Charles de, first president of the parliament of Burgundy, was born at Dijon in 1709. He studied law with a view to the magistracy, but the bent of his mind was towards literature and the sciences. He travelled through Italy in 1739, in company with his friend M. de Sainte-Palaye; and on his return to France published his Lettres sur l'Etat Actuel de la Ville Souterraine d'Herculanum, Dijon, 1750, 8vo, which was the first work upon that interesting subject. A collection of letters, written during his Italian tour, entitled Lettres Historiques et Critiques, in three vols. 8vo, was published at Paris after his death. In 1760 he published a dissertation Sur le Culte des Dieux Fétiches, 12mo, which was afterwards inserted in the Encyclopédie Méthodique. At the solicitation of his friend Buffon, De Brosses undertook his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, which was published in 1756, in two vols. 4to, with maps. It was in this work that De Brosses first laid down the geographical divisions of Australasia and Polynesia, which were afterwards adopted by Pinkerton and succeeding geographers. In 1765 appeared his Traité de la Formation Mécanique des Langues; a work distinguished by much research, and containing many ingenious hypotheses; but, at the same time, marked by that love of theory which is so apt to imbue the cultivators of etymological science.

De Brosses had been occupied, during a great part of his life, on a translation of Sallust, and in attempting to supply the lost chapters in that celebrated historian. At length, in 1777, he published L'Histoire du Septième Siècle de la République Romaine, 3 vols. 4to; to which is prefixed a learned life of Sallust, reprinted at the commencement of the translation of that historian by De Lamalle.

These literary occupations did not prevent De Brosses from discharging with ability his official duties, nor from carrying on a constant and extensive correspondence with the most distinguished literary characters of his time. In 1758 he succeeded the Marquis de Cammont in the Académie des Belles Lettres; but was never admitted a member of the French Academy, in consequence, it is said, of the opposition of Voltaire.

Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote several memoirs and dissertations in the collections of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in those of the Academy of Dijon. He also contributed various articles to the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, on the subjects of grammar, etymology, music, &c.; and he left behind him several MSS., which were unfortunately lost during the revolution. He died in 1777.

(Biographie Universelle.)