LEMERCIER, LOUIS JEAN NÉPOMUCÉNE (1771-1840), French poet and dramatist, was born in Paris on the 21st of April 1771. His father had been intendant successively to the duc de Penthièvre, the comte de Toulouse and the unfortunate princesse de Lamballe, who was the boy’s godmother. Lemercier showed great precocity; before he was sixteen his tragedy of Méléagre was produced at the Théâtre Français. Clarissa Harlowe (1792) provoked the criticism that the author was not assez roué pour peindre les roueries. Le Tartufe révolutionnaire, a parody full of the most audacious political allusions, was suppressed after the fifth representation. In 1795 appeared Lemercier’s masterpiece Agamemnon, called by Charles Labitte the last great antique tragedy in French literature. It was a great success, but was violently attacked later by Geoffroy, who stigmatized it as a bad caricature of Crébillon. Quatre métamorphoses (1799) was written to prove that the most indecent subjects might be treated without offence. The Pinto (1800) was the result of a wager that no further dramatic innovations were possible after the comedies of Beaumarchais. It is a historical comedy on the subject of the Portuguese revolution of 1640. This play was construed as casting reflections on the first consul, who had hitherto been a firm friend of Lemercier. His extreme freedom of speech finally offended Napoleon, and the quarrel proved disastrous to Lemercier’s fortune for the time. None of his subsequent work fulfilled the expectations raised by Agamemnon, with the exception perhaps of Frédégonde et Brunéhaut (1821). In 1810 he was elected to the Academy, where he consistently opposed the romanticists, refusing to give his vote to Victor Hugo. In spite of this, he has some pretensions to be considered the earliest of the romantic school. His Christophe Colomb (1809), advertised on the playbill as a comédie shakespirienne (sic), represented the interior of a ship, and showed no respect for the unities. Its numerous innovations provoked such violent disturbances in the audience that one person was killed and future representations had to be guarded by the police. Lemercier wrote four long and ambitious epic poems: Homère, Alexandre (1801), L’Atlantiade, ou la théogonie newtonienne (1812) and Moïse (1823), as well as an extraordinary Panhypocrisiade (1819-1832), a distinctly romantic production in twenty cantos, which has the sub-title Spectacle infernal du XVIe siècle. In it 16th-century history, with Charles V. and Francis I. as principal personages, is played out on an imaginary stage by demons in the intervals of their sufferings. Lemercier died on the 7th of June 1840 in Paris.
LEMERY, NICOLAS (1645-1715), French chemist, was born at Rouen on the 17th of November 1645. After learning pharmacy in his native town he became a pupil of C. Glaser’s in Paris, and then went to Montpellier, where he began to lecture on chemistry. He next established a pharmacy in Paris, still continuing his lectures, but in 1683, being a Calvinist, he was obliged to retire to England. In the following year he returned to France, and turning Catholic in 1686 was able to reopen his shop and resume his lectures. He died in Paris on the 19th of June 1715. Lemery did not concern himself much with theoretical speculations, but holding chemistry to be a demonstrative science, confined himself to the straightforward exposition of facts and experiments. In consequence, his lecture-room was thronged with people of all sorts, anxious to hear a man who shunned the barren obscurities of the alchemists, and did not regard the quest of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life as the sole end of his science. Of his Cours de chymie (1675) he lived to see 13 editions, and for a century it maintained its reputation as a standard work. His other publications included Pharmacopée universelle (1697), Traité universel des drogues simples (1698), Traité de l’antimoine (1707), together with a number of papers contributed to the French Academy, one of which offered a chemical and physical explanation of underground fires, earthquakes, lightning and thunder. He discovered that heat is evolved when iron filings and sulphur are rubbed together to a paste with water, and the artificial volcan de Lemery was produced by burying underground a considerable quantity of this mixture, which he regarded as a potent agent in the causation of volcanic action.
His son Louis (1677-1743) was appointed physician at the Hôtel Dieu in 1710, and became demonstrator of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in 1731. He was the author of a Traité des aliments (1702), and of a Dissertation sur la nature des os (1704), as well as of a number of papers on chemical topics.
LEMERY, a town of the province of Batangas, Luzon, Philippine Islands, on the Gulf of Balayan and the Pansipit river, opposite Taal (with which it is connected by a bridge), and about 50 m. S. of Manila. Pop. of the municipality (1903) 11,150. It has a fine church and convent. Lemery is situated on a plain in a rich agricultural district, which produces rice, Indian corn, sugar and cotton, and in which horses and cattle are bred. It is also a port for coasting vessels, and has an important trade with various parts of the archipelago. The language is Tagalog.
LEMGO, a town of Germany, in the principality of Lippe, in a broad and fertile plain, 9 m. N. from Detmold and on the railway Hameln-Lage. Pop. (1900) 8840. Its somewhat gloomy aspect, enhanced by the tortuous narrow lanes flanked by gabled houses of the 15th century, has gained for it among countryfolk the sobriquet of the “Witches’ nest” (Hexen-Nest). It is replete with interest for the antiquarian. It has four Evangelical churches, two with curiously leaning, lead-covered spires; an old town-hall; a gymnasium; and several philanthropic and religious institutions. Among the latter is the Jungfrauenstift, of which a princess of the reigning house of Lippe-Detmold has always been lady superior since 1306. The chief industry of Lemgo is the manufacture of meerschaum pipes, which has attained here a high pitch of excellence; other industries are weaving, brewing and the manufacture of leather and cigars. The town was a member of the Hanseatic league.