of genius, passion, and misfortune; yet their
works have been forgotten, and the history
of their lives has become a tradition rather
than a chronicle.

It is remarkable, as showing how much
of our acquaintance with the subject of
this paper—in England, at least—is purely
legendary, that in the voluminous catalogue
of the library of the British Museum there is
but one work to be found in English concerning
Abelard and Heloïse; and this is but a
trumpery imitation of Pope's poetical version
of the letters. Scattered through the various
biographical dictionaries are sundry meagre
notes of Abelard and his spouse.  These are
all founded upon the only English work of
importance on this topic that I have been
enabled to meet with (and the Museum does
not possess it): "The History of the lives of
Abeillard and Heloisa, by the Reverend
Joseph Berrington: Basle, seventeen
hundred and ninety-three." This is an
excellent book, containing, in addition to the
biography, sensible translations of the
Historia calamitatum of Abelard, and of Heloïse's
letters; but the good clergyman has not
thought it worth his while to consult the
authorities contemporary with his hero
and heroine; and has, in writing their lives,
taken for granted as historical and authentic
all the romantic figments of a certain clerical
rascal, one Dom Gervaise, formerly a Trappist,
but who had been drummed out of that
austere society; and who, in seventeen
hundred and twenty published a "History
of Peter Abeillard, Abbot of St Gildas, and
of Eloïsa his wife." This work was interesting
and piquant certainly; but in it the plain
facts of the case were, for purely bookselling
purposes, overlaid with a farrago of romance
and legendary gossip. However, Mr.
Berrington's well-meaning quarto, and the
dictionary memoirs founded upon it, together
with Pope and his imitator, are all the
authorities we can muster on this world-
known theme. One would imagine that the
Germans—fond as they are of sentimental
metaphysics—would have eagerly seized upon
the history of Abelard for elucidation and
disquisition. Yet it will scarcely be credited
that only three German authors of any note
have thought it worth while to write at any
length about Maitre Pierre and his wife.
Herr Moritz Carrière has undertaken to
eliminate Abelard's system of philosophy; in
which he has done little more than translate
the remarks of the most recent French
writers thereupon. Herr Fessler, in the
true spirit of a metaphysical littérateur, has
taken the subject up in the most orthodox
style of Fog; descanting, and doubting, and
re-doubting, until the Fog becomes positively
impervious; and Abelard disappears entirely
within it, leaving nothing before the eyes
but a hazy mass of black letters sprawling
over whitey-brown pages, in a stitched cover
of blue sugar-paper. The third sage, Herr
Feuerbach (Leipsic, eighteen hundred and
forty-four), is yet bolder in his metaphysical
obscurity. His book is called "Abelard and
Heloïse;" but, beyond these names dimly
impressed on the title-page, the beings they
stand for are not once mentioned again
throughout the work, and M. de Remusat
conjectures that by Abelard and Heloïse, the
foggy Herr means Art and Humanity. This
is lucus a non lucendo with a vengeance!

In France, however, to make amends,
the lives and writings of this unhappy pair
have been a fertile theme for the most
illustrious of modern French scholars. The
accomplished Madame Guizot, the academicians
Villenave and Philarète-Chasles, the erudite
Bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), have all
written, and written well, on the subject
of Maitre Pierre. Nor must we forget M.
Victor Cousin, who, in eighteen hundred and
thirty-six, first published a work from the
pen of Abelard himself, the Sic et non and
the Odæ Flebiles, or Songs of Lamentation of
Abelard, from a manuscript which had been
recently discovered in the Vatican Library.
The earliest of the modern writers upon
Abelard was the famous and brilliant Bussy-
Rabutin; the latest M. Charles de Remusat;
who, in eighteen hundred and forty-six,
published in Paris a voluminous and elaborate
work entitled Abelard. No; not the last
M. de Remusat is but the penultimate; for,
even as we write, comes the announcement
that the great master of philosophical
biography, M. Guizot himself, has entered the
lists, and has added his Abelard to the
distinguished catalogue.

Yet, with all this, the story of the lives of
Abelard and Heloïse remains to be written.
Elaborate as M. de Remusat's work is, it
is more a scholarlike explanation and
examination of the system of philosophy and
theology professed and taught by Abelard,
than a life history of the Abbot of St Gildas,
and the Abbess of the Paraclete. The field
is yet open for a history of the lives and
adventures, the fortunes and misfortunes
of Abelard and Heloïse; of Abelard, more
especially, could his history be separated
from that of his partner in joy and misery—
for Abelard was the glory of his age. Far
removed above those obscure school-men of
the Middle Ages whose names are only dimly
remembered now in connection with some
vain polemical dispute, he was a poet, a
musician, a philosopher, a jurist; a scholar
unrivalled; a dialectician unmatched, a
theologian, whose mouth—as his adversaries
confessed—was only to be closed by blows. His
profound learning, his commanding eloquence,
the charms of his conversation, the beauty of
his person, the purity of his morals—until his
fatal passion—made him the delight, and wonder,
and pride of France, and of Europe. He
was the only man among crowds of schoolmen
and scholiasts, and casuists and sciolists,
who was wise enough to comprehend, and