whose work he publishes. Calvin has confounded the two
Senecas, the father and the son; the rhetorician and the philosopher, of
both of whom he makes but one literary personage, living the very
patriarchal life of more than one hundred fifteen years.

We must pardon Varillas for having, with sufficient acrimony, brought
into relief this mistake of the biographer of Seneca the philosopher,
and not, like the historians of the Reformation, become vexed at the
proud tone of the French historian. Had the fault been committed by a
Catholic, where is the Protestant who would not have done the same thing
as Varillas?

The literary work which Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has
interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a
literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have
supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so
numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so
replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians,
moralists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and philologists.

Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his
memory. His work is a gallery, open to all the modern and ancient
glories of literature, whom the commentator calls to his aid, often for
the elucidation of a doubtful passage. The young rhetorician glorifies
his country, and when upon his march he encounters some historic name,
by which his idea can be illustrated, he hastens to proclaim it, with
all its titles to admiration. He there salutes Bude in magnificent
terms: "Bude, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom,
at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition." The portrait
which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: "Seneca,
whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his
diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves
on, free and unembarrassed." It may be seen that the student had the
honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of
Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective allegory; for what
reader could have divined that the writer designed to represent Francis
I, under the name of Nero, as addressed by the Cordovan? The treatise
could produce no sensation, and, like the work of Seneca, must be
shipwrecked in that sea of the passions which, at the two epochs, raged
around both writers.

Calvin experienced