MEZERAI, François Eudes de, a celebrated French historian, the son of Isaac Eudes, a surgeon, was born at Rye, in Lower Normandy, in 1610, and took the surname of Mezerai, from a hamlet near Rye. Having completed his studies at Caen, he discovered a strong inclination to poetry; but on proceeding to Paris, he was advised by one of his friends to apply himself to the study of politics and history, and procured the place of commissary at war, which he held during two campaigns. He then shut himself up in the college of St Barbe, in the midst of books and manuscripts; and, in 1643, published the first volume of the History of France, in folio. Some years afterwards, the other two volumes also appeared. In that work Mézerai surpassed all who had written the history of France before him, and was rewarded by the king with a pension of four thousand livres. In 1668 he published an Abridgment of his History of France, in three volumes quarto, which was well received by the public; but as he inserted in that work the origin of most of the taxes, with very free reflections, Μ. Colbert complained of it, upon which Mézerai promised to correct what he had done in a second edition. As his corrections, however, amounted rather to palliations than changes or retractations, the minister caused half of his pension to be suppressed. Mézerai complained of this in very severe terms, but the only answer he obtained was the suppression of the other half. Annoyed at this treatment, he resolved to write on subjects which could not expose him to such disappointments, and composed his treatise on the origin of the French, which did him much honour. He was elected perpetual secretary to the French Academy, and died in the year 1683. He is said to have been extremely negligent of his person, and so careless of his dress that he might have passed for a beg-ger rather than a man of letters. He was actually seized one morning by the archers des pauvres, or parish officers; a mistake which, so far from provoking, highly diverted him. He used to study and write by candle-light, even at noon-day in summer; and, as if there had been no sun in the world, always waited upon his company to the door with a candle in his hand. In regard to religion, he affected a species of Pyrrhonism, which, however, was not so much [7:15:2]in his heart as in his mouth, and rather the effect of a contradictory humour than the result of conviction. This appeared from his last sickness; for having sent for those friends who had been the most frequent auditors of his licentious talk about religion, he made a sort of recantation, which he concluded with desiring them to forget what he might formerly have said upon the subject of religion, and to “remember that Mézerai dying was more to be believed than Mézerai living.” The following is a list of the works of Mézerai, viz. 1. Histoire de France, 1643, 1646, 1651, in three vols. folio; 2. Abrégé Chronologique de ΓHistoire de France, 1668, in three vols. 4to; 3. Traité de l’Origine des Français, Amsterdam, 1688, in 12mo; 4. Une Traduction de l’Histoire des Tures de Chalcondyle, Paris, 1662, in two vols. folio; 5. Une Traduction Française du Traité de Jean de Salisbury, intitulé La Vanité de la Cour, Paris, 1640, in 4to; 6. Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne, translated from the Latin of Grotius, Paris, 1644, in 8vo; 7. Histoire de la Mère et du Fils, that is, of Mary of Medicis and Louis XIII., Amsterdam, 1730, in 4to. A compilation entitled Mémoires Historiques et Critiques sur divers points de l’ Histoire de France, has also been ascribed to Mézerai, though apparently without the slightest foundation.