Years of the Years
Christian of my
Æra age.
1669. Tues., Mar. 19. 22. I changed my religion--next day I resumed
the study of logic.
1670. Aug. 20. 23. I returned to the reformed religion, and
made a private abjuration of the Romish
religion, in the hands of four ministers.
His brother was one of these ministers; while a catholic, Bayle had
attempted to convert him, by a letter long enough to evince his
sincerity; but without his subscription we should not have ascribed it
to Bayle.
For this vacillation in his religion has Bayle endured bitter censure.
Gibbon, who himself changed his about the same "year of his age," and
for as short a period, sarcastically observes of the first entry, that
"Bayle should have finished his logic before he changed his religion."
It may be retorted, that when he had learnt to reason, he renounced
Catholicism. The true fact is, that when Bayle had only studied a few
months at college, some books of controversial divinity by the catholics
offered many a specious argument against the reformed doctrines. A young
student was easily entangled in the nets of the Jesuits. But their
passive obedience, and their transubstantiation, and other stuff woven
in their looms, soon enabled such a man as Bayle to recover his senses.
The promises and the caresses of the wily Jesuits were rejected; and the
gush of tears of the brothers, on his return to the religion of his
fathers, is one of the most pathetic incidents of domestic life.
Bayle was willing to become an expatriated man; to study, from the love
of study, in poverty and honour! It happens sometimes that great men are
criminated for their noblest deeds by both parties.
When his great work appeared, the adversaries of Bayle reproached him
with haste, while the author expressed his astonishment at his slowness.
At first, "The Critical Dictionary," consisting only of two folios, was
finished in little more than four years; but in the life of Bayle this
was equivalent to a treble amount with men of ordinary application.
Bayle even calculated the time of his headaches: "My megrims would have
left me had it been in my power to have lived without study; by them I
lose many days in every month." The fact is, that Bayle had entirely
given up every sort of recreation except that delicious inebriation of
his faculties, as we may term it for those who know what it is, which he
drew from his books. We have his avowal: "Public amusements, games,
country jaunts, morning visits, and other recreations necessary to many
students, as they tell us, were none of my business. I wasted no time on
them, nor in any domestic cares,--never soliciting for preferment, nor
busied in any other way. I have been happily delivered from many
occupations which were not suitable to my humour; and I have enjoyed the
greatest and the most charming leisure that a man of letters could
desire. By such means an author makes a great progress in a few years."
Bayle, at Rotterdam, was appointed to a professorship of philosophy and
history; the salary was a competence to his frugal life, and enabled him
to publish his celebrated Review, which he dedicates "to the glory of
the city," for _illa nobis hæc otia fecit_.
After this grateful acknowledgment, he was unexpectedly deprived of the
professorship. The secret history is curious. After a tedious war, some
one amused the world by a chimerical "Project of Peace," which was much
against the wishes and the designs of our William the Third. Jurieu, the
head of the Reformed party in Holland, a man of heated fancies,
persuaded William's party that this book was a part of a secret cabal in
Europe, raised by Louis the Fourteenth against William the Third; and
accused Bayle as the author and promoter of this political confederacy.
The magistrates, who were the creatures of William, dismissed Bayle
without alleging any reason. To an ordinary philosopher it would have
seemed hard to lose his salary because his antagonist was one
Whose sword is sharper than his pen.
Bayle only rejoiced at this emancipation, and quietly returned to his
Dictionary. His feelings on this occasion he has himself perpetuated.
"The sweetness and repose I find in the studies in which I have engaged
myself, and which are my delight, will induce me to remain in this city,
if I am allowed to continue in it, at least till the printing of my
Dictionary is finished; for my presence is absolutely necessary in the
place where it is printed. I am no lover of money, nor of honours, and
would not accept of any invitation should it be made to me; nor am I
fond of the disputes, and cabals, and professorial snarlings which reign
in all our academies: _Canam mihi et Musis_." He was indeed so charmed
by quiet and independence, that he was continually refusing the most
magnificent offers of patronage, from Count Guiscard, the French
ambassador; but particularly from our English nobility. The Earls of
Shaftesbury, of Albemarle, and of Huntingdon tried every solicitation to
win him over to reside with them as their friend; and too nice a sense
of honour induced Bayle to refuse the Duke of Shrewsbury's gift of two
hundred guineas for the dedication of his Dictionary. "I have so often
ridiculed dedications that I must not risk any," was the reply of our
philosopher.
The only complaint which escaped from Bayle was the want of books; an
evil particularly felt during his writing the "Critical Dictionary;" a
work which should have been composed not distant from the shelves of a
public library. Men of classical attainments, who are studying about
twenty authors, and chiefly for their style, can form no conception of
the state of famine to which an "helluo librorum" is too often reduced
in the new sort of study which Bayle founded. Taste when once obtained
may be said to be no acquiring faculty, and must remain stationary; but
knowledge is of perpetual growth, and has infinite demands. Taste, like
an artificial canal, winds through a beautiful country; but its borders
are confined, and its term is limited. Knowledge navigates the ocean,
and is perpetually on voyages of discovery. Bayle often grieves over the
scarcity, or the want of books, by which he was compelled to leave many
things uncertain, or to take them at second-hand; but he lived to
discover that trusting to the reports of others was too often suffering
the blind to lead the blind. It was this circumstance which induced
Bayle to declare, that some works cannot be written in the country, and
that the metropolis only can supply the wants of the literary man.
Plutarch has made a similar confession; and the elder Pliny, who had not
so many volumes to turn over as a modern, was sensible to the want of
books, for he acknowledges that there was no book so bad by which we
might not profit.
Bayle's peculiar vein of research and skill in discussion first
appeared in his "Pensées sur la Comète." In December, 1680, a comet had
appeared, and the public yet trembled at a portentous meteor, which they
still imagined was connected with some forthcoming and terrible event!
Persons as curious as they were terrified teased Bayle by their
inquiries, but resisted all his arguments. They found many things more
than arguments in his amusing volumes: "I am not one of the authors by
profession," says Bayle, in giving an account of the method he meant to
pursue, "who follow a series of views; who first project their subject,
then divide it into books and chapters, and who only choose to work on
the ideas they have planned. I for my part give up all claims to
authorship, and shall chain myself to no such servitude. I cannot
meditate with much regularity on one subject; I am too fond of change. I
often wander from the subject, and jump into places of which it might be
difficult to guess the way out; so that I shall make a learned doctor
who looks for method quite impatient with me." The work is indeed full
of curiosities and anecdotes, with many critical ones concerning
history. At first it found an easy entrance into France, as a simple
account of comets; but when it was discovered that Bayle's comet had a
number of fiery tales concerning the French and the Austrians, it soon
became as terrific as the comet itself, and was prohibited!
Bayle's "Critique générale de l'Histoire du Calvinisme par le Père
Maimbourg," had more pleasantry than bitterness, except to the palate of
the vindictive Father, who was of too hot a constitution to relish the
delicacy of our author's wit. Maimbourg stirred up all the intrigues he
could rouse to get the Critique burnt by the hangman at Paris. The
lieutenant of the police, De la Reynie, who was among the many who did
not dislike to see the Father corrected by Bayle, delayed this execution
from time to time, till there came a final order. This lieutenant of the
police was a shrewd fellow, and wishing to put an odium on the bigoted
Maimbourg, allowed the irascible Father to write the proclamation
himself with all the violence of an enraged author. It is a curious
specimen of one who evidently wished to burn his brother with his book.
In this curious proclamation, which has been preserved as a literary
curiosity, Bayle's "Critique" is declared to be defamatory and
calumnious, abounding with seditious forgeries, pernicious to all good
subjects, and therefore is condemned to be torn to pieces, and burnt at
the _Place de Grêve_. All printers and booksellers are forbidden to
print, or to sell, or disperse the said abominable book, under _pain of
death_; and all other persons, of what quality or condition soever, are
to undergo the penalty of exemplary punishment. De la Reynie must have
smiled on submissively receiving this effusion from our enraged author;
and to punish Maimbourg in the only way he could contrive, and to do at
the same time the greatest kindness to Bayle, whom he admired, he
dispersed three thousand copies of this proclamation to be posted up
through Paris; the alarm and the curiosity were simultaneous; but the
latter prevailed. Every book collector hastened to procure a copy so
terrifically denounced, and at the same time so amusing. The author of
the "Livres condamnés au Feu" might have inserted this anecdote in his
collection. It may be worth adding, that Maimbourg always affected to
say that he had never read Bayle's work, but he afterwards confessed to
Menage, that he could not help valuing a book of such curiosity. Jurieu
was so jealous of its success, that Beauval attributes his personal
hatred of Bayle to our young philosopher overshadowing that veteran.
The taste for literary history we owe to Bayle; and the great interest
he communicated to these researches spread in the national tastes of
Europe. France has been always the richest in these stores, but our
acquisitions have been rapid; and Johnson, who delighted in them,
elevated their means and their end, by the ethical philosophy and the
spirit of criticism which he awoke. With Bayle, indeed, his minor works
were the seed-plots; but his great Dictionary opened the forest.
It is curious, however, to detect the difficulties of early attempts,
and the indifferent success which sometimes attends them in their first
state. Bayle, to lighten the fatigue of correcting the second edition of
his Dictionary, wrote the first volume of "Réponses aux Questions d'un
Provincial," a supposititious correspondence with a country gentleman.
It was a work of mere literary curiosity, and of a better description of
miscellaneous writing than that of the prevalent fashion of giving
thoughts and maxims, and fanciful characters, and idle stories, which
had satiated the public taste: however, the book was not well received.
He attributes the public caprice to his prodigality of literary
anecdotes, and other _minutiæ literariæ_, and his frequent quotations!
but he defends himself with skill: "It is against the nature of things
to pretend that in a work to prove and clear up facts, an author should
only make use of his own thoughts, or that he ought to quote very
seldom. Those who say that the work does not sufficiently interest the
public, are doubtless in the right; but an author cannot interest the
public except he discusses moral or political subjects. All others with
which men of letters fill their books are useless to the public; and we
ought to consider them as only a kind of frothy nourishment in
themselves; but which, however, gratify the curiosity of many readers,
according to the diversity of their tastes. What is there, for example,
less interesting to the public than the _Bibliothèque Choisie_ of
Colomiés (a small bibliographical work); yet is that work looked on as
excellent in its kind. I could mention other works which are read,
though containing nothing which interests the public." Two years after,
when he resumed these letters, he changed his plan; he became more
argumentative, and more sparing of literary and historical articles. We
have now certainly obtained more decided notions of the nature of this
species of composition, and treat such investigations with more skill;
still they are "caviare to the general." An accumulation of dry facts,
without any exertion of taste or discussion, forms but the barren and
obscure diligence of title-hunters. All things which come to the reader
without having first passed through the mind, as well as the pen of the
writer, will be still open to the fatal objection of insane industry
raging with a depraved appetite for trash and cinders; and this is the
line of demarcation which will for ever separate a Bayle from a Prosper
Marchand, and a Warton from a Ritson; the one must be satisfied to be
useful, but the other will not fail to delight. Yet something must be
alleged in favour of those who may sometimes indulge researches too
minutely; perhaps there is a point beyond which nothing remains but
useless curiosity; yet this too may be relative. The pleasure of these
pursuits is only tasted by those who are accustomed to them, and whose
employments are thus converted into amusements. A man of fine genius,
Addison relates, trained up in all the polite studies of antiquity, upon
being obliged to search into several rolls and records, at first found
this a very dry and irksome employment; yet he assured me, that at last
he took an incredible pleasure in it, and preferred it even to the
reading of Virgil and Cicero.
As for our Bayle, he exhibits a perfect model of the real literary
character. He, with the secret alchymy of human happiness, extracted his
tranquillity out of the baser metals, at the cost of his ambition and
his fortune. Throughout a voluminous work, he experienced the enjoyment
of perpetual acquisition and delight; he obtained glory, and he endured
persecution. He died as he had lived, in the same uninterrupted habits
of composition; for with his dying hand, and nearly speechless, he sent
a fresh proof to the printer!