Walpole's MS. Notes on Bayle. plate, the coft, the dates when he commenced and finished reading it, and ample After more than a century and a half, evidence of careful perufal, by numerous Bayle's Dictionary is ftill the fame favorite notes in Walpole's crabbed hand-writing, with the lovers of books that it was upon containing fome curious facts and opinions, its first publication. The esteem in which evincing his knowledge, acuteness, and ill it was held by Johnfon, Gibbon and D'Is- nature. I deem them well worthy of preraeli, who were certainly competent judges fervation. of good reading, is well known. In Moore's Diary its various merits are pleasantly set forth by Lord Holland:

"Sept. 2, 1837. Received a note from Lord Holland announcing that his prefent of Bayle was on its way down by the wagon. The note was accompanied by an amusing ftring of rhymes full of fun and pun, à la Swift; and the next day's poft brought me what he calls Editio auctior et emendatior of the fame, which I fhall here tranfcribe:

"MY DEAR MOORE,

"Neither poet nor scholar can fail

To be pleased with the critic I fend you 'tis Bayle.
At leisure or working, in sickness or hale,
One can ever find something to fuit, one in Bayle.
Would you argue with fools who your verses affail,
Why here's logic and learning fupplied you by Bayle.
Indeed, as a merchant would speak of a fale,
Of the articles afked for, I forward a Bayle.
But should you, in your turn, have a fancy to rail,
Let me tell you, there's store of good blackguard
in Bayle.

And although they for libel might throw you in jail,
Pray what would release you so quickly as Bayle ?
Your mufe has a knack at an amorous tale,
Do you want one to verify? turn do your Bayle.
Nay, more-when at fea, in a boisterous gale,
I'll make you acknowledge there's service in Bayle:
For if water be filling the boat where you fail,
I'll be bound you'll cry bail, my lads,' Bayle.
A mere correfpondent may trust to the mail,
But your true man of letters relies on his Bayle.
So much knowledge in wholesale, and wit in retail.
(Tho' you've plenty already) greet kindly in Bayle."

Horace Walpole's copy of the General Dictionary, Hiftorical and Critical (10) vols. folio, London, 1734-41, which includes the best tranflation of Bayle), is now before me. Each volume contains his book

Enough of the text is given, to enable the reader to understand Walpole's comments, which are indicated by quotation marks; the few illuftrations I have thought neceffary are included in brackets. Vol. I. P. 67.-The Abbey of Notre-Dame

I

dor, who is obliged to tell the truth. I fame, as Alexander ab Alexandro, and the spoke then as a young spark, but now present inftance of fuch learned perfonages fpeak as an old man, &c." as have married their maids." "Something like this happened to Waller, with Charles II.; but he made a better anfwer." [The fuperiority of the "Panegyric on Cromwell" to the "Congratulation" to Charles II. "Poets, Sir, fucceed better in fiction than in truth."]

Vol. II. p. 95, Art. APOLODORUS, Note C. -On his cenfuring the Emperor Hadrian's plan of a Temple of Venus: citing the converfation between Apelles and Alexander.

"This is a foolish reason of Bayle, and weh wd have had a different effect on any body elfe, to disbelieve a Fact, becaufe he had found another example of it. And it is as foolish to disbelieve that two men said a thing like one another, because the two men to whom it was faid, did not act like one another upon it.'

P. 464.-Aventine confidered that by marrying a handsome young woman, he fhould expofe his forehead to a shameful and shocking dishonor-being in his fixty-fourth year, &c.

"What stuff is all this reafoning! and how unworthy a great man, as Bayle is falfely recon'd, tho even his criticism,, which was his Fort (for I do not look upon merely having read much, as any merit, at leaft it is no proof of parts), is generally wasted in adjusting immaterial Dates, such as whether a German profeffor died in 1502 or 1503, or in reflections on learned men getting good wives, as in the Note (A) of N. Arnoldus; and fuch impertinent trifles as that of the fame Arnoldus spending a month agreeably with Martin Gertichius his uncle by the mother's fide.""

P. 558, Art. BACON.-The king gave him pofitive advice to fubmit himfelf to his House of Peers, and that upon his princely word he would restore him again, if they in their honors should not be fenfi ble of his merits.

"This is no improbable account of this great man's Fall, efpecially if it be confidered that K. James wept when he heard of the Accufation. When the Earl of Som

erfet, his old Favorite, whom he was facrificing to his new one, went to the Tower, this infamous King hung about his neck and wept, but the moment he was out of fight, faid, Now the De'il take thee, man; I hope never to fee thy face again. Lord Bacon's noble confeffion of his fault, which was chiefly indulgence to worthlefs fervants, and his philofophic behaviour afterwards, look little like a guilty mind; and that very confeffion might probably flow from his consciousness of the King's betraying him, a

His to be unravelled by It."

flattery that seems his commoneft and great- diffoluble, for that, not being founded on eft failing, and the more from its being be- the Scripture but invented fince; It is ftill ftowed on fo worthless an object. having advised the calling this Parliament, might be another motive of the King's giving him up to It, and they had not the virtue of their fucceffors in 1641, who would not be content with that common scapegoat of a bad King, the facrifice of his minifter."

P. 564, Art. BRACHMANS.—The filly things which the Eastern nations have believed for fo many ages concerning the origin of the universe, he attributes to the divine anger, &c.

"The origin of learning in the East, and of error too. Half our present knowledge arofe from difcovering the errors of what

had before been called fo."

P. 626, Art. JORDANUS BRUNUS.

"N. B. One of the reasons for believing that Bruno was an Atheist, was his believing a Plurality of Worlds!"

P. 628.-Scioppius fays that Bruno maintained that magic is a lawful thing.

"It is plain that he did not approve of magic, tho he was fo fimple as to believe it, tho not more credible than much of what he difbelieved, by Scioppiuf's own Account of his faying Chrift and others fuffered juftly for being magicians."

P.

689, Art. PHILIP DUKE OF BURGUNDY. -The people imagined he efcaped, and was gone to conceal himself in an hermitage, from whence he would return after feven years.

"This fort of notion has prevailed among

"The meaning of all this nonsense is, that the two natures of Chrift are mixed without any of the properties of union." "The origin of all the controverfies about the common people in other countries, as the Trinity, arose not from the difference about King Arthur, Don Sebastian, and the of Beliefs, but from men trying to make late K. George, who was thought to be sense of what they believed. They put fhut up in a caftle in Hanover." together to explain it a fet of words that Vol. IV. p. 9, Art. CÆSAR.—It would be had fixed ideas-other men finding it imwronging him to confider him an Epicupoffible to believe it condemned them for rean with regard to Providence. This Heretics if the explanation had no meanis liable to three objections: the first ing and consequently approached nearer from this paffage in Salluft, &c., &c. to orthodoxy, it produced as many controverfies and different explanations as the original enigma, and which is the more in

"There is a stronger objection to this, which is, that nobody takes this for an ora

'Mr. Pope kept and used to show three thick volumes of Pamphlets and fatires

(To be continued.)

P. 364, Art. DR. SAMUEL CLARKE.-His wrote against him."
fcruples about fubfcription were great.
To have nothing required from the
preachers of the gospel but what was
purely primitive, &c.

"Sr. R. W. had a very long conversation one night at Kensington with Dr. Clarke on this fubject. The Queen and Lady Sundon were very defirous of making him a Bishop, but he would not subscribe. Sr. R. preffed him very close with asking him how he could confcientioufly keep his living of St. James, which he held by having subscribed."

ftate for ever alfo.

"If Dr. Clarke believed thus, he believed a contradiction to his own belief of the immortality of the soul."

Les Libres Precheurs.

"LES LIBRES PRECHEURS, devanciers de Luther et de Rabelais; etude hiftorique, critique et anecdotique, fur les xIV., XV., et xvI. fiecles. Par ANTHONY MERAY. Paris, A. CLAUDIN, 1860." 12mo. pp. 221. The edition limited to 300 copies.

This "hiftorical study," which appeared firft as a series of articles in the "Archives

P. 365.-As to the eternity of the punish- du Bibliophile," treats of a clafs of men, ments of hell: they fhall continue the the burlefque preachers of the middle ages, whole duration of the wicked. Nothing reprefentatives of whom are to be found shall put an end to their torment but in the hiftory of every nationality. As it what shall do so to their lives and their is proposed to devote a series of articles in The Philobiblion to an examination of their importance in the hiftory of our modern civilization, and the value of their works as fhowing the manners, and the style of P. 563, Art. DEMOCRITUS.—It was enacted thought and fpeech of the people of their by the laws, that those who had spent times, no better general idea could be givtheir patrimony fhould not be interred en of the interest and importance of this in the fepulchre of the family. To get branch of literature, than will be obtained himself exempted from the penalty, he by a notice in M. Meray's cautious but chofe among his works that which fur- appreciative "Etude hiftorique." For any paffed all the reft, and read it to the ma- accurate measure in the future of the prefgiftrates. They were fo charmed with ent condition of thought in England, Spurit, they made him a prefent of five hun- geon will be as neceffary as Buckle. dred talents, &c.

"Is it probable that a little city gave a man an hundred thousand pound for one book of his, which he read to them on being brought before them for having spent about twenty thousand ?"

But thefe "burlesque preachers" were that name would feem to imply. They not merely noify, religious demagogues, as were, as M. Meray calls them, the forerunners of Luther and the Reformation; and he is right in his belief, that "the active element of democracy, the lively and Vol. V. p. 635, Art. GUISE.-Cardinal lafting principle of reform, during the long de Lorrain took pleasure in collecting feudal period which Europe has paffed and showing the libels written upon him through, was principally to be found within by the Huguenots. the walls of the monafteries. In France,"

But

he goes on, "particularly where the tem- fingle object of these pages. I wish to atporal power never united itself, as in Ger- tempt to find again the fpirit of our old many and Italy, with the fpiritual power, fermons, to ftudy in them their authors in where the terrorism of the Inquifition was their various characters of tribunes, reformnever regularly established at the expense ers, moralists, satirists, and critics (fronof moral life, as in Portugal and Spain, deurs)." fome of our monaftic orders, the mendi- "Europe remained a long time in this cants and the preachers, were a fort of pop- half dreamy ftate of mystical reverie, at ular militia, naturally organized for the war with invifible and fupernatural agents, purpose of defending the cause of the weak, in that state of femi-hallucination in which and watching the exceffes of the great. we, awakened, have in our turn surprised Sprung from the people, the majority of the old races of Hindoftan. *** thefe orators, who fcattered their hot words freely to the people, not only in the churches, but in the public streets, at the fire-fides, in the open air and the open fields, bore in their style the marks of their humble origin. They retained from the people their hot anger, their unpolished eloquence, their jovial and farcaftic tone, their facility for error, and alfo the energy of their material appetites, which, in fpite of their habitual fobriety and continence, they could not always refift."

Europe owes this awakening of intelligence, this return to active and strong aspirations, in a great measure to the more and more daring protests of the orators of our monafteries."

;

"If, in this long, intellectual eclipse, the only afylum for thought had been open to none but the members of a theocratic cafte, like that of the Brahmins of India if our monks, by the fingle fact of birth, had found themfelves ifolated from the mafs which was declared impure by an "The monks have been studied from abominable cofmogony; if these guardians many points of view. I do not speak now of the facred fire had lived only among of the modern monks; these seem to me themselves, preserving for their exclufive out of place in the middle of the nine- profit, as inviolable fecrets, the fruits of teenth century; to-day, when inftruction, their ftudies and the fuperior knowledge of the defence of higher principles, and criti- inspired books, what would we have been cal protestation, have more regular repre- now? Would we be able to glorify oursentatives, the monks seem to me as unne- felves for our great fuperiority over the ceffary as the dukes, the counts, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ganges? Affubarons, who bear the titles of their loft redly not.” offices, fide by fide with the generals, the prefects, and the mayors who have replaced them. I take up the monaftic inftitution at the epoch when it was made fruitful by faith, and I leave it at the extreme limit of its active influence, that is to say, at the reign of Henry IV."

"The only aspect under which I wish to examine the monaftic legions of the past, is that of their out-door work, of their public life: the effect of their words upon the world which furrounded them, is the

Happily for us, the convents were recruited from among the difinherited members of fociety. Thanks to this poffibility of regeneration open to the pariahs of Europe, the ferfs became free. Those who faw all honorable employments closed to their steps, turned to that in which intelligence was made available."

Confidered from this point of view, the monkish literature, which has too generally been confidered a mere tiffue of obscure buffoonery, becomes not only interesting,