Few philosophers were more deserving of the title than, Bayle. His last
hour exhibits the Socratic intrepidity with which he encountered the
formidable approach of death. I have seen the original letter of the
bookseller Leers, where he describes the death of our philosopher. "On
the evening preceding his decease, having studied all day, he gave my
corrector some copy of his 'Answer to Jacquelot,' and told him that he
was very ill. At nine in the morning his laundress entered his chamber;
he asked her, with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled? and a few
moments after he died." His disease was an hereditary consumption, and
his decline must have been gradual; speaking had become with him a great
pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind to his last
hour; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which, could interrupt the
printer.
The irritability of genius is forcibly characterised by this
circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had united
him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flattering eulogiums: he is
the hero of his "Republic of Letters." Enmity succeeded to friendship;
Jurieu is then continually quoted in his "Critical Dictionary," whenever
an occasion offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable
contradictions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent opinions
may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a _Saint_! St. Jerome
praised Rufinus as the most learned man of his age, while his friend;
but when the same Rufinus joined his adversary Origen, he called him one
of the most ignorant!
As a logician Bayle had no superior; the best logician will, however,
frequently deceive himself. Bayle made long and close arguments to show
that La Motte le Vayer never could have been a preceptor to the king;
but all his reasonings are overturned by the fact being given in the
"History of the Academy," by Pelisson.
Basnage said of Bayle, that _he read much by his fingers_. He meant that
he ran over a book more than he read it; and that he had the art of
always falling upon that which was most essential and curious in the
book he examined.
There are heavy hours in which the mind of a man of letters is unhinged;
when the intellectual faculties lose all their elasticity, and when
nothing but the simplest actions are adapted to their enfeebled state.
At such hours it is recorded of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn,
that he would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his
neighbour's house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that he would
frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to places where
mountebanks resorted; and that this was one of his chief amusements. He
is surprised that so great a philosopher should delight in so trifling
an object. This objection is not injurious to the character of Bayle;
it only proves that the writer himself was no philosopher.
The "Monthly Reviewer," in noticing this article, has continued the
speculation by giving two interesting anecdotes. "The observation
concerning 'heavy hours,' and the want of elasticity in the intellectual
faculties of men of letters, when the mind is fatigued and the attention
blunted by incessant labour, reminds us of what is related by persons
who were acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John
Fielding; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated cases, and
perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire to a little closet
in a remote and tranquil part of the house, to rest his mental powers
and sharpen perception. He told a great physician, now living, who
complained of the distance of places, as caused by the great extension
of London, that 'he (the physician) would not have been able to visit
many patients to any purpose, if they had resided nearer to each other;
as he could have had no time either to think or to rest his mind.'"
Our excellent logician was little accustomed to a mixed society: his
life was passed in study. He had such an infantine simplicity in his
nature, that he would speak on anatomical subjects before the ladies
with as much freedom as before surgeons. When they inclined their eyes
to the ground, and while some even blushed, he would then inquire if
what he spoke was indecent; and, when told so, he smiled, and stopped.
His habits of life were, however, extremely pure; he probably left
himself little leisure "_to fall into temptation_."
Bayle knew nothing of geometry; and, as Le Clerc informs us,
acknowledged that he could never comprehend the demonstration of the
first problem in Euclid. Le Clerc, however, was a rival to Bayle; with
greater industry and more accurate learning, but with very inferior
powers of reasoning and philosophy. Both of these great scholars, like
our Locke, were destitute of fine taste and poetical discernment.
When Fagon, an eminent physician, was consulted on the illness of our
student, he only prescribed a particular regimen, without the use of
medicine. He closed his consultation by a compliment remarkable for its
felicity. "I ardently wish one could spare this great man all this
constraint, and that it were possible to find a remedy as singular as
the merit of him for whom it is asked."
Voltaire has said that Bayle confessed he would not have made his
Dictionary exceed a folio volume, had he written only for himself, and
not for the booksellers. This Dictionary, with all its human faults, is
a stupendous work, which must last with literature itself. I take an
enlarged view of BAYLE and his DICTIONARY, in a subsequent article.