Chapelain, JEAN, a somewhat curious figure in the gallery of French authors, was born in 1595, and died in 1674. He was a learned, industrious writer, who passed for a time as a poet, and was accepted as the dominant authority in the world of French letters between the literary dictatorships of Malherbe and of Boileau. He produced one of the abortive epics which it was the fashion to write during the regency of Mazarin. This work, the
Pucelle, dealt with the story of Joan of Arc, in twenty-four books. Its appearance covered its author with ridicule. Chapelain was gibbeted in the satires of Boileau, and the critic's severity was in this case amply justified by the dullness and grotesque absurdities of the work which he attacked. Chapelain also wrote a number of odes, one of which, composed in honour of Cardinal Richelieu, is not without merit. An edition of part of the Pucelle (1 vol. folio) was published in 1656. The last twelve books still remain in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Impériale.