"From this abyss " came forth also a prince singularly well informed,
fond of study, with a refined taste in literature, with a passion for
science; for his instruction Fenelon made use of the great works composed
for his father's education by Bossuet, adding thereto writings more
suitable for his age; for him he composed the _Fables_ and the _Dialogues
des Morts,_ and a _Histoire de Charlemagne_ which has perished. In his
stories, even those that were imaginary, he paid attention before
everything to truth. "Better leave a history in all its dryness than
enliven it at the expense of truth," he would say. The suppleness and
richness of his mind sufficed to save him from wearisomeness; the
liveliness of his literary impressions communicated itself to his pupil.
"I have seen," says Fenelon in his letter to the French Academy, "I have
seen a young prince, but eight years old, overcome with grief at sight of
the peril of little Joash; I have seen him lose patience with the chief
priest for concealing from Joash his name and his birth; I have seen him
weeping bitterly as he listened to these verses:--

'O! miseram Euridicen anima fugiente vocabat;
Euridicen toto referebant flumine ripx.'"

The soul and mind of Fenelon were sympathetic; Bossuet, in writing for
the grand-dauphin, was responsive to the requirements of his own mind,
never to those of the boy's with whose education he had been intrusted.

Fenelon also wrote _Telemaque_. "It is a fabulous narrative," he himself
says, "in the form of an heroic poem, like Homer's or Virgil's, wherein I
have set forth the principal actions that are meet for a prince whose
birth points him out as destined to reign. I did it at a time when I was
charmed with the marks of confidence and kindness showered upon me by the
king; I must have been not only the most ungrateful but the most
insensate of men to have intended to put into it satirical and insolent
portraits; I shrink from the bare idea of such a design. It is true that
I have inserted in these adventures all the verities necessary for
government and all the defects that one can show in the exercise of
sovereign power; but I have not stamped any of them with a peculiarity
which would point to any portrait or caricature. The more the work is
read, the more it will be seen that I wished to express everything
without depicting anybody consecutively; it is, in fact, a narrative done
in haste, in detached