EGLANTINE (Fabre de), was born at Chalons in Champagne. He was early educated, by the care of his parents, in polite literature and natural philosophy. From his youth he felt an invincible inclination to court the muses; and in the year 1786 he published, in a French periodical work, intitled Les Etrangers du Par-nasse, a little poem called Chalons sur Marne, in which he drew a very charming picture of the moral pleasures that were to be found in that place and its neighbourhood. This piece, however, was then considered as a juvenile composition, and fell very short of that high degree of celebrity which the author afterwards attained to. In the years 1789 and 1790 he published two well-known comedies, Le Philinte, and L'Intrigue Epistolaire. Besides his talents for writing comedies, he felt, like Moliere, an inclination to perform parts on the stage. He accordingly acted his own plays in the theatres of Lyons and Nimes.
Being, like the greater part of French wits and philosophers, an avowed enemy to religion and civil subordination, he was thought to have sufficient merit to be removed from the office of fabricating comedies to that of fabricating constitutions. Accordingly, in 1792, he was chosen (we believe by the influence of the Girondine faction) a deputy to the National Convention. In that assembly, during the winter and the spring of 1793, he acted a part certainly not very commendable, though every way worthy of the pupil of the economists. At that period the Girondine party was the most powerful; and it was very generally reported among the
the best informed people at Paris, that Fabre contributed, together with Danton and Robespierre, to the famous massacre of the 31st of May, when the Girondine faction was overthrown by a popular insurrection. What gives the appearance of authenticity to this report is, that Fabre himself some days afterwards observed to a friend, that the domineering spirit of the Girondines, who had engrossed all power and office, had induced him and his colleagues, in order to shake off the yoke, to throw themselves into the hands of the Sanseuloterie; that he could not help, however, foreboding dangerous consequences from that day, 31st of May, as the same mob which they had taught to despise the legislature might, at the instigation of another faction, overthrow him in his turn. Thus Fabre appeared to have a presentiment of his own future destiny.
On the overthrow of the Girondine party, and the establishment in power of the Sanseuloterie, Fabre began to act a considerable part. He was appointed member of the Committee of Public Instruction; in which station, in the month of August 1793, he gave his vote for suppressing all academies and literary corporations which, from their privileges and aristocratic spirit, were considered as unfriendly to a truly republican government. In October 1793, he submitted to the National Convention the plan of a new calendar, which was afterwards adopted.
The reader who will take the trouble to turn to the article REVOLUTION, n° 184, Encycl. may see that calendar, and be able to judge for himself whether it evinces the childishness or the science of its author. A journalist of our own indeed, who seems to admire every thing that is new and odd, says, that the accuracy and regularity with which it was executed, evinced an uncommon degree of knowledge in mathematics and natural philosophy, and failed not to reflect on its author great reputation! Indeed! Had the Sanseulotes so soon forgotten their "guides, philosophers, and friends," D'Alembert, and Condorcet, as to consider this exploit
as sufficient to place its author in the temple of fame among the sons of science? Our journalist, however, admits, that it gave birth to a pleasant pamphlet, intitled Le Législateur à la Mode; in which it was demonstrated, that the 31st chapter of the travels of Anacharsis, by the Abbe Barthelemy, where the description of the ancient Greek calendar is introduced, had furnished no inconsiderable part of the plan of the new Fabrine calendar.
The Sanseuloterie had now become too powerful to be tolerated any longer. In the winter of 1794, that faction was divided into two parts, the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, or, in other words, the Robespierriists and the Dantonists. Fabre was of the faction of Danton, and was confined with Danton's adherents in the prison of the Luxembourg. From that prison he wrote a number of letters, which were afterwards printed. These letters are highly extolled as beautiful descriptions of sensibility and talents in distress. After a month's imprisonment, Fabre was, with many others, executed in the place de la Revolution, in April 1794, in the 35th year of his age. His sentence, we believe, was unjust; but death he had more than merited.