JACOBUS AUGUSTUS, an historian of great and merited reputation, is better known by this classical, than by his vernacular name of Jacques Auguste de Thou. He was the son of Christophe de Thou, first president of the parliament, and was born at Paris on the 8th of October 1553. He received a very learned education, and became distinguished among men of learning. The highest preferment which he obtained was that of president a mortier in the parliament of Paris. He died on the 7th of May 1617, leaving behind him the character of one of the most excellent men of his age and nation. Besides Latin poems, and an account of his own life written in the same language, he composed a very ample and valuable work, entitled Historia sui Temporis. It is indeed a work unparalleled in modern literature. The first eighteen books were published at Paris in 1604; and the author continued to make various additions till the year 1609, when he completed the printing of eighty books. The fearless liberality of his sentiments had excited so violent a clamour against him, that he did not venture to publish the more recent portion of his history. To his faithful friends Du Puy and Rigault he left a copy of his entire history prepared for the press; and as they found it could not be safely printed at Paris, they sent it to Geneva, where the edition was superintended by Lengelheim. For the sake of greater concealment, the imprint of Lyon was substituted for that of Geneva; and the editor added a preface, stating that he had in vain waited for an edition of Thuanus's history from the hands of his executors, and therefore determined to publish it from a copy which had been transmitted to him from the author. Under these circumstances, the work, complete in one hundred and thirty-eight books, was first published in the year 1620, together with the six books of the author's memoirs of his own life. Other two impressions proceeded from Frankfurt and Geneva; but all these have been superseded by the splendid and valuable edition published at London by Samuel Buckley, in seven volumes folio, in the year 1733.