237 



SADOLETO, JACOPO. 



SAGE, LE, ALAIN-RENE. 



238 



decorated with the king of Scotland's standard, which he had taken 

 at Pinkie. 



The transactions of Sir Ralph Sadler's most memorable embassies 

 are recorded in ' Letters and Negociatious of Sir Ralph Sadler,' &c., 

 printed at Edinburgh,' 8vo, 1720, from manuscripts in the Advocates' 

 Library : but a more complete collection was published of his ' State 

 Papers and Letters,' edited by Arthur Clifford, Esq., of Tixal, his 

 descendant, iu 2 vols. 4to, in 1809, to which was added, a ' Memoir of 

 the Life of Sir Ralph Sadler/ by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Walter Scott, 

 with historical notes : to which the preceding account is principally 

 indebted. 



SADOLE'TO, JACOPO, was born at Modena in 1477, and studied 

 at Ftrrara, and afterwards at Rome. He applied himself especially to 

 the Greek and Latin classics, and became a distinguished scholar. 

 Leo X. appointed him one of his secretaries, together with Bembo, 

 and afterwards made him bishop of Carpeutras iu the county of 

 Avignon, but still kept him at Rome. After Leo's death, his suc- 

 cessor, Adrian VI., who had no partiality for learned men, neglected 

 ...leto, who repaired to his diocese of Carpentras. When 

 Clement VII. ascended the pontifical throne, in 1523, he appointed 

 Sadoleto his secretary. But Clement's tortuous and selfish policy 

 disgusted Sadoleto, who asked and obtained leave to return to his 

 diocese, and accordingly he left Rome about a month before Bourbon 

 and his band sacked the city. At Carpentras he wrote several works ; 

 among the rest, a learned commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to 

 the Romans. Some expressions in this commentary, which referred 

 to the abstruse doctrines of predestination and grace, were considered 

 heterodox at Rome, and his work was prohibited. Sadoleto wrote to 

 Paul III., who had succeeded Clement VII., an explanation of his 

 opinions, which satisfied the pope, and Sadoleto was cleared of all 

 suspicion of heresy. Soon after he was made a cardinal, and was 

 employed in several important affairs. In 15-12 he was sent as legate 

 to Francis I., to mediate a peace between that king and the Emperor 

 Charles V., in which however he did not succeed. In 1544, being old 

 and infirm, he obtained leave to resign his sec of Carpentras in favour 

 of his nephew Paul Sadoleto, whom he had educated himself, and 

 withdrew into retirement. He died in 1547. His unspotted character, 

 the mildness of his manners, his sincere piety, and his love of letters, 

 have caused him to be compared with Fdndlon. 



Sadoleto wrote a work on education, ' De Liberia recte Institueudis,' 

 which contains much excellent advice. He also wrote a disputation, 

 in two books, on the merits of philosophy, on the model of Cicero's 

 ' Tusculanse/ which Bembo praised greatly, as worthy of the Augustan 

 age. A poem which he wrote in Latin hexameters, on the discovery 

 at Rome of the group of the Laocoon, was likewise much admired. 



SAFARIK, PAL JOZSEF, is the Bohemian form of the name of 

 an eminent antiquarian and philological author, who has adopted the 

 Bohemian language as the vehicle of his literary productions, after 

 having composed his early writings in German, in which his name is 

 generally spelt Schafarik, or Schaffarik. He was born on the 30th of 

 May 1795, at Kobeljarowo in Northern Hungary, where the Slovakian, 

 which is the common language, is so akin to the Bohemian spoken in the 

 neighbouring kingdom, that Safarik, the principal native prose writer, 

 and Kollar [KoLLABJ, the leading native poet, have both ranged them- 

 selves in the ranks of Bohemian authors. After studying in his native 

 country, and then at the University of Jena, Safarik became a pro- 

 fessor at the colh ge of Neusatz in Southern Hunirary, where a different 

 Slavonic dialect is the language spoken ; but in 1833 he threw this up, 

 and fixed his residence at Prague, to devote himself to the study of 

 Bohemian, and to edit the 'Journal of the Bohemian Museum,' which 

 remained under his management from 1832 to 1842. In the year 



1848 he was appointed keeper of the university library at Prague, 

 and he took a great share in the Bohemian agitation of that year, 

 which was crushed by the cannon of Windischgratz. [PALACKY.] 

 This did not prevent his appointment by the Austrian government, in 



1849 and in 1851, as president of the committee, to examine the old 

 legal technical terms and invent new ones, in connection with the pro- 

 ject of publishing the laws in each of the five Slavonic languages of 

 the Austrian empire the Bohemian, Ruthenian, Croatian, Servian, 

 and Slovakian. Safarik's writings are numerous, but all have a bearing 

 on the subject of the Slavonic languages and literature. The principal 

 is his ' Geschichte der slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach alien 

 Mundarten ' (a ' History of the Slavonic Language and Literature in 

 all its Dialects'), Buda, 1826, which is a great storehouse of literary 

 information, but rather a bibliographical catalogue than a history, the 

 principal feature being its very full lists of titles of books. His 

 ' Slowanske" Starozitnosti ' ('Bohemian Antiquities'), Prague, 1837, and 

 his ' Slowansky Narodopis' ('Slavonic Ethnology'), Prague, 1842, 

 contain the results of his researches into the origin and early history of 

 the Slavonic nations. They have been translated into various lan- 

 guages, and are now among the first books referred to by all investi- 

 gators of the subject. His other works are chiefly dissertations of less 

 extent on kindred themes. 



SAGE, LE, ALAIW-RENE, was born May 8, 1668, at the village of 

 Sarztau, which is situated on the peninsula of Ruis in the department 

 of Morbihan, in France, about ten miles from Vannes, the capital ol 

 that department. His father, Claude Le Sage, who was a lawyer, and 

 held the office of registrar of the Cour Royale of Ruis, died in 1682 ; 



le bequeathed a moderate property to his son, and entrusted both son 

 and property to an uncle, who sent young Le Sage to be instructed in 

 ihe Jesuits' college at Vannes, where he became an especial favourite 

 of Pere Bochard, then at the head of that college, who bestowed much 

 mins on his education. The uncle is said to have dissipated the pro- 

 perty, and young Le Sage, on leaving the college, appears to have 

 obtained and held for five or six years an office in the collection of the 

 ;axes in his native province of Brittany. 



Le Sage, having been deprived of his office, went to Paris in 1692, 

 with the intention of going through a course of philosophy and law, 

 and at the same time of making interest to obtain another situation. 

 Bis handsome person and agreeable manners, his talents, and his taste 

 For elegant literature, procured him admission to the best society. In 

 1694 he married the daughter of a citizen of Paris. Danchet, with 

 whom he had become intimate while prosecuting his studies in the 

 University of Paris, persuaded him to produce, from the Latin version 

 of Jaques Bongare, the Letters of Aristsonetus, which is rather an 

 imitation than a translation. It was printed in 1695 at Chartrea, but 

 with the imprint of Rotterdam, 1 vol. 12mo, at the expense of Danchet, 

 who was then professor of rhetoric at Chartres. 



Le Sage had been admitted avocat au parlement de Paris, but he 

 subsequently dropped the designation, and also relinquished some 

 small office which he held, in order that he might devote himself to 

 literature. The Abbd de Lyonne became his patron, and bestowed 

 upon him a pension of 600 livres ; and to him also Le Sage appears to 

 have been indebted for his introduction to the Spanish language and 

 literature. He now produced ' Le Traltre puni,' a comedy iu five acts, 

 imitated from the ' Traicion busca el Castigo ' of F. de Rosas (Paris, 

 1700); 'Don Felix de Mendoce,' taken from a piece by Lope de Vega 

 (Paris, 1700) ; and 'Le Point d Honneur/ a comedy in five acts, from 

 the ' No hay Amigo para Amigo ' of F. de Roxas, which was performed 

 at the Theatre Fran9ais, but with little success. The two first plays 

 were not represented, and the last, when he afterwards reduced it to 

 three acts, and brought it cut at the Theatre Italien in 1725, under 

 the title of ' L'Arbitre des Diffe'rends,' was only played twice. Le 



|fe's next effort was ' Les Nouvelles Aventures de Don Quichotte,' 

 translated from Avellaneda's frigid continuation of the work of Cer- 

 vantes (2 vols. 12mo, 1704-6). This translation obtained as little 

 favour from the French public as the original had from the Spanish. 



Le Sage was now thirty-eight years of age, and his labours had 

 hitherto been to little purpose ; but he had been training himself for 

 a brighter display of his powers. He had made himself familiar with 

 the literature of the Spanish drama, unrivalled for its richness of 

 invention ; he had been filling his mind with Spanish scenes, and 

 incidents and characters drawn from that great storehouse ; and he 

 had been perfecting his style, originally formed on the sound principles 

 of a classical education, by free translations. In 1707 'Don Ce"sar 

 Ursin,' a comedy in five acts, imitated from Calderou, was performed 

 at the Theatre Francais without success, while a little piece of hia 

 own, 'Crispin, Rival de son Maitre,' played at Paris on the same day, 

 had a brilliant run, and indeed is said, in liveliness, interest, and 

 especially truth of dialogue, to be hardly inferior to Moliere. Soon 

 afterwards appeared his ' Diable Boiteux,' of which he had borrowed 

 the name and the leading idea from 'El Diablo Cojuelo' of Luis 

 Velez de Guevara, and of which indeed it is properly a continuation 

 (Paris, 1707). Its success was prodigious, which was no doubt in a 

 great measure owing to much of the satire being aimed at contempo- 

 rary characters of eminence in Paris ; but the true drawing and rich 

 colouring of its pictures, which are copied from all ranks of society, 

 and its nervous, clear, and correct style, have made its reputation 

 lasting. In 1726 he augmented the work by an additional volume, 

 and in 1737 added to it the ' Eutretien des Chemine'es de Madrid,' and 

 ' Les Bequilles du Diable Boiteux,' the first a continuation of the 

 work by Le Sage himself, and the last a eulogy of it by the Abbe 

 Bordelon. 



Le Sage had offei-ed to the Theatre Franais a piece in one act called 

 ' Les Etrennes,' which was to have been performed January 1, 1708, 

 but the actors refused to play it ; upon which Le Sage extended it to 

 five acts, and gave it the title of ' Turcaret.' The piece was levelled 

 at the corruptions of those who managed the revenue and farmed the 

 taxes, the maltotiers, traitauts, and others of that clas*. This power- 

 ful body being aware of the aim of the piece, of which Le Sage had 

 read some parts to his literary friends, used their utmost exertions to 

 prevent its performance, and even offered the author, it is said, 100,000 

 francs to suppress it, but he refused the bribe. They had better 

 success however with the players, and would have triumphed, if au 

 order of Monseigneur, dated October 13, 1708, had not been addressed 

 to the actors in these terms : " Monseigneur having been informed that 

 the king's company object to perform (' font difficult^ de jouer ') a 

 piece entitled ' Turcaret, ou lo Financier,' commands them to learn it 

 and to play it forthwith." The performance took place February 14, 

 1709, and the success was even greater than had been anticipated. 

 This comedy is entirely Le Sage's own, and is greatly superior to any 

 of those which he had borrowed from the Spanish. A little piece 

 called ' La Tontine,' which had been accepted at the Theatre Francai?, 

 was, owing to intrigue within or without the theatre, not performed 

 till 1732. Disgusted with this and other conduct of a similar kind, 

 Le Sage resolved to relinquish the legitimate drama and the royal 



