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Helm, W. H.; Vigée-Lebrun, Louise-Elisabeth [Ill.]
Vigée-LeBrun 1755-1842: her life, works and friendships : with a catalogue raisonne of the artist's pictures : with a frontispiece in colours, 40 photogravure plates and other illustrations — London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915

DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0164
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A TURNCOAT-POET

73

it is not unlikely that the origin of this particular clause in the variable
indictment against her may be found in the fact that he had given a pension
of two thousand francs to “Pindar” Lebrun, the poet who was said to
write for him the verses which he claimed as his own compositions. One
day, when Calonne read one of these bits of poetry to Rivarol, and asked
him, with a self-satisfied air, whether he thought the lines “ sentaient le
college,” his visitor replied, “ Oh! non, Monseigneur, mais quelque peu
la pension.”
In further return for Calonne’s pecuniary favours “Pindar” Lebrun
compared the incompetent Minister of Louis XVI to Sully, the incom-
parable Minister of Henri IV! It may be added that at the Revolution
he turned round and poured abuse on the Court and its Ministers; later
on he eulogised Napoleon (who gave him a pension three times as great
as the first), and had he not died before the return of the Bourbons, there
is no reason to doubt that he would have written an ode to the glory of
Louis XVIII. The history of courtly poets is less pleasing than that of
Court painters.
 
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