The Devil's Details Read Free

Critical
(London: printed for J. J. and P. Knapton; D. Midwinter; J. Brotherton; A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … [and 25 others], 1734-1738), 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 23.
    16. Peter [sic] Bayle,
The Dictionary, Historical and Critical
(London: printed for J. J. and P. Knapton; D. Midwinter; J. Brotherton; A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … [and 25 others], 1734-1738), 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 23, note [D]. The note begins: “Some Fathers of the Church have maintained the Affirmative [18]; and the Heretics, taken notice of below, who took their names from Abel are of the same opinion; but those who believe, that Abel lived an hundred and twenty nine Years, think it improbable he should die a Batchelor [sic] .”
    17. Peter [sic] Bayle,
The Dictionary, Historical and Critical
(London: printed for J. J. and P. Knapton; D. Midwinter; J. Brotherton; A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … [and 25 others], 1734-1738), 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 27, note [G].
    18. Ibid.
    19. Ibid.
    20. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 381, note [F].
    21. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 27.
    22. Ibid., note [H].
    23. Anthony Grafton,
The Footnote: A Curious History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 197. Grafton could also with justice be called a philosopher, as much of his writing drifts—intelligently and provocatively—into the domain of philosophy.
    24. Ibid. But Scioppius’s account of his youthful run-in with the sparrow is first in Latin and only later translated by Bayle, which surely limited his audience even in the sixteenth century more effectively that an R rating in the twenty-first.
    25. Peter [sic] Bayle,
The Dictionary, Historical and Critical
(London: printed for J. J. and P. Knapton; D. Midwinter; J. Brotherton; A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … [and 25 others], 1734-1738), 2nd ed., vol. 5, pp. 90-1.
    26. Ibid.
    27. Ibid., p. 90.
    28. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 101.
    29. Ibid.
    30. Ibid., note [C].
    31. Ibid., p. 110. Bayle probably was not genuinely worried about his own inclusion in later biographical dictionaries; more likely he simply could not pass up a chance for another swipe at Mr. Moréri, his competitor and bête noir . Moréri, as Bayle makes sure to point out, does not have an entry in his dictionary for the “indefatigable” Adam.
    32. Ibid. The article on Billaut dismisses him with a few brief paragraphs; he “became a pretty good French poet” on whom critics “did not lavish praise” and who “did not grow rich by the Poet’s Trade” (ibid., vol. 2, p. 9). Poets were a dime a dozen during the seventeenth century—literally. Only some ulterior motive can account for his gaining entry into Bayle’s dictionary. That Bayle wanted to surround the first Adam with lesser lights would explain the entry.
    33. Ibid., p. 101, note [A].
    34. Ibid., p. 444, note [A].
    35. Stuart Miller,
The Picaresque Novel
(Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1967), p. 70.
    36. Ibid., p. 71.
    37. John Murray, ed.,
The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon
(London: John Murray, 1896), p. 247. Quoted in Patricia B. Craddock, Young Edward Gibbon: Gentleman of Letters (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 127. It should be said—with regret perhaps, but also with some asperity—that Craddock has not been well served by her publishers. Citations are unconscionably abbreviated and squeezed into parentheses that disfigure the text: (M 247), for example. A trip to “Abbreviations” at the front of the book is required to learn that M stands for Murray’s Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon and not Gibbon’s Memoirs —unless one’s own M , that is, memory , is exceptional. For Craddock’s commentary notes we are trundled off to the end of the book. When found (a difficult task; see my note 52, page 86), these notes often have a reference that necessitates a journey back to the front of the book. Scholarly work is already circuitous enough