JEAN, better known as Père Hardouin, one of the most learned, and at the same time most singular men whose names are to be found in the history of letters, was born at Quimper, in Brittany, in 1646. His youth gave little promise of his future distinction, and it was with difficulty that he was admitted into the order of the Jesuits. After the usual preliminaries he went to Hardwick Paris to complete his theological studies. He there undertook to edit the Natural History of Pliny for the series of the Delphin Classics. In trying to determine the positions of the towns mentioned by Pliny, he became sensible that a knowledge of medals would assist him in clearing up different points of ancient geography; and with this view he immediately applied to the study of numismatics, in which he soon rendered himself profound. His edition of Pliny was completed in five years, and, when it appeared, made his name known to all Europe. This work, which, according to Huet, would have occupied any five ordinary scholars fifty years, met with so flattering a reception, that Father Hardouin could not enjoy his success with moderation. The commendations which poured in upon him from all quarters intoxicated him with pride; and he no longer spoke of other antiquaries, except with the utmost contempt. The latter in their turn deprecated his merits, and exaggerated his faults. Hardouin replied with bitterness, and at length had recourse to the wildest paradoxes in his attempt at self-defence. In one of his works, La Chronologie expliquée par les Médailles, he ventured to maintain that ancient history had been entirely recomposed by the monks of the thirteenth century, and that the only genuine remains of Latin antiquity were the works of Cicero and Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil, and the satires and epistles of Horace. In 1708 his ecclesiastical superiors compelled him to retract this opinion, but his retraction made no real change in his views. He died at Paris, September 3, 1729, in the eighty-third year of his age. His principal works are:

- *Nummi antiqui Populorum et Urbium illustrati, de re monetaria veterum Romarum*, ex Plini Secundi historia, Paris, 1684, in 4to; - *Antiquitatis de Nummis antiquis Coloniarum et Monarcharum ad Jo. Faye Vaillant*, ibid., 1689, in 4to; - *C. Plini Secundus Historiae Naturalis, libri xxviii.*, Paris, 1699, in five volumes, 4to; - *S. Joannis Chrysostomae Epistolae ad Cæsariam monacham, novis illustrata*, Paris, 1686, in 4to; - *Chronologiae ex Nummis antiquis restitutae specimen primum*, Paris, 1696, in 4to; - *Opera Selecta*, Amsterdam, 1709, 1719, in folio; - *Consiliorum Collectio Regia Maxima*, Paris, 1715 and the following years; - *Apologie d'Homer, où l'on explique le véritable dessein de l'Iliade, et la Théo-mythologie*, Paris, 1716, in 12mo; - *Opera Varia Posthuma*, Amsterdam, 1733, in folio; - *Commentarius in Novum Testamentum*, Amsterdam, 1742, in folio; - *Prologosum ad censuras Scriptorum veterum*, London, 1750, in 8vo; and a very great number of Dissertations, chiefly on Medals, in the Mémoires de Trévoux.