Note 115 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 8)

Most of the applications made of the personages are stupid enough, and we are convinced, that though Fénélon might have referred to the Dutch, when he wrote of the Phenicians, and even have shadowed forth an ideal likeness of Louis XIV. in Sesostris, and perhaps of Louvois in Protesilaus, and of Pomponne in Philocles,—he had no thought of the king's mistresses, Montespan and Fontanges, nor of madame de Maintenon, when he wrote of Calypso, Eucharis, and Antiope. In addition to these allusions, we are told that Pygmalion meant Cromwell; Baleazer, Charles II.; Narbal, Monk; and Idomeneus, James II. The first of these is absurd. Still, as we have said, without portraying individuals, Fénélon very likely referred to certain questions of policy, and to the actual state of some neighbouring countries, in sketching the government and people of some of the lands which Telemachus visited.