TOURNEMINE, LE PERE. 



TOURNEUR, PIERRE LE. 



136 



the East he published ' Corollarium Institutionum Rei Herbaria;, in 

 quo Plante, 1356 . . .- . in Regiouibus Orientalibus observatae, recen- 

 sentur .... et ad sua Genera revocantur,' 4 to, with 13 plates, Paris, 

 1703. This was afterwards added to Ant. de Jtissieu's edition of the 

 'Elements,' in 1719, 3 vols. 8vo, Lyons. 'Histoire des Plautes qui 

 naissent aux Environs de Paris, avec leurs Usages dans la Me'decine,' 

 12ino, Paris, 1693. An improved edition of it was given by Bernard 

 de Jussieu, in 2 vols. 12mo, 1725; and an English translation was 

 published by Martyn, 2 vols. 8vo, London, in 1732. ' Relation d'un 

 Voyage du L<5vant, fait par Ordre du Roi, contenant 1'Histoire Ancienne 

 et Moderno de plusieurs lies de I'Archipel, les Plans des Villes et des 

 Lieux les plus considerables, et enrichie de Descriptions et de Figures 

 de Plantes, d'Animaux, et d'Observations singulifcres touchant 1'His- 

 toire Naturelle.' The first volume of this work was printed at the 

 Louvre before his death ; the second was completed from his manu- 

 scripts; and both were published in 1717, in 2 vols. 4to. There have 

 been several French editions, and it has been translated into English, 

 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1741. ' Traite" de la Matiere Me"dicale, ou 1'Histoire 

 et 1' Usage des Mddicamens et leur Analyse Chimique, Ouvrage post- 

 hume de M. Tournefort, mis au jour par M. Besnier,' 2 vols. 12mo, 

 Paris, 1717. This work, which was not published in French until 

 after the death of the author, had been already translated and pub- 

 lished in English, 8vo, London, 1708 and 1716. 



TOURNEMINE, LE PE'RE RENE' JOSEPH, Jesuit, occupies a 

 subordinate but useful and honourable position in the literary history 

 of France. He belonged to an ancient family in Bretagne, and was 

 boru at Rennes on the 26th of April 1661. In 1680, he entered the 

 Society of the Jesuit?. His superiors thought that his peculiar talents 

 qualified him for a teacher, and his subsequent career showed the 

 correctness of their opinion. For about twenty years he taught in 

 different colleges of the Order, with eminent success, humanity, 

 rhetoric, philosophy, and theology ; and while thus instructing others 

 he was accumulating information in the belles-lettres, physical, 

 moral, and metaphysical science theology, history, geography, and 

 numismatics that was to fit him for the employment of nearly 

 twenty years of his matured intellect. 



In 1701 Tournemine was called to Paris to take the management of 

 the ' Journal de Trevoux,' a periodical publication, which, although at 

 times disfigured by the narrow views and unamiable temper of secta- 

 rianism, has rendered services to literature that entitle it to a better 

 reputation than the equivocal one in which it is held by the mass of 

 readers who know it only from the sarcasms of Voltaire. Tourne- 

 mine was the principal editor of this work for nineteen years, from 

 1701 to 1720. He contributed to the journal during this time a 

 number of curious dissertations and analyses which procured for it a 

 high reputation throughout Europe. Superior to the partisan spirit of 

 many of his brethren, he was sufficiently impartial to combat the 

 systems of Hardouin and Panel ; and free from bigotry, although sin- 

 cerely religious, he praised highly the ' Merope ' of Voltaire, and even 

 when engaged in controversy with its great author always treated him 

 with respect. 



In 1 720 he was freed from the laborious task of editorship, but still 

 continued to contribute largely to the pages of the ' Journal de Tre- 

 voux.' Indeed the variety of studies to which, as teacher, and editor 

 of a critical journal, he had found it necessary to turn his attention, 

 appears to have produced in him desultory habits of thought, and 

 prevented the concentration of his powers upon any one topic, so as 

 to enable him to exhaust it. The Order, regretting that his time and 

 talents should be thus wasted, appointed him librarian to the residence 

 of professed Jesuits (maison de professe) at Paris, and after the death 

 of Bonami (1725) employed him to continue the literary history of 

 the society from the period to which it had been brought down by 

 Southwell. Tournemine entered with enthusiasm upon his new task. 

 He called upon all the provinces to supply him with memoirs, and 

 instituted researches in the archives of the society at Rome. The 

 habits of thought however which he had contracted led him to under- 

 fake the work on a scale beyond what it was possible to accomplish, 

 and unfitted him at the same time for persevering routine labour. 

 The over-minute investigation of details, and the episodical inquiries 

 into which he was continually seduced, diverted him from the com- 

 pletion of the work he had undertaken, and he failed to perform his 

 engagements. 



Tournemine died at Paris on the 16th of May 1739, in the seventy- 

 ninth year of his age, regretted by all who knew him. He has left no 

 work worthy of his talents and opportunities, yet he has not been 

 without influence upon literature. As a teacher and journalist, and in 

 the conversation of private society, he prompted aud encouraged many 

 young writers. His knowledge was at the service of every one who 

 asked it, and the information which he did not himself elaborate into 

 any enduring work was yet of material service to others. Ho 

 belonged to a class of minds which, although they leave little or no 

 permanent trace of their individuality, are indispensable to the 

 creation of a national literature those who go to form a literary 

 public, animating and instructing writers by its sympathy and subor- 

 dinate co-operation. 



A list of Touruemine's writings is given in the 42nd volume of the 

 ' Mdmoires de Niceron,' and iu the Dictionary of Chaufpie. They 

 consist chiefly of his contributions to the ' Journal de Trevoux.' He 



contributed the chronological tables to the edition of the Bible pub- 

 lished by Duhamel in 1706. He published in 1719 an edition of 

 Menochius's ' Scriptural Commentaries,' to which he appended a 

 system of chronology and twelve dissertations on different points of 

 the chronology of the Bible. In 1726 he published an edition of 

 Prideaux's ' History of the Jews,' and added to it a dissertation on 

 the books of Scripture not recognised as canonical by Protestant?, and 

 some remarks upon the ruins of Nineveh and the destruction of the 

 Assyrian empire. Tournemine's ' Reflexions sur I'Athe'iame ' were 

 printed as an introduction to two editions of Fe'ne'lon'a ' Traitd sur 

 I'Existence de Dieu;' and in reply to Voltaire, who had invited him 

 to clear up his doubts, he published in the 'Journal de Trevoux' 

 (October 1735) a letter on the immateriality of the soul, which does 

 not appear to have convinced the philosopher. Sketches of the life of 

 Tournemine are contained in the 'Journal de Trevoux' for September 

 1739, and in Belingan's 'Observations sur les Ecrivains Modernes,' 

 vol. xviii. There is also a well-executed memoir of him by M. Weiss 

 in the ' Biographic Universelle.' 



TOURNEUR, PIERRE LE, was born at Valognes in 1736. He 

 studied in the college Des Grassins at Coutances, where he distin- 

 guished himself, and appears to have repaired to Paris about the year 

 1767 or 1768, with a view to earn his subsistence by literary labour. 

 His history from that time till his death, in 1788, is little more than 

 an account of his publications and the reception they met with. 



He published in 1768 a thin octavo containing a few prize essays 

 which had been crowned by the academies of Montauban and Besancon 

 in the years 1766 and 1767; and an 'Eloge de Charles V., Roi 

 de France,' which had been unsuccessful in the competition of the 

 French Academy in the latter year. This seems to have been his 

 only attempt at original publication, with the exception of a number 

 of prefaces and some verses in two little volumes, entitled ' Jardins 

 Anglais, ou Varidtes tant originales que traduites,' which appeared iu 

 1788. His original composition betrays an entirely common-place 

 mind. 



In 1769 Le Tourneur published a collection of tales translated from 

 the English, of no importance in itself, and which attracted little or 

 no attention. Towards the close of the same year, or in the beginning 

 of 1770, he brought out a translation of 'Young's Night Thoughts' 

 and miscellaneous poems, which was more successful. He has taken 

 great liberties with the ' Night Thoughts,' omitting several passage?, 

 and altering the whole arrangement of the poem, with a view to 

 render it less startling to French taste. Grimm sneered at the work, 

 but Diderot and Laharpe declared themselves warmly in its favour. 

 The success of the translation of the ' Night Thoughts ' appears to 

 have decided Le Tourneur to confine himself in future to that kind of 

 employment. His first undertaking was a complete translation of 

 the dramatic works of Shakspere. In this enterprise he was associated 

 at first with the Comte de Catuelan and Fontaine Malherbe, both of 

 whose names are subscribed along with his in the dedication to the 

 king, prefixed to the first volume. But his associates deserted him 

 after the publication of the second volume, and the remaining 

 eighteen were the unaided work of Le Tourneur. The first volume 

 appeared in 1776 ; the laat in 1782. It is difficult for an Englishman 

 to do justice to the merits of a translation of Shakspere into any 

 foreign language. He feels the unavoidable defects too strongly. 

 Thus much however may be said of Le Tourneur's, th.it it honestly 

 aims at giving Shakspere as he is. The translator has evidently bene- 

 fited by his knowledge of the German translation by Eschenburg 

 (Zurich, 1775-87), and has prefixed the remarks of that critic to 

 several of the plays. The version is in prose, and by a prosaical 

 mind, yet enough of Shakspere remains to impress minds which know 

 him through no other medium with some sense of his greatness. It 

 is still the best French translation of Shakspere, and as such was 

 revised and republished by M. Guizot in 1824. Some expressions in 

 the prefatory discourse excited the anger of Voltaire, who thought he 

 saw in it an attempt to decry the merits of the great French drama- 

 tists. The controversy to which Voltaire's denunciations gave rise 

 was of advantage to the work by creating a public interest in it. Le 

 Tourneur seems to have taken no part in the discussion : in an adver- 

 tisement prefixed to the ninth volume, he quietly observes, "This 

 work has triumphed over the absurd hostility declared against it at its 

 first appearance, and the extraordinary wrath of a great poet, the 

 most ardent panegyrist of Shakspere so long as he was unknown, his 

 unaccountable enemy since he has been translated." Of the original 

 subscribers to the quarto edition a large proportion were English : the 

 sale however increased as the work advanced ; a quarto and an octavo 

 edition were published simultaneously ; and Le Tourneur, who seems 

 to have become publisher as well as author, adventured on the specu- 

 lation of publishing in numbers, by subscription, pictorial illustrations 

 of Shakspere. 



The translation of Shakspere was far from being the only employ- 

 ment of its author during the time he was engaged upon it. In 1770 

 he published a translation of Hervey's ' Meditations among the 

 Tombs ; ' in 1771 a translation of Johnson's ' Life of Savage,' together 

 with au abridgment of the same author's 'Life of Thomson ; ' in 1777 

 he published a translation of Macpherson's 'Ossian;' in the same 

 year a translation of Soame Jenyns's ' View of the Evidences of 

 Christianity;' in 1784-87, a translation of 'Clarissa Harlowej'in 



