Autreau, Jacques D'

, a painter from necessity and a poet by taste, died in indigence, in constant attachment to his two professions, at Paris, his birth-place, in the hospital of Incurables, in 1745. D’Autreau, although of a gloomy and melancholy character, wrote comedies that excited laughter, and continue to amuse upon the stage. He was almost sixty when he first turned his thoughts to the drama, an employment that demands all the vivacity and imagination of youth but his plots are too simple, the catastrophe is immediately perceived, and the pleasure of surprise is lost. His dialogue, however, is natural, his style easy, and some of his scenes are in the true comic taste. The Italian theatre has preserved his “Port a PAnglois,” in prose “Democrite pretendu fou,” in three acts, and in verse. The theatres of France have represented “Clorinda,” a tragedy in five acts the “Chevalier Bayard,” in five acts and the “Magie de l’Amour,” a pastoral in one act, in verse. He gave at the opera, “Platee, ou la Naissance de la Comedie,” the music by the celebrated Rameau. “Le Port a l’Anglois” is the first piece in which the Italian players spoke French. The works of | d‘Autreau were collected in 1749, in 4 vols. 12mo, with a good preface by Pesselier. The most known of the pictures of this painter, is that of Diogenes, with the lanthern in his hand, in search of an honest man, and finding him in the cardinal de Fleury. D’Autreau lived very retired, de*. spising all that the generality of mankind esteem, and agreeing with the public in no one thing except in the little concern he took about himself. ¹