SKETCH

OF THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

SORBIERE.

SAMUEL SORBIERE was born of Protestant parents in the year 1610. His father was a tradesman. Having laid a proper foundation in languages and polite literature, he went to Paris and studied divinity; but he soon quitted that pursuit. He applied himself to physic; in which he made so great a progress, that he formed an abridgment for his own use, which was likewise printed on one sheet. He after

wards turned Roman Catholic; and was well recommended to the Court of Rome by Cardinal Mazarin, to whom he dedicated his Reasons of Conversion. But Sorbiere, who was a discontented man, grumbled that Clement IX. did not take sufficient care of his fortune; and on receiving some small favours from the Pope, it is said that he exclaimed, "Most holy Father, you give ruffles to a man who wants a shirt." Nevertheless Sorbiere, by the patronage of Louis XIV. and Pope Alexander VII. had a comfortable subsistence during his life, which ended by a dropsy in April 1670. His chief works are, a Treatise on the passage of the Chyle, and the Motion of the Heart, abounding in doubts; a Discourse on the Transfusion of the Blood of Animals into the Human Body; translations into the French language, of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, some of Hobbes's works, and some part of Camden's Britannia.

SORBERIANA.

ATHEISTS.

THERE are three kinds of atheists; persons of subtle understandings, men of profligate principles, and ignorant pretenders to thinking. The two last are generally converted by misfortunes, or the approach of death, the great touchstone of the soul. As to the former, it is impossible for me to imagine how they can, as men of knowledge, reject so many evidences of a first

cause.

M. DESCARTES.

M. Descartes was very silent and sparing of words. I passed two hours with him one day, without carrying away one idea, He spoke little, and seemed afraid lest

what he looked upon as mysterious should be laid open; or perhaps he did not make much account of his own theories, or preserved silence out of pomp, or a contempt of the opinion of others. There are persons who find mysteries every where; some admit them not at all; as some minds love darkness, and some rejoice in light..

I view Descartes in the same light as I do dancers on the slack rope. I admire their agility and boldness, and the gracefulness of their motions; but I think their powers misemployed. Descartes was a man of uncommon genius; and perhaps it may be through my dulness or ignorance that I ascribe to him extravagant attempts in physics. He appears indeed to have aspired to an intimate connection with nature, and to have surveyed the charms of the goddess with the unreserved privilege of an husband. He is superior to the schoolmen in reasoning, though he retains much of their abstracted refinements. If he has failed, so have his predecessors; and so will those

who treat of physics after him, and the

public must be judge.

When I was at Amsterdam, I lodged with an old soldier; who, after having served seven years, returned to his old trade of a taylor. The fellow was eternally spouting out quotations from scripture, without any occasion or connection; as he seemed to be a most complete blockhead. All his religion consisted in saying he was a Protestant, and thanking God that he did not go to mass. With all this, he was for ever at the alehouse; and would frequently beat his wife, and at the same time apply quotations from scripture, which he considered as bearing hard on her sex.

Courtiers behave to kings with regard to their understandings, as gypsies do to their children; which they cripple and disfigure, in order to render them fit objects of charity, and to promote their trade of begging.