Barclay, JOHN

Barclay, JOHN, author of the Argenis, was born in 1582, at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, where his father, a Scotsman, was professor of Law. Owing, it is said, to persecution on the part of the Jesuits, he came with his father to England about 1603, and either in that year, or two years later, he published his Euphormionis Satyricon, a politico-satirical romance, chiefly directed against the Jesuits, supplements to which were the second part (1607), the Apologia (1611), and the Leon Animorum (1614). In 1616 he left England, and went to Rome, where he died, a good Catholic, in 1621. In the same year appeared his Argenis, according to Cowper, 'the best romance that ever was written.' It was written in Latin, and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Polish, &c. There are no fewer than three English versions, the last by Clara Reeve in 1772. It is a political allegory, containing clever allusions to the state of Europe, more particularly of France, during the time of the League; and has merited the admiration of readers as dissimilar as Richelieu, Leibnitz, and Coleridge. See Dupond, L'Argenis de Barclai (1875).