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ETIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615)

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Originally appearing in Volume V20, Page 884 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ETIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615)  , French lawyer and man of letters, was born at Paris, on the 7th of
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June 1529 by his own account, according to others a
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year earlier . He was called to the Paris bar in 1549 . In 1558 he became very
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ill through eating poisonous mushrooms, and did not recover fully for two years . This compelled him to occupy himself by
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literary
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work, and in 156o he published the first
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book of his Recherches de la France . In 1565, when he was
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thirty-seven, his fame was established by a
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great speech still extant, in which he pleaded the cause of the university of Paris against the
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Jesuits, and won it . Meanwhile he pursued the Recherches steadily, and published from time to time much
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miscellaneous work . His literary and his legal occupations coincided in a curious fashion at the Grands Jours of
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Poitiers in 1579 . These Grands Jours (an institution which fell into desuetude at the end of the 17th century, with
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bad effects on the social and
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political welfare of the French provinces) were a kind of irregular
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assize in which a commission of the parlement of Paris, selected and despatched at short
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notice by the king, had full power to hear and determine all causes, especially those in which seignorial rights had been abused . At the Grands Jours of Poitiers of the date mentioned, and at those of
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Troyes in 1583, Pasquier officiated; and each occasion has
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left a curious literary memorial of the jests with which he and his colleagues relieved their graver duties . The Poitiers work was the celebrated collection of poems on a flea (see Southey's Doctor) . In 1585 Pasquier was appointed by Henry III. advocate-general at the Paris cours
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des comptes, an important
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body having political as well as
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financial and legal functions . Here he distinguished himself particularly by opposing, sometimes successfully, the mischievous
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system of selling hereditary places and offices, which more perhaps than any single thing was the curse of the older French monarchy .

The

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civil
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wars compelled Pasquier to leave Paris and for some years he lived at
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Tours, working steadily at his great book, but he returned to Paris in Henry IV.'s train in March 1594 . He continued until 1604 at his work in the chambre des comptes; then he retired . He survived this retirement more than ten years, producing much literary work, and died after a few hours' illness on the 1st of September 1615 . In so long and so laborious a
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life Pasquier's work was naturally considerable, and it has never been fully collected or indeed printed . The standard edition is that of Amsterdam (2 vols. fol., 1723) . But for ordinary readers the selections of Leon Feugere, published at Paris (2 vols . 8vo, 1849), with an elaborate introduction, are most accessible . As a poet Pasquier is chiefly interesting as a minor member of the Pleiade
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movement . As a
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prose writer he is of much more account . The three chief divisions of his prose work are his Recherches, his letters and his professional speeches . The letters are of much
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biographical
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interest and
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historical importance, and the Recherches contain in a somewhat miscellaneous fashion invaluable information on a vast variety of subjects, literary, political, antiquarian and other .

End of Article: ETIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615)
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