QUILLET, CLAUDE, an eminent Latin poet, was born at Chinon in Touraine in 1602, and practised physic there with reputation; but having declared against the pretended possession of the nuns of Loudun, in a manuscript treatise, the original of which was deposited in the library of the Sorbonne, he was obliged to retire into Italy, where he became secretary to the Marshal d'Estrées, the French ambassador at Rome. In 1655, Quillet having published in Holland a Latin poem entitled Callipædia, under the name of "Calvidius Lætus," he there inserted some verses against Cardinal Mazarin and his family; but that churchman making him some gentle reproaches, he retrenched what related to the cardinal in another edition, and dedicated it to him, Mazarin having, before it was printed, given him an abbey. He died in 1661, aged fifty-nine, after having given Ménage all his writings, and 500 crowns to pay the expense of printing them; but the Abbé took the money and papers, and published none of them. A third edition of his poems, with a number of other pieces, was published in London in 1708, 8vo. The Callipædia was translated into English verse by Nicolas Rowe, London, 1710.