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Lafontaine, born about 1621

About This Item

  • Title: Lafontaine, born about 1621
  • Date: 1853 or later; 1853
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman | Charles Knight | Unknown
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00176
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: Clipping is from Charles Knight's editorial introduction to Buffon's "The First Man," in Half-Hours with the Best Authors (New York: Wiley, 1853), 1:155. There is writing on the verso that does not appear to be in Whitman's hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Lauren Grewe Nicole Gray Ty Alyea Matt Cohen Ashlyn Stewart
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt, Charles Knight, and Unknown. "Lafontaine, born about 1621." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 29 October 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00176.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Whitman's hand blue double overline and underline
Highlighting yellow background with top and bottom border
Paste-on gray box with black borders
Laid in white box with black borders
Erasure white text with dark gray background
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
[begin surface 1] Lafontaine, born about 1621 lived 73 years —(1694) was of good family, inherited some property,—wrote fables in verse— somewhat like Æsop's—also wrote poems & plays—lived 20 years supported by a noble lady in her house—was intimate with (?Racine, Boileau, Bossuet, Moliere).— [begin surface 2]

BUFFON.

[THE Comte de Buffon, the most eloquent if not the most accurate of naturalists, was born in 1707, and died in 1788. More than two-thirds of his fourscore years were passed in unremitting literary labor. He was rich, luxurious, fond of display,—yet he went to bed every night at nine o'clock, and began his appointed task every morning at six. In his latter years, when asked how he could have done so much, he replied, "Have I not spent fifty years at my desk?" The passage which we translate from his chapter on "Man," will give a notion of the fertility of his imagination, under the guidance of science.]

 [begin surface 3] order 29 Unmount & put news cuttings with item No 4
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