iosity, the learned came to study, and
often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the
skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions
of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of
his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most
magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been
preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions,
with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents
a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.
The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos,
yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets,
forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great
division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!

Another literary history is the "Bibliotheque Francoise" of GOUJET, left
unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French
literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the
translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.
He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed
sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!

A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Litteraire de la
France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive
writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth
century![A]

[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]

DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive
bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a
barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes
curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed
as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have
adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of
our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the
writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute,
remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see
so hopelessly interrupted.

When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted,
in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the
Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Melanges t