, master of the accounts at Paris, was born there in 1696, and died in
, master of
the accounts at Paris, was born there in 1696, and died in
that capital Dec. 1, 1774. He was admitted of the French
academy in 1733, and was much esteemed as a man of
general knowledge and taste. He attempted to give his
countrymen an idea of English poetry, by a translation
into French of Milton’s Paradise Lost, in 4 vols. 12mo,
containing also the Paradise Regained, translated by a Jesuit, with Addison’s remarks on the former. This version,
in which great liberties are taken with the original, is written in an animated and florid style. The last edition of
the Diet. Hist, however, robs him of the whole merit of
this translation, and ascribes it to Boismorand, whose name
was not so good a passport to fame as that of Dupre. He
wrote also, an “Essay on the Coins of France,
” Inquiries concerning the value of Monies, and
the price of Grain,
” The Table of
the duration of Human Life,
” in the Natural History of M.
de Buffon. The author, who had cultivated in his youth
the flowers of imagination, devoted his old age to studies
relative to rural oeconomy, to agriculture, and other sciences of importance to mankind.