(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 Étrennes du Parfaite, 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 Philosophe, and L’Intrigue Epistolaire. Besides his talents for writing comedies, he felt, like Molière, 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