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APPENDIX.

VOL. III.

21

APPENDIX.

No. I. p. 48.

JEAN PIERRE CAMUS

was born at Paris, 1582, of a family of some distinction: he was elevated to the bishopric of Beley before he was twenty-six years of age, and in this situation was remarkable for the conscientious discharge of his ecclesiastical duties: he was much beloved by the protestants, but drew on himself the hatred of the monks, against whom he declaimed and wrote without intermission for many years. In 1629, Camus resigned his bishopric, and retired to an abbacy in Normandy, granted him by the king. Afterwards, however, he was prevailed on to accept of ecclesiastical preferment, and was nominated to the bishopric of Arras; but before his bulls arrived from Rome, he died in the seventieth year of his age, in 1652,

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and was carried, in compliance with his instructions, to the hospital of Incurables.

The numerous sermons he delivered, some of which were afterwards published, are remarkable for their naivelé. One day pronouncing a discourse, which he had been appointed to preach before the Trois Etats, he asked, "What would our fathers have said to have seen offices of judicature in the hands of women and children? What remains but to admit, like the Roman emperor, horses to the parliament? And why not, since so many asses have got in already?" He also said one day from the pulpit, that a single person might blaspheme, lie, or commit murder, but there was another sin so great qu'il falloit etre deux de le commettre. In somewhat better taste was his appeal to the charity of a numerous auditory." Messieurs, on recommande a vos charités une jeune damoiselle qui n'a pas assez de bien pour faire Voeu de Pauvreté." A great number of similar anecdotes concerning Camus, though not implicitly to be depended on, may be found in the Menagiana.

No. II. p. 102.

SCARRON.

Paul Scarron was born at Paris in 1610. He was of a respectable family, and was son to a man of considerable fortune. After the death of his mother his father again married. Scarron became an object of aversion to this second wife, and was, in a manner, driven from his paternal mansion. He assumed the clerical habit, which was by no means consonant to his disposition, travelled into Italy, and at his return continued to reside in Paris, A great part of his youth was passed in the society of Marion de Lorme and Ninon L'Enclos, whose gaiety, joined to their mild and accommodating morality, may have contributed, in some degree, to form the disposition of Scarron. The excesses in which he engaged destroyed his constitution-an acrid humour is said to have distilled on his nerves, and to have baffled all the skill of his physicians. At the age of twenty-seven he was seized with sciatica and rheumatism, and the most singular complication of painful and debilitating disorders; the approach of these distempers is said to have been accelerated by a frolic, in which he engaged during a carnival, in which he disguised himself as a savage, and being hunted by the mob, was forced for some time to conceal him.

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