Note 4 — TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Toland, History of the Druids, p. 51.—

"This justice, therefore, I would do to Ireland, even if it had not been my country, viz. to maintain that this tolerating principle, this impartial liberty (of religion), ever since unexampled there as well as elsewhere, China excepted, is far greater honour to it," &c.

Never was a man more calumniated than Confucius by the Jesuit Couplet. Confucius Sinarum Philosophus was printed in the year 1687, shortly after Louis XIV. abolished the Edict of Nantes, and persecuted the most industrious part of his subjects. The Jesuit is bold enough to affirm, in his Epistola Dedicatoria ad Ludovicum magnum, that the Chinese philosopher would be exceedingly rejoiced in seeing the piety of the great king.

"Quibus te laudibus efferret, cum haeresin, hostem illam avitae fidei ac regni florentissimi teterrimam, proculcatam et attritam, edicta quibus vitam ducere videbatur, abrogata; disjecta templa, nomen ipsum sepultum, tot animarum millia pristinis ab erroribus ad veritatem, ab exitio ad salutem tam suaviter (!) tam fortiter (!), tam feliciter (!) traducta."