Dinouart, Anthony Joseph Toussaint

, canon of the chapter of St. Bennet at Paris, and member of the academy of the Arcades at Rome, was born of a reputable family at Amiens, Nov. 1, 1715, and died at Paris April 23, 1786. After exercising the ministerial functions in the place of his nativity, he repaired to the capital to engage in literary pursuits. M. Joly le Fleuri, at that time avocat-génral, gave him his esteem, his confidence, and his patronage. He was first employed on the “Journal Chretien,” under the abbe Joannetj and the zeal with which he attacked certain authors, and especially M. de SaintFoix, involved him in some unpleasant controversy. He had represented this latter as an infidel seeking every occasion for mixing pestilential notions in whatever he wrote. SaintFoix took up the affair with warmth, and brought an action against both him and abbe Joannet, which terminated in a sort of reparation made him by the two journalists, in their periodical publication. After this the abbe Dinouart began to write on his own account, and in October 1760, set up his “Journal Ecclesiastique,” or, Library of ecclesiastical knowledge, which he continued till his death. He | established a very extensive correspondence with the provincial clergy, who consulted him on the difficulties of their ministration. This correspondence contributed greatly to the recommendation of his journal, which contained instructions in all matters of church discipline, morality, and ecclesiastical history. The editor indeed made no scruple of drawing almost all his materials from well-known books, without altering a word; he inserted, for example, in his journal, all the ecclesiastical part of Hardion’s Universal History; but it was useful to the inferior provincial clergy, who were deficient in libraries, and not sorry to have their loss in some shape made up by the periodical compilation of abbe Dinouart. Other critics censured him for giving an incoherent assortment of articles; for advertising, for instance, in the same leaf, “Balm of Genevieve,” and “Sermons to be sold” for the use of young orators who would not take the trouble to compose them; imitating in this a quack of our own nation, who used to advertise sermons, marmalade, and rules for carving. Dinouart, however, bears a reputable personal character. He was naturally of a kind disposition and a sensible heart. The great vivacity of his temper, which hurried him sometimes into transient extravagancies, which he was the first to condemn in himself, prompted also his activity to oblige, for which he never let any opportunities escape him. He generally wrote in a loose, negligent, and incorrect manner, both in verse and prose, and even aspired to be thought a French and Latin poet; but still the usefulness of the greater part of his works recommended them. Among them, we find, 1. “Embriologie sacre’e, traduite du Latin de Cangiamila,” 12mo. 2. “Hymnes Latines.” 3. “Manuel des pasteurs,” 3 vols. 12mo. 4. “La llhetorique du predicateur, ou Traite de l’eloquence du corps,” 12mo. 5. A new edition of the “Abrege” chronologique de Phistoire ecclesiastique de Pabbe Macquer,“Paris, 1768, 3 vols. 3vo. 6.” Anecdotes ecclesjastiques," ibid. 1772, 2 vols. 8vo, in which he was assisted by the abbd Jaubert. ¹