Jean-Pierre Niceron

Biography

After having completed its studies successfully, it entered the congregation of the Barnabite S, where it had an uncle who undertook to direct it in this new state. He professed during a few years rhetoric and humanities in various colleges, and applied at the same time to the study of the modern languages.

Recalled to Paris in 1716, it gave up teaching to be delivered entire to the execution of the project which it had conceived namely by publish the Vies of the scientists since the rebirth of the letters . This immense company occupied it the remainder of its life, which the excess of work shortened.

It was only 53 years old when it died, the July 8th 1738.

Memories to be used for the history of the famous men

The work of the Niceron Father is entitled Mémoires to be used for the history of the famous men, of the republic of the letters, with a catalog reasoned their works , Paris, 1727 - 1745, 43 vol. in-12. The 10th volume, divided into 2 parts which are connected separately, and 20th contain corrections and additions for the Vies already published, and them, last volumes (to be started with the 31e) contain each one the alphabetical table, general of all the articles contained in preceding volumes, counts all the more necessary as the author subjected himself with no species of order.

One reproached him with reason for having given to his bulky compilation an inaccurate title, since the majority of the writers qni found place there are not nothing less than famous men.

It did not know either to preserve the proportion between its notes, whose extent is often because reverse of their true importance. But, in spite of these defects, one must agree that the work of Niceron is one of most useful which were published in France on the literary history.

The Papillon abbot did not return to this hard writer the justice which it deserves:

It is, says it, a plagiarist who hardly puts himself in sorrow to annoy us by Vies that we find the every day under our hand. It is easy to do one in-12 at this price and to gain the fifty ecus that one pays him by district.” ( Letter with Leclerc , in the Memories of Artigny , T. 5, p. 394.)

Niceron drew its materials from the same works of each author or the most estimated biographies Germany and Italy. It quotes at the end of each article the sources where it drew, which facilitates the checking, and it had care to give the catalog of all the productions of an author, by indicating the various editions and the translations with a meticulous exactitude.

But the plan which it had adopted was too vast: 43 volumes of its Mémoires do not contain sixteen hundred articles. He died during the impression of the 39e. The P. Oudin, J. - B. Michault and the abbot Claude-Pierre Goujet published last four volumes, in which they inserted several interesting notes. The abbot Rives had the project to make reprint the Mémoires of Niceron in a better order, with his own corrections and those of the abbot Sepher. (See: Hunting for the bibliographers p. 454.)

Translations

The P. Niceron translated from English:

Large the Febrifuge, or Speech where one shows that common water is the best remedy for the fevers and probably for the Peste , Paris, 1724; reprinted under the title of Treated common water , ibid, 1730, 2 vol. in-12. This work is of Jean Hanckock.
Voyages of Jean Ovington with Surate , 1724, 2 vol. in-12;
the Conversion of the England to Christianity , in-8°;
Answers of Woodward to the observations of Camerarius on the physical geography.

Barbier allots the first volume of the amusing and instructive Bibliothèque to him , continued by Duport of the Hillock. Finally it with left in manuscript: a Table of all the newspapers -- literary Mixtures ; - a flying Library (see: Cinelli), - and the first three letters of the French Library , work in which he proposed to gather notes on all the French who cultivated the literature and sciences successfully.

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