Chronology.
On the 3rd of December, 1729, died at Paris, John Hardouin, a learned Jesuit, especially celebrated for his condemnation of the writings of almost all the Greek and Latin authors as forgeries in the middle ages. He supposed that all history, philosophy, science, and even divinity, before the middle of the XIVth century, had been forged in the abbies of Germany, France, and Italy, by a set of monks, who availed themselves of the taking of Constantinople by the French in 1203, its recovery by the Greeks 1261, and the expedition of St. Louis to the Holy Land, to make the world believe that the writings of the Greeks and Romans were then first discovered, and brought into the west: whereas they had been compiling them in their cells, and burying them in their libraries, for their successors to draw forth to light. Though he was ably refuted by Le Clerc and other distinguished writers, and recanted his opinions, in consequence of the superiors of his church proscribing his works, yet he repeated these absurd notions in subsequent publications.[522]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 40·62.
[522] Gentleman’s Magazine.