miferable infected; and although then no medicine was made known to me but trivial ones, yet God preferved my innocency from fo cruel an enemy. I was not indeed fent for, but went of my own accord ; and that not so much to help them, which I defpaired of doing, as for the fake of learning. All that faw me, feemed to be refreshed with hope and joy; and I myself, being fraught with hope, was perfuaded, that, by the mere free gift of God, I fhould fometimes obtain a mastery in the science. After ten years travel and studies from my degree in the art of medicine taken at Louvain, being then married, I withdrew myself, in 1609, to Vilvord; that being the lefs troubled by applications, I might proceed diligently in viewing the kingdoms of vegetables, animals, and minerals. I employed myself . fome years in chemical operations. I fearched into the works of Paracelfus; and at first admired and honoured the man, but at laft was convinced, that nothing but difficulty, obfcurity, and error, was to be found in him. Thus tired out with search after search, and concluding the art of medicine to be all deceit and uncertainty, I faid with a forrowful heart, Good God! how long wilt thou be angry with mortal man, who hitherto has not disclosed one truth, in healing, to thy fchools? How long wilt thou deny truth to a people confeffing thee, needful in thefe days, more than in times paft? Is the facrifice of Molech pleafing to thee? wilt thou have the lives of the poor, widows, and fatherless children, confecrated to thyself, under the most miserable torture of incurable diseases? How is it, therefore, that thou ceasest not to destroy so many families through the uncertainty and ignorance of physicians?' Then I fell on my face, and faid, Oh, Lord, pardon me, if favour towards my neighbour hath fnatched me away beyond my bounds. Pardon, pardon, O Lord, my indifcreet charity; for thou art the radical good of goodness itself. Thou hast known my sighs; and that I confefs myself to be, to know, to be worth, to be able to do, to have, nothing; and that I am poor, naked, empty, vain. Give, O Lord, give knowledge to thy creature, that he may affectionately know thy creatures; himself firft, other things befides himfelf, all things, and more than all things, to be ultimately in thee.'

"After I had thus earnestly prayed, I fell into a dream; in which, in the fight or view of truth, I faw the whole univerfe, as it were, some chaos or confused thing without form, which was almost a mere nothing. And from thence I drew the conceiving of one word, which did fignify to me this following: • Behold thou, and what things thou feeft, are nothing. Whatever thou doft urge, is lefs than nothing itself in the fight of the Moft High. He knoweth all the bounds of things to be done: thou at leaft may apply thyfelf to thy own fafety." In this con

ception

ception there was an inward precept, that I fhould be made a phyfician; and that, fome time or other, Raphael himself Thould be given unto me. Forthwith therefore, and for thirty whole years after, and their nights following in order, I laboured always to my coft, and often in danger of my life, that I might obtain the knowledge of vegetables and minerals, and of their natures and properties alfo. Meanwhile, I exercised myself in prayer, in reading, in a narrow fearch of things, in fifting my errors, and in writing down what I daily experienced. At length I knew with Solomon, that I had for the moft part hitherto perplexed my spirit in vain; and I said, Vain is the knowledge of all things under the fun, vain are the fearchings of the curious. Whom the Lord Jefus fhall call unto wifdom, he, and no other, fhall come; yea, he that hath come to the top, fhall as yet be able to do very little, unless the bountiful favour of the Lord fhall fhine upon him. Lo, thus have I waxed ripe of age, being become a man; and now also an old man, unprofitable, and unacceptable to God, to whom be

all honour."

From the account here given by himself, it is easy to conceive, that Van Helmont, at his first appearance in the world, would pafs for no better than an enthusiast and a madman. He certainly had in him a strong mixture of both enthusiasm and madness: nevertheless he was very acute and very profound, and discovered in many cafes a wonderful penetration and infight into nature. By his skill in phyfic, he performed fuch unexpected cures, that he was put into the inquifition, as a man that did things beyond the reach of nature. He cleared himself before the inquifitors; but, to be more at liberty, retired afterwards into Holland. He died Dec. 30, 1644, and the day before wrote a letter to a friend at Paris, in which were these words: "Praise and glory be to God for evermore, who is pleased to call me out of the world; and, as I conjecture, my life will not last above 24 hours. For this day I find myself first affaulted by a fever, which, fuch is the weakness of my body, muft, I know, finish me within that space." A few days before that, he said to his fon Francis Mercurius Van Helmont, "Take all my writings, as well thofe that are crude and uncorrected, as those that are thoroughly purged, and join them together. I now commit them to thy care; finish and digeft them according thy own judgment. It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty, who attempts all things powerfully, and directs all things fweetly."

John Caramuel Lobkowiz has given a good account of this phyfician and philofopher in a very few words. "Helmont," fays he, "for I knew the man, was pious, learned, famous: a fworn enemy of Galen and Ariftotle. The fick never languished long under his hands: being always killed or cured in two or

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three days. He was fent for chiefly to those who were given up by other phyficians; and, to the great grief and indignation of fuch phyficians, often restored the patient unexpectedly to health. His works were published in folio. They are one continued fatire against the Peripatetics and Galenifts; very voluminous, but not very profitable for inftruction in phyfic." His fon, Francis Mercure, who had fome fame, was faid in his epitaph to be," Nil patre inferior," but falfely. He died in 1699 at 81.

HELOISE, the concubine, and afterwards the wife, of Peter Abelard; a nun, and afterwards priorefs of Argenteuil; and laftly, abbefs of the Paraclete, was born about the beginning of the 12th century. The hiftory of her amour with Abelard having been already related in our account of him, we refer the reader to it; and fhall content ourselves here, with giving fome particulars of Heloife, which we have either not mentioned at all, or but very flightly, under that article.

This lady has ufually been celebrated for her great beauty and her great learning. In the age fhe lived, a young girl with a very fmall fhare of erudition, might eafily pafs for a miracle. This however is not faid to derogate from Heloife's merit, who certainly deferves an honourable place among the very learned women as she was skilled, not only in the Latin language, but alfo in the Greek and Hebrew. This Abelard expressly declares in a letter, which he wrote to the nuns of the Paraclete. As to those who afcribe to her a ravishing beauty, we may upon very good grounds prefume them to be mistaken. Abelard muft have been as good a judge of it as any one; he must have had more reason to exaggerate, than to diminish in his account of it, yet he contents himself with faying, that " as she was not the last of her fex in beauty, fo in letters fhe was the first:" "Cum per faciem non effet infima, per abundantium literarum erat fuprema:" a very flat elogium, fuppofing her to have been an accomplished beauty, and by no means confiftent with the paffion which Abelard entertained for her. But Abelard's poetry may account for this fuppofed beauty in Heloife: his verfes were filled with nothing but love for her, which, making the name of this miftrefs to fly all over the world, would naturally occafion perfons to afcribe charms to her, which nature had not given. Her paffion, on the other hand, was as extravagant for Abelard; and her encomiums upon him have fet him perhaps as much too high in the opinion of the women, as the herfelf has stood in the opinion of the men. Take a little of her language by way of fpecimen.: "What wife, what maid, did not languish for you when abfent, and was not all in a flame with love, when you was near? What queen or great lady did

not

not envy my joys and my bed? Two qualities you had, feldom to be found among the learned, by which you could not fail to gain all women's hearts: poetry, I mean, and mufic. With these you unbended your mind after its philofophic labours, and wrote many love verfes, which by their sweetness and harmony have caufed them to be fung in every corner of the world, fo that even the illiterate found your praife. And as the greatest part of your fongs celebrated our loves, they have spread my name to many nations, and kindled there the envy of the women against me." In the mean time Abelard was very hand. fome and very accomplished; though probably neither fo handfome nor accomplished as, according to Heloife, to make every woman frantic, who fhould caft her eyes upon him.

When Abelard confented to marry Heloife, the used a thou fand arguments to put him out of conceit with the conjugal tie, "I know my uncle's temper," faid the to him; "nothing will appease his rage against you: and then what glory will it be to me to be your wife, fince I fhould ruin your reputation by it? What curfes have I not reafon to fear, if I rob the world of fo bright a luminary as you are? What injury fhall 1 not do the church? What forrow thall I not give the philofophers? What a fhame and injury will it be to you, whom na ture has formed for the public good, to give yourself up entirely to a woman? Confider thefe words of St. Paul, Art thou loofed from a wife, feek not a wife.' And if the counfel of this great apostle, and the exhortations of the holy fathers, can not diffuade you from that heavy burden, confider at least what the philofophers have faid of it. Hear Theophraftus, who has proved by fo many reafons, that a wife man ought not to marry. Hear what Cicero, when he had divorced his wife Terentia, anfwered to Hirtius, who proposed a match to him with his fifter that he could not divide his thoughts between philofo❤ phy and a wife.' Befides, what conformity is there between maid fervants and scholars, inkhorns and cradles, books and diftaffs, pens and fpindles? How will you be able to hear, in the midft of philofophical and theological meditations, the cries of children, the fongs of nurses, and the disturbance of house-keeping?" Afterwards, in the correfpondence which he kept up with him, when the had renounced the world many years, and engaged in a monaftic life, the reprefented to him the difintereftedness of her affection; and how the had neither fought the honour of marriage, nor the advantages of a dowry, nor her own pleasure, but the fingle fatisfaction of poffeffing her dear Abelard. She tells him, that although the name of wife feems more holy and of greater dignity, yet fhe was always better pleafed with that of his mistress, his concubine, or even strum,

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pet; and declares in the most folemn manner, that the had rather be the whore of Peter Abelard, than the lawful wife of the emperor of the world [N]. "Deum teftem invoco," fays fhe, "fi me Auguftus univerfo præfidens mundo matrimonii honore dignaretur, totumque mihi orbem confirmaret in perpetuo præfidendum, charius mihi & dignius videretur TUA DICI MERETRIX, quam illius imperatrix [o]." I know not, fays Bayle, how this lady meant; but we have here one of the most mysterious refinements in love. It has been, continues he, for feveral ages believed, that marriage destroys the principal poignancy of this fort of falt, and that when a man does a thing by engagement, duty, and neceffity, as a task and drudgery, he no longer finds the natural charms of it; fo that, according to thefe nice judges, a man takes a wife" ad honores," and not " ad delicias." "Marriage," as Montaigne obferves, "has on its fide, profit, juftice, honour, and conftancy; a flat but more univerfal pleafure. Love is founded only upon pleasure, which is more touching, fprightly, and exquifite; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty. There must be in it fting and ardour: 'tis no more love if without darts and fire. The bounty of the ladies is too profufe in marriage: it blunts the edge of affection and defire [P]." And this perhaps made a Roman emperor fay to his wife, Patere me per alias exercere cupiditates meas, nam uxor nomen eft dignitatis, non voluptatis [Q]" that is, " suffer me to fatisfy my defies with other women, for spouse is the name of dignity, not of pleasure."

Heloife died May 17, 1163, about 20 years after her beloved Abelard, and was buried in his grave. A most surprising miracle happened, if we may believe a MS. chronicle of Tours, when the fepulchre was opened, in order to lay Heloife's body there, viz. "That Abelard stretched out his arms to receive her, and closely embraced her :" but fome have ventured to fuppofe, that this may be a fiction. The letters of Heloife, together with their answers, may be found in Abelard's works, where more may be seen of this celebrated amour. Love certainly begets much folly and madness among the fons of men: yet, upon comparing the loves of Abelard and Heloife with the loves of the rest of mankind, one fhall be apt to apply to the former, what the fervant in the play faid of his master's younger fon, when he compared him with his elder: "Hic vero eft, qui fi occeperit amare, ludum jocumque dices fuiffe illum alterum, præut hujus rabies quæ dabit:" that is, "If this frantic fpark thall once take it into his head to be a lover, you will fay that