Pierre Daniel, one of the most versatile savants of his own, or, indeed, of any age. Born at Caen in 1630, he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, to which his parents were attached. Huet's was one of those minds (so common in French literary history) which attain to a moderate proficiency in every branch of inquiry; and without being naturalized (so to speak) in any department, may become acclimated to all. Of this inquisitive temperament he gave ample evidence at the university of his native town, where his studies were prosecuted with an ardour which communicated itself to his instructors; and to the Jesuit Mambrun, the professor of philosophy, he always considered himself under peculiar obligations for a degree of attention which was all the more acceptable as the early loss of his parents had rendered it the more necessary. On attaining his majority he succeeded to an independence, which allowed him to satisfy, though not to satiate, his passion for knowledge. It was about this time that Bochart, then a fellow-townsman of Huet's, had received an invitation to Stockholm from Queen Christina, and prevailed on the young scholar to accompany him. This was an important event in the life of Huet, as he obtained access, in the great public library of the Swedish capital, to an excellent manuscript of Origen on St Matthew, which perhaps suggested his well-known edition of that father. On returning to his native town, after a brief stay at Stockholm, he devoted the next twenty years of his life to a diversified but systematic and profound course of study, comprising many of the exact sciences, and, above all, to the preparation of his great edition of Origen. He relieved the severity of his literary labours by cultivating the acquaintance of distinguished contemporary savants, and in this way his reputation spread so widely as to place his name on Colbert's list of literary pensions. In poetry also he found an agreeable source of relaxation, and his natural love for scenery developed itself in many a copy of verses Latin and French. The vast number of novels which he would seem to have read, may be inferred from his elaborate essay on the Origin of Romance, prefixed to the Contesse La Fayette's celebrated Zaide. Local antiquities always occupied much of his attention; and his work entitled Les Origines de la Ville de Caen, written in his declining period, reached in 1706 a second edition, which, however, is a great improvement on its predecessor. But in spite of these frequent side-glances to other subjects of inquiry his attention was mainly fixed on his edition of Origen's Exegetical Works, which was finally published in 2 vols. folio, in 1669. The biographical and historical portions of his annotations far outweigh the value of his textual labours; and even yet no critical edition of Origen is reckoned complete which does not contain Huet's Origeniana. Shortly after the accomplishment of this great work, his love for the sequestered life of the cloister induced him to retire to the Jesuit's College of La Flèche, but he was not suffered long to enjoy his literary seclusion. In 1670 he was appointed sub-preceptor to the Dauphin who was then only nine years of age, and in superintending the education of that prince, he was detained at court for the next ten years. During this period he completed his most considerable work—his Demonstratio Evangelica, which was published in 1679. This laid the foundation of his theological fame. During the preparation of this colossal work he superintended the well-known series of the Delphin Classics, of which he was partly the originator. On the marriage of the Dauphin in 1679, the publication of the Delphin Classics ceased, and Huet was allowed to retire from court. The king presented him with an abbey at Aulnai, 12 miles to the south of Caen, and he was thus enabled to resume his former and favourite pursuits. For ten years he continued to spend his summers in this delightful retreat, and his winters at Paris or Caen; but though his literary zeal never flagged, his special subjects of study had not been sufficiently well chosen, for nothing which he has written after his fiftieth year has done much for his reputation. In 1685, however, he was appointed by the king to the see of Soissons, which he shortly afterwards exchanged for that of Avranches, in the neighbourhood of Caen. He was bishop of this see for not more than seven years, and he resigned his arduous duties for that literary ease of which he was so enamoured. The residue of his long life was spent at the Abbey of Fontenai, near Caen, where in spite of his increasing infirmities he devoted his leisure mainly to literary studies; and after an illness in 1712, so severe that his life was despaired of, he was busily engaged in compiling his Mémoires de lui-même, and those miscellaneous memoranda which were published after his death, under the name of Huetiana. But the care of his medical advisers and the baths of Bourbon, though they had long kept death at a distance, were unable to avert it, and in the Jesuit House in Paris, on the 26th of January 1721, he expired in his 91st year as happily as he had lived.

Ever since his retirement from court, Cartesianism had been gradually advancing to importance, and its adherents, among whom were numbered the most influential men of the time, were devoting all their energies to its propagation. The main object of their attack was Aristotelianism; and as the Stagirite embraces or discusses in his works nearly every department of ancient literature, the entire remains of antiquity were included in their denunciations, which were promulgated in French to the neglect of Latin. All this was viewed by the Jesuits with intense dislike. Huet warmly espoused the cause of his order, and with reasoning and rillery he did his utmost to discomfit his opponents. In his Censura philosophiae Cartesiana, however, which was published in 1689, he shows an utter incompetency to meet the Cartesians on philosophical grounds, and cannot discriminate between the leading doctrine of their master and Pyrrhonism. His ridicule was equally ineffective; and the Nouveaux Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cartésianisme did as little for his cause or his reputation as his Censura. The most notable of his later works was his Traité Philosophique de la Foi-blesse de l'Esprit Humain, published posthumously in 1723, which caused more excitement than all his other works put together. It contains little more than the foreshadowings of that doctrine which Berkeley and Hume carried to its utmost limit; and probably it was from the undeveloped state of his views that Huet's work was regarded with such horror at the time. He was considered a thorough sceptic for harbouring opinions which the pious bishop of Cloyne has shown to be quite compatible with a belief in the great truths of Christianity. Huet's is a name familiar in our day only to scholars as deeply read as he was in his own. Few scholars have lived with so much pleasure to themselves or have had their lot cast in easier circumstances. His long day was hardly visited by a cloud; it seems to have had all the felicity of one unbroken lucid interval; and perhaps it is for this reason that the pleasure he himself enjoyed in his literary labours has not been shared by posterity. (Quarterly Review, No. 194.)