Lescaille, James

, a celebrated Dutch printer, was born in 1610 of an illustrious family at Geneva, which removed to Holland, where his press became famous for the number of beautiful and accurate editions which issued from it. He was also esteemed an excellent poet; and his daughter, Catherine Lescaille, who died June 8, 1711, was so much admired for her poetical talents, as to be called the Dutch Sappho, and the tenth Muse. A collection of her Poems was printed in 1728, with the following tragedies: Genseric, Wenceslaus, Herod and Mariamne, Hercules and Deianira, Nicomedes, Ariadne, Cassandra, &c. which, although they are not written according to the ordinary rules of the drama, frequently discover marks of superior genius. James Lescaille was honoured with the poetic crown by the emperor Leopold in 1663, and died in 1677. ²