Brun, Lawrence Le

, a French Jesuit, was born at Nantes in 1607, and died at Paris Sept. 1, 1663. He wrote many pieces of Latin poetry. The principal are, 1. “The Ignatiad,” in xii books: the subject is the pilgrimage of St. Ignatius to Jerusalem. This poem forms a part of his “Virgilius Christianus;” in which he has imitated, with more piety than taste, the eclogues, the georgics, and the Æneid. His “Ovidius Christianus” is in the same strain: the Heroic Epistles are changed into pastoral letters, the Tristibus into holy lamentations, and the Metamorphoses into stories of converted penitents. Father Le Brun also wrote “Eloquentia Poetica,” Paris, 1655, 4to, a treatise in Latin on the precepts of the art of poetry, supported on examples drawn from the best authors. At the end is a treatise on poetical common-places, which may be of service to young versifiers.²