I had sat down to answer your letters of June
the 19th, 20th, and 22nds with pen, ink, and paper, before me, when I
received from our mail that of July the 30th. You ask information on
the subject of Camus. All I recollect of him is, that he was one of the
deputies sent to arrest Dumourier at the head of his army, who were,
however, themselves arrested by Dumourier, and long detained as
prisoners. I presume, therefore, he was a Jacobin. You will find his
character in the most excellent revolutionary history of Toulongeon. I
believe also, he may be the same person who has given us a translation
of Aristotle's Natural History, from the Greek into French. Of his
report to the National Institute on the subject of the Bollandists, your
letter gives me the first information. I had supposed them defunct
with the society of Jesuits, of which they were: and that their works,
although above ground, were, from their bulk and insignificance, as
effectually entombed on their shelves, as if in the graves of their
authors. Fifty-two volumes in folio, of the _acta sanctorum_, in
dog-Latin, would be a formidable enterprise to the most laborious
German. I expect, with you, they are the most enormous mass of lies,
frauds, hypocrisy, and imposture, that ever was heaped together on this
globe. By what chemical process M. Camus supposed that an extract of
truth could be obtained from such a farrago of falsehood, I must leave
to the chemists and moralists of the age to divine.
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