Bougainville, John Peter De

, born at Paris Dec. 1, 1722^ was educated with great care. His talents thus improved procured him celebrity at an early period, |

and obtained for him the places most flattering to literarymen at Paris. He became pensionary and secretary to the royal academy of inscriptions, member of the French academy, and some other foreign societies, censor-royal, keeper of the hall of antiquities at the Louvre, and one of the secretaries in ordinary to the duke of Orleans. His extraordinary industry impaired his health, and brought on premature old age, of which he died at the chateau de Loches, June 22, 1763, at the age of forty-one. His talents and personal virtues acquired him zealous patrons and affectionate friends. In his writings, as in his man'ners, all was laudable, and yet nothing shewed the desire of being praised. With the talents that contribute to fame, he principally aspired at the honour of being useful. Nevertheless, literary ambition, which is not the weakest of ambitions, found him not insensible. Accordingly he was desirous of being admitted of the French academy; he made vigorous application to Duclos, at that time secretary; mentioning, among other things, that he was afflicted with a disorder that was sapping his constitution, and that consequently his place would soon be vacant again; the secretaiy, an honest man, but of a hard and rough character, replied, with more wit than feeling, that it was not the business of the French academy to administer extreme unction. He wrote, 1. A translation of the AntiLucretius of the cardinal de Polignac, 2 vols. 8vo, or one vol. 12mo, preceded by a very sensible preliminary discourse. 2. Parallel between the expedition of Kouli Khan in the Indies, and that of Alexander, a work of great learning, abounding in ideas, flights of imagination and eloquence; but sometimes rather bombastic. He also wrote several papers of very superior merit in the Memoirs of the French Academy. In his twenty-fifth year he wrote a tragedy on the death of Philip, father of Alexander, which is said to evince considerable talents for poetry; and in the Magazin Encyclopedique was lately published a metrical translation by him of the Hymn of Cleanthes, which appears to have suggested to Pope his Universal Prayer. ¹