Jean Levesque de, a learned French writer, was born at Rheims in 1691. In 1713 he went to Paris, and with two elder brothers pursued a systematic course of study extending over almost every department of human knowledge. The result of these labours was embodied in an Encyclopaedia in twelve folio volumes, to which Jean contributed about one-half. In 1756 he was elected into the French academy, and in 1785 was rewarded with a pension by the king. His largest work, The Lives of the Popes, is not much esteemed now as an authority; but his biographies of Erasmus, Grotius, and Bossuet, are interesting and valuable. He died at Paris in 1785, aged ninety-four.