concerned in the religious affairs of England, and were thereby obnoxious to the then prevailing sects, though neither of them had any other connexion with Jesuits, than the {313} intercourse of friendship and esteem. But Coudrette a Jesuit! How can this be credited? New personages in comedies are introduced to excite new interest; and was Coudrette ever before named in this island? Indeed his name is so very obscure, that it is difficult to find, even a Frenchman, who ever heard it. It has however obtained a small niche in two French historical dictionaries, the first of which, _par une societé des gens-de-lettres_, though friendly to the Jansenists, styles Coudrette _un ennemi acharné des Jesuits_. The other, by the well known abbé Feller, a man of very general information, asserts, that Coudrette had been from his youth, _de tres bonne heure_, a violent partisan of Jansenism, closely connected with the abbé Boursier, one of the heroes of the sect. In 1735 and 1738, during the ministry of cardinal de Fleury, he was confined by a _lettre de cachet_ first at Vincennes, then in the Bastille, for his intrigues, cabals, and libels against the church; and of course he was canonized as a saint in the _Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques_, the well known {314} Jansenistical gazette. When the parliaments denounced open war against the Jesuits, he came forward a volunteer in the cause, and printed his _Histoire general des Jesuites_ in the course of 1761: but Coudrette and his history were perfectly forgotten in France before 1762. How could a copy of it have escaped into England? It has found its proper repository on the shelves of Laicus, or his employer[115]. I have done with Laicus and his authorities. He promises a commentary upon his own performance. It has not, I believe, yet appeared, {315} even in the Times. Mine shall be very short.