White — Elias Bouhereau of La Rochellc. 129 



been lost irrevocably. The copies are not very satisfactory, so that I have 

 not made any use of them here. But the original collection must have 

 suffered loss long before Dr. Travers commenced his investigations. There 

 are constant references in the extant letters to Bouhereau's correspondence 

 with Valentine Conrart, the first secretary of the French Academy, and with 

 Tanneguy Le Fevre, the well-known classical scholar. Not a single letter 

 from either is forthcoming, nor is one noted in Travers's memorandum. It 

 must be stated, however, that, in the printed collection of Le Fevre's 

 Hpisfolae, Pars altera, Saumur, 1665, there are no fewer than twenty-one 

 addressed Ad Eliam Boherellum, amicum suum ; and Dr. La Touche had 

 two others copied ; but the date as copied, 1677, is evidently a blunder. 



It is possible that the letters of Valentine Conrart to Bouhereau were 

 returned by the latter to Conrart's literary executors, with a view to 

 their publication. The collection as it remains, however, is not devoid of 

 literary interest. The following are names of men who " were honoured in 

 their generations, and were a glory in their days " : — 



Marc-Antoine de la Bastide (1624-1704), one of Conrart's literary 

 executors, and who revised and corrected his metrical version of the Psalms ; 

 Paul Bauldry, historian, born at Kouen, 1639, died at Utrecht, 1706, where 

 he had been professor of sacred history ; Moise Charas (1618-1698), an 

 eminent physician and chemist, received with high honours when he visited 

 England ; Pierre Chauvin, philosopher and theologian ; Jean Robert Chouet 

 (1642-1731), who, at the age of twenty-two, was professor of philosophy at 

 Saumur, and, returning to Geneva in 1669, maintained there the system of 

 Descartes, and was "the master of Bayle and Basnage" ; Benjamin D'Aillon, 

 theologian, who, after holding a post at the Church of La Potente in London, 

 became minister to the French congregation in Carlo w, and died there, 1709 ; 

 Laurent Drelincourt (1626-1681), author of Sonnets Chretiens — there is an 

 account of his ordination as pastor at La Eochelle by his more famous 

 father, Charles, in 1651, in a work by the latter, classed in Marsh's Library, 

 R 5. 6. 27 ; Etienne Gaussen, died at Saumur, 1675, where he had been 

 successively professor of philosophy, of theology, and Head of the Academy 

 in succession to Amyraut; Andre Lortie, and Elie Merlat (1634-1705), 

 controversialists; Jean Rou (1638-1711), historian and chronologer; and 

 Jacques Du Rondel, to whom Bayle dedicated the prospectus of his Dictionary. 



These that I have named have an honourable place in the Nouvelle 

 Biogra.phie G^nSrale, and were, all of them, intimate friends of Elie 

 Bouhereau. 



While sorting out these letters, and reading such as were easily legible, 

 it occurred to me that it would be an act of piety towards the memory of 



