Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/462

BAY training. From the protestant university of Puylarens, in which he studied for three years, he went in 1669 to Toulouse, where he became so captivated with a jesuit professor, as to adopt his class-teacher's religion. The remonstrances of his family, and what is more likely still, a little cool reflection, served to restore him to his old belief; but as at this time heavy penalties hung over the heads of relapsed protestants, he removed to Geneva, and from thence to Copet, where he became tutor in a private family. He subsequently ventured to settle at Rouen, where he maintained himself by private tuition; but feeling a yearning after intercourse with lofty minds, determined on leaving for Paris, where he would at least find compensation for the drudgery of teaching for bread, in the society of the learned. As he corresponded on literary topics with his friend, the celebrated Basnage, who was at that time a theological student in the university of Sedan, the latter, in an admiring spirit, showed Bayle's letters to Jurieu, divinity professor, who was so struck with them, that he recommended the writer to the vacant chair of philosophy, to which Bayle was, after a public disputation, appointed, and which he filled till July, 1681. That bigoted monarch, Louis XIV., distrusting the freedom of inquiry encouraged at Sedan, in his own arbitrary fashion saved himself the trouble of investigation by a decree of suppression; and Bayle, who had for nearly six years fulfilled the duties of his office, found himself without employment. It was in the previous spring that he published his "Letter on Comets," which, as it was directed against the superstitious panic excited by the comet that had appeared the year before, no doubt the spirit of the writer broke out sufficiently to alarm the jealousy of his majesty's jesuit advisers, for license to print and publish the paper was refused. Holland, which opened a place of refuge to the persecuted, and placed its printing-presses at the disposal of his 'Majesty's Opposition,' was true to itself on this occasion, and the ex-professor of Sedan was raised to the chair of history and philosophy in a new educational establishment, due to the public spirit of the magistracy of Rotterdam. Jurieu was at the same time appointed professor of theology. For some cause, not easily to be made clear, the friendship which had hitherto existed between these companions in exile was destined to be broken; and amongst the enemies which the subsequent writings of Bayle were destined to raise up, the foremost in ardour and in asperity was the philosopher's friend and protector at Sedan. In 1682 appeared the answer to Maimbourg's libellous Histoire du Calvinism—a reply which carried the war so briskly into the enemy's camp, that the French government ordered it to be burned, which had the usual effect of causing it to be universally read. It was in 1684 that Bayle commenced his "Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres"—a monthly review, in fact, of works deserving of notice, but to which he did not put his name, from the same disinterested avoidance of notoriety, which, until the publication of his "Critical Dictionary," induced him to screen himself from observation. An article in this literary review provoked the wrath of a personage not to be lightly treated—the violent, eccentric, but accomplished Christine of Sweden. Fancying that she perceived an offensive allusion to herself, she employed the pen of one of her ladies to assure the writer, that if he did not apologize, he might gratify his vanity with the boast, that he was the only beau who had ever insulted the Queen of Sweden with impunity. The summary justice executed a little while before upon her private secretary Monaldeschi, and that in violation of the palace of her royal host at Fontainebleau, was enough to give point to the heroine's missive; but although Bayle may have had little reason to apprehend poison or dagger, he wrote a reply, which not only appeased the royal ire, but melted the queen into solicitation of the pleasure of numbering him amongst those men of learning and science with whom she loved to correspond. The deaths of his father and two brothers happening together overwhelmed him with sorrow, and induced him to write that tract, or lay sermon, against persecution, on the text, Luke xiv. 23, "Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." He himself became so ill, as for a year to be unable to prosecute his literary labours. A pamphlet which appeared in 1690, called Advice to Refugees, and with which Bayle, it appears, had nothing to do, was nevertheless seized on by his enemies, who chose to attribute it to his pen. Accusing him of being in league with the French party—at that moment of Dutch hatred against the persecuting king of France, the most serious charge that could be made—they affected to find proof of their assertions in the writing in question, and so far succeeded in exciting the suspicious of the great William III. himself, and in convincing the magistracy of Rotterdam of his guilt, that the latter, with the king of England's consent, deprived him of his chair, and withheld his emoluments. It is said that the English minister, Lord Shaftesbury, interfered with success to save him from being banished from Holland. Deprived of even liberty to teach in private, he turned his mind towards his great work—the "Critical and Philosophical Dictionary"—of which the first volume appeared in 1695, and was followed by the second volume in 1696. This was the first publication to which he openly affixed his name. Such a work could not fail to afford his enemies handles for attack, but the public came to his side, and insisted on having restored certain paragraphs which he himself had consented to cancel. In point of fact, Bayle, for a controversialist, was peculiarly free from that pugnacious temper which is supposed to belong to the character. He has himself given to mankind the key of his motives in these simple words, that he wanted "not to inculcate scepticism, but to suggest doubts." To a mind of such a temper, the sacrifice of an article found to be offensive, or to surpass his own aim, may be conceived to be easy, without attributing indifference or pusillanimity, or any other of those weak or vicious qualities, which have been applied to the reputation of this eminent inquirer. To suggest doubts in the minds of those who were, in the perverted name of truth, following up the terrible decree of revocation of the edict of Nantes, and covering the land with desolation and ruin, and filling other countries with the wail of the exile, was, in fact, to stay the uplifted arm of persecution, by invoking reflection. That Bayle may have unsettled his own convictions in the process of doubt-suggesting, there is reason enough to think possible. It requires no deep examination of the works of the great men of the seventeenth century, to discover how much their minds were directed towards discovery of some common ground of reconciliation, calculated to deprive persecution of excuse. If Bayle could not bring his mind to an agreement with Leibnitz, for instance, about the possibility of a union between two militant churches, yet the profound respect with which the great philosopher of Leipzig habitually treated the reasonings of his correspondent, would be enough to show the estimation in which he was held by the greatest men of the time. His, in fact, was a blameless life. From his twentieth to his fortieth year, he studied fourteen hours a day. His manners were pure and gentle, and his feelings affectionate and warm. At Toulouse, where, as we have seen, he passed a portion of his early youth, the reputation he left after him was so fair, that the local magistracy prevented his will from being annulled, which, as he died a refugee, might have been done. Sixteen years after his death, which took place in 1706, the Academy of Toulouse proposed the name of Bayle as the subject of a eulogy; but the worthless successor of Louis XIV., remembered the destroyer of the university of Sedan, and a lettre de cachet put an extinguisher on the project. The attributed scepticism of Bayle, taking that word in the rather strained sense of disbelief, has gained strength from a cause for which he is not fairly answerable; namely, the armoury which his dictionary afforded Voltaire and the encyclopedists of the succeeding century. But when the latter came into the field, the ground of controversy had been shifted. Although persecution had not ceased, yet were they who abused authority no longer solicited, in the calm language of expostulation, to consider whether they were quite sure of having the argument on their own side. They were placed on the defensive, and made to writhe under scorn and ridicule. Still, the influence of Bayle's writings on the eighteenth century is an important fact in the history of the great struggle which reached its climax at the Revolution. Consulted in a different spirit, they might have borne other and better fruit. The toleration at which he would have stopped short being repudiated, and the adversaries of abuses gathering strength, they were only too glad to avail themselves of his weapons, and to hail him as a precursor of their own conquering advance.—J. F. C.  BAYLE or BAILLE,, a native of Marseilles, and a member of the French convention, died about the end of 1793. He sat constantly at the top of the Mountain, and voted for the death of Louis XVI. Being sent into the southern districts of the kingdom with a revolutionary commission, he arrived at Toulon just at the time when the town had been surrendered to the 