etecting falsehoods amidst truths, and weighing probability
against uncertainty--holding together the chain of argument from its
first principles to its remotest consequence--Bayle stands among those
masters of the human intellect who taught us to think, and also to
unthink! All, indeed, is a collection of researches and of reasonings:
he had the art of melting down his curious quotations with his own
subtile ideas. He collects everything; if truths, they enter into his
history; if fictions, into discussions; he places the secret by the side
of the public story; opinion is balanced against opinion: if his
arguments grow tedious, a lucky anecdote or an enlivening tale relieves
the folio page; and knowing the infirmity of our nature, he picks up
trivial things to amuse us, while he is grasping the most abstract and
ponderous. Human nature in her shifting scenery, and the human mind in
its eccentric directions, open on his view; so that an unknown person,
or a worthless book, are equally objects for his speculation with the
most eminent--they alike curiously instruct. Such were the materials,
and such the genius of the man, whose folios, which seem destined for
the retired few, lie open on our parlour tables. The men of genius of
his age studied them for instruction, the men of the world for their
amusement. Amidst the mass of facts which he has collected, and the
enlarged views of human nature which his philosophical spirit has
combined with his researches, Bayle may be called the Shakspeare of
dictionary makers; a sort of chimerical being, whose existence was not
imagined to be possible before the time of Bayle.

But his errors are voluminous as his genius! and what do apologies
avail? Apologies only account for the evil which they cannot alter!

Bayle is reproached for carrying his speculations too far into the wilds
of scepticism--he wrote in distempered times; he was witnessing the
_dragonades_ and the _revocations_ of the Romish church; and he lived
amidst the Reformed, or the French prophets, as we called them when they
came over to us, and in whom Sir Isaac Newton more than half believed.
These testify that they had heard angels singing in the air, while our
philosopher was convinced that he was living among men for whom no angel
would sing! Bayle had left persecutors to fly to fanatics, both equally
appealing to the Gospel, but alike untouched by its blessedness! His
impurities were a taste inherited from his favo