Bellegarde, Jean Baptiste Morvan De

, born in 1648 at Pihyriac in the diocese of Nantes, became a Jesuit, and continued of that society for sixteen or seventeen years. It is pretended that his attachment to Cartesianism, at a time when it was no longer in fashion, obliged him to quit it, and he applied vigorously to his pen for a subsistence, sharing what he got very liberally with the poor. He died in the community of the priests of St. Francis de Sales, the 26th of April 1734, at the age of 86. He wrote French translations of several works of the fathers, of St. John Chrysostome, of St. Basil, of St. Gregory Nazianzen, of St. Ambrose, &c. of the works of Thomas à Kempis; of the Apparatus Biblicus, in 8vo, which for the most part are very unfaithful nor are his versions of the classics, of Ovid’s epistles, and others, in greater estimation. There is also by him a version of Las Casas, on the destruction of the Indies, 1697, and several moral productions: 1. Reflections on what may please and displease in the world. 2. Reflections on ridicule. 3. Models of conversation, and other moral writings, forming together 14 small volumes, all which bear strong marks of the precipitation in which the author composed them. The abb< de Bellegarde had an easy and sometimes an elegant style; but his reflections are little more than trivial moralities, without depth or ingenuity. A very indifferent translation of his “Models of conversation” was published at London in 1765, 8vo, enough to shew the absurdity of many of his sentiments, and the improbabilities of his historical facts. ²