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Francois Guillaume Jean Stanislas Andrieux

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FRAN COIS GUILLAUME JEAN STANISLAS ANDRIEU X (1759-1833), French man of letters, was born at Strassburg on the 6th of May 1759. He was educated at Strassburg and proceeded to Paris to study law. There he became a close friend of Collin d'Harleville. He became secretary to the duke of Uzes, and practised at the bar, but his attention was divided between his profession and literature. His plays are of the 18th century style, comedies of intrigue, but they rank with those of Collin d'Harleville among the best of the period next to those of Beaumarchais. Les Etourdis, his best comedy, was represented in 1788 and won for the author the praise of La Harpe. Andrieux hailed the beginning of the Revolution with delight and received a place under the new government, but at the beginning of the Terror he retreated to Mevoisins, the patrimony of his friend Collin d'Harleville. Under the Convention he was made civil judge in the Court of Cassation, and was one of the original members of the Institute. A moderate statesman, he was elected secretary and finally president of the Tribunat, but with other of his colleagues he was expelled for his irreconcilable attitude towards the establishment of the civil code. On his retirement he again turned to write for the stage, producing Le Tresor and Moliere avec ses amis in 1804. He became librarian to Joseph Bonaparte and to the Senate, was professor of grammar and literature at the Ecole Polytechnique and eventually at the College de France. As a professor he was extraordinarily successful, and his lectures, which have unhappily not been preserved, attracted mature men as well as the ordinary students. He was rigidly classical in his tastes, and an ardent opponent of romanticism, which tended in his opinion to the subversion of morals. Among his other plays are La Comedienne (1816), one of his best comedies, and a tragedy, Lucius Junius Brutus (1830). Andrieux was the author of some excellent stories and fables: La Promenade de Fenelon, Le Bulle d'Alexandre VI. and the Meunier de Saint-Souci. In 182 9 he became perpetual secretary to the Academy, and in fulfilment of his functions he worked hard at the completion of the Dictionary. He died on the 9th of May 1833 in Paris.

See also A. H. Taillandier, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages d'Andrieux (1850); Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, vol. i.