parliaments, business associations, and benevolent committees, and even as to juries, from whose proceedings many ridiculous passages might be extracted.
It is only fair to add, that De la Roche shews sympathy with the French Protestants. For instance, he makes this observation: “Christ ordered his disciples to celebrate the memory of his death by eating some bread and drinking some wine. Who in the Apostolical age would have thought that such a plain ceremony would in time be transformed into a mass, and that thousands of people would be burnt alive on account of that bread and of that wine?” He gives this useful extract from the French Synods (which, and indeed everything valuable, had already been given to English readers in Quick’s Synodicon) —
“1612. The Deputies-General are enjoined most humbly to beseech their Majesties to free them from the necessity imposed upon them (with greater severity than has been done heretofore, and even against the liberty of conscience granted them) call themselves of the pretended Reformed Religion, rather choosing to undergo the greatest punishments than to condemn their religion with their own mouth.”
He relates the following interesting anecdote:—
“In the time of the persecution of the French Protestants a friend of mine was apprehended in a maritime province, when he was ready to take shipping for England. The famous Abbé Flechier, who happened to be there (he was afterwards Bishop of Nismes), sent for him and discoursed with him in a very polite manner to persuade him to turn Catholic. The young gentleman told him, Sir, you have expressly declared in your History of the Emperor Theodosius the Great that no violence ought to he used for the conversion of heretics. The Abbé being sensible of the consequence of such an observation, especially at such a time, turned immediately the discourse another way, and spoke of something else to a gentleman who sat by him.”
He also introduces to his readers a Huguenot book, reviewing it favourably and heartily thus:—
“Lettres à un Protestant François touchant la Declaration du Roi concernant la Religion donné à Versailles le 14 Mai 1724. A Londres, chez Thomas l’Etonne, 1725.” [Letters to a French Protestant about the King’s Declaration concerning Religion, given at Versailles, 24th May 1724. London, 1725, 2 tomes in 12mo., pp. 246 and 221.]
This work contains eleven letters with these titles:— I. General Reflections. II. and III. Pretended mitigations in the Declaration. IV. Proofs of Severity from the preface. V. The Severity of the Articles of the Declaration taken from the old Edicts, and reflections upon forced communions [one of the most valuable parts of this book]. VI. Articles of the Declaration more severe than the former Arrets. VII. Persecution gives no right to take up arms against the Sovereign. VIII. Dissimulation is a crime in point of religion. IX. The necessity of running away in the time of persecution. X. and XL Reasons for running away taken from the Declaration. One may boldly challenge the most violent Divines of the Church of France, and even all the Jesuits and Dominicans of that kingdom, to confute what the Author says against the persecution of the French Protestants. Nothing can be more deplorable than the state of Christianity in the Church of Rome. Men are taught to believe such things as are most inconsistent with reason, and to act against natural humanity.”
In addition to what I formerly quoted, he says with regard to his own literary labours:— “Unnecessary abridgements are a public nuisance in the commonwealth of learning. I never printed any Abridgement but that of Gerard Brandt’s History of the Reformation in the Low Countries; and I hope nobody will say that it was unnecessary” [it is in two octavo volumes].
De La Roche’s Autograph may be seen in the British Museum in the collection of letters to Des Maizeaux, to whom he writes:—
“London, 19th October 1717. — I pray you very humbly not to mention in your performance that it was I who translated the controversy between Mr. Clark and Monsieur Leibnitz.”
*⁎* The following is an exact account of his periodical publications:— The first volume of his Memoirs of Literature was in folio, 1710-11. Vols, two, three, and four followed at various intervals from 1712 to September 1714, and these were quartos. He then transferred his publications to Holland, where he issued from 1714 to 1725 the Bibliotheque Angloise ou Histoire Literaire de la Grande Bretagne, in five vols, 12mo, and a continuation entitled Memoires Literaire de la Grande Bretagne, in eight vols. 12mo. He published, by subscription, in 1722, at London, a second edition of his former Memoirs of Literature, 350 copies, in eight vols, octavo; to the new preface he signed his name, Michael de la Roche; the only apparent Huguenot names among the subscribers are Isaac Diserote, Rev. Dr. La Croze, Charles de Maxwel, Esq., and James Rondeau. Next he brought out “New Memoirs