“ LAYA, JEAN LOUIS (1761–1833) , French dramatist, was born in Paris on the 4th of December 1761 and died in August 1833. He wrote his first comedy in collaboration with Gabriel M. J. B. Legouvé in 1785, but the piece, though accepted by the Comédie Française, was never represented. In 1789 he produced a plea for religious toleration in the form of a five-act tragedy in verse, Jean Calas; the injustice of the disgrace cast on a family by the crime of one of its members formed the theme of Les Dangers de l’opinion (1790) ; but it is by his Ami des lois (1793) that Laya is remembered. ”