Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/189

 L A B L A B taken by American and Canadian fishermen of which no returns can be obtained, but which are estimated to be about an eighth of the quantities taken by Newfoundland fishermen. These last can work the fisheries more successfully than those comin&quot; from a distance, and are gradually absorbing the trade. The total catch by Newfoundlanders, Canadians, Americans, and Eskimo on the Atlantic and St Lawrence coasts of Labrador may be valued at 1,000,000 sterling per annum, and is increasing steadily. The number of vessels employed annually is estimated at from 1100 to 1200. Labrador as well as Newfoundland was discovered bv John Cabot in 1497 ; the recent discovery of a map made by or under the direction of Sebastian Cabot proves that it must surrender the honour of being his &quot; Prima tierra vista&quot; to the present island of Cape Breton. Cabot does not appear to have given any name t &amp;gt; Labrador ; tradition has it that a Basque whaler, called &quot;Labrador,&quot; penetrated as far as Labrador Bay (now Bradore Bay), a .id that, as this bay was in process of time much frequented by Basque fishermen, the name was extended to the whole coast. The Basques were the successors of the Norsemen. After them, .shout the year 1520, came the Bretons, who founded the town of Brest in Bradore Bay, about 3 miles from Blanc Sablon Harbour, which at one time contained upwards of one thousand permanent residents. The ruins and terraces of this old town are still visible. For a lengthened period extensive fisheries (to which they attached the greatest importance) were carried on by the French on the Labrador coast, near the Straits of Belle Isle. After the British conquest of Canada the whole fisheries along the southern and c istern shores of Labrador were placed under the government of Quebec, and they continued so till 1763, when the Atlantic coast was annexed to the government of Newfoundland, the boundary between the two jurisdictions being fixed at Blanc Sablon. In 1773, owing to difficulties arising out of grants made to a few persons, under French rule, the eastern coast was restored to the government of Quebec ; but since 1809 it has been again attached to Newfoundland. In 1824 the governor of Newfoundland was empowered to institute a court of civil jurisdiction on the coast of Labrador. At present the civil and criminal court of Labrador is presided over by one judge appointed by the governor in council. All goods landed are subjected to the duties imposed on like goods i;i any part of the island of Newfoundland. The extent of the jurisdiction of the government of Newfoundland in Labrador is thus defined (Letters-Patent, 28th March 1876); &quot;all the coast of Labrador from the entrance of Hudson s Straits to a line to be drawn due north and south from Anse Sablon on the said coast to the fifty-second degree of north latitude, and all the islands adjacent to that part of the said coast of Labrador.&quot; The north western portion, or that which drains into Hudson s Bay and Hudson s Straits, now forms the North-East Territory of the Dominion of Canada, and the southern portion, draining into the Gulf of St Lawrence, is incorporated with the province of Quebec. An undefined area of what is now the North-East Territory was formerly known as East Main. 177 See Cartwright, S/.cteen Years on the Coast of Lnlrad r, Newark, 1792; Hind, Explorations of the Labrador Peninsula, ISC- 1 / ; Chimmo. in Journ. Roy. Geoy. S)c., 1868 ; Bell, in Report of the Geol. Survey of Canada, 1879. (M. II.) LA BRUYERE, JEAN DE (1645-1696), essayist and moralist, was born at Paris in August 1645, and not, as lias more commonly been asserted, at Dourdan (Seine-et- Oise) in 1639. His family was of the middle class, and his reference to a certain Geoffroy de la Bruyere, a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self- ennoblement common in France as in some other countries. Indeed he himself always signed the name Delabruyere in one word, thus avowing his roture. His progenitors, however, were of respectable position, and he could trace them back at least as far as his great-grandfather, who had been a strong Leaguer. La Bruyere s own father held a municipal appointment in the capital, and seems as well as liis son to have been in easy circumstances. The son was educated by the Oratorians, and at the university of Orleans; he was called to the bar, and in 1673 bought a pest in the revenue department at Caen, which gave the status of noblesse and a certain income. He afterwards in 1687 sold this office. His predecessor in it was a relation of Bossuet, and it is thought that the transaction was the cause of La Bruyere s introduction to the great orator. Bossuet, who from the date of his own preceptorship of the dauphin, was a kind of agent-general for tutorships in the royal family, introduced him in 1683 or 1684 to the household of the great Conde, whose grandson Henri Jules de Lourbon he was charged to educate. The rest of his life was passed in the household of the prince or else at court and he seems to have profited by the inclination which all the Conde family had for the society of men of otters without suffering from the capricious and tyrannical temper which was also one of the characteristics of the house Very little is known of the events of this part or indeed of any part of his life. Although he certainly mixed freely in society at a time when more gossip was committed to paper than at almost any other, the notices of him are very few, though they are almost always favourable. The impression derived from them is of a silent observant but somewhat awkward man, resembling in manners our own Addison, whose master in literature La Bruyere undoubtedly was. Yet despite the numerous enemies which his book raised up for him, most of the few personal notices we have are, as has been said, favour ablenotably that of St Simon, an acute judge and one bitterly prejudiced against roturiers generally. There is a curious passage in a letter from Boileau to Racine in which he regrets that &quot; nature has not made La Bruyfcre as agreeable as he would like to be,&quot; which, as he at the same time calls him a &quot;fort honnete homme,&quot; and says that he would lack nothing were it not for the conduct of nature in this respect, can only refer to the want of manner just noticed. His Caracteres appeared in 1688, and at once, as Malezieu had predicted, brought him &quot;bien des lecteurs et bien des ennemis.&quot; At the head of these were Thomas Corneille,Fontenelle, and Benserade, who were pretty clearly aimed at in the book, as well as innumerable other persons, men and women of letters as well as of society, on whom the cap of La Bruyere s fancy-portraits was fitted by manuscript &quot; keys &quot; which were at once compiled by the scribblers of the day. The friendship of Bossuet and still more the protection of the Condes defended the author quite sufficiently, and he continued to insert fresh portraits of his contemporaries in each new edition of his book. Those, however, whom he had attacked were powerful in the Academy, and numerous defeats awaited La Bruyere before he could make his way into that guarded hold. He was defeated thrice in 1691, and on one memorable occasion he had but seven votes, five of which were those of Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, Pelisson, and Bussy-Rabutin. It was not till 1695 that he was elected, and even then an epigram, which, considering his admitted insignificance in conversa tion, was not of the worst, Jisesit lateri : &quot; Quand la Bruyere se presente Pourquoi faut il crier haro ? Pour faire un nombre de quarante Ne falloit il pas un zero ? &quot; His unpopularity was, however, chiefly confined to the subjects of his sarcastic portraiture, and to the hack writers of the time, of whom he was wont to speak with a disdain only surpassed by that of Pope. His description of the leading newspaper of the day as &quot; irnme diatement au dessous du rien &quot; is the best remembered specimen of these unwise attacks which, both in France and England, retarded the establishment of an independent profession of letters for many years. La Bruyere s discourse of admission at the Academy was, like his admission itself, severely criticized, yet it is certainly one of the best of its kind. With the Caracteres, the translation of Theophrastus, and a few letters, it completes the list of his literary work, with the exception of a curious and much-disputed posthumous treatise. La Bruyere died very suddenly, and not long after his admission to the Academy. He is said to have become suddenly deaf in an assembly of his friends, and, being carried home to the Hotel de Condd, to have expired of apoplexy a day or two afterwards. It is not surprising that, considering the recent panic about poisoning, the XIV. 23