them with their capitals, all in such just proportion ; it is chance which has so firmly united the differ- ent pieces that form the pyramids ; it is chance which has newn the obelisks from a single stone, and engraved upon them all these characters ? No ; would he not rather say with the most certain conviction of which the mind of man is capa- ble, ' These magnificent ruins are the remains of the majestic architecture which nourished in ancient Egypt !' " w This is what simple reason would utter at first sight, and without feeling the necessity of any argument on the q-estion. The same applies to the first glance thrown upon the universe. We may confuse ourselves with vain reasonings, and render obscure that whicn was as clear as possible before ; but the first simple impression is the true one. Such a work as the world cannot have formed itself; the bones, the tendons, the reins, the arteries, the nerves, and the muscles which compose the frame of man, display more art and nicety of proportion, khan all the architecture of ancient Greece or Egypt. The eye >f the smallest animal surpasses in its structure the most per LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMABTTNE. 77 "ect human mechanism.' If we found a watch amid tho sanda of Africa, we should not venture to declare seriously that chance had formed it in these deserts ; and yet men have felt no shame in saying that the bodies of animals, the mechan- ical art of which no watch can ever equal, are merely the re- sults of chance !...." " my God ! If so many do not behold thee in the sub- lime spectacle of creation which thou bestowest upon them, it is not because thou art far removed. Each of us can touch thee as it were, with the hands, but the senses and passions dwelling within us prevent all recognition of thee by the mind. Thus, Lord, thy light shineth in darkness, and the darkness is so profound that it comprehendeth it not. Thou displayest thyself in all things, and in all things heedless man neglects to perceive thee. All nature speaks of thee, and resounds thy holy name ; but she speaks to those who do not hear, who are deaf because they confound themselves in their own mazes. Thou art about and within them, but they are as fugitives who fly from their own nature. They would find thee, oh, shining light ! oh, eternal beauty ! always old, and always new ; oh, fountain of pure delight ! oh, pure and blessed life of all those who truly live, if they would but seek thee within their own hearts. Yet the impious lose thee only by losing themselves. Alas, they are so absorbed in thy gifts, that that which ought to display, prevents their seeing the hand of the giver ; they live by thee, and live without thinking of thee ; or rather, die within reach of life, from imbibing no nourishment from life ; for what a death it is to be ignorant of thee ! . . . ." " I am convinced that there is of necessity in nature a Being who exists by himself; and is consequently perfect. I know that I am not this being, because I am infinitely below infinite perfection. I feel that he is distinct from me, and that 1 live through him. Nevertheless, I discover that he has given me the true idea of himself in making me comprehend the exist- ence of an infinite perfection, in which I cannot be mistaken, for I hesitate at no bounded perfection that presents itself to me. Its limit compels me to reject it, and I say to it in mv 78 WOKKS OF FENELON. heart, Thou art not my God ; thou art not infinitely perfect ; thou art not created by thyself. Such perfection as thou hast is measured ; there is a point beyond which thou hast nothing, and thou art but nothing." " The same applies not to God ; he is all ; he is, and can never cease to be ; he is, and for him there is neither degree nor measure : he is, and nothing is but through him. Such is my belief. Since then I know that he is, there is nothing marvellous to me in the existence of such a being. All things around me are but through him ; but that which is wonderful and inconceivable, is that I should be able to comprehend him It must be that he is not alone the immediate object of my thoughts, but as much their creator as he is the author of my entire being ; let him raise that which is finite to the contem- plation of the infinite." " This is the prodigy that I bear continually within me. 1 myself am a prodigy. Being nothing, at least possessing only a dependent, limited, and transient existence, I hold by the in- finite and immutable which I have conceived. This is where I am incapable of comprehending myself; I embrace all, and yet am nothing, a nothing which knows the infinite. Words fail me to express how much I at once admire and despise myself. O God ! O Being beyond all beings ! Being before whom I am as if I were not ! Thou showest thyself unto me, and nothing which is not of thee can resemble thee. I behold thee ; it is thyself, and the light of thy countenance reaches me, and supports my heart while waiting for the great day of truth." " I demand wherefore has the Almighty given us this capa- city of knowing and loving him. It is manifestly the most precious of a.l his gifts. Has he accorded it to us blindly, without reason, purely by chance, not intending that we should use it ? He has bestowed upon us corporal eyes to behold the light of day, Can we believe that he has given us spiritua^ eyes, capable of seeing his eternal truth, and yet desire that we should remain in ignorance ? I confess we cannot infinitely know or love infinite perfection. Our loftiest recognition vdL LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 79 aver remaii infinitely imperfect compared with a Being of in finite perfection." " In a word, intimately as we may be acquainted with God, we can never comprehend him ; but we know him sufficiently to recognize all things in which he is not, and to attribute to him those sublime perfections which are his without any fear of error. The universe holds no being that we can confound with God, and we know how to represent his infinite character as one, and incommunicable. We must seek to know him distinctly, since the clearness of our idea of him must force us to prefer him to ourselves. An idea which compels us to dethrone self must indeed be a powerful one with blind man- kind, so prone to salt-idolatry. Never has any idea been so combated, never has any idea proved so victorious. Let us judge of its strength by the confession of weakness it teara from us " u We have preserved the book, which bears all the marks of divinity, since it is this volume which inculcates upon us the supreme love and knowledge of the true God. It is here that the Almighty speaks as God, when he says ' / am. 1 No other book has painted God in a manner worthy of him : the deities of Homer are the opprobrium and derision of divinity. The volume which we hold in our hands, after having shown God to us such as he really is, inculcates the only faith worthy of him. It speaks not of appeasing him by the blood of vic- tims ; it tells us to love him better than ourselves ; we must love him for himself alone, and for his love ; we must renounce ourselves for him, and prefer his will to our own : his love will then create in us every virtue, and exclude each inclination to vice. This is such a renewal of the heart of man as man him- lelf could never have imagined. He could not have invented a religion which would lead him to abandon his own thoughts and his own will, to follow implicitly that of another. Even when this religion is offered to him by the most supreme inthority, his mind cannot conceive it; his inclination revolts, itid his deepest feelings a~e agitated. We need not be sur- prised at sue ii a consequence, since it is a faith which teaches 80 WORKS OF FENELON. man to debase and crush the idol, self; to become a new creature, and to place God in the shrine which self has hitherto occupied, in order to make him the source and centre of cut love " " God has united mankind in a society, where it becomes a general duty to love and succor each other, as the children conceal for her sake : truth alone restrains me." At length, the condemnation obtained with so much trouble 86 WORKS OF FENELON. from the mild justice of Innocent the Twelfth arrived in Paris, accompanied by a shout of joy from the enemies of Fenelon at Rome. " We send you the skin of the lion we have had much trouble in catching," wrote they, " and who has for many months astonished the world by his roaring." At the moment when Fenelon received at Cambray the first news of his condemnation, he was about to ascend his pulpit and address the people on a sacred subject, upon which for some days he had been meditating. He had not time to exchange a syllable with his brother, who had been the bearer of the information, that he might soften this heavy blow. Those who were present could not observe that he either col- ored or grew pale at the fatal intelligence. He knelt for a moment with his face buried in his hands, that he might change the subject of his discourse ; and rising with his usual calm inspiration, he spoke with impressive fervor upon the unreserved submission due under all conditions of life to the legitimate authority of superiors. The report of his condemnation spreading from mouth to mouth in whispers throughout the cathedral, caused all to fix their eyes upon him, and his resignation drew tears from many. The whole flock appeared to suffer with their pastor. He alone felt himself sustained by the hand that had just struck him, for his grief was not caused by pride, but by the uncertainty of his conscience. The authority which he recog- nized, in freeing him from this doubt, at the same time released him from his mental agony. He had submitted his conscience k,o the Church ; she had pronounced her sentence ; he believed to be the voice of heaven, and submitted to the decision. " The supreme authority has eased my conscience," wrote De, on the evening of the same day. " There remains nothing for me now but to submit in silence, and to bear my humilia- tion without a murmur. Dare I tell you that it is a state which carries with it consolation to an upright man who cares not for the world 1 The humiliation is without doubt most painful, but the least resistance would cost my heart muck more." T.IFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 87 The next day he published a declaration to his diocesans, in which he accused himself of error in his book of " Maxims of uhe Saints." " We shall console ourselves," said he in this avowal, the most Christian act of his life, " for our mortifica- tion, provided that the minister of the word sent by God for your edification be not weakened, and that the humiliation of the pastor may increase the grace and fidelity of his flock." This great action and these beautiful words were interpreted by the enemies of the living Fenelon as a sacrifice of his pride as a bishop to the still greater pride of the courtier. They saw in it an artful desire to raise a pretext by which his rivals might lose favor, an advance towards reconciliation at the expense of his conscience, with Louis the Fourteenth, a base and pretended disavowal of those religious opinions which he still held intact in his soul, and which he only condemned from policy. Impartial judgment must free his memory from these calumnies. If Fenelon had possessed sufficient worldly ambi- tion and dissimulation to disavow an opinion displeasing to the king and Court, he would also have had enough of the same qualities to prevent his expressing his views openly before them, and thus risking a disgrace voluntarily incurred. He had been out of favor for several years, therefore it is not likely that at the end of his martyrdom he would have renounced his faith. The truth is, that he suffered for his transcendental philosophy and ethereal piety, as long as it was only reprobated by the king and the world; but the instant that religious authority had pronounced its opinion, he sacrificed to duty that which he had refused to immolate to ambition. Undoubtedly the official sentence of Rome did not change in his inmost heart his sublime convictions of the disinterested and absolute love of God. He did not believe he was mistaken :n what he had felt, but thought he might have gone too far in expressing it; above all. he imagined that the Church wished to impose silence with regard to those subtilties which might trouble the minds of the people, and interfere with ecclesiasti- cal government ; and he submitted in good faith, humility, and lilencc. 88 WORKS OF FENELOSC. This humility and silence, which instructed the world, in . creased the irritation of his enemies. They wished to over throw the author of a heresy, but in Fenelon they found onlj a victim to admire. " It is astonishing," exclaimed Bossuet, himself, " that Fene Ion, who is so keenly alive to his humiliation, should be insen gible to his error. He wishes every thing to be forgotten excep, that which redounds to his honor. All this is like a man who seeks to place himself under the shelter of Rome, without per ceiving the advantage." The genius of this great man only served in this instance to illustrate his hatred, which he carried with him to the grave. His death speedily succeeded his triumph. " I have wept be Fore God and prayed for this old instructor of my youth," wrote Fenelon, to a friend, when he heard of this event, " but it is not true that I celebrated his obsequies in my cathedral and preached his funeral sermon. You know that such affec- tation is foreign to my nature." Bossuet's persecution of this most gentle of disciples has stained his memory. Nothing goes unpunished in this world, not even the weaknesses of genius. The zealous ardor of the pontiff for the unity of faith cannot excuse the cruelty of the polemical controversialist. Bossuet was a prophet of the Old Testament ; Fenelon an apostle oi the Evangel ; the one an embodiment of terror, the other an emblem of charity. All admire Bossuet as a writer, but who would wish to resemble him as a man ? It becomes the expi- ation of those who know not how to love, that their memory is not regarded with affection. Madame Guyon, the cause of all these troubles, was liber- ated from Vincennes after the death of Bossuet, and resideu in exile in Lorraine with one of her daughters. She died there after many years, still celebrated for that unchanging piety anf virtue which justified the esteem of Fenelon, All now appeared tranquil, and promised to Fenelon a speedy return to the charge of his pupil, the Duke of Bur gundy, whom the lapse of years had brought nearer to the LIFE (.F FENELON, BY LAMARTINE. 89 ihrone, when the treachery of a copyist who gave to the printers in Holland a manuscript of Telemachus, plunged the author once more and forever into disgrace at Court, and ex- cited anew the anger of the king. Telemachus, thus pirated, burst forth like a revelation, and spread with the rapidity of 6re. The times called for it ; the vicissitudes of glory and tyranny, the servitude and misfortunes of the nation at the end of the wars of Louis the Fourteenth, had impressed the whole mind of Europe with a sort of presentiment of this book. It contained the vengeance of the people, a lesson to kings, the inauguration of philosophy and religion into politics. A brilliant and harmonious poetry served as the organ of truth as well as fiction. All responded to the gentle voice of a legislative and poeti- cal pontiff, who presented himself to instruct, console, and charm the world. The presses of Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, and England, could not issue enough copies of Telem- achus to satisfy the avidity of its readers. It became in a few months the gospel of modern imagination ; a classic in ita birth. The reputation of this great work reached Louis the Four- teenth. His courtiers, in pointing out to him his likeness, in the feeble and hard-hearted Idomeneus, the scourge of his peo- ple, said, " He who has thus painted your majesty's portrait, must be your enemy." They saw in the recitals and theories of paganism an injurious satire upon monarchs and govern- ment. Public malignity delighted to find in all the personages of which Fenelon's pictures were composed, resemblances to ths king, the princes, the ministers, and favorites of both sexes. These portraits, conceived and executed in the palace of /ersailles, at a time when Fenelon enjoyed all the confi- dence that the king placed in the preceptor of his heir, ap- peared as a flagrant instance of domestic treason. The refined dreams of Fenelon. contrasted with the sombre realities of the Court, and the sadness of a reign in its decline, -ose like so many accusations against the representative of oyalty. Temerity and black ingratitude were attributed to 90 WORKS OF FENELON. the mind of a poet, whose only fault amounted to Ins having indulged in creations of the fancy more surpassingly beautiful than those of nature herself. The instinctive antipathy ol Louis the Fourteenth to Fenelon originated in indignation and resentment. When we compare the reign and the poem, we can scarcely feel surprised, or accuse the king of injustice. Such a book, composed under the shadow cf the palace, and published without the knowledge of the priuce, appeared in truth a most outrageous satire, as well as a cruel violation ol the intimate confidence and majesty of the sovereign. The mind of Fenelon, in writing it, had never conceived the sinis- ter allusions and ungrateful accusations which were attributed to him. He had innocently surrendered himself to his puie imagination, which colored every thing up to the level of his own moral perfection, his candor and love of human nature. He wished to prepare in silence, for the instruction of his royal charge, a model of a monarch, and of legislative government. It was neither his intention nor his fault that the resplendent virtue which shone forth in his speakers and personages should throw a deeper shadow upon the arbitrary, haughty, and per- secuting reign of Louis the Fourteenth. The dread even of these remarks had made him conceal his poem, as a mysterious secret between himself and his pupil. He had no desire to make it the vehicle of personal fame ; he reserved it for the instruction and glory of a future sovereign. He never so'.ight literary publicity for his writings ; they were intended far lue contracted privacy of friendship or religion, and their own brilliancy was the cause of their more extensive circulation. It was in this view that he had composed Telemachus. This poem, which he destined not to see the light until after the death of Louis the Fourteenth, he had written with his own hand in his private apartments, and afterwards had it copied by a person on whose fidelity he thought he could rely. He intended it as a legacy to his family, that they might make such use of it after his death as the times admitted. In his own private feeling, the publication of Telemachus caused hia as much trouble as grief. He saw in it his certain condemna LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAKTINE. 91 lion to a perpetual exile, and beheld himself in the situation of a public enemy in a court which would never forgive him. He was not mistaken. The universal resentment against him was immediate. The Court had an intuitive feeling of the harm which this book would do them in the eyes of pos- terity, and unskilfully disguised their terrors under the sem- blance of disdain. " Fenelon's book," said Bossuet, who was still alive at the time of its first reputation, " is a romance. Opinions are divided on the subject ; the cabal admire it, but the rest of the world consider it scarcely serious enough to be worthy of a clergyman." u I have not ibe least cuiiosity to read Telemachus," writes M?dan>e de idv.intcnon. The king, who seldom read any thing, disdained to peiuse it. The Court thought to smother it in silrr.ce. It was agreed at Versailles that they should not even mention the name before the king, and they believed the Look forgottn by the world, because they chose to forget it themselves. Sixteen years later, when Telemachus, printed in every form, and translated in every language, inundated all Europe, the orators of the French Academy, in speaking of the literary works of their time, were silent upon this, which held posses- sion of the age, and will descend to all posterity. The anger of the Court deeply grieved the Duke of Bur- gundy, whom separation, injustice, and adversity had more strongly than ever attached to his preceptor. To escape the iealous tyranny of his grandfather, he was obliged to make a secret of his attachment to Fenelon, and to conceal as a State crime his correspcndence with his friend. " At last," wrote the young prince, " I find an opportunity of breaking the silence which I have been forced to maintain for four years. I have suffered many evils, but one of the greatest was the not being able to teh you what I felt for you t uring this long interval, and how much my love has increased, ustead of being diminished, by your misfortunes. I reflect ith delight upon the time when I shall see you again, but _ 92 WORKS OP FENELOW. fear that period is still far distant. ... I continue to study alone, and I am fonder of reading than ever. Nothing inter- ests me more than philosophy and ethics, and I am continually practising myself in those exercises. I have written several little essays, which I should like to send to you to correct. . . I will not tell you in this, how angry I am at all that they have done to you, but we must submit for the present. . . . Do not how this letter to any person whatever, except only to the Abbe de Langeron, for I can depend upon his secrecy ; and do not answer it " Fenelon replied from time to time by letters written at long intervals, containing the advice of a man of piety and a states- man, and filled with expressions of paternal tenderness. " I speak to you only of God and yourself," wrote he ; "you must not think of me. Heaven be praised, my mind is at peace; my most severe cross is not beholding you; but I bear you with me before God in a more intimate form than that of the senses. I would give a thousand lives as a drop of water, to see you all that Heaven intended you to be. Amen. Amen." The Duke of Burgundy, in going to take command of the army in Flanders, during the campaign of 1708, passed by Cambray. " The king was less concerned," says St. Simon, " with the equipment of his grandson, than with the necessity of his pass- ing near Cambray, which place he could not avoid without an appearance of studied intention. He was strictly forbidden, not only to sleep there, but even to stop and dine ; and to avoid the chance of a private interview with the archbishop, the king further commanded him not to leave his carriage. Saumery was instructed to see this order strictly complied with ; he acquitted himself like an Argus, with an air of authority that scandalized everybody. The archbishop was waiting to receive them at the post-house, and approached his pnpil's carriage as soon as it arrived ; but Saumery, who had ust alighted, and informed him of the king's orders, stationer aimself at his elbow. The crowd surrounding the young princ LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTTNE. 93 were moved at the transports of joy which escaped him, in spite of all restraint, when he beheld his preceptor. He em- braced him repeatedly, and the warmth of the glances which he darted into the eyes of the archbishop, conveyed all that the king had interdicted, and expressed an eloquence which none could behold without emotion. The prince only stopped to change horses, but without hurry ; then followed fresh em braces, and they parted. The scene had been too public, and lad excited too much curiosity not to be reported on all sidev As the king had been strictly obeyed, he could not find fault with what had been so little concealed from those who pressed around, or with the looks that were exchanged between the prince and the archbishop. The Court thought much of this, and the army still more. The influence which, notwithstand- ing his disgrace, the archbishop exercised in his own diocese, and even in the Netherlands, communicated itself to the troops, and those who thought of the future, from that time forth passed more willingly by Cambray, in their journeys to and fro from Flanders, than by any other route." It was at Cambray, during those sad years in which confed- erated Europe made Louis the Fourteenth atone for tht splendor of his government, the long prosperity, and exalted glory of his entire reign, that we must chiefly admire Fenelon. In recurring to the past, posterity meets with nothing more beautiful, more simple, more devoted, more wise, more respect- able, or more respected, than this supremely amiable man, devoting himself to the duties of his mission. As priest, bishop, administrator for ths poor, friend, citizen, and man, all the noble ccnirnentri which adorn human nature shone forth, col- lected with remarkable brilliancy in this single individual. Above all, throughout the vicissitudes of a complicated and unfortunate wj-.r, of which his diocese was the theatre and the victim, he appeal td as the most touching personification of charity. TLc true .qualities of Christian love, called forth each day by the miseries which increased them as they themselves augmented, caused the name, and above all, the presence, of Kenelon to be blessed by many voices. In his example, they 94: WORKS OF FENELON. found a resource which assisted them to brave the common calamity with patience and resignation. Imagination became excited, and added a thousand particulars to the truths which were so naturally combined with it, that they only appeared to embellish facts to paint them with more fidelity. A kind 01 legend thus grew beneath the steps of the "good archbishop" and followed him like the sweet odor of his virtues. These true or exaggerated recitals of charity are commemorated in all the records of the time. During the winter and scarcity of 1709, this charity waa exercised with the most active zeal, and under the greatest variety of forms, in order to ameliorate the triple trials of war, cold, and famine. Disasters accumulated. The strong places, which had been fortified with so much care by the prudence of the king, fell into the enemy's power. The troops, badly paid, forgot their discipline and obedience, as they had also forgotten the way to victory. The treasury was empty. The inexhaustible imagination of the exchequer was thoroughly worn out, and knew not upon what pretext, or by what mer- cenary bait, to extract another crown from the country. The severity of the weather had everywhere rendered the grain which had been sown unproductive. During the winter, men expired of cold ; and when the summer came, they might be Been lying dead of starvation, with a bunch of withered herbs in their mouths. In numerous towns and provinces, seditions unexpectedly burst upon the government, which found its resources everywhere exhausted. Executions followed on the mad extravagances of misery. Peace, which he liad never known how to preserve, now fled from the humble solicitations of Louis the Fourteenth. The ambition of Prince Eugene and the avarice of Marlborough prolonged the war, which waa profitable to them, and to their glory. After Hochstedt and Ramillies, Oudenarde, Lille, and Malplaquct, appeared to toll the funeral knell of France. She retained for a long time the cruel impression, and shudders still at the remembrance of Jiat year when God appeared to punish men for their discord in accumulating with a severe hand the full measure o LIFE OF ITlfELON, BY LAMAKTINE. 95 those evils which th^y had commenced by heapir g on them- selves. But above this sad recollection, and inseparably connected with it, there still rises the remembrance of one of those great men, accorded as an example and consolation under the heavi- est blows which it pleases the Divine Providence to dispense an immutable law established by historical evidence. To alle- viate anarchy, spring up virtuous patriots ; to soothe calamities, heroes of charity ; to temper the massacre of the Indians, there was Las Casas; to assume the fury of the religious wars, L'Hopital ; amid the vices of his times, St. Vincent de Paul ; at Milan, Charles Borromeus ; r.t Marseilles, Belzunce ; and to balance against the executioners during the reign of terror, there were the victims. Flanders, and the year 1709, pos- sessed Fenelon. In these redeeming signs may be recognized the hand which only chastises to instruct. The episcopal palace of Cambray was transformed into the common asylum of the unfortunate. When it became too email to contain them, Fenelon opened his seminary, and hired several houses in the town. The inhabitants of entire villages, which had been ravaged by the soldiers, took refuge under his protection. These poor people were received like children; and those who had suffered most, were treated with the first and greatest care. On the other hand, generals, officers, and soldiers, sick or wounded, were brought to this untiring char- ity, which never paused to count the numbers to be relieved. Let us give attention to what St. Simon says upon this subject. lie praises rarely, and then f.gair.st his will ; but when he writes of Fenelon, he is forced to wire awar the gall from his pen: u His open house and table had the appearance of those of * governor of Flanders, and of an episcopal palace, combined. There were constantly many renowned officers, and distin- guished soldiers, sick, wounded, or in good health, living with him. All expenses were defrayed by him, and they were served equally, as if there was only one honored guest to attend upon. He himself was usually present at all the medical and 96 WORKS OF surgical consultations. He also exercised towards tLc sick and wounded, the functions of the most charitable pastor; and often went to the houses and hospitals in which the soldiers were lodged, to fulfil the same office. All these duties wvas no conversation. A casual exclamation might now and then be heard to proceed from some unhappy individual, who received an answer from his sorrowful neighbor. A word an a quartez of an hovr ; haggard and sorrowful eye* ; occa- 101 WORKS OF FENELON. ionally an involuntary movement of the hand, while all the rest of their persons remained motionless. Those who were only curious and little uneasy were few ; not counting the fools, who had nearly all the talk to themselves, asking ques- tions and exhibiting despair encug'i for all the rest. Those who already looked upon this event as favorable, had great difficulty in carrying their demeanor to the necessary point of austere grief; but all was merely a transparent veil, which could not prevent quick eyes from ascertaining real feelings. These last were as careful as those who were really affected, but their looks betrayed how in reality their minds were agi- tated. Constant changes of position, like people who were not at ease either sitting or standing, a careful avoidance of each other from fear of a mutual encounter of eyes, the mo- mentary embarrassment which occurred when they did meet, the appearance of a sort of indescribable freedom in their whole air in spite of their efforts to restrain and compose themselves; a quick and sparkling glance around betrayed them notwithstanding their utmost endeavors at concealment. "The two princes, and the two princesses seated at their sides, taking care of them, were the most exposed to view. Monseigneur the Duke of Burgundy, shed from real emotion and good feeling, with a gentle mien, natural, religious, and patient tears. The Duke de Bern also wept abundantly and bitterly, and uttered not only sobs, but cries and groans. These were carried to such an extent that they were obliged to undress him on the spot, and to have recourse to doctors and remedies. The Duchess de Berri was beside herself. The most agonizing despair, mingled with horror, was depicted on her countenance, on which might be seen, as if written in pal- pablo characters, a perfect frenzy of grief; not caused by feel- ings of friendship, but by those of interest. Often roused by the cries of her husband, prompt in assisting and supporting him, she showed a lively anxiety for his sufferings, but> soon after appeared again totally absorbed in her own thoughts. The Duchess of Burgundy also tried to console her spouse, and "bund it a less difficult task than that of appearing as if ah LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMAETTNE. 105 aerself wanted consolation. A few tears drawn forth by the spectacle, and often with difficulty kept up, sufficed, with the aid of a handkerchief, to make her eyes red and swollen, and to disfigure her face, although frequent stolen glances fell upon all tae assembly, and scrutinized separately the countenance of each. " The Duke de Beauvillier stood near them, and with a cold and tranquil air, issued orders for the consolation of the other princes. " Madame, re-attired in full dress, entered, crying loudly, not really recognizing anybody, but inundating all with tears as she embraced them alternately, causing the whole chateau to resound with renewed lamentations. She presented the grotesque spectacle of a princess arrayed in full costume, in the middle of the night, coming to mingle her tears ?,n see the reign of heaven upon earth ; he taught kings the LIFE OF FENELON, BY LAMARTTNE. 115 sacred rights of man, while he showed the people the duties of subjects. He thirsted for Christian equality, regulated liberty, justice, morality, and charity, in the dealings of the government with the people, and of the people with the gov- ernment; he was the tribune of virtue, and the prophet of social improvement ; he has expanded his own soul over the souls of two centuries ; sometimes the poet of imagination, but always the poet of charity, he has softened and Christian- ized the genius of France. Conscience owes him an additional virtue toleration; thrones, another duty the love of the people; republics, an added glory humanity. France haa possessed bolder natures, but she has given us none so full of tenderness. If genius acknowledged a sex, it might be said that Fenelon had the imagination of a woman to dream of heaven, and her soul to love the earth. When we pronounce his name, or open his book, we fancy that we look on his face, and persuade ourselves that we hear the voice of a friend. What quality of fame can surpass this love in veneration and solid value ? The epitaph of Fenelon might be written in these words : " There are men who have made France more feared or renowned, but none have rendered her more beloved by other nations." ESSAY CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF FENELON BY M. VILLEMAIN. FBNELON, Francois de Salignac de Lamotte, of an ancient and illustrious family, was born at the Chdteau de Fenelon, in Perigord, August 6, 1651. Under the eyes of a virtuous father, he pursued his literary studies with equal success and rapidity ; and nurtured from childhood in classical antiquity, educated in solitude among the models of Greece, his noble and delicate taste appeared at the same time with his happy genius. Called to Paris by his uncle, the Marquis de Fenelon, in order to complete his philosophic studies and commence the course of theology necessary for his destined vocation, he underwent, at fifteen years of age, the same trial as Bossuet, and preached before an auditory less celebrated, in truth, thau that of the Hotel de Rambouillet, yet highly distinguished. This splendor of a premature reputation alarmed the Marquis de Fenelon, who, in order to remove the young man from the Reductions of the world and of self-love, sent him to the semi- nary of St. Sulpice. In this retreat, Fenelon was penetrated with the evangelical spirit, and merited the friendship of a nrtuous man, M. Tronson, Superior of St. Sulpice.. Here he sceived holy orders. It was then that his religious fervor inspired him with the iesign of consecrating himself to the missions of Canada 118 WOKKS OF FENELON. Crossed in Lis project by the fears of his family and the feeble- ness of his constitution, he soon turned his attention towards the missions of the Levant, towards Greece, where the profane and the sacred, where St. Paul and Socrates, where the Church of Corinth, the Parthenon and Parnassus, invited his poetic and religious imagination. Enchanted by the souvenir* of Athens, he was indignant at the thought that the native land of letters and glory should be the prey of barbarians. 44 When shall I see," he wrote, "the blood of the Persians mingling itself with that of the Turks on the fields of Mara- thon, in order to give Greece wholly to religion, to philosophy, to art, which re-claim her as their native land !" The enthusi- asm of the young apostle, however, gave way to graver con- siderations. Fenelon, diverted from these foreign missions, devoted himself wholly to an apostleship which he did not believe less useful to the instruction of the l Nouvelles Catho- liquesj the newly converted women in Paris. The duties and the cares of this employment, in which he buried his genius during ten years, prepared him for the composition of his first work, the Treatise on the Education of Girls* a masterpiece of delicacy and of reason, which the author of Emile and painter of Sophie has not surpassed. This work was designed for the Duchess de Beauvilliers, the pious and wise mother of a numerous family. Fenelon, in the modest obscurity of his ministry, already enjoyed with the Dukes de Beauvilliers and de Chevreuse that virtuous friendship which was equally proof against favor and disgrace, the court and exile. He had found in Bossuet an attachment that was to be less durable. Admitted to the familiarity of this great man, he studied his genius and his life. The example of Bossuet, whose wholly polemical religion was employed upon contro- versies and conversions, doubtless inspired Fenelon with the Traite du ministere des pasteurs? a work in which he corn- Dated heretics with more moderation than his illustrious model exhibited. The subject, the merit of the work, and the all- Traite de ^education des Jttles. Treatise on ike Ministry of Fattori NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VILLEMAIN. 119 powerful influence of Bossuet led Louis XIV. to confide tc Fenelon the care of a new mission in Poitou. The rigoroua uniformity which Louis XIV. wished to extend over all the consciences of his kingdom, and the resistance that sprang from oppression, often obliged the monarch to have his mis- sionaries sustained by soldiers. Fenelon did not limit himself to absolutely rejecting the odious assistance of dragoons ; he reserved to himself the choice of ecclesiastical colleagues who ehould participate in a ministry of persuasion and gentleness. He converted without persecuting, and made the belief whose apostle he was, an object of love. The importance then attached to such missions attracted, more than ever, attention to Fenelon, who happily acquitted himself of his task. A great object then presented itself to ambition and talent. The dauphin, the grandson of Louis XIV., was no longer a child ; and the king was seeking a person to whose hands he should confide this precious deposit. 1 Virtue, aided by the favor of Madame de Maintenon, obtained the preference. M. de Beauvilliers was named governor ; and he chose Fenelon, with the consent of the king, as preceptor of tae young prince. These virtuous friends, seconded by the cares of some men worthy of imitating them, commenced the noble task of educating a king. History attests that nevei was there seen a more perfect co-operation of wills and efforts. Fenelon, by the natural superiority of his genius, was the soul of this re-union. It was he who, transported by the hope of ome day placing virtue upon the throne, and seeing the hap- piness of France in the education of her king, destroyed with an admirable art all the dangerous germs that nature and the premature sentiment of power had implanted in that young heart, and made the defects of a stubborn character yield to the habit of most salutary virtues. This education, whose immortal monuments remain to us in the writings of Fenelon would seem the masterpiece of genius consecrating itself tc the happiness of men. > 1689. 120 WORKS OF FENELON. Fenelon, brought into the midst of the Court, and only giving himself up to it, made himself admired by the graces of a brilliant and facile mind, by the charm of the noblest and most eloquent conversation. There was in him something of the seducing and the inspired. Imagination, genius, escaped him on all sides ; and the most elegant politeness adorned the ascendency of genius, and made it pardoned. This personal superiority excited much more admiration than the small number of works that he had produced. He was praised on this account at the period of his reception into the Academy ; and, a little time afterwards, La Bruyere painted him still under the same traits, recognizable by all contemporaries. " One feels," he said, " the force and the ascendency of that rare spirit, whether he preaches from his genius and without preparation, whether he pronounces a studied and oratorical discourse, or explains his thoughts in conversation, always master of the ear and heart of those who listen to him, he does not allow them to envy so much elevation, so much facility, delicacy, and politeness." This ascendency of virtue, grace, and genius, which, ex- cited in the hearts of Fenelon's friends a tenderness mixed with enthusiasm, Avhich had won Madame de Maincenorz, in spite of her mistrust and reserve, were unavailing against the prepossessions of Louis XIV. This prince doubtless es- teemed the man to whom he confided the education of his grandson ; but he never had any liking for him. It has been thought, that the brilliant and facile eloquence of Fenelon dis- turbed a monarch who was displeased with any sort of pre- eminence except his own. But, if we look at a letter in which Fenelon, in the overflow of confidence, informed Madame de Maintenon that Louis XIV. had no idea of his duties as a king, it will be easily supposed that an opinion so severe, with which Fenelon seems to have been too deeply penetrated never to have let some indiscreet revelation of it escape him, soukl not remain wholly unknown to a monarch accustomed to praise, and who could be offended at a less severe judgment History has not participated in the extreme rigor of this opin- HOTICE OF FENELON, BT VILLEMAIN. 121 ion upon a prince who, in the exercise of a power in truth absolute, always bore about him propriety and grandeur, and preserved honor under despotism his greatest enemy Fenelon had preserved at Court the most irreproachable dis- interestedness. He spent nve years there, in the prominent place of preceptor to the dauphin, without asking, without receiving any favor. Louis XIV., who knew how to reward nobly and appropriately, desired to repair this oversight, and named Fenelon to the Archbishopric of Cambray. 1 This moment of favor and prosperity was that in which Fenelon was destined to receive a blow that would have mortally wounded a less inviolable reputation. Fenelon, whose natural temperament led him to cherish a lively and spiritual devotion, had for some time fancied that he recognized a part of his principles in the mouth of a pious and insane woman, who doubtless had much persuasion and talent, since she obtained an extraordinary influence over sev- eral superior minds. Madame Guyon, writing and dogmatizing upon grace and pure love, at first persecuted and arrested, soon afterwards admitted into the intimate society of the Duke de Beauvilliers, received by Madame de Maintenon, authorized to disseminate her doctrines in Saint-Cyr, then suspected by Bos suet, arrested anew, interrogated and condemned, was the pre- text of Fenelon's disgrace. The inexorable Bossuet did not relish the mystic subtilties, the refinements of divine love, with which the lively and tender imagination of Fenelon was too easily captivated. Bossuet wished to have the new Arch- bishop of Cambray himself condemn the errors of a woman whose friend he had been. Fenelon refused through conscience and delicacy, fearing to compromise opinions that were dear to him , wishing to deal gently with an unfortunate woman, who appeared to him only culpable of excess in the love oi God. Perhaps, in fine for he was human he was shocked by the theological hauteur of Bossuet, who pressed him as if he had wished to convert him. ID 1694. VOL I. 6 122 WORKS OF FENELON. Fenelon published that too famous book, of the Maxims of the Saints, 1 which may be regarded as an indirect apology, or even as a softened exposition (redaction atter.uante), of Madame Guyon's principles. In an age when a religious opinion was a political event, the first appearance of this work excited much astonishment and many murmurs. All those who could be secretly jealous of the rank and genius of Fenelon, declared themselves against the errors of his theology. Elevated above any mean sentiment, but inflexible, impatient of contradiction, negligent of mundane regards and proprieties when he be- lieved religion compromised, Bossuet himself denounced to Louis XIV. in the midst of his Court, the heresy of the new archbishop. At the moment when Fenelon received this weighty blow, the burning of his palace at Cambray, the loss of his library, of his manuscripts, of his papers, put his soul to a new proof, and wrung from him no other complaint than these words, so touching, and in his mouth so true : " It is better that my mansion should be burned than the cottage of * poor laborer." Nevertheless, Bossuet, committed by the eclat of his firs* declaration, prepared himself to pursue his rival, and seemed eager to wring from him a recantation. The admirer and friend of Fenelon, Madame de Maintenon, separated herself from him with an inconceivable coldness. Fenelon submitted his book to the judgment of the Holy See. Bossuet had al- ready composed remarks, in which the bitterest and most ve- hement censure was coupled with pompous expressions of regret and friendship. He proposed at the same time a conference, which Fenelon refused, preferring to defend his book at the tribunal of Rome. It was then that he received orders to quit the Court, and retire into his diocese. News of this excited in the soul of the Duke of Burgundy a grief that was the eulogy of the education of that young prince. The jabal had wished to profit by the fall of Fenelon, in order to >verturn the Duke de Beauvilhers ; he was saved by the fore* i Dt Maximet dts Saints. NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VILLEMAIN. 123 of virtue, and his very devotion to the cause of an unfortunate friend interested the generosity of Louis XIV. In spite of the manifest wish of this prince, the court 01 Rome hesitated to condemn an archbishop so illustrious as Fenelon. This delay and this repugnance, which honored Pope Innocent VIIL, gave scope to the talent of the accuser and the accused ; and while the judges were deliberating, the writings of the two adversaries succeeded each other with prodigious rapidity. The struggle changed its object. After having exhausted dogma, Bossuet threw himself back upon facts ; and his account of quietism, wittily and sharply written, seemed destined to fasten upon Fenelon himself a part of the ridicule inseparable from Madame Guyon. The Abbe Bossuet, unworthy nephew of Bossuet, carried personal accusations still further ; and, collecting the most odious rumors, he sought to tarnish the purity of Fenelon. Never did the indignation of a virtuous and calumniated soul show itself more eloquent. Fenelon, in an apology, demolished these vile accusations ; and new letters from Louis XIV., written by Bossuet, new intrigues, and even threats, were necessary, in order to wring from the court of Rome a condemnation, which was even softened in form and expression. The interest of this controversy, so for- eign to the ideas of our age, is perfectly preserved in the excellent history of Fenelon, by M. de Bausset ; and in this work one will find an animated picture of the court of Rome and the court of France, which took a lively interest in this frivolous question, to which importance was given by the opin- ions of the times, and by the prodigious talent of the two rivals. The long and glorious resistance of the Archbishop of Cam- bray had still further sharpened the resentment of Louis XIV. ; and the hesitation of the Pope to condemn Fenelon 1 rendered 1 I'eccaiit exctfsuamaru divini, sed vos peccdttis dtfectu amorit proximi, " Ho lias Binned by excess of love for God, but you have sinned by defi- tiency of love for your neighbor," wrote Pope Innocent to those prelate! rho had distinguished themselves as Fe'ueloc's adversaries. A wore pua geut reproof cannot be found in ecclesiastical history. 124 WORKS OF FENELON. his disgrace with the Court more irreconcilable than ever When the brief so long deferred, obtained by so much discus sion and intrigue, finally appeared [1699], Fenelon hastened tc subscribe it, and to condemn himself by a most touching and simple mandatory letter, in which Bossuet did not fail to find much parade and ambiguity. The modest submission of Fe- nelon, his silence, his episcopal virtues, and the admiration which they inspired, would not, doubtless, have reopened to him the entrance of the court of Louis XIV., but an unex- pected event more than ever irritated the monarch. " Telemachus," composed some years before, at the period of Fenelon's favor, was published, some months after the affair of quietism, by the infidelity of a domestic charged with trans- cribing the manuscript. The work, suppressed in France, was reproduced by the presses of Holland, and obtained in all Europe a success that malignity rendered injurious to Louis XIV., by seeking in it allusions to the conquests and misfor- tunes of his reign. This prince, who had never liked the political ideas of Fenelon, and long since had called him a chimerical bel esprit, regarded the author of " Telemachus" as a detractor from his glory, who added the wrong of ingratitude to the injustice of satire. Fenelon in his dying hour protested his respect for the person and the virtues of Louis XIV. This forma! testimony, compared with the severe judgment that Fenelon expressed in the letter of which we have already spoken, allows of only one explanation that respects his glory and truth. This sensible and virtuous man, preoccupied with the misfortunes that were mingled with the splendor of the reign of Louis XIV., unconsciously transferred to a work 01 imagination some traits of a picture which he had before hia eyes, and which often afflicted his soul. How could he have helped it? How could he have spoken of peoples and kings without making allusions to contemporaries ? The circle of human calamities and faults is more limited than it is sup- ">o The Chevalier do St. George. 128 WORKS OF FENELON. diffeient memoirs which he addressed to the Duke de BeauviT Hers, that may be studied the wisdom of his views upon the greatest interests, upon the succession of Spain, upon the policy proper for Philip V., upon the allies, upon the conduct of the war, upon the necessity of peace. Greatly to be de- sired is the publication of these precious writings, which are Known only by the extracts given by Fenelon's last historian. That disastrous war of the Spanish succession, in bringing the theatre of combat near the residence of Fenelon, gave him the joy of seeing, after ten years of absence, the young prince whom he had formed, who had just taken command of the last troops of the vanquished Louis XIV. It cannot be disguised, how- ever, that the pupil of Fenelon, in the commanding of armies, was below the r.romise of his youth and the opinion of France. The letters of Fenelon to the Duke of Burgundy, during this decisive period, while showing the severe frankness, the sin- gular ascendency of the tutor, would themselves give rise to the suspicion that this young prince, instructed, docile, virtuous, had a genius too timid. One is not pleased that the heir of Louis XIV. needs to receive lessons upon all the details of his conduct. In spite of the respect that even the minutiae of virtue deserve, one is not pleased that a young prince placed upoii so great a stage, occupied with interests so important, should be disquieted and consult Fenelon, in order to know whether, in the movement of war, he could remain for some hours within the walls of a convent. One fears that such dis- quietudes may have left little place for great ideas, and that the education of the dauphin may, in some respects, have dimin- ished his soul, in order the better to subdue it. Fenelon, it is true, always speaks to his pupil the language of an active and enlightened policy. But, when he reproaches him with a love of solitude and contemplation, a trifling piety, and a misplaced humility, it is difficult to believe that these defects, which scorn so opposed to the impetuous childhood of the Duke of Burgundy, may not, in part, be the result of education upon a soul which had more ardor than light; which, too much sub- dued by religion, converted all its force into mildness an v NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VILLEMAIN. 129 virtue. In the letters of Fenelon to his virtuous pupil, we find severe judgments upon all the generals that then formed the hope of France. It may be remarked, in this regard, that Fenelon had much sweetness in character, and much domina- tion in spirit. His ideas were absolute and decisive, a habit that seems to pertain to promptness and force of mind. The continual attention that Fenelon paid to the political interests of France, did not in the least diminish his zeal for the affairs of religion and the Church. Those who particularly honor Fene- .on as a philosopher will, perhaps, be astonished to see him entering into all ecclesiastical discussions with as much ardor as Bossuet himself. But if Fenelon had not been, before all, what he ought to have been by conscience and condition, bishop and theologian, he would merit less ettaem ; he would have lacked the leading characteristic of the century in which he lived the sentiment of propriety and duty. When the unfortunate disputes of Jansenism were revived, after a long interruption, Fenelon wrote against the men who did not imi- tate his respect for the court of Rome ; and he soon found himself engaged in a controversy that was scarcely briefer and less earnest than that of pure love. The courtiers, on this account, supposed in Fenelon views of ambition and flattery. If Fenelon had wished to gain the heart of tha king, he employed at the same period a nobler way, by feeding, at his own expense, the French army during the disastrous \7inter of 1709 ; but he no more sought on this occasion than on the other to overcome unconquerable prejudices. He served religion and his country. The following year, the same sentiments in- spired him with the eloquent picture of the ills of France, and the project of associating the nation with the government, the u reposition for convoking an assembly of the notables. This memoir is of the highest interest. Fenelon therein admirably judges of the force and the weakness of despotism, and the salutary power of liberty. We can scarcely conceive that this generous and provident policy, which anticipated the opinion of Europe, should have attracted on Funelon reproach nd hatred, even m the middle of our century. If U were foi 6 130 TVOKK9 OF FENELOTi. this reason that the name of philosopher has been given to the most religious of bishops, Fenelon would disavow neither his panegyrists nor his accusers ; and, for having desired happi- uess and liberty for nations, he would not believe himself less a Christian. The memoirs that Fenelon addressed to the Duke de Beauvilliers, were the prayer of a sage zealous for his country, but without the power to serve her. An unex- pected event gave a glimpse of the moment when the counsels of Feuelon might govern France. The grand dauphin died, and the Duke of Burgundy, long oppressed by the mediocrity of iiis father, saw himself suddenly approaching the throne, whose heir he was, and the king, of whom he became the confidant and the support. His virtues, freed from a jealous tutelage, finally had scope for action. What joy must the virtuous tutor have felt, on seeing his work ready to be justified by the happiness of his country ! Then, full of hope, he wrote to his pupil, who, according to the expression of Saint-Simon, reigned in advance : " It is not necessary that all should ex- ist for one alone ; but one alone ought to exist for all, to make their happiness." He communicated at the same time to the Duke de Beauvilliers different plans of administration and government, that ought to be proposed to the young prince. While Fenelon was preparing the reign of his pupil, sudden death removed the heir of the old king, who remained immov- ably firm in the midst of all the humiliations of his glory, and all the disasters of his family. Thus ended the hopes of vir- tue : nevertheless, Fenelon, in spite of his grief, did not aban- don the love of his country, even when he no longer saw be- tween her and him the young prince whom he had trained up for her. Anxious for France, whose destiny rested upon a monarch of seventy-six and an infant in the cradle, he wished *x> prevent the ills of a long minority. In several cc nfidential memoirs which he wrote upon that subject, we recognize the novelty of his political views, and that spirit of liberty whicn. m his century,, was not the least of its innovations. One o* these papers ie devoted to a discussion of the suspicions that NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VTT,LEMAIN. 131 accused the Duke of Orleans of a most frightful crime, and of an ambition eager to commit another. When we have read this memoir, whose author, without admitting the popular re- ports in all their horror, severely judges the scandals and vices of the Duke of Orleans, we feel some surprise at seeing Fe- nelon keeping up with this prince a philosophic correspond- ence. Doubtless Fenelon hoped to overcome, by virtue and truth, a soul abandoned to all vices, but incapable of a crime. It is Plato writing to Dionysius ; and the resemblance is so much the more true, as, setting aside revealed religion, Fe- nelon endeavors, before all, to prove the principles of natural religion, principles ordinarily feeble and ill-established in a heart that has lost all others, but to which his luminous and simple genius lends a form that must have astonished the friv- olous incredulity of the Duke of Orleans. Such a discussion will appear, in our century, much more worthy of Fenelon than the theological debates in which the bull Unigenitus en- gaged him, near the close of his life. But this great man, faithful before all to his episcopal character, saw for himself no task more noble than that of combating opinions which troubled the consciences of men and disturbed the repose of the Church. Malignity supposed th>o the zeal of Fenelon was animated by an old spite against the Cardinal de Noailles. But when the conduct of a virtuous man is authorized by his duty, it must not be explained by his weaknesses. It was to these ab- stract and difficult discussions that Fenelon devoted the last days of a life suffering and made desolate by mourning. This man, so sensitive to earthly friendships, and who desired that all good friends might die together, lost, at short intervals, nearly all those whom he loved. While, afflicted with several uccessive losses, he was writing " I no longer see aught but friendship, and it will be friendship that will make me die " death took from him the Duke de Beauvilliers : he died him- self four months afterwards, at the age of sixty-four years (Jan- uary 7, 1715). A light fall hastened the wished-for moment. Bis death, like his life, was that of a great and virtuous bishop* 132 WOKK8 OF FENELO1T Although Fenelon wrote much, he never appeared to seek fame as an author. All his works were inspired by the duties of his station, by his own misfortunes, or those of his country Most of them escaped his hands without his knowledge, and were known only after his death. Some sermons the first essay of his youth have been preserved. The composition is not strong and elaborate, as in the masterpieces of the great pulpit orators ; but in them reigns an amiable enthusiasm for religion and virtue, a facile and vivid imagination, a natural, harmonious, and poetical elegance. They are brilliant sketches traced by a happy genius, that uses little effort. Nevertheless, Fenelon had reflected much upon oratorial art and pulpit elo- quence ; and his studies, in this regard, are found in three dialogues, in the manner of Plato, filled with arguments bor- rowed from that philosopher, and above all, written with a grace that seems to have been stolen from him. We have in our language no treatise on oratorical art that contains more sound, ingenious, and new ideas, and a severer and bolder im- partiality in judgments. The style is simple, agreeable, varied, fitly eloquent, and mingled with that delicate vivacity with which the ancients knew how to temper didactic severity This production belongs to the youth of Fenelon : in it one everywhere feels that exquisite taste for simplicity, that love for naive beauty, which constitutes the inimitable character ol his writings. The Letter on Eloquence} written towards the close of his life, contains only the same doctrine, applied with more extent, ornamented with new developments, everywhere enounced with the mild and persuasive authoity of a man of genius growing old, who discusses little, remembers, and judges; no shorter piece of composition presents a richer and happier choice of souvenirs and examples. Fenelon cites them with eloquence, because they come from his soul rather than from bis memory. But, among so many beauties, he returns to those that are calmest, most natural, most naive ; and then, in order to express what he feels, he has words of an inimitable grace. 1 Lcttre sur V Eloquence. NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VILLEilAUf. This Letter to the Academy, 1 the Dialogues on Eloquence* tome Letters to La Motte on Homer and the Ancients? place Fenelon in the first rank among critics, and serve to explain the original simplicity of his own writings, and the composition, BO antique and so new, of " Telemachus." Fenelon, charmed with the beauties of Virgil and Homer, searches in them for those traits of a naive and passionate truth, which he found especially in Homer, and which he himself calls that amiable simplicity of a new-born world. The Greeks appear to him nearer that first epoch, and he prefers to study and imitate them ; Homer, Xenophon, and Plato inspired him with " Te- lemachus." One would be deceived in believing that Fenelon is indebted to Greece for nothing but the charm of Homer's fictions : the idea of moral beauty in the education of a young prince, those philosophic conversations, those proofs of courage, of patience, of humanity in war, respect for oaths, all these beneficent ideas are borrowed from the Cyropedia. In the theories regarding the happiness of a people ; in the plan of a state government like a family, we recognize the imagination and the philosophy of Plato. But we may believe that Fene- lon, correcting the fables of Homer by the wisdom of Socrates, and forming that happy mixture of the most pleasing fictions, of the purest philosophy, and of the most humane politics, is able to balance, by the charm of this union, the glory of in- vention which he cedes to each of his models. Without doubt Fenelon has participated in the faults of those that he imitated ; and if the combats of " Telemachus" have the gran- deur and the fire of the combats of the Iliad, Mentor sometimes peaks as long as one of Homer's heroes ; and sometimes the details of a somewhat commonplace moral discussion remind us of the long interviews of the Cyropedia. Considering " Te- lemachus" as an inspiration of the Greek muses, it seems that the genius of Fenelon receives from them a force that to him was unnatural. The vehemence of Sophocles is completely fur VEloqune. Ltttru a La MotU tur Homer et fur let Ancient. 134 WORKS OF FENELON. preserved in the savage imprecafc'ora of Philoctetes. Love burns in the heart of Eucharis as in ths verses of Theocritus. Although the beauties of antiquity seem to have been gleaned for the composition of Telemachus, the>.e remains to the author some glory of invention, without taking acccuni of what is creative in the imitation of foreign beauties, inimitable before and after Fenelon. Nothing is more beautiful than the ar- rangement of " Telemachus," and we do not find less grandeur in the general idea, than taste and skill in the union and con- trast of episodes. The chaste and modest loves of Antiope, introduced at the end of the poem, correct, in a sublime man- ner, the transports of Calypso. The interest of passion is thus twice produced, once under the image of madness, and again under that of virtue. But, as " Telemachus" is especially a book of political ethics, what the author paints with most force, is ambition, that malady of kings which brings death to peoples, ambition, great and generous in Sesostris, imprudent in Ido- meneus, tyrannical and calamitous in Pygmalion, barbarous, hypocritical, and impious in Adrastus. This last character, superior to Virgil's Mezentius, is traced with a vigor of imagi- nation that no historical truth could surpass. This invention of personages is not less rare than the general invention of a plan. The happiest character among these truthful portraits, is that of young Telemachus. More developed, more active than the Telemachus of the Odyssey, he combines all that can surprise, attach, and instruct; in the age of passions, he is under the guard of wisdom, which often allows him to fail, because faults are the education of men ; he has the pride cf the throne, the transport of heroism, and the candor of early youth. This mixture of hauteur and naivete, of force and sub- mission, forms perhaps the most touching and most amiable tharacter invented by the epic muse ; and, doubtless, Rous- seau, a great master in the art of painting and touching, felt this marvellous charm, when he supposed that Telemachus would be, in the eyes of chastity and innocence, the idea- model worthy of a first love. Great critics have often repeated that the hero of a poem 01 NOTICE OF FENELON, BY VILLEMAIN. 135 a tragedy should aot bs perfect. They have admired in the Achilles of Homer, iz the Rinaldo of Tasso, the interest of faults and oassions ; but they have not foreseen the interest, not less new, and more instructive, of a character which, at first, is a mixture of all human weaknesses, but gradually disengages itself from them, and is developed while being purified. The character of Telemachus offers the charm of virtue and the vicissitudes of weakness ; it has none tho less movement because it tends to perfection. It is animated and perfected at the same time ; and the interest that we feel is agitated like the strife of passions, and agreeable like the triumph of virtue. Doubtless Fenelon, in this form given to the principal character, sought before all the instruction of his pupil ; but he created at the same time one of the most interesting and most novel conceptions of the epopee. In order to completely seize in Telemachus that treasure of antique riches the part of invention belonging to the modern author, it would be necessary to compare the Hades and Ely- sium of Fenelon with the same pictures traced by Homer and Virgil. Whatever may be the sublimity of Ajax's silence ; whatever may be the grandeur, the perfection of the sixth book of the ^Eneid, one would feel all that Fenelon has created anew, or rather all that he haa drawn from the Christian mys- teries, by an admirable art, or by an unconscious remembrance. The greatest of these beauties unknown to antiquity, is the invention of pains and joys purely spiritual, substituted for the feeble or grotesque picture of physical ills and felicities. Here- in Fenelon is sublime, and seizes better than Dante the aid, so new and so' great, of Christianity. Nothing is more philo- sophic and more terrible than the moral toitures which he outs in the heart of the culpable ; and, in order to represent ihese inexpressible griefs, his style acquires a degree of energy Dot expected from him, and found in no other. But when, lelivertd from these frightful pictures, he can allow his placid nd beneficent imagination to repose upon the dwelling-place of the just, then arc heara tones which the human voice hae tever equalled, &m\ something celestial escapes from his sc u 136 WORKS OF FENELON. intoxicated with the joy that he describes. These ideas are absolutely foreign to the antique genius ; it is the ecstasy oi Christian charity ; it is a religion wholly of love, interpreted by the sweet and tender soul of Fenelon ; it is the pure love given as a reward to the just, in the Elysium of mythology. So, when in our days a celebrated writer sought to retrace the Christian paradise, he must have felt more than once that he had been preceded by Fenelon ; and in spite of the efforts of a rich imagination, and the easier and freer employment of Christian ideas, he was obliged to throw himself back upon less happy images, and merited only the second rank. The Elysium of Fenelon is one of the creations of modern genius ; nowhere does the French language appear more flexible and more melodious. The style of " Telemachus" has been subject- ed to much criticism ; Voltaire has given an example of it with taste. It is certain that the diction so natural, so sweetly ani- mated, sometimes so energetic and bold, is intermingled with feeble and languishing details; but they disappear in the happy facility of the style. The interest of the poem carries the reader along ; and great beauties reanimate and transport him. As to those who are offended at some words repeated, at some negligent constructions, let them understand that beauty of language does not consist in a severe and careful cor- rectness, but in a choice of simple, happy, expressive words, in a free and varied harmony that accompanies style, and SV.B- tains it as the accent sustains the voice, in a sweet glow everywhere diffused, as the soul and life of discourse. The Adventures of Aristinovd breathe that melting charm which is given to but few men to Virgil, to Racine, to Fene- lon. In this morceau of a few pages, one would divine the au- thor of " Telemachus," as in the Dialogue of Eucrates and Sylla we recognize Montesquieu. Only to really superior men be- ongs the power of thus embracing, in a very narrow compass Jie essay of all their genius. After " Telemachus," the most im- portant work of Fenelon, in subject and extent, is the Treatist 1 ^ventures

Keliyio*. r le Jonscienct tfvn Roi. CRITICAL OPINIONS UPON FENELON AND HIS WORKS, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, speaking of the controversy ">.&> tween Fenelon and Bossuet, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, says: "Never were two great men more unlike. Fenelon in his writings exhibits more of the qualities which predispose to religious feelings, than any other equally conspicuous person ; a mind so pure as steadily to contemplate supreme excellence ; a heart capable of being touched and affected by the contemplation ; a gentle and mod- est spirit, not elated by the privilege, but seeing its own want of worth as it came nearer to such brightness, and disposed to treat with compassionate forbearance those errors in others, of which it felt a humbling consciousness. Bossuet was rather a greater minister in the ecclesiastical commonwealth; em- ploying knowledge, eloquence, argument, the energy of his character, the influence and even the authority of his station. to vanquish opponents, to extirpate revolters, and, sometimes with a patrician firmness, to withstand the dictatorial encroach- ment of the Roman pontiff on the spiritual aristocracy of France." Hallam thus speaks of " Telemachus :" " The Telemaque o Fenelon, after being suppressed in France, appeared in Holland clandestinely, without the author's consent, in 1699. It ii needless to say that it soon obtained the admiration of Europe WOEKS OF FENELON. and, perhaps, there is no book in the French language that has been more read. Fenelon seems to have conceived that, metre not being essential, as he assumed, to poetry, he had, by imitating the Odyssey in Telemaque, produced an epic of as 'egitiraate a character as his model. But the boundaries between epic poetry, especially such orics as the Odyssey, and romance were only perceptible by the employment of verse in the former ; no elevation of character, no ideality of concep- tion, no charm of imagery or emotion, had been denied to romance. The language of poetry had for two centuries been seized for its use. Telemaque must therefore take its place among romances; but still it is true that no romance had breathed so classical a spirit, none had abounded so much with the richness of poetical language, much, in fact, of Homer, Virgil, and Sophocles having been woven in with no other change than verbal translation, nor had any preserved such dignity in its circumstances, such beauty, harmony, and noble- ness in its diction. It would be as idle to say that Fenelon was indebted to D'Urfe and Calprenede, as to deny that some degree of resemblance may be found in their poetical prose. The one belonged to the morals of chivalry, generous but ex- aggerated ; the other to those of wisdom and religion. The one had been forgotten, because its tone is false ; the other is ever admired, and is only less regarded, because it is true in excess, because it contains too much of what we know. Tele maque, like some other of Fenelon's writings, is to be con- sidered in reference to its object ; an object of all the noblest, being to form the character of one to whom many must look np for their welfare, but still very different from the inculca- tion of profound truth. The beauties of Telemaque are very numerous; the descriptions, and, indeed, the whole tone o* ihe book, have a charm of grace something like the pictures of Guido ; but there is also a certain languor which steals over s in reading ; and, though there is no real want of variety in Uie narration, it reminds us so continually of its source, the Homeric legends, a? to become rather monotonous. The abandonment of verse has 'produced too much diffuseness ; it VABIOUS CRITICAL OPINIONS. 141 will be observed, if we look attentively, that where Homer is circumstantial, Fenelon is more so ; in this he sometimes ap- proaches the minuteness of the romancers. But these defect* are more than compensated by the moral and even aesthetic excellence of this romance." Dr. Hugh Blair, in one of his Lectures on the Epic Poets, thus speaks of the same work : " In reviewing the epic poets, it were unjust to make no mention of the amiable author of the Adventures of Telemachus. This work, though not composed in verse, is justly entitled to be held a poem. The measured poetical prose in which it is written is remarkably harmonious, and gives the style nearly as much elevation as the French language is capable of supporting, even in regular verse. " The plan of the work is, in general, well contrived, and is deficient neither in epic grandeur nor unity of object. The author has entered with much felicity into the spirit and ideas of the ancient poets, particularly into the ancient mythology, which retains more dignity and makes a better figure in his hands, than in those of any modern poet. His descriptions are rich and beautiful, especially of the softer and calmer scenes, for which the genius of Fenelon was best suited ; such as the incidents of pastoral life, the pleasures of virtue, or a country flourishing in peace. There is an inimitable sweetness and tenderness in several of the pictures of this kind which he has rven. " The best executed part of the work is the first six books, in which Telemachus recounts his adventures to Calypso. The narrative throughout them is lively and interesting ; afterwards, especially in the last twelve books, it becomes more tedious and anguid ; and in the warlike adventures which are attempted, "here is a great defect of vigor. The chief objection against ihis work being classed with epic poems, arises from the minute details of virtuous policy into which the author in some places enters ; and from the discourses and instructions of Mentor, which recur upon us too often, and too much in the strain o* loaamcnplace morality. Though these were well suited tc 142 WOKKS OF FENELON. the main design of the author, which was to form the mind of a young prince, yet they seem not congruous to the nature of epic poetry, the object of which is to improve us by means of actions, characters, and sentiments, rather than by delivering professed and formal instructions. " Several of the epic poets have described a descent into hell ; and in the prospects they have given us of the invisible world, we may observe the gradual refinement of men's notions concerning a state of future rewards and punishments. The descent of Ulysses into hell, in Homer's Odyssey, presents to us a very indistinct and dreary sort of object. The scene is laid in the country of the Cimmerians, which is always cov- ered with clouds and darkness, at the extremity of the ocean. When the spirits of the dead begin to appear, we scarcely know whether Ulysses is above ground or below it. None of the ghosts, even of the heroes, appear satisfied with their con- dition in the other world ; and when Ulysses endeavors to comfort Achilles by reminding him of the illustrious figure which he must make in those regions, Achilles roundly tells him that all such speeches are idle ; for he wuld rather be a day-laborer on earth, than have command of all the dead. " In the sixth book of the ^Eneid, we discern a much greater refinement of ideas, corresponding to the progress which the world had then made in philosophy. The objects there delineated are more clear and distinct, and more grand and awful. The separate mansions of good and bad spirits, with the punishments of the one and the employments and happiness of the other, are finely described, and in consistency with the most pure morality. But the visit which Fenelon makes Telemachus pay to the Shades is much more philosoph- ical than Virgil's. He employs the same fables and the same mythology ; but we find the ancient mythology refined by the knowledge of the true religion, and adorned with that beautiful enthusiasm for which Fenelon was so distinguished. His account of the happiness of the just is an excellent de- icription in the mystic strain, and very expressive of the genius and spirit of the author." VARIOUS CRITICAL OPINIONS. 143 Dr. Charming, in reviewing a book entitled " Selections from khe Writings of Fenelon," says : u We welcome a book from Fenelon ; and we do so, because, if not a profound he was an original thinker, and because, though a Catholic, he was essentially free. He wrote from hia own mind, and seldom has a purer mind tabernacled in flesh. He professed to believe in an infallible Church ; but he listened habitually to the voice of God within him, and speaks of thia in language so strong as to have given the Quakers some plea for ranking him among themselves. So little did he confine himself to established notions that he drew upon himself the censures of his Church, and, like some other Christians whom we could name, has been charged with a refined Deism. His works have the great charm of coming fresh from the soul. He wrote from experience, and hence, though he often speaks in language which must seem almost a foreign one to men of the world, yet he always speaks in a tone of reality. That he has excesses we mean not to deny, but they are of a kind which we regard with more than indulgence, almost with ad- miration " Fenelon saw far into the human heart, and especially into the lurkings of self-love. He looked with a piercing eye through the disguises of sin ; but he knew sin, not as most men do, by bitter experience of its power, so much as by his knowledge and experience of virtue. Deformity was revealed to him by his refined perceptions and intense love of moral beauty. The light which he carried with him into the dark corners of the human heart, and by which he laid open its most hidden guilt, was that of celestial goodness. Hence, though the severest of censors, he is the most pitying. Not a tone of asperity escapes him. He looks on human error with tn angel's tenderness, with tears which an angel might shed, and thus reconciles and binds us to our race, at the very mo- ment of revealing its corruptions. " That Fenelon's views of human nature were dark, too dark, we learn from almost every page of his writings , and at this we cannot wonder. He was early thrown into the verv 144 WORKS OF FENELON. Court from which Rochefoucauld drew his celebrated Maxims- perhaps the very spot, above all others on the face of the earth, distinguished and disgraced by selfishness, hypocrisy, and intrigue. When we think of Fenelon in the palace of Louis the Fourteenth, it reminds us of a seraph sent on a divine commission into the abodes of the lost ; and when we recol- lect that in that atmosphere he composed his Telemachus, we doubt whether the records of the world furnish stronger evi- dence of the power of a divine virtue to turn temptation into glory and strength, and to make even crowned and prosperous vice a means of triumph and exaltation " The Edinburgh Review, vol. 107, in an article upon a work entitled M^moires et Journal sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Bossuet, says : " Bossuet was born with all the vigor and fixity of age ; Fenelon retained until death all the generous glow and boundless elasticity of youth. Bossuet preached the doctrine of fear, Fenelon that of love. Bossuet's mind was petrified by ever looking back, that of Fenelon was directed ever for- ward, in spite of the taunts and despair of skeptics and unbe- lievers. The one loved immutability, the other progress. In the heart of the one ruled mistrust, in that of the other confi- dence. Bossuet was a Conservative, Fenelon a Liberal. The genius of the former was Hebrew and Roman, that of the latter Grecian and Evangelical. The one had the stern majesty of a prophet by Michael Angelo, the other the ecstatic beauty of a martyr by Guido Reni." BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 145 THE WORKS OF FENELON. I. Treatise on the Education of Girls (Tratie de V Education da Filles), 1681-1687. II. Treatise on the Office of Pastors (Tratie du Ministere des Pasteurs), 1688, in 12mo. III. Explanation of the Maxims of the Saints (Explication des Max- ima des Saints), 1697, in 12mo. IV. Adventures of Telemachus (Aventures de TeUmaque), 1699, the editions of which are innumerable. V. Dialogues of the Dead (Dialogues des Moris, Composes pour V Educa- tion d'un Prince), 1712, in 12mo. VI. Dialogues on Eloquence in general, and on that of the Pulpit in particular, wit*h a Letter to the French Academy (Dialogues sur I' Elo- quence en gen&ral et sur cette de la chaire en particulier, avec une Lettre d I'Academie Franfaise), 1718, in 12mo. VII. Examination of a King's Conscience (Examen de la Conscience fun Roi), 1734. VIII. Letters on Different Subjects, pertaining to Religion and Metaphysics (Lettres sur divers sujets, concernant la Religion et la Mela- physique), 1718. IX. Demonstration of the Existence of God (Demonstration de I'Ex iitence de Dim), 1713. X. Selections from Sermons on Different Subjects (Recueil de Sermons ^hoists sur differents sujets), 1710. XI. Spiritual Works ((Euvres Spirituettes). The only complete edition of Fenelon's works is said to be that of Versailles, 34 vols. in 8vo, begun at Versailles, in 1820, ,^ Lebel, as publisher, and finished in Paris in 1830 by Leclerc. In the edition of Besanqon (27 vols. in 8vo, 1830), more than half of the correspondence is omitted. In 1782 the Assembly of the Clergy of France appropriated forty thousand livres to defray the expenses of publishing the works of Fenelon. The preparation of the edition was intrusted first to the Abbe Gallard, and afterwards to the Abb6 de Querbeuf ; but, from VOL. I. 7 146 WORKS OF FENELON. whatever cause, in this collection of Fenelon's writings (9 vols in 4to, Paris, 1787-1792), the reader will seek in vain for those on Quietism and Jansenism, his Explication des Maximes, and his Mandements. The edition of Toulouse (19 vols. 12mo, 1809-1811) contains Querbeuf's Life of Fenelon, and four In- structions Pastorales, and an Abridgement of the Lives of the Ancient Philosophers, omitted in the previous edition. A good selection from Fenelon's works was published by Perisse Freres, Paris, 1842, 4 vols. 8vo. Didot Freres have published the works of Fenelon itj three large 8vo. volumes, which is a cheap (30 franc) and very good edition. The edition of Ver- sailles mentioned above is the best. Of the innumerable editions of " Telemachus," that of Le- fevre (1 vol. 8vo, Paris, 1853) is perhaps the best. The most complete biographical account of Fenelon is that given by M. de Bausset in his Histoire de Fenelon (3 vols. 8vo, 1808). The Abbe Gosselin, director of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, published an interesting book in 1843, entitled, Lit erary History of Fenelon, or Historical and Literary Review of his Writings (Paris, 1 vol. 8vo). We intend in our collection of the French classics, to give either carefully revised or new translations of all the works of Fenelon tnat have an enduring interest. ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS, BOOK I, Telemachus, conducted by Minerva under the likeness of Mentor, lands, after having suffered shipwreck, upon the island of the goddess Calypso who is still regretting the departure of Ulysses. The goddess receives him favorably, conceives a passion for him, offers him immortality, and inquires after his adventures. He recounts his voyage to Pylos and Lacedeemon ; his shipwreck on the coast of Sicily ; the danger he was in of being offered as a sacrifice to the manes of Anchises ; the assistance which Mentor and he gave Acestes against an incursion of barbarians, and the gratitude of the king, who, to reward their service, gave them a Tyrian vessel, that they might return to their country. CALYPSO was unable to console herself for the departure of Ulysses. 1 She regretted her immortality,* as that which could only perpetuate affliction, and aggravate calamity by despair. Her grotto to more echoed with the music of her voice ; and her nymphs wa ted at a distance, with timidity and silence. She often wandered alone along the borders of her island, amid the luxuriance of a perpetual spring ; but the beauties that bloomed around her, instead of soothing her grief, only impressed more strongly upon her mind the memory of Ulys- ses, who had been so often the companion of her walks. Some- times she stood motionless upon the beach ; and while her eyes were fixed on that part of the horizon, where the lessen- Clysse had left Calypso by order of Jupiter. See the fifth book of Homer's Odytiey. * Vei.us, in the idyl of Bion on the death of Adonis, complains of living and of being a goddess, and of not being able to follow her lover. " Oh wretchedness ! that I must live and be divine, and unable to follow thee !" Calypso herself will say further on (Book vi.), "My divinity no more serves me but to render my unhappiness eternal. Would that I could nd my misery with death !" Fenelon imitates the discourse of Inachus in Ovid (Metam., i. 661) : " Nor is it possible for me to end grief so great by death ; but it is a detriment to be a god ; and the gate of death being hut against me, extends my grief to eternal ages." 150 WORKS OF FENELON. fog bark of the hero at length disappeared, they overflowed with tears. Here she was one day surprised with the sudden appearance of a shipwreck : broken benches and oars lay scattered about upon the sand ; a rudder, a mast, and some cordage were floating near the shore. Soon after, she perceived at a distance two men, one of whom appeared to be aged, and in the other, although a youth, she discovered a strong resemblance of Ulysses. The same benevolence and dignity were united in his aspect ; his stature was equally lofty, and his port equally majestic. The goddess knew immediately that this was Te- lemachus ; but, notwithstanding the penetration of divine sa- gacity, she could not discover who was his companion ; for it is the prerogative of superior deities to conceal whatever they please from those of a lower class ; and it was the pleasure of Minerva, who accompanied Telemachus in the likeness of Mentor, to be concealed from Calypso. Calypso, however, rejoiced in the happy shipwreck, which had restored Ulysses to her wishes in the person of his son. She advanced to meet him ; and, affecting not to know him, she said : " How hast thou presumed to land on this island ? Knowest thou not, that from my dominions no daring intruder departs unpunished ?" By this menace she hoped to conceal the joy which glowed in her bosom, and which she could not prevent from sparkling in her countenance. " Whoever thou art," ' replied Telemachus ; " whether thou art indeed a goddess, or whether, with all the appearance oi divinity, thou art yet mortal ; canst thou regard with insensi- bility the misfortunes of a son, who, committing his life to the caprice of the winds and waves in search of a father, has suf- fered shipwreck against these rocks ?" " Who then is thy ' The discourse of Ulysses to Nausicaa (Odyss., vi. 149) begins with a imilar thought: "I supplicate thee, O queen, whether thou art some goddess or mortal." JEneas, in Virgil (^fineid, i. 327), says to Venus, whom he meets without knowing her : " virgin, by what name shall 1 ddress thee ? for thou wearest not the looks of a mortal, nor sounds th^ voice human. thou a goddess surely !" TELEMACHUS.-- -BOOK I. 151 father whom thou seekest ?" inquired the goddoss. "He is one of the confederate kings," answered Telemachus, " who, after a siege of ten years, laid Troy in ashes, and his name is Ulysses ; a name which he has rendered famous by his prow- ess, and yet more by his wisdom, not only through all Greece, but to the remotest boundaries of Asia. He is now a wan- derer on the deep, the sport of tempests which no force can resist, and the prey of dangers which no sagacity can elude. His country seems to fly before him. 1 Penelope, his wife, de- spairs at Ithaca of his return. I, though equally destitute of hope, pursue him through all the perils that he has passed, and seek him upon every coast. I seek him ; but, alas ! perhaps the sea has already closed over him forever ! O goddess, compassionate our distress ; and, if thou knowest what the fates have wrought, either to save or destroy Ulysses, vouch- safe this knowledge to Telemachus his son !" Such force of eloquence, such maturity of wisdom, and such blooming youth, filled the bosom of Calypso with astonishment and tenderness : she gazed upon him with a fixed attention ; but her eyes were still unsatisfied, and she remained some time silent. At length she said : " We will acquaint you, Telema- chus, with the adventures of your father. But the story will be long : it is now time that you should repair that strength by rest, which has been exhausted by labor. Come into my iwelling, where I will receive you as my son ; come, you shall be my comfort in this solitude ; and, if you are not vol- untarily wretched, I will be your felicity." Telemachus followed the goddess, who was encircled by a crowd of young nymphs, among whom she was distinguished oy the superiority of her stature, 1 as the towering summit of a 1 F6nel >n seems to remember those verses which Virgil (^n*id, v. 62fl,' pats in the mouth of Beroe : "The seventh summer since the destruction of Troy in already rolled away, while we, having measured all lands and teas, so many inhospitable rocks and barbarous climes, are driven about,' while along the wide ocean we pursue an ever-fleeing Italy, and are tossec >n the waves." Homer (Odyst. vi. 107), describing Diana in the midst of her nyinpl s 152 WORKS OF FENELON. lofty oak is seen, in the midst of a forest, above all the tree* that surround it. He was struck with the splendor of her beauty, the rich purple of her long and flowing robe, her hail that was tied with graceful 1 negligence behind her, and the vivacity and softness that were mingled in her eyes. Mentor followed Telemachus, modestly silent, and looking downwards. When they arrived at the entrance of the grotto, Telema- chus was surprised to discover, under the appearance of rural simplicity, whatever could captivate the sight. There was, indeed, neitter gold, nor silver, nor marble; no decorated columns, 8 no paintings, no statues were to be seen ; but the grotto consisted of several vaults cut in the rock ; the roof was embellished with shells and pebbles; and the want of tapestry was supplied by the luxuriance of a young vine, which extended its branches equally on every side. 3 Here the heat says that she is a head taller than all : " Above all by her head and her forehead, for she is easily known, but all of them are lair." Virgil, speak- ing of Turnus (^neid, vii. 784), uses the same image: "Turnus himself, a comely personage, moves on in the van, wielding his arms, and by a full head overtops the rest." Milton, too, has borrowed the image (Par. Lost, ix. 3861: " but Delia's self In gait surpassed, and goddess-like deport." > " For whom dost bind thy golden hair, plain in thy neatness." Hor- ace, I., Od. v. 4 " Nor ivory, nor fretted ceiling adorned with gold, glitters in my house : no Hymettiau beams rest upon pillars, cut out of the extreme parts of Af- rica." Hor. II., Od. xviii. These and some of the following details are taken from Homer's de- scription of Calypso's grotto (Odyss., v. 60-7C) . ' He came to the great cave in which the fair-haired nymph dwelt, and he found her within. A large fire was burning on the hearth, and at a distance the smell of well- cleft cedar, and of frankincense, that were burning, shed odor through the eland : but she within was singing with a beautiful voice, and going over the web, woven with a golden shuttle. But a flourishing wood sprung up around her grot alder, and poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. There, also, birds with spreading wings slept, owls, and hawks, and wide-tongued irows of the ocean, to which maritime employments are a care. There a fine in its prime was spread about the hollow grot, and it flourished with dusters. But four fountains flowed in succession with white water, turned near one another, in different ways ; but around these flourished soft mead- ows of violets and of parsley. There, indeed, even an immortal coming would admire it when he beheld, and would be delighted in nig mind." TELEMACHUS. BOOK I. 153 of the sun was tempered by the freshness of the breeze ; th rivulets that with soothing murmurs wandered through meadows of intermingled violets and amaranth, 1 formed innumerable baths that were pure and transparent as crystal ; the verdant carpet which nature had spread around the grotto was adorned with a thousand flowers. At a small distance, there was a wood of those trees that in every season unfold new blossoms, which diffuse ambrosial fragrance, and ripen into golden fruit. 1 In this wood, which was impervious to the rays of the sun, 1 and heightened the beauty of the adjacent meadows by an agreeable contrast of light and shade, nothing was to be heard but the song of birds, or the sound of w ater, which falling from the summit of a rock, was dashed into foam below, where, forming a small rivulet, it glided hastily over the meadow.* The grotto of Calypso was situated on the declivity of a hill. It commanded a prospect of the sea, sometimes smooth, peaceful, and limpid ; sometimes swelling into mountains, and breaking with idle rage against the shore. 4 At another view a river was discovered, in which were many islands, surrounded with limes that were covered with flowers, and poplars that raised their heads to the clouds. The streams which formed those islands seemed to stray through the fields with a kind of sportful wantonness : some rolled along in translucent waves with a tumultuous rapidity ; some glided away in silence with 1 It is probable that Fdnelon has used the word amaranth, without attach- ing to it any definite meaning, simply designating by it any agreeable flower. * An orange grove. " A dense thicket, which neither the force of the moist-blowing windi breathed through, nor did the shining sun strike it with its beams, nor did the showers penetrate through it, so thick was it." Odyts.^ xix. 440. " A gentle rivulet swiftly running through the mead." Virg. Geor., If. 19. " Leave the mad billows to buffet the shores." Virg. Eel., ix. 48 4 When the sea was aroused, and an enormous moss of waters seemed to bend an J to grow in the form of a mountain, and to send forth a roaring voiae, and to burst asunder at its very summit." Ovid, Jfftaw., xv. 508. This hyperbolical comparison has been often employed, both bj poeU tnd by prwe writers. 7 154 WORKS OF FENELON. a motion that was scarcely perceptible ; others, after a long cir- cuit, turned back, as if they wished to issue agaiu from their source, and were unwilling to quit the paradise 1 through which they flowed. The distant hills and mountains hid their sum- mits in the blue vapors that hovered over them, and diversified the horizon with strange forms that were equally pleasing and romantic. The mountains that were less remote, were covered with vines, the branches of which were interwoven with each other, and hung down in festoons. Grapes, which surpassed in lustre the richest purple, were too exuberant to be concealed by the foliage, and the branches bowed under the weight of the fruit. The fig, the olive, the pomegranate, and other trees without number, overspread the plain ; so that the whole country had the appearance of a garden, of .iifinite variety and boundless extent. Calypso, having displayed this profusion of nature's beauty to Telemachus, said to him : " Go now, and refresh yourself, and change your apparel, which is wet. I will afterwards see you again, and relate such things as shall affect your heart." She then caused him to enter, with his friend, into the most secret recess of a grotto adjoining her own. Here the nymphs had already kindled a fire with some billets of cedar, which perfumed the place, and had left change of apparel for the new guests. Telemachus, perceiving that a tunic of the finest wool, whiter than snow, and a purple robe embroidered with gold, were intended for him, contemplated the magnificence of his dress with a pleasure natural to a youth. Mentor perceived his weakness, and reproved it. " Are these then," said he, " Telemachus, such thoughts as become the son of Ulysses ? Be rather studious to appropriate the charac- 1 The French poet, Quinault, in his tragedy of Arniide (II. 8), which Voltaire called a mas' -srpiece, and which inspired Gliick while composing iiis opera of the same name, precedes Fenelon in this beautifu imaginative picture : " This river gently flows, Regretfully leaving a region so charminfr " TELEMACHU8. BOOK I. 155 tcr of thy father, and to surmount the persecutions of fortune, The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory : glory is due to him only who can bear pain, and trample pleasure under hia feet" Telemachus answered with a sigh : " May the gods destroy me, rather than suffer me to be enslaved by voluptuous effemi- nacy! No; the son of Ulysses shall never be seduced by the charms of enervating and inglorious ease ! But how gracious is heaven, to have directed us, destitute and ship- wrecked, to this goddess, or this mortal, who has loaded ua with benefits !" " Fear rather," replied Mentor, " lest her wiles should over whelm thee with ruin ; fear her deceitful blandishments more than the rocks on which thou hast suffered shipwreck ; for shipwreck and death are less dreadful than those pleasures by which virtue is subverted. Believe not the tales which she shall relate. The presumption of youth hopes all things from itself, and, however impotent, believes it has power over every event ; it dreams of security in the midst of danger, and listens to subtilty without suspicion. Beware of Calypso's seducing eloquence, which, like a serpent, glides beneath flowers; dread the concealed poison! Trust not thyself, but confide implicitly in my counsel." They then returned to Calypso, who was waiting for them. Her nymphs, who were dressed in white, and had their hair braided, set before them a repast, which, though it was simple, and consisted only of such game as they had either taken with their nets, or killed in the chase, was yet of exquisite taste, and served up with elegance. Wine, more richly flavored than nectar, was poured from large silver vases, and sparkled in cups of gold that were wreathed with flowers ; and baskets were heaped with all the variety of fruit that is promised by ipring and bestowed by autumn. In the mean time four of the attendant nymphs began to sing. Their first theme was the battle of the Gods and Titans; then they celebrated the loves of Jupiter and Semele ; the birth of Bacchus, and hii 156 WORKS OF FENELON education under old Silenus; the race of Atalanta 1 with Hip- pomenes, by whom she was conquered with golden apples from the gardens of the Hesperides :* the wars of Troy were re- served to the last; the prowess and the wisdom of Ulysses were extolled to the heavens. The principal nymph, whose name was Leucothoe, to the harmonious voices of the chorui joined the music of her lyre. When Telemachus heard the name of his father, the tean which stole down his cheeks added new lustre to his beauty. But Calypso, perceiving that he was too sensibly touched, an This was the Boeotian Atalanta. When her father desired her to marry, she required every suitor to contend with her in the foot-race, because she was the most swift-footed of mortals. If he conquered her, he was to be rewarded with her hand ; if he was conquered, he was to be put to death. She conquered many suitors, but was at length overcome by Hippomenes with the assistance of Venus. The goddess of love had given him three golden apples, gathered in the gardens of the Hesperides, and during the race he dropped them one after the other : their beauty charmed Atalanta o much, that she could not abstain from picking them up, and Hippome- nes thus gained the goal before her. She accordingly became his wife. " Then he sings the virgin, charmed with the apples of the Hesperi- an." Virg. Eel., vi. 61. 1 La Fontaine, in his poem of Adonis, paints Venus weeping, and adding .Tiatre to her .beauty wit/ her tears. AS we might expect, he has been preceded by Ovid. * CVypso says to Mercury, speaking of Ulysses (Odysa., v. 185) : " Him TELEMACHtrS. BOOK I. 157 to his wretched country blinded him to the prospect of supe rior felicity. Thou seest what he has lost for Ithaca, to whicL 'j e can never return. He resolved to leave me, and departed but a tempest revenged the insult, and the vessel in which he had embarked, having been long the sport of the storm, wa? at last swallowed up in the deep. Let this example influence thy conduct. All hopes of again seeing thy father, and of sue ceeding to his throne, are now at an end. Do not too deeply regret his loss, since thou hast found a goddess who offers thee superior dominion, and more permanent felicity." Calypso, after this declaration, exerted all her eloquence to display the happiness she had conferred upon Ulysses ; she recounted his adventures 1 in the Cave of Polyphemus, the Cyclop, and in the country of Antiphates, king of the Laestry- gones ; she forgot neither what happened to him in the island of Circe, the daughter of the Sun, nor the dangers of his pas- sage between Scylla and Charybdis. She described the tem- pest that had been raised against him by Neptune, after his departure from her, in which she insinuated that he had per- ished, concealing his arrival in the island of the Pheacians. Telemachus, who had too hastily congratulated himself upon the bounty of Calypso, now perceived the evil of her designs, and the wisdom of that counsel which had been just given him by Mentor. He answered in few words : " Forgive, god- dess, my sorrow ; my heart is now susceptible only of regret ; but I may hereafter be again capable of felicity. Suffer me now to pay at least a few tears to the memory of my father : thou knowest, better than his son, how well he deserves the tribute." Calypso, perceiving that it was not now her interest to prew him further, feigned to participate in his sorrow, and to regret the fate of Ulysses. But, that she might gain a more perfect knowledge of the means by which his affections were to b Indeed I loved and nourished, and I said that I would make him od free from old age." 1 These different adventures are recounted in the OJystty, be. x. xil. 158 WORKS OF FENELON. engaged, she inquired the particulars of his shipwreck, and bj what acciieut he had been thrown upon her coast. " The stor} of my misfortunes," said he, "will be too long." "No, no," responded Calypso, " I am impatient to hear it ; indulge me, therefore, without delay." Telemachus long refused ; but she continued her solicitations, and at length he complied. " I set out from Ithaca 1 to inquire after my father of those princes who had returned from the siege of Troy. The suitors of Penelope, my mother, were surprised at my departure; be- cause from them, whom I knew to be perfidious, I had con- cealed my purpose. Neither Nestor, whom I saw at Pylos, nor Menelaus, who received me with affection at Lacedemon, knew whether my father was among the living or dead. Im- patient of perpetual suspense and uncertainty, I resolved to go into Sicily, whither my father was said to have been driven by contrary winds. But the prudent Mentor, who is here the companion of my fortunes, opposed the execution of so rash a design; he represented my danger, upon the one hand, from the Cyclops, the gigantic monsters who riot on human flesh, and, on the other, from the fleet of ./Eneas and the Trojans, who were hovering about those coasts. ' The Trojans,' said he, ' are irritated against all the Greeks ; but, above all, against Ulysses, whose son, therefore, they would rejoice to destroy. Return then to Ithaca. Perhaps your father, who is beloved by the gods, may have returned already. But if heaven haa decreed his death, if he shall see Ithaca no more, it is fit that you return to avenge him and to deliver your mother ; to dis- play your wisdom to attending nations ; and to let all Greece behold, in Telemachus, a sovereign not less worthy of the throne than Ulysses.' " This counsel, which was the voice of reason, I rejected, and listened only to the suggestions of my passions ; but such waa 1 Telemachus, setting out from Ithaca by the counsel of Minerva, wen Iret to Pylos, then to Sparta, in order to make inquiries of Nestor and Vlei ichius about his father. See the Odyssey, ii. iii. iv. In Hornet , tlu royage of Telemachus ends at Sparta. TELEMACHUS. BOOK I. 159 the affection of Mentor for me, that lie embarked with me for that voyage, which, in the foHy of my presumption, I under- took contrary to his advice ; and the gods, perhaps, permitted the fault, that the calamity which it drew upon me might teach me wisdom." While Telemachus had been speaking, Calypso had atten- tively considered Mentor, and was suddenly chilled with astonish- ment. She imagined that she perceived in him something more than human. Not being able to resolve the perplexity of her thoughts into any probable determination, the presence of this inscrutable being continued to agitate her mind with suspicion and dread. Fearing yet more that her confusion should be perceived, she said to Telemachus : " Proceed, and gratify my curiosity." Telemachus resumed his story thus : " We steered some time with a favorable wind for Sicily, but at length a tempest overcast the sky, and involved us in sudden darkness. 1 By the transient gleams of the lightning we perceived other vessels that were exposed to the same danger ; and were soon convinced that they were part of the Trojan fleet, and were not less to be dreaded by us than shoals and rocks. Then, but too late, I perfectly comprehended what the ardor of youth had before prevented me from con- sidering with sufficient attention. In this dreadful exigence, Mentor appeared not only fearless and calm, but more than usually cheerful ; he encouraged me to hope, and as he spoke, I perceived myself inspired with invincible fortitude. While he was directing the navigation of the vessel with the utmost tranquillity, the pilot being incapacitated by terror and con- fusion, I said to him : 'My dear Mentor, why did I reject your advice ? What greater evil can befall me than a confidence in my own opinion, at an age which can form no judgment of the future, has gained no experience from the past, and knows not 1 " In an instant oioudn (match the heavens and day from the eyes of he Trojans ; sable night site brooding on the sea, thunder roars from pole o pole, the sky glares with repented flashes, and all nature threatens then with immediate death." Virg. j&n., i. 88. 160 WOBKS OF FENELON. how to employ the present? If we survive this tempest, 1 will distrust myself as my most dangerous enemy, and confide unly in Mentor.' " Mentor replied with a smile : ' I have no desire to reproacL you with the fault you have committed ; if you have such a sense of it as will enable you to repress the violence of desira hereafter, I am satisfied. But when danger is past, perhaps presumption will return. By courage only can we now escape. Before we incur danger, we should consider it as formidable ; but when it is present, we should treat it with contempt. Show thyself worthy of Ulysses, then, and discover a mind superior to all the evils which combine against thee.' "The candor and magnanimity of Mentor gave me great pleasure ; but I was transported with wonder and delight at the stratagem by which he delivered us. Just as the clouds broke, and the light must in a few minutes have discovered us to the Trojans, who were very near, he remarked that one of their vessels, which greatly resembled ours, except that the stern was decorated with garlands of flowers, had been sepa- rated from the rest of the fleet in the storm ; he immediately placed ornaments of the same kind at the stern of our vessel, and made them fast himself with bandages of the same color as those of the Trojans ; he also ordered the rowers to stoop over their seats as low as possible, that our enemies might not. discover them to be Greeks. In this manner he proceeded through the midst of their fleet ; and the Trojans, mistaking us for their companions which had been missing, shouted as we passed. We were some time forced irresistibly along with them, but at length found means to linger behind ; and while they were driven by the impetuosity of the wind towards Africa, 1 we labored at the oar and made our utmost effort to and on the neighboring coast of Sicily. " Our labor indeed succeeded; but the port which we sought was scarcely less to be dreaded than the fleet which we had 1 " The weary Trojans direct their course towards tbo nearest shores u d make the coast of Libya." ^n., i. 157. TELEMACHTJ8. BOOK I. 161 endeavored to avoid ; for on the coast of Sicily. we found othe* fugitives from Troy, who had settled there under the goverr ment of Acestes, 1 who was himself of Trojan extraction. We had no sooner landed than these people, imagining either that we were inhabitants of some other part of the island, who had taken arms to surprise them, or a foreign enemy, who had invaded the country, burnt our vessel in the first tumult of their rage, and put all our companions to the sword. Mentor and myself were spared only that we might be presented to Acestes, and that he might learn from us what were our designs and whence we cauit. We entered the city, with our hands bound behind* us ; and had nothing to expect from this respite but that our death would be made the spectacle of a cruel people as soon as they should discover us to be Greeks. ** We were brought before Acestes, who was sitting with a sceptre of gold in his hand, administering justice to his people, and preparing to assist at a solemn sacrifice. He asked us, with a stern voice, the name of our country and the purpose of our voyage. Mentor instantly replied : ' We come from the coast of the greater Hesperia, 3 and our country is not far from thence.' He thus avoided a declaration that we were Greeks. But Acestes would hear no more, and concluding that we were strangers, who had formed some evil design, which we were therefore solicitous to conceal, he commanded that we should be sent into the neighboring forests to serve as slaves under those who had the care of his herds. " To live upon this condition seemed to me harder than to die. I cried out : ' king, punish us rather with death than > " Eut Acestss, from a mountain's lofty summit, struck with the distant p roipect of their arrival, and at the friendly ships, comes up to them, all rough with javelins, and the hide of an African bear ; whom, begotten by (Lie river Crinisius, a Trojan mother bore." ^n., v. 86. 1 ' In the mean time, behold. Trojan shepherds, with loud acclamations, Mme dragging to the king a youth, whose hands were bound behind him." jn., ii. 57. 1 Italy, and more especially that r-ortnn of it called Magna Gn-cia, if designated. Virgil places the tomb of Careta where the city of Gaeta new Kanda, in Hetptria Jfayna.jn., vii. 7. 162 WORKS OF FENELON. infamy. Know that I am Telemachus, son of the wise Ulysses, king of Ithaca ; in search of my father I am bound to every shore ; but, in this search, if I am not permitted to succeed, if I must never more return to my country, and if I can no longer live but as a slave, put an end to my life, and relieve me from a burden that I cannot support.' " This exclamation inflamed the multitude ; and they imme- diately demanded that the son of Ulysses, by whose inhuman subtlety Troy had been subverted, should be put to death. Acestes then turning to me, cried out : ' I cannot refuse thy blood, son of Ulysses, to the manes or those Trcjans with whom thy father crowded the banks of Cocytus : thou musi die, and thy conductor shall perish with thee.' At the same instant, an old man proposed to the king that we should be offered up on the tomb of Anchises. ' The shade of that hero,' said he, 'will be gratified with their blood; and even the great ^Eneas, when he shall be told of such a sacrifice, will be touched with joy at the zeal of your affection for the supreme object of his own.' " This proposition was received with a shout of applause, and the execution of it was immediately begun. We were conducted to the tomb of Anchises, where two altars had been prepared ; the hallowed fire was kindled, and the sacrificial knife lay before us. They had adorned us, as victims, with garlands of flowers; and the pleadings of compassion were overborne by the impetuosity of zeal. But, just at this dread- ful crisis, Mentor, with all the calmness of security, demanded audience of the king, and addressed him thus : " ' Acestes, if the misfortunes of Telemachus, who is yet a youth, and has never borne arms against the Trojans, can 3xcite no pity in thy breast, at least let thy own clangor awaken thy attention. The skill that I have acquired in aruens, by which the will of the gods is discovered, enables me to foretell, that within three days a nation of barbariane will rush upon thee from the mountains, like a flood, to spoi. thy city and overspread thy country with desolation. Make haste to avert the torrent ; arm thy people, and secure withii IELKMACHUS. BOOK I. 163 the walls of the city whatever is valuable in the field. I when three days have elapsed, my predictions shall appear to have been false, let these altars be stained with our blood ; but, on the contrary, if it shall be confirmed by the event, let Aoes- tes remember that he ought not to take away the life of thoso to whom he will be indebted for his own.' M At these words, which were pronounced not with the diffi- dence of conjecture, but the assurance of certain knowledge, Acestes was astonished. ' I perceive, O stranger,' said he, ' that the gods, who have allotted thee so small a portion of the gifts of fortune, have enriched thee with the more valuable treasures of wisdom.' Hfc then commanded the solemnities of the sacrifice to be suspended, and immediately made prepara- tions against the invasion which had been predicted by Men- tor. Multitudes of women, trembling with fear, and men de- crepit with age, followed by children, whom the alarm had terrified into taars, were seen on every side, crowding to the city. Bleating sheep and lowing cattle came in such droves from the pastures, that thay were obliged to stand without cover in the street. A confused noise was everywhere to be heard, of multitudes that jostled each other with tumultuous and undistinguished outcries, that mistook a stranger for a friend, and pressed forward with the utmost eagerness, though they knew not whither they were going. The principal citi- zens, indeed, imagining themselves to be wiser than the rest, regarded Mentor as an impostor, who had invented a falsehood to prolong his life. u Before the end of the third day, while they were yet ap- plauding their own sagacity, a cloud of dust was perceived upon the declivity of the neighboring mountains, and an innu- merable multitude of armed barbarians were soon after dis- tinguished. These were the Hiraerians, and other savages, that inhabit the Nebrodian mountains, and the summit of Acragas 1 ; regions in which the severity of the winter is never 1 The city of Ilimera, in Sicily, was celebrated in antiquity. U was sit- lated west of the mouth of the river Ilimera, whose source wua at tha 164: WORKS OF FENELON. softened by the breezes of spring. Those who had despised the prediction of Mentor, were now punished by the loss of their slaves and their cattle ; and the king addressed him to this effect : ' From henceforth I forget that you are Greeks, since you are no more enemies, but friends ; and, as you were, doubtless, sent by the gods for our deliverance, I hope not less from yovr valor than I have experienced from your wisdom ; delay not, therefore, to afford us your assistance.' " There appears in the eyes of Mentor a daring that awes the fiercest combatants. He snatches a shield, a helmet, a sword, a lance : he draws up the soldiers of Acestes, and ad- vances towards the enemy at their head. Acestes, whose courage is still high, but whose body is enfeebled by age, can only follow him at a distance. I approach nearer to his per- son, but not to his valor. In the battle, his cuirass resembles the immortal aegis of Minerva. Death, watching his sword a* a signal, follows him from rank to rank. Thus a lion of Nu- midia, that hunger has made yet more furious, rushes among the flock ; ! he kills and tears to pieces without resistance ; and the shepherds, instead of attempting to defsnd their sheep, fly with terror and trepidation to preserve themselves. " The barbarians, who hoped to have surprised the city, were themselves surprised and disconcerted. The subjects of Acestes, animated by the example and the voice of Mentor, exerted a power which they knew not that they possessed. foot of the Nebrodes, the great chain of mountains running through the whole island. Mount Acragas was in the neighborhood of the city of the same name, the Agrigentum of the Eomans, the Girgenti of to-day. 1 " As a famished lion, making wild havoc amid a sheep-fold (for rav- enous hunger prompts him on), grinds and tears the flock, feeble and dumb with fear, and gnashes his bloody jaws : nor less was the carnage made by Euryalus : he too, all on fire, rages throughout, and in the middle falls upon a vulgar, nameless throng." ^W., ix. 839. " He then .... advanced, brandisning two spears, like a lion reared in tii 3 mountains, which hath been long in want of flesh, and whose val- iant mind impels him to go even to the well-penned fold." Iliad, xii. 800 " As when a lion, leaping amid the herd, has broken the neck of a neifer, or of an ox pasturing in a thicket, so did the sou of Tydeus," etc. -loid., v. 161. TELEMACHUS. BOOK I. 165 The son of the king, who commanded the invasion, fell by my hand. Our ages were equal, but he greatly exceeded me in stature ; for those savages are descended from a race oi giants, whose origin was the same as that of the Cyclops. I per- ceived that he despised me as a feeble enemy ; but regarding neither the fierceness of his demeanor, nor the superiority of his strength, I made a thrust at his breast with my lance. The weapon entered deeply, he vomited a torrent of dark blood, and expired. 1 was iu danger of being crushed by his weight as he fell, and the distant mountains echoed with the clash of his armor. After I had stripped the body of the spoils, 1 I re- turned to seek Acestes. Mentor, having completed the disor- der Oi the enemy, cut to pieces all that made a show of rasistance, and pursued the fugitives to the woods. " This success, of which every one had despaired, fixed all eyes upon Mentor, as a favorite of the gods, and distinguished by divine inspiration. Acestes, in gratitude to his deliverers, acquainted us that it would no longer be in his power to pro- tect us, if the fleet of ^Eneas should put back to Sicily. He therefore furnished us with a vessel, that we might return to our country ; and, having loaded us with presents, he urged our immediate departure, as the only means by which the ap- proaching danger could be avoided. He would not, however, supply us either with rowers or a pilot from among his own subjects, being unwilling to trust them upon the Grecian coacts ; but he sent on ooard some Phoenician* merchants, who, .as they are r. commercial people, and trade to every port, had nothing to fear. These ac.en were to have returned to Acestes, after putting us on shore at Ithaca ; but the gods, who sport with the designs of men, reserved us for other dangers." > Like the Homeric heroes, who never failed to despoil their dead ene- mies, provided they had time. The Phoeniciacs, whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre, on the coart jf Syria, carried on, in very early times, an immense commerce, and their tavigation extended to all seas. BOOK II. Telcmachus relates his being taken in tlitv ; a delight it home, and no hindrance abroad ; they are com p,..iions by night, and in travel, and i.. the country." * "The episode of Termosiris it O.MM worth a long poem." Chateau iid, Jtin., toui. iii. p. 80. 176 WORKS OF FENELON. Bon ; and I frequently addressed him as a father. 'The gxls, said I, ' who have deprived me of Mentor, have, in pity, sus- tained me with thy friendship.' He was, without doubt, like Orpheus and Linus, inspired by the gods. He often repeated verses of his own, and gave me those of many others who had been the favorites of the Muses. When he was habited in hi* long white robes, and played upon his ivory lyre, the bears, lions, and tigers of the forest fawned upon him, and licked his feet ; the satyrs came from their recesses and danced around him ; and it might almost have been believed, that even tho trees and rocks were influenced by the magic of his song, in which he celebrated the majesty of the gods, the virtue of heroes, and the wisdom of those who prefer glory to pleas- ure. " Termosiris often excited me to courage. He told me that the gods would never abandon either Ulysses or his son ; and that I ought, after the example of Apollo, to introduce the shepherds to the acquaintance of the Muses. * Apollo,' says he, * displeased that Jupiter frequently interrupted the serenity of the brightest days with thunder, turned his resentment against the Cyclops, who forged the bolts, and destroyed them with his arrows. Immediately the fiery explosions of Mount Etna ceased ; the strokes of those enormous hammers, which had shaken the earth to the centre, were heard no more ; iron and brass, which the Cyclops had been used to polish, began now to rust and canker. Vulcan quitting his forge, in the fury of his resentment, hastily climbed Olympus, notwith- standing his lameness ; and, rushing into the assembly of tho gods, covered with dust and sweat, complained of the injury with all the bitterness of invective. Jupiter being thus in- censed against Apollo, expelled him from heaven, and threw him down headlong to the earth. His chariot, though it was empty, still performed its usual course ; and, by an invisible 1 " At the same time he begins. Then you might have seen the fauna lid savages frisking in measured dance, then the stiff oaks waving theii .ops." Virgil, Eel., vi. 26. TELEMACHUS. BOOK U. 17V iropu.se, continued the succession of day and night, and the regular change of seasons to mankind. "'Apollo, divested of his rays, was compelled to become a shepherd, and kept the flocks of Admetus, king of Thessaly. While he was thus disgraced, and in exile, he used to soothe his mind with music, under the shade of some elms that flour- ished upon the borders of a limpid stream. This drew about him all the neighboring shepherds, whose life till then had been rude and brutal ; whose knowledge had been confined to the management of their sheep ; and whose country had the appearance of a desert. . M< To these savages Apollo, varying the subject of his song, taught all the arts by which existence is improved into felicity. Sometimes he celebrated the flowers which improve the graces of Spring, the fragrance which she diffuses, and the verdure that rises under her feet. Sometimes he sang of the delight- ful evenings of Summer, of her zephyrs that refresh mankind, and of her dews that allay the thirst of the earth. Nor were the golden fruits of Autumn forgotten, with which she rewards the labor of the husbandman ; nor the cheerful idleness ot Winter, who piles his fires till they emulate the sun, and in- vites the youth to dancing and festivity. He described also the gloomy forests with which the mountains are overshad- owed, and the rivers that wind with a pleasing intricacy through the luxuriant meadows of the valley. Thus were the shepherds of Thessaly made acquainted with the happiness that is to be found in a rural life, by those who know how to enjoy the beauties of nature. " 'The pipes of the shepherds now rendered them more happy than kings ; and those uncorrupted pleasures, which fly from the palace, were invited to the cottage. The shepherd- esses were followed by the Sports, the Smiles, and the Graces ; Mid adorned by simplicity and innocence. Every day was de- voted to joy ; and nothing was to be heard but the chirping of birds, the whispers of the zephyrs that sported among the branches of the trees, the murmurs of water falling from a "ock, or the songs with which the Muses inspired the shepherds 178 WOBKS OF FENELOUT who followed Apollo. They were taught also to conquer in the race, and to shoot with the bow. The gods themselves became jealous of their happiness : they now thought the ob- scurity of a shepherd better than the splendor of a deity, and recalled Apollo to Olympus. " ' By this story, my son, be thou instructed. Thou art now in the same state with that of Apollo in his exile. Like him, therefore, fertilize an uncultivated soil, and call plenty to a desert ; teach these rustics the power of music, soften the ob- durate heart to sensibility, and captivate the savage with the charms of virtue. Let them taste the pleasures of innocence and seclusion ; and heighten this felicity with the transporting knowledge, that it is not dependent upon the caprice of for- tune. The day approaches, my son, the day approaches, in which the pains and cares that surround a throne will teach thee to remember these wilds with regret.' " Termosiris then gave me a flute, the tone of which was so melodious, that the echoes of the mountains, which repeated the sound, immediately brought the neighboring shepherds in crowds about me. A divine melody was communicated to my voice ; I perceived myself to be under a supernatural influence, and I celebrated the beauties of nature with all the rapture of enthusiasm. We frequently sung all the day in concert, and sometimes encroached upon the night. The shepherds, for- getting their cottages and their flocks, were fixed motionless as statues about me, while I instructed them. The desert be- came insensibly less wild and rude ; every thing assumed a more pleasing appearance ; and the country itself seemed to be improved by the manners of the people. " We often assembled to sacrifice in the temple to Apollo, where Termosiris was priest. The shepherds wore wreaths 01 laurel in honor of the gods, and the shepherdesses were adorned with garlands of flowers, and came dancing with bur- dens of consecrated gifts upon their heads. After the sacri- fice, we made a rural feast ; the greatest delicacies were the /nilk of our goats and sheep, and some dates, figs, grapes, anrf other fruits, which were fresh gathered by our own hands TELEMACHUS. BOOK II. 179 the green turf was our seat, and the foliage of the treea afforded us a more pleasing shade than the gilded roof of a palace. " But my reputation among the shepherds was completed by an accident : a hungry lion broke in among my flock, and begac a dreadful slaughter. I ran towards him, though I had nothing in my hand but my sheep-hook. When he saw me, he erected his mane : he began to grind his teeth, and to ex- tend his claws : his mouth appeared dry and inflamed, and his eyes were red and fiery. I did not wait for his attack, but rushed upon him, and threw him to the ground ; nor did I re- ceive any hurt, for a small coat of mail that I wore, as an Egyptian shepherd, defended me against his claws. Three times I threw him, and he rose three times against me, roaring so loud that the utmost recesses of the forest echoed. At last, I grasped him till he was strangled, and the shepherds, who were witnesses of my conquest, insisted that I should wear his skin as a trophy. " This action, and the change of manners among our shep herds, was rumored through all Egypt, and came at length to the ears of Sesostris. He learnt that one of the two captives, who had been taken for Phoenicians, had restored the golden age in the midst of deserts which were scarcely habitable. He desired to see me ; for he was a friend of the Muses, and re- garded, with attention and complacency, whatever appeared to be the means of instruction. I was accordingly brought before him : he listened to my story with pleasure, and soon discov- ered that he had been deceived by the avaricious Metophis. Metophis he therefore condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and took into his own possession the wealth that his rapacity and injustice had heaped together. ' How unhappy,' said he * are those whom the gods have exalted above the rest of man- tirid ! They see no object but through a medium which dis- torts it, they are surrounded by wretches who intercept truth in its approaches ; every one imagines it is his interest tc deceive them, and every one conceals his own ambition undei ie appearance of zeal for their service : that regard is pro 180 WORKS OF FENELON. fcssed for the prince, of which the wealth and honors that he dispenses are the real objects; and so flagitious is the neglect of his interest, that for these he is flattered and betrayed.' " From this time Sesostris treated me with a tender friend- ship, and resolved to send me back to Ithaca, in a fleet that should carry troops sufficient to deliver Penelope from all her suitors. This fleet was at length ready to sail, and waited only for our embarkation. I reflected, with wonder, upon the ca- price of Fortune, who frequently most exalts those whom, the moment before, she had most depressed. The experience of this inconstancy encouraged me to hope that Ulysses, what- ever he should suffer, might at last return to his kingdom My thoughts also suggested that I might again meet with Mentor, even though he should have been carried into the re- motest parts of Ethiopia. " I therefore delayed my departure a few days, that I might make some inquiry after him ; but in this interval, Sesostris, who was very old, died suddenly ; and by his death I was in- volved in new calamities. " This event filled all Egypt with grief and despair : every family lamented Sesostris as its most valuable friend, its pro- tector, its father. The old, lifting up their hands to heaven, uttered the most passionate exclamations : ' Egypt, thou hast known no king like Sesostris in the times that are past ; nor shalt thou know any like him in those that are to come ! Ye gods ! ye should not have given Sesostris to mankind ; or ye should not have taken him away ! wherefore do we sur- vive Sesostris !' The young cried out : ' The hope of Egypt is cut off ! Our fathers were long happy under the government of a king whom we have known only to regret !' His domes- ics wept incessantly, and, during forty days, the inhabitants af the remotest provinces came in crowds to his funeral. Every one was eagerly solicitous yet once more to gaze upon the body of his prince ; all desired to preserve his image in Jieir memory ; and some requested to be shut up with hin? in the tomb. u The loss of Sesostris was more sensibly felt, as Bocchork TELEMACHUS. BOOK II. 181 his son, was destitute of humanity to strangers and of curiosity for science, of esteem for merit and of love of glory. The greatness of the father contributed to degrade the son. Ilia education had rendered him effeminately voluptuous and bru- tally proud ; he looked down upon mankind as creatures of an inferior species, that existed only for his pleasure : he thought only of gratifying his passions, and of dissipating the immense treasures that had been amassed for public use by the economy of his father ; of procuring new resources for extravagances by the most cruel rapacity ; of impoverishing the rich, of famish- ing the poor, and of perpetrating every other evil that was advised by the beardless sycophants whom he permitted to disgrace his presence, while he drove away with derision the hoary sages in whom his father had confided. Such was Boc- choris ; not a king, but a monster. Egypt groaned under his tyranny ; and though the reverence of the people for the memory of Sesostris rendered them patient under the govern- ment of his son, however odious and cruel, yet he precipitated his own destruction ; and, indeed, it was impossible that he should long possess a throne which he so little deserved. " My hopes of returning to Ithaca were now at an end. I was shut up in a tower that stood on the sea-shore near Pelu- sium, k where we should have embarked, if the death of Sesos- tris had not prevented us ; for, Metophis having by some in- trigue procured his enlargement and an admission into the councils of the young king, almost the first act of his power was to imprison me in this place, to revenge the disgrace into which I had brought him. There I passed whole days and nights in the agonies of despair. All that Termosiris had pre- dicted, and all that I had heard in the cave, was remembered but as a dream. Sometimes, while I was absorbed in reflec- tions upon my own misery, I stood gazing at the waves that broke against line foot of the tower ; and sometimes I contem- 1 A oity of Lower Efrypt, standing on the east side of the most easturi month of the Nile, two miles from the sea. It was strongly fortified. Ik inins alone remain. 182 WORKS OF FENELON. plated the vessels that were agitated by the tempest, and in danger of driving against the rocks upon which the tower was built ; but I was so far from commiserating those who were threatened with shipwreck, that I regarded them with envy. ' Their misfortunes,' said I to myself, ' and their lives, will quickly be at an end together, or they will return in safety to their country. Alas ! I can hope for neither.' " One day, while I was thus pining with ineffectual sorrow, I suddenly perceived the masts of ships at a distance like a forest. The sea was presently covered with sails swelling with the wind, and the waves foamed with the strokes of innumera- ble oars. I heard a confused sound on every side. On the sea-coast, I perceived one party of Egyptians run to arms with terror and precipitation, and another waiting quietly for the fleet which was bearing down upon them. I soon discovered that some of these vessels were of Phoenicia, and others of Cyprus ; for my misfortunes had acquainted me with many things that relate to navigation. The Egyptians appeared to be divided among themselves ; and I could easily believe that the folly and the violence of Bocchoris had provoked his sub- jects to a revolt, and had kindled a civil war : nor was it long before I became a spectator of an obstinate engagement from the top of my tower. " Those Egyptians who had called in the assistance of the foreign powers, after having favored the descent, attacked the other party, which was commanded by the king, and animated by his example. He appeared like the god 1 of war ; rivers of blood flowed around him; the wheels of his chariot were smeared with gore that was black, clotted, and frothy, and could scarcely be dragged over the heaps of slain, which they crushed as they passed. His figure was graceful and vigor- DUS, his aspect was haughty and fierce, and his eyes sparkled with rage and despair. Like a high-spirited horse that had 1 w And Meriones, equal to swift Mars, quickly took from the tent I wazen spear." Homer, Iliad, xiii. 2S8. This comparison of warriors witfc Mars is frequent in the ancient poets. TELEMACHUS. BOOK II. 183 never been broken, he was precipitated upon danger by hia courage, and bis valor was not directed by wisdom. He knew not how to retrieve an error, nor to give orders with sufficient exactness. He neither foresaw the evils that threatened him, nor employed the troops he had to the greatest advantage, though he was in the utmost need of more. Not that he wanted abilities, for his understanding was equal to his courage, but he had never been instructed by adversity : those who had been intrusted with his education had corrupted an excellent natural disposition by flattery. He was intoxicated with the conscious- ness of his power, and the advantages of his situation ; he be- lieved that every thing ought to yield to the impetuosity of his wishes, and the least appearance of opposition transported him with rage ; he was then deaf to the expostulations of reason, and had no longer the power of recollection. The fury of his pride transformed him to a brute, and left him neither the af- fections nor the understanding of a man ; the most faithful of his servants fled terrified from his presence ; and he was gen- tle only to the most abject servility, and the most criminal compliance. Thus his conduct, always violent, was always directly opposite to his interest, and he was detested by all whose approbation is to be desired. " His valor now sustained him long against a multitude of fcis enemies ; but, at length, the dart of a Phoenician entered his breast : the reins dropped from his hands, and he fell from ais chariot under the feet of his horses. A soldier of the isle of Cyprus immediately struck off his head, and, holding it up by the hair, showed it to the confederates as a trophy of their victory. " Of this head no time or circumstance can ever obliterate the memory : methinks I still see it dropping blood the eyes closed and sunk the visage pale and disfigured the mouth half open, as if it would still finish the interrupted silence and the look which, even in death, was haughty and threatening. Nor shall I forget, if the gods hereafter place me upon & throne, so dreadful a demonstration that a king is not worthy to com- mand, nor can be happy in the exercise of his power, but is 184 WORKS OF FENELON. proportion as he is himself obedient to reason. Alas! how deplorable is his state, who, by the perversion of that power with which the gods have invested him as the instrument of public happiness, diffuses misery among the multitudes that he governs, and who is known to be a king only as he i ft cone I" tfOOK III. Telemachus relates that, the successor of Bocchoris releasing all the Tyrita prisoners, he was himself sent to Tyre, on board the vessel of Narbal, who had commanded the Tyrian fleet ; that Narbal gave him a descrip- tion of Pygmalion their king, and expressed apprehensions of dangei from the cruelty of his avarice ; that he afterwards instructed him in the commercial regulations of Tyre ; and that, being about to embark in a Cyprian vessel, in order to proceed by the isle of Cyprus to Ithaca, Pygmalion discovered that he was a stranger, and ordered him to be seized ; that his life was thus brought into the most imminent danger, but that he had been preserved by the tyrant's mistress Astarbe, that she might, in his stead, destroy a young Lyctian of whom she had been enamored, but who rejected her for another ; that he finally embarked in a Cyprian vessel, to return to Ithaca by the way of Cyprus. CALYPSO was greatly astonished at the wisdom which she discovered in Telemachus. She was delighted with his inge- nious confession of the errors into which he had been betrayed by the precipitation of his own resolutions, and by his neglect of Mentor's counsel. She was surprised to perceive in the youth such strength and dignity of mind, as enabled him to judge of his own actions with impartiality, and, by a review of the failings of his life, become prudent, cautious, and delib- erate. " Proceed," said she, " my dear Telemachus ; for I am impatient to know by what means you escaped from Egypt, and where you again found Mentor, whose loss yov had so much reason to regret." Telemachus then continued his relation. "The party of Egyptians who had preserved their virtue and their loyalty, being greatly inferior to the rebels, were obliged to yield when the king fell. Another prince, whose uame was Termutis, was established in his stead. The Phoe- nician and Cyprian troops, after they had concluded a treaty with him, departed. By this treaty, all the Phoenician prison- ar> were to be restored ; and, as 1 was deemed one of the LOO WORKS OF FENELON. number, I was set at liberty, and put on board with the rest, a change of fortune that once more dissipated the gloom of despair, and diffused the dawn of hope in my bosom. Our sails were now swelled by a prosperous wind, the foaming waves were divided by our oars, the spacious deep was cov- ered with vessels, the mariners shouted, the shores of Egypt fled from us, and the hills and mountains grew level by de- grees. Our view began to be bounded only by the sea and the sky, while the sparkling fires of the sun, which was rising, seemed to emerge from the abyss of the waters ; his rays tinged with gold the tops of the mountains, which were still just to be perceived in the horizon ; and the deep azure with which the whole firmament was painted, was an omen of a happy voyage. " Though I had been dismissed as a Phoenician, yet I was not known to any of those with whom I embarked. Narbal, who commanded the vessel, asked me my name and my coun- try. ' Of what city of Phoenicia are you ?' said he. ' Of none,' I replied ; ' but I was taken at sea in a Phoanician vessel, and, as a Phoenician, remained a captive in Egypt : under this name have I been long a slave ; and by this name I am at length set free.' ' Of what country are you then ?' said Narbal. ' I am,' said I, ' Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, king of Ithaca an island of Greece. My father has acquired a mighty name among the confederate princes who laid siege to Troy ; but the gods have not permitted him to return to his kingdom. I have sought him in many countries ; and am, like him, perse- cuted by Fortune. 1 am wretched, though my life is private, and my wishes are few ; I am wretched, though I desire no happiness but the endearments of my family and the protec- tion of my father.' " Narbal gazed upon me with astonishment, and thought he perceived in my aspect something that distinguishes the favor- ites of heaven. He was, by nature, generous and sincere ; my misfortunes excited his compassion ; and he addressed me witfi a confidence which the gods, doubtless, inspired for my preser ation in the most imminent danger. TELEMACHU8. BOOK m. 187 " ' Telemachus,' said he, ' I doubt not tlie truth of what you lave told me ; such, indeed, are the signs of candor and integ- rity which I discover in your countenance, that it is not in my power to suspect you of falsehood. I am irresistibly deter- mined, by a secret impulse, to believe that you are beloved by the gods, whom I have always served, and that it is their pleasure I also should love you as my son. I will, therefore, give you salutary counsel, for which I ask no return but secrecy.' 'Fear not,' I said, 'that I should find it difficult to be silent ; for, however young, it is long since I learned not to reveal my own secret, much less not to betray, under any pre- tence, the secret of another.' * By what means,' he inquired, * could the habit of secrecy be acquired by a child ? I should rejoice to learn how that may be attained early, without which a prudent conduct is impossible, and every other qualification useless.' " 4 1 have been informed,' I answered, ' that when Ulyssea went to the seige of Troy, he placed me upon his knees, threw his arms about me, and after he had kissed me with the utmost tenderness, pronounced these words, though I could not then understand their import : " my son, may the gods ordain me to perish before I see thee again, or may the Fatal Sisters cut the thread of thy life while it is yet short, as the reaper cuts down a tender flower that is but beginning to bloom, may my enemies dash thee in pieces before the eyes of thy mother and of me, if thou art one day to be corrupted and seduced from virtue ! O my friends, I leave with you this son, whom I so ter.derly love : watch over his infancy ; if you have any love for me, keep flattery far from him ; teach him self- mastery ; and, while he is yet flexible, like a young plant, keep him upright. Above all, let nothing be forgotten that may render him just, beneficent, sincere, and secret. He that ia capable of a lie, deserves not the name of a man ; and he that knows not how to be silent, is not worthy to reign." " ' I have repeated to you the very words of Ulysses, because o me they have been repeated so often, that they perpetually ccur to my mind ; and I frequently repeat them to myself. 188 WORKS OF FENELON. M ' The friends of my father began very early to teach u> secrecy, by giving me frequent opportunities to practice it ; and I made so rapid a progress in the art, that, while I was yet an infant, they communicated to me their apprehensions from the crowd of presumptuous rivals that addressed my mother. At that time they treated me not as a child, but as a man, whose reason might assist them, and in whose firmness they could confide : they frequently conferred with me, in private, upon the most important affairs; and communicated the schemes which had been formed to deliver Penelope from her suitors. I exulted in this confidence, which I considered as a proof of iny real dignity and importance. I was, therefore, ambitious to sustain my character, and never suffered the least intimation of what had been intrusted to me as a secret, to escape me. The suitors often engaged me to talk, hoping that a child who had seen or heard any circumstance of importance, would relate it without caution or design ; but I had learnt to answer them, without forfeiting my veracity or disclosing my secret.' " Narbal then addressed me in these terms : ' You see, Telemachus, of what power the Phoenicians are possessed, and how much their innumerable fleets are dreaded by the neigh- boring nations. The commerce which they have extended ti/ the Pillars of Hercules, 1 has given them riches which the most flourishing countries cannot supply to themselves. Even the great Sesostris could never have prevailed against them at sea ; and the veterans, by whom he had subjugated all the East, found it extremely difficult to conquer them in the field. He imposed a tribute, which they have long neglected to pay lor they are too sensible of their own wealth and power to stoop patiently under the yoke of subjection : they have, therefore, ".brown it off; and the war which Sesostris commenced against them has been terminated by his death. The power of Sesos- tris was, indeed, rendered formidable by his policy ; but when > That is, the Straits of Gibraltar. The peaks of Calpe and Abyla, th former on the European, the latter on the African side of the entranoe t* Jie Mediterranean, were called the Pillars of Hercules. TELEMACHU8. - BOOK HI. 189 without his policy his power descended to his son, it was no longer to be dreaded ; and the Egyptians, instead of entering Phoenicia with a military force, to reduce to obedience a revolted people, 'have been compelled to call in the assistance of the Phoenicians, to deliver them from the oppression of an impious tyrant. This deliverance the Phoenicians have effected, and added new glory to independence, and new power to wealth. " * But while we deliver others, we are slaves ourselves. O Telemachus, do not rashly put your life in the hands of Pyg- malion, our king. His hands are already stained with the blood of Sichaeus, the husband of Dido his sister ; and Dido, 1 impatient to revenge his death, has fled, with the greater part of the friends of virtue and liberty, in a numerous fleet from Tyre, and has laid the foundations of a magnificent city on the coast of Africa, which she calls Carthage. An insatiable thirst of riches renders Pygmalion every day more wretched and more detestable. In his dominions it is a crime to be wealthy : avarice makes him jealous, suspicious, and cruel : he persecutes the rich, and he dreads the poor. " ' But, at Tyre, to be virtuous is yet a greater crime than to be wealthy ; for Pygmalion supposes that virtue cannot pa- tiently endure a conduct that is unjust and infamous; and, as virtue is an enemy to Pygmalion, Pygmalion is an enemy to virtue. Every incident torments him with inquietude, per- plexity, and apprehension ; he is terrified at his own shadow ; and sleep is a stranger to his eyes. The gods have punished him by heaping treasures before him which he does not darfc to enjoy ; and that in which alone he seeks for happiness is the source of his misery. He regrets whatever he gives ; he Arcade the loss of the wealth which he possesses, and sacrifices veiy comfort to the acquisition of more. " ' He s scarcely ever to be seen, but sits in the inmost recess of his palace, alone, pensive, and dejected ; his friends dare not approach him, for to approach him is to be suspected is an enemy. A guard, with swords drawn, and pikes levelled, Fenelon here follows Virgil. See ^/mid, i. 343, et tequtiu. 190 WORKS OF FENELON. surrounds his dwelling with a horrid security The apart ment in which he hides himself consists of thirty chambers, which communicate with each other, and to each of which there is an iron door with six holts. It is never known in which of these chamber he passes the night ; and it is said, that, the better to secure himself against assassination, he never sleeps in the same two nights together. 1 He is equally insensi- ble to the joys of society, and to the more refined and tender delights of friendship. If he is excited to the pursuit of pleasure, he perceives that pleasure is far from him, and sits down in despair. His eyes are hollow, eager, and piercing ; and he is continually looking round him with a restless and inquisitive suspicion. At every noise, however trivial, he starts, listens, is alarmed, and trembles. He is pale and ema- ciated ; the gloom of care is diffused over his countenance, and his brow is contracted into wrinkles. He seldom speaks, but he sighs perpetually. The remorse and anguish of his mind are discovered by groans, which he endeavors in vain to suppress. The richest delicacies of his table are tasteless. His children, 2 whom he has made his most dangerous enemies, are not the objects of hope, but of terror. He believes himself to be in perpetual danger, and attempts his own preservation by cutting off all those whom he fears ; not knowing that cruelty, in which alone he confides for safety, will inevitably precipitate his destruction, and that some of his domestics, dreading the effects of his caprice and suspicion, will suddenly deliver the world of so horrid a monster. "'As for me, I fear the gods; and will, at whatever hazard, continue faithful to the king whom they have set over me. I had rather he should take away my life than lift my hand 1 The author here applies to Pygmalion what has been told of Cromwell. * Fenelon seems to allude to Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse Cicero (Tusc., v. 20) tells the story of him, that, fearing the barber, In made his own daughters shave him, and, finally, would not trust the razor ven to them, when they were grown up, but contrived how they migh, Durn off his hair and beard. Valerius Maximus (vii. 18), repeats the toiy. TELEMACHU8. BOOK TEL. 191 against his, or neglect to defend him against the attempts ol another. But do not you, O Telemachus, acquaint him with the name of your father ; for he will then certainly shut you up in prison, hoping that Ulysses, when he returns to Ithaca, will pay him a large sum for your ransom.' u When we arrived at Tyre, I followed the counsel of Narbal, and was soon convinced that all he had related was true ; though before, I could scarcely conceive it possible for any man to render himself so extremely wretched as he had represented Pygmalion. " I was the more sensibly touched at the appearances of his tyranny and wretchedness, as they had the force of novelty, and I said to myself: * This is the man who has been seeking happiness, and imagined it was to be found in unlimited power and inexhaustible wealth. Wealth and power he has acquired, out the acquisition has made him miserable. If he were a shepherd, as I lately have been, he would be equally happy in the enjoyment of rural pleasures, which, as they are innocent, are never regretted ; he would fear neither daggers nor poison, but would be the love and the lover of mankind ; he would not indeed possess that immense treasure, which, to him who hides it, is useless as a heap of sand, but he would rejoice in the bounty of nature, by which every want would be supplied. He appears to act only by the dictates of his own will ; but he is, indeed, the slave of appetite : he is condemned to do the drudgery of avarice, and to smart under the scourge of fear and suspicion. He appears to have dominion over others, but he is not the master even of himself; for, in every irregular passion, he has not only a master, but a tormentor.' " Such were my reflections upon the condition of Pygmalion, without having seen him for he was seen by none ; and his eople could only gaze, with a kind of secret dread, upon those lofty towers, which were surrounded night and day by his guards, and in which he had immured himself, with his treasures, as in a prison. I compared this invisible king with Sesostris, the mild, the affable, the good ; who was so easy of to his Milirris, and so desirous to converse with 192 WORKS OF FENELON. strangers ; so attentive to all who wish to be heard, and so inquisitive after truth, which those who surround a thione are solicitous to conceal. * Sesostris,' said I, ' feared nothing, and had nothing to fear ; he showed himself to all his subjects as to his children ; but by Pygmalion, every thing is to be feared, and he fears every thing. This execrable tyrant is in perpetual danger of a violent death, even in the centre of his inaccessible palace, and surrounded by his guards ; but the good Sesostris when his people were gathered in crowds about him, was in perfect safety, like a kind father, who, in his own house, is sur- rounded by his children.' " Pygmalion gave orders to send back the troops of the isle of Cyprus, who, to fulfil a treaty, had assisted His own in their expedition to Egypt ; and Narbal took this opportunity to set me at liberty. He caused me to pass in review among the Cyprian soldiers ; for the king always inquired into the minutest incidents with the most scrupulous suspicion. " The failing of negligent and indolent princes is the giving themselves up, with a boundless and implicit confidence, to the discretion of some crafty and iniquitous favorite. The failing of Pygmalion was to suspect the most ingenuous and upright. He knew not how to distinguish the native features of integrity from the mask of dissimulation ; for the good, who disdained to approach so corrupt a prince, he had never seen. He had been so often defrauded and betrayed, and had so often detected every species of vice under the semblance of virtue, in the wretches who were about him, that he imagined every man Balked in disguise, that virtue existed only in idea, and that all men were nearly the same. When he found one man fraudu- ent and corrupt, he took no care to displace him for another, oecause he took it for granted that another would be as bad. And he had a worse opinion of those in whom he discovered n appearance of merit, than of those who were most openly ricious ; because he believed them to be equally knaves, and greater hypocrites. " But to return to myself. The piercing suspicion of the king did not distinguish me from the Cyprian soldiers ; but TELEMACHDS. BOOK III. 193 Narbal trembled for fear of a discovery, which would havp been fatal both to him and to me ; he, therefore, expressed the utmost impatience to see me embark ; but I was detained at Tyre a considerable time by contrary winds. " During this interval I acquainted myself with the manners of the Phoenicians, a people that had become famous through all the known world. 1 admired the situation of their city, which is built upon an island in the midst of the sea. The neighboring coast is rendered extremely delightful by its un- common fertility, the exquisite flavor of its fruits, the number of towns and villages which are almost contiguous to each other, and the excellent temperature of the climate : it is sheltered by a ridge of mountains from the burning winds that pass over the southern continent, and refreshed by the northern breezes that blow from the sea. It is situated at the foot of Libanus, 1 whose head is concealed within the clouds, and hoary with everlasting frost. Torrents of water, mingled with snow, rush from the craggy precipices that surround it ; and at a small distance below is a vast forest of cedars, which appear to be as ancient as the earth, and almost as lofty as the sky. The declivity of the mountain, below the forest, is covered with pasture, where innumerable cattle and sheep are continually feeding among a thousand rivulets of the purest water. At the foot of the mountain, below the pastures, the plain ha? the ap- pearance of a garden, where spring and autumn seem to unite their influence to produce at once both flowers and fruit, which are never parched by the pestilential heat of the southern blast, nor blighted by the piercing cold of the northern tem- pest. " Near this delightful coast, the island on which Tyre is built emerges from the sea. The city seems to float upon the waters, and looks like the sovereign of the deep. It is crowded with merchants of every nation, and its inhabitant* are them- iclves the most eminent merchants of the world. It app'-ni-s, it first, net to be the city of any particular peorx 1 ", W t' be 1 A rnouutain of Syria. 194 WOKK8 OF FENELON. common to all, as the centre of their commerce. There are two large moles, which, like two arms stretched out into the sea, embrace a spacious harbor, which is a shelter frora every wind. The vessels in this harbor are so numerous, as almost to hide the water in which they float ; and the maste look at a distance like a forest. All the citizens of Tyre apply themselves to trade ; and their wealth does not render them impatient of that labor by which it is increased. Their city abounds with the finest linen of Egypt, and cloth that has been doubly dyed with the Tyrian purple 1 a color which has a lustre that time itself can scarcely diminish, and which they frequently heighten by embroidery of gold and silver. The commerce of the Phoenicians extends to the Straits of Gades ;* they have even entered the vast ocean by which the world is encircled, and made long voyages upon the Red Sea to islands which are unknown to the rest of mankind, from whence they bring gold, perfumes, and many animals that are to be found in no other country. " I gazed with insatiable curiosity upon this great city, in which every thing was in motion ; and where none of those idle and inquisitive persons 3 are to be found, who, in Greece, saunter about the public places in quest of news, or observe the foreigners who come on shore in the port. The men are busied in loading the vessels, in sending away or in selling their merchandise, in putting their warehouses in order, or in keeping an account of the sums due to them from foreign merchants. The women are constantly employed in spinning wool, in drawing patterns for embroidery, or in folding up rich stuffs. 1 " He was arrayed in a mantle twice steeped in Tyrian purple." Ovid, Fast., ii. 107. Heinsius has collected many similar passages. The purple dye, for which Tyre was so famous, was obtained from the"Murex," a Kind of shell-fish. Garments dyed in it were very costly. * Now Cadiz. s "Tell me," says Demosthenes, with terrible invective, in his first Philippic, " have you nothing else to do than promenade tbe public place* nd ask each other Wltat newsf" TELEMACHTJ8. BOOK III. 195 ** * By what means,' said I to Narbal, ' have the Phoeniciant monopolized the commerce of the world, and enriched them- selves at the expense of every other nation ?' * You see the means,' answered Narbal ; ' the situation of Tyre renders it fit for commerce ; and the invention of navigation is the peculiar glory of our country. If the accounts are to be believed that are transmitted to us from the most remote antiquity, the TTrians rendered the waves subservient to their purpose long before Typhis and the Argonauts' became the boast of Greece : they were the first who defied the rage of the billows and the lempest on a few floating planks, and fathomed the abysses ot the ocean. They reduced the theories of Egyptian and Baby- lonian 8 science to practice, regulating their course, where there was no landmark, by the stars ; 8 and they brought innumer- able nations together which the sea had separated. The Tyr ians are ingenious, persevering, and laborious; they have, besides, great manual dexterity, and are remarkable for tem- perance and frugality. The laws are executed with the most scrupulous punctuality ; and the people are, among themselves, perfectly unanimous; and to strangers, they are, above all others, friendly, courteous, and faithful. 4 " ' Such are the means nor is it necessary to seek for any other by which they have subjected the sea to their domin- ion, and included every nation in their commerce. But if iealousy and faction should break in among them ; if they should be seduced by pleasure, or by indolence ; if the great should regard labor and economy with contempt, and the manual arts should no longer be deemed honorable ; if pub- lic faith should not be kept with the stranger, and the laws of a free commerce should be violated ; if manufactures should ' Cadmus arrived in Greece from Tyre long v ^>-e the expedition of the Argonauts. Typhis was pilot of the ship Argo. * Herodotus (II. cix.) Buys the Babylonians discovered the pole and the n ndial, and divided the day into twelve parts. "The Phoenicians," says Pliny (Hist, flat., vii. 56), " first observed the iii navigation." yre," wid " double-tongued TyrimB," say Lucan and Vi/gil, 196 WORKS OF FENELON. be neglected, and those sums spared which are necessary tc render every commodity perfect in its kind ; that power, which is now the object of your admiration, would soon be at an end.' " ' But how,' said I, ' can such a commerce be established at Ithaca ?' ' By the same means,' said he, ' that I have estab- lished it here. Receive all strangers with readiness and hos- pitality : let them find safety, convenience, and liberty in your ports; and be careful never to disgust them by avarice or pride. He that would succeed in a project of gain, must never attempt to gain too much, and upon proper occasions must know how to lose. Endeavor to gain the good-will of foreign- ers ; rather suffer some injury than offend them by doing jus- tice to yourself; and especially, do not keep them at a distance by a haughty behavior. Let the laws of trade be neither complicated nor burdensome ; but do not violate them yourself nor suffer them to be violated with impunity. Always punish fraud with severity; nor let even the negligence or prodigality of a trader escape ; for follies as well as vice effectually ruin trade, by ruining those who carry it on. But above all, never restrain the freedom of commerce, by rendering it subservi- ent to your own immediate gain. The pecuniary advantages of commerce should be left wholly to those by whose labor it subsists, lest this labor, for want of a sufficient motive, should cease. There are more than equivalent advantages of another kind, which must necessarily result to the prince, from the wealth which a free commerce will bring into his State. Com- merce is a kind of spring, which, diverted from its natural channel, ceases to flow. There are but two things which in- vite foreigners profit and convenience. If you render com- merce less convenient, or less gainful, they will insensibly ' forsake you. Those that once depart will never return ; be- cause other nations, taking advantage of your imprudence, will invite them to their ports, and a habit will soon be con- tracted of trading without you. It must indeed be confessed, .hat the glory even of Tyre has for some time been obscured. my dear Telemachus, hadst thou beheld it before the reign TELEMACHD8. BOOK HI. 197 of Pygmalion, how much greater would have been thy aston- ishment ! The remains of Tyre only are now to be seen ruins which have yet the appearance of magnificence, but will shortly be mingled with the dust. O unhappy Tyre, to what a wretch art thou subjected ! thou to whom, as to the sover- eign of the world, the sea so lately rolled the tribute of every nation ! " ' Both strangers and subjects are equally dreaded by Pyg- malion. Instead of throwing open our ports to traders of the most remote countries, like his predecessors, without any stip- ulation or inquiry, he demands an exact account of the num- ber of vessels that arrive, the countries to which they belong, the name of every person on board, the manner of their trad- ing, the kind and value of their commodities, and the time they w:e to continue upon his Coast. Nor is this the worst ; for he pnu; ; n practice all the little artifices of cunning to draw the foreign merchants into some breach of his innumerable regulations, that under the appearance of justice he may con- fiscate their goods. He is perpetually harassing those whom he imagines to be most wealthy, and increasing, under various pretences, the incumbrances of trade, by multiplying taxes. He affects to trade himself; but every one is afraid to deal with him. Thus commerce languishes ; foreigners forget, by degrees, the way to Tyre, with which they were once so well acquainted ; and if Pygmalion persists in a conduct so impol- itic and so injurious, our glory and our power will be trans- ferred to some other nation which is better governed.' " I then inquired of Narbal by what means the Tynans had become so powerful at sea ; for I was not willing to be ignorant of any of the arts of government. ' We have,' said he, ' the forests of Lebanon, 1 which furnish sufficient timber for build- ing ships ; and we are careful to reserve it all for that pur- pose, never suffering a single tree to be felled but for the 1 " They have made all thy whip-boards of fir-trees of Senir : thoj nave taken cedaru from Lebanon to make masta for thee." j ixvii 5. 198 WORKS OF FENELON asc of the public. We have also a great number of artificers, who excel in naval architecture.' ** ' How have you been able to procure these artificers ?' 1 inquired. " * They are the gradual produce,' said he, ' of our own country. When those who excel in any art are constantly and liberally rewarded, it will soon be practised in the greatest possible perfection ; for persons of the highest abilities will al- ways apply themselves to those arts by which great rewards are to be obtained. But, besides pecuniary rewards, whoever excels in any art or science upon which navigation depends, receives great honor. A good geometrician is much re- spected ; an able astronomer yet more ; and no rewards are thougnt too great for a pilot who excels in his profession. A skilful carpenter is not only well paid, but treated well. Even a dexterous rower is sure of a reward proportionate to his ser- vices ; his provision is the best of its kind ; proper care is taken of him when he is sick, and of his wife and children when he is absent ; and if he perish by shipwreck, his family is provided for. Those who have been in the service a certain number of years are dismissed with honor, and enabled to spend the remainder of their days without labor or solicitude. We are, therefore, never in want of skilful mariners ; for it is the ambition of every father to qualify his son for so advanta- geous a calling. Boys, almost as soon as they can walk, are taught to handle an oar, to manage the sails, and to despise a storm. Men are thus rendered willingly subservient to the purposes of government, by an administration so regular that it operates with the forc<' of custom ; and by rewards so cer- tain, that the impulse of hope is irresistible. By authority xlone little can ever be effected. Mere obedience, like that of a vassal to his lord, is not sufficient ; obedience must be ani- nated by affection, and men must find their advantage in lhat labor which is necessary to effect the purposes of others. 1 " Thy wise men, Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots." Ezeki*. ivii. g. TELEMACHU8. BOOK m. 199 u After this discourse Narbal carried me to the public store- houses, the arsenals, and all the manufactories that related to shipping. I inquired minutely into every article, and wrote down all that I learnt, lest some useful circumstances should afterwards be forgotten. " Yet Narbal, who was well acquainted with the temper of Pygmalion, and had conceived a zealous affection for me, was still impatient for my departure, dreading a discovery by the king's spies, who were night and day going about the city ; but the wind would not yet permit me to embark. One day while we were busied in examining the harbor with more than common attention, and questioning several merchants about commercial affairs, one of Pygmalion's officers came up to Narbal, and said : ' The king has just learnt, from the captain of one of the vessels which returned with you from Egypt, that you have brought hither a foreigner, who passes for a na- tive of Cyprus. It is the king's pleasure that this person be immediately secured, and the country to which he belongs certainly known, and for this you are to answer with your head.' Just at this moment, I had left Narbal at a distance, to examine more nearly the proportions of a Tyrian vessel which was aimost new, and which was said to be the best sailer that had ever entered the port ; and I was then putting some questions to the shipwright under whose directions it had been built. " Narbal answered with the utmost consternation and terror, ' that the foreigner was really a native of the island of Cyprus, and that he would immediately go in search of him ;' but the _ioment the officer was out of sight, he ran to me and ac- quainted me with my danger. ' My apprehensions,' said he, * were but too just. My dear Telemachus, our ruin is inevita- ble : the king, who is night and day tormented with mistrust, suspects that you are not a Cyprian, and has commanded me to secure your person under pain of death. What shall we do ? May the gods deliver us by more than human wisdom, or we perish ! I must produce you to the king, but do you xmfidently affirm that you are a Cyprian of the city of Auia 200 WORK8 OF FENELON, thus, and con of a statuary of Venus. I will confirm yout account, by declaring that I was formerly acquainted with your father ; and perhaps the king, without entering into a more severe scrutiny, will suffer you to depart. I see no other expedient, by which a chance of life can be procured for us both.' " To this counsel of Narbal, I answered : ' Let an unhappy wretch perish, whose destruction is the decree of fate. I can die without terror ; and I would not involve you in my calam- ity, because I would live without ingratitude ; but I cannot consent to lie. I am a Greek ; and to say that I am a Cyp- rian, is to cease to be a man. The gods, who know my sin- cerity, may, if it is consistent with their wisdom, preserve me by their power ; but fear shall never seduce rne to attempt my own preservation by falsehood.' " ' This falsehood,' answered Narbal, ' is wholly without guilt, nor can it be condemned even by the gods : it will in- jure none ; it will preserve the innocent ; and it will no other- wise deceive the king, than as it will prevent his incurring the guilt of cruelty and injustice. Your love of virtue is romantic, and your zeal for religion superstitious.' " ' That it is a falsehood,' said I, ' is to me sufficient proof that it can never become a man who speaks in the presence of the gods, and is under perpetual and unlimited obligations to truth. He who violates truth, as he counteracts the dictates of conscience, must offend the gods and injure himself. Do not, therefore, urge me to a conduct that is unworthy both of you and of me. If the gods regard us with pity, they can easily effect our deliverance ; and if they suffer us to perish, we shall die martyrs of truth, and leave one example to man- kind, that virtue has been preferred to life. My life has been already too long, since it has only been a series of misfortunes , and it is the danger of yours only, my dear Narbal, that I re gret. Why, alas, should your friendship for a wretched fugi- tive be fatal to yourself !' " This dispute, which had continued a considerable time, was it length interrupted by the arrival of a person, who had run TELEMACHU8. BOOK HI. 201 till he was not able immediately to speak ; but we soon learnt that he was another of the king's officers, and had been dis- patched by Astarbe. " Astarbe had beauty that appeared to be more than human, and a mind that had almost the power of fascination. Her general manner was sprightly, her particular address soft and insinuating. But with all this power to please, she was, like the Syrens, cruel and malignant. She knew how to conceal the worst purposes by inscrutable dissimulation. She had gained an absolute ascendency over Pygmalion by her beauty and her wit, by the sweetness of her song, and the harmony of her lyre. Pygmalion, in the ardor of his passion for this mistress, had put away Topha his queen. He thought only how he should gratify Astarbe, who was enterprising and am- bitious ; and his avarice, however infamous, was scarcely a greater curse than his extravagant fondness for this woman. But though he was passionately enamored of her, she re- garded him with contempt and aversion ; she disguised her real sentiments, and appeared to desire life itself only as the means of enjoying his society, at the very moment in which her heart sickened at his approach. " At this time there was, at Tyre, a young Lyctian 1 named Malachcn, who was extremely beautiful, but dissolute, voluptu- ous, and effeminate. His principal care was to preserve the delicacy of his complexion, to spread his flaxen hair in ringlets over his shoulders, to perfume his person, adjust his dress, and chant amorous ditties to the music of his lyre. Of this youth Astarbe became enamored to distraction. He declined her favors, because he was himself equally enamored of another, and dreaded the jealousy of the king. Astarbe perceived herself slighted ; and, in the rage of disappointment, resolved that he who rejected her love should at least gratify ber revenge. She thought of representing Malachon to the 1 Lydian is the erroneous reading of nearly all editions. Lyctua was an important towu in the east of Crete See thu lengthy note in the Lefevrc (ditiorn. 9 202 WORKS OF FENELOW. king as the stranger whom he had been informed Narbal had brought into Tyre, and after whom he had caused inquiry tc be made. " In this fraud she succeeded by her own arts of persuasion, and by bribing to secrecy all who might have discovered it to Pygmalion. As he neither loved virtue himself, nor could discover it in others, he was surrounded by abandoned merce- naries, who would, without scruple, execute his commands, however iniquitous and cruel. To these wretches the author- ity of Astarbe was formidable ; and they assisted her to deceive the king, lest they should give offence to an imperious woman, who monopolized his confidence. Thus Malachon, though known to be a Lyctian by the whole city, was cast into prison, as the foreigner whom Narbal had brought out of Egypt. " But Astarbe fearing that, if Narbal should come before the king, he might discover the imposture, dispatched thia officer with the utmost expedition, who delivered her commands in these words : ' It is the pleasure of Astarbe, that you do not discover the stranger whom you brought hither to the king ; she requires nothing of you but to be silent, and will herself be answerable for whatever is necessary to your justification ; but let your friend immediately embark with the Cyprians, that he may no more be seen in the city.' Narbal, who re- ceived this proposal of deliverance with ecstasy, readily prom- ised to fulfil the conditions, and the officer, well satisfied to have succeeded in his commission, returned to Astarbe to make his report. " Upon this occasion, we could not but admire the dirine goodness, which had so suddenly rewarded our integrity, and interposed, almost by a miracle, in favor of them that were ready to have sacrificed every thing to truth. ' We reflected with horror upon a king who had given himself up to avarice and sensuality. ' He who is thus suspi- ;ious of deceit,' said we, ' deserves to be deceived. He suspects the good, and puts himself into the hands of the bad. Ho alone is ignorant of the fraud by which he is overreached; Thus, while Pygmalion is made the tool of a shameless woman. TELEMACHUS. BOOK m. 203 the gods render the falsehood of the wicked an instrument fof the preservation of the righteous, to whom it is less dreadful to perish than to lie.' u At the very time in which we were making these reflec- tions, we perceived the wind change. It now blew fair for the Cyprian fleet, and Narbal cried out : ' The gods declare for thee, my dear Telemachus, and will complete thy deliverance I Fly from this cruel, this execrable coast ! To follow thee, to whatever climate to follow thee, in life and death would be happiness and honor. But, alas ! Fate has connected me with this wretched country : with my country I am born to suffer, and perhaps in her ruins I shall perish ! But of what moment is this, if my tongue be still faithful to truth, and my heart holds fast its integrity? As for thee, my dear Telemachus, may the gods, who guide thee by their wisdom, reward thee to the utmost of their bounty by giving and continuing to thee that virtue which is pure, generous, and exalted ! Mayest thou survive every danger, return in safety to Ithaca, and deliver Penelope from the presumption of her suitors ! May thy eyes behold, and thy arms embrace, the wise Ulysses ; and may he rejoice in a son that will add new honors to his name ! But, in the midst of thy felicity, suffer, at least, the sorrows of friendship, the pleasing anguish of virtue, to cteal upon thee for a moment ; and remember unhappy Narbal with a sigh, that shall at once express his misery and thy affection.' 4i My heart melted within me as he spoke ; and, when he expected my reply, I threw myself upon his neck and bedewed it with my tears, but was unable to utter a word : we therefore embraced in silence and he then conducted me to the vessel. While we weighed anchor, he stood upon the beach ; and *hen the vessel was under sail, we looked towards each other till the objects became confused, and at length totally du appeared." BOOK IT. Cftlypeo interrupts Telemachus in his relation, that he may retire to rest. Mentor privately reproves him for having undertaken the recital of hie adventures; but as he has begun, advises him to proceed. Telemachna relates that during his voyage from Tyre to Cyprus, he dreamed that he was protected from Venus and Cupid by Minerva; that he after- wards imagined he saw Mentor, who exhorted him to fly from the isle of Cyprus ; that when he awaked, the vessel would have perished in a storm if he had not himself taken the helm, the Cyprians being all intox- icated with wine; that when he arrived on the island, he saw, witk horror, the most contagious examples of debauchery ; but that Hazael, the Syrian, to whom Mentor had been sold, happening to be at Cyprus at the same time, brought the two friends together, and took them on board his vessel that was bound to Crete ; that during the voyage, he Lad seen Amphitrite drawn in her chariot by sea-horses a sight infi- nitely entertaining and magnificent. CALYPSO, who had till this instant sat motionless, and listening with inexpressible delight to the adventures oi ? Te- lemachus, now interrupted him, that he might enjoy some repose. " It is time," said she, " that, after so many toils, you should taste the sweets of sleep. In this island you have nothing to fear; every thing is here subservient to your wishes. Open your heart, therefore, to joy, and make room for all the blessings of peace which the gods are preparing for you. To-morrow, when the rosy 1 fingers of Aurora shall unlock the golden doors of the east, and the steeds of Phoebus shall mount up from the deep, diffusing the beams of day, 4 and 1 " Rosy fingered Aurora" we find repeatedly in Homer. * " The day arisen had scarcely sprinkled the tops of the mountains witb *ght, when first from the deep gulf the horses of the sun lift up theft heads, and from their erected nostrils breath forth day." Virgil, ^Kn. til. 114. TELEMAOHTJ8. BOOK IV. 205 driving before them the stars of heaven, 1 the bistory of your misfortunes, my dear Telemachus, shall be resumed. You have exceeded even your father in wisdom and in courage * nor has Achilles, the conqueror of Hector, nor Theseus, who returned from hell, nor even the great Alcides, who delivered the earth from so many monsters, displayed either fortitude or virtue equal to yours. May one deep and unbroken slumber rendei the night short to you ; though, to me, alas ! it will be weari- some and long. With what impatience shall I desire again to see you, to hear your voice ; to urge you to repeat what I have been told already ; and inquire after what I am still to learn. Go then, my dear Telemachus, with that friend whom the bounty of the gods has again restored ; retire into the grotto which has been prepared for your repose. May Morpheus shed his benignest influence upon your eyelids, that are now heavy with watching, and diffuse a pleasing languor through your limbs, that are fatigued with labor ! May he cause the most delightful dreams to sport around you, fill your imagi- nation with gay ideas, and keep far from you whatever might chase them away too soon !" The goddess then conducted Telemachus into the separate grotto, which was not less rural or pleasant than her own. In one part of it, the lulling murmurs of a fountain invited sleep to the weary ;* and in another, the nymphs had prepared two beds of the softest moss, and covered them with two large skins, one with that of a lion for Telemachus, and the other with that of a bear for Mentor. Mentor, before he resigned his eyes to sleep, spoke thus to Telemachus : " The pleasure of relating your adventures has ensnared you ; for, by displaying the dangers which you have Mirniounted by your courage and your ingenuity, you have captivated Calypso ; and, in proportion as you have inflamed her passions, you have insured vour own captivity. Can it be 1 "Aurora had dispersed the twinkling stars." Ovid, Jfrlam., vii. ICOu " A rivulet with murmuring noise invites leep to weary ejelidH." Vvid, Meiam., xi. 604. 206 WOKK8 OF FKNELON. hoped that she will suffer him to depart who has displayed such power to please ? You have been betrayed to indiscretion by your vanity. She promised to relate some stories to you, and to acquaint you with the adventures and the fate of Ulys- ses ; but she has found means to say much without giving you any information, and to draw from you whatever she desired to know. Such are the arts of the flatterer and the wanton 1 "When, O Telemachus, will you be wise enough to resist the impulse of vanity, and know how to suppress incidents that do you honor, when it is not fit that they should be related! Others, indeed, admire the wisdom which you possess at an age in which they think folly might be forgiven ; but I can forgive you nothing : your heart is known only to me, and there is no other who loves you well enough to tell you your faults. How much does your father still surpass you in wisdom !" " Could I then," answered Telemachus, " have refused an account of my misfortunes to Calypso ?" " No," replied Men- tor ; " but you should have gratified her curiosity only by re- citing such circumstances as might have raised her compassion. You might have told her that, after having long wandered from place to place, you were first a captive in Sicily, and then a slave in Egypt. This would have been enough ; and all that was more, served only to render that poison more active which now rages at her heart, a poison from which pray the gods that thy heart may be defended." " But what can now be done ?" continued Telemachus, in a calmer tone. " Now," replied Mentor, " the sequel of your story cannot be suppressed : Calypso knows too much to be deceived in that which she has yet to learn ; and to attempt it would be only to displease her. Proceed, therefore, to-mor- row, in your account of all that the gods have done for you ; and speak another time with more modesty of such actions of your own as may be thought to merit praise." This salutary advice was received by Telemachus with the tame friendship with which it was given by Mentor ; and they immediately lay down to rest. TELEMACHU8. BOOK IV. 207 As soon as the first rays of Phoebus glanced upon the mountains, Mentor heard the voice of Calypso calling to her nymphs in the neighboring wood, and awakened Telemachus. M It is time," said he, " to vanquish sleep. Let us now return to Calypso, but put no confidence in her honeyed words ; shut your heart against her, and dread the delicious poison of her praise. Yesterday she exalted you above the wise Uly&sea your father, and the invincible Achilles ; above Theseus, who filled the earth with his fame, and Hercules, who obtained a place in the skies. Did you perceive the excess of such adu- lation, or did you believe her praises to be just ? Calypso herself laughs in secret at so romantic a falsehood, which she uttered, only because she believed you to be so vain as to be gratified by the grossest flattery, and so weak as to be imposed upon by the most extravagant improbability." They now approached the place where they were expected by the goddess. The moment she perceived them, she forced a smile, and attempted to conceal, under the appearance of joy, the dread and anxiety which agitated her bosom ; for she foresaw, that, under the direction of Mentor, Telemachus, like Ulysses, would elude her snares. " Come," said she, " my dear Telemachus, and relieve me from the impatience of curiosity. I have dreamed all the night of your departure from Phoenicia to seek new adventures in the isle of Cyprus. Let us not, therefore, lose another moment ; make haste to satisfy roe with knowledge, and put an end to the illusions of conjecture." They then sat down upon the grass, that was intermingled with violets, in the shade of a lofty grove. Calypso could not refrain from looking frequently, with the nost passionate tenderness, at Telemachus ; nor perceive, with- out indignation, that every glance of her eye was remarked by Mentor. Nevertheless, all her nymphs silently ranged them- celves in a semicircle, and leaned forward with the utmost ea geiDess of attention. The eyes of the whole assembly were Immovably fixed upon Telemachus. 1 1 " All became silent, ud flxei their eyed upon him, eagerly utteutu '' Virgil, .*'., ii. 1. 208 WORKS OF FENELON. Looking downward, and blushing with the most graceful modesty, he thus continued his narrative : " Our sails had not been long filled with the gentle breath of a favoring wind, 1 before the level coast of Phoenicia disap- peared. As I was now associated with Cyprians, of whose manners I was totally ignorant, I determined to remain silent, that I might the better remark all that passed, and recommend tnyself to my companions by the most scrupulous decorum. But, during my silence, a deep sleep stole insensibly upon me ; . the involuntary exercise of all my faculties was suspended ; I eunk into the most luxurious tranquillity, and my heart over- flowed with delight. " On a sudden I thought the clouds parted, and that I saw Venus in her chariot drawn by two doves. She appeared in .oil that radiance of beauty, that gayety of youth, that smiling softness,, and irresistible grace, which Jupiter himself could hardly behold with firmness, when first she issued from the foam of the sea. I thought she descended with astonishing rapid- ity, and in a moment reached the spot on which I stood, that she then, with a smile, laid her hand upon my shoulder, and pronounced these words : ' Young Greek, thou art now about to enter into my dominions ; thou shalt shortly arrive at that fortunate island, where every pleasure springs up under my steps. There thou shalt burn incense upon my altars, and I /ill lavish upon thee inexhaustible delight. Let thy heart therefore indulge the utmost luxuriance of hope ; and reject not the happiness which the most powerful of all the deities is now willing to bestow.' " At the same time, I perceived the boy Cupid, fluttering, on his little wings, around his mother. The lovely softness and laughing simplicity of childhood appeared in his counte- nance ; but in his eyes, which sparkled with a piercing bright- uess, there was something that I could not behold without Tear. He looked at me with a smile ; but it was the znalig Dant smile of derision and cruelty. He selected froii hii " Neptun? filled the sails with favoring winds." Virgil, ^n., vii. 28. TELEMACHUS. BOOK IV. 209 golden quiver the keenest of all his arrows, and having bent his bow, the shaft was just parting from the string, when Mi- nerva suddenly appeared, and lifted her immortal aegis before me. In her aspect there was not that exquisite softness, that amorous languor, which I had remarked in the countenance and attitude of Venus. The beauty of Minerva was simple, chaste, and unaffected ; all was easy and natural, yet spirited, striking, and majestic. The shaft of Cupid, not having suffi- cient force to penetrate the shield that intercepted it, fell to the ground. The god, touched at once with shame and indig- nation, withdrew his bow, and betrayed his disappointment with a sigh. ' Away, presumptuous boy !' said Minerva ; ' thou hast power only over the base, who prefer the sordid pleasures of sensuality to the sublime enjoyments of wisdom, virtue, and honor.' " Love, blushing with restrained anger, flew away without reply ; and Venus again ascending to Olympus, I long traced her chariot and her doves in a cloud of intermingled azure and gold ; but at length they disappeared. When I turned my eyes downwards, I perceived that Minerva also had left me. M I then fancied myself transported to a delightful garden, which revived in my mind the descriptions that I had heard ot Elysium. Here I met with Mentor, who accosted me in these words : ' Fly from this fatal country, this island of contagion, where every breeze is tainted with sensuality, where the most ueroic virtue has cause for fear, and safety can be obtained only by flight !' The moment I saw Mentor, I attempted to throw my arms about him in an ecstasy of joy ; but I strove in vain to lift my feet from the ground, my knees failed under me, and ray arms closed over an empty shade, which eluded their grasp. The effort awoke me, and I perceived that this myste- rious dream was a divine admonition. A more animated reso- lution against pleasure, and greater diffidence of my own virtue, toncurrcd to make me detest the effeminate and voluptuous manners of the Cyprians. But I was most affected by the Apprehension that Mentor was dead, and that, having passed 210 WORKS OF FENELON. the waters of the Styx, he was fixed forever in the blissful dwellings of the just. " I mused upon this imaginary loss till I burst into tears. They asked me why I wept. I replied, that it might easily be guessed why an unhappy fugitive, who despaired of returning to his country, should weep. In the mean time, however, all the Cyprians that were on board gave themselves up to the most extravagant merriment. The rowers, to whom a mere suspension of labor was a luxury, fell asleep upon their oars ; but the pilot, who had quitted the helm, and crowned himself with flowers, held in his hand an enormous bowl, which he had almost emptied of wine ; and with the rest of the crew, who were equally intoxicated, sang such songs to the praise of Venus and Cupid, as no man who has a reverence for virtue can hear without horror. " While they were thus thoughtless of danger, a sudden tempest began to trouble the ocean and obscure the sky. The winds, as in the wild ardor of unexpected freedom, were heard bellowing among the sails ; and the dark waves dashed against the sides of the vessel, which groaned under the strokes. Now we floated on the ridge of a stupendous billow ; now the sea seemed to glide from under us, and leave us buried in the abyss. We perceived also some rocks near us, and heard the waves breaking against them with a dreadful noise. I had often heard Mentor say, that the effeminate and voluptuous are never brave ; and I now found by experience that it was true. All the Cyprians, whose jollity had been so extravagant and tumultuous, now sank under a sense of their danger, and wept like women. I heard nothing but the screams of terror, and the wailings of hopeless distress. Some lamented the loss of pleasures that were never to return, and some made idle vows of sacrifice to the gods, if they reached their port in safety. None had presence of mind, either to undertake or direct the navigation of the vessel. In this situation I thought it rny duty to save the lives of others, by saving my own. I tock the helm into my own hand, for the pilot was so intoxicated as ,0 be wholly insensible of the danger of the 'essel. I enccur- TELEMACHUS. BOOK IV. 211 iged the affrighted mariners, and ordered the sails to be taken in. The men rowed vigorously, and we soon found ourselves clear of the rocks, among which we had beheld all the horrors of death at so near a view. " This event had the appearance of a dream to the mariners, who were indebted to me for their lives ; and they looked upon me with astonishment. We arrived at the isle of Cyprus in that month of the Spring which is consecrated to Venus. The Cyprians believe this season to be under the influence cf the goddess, because all nature then appears animated with new vigor, and pleasure seems to spring up spontaneously with the flowers of the field. 1 " As soon as I went on shore, I perceived a certain softness in the air, which, though it rendered the body indolent and in- active, yet brought on a disposition to gayety and wantonness. I observed that the inhabitants were so averse to labor, that the country, though extremely fertile and pleasant, was almost wholly uncultivated. I met, in every street, crowds of women, loosely dressed, singing the praises of Venus, and going to dedicate themselves to the service of her temple. Beauty and pleasure sparkled in their countenances, but their beauty was tainted by affectation. The modest simplicity, from which female charms principally derive their power, was wanting. The dissolute air, the studied look, the flaunting dress, and the lascivious gait, the expressive glances that seemed to wander in search after those of the men, the visible emulation who should kindle the most ardent passion, and whatever else I discovered in these women, moved only my contempt and aversion; and I was disgusted by all that they did with a desire to please. u 1 was conducted to a temple of the goddess, of which there 1 " And no Reason waa there more becoming for Venus than the Spring , lu Spring the earth is bounteous ; in Spring the soil is unbound ; then doei be herbage raise its hea.l, having burst the ground ; then from the swell* '3g bark does llie shoot put forth the bud ; and the lovely Venus in d erving of the lovely season." Ovid, Fatti, iv. 125. 212 WORKS OF FENELON. are several in the island ; for she is worshipped at Cythera, Idalia, and Paphos. That which I visited was at Cythera. The structure, which is of marble, is a complete peristyle; and the columns are so large and lofty, that its appearance is extremely majestic : on each front, over the architrave and frieze, are large pediments, on which the most entertaining adventures of the goddess are represented in bas-relief. There is a perpetual crowd of people with offerings at the gate. " Within the limits of the consecrated ground, no victim is ever slain ; the fat of bulls and heifers is never burnt, as at other temples; nor are the rites of pleasure profaned with their blood. The beasts that are here offered, are only presented before the altar, nor are any accepted, but those that are young, white, and without blemish ; they are dressed with purple fillets, embroidered with gold, and their horns are deco- rated with gilding and flowers : after they have been presented, they are led to a proper place at a considerable distance, and killed for the banquet of the priests. "Perfumed liquors are also offered, and wines sweeter than nectar. The habit of the priests is a long white robe, fringed with gold at the bottom, and bound around them with a golden girdle. The richest aromatics of the East burn night and day upon the altars, and the smoke rises in a cloud of fragrance to the skies. All the columns of the temple are adorned with festoons ; all the sacrificial vessels are of gold ; the whole building is surrounded by a consecrated grove of odoriferous myrtle. None are permitted to present the victims to the priest, or to kindle the hallowed fire, but boys and girls of consummate beauty. But this temple, however magnifi- cent, was rendered infamous by the dissolute manners of the votaries. " What I saw in this place struck me at first with horror ; but at length, by insensible degrees, it became familiar. I was Ho longer alarmed at the appearance of vice ; the manners of vhe company had a kind of contagious influence upon me : my innocence was universally derided ; and my modesty and re- gerve became the sport of impudence and buffoonery. Everj TELEMACHUS. BOOK IV. 2J 3 wt was practised to excite my passions, to ensnare me by temptation, to kindle the love of pleasure in my breast. I perceived that I was every day less capable of resistance ; the influence of education was surmounted ; my virtuous resolu- tions melted away. I could no longer struggle against the evils that pressed upon me on every side ; and from dreading vice, I came at length to be ashamed of virtue. I was like a man who attempts to swim a deep and rapid river ; his first efforts are vigorous, and he makes way against the stream; but, if the shores are steep, and he cannot rest himself upon the bank, hs grows weary by degrees; his strength is ex- hausted ; his limbs become stiff with fatigue ; and he is carried away by the torrent. " Thus my eyes began to grow dim to the deformity of vice* and my heart shrank from the toil of virtue. I could no longer call in the power of reason to my assistance, nor re member the example of my father with emulation. The dream, in which I had seen Mentor in the fields of Elysium, repressed the last feeble effort of my virtue. A pleasing languor stole insensibly upon me ; I felt the seductive poison glide from vein to vein, and diffuse itself through every limb, with a secret satisfaction. Yet, by sudden starts, I deplored my captivity with sighs and tears ; sometimes I pined with re- gret, and sometimes raved with indignation. ' How wretched a period of life,' said I, ' is youth ! Wherefore did the gods, who cruelly sport with the calamities of men, ordain them to pass through that state which is divided between the sports of folly and the agonies of desire ? Why is not my head already hoary, and why do not my steps falter on the brink of the grave ? Why am I not already like Laertes, whose son is my father? Death itself would be sweeter than the shameful weakness of which I am now conscious ! ' ** But these exclamations had no sooner burst from me, than lay anguish would abate ; my conscience, lulled by the opiatea yf sensuality, would again cease to be susceptible of shame ; '.ill somo sudden thought would rouse me once more to sensi- fcilify, and sting me with yet keener remorse. In this state of 214 WORKS OP FENELON perplexity and anguish, I frequently wandered about in the consecrated grove, like a hart wounded by the hunters : the fleet hart reaches the distant forest in a moment, but he car- ries the tormenting shaft in his side : * thus I vainly attempted to escape from myself ; but nothing could alleviate the anguish of my breast. " I was one day in this situation, when, at some distance be- fore me, in the most gloomy part of the grove, I discovered Mentor ; but upon a nearer approach, his countenance ap- peared so pale, and expressed such a mixture of grief and austerity, that I felt no joy in his presence. ' Can it be thou,' I exclaimed, ' my dearest friend, my only hope ! Can it be thou thyself in very deed ; or do I thus gaze upon a fleeting illusion ? Is it Mentor ? or is it the spirit of Mentor, that is Btill touched with my misfortunes ? Art not thou numbered among the happy spirits, who rejoice in the fruition of their own virtue, to which the gods have superadded the pure and everlasting pleasures of Elysium ? Speak Mentor, dost thou yet live ? Am I again happy in thy counsel, or art thou only the manes of my friend?' As I pronounced these words, I ran towards him breathless and transported. He calmly waited for me, without advancing a single step ; but the gods only know with what joy I perceived that he filled my grasp. ' No, it is not an empty shade ; I hold him fast ; I embrace my dear Mentor ! ' Thus I expressed the tumult of my mind in broken exclamations ; till, bursting into tears, I hung upon hia neck without power to speak. He continued to look stead- fastly at me with a mixture of grief, tenderness, and compassion. " 'Alas !' said I, ' whence art thou come ? What dangers have surrounded me in thy absence ! and what should I now have done without thee ?' Mentor, not regarding my ques- tions, cried out in a voice that shook me with terror : ' Fly ! 1 " Like a wounded deer, whom, off her guard, a shepherd pursuing with his darts has pierced at a distance in the Cretan woods, and unknow* mgly [in the wound] hath left the winged steel : she, flying, bounds ove the Dictsean woods and glades : the fatal shaft sticks in her side." Virgil 4f., iv. 69. TELEMACHU8. BOOK IV. 215 delay not a moment to fly. The very fruits of this soil aro poison ; the air is pestilential ; the inhabitants themselves are contagious, and speak only to infuse the most deadly venom. Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradi- cates every virtue. Fly ! wherefore dost thou linger ? Fly ! cast not one look behind thee ; nor let even thy thoughts return tc this accursed island for a moment.' M While he yet spoke, I perceived, as it were, a thick cloud vanish from before me, and my eyes were once more illumi- nated with the rays of pure light. My heart was elated with a peaceful yet vigorous joy, very different from the dissolute and tumultuous pleasures of desire : one is the joy of phrensy and confusion, a perpetual transition from raging passion to the keenest remorse ; the other is the calm and equal felicity of reason, which, like divine beatitude, can neither satiate nor be exhausted. It filled all my breast, and overflowed in tears ; nor have I found on earth any higher enjoyment than thus to weep. ' Happy,' said I, ' are those by whom virtue vouchsafes to be seen in all her beauty ! Thus to behold her is to love her ; and to love her is to be happy.' " But my attention was recalled to Mentor. ' I must leave you,' said he ; ' nor can my stay be protracted a moment.' * Whither dost thou go, then ?' I responded. ' To what deserts will I not follow thee ! Think not to depart without me, for I will rather die at thy feet.' Immediately I caught hold of him, and held him with all my force. ' It is in vain,' said he, ' that thy zeal attempts to detain me. I was sold by Metophis to the Arabs or Ethiopians. 1 They, having gone on a trading >ourney to Damascus' in Syria, determined to part with me, imagining that they could sell me for a large sum to one Ilazael, a man who was seeking after a Grecian slave, to acquaint him with the manners of the country, and instruct aim in the sciences. 1 The Araba and Ethiopians are confounded without reason. 1 Tin city still bears the sumo nati e. 216 WORKS OF FENELON. " ' I was purchased by Hazael at a very high price. The knowledge which he soon acquired from me of the Grecian policy, inclined him to go into Crete, 1 to study the wise laws of Minos. The voyage was immediately undertaken ; but we were driven, by contrary winds, to Cyprus ; and he has taken this opportunity to make his offering at the temple. I see him now coming out ; a favorable wind already fills our sails, and calls us on board. Farewell, my dear Telemachus ; a slave who fears the gods cannot dispense with his obligation to attend his master. The gods have made me the property of another ; and they know that if I had any right in myself, I would transfer it to you alone. Farewell ! remember the achievements of Ulysses and the tears of Penelope ; remem- ber, also, that the gods are just. Ye powers, who are the pro- tectors of the innocent, in what a country am I compelled tc leave Telemachus !' " ' No,' said I, ' my dear Mentor, here thou canst not lea' me ; for I will rather perish than suffer thee to depart without me. But has thy Syrian master no compassion ? Will he tear thee, by violence, from my arms ? He must either take away my life, or suffer me to follow thee. Thou hast thyself exhorted me to fly ; why, then, am I forbidden to fly with thee ? I will speak myself to Hazael ; perhaps he may regard my youth and my distress with pity : he, who is so enamored of wisdom as to seek her in distant countries, cannot surely have a savage and insensible heart. I will throw myself at his feet ; I will embrace his knees ; I will not suffer him to depart, till he has consented that I may follow thee. My dear Men- tor, I will wear the chains of slavery with thee ! I will offer myself to Hazael ; and if he rejects me, my lot is thrown ; and I \vill seek reception, where I know I shall find it, in the grave.' " Just as I had pronounced these words, Mentor was called by Hazael, before whom I immediately fell prostrate on the ground. Hazael, who was astonished to see a stranger in that posture, asked what I would request. ' I request my life,' said * The island of Candia. TELEMACHUS. BOOK IV. 217 I ; ' for, if I am not permitted to follow Mentor, who is your servant, I must die. I am the son of the great Ulysses, who surpassed in wisdom all the Grecian princes by whom Troy, a city famous throughout all Asia, was overturned. But think not that I speak of my birth to exact a tribute to my vanity ; [ mean only to strengthen the claim of misfortune to thy pity. [ have wandered from coast to coast, in search of my father, with this man, whom friendship has made a father to me. Fortune has at length completed my calamity, by taking him from me : he is now thy slave ; let me, therefore, be thy slave also. If thou art, indeed, a lover of justice, and art going, to Crete to acquaint thyself with the laws of Minos, thou wilt not resist the importunity of my distress. Thou seest the son of a mighty prince reduced to sue for slavery, as the only possible condition of comfort. There was a time when I preferred death to servitude in Sicily ; but the evils which I there sut- ured were but the first essays of the rage of fortune. I now tremble, lest I should not be admitted into that state, which then I would have died to shun. May the gods look down on my misfortunes, and may Hazael remember Minos, whose wisdom he admires, and whose judgment shall, in the realms of Pluto be passed upon us both.' " Hazael, looking upon me with great complaisance and hu- manity, gave me his hand and raised me from the ground. I am not ignorant,' said he, ' of the wisdom and virtue of Ulysses ; I have been often told by Mentor what glory he acquired among the Greeks ; and fame has made his name familiar to all the nations of the East. Follow me, son of Ulysses ; I will be your father, till you find him from whom you have derived your being. If I had no sense of the glory of Ulysses, or of his misfortunes, or of yours, the friendship which I bear to Mentor would alone induce me to take care of you. I bought him indeed as a slave, but he is now mine by a nobler connection ; for the money that he cost me procured Dae the dearest and most valuable of all my friends. In him I have found that wisdom which I sought ; to him I owe all the love of virtue that I have acquired. This moment, there- to 218 WORKS OF FENELON. fore, I restore his freedom, and continue thine : I renoncce your service, and require only your esteem.' " The most piercing anguish was now changed in a moment to unutterable joy. I perceived myself delivered from total ruin ; I was approaching my country ; I was favored with as- sistance that might enable me to reach it ; I had the consola- tion of being near a person whose love for me had no founda- tion but the love of virtue ; and whatever else could contrib- ute to my felicity was comprehended in my meeting with Mentor to part no more. " Hazael proceeded directly to the port, followed by Mentor and myself, and we all embarked together. The peaceful waves were divided by our oars ; a gentle breeze, which sported in our sails, seemed, as it were, to animate our bark, and impel it forward with an easy motion. Cyprus quickly disappeared. Hazael, who was impatient to know my senti- ments, asked me what I thought of the manners of that island. I told him ingenuously the dangers to which my youth had been exposed, and the conflict which had agitated my bosom. He was touched at my horror of vice ; and cried out : ' Venus, I acknowledge thy power, and that of thy son ; I have burnt incense upon thy altars ; but forgive me if I de- test that infamous effeminacy which prevails in thy dominions, and the brutal sensuality which is practised at thy feasts.' " He then discoursed with Mentor of that first Power which created the heaven and the earth ; of that infinite and immu- table intelligence which communicates itself to all, but is not divided ; of that sovereign and universal truth which illumi- nates intellectual nature, as the sun enlightens the material world. ' He who has never received this pure emanation of divinity,' said Hazael, ' is as blind as those who are born with- out sight; he passes through life in darkness, like that which involves the polar regions, where the night is protracted to ball *Jie year ;' he believes himself to be wise, and is a fool ; he 1 HJW should a Syrian, in the time of Ulysses, know this ? It may be *nsweied, ttathe was taught by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. TELEMACHUS. BOOK IV. 219 jnagines that his eye comprehends every object, and he sees nothing, or, at most, he perceives only some fleeting illusions by a glimmering and deceitful light, some unsubstantial vapors, that are every moment changing their color and shape, and at length fade into total obscurity. Such is the state of every man who is captivated by the pleasures of sense, and allured by the phantoms of imagination. Indeed, none are worthy the name of men but those who walk by the dictates of eternal reason, who love and follow the guiding ray that is vouch- safed from above. It is by this reason that we are inspired when our thoughts are good ; and by it we are reproved when they are evil. From it we derive intelligence and life. It is an ocean of light : our minds are but small streams that issue from it and are quickly reabsorbed in the deep from which they flowed.' u This discourse, indeed, I did not perfectly comprehend ; yet I perceived something in it that was elevated and refined ; and my heart caught fire at the beams of truth which glanced within the verge of my understanding. They proceeded to talk of the origin of the gods, of heroes, of poets, of the golden age, and of the universal deluge ; of the river of obliv- ion, in which the souls of the dead are plunged ; of the per- petual punishment that is inflicted upon the wicked in the gloomy gulf of Tartarus ; and of that happy tranquillity which is enjoyed in the fields of Elysium by the spirits of the just, who exult in the assurance that it shall last forever. " While Hazael and Mentor were discoursing upon these topics, we perceived several dolphins approaching, whose scales wore varied with azure and gold. Their sport swelled the sea into waves, and covered it with foam. These were followed by tritons, who with their spiral shells emulated the music of the trumpet. In the midst of them appeared the chariot of Amphitrite, drawn by sea-horses whiter than snow, which, di- viding the waves as they passed, left behind them long furrows in the deep. Fire sparkled in their eyes, and from their nos- trils issued clouds of smoke. The chariot of the goddess was & shell, whiter and brighter than ivory, of a wonderful figuro \ 220 WORKS OF FENELON. and it was mounted upon wheels of gold. It seemed almost to fly over the level surface of the water. A great number of young nymphs swam in a crowd after the chariot ; their hair, which was decorated with flowers, flowed loosely behind them, and wantoned in the breeze. The goddess held in one hand a sceptre of gold, with which she awed the waves to obedi- ence ; and, with the other, she held the little god Palemon, her son, whom she suckled upon her lap. Such sweetness and majesty were expressed in her countenance, that the rt/ bellious winds dispersed at her appearance, and gloomy tem- pests howled only at a distance. Tritons guided the horses with golden reins. A large purple sail waved above, which was but half distended by a multitude of little Zephyrs, who labored to swell it with their breath. In the mid air appeared JEolus, busy, restless, and vehement. His wrinkled and morose countenance, his threatening voice, his shaggy brows, which hung down to his beard, and the sullen austerity that gleamed in his eyes, awed the hurricanes of the north to silence, and drove back the clouds. Whales of an enormous size, and all the monsters of the deep, that caused the sea to ebb and flow with their nostrils, rushed from their secret recesses, to gaze upon the goddess." ' i The whole passage is in imitation of Virgil (.JE/i., v. 819). "Along the surface of the seas he [Neptune] nimbly glides in his nzure car. The waves subside, and the swelling ocean smcoths its liquid pnvement under the thundering axle: the clouds fly off the face of the expanded sky. Then [appear] the various forms of his retinue : unwieldy whales, and the aged train cf Glaucus, and Palemon, Ino's son, the swift Tritons, and the whole band of Phorous." Why Fenelon mukes Palemon the son of Aa>- phitrite, we know act. BOOK V. fulemachns relates, tin t when be arrived at Crete, he learnt that Idorra* neus, the king of that island, had, in consequence of a rash vow, sacri- ficed his only son ; that the Cretans, to revenge the murder, had driven him out of the country ; that after long uncertainty they were then assembled to elect a new sovereign ; that he was admitted into the as- sembly ; that he obtained the prize in various exercises ; having ata' resolved the questions that had been recorded by Minos in the o. of his laws, the sages, who were judges of the contest, and all tn>*. people, seeing his wisdom, would have made him king ; that he refused the royalty of Crete to return to Ithaca; that he proposed Mentor, but that Mentor also refused to be king ; that the Cretans then pressing Mentor to appoint a king for them, he relates to them what he heard of the virtues of Aristodemus, whom they immediately proclaimed ; that Mentor and Telemachus having embarked for Italy, Neptune, to gratify the resentment of Venus, shipwrecked them on the island of Calypso, where the goddess received them with hospitality and kindness. " AFTER the goddess and her train disappeared, we began to discover the mountains of Crete, although we could yet scarcely distinguish them from the clouds of heaven and the waves of the sea. But it was not long before the summit of Mount Ida 1 was seen, towering above the neighboring moun- tains, as the branching horns 8 of a stag are distinguished among the young fawns that surround him. By degrees we discovered more distinctly the coast of the island, which had the appearance of an amphitheatre. In Crete, the soil appeared so us as fertile and enriched with every kind of fruit by the labor of its inhabitants, as, in Cyprus, it had appeared wild and uncultivated. " We perceived innumerable villages that were well built, towns that were little inferior to cities, and cities that were in " In the middle of the sea lies Crete, the island of mighty Jupiter, whert Mount Ida." Virgil, ^ft'., iii. 104. " The branching horns of a long-lived stag." Virgil, Eel., vii so 222 WORKS OF FENELOA. ,he highest decree magnificent. There was no field on which the husbandman had not impressed the characters of diligence and labor ; the plough was everywhere to be traced ; and there was scarcely a bramble or a weed to be found in the island. We remarked, with pleasure, the deep valleys in which numer- ous herds of cattle were grazing among many rivulets that enriched the soil ; the sheep that were feeding on the declivity of the hills ; the spacious plains that were covered with the golden bounty of Ceres ; and the mountains that were adorned with the lively verdure of the vine, and with clusters of grapes already tinged with blue, and promising the blessing of Bac- chus, which soothes anxiety to peace and animates weariness to new vigor. " Mentor told us that he had before been in Crete, and ac- quainted us with whatever he knew of the country. ' This island,' said he, ' which is admired by all foreigners, and famous for its hundred cities, 1 produces all the necessaries of life in great plenty for its inhabitants, although they are almost innu merable ; for the earth is always profusely bountiful to those who cultivate it, and its treasures are inexhaustible. The greater the number of inhabitants in any country, the greater plenty they enjoy, if they are not idle ; nor have they any cause to be jealous of each other. The earth, like a good mother, multiplies her gifts in proportion to the number of her children, who merit her bounty by their labor. The ambition and the avarice of mankind are the only source of their calam- ities ; every individual wishes to possess the portion of all, and becomes wretched by the desire of superfluities. If men would be content with the simplicity of nature, and wish only to eatisfy their real necessities, plenty, cheerfulness, domestic concord, and public tranquillity would be uninterrupted and universal. u ' A deep knowledge of these important truths was the Homer, in the Iliad (ii. 649), calls Crete the " hundred-citied ;" but in the Odyisey (xix. 174), he gives to Crete but ninety cities. Horace follow* ifcd Iliad: " Crete distinguished for a hundred cities." TELEMACHTTS. BOOK V. 223 glory of Minos, the wisest of legislators and the best of kings. All the wonders of this island are the effects of his laws. The education which he prescribed for children renders the body healthy and robust, and forms an early habit of frugality and labor. That every species and degree of voluptuousness will debilitate both the body and the mind, is an established maxim ; and no pleasure is proposed as the object of desire, but that of becoming invincible by heroic virtue and distinguished by superior glory. Courage is not considered as the contempt cf death only in the field of battle, but also as the contempt of superfluous wealth and shameful pleasure. And three vices are punished in Crete, whict IE every other country are suffered with impunity ingratitude, dissimulation, and avarice. " ' It might, perhaps, be expected that there should be some law against luxury and pomp ; but at Crete luxury and pomp are not known. Every man labors, and no man thinks of be- coming rich : labor is thought to be sufficiently recompensed by a life of quiet and regularity, in which all that the wants of nature have made necessary is enjoyed in plenty and in peace. No spiendid palace, no costly furniture, no magnificent apparel, no voluptuous festivity, is permitted. The clothing of the in- habitants is, indeed, made of the finest wool, and dyed of tho most beautiful color, but is perfectly plain, and without em- broidery. Their meals, at which they drink little wine, are extremely temperate, consisting chiefly of bread, such fruits as the season produces, and milk. If they ever taste animal food, it is in a email quantity, plainly dressed, and of the coarsest kind ; for they always reserve the finest cattle for labor, that agriculture may flourish. The houses are neat, convenient, and pleasant, but without ornament. Architecture is, indeed, well known among them, in its utmost elegance and magnifi- cence, but the practice of this art is reserved for the temples of the jrods, and it is thought presumptuous in a mortal to have ft dwelling like theirs. The wealth of the Cretans consists iu health, vigor, courage, domestic quiet and concord, public liberty, plenty of all that is necessary, contempt of all that is uiperfluous, habits of iiJu&try, abhorrence of idleness, emu la 224. WORKS OF FENELOtf. tion in virtue, submission to the law 4, and reverence of tnc gods.' " I inquired in what the authority of the king consisted ; and Mentor answered : ' His authority over the subject is absolute, but the authority of the law is absolute over him. His power to do good is unlimited, but he is restrained from doing evil. The laws hsive put the people into his hands as the most valu- able deposit, upon condition that he shall treat them as his children. It is the intent of the law that the wisdom and equity of one man shall be the happiness of many, and not that the wretchedness and slavery of many should gratify the pride and luxury of one. The king ougnt to possess nothing more than the subject, except what is necessary to alleviate the fatigue of his station, and impress upon the minds of the people a reverence of that authority by which the laws are executed. Moreover, the king should indulge himself less, as well in ease as in pleasure, and should be less disposed to the pomp and the pride of life than any other man ; he ought not to be dis- tinguished from the rest of mankind by the greatness of his wealth, or the variety of his enjoyments, but by superior wis- dom, more heroic virtue, and more splendid glory. Abroad he ought to be the defender of his country, by commanding her armies ; and at home, the judge of his people, distiibuting justice among them, improving their morals, and increasing their felicity. It is not for himself that the gods have intrusted him with royalty : he is exalted above individuals, only that he may be the servant of the people ; to the public he owes all his time, all his attention, and all his love ; he deserves dignity only in proportion as he gives up private enjoyments for the public good. " ' Minos directed that his children should not succeed to hia throne, but upon condition that they should govern by these n;axims. He loved his people yet more than his family ; and Dy this wise institution he insured power and happiness to his kingdom. Thus did Minos, the peaceful legislator, eclipse the glory of mighty conquerors, who sacrificed nations to their own /anity, and imagined they were great; and his justice has TELEMACHU8. BOOK V. 225 placed him on a more awful tribunal in the world of spirits, where he distributes rewards and punishments as the supreme judge of the dead.' " While Mentor was thus discoursing, we reached the island. We there saw the celebrated labyrinth which had been built by Daedalus in imitation of that of much larger extent which we had seen in Egypt. While we were contemplating this curi- ous edifice, we perceived all the coast covered with a multitude of people, who gathered in a crowd at a place not far distant from the sea. We inquired the cause of this commotion, and our curiosity was immediately gratified by a Cretan, whose name was Nausicrates. " ' Idomeneus,' said he, ' the son 6"f Deucalion, and grandson of Minos, accompanied the other princes of Greece in their expedition against Troy. After the destruction of that city, he set sail for Crete, but was overtaken by so violent a tem- pest, that the pilot, and all others on board the vessel, who were skilled in navigation, believed shipwreck to be inevitable. Death was present to every imagination ; every one thought he saw the abyss open to swallow him up ; and every one de- plored the misfortune, which did not leave him the mournful hope of that imperfect rest to which the spirits of the dead are admitted beyond the waters of the Styx, after funeral rites have been paid to the body. Idomeneus, lifting up his hands and his eyes to heaven, and invoking Neptune, cried out : ' O mighty Deity, to whom belong the dominions of the deep, vouchsafe to hear me in this uttermost distress ! If thou wilt protect me from the fury of the waves, and restore me in safety to my country, I will offer up to thee the first living ob- ject that I see on my return.' " ' In the mean time, his son hasted to meet him with all the ardor of filial affection, and pleased himself with the thought of receiving the first embrace. Unhappy youth ! He knew not that to hasten to his father was to rush upon de- truction. Idomeneus, escaping the tempest, arrived at his port, and returned thanks to Neptune for having heard hit vow ; but he was soon sensible of the fatal effects it wou'd 226 WOBKS OF FENELON. produce. A certain presage of misfortune made him repent his indiscretion with the utmost anguish of mind ; he dreaded his arrival among his people, and thought with horror of meet- ing those who were most dear to him. But Nemesis, a cruel and inexorable goddess, who is ever vigilant to punish mankind, and rejoices to humble the mighty and the proud, impelled him forward with a fatal and invisible hand. He proceeded from the vessel to the shore ; but he had scarcely ventured to lift up his eyes, when he beheld his son. He started back, pale and trembling. He turned his eyes on every side to find another victim to whom he was less tenderly allied, but it was too late ! His son sprang to him, and threw his arms around his neck ; but perceived, with astonishment, that instead of re- turning his caresses he stood motionless, and at length burst into tears. " ' O my father,' said he, ' what is the cause of this sorrow ? After so long an absence, art thou grieved to ret rn to thy people, and restore happiness to thy son ? In what, alas ! have I offended ? Thy eyes are still turned from me, as if they loathed or dreaded to behold me.' The father, overwhelmed with grief, was not yet able to reply. At length, heavily sigh- ing, he cried out : ' O Neptune, what have I promised thee ? On what condition hast thou preserved me from shipwreck ? Oh, leave me again to the billows and the rocks ! Let me be dashed to pieces, and swallowed up in the deep; but pre- serve my son. Cruel and unrelenting god ! let my blood be accepted as a recompense for his !' Speaking thus, he drew his sword, and attempted to plunge it in his bosom ; but those who stood near him held back his hand. " ' Sophronimus, a hoary prophet, who had long interpreted the will of the gods, assured him that Neptune might be satis- fied without the death .of his son. ' Your vow,' said he, ' was rash ; the gods are not honored, but offended by cruelty. Do not, then, add one enormity to another, and violate the laws f nature to accomplish that vow which it was a crime to make. Select a hundred bulls, whiter than snow ; decorate the altar of Neptune with flowers ; let these victims be thy blameles* TELEMACHUS. BOOK V. 227 offering, and let a cloud of grateful incense ascend in honor of the god.' " ' Idomeneus heard this address in an attitude of despera- tion, and without reply ; his eyes sparkled with fury, his visage became ghastly, his color changed every moment, and his whole body shook with the agony of his mind. His son was touched with his distress; and, having no wish but to relieve it, said : ' My father, here I am. Delay not to appease the god to whom thou hast vowed, nor bring down his ven- geance upon thy head. Since thy life can be redeemed with mine, I will die content. .Strike, then, O my father, and fear not that, at the approach of death, I shall show a weakness that is unworthy of thy son !' " ' At this moment, Idomeneus, starting from his posture with the sudden violence of phrensy, as if roused by the scourge of the infernal furies, surprised the vigilance of those who had their eyes upon him, and plunged his sword in the bosom of his son,' He drew it hastily back ; and, while it was yet warm, made an effort to sheath it a second time in his own breast ; but in this he was again prevented. " ' The youth, who immediately fell, lay weltering in his blood : his eyes were suffused with the shades of death ; he attempted to open them ; but, not being able to bear the light,* they were immediately closed in everlasting darkness. As a lily of the field, when its root is cut away by the ploughshare, being no longer supported by the stalk, languishes upon the ground ; and, though it does not immediately lose all the lustre of its beauty, yet is no more nourished by the earth, its life being extinguished, 1 so fell the son of Idomeneus, cut down like 1 This is taken from the commentary of Servius on the sEneid (iii. 121). ' The last mortal effort of poor Dido was, " with swimming eyes to seek the litfht of heaven." Virgil, jtSiuid, iv. 691. Voltaire and Delille hav mitated thia beautiful passage. ' " EuryaluBis overwhelmed in death, he blood flows down his beau- ieoiiH limbs, and on his shoulder* the drooping neck reclines: as when Durple flower, cut down by toe plough, pines away in death." Virgil, df.,ix.483. " AH if, in a well- watered garden, any one should break down violate, or 228 WORKS OF FENELON. a flower, by an untimely stroke, in the first bloom of 1m youth. " ' The father, stupefied by excess of grief, knew neither where he was, nor what he had done, nor what he ought to do, but walked with faltering steps towards the city, and inquired eagerly for his child. " ' In the mean time the people, who were moved with com- passion for the youth, and with horror at the cruelty of the lather, cried out, that the justice of the gods had given him up to the Furies. Rage supplied them with weapons ; one snatched a stick, another a stone, 1 and discord infused rancor and malignity into every bosom. The Cretans, however wise, were at this time exasperated to folly, and renounced their alle- giance to their king. His friends, therefore, as they could not otherwise preserve him from popular fury, conducted him back to the fleet, where they went on board with him, and once more committed themselves to the mercy of the waves. Ido- meneus, as soon as he recovered from his phrensy, thanked them for having forced him from a country which he had stained with the blood of his son ; and which, therefore, he could not bear to inhabit. The winds wafted them to the coast of Hes- peria ; and they are now forming a new State in the country of the Salentines.' " ' The Cretans, having thus lost their king, have resolved to elect such a person in his stead as shall administer the estab- poppies, and lilies, as they adhere to their yellow stalks; drooping, they would suddenly hang down their languid heads, and could not support themselves ; and would look towards the ground with their tops : so sink bis [Hyacinth us'] dying features ; and, forsaken by its vigor, the neck is a burden to itself, and reclines upon the shoulder." Ovid,.Metam., ix. 190. " Here on the rural couch aloft they raise the youth: like a flower, either :f the tender violet, or of the drooping hyacinth, cropped by a virgin's and, from which not the gay bloom, or its own fair form, hath yet de- nted." Virgil, jn., xi. 70. 1 " And as when a sedition has perchance arisen amcng a mighty miilti 'tide, and the minds of the ignoble vulgar rage; now firebrands, now Notice fly ; fury supplies them with arms." Virgil, jn., i. 150 Fenelon follows Virgil (^n., iii. 121 and 400). The city of Salentum iras in the south of Italy. TELEMACHUS. BOOK V. 229 dshed laws in their utmost purity. For this purpose, the prin cipal inhabitants of every city have been summoned hither. The sacrifices, which are the first solemnities of the election, are already begun ; the most celebrated sages of all the neigh- boring countries are assembled to propose questions to the can- didates, as a trial of their sagacity. Preparations are made for public games, to determine their courage, strength, and activity. The Cretans are resolved, that, as their kingdom is the prize, they will bestow it upon him only who shall be adjudged superior to all others both in body and in mind. To render the victory more difficult, by increasing the number of competi- tors, all foreigners are invited to the contest.' " Nausicrates, after having related these astonishing events, pressed us to enter the lists. ' Make haste,' said he, ' O strangers, to our assembly, and engage, among others, in the contest ; for if the gods decree the victory to either of you, he shall be the sovereign of Crete !' He then turned hastily from us ; and we followed him, not with any desire of victory, but only that we might gratify our curiosity, by being present at k leave of us with great tenderness, and embraced us as friends, with whom Ji<* WAS about to part for life. ' The gods,' dd he, ' are just ; they know that tho sacred bond of oui 246 WOKKS OF FENELON. friendship ts virtue ; and, therefore, they will hereafter restore us to each other ; and those happy fields, in which the just are said to enjoy everlasting rest, shall see our spirits reunited tc part no more. Oh, that my ashes also might be mingled with yours!' Here his words became inarticulate, and he burst into tears. Our eyes overflowed with equal tenderness and grief. " Our parting with Aristodemus was scarcely less affection- ate. ' As you have made me a king,' said he, ' remember the dangers to which you have exposed me. Request the gods to irradiate my mind with wisdom from above, and give me power over myself in proportion to my authority over others. May they conduct you in safety to your country, abase the insolence of your enemies, and give you the joy of beholding Ulysses again upon the throne of Ithaca, supremely happy in the pos- session of Penelope and peace. To thee, Telemachus, I have given a good vessel, well manned with mariners and soldiers, who may assist thee against the persecutors of thy mother. For thee, Mentor, thy wisdom is sufficient: possessing this, thou hast need of nothing : all that I can give would be super- fluous ; all that I can wish is precluded. Go, both of you, in peace ; and may you long be the felicity of each other ; re- member Aristodemus ; and if Ithaca should need the assist- ance of Crete, depend upon my friendship to the last hour of my life.' He then embraced us ; and we could not restrain our tears, while thanking him. "The wind, which now swelled our sails, promised us a happy voyage. Mount Ida already appeared but like a hillock, the shores of Crete in a short time totally disappeared, and the coast of Peloponnesus seemed to advance into the sea to meet us. But a tempest suddenly obscured the sky, and roised the billows of the deep. Night' rushed upon us una- wares, and death presented himself in all his terrors. It was thy awful trident, O Neptune, that agitated the ocean to it "Clouds enwrapped the day." Virgil, ^En., iii. 198. "Sable Nitfh its Irooding on the &a." Ibid., i. 89. TELEMACHU8. BOOK V. 247 remotest shores. 1 Venus, to revenge the contempt with wLich we had treated her, even in her temple at Cythera, hasted to the father of the floods, whom she addressed with a voice broken by grief, and her eyes swimming in tears (thus, at least, I have been informed by Mentor, who is acquainted with celestial things). ' Wilt thou suffer,' said she, ' these impious men to deride my power, and escape unpunished ? My power has been confessed by the gods themselves, and yet all that is done in my favorite island these presumptuous mortals have dared to condemn. They take pride in a frigid wisdom, never warmed by the rays of beauty ; and they despise, as folly, the delights of love. Hast thou forgotten that I was born in thy dominions ? Wherefore dost thou delay to overwhelm the wretches whom I abhor ?' " Neptune immediately swelled the waves into mountain*, that reached the skies ; and Venus, smiling upon the storm, believed our shipwreck to be inevitable. Our pilot cried out, in confusion and despair, that he could no longer withstand the fury of the winds, which drove us upon the rocks' with irresistible violence ; our mast was broken by a sudden gust ;* and the moment after we heard the points of the rocks that were under water tear open the bottom of our vessel. The water flowing in on every side, the vessel sunk, and the mari- ners sent up a cry of distress to heaven. I ran to Mentor, and, throwing my arms round him, said: 'Death is now indeed upon us ; let us meet him with intrepidity. The gods have Delivered us from so many dangers only that we may perish u this. Let us die then, my dear Mentor ; it is some consolrv- 1 " He [Neptune] collected the clouds, and disturbed the sea, taking his tridont in his hand." Homer, Odyttty, v. 291. 1 " The raging storm is Increasing, and the fierce winds wage war on every side, and stir up the furious main. The master of the ship is liim- tolf alarmed, and himself confesses that he does not know what is their present condition, nor what to order or forbid." Ovid, Metam., xi. 490. * " The sea is raging in a hurricane so vast, and all the sky is concealed noneath the shade brought on by the clouds of pitchy darkness, and the ice of night is redouble** in gloom. The mast is broken by tin violence >f the drenching tempest." Ibid., 549. 248 WORKS OF FENELON. lion to me that I die with you; and it would be hopele.:e labor to dispute life with the storm.' " Mentor answered : ' True courage never aits down inactive in despair. It is not enough to expect death with tranquillity ; we ought, without dreading the event, to continue our utmost efforts against it. Let us lay hold on some fragment of tho vessel ; and, while this affrighted and confused multitude deplore the loss of life, without attempting to preserve it, let us try at least to preserve our own.' While he was yet speak- ing, he snatched up an axe and divided the splinter that still held the broken mast together, which, falling across the vessel, had laid it on one side. The top of the mast already lay in the water ; and Mentor, now pushing off the other end, leaped 1 upon it himself in the midst of the waves, and, calling me by my name, encouraged me to follow him. As a mighty oak, when the winds combine against it, stands firm on its root, and its leaves 2 only are shaken by the tempest, so Mentor, who was not only fearless, but serene, appeared superior to the power of the winds and waves. I followed him ; and the force of his example who could have resisted ? " We steered ourselves upon the floating mast, which was more than sufficient to sustain us both, and therefore rendered us a most important service ; for if we had been obliged to swim merely by our own effort, our strength must have been exhausted. The mast, however, on which we sat, was often overwhelmed by the tempest, notwithstanding its bulk, so that we were often plunged under the water, which rushed in at our mouths, ears, and nostrils ; and it was not without the utmost labor and difficulty that we recovered our seat. Sometimes a wave that was swelled into a mountain rolled over us, and then we kept our hold with all our might, lest the mast, which ' Ulysses, in Homer (Odyss., v. 371), escapes in a similar way. 1 " And as the Alpine north-winds by their blasts, now on this Ride, now n that, strive with joint force to overturn a sturdy ancient oak, a louff cowling: goes forth, and the leaves strew the ground in heaps, while th 'runk is uhaken." V'rgil, jn. t iv. 441. TELEMACHTJ8. BOOK V. 249 was our only hope, should be driven from under us in the eh Dck. "While we were in this dreadful situation, Mentor, who possessed the same tranquillity on the fragment of a wreck that he does now on that bank of turf, addressed me in theso words : ' Canst thou believe, Telemachus, that the winds and waves are the arbiters of life and death ? Can they cause thee to perish otherwise that as they fulfil the command of heaven! Every event is determined by the gods ; let the gods, there- fore, and not the sea, be the object of thy fear. Wert thou already at the bottom of this abyss, the hand of Jove could draw thee forth ; or shouldst thou be exalted to the summit ol Olympus, and behold the stars rolling under thy feet, 1 the hand of Jove could again plunge thee into the deep, or cast thee headlong into hell.' I heard and admired this discourse ; but though it gave me some comfort, my mind was too much depressed and confused to reply. He saw me not, nor could I see him. We passed the whole night, shivering with cold, in a state between life and death, driving before the storm, and not knowing on what shore we should be cast. At length, however, the impetuosity of the wind began to abate ; and the sea resembled a person whose anger, after having been long indulged in tumult and outrage, is exhausted by its own vehe- mence, and subsides in murmurs and discontent. The noise of the surge gradually died away, and the waves were not higher than the ridges that are left by the plough. " And now Aurora threw open the gates of heaven to the un, and cheered us with the promise of a better day. The east glowed as if on fire ; and the stars, which had been so long hidden, just appeared, and fled at the approach of Phoe bus. We now descried land at a distance ; the breeze wafted us towards it, and hope revived in my bosom. But we looked round in vain for our companions, who probably resigned ' "Dnphnin, robod in white, admires the courts of heaven, to which lit aBtrangor, and under his feet beholds the clouds and stars.'' Virgil MU.. v. 58. 11 250 \VOKK8 OF FENELON. themselves to tue tempest in despair, and sunk with the vessel As we approached nearer to the shore, the sea drove us upon the rocks, against which we should have been dashed in pieces, but that we received the shock against the end of the mast, which Mentor rendered as serviceable upon this occasion as the best rudder could have been in the hands of the most skilful pilot. Thus, having passed the rocks in safety, we found the rest of the coast rising from the sea with a smooth and easy ascent ; and, floating at ease upon a gentle tide, we soon reached the sand with our feet. There we were discov- ered by thee, goddess, and by thee benignly received." HOOK VI. admires Telemachns for his adventures, and exerts all he' powji to detain him in her island, by inciting him to return her passion ; but he is sustained by the wisdom and friendship of Mentor, as well against her artifices as against the power of Cupid, whom Venus sends to her Assistance. Telemachus, however, and Eucharis become mutually enam- ored of each other, which provokes Calypso first to jealousy, and then to rage. She swears, by the Styx, that Telemachns shall leave her island, and engages Mentor to build a ship to take him back to Ithaca. She ia consoled by Cupid, who excites the nymphs to burn the vessel which had been built by Mentor, while Mentor was laboring to get Telemachus onboard. Telemachus is touched with a secret joy at this event. Men- tor, who perceives it, throws him from a rock into the sea, and leupa after him, that they may swim to another vessel which appeared not far distant from the shore. WHEN Telemachus had concluded the relation of his adven- tures, the nymphs, whose eyes had till then been immovably fixed upon him, looked at each other with a mixture of aston- ishment and delight. " What men," said they, " are these I In the fortunes of whom else would the gods have taken part ; and of whom else could such wonders have been related ? Ulysses is already surpassed in eloquence, in wisdom, and in courage, by his son. What an aspect ! what manly beauty ! what a mixture of dignity and complaisance, of firmness and modesty ! If he was not known to be born of a mortal, he might easily be mistaken for a god for Bacchus, for Mercury, or perhaps, even for Apollo himself ! l But who is this Men- tor ? His first appearance is that of a man obscurely born, and of a mean condition ; but when he is examined with at- 1 " What think you of this wondrous guest who has come to our abodes ! In mien how graceful I in manly fortitude and warlike 'deeds how great I am fully persuaded (nor is my belief groundless) that he is the offspring if the godi." Virgil, ^n. iv., 10. 5J52 WORKS OF FEKELON. tention, something inexpressible is discovered, something that is more than mortal !" Calypso heard these exclamations with a confusion she could not hide ; her eyes were incessantly glancing from Mentor to Telemachus, and from Telemachus to Mentor. She was often about to request a repetition of the story to which she had listened with so much delight, and as often suppressed her de &ire. At length she rose hastily from her seat, and, taking Telemachus with her, retired to a neighboring grove of myrtle, where she labored with all her art to learn from him whether Mentor was not a deity concealed under a human form. It was not, however, in the power of Telemachus to satisfy her curiosity ; for Minerva, who accompanied him in the likeness of Mentor, thought him too young to be trusted with the se- cret, and made the confidant of her designs. She was, besides, desirous to prove him in the greatest dangers ; and no forti- tude would have been necessary to sustain him against any evil, however dreadful and however near, if he had known himself to be under the immediate protection of Minerva. As Telemachus, therefore, mistook his divine companion for Men- tor, all the artifices of Calypso to discover what she wished to know were ineffectual. In the mean time the nymphs who had been left with Mentor gathered round him, and amused themselves by asking him questions. One inquired the particulars of his journey into Ethiopia ; another desired to know what he had seen at Da- mascus ; and a third asked him whether he had kri^wn Ulys- ses before the siege of Troy. Mentor answered chem all with complaisance and a'ffability ; and though he used no studied ornaments of speech, yet his expression was not only signifi- cant but graceful. The return of Calypso soon put an end to this conversation : her nymphs then began to gather flowers, and to sing for the unusement of Telemachus ; and she took Mentor aside, thai 1 " An i, fond even to madness, begs again to hear the Trojan disaster* ad agaio hangs on the speaker's lips." Virgil, ^n., iv. 78. TELEMACBU8. BOOK VI. 253 she might, if possible, discover who he was from his own dis- course. The words of Calypso were wont to steal upon the heart, as sleep steals upon the eyes of the weary, with a sweet and gentle though irresistible influence ; but in Mentor there was something which defeated her eloquence and eluded her beauty something as much superior to the power of Calypso as the rock that hides its foundation in the earth, and its sum mit in the clouds, is superior to the wind that beats against it. He stood immovable 1 in the purposes of his own wisdom, and suffered the goddess to exert all her arts against him with the utmost indifference and security. Sometimes he would let her deceive herself with the hope of having embarrassed him by her questions, and betrayed him into the involuntary dis- covery of himself; but, just as she thought her curiosity waa on the point of being gratified, her expectations were suddenly disappointed, all her conjectures were overthrown, and, bj Borne short and unexpected answer, she was again overwhelmed in perplexity and doubt. In this manner Calypso passed one day after another ; some- times endeavoring to gain the heart of Telemachus by flattery, and sometimes laboring to alienate him from Mentor, of whom >he no longer hoped to obtain the intelligence she desired. She employed her most beautiful nymphs to inflame the breast of the young hero with desire, and she was assisted in her designs against him by a deity whose power was superior to her own. Venus burned with resentment against Mentor and Telema- chus, for having treated the worship which she received at Cyprus with disdain ; and their escape from the tempeat, which had been raised against them by Neptune, filled her breast with indignation and grief. She therefore complained of her disappointment and her wrongs to Jupiter, and from bis supe- 1 " He [stands firm] firm as a rock that projects into the vast cxean, ob- noxious to the fury of the winds, at. 1 exposed to the main, and endures Ul the violence and threatening^ o ' the sky and sea, it.-ulf remaining un- moved." Virgil, jn. t x. C98. 254 WORKS OF FENELOW. rior power she hoped more effectual redress. But the father of the gods only smiled at her complaint ; and, without ac- quainting her that Telemachus had been preserved by Minerva in the likeness of Mentor, he left her at liberty to gratify her resentment as she could. The goddess immediately quitted Olympus ; and thoughtless of all the rich perfumes that were rising from her altars at Cythera, Idalia, and Paphos, mounted her chariot, and called her son. The grief which was diffused over her countenance rather increased than diminished her beauty, and she addressed the god of love in these terms : " Who, my son, shall henceforth burn incense upon our altars, 1 if those who despise our power escape unpunished ? The wretches who have thus offended with impunity are before thee ; make haste, therefore, to secure our honor, and let thy arrows pierce them to the heart : go down with me to that island, and I will speak to Calypso." The goddess shook the reins as she spoke ; and, gliding through the air, surrounded by a cloud which the sun had tinged with a golden hue, she presented herself before Calypso, who was sitting pensive and alone by the side of a fountain, at some distance from her grotto. " Unhappy goddess !" said she, " thou hast already been despised and deserted by Ulysses, whom the ties, not only of love, but of gratitude should have bound to thee ; and the son, yet more obdurate than the father, is now preparing to repeat the insult. But love comes in person to avenge thee ; I will leave him with thee ; and he shall remain among the nymphs of this island as Bacchus did once among those of the island of Naxos, 2 who cherished him in his infancy. Telemachus will regard him, not as a deity, but as a child ; and, not being on his guard against him, will be too sensible of his power." The " And who will henceforth adore Juno's divinity, or humbly offer sac- rifices on \~er altars ?" ^n., i. 48. * One of the Cvclades, in the ^Egean sea, and especially celebrated fo te wine. rELEMACHUS. 'BOOK VI. 255 Queen of Beauty, then turning from Calypso, ' reascended to Olympus in the golden cloud from which she had alighted upon the earth, and left behind her a train of celestial fra- grance, 1 which, expanding by degrees, filled all the groves of Calypso with perfumes. Cupid remained in the arms of Calypso. Though she was herself a deity, yet she felt his fires diffused in her breast. It happened that a nymph, whose name was Eucharis, was now near her, and Calypso put the boy into her arms. This was a present relief; but, alas ! it was purchased too dear. The boy seemed at first to be harmless, gentle, lovely, and engaging His playful caresses and perpetual smiles might well have persuaded all about him that he was born only to delight ; but the moment the heart is open to his endearments, it feels that they have a malignant power. He is, beyond conception, deceitful and malicious; his caresses have no view but to betray ; and his smiles have no cause, but the mischiefs that he has perpetrated, or that he meditates. But, with all his power and all his subtlety, he did not dare to approach Mentor. In Mentor there was a severity of virtue that intimidated and kept him at a distance ; he knew also, by a secret sensation, that this inscrutable stranger could not be wounded by his arrows. The nymphs, indeed, were soon sen- sible of his power ; but the wound which they could not cure, they were very careful to conceal. In the mean time, Telemachus, who saw the boy playing sometimes with one of these nymphs and sometimes with an- other, was surprised at his sweetness and beauty. He some- Limes pressed him to his bosom, sometimes set him on his knee, and frequently took him in his arms. It was not long Defore he became sensible of a certain disquietude, of which he eould not discover the cause ;* and the more he endeavored to " She spoke, and shed around the liquid odor of ambrosia." Virgil, ffeorgict, iv. 415. * " She clings to him with her eyes, with her wnole soul, and sometime* fondles him in her lap, Dido not thinking what a powerful god is settling n her, hapless one." ^n. t i. 717. 256 WORKS OF FENELON. remove it by innocent amusements, the more restless and ener- vated he grew. " The nymphs of Calypso," said he to Mentor " are very different from the women of Cyprus, whose indecent oehavior rendered them disgusting in spite of their charms. In these immortal beauties there is an innocence, a modesty a simplicity, which it is impossible not to admire and love.'* The youth blushed as he spoke, though he knew not why. He could neither forbear speaking, nor go on with his dis- course, 1 which was interrupted and incoherent, always obscure, and sometimes quite unintelligible. " O Telemachus," said Mentor to him, " the dangers to which you were exposed in the isle of Cyprus were nothing in comparison with those which you do not now suspect. Vice, when it is undisguised, never fails to excite horror; we are indignant at the wanton who has thrown off all restraint ; but our danger is much greater when the appearance of modesty remains ; we then persuade ourselves that virtue only has excited our love, and give ourselves up to a deceitful passion, of which beauty is indeed the object, and which we seldom learn to distrust till it is too strong to be subdued. Fly, there- fore, dear Telemachus, from these fatal beauties, who appear to be virtuous, only that they may deceive the confidence they raise ; fly from the dangers to which you are here exposed by your youth ; but, above all, fly from this boy, whom you do not dread only because you do not know him. This boy is Cupid, whom his mother has brought into this island to punish us for treating her worship at Cyprus with contempt ; he has already pierced the heart of Calypso, who is enamored of you ; he has inflamed all the beauties of her train ; and his fires have reached even thy breast, unhappy youth, although thou knowest it not !" Telemachus often interrupted Mentor during this admoni- tion, " Why," said he, " should we not continue in this island Ulysses is no longer a sojourner upon the earth ; he has, M ith : "She begins to speak, and scops short in the middle of a word." ^En. TELEMACHU8. BOOK VI. 257 out doubt, been long buried in the deep: Penelope, after waiting in vain, not only for his return, but for mine, must have yielded to the importunities of some fortunate suitor among the number that surrounds her, especially as it can scarcely be supposed but that her father Icarus must have exerted his paternal authority to oblige her to accept another husband. For what, then, can I return to Ithaca, but to see her disgraced by a new alliance, and be witness to the viola- tion of that truth which she plighted to my father? And if Penelope has thus forgotten Ulysses, it cannot be thought that he is remembered by the people. Neither, indeed, can we hope to get alive into the island ; for her suitors will certainly have placed, at every port, a band of ruffians, to cut us off at our return." " All that you have said," replied Mentor, " is only another proof that you are under the influence of a foolish and fatal passion. You labor with great subtlety to find every argument that can favor it, and to avoid all those by which it would be condemned. You are ingenious only to deceive yourself, and to secure forbidden pleasures from the intrusion of remorse. Have you forgotten that the gods themselves have inter- posed to favor your return ? Was not your escape from Sicily supernatural ? Were not the misfortunes that you suffered in Egypt converted into sudden and unexpected prosperity ? and were not the dangers which threatened you at Tyre averted by an invisible hand ? Is it possible that, after so many mira- cles, you should still doubt to what end you have been pre- served ? But why do I remonstrate ? Of the good fortune that was designed for thee, thou art unworthy. As for myself, I make no doubt but I shall find means to quit this island ; and if here thou art determined to stay, here am I determined to leave thee. In this place let the degenerate son of the great Ulyssea hide himself among women, in the shameful obscurity of voluptuousness and sloth ; and stoop, even in spite of heaven, to that which his father disdained." This reproach, so forcible and so keen, pierced Telemarhus o the heart. lie was me'ted with tenderness and grief ; but 258 WORKS OF FENELON. his gnef was mingled with shame, and his shame with fear, He dreaded the resentment of Mentor, and the loss of that companion to whose sagacity and kindness he was so much indebted. But, at the same time, the passion which had just taken possession of his breast, and to which he was himself a stranger, made him still tenacious of his purpose. " What !" said he to Mentor, with tears in his eyes, " do you reckon as nothing that immortality which I may now share with Calyp- so ?" " I hold as nothing," replied Mentor, " all that is con- trary to the dictates of virtue and to the commands of heaven. Virtue now calls you back to your country, to TJlysses, and to Penelope. Virtue forbids you to give up your heart to an un- worthy passion. The gods, who have delivered you from so many dangers, that your name might not be less illustrious than that of Ulysses, command you to quit this island. Only the tyranny of love can detain you here. Immortality ! alas, what is immortality without liberty, without virtue, and with- out honor ? Is it not a state of misery without hope still more deplorable, as it can never end ?" To this expostulation Telemachus replied only by sighs. Sometimes he almost wished that Mentor would force him from the island in spite of himself; sometimes he was impa- tient to be left behind, that he might be at liberty to gratify hia wishes without fearing to be reproached for his weakness. A thousand different wishes and desires maintained a perpetual conflict in his breast, and were predominant by turns. His mind, therefore, was like the sea when agitated by contending winds. Sometimes he threw himself on the ground near the sea, and remained a long time extended motionless on the beach ; sometimes he hid himself in the gloomy recesses of a wood, where he wept in secret, and uttered loud and passionate complaints. His body had become emaciated ; his eyes had grown hollow and eager ; he was pale and dejected, and in every respect so much altered as scarcely to be known. Hif beauty, his sprightliness, and his vigor had forsaken him. All foe grace and dignity of his deportment were lost, and life itsel 4 iuffered by a swift but silent decay. As a flower that blooms TELEMACHUS. BOOK VI. 259 In the morning, fills the air with fragrance, and then gradu- ally fades at the approach of night, loses the vivid brightness of its colors, droops, withers, and at length falls with its own weight, BO the son of Ulysses was sinking insensibly into the grave. Mentor, perceiving that Telemachus could not resist the vio- lence of his passion, had recourse to an artifice, which he hoped might preserve him from its most pernicious effects. He had remarked that Calypso was enamored of Telemachus, and Telemachus of Eucharis ; for, as Cupid is always busy to give pain under the appearance of pleasure, it seldom happens that we are loved by those whom we love. He therefore resolved to make Calypso jealous. It having been agreed between Eucharis and Telemachus that they should go out together a hunting, Mentor took that opportunity to alarm her. " I have observed," said he, " that Telemachus has of late been more fond of the chase than I ever knew before ; he seems now to take pleasure in nothing else, and is in love only with moun- tains and forests. Is the chase also thy favorite pleasure, O goddess ? and has he caught this ardor from thee ?" Calypso was so stung by this question, that she could neither dissemble her emotion nor hide the cause. "This Telema- chus," said she, " whose heroic virtues despised the pleasures that were offered him in the isle of Cyprus, has not been able to withstand the charms of one of my nymphs, who is not remarkable for beauty. How did he dare to boast of having achieved so many wonders ? he, whom luxury has rendered sordid and effeminate, and who seems to have been intended by nature only for a life of indolence and obscurity among women !" Mentor observed with pleasure that Calypso suf fercd great anguish from her jealousy, and therefore said nothing more to inflame it at that time, lest she should suspect his design ; but he assumed a look that expressed dejection and concern. The goddess manifested, without reserve, her uneasi- ness at all she saw, and incessantly entertained him with new complaints. The hunting-match, to which Mentor had called aer attention, exasperated her beyond all bounds. She knew that Telemachus had nothing in view bul to draw Eucharii 260 AVURK8 OF FENELON. fron: the rest of the nymphs, that he might speak to her in private. A second hunting-match was proposed soon after- wards, and Calypso knew that it was intended for the same purpose as the first. In order to disconcert the plans of Te- lemachus, she declared she would be of the party. But, her emotion being too violent to be concealed, she suddenly broke out into this reproachful expostulation : " Is it thus, then, presumptuous boy, that thou hast made my dominions an asylum from the resentment of Neptune and the righteous vengeance of the gods ? Hast thou entered thia island, which mortals are forbidden to approach, only to defy my power and despise my love ? Hear me, ye gods of the celestial and infernal world, let the sufferings of an injured deity awaken your vengeance! Overtake this perfidious, this ungrateful, this impious mortal, with swift destruction ! Since thy obduracy and injustice are greater than thy father's, may thy sufferings also be longer and more severe ! May thy coun- try be forever hidden from thy eyes, that wretched, that des- picable country, which, in the folly of thy presumption, thou hast, without a blush, preferred to immortality with me ! or rather, mayst thou perish, when in the distant horizon it first rises before thee ! mayst thou then, plunged in the deep, be driven back, the sport of the waves, and cast lifeless upon these sands, which shall deny thee burial ! May my eyes see the vultures devour thee ! they shall see them, and she whom thou lovest shall see them also ; she shall see them with de- spair and anguish, and her misery shall be my delight !" While Calypso was thus speaking, her whole countenance was suffused with rage : there was a gloomy fierceness in her looks, which continually hurried from one object to another. Her lips trembled, a livid circle surrounded them ; and her color, which was sometimes pale as death, changed every momeni, Her tears, which she had been used to shed in great plenty, now ceased to flow, as if despair and rage had dried up their aource ;' and her voice was hoarse, tremulous, and interrupted 1 " Then neither is my mind firm, nor does my color maintain a cer TELEMACHUS. BOOK VI. Mentor remarked all the changes of her emotions, but said aothing more to Telemachus. He treated him as a man in- fected with an incurable disease, to whom it was in vain tc administer remedies ; but he frequently regarded him with a look that strongly expressed his compassion. Telemachus was sensible of his weakness, and conscious that he was unworthy of the friendship of Mentor. He kept his eyes fixed upon the ground, not daring to look up, lest he should meet those of his monitor, by whose very silence he was condemned. He was often ready to throw himself upon his neck, and at once confess and renounce his folly ; but he was sometimes restrained by a false shame, and sometimes by a consciousness that his profession would not be sincere, and by a secret fondness for a situation which, though he knew it to be dangerous, was yet so pleasing, that he could not resolve to quit it. In the mean time the deities of Olympus kept their eyes fixed, in silent suspense, upon the island of Calypso, to see the issue of this contest between Venus and Minerva. Cupid, who like a playful child had been caressed by all the nymphs in their turns, had set every breast on fire. Minerva, under the form of Mentor, had availed herself of that jealousy which is inseparable from love, to preclude its effects ; and Jupiter re- Bolved to sit neuter between them. Eucharis, who feared that Telemachus might escape from her chains, practised a thousand arts to detain him. She was now ready to go out with him to the second chase, as had been agreed upon between them, and had dressed herself like Diana. The deities of love and beauty had, by a mutual ef- fort, improved her charms, which were now superior even to those of Calypso. Calypso beheld her at a distance ; and, see- ing her own reflection also in a fountain near which she stood, the comparison filled her with grief and shame. She hid her- cuin situation : and the involuntary tears glide down my cheek, proT- in? with what lingering flames I m.. inwardly consumed.'' Il< noe, I, Od. xiii. 262 WOKK8 OF FENELON. clf n the innermost recess of her grotto, and gave herself up to these reflections : " I have then vainly endeavored to interrupt the pleasure oi these lovers, by declaring that I will go with them to the chase. Shall I still go ? Alas ! shall I be a foil to her beauties ? tnalJ I increase her triumph and his passion ? Wretch that I am ! what have I done ? I will not go, nor shall they : I know well how to prevent them. If I entreat Mentor to quit the island with his friend, he will immediately conduct him to Ithaca. But what do I say? When Telemachus is gone, what will become of Calypso ? WTiere am I ? what shall I do ? cruel Venus ! Venus, thou hast deceived me ! thou hast betrayed me with a fatal gift ! Pernicious boy ! I opened my heart to thee, seduced by the pleasing hope that thou wouldst introduce felicity ; but thou hast perfidiously filled it with anguish and despair. My nymphs have combined against me, and my divinity serves only to perpetuate my sufferings. Oh that I could put an end to my being and my sufferings to- gether ! But I cannot die, and therefore, Telemachus, thou shalt not live. I will revenge myself of thy ingratitude ; thy nymph shall be the witness of thy punishment : in her pres- ence will I strike thee to the heart. But I rave. unhappy Calypso, what wouldst thou do ? Wouldst thou destroy the guiltless youth whom thou hast already made wretched ? It is 1 that have kindled, in the chaste bosom of Telemachus, a guilty flame. How pure was his innocence, and how uniform his virtue ! how noble his detestation of vice, how heroic his disdain of inglorious pleasure ! Why did I taint so immacu- late a breast ? He would have left me, alas ! And must he not leave me now ? or, since he lives but for my rival, if he stays, must he not stay only to despise me ? But I have mer- ited the misery that I suffer. Go then, Telemachus ; again let the seas divide us : go, and leave Calypso without consolation, unable to sustain the burden of life, unable to lay it down ic the grave. Leave me, without consolation, overwhe.med with shame, and despoiled of hope, the victim of remoise, and the scorn of Eucharis." TELEHACHUS. BOOK VI. 263 Thus she spoke alone in the obscurity of her grotto ; but the next moment, starting suddenly from her seat, she ran out with a furious impetuosity, and cried out : " Where art thou, Mentor? Is it thus that thy wisdom sustains Telemachua against the mischief that is even now ready to overwhelm him ? Thou sleepest while love is vigilant against thee. I can bear this slothful indifference no longer. Wilt thou always see the son of Ulysses dishonor his birth, and forego the advantages of his fortune, with this negligent tranquillity ! It is to thy care, and not mine, that his friends have committed him ; wilt thou, then, sit idle while I am busy for his preserva- tion ? The remotest part of this forest abounds in tall poplars, of which a commodious vessel may easily be built ; in that place Ulysses himself built the vessel in which he set sail from this island. In that place you will find a deep cave, which r/ontains all the implements that are necessary for the work." She had no sooner given Mentor this intelligence than she repented of it ; but he lost not a moment to improve it. He hastened immediately to the cave, found the implements, felled the trees, and in one day constructed a vessel fit for the sea ; for, to Minerva, a short time was sufficient for a great work. Calypso, in the mean time, suffered the most tormenting anxiety and suspense. She was impatient to know what Mentor would do in consequence of her information, and unable to bear the thought of leaving Telemachus and Eucharis at full liberty, by quitting the chase. Her jealousy would not permit her to lose sight of the lovers, and therefore she con- trived to lead the hunters towards that part of the forest where she supposed Mentor would be at work. She soon thought she heard the strokes of the axe and the mallet ; she listened, *nd every blow that she heard made her tremble ; yet she was distracted in the very moment of attention by her fears, that some amorous intimation, some sigh or some glance, between Teiemachus and Eucharis, might escape her notice. Eucharis, at the same time, thought fit to rally her lover ' Are you not afraid," said she, " that Mentor will chide you for going to the chae without him ? What a pity it is that WORKS OF FENELuN. you have so severe a master! He has an austerity that nothing can soften ; he affects to despise pleasure himself and therefore interdicts it to you, not excepting the most innocent amusements. It might, indeed, be proper for you to submit to his direction before you were able to govern yourself ; but after you have given such proofs of wisdom, you ought no longer to suffer yourself to be treated like a child." This subtle reproach stung Telemachus to the heart : he felt a secret indignation against Mentor, and an impatient desire to throw off his yoke, yet he was still afraid to see him ; and his mind was in such agitation that he made the nymph no reply. The hunt, during which all parties had felt equal constraint and uneasiness, being now over, they returned home by that part of the forest where Mentor had been all day at work. Calypso saw the vessel finished at a distance : a thick cloud, like the shades of death, fell instantly upon her eyes. Her knees trembled, she was covered with a cold sweat, 1 and obliged to support herself by leaning on the nymphs that sur- rounded her ; among whom Eucharis pressing to assist her, she pushed her back with a frown of indignation and disdain. Telemachus, who saw the vessel, but not Mentor, who had finished his work, and had retired, asked Calypso to whom it belonged, and for what purpose it was intended ? She could not answer him immediately ; but at length she told him it was to send away Mentor, whom she had directed to build it for that purpose. " You," said she, " shall be no longer distressed by the austerity of that severe censor, who opposes your happi- ness, and would become jealous of your immortality." " To send away Mentor !" said Telemachus. " If he forsakes me I am undone ; if he forsakes me, whom shall I have left, Eucharis, but thee ?" Thus, in the unguarded moment of sur- prise and love, the secret escaped him in words, which his heart prompted, and of which he did not consider tho import, He discovered his indiscretion the moment it was too late ; the jphole company was struck dumb with confusion ; Eucharij "Then a cold sweat flowed over my whole body." ^n. t iii. 175. TELEMACHUS. BOOK VI. 265 blushed, and, fixing her eyes upon the ground, stood behind the crowd, not daring to appear. But, though shame glowed upon her cheek, joy revelled at her heart. Telemachus so far lost his recollection that he scarcely knew what he had done : the whole appeared to him like a dream, but it was like a dream of confusion and trouble. Calypso instantly quitted the place ; and, transported with rage, made her way through the forest with a hasty and dis- ordered pace, following no track, and not knowing whither sho was going. At length, however, she found herself at the en- trance of her grotto, where Mentor was waiting her return- "Begone," said she, "from this island, O stranger, who art come hither only to interrupt rrj peace! Begone, thou hoary dotard, with that infatuated boy, and be assured that, if he is found another hour within my dominions, thou shalt know the power of a deity to punish. I will see him no more, nor will I suffer my uymphs to have any further intercourse with him. This I swear by the waters of the Styx, an oath at which the inhabitants of eternity tremble. 1 But thou, Telem- achus, shalt know that thy sufferings are yet but begun. I dismiss thee from this island, but it is only to new misfortunes ; I will be revenged, and thou shalt regret the abuse of my bounty in vain. Neptune still resents the injury which he received from thy father in Sicily, 2 and solicited by Venus, *hose worship thou hast since despised in the isle of Cyprus, he is now preparing to excite new tempests against thee. Thou shalt see thy father, who is not dead ; but, when thou seest him, thou shalt not know him. Thou shalt meet him in Ithaca, but thou shalt first suffer the severest persecutions of fortune. Begone ! I conjure the celestial deities to revenge me ! Mayst thou be suspended in the middle of the deep, by the rag of some solitary and naked rock : there may the thunder 1 " Ani the Stygian Lake, by whose divinity the gods dread to swear n