acquitted. He represents his own case in Les Deux consciences (1902). L’Île vierge (1897) was the first of a trilogy to be called La Légende de la vie, which was to trace, under the fortunes of the hero, the pilgrimage of man through sorrow and sacrifice to the conception of the divinity within him. In Adam et Ève (1899), and Au Cœur frais de la forêt (1900), he preached the return to nature as the salvation not only of the individual but of the community. Among his other more important works are G. Courbet, et ses œuvres (1878); L’Histoire des Beaux-Arts en Belgique 1830–1887 (1887); En Allemagne (1888), dealing especially with the Pinakothek at Munich; La Belgique (1888), an elaborate descriptive work with many illustrations; La Vie belge (1905); and Alfred Stevens et son œuvre (1906).
Lemonnier spent much time in Paris, and was one of the early contributors to the Mercure de France. He began to write at a time when Belgian letters lacked style; and with much toil, and some initial extravagances, he created a medium for the expression of his ideas. He explained something of the process in a preface contributed to Gustave Abel’s Labeur de la prose (1902). His prose is magnificent and sonorous, but abounds in neologisms and strange metaphors.
See the Revue de Belgique (15th February 1903), which contains the syllabus of a series of lectures on Lemonnier by Edmond Picard, a bibliography of his works, and appreciations by various writers.
LEMONNIER, PIERRE CHARLES (1715–1799), French astronomer, was born on the 23rd of November 1715 in Paris, where his father was professor of philosophy at the collège d’Harcourt. His first recorded observation was made before he was sixteen, and the presentation of an elaborate lunar map procured for him admission to the Academy, on the 21st of April 1736, at the early age of twenty. He was chosen in the same year to accompany P. L. Maupertuis and Alexis Clairault on their geodetical expedition to Lapland. In 1738, shortly after his return, he explained, in a memoir read before the Academy, the advantages of J. Flamsteed’s mode of determining right ascensions. His persistent recommendation, in fact, of English methods and instruments contributed effectively to the reform of French practical astronomy, and constituted the most eminent of his services to science. He corresponded with J. Bradley, was the first to represent the effects of nutation in the solar tables, and introduced, in 1741, the use of the transit-instrument at the Paris observatory. He visited England in 1748, and, in company with the earl of Morton and James Short the optician, continued his journey to Scotland, where he observed the annular eclipse of July 25. The liberality of Louis XV., in whose favour he stood high, furnished him with the means of procuring the best instruments, many of them by English makers. Amongst the fruits of his industry may be mentioned a laborious investigation of the disturbances of Jupiter by Saturn, the results of which were employed and confirmed by L. Euler in his prize essay of 1748; a series of lunar observations extending over fifty years; some interesting researches in terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, in the latter of which he detected a regular diurnal period; and the determination of the places of a great number of stars, including twelve separate observations of Uranus, between 1765 and its discovery as a planet. In his lectures at the collège de France he first publicly expounded the analytical theory of gravitation, and his timely patronage secured the services of J. J. Lalande for astronomy. His temper was irritable, and his hasty utterances exposed him to retorts which he did not readily forgive. Against Lalande, owing to some trifling pique, he closed his doors “during an entire revolution of the moon’s nodes.” His career was arrested by paralysis late in 1791, and a repetition of the stroke terminated his life. He died at Héril near Bayeux on the 31st of May 1799. By his marriage with Mademoiselle de Cussy he left three daughters, one of whom became the wife of J. L. Lagrange. He was admitted in 1739 to the Royal Society, and was one of the one hundred and forty-four original members of the Institute.
He wrote Histoire céleste (1741); Théorie des comètes (1743), a translation, with additions of Hailey’s Synopsis; Institutions astronomiques (1746), an improved translation of J. Keill’s text-book; Nouveau zodiaque (1755); Observations de la lune, du soleil, et des étoiles fixes (1751–1775); Lois du magnétisme (1776–1778), &c.
See J. J. Lalande, Bibl. astr., p. 819 (also in the Journal des savants for 1801); F. X. von Zach, Allgemeine geog. Ephemeriden iii. 625; J. S. Bailly, Hist. de l’astr. moderne, iii.; J. B. J. Delambre. Hist. de l’astr. au XVIII e siècle, p. 179; J. Mädler, Geschichte der Himmelskunde, ii. 6; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 480.
LEMOYNE, JEAN BAPTISTE (1704–1778), French sculptor, was the pupil of his father, Jean Louis Lemoyne, and of Robert le Lorrain. He was a great figure in his day, around whose modest and kindly personality there waged opposing storms of denunciation and applause. Although his disregard of the classic tradition and of the essentials of dignified sculpture, as well as his lack of firmness and of intellectual grasp of the larger principles of his art, lay him open to stringent criticism, de Clarac’s charge that he had delivered a mortal blow at sculpture is altogether exaggerated. Lemoyne’s more important works have for the most part been destroyed or have disappeared. The equestrian statue of “Louis XV.” for the military school, and the composition of “Mignard’s daughter, Mme Feuquières, kneeling before her father’s bust” (which bust was from the hand of Coysevox) were subjected to the violence by which Bouchardon’s equestrian monument of Louis XIV. (q.v.) was destroyed. The panels only have been preserved. In his busts evidence of his riotous and florid imagination to a great extent disappears, and we have a remarkable series of important portraits, of which those of women are perhaps the best. Among Lemoyne’s leading achievements in this class are “Fontenelle” (at Versailles), “Voltaire,” “Latour” (all of 1748), “Duc de la Valière” (Versailles), “Comte de St Florentin,” and “Crébillon” (Dijon Museum); “Mlle Chiron” and “Mlle Dangeville,” both produced in 1761 and both at the Théâtre Français in Paris, and “Mme de Pompadour,” the work of the same year. Of the Pompadour he also executed a statue in the costume of a nymph, very delicate and playful in its air of grace. Lemoyne was perhaps most successful in his training of pupils, one of the leaders of whom was Falconnet.
LEMPRIÈRE, JOHN (c. 1765–1824), English classical scholar, was born in Jersey, and educated at Winchester and Pembroke College, Oxford. He is chiefly known for his Bibliotheca Classica or Classical Dictionary (1788), which, edited by various later scholars, long remained a readable if not very trustworthy reference book in mythology and classical history. In 1792, after holding other scholastic posts, he was appointed to the head-mastership of Abingdon grammar school, and later became the vicar of that parish. While occupying this living, he published a Universal Biography of Eminent Persons in all Ages and Countries (1808). In 1809 he succeeded to the head-mastership of Exeter free grammar school. On retiring from this, in consequence of a disagreement with the trustees, he was given the living of Meeth in Devonshire, which, together with that of Newton Petrock, he held till his death in London on the 1st of February 1824.
LEMUR (from Lat. lemures, “ghosts”), the name applied by Linnaeus to certain peculiar Malagasy representatives of the order Primates (q.v.) which do not come under the designation of either monkeys or apes, and, with allied animals from the same island and tropical Asia and Africa, constitute the sub-order Prosimiae, or Lemuroidea, the characteristics of which are given in the article just mentioned. The typical lemurs include species like Lemur mongoz and L. catta, but the English name “lemur” is often taken to include all the members of the sub-order, although the aberrant forms are often conveniently termed “lemuroids.” All the Malagasy lemurs, which agree in the structure of the internal ear, are now included in the family Lemuridae, confined to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands, which comprises the great majority of the group. The other families are the Nycticebidae, common to tropical Asia and Africa, and the Tarsiidae, restricted to the Malay countries. In the more typical Lemuridae there are two pairs of upper incisor teeth, separated by a gap in the middle line; the premolars may be either two or three, but the molars, as in the lower jaw, are always three on each side. In the lower jaw the incisors and canines are directed straight forwards, and are of small size
