690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE FOUNDER OF THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL. 



BY M. JACQUES BOYEE. 



WHEN recently the statue of Theophrast Renaudot, the 

 founder of French political journalism, was unveiled, the 

 literary and scientific journals were alike full of praises of him 

 and his work; but none of them recollected another pioneer in 

 his field, the modest and profoundly erudite Denis de Sallo, the 

 founder of the Journal des Sgavants, who did for letters and sci- 

 ence what Renaudot so successfully accomplished for politics. 



Without undertaking a full sketch of the history of the French 

 scientific press, I desire only to show here how new in 1665 was 

 that idea, which seems so simple and natural now, of the creation 

 of a scientific journal ; how many impediments were raised against 

 its creator by the commonplace authors whom the new tribunal 

 condemned without appeal ; what patience, what erudition, what 

 a prodigious sum of labor were required from its founders to sur- 

 mount all the obstacles, avoid all the perils they met every day, 

 and give their work a vitality strong enough to permit it, rising 

 repeatedly from its ashes, to perpetuate itself till our time. 



Denis de Sallo, Seigneur of la Coudray, was born in Paris in 

 1626, of an old noble family of Poitou. His lessons in early child- 

 hood were not brilliant ; but after he entered the courses of rhet- 

 oric at the College des Grassins he obtained all the prizes of his 

 class ; became in the next year a distinguished pupil in philoso- 

 phy, and having sustained in public remarkable theses in Latin 

 and Greek, gave himself up with ardor to the study of law. His 

 advance was so rapid that he was able in 1652 to succeed his 

 father, Jacques de Sallo, in his ofiice as counselor at the Parlia- 

 ment of Paris. Three years later he married Elizabeth Menar- 

 deau, daughter of a counselor in the Grand Chamber, by whom 

 he had one son and four daughters. He died on the 14th of May, 

 1669, of apoplexy. His death, according to Vigneuil Marville, was 

 caused by the loss of all his fortune in gambling in 1665 ; but, 

 besides that this story has little probability in view of the char- 

 acter of De Sallo, who was industrious through all his life, it is 

 controverted by a letter of Guy Patin's of the 13th of November, 

 1665, which proves that at that time De Sallo had no thought of 

 dying, and by the testimony of Pere Honore" de Sainte Marie, who 

 agrees with More'ri in placing his death in 1669 and not in 1665. 



Having given an outline of the principal events of De Sallo's 

 life, which was otherwise quiet enough, we pass to the study of 

 his character and work. " He read all sorts of books," says Mo- 

 re'ri, " with incredible care, and kept secretaries continually em- 

 ployed to write down his reflections and the passages which he 



