two circumstances, principally, that their increase and greatness, as a people, are to be ascribed. But why do not the present inhabitants avail themselves of the same means to health? Is it that they are idle, or are they too broken spirited and poverty-stricken to unite in any public work? Or has the climate changed?
Perhaps it was owing to some defect in their civil polity that the ancients were comparatively so easily put down by the Roman power, which might have been the superior civilisation. Possibly the great majority of the people may have been dissatisfied with their rulers, and gladly removed to another place and another form of government. It is even possible, and indeed likely, that these great public works may have been carried on by the forced labour of the poorest and, consequently, the most numerous class of the population, and that, consequently, they had no particular tie to their native city, as being only a hardship to them; and they may even have had a dislike to sewers in themselves, as reminding them of their bondage, and which dislike their descendants have inherited, and for which they are now suffering. At any rate, it is an instructive example to our present citizens of the value of drainage and sanitary arrangements, and shows that the importance of these things was recognised and appreciated in the earliest times.
ANDREW FRUSIUS—ANDRÉ DES FREUX
Many of your readers, as well as "ROTERODAMUS," will be ready to acknowledge their obligation to Mr. Bruce for his prompt identification of the author of the epigram against Erasmus (pp. 27, 28.). I have just referred to the catalogue of the library of this university, and I regret to say that we have no copy of any of the works of Frusius. Mr. Bruce says he knows nothing of Frusius as an author. I believe there is no mention of him in any English bibliographical or biographical work. There is, however, a notice of him in the Biographie Universelle, vol. xvi. (Paris), and in the Biografia Universale, vol. xxi. (Venezia). As these works have, perhaps, found their way into very few private English libraries, I send you the following sketch, which will probably be acceptable to your readers. It is much to be lamented that sufficient encouragement cannot be given in this country for the production of a Universal Biography. Roses's work, which promised to be a giant, dwindled down to a miserable pigmy; and that under "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" was strangled in its birth.
André des Freux, better known by his Latin name, Frusius, was born at Chartres, in the beginning of the sixteenth century. He embraced the life of an ecclesiastic, and obtained the cure of Thiverval, which he held many years with great credit to himself. The high reputation of Ignatius Loyola, who was then at Rome, with authority from the Holy See to found the Society of the Jesuits, led Frusius to that city, where he was admitted a member of the new order in 1541, and shortly after became secretary to Loyola. He contributed to the establishment of the Society at Parma, Venice, and many towns of Italy and Sicily. He was the first Jesuit who taught the Greek language at Messina; he also gave public lectures on the Holy Scriptures in Rome. He was appointed Rector of the German College at Rome, shortly before his death, which occurred on the 25th of October, 1556, three months and six days after the death of Loyola. Frusius had studied, with equal success, theology, medicine, and law: he was a good mathematician, an excellent musician, and made Latin verses with such facility, that he composed them, on the instant, on all sorts of subjects. But these verses were neither so elegant nor so harmonious, as Alegambe asserts1, since he adds, that it requires close attention to distinguish them from prose. Frusius translated, from Spanish into Latin, the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola. He was the author of the following works:—Two small pieces, in verse, De Verborum et Rerum Copia, and Summa Latinæ Syntaxeos: these were published in several different places; Theses Collectæ ex Interpretatione Geneseos; Assertiones Theologicæ, Rome, 1554; Poemata, Cologne, 1558—this collection often reprinted at Lyons, Antwerp and Tournon, contains 2552 epigrams against the heretics, amongst whom he places Erasmus;—a poem De Agno Dei; and, lastly, another poem, entitled Echo de Presenti Christianæ Religionis Calamitate, which has been sometimes cited as an example of a great difficultè vaincue. The edition of Tournon contains also a poem, De Simplicitate, of which Alegambe speaks with praise. To Frusius was also owing an edition of Martial's Epigrams, divested of their obscenities.
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