[599] The original has entêtement, “infatuation,” “obstinacy,” which sometimes meant “enthusiasm,” as in Molièreʼs Femmes Savantes, act iii. scene 2, “Jʼaime la poésie avec entêtement.”
[600] Our author adds in a note, “a pretended pious person.”
[601] The original has pétitoire et possessoire, printed in italics.
[602] M. Terentius Varro (116-26 B.C.) was considered one of the most learned among the Romans. His principal works are De re rustica and De Lingua latina.
[603] This is an allusion to Quinault (see page [28], note 99), whose tragedies were all bad, but whose operas were considered well written. (See page [175], note 366.) He died in 1688, one year before the appearance of this paragraph.
[604] J. Chapelain (1595-1674), the author of La Pucelle dʼOrléans, an epic poem of which only twelve cantos appeared, was the wealthiest of all the authors of his time. Rodogune, Princesse des Parthes, one of the most successful tragedies of Pierre Corneille, had been acted in 1644, and this great dramatist died in poverty and want twenty years later, at the age of seventy-eight, four years before the above paragraph was published.
[605] Bathyllus is Le Basque or Pécourt (see page [67], note 167); the names of several long-forgotten female dancers or singers are given for Rhoe, Roscia—the feminised name of the celebrated Roman actor Roscius—and Nerina.
[606] An allusion to the wife of Dancourt (1661-1725), an author and comic actor, who is, as an actress, said to have been neither beautiful nor excellent.
[607] According to the “Keys,” the actor referred to was Baron (see page [67], note 167), or Champmeslé (1642-1701), an author and actor, and the husband of a lady known to posterity as a friend of the poet Racine.
[608] The Cardinal dʼEstrées (1628-1714) was a member of the French Academy: his nephew, the Marshal, was considered a learned and polished gentleman. There were several magistrates of the name of Séguier, of whom the best known is the Chancellor Séguier (1588-1672). The Duke de Montausier, the former governor of the Dauphin, the husband of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, and the supposed original of Molièreʼs Misanthrope, was still alive when his name appeared, but died about a year later, in 1690. The Duke de Chevreuse, afterwards Duke de Luynes (1620-1690), an author of moral and religious works, was a friend of the Port-Royalists. The first President of the Parliament, Potier de Novion, was a member of the Academy, and died in 1693. There were two Lamoignons—the first, President of the Parliament, who died in 1677, and his son, Chrétien François, président à mortier, the friend of Boileau and Racine, who lived till 1709. Paul Pellisson (1624-1693), the friend and defender of Fouquet, became perpetual secretary to the French Academy, of which he wrote a history, and was considered the ugliest man of his time. M. de la Bruyère adds in a footnote, that in speaking of Scudéry, he meant Mademoiselle Scudéry, to distinguish her from her brother Georges, also an author; this lady wrote a good many novels then in vogue (see page [123], note 229), and died in 1701, more than ninety years old. For de Harlay see page [237], note 470; for Bossuet see page [47], note 128; and for Wardes or Vardes see page [197], note 405.