brothers, he determined to abandon the ecclesiastical profession, and exchanged his place of Conseiller-clerc, for the lay appointment of Maître des Requêtes. In 1586 he obtained the reversion of the office of Président à Mortier, held by his uncle Augustin de Thou ; and having obtained a dispensation from the ecclesiastical engagements which he had contracted, he married, in 1587, Marie de Barbanson.

When the Parisians embraced the party of the League, in 1588, and Henry III. was obliged to quit the capital, De Thou followed the person and fortunes of the monarch, and received a commission to travel through Normandy and Picardy, to sound the intentions, and, if possible, to secure the adherence of the authorities, civil and military, of those provinces. His services were rewarded by the dignity of Conseiller d'État. In the autumn he was present at the convention of the States at Blois; but he returned to Paris before the murder of the Duke of Guise. He was not informed of the intention to commit that crime; and he believed, from certain peculiarities of behaviour, that the king had sent for him expressly to communicate that intention, but had changed his mind during the course of the interview. In the tumults which took place on the arrival of the news at Paris, De Thou's life was in considerable danger, until he effected his escape under the disguise of a soldier, and returned to Blois.

De Thou laboured to induce Henry III. to reconcile himself sincerely to the King of Navarre; and being engaged in a journey to raise supplies of men and money in Germany and Italy when the former was assassinated, he returned with all haste to tender his allegiance to the new monarch, Henry IV., by whom he was favourably received, and employed in the most important and confidential negotiations. Of this period of his life, and of its ill requital, he has spoken with considerable bitterness in a letter dated March 31, 1611, to his friend the President Jeannin, and written, it is to be observed, in a moment of considerable mortification, because his claims to the office of First President had been passed over in favour of M. de Verdun. “I remained,” he says, "after returning from Italy, in Henry IV.'s camp for five years, except when commissioned to repair to Tours, where the Parliament was then held, or to visit other parts of the kingdom upon business. At last, after the king was crowned at Chartres, and the surrender of Paris, being restored to my library and my home, I thought myself sufficiently repaid for my labours, in enjoying, with a sound conscience and unstained fidelity to my sovereign, the benefits of the peace, expecting that the king would do

something for me, in remembrance of those five years of service in the camp, during which I hardly quitted his side. Throughout that time I was in the greatest need of all things, being deprived of all my means by the war, and having served the whole time at my own cost, without pay or fee. And the king himself used to say that I was very different from other men, inasmuch as I, though a constant loser, made no complaints, while others, who were every day profiting by the public misfortunes, used diligently to complain of their own losses. Which in truth was complimentary enough; but this praise was my only payment for past labours: for the king's temper changed with his fortune, and I learnt, at my own expense, how fleeting is the favour of princes, and how ready they are in prosperity to forget past sufferings, and to take the mention of them by their fellow-sufferers as a reproach."

"For two years, "he continues, "nothing was said of me, until the Protestants again made inconvenient demands, and I was selected by the king with full powers to hear their complaints." These were the disputes which were terminated in 1598, by the publication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes. De Thou was very reluctant to undertake this office, foreseeing that it would involve him in great odium. Nor was he mistaken in this respect. He was a zealous advocate of toleration and his liberality of spirit, manifested upon this and on other occasions, but most of all in the unsparing impartiality of his History, placed him, though a Catholic, in bad odour at the court of Rome, by whose influence with the Queen Regent, after the death of Henry IV., he was frustrated in the chief object of his ambition, that of succeeding to the office of First President of the Parliament of Paris, which became vacant in 1611. To that of President à Mortier he had succeeded in 1595, by his uncle's death. He was deeply mortified at this slight, and meditated the resignation of all his offices: and he has strongly expressed his sense of the weight of his claims, and of the injury done to him by thus overlooking them, in the letter to the President Jeannin, part of which we have just quoted. The first suggestion of pique, however, was overruled by his friends. He was appointed one of the directors-general of finance, after the death of Henry IV., and consequent resignation of Sully, in 1610, and was consulted by the Regent in almost all matters of delicacy and importance. His leisure moments during these last years were devoted to his History, which he did not live to bring down to its intended point of conclusion, the death of Henry IV. He died May 7, 1617, leaving three sons and three daughters by a second marriage: his

first wife, childless, died in 1601. The eldest of these, François Auguste de Thou, is known in history by having suffered death with Cinq-Mars, in the reign of Louis XIII., for an alleged conspiracy against the state, the real object of which was the overthrow of Cardinal Richelieu.

In 1593 De Thou was appointed principal librarian to Henry IV.; and by his advice the valuable library of Catherine de' Medici was purchased, and the foundation was laid of that splendour and importance which the Bibliothèque du Roi has since attained. He had himself brought together a very excellent library, a large part of which has since passed into the royal collection. He was a steady friend and favourer of learning and learned men; a zealous, faithful, and disinterested subject; an able statesman; an upright and enlightened magistrate: and his life, both in public and private, displayed the same undeviating integrity and love of truth, which especially distinguish him as an historian.

De Thou began to write his great work, the History of his own Times, in 1591: but, as has been already stated, he had been engaged from early youth in collecting materials for it, and his own description of the pains which he bestowed on the task, will convey the best idea of his zeal and industry. We quote again from the letter to the President Jeannin. "Having always received great pleasure from the perusal of history, and being of opinion that men are to be formed for happiness by examples, as well as precepts, I came to the conclusion, that by undertaking a history of my own time, beginning where Paulus Jovius left off, I should do what would be useful to my country, and honourable to myself. Resolute in this purpose even from boyhood, I laboured afterwards, in my travels, at the bar, in embassies, in the employments of war and peace, for this one object, that when leisure came for the execution of it, I might have all things necessary to my purpose provided. All printed histories I purchased, unprinted ones I procured to be copied, I consulted the notes of military commanders, the records of embassies, the papers of secretaries to kings. I also acquired a great deal of knowledge from the confidential conversations of illustrious men who were my seniors, and weighed, by their judgment and candour, the contradictory reports of party spirit. Thus prepared, I began to compose my History, while the civil war still raged; and I call on God, who gave me strength and understanding to complete a work of such magnitude, amidst such troubles and employments, to witness my entire and uncorrupted honesty, unswayed either by fear or favour, and that I had no other

end in view but the glory of God, and the benefit of the public. In style, eloquence, perspicuity, depth of thought, I confess myself inferior to many in good faith and diligence I yield to none who have preceded me in this kind of composition; and I refer this point to the judgment of posterity." He proceeds to speak of his full knowledge that the tenor of the book would involve him in broils and danger, and expresses a wish that he could have published it anonymously. But he was prepared, he adds, to sacrifice court favour, fortune, and his good name with the public, rather than, by an excess of prudence, throw a shade of discredit upon a work which he had composed with such lofty ends, and with so great labour. He was not wrong in his anticipations. It was impossible honestly to write the history of the stormy and profligate times in which he lived, without saying much that would shock religious zeal, offend party spirit, and raise up bitter enemies in those whose misdeeds were openly and unsparingly brought to light and condemned. De Thou, himself a Catholic, recognised the existence of virtue and talent among the Reformers, and exposed the selfish schemes and atrocious cruelties, which had been formed and exercised under the cloak of maintaining true religion. This was enough to bring on him the hatred of those who still clung to the principles of the League, and the enmity of the court of Rome, which in 1609 placed his History in the list of forbidden books, and, as has been said, exerted its influence with success in 1611, to prevent his promotion. In a Latin epitaph, which he composed for his own tomb, after a solemn declaration of his orthodoxy, he demands, as the only favour which he has to ask of men, to be more kindly treated by them after his death than he had been before it. Posterity at least has responded to the appeal, and by its admiration of the very qualities which involved him in his mortifications, has done him ample justice for the jealousy of Rome, and for the lukewarmness of the master whom he had well served through bad and good fortune.

The History is written in Latin: the style is good, but it is disfigured by the affectation not only of Latinizing names, but of expressing modern offices by classical phrases, which of necessity bear a very forced, or no analogy to the things which they are tortured to denote. For instance, it would be difficult to recognise the Constable of France under the title Magister Equitum. This makes the assistance of an explanatory dictionary very requisite, and such a one was published by Jacques Dupuy, in 1634, under the title, Index Thuani. The History is comprised in 138, or, as divided in some editions, into 143 books; and, in the London edition of 1733, fills six

ponderous folios. In the relation of foreign affairs, De Thou's authority is less valuable, for it is stated that he received with little examination the accounts which were transmitted to him from abroad: but for the history of France during the sixteenth century, his work is the standard authority on which later writers have relied. The best and wisest men of all parties have joined, since his death, in according to him the praise of strict integrity and impartiality, a generosity of temper which scorned to suppress or pervert the truth, and great diligence, as well as unusual opportunities, in ascertaining the real course of events. It is not meant to claim for him an entire exemption from the errors of limited information, or the faults of temper and prejudice: defects such as these are incident to all human productions. It is to be observed that the heaviest charges against him on this head have been made by those who were of his own religion. The first portion of this work was published in 1604, comprising the first eighteen books, with the letter to Henry IV., which serves as a preface. This, which was translated into French, and published separately, has obtained great admiration, as one of the finest specimens extant of this branch of composition. De Thou published the remainder at different times, and superintended several editions. Prudential considerations induced him to make some changes and suppressions, but upon his death-bed he entrusted a perfect manuscript copy to his friends Peter Dupuy and Rigault, with injunctions to publish it. The passages expunged by De Thou himself were subsequently collected and published in Holland, under the title, Thuanus Restitutus. But the most complete edition is that of London, 1733, from the collections and papers of Carte the historian, which were purchased for that purpose by Dr. Mead. This consists of six splendid folio volumes, with a seventh, containing De Thou's autobiography, and a variety of supplementary pieces. The Eloges of learned men, to the number of 400 and upwards, contained in the History, were extracted and published in a body by Antoine Teissier. The whole has been translated into French.

A doubt has been expressed whether the Latin memoirs which profess to be written by De Thou, proceed from his own pen, or from that of Rigault. They are translated into French, and printed by themselves. They are interspersed with many pieces in Latin verse, which De Thou took pleasure in composing, and wrote with elegance. He composed a poem on Hawking, entitled "Hieracosophion, and translated the Book of Job, and several portions of the Prophecies. The gleanings of his conversation, extant under the title Thuana, are scarcely worthy of his high reputation.