_Bibliographical Queries_ (No. 39.), _Monarchia Solipsorum_ (Vol. iii., p.
138.).--Your correspondent asks, Can there be the smallest doubt that the
veritable inventor of this satire upon the Jesuits was their former
associate, Jules-Clement Scotti? Having paid considerable attention to the
writings of Scotti, Inchofer, and Scioppius, and to the evidence as to the
authorship of this work, I should, notwithstanding Niceron's authority, on
which your correspondent seems to rely, venture to assert that the claim
made for Scotti, as well as that for Scioppius, may be at once put aside.
No two authors ever more carefully protected their literary offspring,
numerous as they were, by the catalogues and lists of them which they
published or dispersed from time to time, than these two writers. In them
every tract is claimed, however short, which they had written. Scotti
published one in 1650, five years after the publication of the _Monarchia
Solipsorum_; and I have a letter of his, of the same period, containing a
list of his writings. Scioppius left one, dated 1647, now in MS. in the
Laurentian Library with his other MSS., and which carefully mentions every
tract he had written against the Jesuits. The _Monarchia Solipsorum_ does
not appear in the lists of these two writers; and no good reason can be
assigned why it should not, on the supposition of its being written by
either of them. If not in those which were published, it certainly would
not have been omitted in those communicated to their friends, not Jesuits,
or which were found amongst their own MSS. Then, nothing can be more
distinct than the style of Scotti, of Scioppius, and that of the author,
whoever he was, of the _Monarchia_. The much-vexed spirit of the bitterest
of critics would have been still more indignant if one or two of the
passages in this work could ever, in his contemplation, have been imputed
to his pen.
It is in this case, as in most other similar ones, much easier to conclude
who is not, than who is the author of the book in question. The internal
evidence is very strong in favour of Inchofer. It was published with his
name in 1652, seven years only after the date of the first edition; and the
witnesses are many among his contemporaries, who speak positively to his
being the author. Further, there is no great dissimilarity in point of
style, and I have collected several parallel expressions occurring in the
_Monarchia_ and Inchofer's other works, which very much strengthen the
claim made on his behalf, but which it is scarcely necessary to insert
here. In my opinion, he is the real author. The question might, I have no
doubt, be finally set at rest by an examination of his correspondence with
Leo Allatius, which is, or was, at all events, in the Vatican.