FRÉRON, ELIE-CATHERINE. — French critical journalist, b. at Quimper on 18 (20) January 1718 (1719), d. in Paris on 10 March 1776. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he left the order in 1739.
At first he collaborated with P. F. Des Fontaines on the latter’s review *Observations sur quelques écrits modernes*, later publishing on his own account *Lettres de M. une la comtesse de*** (1745), in which he took aim at the most prominent writers of the day. After the suppression of that journal, he resumed the controversy in *Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps* (1749), which won him the favour of the court. On 3 February 1754 he founded the *Année littéraire*, which he continued until his death; it was a veritable “literary scourge,” where he relentlessly lashed the impiety and subversion of the Encyclopedists, especially Voltaire, while at the same time acknowledging their literary merit. His adversaries retaliated by securing not only the suppression of the paper but also his arrest. A caustic spirit possessed of all the resources of polemics, he was neither impartial nor profound; he had to contend with adversaries too powerful for him, whose invective, while giving him a prominence perhaps greater than he deserved, did so at the expense of his reputation. His immense output is said to have exceeded 250 volumes.
Phrenology — Cranial localizations according to Gall and Spurzheim. From an original drawing of the period preserved in the Museum of the History of Medicine at the University of Rome.
1769
J. R. E. L. E. - CATHERINE - FREUD SIGMUND