Fraguier, Claude Francis

, a French writer, was born of a noble family at Paris in 1666. His first studies were under the Jesuits; and father La Baune had the forming of his taste to polite literature. He was also a v disciple of the fathers Rapin, Jouvenci, La Rue, and Commire; and the affection he had for them induced him | to admit himself of their order in 1683. After his noviciate, and when he had finished his course of philosophy at Paris, he was sent to Caen to teach the belles lettres, where he contracted a friendship with Huet and Segrais, and much improved himself under their instructions. The former advised him to spend one part of the day upon the Greek authors, and another upon the Latin: by pursuing which method, he became an adept in both languages. Four years being passed here, he was recalled to Paris, where he spent other four years in the study of divinity. At the end of this course, he was shortly to take upon him the occupation of either preaching, or teaching; but finding in himself no inclination for either, he quitted his order in 1694, though he still retained his usual attachment to it. Being now at liberty to indulge his own wishes, he devoted himself solely to improve and polish his understanding. He soon after assisted the abbé Bignon, under whose direction the “Journal des Scavans” was conducted; and he had all the qualifications necessary for such a work, a profound knowledge of antiquity, a skill not only in the Greek and Latin, but also Italian, Spanish, and English tongues, a soundjudgment, an exact taste, and a very impartial and candid temper. He afterwacds formed a plan of translating the works of Plato; thinking, very justly, that the versions of Ficinus and Serranus had left room enough for correction and amendments. He had begun this work, but was obliged to discontinue it by a misfortune which befel him in 1709. He had borrowed, as we are told, of his friend father Hardouin, a manuscript commentary of his upon the New Testament, in order to make some extracts from it; and was busy at work upon it one summer evening, with the window half open, and himself inconsiderately almost undressed. The cold air had so unhappy an efiect in relaxing the muscles of his neck, that he could never afterwards hold his head in its natural situation. The winter increased his malady; and he was troubled with involuntary convulsive motions of the head, and with pains which often hindered him from sleeping; yet he lived nineteen years after; and though he could not undertake any literary work, constantly received visits from the learned, and conversed with them not without pleasure. He died suddenly of an apoplexy, 1728, in his sixty-second year. He had been made a member of the academy of inscriptions in 1705, and of the French academy in 1708. | His works consist of Latin poems, and a great number of very excellent dissertations in the Memoirs of the French academy *. His poems were published at Paris in 1729, in 12mo, with the poems of Huet, under the care of the abbé d’Olivet, who prefixed an eulogy of Fraguier; and at the end of them are three Latin dissertations concerning Socrates, which is all that remains of the Prolegomena he had prepared for his intended translation of Plato. These dissertations, with many others upon curious and interesting subjects, are printed in the Memoirs above-mentioned. 1

1

Niceron, yol. XVIII. —Chaufepie.Moreri.