GILLES, "the Varro," according to Bayle, of the seventeenth century, was the son of the Avocat du Roi, and was born at Angers on the 15th August 1613. A tenacious memory and a keen desire for knowledge carried him speedily through his course of studies, and at the early age of nineteen he assumed, in accordance with the wishes of his father, the advocate's gown. But his early developed bias towards literature was irrepressible; and after practising at the bar in Angers, Paris, and Poitiers, he abandoned the profession in disgust, and entered the church. Soon afterwards his promotion to some sinecure benefices enabled him to devote all his time to his favourite pursuit. His varied accomplishments introduced him to the most select literary society, and in no long time he was received into the family of Cardinal de Retz. But Ménage was too self-willed for a protégé. His caustic wit and sarcastic humour were exercised without any compunction on the political creatures of the cardinal, and his unwillingness to soothe the vanity he had wounded aggravated the offensiveness of his conduct. Accordingly, he was forced to leave the house of his patron after a few years. He retired to a dwelling of his own in the cloister of Notre Dame, and there he began to gather around him on Wednesday evenings those literary assemblies which he called Mercureiales. About this time he might have been admitted into the French Academy had he not preferred to ridicule the dictionary of that body in his Répétition des Dictionnaires. The latter part of Ménage's life was embittered by the attacks of those authors whom his ill-tempered satire had provoked. He died on the 23rd July 1692. So unrelenting were his enemies that they made even his death a subject for their satirical wit. Of the voluminous works of Ménage the following are the most important:—Dictionnaire Étymologique, or Origenes de la Langue Française, fol., 1694, and 2 vols., fol., Paris, 1750; Origini della Lingua Italiana, fol., Geneva, 1685; an edition of Diogenes Laertius; Anti-Baillet, Svo, Paris, 1685; Jus Civile Amicitates, Svo, Paris, 1667; and Poemata Latina, Gallica, Graeca, et Italica, 12mo, Amsterdam, 1687. After his death Ménagiana was published in 2 vols. in 1693–94, and afterwards in 4 vols. in 1715.