BENSERADE, ISAAC DE, an ingenious French poet of the seventeenth century, was born at Lyons. He made himself known at court by his verses and his wit, and had the good fortune to please the cardinals Richelieu and Ma-
zarin. After the death of Richelieu, he got into favour with the duke de Brèze, whom he accompanied in most of his expeditions; and when this nobleman died, he returned to court, where his poetry became highly esteemed. He wrote, 1. A Paraphrase upon Job; 2. Verses for Interludes; 3. Rondeaux upon Ovid; 4. Several Tragedies. A sonnet which he sent to a young lady with his paraphrase on Job, being put in competition with the Urania of Voiture, caused him to be much spoken of; for those who gave the preference to Benserade's performance were styled the Jobists, and their antagonists were called the Uranists; and the dispute long divided the whole court and the wits. Some years before his death he applied himself to works of piety, and translated almost all the Psalms. According to the Abbé Olivet, Benserade withdrew from court towards the close of his life, and made Gentilly the place of his retirement. The abbé further says, that when he himself was a youth, it was the custom to visit the remains of the ornaments with which Benserade had embellished his house and gardens, where every thing savoured of his poetical genius; and that the trees were covered with inscriptions carved in the bark, which Voltaire thinks the best of his productions. Benserade died on the 19th October 1691, in the eighty-second year of his age.