BURNING OF THE JESUITICAL BOOKS AT PARIS.
The Quarterly Reviewer who endeavours in the number just published to establish the claim of Thomas Lord Lyttelton to the authorship of Junius, instances the following coincidence in support of his theory:—
"Junius tells us directly, 'I remember seeing Busenbaum, Suarez, Molina, and a score of other Jesuitical books, burnt at Paris, for their sound casuistry by the hands of the common hangman.' We may assume that this took place in 1764, as it was in that year that Choiseul suppressed the Jesuits. Thomas Lyttelton was on the continent during the whole of 1764, and for part of that time resided at Paris."[1]
[1] [The burning of the books referred to by BIFRONS not Junius (unless it be proved that JUNIUS and BIFRONS are one, which is not yet universally admitted), took place on 7th August, 1761. See a very curious note on the subject in Bohn's recently published edition of Junius, vol. ii. pp. 175-6.—ED. "N. & Q.">[
But the orders of the parliament of Paris against the Jesuits, one of which condemned some thirty of their books to be burnt, were issued three years before the suppression of their order in France, viz., in the early part and summer of 1761. That Thomas Lyttelton could then have been in Paris is highly improbable; he was only seventeen, and it was a time of war. Will any one take the trouble to ascertain where Francis was? I believe he was appointed secretary to the Portuguese embassy in 1760, and returned to London in 1763.
H. MERIVALE.