Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/474

462 me to dispute readings taken with the aid of such a master as Delisle. But some passages of interest have been overlooked, and the want of attentive revision in small things is a drawback in a book of this academic kind. It is not very difficult to read the conundrum contained in the words "M. de Leybum, auditeur de mgr. le cardinal de Montfort." But the "Libellus de expeditione sacra sub Urbano II." is an account of the first crusade, not of a pilgrimage under Urban the Fifth ; Johannes Diaconus ought not to be confounded with Paulus Diaconus, though both wrote lives of the same personage ; Christine of Sweden was not the daughter of Charles XII. ; in 1686 Burnet was not Bishop of Salisbury ; and the rejoicings over the reported death of William III. took place after Boyne Water, not "au moment où il venait de détrôner Jacques II." A hasty reader of the words "Comme Pierre Victor l'écrit dans le deuxième livre de sa Rhétorique" would take the commentator for the author. In the account of Allatius's emotion at the loss of the Greek pen which had lasted forty years, "ne versa pas une larme" does not give the sense of "tantum non lacrymasse." Mabillon wrote "Animadversiones" on a book which claimed the Imitation for Kempis. We are assured that the title of the book is dans nu Latin un peu barbare. The title is Vindiciae Kempenses, without any barbarism. Madame de Guise is counted among those who urged Rancé to write against Mabillon. If it is so, authority should be given, for there would appear to be some the other way : "Le P. Abbé avouoit dans une de ses lettres que ces avis lui venoient de plus de vingt endroits. Madame de Guise, entre autres, lui ecrivit fortement sur ce sujet ; mais e'etoit pour lui une affaire de conscience." It is scarcely accurate to say simply that the dispute touching the orthodoxy of the Benedictines of St. Maur, provoked by Mabillon's preface to St. Augustine, was silenced by the pope in 1700. The king imposed silence in 1699. In March 1701 the question was reopened at Rome; in January 1708 Massuet wrote his defence against the Bishop of Beauvais ; it was even