Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/136

 time it stood very high—five hundred louis according to Voltaire being offered for the play of ‘Sir Politick Would-be.’ In the eighteenth century his fame declined, and Voltaire, notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, a sort of intellectual filiation, spoke of him with uniform disparagement; ‘never,’ he said, ‘was reputation more usurped than his.’ In the last fifty years greater justice had been rendered him, and it has been recognised that he was in certain respects a fit contemporary or even precursor of Pascal, and a precursor of Voltaire, and that a fair proportion of his prose—not his verse—is, to use the Duc d'Aumale's words, ‘exquisite and delicate.’

His medical attendant, Silvestre, has given this portrait of him: ‘M. de Saint-Évremond was well made. As he had in youth taken part in all manly exercises, he retained, even to a very advanced age, a natural and easy carriage. His eyes were blue, keen, and full of fire, his face bright and intelligent, his smile somewhat satirical. In youth he had had fine black hair, but though it had become quite white, and even very sparse, he never would wear a wig, and contented himself with wearing a skull-cap. More than twenty years before his death a wen developed at the root of his nose, and grew to a good size, but this did not disfigure him very much, at least in the eyes of those who saw him habitually. His conversation was gay and easy, his repartees lively and incisive, his manners good and polite; in a word, one can say of him that in all things he showed himself to be a man of quality.’

There exist, however, hints of less flattering characteristics. Christopher Pitt [q. v.], in a ‘Dialogue between a Poet and his Servant,’ has the following lines: Old Évremond, renowned for wit and dirt, Would change his living oftener than his shirt; Roar with the rakes of state a month; and come To starve another in his hole at home. A portrait of Saint-Évremond, painted by Parmentier in 1701, is in the National Portrait Gallery. An engraving of it is given in the first volume of the quarto edition of the ‘Works,’ London, 1705, and another engraved portrait from an original by Kneller is in volume iii. of the edition of the ‘Works’ in English, 1728 (London). There is also a bust over the grave in Westminster Abbey.

All his works were composed for his own pleasure, or the pleasure of his friends, and circulated only, so far as his responsibility was concerned, in manuscript. They are thus mainly of an occasional kind, and consist of poems, chiefly of an amatory kind; three or four plays, the ‘Comédie des Académiciens,’ ‘Sir Politick Would-be,’ a play ‘à la manière angloise,’ ‘Les Opéra;’ various essays, dialogues, dissertations, and reflections, the most extended being ‘Sur les divers génies du Peuple Romain dans les divers tems de la République,’ and a considerable correspondence with Ninon de Lenclos, the Duchess of Mazarin, and others. Being much sought after, and having therefore a money value, all that he wrote was pirated, and a good deal was attributed to him of which he was not the author. A pirated selection appeared in an English translation in 1700 (London, 2 vols. 8vo). He treated such piracies with characteristic indifference till quite the end of his life, when Des Maizeaux induced him to begin the work of authentication. Death supervened. But Des Maizeaux and Silvestre, with such notes and indications as Saint-Évremond had left, published his authentic works in 1705, in London, in 2 vols. 4to (3rd edit. 1709). Des Maizeaux also brought out at Amsterdam in 1706 a collection of the works attributed to Saint-Évremond, under the title of ‘Mélange curieux des meilleures pièces attribuées à M. de Saint-Évremond.’ The works were several times republished, the edition of 1753, in 12 vols., containing much that he confessedly had not written.

In later times selections from Saint-Évremond's works have been edited by Hippeau (1852), Giraud (1865), Gidel (no date, but circa 1866), Merlet (1870), Lescure (1881), Macé (1894).

[The chief authority about Saint-Évremond is Des Maizeaux, who first published, in 1705, a memoir with Saint-Évremond's collected works; it was several times reprinted. To it should be added the preface of P. Silvestre to the fifth edition of 1739. The volumes of selections mentioned above contain biographical sketches more or less extended, the notice by Giraud being specially elaborate, but unfortunately only carrying the story of Saint-Évremond's life to the date of his exile. A continuation had been projected, but was apparently never carried out. Sainte-Beuve wrote two papers on Saint-Évremond in his Causeries du Lundi, vol. iv., and Nouveaux Lundis, vol. xiii. A notice with some reference to his influence on English literature will be found in Saintsbury's Miscellaneous Essays and Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xi. 186.]

 ST. FAITH'S, JOHN (d. 1359), theological writer, was educated at the Carmelite house of St. Faith, near Norwich, and studied at Oxford. He was made governor of the Carmelites of Burnham Norton, Norfolk, and died there, 18 Dec. 1359. He