AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAI

AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAI (Nicholas), born at Orleans in 1634, was much esteemed at the court of France, and appointed secretary of an embassy which that court sent to the commonwealth of Venice, as appears by the title of his translation of Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent; but he afterwards published writings which gave such offence, that he was imprisoned in the Bastille. The first works he printed were the History of the Government of Venice, and that of the Uscocks, a people of Croatia. In 1683 he published his translations into French of Machiavel's Prince, and Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, and Political Discourses of his own upon Tacitus. These performances were well received by the public. He did not prefix his own name to the two last mentioned works, but concealed himself under that of La Mothe Joffeval. His translation of Father Paul was attacked by the partisans of the pope's unbounded power and authority. In France, however, it met with great success; all the advocates for the liberty of the Gallican church promoting the success of it to the utmost of their power, though at the same time there were three memorials presented

presented to have it suppressed. When the second edition of this translation was published, it was violently attacked by the Abbé St. Real, in a letter he wrote to Mr. Bayle, dated October 17. 1685. Amelot defended himself, in a letter to the same gentleman. In 1684, he printed at Paris a French translation of Baltasar Gracián's Oraculo manual, with the title of L'Homme de Cour. In 1686, he printed La Morale de Tacite de la flaterie; in which work he collected several particular facts and maxims, which represent in a strong light the artifices of court-flatterers, and the mischievous effect of their poisonous discourses. Frederick Leonard, a bookseller at Paris, having proposed, in the year 1692, to print a collection of all the treatises of peace between the kings of France and all the other princes of Europe, since the reign of Charles VII. to the year 1690, Amelot published a small volume in duodecimo, containing a preliminary discourse upon these treatises; wherein he endeavours to show, that most princes, when they enter into a treaty, think more how to evade than how to perform the terms they subscribe to. He published also an edition of Cardinal d'Ofiat's Letters in 1697, with several observations of his own; which, as he tells us in his advertisement, may serve as a supplement to the history of the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV. kings of France. He wrote several other works; and died at Paris in 1706, being then almost 73 years of age.