Urfe', Honore‘ D’

, a writer of romances, was born February 11, 1567, at Marseilles, and was descended from an illustrious house of Forez, originally of Suabia. He was educated among the Jesuits, and sent to Malta, but returned to Forez. In 1574 Anne d’Urfé, his brother, married Diana de Chateau-Morancl, a rich lady, sole heiress of that bouse; but having procured his marriage to be declared null in 1596, he took the ecclesiastical habit, and Honore“d’Urfe, whose interest it was to keep Diana’s very large fortune in his own family, married her, about 1601. Their union did not however prove happy, for the lady, then above forty, had rendered herself otherwise disgusting by having her apartments always filled with great dogs, and as she brought him no children, he left her, and retired to Piedmont, where he died, 1625, aged fifty-eight. His principal work is a celebrated romance, entitledL‘ Astrée,“4 vols. 8vo, to which Baro, his secretary, added a fifth. It was reprinted, 1733, 10 vols. 12mo, and was read throughout Europe at one time as the first work of the kind, and was perhaps relished by some from the notion that it contained an account of the gallantries of Henry the Fourth 1 s reign. His other works are: a poem, entitled” La Sirene,“I6.ll, 8vo;” Epitres morales,“1620, 12mo;” La Savoysiade,“a poem, of which only part is in print; a pastoral in blank verse, entitled” La Sylvaniere,“8vo, and some” Sonnets.“Anne d’Urfe”, his eldest brother, was count de Lyon, lived in a very exemplary manner, and | died 1621, aged sixty-six. He also was a literary man, and has left “Sonnets,” “Hymns,” and other poetical pieces 5 1603, 4to. 1