Rivet De La Grange, Anthony

, of the same family as the preceding, but descended from a catholic branch, was born October 30, 1683, at Confolens, a small town in Poictiers. He studied philosophy under the Jacobins at Poictiers, but an escape from very imminent danger determined him to put on the Benedictine habit, which he accordingly did at Marmoutier in 1704, and took his vows therein 1705. In 1716 he was transferred to the monastery of St. Cyprian, and summoned to Paris the year following, to assist some other monks in compiling a history of illustrious men of the Benedictine order; but this project failing, Rivet turned his thoughts entirely to the literary history of France, which he had before formed a | design of writing, and which employed the rest of his trfe, He was-assisted in this work by three of his brethren, Joseph Duclou, Maurice Poncet, and John Colomb, who were all his particular friends, good critics, and accurate and industrious writers. In 1723 Rivet published at AmsterdamLe Necrologe de Port Royal des Champs,” a work of which he was very fond, and added to it a long historical preface. This publication, joined to his warm opposition to the bull Unrgenitus, from which he had appealed, obliged him to retire -iiftb the abbey of St. Vincent at Mans, the same year, where he laboured assiduously during more than thirty years to complete his “Literary History of France.” >' He published the first volume in 1733, 4to, and was finishing the ninth, which contains the first years of the 12th century, when he died, February 7, 1749, in his sixty-sixth year, worn out with intense application, austerities, and the strict and rigorous observation of his rule, from which he never departed. His history was afterwards extended to 12 volumes, to which Clemencet added a 13th. It is a very useful work, but the French literati have never thought of completing it. 1