Jean François de Saint-Lambert

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Jean François de Saint-Lambert (December 26, 1716 – February 9, 1803), was a French poet.

He was born at Nancy and entered the army. When Stanislaus Leszczynski was established in 1737 as duke of Lorraine, Saint-Lambert became an official at his court at Lunéville. He left the army after the Hanoverian campaign of 1756–1757, and devoted himself to literature, producing a volume of descriptive verse, Les Saisons (1769), now never read, many articles for the Encyclopedie, and some miscellaneous works. He was admitted to the French Academy in 1770.

His fame, however, comes chiefly from his love affairs. He was already high in the favour of the marquise de Boufflers, Leszczynski's mistress, whom he addressed in his verses as "Doris" and "Thémire", when Voltaire in 1748 came to Lunéville with the Emilie de Breteuil, marquise du Chatelet. Her infatuation for him and its fatal termination are known to all readers of the life of Voltaire.

His subsequent liaison with Sophie Lalive de Bellegarde, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Sophie", though no less disastrous to his rival, continued for the whole lives of himself and his mistress. Saint-Lambert's later years were given to philosophy. He published in 1798 the Principe des mœurs chez toutes les nations ou catéchisme universel, and published his Œuvres philosophiques (1803), two years before his death. Madame d'Houdetot lived until January 28, 1813.