Cousin, Lewis

, president of the Mint, one of the forty members of the French academy, was born Aug. 12, 1627, at Paris. He was intended for the ecclesiastical profession, and admitted bachelor of the Sorbonne; but, quitting that situation afterwards, was received advocate, married, and attended the bar till 1657, when he was appointed president of the Mint. He assisted in the “Journal des Savans” from 1687 to 1702. President Cousin was well acquainted with ecclesiastical antiquity, and learned Hebrew at the age of 70, that he might spend his last years in reading the Scripture in the original. He died. February 26, 1707, at Paris, aged 80. He founded six scholarships at the college of Laon, and left his library to the abbey of St. Victor, with 20,000 livres; the interest to be employed in augmenting that library. His works are, “The Roman History of Xiphilin,” &c. 4to, or 2 vols. 12mo, a French translation of the “Ecclesiastical Histories of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, and Theodoret,” 4 vols. 4to, or 6 vols. 12 mo: there are often hut five, because the History of Constantine has been taken out, and added to that of Constantinople. A translation of the authors of the “Byzantine History,1672—1674, in 8 vols. 4to, or 11 12mo and some other works. These translations are written in very good French. 2

2

Moreri. —Dict. Hist.Niceron, vols. XVIII. and XX.