important centre. Docks, wharves, piers, curing stations and warehouses have been provided or enlarged to cope with the growth of the trade, and an esplanade has been constructed along the front. The town is also the chief distributing agency for the islands, and carries on some business in knitted woollen goods. One mile west of Lerwick is Clickimin Loch, separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. On an islet in the lake stands a ruined “broch” or round tower.
LE SAGE, ALAIN RENÉ (1668–1747), French novelist and
dramatist, was born at Sarzeau in the peninsula of Rhuys,
between the Morbihan and the sea, on the 13th of December 1668.
Rhuys was a legal district, and Claude le Sage, the father of
the novelist, held the united positions of advocate, notary and
registrar of its royal court. His wife’s name was Jeanne Brenugat.
Both father and mother died when Le Sage was very young, and
his property was wasted or embezzled by his guardians. Little
is known of his youth except that he went to school with the
Jesuits at Vannes until he was eighteen. Conjecture has it that
he continued his studies at Paris, and it is certain that he was
called to the bar at the capital in 1692. In August 1694 he
married the daughter of a joiner, Marie Elizabeth Huyard.
She was beautiful but had no fortune, and Le Sage had little
practice. About this time he met his old schoolfellow, the
dramatist Danchet, and is said to have been advised by him
to betake himself to literature. He began modestly as a translator,
and published in 1695 a French version of the Epistles
of Aristaenetus, which was not successful. Shortly afterwards
he found a valuable patron and adviser in the abbé de Lyonne,
who bestowed on him an annuity of 600 livres, and recommended
him to exchange the classics for Spanish literature, of which he
was himself a student and collector.
Le Sage began by translating plays chiefly from Rojas and Lope de Vega. Le Traitre puni and Le Point d’honneur from the former, Don Félix de Mendoce from the latter, were acted or published in the first two or three years of the 18th century. In 1704 he translated the continuation of Don Quixote by Avellaneda, and soon afterwards adapted a play from Calderon, Don César Ursin, which had a divided fate, being successful at court and damned in the city. He was, however, nearly forty before he obtained anything like decided success. But in 1707 his admirable farce of Crispin rival de son maître was acted with great applause, and Le Diable boiteux was published. This latter went through several editions in the same year, and was frequently reprinted till 1725, when Le Sage altered and improved it considerably, giving it its present form. Notwithstanding the success of Crispin, the actors did not like Le Sage, and refused a small piece of his called Les Étrennes (1707). He thereupon altered it into Turcaret, his theatrical masterpiece, and one of the best comedies in French literature. This appeared in 1709. Some years passed before he again attempted romance writing, and then the first two parts of Gil Blas de Santillane appeared in 1715. Strange to say, it was not so popular as Le Diable boiteux. Le Sage worked at it for a long time, and did not bring out the third part till 1724, nor the fourth till 1735. For this last he had been part paid to the extent of a hundred pistoles some years before its appearance. During these twenty years he was, however, continually busy. Notwithstanding the great merit and success of Turcaret and Crispin, the Théâtre Français did not welcome him, and in the year of the publication of Gil Blas he began to write for the Théâtre de la Foire—the comic opera held in booths at festival time. This, though not a very dignified occupation, was followed by many writers of distinction at this date, and by none more assiduously than by Le Sage. According to one computation he produced, either alone or with others, about a hundred pieces, varying from strings of songs with no regular dialogues, to comediettas only distinguished from regular plays by the introduction of music. He was also industrious in prose fiction. Besides finishing Gil Blas he translated the Orlando innamorato (1721), rearranged Guzman d’Alfarache (1732), published two more or less original novels, Le Bachelier de Salamanque and Estévanille Gonzales, and in 1733 produced the Vie et aventures de M. de Beauchesne, which is curiously like certain works of Defoe. Besides all this, Le Sage was also the author of La Valise trouvée, a collection of imaginary letters, and of some minor pieces, of which Une journée des parques is the most remarkable. This laborious life he continued until 1740, when he was more than seventy years of age. His eldest son had become an actor, and Le Sage had disowned him, but the second was a canon at Boulogne in comfortable circumstances. In the year just mentioned his father and mother went to live with him. At Boulogne Le Sage spent the last seven years of his life, dying on the 17th of November 1747. His last work, Mélange amusant de saillies d’esprit et de traits historiques les plus frappants, had appeared in 1743.
Not much is known of Le Sage’s life and personality, and the foregoing paragraph contains not only the most important but almost the only facts available for it. The few anecdotes which we have of him represent him as a man of very independent temper, declining to accept the condescending patronage which in the earlier part of the century was still the portion of men of letters. Thus it is said that, on being remonstrated with, as he thought impolitely, for an unavoidable delay in appearing at the duchess of Bouillon’s house to read Turcaret, he at once put the play in his pocket and retired, refusing absolutely to return. It may, however, be said that as in time so in position he occupies a place apart from most of the great writers of the 17th and 18th centuries respectively. He was not the object of royal patronage like the first, nor the pet of salons and coteries like the second. Indeed, he seems all his life to have been purely domestic in his habits, and purely literary in his interests.
The importance of Le Sage in French and in European literature is not entirely the same, and he has the rare distinction of being more important in the latter than in the former. His literary work may be divided into three parts. The first contains his Théâtre de la Foire and his few miscellaneous writings, the second his two remarkable plays Crispin and Turcaret, the third his prose fictions. In the first two he swims within the general literary current in France; he can be and must be compared with others of his own nation. But in the third he emerges altogether from merely national comparison. It is not with Frenchmen that he is to be measured. He formed no school in France; he followed no French models. His work, admirable as it is from the mere point of view of style and form, is a parenthesis in the general development of the French novel. That product works its way from Madame de la Fayette through Marivaux and Prévost, not through Le Sage. His literary ancestors are Spaniards, his literary contemporaries and successors are Englishmen. The position is almost unique; it is certainly interesting and remarkable in the highest degree.
Of Le Sage’s miscellaneous work, including his numerous farce-operettas, there is not much to be said except that they are the very best kind of literary hack-work. The pure and original style of the author, his abundant wit, his cool, humoristic attitude towards human life, which wanted only greater earnestness and a wider conception of that life to turn it into true humour, are discernible throughout. But this portion of his work is practically forgotten, and its examination is incumbent only on the critic. Crispin and Turcaret show a stronger and more deeply marked genius, which, but for the ill-will of the actors, might have gone far in this direction. But Le Sage’s peculiar unwillingness to attempt anything absolutely new discovered itself here. Even when he had devoted himself to the Foire theatre, it seems that he was unwilling to attempt, when occasion called for it, the absolute innovation of a piece with only one actor, a crux which Alexis Piron, a lesser but a bolder genius, accepted and carried through. Crispin and Turcaret are unquestionably Molièresque, though they are perhaps more original in their following of Molière than any other plays that can be named. For this also was part of Le Sage’s idiosyncrasy that, while he was apparently unable or unwilling to strike out an entirely novel line for himself, he had no sooner entered upon the beaten path than he left it to follow his own devices. Crispin rival de son maître is a farce in one act and many scenes, after the earlier manner of motion. Its
