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Vincent Voiture

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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VINCENT VOITURE (1598-1648), French poet, was the son of a rich merchant of Amiens. He was introduced by a schoolfellow, the comte d'Avaux, to Gaston d'Orleans, and accompanied him to Brussels and Lorraine on diplomatic missions.. Although a follower of Gaston, he won the favour of Richelieu, and was one of the earliest academicians. He also received appointments and pensions from Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria. He published nothing in book form, but his verses and his prose letters were the delight of the coteries, and were copied, handed about and admired more perhaps than the work of any contemporary. He had been early introduced to the Hotel de Rambouillet, where he was the especial friend of Julie d'Angennes, who called him her "dwarf king." His ingenuity in providing amusement for the younger members of the circle ensured his popularity, which was never seriously threatened except by Antoine Godeau, and this rivalry ceased when Richelieu appointed Godeau bishop of Grasse. When at the desire of the duc de Montausier nineteen poets contributed to the Guirlande de Julie, which was to decide the much-feted Julie in favour of his suit, Voiture refused to take part. The quarrel between the Uranistes and the Jobelins arose over the respective merits of a sonnet of Voiture addressed to a certain Uranie, and of another composed by Isaac de Benserade, till then unknown, on the subject of Job. Another famous piece of his of the same kind, La Belle Matineuse, is less exquisite, but still very admirable, and Voiture stands in the highest rank of writers of vers de societe. His prose letters are full of lively wit, and, in some cases, as in the letter on Richelieu's policy (Letter Lxxiv.), show considerable political penetration. He ranks with Jean de Balzac as the chief director of the reform in French prose which accompanied that of Malherbe in French verse. Voiture died at the outbreak of the Fronde, which killed the society to which he was accustomed, on the 26th of May 1648.

1 See A. Roux, CEuvres de M. de Voiture (Paris, 1856); and C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xii.