The New International Encyclopædia/Fontanes, Louis, Marquis de

FONTANES, fôN′tȧn′, Louis, Marquis de (1757-1821). A French poet and political orator. He was born at Niort, March 6, 1757, and was of an ancient Protestant family of Languedoc. He went to Paris while still a youth, and at twenty-one had attracted attention as poet by Le cri de mon cœur (1778) and La forêt de Navarre (1778). A little later he published a scholarly translation of Pope's Essay on Man (1783). During the early years of the Revolution he was active as a moderate Republican journalist, and before the fall of Robespierre was in hiding for a time. Later he was constrained to take refuge in Hamburg, whence he went to London, and became a close friend of Chateaubriand. While in England he published a much-admired imitation of Gray's “Elegy,” Le jour des morts (1796). He returned to France in 1799, was reinstated in the Institute, of which he had been made a member in 1795, and, warmly espousing the cause of Napoleon, was made member of the legislative body (1802-10), of which he became president in 1804. Here he developed great oratorical talent in praise of the First Consul and Emperor. He was advanced to the Senate (1810), but he adapted himself readily to the Restoration after Leipzig, drew up Napoleon's act of abdication (1814), and was made peer by Louis XVIII. He died in Paris, March 17, 1821. Fontane's works, edited by Sainte-Beuve in two volumes (1837), are models of elegant and correct diction, and show sound literary judgment.