MÉNAGE, Gilles (1613-1692), described by Bayle as “one of the most learned men of his time, and the Varro of the 17th century,” was the son of Guillaume Ménage, king’s advocate at Angers, and was born in that city on August 15, 1613. A tenacious memory and an early developed enthusiasm for learning carried him speedily through his literary and professional studies, and we read of him practising at the bar at Angers as early as 1632. In the same year he pleaded several causes before the parlement of Paris, and soon afterwards he attended the “Grand Tours” at Poitiers, but after having been laid aside by a severe illness he abandoned the legal profession and declared his intention of entering the church. He succeeded in obtaining some sinecure benefices, and lived for some years in the household of Cardinal De Retz (then only coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris), where he had ample leisure for his favourite literary pursuits. Some time after 1648 he withdrew to a house of his own in the cloister of Notre Dame, where his remarkable conversational powers enabled him to gather round him on Wednesday evenings those much frequented literary assemblies which he called “Mercuriales.” His learning procured for him admission to the Della Cruscan Academy of Florence, but his irrepressible tendency to caustic sarcasm led to his remorseless exclusion from the French Academy. He died at Paris on July 23, 1692. Of the voluminous works of Ménage (fully enumerated in the Dictionnaire of Chauffepié) the following may be mentioned :— Origines de la Langue Françoise (1650; greatly enlarged in 1694); Diogenes Laertius Greece et Latine, cum Commentario (1663 and again much improved in 1692); Poemata Latina, Gallica, Greeca, et Italica (1656; 8th ed., 1687); Origini della ...