CHARLES DE, first president of the parliament of Burgundy, was born at Dijon on the 17th of February 1707. He studied law with a view to the magistracy, but without neglecting literature and the sciences, to which he discovered an early and decided attachment. His study of the Roman history excited in him a strong desire to visit Italy, which he accordingly traversed in 1739, in company with his friend M. de Sainte-Palaye. On his return to France he published his Lettres sur l'État Actuel de la Ville Souterraine d'Herculanum, Dijon, 1750, 8vo; the first work which had appeared upon that interesting subject. A collection of letters, written during his Italian tour, entitled Lettres Historiques et Critiques, in three vols. 8vo, was published at Paris after his death without the consent of his family. In 1760 he published a dissertation Sur le Culte des Dieux Fétiches, 12mo, which was afterwards inserted in the Encyclopédie Méthodique. At the solicitation of his friend Buffon, De Brosse undertook his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, which was published in 1756, in two vols. 4to, with maps, by Robert de Vaugondy. It was in this work that De Brosse first laid down the geographical divisions of Australasia and Polynesia, which were afterwards adopted by Pinkerton and succeeding geographers. In 1765 appeared his Traité de la Formation Mécanique des Langues; a work distinguished by much research, and containing many ingenious hypotheses; but, at the same time, marked by that love of theory which is so apt to imbue the cultivators of etymological science.
De Brosse had been occupied, during a great part of his life, in making a translation of Sallust, and in attempting to supply the chasms in that celebrated historian. At length, in 1777, he published L'Histoire du 7e Siècle de la République Romaine, three vols. 4to; a work which would probably have met with great success had the style corresponded with the interest of the subject, and with the author's historical sagacity and depth of research. To the history is prefixed a learned life of Sallust, which was reprinted at the commencement of the translation of that historian by De Lamalle. After the death of De Brosse a supplement was added to this work, from his MSS. containing the various readings, fragments, and an index of the authors from whom they are taken. This supplement, which should be placed at the end of the third volume, is wanting in some copies.
These literary occupations did not prevent De Brosse from discharging with ability his official duties, nor from carrying on a constant and extensive correspondence with the most distinguished literary characters of his time. During the leisure afforded him by the suspension of the parliaments in the year 1771, he applied himself with greater vigour to literature. In 1758 he succeeded the Marquis de Caumont in the Académie de Belles Lettres; but was never admitted a member of the French Academy, in consequence, it is said, of the opposition of Voltaire, who entertained a dislike to him.
De Brosse died on the 7th of May 1777. He was a man no less distinguished for ease and vivacity in the general intercourse of society, than for the extent and variety of his literary attainments. Besides the works we have already mentioned, he wrote several memoirs and dissertations in the collections of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in those of the Academy of Dijon. He also contributed a number of articles to the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, on the subjects of grammar, etymology, music, &c.; and he left behind him several MSS. which were unfortunately lost during the revolution. (See the Biographie Universelle.)