400 



PRgVOST 



PRIAM 



immortal as the author nf MHIIOH Ltteaut, was born 

 of good family Hi 11 end in in Artoi-, ]-i April 1097. 

 ll>> \va-sediicatcd by tin- Jesuit* at Hesdin, ami at 

 tin- College d'Harcourt in i'ari*. at sixteen volnii- 

 for service an the laat war of Louis XIV. 



was drawing; to its close, Imt goon returned in the 

 Jesuits, ami indeed had almost joined tin- nnlrr 

 when a fresh temptation drew his impulsive anil 

 restless nature once more to the soldier's life. Of 

 this -frond period of soldiering little is known, Imt 

 it U certain that at twenty-four he joined the 

 Benedictines of St Manr, and spent the next -i\ 

 \e.us in a round of religious duties, in study, and 

 in writing a volume of tlallia C'/irixtuina. About 

 tin- year 1727, being anxious to be transferred to 

 Cluny, where the rule was less austere, he dis- 

 counted his IMM mission, and so found himself 

 iinex|x>ctedlv guilty of the sin of disobe<lience. 

 Hi- Mfd to Holland, and spent six years of exile in 

 that country ami in England, and there is even a 

 dim story of a love entanglement :igain-t which he 

 strove for a while in vain. In 1728 he published 

 the first and best of his long novels, tlif Mi moires 

 if tin llomate fie (Juntitt, to which indeed Minimi 

 Letcaut (apparently first published at Amsterdam 

 in 1733) forms a kind of supplement. His lluent 

 pen employed itself in farther novels Clfrelum/, 

 fit naturel tie Cromwel ; Le Doyen de Killerine 

 in translations, and in I.r Pour et Contrc ( 1733-40), 

 a periodical review of life and letters, modelled on 

 the Spectator, and showing an excellent apprecia- 

 tion of English books, By 1735 he was iwck in 

 France by royal permission, and allowed to wear 

 the dress of the secular priesthood. He was be- 

 friended by Cardinal de Missy, and the Prince dc 

 Conti, whose chaplain he became, and for thirty 

 years he wrote assiduously over a hundred volumes 

 of compilations, including a voluminous Histoire 

 gtntrale den Voyayr*{nf which vol. i., 1748, contains 

 a tine portrait by Schmidt), histories, moral essays, 

 translations of Pamela ami Claritsa Ifarlowe, and at 

 least one novel Histoire tTvne Grecque Moderne. In 

 1741 a literary service tbonAfatlewy rendered to a 

 satirical novelist drove him from !' ranee to Brussels, 

 thence to Kraiikforl : hut he was soon forgiven by 

 M. de Maurepas, and allowed to return. He lived 

 inaeoti.ige at Saint Kii min near Chantilly, walked 

 much ill the woods there, ami died of the rupture 

 of an aneurism, '23d November 1763. The story 

 wan long current that after he was thought to han- 

 dled of apoplexy, a stupid surgeon, in haste to 

 begin a post-mortem examination, both brought 

 him to life and killed him with a single thru-! of 

 hia knife; but this hideous romance first ap|>rured 

 about 1782, and was completely disproved by 

 Harrisse (see his L'Abbi Prtvott, 1896). Many 

 other legends have clustered round Prevost's ro- 

 mantic life. Of these the most remarkable ia a 

 perfectly baseless calumny that he killed his own 

 father, who had caught him in an intrigue, by 

 throwing him downturn 



Prevost's is one of the names lifted securely 

 above the Hood of time by one lxM>k written in a 

 moment of happy inspiration. Minimi J.i-xnmf 

 lemains fieh. rliaiming, and perennial, from it* 

 perfect and unaffected simplicity, the stamp of 

 reality and truth throughout, and a style so (low- 

 ing, easy, and natural, that the reader forgets it 

 altogether in the im-mowering pathetic interest of 

 the story. The half dozen figures portrayed have 

 the likeness of life itself : the young Chevalier des 

 Giii-iix, the hero, is a lover of "the noblest pattern, 

 absolutely forgetful of self, and idealising even the 

 un worthiness of his mistress ; Tiber(je is an admir- 

 able type of the sensible and faithful friend, Les- 

 caut, Manon's brother, of the ruffian and bully ; 

 but the triumph of the book is Manon herself, 

 charming, light-hearted, shallow, incapable of a 



love that she will not sacrifice for luxury, yet ever 

 moved with a real affection for her love'r, constant 

 even in her inconstancy and her degradation, the 

 goodness ever shining through the guilt, HIM 

 last purified by love and sulVering. One feels in 

 this unique book that it is impossible to sa\ w hen- 

 reality ends and fiction begins, and inileed it 

 remains to this day unequalled as a truthful 

 realisation of one over-mustering passion. Fiom 

 beginning to end a careful reader detects the traces 

 of a sad experience, for its author had himself a 

 sensitive heart and warm imagination, joined to a 

 weak and vacillating character. Both aTilM-rge and 

 a Des Grieux met in himself, for his character and 

 ideals were pure and elevated, despite the wcxik 

 nesses that grew out of his passionate and impulsive 

 soul. Compounded, like his hero, at once of weak- 

 ness and of strength, he is not to be regarded with 

 admiration so much as sympathy and affection, for, 

 if his sensitive ami impressionable heart opened a 

 door to frailties ill-befitting the habit that be won-. 

 these frailties at least were natural and not dis- 

 simulated, and did not corrupt his heart any more 

 than they did hi- heroine's. 



There is no complete edition of Prevosfs works. His 

 (Kurret Choiiio were collected at Amsterdam (39 vols. 

 1783-85). Of his one mnsterpiece the editions are 

 numberless, and there is at least one fair English transla- 

 tion, by D. C. Moylan (1841 ; reprinted 1886). See the 

 biography prefixed to Provost's Pcntttt (1764), and 

 Sainte-Beuve in J'nrtrait* Littcraira, vols. i. and iii., 

 and t'aiuuric* Uu Lundi, vol. ix. 



PreVoKt-Paradol. LUCIEN ANATOI.K, French 

 journalist, was bom at I'm is, son of an actress, sth 

 August 1829, passed with distinction through the 

 College Bourbon and Kcole Normale, and liecame 

 in 1855 professor of French Literatim- al Aix. 

 Hardly a year later he was at work in Paris on the 

 Journal des Debate and Courrier tin liinnnirhf, 

 and from time to time he published < -oiled ions of 

 essays on literature and politics, of which the best 

 is his Essais tur les Moralistw f'rattfai* (18114). 

 In 1865 he was elected to the Academy, and in 

 IM'IS he visited England, and was honoured at 

 Edinburgh with a public entertainment. He bad 

 always l>een, as a moderate liberal, an opponent 

 of the empire, hut the accession of Ollivier to power 

 in January 1870 seemed to open up a new era for 

 French policy, and he allowed himself to accept 

 the post of envoy to the I'nited States. Scaircly 

 was he installed when the war with (iernmny 

 broke out, and Picvost I'aiadol. his mind iinhin^' d 

 by the virulent attacks made upon him by the 

 republican piess, and hopeless of the issue (if the 

 struggle before his country, solved his own difficul- 

 ties by suicide at Washington, 20th July 1870. 



Prey. BIRDS OF. See Bums OF PIIF.V. 



Priam, king of Troy al flu- time of the Trojan 

 war, was the son of I.aomedon and Strymo or 

 Placia. The name means 'the ransomed,' and 

 was given him on account of his having been 

 ransomed by his sister Hesione from Hercules, into 

 whose hands he had fallen. His lii-t wife was 

 Arisba, daughter of Merops. whom he gave away 

 to a friend in order to marry Hecuba, by whom, 

 according to Homer, he had nineteen sons. He 

 hail altogether fifty sons ; later writers add as 

 many daughters. The l>st known of these are 

 Hector, Paris, Uciphobns, Ilelenus, Troilus, mid 

 Cassandra. Priam is represented as too old to 

 take any active jiart in the Trojan war, and in 

 Homer only once ap)>ears on the field of battle. 

 After Hector's death he went to the tent of Achilles 

 to leg the Ixxly for burial. The oldest Greek 

 legends arc silent respecting his fate ; but later 

 poets like Euripides and Virgil say that he was 

 slain by Pyrrhus when the Greeks stormed the 

 city. 



