EXCURSUS TO THE SKIRMISH.
Nicolas Chorier, the author of the Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (the book is commonly called the Aloisia or the Meursius, after the name of the supposed author or translator) was born at Vienne, Dauphiny, in 1612; he received a law-doctor's degree in 1639, and practised the profession of lawyer at the Court of Aids in his native town.[1] A man of cultivated mind, a passionate lover of letters, a first-rate Latinist, he devoted only a very limited part of his time to causes of the bar.
While passing out of the Jesuit Academy, and during the course of his law studies, he tried his hand at a variety of works both in French and Latin.……The composition of the Aloisia, or at least the first draft, for he must often have retouched this chief work, may be traced back to that time. "I wrote then," he tells us in his Memoirs, "Epistles, Speeches, a Political Dissertation on the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire, and two Satires, the one Menippean, the other Sota-
- ↑ We are quoting from the English translator's "Notice of Nicolas Chorier" in the Liseux edition already mentioned.
- The Sotadical Satire is so-called after Sotades, who lived three centuries before Christ, and whose erotic poems are unfortunately lost.—English Translator's note. According to a note in Priapeia (Cosmopoli, 1890, Privately Printed), Sotades, the Mantinean poet, was the first to treat of Greek love, or dishonest and unnatural love. He
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