JACQUES

CAZOTTE (1719-1792)  , French author, was born at Dijon, on the 17th of October 1719 . He was educated by the Jesuits, and at twenty-seven he obtained a public office at Martinique, but it was not till his return to Paris in 176o with the rank of commissioner-general that he made a public appearance as an author . His first attempts, a mock romance, and a coarse song, gained so much popularity, both in the court and among the people, that he was encouraged to essay something more ambitious . He accordingly produced his romance, Les Prouesses inimitables d'011ivier, marquis d'Edesse . He also wrote a number of fantastic oriental tales, such as his Mille et une fadaises, Conies d dormir debout (1742) . His first success was with a " poem in twelve cantos, and in prose intermixed with verse, entitled 011ivier (2 vols., 1762), followed in 1771 by another romance, the Lord Impromptu . But the most popular of his works was the Diable amoureux (1772), a fantastic tale in which the hero raises the devil . The value of the story lies in the picturesque setting, and the skill with which its details are carried out . Cazotte possessed extreme facility and is said to have turned off a seventh canto of Voltaire's Guerre civile de Geneve in a single night . About 1775 Cazotte embraced the views of the Illuminati, declaring himself possessed of the power of prophecy . It was upon this fact that La Harpe based his famous jeu d'esprit, in which he represents Cazotte as prophesying the most minute events of the Revolution . On the discovery of some of his letters in August 1792, Cazotte was arrested; and though he escaped for a time through the love and courage of his daughter, he was executed on the 25th of the following month .

The only

complete edition is the U uvres badines et morales, historiques et philosophiques de Jacques Cazotte (4 vols., 1816-1817), though more than one collection appeared during his lifetime . An edition de luxe of the Diable amoureux was edited (1878) by A . J . Pons, and a selection of Cazotte's Contes, edited (188o) by Octave Uzanne, is included in the series of Petits Conteurs du X VIIIe siecle . The best notice of Cazotte is in the Illumines (1852) of Gerard de Nerval .