202 Biographical Memoir of M. Claude Louis Richard. 



XV. employed to augment his collection of live plants. He 

 visited Auvergne and the Island of Minorca, where he made 

 rich acquisitions. Botany owes to him some valuable species. 

 His eldest son Claude Richard, the father of our academician, 

 was placed at the head of a garden which the king had pur- 

 chased at Auteuil, and which was a kind of auxiliary to that of 

 Trianon. At this garden was born M. Claude Louis Richard, 

 the subject of our present memoir. He was therefore born in 

 the midst of plants; he learnt to know them sooner than the 

 letters of the alphabet ; and before he was able to write correct- 

 ly, he could draw flowers, or plans of gardens. Thus it may be 

 literally said of him that he sucked in botany with his mother's 

 milk ; he did not recollect a moment of his life in which he had 

 not been a botanist ; and if he ever engaged in other studies, 

 botany was always the object of them. It was for botany that 

 he improved himself in drawing, and almost for it alone that he 

 gave himself the trouble of attending his classes, and learning 

 Latin and Greek. Yet his progress was scarcely less backward 

 than that of children who learnt these things only for their own 

 sake. At the age of twelve he had the Georgics by heart. The 

 delicacy and correctness of his drawings were surprising. 



But this early display of talent, which ought to have attached 

 his parents to him, and secured for him a happy childhood, were 

 the very causes of the first misfortunes which he experienced, 

 and which, perhaps, by altering his disposition and his health, 

 led to those of his future life. The archbishop of Paris, M. de 

 Beaumont, sometimes visited the garden of Anteuil, and was 

 fond of its director. The intelligence and proficiency of the 

 child excited his interest, and he promised advancement should 

 he devote himself to the church. This was opening to him the 

 only career in which talent, without birth or fortime, could then 

 expect to arrive at honours and independence, and opening it, 

 too, with the most favourable prospects. There was nothing 

 that be might not have hoped from the bounty of the prelate, 

 seconded by the protection which the king extended to his fa- 

 mily ; and M. Richard, the father, who had nine other children, 

 and who was not rich, even for a gardener, could not fail to 

 seize such hopes with ardour ; but his son had determined other- 

 wise. Nothing could bend the inflexible resolution of the child- 



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