Such are the lessons drawn from this secret history of voluminous writers.  We see one venting his mania in scrawling on his prison walls; another persisting in writing folios, while the booksellers, who were once caught, like Reynard who had lost his tail, and whom no arts could any longer practise on, turn away from the new trap; and a third, who can acquire no readers but by giving his books away, growing grey in scourging the sacred genius of antiquity by his meagre versions, and dying without having made up his mind, whether he were as woful a translator as some of his contemporaries had assured him.

Among these worthies of the Scribleri we may rank the Jesuit, Theophilus Raynaud, once a celebrated name, eulogised by Bayle and Patin.  His collected works fill twenty folios; an edition, indeed, which finally sent the bookseller to the poor-house.  This enterprising bibliopolist had heard much of the prodigious erudition of the writer; but he had not the sagacity to discover that other literary qualities were also required to make twenty folios at all saleable.  Of these “Opera omnia” perhaps not a single copy can be found in England; but they may be a pennyworth on the continent.  Raynaud’s works are theological; but a system of grace maintained by one work and pulled down by another, has ceased to interest mankind:  the literature of the divine is of a less perishable nature.  Beading and writing through a life of eighty years, and giving only a quarter of an hour to his dinner, with a vigorous memory, and a whimsical taste for some singular subjects, he could not fail to accumulate a mass of knowledge which may still be useful for the curious; and besides, Raynaud had the Ritsonian characteristic.  He was one of those who, exemplary in their own conduct, with a bitter zeal condemn whatever does not agree with their own notions; and, however gentle in their nature, yet will set no limits to the ferocity of their pen.  Raynaud was often in trouble with the censors of his books, and much more with his adversaries; so that he frequently had recourse to publishing under a fictitious name.  A remarkable evidence of this is the entire twentieth volume of his works.  It consists of the numerous writings published anonymously, or to which were prefixed noms de guerre.  This volume is described by the whimsical title of Apopompaeus; explained to us as the name given by the Jews to the scape-goat, which, when loaded with all their maledictions on its head, was driven away into the desert.  These contain all Raynaud’s numerous diatribes; for whenever he was refuted, he was always refuting; he did not spare his best friends.  The title of a work against Arnauld will show how he treated his adversaries.  “Arnauldus redivivus natus Brixiae seculo xii. renatus in Galliae aetate nostra.”  He dexterously applies the name of Arnauld by comparing him with one of the same name in the twelfth century, a scholar of Abelard’s, and a turbulent enthusiast,