CREI3ILLON- CRECY. 



515 



countrymen, even to ^Eschylus, was born at Dijon, 

 Feb. 15, 1674, and early manifested talent at the 

 school of the Jesuits in his native town, but, at the 

 same time, a boisterous and heedless temper. Being 

 designed for the profession of law, he was placed 

 with an attorney, named Prieur, at Paris ; but they 

 were both lovers of the theatre, so that the youth 

 made little progress in his studies. The attorney 

 perceived, too, that his pupil was disqualified for the 

 profession by his passionate temperament, but show- 

 ed penetration and judgment in his criticisms on dra- 

 matic performances : he therefore advised him, 

 though he had as yet written nothing but some trifl- 

 ing songs and scraps of verse, to apply himself to 

 dramatic composition. Crebillon did so ; but his 

 first piece, La Mart des Enfans de Brutus, was re- 

 jected by the players. He burnt the manuscript, 

 and resolved to have no more to do with the drama ; 

 but, subsequently, at the persuasion of Prieur, he 

 wrote Idomenee, which, in 1705, was brought upon 

 the stage. The faults of the play were overlooked 

 in consideration of the youth of the author and the 

 promising talent which it displayed ; and the prompt- 

 ness Avith which the author in five days wrote anew 

 the last act, which had displeased at the first repre- 

 sentation, drew the attention of the public to the 

 young poet, whose talents, after the appearance of 

 his Atree, in 1707, were loudly applauded. Prieur, 

 though sick, requested to be carried to the theatre, 

 and said to the young tragedian, "I die content ; I 

 have made you a poet, and leave in you a man who 

 belongs to the nation." K strange taste for unnatural 

 declamation had been excited by the Rhodogune, and 

 this manner was carried to excess by Crebillon, in 

 the Atree. In 1709 appeared his Electre, which is as 

 declamatory and as intricate as his earlier plays ; yet 

 it suited the taste of the age. His chef d'ceuvre, at 

 least according to La Harpe, is his fi/tadamiste (1711). 

 But Boileau, on his death-bed, hearing the first 

 scenes of this tragedy read to him by Leverrier, could 

 not help exclaiming to his friends, " Heavens ! do 

 you wish to hasten my death ? Why, the Boyers 

 and Pradons were suns to this author ! I shall be 

 more willing to leave the world, since our age is be- 

 coming inundated with silly trash." Most persons of 

 the present day would probably agree with Boileau. 

 In eight days, the Rhadamiste passed through two 

 editions, and Paris and Versailles vied with each 

 other in admiring it. Crebillon had been told that 

 his talent lay in the terrible, and thought, therefore, 

 tliat he could not exert himself too much in scenes of 

 horror, and hence was called the terrible. Xerxes 

 (1714) exceeded, in this respect, all that he had 

 oefore written, but soon disappeared from the stage. 

 Semiramis (1717), the mother enamoured of her 

 son, and not cured of her passion by the discovery 

 of lu's relationship, was severely censured. It was 

 not till nine years after this that his Pyrrhus ap- 

 peared (1726), and met with a good reception, con- 

 trary to the expectation of the author, who, in this 

 work, had abstained from the frightful and shocking. 

 Domestic distress and poverty seem, from this time, 

 to have crippled the powers of his genius. His small 

 patrimony was absorbed by debts and law expenses. 

 A father and a beloved wife were taken from him 

 within a short time. Amidst the embarrassments in 

 which he was involved, he refused, with characteris- 

 tic inflexibility, all the offers of assistance which were 

 made him. When madame de Pompadour wished to 

 humble Voltaire, Crebillon was thought of as a fit 

 instrument for her purpose. The king gave him the 

 office of censor of the police, a yearly pension of 1000 

 francs, and an appointment in the library. Thus 

 freed from anxiety, lie finished his Catiline, which 

 was represented, at the king's expense, in 1740, with 



all the pomp that the court theatre could display. 

 This piece, overrated by the party opposed to Vol- 

 taire, is undervalued by La Harpe. To make some 

 atonement to the character of Cicero, which was 

 thought to have been wronged in his Catiline, he 

 wrote, at seventy-six, the Triumvirate, or the Death 

 of Cicero, which was brought upon the stage in hk 

 eighty-first year. The defects of this piece were over- 

 looked, from respect to the age of the author. Thus 

 much for his dramatic compositions. In general, 

 Crebillon shows none of the true elevation of the 

 tragic art, but only an imitation, sometimes a 

 happy one, of the manner struck out by Corneille. 

 He was a man of a proud and independent character, 

 disdained to flatter the great, and passed much of his 

 life in a condition bordering on poverty. More for- 

 tunate circumstances might have given more amenity 

 to his spirit; but, neglected, as he imagined, by 

 mankind, he sought consolation in the company of 

 dogs and cats, which he picked up in the streets 

 (the poorest and most sickly were those which he 

 preferred), and found a species of enjoyment in an 

 irregular manner of living. In 1731, he became a 

 member of the academy. Crebillon died, June 17, 

 1762, at the age of eighty-eight. Louis XV. erect- 

 ed a magnificent monument to him in the church of 

 St Gervais, which, however, was never entirely com- 

 pleted till it was removed to the museum of French 

 monuments (aux petits Augustins). Besides the 

 splendid edition. ot Crebillon's works published by 

 the order of Louis XV., for the benefit of the author, 

 after the successful performance of Catiline ((Euvres 

 de Crebillon, imprimerie R. du Louvre, 1750, 2 vols., 

 4to), there is another published by Didot the elder, 

 1812, 3 vols., in both of which, however, six verses 

 are omitted in Catiline, which had been left out in 

 the representation, as applicable to madame de Pom- 

 padour. 



CREBILLON, CLAUDE PROSPER JOLYOT DE, the 

 younger son of the preceding, was born at Paris in 

 1707, and succeeded as an author in an age of licen- 

 tiousness. By the exhibition of gross ideas, covered 

 only with a thin veil, and by the subtleties with which 

 he excuses licentious principles, Crebillon contributed 

 to diffuse a general corruption of manners, before 

 Confined to the higher circles of Parisian society. In 

 later times, the French taste has been so much 

 changed, especially by the revolution, that such inde- 

 licacies as are found in his works would not be tole- 

 rated at the present day. His own morals, however, 

 appear to have been the opposite of those which he 

 portrayed. We are told of his cheerfulness, his rec- 

 titude of principle, and his blameless life. In the cir- 

 cle of the Dominicaux (a Sunday society), he was a 

 favourite, and the caveau where Piron, Gallet, Colle, 

 wrote their songs and uttered their jests, was made 

 respectable by his company. Of his works, the best 

 are, Lettres de la Marquise * * * au Comte de * * * 

 (1732, 2 vols., 12mo) ; Tanzai et Neadarne (less 

 licentious, but full of now unintelligible allusions) ; 

 Les Egaremens du Coeur et de I' Esprit (Hague, 1736, 

 3 vols.), perhaps the most successful, but unfinished. 

 One of his most voluptuous pieces is Le Sopha (1745, 

 2 vols.). In the same licentious strain are most of 

 his other writings composed. It is still a disputed 

 point whether he was the author of the Lettres de la 

 Marquise de Pompadour. They are not included in 

 the edition of 1779, 7 vols., 12mo. Crebillon held a 

 small office in the censorship of the press. He died 

 at Paris, April 12, 1777. 



CRECY, or CRESSY EN PONTHIEU ; a town 

 in France, in Somme ; 10 miles N. of Abbeville, and 

 100 N. of Paris ; population, 1650. It is celebrated 

 on account of a battle fought here, August 26, 1346, 

 between the English and French. Edward III. and 



