JEAN

See also:

• PIERRE

PIERRE CLARIS DE

See also:

• JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN (1755-1794)
• FLORIAN, SAINT

FLORIAN (1755-1794)  , French poet and romance writer, was born on the 6th of March 1755 at the chateau of Florian, near Sauve, in the department of Gard . His mother, a Spanish lady named Gilette de Salgues, died when he was quite a child . His uncle and guardian, the marquis of Florian, who had married a niece of Voltaire, introduced him at Ferney and in 1768 he became page at Anet in the household of the duke of Penthievre, who remained his friend throughout his life . Having studied for some time at the artillery school at Bapaume he obtained from his patron a captain's commission in a dragoon regiment, and in this capacity it is said he displayed a boisterous behaviour quite incongruous with the gentle, meditative character of his works . On the outbreak of the French Revolution he retired to Sceaux, but he was soon discovered and imprisoned; and though his imprisonment was short he survived his release only a few months, dying on the 13th of September 1794 . Florian's first literary efforts were comedies; his verse epistle Voltaire et le serf du Mont Jura and an eclogue Ruth were crowned by the French Academy in 1782 and 1784 respectively . In 1782 also he produced a one-act prose comedy, Le Bon Menage, and in the next year Gala/4e, a romantic tale in imitation of the Galatea of Cervantes . Other short tales and comedies followed, and in 1786 appeared Numa Pompilius, an undisguised imitation of Fenelon's Telemaque . In 1788 he became a member of the French Academy, and published Estelle, a pastoral of the same class as Galatee . Another romance, Gonzalve de Cordoue, pre-ceded by an historical notice of the Moors, appeared in 1791, and his famous collection of Fables in 1702 . Among his posthumous works are La Jeunesse de Florian, ou Memoires d'un jeune Espagnol (1807), and an abridgment (1799) of Don Quixote, which, though far from being a correct representation of the original, had great and merited success . Florian imitated Salomon Gessner, the Swiss idyllist, and his style has all the artificial delicacy and sentimentality of the Gessnerian school .

Perhaps the nearest example of the class in

English literature is afforded by John Wilson's (Christopher North's) Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life . Among the best. of his fables are reckoned " The Monkey showing the Magic Lantern," " The Blind Man and the Paralytic," and " The Monkeys and the Leopard." The best edition of Florian's fEuvres completes appeared in Paris in 16 volumes, 182o; his tEuvres inedites in 4 volumes, 1824 . See " Vie de Florian," by L . F . Jauffret, prefixed to his fFuvres osthumes (1802); A . J . N. de Rosny, Vie de Florian (Paris, An V.); ainte-Beuve, Caaseries du lundi, t. iii . ; A. de Montvaillant, Florian, sa vie, ses oeuvres (1879) ; and Lettres de Florian. a Mme de la Briche, published, with a notice by the baron de Barante in Melanges published (1903) by the Societe des bibliophiles francais .