, one of the most distinguished French writers of the eighteenth century,
, one of the most distinguished French writers of the eighteenth century, was born in 1723, at Bort, a small town in Limosin. His father, who was in very moderate circumstances, and had a very large family, bestowed great pains on this, his eldest son, and was ably assisted in the cultivation of his talents, by his wife, who appears to have been a woman of superior sense and information. Young Marmoutel first studied the classics and rhetoric in the Jesuits’ college of Mauriac, and at fifteen was placed by his father with a merchant at Clermont. As this, however, was very little to his taste, he applied for admission into the college of Clermont, and having been received into the philosophical class, maintained himself by teaching some of the junior scholars. He afterwards went to Toulouse, and became teacher of philosophy in a seminary of the Bernardines, where his abilities acquired considerable distinction.