Meziriac, Claude Caspar Bachet, Sieur De

, a very able scholar, was born at Bresse in 1581. At the age of twenty he was admitted into the order of Jesuits, but on his recovery from an illness, he returned to a secular life again. About this time, he resided occasionally both at Paris and Rome; and at Rome wrote a small collection of Italian poems, in competition with Vaugelas, who was there at the same time; among which there are imitations of the most beautiful similies in the eight first books of the ^neid. He published also Latin and French poetry in 1621, and translated some of Ovid’s epistles, which he illustrated with commentaries, esteemed more valuable than his translation. He is also said to have been well versed in the controversies, both in philosophy and religion; and an able algebraist and geometrician. Of the latter we have a proof in his edition of “Diophantus,” enriched with a very able commentary and notes, Paris, 1621, and reprinted several times in Germany. Des Cartes had a very high opinion of his knowledge in mathematical science. Such was his fame at one time, that he was proposed as preceptor to Louis XIII. upon which account he left the court in great haste, and declared afterwards, that he never felt so much pain upon any occasion in his life: for that he seemed as if he had had already upon his shoulders the weight of a whole kingdom. He was, though absent, made a member of the French academy, when in its infancy; and, when it came to his turn to make a discourse in it, he sent up one, which was read to the assembly by Mr. de Vaugelas. He died at Bourg in Bresse, | Feb. 26, 1638. He left several Mss. in a finished state, but which have never been printed, and had brought a translation of all Plutarch’s works with notes almost to a conclusion when he died. ¹