SAINT-SIMON, Louis de Roueroy, Duc de, author of the celebrated Memoirs of the Court of France under Louis XIV. and his Successors, was born at Paris, of a family claiming kin with the old counts of Vermandois and the Emperor Charlemagne, in 1675. From his earliest years he was accustomed to the presence of royalty, having been presented at the font by Louis XIV. and by Maria Theresa of Austria. He embraced early the military profession, and served under the Maréchal de Luxembourg in 1692, when he signalized himself by his valour at the siege of Namur and at the battles of Fleurus and of Nerwinden. The following year he rose to be captain and colonel; but was arrested in his military progress by the death of his father in 1693, who left him heir to his titles and his estate. Louis de Roueroy, now Duc de Saint-Simon, exchanged the military attire for the dress of the diplomatist. In this new sphere he would have risen to distinction by the brilliancy of his talents, had not the native independence of his character interfered. The king, it is said, overlooked him; the royal councils were filled by meaner men; and the Duc de Saint-Simon occupied his time in secretly transferring to paper the characters of the court. This staunch aristocrat was a firm Jansenist, and looked with no favourable eye on the rise of Madame de Maintenon. He opposed the scheming Jesuits; he warned the populace against the financial projects of Law; he strongly advocated the claims of the Duc d'Orleans to the regency, and used all his efforts to counteract Cardinal Dubois. Such measures were calculated to elevate his name among the populace; but he was a French peer, and opposed to every plan of reform. Though supporting the regent, he was too independent a man to follow him servilely. In 1721 he performed a fruitless embassy to the court of Spain in support of the marriage of the Infanta with Louis XV., who was then a minor. On the death of Orleans and the ascension of Louis, this proud old aristocrat retired in disgust from the court, and occupied his remaining years in writing his Memoirs. He died at Paris on the 2d of March 1755.
These famous Memoirs, now known over the whole world, consist of a curious compound of history and of biography, written in a somewhat rough style, but with great honesty of purpose, and with an exceedingly clear eye for truth. His vivid perception of character, his stores of illustrative anecdote, and his boundless detail of quaint and curious allusion, despite the strong prejudice of the author, constitute his book the most invaluable record of the life and manners of the age of Louis XIV. and of the regency. The family of the author obtained after his decease a lettre de cachet for the deposition of the original manuscript in the national archives, not judging it prudent to publish it while the characters it described were alive. After many ineffectual attempts to recover the MS., the Abbé Voisenon was commissioned by Louis XVI. to examine it. The work was retained; but the Abbé made large extracts and copies from it, which were afterwards surreptitiously got hold of, and printed in 7 vols. in 1788 and 1789. In 1791 Soulaucie issued another edition, but still incomplete, in 13 vols. 8vo. In 1829-30, by order of Louis XVIII., the first complete edition was given to the world in 21 vols. 8vo. Another edition, in 20 vols. of superb typography, by M. de Chéruel, with an introductory notice by Sainte-Beuve of the French Academy, was published in 1856-57. Since then there have been numerous editions of this highly interest-
ing book. An English translation of select portions of St Andrews the Memoirs, by Bayle St John, was published in 4 vols. in 1857.