MOINE (Peter le), was born at Chaumont in Bassigny, A. D. 1602, and died at Paris August 22. 1672, aged 70. He joined the society of Jesuits, and enjoyed several offices among them. He is chiefly known by his verses, which were collected into one volume folio in 1671. Father le Moine is the first of the French poets belonging to that famous society, who acquired reputation by this species of writing. It cannot be denied that this poet possessed genius and fancy; but his imagination was ungoverned, which is particularly the case in his poem of Saint Louis. De-
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spreaux, when asked his opinion of this poet, replied, That "he was too extravagant for praise, and too much a poet for censure." To give his character in one word, he was a pedant who had a lively imagination without taste, and who, far from restraining his impetuous genius, abandoned himself without reserve to its direction. Hence his gigantic figures, his crowd of metaphors, his ridiculous antitheses, his hyperbolical expressions, &c. This Jesuit somewhere says, "that the water of the river on the banks of which he had composed his verses, was so admirably qualified to make poets, that though it were converted into holy water, it would not protect a man against the demon of poetry." The prose of father le Moine is in the same brilliant and bombast style. Senault, a father of the oratory, used to say of him, that he was Balzac in a theatrical dress. Among his prose works are, 1. La Devotion aisée, Paris, 1652, 8vo; an extraordinary book which produced more mirth than devotion. 2. Pensées Morales. On these two books the reader may consult Paschal's ninth and tenth provincial letters. 3. A short Treatise on History, in 12mo; in which we find many pleasant and curious thoughts mixed with a good deal of common-place.