of an oracle, and his most unmerited censures as just condemnations. The Scaligerana, accordingly, contains many falsehoods, with much unworthy personal abuse of the most distinguished characters of the age.
In imitation of the Scaligerana, a prodigious number of similar works appeared in France towards the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. At first these collections were confined to what had fallen from eminent men in conversation; but they were afterwards made to embrace fragments found among their papers, and even passages extracted from their works and correspondence. Of those which merely record the conversations of eminent men, the best known and most valuable is the Menagiana. Gilles Ménage was a person of good sense, of various and extensive information and of a most communicative disposition. A collection of his oral opinions was published in 1693, soon after his death; and this collection, which was entitled Menagiana, was afterwards corrected and enlarged by Bernard de la Monnoye, in an edition published by him in 1715.
The Perroniana, which exhibits the opinions of Cardinal du Perron, was compiled from his conversation by C. Dupuy, and published by Vossius in 1666, by the same contrivance which put him in possession of the Scaligerana. The Thuana, or observations of the president de Thou, have usually been published along with the Perroniana, but first appeared in 1669.
The Valesiana is a collection of the literary opinions of the historiographer Adrien de Valois, published by his son. M. de Valois was a great student of history, and the Valesiana accordingly comprehends many valuable historical observations, particularly on the works of du Cange.
The Fureteriana (1696) contains the bons mots of Antoine Furetière, the Academician, the stories which he was in the habit of telling, and a number of anecdotes and remarks found in his papers after his decease.
The Chevraeana (1697), so called from Urbain Chevreau, is more scholarly than most works of a similar description, and probably more accurate, as it differs from the Ana proper, of which the works described above are instances, in having been published during the life of the author and revised by himself.
Parrhasiana (1699–1701) is the work of Jean le Clerc, a professor of Amsterdam, who bestowed this appellation on his miscellaneous productions with the view of discussing various topics of philosophy and politics with more freedom than he could have employed under his own name.
The Huetiana contains the detached thoughts and criticisms of P. D. Huet, bishop of Avranches, which he himself committed to writing when he was far advanced in life. Huet was born in 1630, and in 1712 he was attacked by a malady which impaired his memory, and rendered him incapable of the sustained attention necessary for the completion of a long or laborious work. In this situation he employed himself in putting his detached observations on paper. These were published by the Abbé d’Olivet the year after his death (1722).
The Casauboniana presents us with the miscellaneous observations, chiefly philological, of the celebrated Isaac Casaubon. During the course of a long life that eminent commentator was in the daily practice of committing to paper anything remarkable which he heard in conversation with his friends, especially if it bore on the studies in which he was engaged. He also made annotations from day to day on the works he read, with which he connected his judgments concerning the authors and their writings. This compilation was styled Ephemerides. His Adversaria, and materials amassed for a refutation of the Ecclesiastical Annals of Baronius, were bequeathed by his son Meric Casaubon to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These were shown to J. C. Wolf during a visit which he paid to that university; and having been transcribed by him, were published in 1710 under the title of Casauboniana.
Besides the above a great many works under the title of Ana appeared in France about the same period. Thus, the opinions and conversation of Charpentier, Colomesius and St Evremond were recorded in the Carpenteriana, Colomesiana and St Evremoniana; and those of Segrais in the Segraisiana, —a collection formed by a person stationed behind the tapestry in a house where Segrais was accustomed to visit, of which Voltaire declared, “que de tous les Ana c'est celui qui mérite le plus d’être mis au rang des mensonges imprimés, et surtout des mensonges insipides.” The Ana, indeed, from the popularity which they now enjoyed, were compiled in such numbers and with so little care that they became almost proverbial for inaccuracy.
In 1743 the Abbé d’Olivet spoke indignantly of “ces ana, dont le nombre se multiple impunément tous les jours à la honte de notre siècle.” About the middle of the 18th century, too, they were sometimes made the vehicles of revolutionary and heretical opinions. Thus the evil naturally began to cure itself, and by a reaction the French Ana sank in public esteem as much below their intrinsic value as they had formerly been exalted above it.
Of the examples England has produced of this species of composition, perhaps the most interesting is the Walpoliana, a transcript of the literary conversation of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford. Most other works which in England have been published under the name of Ana, as Baconiana, Atterburyana, &c., are rather extracts from the writings and correspondence of eminent men than memorials of their conversation.
There are some works which, though they do not bear the title, belong more strictly to the class of Ana than many of the collections which are known under that appellation. Such are the Mélanges d’histoire et de littérature, published under the name of Vigneul Marville, though the work of a Benedictine, d’Argonne; and the Locorum Communium Collectanea, ex Lectionibus Philippi Melanchthonis,—a work of considerable reputation on account of its theological learning, and the information it communicates concerning the early state of the Reformed Church. But of those productions which belong to the class, though they do not bear the name, of Ana, the most celebrated are the Colloquia Mensalia of Luther and Selden’s Table-Talk. The former, which comprehends the conversation of Luther with his friends and coadjutors in the great work of the Reformation, was first published in 1566. Captain H. Bell, who translated it into English in the time of the Commonwealth, informs us that, an edict having been promulgated commanding the works of Luther to be destroyed, it was for some time supposed that all the copies of the Colloquia Mensalia had been burned; but in 1626, on the foundation of a house being removed, a printed copy was found lying in a deep hole and wrapped up in a linen cloth. The book, translated by Bell, and again by the younger Hazlitt in 1847, was originally collected by Dr Anton Lauterbach (1502–1569) “out of the holy mouth of Luther.” It consists chiefly of observations and discussions on idolatry, auricular confession, the mass, excommunication, clerical jurisdiction, general councils, and all the points agitated by the reformed church in those early periods. The Table-Talk of Selden contains a more genuine and undisguised expression of the sentiments of that eminent man than we find in his more studied productions. It was published after his death by Richard Milward, his amanuensis, who affirms that for twenty years he enjoyed the opportunity of daily hearing his discourse, and made it his practice faithfully to commit to writing “the excellent things that usually fell from him.”
The most remarkable collection of Ana in the English language —and, indeed, in any language—is to be found in a work which does not correspond to the normal type either in name or in form. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Boswell relates that to his remark, à propos of French literature, “Their Ana are good,” Johnson replied, “A few of them are good; but we have one book of that kind better than any of them—Selden’s Table-Talk.” Boswell’s own work, however, is incomparably superior to all.
J. C. Wolf has given a history of the Ana in a preliminary discourse to his edition of the Casauboniana, published in 1710. In the Répertoire de bibliographies spéciales, curieuses, et instructives, by Peignot, there is a Notice bibliographique of these collections; but many of the books there enumerated consist of mere extracts from the writings of popular authors.
ANABAPTISTS (“re-baptizers,” from Gr. ἀνά and βαπτίζω), a name given by their enemies to various sects which on the
