ROLLIN, CHARLES, a well-known French historian, was born at Paris on the 30th January, 1661. He was intended for his father's profession of a cutler, but a Benedictine having observed his turn for literature, in duced his mother to give him a liberal education. In the college of Du Plessis the good Benedictine obtained a pension for the boy, who distinguished himself by his diligence and talents, and thus became known to the minister Pelletier, whose two eldest sons were his schoolfellows. In 1683, M. Hersa made him his assist ant in the rhetoric chair, and in 1687 he resigned it to him altogether. In 1688 he obtained the chair of elo quence in the Royal College, of which he was chosen rector in 1694, an office which led him to deliver the annual panegyric on Louis XIV. In this situation he revived the study of Greek literature, which had fallen into neglect. When his office of rector expired, Cardi nal Noailles engaged him to superintend the studies of his nephews at the college of Laon, but he was, against his inclination, appointed in 1699 coadjutor to the prin cipal of the college of Beauvais, an establishment without discipline and without students. Here he remained till
1712, when he fell a sacrifice to the contests of the Je suits and the Jansenists. By the influence of the for vier he was deprived of his situation, but with a decent competency which he enjoyed, he felt that he had lost nothing. Under these circumstances he prepared his edition of Quintilian with notes, which appeared in 1715, in two volumes, 12mo.
In 1720, he was again chosen rector of the university of Paris. The university had protested against taking any part in the prevailing contentions, and being con gratulated on this step in a public oration by Rollin, he was displaced in about two months by a Lettre de cachet.