CREBILLON, krh'be'yox'. CLAUDE PROSPER JOLYOT DE ( 1707-77). A noted French story-teller and wit. Ile was horn in Paris. February 14. 1707, the son of the dramatist Prosper Jolyot CriMilton. Except for a five years' exile for po litical and theological allusions in his novels, etpecially concerning the Papal bull Unigenit us, which led also to a brief imprisonment in the Bas tille. he passed his life in Paris. Though he occu pied at one time the office of literary censor, his fiction is a byword for its licentious suggestive ness. It shows a graceful talent, however. His best known tales are L'ecumoire ou TunzaT et Neuflarne (1734), followed in 1736 by the notori ous Lcs egaruncots flu cccur ct dc l'esprit, and in 1745 by Le sopha. than which it has not been pos sible to descend further in the refinements of im morality: not a gross word and not a decent thought. The conversation is witty, the manners refined after their kind. This smirking volup tuousness is only the eompletest literary expres sion of the spirit of the time, that was sapping the foundation of national strength and character and preparing the way for the Revolution. He died in Paris, April 12, 1777.
CRtBILLON, PROSPER JOLYOT DE ( 1674 1762). A noted French tragic poet, born in Dijon, -January 13, 1674. Ile abandoned the law for the stage on the success of idomenee (1705), and with Atree et Thycsle (1707) took first rank among the tragic poets of his time.
Among the more noteworthy of his subsequent tragedies are Electre (1708) ; R•adamiste et Zenobic (1711), his best work; Pyrrhus (1726) ; and eatable (174S). Crebillon became an Acad emician in 1731 and held several minor public offices, among them that of stage censor. Later he became indigent, but died in comfort through the profits of an edition of his Works (1750), made at the royal order and charge. He died in Paris, June 17, 1762. Crebillon suffered, as did his fame. from the envy and enmity of Voltaire, himself a tragic poet of greater polish, though less rugged power. Ile is apt to mistake the hor rible for the grandiose, and inflation for energy in diction, as did Corneille. whom among French dramatists he most resembles both in his quali ties and his defects. Crebillon's Works have been often edited, best perhaps by Didot (1812). There is a Life by the Abbe de la Porte, and a dis criminating critical essay on Crebillon's place in the development of French drama in Brunetiere's Epoque• du thelitre francais. See also Dutrait, Etude sur Crebillon (1893).