The history of BAILLET’S “Jugemens des Scavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs,” or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to ascertain the period of their projected labour.  Baillet passed his life in the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the subject which other writers had touched on.  By means of this catalogue, the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries.  This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and often transcribed its precious notices.  Amid this world of books, the skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most magnificent plans of literary history.  This instructive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his edition.  It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions.  It is a map of the human mind, and presents a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.  The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!

Another literary history is the “Bibliotheque Francoise” of GOUJET, left unfinished by his death.  He had designed a classified history of French literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.  He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!

A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the “Histoire Litteraire de la France,” now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century![A]

[Footnote A:  This work has been since resumed.]

DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious:  but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far as the letter H!  The alphabetical order which some writers have adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life!  The last edition of our own “Biographia Britannica,” feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly interrupted.