there was a meeting
at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary
intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and
information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could
for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published
but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have
published others had he lived to complete them. M. Menage in France,
and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate
friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was
modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the
best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about
sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his
whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age
of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time
ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his
respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from
Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man
such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to
have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On
the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in
London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid
recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition,
and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of
foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate
commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in
return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course
of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of
Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine
Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers,
Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from
the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our
information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages.
The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six
volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and
Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in
1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians
were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the
earli