Santeul, Jean Baptiste de, an excellent Latin poet, was born at Paris in the year 1630. Having finished his studies, he applied himself entirely to poetry, and celebrated in his verse the praises of several great men, by which he acquired universal applause. He enriched Paris with a great number of inscriptions, which are to be seen on the public fountains and the monuments consecrated to posterity. At length, some new hymns being to be composed for the Breviary of Paris, Claud Santeuil, his brother, and M. Bossuet, persuaded him to undertake that work; and he succeeded in it with the greatest applause. On this the order of Cluny having desired him to compose some for their Breviary, he complied with their request; and that order, out of gratitude, granted him letters of filiation, with an annual pension. Santeuil was caressed by all the learned men of his time, and had as his admirers the two princes of Condé, father and son, from whom he frequently received favours. Louis XIV. also gave him a proof of his esteem, by bestowing upon him a pension. He attended the Duke of Bourbon to Dijon, when that prince went thither in order to hold the states of Burgundy, and died there in 1697, as he was preparing to return to Paris. Besides his Latin hymns, he wrote a great number of Latin poems, which have all the marks of genius discoverable in the works of true poets.