Arbaud, Francis

, Sieur de Porcheres, one of the first members of the French academy in the seventeenth century, was born in Provence, and was descended from the ancient family of Porcheres. He was the scholar and follower of Malherbe, and imitated him in the turn of his verse, and was also tutor to the son of Mr. de Chenoise, and afterwards to the son of the count Saint-Herau. The abbtj Bois-Robert, who was particularly eminent for the generous use which he made of his interest with cardinal Richelieu, procured him a pension of six hundred livres from that great man. On March 10, 1636, he spoke an oration in the French academy upon the “Love of the Sciences.” He retired at last into Burgundy, where he married, and died in 1640. He wrote a great number of verses, which were never printed. But there are others, which were published, as particularly his “Paraphrase upon the Psalms” of Degrees,“to which are added his” Poems upon divers subjects," Paris, 1633, 8vo. He had a brother, John, who had likewise a talent for poetry, and translated several of the Psalms into French verse, two editions of which have been published, the former at Grenoble in 1651, and the latter more complete at Marseilles in 1654. ²