L’Hôpital filled this office during nine years. It was one in which he found no pleasure; for though attached to the philosophical study of the law (and he mentions it as one of the evils of his situation that he had been obliged to abandon a project for collecting into one body the laws of France, both written and resting on judicial decisions), he found the daily routine of trying causes extremely irksome. His letters are full of complaints of this drudgery, as he esteemed it, and express in lively terms the pleasure which he felt in escaping during the vacations into the country, and renewing his literary pursuits. He numbered the most intellectual and learned men of France among his friends, nor was he backward in seeking to conciliate the great and powerful. It is worth noting, as indicative of the manners of the age, that his favourite method of addressing such persons was in Latin hexameters. Accounts of his way of life, statements of his wishes, petitions, &c., are conveyed in that form; and he composed with fluency, and with a competent share of elegance, without great attention to correctness. One of his frequent correspondents, to whose favour he owed in great measure his future rise, was Cardinal Lorraine. The Chancellor Olivier, a man of no common virtue, was another of his best friends, and to him L’Hôpital was indebted for being withdrawn from the hated bustle of the law, by his appointment as envoy to the Council of Bologna. This proved a sinecure; and he employed his time in wandering about the neighbourhood of that city, and writing letters to the Chancellor, full of poetical descriptions, and requests for a more permanent provision away from the tumult of the law courts.