To know Bayle as a man, we must not study him in the folio Life of Des
Maizeaux, whose laborious pencil, without colour and without expression,
loses, in its indistinctness, the individualising strokes of the
portrait. Look for Bayle in his "Letters," those true chronicles of a
literary man, when they record his own pursuits.
The personal character of Bayle was unblemished even by calumny; his
executor, Basnage, never could mention him without tears! With
simplicity which approached to an infantine nature, but with the
fortitude of a stoic, our literary philosopher, from his earliest days,
dedicated himself to literature; the great sacrifice consisted of those
two main objects of human pursuits, fortune and a family. Many an
ascetic, who has headed an order, has not so religiously abstained from
all worldly interests; yet let us not imagine that there was a
sullenness in his stoicism,--an icy misanthropy, which shuts up the
heart from its ebb and flow. His domestic affections through life were
fervid. When his mother desired to receive his portrait, he opened for
her a picture of his heart! Early in life the mind of Bayle was
strengthening itself by a philosophical resignation to all human events!
"I am indeed of a disposition neither to fear bad fortune nor to have
very ardent desires for good. Yet I lose this steadiness and
indifference when I reflect that your love to me makes you feel for
everything that happens to me. It is therefore from the consideration
that my misfortunes would be a torment to you, that I wish to be happy;
and when I think that my happiness would be all your joy, I should
lament that my bad fortune should continue to persecute me; though, as
to my own particular interest, I dare promise to myself that I shall
never be very much affected by it."
An instance occurred of those social affections in which a stoic is
sometimes supposed to be deficient, which might have afforded a
beautiful illustration to one of our most elegant poets. The remembrance
of the happy moments which Bayle spent when young on the borders of the
river Auriège, a short distance from his native town of Carlat, where he
had been sent to recover from a fever occasioned by an excessive
indulgence in reading, induced him many years afterwards to devote an
article to it in his "Critical Dictionary," for the sake of quoting the
poet who had celebrated this obscure river. It was a "Pleasure of
Memory!" a tender association of domestic feeling!
The first step which Bayle took in life is remarkable. He changed his
religion and became a catholic. A year afterwards he returned to the
creed of his fathers. Posterity might not have known the story, had it
not been recorded in his Diary. The circumstance is thus curiously
stated:--