Alexis, a French poet, was born at Dijon in July 1689, where his father was an apothecary, and where he passed more than thirty years in idle and destructive dissipation. He was at length obliged to quit the place of his nativity, in order to avoid the reproaches of his fellow-citizens, on account of an ode which he had written, and which gave them great offence. His relations not being able to give him much assistance, he supported himself at Paris by means of his pen, the strokes of which were as beautiful and fair as those of an engraver. He lived in the house of M. de Belleisle as his secretary, and afterwards with a financier, who, however, did not know that he had a man of genius under his roof. His reputation as a writer commenced with some pieces which he published for the entertainment of the populace, and which showed strong marks of original invention; but what fully established his character in this way was his comedy entitled Métromanie, which was the best that had appeared in France since Regnard's Gamester. This performance, in five acts, well conducted, and replete with genius, wit, and humour, was acted with the greatest success upon the French stage in 1738. Piron, however, had a sufficient stock of self-conceit; and what helped to increase it, and make him fancy himself superior to the most celebrated of his contemporaries, was the circumstance that, on account of his original humour, of which he had an uncommon share, his company was more courted than that of Voltaire, who was otherwise too lively, captious, and crabbed. Piron's mischievous ingenuity was partly the cause which excluded him from the French Academy. "I could not," said he, "make thirty-nine people think as I do, and I could less think as thirty-nine do." He called that celebrated society "les invalides du bel esprit," and yet he often endeavoured to become one of those invalids. He died on the 21st of January 1773, at the age of eighty-three. He had prepared for himself the following characteristic epitaph:

Cl gît Piron, qui ne fut rien, Pas même académicien.

A collection of his works appeared in 1776, in seven vols. 8vo and nine vols. 12mo. The principal pieces are, The School of Fathers, a comedy acted in 1728 under the title of Ungrateful Sons; Callisthenes, a tragedy, the subject of which is taken from Justin; The Mysterious Lover, a comedy; Gustavus and Ferdinand Cortez, two tragedies, some scenes of which discover an original genius, but the versification neither pleases the ear nor affects the heart; Métromanie, a comedy; The Courses of Tempe, an ingenious pastoral, in which the manners both of the town and country are pleasantly drawn; with some odes, poems, fables, and epigrams. In this last kind of poetry he was very successful, and he may be placed after Marot and Rousseau; but there was no occasion for loading the public with seven volumes of his works. The half of that number might have sufficed; for, excepting Métromanie, Gustavus, the Courses of Tempe, some odes, about twenty epigrams, three or four fables, and some epistles, the rest are but indifferent, and have no claim to any extraordinary merit.