entaries of Caesar
translated for his use; and it is recorded that his military ardour was
heightened by the perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus was made a
hero by the writings of Xenophon. When Clarendon was employed in writing
his history, he was in a constant study of Livy and Tacitus, to acquire
the full and flowing style of the one, and the portrait-painting of the
other: he records this circumstance in a letter. Voltaire had usually on
his table the _Athalie_ of Racine, and the _Petit Careme_ of Massillon;
the tragedies of the one were the finest model of French verse, the
sermons of the other of French prose. "Were I obliged to sell my
library," exclaimed Diderot, "I would keep back Moses, Homer, and
Richardson;" and, by the _eloge_ which this enthusiastic writer composed
on our English novelist, it is doubtful, had the Frenchman been obliged
to have lost two of them, whether Richardson had not been the elected
favourite. Monsieur Thomas, a French writer, who at times displays high
eloquence and profound thinking, Herault de Sechelles tells us, studied
chiefly one author, but that author was Cicero; and never went into the
country unaccompanied by some of his works. Fenelon was constantly
employed on his Homer; he left a translation of the greater part of the
Odyssey, without any design of publication, but merely as an exercise
for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of Tacitus, of whom he
must be considered a forcible imitator. He has, in the manner of
Tacitus, characterised Tacitus: "That historian," he says, "who abridged
everything, because he saw everything." The famous Bourdaloue re-perused
every year Saint Paul, Saint Chrysostom, and Cicero. "These," says a
French critic, "were the sources of his masculine and solid eloquence."
Grotius had such a taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket
edition about him, and has been seen to kiss his hand-book with the
rapture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated
sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction with the
Batavian republican. The diversified reading of Leibnitz is well known;
but he still attached himself to one or two favourites: Virgil was
always in his hand when at leisure, and Leibnitz had read Virgil so
often, that even in his old age he could repeat whole books by heart;
Barclay's Argenis was his model for prose; when he was found dead in his
chair, the Argenis had fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Ma