File:Personal sketches of recent authors (1898) (14777903124).jpg

Identifier: personalsketches00gris (find matches)
Title: Personal sketches of recent authors
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Griswold, Hattie Tyng, 1840-1909
Subjects: Authors, English Authors, American
Publisher: Chicago, A. C. McClurg and company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Treguier, withits lofty spire at once so delicate and so simple.About it is a green churchyard containing the tombof St. Ives, the patron saint of Brittany, and sur-rounding that are the ancient cloisters. The seaportof Treguier is not far away, on an estuary betweentwo wooded promontories. The town traffics in fishand grain, and the inhabitants are chiefly concernedwith the sea. Brittany mans the navy of Franceto a large extent, and from this very port many menhave gone forth to the service of the state. The ancestors of Ernest Renan had been amongthese sailor folk for several generations. They hadlived in a house on the hill near the cathedral, andnot down by the water with the sailors, who had notmeans enough to buy a fishing-smack. His grand-father was a true Breton, religious, melancholy,pleasure-loving, garrulous, capable of passion, andwith a genius for superstition. His father, CaptainRenan, had married the daughter of a Lanniontrader. She was an ardent Catholic and an Orlean-
Text Appearing After Image:
ERNEST REN AN. TF PL ARY A8TOR, LEN ERNEST RE NAN. 33 1st, while her husband was a Republican. Ernestwas born on the 28th of February, 1823, and beinga small and fragile child it was feared he could notlive. We are told that Old Gude, the witch, tookthe babes little shirt and dipped it in a countryholy-well. She came back radiant: He will live,after all, she cried; the two little arms stretchedout, and you should have seen the whole garmentswell and float; he means to live. And live hedid, to be the pride of his fond, vivacious mother,and one of the most illustrious of the sons of Francein these later days. The Breton coast near Treguier is incomparablysoft and lovely, and the gray mists wrap it all ina delicate veil much of the time. Their filmy trac-ery is over everything, and their dampness inducesa scanty verdure where barrenness would otherwisehave reigned. It was up and down this coast thatErnest Renan wandered when a boy, enamoured ofthe sea, like all his race, and knowing it i

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