Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/717

It has been observed, that she had all imaginable accomplishments and talents for pleasing. Happy enough to be born with a great share of wit, she not only cultivated it in herself, but, what is more, she loved, or affected to love it, in others. The king himself never passed for having much relish for men of letters; and, indeed, their general silence forms a kind of tacit condemnation. La Pompadour, however, not always to make a blameable use of her interest over him, procured a pension of six thousand livres, (about three hundred pounds) a year, for Crebillon the elder; she obtained another for Madame de Lussan; countenanced and promoted the interest of Marmontel; and kept on fair terms with Voltaire. She was the original Collette, in Rousseau's Devin de Village, acted at court, and sent him one hundred pounds on the occasion; of which, however, he would take but forty shillings, saying, it cost him but so long writing, as that sum would subsist him. Nor did she neglect the patronage of the liberal arts. All applications were made through her, in their several branches; and there was not any man eminent in his profession, but what she distinguished and encouraged. She not only visited herself the work-places of those employed in the mechanics arts, but took with her the king, to whom she pointed out and recommended their respective merits. For some she obtained pensions, lodgings in the Louvre, and other advantages and distinctions. The tapestries of the Gobelins, the porcelain manufactory, and the carpet works of the Savonniere, felt her beneficial influence. But she did not fail making a due parade of all those laudable attentions, serving, as they must, to place her in a respectable light with the king, who could not but see the fitness of them, and their tendency to do him honour.

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