Demetrius, son of a prince of Moldavia, born in 1673; died in 1723. Disappointed in not succeed- Cantemir ing his father in that dignity, which was held under the Ottoman Porte, he went over with his army to the Czar Peter, against whom he had been sent by the Grand Signior. He signalized himself in the czar's service, and wrote in Latin a History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire, which has been translated into almost every language in Europe. This once popular work is now known to be taken principally from an inaccurate abridgment and continuation of Saad-ed-deen's great Turkish history. (See Journal Asiatique, anno 1824, tom. iv.)

Cantemir, Antiochus, the father of Russian poetry, was the youngest son of the preceding, and was born in 1700. Under the ablest professors, whom the czar had invited to Petersburg, he studied mathematics, physics, history, moral philosophy, and polite literature. After completing his academic course, he published in the Russian language a Concordance to the Psalms, and was elected a member of the academy. When only twenty-four years of age he was nominated as minister to the court of Great Britain; and here, as well as in France, whither he went in 1738 as minister plenipotentiary, he was equally admired as a statesman and a man of letters. Subsequently he was ambassador-extraordinary at the courts of Britain and France successively. His wise and prudent conduct in relation to the different revolutions which agitated Russia during his absence, procured him the confidence and esteem of three successive princes. This accomplished man died at Paris in 1744, at the age of forty-four. Besides a Russian translation of Anacreon and the Epistles of Horace, he wrote original satires, odes, and fables, and translated Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds, and Algarotti's Dialogues on Light and Colours. The Abbé Guasco has written his life in French, and translated his satires into that language.