The friends of Crebillon, uneasy respecting his future destiny, had advised him during the preceding year to present himself at court, where he was received and recognized as a man of genius. In the early days of his widowhood, he quitted Paris suddenly and took up his residence at Versailles. But at Versailles he lived as he had done in Paris, immured in his chamber, and entirely engrossed with his own sombre and lugubrious thoughts and visions; in consequence of this, he was scarcely noticed; the king seeing before him a species of Danubian peasant, proud of his genius and his poverty, treated him with an almost disdainful coldness of manner. Crebillon did not at first comprehend his position at Versailles. He was a simple-minded philosopher, who had studied heroes and not men. At length, convinced that a poet at court is like a fish out of water, he returned to Paris to live more nobly with his heroes and his poverty. He retired to the Marais, to the Rue des Deux-Portes, taking with him only a bed, a table, two chairs, and an arm-chair, "in case," to use his own words, "an honest man should come to visit him."
Irritated at the rebuff he had met with at Versailles, ashamed of having solicited in vain the justice of the king, he believed henceforth only in liberty. "Liberty," said he, "is the most vivid sentiment engraven on my heart." Unintentionally, perhaps, he avenged himself in the first work he undertook after this event: the tragedy of "Cromwell,"—"an altar," as he said, "which I erect to liberty." According to D'Alembert, he read to his friends some scenes of this play, in which our British aversion for absolutism was painted with wild and startling energy; in consequence thereof, he received an order forbidding him to continue his piece. His Cromwell was a villain certainly, but a villain which would have told well upon the stage, from the degree of grandeur and heroic dignity with which the author had invested the character. From that day he had enemies; but indeed it might be said that he had had enemies from the evening of the first representation of his "Electre." Success here below has no other retinue.
Crebillon was now almost penniless. By degrees, without having foreseen such an occurrence, he began to hear his numerous creditors buzzing around him like a swarm of hornets. Not having any thing else to seize, they seized at the theatre his author's rights. The affair was brought before the courts, and led to a decree of parliament which ordained that the works of the intellect were not seizable, consequently Crebillon retained the income arising from the performance of his tragedies.
Some years now passed away without bringing any fresh successes. Compelled by the court party to discontinue "Cromwell," he gave "Semiramis," which, like "Xerxes," some time previously, was a failure. Under the impression that the public could not bring itself to relish "sombre horrors of human tempests," he sought to arm himself as it were against his own nature, to subdue and soften it. The tragedy of "Pyrrhus," which recalled the tender colors of Racine, cost him five years' labor. At that time, so strong in France was the empire of habit, that this tragedy, though utterly valueless as a work of art, and wanting both in style, relief, and expression, was received with enthusiasm. But Crebillon possessed too much good sense to be blinded by this spurious triumph. "It is," said he, when speaking of his work, "but the shadow of a tragedy."
"Pyrrhus" obtained, after all, but a transitory success. After a brief period, the public began to discover that it was a foreign plant, which under a new sky gave out but a factitious brilliancy. In despair at having wasted so much precious time in fruitless labor, and disgusted besides at the conduct of some shameless intriguers who frequented the literary cafés of the capital, singing his defeat in trashy verse, Crebillon now retired almost wholly from the world. He would visit the theatre, however, occasionally to chat with a few friends over the literary topics of the day; but at length even this recreation was abandoned, and he was seen in the world no more.
He lived now without any other friends than his heroes and his cats and dogs, devouring the novels of La Calprenède, and relating long-winded romances to himself. His son affirms having seen fifteen dogs and as many cats barking and mewing at one time round his father, who would speak to them much more tenderly than he would to himself. According to Freron's account, Crebillon would pick up and carry home under his cloak all the wandering dogs he met with in the street, and give them shelter and hospitality. But in return for this, he would require from them an aptitude for certain exercises; when, at the termination of the prescribed period, the pupil was convicted of not having profited by the education he had received, the poet would take him under his cloak again, put him down at the corner of a street and fly from the spot with tears in his eyes.
On the death of La Motte, Crebillon was at length admitted into the Academy. As he was always an eccentric man, he wrote his "Discourse" of reception in verse, a thing which had never been done before. On pronouncing this line, which has not yet been forgotten—
Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonné ma plume—
he was enthusiastically applauded. From that day, but from that day only, Crebillon was recognized by his countrymen as a man of honor and virtue, as well as genius. It was rather late in the day, however; he had lost his wife, his son was mixing in the fashionable world, he was completely alone, and almost forgotten, expecting nothing more from the fickle public. More idle than a lazzarone, he passed years without writing a single line, though his ever-active imagination would still produce, mentally, tragedy after tragedy. As he possessed a wonderful memory, he would compose and rhyme off-hand the entire five acts of a piece without having occasion to put pen to paper. One evening, under the impression that he had produced a masterpiece, he invited certain of his brother Academicians to his house to hear his new play. When the party had assembled, he commenced, and declaimed the entire tragedy from beginning to end without stopping. Judging by the ominous silence with which the conclusion was received, that his audience was not over delighted with his play, he exclaimed, in a pet—
"You see, my friends, I was right in not putting my tragedy on paper."