674 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1810. 



den in obscurity, and not much 

 known at court even at the time 

 when he was employed upon the 

 mission of Poitou, burst forth at 

 length in consequence of the 

 king's choice of him to educate 

 his grandson, the duke of Bur- 

 gundy. The theatre was not too 

 spacious for the actor, and, if his 

 predilection for the mystics had 

 not developed the secret of his 

 heart and the wealjness of his 

 mind, there could have been no 

 situation to which public opinion 

 would not have destined him, nor 

 any which would not have ap- 

 peared inferior to his talents." 



A man, much more severe than 

 the chancellor D'Aguesseau; a 

 man, whose misanthropy and satiri- 

 cal character naturally inclinedhira 

 to censure rather than to praise ; 

 the duke de St. Simon, the most 

 observing of courtiers, and the most 

 bitter of historians, represents Fe- 

 nelon to us in the same colours. 



He describes him as being 

 '< gifted with a natural, a mild, 

 and a florid eloquence ; with per- 

 suasive politeness, but yet digni- 

 fied and discriminating ; and with 

 a fluent, perspicuous, and agree- 

 able power of conversation, which 

 was combined with that precision 

 so necessary for rendering the 

 most complicated and abstract 

 subjects intelligible. He was a 

 man who always appeared to have 

 just as much mind as the persons 

 he might be conversing with ; he 

 stooped to their level, but with- 

 out appearing to do it : this put 

 them at their ease, and excited in 

 them a lively sentiment of de- 

 light, so that they could neither 

 quit him, nor, wiien absent, help 

 returning to his company. To this 

 rare talent, wliic h he possessed in 



a remarkable degree, we musZ 

 attribute the steady fidelity of hia 

 friends, who remained attached to 

 him all his life, even after his fall, 

 and which, when they were scat- 

 tered through society, re-assem- 

 bled them together to speak of 

 him, to wish for him, and to at- 

 tach themselves to him more de- 

 votedly." 



The celebrity of Fenelon was 

 such, that it obtained for him, at 

 court, several distinctions to which 

 his birth gave him claim, but 

 which could not be said to belong 

 to his situation as preceptor. 

 Louis XIV. granted him permis- 

 sion to eat at the same table with 

 the duke of Burgundy, and to ride 

 in the same carriage with him. 

 These, indeed, were distinctions 

 which could add nothing to the 

 intrinsic merit of Fenelon, and we 

 may easily believe that he ground- 

 ed no pretensions of superiority 

 upon them over Bossuet, to whom 

 similar honours had not been ac- 

 corded ; nor could Bossuet the less 

 esteem Fenelon, or envy him for 

 distinctions which resulted merely 

 from the accident of birth. We 

 should not, perhaps, have recorded 

 so trifling an event, were it not to 

 show how minutely Louis XIV., 

 who possessed so eminently the 

 art of reigning, attended to the 

 maintenance of those honorary 

 distinctions, the absence of which 

 can humiliate no reasonable mind, 

 and which discharges the grati- 

 tude of the sovereign without 

 costing any thing to the people. 

 It was with this money of opinion 

 that a king of France rewarded 

 the blood and services of those an- 

 cient families, " who," as Mon- 

 tesquieu says, " not being able to 

 acquire wealth, hoped for honours, 



