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451 



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oceived with general approbation. It excited a desire for 

 the appearance of his Church history, and the chancellor 

 Boucherat, in order to remove the obstacle to its publica- 

 tion, appointed a new censor. Thus encouraged, he brought 

 ont the first volume in 1693, under the title of ' ,Mc- 

 moires pour servir a 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique des Six Pre- 

 miers Siecles.' A note to this volume, on the question 

 whether Jesus Christ celebrated the Passover the evening; 

 before his death, in which he examined the views of Ber- 

 nard Lami, a learned priest of the Oratory, on that question, 

 involved him in a controversy with that writer, who read 

 Tillemont's note before publication, and examined the 

 arguments contained in it in a subsequent work of his own. 

 Tillemont in consequence addressed to Lami a letter, 

 which is printed at the close of the second volume of his 

 ' Memoires,' and is remarkable for its spirit of modesty and 

 meekness. Lami replied, but Tillemont declined to con- 

 tinue the discussion, thinking that he had said enough to 

 enable those interested in the question to form a judgment. 

 Faydit de Riom, an ecclesiastic whom the Congregation of 

 the Oratory had expelled from their body, a man of con- 

 Mderable talent, but of jealous disposition, published at 

 li;Vu-, A.ri. 1695, the first number (28 pp. 4to.) of a work, to 

 be continued every fortnight, entitled ' Memoires centre 

 K's Memoires de M. Tillemont.' It contained several 

 violent and unjust strictures on the work, to which Tille- 

 mont did not reply, though some of his friends with need- 

 h-" Apprehension procured the stopping of Faydit's work, 

 which never proceeded beyond the first number. Faydit 

 repeated his attack in a subsequent work, but it produced 

 little effect. 



The remainder of Tillemont's life was passed in the quiet 

 pursuit of his studies. He was attacked by a slight cough 

 at the end of Lent, 1697, and in the course of the summer 

 was seized with fainting, owing to a sudde.i chill while 

 hearing mass in the chapel of Notre Dame des Anges : 

 toward the end of September his illness increased so as to 

 excite the anxiety of his friends. He consequently removed 

 to Paris for the sake of medical advice; and there, after 

 an illness which rendered his piety and submissiveness to 

 the divine will more conspicuous, he breathed his last, on 

 Wednesday, 10th January, 1G9H. aged sixty years. He 

 was buried in the abbey of Poit Royal, in which the Ber- 

 nardiup or Cistertian nuns, to whom the abbey had origi- 

 nally belonged, were n<<w u^ain established. 



The works bv which Tillemont is known are, his ' His- 

 toire des Kmpercnrs,' and his ' Memoires pour servir a 

 1'ITistoire Keclexiastiquc.' The first was published in G 

 vils. tto. : the fiist four during the author's life, at inter- 

 vals from 1690 to 1697 : the remaining two after his death, 

 in 1701 and 1738. The earlier volumes were reprinted 

 at Brussels in 12mo., in 1707, et seq., and a new edition 

 appeared at Paris, in 4to., in 17:*)-23, with the author's 

 latest corrections. He explains his plan in the ' Aver- 

 nent' to the first volume : his intention'was to illns- 

 llie history of the Church for the first six centuries; 

 bi't instead of commencing with the first persecutor, Nero, 

 lie noes baek to Augustus, whose edict occasioned the 

 journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and thus deter- 

 mined the place of our Lord's nativity. The history ends 

 with the Byzantine emperor Anastasius (A.D. 518). The 

 is unpretending, and consists for the most part of^a 

 tiniislation of the original writers with slight modifications, 

 and with such additions (marked by brackets) as were 

 needed to form the whole into one continuous narrative, 

 fh reflections as the author deemed requisite to cor- 

 rect the false morality of heathen writers. To each volume 

 are appended notes relating to difficulties of history or 

 chronology which require diseusssion of a kind or extent 

 unsuited for insertion in the body of the work. ' There is 

 nothing,' says Dupin, ' which has escaped the exactness of 

 M. Tillemont ; and there is nothing obscure or indicate 

 which his criticism has not cleared up or disentangled.' 



The ' M6moires,' &c. extend to 1(! vols. 4to., of which 



the iir^t appeared in 1093; three volumes more during 



the author's lifetime, in 1094-5-6; and the fifth was in 



the press at the time of his death. These five volumes 



,nd edition in 1701-2, and were followed 



in 1702-1711 by the remaining eleven, which the author 



had left in manuscript. This great work is on the same 



being composed of translations from 



iL'inal writers, connected by paragraphs or sent- 



in brackets. Dupin characterizes it as being not a continu- 



ous and general history of the Church, but an assemblage 

 of particular histories of saints, persecutions, and heresies, 

 a description accordant with the modest title of the work, 

 ' Memoires pour servir i 1'Histoire,' &c. The author con- 

 cerns himself chiefly with facts, without entering into 

 questions of doctrine and discipline ; and notices not all 

 the saints in the calendar, but only those of whom there 

 are some antient and authentic records. Each volume has 

 notes of similar character to those given in ' L'Histoire des 

 Empereurs.' 



Tillemont supplied materials for several works published 

 by others, as for the Life of St. Louis, begun by De Sacy 

 and finished and published by La Chaise ; for the lives or 

 St. Athanasius and St. Basil, by GodetVoi Hermant ; of Ter- 

 tullian and Origen, by Du Fosse 1 , under the name of La 

 Mothe,' &c. 



(Vie deM. Lenain de Tillemont, by his friend Trouchay, 

 afterwards canon of Laval, Cologne, A.D. 1711 ; Dupin, 

 Bibliothcque des Auteurs Ecclgsiastiques du Dixseptieme 

 .SYtV/f .- liiosi-ajtliic I ?niverselle.) 



TILLOCH, ALEXANDER, LL.D., was born at Glasgow 

 on the 28th of February, 1759, and was educated with a 

 view to following the business of his father, who was a 

 tobacconist, and for many years filled the office of magis- 

 trate in that city. He was, however, more inclined to the 

 pursuit of scientific knowledge than to the routine of busi- 

 ness. His biographer states that in early life his attention 

 was greatly attracted by the occult sciences, and that al- 

 though he was not long subject to their delusions, he never 

 was inclined to treat judicial astrology with contempt. One 

 of the earliest subjects to which Tilloch applied himself was 

 the improvement of the art of printing; his experiments 

 have been alluded to in a previous volume. [STEREOTYPE, 

 vol. xxiii., pp. 42 and 43.] After carrying on the tobacco bu- 

 siness for a time in his native city in connection with his 

 brother and brother-in-law, Tilloch abandoned it, and for 

 several years exercised that of printing, either singly or in 

 partnership with others. In 1787 he removed to London, 

 where he subsequently resided ; and in 1789 he, in connec- 

 tion with other parties, purchased the ' Star,' a daily evening 

 newspaper, of which he became editor. This office he 

 continued to hold until within a few years of his death, 

 when bodily infirmities and the pressure of other engage- 

 ments compelled him to relinquish it. The political 

 opinions of Tilloch were temperate. For many years he 

 devoted attention to means for the prevention of the for- 

 gery of bank-notes, and in 1790 he made a proposal to the 

 British ministry on the subject, which met with an unfa- 

 vourable reception. He then offered his invention to the 

 French government, who were anxious to apply it to the 

 printing of assignats ; but, after some experiments had 

 been made, and negotiations had been urgently sought 

 by the French authorities, all communication on the sub- 

 ject was cut short by the passing of the Treasonable Cor- 

 respondence Bill. In 1797 he presented to the Bank of 

 England a specimen note, produced by block or relict' 

 printing, which was certified by the most eminent en- 

 gravers to be impossible of imitation ; yet nothing was 

 done towards the adoption of his or of any similar plan. 



Considering that there was room for a new scientific 

 journal, in addition to that published by Nicholson, Til- 

 loch published, in June, 1797, the first number of the ' Phi- 

 losophical Magazine,' a periodical which has ever since 

 maintained a high reputation as a record of the progress 

 of science, and a digest of the proceedings of learned 

 societies at home and abroad. Of this work he was sole 

 proprietor and editor until a few years before his death, 

 when Mr. Richard Taylor, who succeeded him in its 

 management, became associated with him. In the earlier 

 numbers of the ' Star ' Tilloch published several essays on 

 theological subjects, some of which, relating to the pro- 

 phecies, were subsequently collected into a volume by 

 another person, and published with the name ' liiblicus ;' 

 and in 1823 he issued an octavo volume entitled ' Disserta- 

 tions introductory to the study and right understanding of 

 the language, structure, and contents of the Apocalypse, in 

 which he endeavours to prove that that portion of Scripture 

 was written much earlier than is usually supposed, and 

 before most of the apostolical epistles. His views on this 

 and other points are discussed at length in a notice of this 

 work, published soon after his death, in the ' Eclectic 

 Review.' The last work undertaken by Tilloch was a 

 weekly periodical entitled the ' Mechanic s Oracle,' devoted 



