Loubere, Simon De La

, a French poet, was born in 1642, of a respectable family at Toulouse. He was originally secretary of the embassy to M. de St. Remain, ambassador in Switzerland, and went to Siam, 1687, as envoy extraordinary from the French king. On his return to France, he was entrusted with a secret commission in SpaVi and Portugal, s-trpposed to have had for its object the detachment of those two courts from the alliance which had produced the revolution in England; but his design transpiring, he was arrested at Madrid, and with difficulty obtained his liberty. M. dela Loubere attached himself afterwards to the chancellor de Pontchartrain, and travelled with his son. He was admitted into the French academy in 1693, and that of the belles lettres in 1694; and retired at last to Toulouse, where he married at sixty, established the Floral Games, and died March 26, 1729, aged eightyseven. His works are, Songs, Vaudevilles, Madrigals, Sonnets, Odes, and other poetical pieces; an account of his voyage to Siam, 2 vols. 12rno, and a treatise “de la Resolution des Equations,” 1729, 4 to. &c. Of his voyage to Siam, there is an English translation, published in 1693, folio. It is the only one of his productions now in request. There is reason to think he was not much admired by some of the academicians. It being by means of M. de Pontchartrain that he was admitted into the French academy, Fontaine said,

"C’est un impot que Pontchartrain

Veut mettre sur l’Academie."

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