Note 51 — I. OF WORKS OF THE MIND.

Probably Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is meant here. This author had made excellent classical studies in a Jesuit college, but attacked the ancients in his Discours sur LʼEglogue and in his Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, published together with his Poésies Pastorales in 1688. The paragraph beginning “A man feeds” and ending “nurses” was only printed for the first time in the fourth edition of the “Characters,” published in 1689.