CHARPENTIER, François (1620-1702), archaeologist and man of letters, was born at Paris. Intended for the bar, he quitted law for literature at an early age, and was employed by the great minister Colbert, who had determined on the foundation of a French East India Company, to draw up an explanatory account of the project for the perusal of Louis XIV.; to the memoir he thus prepared he afterwards added a second part. Charpentier, who was an ardent admirer of his own tongue, was one of the first to demonstrate the absurdity of the use of Latin in monumental inscriptions, and to him was entrusted the task of supplying the paintings of Lebrun in the Versailles Gallery with appropriate legends. He acquitted himself so indifferently of the commission that his verses had to be replaced by others, the work of Racine and Boileau. With these poets Charpentier had already quarrelled, having espoused the cause of Perrault in the famous academical dispute (1687) concerning the relative merit of the ancients and moderns, and their notices of him are by no means calculated to place his abilities in the most favourable light. He is credited with an important share in the production of the magnificent series of medals that commemorate the principal events of the age of Louis Quatorze. Charpentier, who was long in receipt of a pension of 1200 livres from Colbert, was erudite and often ingenious, but he was always heavy and commonplace. His principal works are a Vie de Socrate (1650), a translation of the Cyropaedia of Xenophon (1659), the Traité de la Peinture Parlante (1684), and the Défense de VExcellence de la Langue Française (1695).