Lomenie, Henry Lewis De, Count De Brienne

, was born in 1635, the son of that count de Brienne who was ambassador in England in 1624. He had the reversion of the secretary of state’s office which his father held, and was made counsellor of state in 1651, when a boy of sixteen, with permission to exercise this office when he should attain the age of twenty- five. During this interval, | be travelled over Italy, Germany, and the north, to acquire a knowledge of the countries he was afterward to treat with, and on his return, although only twenty-three years old, the king permitted him to act as secretary of state; but after his wife’s death, in 1665, Louis XIV. obliged him to resign his post. M. de Lomenie then retired to the fathers of the oratory, and was sub-deacon, but left them, and went to the court of Christian Louis, duke of Mecklenburgh, in 1672. His residence at that court was the origin of all the troubles which he brought upon himself; for, having entertained a criminal passion for the princess of Mecklenburg, he had the audacity to acquaint her with it. She complained of this affront to Louis XIV. who ordered him to return to Paris, and confined him in the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, then at St. Benolt-sur- Loire, afterwards at St. Lazare, and lastly, at the abbey of St. Severin, at Chateau Landon, where he died, April 17, 1698. He left an account of his travels, in Latin,entitled “Itinerarinm,” 8vo, written with elegance and perspicuity. 2. “Recueil de Poesies diverses et Chre”­tiennes,“Paris, 1671, 3 vols. 12mo. 3.” Remarques sur les Regies de la Poésie Françoise,“which are at the end of the” Nouvelle Methode Latine“of Port Royal, the seventh edition, 8vo. M. de Châlons has borrowed, without any acknowledgment, almost the whole of these remarks, in his treatise” Des Regies de la Poésie Fransoise.“Lomenie also published a translation of the” Institutions of Thanlerus," 8vo and 12mo, &c. and left in ms. memoirs of his life, and some poems. It appears from his works, that he possessed wit and genius, but that a capricious, fickle, and inconstant disposition, joined to a depraved fancy, rendered them useless to him, ad in some measure to the world. ¹