Eminent literary and scientific men of France.

Date:
1838-1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eminent literary and scientific men of France. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Gascon — lively, insinuating, and ambitious. Gassendi could not resist his efforts to get admitted as his pupil; and his quickness and excellent memory rendered him an apt scholar. Chapelle himself, the friend after- wards of Boileau and of all the literati of Paris, a writer of songs, full of grace, sprightliness, and ease, displayed talent, but at the same time gave tokens of that heedless, gay, and unstable character that followed him through life, and occasioned his father, instead of making him his heir as he intended, to leave him merely a slight annuity, over which he had no con- trol. Bernier became afterwards a great eastern tra- veller. ] 641. Immediately on leaving college Poquelin entered on iEtat. his service of royal valet de chambre. Louis XIII. J9. made a journey to Narhonne; and he attended instead of his father.* This journey is only remarkable from the public events that were then taking place. Louis XIII. and cardinal de Richelieu had marched into Rousillon to complete the conquest of that province from the house of Austria — both monarch and minister were dying. The latter discovered the conspiracy of Cinq- Mars, the unfortunate favourite of the king, and had seised on him and his innocent friend De Thou — they were condemned to death ; and conveyed from Tarras- con to Lyons in a boat, which was towed by the cardinal’s barge in advance. Terror at the name of the cardinal, contempt for the king, and anxiety to Vatch the wasting illnesses of both, occupied the court: the passions of men were excited to their height; and the young and ardent youth, fresh from the schools of philosophy, witnessed a living drama, more highly wrought than any that a mimic stage could represent. * Biographers are apt to invent, if they cannot discover the causes of even trifling events. That the son replaced the father on this occasion, made the elder biographers state that the latter was prevented by his ad- vanced age. Beffara has discovered that the grandfather of Moliere mar- ried ilth July, 1594, consequently that the father could not be more than forty-six years of age in 1641. A thousand reasons may be found for the substitution of the son. The aversion that Parisians have for travelling might suffice — the large motherless family that the elder Poquelin must leave behind, or a wish to introduce his son to the notice of the king, &c.
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