(Peter Claude), a comic poet, was born in Paris, and acquired great reputation by inventing a new kind of entertainment, called the Weeping Comedy. Instead of imitating Aristophanes, Terence, Molire, and the other celebrated comic poets who had preceded him; and instead of exciting laughter by painting the different ridiculous characters, or giving strokes of humour and absurdities in conduct; he applied himself to represent the weaknesses of the heart, and to touch and soften it. In this manner he wrote five comedies: 1. La Fausse Antipathie; 2. Le Préjugé à la Mode; 3. Melancolie; 4. Amour pour Amour; and, 5. L'Ecole des Mères. He was received into the French Academy in 1736, and died at Paris in 1754, at the age of sixty-three. He also wrote a tragedy entitled Maximianus; and an epistle to Clio, an ingenious didactic poem.