Barbeau De Labruyere, John Lewis

, born at Paris in 1710, was the son of a woodmonger, and originally intended for his father’s trade but nature had given him a taste for literature, and in order to be able to cultivate it, he at first embraced the ecclesiastical profession, which he quitted some time afterwards, and retired to Holland, where he passed ten or fifteen years. He carried with him from that country charts but little known in France, which he communicated to M. Bauche, who kept him with him above twenty-three years, and in whose workshe had the greatest share. In 1759, however, a production appeared under his name. This was “Mappe-monde Historique” an ingenious and novel chart, in which the author has had the skill to combine geography, chronology, and history into one system. He had intended to particularize this general chart in distinct maps but he was forced to abandon this idea by the necessity he laboured under of gaining his bread by rapid publications. The world is indebted to him for the “Tablettes Chronologiques” ofthe abbe Lenglet, 1763 and 1778 for the “Geographic IVJoderne” of the abbe la Croix, the substance of which is properly his the two last volumes of the “Bibliotheque de France,” of father le Long; and he furnished great assistance to M. de Fontette in the publication of the three first. We have likewise by him a Description of the empire of Russia, published in German by baron de Strahlemberg, 1757, and translated into French, but this is a very inaccurate work and “Vie de M. Francois Paris, diacre,” 1751, 12mo. Barbeau died of a stroke of the apoplexy, at Paris, the 20th of November 1781. He married about two years before, for the sake of having a companion to mitigate the sorrows and infirmities of age. He was one of the few modest scholars, who, without having either literary titles or pensions, are often more useful than others decorated and endowed with both. No one was ever more obliging no one less avaricious of his knowledge, or had more to communicate on the subjects of geography and history. His memory was a kind of living library, and he was always consulted with advantage, either for the exact | tlates of events, or for t.he best editions of good or scarce books, ¹