, the son of Frangois le Bovier de Fonienelle, advocate in the parliament
, the son of
Frangois le Bovier de Fonienelle, advocate in the parliament of Rouen, and of Martha Corneiile, sister to the
great dramatic poet Corneille, was born at Rouen Feb.
11, 1657, and lived to the age of an hundred, though
so weak at his birth, that his life was not expected. Voltaire declares him to have been the most universal genius
the age of Louis the Fourteenth produced; and compares
him to lands situated in so happy a climate as to produce
all sorts of fruits. Before he was twenty, he had written
a great part of Bellerophon,“a tragic opera; and some
time after his opera of
” Thetis and Peleus“appeared, in
which he had closely imitated Quinault, and met with
great success. That of
” yneas and Lavinia“did not
succeed so well. He tried his genius in writing tragedy;
and assisted mademoiselle Bernard in some of her dramatic
pieces. Two he wrote himself, one of which was acted in
1680, but never printed. He was too long and too unjustly censured on account of this piece; for he had the
merit to discover, that though his genius was unconfined,
yet he did not possess those talents which so greatly distinguished his uncle, Peter Corneille, in the tragic drama.
He wrote several smaller compositions, in which that delicacy of wit and profoundness of thought, which promise
greater efforts, might already be discovered. In his poetical performances, and
” Dialogues of the Dead,“the spirit
of Voiture was displayed, though more extended and more
philosophical. His
” Plurality of Worlds“is a work singular in its kind; his design in it was to present that part
of philosophy to view in a gay and pleasing dress; for
which purpose he has introduced a lady, and drawn up
the whole in a most agreeable as well as instructing dialogue. In the same manner he made an entertaining book
from
” Van Dale’s Oracles." The controversial matters
treated of in this work (for he went upon Van Dale’s scheme of exploding the Oracles as human impostures) raised him
secret enemies, whose malice he had the good fortune to
disappoint. He found, says Voltaire, how dangerous it
is for a man, though in the right, to differ in opinion from
those whose judgment receives a sanction from authority.