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LOUIS JEAN NEPOMUCENE LEMERCIER (1771–1840)
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LEMERCIER, LOUIS JEAN NEPOMUCENE (1771–1840), French poet and dramatist, was born in Paris on the 21St of April 1771. His father had been intendant successively to the duc de Penthievre, the comte de Toulouse and the unfortunate princesse de Lamballe, who was the boy's godmother. Lemercier showed great precocity; before he was sixteen his tragedy of Meleagre was produced at the Tlzedtre Francois. Clarissa Harlowe (1792) provoked the criticism that the author was not asset roue pour peindre les roueries. Le Tartufe revolutionnaire, a parody full of the most audacious political allusions, was suppressed after the fifth representation. In 1795 appeared Lemercier's masterpiece Agamemnon, called by Charles Labitte the last great antique tragedy in French literature. It was a great success, but was violently attacked later by Geoffroy, who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Crebillon. Quatre metamorphoses (1799) was written to prove that the most indecent