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, engraver, and letter-founder, was born at Troyes, in 1525, son of Guilleaume le Be, a noble bourgeois, and Magdalen de St. Aubin. Being brought up in the house of Robert Stephens, whom his father supplied with paper, he got an insight into the composition of the types of that famous printing-house. He afterwards, by order of Francis I. made those beautiful oriental types which Robert Stephens used; and Philip II. employed him to prepare those with which his Bible of Antwerp was printed. In 1545 le B6 took a journey to Venice, and there cut for Mark Anthony Justiniani, who had raised a Hebrew printing-house, the punches necessary to the casting of the founts to be employed in that establishment. Being returned to Paris, he there practised his art till 1598, the year of his decease. Casaubon speaks of him highly to his credit in his preface to the Opuscula of Scaliger. Henry le Be, his son, was a printer at Paris, where he gave in 1581, a quarto edition of the “Institutiones Clenardi Gr.” This book, which was of great utility to the authors of the “Methode Grecque” of Port-royal, is a master-piece in printing. His sons and his grandsons signalised themselves in the same art. The last of them died in 1685.

, was a printer, and a son of a printer; but he applied himself to letter-cutting in 1730, and carried on a foundery and a printing-house together. He was an expeditious compositor, and was said to know the letters by the touch; but being not perfectly sound in mind, produced some strange works. In 1751 he published a pretended translation of “The Book of Jasher;” said to have been made by one Alcuin of Britain. The account given of the translation is full of glaring absurdities; but the publication, in fact, was secretly written by him, and printed off by night. He published, in 1733, an Oration, intended to prove the plurality of worlds, and asserting that this earth is hell, that the souls of men are apostate angels, and that the fire to punish those confined to this world at the day of judgment will be immaterial. This was written in 1729, and spoken afterwards at Joiners- hall, pursuant to the will of his mother, who had held the same extraordinary opinions. In this strange performance the author unveils his deistical principles, and takes no small liberty with the sacred Scriptures, especially the character of Moses. Emboldened by this first adventure, he determined to become the public teacher of infidelity, or, as he calls it, “The religion of nature.” For this purpose, he hired the use of Carpenters’-hall, where, for some considerable time, he delivered his orations, which consisted chiefly of scraps from Tindal, and other similar writers. In the course of the same year, 1733, appeared a second pamphlet called “A Dialogue between a Doctor of the Church of England and Mr. Jacob Hive, upon the subject of the oration.” This strange oration is highly praised in HolwelPs third part of “Interesting Events relating to Bengal.” For publishing “Modest Remarks on the late bishop Sherlock’s Sermons,” Hive was confined in Clerkenwell- bridewell from June 15, 1756, till June 10, 1758; during which period he published “Reasons offered for the Reformation of the House of Correction in Clerkenwell,” &c. 1757, and projected several other reforming treatises, enumerated in Gough’s “British Topography;” where is alsjo a memorandum, communicated by Mr. Bowyer, of Hive’s attempt to restore the company of Stationers to their primitive constitution. He died in 1763,

, the eldest son of the preceding, was employed in printing with his step-father de Colines. The “Vinetum” of Charles Stephens, 1537, is the first work to which we see his name and the last is the “Andria” of Terence, in 1547. He sometimes used his father’s mark, but occasionally one of his own, a golden vase placed on a book, and surmounted by a vine-branch with fruit. He never was married, and Maittaire is mistaken in saying he had a son of the same names, who was a printer in 1570. That Francis was the son of Robert, and nephew to the subject of this short article.

We shall now briefly mention the remaining branches of this justly celebrated family. Henry Stephens, the third of that name, and son to Robert, the second, was treasurer of the royal palaces. Prosper March and thinks he was a printer in 1615, but no work is known to have issued from his press. He had two sons, Henry and Robert, and a daughter married to Fougerole, a notary. His son Henry, sieur des Fossés, was the author of “L' Art de faire les devices, avec un Traité des rencontres ou mots plaisants,” Paris, 1645, 8vo. His “Art of making devices” was translated into English by our countryman Thomas Blount (See vol. V. p. 430) and published in 1646, 4to. Henry assumed the title of interpreter of the Greek and Latin languages, and was reckoned a good poet. We also are indebted to him for a character of Louis XIII. and eloges of the princes and generals who served under that monarch, which he published in a work entitled “Les Triomphes de Louis-le-Juste,” Paris, 1649, fol. Robert, his brother, was an advocate of parliament, and completed the translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric begun by his uncle, Robert the third of the name, and published at Paris in 1630, 8vo. He left off printing about 1640, and was bailli of St. Marcel.