ANCELOT, JAcquEs-AnsksE-PourcAnrE-FnANcots, a French poet, b. Feb. 9, 1794, at Havre, where his father was clerk of the chamber of commerce. The latter being a well-informed gentleman, delighting in verse, early taught his son to recite passages from the French poets. A. was from the first intended for active life in connection with the administration of the navy; and was employed, until the revolution of Jul} in the government service. His reputation was first established in 1819 by his tragedy of Louis IX., which was played fifty nights in succession, and procured him a pension of 2000 francs from the king. His next piece, The Mayor of the Palace (1823), was not so well received. -In 1824, appeared his _Hague, a work which exhibited the great skill of the author in adapting a masterpiece of Schiller to the French stage. In 1825, he gave to the world an epic poem in six cantos, Marie de Brabant; and in 1827, a clever and graceful work, partly prose and partly verse, entitled Six _Months in Russia; besides a novel in four volumes, The Man of the World. Olga, a drama, was published in 1828; and Elizabeth of England in 1829. Both of these works were highly successful, though
neither met with the brilliant reception of Louis IX. In 1834 appeared Les Emprunts aux Salons de Paris. The revolution of July deprived him of his pension, and also of his situation as librarian of Menden; and for the next ten years lie was compelled to support himself and family- by the concoction of numberless vaudevilles, dramas, comedies, anec dotes, etc., sometimes of very questionable morality. In 1841, the French academy chose him as the successor of Bonald. Shortly after appeared his Familiar Letters (Epitres Familieres), a collection of satires as remarkable for freshness of epigram as for grace of style and richness of versification. In 1848, he published La Rue—Quincampoix. He d. in 1850.
A's elehf-d'auvre, Louis IX., is a work of genius; the versification is correct, ele gant, and harmonious; the manners and characters of the period are delineated with great fidelity and brilliancy; the plot is skillfully constructed; and some of the scenes are contrived .with singular felicity.