During his college days a marked facility and grace in composition gave promise of his future literary success.
While engaged in journalistic duties Catrou found time for historical research, and to his productions in this line his fame is chiefly due.
[1] Catrou's "Histoire du fanatisme dans la religion protestante" was a controversial work dealing principally with the Anabaptists and the Quakers.
The French work was highly praised at the time for its deep research and solid reasoning, but its somewhat pompous style soon brought severe censure from the critics.
Its appearance in an English dress gave occasion to some very bitter attacks; but, though censured, this work provided inspiration to British historian Nathaniel Hooke, who in his Roman History drew freely from the text of Catrou and more freely from the critical notes of Rouillé.
"I always consulted the most learned and ingenious commentators" he writes in his autobiography; "Torrentius and Dacier on Horace, and Catrou and Servius on Virgil".