From the Earliest Accounts of Time to the present Period. WHEREIN. Their remarkable ACTIONS and SUFFERINGS, Their VIRTUES, PARTS, and LEARNING, ARE ACCURATELY DISPLAYED. With a CATALOGUE of their LITERARY PRODUCTIONS. A NEW EDITION, IN TWELVE VOLUMES, GREATLY ENLARGED AND IMPROVED. PRINTED FOR W. STRAHAN, T. PAYNE AND SON, J. RIVING- TON AND SONS, W. OWEN, B. WHITE, T. AND W. LOWNDES, B. LAW, J. ROBSON, J. JOHNSON, G. ROBINSON, AN UNIVERSAL, HISTORICAL, and LITERARY DICTIONARY. MA AIGNAN (EMANUEL), a religious minim, and one of the greateft philofophers of his age, was born at Toulouse, of an ancient and noble family, in 1601. While he was a child, he discovered an inclination to letters and the sciences; for nothing, fays the writer of his life, had so great an effect in making him forbear fquawling and crying, as the putting of fome little book into his hands. He went through his courfe in the college of Jefuits, and acquitted himself with great diligence in every part of the province of a good fcholar, both with refpect to literary and religious exercises. He was ftrongly determined to a religious life, by an affront which he received when he was learning thetoric. He had written a poem, in order to difpute the prize of eloquence, and he believed the victory was unjustly adjudged to another. This made him refolve to afk the minim's habit,' and he had no occafion to afk it long; for, having acquitted himself very well in the trials of his probation-time, he was received upon his taking the vow in 1619, when he was eighteen. He went through his courfe of philofophy under a profeffor who was very much attached to the doctrine of Ariftotle; and he omitted no opportunity of difputing loudly against all the parts of that philofopher's fcheme, which he fufpected of heterodoxy. His preceptor confidered this as a good prefage; and, in a fhort time, difcovered, to his great aftonishment; that his pupil was very well verfed in mathematics, without having had the help of a teacher, In this, Vol. IX. B like |