DELILLE, JACQUES (17381813)

This article appears in Volume V07, Page 963 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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DELILLE, JACQUES (17381813) , French poet, was born on the 22nd of June 1738 at Aigue-Perse in Auvergne. He was an illegitimate child, and was descended by his mother from the chancellor De 1'HSpital. He was educated at the college of Lisieux in Paris and became an elementary teacher. He gradually acquired a reputation as a poet by his epistles, in which things are not called by their

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

names but are hinted at by elaborate periphrases. Sugar becomes " le miel americain que du suc des roseaux exprima 1'Africain." The publication (1769) of his translation of the Georgics of Virgil made him famous. Voltaire recommended the poet for the next vacant place in the Academy. He was at once elected a member, bait was not admitted until 1774 owing to the opposition of the king, who alleged that he was too

young

. In his Jardins, ou fart d'embellir les paysages (1782) he made good his pretensions as an

original

ORIGINAL

poet. In 1786 he made a journey to Constantinople in the

train

TRAIN (M. Eng. trayn or trayne, derived through Fr. from Late Lat. trahinare, to drag, draw, Lat. trahere, cf. trail, trace, ultimately from the same source)

of the

ambassador

AMBASSADOR (also EMBASSADOR, the form sometimes still used in America; from the Fr. ambassadeur, with which compare Ital. ambasciatore and Span. embajador, all variants of the Med. Lat. ambassiator, ambassiator, ambasator, &c., derived from Med. Lat. amba

M. de Choiseul-Gouffier.
Delille had become professor of Latin poetry at the College de France, and abbot of Saint-Severin, when the outbreak of the Revolution reduced him to poverty. He purchased his personal safety by professing his adherence to revolutionary doctrine, but eventually quitted Paris, and retired to St Die, where he completed his translation of the Aeneid. He emigrated first to Basel and then to Glairesse in Switzerland. Here he finished his Homme des champs, and his poem on the Trois regnes de la nature. His next place of

refuge

REFUGE

was in Germany, where he composed his La Pitie; and finally, he passed some time in London, chiefly employed in translating Paradise Lost. In 1802 he was able to return to Paris, where, although nearly blind, he resumed his professorship and his chair at the Academy, but lived in retirement. He fortunately did not outlive the vogue of the descriptive poems which were his

special

SPECIAL

province, and died on the 1st of May 1813.
Delille left behind him little

prose

PROSE

. His preface to the translation of the Georgics is an able essay, and contains many excellent hints on the art and difficulties of translation. He wrote the article " La Bruyere " in the Biographic universelle. The following is the

list

LIST (O.E.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lust, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
)
LIST, FRIEDRICH (1789-1846)

of his poetical works:Les Georgiques de Virgile, traduites en vers franYais (Paris, 1769, 1782, 1785, 1809); Les Jardins, en quatre chants (1780; new edition, Paris, 18oi);
L'Homme des champs, ou les Georgiques francaises (Strassburg, 1802); Poesies fugitives (1802); Dithyrambe sur l'immortalite de l'&me, suivi du passage du Saint Gothard, poeme traduit de l'Apglais de Madame la duchesse de Devonshire (1802); La Pitie, poeme en quatre chants (Paris, 1802); L'Eneide de Virgile, traduite en vers francais (4 vols., 1804) ; Le Paradis perdu (3 vols., 1804); L'Imagirtation, poeme en huit chants (2 vols., 18o6); Les trois regnes de la nature (2 vols., 18o8); La Conversation (1812). A collection given under the title of Poesies diverses (18o1) was disavowed by Delille.
His Euvres (16 vols.) were published in 1824. See Sainte-Beuve, Portraits ;itteraires, vol. ii.

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