Barre, Francis Poullain De La

, was born July 1647, at Paris. He applied himself to studying the Scriptures and councils, and conceived so great a contempt for scholastic divinity, as to give up the design he had entertained of being a doctor of the Sorbonne. He was curate of Flamingrie, in the diocese of Laon, 1680; but imbibing the tenets of the Protestants, and fearing lest he should be arrested for the opinions which he propagated in his sermons and discourses, he went to Paris, 1688, and afterwards took refuge at Geneva, where he married, 1690. He at first taught French to the foreign nobility; but was afterwards declared a citizen, and admitted into one of the first classes of the college at Geneva, in which city he died May 1723. His best works are those which he published in France before his retiring to Geneva, they are, “Un traite de l'Egalite des deux sexes,” 1673, 12mo. “Traite de l‘ Education des Dames, pour laconduite de l’esprit dans les sciences et dans les mceurs,” 12mo. “De Texcellence des Hommes contre l'Egalite des Sexes,” 12mo. “Rapports de la Langue Latine a la Franchise,” 12mo. John James de la Barre, his son, was author of “Pensees philosophiques et theologiques,” 1714 et 1717, 2 vols 8vo. They are theses.¹