FABRE  D'

EGLANTINE, PHILIPPE FRANCOIS NAZAIRE (1750-1794), French dramatist and revolutionist, was born at Carcassonne on the 28th of July 1750 . His real name was simple Fabre, the " d'Iglantine " being added in commemoration of his receiving the golden eglantine of Clemence Isaure from the academy of the floral games at Toulouse . After travelling through the provinces as an actor, he came to Paris, and produced an unsuccessful comedy entitled Les Gens de lettres, ou le provincial a Paris (1787) . A tragedy, Augusta, produced at the Theatre Francais, was also a failure . One only of his plays, Philinte, ou la suite du Misanthrope (1790), still preserves its reputation . It professes to be a continuation of Moliere's Misanthrope, but the hero of the piece is of a different character from - the nominal prototype—an impersonation, indeed, of pure and simple egotism . On its publication the play was introduced by a preface, in which the author mercilessly satirizes the Optimiste of his rival J . F . Collin d'Harleville, whose Chateaux en Espagne had gained the applause which Fabre's Presomptueux (1789) had failed to win . The character of Philinte had much political significance . Alceste received the highest praise, and evidently represents the citizen patriot, while Philinte is a dangerous aristocrat in disguise . Fabre was president and secretary of the club of the Cordeliers, and belonged also to the Jacobin club .

He was chosen by

Danton as his private secretary, and sat in the National Convention . He voted for the king's death, supporting the maximum and the law of the suspected, and he was a bitter enemy of the Girondins . After the death of Marat he published a Portrait de l'Ami du Peuple . On the abolition of the Gregorian calendar he sat on the committee entrusted with the formation of the republican substitute, and to him was due a large part of the new nomenclature, with its poetic Prairial and Floreal, its prosaic Primidi and Duodi . The report which he made on the subject, on the 24th of October, has some scientific value . On the 12th of January 1794 he was arrested by order of the committee of public safety on a charge of malversation and forgery in connexion with the affairs of the Compagnie des Indes . Documents still existing prove that the charge was altogether groundless . During his trial Fabre showed the greatest calmness and sang his own well-known song of Il pleut, it pleut, bergire, rentre tes blancs moutons . He was guillotined on the 5th of April 1794 . On his way to the scaffold he distributed his manuscript poems to the people . A posthumous play, Les Precepteurs, steeped with the doctrines of Rousseau's Emile, was performed on the 17th of September 1794, and met with an enthusiastic reception . Among Fabre's other plays are the gay and successful Convalescent de qualite (1791), and L'Intrigue epistolaire (1791) .

In the latter play Fabre is supposed to have

drawn a portrait .of the painter Jean Baptiste Greuze . The author's U2uvres melees et posthumes were published at Paris 1802, 2 vols . See Albert Maurin, Galerie Kist. de la Revolution francaise, tome II; Jules Janin, Hist. de la lilt. dram . ; Chenier, Tableau de la tilt. francaise; F . A . Aulard in the Nouvelle Revue (July 1885) .