of
_Heretics_.

It is rather singular that so late as in the year 1765, a work should
have appeared in Paris, which bears the title I translate, "The
Christian Religion _proved_ by a _single fact_; or a dissertation in
which is shown that those _Catholics_ of whom Huneric, King of the
Vandals, cut the tongues, _spoke miraculously_ all the remainder of
their days; from whence is deduced the _consequences of this miracle_
against the Arians, the Socinians, and the Deists, and particularly
against the author of Emilius, by solving their difficulties." It bears
this Epigraph, "_Ecce Ego admirationem faciam populo huic, miraculo
grandi et stupendo_." There needs no further account of this book than
the title.

THE GOOD ADVICE OF AN OLD LITERARY SINNER.

Authors of moderate capacity have unceasingly harassed the public; and
have at length been remembered only by the number of wretched volumes
their unhappy industry has produced. Such an author was the Abbe de
Marolles, otherwise a most estimable and ingenious man, and the
patriarch of print-collectors.

This Abbe was a most egregious scribbler; and so tormented with violent
fits of printing, that he even printed lists and catalogues of his
friends. I have even seen at the end of one of his works a list of names
of those persons who had given him books. He printed his works at his
own expense, as the booksellers had unanimously decreed this. Menage
used to say of his works, "The reason why I esteem the productions of
the Abbe is, for the singular neatness of their bindings; he embellishes
them so beautifully, that the eye finds pleasure in them." On a book of
his versions of the Epigrams of Martial, this critic wrote, _Epigrams
against Martial._ Latterly, for want of employment, our Abbe began a
translation of the Bible; but having inserted the notes of the
visionary Isaac de la Peyrere, the work was burnt by order of the
ecclesiastical court. He was also an abundant writer in verse, and
exultingly told a poet, that his verses cost him little: "They cost you
what they are worth," replied the sarcastic critic. De Marolles in his
_Memoirs_ bitterly complains of the injustice done to him by his
contemporaries; and says, that in spite of the little favour shown to
him by the public, he has nevertheless published, by an accurate
calculation, one hundred and thirty-three thousand one hundred and
twenty-four verses! Yet this was not the heaviest of his literary sins.
He