Telemaque

"Telemaque" was written by Francois Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. It is a French prose epic, in twenty-four books, and contains the adventures of Telemachus, the only son of Ulysses and Penelope, while in search of his father who had been absent twenty years from his home. Telemachus is accompanied by the god of wisdom under the form of Mentor. There is perhaps no book in the French language which has been more read, and it is a class-book in almost every European school.

Fenelon was suspected of favoring the doctrines of the Quietists; and, upon his refusing to condemn them, Bossuet denounced him to the king as a heretic. He, however, signed a recantation, and would have been restored to royal favor had not this celebrated romance of "Telemaque" (which he had written some years before, to train the mind of his young pupil--the Duke of Burgundy, a grandson of Louis XIV.--"in the principles of virtue") been published, against his will, through the treachery of a servant, who sold a copy without telling the name of the author. It was considered a sarcasm on the reign of Louis XIV.; and it caused Fenelon to be banished from court, and to spend the rest of his life in exile. He died in Cambray, aged sixty-three years, Jan. 7, 1715.