oversial, geographical, and moral; so
that the reader might not have any ground for the complaint so often
brought against modern German scholars, that they afford no apparatus to
help the busy student when consulting their works. Rosweid's idea as to
the manner in which those volumes should be compiled was no less
original. He proposed first of all to bring together all the lives of
Saints that had been ever published by previous hagiographers; which he
would then compare with ancient manuscripts, as he was convinced that
considerable interpolation had been made in the narratives. In addition,
he desired to seek in all directions for new materials; and to
illustrate all the lives hitherto published or unpublished, by
explaining obscurities, reconciling difficulties, and shedding upon
their darker details the light of a more modern criticism. Rosweid's
fame was European in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and
his proposal attracted the widest attention. To the best judges it
seemed utterly impracticable. Cardinal Bellarmine heard of it, and
proved his keenness and skill in literary criticism by asking what age
the man was who proposed such an undertaking. When informed that he was
about forty, "Ask him," said the learned Cardinal, "whether he has
discovered that he will live two hundred years; for within no smaller
space can such a work be worthily performed by one man,"--an unconscious
prophecy, which has found in fact a most ample fulfilment; for death
snatched away Rosweid before he could do more towards his great
undertaking than accumulate much precious material; while more than two
hundred years have elapsed, and yet the work is not completed.

After the death of Rosweid, the Society of Jesus, which now regarded the
undertaking as a corporate one, entrusted its continuation to Bollandus.
He was thirty-three years of age, and had distinguished himself in every
branch of the Society's activity as a teacher, a divine, a scholar, and
an orator. In this last capacity, indeed, it was his duty to address
Latin sermons to the aristocracy of Antwerp, a fact which betokens a
much more learned audience than now falls to any preacher's lot. He was
a wise director of conscience too, a sphere of duty in which the Jesuits
have always delighted. A story is told illustrating his skill in this
direction. One of the highest magistrates of the city, being suddenly
seized with a fatal illness, despatched a messenger for Bo