entitled “The Compendious Library.” His great work is, “A Philosophical and Critical Essay on Ecclesiastes.” (London, 1760), which was a labour of more than ten years. It had been planned thirty years before the publication of the goodly quarto. The English diction is exceedingly creditable to a born Frenchman. The exposition arose from the use which is made in the Protestant controversy of Ecclesiastes ix. 5, to prove the unreasonableness of praying to dead saints. Marin Grosteste Desmahis, the apostate brother of De la Mothe, had denied the propriety of that inference. Des Voeux considered that Desmahis could not be thoroughly answered without an elucidation of the true design of Ecclesiastes, the method pursued by the author, and the thread of his argument. It may interest the reader to know what this industrious commentator makes of the above-mentioned formidable text, “the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.” His paraphrase is, “The dead have no sort of knowledge of what passes in this world. Their merits with respect to it are buried with them, and there is neither reward for them, nor even remembrance of them. No regard is paid to what they loved, or hated, or envied. The influence of their passions and affections over human affairs is at an end.” The commentary was translated into German by Bamberger, 4to, Halle, 1764.
Des Voeux was married to Charlotte, daughter of James Dessidin, and spent his last years in Portarlington.
V. Relatives of the La Rochefoucaulds.
The surname of De Ponthieu is worthy to be associated with the most noble names. Messire Charles De Ponthieu, a refugee officer, was married to Marguerite de La Rochefoucauld in London at the Church of Les Grecs, 7th October 1691. She had a brother, a resident in Portarlington, named Reuben de La Rochefoucauld. To that town De Ponthieu retired on a captain’s half-pay. The children of Captain and Madame de Ponthieu were Henry and Josias, and a daughter, Mademoiselle E. de Ponthieu, who was married to Major-General Cavalier. Josias was named after Major de Champagne, who was his godfather. The fact of Madame Cavalier being a relative of Madame Champagne, accounts for the interest which the distinguished Major took in her, and for his great liberality to her and her husband in money matters.
Chapter II.
DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET.[1]
An ancient and knightly Protestant family of Normandy, surnamed Dumont, long resident in the vicinity of Dieppe, was represented in the beginning of the seventeenth century by Le Chevalier Samuel Dumont. He was married on the 2d January 1624 to Anne De La Haye, daughter of Isaac, Sieur De Lintôt.
Isaac Dumont De Bostaquet, the only son of that marriage, and the hero of this chapter, was born on the 4th February 1632. His father dying in the following May, he and his sisters were brought up by that lovely and excellent lady, their mother, who had become a widow at the early age of twenty-four, and who lived to keep her eightieth birthday in the prison of Caudebcc, a prisoner for Christ’s sake. Isaac’s school-days at Rouen and Falaisc came to an end in 1645, after which date he spent three years at the colleges of Saumur and Caen. He then entered a military academy at Rouen, and finished these professional studies at Paris.
In 1652 he became a cornet of cavalry in the Marquis d’Heudreville’s regiment, in the company of Monsieur De Royville. But in 1657, after his marriage with Marthe de la Rive, he retired from the army. The nuptial ceremony was performed
- ↑ This chapter is an abridgement of the MS. of 281 folio pages, referred to by Lord Macaulay in his History of England, and which was printed in 1864, at Paris, under the direction of Messrs Charles Read and Francis Waddington, whose preface and notes are exceedingly valuable. The MS. title is “Registre faiet en Hollandc à La Haye le mois d’Apvril mil six cent quatre vingt huiet. Continué en 1689 en Angleterre à Greenwiche en decembre. Finy le mois d’apvril 1693 a Dublin en Irelande.” The title-page of the imprint is “Mémoires inédits de Dumont De Bostaquet Gentilhomme Normand sur les temps qui ont précédé et suivi la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes, sur le Refuge et les expéditions de Guillaume III. en Angleterre et en Irlande.” This book has not as yet been translated into English, but there is a good summary of it in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 121, No. 248. [Some matter has been gleaned by myself from other sources.]
