latter, however, is rarely
used. In the same note, a printer's error has been perpetuated through
all the editions of Byron; the name of _Barry_, the painter, has been
printed _Berry_.

BAYLE.

Few philosophers were more deserving of the title than, Bayle. His last
hour exhibits the Socratic intrepidity with which he encountered the
formidable approach of death. I have seen the original letter of the
bookseller Leers, where he describes the death of our philosopher. "On
the evening preceding his decease, having studied all day, he gave my
corrector some copy of his 'Answer to Jacquelot,' and told him that he
was very ill. At nine in the morning his laundress entered his chamber;
he asked her, with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled? and a few
moments after he died." His disease was an hereditary consumption, and
his decline must have been gradual; speaking had become with him a great
pain, but he laboured with the same tranquillity of mind to his last
hour; and, with Bayle, it was death alone which, could interrupt the
printer.

The irritability of genius is forcibly characterised by this
circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had united
him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flattering eulogiums: he is
the hero of his "Republic of Letters." Enmity succeeded to friendship;
Jurieu is then continually quoted in his "Critical Dictionary," whenever
an occasion offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable
contradictions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent opinions
may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a _Saint_! St. Jerome
praised Rufinus as the most learned man of his age, while his friend;
but when the same Rufinus joined his adversary Origen, he called him one
of the most ignorant!

As a logician Bayle had no superior; the best logician will, however,
frequently deceive himself. Bayle made long and close arguments to show
that La Motte le Vayer never could have been a preceptor to the king;
but all his reasonings are overturned by the fact being given in the
"History of the Academy," by Pelisson.

Basnage said of Bayle, that _he read much by his fingers_. He meant that
he ran over a book more than he read it; and that he had the art of
always falling upon that which was most essential and curious in the
book he examined.

There are heavy hours in which the mind of a man of letters is unhinged;
when the intellectual faculties lose all their elasticity, a