The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Here the whole tale ends. As the events I recorded recede into the past, I
begin almost to doubt the truth of them. But I have one living
evidence--now I am glad to say not single--and Le Brun may fairly lay it to
me that he has at this moment the most agreeable little lady in all
Normandy for his wedded wife. I am not aware if Boots still visits the
glimpses of the moon at St. Sauveur, for soon after these events I was
obliged to return to my parish to put down the Popish fooleries which I
found my hack had begun to introduce. If, however, he does, I only hope his
reappearance will be as useful as in the above little narrative, but the
Brown, the Gray--and the narrator have now done with him for ever.
CREBILLON, THE FRENCH ÆSCHYLUS.
From Fraser's Magazine.
About the year 1670, there lived at Dijon a certain notary, an original in
his way, named Melchior Jolyot. His father was an innkeeper; but of a more
ambitious nature than his sire, the son, so soon as he had succeeded in
collecting a little money, purchased for himself the office of head clerk
in the Chambres des Comptes of Dijon, with the title of Greffier of the
same. During the following year, having long been desirous of a title of
nobility, he acquired, at a very low price, a little abandoned and almost
unknown fief, that of Crebillon, situated about a league and a half from
the city.
His son, Prosper Jolyot, the future poet, was at that time a young man of
about two-and-twenty years of age, a student at law, and then on the eve of
being admitted as advocate at the French bar. From the first years of his
sojourn in Paris, we find that he called himself Prosper Jolyot _de
Crebillon_. About sixty years later, a worthy philosopher of Dijon, a
certain Monsieur J. B. Michault, writes as follows to the President de
Ruffey:--"Last Saturday (June 19th, 1762), our celebrated Crebillon was
interred at St. Gervais. In his _billets de mort_ they gave him the title
of _ecuyer_; but what appears to me more surprising, is the circumstance of
his son adopting that of _messire_."
Crebillon had then ended by cradling himself in a sort of imaginary
nobility. In 1761, we find him writing to the President de Brosse: "I have
ever taken so little thought respecting my own origin, that I have
neglected certain very flattering elucidations on this point. M. de Ricard,
máitre des comptes at Dijon, gave my father one day two titles he had
found. Of these two titles, written in very indifferent Latin, the first
concerned one Jolyot, chamberlain of Raoul, Duke of Burgundy; the second, a
certain Jolyot, chamberlain of Philippe le Bon. Both of these titles are
lost. I can also remember having heard it said in my youth by some old
inhabitants of Nuits, my father's native place, that there formerly existed
in those cantons a certain very powerful and noble family, named Jolyot."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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