See E. Schönfeld in Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft, x. pp. 150-178.
ARGENS, JEAN BAPTISTE DE BOYER, Marquis d’ (1704-1771), was born at Aix in Provence on the 24th of June 1704. He entered the army at the age of fifteen, and after a dissipated and adventurous youth settled for a time at Amsterdam, where he wrote some historical compilations and began his more famous Lettres juives (The Hague, 6 vols., 1738-1742), Lettres chinoises (The Hague, 6 vols., 1730-1472), and Lettres cabalistiques (2nd ed., 7 vols., 1769); also the Mémoires secrets de la république des lettres (7 vols., 1743-1478), afterwards revised and augmented as Histoire de l’esprit humain (Berlin, 14 vols., 1765-1768). He was invited by Prince Frederick (afterwards Frederick the Great) to Potsdam, and received high honours at court; but Frederick was bitterly offended by his marrying a Berlin actress, Mlle Cochois. Argens returned to France in 1769, and died near Toulon on the 11th of January 1771.
ARGENSOLA, LUPERCIO LEONARDO DE (1559-1613), Spanish dramatist and poet, was baptized at Barbastro on the 14th of December 1559. He was educated at the universities of Huesca and Saragossa, becoming secretary to the duke de Villahermosa in 1585. He was appointed historiographer of Aragon in 1599, and in 1610 accompanied the count de Lemos to Naples, where he died in March 1613. His tragedies—Filis, Isabela and Alejandra—are said by Cervantes to have “filled all who heard them with admiration, delight and interest”; Filis is lost, and Isabela and Alejandra, which were not printed till 1772, are ponderous imitations of Seneca. Argensola’s poems were published with those of his brother in 1634; they consist of excellent translations from the Latin poets, and of original satires. His “echoing sonnets”—such as Después que al mundo el rey divino vino—lend themselves to parody; but his diction is singularly pure.
His brother, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (1562-1631), Spanish poet and historian, was baptized at Barbastro on the 26th of August 1562, studied at Huesca, took orders, and was presented to the rectory of Villahermosa in 1588. He was attached to the suite of the count de Lemos, viceroy of Naples, in 1610, and succeeded his brother as historiographer of Aragon in 1613. He died at Saragossa on the 4th of February 1631. His principal prose works are the Conquista de las Islas Molucas (1609), and a supplement to Zurita’s Anales de Aragón, which was published in 1630. His poems (1634), like those of his elder brother, are admirably finished examples of pungent wit. His commentaries on contemporary events, and his Alteraciones populares, dealing with a Saragossa rising in 1591, are lost. An interesting life of this writer by Father Miguel Mir precedes a reprint of the Conquista de las Islas Molucas, issued at Saragossa in 1891.
ARGENSON, the name, derived from an old hamlet situated in what is now the department of Indre-et-Loire, of a French family which produced some prominent statesmen, soldiers and men of letters.
René de Voyer, seigneur d’Argenson (1596-1651), French statesman, was born on the 21st of November 1596. He was a lawyer by profession, and became successively avocat, councillor at the parlement of Paris, maître des requêtes, and councillor of state. Cardinal Richelieu entrusted him with several missions as inspector and intendant of the forces. In 1623 he was appointed intendant of justice, police and finance in Auvergne, and in 1632 held similar office in Limousin, where he remained till 1637. After the death of Louis XIII. (1643) he retained his administrative posts, was intendant of the forces at Toulon (1646), commissary of the king at the estates of Languedoc (1647), and intendant of Guienne (1648), and showed great capacity in defending the authority of the crown against the rebels of the Fronde. After his wife’s death he took orders (February 1651), but did not cease to take part in affairs of state. In 1651 he was appointed by Mazarin ambassador at Venice, where he died on the 14th of July 1651.
His son, Marc René de Voyer, comte d’Argenson (1623-1700), was born at Blois on the 13th of December 1623. He also was a lawyer, being councillor at the parlement of Rouen (1642) and maître des requêtes. He attended his father in all his duties and succeeded him at the embassy at Venice. In 1655 he returned from his embassy, ruined, and lost favour with Mazarin, who removed him from his office of councillor of state. He then gave up public affairs and retired to his estates, where he occupied himself with good works. In September 1656 he entered the Company of the Holy Sacrament, a secret society for the diffusion of the Catholic religion. Besides writing the Annals of the society, he composed many pious works, which were destroyed in the fire at the Louvre in 1871. Some of his correspondence with the once famous letter-writer, Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654), has been published. He died in May 1700, leaving two sons, Marc René (see below), and François Élie (1656-1728), who became archbishop of Bordeaux.