MAIRET, JEAN DE (1604-1686), French dramatist, was born at Besançon, and baptized on the 10th of May 1604. His own statement that he was born in 1610 has been disproved. He went to Paris to study at the Collège des Grassins about 1625, in which year he produced his first piece _Chriséide et Arimand_, followed in 1626 by _Sylvie_, a "pastoral tragi-comedy." In 1634 appeared his masterpiece, _Sophonisbe_, which marks, in its observance of the rules, the beginning of the "regular" tragedies. Mairet was one of the bitterest assailants of Corneille in the controversy over _The Cid_. It was perhaps his jealousy of Corneille that made him give up writing for the stage. He was appointed in 1648 official representative of the Franche-Comté in Paris, but in 1653 he was banished by Mazarin. He was subsequently allowed to return, but in 1668 he retired to Besançon, where he died on the 31st of January 1686. His other plays include _Silvanire ou la Morte-vive_, published in 1631 with an elaborate preface on the observance of the unities, _Les Galanteries du duc d'Orsonne_ (1632), _Virginie_ (1633), _Marc-Antoine_ (1635), and _Le Grand et dernier Solyman_ (1637). See G. Bizos, _Étude sur la vie et les oeuvres de Jean de Mairet_ (1877). _Sophonisbe_ was edited by K. Vollmöller (Heilbronn, 1888), and _Silvanire_ by R. Otto (Bamberg, 1890). MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1754-1821), French diplomatist and polemical writer, was born at Chambéry on the 1st of April 1754. His family was an ancient and noble one, enjoying the title of count, and is said to have been of Languedocian extraction. The father of Joseph was president of the senate of Savoy, and held other important offices. Joseph himself, after studying at Turin, received various appointments in the civil service of Savoy, finally becoming a member of the senate. In 1786 he married Françoise de Morand. The invasion and annexation of Savoy by the French Republicans made him an exile. He did not take refuge in that part of the king of Sardinia's domains which was for the time spared, but betook himself to the as yet neutral territory of Lausanne. There, in 1796, he published his first important work (he had previously written certain discourses, pamphlets, letters, &c.), _Considérations sur la France_. In this he developed his views, which were those of a Legitimist, but a Legitimist entirely from the religious and Roman Catholic point of view. The philosophism of the 18th century was Joseph de Maistre's lifelong object of assault.