Huet

Huet, PIERRE DANIEL, French scholar and polymath, was born at Caen, February 8, 1630. He was educated in the Jesuit school of Caen, and became a zealous pupil of Descartes and of Bochart. The latter he accompanied on a visit to Stockholm in 1652, when he discovered and transcribed the MS. of Origen which was the basis of his celebrated edition of that father fifteen years later. On his return home he gave himself up entirely to study. In 1661 he published his essay De Interpretatione. In 1670 he was appointed with Bossuet tutor of the dauphin, and in the same year wrote his Essai sur l'Origine des Romains. He took an active part also in preparing the Delphin edition of the classics. Having in 1676 taken holy orders, he was successively abbot of Aunay (1678), Bishop of Soissons (1685) and Avranches (1692), and abbot of Fontenay (1699). In 1679 appeared one of his most important books, Demonstratio Evangelica. In 1701 he withdrew to the Jesuits' house in Paris, where he died, 26th January 1721. During his episcopal career Huet published a couple of books on the Cartesian philosophy, another on reason and faith, and another on the site of the earthly paradise. To his latest years belong Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation des Anciens (1716), and his autobiographical memoirs (1718). His works were published in a collected form in 1712, and a volume of Huetiana appeared in 1722. In this latter year Huet's Traité de la Faiblesse de l'Esprit Humaine, which excited much controversy, first saw the light. See his Latin autobiography (1713), the French Life by Bartholomess (1850), and an article in the Quarterly, 1855.