so called, because they studied to attain a state of perfect contemplation, in which the soul is the passive recipient of divine light. She was especially noted for her doctrine of pure love; she taught that Christian perfection consisted in a disinterested love of God, excluding the hope of happiness and fear of misery, and that this perfection was attainable by man. Fenelon first became acquainted with her at the house of his friend the Duke de Beauvilliers, and, convinced of the sincerity of her religion, was disposed to regard her more favourably from a notion that her religious opinions, against which a loud clamour had been raised, coincided very nearly with his own. It has been the fashion to represent him as her convert and disciple. The truth is, that he was deeply versed in the writings of the later mystics; men who, with all their extravagance, were perhaps the best representatives of the Christian character to be found among the Roman Catholics of their time. He considered the doctrine of Madame Guyon to be substantially the same with that of his favourite authors; and whatever appeared exceptionable in her expositions, he attributed to loose and exaggerated expression natural to her sex and character.
The approbation of Fenelon gave currency to the fair Quietist amongst orthodox members of the church. At last the bishops began to take alarm: the clamour was renewed, and the examination of her doctrines solemnly intrusted to Bossuet and two other learned divines. Fenelon was avowedly her friend; yet no one hitherto had breathed a suspicion of any flaw in his orthodoxy. It was even during the examination, and towards the close of it, that he was promoted to the Archbishopric of Cambray. The blow came at length from the hand of his most valued friend. He had been altogether passive in the proceedings respecting Madame Guyon. Bossuet, who had been provoked into vehement wrath, and had resolved to crush her, was sufficiently irritated by this temperate neutrality. But when Fenelon found himself obliged to publish his ‘Maxims of the Saints,’ in which, without attacking others, he defends his own views of some of the controverted points, Bossuet, in a tumult of zeal, threw himself at the feet of Louis, denounced his friend as a dangerous fanatic, and besought the King to interpose the royal arm between the Church and pollution. Fenelon offered to submit his book to the judgment of the Pope. Permission was granted in very ungracious terms, and presently followed by a sentence of banishment to his diocese. This sudden reverse of fortune, which he received without even whispering a complaint, served to show the forbearance and meekness of his spirit, but it deprived him of none of his powers. An animated controversy arose between him and Bossuet, and all Europe beheld with admiration the boldness and success with which he maintained his ground against the renowned and veteran disputant; and that, too, in the face of fearful discouragement. The whole power of the court was arrayed against him, and he stood alone; for his powerful friends had left his side. The Cardinal de Noailles and others, who had in private expressed unqualified approbation of his book, meanly withheld a public acknowledgment of their opinions. Whilst his enemy enjoyed every facility, and had Louis and his courtiers and courtly bishops to cheer him on, it was with difficulty that Fenelon could find a printer who would venture to put to the press a work which bore his name. Under these disadvantages, harassed in mind, and with infirm health, he replied to the deliberate and artful attacks of his adversary with a rapidity which, under any circumstances, would have been astonishing. He was now gaining ground daily in public opinion. The Pope also, who knew his merit, was very unwilling to condemn. His persecutors were excited to additional efforts. He had already been banished from court; now he was deprived of the name of preceptor, and of his salary—of that very salary which some time before he had eagerly offered to resign, in consideration of the embarrassed state of the royal treasury. The flagging zeal of the Pope was stimulated by threats conveyed in letters from Louis penned by Bossuet. At length the sentence of condemnation was obtained; but in too mild a form to satisfy altogether the courtly party. No bull was issued. A simple brief pronounced certain propositions to be erroneous and dangerous, and condemned the book which contained them, without sentencing it in the usual manner to the flames.
It is needless to say that Fenelon submitted. He published without delay the sentence of condemnation, noting the selected propositions, and expressing his entire acquiescence in the judgment pronounced; and prohibited the faithful in his diocese from reading or having in their possession his own work, which up to that moment he had defended so manfully. Protestants, who are too apt in judging the conduct of Roman Catholics, to forget every thing but their zeal, have raised an outcry against his meanness and dissimulation. Fenelon was a sincere member of a Church which claimed infallibility. We may regret the thraldom in which such a mind was held by an authority from which the Protestant happily is free; but the censure which falls on him personally for this act is certainly misplaced.
The faint hopes which his friends might have cherished, that when the storm had passed he would be restored to favour, were soon extinguished by an event, which, whilst it closed against him for ever the doors of the palace, secured him a place in history, and without which it is probable that he would never have become the subject even of a short memoir.
A manuscript which he had intrusted to a servant to copy, was treacherously sold by this man to a printer in Paris, who immediately put it to the press, under the title of Continuation of the Fourth Book of the Odyssey, or Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, with the royal privilege, dated April 6, 1699. It was told at court that the forthcoming work was from the pen of the obnoxious archbishop; and before the impression of the first volume was completed, orders were given to suppress it, to punish the printers, and seize the copies already printed. A few however escaped the hands of the police, and were rapidly circulated. One of them, together with a copy of the remaining part of the manuscript, soon after came into the possession of a printer at the Hague, who could publish it without danger.
So eager was the curiosity which the violent proceedings of the French court had excited, that the press could hardly be made, with the utmost exertion, to keep pace with the demand. Such is the history of the first appearance of Telemachus.
Louis was persuaded to think that the whole book was intended to be a satire on him, his court, and government; and the world was persuaded for a time to think the same. So, whilst the wrath of the King was roused to the uttermost, all Europe was sounding forth the praises of Fenelon. The numerous enemies of Louis exulted at the supposed exhibition of his tyranny and profligate life. The philosophers were charmed with the liberal and enlightened views of civil government which they seemed to discover. It is now well known that the anger and the praise were alike undeserved. The book was probably written for the use of the Duke of Burgundy, certainly at a time when Fenelon enjoyed the favour of his sovereign, and was desirous to retain it. He may have forgotten that it was impossible to describe a good and a bad king, a virtuous and a profligate court, without saying much that would bear hard upon Louis and his friends. As for his political enlightenment, it is certain that he had his full share of the monarchical principles of his time and nation. He wished to have good kings, but he made no provision for bad ones. It is difficult to believe that Louis was seriously alarmed at his notions of political economy. That science was not in a very advanced state; but no one could fear that a prince could be induced by the lessons of his tutor to collect all the artificers of luxury in his capital, and drive them in a body into the fields to cultivate potatoes and cabbages, with a belief that he would thus make the country a garden, and the town a seat of the Muses.
Nothing was now left to Fenelon but to devote himself to his episcopal duties, which he seems to have discharged with equal zeal and ability. The course of his domestic life, as described by an eyewitness, was retired, and, to a remarkable degree, uniform. Strangers were courteously and hospitably received; but his society was confined for the most part to the ecclesiastics who resided in his house. Amongst them were some of his own relations, to whom he was tenderly attached, but for whose preferment, it should be noticed, he never manifested an unbecoming eagerness. His only recreation was a solitary walk in the fields, where it was his employment, as he observes to a friend, to converse with his God. If in his rambles he fell in with any of the poorer part of his flock, he would sit with them on the grass, and discourse about their temporal as well as their spiritual concerns; and sometimes he would visit them in their humble sheds, and partake of such refreshment as they offered him.
In the beginning of the 18th century we find him
