for long, however; the unanimous rancour of so many men of influence and rank had successfully ruined the fortune and broken the spirit of the old piratical lexicographer.  Before retiring into private life, however, he poured out in his Couches de l’Academie a torrent of poison, which was distilled through the presses of Amsterdam in 1687.  One of his earlier colleagues at the Academy supplied the bankrupt man with the necessaries of life, until, on the 14th of May, 1688, probably just as the “dumpy twelve” was passing through the press, he died in Paris like a rat in a hole.  His Dictionary, being suppressed in France, was edited, after his death, in 1690, at The Hague and Rotterdam, and enjoyed a great success.  We learn from a letter of Racine to Boileau that in 1694 the publisher ventured to offer a copy of a new edition of it to the King of France, and that it was graciously received.  If the poor old man could have struggled on a little longer he might have lived to see himself become fashionable and successful again.

With all his misfortunes he managed to beat the Academy, for that body, in spite of its superhuman efforts, did not contrive to publish its Dictionary till four years after the appearance of Furetiere’s.  The latter is a great curiosity of lexicography, a vast storehouse of peculiar and rare information.  It is always consulted by scholars, but never without a recollection of the extraordinary struggle which its author sustained, singlehanded, against the world, and in which he fell, overpowered by numbers, only to triumph after all in the ashes of his fame.

LADY WINCHILSEA’S POEMS

MISCELLANY POEMS. With Two Plays.  By Ardelia.

  I never list presume to Parnass hill,
  But piping low, in shade of lowly grove,
  I play to please myself, albeit ill.

Spencer Shep.  Cal.  June.

Manuscript in folio.  Circa_ 1696.

There is no other book in my library to which I feel that I possess so clear a presumptive right as to this manuscript.  Other rare volumes would more fitly adorn the collections of bibliophiles more learned, more ingenious, more elegant, than I. But if there is any person in the two hemispheres who has so fair a claim upon the ghost of Ardelia, let that man stand forth.  Ardelia was uncultivated and unsung when I constituted myself, years ago, her champion.  With the exception of a noble fragment of laudation from Wordsworth, no discriminating praise from any modern critic had stirred the ashes of her name.  I made it my business to insist in many places on the talent of Ardelia.  I gave her, for the first time, a chance of challenging public taste, by presenting to readers of Mr. Ward’s English Poets many pages of extracts from her writings; and I hope it is not indiscreet to say that, when the third volume of that compilation appeared, Mr. Matthew Arnold told me that its greatest revelation to himself had been