The Bastile twice received Laurent Angliviel la Beaumelle, who was born in 1727, at Vallerangue, in Lower Languedoc. His first imprisonment, in 1753, which lasted six months, was caused by his Notes on the Age of Louis XIV.; for his second, in the following year, he was indebted to a passage in his Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, which charged the Austrian court with keeping poisoners in its pay. His release, at the end of five months, was generously obtained by the intercession of that court which he had so grossly insulted. La Beaumelle was brought up in the Catholic religion, but, during a residence of some years in Geneva, he became a protestant. At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed professor of French literature at Copenhagen, and his first work, “Mes Pensées,” was published in the Danish capital. Lured by the patronage which Frederic of Prussia held out to authors, La Beaumelle removed to Berlin. Voltaire, who was then at the Prussian court, visited him, and expressed a wish to be numbered among his friends; but their amicable intercourse was soon changed into deadly hostility. There was a short paragraph in Mes Pensées, which wounded the vanity of Voltaire, and La Beaumelle was also guilty of having a respect for Maupertuis, whom Voltaire detested, and missed no opportunity of ridiculing. The rabid hatred with which Voltaire ever after pursued his foe, and the virulent and even low abuse which he lavished on him, can excite only disgust. The malign influence of Voltaire having rendered Berlin a disagreeable abode, La Beaumelle returned to his native country. After having resided in peace at Toulouse for several years, he obtained a place in the King’s Library, at Paris, which, however, he did not long retain; his death, which happened in 1779, followed close upon his appointment. La Beaumelle had certainly no mean talents; and it is much to be regretted, that they were so often thrown away upon literary squabbles. Of his works, the best are Mes Pensées; a Defence of the Spirit of Laws; and Letters to M. de Voltaire.