FLORIAN, Jean Pierre Claris de (1755-1794), a French poet and romancist, was born at the chateau of Florian, near Sauve, in that part of Languedoc which now forms the department of Gard. His mother, a Spanish lady named Gilette de Salgues, died when he was quite a child, and the person who seemed to have had most influence on his early years was his grandfather, an old noble who had run through his estate. His uncle, the marquis of Florian, who had married a niece of Voltaire, introduced him at Ferney, and Florianet, as he was soon affectionately nicknamed, spent a pleasant time with the old dictator of French literature. In 1768 he became page in the household of the duke υf Penthièvre at Anet, and throughout his life he was the object of the powerful patronage of that cultured nobleman. Having studied for some time at the artillery school at Bapaume he obtained from the duke a commission in a dragoon regiment, and in this capacity it is said he displayed a boisterous behaviour as unlike as might be to what the reader of his works would naturally imagine. He afterwards left the army and became gentleman in ordinary. On the breaking out of the French Revolution he retired to Sceaux, but he was soon discovered and dragged to prison by the Parisian sans-culottes; and though his incarceration was not of long continuance, it so injured his health that he survived his release only a few months. His death took place on September 13, 1794.

Florian’s first literary efforts took the shape of little comedies; but he first attracted attention by an epistle in verse entitled Voltaire et le serf du Mont Jura and an eclogue called Ruth, which were crowned by the French Academy in 1782 and 1783 respectively. In the latter year he also produced his Galatêe, a professed imitation of the Galatea of Cervantes, and this was followed two years later by Numa Pompilius, an equally undisguised imitation of Fénelon’s Télémaque, which as an educational work has proved only less popular than its prototype. In 1788 ho became a member of the French Academy and published Estelle, a pastoral of the same class as GalaCee, which is reckoned one of the best of his works. Another romance, Gonzalve de Cordoue, preceded by an historical notice of the Moors, appeared in 1791, and his famous collection of Fables in 1792. After his death there appeared an unfinished treatment of the story of William Tell, to which he had devoted the leisure of his confinement, and an abridgment of Don Quixote, which, though far from being a correct representation of the original, had great success.

Florian was a professed imitator of Gessner, and his style has all the artificial delicacy and sentimentality of the Gessnerian school. Perhaps the nearest example of the class in English literature is afforded by Wilson’s Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. He is least affected in his fables, his comedies, and some of his minor tales. Among the best of the fables are reckoned “the Monkey showing the Magic Lantern,” “the Blind Man and the Paralytic,” and “the Monkeys and the Leopard”; and Les Deux Billets, Le Bon Père, and Le Bon Menage are the best known of the comedies. In the latter he brought the arlequinades again into fashion, and raised them to a higher level. Florian’s Oeuvres Complètes appeared at Paris in 16 volumes, 1820; his Oeuvres inédites in 4 volumes, 1824. Didot published an edition in 24 volumes, Briand another in 13, and Jauffret a third in 12. The editions of some of the more popular works are extremely numerous.

See “Vie de Florian” prefixed to his Oeuvres posthumes ∙, A. J. N. de Rosny, Vie de Florian, Paris, An V.; Jauffret and Lacretelle, Éloge de Florian, 1812; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, t. iii.