FURETIERE

furetiere, antoine (1619-1688), french scholar and miscellaneous writer, was born in paris on the 28th of december 1619. he first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various preferments became abbe of chalivoy in the diocese of bourges in 1662. in his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires--_nouvelle allegorique, ou histoire des derniers troubles arrives au royaume d'eloquence_ (1658); _voyage de mercure_ (1653)--he was admitted a member of the french academy in 1662. that learned body had long promised a complete dictionary of the french tongue; and when they heard that furetiere was on the point of issuing a work of a similar nature, they interfered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed the exclusive privilege of publishing such a book. after much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685; but for this act of injustice he took a severe revenge in his satire, _couches de l'academie_ (amsterdam, 1687). his _dictionnaire universel_ was posthumously published in 1690 (rotterdam, 2 vols.). it was afterwards revised and improved by the protestant jurist, henri basnage de beauval (1656-1710), who published his edition (3 vols.) in 1701; and it was only superseded by the compilation known as the _dictionnaire de trevoux_ (paris, 3 vols., 1704; 7th ed., 8 vols., 1771), which was in fact little more than a reimpression of basnage's edition. furetiere is perhaps even better known as the author of _le roman bourgeois_ (1666). it cast ridicule on the fashionable romances of mlle de scudery and of la calprenede, and is of interest as descriptive of the ~~ everyday life of his times. there is no element of burlesque, as in scarron's _roman comique_, but the author contents himself with stringing together a number of episodes and portraits, obviously drawn from life, without much attempt at sequence. the book was edited in 1854 by edward fournier and charles asselineau and by p. jannet. the _fureteriana_, which appeared in paris eight years after furetiere's death, which took place on the 14th of may 1688, is a collection of but little value.