Ivetaux, Nicholas Vanquelin, Seigneur Des

, a French poet, was born of a respectable family at la Fresnaye, a castle near Falaise. He discovered early a taste for poetry and the belles lettres, and, after having distinguished himself as a student at Caen, succeeded his father as lieutenant-general of the city; but the marechal d‘Estrees persuaded him to resign his post and go to court, where he placed him with M. de Vendome, son of the celebrated Gabrielle d’Estr6es. It was for this young prince that des Ivetaux wrote his poem of “L'Institution du Prince,” in which he gives his pupil very sensible, judicious, and even religious advice. After this he was preceptor to the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII; but his licentious way of life displeased the queen, and occasioned him to be excluded from the court a year after Henry IV. died. A pension and several benefices were, however, given him; but he afterwards resigned his benefices, on being reproached by cardinal Richelieu for his libertinism. Thus free from all restraint, des Ivetaux retired to an elegant house in the fauxbourg St. Germain, where he spent the rest of his days in pleasure and voluptuousness, iiving in the Epicurean style. Fancying that the pastoral life was the happiest, he dressed himself like a shepherd, and led imaginary flocks about the walks of his garden, repeating to them his lays, accompanied by a girl in the dress of a shepherdess, whom he had picked up with her Jiarp in the streets, and taken for his mistress. Their whole employment was to seek refinements in pleasures, and every day they studied how to render them more exquisite. Thus des Ivetaux passed his latter years; and it has been said that he ordered a saraband to be played when he was dying, to sooth his departing soul; but M. Huet, on the contrary, affirms, that he repented of his errors at the point of death. However that may be, he died in his ninetieth year, at Brian val, near Germigni, in 1649. Besides the poem above mentioned, des Ivetaux left stanzas, sonnets, and other poetical pieces, in the “Deiices de la Poésie Françoise,” Paris, 1620, 8vo. ¹

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