BOOKS AND CHILDREN.

Not long since, I read in a Thesis de aquae calidæ potu, maintained at Helmstad, under Henry Meibomius, in the year 1689, that Andrew Tiraquellus, in French Tiraqueau, one of the most learned men in the country, who drank only water, was father of forty-five children, and author of as many books, on which occasion these four verses are mentioned:

Fœcundus facundus aquæ
Tiraquellus amator Terquindecim li brorum et liberûm parens.
Qui nisi restinxisset aquis abstemius ignes.
Implesset orbem prole animi atque corporis.

Learn'd Tiraquellus, though to water true,
Yet forty-five both books and children knew;
And had his fire not been by water chill'd,
His double offspring must the world have fill'd.

I dare aver that the fact is stretched too far. Thuanus could not have been ignorant of a thing so remarkable as this, and would undoubtedly have mentioned it if he had believed it true: but he contents himself with saying that Tiraquellus bestowed a book and a child on the public every year. Some other writers have particularized the number; but confine themselves to thirty. “ Tiraquellus was no less fruitful in the production of the children of his mind than of those of his body; for in thirty years not one passed in which he did not give the world a book and a son, and if on the one side he extended his name and family by a large number of children, all excellent persons,

which he had by a virtuous wife, he acquired full as large a share of glory by the great number of books with which he enriched the public; but what increases the wonder is, that he was thus fruitful though he drank only water.” M. Teissier, who cites Frey, Admir. Galliæ, confines himself also to thirty. Nor can we reach so far as forty-five if we regulate ourselves by the common observation of those authors who mention this; they aver that Tiraquellus had but one wife, and that all his children were lawfully begotten.

Observe, that in order to justify those who aver that Tiraquellus had forty-five lawful children, though married but once, we cannot suppose of him what the Menagiana relates of one Blunet, who had by his wife one and twenty children at seven successive births, three at each time; for if this learned Civilian’s wife had very often brought him two or three at a time, it would have been the principal circumstance which authors would have observed. But not one of them has mentioned any thing like it; on the contrary, they have told us that Tiraquellus produced every year a book and a child.Singulis annis singulos liberos reipub-licœ daret,—Art.Tiraquellus.