Works
At Rotterdam Bayle published his famous Pensées diverses sur la comète de 1680 in 1682, as well as his critique of Louis Maimbourg's work on the history of Calvinism. The reputation achieved by this critique stirred the envy of Bayle's Calvinist colleague of both Sedan and Rotterdam, Pierre Jurieu, who had written a book on the same subject.
Between 1684 and 1687, Bayle published his Nouvelles de la république des lettres, a journal of literary criticism. In 1686, Bayle published the first two volumes of Philosophical Commentary, an early plea for toleration in religious matters. This was followed by volumes three and four in 1687 and 1688.
In 1690 there appeared a work entitled Avis important aux refugies, which Jurieu attributed to Bayle, whom he attacked with great animosity. After losing his chair, Bayle engaged in the preparation of his massive Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary), which actually constituted one of the first encyclopaedias (before the term had come into wide circulation) of ideas and their originators. The Dictionary attempted to put forth Bayle's view that much that was considered to be truth was actually just opinion, and that gullibility and stubbornness were prevalent. The Dictionary would remain an important scholarly work for several generations after its publication.
The remaining years of Bayle's life were devoted to miscellaneous writings, arising in many instances out of criticisms made of his Dictionary.
Voltaire, in the prelude to his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne calls Bayle "le plus grand dialecticien qui ait jamais écrit", or the greatest dialectitian to have ever written.
The Nouvelles de la république des lettres was the first thorough-going attempt to popularise literature, and it was eminently successful. His multi-volume Historical and Critical Dictionary, however, constitutes Bayle's masterpiece. The English translation of "The Dictionary", by Bayle's fellow Huguenot exile Pierre des Maizeaux, was named by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson as one of the one hundred foundational texts that formed the first collection of the Library of Congress.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the line, All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;Mis then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)