BAYLE’S News of the Republic of Letters (Nouvelles de la République des Lettres), which appeared periodically in 1684, and for several years thereafter, is one of the earliest forerunners of the modern review with its critical essays on literary subjects. This venture of Bayle is now almost forgotten, but he will always be remembered for his “Historical and Critical Dictionary,” which appeared in 1697. In the modern sense, it is not a dictionary at all, but a great collection of Bayle’s views and opinions on every subject he could think of, the whole alphabetically arranged for ready reference. He was soaked through with classical learning, much of it of the decadent period, and it is unfortunate that some of the most remarkable of his essays are, because of this, out of harmony with modern taste. This does not prevent the “Dictionary” as a whole from being one of the most remarkable productions of the human mind, scarcely approached by anything else in the whole range of literature.

  Bayle was born November 18th, 1647, near Foix, in the south of France, and educated in the Jesuit College at Toulouse. His religious life shows much diversity, due to changes from the Roman Catholic Church to Calvinism and vice versâ, with a general tendency to relapse from both into a mild skepticism which was more congenial to him than either. From 1681 to 1693 he was Professor of Philosophy and History in the University of Rotterdam. The rest of his life was devoted chiefly to his “Dictionary.” He died December 28th, 1706.