Frank Thomas Marzials

“ Thence he went to Holland, and accompanied a corps of French refugees to Spain, where he was taken prisoner at the battle of Almanza 1707. He would have been burnt alive by some peasants but for the intervention of the Duke of Berwick. From Spain he was sent into France, and succeeded in escaping to Switzerland, ultimately finding his way back to Holland, where he became one of the pastors at Rotterdam, and gained the friendship of Bayle. He finally left Holland for London in 1711, and was successively pastor of the French churches in Martin's Lane and the Savoy. ”

“ Alexandre the younger and elder saw life together very thoroughly, and Paris can have had few mysteries for them. Suddenly the son, who had been led to regard his prodigal father’s resources as inexhaustible, was rudely undeceived. ”

“ His political economy was that of an orthodox popularizer, and in no sense epoch-making. His dramas are negligible. His more serious novels, Madelon (1863) , L’infâme (1867) , the three that form the trilogy of the Vieille Roche (1866) , and Le roman d’un brave homme (1880) —a kind of counterblast to the view of the French workman presented in Zola’s Assommoir—contain striking and amusing scenes, no doubt, but scenes which are often suggestive of the stage, while description, dissertation, explanation too frequently take the place of life. ”

“ ZOLA, ÉMILE ÉDOUARD CHARLES ANTOINE (1840–1902) , French novelist, was born in Paris on the 2nd of April 1840, his father being an engineer, part Italian and part Greek, and his mother a Frenchwoman. The father seems to have been an energetic, visionary man, who, dying while his only son was a little lad, left to his family no better provision than a lawsuit against the municipality of the town of Aix. It was at Aix, which figures as Plassans in so many of his novels, that the boy received the first part of his education. ”

“ D'ESPAGNE, JEAN (1591–1659) , French protestant pastor and theologian, born in 1591 in the Dauphiné, was pastor at Orange in 1620, and then at the Hague, which he seems to have left in 1629, under disagreeable circumstances, if we may trust a very hostile pamphlet published against him in London in 1657 (Réponse aux questions de M. Despagne adressées à l'Eglise francoise de Londres, London, 1657, apparently written by a M. Herbert) . ”

“ The first impression it produces may be one of heaviness, and the later “gospels” on population and work are distinctly ponderous. But for rendering the gloomy horror of the subjects in which he most delights—detail on detail being accumulated till the result is overwhelming—Zola has no superior. Some of his descriptions of crowds in movement have never been surpassed.
Zola played a very important part in the Dreyfus affair, which convulsed French politics and social life at the end of the 19th century. ”

“ During the next few years, with indefatigable energy, and generally with full public recognition, he wrote novels, stories, a play—which failed,—a book-pamphlet on the Roman question, many pamphlets on other subjects of the day, newspaper articles innumerable, some art criticisms, rejoinders to the attacks of his enemies, and popular manuals of political economy, L’A B C du travailleur (1868) , Le progrès (1864) . About’s attitude towards the empire was that of a candid friend. ”

“ When Locke died, Coste was successively tutor to several young noblemen and gentlemen, and, among others, to the son of Lord Shaftesbury, the philosopher, with whom he was on terms of considerable intimacy. ”

“ From the Fortune des Rougon to the Docteur Pascal (1893) there are some twenty novels in the Rougon-Macquart series, the second half of which includes the powerful novels Germinal (1885) and La Terre (1888) . In 1888 Zola departed from his usual vein in the idyllic story of Le Rêve. Zola also wrote a series of three romances on cities, Lourdes, Rome, Paris (1894–98) , novels on the “gospels” of population (Fécondité) and work (Travail) , a volume of plays, and several volumes of criticism, and other things. These books are based on study and observation; the novels are crowded with characters. ”

“ The lessons themselves are mostly concerned with the “eternal feminine,” by which Dumas was haunted, and differ in ethical value. Thus in Les Idées de Madame Aubray (1867) he inculcates the duty of the seducer to marry the woman he has seduced; but in La Femme de Claude (1873) he argues the right of the husband to take the law into his own hand and kill the wife who is unfaithful and worthless—a thesis again defended in his novel, L’Affaire Clémenceau, and in his pamphlet, L’Homme-femme ”

“ Leibnitz visited him and esteemed him highly (Ancillon, Mémoires, &c. p. xxix) , and Locke frequently saw him in Paris (Le Clerc, Life of Locke, London, 1706, p. 10; King, Life of Locke, 1830, pp. 134, 155, 158, 160) . He was on good terms with several Roman catholic scholars, and endeavoured to bring about a non-sectarian translation of the Bible, a project which gave offence to Bossuet (Lettres choisies de M. Simon, 1730, i. 37) . ”

“ JUSTEL, HENRI (1620–1693) , librarian, born in Paris in 1620, was the son of Christophe Justel, a learned protestant and canonist. He succeeded his father in the office of secretary to Louis XIV. He possessed a good library, containing many rare manuscripts, and his social qualities and powers of conversation attracted many eminent men to his house. ”

“ After that date he wrote no more, restrained by an honourable fear of producing inferior work. The Academy had long before, on the 31st of March 1857, elected him to be one of its members. He died in his house at Croissy on the 25th of October 1889. ”

“ Coste had translated Locke's ‘Thoughts concerning Education’ and ‘Reasonableness of Christianity,’ and was in 1697 translating the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ when he was made tutor to Frank Masham, the son of Lady Masham, Cudworth's daughter. ”

“ His first book, Contes à Ninon, appeared on the 24th of October 1864, and attracted some attention, and in January 1866 he determined to abandon clerking and take to literature. Vigorous and aggressive as a critic, his articles on literature and art in Villemessant’s paper L’Événement created a good deal of interest. ”

“ There is in it an unlucky observation on envy among artists, which seems to have excited a bitter storm, and brought on the author a fierce pamphlet from the pen of an assailant whom he describes, in a published ‘Letter to Benjamin West,’ as ‘an anonymous assassin styling himself a painter.’
Desenfans was a man of taste and education, and clearly a judicious collector. He published in 1799 ‘A Plan, preceded by a Short Review of the Fine Arts,’ &c., which was in effect a plea for the creation of a national gallery. ”

“ His best work after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d’un notaire (1862) ; Le roi des montagnes (1856) ; L’homme à l’oreille cassée (1862) ; Trente et quarante (1858) ”

“ Perhaps the one which most nearly approaches the famous parody in the 'Rejected Addresses' is the 'Address to every Loyal Briton on the Threatened Invasion of his Country;' but the 'Britons to Arms!' of a later date is almost of equal merit. Fitzgerald's 'Nelson's Triumph' appeared in 1798, his 'Tears of Hibernia dispelled by the Union' in 1802, and his 'Nelson's Tomb' in 1806. In 1814 Fitzgerald issued a collected edition of his verses in denunciation of Napoleon Bonaparte. ”

“ Meanwhile, and afterwards, his pen was busy, not with much original work, but with translations from Lady Masham, Lord Shaftesbury, Newton (the ‘Optics’) , and with annotated editions of La Fontaine, Montaigne, &c. His original work is indeed in no sense remarkable; but his translations were of durable service, and helped to introduce English thought to the French of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Duke Charles was mortally wounded and taken prisoner by the French army under Catinat at the battle of Marsiglia in 1693, and Dubourdieu took the body to Lausanne for interment. In 1695 he published a sermon delivered on the eve of Queen Mary's funeral ”

“ These two Dubourdieus, Jean and Jean Armand, have been assumed by most biographers to be the same person. Agnew, however, in his ‘Protestant Exiles from France,’ shows almost conclusively that they were distinct persons, Jean Armand being possibly the nephew, but more probably the son, of Jean. ”