HARDOIIIN, JEAN, was b. in 1645, at Quimper, in Brittany, where his father fol lowed the trade of a bookseller. Hardouin received his first education in the schools of the Jesuits, and being received into that order at the age of 20, completed his studies in Paris. On the death of Pere Gamier in 1683, Hardouin was appointed librarian of the college of Louis le Grand, in which office lie enjoyed full leisure for the literary pur suits in which he delighted, and in which his extravagances have acquired for him a notoriety almost without any parallel in the annals of literary eccentricity. Dupin places him among the very first scholars of his learned brotherhood. In a spirit of literary skepticism which it is difficult to look upon as serious, he maintained, not only that the entiref body Of classical literature, with the exception of in Latin, Pliny's l‘raturta History, Virgil's Gempics, the comedies of Plautus, and Horace's Satires, and in Greek, Hoiner's Iliad, and Herodotus's history, was falsely ascribed to the authors whose various names it bears, but that it was all the production of the monks of the 13th century! In the same skeptical spirit, he rejected as spurious all the reputed remains of ancient art, together with the inscriptions and coins arc attributed to classical times; nay, he extended time same skepticism to the Septutuznit of the' Old Testament, and even to the Greek text of the .New, the original language 01 which
he held to nave been Latin! Opinions so extravagant naturally called forth the repro bation of the authorities of his order. He was required to retract them; and there is some reason to believe, that they were put forward by him rather from a love of paradox and a morbid desire of notoriety, than from any serious conviction of their probability. Nevertheless, with all this extravagance, the erudition of Pere Hardouin was beyond dispute, and most of his works are of great historical and critical value. His edition of Pliny (5 vols. •w, Paris, 1689) is a prodigy of learning and industry. Of his remain ing works/the most valuable is his great Colleen° Conciliorum (12 vols. folio), a work of great learning and utility, which has the rare advantage of possessing one of the best indexes extant; a commentary on the New Testament in folio; several volumes on the study of numismatics and chronology; and a vast number of dissertations and essays m the Mentoires de Treroux. He died at the age of 83, in the convent of his order in Parts, Sept. 8, 1729.