130 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



the first Keeper of Marsh's Library if his latest successor were to bring 

 together whatever may be known about his life— a life, strenuous, beneficent, 

 enriched by considerable learning, but maimed by the persecution for 

 religion from which he eventually found a harbour of refuge in St. Patrick's 

 Close. Something has already been done to preserve the memory of Elie 

 Bouhereau.^ He has an honourable place in Haag's La France Protestante, 

 and in the Kev, David C. A. Agnew's Protestant Exiles from France in the reign 

 of Louis XIV. (second ed., London, 1871 : see especially vol. ii., p. 140) ; 

 and the late Professor G. Stokes, d.d., in his accounts of Marsh's Library 

 [Proceedings P.I.A., ser. 3, vol. iv,, p. 415, and Some Worthies of the Irish 

 Church, pp. 116, sqq.), gave some information about the first Librarian. But 

 these writers had not before them the private letters, although one of the 

 letters restored by Lord Iveagh, that from M, Ptou, is quoted by Agnew, who 

 also makes other statements which I have reason to believe he learnt from 

 Travers. Something also may be gathered from two little books by a friend 

 and contemporary of Bouhereau's, Pastor Delaizement — Hist, des Peformez 

 de la Rochelle depuis Vannee 1660, Amsterdam, 1689, and his edition of 

 Becherches sur les commencemens . . . de la Reformation en la ville de la 

 Mochelle, par Phil. Vincent, Kotterdam, 1693, 



Elie Bouhereau was born at La Kochelle, on May 5th, 1643,^ according 

 to a MS. journal, kept by his uncle, Joseph Guillandeau, which is among the 

 Bouhereau MSS. in Marsh's Library, but in 1642 according to Haag. Either 

 date agrees fairly well with Bouhereau's own statement (Cat. Treas. Papers, 

 Jan. 22, 1708-9) that he was sixty-eight years old when sending in his 

 petition for the continuance of his pension. He was the only surviving 

 son of Elie Bouhereau, pastor, first at Pontenay, and subsequently at 

 La Kochelle, and, according to Smiles, President of the Consistory. His 

 father died while he was yet a boy. This is indicated in the inscription on 

 the title-page of a college prize (classed E 1. 4. 15) — first for Greek and 

 Latin in the second class — won by Bouhereau at Saumur, 1st ISTov., 1656, 

 in which he is described as Flias Boherellus Pupellensis . . . praestantissimd viri 

 et fidelissimi Verhi Dei in Ecclesia Rupellana olim duni vixit Praeconis fili 

 minime degener. The book is an edition of Pindar by Johannes Benedictus,^ 

 Saumur, 1620. This inscription disposes of the supposition, mentioned by 



1 There are very brief notices of him in the Biographic Universelle and in the Nouvelle Biographic 

 Generale, Firmin Didot Freres. 



2 The numbers 5 and 1643 have been rewritten in later ink, possibly by Bouhereau himself, in 

 the entry relating to his father's marriage, 13th February, 1635. Elie Bouhereau, the grandfather 

 of Dr. Bouhereau, was a merchant. 



^ Benedictus was a doctor of medicine, and also professor of Greek at Saumur. There is also 

 an edition of Lucian by him (2 vols., Saumur, 1619) among Bouhereau's books in Marsh's Library. 



