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Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert was a French poet born at Fontenoy-le-Château, Vosges, Lorraine.
Having completed his education at the college of Dole, he devoted himself for a time to a half-scholastic, half-literary life at Nancy, but in 1774 he found his way to the capital. As an opponent of the Encyclopaedists and a panegyrist of Louis XV, he received considerable pensions. He died in Paris in 1780 from the results of a fall from his horse.
The satiric force of one or two of his pieces, as Mon Apologie and Le Dix-huitième Siècle , would alone be sufficient to preserve his reputation, which has been further increased by modern writers, who, like Alfred de Vigny in his Stello , considered him a victim to the spite of his philosophic opponents. His best-known verses are the Ode imitée de plusieurs psaumes, usually entitled Adieux à la vie.
Among his other works may be mentioned Les Familles du Darius et d'Eridame, histoire persane , Le Carnaval des auteurs , Odes nouvelles et patriotiques. Gilbert's Œuvres complètes were first published in 1788.