From this time Pretorius took little further part in public affairs until after the first annexation of the state by Great Britain. In 1878 he acted as chairman of the committee of Boer leaders who were seeking the restoration of the independence of their country, and for his action in that capacity he was arrested in January 1880 by order of Sir Garnet Wolseley on a charge of treason. (See the Blue Book [C. 2584] of 1880 for details of this charge.) He was admitted to bail and shortly afterwards urged by Wolseley to accept a seat on the executive council. This offer Pretorius declined, but he consented to tour the country with a proclamation by Wolseley counselling the Boers to submit, and promising them self-government. In December of the same year he was appointed, with Paul Kruger and P. Joubert, to carry on the government on the part of the insurgent Boers. He was one of the signatories to the Pretoria Convention and continued to act as a member of the Triumvirate until the election of Kruger as president in May 1883. He then withdrew from public life; but lived to see the country re-annexed to Great Britain, dying at Potchefstroom on the 19th of May 1901. He is stated to have disapproved the later developments of Krugerism, and within four months of his death visited Louis Botha and Schalk Burger, on behalf of Lord Kitchener, with the object of bringing the war to an end.
For the elder Pretorius see G. M. Theal, Compendium of the History and Geography of South Africa, 3rd ed. (London, 1878), and History of South Africa, vol. iv. [1834–1854] (London, 1893). For the younger Pretorius see vol. v. of the same series.
PRETTY, a word usually applied in the sense of pleasing in appearance, without connoting those qualities which are described as beautiful or handsome. In Old English praettig meant tricky, cunning or wily, and is thus used to translate the Latin sagax, astutus, callidus, in a vocabulary of about 1000. Praett meant a trick, and this word is seen in many forms in Dutch, cf. the words prettig, sportive, part, trick. A connexion has been suggested with the Greek πρακτικός, πράττειν, to do, make, through Latin practica, practice, performance; but the New English Dictionary rejects these, as also Celtic sources, as unfounded. From “cunning” to skilful, and thence to its use as a term of general appreciation as is so often used by Pepys, the development is easy.
PREVARICATION, a divergence from the truth, equivocation, quibbling, a want of plain-dealing or straightforwardness, especially a deliberate misrepresentation by evasive answers, often used as a less offensive synonym for a lie. The Latin praevaricatio was specifically applied to the conduct in an action at law in which an advocate (prevaricator) in collusion with his opponent put up a bad case of defence. Praevaricare meant literally to walk with the legs very wide apart, to straddle, hence to walk crookedly, to stray from the direct road, various, straddling, being derived from varus, bow-legged, a word which has been connected etymologically with German quer, transverse, across, and English “queer.”
PREVEZA, or Prevesa, a seaport of Albania, European Turkey, in the vilayet of Iannina; at the entrance to the Gulf of Arta, an inlet of the Ionian Sea. Pop. (1905), 6500, of whom about four-fifths are 'Christian Albanians or Greeks, and one-fifth Moslems. The town is surrounded by dense olive groves, and most of its houses stand in their own gardens. The harbour is small, and closed to large vessels by a bar of sand; but it is a port of call for the Austrian Lloyd Steamers, and annually accommodates about 1500 small vessels, the majority of which are engaged in the coasting trade. Preveza exports dairy produce, valonia, hides and wool, olives and olive oil. The yearly value of its trade varies from about £70,000 to £80,000. About 3 m. north are the ruins of Nicopolis (q.v.).
PRÉVOST, ANTOINE FRANÇOIS (1697–1763), French author and novelist, was born at Hesdin, Artois, on the 1st of April 1697. He first appears with the full name of Prévost d’Exiles in a letter to the booksellers of Amsterdam in 1731. His father, Liévin Prévost, was a lawyer, and several members of the family had embraced the ecclesiastical estate. Prévost was educated at the Jesuit school of Hesdin, and in 1713 became a novice of the order in Paris, pursuing his studies at the same time at the college of La Flèche. At the end of 1716 he left the Jesuits to join the army, but he soon tired of life in barracks, and returned to Paris in 1719 with the idea, apparently, of resuming his novitiate. He is said to have travelled in Holland about this time; in any case he returned to the army, this time with a commission. Some of his biographers have assumed that he suffered some of the misfortunes assigned to his hero Des Grieux. However that may be, he joined in 1719–1720 the learned community of the Benedictines of St Maur, with whom he found refuge, he himself says, after the unlucky termination of a love affair. He took the vows at Jumièges in 1721 after a year’s novitiate, and received in 1726 priest’s orders at St Germer de Flaix. He resided for seven years in various houses of the order, teaching, preaching and studying. In 1728 he was at the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés, Paris, where he was engaged on the Gallia christiana, the learned work undertaken by the monks in continuation of the works of Denys de Sainte-Marthe, who had been a member of their order. His restless spirit made him seek from the Pope a transfer to the easier rule of Cluny; but without waiting for the brief, he left the abbey without leave (1728), and, learning that his superiors had obtained a lettre de cachet against him, fled to England.
In London he acquired considerable knowledge of English history and literature, traceable throughout his writings. Before leaving the Benedictines Prévost had begun his most famous romance, Mémoires et avantures d’un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré du monde, the first four volumes of which were published in Paris in 1728, and two years later at Amsterdam. In 1729 he left England for Holland, where he began to publish (Utrecht, 1730) a romance, the material of which, at least, had been gathered in London—Le Philosophe anglais, ou Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland, fils naturel de Cromwell, écrite par lui-mesme, et traduite de l’anglois (Paris 1731–1739, 8 vols., but most of the existing sets are partly Paris and partly Utrecht). A spurious fifth volume (Utrecht, 1734) contained attacks on the Jesuits, and an English translation of the whole appeared in 1734. Meanwhile, during his residence at the Hague, he engaged on a translation of the Historia of De Thou, and, relying on the popularity of his first book, published at Amsterdam a Suite in three volumes, forming volumes v., vi., and vii. of the original Mémoires et avantures d’un homme de qualité. The seventh volume contained the famous Manon Lescaut, separately published in Paris in 1731 as Les Aventures du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, par Monsieur D.... The book was eagerly read, chiefly in pirated copies, as it was forbidden in France. In 1733 he left the Hague for London in company with a lady whose character, as given by Prévost’s enemies, was far from desirable. In London he edited a weekly gazette on the model of Addison’s Spectator, Le Pour et contre, which he continued to produce, with short intervals, until 1740.
In the autumn of 1734 Prévost was reconciled with the Benedictines, and, returning to France, was received in the Benedictine monastery of La Croix Saint-Leufroy in the diocese of Evreux to pass through a new, though brief, novitiate. In 1735 he was dispensed from residence in a monastery by becoming almoner to the prince de Conti, and in 1754 obtained the priory of St Georges de Gesnes. He continued to produce novels and translations from the English, and, with the exception of a brief exile (1741–1742) spent in Brussels and Frankfort, he resided for the most part at Chantilly until his death, which took place suddenly while he was walking in the neighbouring woods on the 23rd of December 1763. Hideous particulars have been added, but the cause of his death, the rupture of an aneurism, has been definitely established. Stories of crime and disaster were related of Prévost by his enemies, and diligently repeated, but they have proved to be as apocryphal as the details given of his death.
Manon Lescaut, one of the greatest novels of the century, is very short; it is entirely free from improbable incident, it is penetrated by the truest and most cunningly managed feeling; and almost every one of its characters is a triumph of that analytic portraiture which is the secret of the modern novel. The chevalier des Grieux, the hero, is probably the most perfect example of the carrying out of the sentiment “All for love and the world well lost ” that exists in fiction, at least where the circumstances are those of ordinary and probable life. Tiberge, his friend, is hardly inferior in the difficult part of mentor and reasonable man. Lescaut, the heroine’s brother, has vigorous touches as a bully and Bohemian; but the triumph of the book is Manon herself. Animated by a real affection
