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LEROY-BEATJLIEXI. 151 LESAGE. succeeded his father-in-law, Michel Chevalier, as j)rutessor of political economy at the College de I'rance. He was frequently a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, but was never successful. He became the leading exponent of free trade in France, and founded the Economiste Fran- fciis to give utterance to his views. Among his important works are: La colonisation chez hs jjeuples 7)todernes (1873) ; Traite de la science dcs finances (1877) ; Precis d'economie poliiique (1888) ; L'etat moderne et ses fonctions (1889) ; Traite theorique et pratique d'economie politique (1895) ; La renovation de I'Asie, Hiherie, Chine, Jupon (1900; Eng. trans.. The Awakening of the East, New York, 1900). LERP INSECT. Any one of several and per- haps many Australian flea-lice (Psyllids), whose cases, known as ierp' or "leap,' are eaten by the natives. The larval cases of these insects' (some of which belong to the genera Spondyliaspis and Cardiaspis) are not mere waxy excretions which harden on exposure to air, but they are spun by the larvae, each ease being constructed and in- habited by a single larva. Some of the cases are objects of great beauty and resemble 'exquisite examples of miniature basket-work,' or a valve of a cockle-shell. LERWICK, ler'wlk or ler'ik. The chief town of the Shetland Islands (q.v. ), Scotland, on Mainland, on Bressay Sound, 110 miles northeast of Kirkwall (Jlap: Scotland, G 1). Fishing is the chief branch of industry'. The harbor is com- modious and safe. It has a public pier 300 feet in length and is defended by a fort built in the time of Cromwell. Lerwick is one of the princi- pal Scottish stations for the royal naval reserve, and the seat of the Shetland law courts. Popula- tion, in 1891, 3930; in 1901, -1061. LERY, la're', Jean de ( 1534-lGOl ) . The first Protestant minister who preached on the Ameri- can continent. He was a C'alvinist, and. with several other ministers, was sent from Geneva in 1556 to preach among the colonists established at Eio Janeiro, Brazil, by Coligny and Villegagnon. The ministers and the patron quarreled, and the former had a hard time of it. After many sufferings and dangers they returned to France. Lery served as pastor in several cities. He wrote Bistoire d'lin voyage fait en la terre da Bresil (1578). liESAGE, le-s:izh', Al.ix R£x12 (1668-1747). A French novelist and dramatist, born in Sar- zeau. Brittany, May 8, 1G68, famous for his Cil Bias. Left an orphan at fourteen and de- spoiled by his imeles of his patrimony, he went to Paris in 1690, studied for the law, married in 1694, gave up law for letters, won the patron- age of the Abbe de Lyonne. from whom he re- ceived a pension of 600 livres, and supported him- self by hack work in not always faithful transla- tions from the Spanish {Theatre Espngnol. 1700; .vellaneda's unauthorized Sew Adventures of Don Quixote, 1704; etc.). Lesage's original work in both fiction and drama begins with 1707 with the comedy Crispin, rival de son maitre. and the novel Le diable boiteux. the idea for which was borrowed from Guevara's DiaMo Cojiielo (1641) and the details from other sources, though none could question the originality of its wit and spirit. Then followed Lesage's greatest comedy, Ttircaret (1709). In this play Lesage fiercely assailed the tax-gatherers or traitants. Such was their power that they could keep this play ofT the stage for a while, "but the Dauphin took sides with Lesage and Turcaret was put on. His trouble with the Theatre Frangais led him to work thereafter for the rival and inferior Theatre de la Foire, for which Lesage wrote a host of farces and light operettas, onee popular but now forgotten, giving his ripest thought meantime to (iil Bias, his gieatest novel, begun in 1715, continued in 1724, completed in 1735, and revised in 1747. Gil Bias is derived in part from the following works: Disgrazia del conte d'OUvure, in a French translation; from a French work founded on the Anecdotes du comte-diic d'Olivares, by M. de Valdory; from the Histoire du comte- duc avec des reflexions poUtiques et ctirieuses (Cologne, 1683). Lesage also borrowed from the life of Obregon. and from a number of Span- ish narratives or plays. The Lazarillo de Tonnes is a prototype of Gil Bias. The borrowed episodes of Gil Bias constitute about one-fifth of the whole. It tells the story of a young rogiie who is cast upon the world and has innumerable adventures which he recounts in a light, satirical, low, and often cjTiical vein. Lesage wrote also a French adaptation of the Spanish Gu::man d'Alfarache (1732), a picaroon novel, and the similar though more independent picaroon stories, Estevanille Gonzales (1734) a.nA Le Baehelier de Halamanque (1736), as well as Les arentnres du chevalier de Beauchesne (1732), founded on contemporary memoirs, all works little read, and not likely to be much read, but not without interest as experi- ments in realistic fiction. Lesage's domestic life was happy and un- eventful. He lived respectably, on the borderland of Bohemia, and if he died poor it was rather be- cause he was independent than because he was reckless, his good humor being always restrained by a sane judgment. In his lifetime, though always popular, he was enjoyed rather than appreciated, for, though not a creative genius, he was so keen an observer and so remarkable an assimilator as to be in .several ways an inno- vator ; not the father of realism, but its prophet. Le dialtle boiteux is a satire on contemporary Parisian society, under a Spanish veil, owing more to La Bruy&re's Caractircs than to Gue- vara. Keys were soon provided in abundance, and even now the allusions to Fontcnelle, Ninon de I'Enclos, Voltaire, and others are unmistak- able. Crispin and Turcaret, too. are prose pic- tures of Parisian life, the former farcical, the latter a cruelly realistic satire on mercantile pettiness, provincial narrowness, and most of all on the new plutocracy. This satiric realism finds its final expression in Gil Bias, the story of a self-made man and studied more from French life than from any Spanish romance. At least four men were then living in France — Dubois, Alberoni. Barjac, and Ciourville — valets or favor- ites, whose adventures might have suggested those of Lesage's Spanish hero. The story aims through the experiences of a checkered life to show how character is formed by environment, how impressions rouse reflection, reflection stirs conscience, and both react on conduct so as grad- ually to tran.sform it. That is the moral, and to draw it Lesage paints the world as he finds it with keen understanding and the charity of wis- dom. So Gil Bias has endured for nearly two centuries as a gospel of a worldly-wise man's common sense. Lesage's permanence in French