Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon was born at Dijon, on the 13th of February, 1674; like Corneille, Bossuet, and Voltaire, he studied at the Jesuits' college of his native town. It is well known that in all their seminaries, the Jesuits kept secret registers, wherein they inscribed, under the name of each pupil, certain notes in Latin upon his intellect and character. It was the Abbé d'Olivet who, it is said, inscribed the note referring to Crebillon:—"Puer ingeniosus sed insignis nebulo." But it must be said that the collegiate establishments of the holy brotherhood housed certain pedagogues, who abused their right of pronouncing judgment on the scholars. Crebillon, after all, was but a lively, frolicksome child, free and unreserved to excess in manners and speech.
His father, notary and later greffier en chef of the "Chambre des Comptes" at Dijon, being above all things desirous that his family should become distinguished in the magistracy, destined his son to the law, saying that the best heritage he could leave him was his own example. Crebillon resigned himself to his father's wishes with a very good grace, and repaired to Paris, there to keep his terms. In the capital, he divided his time between study and the pleasures and amusements natural to his age. As soon as he was admitted as advocate, he entered the chambers of a procureur named Prieur, son of the Prieur celebrated by Scarron, an intimate friend of his father, who greeted him fraternally. One would have supposed that our future poet, who bore audacity on his countenance, and genius on his brow, would, like Achilles, have recognized his sex when they showed him arms; but far from this being the case, not only was it necessary to warn him that he was a poet, but even to impel him bodily, as it were, and despite himself, into the arena.
The writers and poets of France have ever railed in good set terms against procureurs, advocates, and all such common-place, every-day personages; and in general, we are bound to confess they have had right on their side. We must, however, render justice to one of them, the only one, perhaps, who ever showed a taste for poetry. The worthy man to whom, fortunately for himself, Crebillon had been confided, remarked at an early stage of their acquaintanceship, the romantic disposition of his pupil. Of the same country as Piron and Rameau, Crebillon possessed, like them, the same frank gayety and good-tempered heedlessness of character, which betrayed his Burgundian origin. Having at an early age inhaled the intoxicating perfumes of the Burgundian wines, his first essays in poetry were, as might be expected, certain chansons à boire, none of which, however, have descended to posterity. The worthy procureur, amazed at the degree of power shown even in these slight drinking-songs, earnestly advised him to become a poet by profession.
Crebillon was then twenty-seven years of age; he resisted, alleging that he did not believe he possessed the true creative genius; that every poet is in some sort a species of deity, holding chaos in one hand, and light and life in the other; and that, for his part, he possessed but a bad pen, destined to defend bad causes in worse style. But the procureur was not to be convinced; he had discovered that a spark of the creative fire already shone in the breast of Crebillon. "Do not deny yourself becoming a poet," he would frequently say to him; "it is written upon your brow; your looks have told me so a thousand times. There is but one man in all France capable of taking up the mantle of Racine, and that man is yourself."
Crebillon exclaimed against this opinion; but having been left alone for a few hours to transcribe a parliamentary petition, he recalled to mind the magic of the stage—the scenery, the speeches, the applause; a moment of inspiration seized him. When the procureur returned, his pupil extended his hand to him, exclaiming, enthusiastically, "You have pointed out the way for me, and I shall depart." "Do not be in a hurry," replied the procureur; "a chef d'[oe]uvre is not made in a week. Remain quietly where you are, as if you were still a procureur's clerk; eat my bread and drink my wine; when you have completed your work, you may then take your flight."
Crebillon accordingly remained in the procureur's office, and at the very desk on which he transcribed petitions, he composed the five long acts of a barbarous tragedy, entitled, "The Death of Brutus." The work finished, our good-natured procureur brought all his interest into play, in order to obtain a reading of the piece at the Comedie Française. After many applications, Crebillon was permitted to read his play: it was unanimously rejected. The poet was furious; he returned home to the procureur's, and casting down his manuscript at the good man's feet, exclaimed, in a voice of despair, "You have dishonored me!"
D'Alembert says, "Crebillon's fury burst upon the procureur's head; he regarded him almost in the light of an enemy who had advised him only for his own dishonor, swore to listen to him no more, and never to write another line of verse so long as he lived."
Crebillon, however, in his rage maligned the worthy procureur; he would not have found elsewhere so hospitable a roof or as true a friend. He returned to the study of the law, but the decisive step had been taken; beneath the advocate's gown the poet had already peeped forth. And then, the procureur was never tired of predicting future triumphs. Crebillon ventured upon another tragedy, and chose for his subject the story of the Cretan king, Idomeneus. This time the comedians accepted his piece, and shortly afterwards played it. Its success was doubtful, but the author fancied he had received sufficient encouragement to continue his new career.
In his next piece, "Atrée," Crebillon, who had commenced as a school-boy, now raised himself, as it were, to the dignity of a master. The comedians learned their parts with enthusiasm. On the morning of the first representation, the procureur summoned the young poet to his bedside, for he was then stricken with a mortal disease: "My friend," said he, "I have a presentiment that this very evening you will be greeted by the critics of the nation as a son of the great Corneille. There are but a few days of life remaining for me; I have no longer strength to walk, but be assured that I shall be at my post this evening, in the pit of the Théâtre Française." True to his word, the good old man had himself carried to the theatre. The intelligent judges applauded certain passages of the tragedy, in which wonderful power, as well as many startling beauties, were perceptible; but at the catastrophe, when Atreus compels Thyestes to drink the blood of his son, there was a general exclamation of horror—(Gabrielle de Vergy, be it remarked, had not then eaten on the stage the heart of her lover). "The procureur," says D'Alembert, "would have left the theatre in sorrow, if he had awaited the judgment of the audience in order to fix his own. The pit appeared more terrified than interested; it beheld the curtain fall without uttering a sound either of approval or condemnation, and dispersed in that solemn and ominous silence which bodes no good for the future welfare of the piece. But the procureur judged better than the public, or rather, he anticipated its future judgment. The play over, he proceeded to the green-room to seek his pupil, who, still in a state of the greatest uncertainty as to his fate, was already almost resigned to a failure; he embraced Crebillon in a transport of admiration: 'I die content,' said he. 'I have made you a poet; and I leave a man to the nation!'"
And, in fact, at each representation of the piece, the public discovered fresh beauties, and abandoned itself with real pleasure to the terror which the poet inspired. A few days afterwards, the name of Crebillon became celebrated throughout Paris and the provinces, and all imagined that the spirit of the great Corneille had indeed revisited earth to animate the muse of the young Burgundian.