Crébillon,

Crébillon, PROSPER JOLYOT DE, a French dramatist, was born at Dijon, on January 13, 1674. His parents belonged to the middle class, and he was educated in Paris for the law. He soon abandoned a legal for a literary career, and his tragedy of Idoménée was successfully produced in 1703. It was followed by Atrée et Thyeste (1707), Electre (1709), and Rhadamiste et Zénobie (1711). The last is his best play, the character of Zenobia being drawn with remarkable power. After writing several other pieces, Crébillon fell into neglect and produced nothing for more than twenty years. He was then pushed forward as a dramatic rival to Voltaire by Madame de Pompadour and other enemies of the great writer, elected to the Academy, awarded a pension of 1000 francs, and appointed royal censor, and one of the royal librarians. His tragedy of Catilina, for which the king furnished the properties, was brought out with great success in 1748. Among his other works were Xerxes, Semiramis, Pyrrhus, and Le Triumvirat, the last of which was written when he was eighty-one years old. He died on June 17, 1762. He was a very unequal writer. An oppressive gloom pervades the tragedies which he founded on Greek legend; but occasionally he writes naturally and powerfully. 'Not a few of his verses have a grandeur which has been said to be hardly discoverable elsewhere in French tragedy between Corneille and Hugo' (Saintsbury). Next to Voltaire, he was the best tragic dramatist of his age in France. There are editions of his works by Perelle (2 vols. 1828) and Vitu (1885).—CLAUDE PROSPER JOLYOT DE CRÉBILLON, the younger son of the dramatist, was born in Paris on February 14, 1707. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand, and after writing a number of slight pieces for the stage, acquired great popularity as an author of prose fiction. In 1740 he married an Englishwoman, Lady Stafford. One of his books, Le Sopho, conte moral, having given offence to Madame de Pompadour by its indecency, he was banished from Paris for five years, but on his return in 1755 was appointed to the censorship. He was believed by his friends to be dead long before he died on April 12, 1777.