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 Greve.  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 condamnes 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 “Reponses 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 minutiae literariae, and his frequent quotations! but he defends himself with skill:  “It is