Pierre Augustin Caron de, appears to have been one of those persons who, from restlessness of disposition and singularity of character, obtain, in their own age, more celebrity than they are entitled to from their merit or talents. He was born at Paris in 1732, and was the son of a clockmaker, who brought him up to his own trade. From his earliest youth, however, he discovered an inclination for literature, together with a remarkable talent for music. His proficiency in this art procured him an introduction to the French court, where he was employed to teach the princesses, daughters of Louis XV., to play on the guitar. At their concerts, which he attended, he became acquainted with the banker Duverney, by whom he was instructed in business, and placed in a situation which was likely to lead to fortune. Beaumarchais first attracted public attention by his drama of Eugénie, which was published in 1767; but he was chiefly indebted for the notoriety he obtained to the various law-suits in which he became involved after the death of his patron Duverney. The chief advantage which he acquired from these various processes was the astonishing interest and admiration which were universally excited in France by the Factums or Mémoires which he wrote in his defence; in which the most logical and convincing argument is diversified with the bitterest sarcasm, the keenest raillery, and the relation of incidents as strange and amusing as any which are met with in romance. These able and lively productions, however, procured him many enemies, as they discovered him to be a man of a most resentful and calumnius disposition. Though occupied with these processes and various literary pursuits, Beaumarchais did not neglect the improvement of his fortune. He engaged in various speculations, of which the most profitable was his project of supplying the Americans with arms and ammunition during the war with this country. Having thus gained a considerable fortune, he built a magnificent villa in the Faubourg St Antoine, which he embellished with much taste and at great expense. Afterwards lost some part of the money he had acquired by an expensive and ill-executed edition of the works of Voltaire; and neither the early support which he gave to the principles of the French revolution, nor his importation of fire-arms for the use of the French forces, was sufficient to preserve his property from confiscation, or his person from proscription. The sufferings and dangers which he experienced during this period have been detailed by him in a work entitled Mes Six Époques, which is written with considerable force and interest. After he had endured every species of accusation and persecution, and had passed some species as an exile from his native country, he returned to France when the storms of the revolution had subsided into a more settled tyranny; and having recovered possession... Besides his Memoires, Beaumarchais is the author of various dramatic productions, which made a great noise, and gained him considerable reputation in Paris at the time they appeared. His works were published at Paris in 1809, in 8 vols. 8vo; and in 1827, in 6 vols. 8vo.