French royal families and the princely houses of Italy had introduced into France those principles of infidelity which the exclusive love of classical literature had given birth to in Italy at the revival of letters. These principles were eagerly received and strongly supported in France because they suited well with the dissoluteness of the court. The powerful intellects of other times had only looked for applause from kindred minds; but the wits of the court of Louis the Fourteenth had no higher or better ambition than such fame as would be bestowed by the approbation of the great vulgar. In the one case literature dictated opinions, and men of wisdom taught the world, which then was contented to yield the proper place to merit; in the other case books were merely the echo of the prevailing taste; they were written to support it, and as it was corrupt and frivolous to a degree knowledge made no progress. By his cleverness and brilliancy. Voltaire rose to be the head of those who thus degraded letters by following in the court-train and feeding all its follies. The light, thin soil of his mind could not afford subsistence to the tree of knowledge, which in his case put forth a few showy blossoms, but never ripened into fruit. Ideas must be sought somewhere, and Bayle's Dictionary was the fashionable work during Voltaire's youth. It was true that Le Clerc, and Jurien, and Jacquelot, had shown the superiority of truth over scepticism, but the wits admired the elegance of Bayle, while the ladies were delighted with his tales of gallantry, and in those days the ladies of France reigned with despotic sway over literature as well as over love. The apostle of scepticism therefore drew his principal weapons from the Dictionary, and his natural wit acquired a keener edge by communing thus closely with that of Bayle. He amplified his master's pointed sentences into elaborate systems, and by means of a lively fancy and a

L

remarkable facility of diction persuaded the world that his infidelity was the creation of his own genius. But a more illustrious disciple of Bayle was

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one of

own countrymen, the elegant and accomplished Gibbon. From resolving to write the history of the city of Rome, the idea gradually expanded into the noble project of writing the History of the Decline and Fall of the whole Roman Empire. Much of this subject had already been traced in outline. Le Beau had given the French nation a history of the Lower Empire, in continuation of Crevier's History of the Roman Emperors. Every great man has had numerous biographers, and libraries were crowded with church annals. To read and study all the original authors on the events and opinions of more than twelve hundred busy years was a task beyond the industry of Gibbon, although he was keen and sagacious, and perhaps as learned as any gentleman-author can be, who spends his mornings in his library. He benefited very considerably by those writers of modern times who had devoted years to the investigation of particular parts of his grand subject, and of the numerous topics, which he has chosen to introduce as episodes. He had the skill of making other persons' learning appear to be his own, and, it is plain, only consulted original authorities upon points of moment, to which he knew the attention of the world would be more particularly directed. His occasional criticisms on Lardner make the uninformed reader suppose that his learning even surpassed that of the illustrious champion of dissent, while, in reality, it was Lardner who furnished him with most of his facts concerning the early Christians, though, by comparing Lardner's statements with those of Tillemont, Dupin and Fleury, he might occasionally discover differences, and be enabled to give critical decisions between the combatants. In all literary opinions, Gibbon was a

Frenchman; and it is only from the circumstance of most Englishmen possessing but a very slight acquaintance with French literature that he was ever thought to be an original writer. No man borrowed so freely as Gibbon from the French compilers of memoirs, and it may with truth be said, that, while reading the Decline and Fall, we are often only being amused with an elegant version of the Abbe Bleterie, Petit de la Croix, and other authors of the same description. The very sum and substance of the papers in the Transactions of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres are to be found in the Decline and Fall. Even those, who may not be able to trace the historian's elegant plagiarisms, must yet be aware that the idiom of his work is much more French than English, and that his style is by no means a fitting object of imitation. In the last century infidelity was a fashionable qualification amongst men of literature, an assumed badge that distinguished knowledge from ignorance, and not an honest conviction. In the case of Gibbon, Bayle supplied all the quibbles and sophistries on the subject of religion, and these appear, sometimes in the text of the Decline and Fall when they are dressed up in all the pomp of history, and sometimes in the notes when they are sharpened into epigrams. But Gibbon was a man of cold temperament, and altogether wanted that enthusiasm in scepticism which distinguished his master. There are fanatical sceptics, and superstitious atheists, and it is often an even point which is the worst, the bigotry of unbelief, or the bigotry of religion. While Bayle was a Pyrhonist in all things, his disciple was satisfied with endeavouring to destroy the Christian religion. Both the master and the scholar laboured with incessant diligence to show that the Christians had always been poor, timid, pitiable beings; and that in the multitude of theological opinions truth was

not to be found. It was from the same source that Gibbon drew most of his materials for attacking morals, for a leading characteristic of the Dictionary is licentiousness, although there is much difference in their way of management. Bayle speaks of love with the curiosity of a natural philosopher and the elegance of a lettered mind. Gibbon shows the brutality, and not the mental sensibility, of the passion; but when he happens to throw round his subject the graces of elegant fiction, those graces are always borrowed from the curious disquisitions in Bayle. To Voltaire also the historian is largely indebted, and they who have waded through these voluminous authors must easily remember moments when they have been struck with identity both of thought and diction. To establish the truth of this assertion it would be requisite to give examples far beyond my limits, and perhaps as far beyond the patience of most readers. Judgments of this nature are the slowly formed results of long and patient study, the conclusions being often more a matter of feeling than the single consequence of any particular instance of similitude.

But if Bayle has turned half-thinkers into free-thinkers, he has also helped to enlighten men of real talent. When Tonson, the bookseller, used to wait on Addison for his Spectators, he always found Bayle lying open upon the table. Johnson was accustomed to praise the Dictionary for the account given in it of the biographical part of literature, yet Addison was pious, and Johnson was both pious and learned, and either extracted the honey from the flower while he left behind the poison. It would have been well for D'Israeli, when tracing the literary character, if he had followed their example, for he would have drawn more substantial information from Bayle than from Gassendi's Life of Pieresa, or the many obscure authors,— obscure because they are worthless,-whom he is so fond

of following. Bayle traced conduct to its motives, and would have guided Mr. D'Israeli to the reasons as well as to the facts of his several subjects. Rousseau is the hero of Mr. D'Israeli's pages, and men of letters are exceedingly obliged to a writer, who draws the literary character from the life of a madman; yet surely Plotinus,* as described by Bayle, would have been a better figure in his picture, if he was resolved that eccentricity should stand for wisdom. The Platonic philosopher was at least a good man, while the contributor to impiety to the Foundling Hospital at Paris seems to have been the very opposite.

* Plotinus flourished in the third century, and belonged to the Platonic school of philosophy, his whole life being spent in a visionary attempt to make the mind independent of the body and to elevate man as nearly as possible to the Deity. The Calvinistic spirit of modern times is but another form of the same folly, which neglects the real and the sensible for a dreamy something, which exists but in the imaginations of religious enthusiasts, who fancy they are worshipping the Creator by contempt of his gifts. To such an extent did Plotinus carry this doctrine, that he professed himself ashamed of being lodged in a body, having so profound a contempt for everything material in him that he would never suffer his picture to be drawn. How childish does all this seem by the side of the Baconian philosophy, the most inestimable gift that was ever bestowed by man upon his fellow-creatures.