Our excellent logician was little accustomed to a mixed society: his life was passed in study. He had such an infantine simplicity in his nature, that he would speak on anatomical subjects before the ladies with as much freedom as before surgeons. When they inclined their eyes to the ground, and while some even blushed, he would then inquire if what he spoke was indecent; and, when told so, he smiled, and stopped. His habits of life were, however, extremely pure; he probably left himself little leisure "to fall into temptation."
Bayle knew nothing of geometry; and, as Le Clerc informs us, acknowledged that he could never comprehend the demonstration of the first problem in Euclid. Le Clerc, however, was a rival to Bayle; with greater industry and more accurate learning, but with very inferior powers of reasoning and philosophy. Both of these great scholars, like our Locke, were destitute of fine taste and poetical discernment.
When Fagon, an eminent physician, was consulted on the illness of our student, he only prescribed a particular regimen, without the use of medicine. He closed his consultation by a compliment remarkable for its felicity. "I ardently wish one could spare this great man all this constraint, and that it were possible to find a remedy as singular as the merit of him for whom it is asked."
Voltaire has said that Bayle confessed he would not have made his Dictionary exceed a folio volume, had he written only for himself, and not for the booksellers. This Dictionary, with all its human faults, is a stupendous work, which must last with literature itself. I take an enlarged view of Bayle and his Dictionary, in a subsequent article.
CERVANTES.
M. Du Boulay accompanied the French ambassador to Spain, when Cervantes was yet living. He told Segrais that the ambassador one day complimented Cervantes on the great reputation he had acquired by his Don Quixote; and that Cervantes whispered in his ear, "Had it not been for the Inquisition, I should have made my book much more entertaining."
Cervantes, at the battle of Lepanto, was wounded, and enslaved. He has given his own history in Don Quixote, as indeed every great writer of fictitious narratives has usually done. Cervantes was known at the court of Spain, but he did not receive those favours which might have been expected; he was neglected. His first volume is the finest; and his design was to have finished there: but he could not resist the importunities of his friends, who engaged him to make a second, which has not the same force, although it has many splendid passages.
We have lost many good things of Cervantes, and other writers, through the tribunal of religion and dulness. One Aonius Palearius was sensible of this; and said, "that the Inquisition was a poniard aimed at the throat of literature." The image is striking, and the observation just; but this victim of genius was soon led to the stake!