- François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel
François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel (
January 1 ,1677 -December 26 1758 ), born atPérigueux , was a Frenchdramatist andsatirist .He was an extremely precocious boy, and at
Bordeaux , where he was educated, he produced a play when he was nine years old. Five years later his mother took him to Paris, where he found a patron. in the princesse de Conti, to whom he dedicated his tragedy of "Jugurtha" or, as it was called later, "Adherbal" (1694). Racine had given him advice and was present at the first performance, although he had long lived in complete retirement. Other plays followed: "Oreste et Pylade" (1697), "Méleagre" (1699), "Amasis" (1701), and "Ino et Mélicerte" (1715).Lagrange hardly realized the high hopes raised by his precocity, although his only serious rival on the tragic stage was Campistron, but he obtained high favour at court, becoming "
maître d'hôtel " to the duchess of Orléans.This prosperity ended with the publication in 1720 of his "Philippiques", odes accusing the regent, Philip, duke of Orléans, of the most odious crimes. He might have escaped the consequences of this
libel but for the bitter enmity of a former patron, the duc de La Force. Lagrange found sanctuary atAvignon , but was enticed beyond the boundary of the papal jurisdiction, when he was arrested and sent as a prisoner to theÎle Sainte-Marguerite .He contrived, however, to escape to
Sardinia and thence toSpain andHolland , where he produced his fourth and fifth "Philippiques". On the death of the Regent he was able to return to France. He was part author of a "Histoire de Périgord" left unfinished, and made a further contribution to history, or perhaps, more exactly, to romance, in a letter to Élie Fréron on the identity of theMan with the Iron Mask . Lagrange's family life was embittered by a long law-suit against his son. He died at Périgueux at the end of December 1758.He had collected his own works (5 vols, 1758) some months before his death. His most famous work, the "Philippiques", was edited by M. de Lescure in 1858, and a sixth philippic by M. Diancourt in 1886.----
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