Julien Pouchard

Julien Pouchard , born in 1656 with Passed and dead the December 12th 1705, is a Professor and Journaliste French.

Julien Pouchard made his first studies with the Mans, at the Pères of the Oratory and finished them with the Collège of Lisieux. His parents being poor, the director of the college of Lisieux which had taken it in friendship because of fast progress that it made in all sciences, refused the price of his pension. Some time after, he entrusted the government of the young pupils to him who received a free education in his establishment.

Pouchard, which did not neglect therefore its particular studies, on soon the occasion to show its great knowledge. Melchisédech Thévenot having undertaken its beautiful edition of the Greek mathematicians, charged Julien Pouchard comparing some manuscripts and with re-examining the Latin translations which it made print. Pouchard fades during several years with this work neither glorious nor lucrative on the Greek manuscripts of the Library of the king, revising and correcting defective texts. Always very poor, it entered in the marquis of Marselière, which entrusted the education of his/her son to him. This young man having died, the intendant of finances Caumartin gave it for governor to his only son, Antoine-Louis of Saint-Angel.

In 1701, the new payment of the Académie of the inscriptions opened the doors of this body to him, initially like associated member. Its deep scholarship, in its memories on the Antiquity of the Egyptians and on the Liberalities of the Roman people , pointed out it soon. It communicated of them some others with the Academy which were extremely estimated but whose subject was lost because none was published. The Histoire of the Academy of the inscriptions analyzes one of these memories devoted to the obelisks of Sésostris.

To the creation of the Newspaper of Savans , the direction was entrusted by it to Julien Pouchard. Appearing to have exerted very conscientiously its office of literary critic, very many writers, whom one never rented enough and that least criticism exasperated, knew extremely bad liking in Pouchard of this difficult and perilous function. After its death, the Journal of Savans answered some words its detractors: “Certain authors, who believed themselves maltreated, murmured against him. The most animated were often those of which it had done nothing but simply expose the words and the feelings; but perhaps, as he exerted his criticism with not enough care and in a whole freedom, he suffered readily that which its adversaries gave each other, and he scorned their insults. - They are annoyed, said it, of what I make known their faults, and me I it am of what they do of bad books. ”

One counts, among the writers who called some with the public of his stops, the professor of rhetoric to the college Mazarin Gibert and of Sacy. The father Lamy had just published a treaty in which he favorably did not treat the art of the rhéteurs and Gibert believed that he was in the duties of his responsibility of answer the epigrams of the Lamy father. He thus rose on this point a serious debate, in which the writer of the Journal of the savans necessarily had to intervene. If held that they were, its conclusions not being favorable to the professor of rhetoric, Gibert answered with sourness. De Sacy still made more noise about an article on its Traité friendship . Two years after the death of Pouchard, making a reading in a solemn meeting of the French Academy, it benefitted even from this occasion to complain and make the public pilot of the persistence of his resentment with regard to Pouchard.

In 1704, the pulpit of professor in Greek language to the royal College being vacant, Pouchard was called to fill it, but it did not occupy it a long time, because it died, old only forty-nine years. It left in manuscript a universal Histoire , whose author of sound Éloge , in the Journal of Savans , speaks in these terms: “The facts are reported there with much clearness; the style in is pure, simple and precise. Manners, the discipline and the laws of the various people are described there in a way as useful as pleasant, and, though others already worked successfully on the same intention, we are persuaded that, when this history is put at the day, the reputation of the first will not erase the merit of this last work. ” It was not printed since the death of Pouchard, and the fate of its manuscript is unknown.

Sources

Barthelemy Hauréau, literary History of Maine , T. IX , Paris, Dumoulin, 1876, p. 144-8
Paul Tallemant, Claude Gros of Boze, History of the royal Academy of the inscriptions and the humanities since its establishment, Paris, Guerin, 1740

References

Dictionary of the press, 1600-1789 . I, Dictionary of the journalists , under dir it. of Jean Sgard, Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1999

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