The thirteenth volume has a subject which seems much in the taste of the sermons on the letter O! it is entitled Laus Brevitatis! in praise of brevity.  The maxims are brief, but the commentary long.  One of the natural subjects treated on is that of Noses:  he reviews a great number of noses, and, as usual, does not forget the Holy Virgin’s.  According to Raynaud, the nose of the Virgin Mary was long and aquiline, the mark of goodness and dignity; and as Jesus perfectly resembled his mother, he infers that he must have had such a nose.

A treatise entitled Heteroclita spiritualia et anomala Pietatis Caelestium, Terrestrium, et Infernorum, contains many singular practices introduced into devotion, which superstition, ignorance, and remissness, have made a part of religion.

A treatise directed against the new custom of hiring chairs in churches, and being seated during the sacrifice of the mass.  Another on the Caesarean operation, which he stigmatises as an act against nature.  Another on eunuchs.  Another entitled Hipparchus de Religioso Negotiatore, is an attack on those of his own company; the monk turned merchant; the Jesuits were then accused of commercial traffic with the revenues of their establishment.  The rector of a college at Avignon, who thought he was portrayed in this honest work, confined Raynaud in prison for five months.

The most curious work of Raynaud connected with literature, I possess; it is entitled Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, deque justa aut injusta eorundem confixione.  Lugduni, 1653, 4to, with necessary indexes.  One of his works having been condemned at Rome, he drew up these inquiries concerning good and bad books, addressed to the grand inquisitor.  He divides his treatise into “bad and nocent books; bad books but not nocent; books not bad, but nocent; books neither bad nor nocent.”  His immense reading appears here to advantage, and his Ritsonian feature is prominent; for he asserts, that when writing against heretics all mordacity is innoxious; and an alphabetical list of abusive names, which the fathers have given to the heterodox is entitled Alphabetum bestialitatis Haeretici, ex Patrum Symbolis.

After all, Raynaud was a man of vast acquirement, with a great flow of ideas, but tasteless, and void of all judgment.  An anecdote may be recorded of him, which puts in a clear light the state of these literary men.  Raynaud was one day pressing hard a reluctant bookseller to publish one of his works, who replied—­“Write a book like Father Barri’s, and I shall be glad to print it.”  It happened that the work of Barri was pillaged from Raynaud, and was much liked, while the original lay on the shelf.  However, this only served to provoke a fresh attack from our redoubtable hero, who vindicated his rights, and emptied his quiver on him who had been ploughing with his heifer.