Charles Collé

The friendship of the younger Crébillon helped broaden his horizons, and the establishment in 1729 of the famous "Société du Caveau", a drinking-club known for its wit and good company, gave him a field for the display of his fine talent for popular song.

[1] In 1739 the Society of the Caveau, which numbered among its members Helvétius, Charles Pinot Duclos, Pierre Joseph Bernard, called Gentil-Bernard, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Alexis Piron, and the two Crébillons, was dissolved, and was not reconstituted till twenty years afterwards.

[1] Meanwhile, Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, who was an excellent comic actor, particularly in representations of low life, and had been looking out for an author to write suitable parts for him, made Collé his reader.

[1] From 1748 to 1772, besides these and a multitude of songs, Collé was writing his Journal, a curious collection of literary and personal strictures on his companions as well as on their enemies, on Piron as on Voltaire, on La Harpe as on Pierre Corneille.

The subjects are love and wine; occasionally, however, as in the famous lyric (1756) On the capture of Port Mahon, for which the author received a pension of 600 livres, the note of patriotism is struck with no unskilful hand, while in many others Collé shows considerable epigrammatic force.