FONTENELLE, Bernardle Bo vier de (1657-1757), author of the Dialogues des Morts, Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes, &c., was born at Rouen on the 11th of February 1657, and died at Paris on the 9th of January 1757, having thus very nearly attained the age of 100 years. His father was an advocate settled in Rouen, his mother a sister of the great Corneille. He was educated at the college of the Jesuits in his native city, and distinguished himself by the extraordinary precocity, as well as the amazing versatility, of his talents. His teachers, who readily appreciated these, were anxious to allure him into their order, but his father had designed him for the bar, and an advocate accordingly he became; but, having lost the first cause which was entrusted to him, he soon abandoned law in disgust and gave himself wholly to literary pursuits. His attention was first directed to poetical composition; and more than once he competed for the poetry prizes of the French Academy, but never with success. He had also the sorrow of witnessing, in 1680, the total failure of his tragedy Aspar, a failure which was all the more mortifying because, for the purpose of annoying Racine, Thomas Corneille had previously sounded forth in the Mercure the praises of his nephew as the most gifted of all the younger dramatists. Fontenelle afterwards acknowledged the justice of the public verdict by burning his unfortunate drama, of which nothing but the name now survives. But for several years he persisted in the belief that poetry was his true vocation, and continued to produce dramatic compositions, the mediocrity of which, considering the author’s real talent, is positively astonishing. His opera of Thetis et Pêlée, though highly praised by Voltaire, cannot be said to rise much above ...