The literary successor of La Beaumelle in the Bastile, was Francis de Marsy, a native of Paris, born in 1714. After he had finished his studies, he was admitted a member of the society of Jesuits. His first productions were two Latin poems, on Tragedy and Painting, from which, particularly the latter, he derived considerable reputation, his Latinity being good, his versification flowing and spirited, and his imagery poetical. Encouraged perhaps by the praise which he received for these works, he became an author by profession, and wasted, in the ungrateful occupation of writing for booksellers, those talents which, otherwise employed, might have given him permanent fame. One of his tasks, an analysis of the works of Bayle, which he published in 1755, was condemned by the parliament of Paris, and made him, for some months, an inmate of the Bastile. He died in 1763. Among his works are the first twelve volumes of the History of the Chinese, Japanese, &c.; and an edition of Rabelais in eight volumes. The former is a hasty compilation; the latter he spoiled, by retouching and modernizing the style—it is probable, however, that the clothing of Rabelais in a modern garb was a sagacious scheme of the publishers. To hazard censure upon an individual of the privileged class, or even to be suspected of having done so, was an infallible passport to the Bastile. That versatile and elegant writer Marmontel was one of those who were taught the danger of a courtier’s hostility. This enemy was the Duke d’Aumont, whom, in his Memoirs, he truly describes as being “the most stupid, the most vain, and the most choleric, of all the gentlemen of the King’s chamber.”