BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. LA FONTAINE. EAN DE LA FONTAINE, one of France's most distinguished poets, was born on the 8th of July, 1621, at Château Thierry. The house of his birth is still standing, and remains unchanged. His early education under the village schoolmaster was meagre, but in 1641 he entered the Oratory at Rheims, where he made good progress. At the age of twenty-six he married a lady whom his father had chosen for him. His father also resigned his post as forester in his favor, but neither the wife nor the position suited the son, and he soon resigned the one and deserted the other. Like many authors in bygone days, La Fontaine lived mostly on the patronage of distinguished and noble patrons. He died at the ripe old age of seventy-four, at Paris, on April 13, 1695. His fables are the chief productions of his pen. Of them Wright says: "La Fontaine makes each fable a little drama, with its exposition. A painter of animals, whom he studied with an artist's attention and the warm imagination of a poet who identifies himself with everything and to whom nothing in nature is indifferent, he joined to the charm of a learned and at the same time simple language which seems alike of the past and present that of a free, easy, varied versification. expanding and contracting with marvellous propriety as the thought requires. The habitual character of his narrative is an ingenuous wit, a piquant simplicity, a familiar good-nature full of sense, spirit and unreserve; but when his subject bears him to it, he becomes serious, touching, melancholy, elevated, sublime; the goodnatured man disappears; we hear the inspired accents of the most eloquent poesy. La Fontaine,' says Sainte Beuve, versifying the subjects of fables furnished by tradition, does not at first go beyond the limits of the branch. His first book is an essay; in it we see the fable pure and simple. Thus conceived, the fable seems to me a small and quite insignificant branch. Among the Orientals at first, when primitive wisdom was disguised under happy parables to speak to kings, it might have its elevation and its grandeur; but transplanted to our West, and reduced to a short story with its twoor four-line moral, I see only a form of instruction suited to children. How, then, did La Fontaine become a great poet in this very branch of fables? It is because he went beyond it; he appropriated it to himself, and saw in it from a certain moment only a pretext for his inventive genius and his talent of universal observation.' เ moral fables The Shepherd and the King,' | Cardinal Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, 6 The Peasant of the Danube,' involving an eloquent sentiment of history, and almost of statesmanship; then those other fables which in their whole are a complete painting, of a more finished turn, and equally full of philosophy-'The Old Man and the Three Young Men,' 'The Cobbler and the Financier,' the last as perfect in itself as a great scene as a short comedy of Molière. Some are properly elegies- Tircis and Amaranth'—and others elegies under a less direct and more enchanting form, such as the 'Two Doves.' If human nature seems often harshly treated by La Fontaine, if he says that childhood is without pity' and old age 'pitiless' (manhood making the best terms it can with him), it is enough to save him from the reproach of calumniating man, and leaves him as one of our great consolers, that friendship found him so habitual and so touching an interpreter. His Two Friends' is a masterpiece of this kind; but whenever he has to speak of friendship, his heart opens, his observant raillery expires; he has words that are felt, tender and noble accents. After reading this selection of La Fontaine's best fables, we feel our admiration for him renewed and refreshed, and exclaim, with the eminent critic Joubert, There is in La Fontaine a plenitude of poesy nowhere else to be found in our French writers.'" ST SIR THOMAS MORE. IR THOMAS MORE, who was born in London in 1480, was son of Sir John More, knight, one of the judges of the king's bench. He received the first part of his education at St. Anthony's, Threadneedle street, and was afterward admitted into the family of who was accustomed to say of him to his guests, "This boy who waits at table, whoever lives to see it, will prove a marvellous man." In 1497 he entered at Oxford, where he continued two years, and then, being designed for the law, removed to New Inn, London, and soon after to Lincoln's Inn, of which his father was a member. About the age of twenty he became disgusted with the law and shut himself up during four years in the Charter-house, devoting himself exclusively to the services of religion. He had a strong inclination to take orders, and even to turn Franciscan, but was overruled by his father, whose authority was, moreover, reinforced by the amorous propensities of the son, which were not to be subdued even by the austerities of the cloister. Accordingly, he married Jane, eldest daughter of John Colt, Esq., of Newhall, Essex. About this period, too, he was appointed law-reader at Furnival's Inn, which he held for three years, and besides read a public lecture in the church of St. Laurence, Old Jewry, upon St. Austin's treatise De Civitate Dei. At the age of two and twenty he was elected member of the Parliament called by Henry VII. in 1503 to demand a subsidy and nine-fifteenths for the marriage of Margaret, his eldest daughter, to James, king of Scotland. More opposed this demand with such force of argument that it was finally rejected by the House. In 1508 he was made judge of the sheriff's court, also a justice of the peace, and became eminent at the bar. In 1516 he went to Flanders, in the retinue of Bishop Tonstal and Dr. Knight, who were sent by Henry to renew the alli Sir Thomas retained his hilarity, and even his habitual facetiousness, to the last, and made a sacrifice of his life to his integrity with all the indifference he would have shown in an ordinary affair. The following couplet, which is attributed to him, will serve to indicate the habitual state of mind which enabled him to meet his fate with a fortitude so admirable: 'If evils come not, then our fears are vain ; And if they do, fear but augments the pain." ance with the archduke of Austria, afterward | tangled in the contest, he resigned the seal Charles V. On his return he was offered a after having sustained his high dignity only pension by Cardinal Wolsey, which, however, two years and a half. On the passing of the he thought proper to refuse, though he soon act of supremacy, in 1534, he refused to take after accepted of the king the place of mas- the required oath, and he died on the block, ter of the requests. About this time, also, a martyr, on the 5th of July, 1535. His Majesty conferred on him the honor of knighthood, appointed him one of his privy council and admitted him to the greatest personal familiarity. In 1520 he was made treasurer of the exchequer, and about the same period built a house at Chelsea, on the banks of the Thames, and, being now a widower, married a second wife. In 1523, a Parliament being summoned to raise money for a war with France, he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, and in this character opposed with great firmness, and with equal success, an oppressive subsidy demanded by the minister, Cardinal Wolsey. He was sent in 1526, with Cardinal Wolsey and others, on a joint embassy to France, and in 1528 was made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In the following year His Majesty appointed him, together with Tonstal, bishop of Durham, ambassador to negotiate a peace between the emperor Henry and the king of France, and in the peace hence resulting, concluded at Cambray, he obtained for the kingdom advantages so far beyond what had been expected that the king, on the disgrace of Cardinal Wolsey, gave him the great seal on the 25th of October of the same year; and it is remarkable that he was the first layman who had ever obtained that honor. But perceiving, from the measures pursued by the king in respect of his divorce from Queen Catharine, that a final rupture with Rome would be inevitable, and that himself, from his office, must be en A large portion of the writings of Sir Thomas More are in Latin, of which a collection in folio was published at Basil in 1566, and the year following at Louvain. Among this number is his Eutopia, his most celebrated work, which was written in 1516, and first published at Basil in 1518; at least, this is the first edition of which we have any account. From this book it appears that in the early part of his life he was a free-thinker, though he was subsequently devoted to Catholic principles. It was composed during the greatest hurry of his professional business, and at this period he stole time from his sleep to pursue his studies. The Eutopia was translated into several languages, and added greatly to the fame of his talents. A translation of it in English appeared in 1624 by Ralph Robinson, and in 1683 by Bishop Burnet, with a preface concerning the nature of translations. eries, and his Eutopia was taken by the learned Budæus and others for true history. They thought it expedient that missionaries should be sent out to convert so wise a people to Christianity. The age of More was the age of discov- | science; he overcomes difficulties that might be supposed insurmountable. No devotee. ever more patiently submitted to mortification for the glory of saintship than the man of science submits to self-denial for his crown of laurel. When he attains his height of elevation, he looks down from his pinnacle and beholds even kings as vulgar things. The whole diversified concerns of men are important in his eyes only as affording to him sub GEORGE BURNETT. PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE is one of the most glori-jects for sublime speculation. He worships no god but knowledge; he raves about the charms of truth. While the savage looks for a heaven in which he will be inconceivably happy in pursuing his game through the clouds or through fair forests, the philosopher can think of no employment in heaven but that of discovering new relations of truth, solving dark problems and penetrating more deeply into the nature of things. ous of the distinguishing attributes of human nature in its best estate; in its fall knowledge is undoubtedly the most glorious distinction within its reach. Man by nature, even in the lowest state of degradation in which savage life presents him, knows more than the fowls of heaven and the beasts of the field. He is also by nature prone to the pursuit of knowledge and capable of immense and endless advances in the attainment. Who can think on the discoveries and inventions in sciences and in arts without being convinced that man has something truly noble in his constitution? He is a royal palace in ruins. ItOLUNTARY solitariness is that which is true the degraded and destitute circumstances in which the bulk of the human race are placed repress in a great measure the desire of knowledge, yet in favorable circumstances this desire will always manifest itself, even in the lowest state of human degradation. When knowledge is much cultivated, the desire of it, in many, advances to the rage of a passion. The philosopher in the pursuit of knowledge submits to every privation and labor, and the glory of a very trifling discovery will be esteemed by him a rich reward for his travelling to the ends of the earth. No missionary is so patient, so persevering, so fanatically zealous, as the missionary of ALEXANDER CARSON, LL.D. ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. is familiar with melancholy and gently brings on, like a siren, a shoeing-horn or some sphinx, to this irrevocable gulf; a primary cause Piso calls it. Most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brookside, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject which shall affect them most; amabilis insania and mentis gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly im DESCRIPTION OF THE PERSON AND CHARACTER OF RICHARD III. 333 some dismal object to their minds, which now by no means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid. They may not be rid of it; they cannot resist. ROBERT BURTON. agine they represent or that they see acted or done. Blanda quidem ab initio, saith Lemnius, to conceive and meditate of such pleasant things sometimes, present, past or to come, as Rhasis speaks. So delightsome these joys are at first they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole DESCRIPTION OF THE PERSON AND years alone in such contemplations and fantas CHARACTER OF RICHARD III. tical meditations, which are like unto dreams, RICHARD, the third son, of whom we and they will hardly be drawn from them or willingly interrupt. So pleasant their vain conceits are that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business; they cannot address themselves to them or almost any study or employment. These fantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually, set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract and detain them; they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholizing and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about an heath with a Puck in the night. They run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain or easily leave off winding and unwinding themselves, as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at last the scene is turned upon a sudden by some bad object, and they, being now habituated to such vain meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, discontent, cares and weariness of life surprise them in a moment, and they can think of nothing else; continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them and terrifies their souls, representing now entreat, was in wit and courage egal with either of them; in body and prowess, far under them both-little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hardfavored of visage, as such as in states called warlye, in other men otherwise. He was malicious, wrathful, envious and from afore his birth ever froward. None evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition was more meetly than for peace. Sundry victories had he, and some time overthrows, but never in default for his own person either of hardiness or politic order. Free was he called of dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal. With large gifts he get him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pil and spoil in other places, and get him steadfast hatred. He was close and secret, a deep dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill, dispitious and cruel, not for evil will alway, but after for ambition, and either for the surety and increase of his estate. Friend and foe was much what indifferent, where his advantage grew; he spared no man's death whose life withstood his purpose. He slew with his own hands King Henry VI., being prisoner in the Tower. SIR THOMAS MORE. |