Tiraqueau, Andrew

, or Tiraquellus, a learned French lawyer of the sixteenth century, was a native of Poitou, and became a counsellor in the parliament of Bour­*Jeaux, and afterwards in that of Paris. He laboured very diligently to drive chicanery from the bar, and being employed by Francis I. and Henry II. in many affairs of consequence, approved himself in all things a man of strict and singular integrity. Though he must have been much employed in public business, he was so diligent with his pen that his works amount to seven volumes in folio. Frank. 1597. Tiraqueau died, at a very advanced age, in 1574. Among his numerous works, those particularly noticed are, 1. “Commentaries on Alexander ab Alexandro,” published separately, in two volumes folio, Leyden, 1673. 2. “Commentarius de Nobilitate et jure primogenitorum,” Leyden, 1617, folio. He was a married man, and it is said that he produced a book and a child every year, till there were twenty of each, or as some say thirty. This, with the circumstance of his being a water-drinker, occasioned the following jocular epitaph: “Hie jacet, qui aquam bibendo viginti liberos suscepit, viginti libros edidit. Si merum bibisset, totum orbem implevisset.”

Here lies a man who, drinking only water,

Wrote twenty books, with each had son or daughter ;

Had he but used the juice of generous vats,

The world would scarce have held his books and brats.

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