PEBMONTVAL
Benedictine monk, and was professor of
mathematics in the Benedictine monastery
at Compiegne. At the Eevolution he
joyously discarded his frock, and com
manded a regiment of volunteers. He was
elected to the National Convention in 1791,
and was drastic against the Church. He
edited the Ami des Lois, and sat in the
Council of Five Hundred. Expelled as a
regicide in 1816, he settled in Belgium,
and wrote plays and poems. He tells his
adventurous story in an autobiographical
novel, Victoire, ou Les Confessions d un
Benedictin. His philosophy is expounded j
in his Conjectures sur I origine et la nature
des choses (1821). He was a Deist or
(during the Directoire) Theophilanthropist.
D. Feb. 16, 1825.
POWELL, Professor Frederick York,
LL.D., historian. B. Jan. 14, 1850. Ed. Eugby and Oxford (Christ s Church). He was " already a strong Socialist and Agnostic " when he went to Oxford (Diet. Nat. Biog.}. Proceeding to the study of law, he was called to the Bar in 1874, and in the same year he was appointed lecturer in law at Christ s Church. He was, how ever, rapidly making a reputation as a scholar of English medieval history, and in 1894 he succeeded Froude as Eegius Professor of modern history. He was one of the founders of the English Historical Review in 1885, and his Early England up to the Norman Conquest and other works are of high authority. He was also an expert on the language and history of Iceland, and wrote a number of volumes on them (An Icelandic Reader, 1879; Origines Islandicae, 1905, etc.). His command of European literature was extraordinary, and he even studied Irish, Maori, Gypsy, and Persian. His Socialism was modified in his later years, though he helped to found Euskin College ; but he remained to the end " a decent heathen Aryan," as he called himself. Mr. Clodd quotes him saying of Gladstone : " What an extraordinary thing it is that a man with such brains for finance shouldn t G19
be able to throw off the superstitious
absurdities of the past" (Memories, p. 129),
D. May 8, 1904.
PRADES, Jean Martin de, French writer. B. 1720. He was supposed to be studying for the Church at the Sorbonne, but his doctorate-thesis caused a sensation in 1751 by comparing the miracles of Chris tianity to those of /Esculapius and rejecting all supernatural religion. De Prades was already at that time a close friend of the Encyclopaedists, and had written for the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique. His thesis was condemned by the Church, and he had to fly to Holland. Voltaire recommended him to Frederick the Great, who engaged him as reader and cynically bestowed on him two canonries of the Church. Voltaire called the clerical heretic " Frere Gaillard." In the end he went through some sort of conversion. D. 1782.
PRELLER, Professor Ludwig, German philologist and archaeologist. B. Sep. 15, 1809. Ed. Leipzig, Berlin, and Gottingen Universities. He began the study of theology with a view to entering the ministry, but Schleiermacher undermined his orthodoxy and he turned to philology. He began to teach at Kiel in 1833, and was appointed professor at Dorpat University in 1838. In 1843-44 he travelled in Italy, and he then took a chair at Jena in 1844, and became Librarian at Weimar in 1847. Preller was one of the first authorities of his time on Greek and Eoman religion. His Griechische Mytholocjie (2 vols., 1854) and Romische Mythologie (2 vols., 1858) are .classics, and he wrote many other works. In his later years he adopted Freemasonry, and his friend Stichling tells us that he became very sceptical (and apparently Agnostic). D. June 21, 1861.
PREMONTYAL, Andre Pierre le Quay
de, French writer. B. Feb. 16, 1716. His original name was A. P. Le Guay, but he quarrelled with his family about religion and changed it. He then lectured on G20
