GRESSET, JEAN BAPTISTE LOUIS 7 7 ) French poet and dramatist, was born at Amiens. His poem Vert Vert (1734) is his main title to fame, though in his later years he regretted the frivolity which enabled him to produce this delightful work. Gresset, who had taken novice's orders in the Society of Jesus at 16, found himself famous. He left Rouen, went up to Paris, where he found refuge in the same garret which had sheltered him when a boy at the College Louis le Grand, and there wrote La Chartreuse , Carerne impromptu, and Lutrin vivant (1735). Complaints were made to the Jesuit fathers of the alleged licentiousness of his verses, the real cause of com plaint being the ridicule which Vert Vert seemed to throw upon the whole race of nuns and the anti-clerical tendency of the other poems. Gresset was expelled the order. He wrote for the theatre Edouard III, a tragedy (1740) ; Sidnei (1745), a comedy; and Le Mechant (1747), esteemed by Brunetiere the best verse comedy of the French i8th century theatre, not excepting even the Metromanie of Alexis Piron. Gresset was admitted to the Academy in 1748. Then, still young, he retired to Amiens, where his relapse from the discipline of the church became the subject of the deepest remorse. He died at Amiens on June 16, 17 7 7.
The best edition of his poems is A. A. Renouard's (1811) . See Jules Wogue, J. B. L. Gresset (1894)•