BOUHOURS, Dominique, a French critic, was born at Paris in 1628. He entered the Society of the Jesuits at the age of sixteen, and was appointed to read lectures on literature in the college of Clermont at Paris, and on rhetoric at Tours. He afterwards became preceptor to the two sons of the duke of Longueville. The duke died in Bouhours’s arms; and the “account of the pious and Christian death” of this great personage was his first publication. He was sent to Dunkirk to the Romanist refugees from England, and in the midst of his missionary occupations published several books. Among these were Les Entretiens d’A riste et d'Eugène, a work of a critical nature on the French language, printed five times at Paris, twice at Grenoble, and afterwards at Lyons, Brussels, Amsterdam. Leyden, &c. It involved him in numerous quarrels, particularly with Ménage, who, however, continued to live on friendly terms with the author. The fame and merit of this piece recommended Bouhours so effectually to the great Colbert, that he intrusted him with the education of his son the marqιis of Seignclay. Ho afterwards wrote several other works in French, the chief of which are, La Manier de bien penser sur les ouvrages d'esprit, 1687; Remarks and Doubla upon the French Language, 1694 ; The Life of St Ignatius, 1679; The Art of Pleasing in Conversation; The Life of St Francis Xavier, 1682. It was his practice to publish alternately a book on literature and a work on some subject of piety, which gave occasion to a wag, in a satirical epitaph, to remark of him, “qu’il servait le monde et le ciel par semestre.” His Pensées ingénieuses des Anciens et des Modernes, though at once instructive and amusing, exposed him to censure as well as ridicule, on account of some strange ...