Évariste-Désiré Desforges, Vicomte de,** the French Tibullus, was born in the island of Bourbon in 1753, and was sent to France to be educated at the age of nine. His devotion to literature did not appear in the early part of his life. At the college of Rennes he showed a listless dislike for the subjects of scholastic study. A spirit of religious fanaticism next possessed him, and led him to the very eve of entering upon a monastic life. Then rushing into the very opposite extreme of sentiment, he plunged into the midst of the pleasures of the world, enlisted in the army, and drank in with avidity the Epicurean maxims of the barracks. It was not until, at the age of twenty, he paid a visit to his native island, that an event occurred which awakened his poetical genius. He was there smitten with a passion for a young Creole maiden called Eleanor: she was soon after wedded to another; and the jilted lover returned disconsolate to France. His mind then resolved to vent its burden through the channel of verse. Accordingly, in a collection of elegies published in 1775 he described, with a fresh simplicity, easy grace, and deep pathos, the delights of a requited attachment, and the regrets, jealousies, and alternations between hope and fear, of a disgraced love. The fair reputation which Parny gained by these poems was soon tarnished by a flagrant indiscretion. Losing all his fortune during the troublous days of the Revolution, and being driven to earn a livelihood by his own exertions, he was tempted to pander to the immoral tastes of the times. He commenced an attack upon decency and religion in his Guerre des Dieux; and he persisted in following up his odious attempt in his Paradis Perdu et Galanteries de la Bible. A piece on the culture of flowers, and another entitled Journée Champêtre, were almost the only productions of his latter years which were at the same time imbued with the genius of poetry and untainted by profaneness and obscenity. The consequence was, that the more respectable part of the community cherished towards him an aversion which had not passed away at the time of his death, in 1814. The select works of Parny were published by Didot, in 5 vols. 18mo, Paris, 1808, and reprinted in the Collection de Classiques Français de Lefèvre, Paris, 1827. His Poésies Indites, preceded by a notice on his life and works, were published by Tissot, 18mo, Paris, 1827.