Morellet, the friend, and by marriage the relative, of Marmontel, was, like that writer, one who suffered from the vengeance of the great. It must be owned, however, that there was less injustice in his punishment than in that of his friend, as he was really the author of the satire for which he was confined, and it was published under circumstances which made even Voltaire doubt whether the conduct of the writer was perfectly justifiable. Andrew Morellet, to whom some of his acquaintance gave the punning appellation of Mord-les, or Bite-’em, was born at Lyons, in 1727. He received the early part of his education at the Jesuits’ College in that city, and he completed his studies at Paris, in the seminary of Trente-Trois, and the Sorbonne. He appears, however, to have paid at least as much attention to the works of modern philosophers as to those of the theologians. At Paris he became intimate with D’Alembert, Diderot, and other contributors to the Encyclopædia. Returning to Paris, after a tour which he made with a pupil, he was gladly admitted into the most talented society in the capital. Palissot, in his comedy of the Philosophers, having ridiculed the philosophical party, Morellet resented the insult by a satirical production, called The Vision. In this work there were some severe lines on the princess of Robecq, an enemy of the encyclopedists, who was then lying on her death-bed. For these lines Morellet suffered an imprisonment of several months in the Bastile. Morellet was admitted into the French Academy in 1784, and he contributed much to the Dictionary of that body. In 1803 he became a member of the Institute, and in 1807 attained a seat in the legislature. His life was protracted to the age of ninety-two, and, for nearly the whole of that time his pen was actively employed on subjects of political economy and general literature, and in translations, principally from the English language. A selection from his writings was made by himself, in four volumes, with the title of Literary and Philosophical Miscellanies of the 18th Century. He died in 1819. By Marmontel, who married his friend’s niece, he is thus characterized: “The Abbé Morellet, with more order and clearness, in a very rich magazine of every kind of knowledge, possessed in conversation a source of sound, pure, profound ideas, that, without ever being exhausted, never overflowed. He showed himself at our dinners with an openness of soul, a just and firm mind, and with as much rectitude in his heart as in his understanding. One of his talents, and the most distinguishing, was a turn of pleasantry delicately ironical, of which Swift alone had found the secret. With this facility of being severe, if he had been inclined, no man was ever less so; and, if he ever permitted himself to indulge in personal raillery, it was but a rod in his hand to chastise insolence or punish malignity.”