Coste came, tutor to the Mashams, with whom Locke then lived; later still, for the company was growing less select, eccentric Thémiseul de SainteHyacinthe, alias Paul Cordonnier, a converted dragoon, to whom partly France owes her translation of Robinson Crusoe; and lastly, in 1726, the old Huguenots who still repaired to the familiar tavern, saw, fresh from the Bastille, his conversation sparkling with wit that must have taught them what a change had come over France, since the death of the old persecuting King, M. de Voltaire.

In such coffee-houses, in Rotterdam and in London, during that eventful period between the Revocation and the death of William III., all the eighteenth century was thought out. Alone the refugees were able to establish a faithful exchange of ideas between England and the Continent. Men of great learning would not have done the work so well. These alone had the necessary qualities and shortcomings: the journalist's curiosity, eager to know, caring little about the relative importance of what he knows; and the teacher and popularizer's lucidity not unmixed with shallowness. Thanks to them, the literary journals of Holland circulated in England and English thought found its way into France. The correspondents of those papers would anticipate the modern methods of the reporter, to the extent that, to Locke's great surprise, a conversation of his found its way into the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres. Better than Bayle and Le Clerc, indefatigable Desmaizeaux is the characterOriginal Letters of Locke, etc., Lond., 1832, 68-69.

I

istic Refugee journalist, corresponding with most European scholars, affording them réclame, publishing abstracts of their books, writing obituary notices, editing posthumous works, and withal incapable of giving utterance to a single original idea. One grave defect they had in common with all the Huguenots, a supreme contempt of art. When Bossuet's Histoire des Variations appeared, the Refugees thought it long and tedious.' Their knowledge, like a good reviewer's, is universal. Pierre Bayle, their chief, could never write a book, but cast his revolutionary thoughts into the uncouth shape of an Encyclopædia. The supreme masterpiece of refugee thought is the Critical Dictionary; nor was it the only Dictionary of Biography that they produced-witness Chauffepié's Dictionary, Ancillon's Mémoires, Desmaizeaux's Lives, Le Clerc's Eloges. Their newspapers are stepping-stones to Dictionaries; and their Dictionaries in sum are only collections of anas. Such is the spirit of the eighteenth century. While literature and works of imagination are in the background, the foreground is taken up by anecdotes and mémoires mixed up with disquieting discussions on philosophy, theology and politics. To usher in the nineteenth century, a readjustment of traditional doctrines was necessary, and this the eighteenth century admirably effected. But the refugees had made the task easy. They worked also in the eighteenth century spirit,

'REBELLIAU, 313. Le premier défaut du livre de M. Bossuet, c'est la longueur; il demeurera enseveli sous sa grandeur et sous ses ruines. JURIEU, Lett. Past. III. lett. vi, 122.

proving not only compilers, but reasoners; to them must be ascribed the development in Europe of criticism; and lastly, they made the reading public familiar with doctrines that hitherto had been confined to the schools. To others in France and in England it remained to give those popularized doctrines a literary expression.

Another trait of the refugees is their cosmopoli

tism. Some were born in Geneva, some in France; like another Semitic tribe, they roamed about Switzerland, Holland, England. After preaching in London, Le Clerc settles in Amsterdam; before living at Oates with the Mashams, Coste had been a pastor in France, a printer's corrector in Amsterdam, and, after a long stay in England, he ultimately died in Paris. A barrister in early life, Rapin Thoyras flies to England after the Revocation, then to Holland where he becomes a soldier, follows the Prince of Orange on his expedition against his father-inlaw, then Schomberg in Ireland, becomes tutor to the Duke of Portland's children, then goes back once more to The Hague and ends a chequered career at Wesel. The learned societies, owing to the medium of the refugees, correspond. Such refugees as have remained on the Continent show their desire to have information about England. 'L'Angleterre," wrote Bayle, "est le païs du monde où les profonds raisonnemens métaphysiques et physiques, assaisonnés d'érudition, sont les plus goutés et à la mode." For Jurieu: "L'Angleterre est le lieu

2

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'See in Bayle's Lettres Choisies letters from the London and the Dublin Royal Societies.

du monde le plus rempli d'esprits inquiets, aimant les changements, et qui aspirent aux choses nouvelles.' The refugees credited England with their own characteristics turbulency and the thirst for scientific information.

3

An important fact is that these refugees, as their predecessors had done,' learned English; hardly any one in Europe 3 besides them knew English. In one of Florio's Anglo-Italian dialogues, an Italian in England, asked to give his opinion of the language, replied that it was worthless beyond Dover. Ancillon regretted that the English authors chose to write in English as no one abroad could read them. Even such as learned English by necessity speedily forgot it. As late as 1718, Le Clerc deplored the small number of scholars on the Continent able to read

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5

English. " Alone the Huguenots felt how useful the knowledge of such a language would be: "Mon malheur est grand," exclaimed Bayle, “de n'entendre pas l'Anglois; car il y a en cette langue beaucoup de livres qui me seraient très utiles." Unlike SaintEvremond, the Huguenots, as soon as they were in England, learned English. The first time Evelyn saw Allix, the pastor of Charenton, he and the

I

Lett. Part IV., Lett. xiv, 329.

'BOCHART, see quotation on p. 15.

Du Jon himself translated

into English his De pictura veterum. (Dict. Nat. Biog.)

3

This fact is sufficiently established by Jusserand's French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.

4 EINSTEIN, 103.

5JUSSERAND. Sh. en France, etc., 97.

'Mons' Boyd .. has forgott, I believe, most of his English. Orig. Lett. of Locke, etc., 229.

Bibl. Choisie, vol. 28, Pref.
Lettres Choisies, II., 737.

Archbishop Sancroft were conversing in Latin ;' three years afterwards, he had so thoroughly mastered English that, like Voltaire later, he was able to write a book in English."

2

1 Diary, 8.7.1686.

HAAG. art. Allix. For other instances, like that of Motteux, in TEXTE, ch. I. To which let us add, for the period preceding 1688, the translations of the Eikon Basilike noticed above.