Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/138

128 of Calvin's familiars. The chapters on his relatives, on his friends and especially on his secretaries, Nicholas des Gallars, Jean Bude, Charles de Jonvilliers, Raguenier, etc., are precious, being based on information more complete than any note of previous biographers.

Concerning the reformer himself. Professor Doumergue has honored me with a special chapter answering my last criticism in this Review. We disagree on a question of chronology and of measure as to the part to be attributed to heart-impulses in Calvin's conduct. My learned colleague is bent on making that part a leading one in his hero's public life and even his theology. To the numerous quotations he had gathered from the correspondence of his youth he now adds some new ones from letters of the Genevan epoch to and from his friends and insists upon the devoted feelings he inspired in them up to his last days. I never doubted that Calvin remained sympathetic to his friends, even in those troubled times to which I had to refer. I spoke of historians, who are by duty neither friends nor foes, and who have to judge on facts as well as on formulae. But I do not wish to impose to-day on my American readers the continuation of a controversy which nevertheless will have to be pursued later, when the monumental work of Professor Doumergue receives its last crowning volume, which will bear the announced, promising title: "Struggle and Triumph."

For the present I ought to be contented with quoting the following extracts from the excellent chapter: " Calvin at home" (p. 548), which proves beyond dispute how much the author has progressed in his knowledge of Calvinian psychology by studying him, with the help of luminous medical advice, on the spot:

"Nous constatons cette chose simple, naturelle, necessaire, à savoir que Calvin a eu le caractère exigé par sa situation exceptionnelle. Certes, pas plus ici qu'ailleurs, nous ne contestons les défauts de Calvin, ni ce côté, cette face de son caractère, qui est l'austérité, la séverité. Mème nous reconnaissons qu'il était nerveux, irritable, très irritable, et que cette irritabilite naturelle était sans cesse augmentée par l'enervement de la maladie, et par l'ènervement plus agaçant encore d'une opposition souvent méchante. Nous ne contestons pas davantage qu'un homme de cette énergie, de cette volonté, de cette clarté de conception, de cette confiance en la vérité, telle qu'il la concevait, n'ait eu un penchant très naturel à exercer la domination dont il était capable, qui lui était offerte par les circonstances, et qui était indispensable au succès de sa mission et de son œuvre. Mais toutes ces restrictions faites, il n'en reste pas inoins que ce qui est incontestable dans le carac- tère de Calvin, c'est la séduction, l'attrait."