LESSON (through Fr. leçon from Lat. lectio, reading; legere, to read), properly a certain portion of a book appointed to be read aloud, or learnt for repetition, hence anything learnt or studied, a course of instruction or study. A specific meaning of the word is that of a portion of Scripture or other religious writings appointed to be read at divine service, in accordance with a table known as a “lectionary.” In the Church of England the lectionary is so ordered that most of the Old Testament is read through during the year as the First Lesson at Morning and Evening Prayer, and as the Second Lesson the whole of the New Testament, except Revelation, of which only portions are read. (See [Lection] and [Lectionary].)
LESTE, a desert wind, similar to the Leveche (q.v.), observed in Madeira. It blows from an easterly direction in autumn, winter and spring, rarely in summer, and is of intense dryness, sometimes reducing the relative humidity at Funchal to below 20%. The Leste is commonly accompanied by clouds of fine red sand.
L’ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER (1616-1704), English pamphleteer on the royalist and court side during the Restoration epoch, but principally remarkable as the first English man of letters of any distinction who made journalism a profession, was born at Hunstanton in Norfolk on the 17th of December 1616. In 1644, during the civil war, he headed a conspiracy to seize the town of Lynn for the king, under circumstances which led to his being condemned to death as a spy. The sentence, however, was not executed, and after four years’ imprisonment in Newgate he escaped to the Continent. He was excluded from the Act of Indemnity, but in 1653 was pardoned by Cromwell upon his personal solicitation, and lived quietly until the Restoration, when after some delay his services and sufferings were acknowledged by his appointment as licenser of the press. This office was administered by him in the spirit which might be expected from a zealous cavalier. He made himself notorious, not merely by the severity of his literary censorship, but by his vigilance in the suppression of clandestine printing. In 1663 (see [Newspapers]) he commenced the publication of the Public Intelligencer and the News, from which eventually developed the famous official paper the London Gazette in 1665. In 1679 he again became prominent with the Observator, a journal specially designed to vindicate the court from the charge of a secret inclination to popery. He discredited the Popish Plot, and the suspicion he thus incurred was increased by the conversion of his daughter to Roman Catholicism, but there seems no reason to question the sincerity of his own attachment to the Church of England. In 1687 he gave a further proof of independence by discontinuing the Observator from his unwillingness to advocate James II.’s Edict of Toleration, although he had previously gone all lengths in support of the measures of the court. The Revolution cost him his office as licenser, and the remainder of his life was spent in obscurity. He died in 1704. It is to L’Estrange’s credit that among the agitations of a busy political life he should have found time for much purely literary work as a translator of Josephus, Cicero, Seneca, Quevedo and other standard authors.
LESUEUR, DANIEL, the pseudonym of Jeanne Lapanze, née Loiseau (1860- ), French poet and novelist, who was born in Paris in 1860. She published a volume of poems, Fleurs d’avril (1882), which was crowned by the Academy. She also wrote some powerful novels dealing with contemporary life: Le Mariage de Gabrielle (1882); Un Mystérieux Amour (1892), with a series of philosophical sonnets; L’Amant de Geneviève (1883); Marcelle (1885); Une Vie tragique (1890); Justice de femme (1893); Comédienne Haine d’amour (1894); Honneur d’une femme (1901); La Force du passé (1905). Her poems were collected in 1895. She published in 1905 a book on the economic status of women, L’Évolution féminine; and in 1891-1893 a translation (2 vols.) of the works of Lord Byron, which was awarded a prize by the Academy. Her Masque d’amour, a five-act play based on her novel (1904) of the same name, was produced at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in 1905. She received the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in 1900, and the prix Vitet from the French Academy in 1905. She married in 1904 Henry Lapanze (b. 1867), a well-known writer on art.
LE SUEUR, EUSTACHE (1617-1655), one of the founders of the French Academy of painting, was born on the 19th of November 1617 at Paris, where he passed his whole life, and where he died on the 30th of April 1655. His early death and retired habits have combined to give an air of romance to his simple history, which has been decorated with as many fables as that of Claude. We are told that, persecuted by Le Brun, who was jealous of his ability, he became the intimate friend and correspondent of Poussin, and it is added that, broken-hearted at the death of his wife, Le Sueur retired to the monastery of the Chartreux and died in the arms of the prior. All this, however, is pure fiction. The facts of Le Sueur’s life are these. He was the son of Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, who placed his son with Vouet, in whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, and was one of the first twelve professors of that body. Some paintings, illustrative of the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, which were reproduced in tapestry, brought him into notice, and his reputation was further enhanced by a series of decorations (Louvre) in the mansion of Lambert de Thorigny, which he left uncompleted, for their execution was frequently interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now missing, although they were entered in Bailly’s inventory (1710); but several works produced for minor patrons have come down to us. In the gallery of the Louvre are the “Angel and Hagar,” from the mansion of De Tonnay Charente; “Tobias and Tobit,” from the Fieubet collection; several pictures executed for the church of Saint Gervais; the “Martyrdom of St Lawrence,” from Saint Germain de l’Auxerrois; two very fine works from the destroyed abbey of Marmoutiers; “St Paul preaching at Ephesus,” one of Le Sueur’s most complete and thorough performances, painted for the goldsmith’s corporation in 1649; and his famous series of the “Life of St Bruno,” executed in the cloister of the Chartreux. These last have more personal character than anything else which Le Sueur produced, and much of their original beauty survives in spite of injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas. The Louvre also possesses many fine drawings (reproduced by Braun), of which Le Sueur left an incredible quantity, chiefly executed in black and white chalk His pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife’s brother, Th. Goussé, and three brothers of his own, as well as Claude Lefebvre and Patel the landscape painter.
Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran, Seb. Leclerc, Drevet, Chauveau, Poilly and Desplaces. Le Sueur’s work lent itself readily to the engraver’s art, for he was a charming draughtsman; he had a truly delicate perception of varied shades of grave and elevated sentiment, and possessed the power to render them. His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a very fine taste, but his works often fail to please completely, because, producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types, and partly because he rarely saw colour except with the cold and clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet; yet his “St Paul at Ephesus” and one or two other works show that he was not naturally deficient in this sense, and whenever we get direct reference to nature—as in the monks of the St Bruno series—we recognize his admirable power to read and render physiognomy of varied and serious type.