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 he went, for what reason is not known, to St. Maixent, in Poitou, where he published a tragedy entitled ‘Stilico.’ He next became professor of humanities at Toulouse, where he entered with such zeal into the quarrels between the university and the authorities of the city that he was soon compelled to resign his post. Declining an invitation to teach philosophy at Montpellier, he became a candidate for the professorship of oratory at Nîmes, the election to which was to be decided by the result of a public competition. Dempster was successful, receiving the suffrages of all but one out of the twenty-four judges. One of the defeated competitors, however, Johann Jacob Grasser, of Basle, with the help of an armed band of his partisans, made a murderous attack upon his rival, who, however, was successful in defending his life. This, of course, is Dempster's version of the story, but it may be suspected that he was not altogether the innocent victim that he represents himself to have been. The municipal council suspended Dempster from his professorship, and brought an action against him in the local court. At the same time Grasser was thrown into prison, but liberated through the influence of his partisans in the council. Subsequently, however, the friends of Dempster, as the latter himself records, caused Grasser to be again imprisoned at Montpellier and at Paris. The accusation against Dempster was unsuccessful, and the prosecutors appealed to the parliament of Toulouse, which, after two years' delay, pronounced Dempster innocent of the charges against him. The accusers were condemned to pay a heavy fine in addition to the costs of the defence; several of the witnesses were sentenced to banishment, and a libel which had been published against Dempster was ordered to be publicly burnt by the hangman.

After this triumphant vindication of his character, Dempster became tutor to Arthur l'Espinay, the son of the Marshal de Saint Luc. He was preparing to set out with his pupil on a tour in Spain, when, in consequence of a quarrel with a relative of the marshal, he was dismissed from his post. He then paid a visit to Scotland, in order to try to obtain help from his relatives, and, he also says, to institute proceedings for the recovery of his inheritance. At Perth, he says, he held a public discussion for three days on controverted questions of theology with the celebrated William Cowper, then a presbyterian minister, but afterwards bishop of Galloway. It is needless to say that Cowper was miserably defeated; indeed, Dempster adds the remarkable statement that only the influence of powerful friends saved him from legal punishment for having so ineffectually defended the protestant faith. Dempster further says that Cowper afterwards published the discussion, but being ashamed to confess that his opponent was only a jurist, not a professed theologian, he suppressed the mention of his name. It is certainly a fact that Cowper published in 1613 a ‘Seven days’ [not three days] ‘Conference between a Catholicke Christian and a Catholicke Romane,’ but the assertion that the ‘Catholicke Romane’ referred to was Dempster is a mere fiction. Cowper's book is not a report of a real debate, but an imaginary dialogue, ending with the conversion of the Roman catholic to protestantism. To the machinations of his vanquished opponent Dempster ascribes the failure of his petition to the Scottish parliament for the restoration of his ancestral estates.

Finding that his relatives in Scotland were too poor to afford him any assistance, or refused to do so on account of his religion, he betook himself to Paris, where he spent seven prosperous years as professor in the Collèges des Grassins, de Lisieux, and de Plessy. Here he published, among other learned works, his enlarged edition of Rosinus's ‘Antiquitatum Romanarum Corpus absolutissimum,’ dedicated to James I of England, who invited him to come to London, offering him the title of historian to the king. Dempster gladly availed himself of the invitation, as circumstances had occurred which rendered his immediate departure from Paris a matter of necessity. His own statement is merely that a certain Norman, named Jean Robillard, had broken into his lodging by night with a band of soldiers with intent to take his life. The assailants were disarmed and given into custody, but Dempster, fearing to be exposed to similar perils in future, resolved to lose no time in putting himself out of the reach of his enemies. A much fuller, and probably more accurate, version of the story is given by Giovanni Vittorio Rossi (better known under his Latin name of Janus Nicius Erythræus). According to this account, the president of the Collège de Beauvais, having occasion to be absent from Paris for a short time, appointed Dempster as his substitute. One of the pupils of the school having challenged another to a duel, Dempster birched the offender before the whole class. In order to be revenged for this punishment the youth brought into the college three of his relatives, officers of the king's guard, who undertook to subject the schoolmaster to severe chastisement. When Dempster perceived their errand, he called the other masters and the college servants to his assistance. The assail-