FRANCIS Eudes de, an eminent French historian, the son of Isaac Eudes a surgeon, was born at Rye, in Lower Normandy, in 1610; and took the surname of Mezeray, from a hamlet near Rye. Having performed his studies at Caen, he discovered a strong inclination to poetry; but going to Paris, he, by the advice of one of his friends, applied himself to the study of politics and history, and procured the place of commissary at war, which he held for two campaigns. He then flung himself up in the college of St Barbe, in the midst of books and manuscripts; and, in 1643, published the first volume of the History of France, in folio; and some years after, the other two volumes. Mezeray in that work surpassed all who had written the history of France before him, and was rewarded by the king with a pension of 4000 livres. In 1668, he published an Abridgement of his History of France, in three volumes 4to, which was well received by the public; but as he inserted in that work the origin of most of the taxes, with very free reflections, M. Colbert complained of it, when Mezeray promised to correct what he had done in a second edition; but those corrections being only palliations, the minister caused half of his petition to be suppressed. Mezeray complained of this in very severe terms; when he obtained no other answer than the suppression of the other half. Vexed at this treatment, he resolved to write on subjects that could not expose him to such disappointments; and composed his treatise on the origin of the French, which did him much honour. He was elected perpetual secretary to the French academy; and died in 1683. He is said to have been a man extremely negligent in his person, and so careless in his dress, that he might have passed for a beggar rather than for what he was. He was actually seized one morning by the archers des pauvres, or parish officers; which mistake was so far from provoking him, that he was highly diverted with it, and told them, that "he was not able to walk on foot, but that as soon as a new wheel was put to his chariot, he would attend them wherever they thought proper." He used to study and write by candle light, even at noon-day in summer; and, as if there had been no fun in the world, always waited upon his company to the door with a candle in his hand. With regard to religion, he affected Pyrrhonism; which however was not, it seems, so much in his heart as in his mouth. This appeared from his last sickness; for having sent for those friends who had been the most usual witnesses of his licentious talk about religion, he made a sort of recantation, which he concluded with desiring them "to forget what he might formerly have said upon the subject of religion, and to remember, that Mezeray dying was a better believer than Mezeray in health." Besides his history, he also wrote, 1. A continuation of the history of the Turks. 2. A French translation of John de Salisbury's Latin treatise on the vanities of the court. 3. There are attributed to him several satires against the government; and in particular, those that bear the name of Sandricourt.