After several years of foreign travel, during which he visited the universities of Germany and Holland and entered into relations with the most celebrated savants, de Loys de Bochat began his professorship at Lausanne with a striking inaugural discourse which is alluded to in the following (unpublished) letter, addressed to him by Barbeyrac from Groningen, March 11th, 1721:

'Monsieur, I reply to your letter as early as it is possible for me to do, although at not so early a date as I would have desired.

'I have read with very great pleasure your inaugural oration, for which I thank you most heartily. I found nothing there to object to except the too complimentary manner in which you have spoken of me.

I am confirmed by its perusal in the opinion I always held that you will worthily fill the post I occupied before you, and that, being yet in the flower of your age, you will have sufficient time to inspire the youth of your country with such a strong taste for these admirable and necessary studies that it will be perpetuated to the furthest generations. I desire this with all my heart, and I shall always be interested in this as in every other thing which is to the advantage of Lausanne and its Academy.

'I am extremely happy to know that you have induced M. de Breuil to retract the false rumours and unfortunate impressions to which he had given rise, concerning these gentlemen, with regard to orthodoxy. I read that article with pleasure, and not knowing that it came from so near, I was astonished by the diligence which had been displayed at Lausanne, from whence I supposed the communication had been addressed to the gazetteer.

'I am delighted to learn, also, that you have made known to your colleagues the manner in which the Synod of Dordrecht is signed in Holland. I was ignorant of that, not having had occasion to inform myself concerning it.

You give me great pleasure and do me great honour, Monsieur, in proposing to me your doubts upon an important and fundamental matter. I enclose in this letter a paper apart, which contains what I think may be said to satisfy a just and

unprejudiced mind like your own. I trust that my thoughts will content you, and in case some difficulties remain, you will oblige me by pointing them out. This will be the means both to fortify myself in my principles and render them more clear, or to convince me of my error, supposing that, in spite of the utmost attention of which I have been capable, error has crept in.

'I am proud to see that you hold the same ideas as myself concerning the piece of M. Branchu. As I have re-read it in order to answer the letter he wrote me in sending me his book, I am more and more confirmed in the resolution to reply in no manner to a work that is not worth answering.

'I have learned that the author is the son of a man who taught Latin privately to children at the Hague; that he seeks to make himself known, and that at Leyden he gives lectures on Law to the students; and that, in order to arrive at his end, he desires to attack men of ability. As he has done me the too great honour to place me in this category by commencing with me his attacks against living authors, I ought to be sufficiently grateful to him not to expose him to the pain of seeing proved, by acknowledged authorities, that all his defences or attacks are false from one end to the other, and that he almost appears not to have read the piece he attempts to refute.

'He affects to be a mathematician, but if he is one he furnishes a striking proof that, in imitation of his hero, he has not drawn from the study of this science, as far as the others are concerned, that accuracy of reasoning which many mathematicians lack when they quit their sphere. I have said nothing to him whatever on that of which I speak to you in the enclosed memoir. I have contented myself in allowing him to feel, in general and in honest terms, that he had not seen the lectures concerning the question, nor set forth my reasons as he should have done. I have pointed out some instances where he distorted my ideas, although they were expressed in the clearest

manner.

'Surely he has scarcely studied the Law of Nations and of Nature, although in order to attract German students and to compliment them by the defence of a celebrated master of their nation, he has ventured to break a lance with me; but I have

declared to him that I was not in the humour, and that I did not judge it necessary to enter into the lists with him. He has applied himself more to the Civil Law according to the usage of princes, than to the Natural Law. Nevertheless, my colleague, who is very jealous of the honour of the ancient jurisconsults, has made him understand also in a letter sent under cover by me, that he was not contented with him in that respect.

'I have not seen the edition of the little Puffendorf' by M. Weber, wherein you tell me he has made some small remarks against the letter of M. Leibnitz. When this edition falls into my hands I will note these. The editor is a good man, but he does not appear to me to be a great clerk.

'As for the edition of the Fundamenta N. et G.2 by M. Thomasius, I avow to you that this book has never pleased me. His "Jurisprudentia Divina" seemed to me to be better alone, without the supplements and corrections, which prove that second thoughts are not always better than first.

'I have a high esteem for the author, whom I formerly knew, on account of his moderation and of his love of truth; but because he desired to embrace too many different studies, it has happened to him, as to many of his nation and order, not to be equally strong and judicious in all.

In the matter of Civil Law he has this good quality—not to worship the ancient jurisconsults and their fragments which are so imperfect and so confused; but on the other hand, he has not the taste to discern the good explanations which might be given concerning them by word of mouth, and to join to the philosophical spirit a critical discernment.

'I think, like you, that the " Abrégé " of Puffendorf and the "Elementa Philosophiæ Practica" of M. Buddæus are up to this moment the most useful books of this kind for beginners. But I recognise by experience that the first, with all his defects, which may easily be remedied by vocal explanations, is sufficiently convenient, and perhaps more so than any other similar work which has appeared up to this day.

'I do not neglect to obtain and read all the new things that

1 Pufendorfii Officia hominis et civis cum lemmatibus et remissionibus ad Grotium.

2

Fundamenta juris naturæ et gentium ex sensu communi deducta (1718).

appear in Germany, where this study is more cultivated than elsewhere-for example, the Abrégé of Wolfru, that of Gribner, and so forth; but I have not yet seen anything which merits on the whole that the treatise De Offic. Hom. et Civ. should be laid aside, and an abridgment of this nature substituted for it.

'I do not find much either in the notes with which various authors accompany Puffendorf's book, either in Germany or elsewhere. It has been published even in Scotland, from whence a professor of Glasgow, named Carmichael, sent me last year his edition, as he tells me he desires to republish it shortly.

The promise which I have made to prepare a system of Natural Law in accordance with my way of thinking, is one of those vague projects which one never knows whether he will carry out. The occupations of literary men depend upon their situation and circumstances. A thousand distractions and difficulties arise, which prevent one from doing what he desires.

'But when my Grotius appears, it will be possible, in joining it to Puffendorf, to see very nearly what I think upon the most important matters and questions of Natural Law and of the Law of Nations; so that those who find there what they want can easily construct a system which will come to the same as that which I myself might develop, especially when I shall have published a new edition of my great Puffendorf, upon which apparently I shall soon be obliged to work—according to what the publisher has long been telling me.

'I am also about to reprint my Treatise on Play,' and a volume of Dissertations on the Power of Sovereigns and the Liberty of Conscience, to which is joined my Dissertation on the Nature of Chance, and my Discourse on the Utility of the Sciences.3 All this demands time. I have also determined to join to the new edition of the great Puffendorf an abridged reply to Père Ceillier upon the subject of the Fathers of the Church, having changed the design I had formed of making a separate work, to include a treatise upon various important matters.

1 Traité du Jeu, 2 vols.

2 Discours sur la Nature du Sort. Amsterdam, 1731.

Sur l'Utilité des Sciences.

'I have not received the inaugural oration of M. Otto, nor heard anything of Wettstein, to whom he ought to have sent it for me. It is true that, on account of the bad weather, I have not received as yet this whole year any package from Amsterdam, nor even for some weeks any letter. Nevertheless, I pray you to thank M. Otto in advance for the goodness which he evinces in thinking of me. I await with impatience this piece, and I hope to find in it the same satisfaction which I obtained in reading his Ediles,' his Papinianus, and his Dii Viales,3 which makes me ardently hope that he will soon give to the public a new volume of his Dissertations, whether already printed or not.

'My wife is greatly obliged, Monsieur, for your kind remembrance, and sends you a thousand compliments. She is still suffering from a return of fever, which we have not been able as yet entirely to chase from our house.

'I am, with all the consideration and sincerity possible,

'Monsieur,

'Your very humble and very obedient servant,

'BARBEYRAC.'

CHAPTER XC

THERE is another unpublished letter found by me in La Grotte, which is interesting as a contemporary view of Barbeyrac's labours, and of the esteem in which de Loys de Bochat was held. It was written to the latter from Neuchâtel (June 24, 1722), by Daniel de Pury, and is difficult to translate owing to the involved German idioms in constant antagonism with the French words in which they are clothed. I give some extracts:

'Flattering myself, my dear Sir, that you still preserve some

1 De Edilibus coloniarum et municipiorum liber singularis, in quo pleraque ad veterum politiam municipalem pertinentia explicantur. Francfort, 1713. 2 Papinianus, sive de vita, studiis, scriptis, honoribus et morte Papiniani diatriba. Leyden, 1718.

De Diis Vialibus plerorumque populorum. Halle, 1714.

Letter of Jean Barbeyrac to Loys de Bochat, from the unpublished Collections of Mme. Constantin Grenier, discovered by the author in La Grotte.