LOUIS ELLES, doctor of the Sorbonne, and professor of philosophy in the Royal College, one of the greatest critics of his time, especially in ecclesiastical matters, was born at Paris in 1657. When he published the first volume of his Bibliothèque Universelle des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, in 1686, the liberty with which he treated some ecclesiastical writers gave so much offence that M. de Harlay, archbishop of Paris, obliged Dupin to retract many of his propositions, and besides suppressed the work. Nevertheless he was suffered to continue it, by altering the title from Bibliothèque Universelle to Bibliothèque Nouvelle. This great undertaking, continued in successive volumes till it reached as many as fifty-eight, though sufficient to occupy the life of an ordinary man, did not prevent M. Dupin from obliging the world with other works. He was a man of prodigious reading, and had an easy, happy way of writing, with an uncommon talent for analyzing the works of an author; a quality which renders his Bibliothèque so valuable. M. Dupin was banished for a time from his chair in the Royal College, to Chatelherault, on account of the famous Cas de Conscience, but he was afterwards restored, and died in 1719.