ADRIEN, a very learned French writer and critic, born in June 1649, at the village of Neuville, near Beauvais, in Picardy. His parents were too poor to give him a proper education, which, however, he obtained by the favour of the bishop of Beauvais, who afterwards presented him with a small vicarage. In 1680 he was appointed librarian to M. de Lamoignon, advocate-general to the parliament of Paris, of whose library he made a Catalogue Raisonné in thirty-five volumes folio, all written with his own hand. He died in January 1706. In the list of his numerous works, the following are among the most conspicuous—1. Histoire de Hollande depuis 1609 jusqu'à 1690, 4 tom. 12mo, a continuation of Grotius, and published under the name of Neuville. 2. Les Vies des Saints, 3 tom. fol. 3. Des Enfants devenus célèbres par leurs Études et par leurs Écrits, 2 tom. 12mo. 4. Vie de Descartes, 2 tom. 4to. 5. Jugements des Savants sur les principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs, 9 tom. 12mo. The last is the most celebrated and the most useful of all the works of this learned and indefatigable writer. The edition of it published in 1722 by M. de la Monnoye, in seven volumes quarto, contains the Anti-Bailliet of M. Menage, besides notes; but the edition published at Amsterdam in 1725 is more esteemed.