[Lespinasse], a French lady, born in Lyons, famous for her wit, to whom D'Alembert was much attached, and the centre of a learned circle in Paris in her time (1731-1776).
[Lesseps, Ferdinand de], French diplomatist, born at Versailles; conceived the scheme of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean in 1854, and saw it finished as the Suez Canal in 1869; projected a similar scheme for a canal at Panama, but it ended in failure, disgrace, and ruin to the projectors as well as others (1805-1894).
[Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim], a German author, and founder of modern German literature, born at Kamenz, Saxony, son of the pastor there; sent to study theology at Leipzig, studied hard; conceived a passion for the stage; wrote plays and did criticisms; wrote an essay on Pope; took English authors as his models, revolted against those of France; made it his aim to inaugurate or rather revive a purely German literature, and produced examples regarded as classics to this day; his principal dramas, all conceived on the soil, are "Miss Sara Sampson," "Mina von Barnhelm," "Emilia Galotti," and "Nathan der Weise," and his principal prose works are his "Fables" and "Laocoon," a critical work on art still in high repute (1729-1781).
[L'Estrange, Sir Roger], a zealous Royalist, born in Norfolk; was for his zeal in the royal cause committed to prison; having escaped, he was allowed to live in retirement under Cromwell, but woke up a vigorous pamphleteer and journalist in the old interest at the Restoration, "wounding his Whig foes very sorely, and making them wince"; he translated Josephus, Cicero's "Offices," Seneca's "Morals," the "Colloquies" of Erasmus, and Quevedo's "Visions," his most popular work (1616-1704).
[Lethe] (i. e. oblivion), in the Greek mythology a stream in the nether world, a draught of the waters of which, generally extended to the ghosts of the dead on their entrance into Pluto's kingdom, obliterated all recollection of the past and its sorrows.
[Leto] (i. e. the hidden one), one of the Titan brood, who became by Zeus the mother of Apollo and Artemis, and for whose confinement, in her persecution by Hera, Poseidon by a stroke of his trident fixed the till then floating island of Delos to the sea-bottom.
[Letter of Marque], a commission to the captain of a merchant ship or a privateer to make reprisals on an enemy's ships or property.
[Letters Patent], a document under seal of the government granting some special privilege to a person.
[Lettres de Cachet] (i. e. sealed letters), warrants of imprisonment, issued prior to the Revolution, sealed with the private seal of the king, in contradistinction from lettres patentées, which were sealed by the Great Seal of the kingdom. See [Cachet, Lettre de].
[Leucippus], a Greek philosopher of the 6th century B.C., the founder of the Atomic theory of things, of which [Democritus] (q. v.) was the chief expounder.