Note 2 — BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Reading edition
La vie et l’esprit de M. Benoit de Spinosa was published without the author’s name, in Amsterdam 1719. In the “Preface du Copiste” it is stated that the author of it is not known, but that if a conjecture might be permitted it might be said, perhaps with certitude, that the book is the work of the late Mr. Lucas, so famous for his Quintessences and for his manners and way of living.
Kuno Fischer, in his Descartes und seine Schule. Zweiter Theil, Heidelberg, 1889, p. 101, says:
“The real author of the work is not known with entire certainty; probably the author was Lucas, a physician at the Hague, notorious in his own day; others name as author a certain Vroese.”
Freudenthal, in his Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza’s. Leipzig, 1899, writing of the various conjectures as to the authorship of the book, states that W. Meyer has lately sought to prove that Johan Louckers, a Hague attorney, was the author, but that the authorship had not been settled.
Oettinger in his Bibliographie Biographie Universelle, Bruxelles 1854, p. 1707, gives Lucas Vroese as the author.
It has also been suggested that Lucas and Vroese were two men and together wrote the book.
The authority for ascribing the book to Vroese, of whose life no particulars seem to have been recorded, appears to be the following passage in the Dictionnaire Historique, par Prosper Marchand, à la Haye, 1758, v. 1., p. 352:
“A la fin d’une copie manuscrit de ce Traité que j’ai vûe et lûe, on lui donne pour véritable Auteur a Mr. Vroese, conseiller de la cour de Brabant à la Haie, dont Aymon et Rousset retouchèrent le langage; et que ce dernier y ajouta la Dissertation ou Réponse depuis imprimée chez Scheurleer.”
The name “Vroese” appears at the side of the colophon at end of our translation, but probably as a reference only. ↑