Marmontel was designed by his father to be brought up to trade, but his desire of learning was unconquerable, and was at last allowed to be gratified. His early education he received from the Jesuits, at the humble college of Mauriac, and he completed it at Clermont and Toulouse. At one time he fancied that he had a vocation for the ecclesiastical state, and he would have become one of the fraternity of Jesuits, had he not been deterred by the pathetic entreaties and remonstrances of his mother. It was at Toulouse that he made his first literary essay, in a competition for one of the prizes bestowed by the academy for Floral Games. A correspondence into which he entered with Voltaire, induced the poet to advise him to take up his abode in Paris, and on this advice he acted in 1745. For a considerable time after his settling in the capital, he had to contend against poverty. The complete success which attended his tragedy of Dionysius the Tyrant, lifted him at once into fortune and fame. “In one day,” says he, “almost in one instant, I found myself rich and celebrated. I made a worthy use of my riches, but it was not so with my celebrity. My fame became the origin of my dissipation, and the source of my errors. Till then my life had been obscure and retired.” It is honourable to him that all his family benefited by his improved circumstances; and, in palliation of his errors, we must consider how difficult it was for a young and flattered poet to escape the contagious effect of a corrupted capital. He finally renounced his licentious habits, and became an affectionate and happy husband and father.