Grevin, James

, a French poet and physician, was born at Clermont, in Beauvoisis, in 1533. He began early to write, producing his tragedy of the “Death of Caesar” in his fifteenth year; and practised physic with success. He was long retained in the service of Margaret of France, duchess of Savoy, whom he followed to Piedmont. He

* Lord Orford erroneously attributes 4to, which was evidently written by to him “Sir Fulke Grevilta’s Five one of the presbyterian party, and was Yeares of king James, or the condition afterwards republishetl, with additions, of the state of England, and the rela- under the title of” The first Fourteen tion it had to other provinces,“1643, Years of king James,” 1651, 4to. | died at Turin the 5th of November 1573. There are three plays extant of his: “The Treasurer’s Wife,” a comedy, in 1558; the “Death of Caesar,” a tragedy; and the “Frighted Ones, (Les Esbahis)” a comedy, both acted the same day at the college of Beauvais in 1560. Grevin, though snatched away by a premature death, had acquired a great reputation, not only as a poet, but as a physician. Some of his countrymen, speaking of his dramas, give him this favourable testimony, “that he effaced all who preceded him on the French stage, and that eight or ten such poets as he would have put it on a good footing, his versification being easy and smooth, especially in his comedies, and his plots well contrived.” His poems and plays were printed at Paris, 1561, 8vo. He left also a “Treatise on Poisons,” and another “against Antimony,” both translated into Latin, and printed in 4to. It was by his means that the absurd decree of the faculty of Paris, afterwards confirmed by parliament, against the use of antimony in medicine, was passed. He was a Calvinist, and united with Rochandieu and Florence Christian in their ingenious poem entitled “The Temple,” which they wrote against Ronsard, who had abused the Calvinists in his discourse on the Miseries of Time." ¹