MOTTE (Anthony Houdart de la), an ingenious Frenchman, greatly distinguished by his writings in prose and verse, and by his literary contests with many eminent persons, was born at Paris in 1672. He wrote with very different success, no man having been more praised or more criticised than he was: his literary pa-
Motoualis radoxes, his singular systems, in all branches of polite learning, and above all his judgment upon the ancients, which, like those of Perrault, were thought disrespectful and detracting, raised him up formidable adversaries. Racine, Boileau, Rousseau, and Madam Dacier, were among the number of those who made it their business to avenge antiquity on a man who, with more wit than genius or learning, assumed a kind of dictatorial authority in the province of belles lettres. He became blind in the latter years of his life, and died in 1731. He wrote a great deal in epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, lyric, pastoral, and fables; besides a vast variety of discourses, critical and academical, in prose. A complete edition of all his works was published in 11 vols. 8vo, in 1754; though, as has been said of our Swift, his reputation had been better consulted by reducing them to three or four.