Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
His mind toiled with that impatience of knowledge, that becomes a pain only when the mind is not on the advance. In England PEIRESC was the associate of Camden and Selden, and had more than one interview with that friend to literary men, our calumniated James the First. One may judge by these who were the men whom PEIRESC sought, and by whom he himself was ever after sought.
The correspondence of PEIRESC branched out to the farthest bounds of Ethiopia, connected both Americas, and had touched the newly-discovered extremities of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a premature death. I have drawn this imperfect view of PEIRESC'S character, that men of letters may be reminded of the capacities they possess.
There is a tradition that Peiresc's correspondence, containing many thousands of documents, was destroyed by his grand-niece, 'a kind of female Omar, who insisted in using the papers for lighting fires and making trays for her silk-worms. Peiresc employed some of the most learned men of his time to collect for him in Italy.
A moving picture of the literary life of a man of letters who was no author, would have been lost to us, had not PEIRESC found in GASSENDI a twin spirit. It was in the vast library of PINELLI, the founder of the most magnificent one in Europe, that PEIRESC, then a youth, felt the remote hope of emulating the man of letters before his eyes.
His fortune was not great; and when he sometimes endured the reproach of those whose sordidness was startled at his prodigality of mind, and the great objects which were the result, PEIRESC replied, that "a small matter suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, whose true wealth consists in the monuments of arts, the treasures of his library, and the brotherly affections of the ingenious."
PEIRESC, the great French collector, refused marriage, convinced that the cares of a family were too absorbing for the freedom necessary to literary pursuits, and claimed likewise a sacrifice of fortune incompatible with his great designs. BOYLE, who would not suffer his studies to be interrupted by "household affairs," lived as a boarder with his sister, Lady Ranelagh.
A letter from Joseph Scaliger, who ruled literary Europe like a King, from his chair at Leyden, sent Peiresc off to Verona, where he hunted up evidence in support of the wild story that the Scaligers were the representatives of the Ducal line of La Scala.
PEIRESC was employed all his life on a history of Provence; but, observes Gassendi, "He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into any shape of elegant form; he was therefore content to take the midwife's part, by helping the happier labours of others."
On this subject a very curious circumstance has been revealed respecting PEIRESC, whose enthusiasm for science was long felt throughout Europe.
Was there ever a man, I pray you, more skilled in history and philology, more ready to assist the student, more endowed with wit and wealth and worth, the equipment of any man who, like Peiresc, is to hold the world of letters at his beck and call.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking