(Nicholas-Anthony), a very singular Frenchman, was born at Paris in 1722, and died there in 1759, aged only 37. During his education, he is said have come out of the college of Beauvais almost as ignorant as he entered into it; but, struggling hard against his unaptness to learn, he at length overcame it. At seventeen, he began to study mathematics and architecture; and in three or four years made such a progress, as to be useful to the baron of Thiers, whom he accompanied to the army in quality of engineer. Afterwards he had the supervision of the highways and bridges; and he executed several public works in Champagne, Burgundy, and Lorraine. The author of his life, in the Dictionnaire des Hommes celebres, writes, that in this province a terrible spirit discovered itself in him, which he himself did not suspect before; and this was, it seems, the spirit of "thinking philosophically." In cutting through mountains, directing and changing the courses of rivers, and in breaking up and turning over the strata of the earth, he saw a multitude of different substances, which (he thought) evinced the great antiquity of it, and a long series of revolutions which it must have undergone. From the revolutions in the globe, he passed to the changes that must have happened in the manners of men, in societies, in governments, in religion; and he formed many conjectures upon all these. To be farther satisfied, he wanted to know what, in the history of ages, had been said upon these particulars; and, that he might be informed from the fountain-head, he learned first Latin and then Greek. Not yet content, he plunged into Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Arabic; and acquired so immense an erudition, that, if he had lived, he would have been one of the most learned men in Europe; but death, as we have observed, prematurely took him off. His works are, 1. Traité du Despotisme Oriental, 2 vols 12mo; a very bold work; but not so bold and licentious as, 2. L'Antiquité divisée, 3 vols 12mo. This was posthumous. 3. He furnished to the Encyclopédie the articles Deluge, Corvée, and Société. 4. He left behind him in MS. a Dictionary, which may be regarded as a concordance in ancient and modern language. As a man, he is said to have been of a sweet, calm, and engaging gaging temper; which, however, it is very difficult to reconcile with the dark, impetuous, ardent spirit, that appears to have actuated him as a writer.

(John), an engraver, who flourished towards the end of the last century, was a native of France. His first manner of engraving appears to have been copied, in some degree, from that of Francis de Poilly; but soon after he adopted one of his own, which, though not original, he however greatly improved: He finished the faces, hands, and all the naked parts of his figures, very neatly with dots instead of strokes, or strokes and dots. The effect is singular enough, and by no means unpleasing; only, in some few instances, he has opposed the coarse graving of his draperies, and back-ground, so violently to the neater work of the flesh, that the outline of the latter is thereby rendered hard, and the general appearance of it flat and chalky. This style of engraving has been carried to its greatest perfection in the present day, particularly in England. He did not draw the naked parts of his figures correctly, or with fine taste. His draperies are apt to be heavy, and the folds not well marked. However, his best prints possess much merit, and are deservedly held in great esteem.