Vincent Voiture

He was introduced by a schoolfellow, the count Claude d'Avaux, to Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and accompanied him to Brussels and Lorraine on diplomatic missions.

Although a follower of the Duke of Orléans, he won the favour of Cardinal Richelieu, and was one of the earliest members of the Académie française.

The quarrel between the Uranistes and the Jobelins arose over the respective merits of a sonnet of Voiture addressed to a certain Uranie, and of another composed by Isaac de Benserade, till then unknown, on the subject of Job.

Another famous piece of his of the same kind, La Belle Matineuse, is less exquisite, but still admirable, and Voiture stands in the highest rank of writers of vers de société.

Voiture's death, on 26 May 1648, at the outbreak of the Fronde, marked the beginning of the end of the society to which he was accustomed.