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58 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
French Women "Adele Of Letters ," &C . ....
apt to be overlaid or violated in compliance with , the subtle and more arbitrary law of public taste and requirementupon which _,
, success or failure depend , and which is certainly not amenable to high art .
We give extracts from the beginning and end of the biographical sketch of this lady , as evidence of the taste and feeling with which .
Miss Kavanagh has achieved _Iier task . _MaBEMOISEUUE I > E _ScUiDERY .
" The name of Mademoiselle de Scudery has remained on record as a striking and memorable instance of the vicissitudes innerent to
literary fame . "What was she not in her own day ? What is she now in ours ? Her fifty volumes of poetry and prose were the
delight of the most exquisitely polished society France has yet knownfor elegant pleasures and refined conversations were its
, great occupation . They were translated into every European language , and found their way , it is asserted , into Eastern tongues .
Her discourse on Glory won the first prize of eloquence bestowed hy the French Academy , and she replaced Helen Cornaro
amongst the Ricovrati of Padua . None of the women who have written during the last two centuries received more honours , more
flattering distinctions , and more substantial rewards , than fell to the lot of Madeleine de Scudery . Madame de Stael alone has been more
influential since then , _btft she has not been more famous . Her fame , indeedinstead of decreasing with , time , has assumed that
, fluence calm power and much which of promises her celebrity that it sprang shall be from enduring two sources ; but , her which in- _,
poverty and universal love closed on Mademoiselle de Scudery . One was born poor , wrote for her daily breadand kept aloof from
, the political contests of her day . The other , the daughter of a wealthy and popular minister , the personal enemy of Napoleon ,
reared in stirring times , full of ardour and passion in her opinions , waged no contemptible war against the mightiest of sovereigns ;
and to her prominent position , and that long enmity , more than to her fine geniusshe owed her world-known celebrity . But little
has it availed , Mademoiselle de Scudery that she once delighted fine minds and delicate wits ; two hundred years have scarcely
passed since she wrote that famous ' Clelia , ' which , with its map of the kingdom of Tenderness , has proved so fatal to her name .
' Clelia , ' celebrated by the sarcasms of Boileau and Moliere , two pitiless enemiesand powerful as they were pitiless , and which the
, world knows now by their anathemas , for what they spared it has forgotten . And yet , when it appeared at the sign of the ' Palm /
in the Mercer's Gallery of the old Palais de Justice , the great publishing world of the day , it got as cordial a welcome as Oorinne or
Cecilia ever excited in the last age . Princesses received with transport every one of its ten . volumes—for it took years to appear ; Une
ladies and fastidious gentlemen , aye even Boileau himself , then a
58 Notices Of Books.
58 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1862, page 58, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031862/page/58/
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