to the formation of his mind: ‘Pascal’s Provincial Letters;’ ‘The Life
of Julian, by the Abbé Bletterie;’ and ‘Giannone’s History of Naples.’
Not one of them was English; he acknowledges no early obligations to the
literature of his own country; in fact, those five years which usually
decide the character of the rest of life were entirely passed abroad, in
the study and perpetual use of foreign languages, and the imitation of
foreign literature. It was not then wonderful that he should continue
for some time longer to follow the first impulse. But repeated failures
would doubtless have shown him the false position in which he stood,
even without the seasonable admonition administered by the authority of
Hume.
Gibbon returned immediately from Italy to England, and retired to the
peaceful retreat of his family and his books. Yet the five years which
followed were those on which he reflected with least satisfaction. He
was dependent on his father’s generosity, he had no professional
occupation for an active and ambitious mind, his very reading was
somewhat desultory, and his whole energies were not yet devoted to one
great object. He felt the absence of this; and it was ill supplied by
his ‘Critical Observations on the 6th Book of the Æneid,’ or his attempt
at the History of Switzerland. The death of his father, in 1770, placed
him in possession of a moderate fortune and of entire independence; and
then it was that he entered in good earnest on the ‘History of the
Decline and Fall.’
In 1772 he settled in London, and obtained a seat in parliament for
Liskeard. He adhered to the Government of Lord North, and by “many a
sincere and silent vote” on the American question, supported the rights
(as he says), though not perhaps the interests, of the mother country.
As a senator, he acquired no distinction. A mixture of timidity and
pride, a want of physical energy and of that ready vigour of mind, which
fits men for public life, better than habits of the sagest meditation,
disqualified him for political polemics: and even his general opinions
seem at that time to have been so little fixed, that when at last he
accepted a place at the Board of Trade under Lord North, he gave
surprise and offence to the opposition, who considered him as on their
side. He fell with his patron; and his natural distaste for politics
being probably increased by this and a subsequent disappointment, he
retired for ever from the disquietudes of public life.
During his residence in London, he published the first three volumes of
his History. On the composition of the first he had bestowed peculiar
care, and its reception repaid his labours. A very laudatory letter,
which he received from Hume, foretold the attacks to which the fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters would subject him; for which he was entirely
unprepared. And in his subsequent reflections on this subject, he admits
that, had he foreseen the offence they were calculated to give, he
“might perhaps have softened the two invidious chapters, which would
create many enemies, and conciliate few friends.” Among his
ecclesiastical opponents, by far the most eloquent and powerful was
Bishop Watson, whose high-minded hostility deserved the respect bestowed
on it by the historian himself, in his celebrated Vindication.
The second and third volumes were not so favourably received as the
first; the author himself admits that they are possibly too minute and
prolix: and the work made as yet no progress on the continent. But he
persevered with increasing zeal in the labour which was now become
necessary to his happiness; and that he might the more exclusively
devote himself to it, he returned to establish himself at Lausanne, in
1783, nearly twenty years after his second visit to that place. He made
it his residence until 1793, and there composed the last three volumes
of his history: and he has carefully recorded, that it was on the 27th
of June, 1787, between eleven and twelve at night, in a summer-house in
his garden, that he wrote the last sentence. His fourth volume cost him
rather more than two years, his fifth rather less, and the sixth little
more than one. It had been his habit, till quite at last, to close his
studies with the day, and commonly begin them with the morning, and the
result of this late change is observed in the increased rapidity with
which the latter portion of the work was written. He visited England to
superintend the printing of these three volumes, and published them
together on his fifty-first birthday.
He lived only five years and seven months longer: and his premature
death (for he died during the full vigour of all his faculties and
talents) may be ascribed to his own singular improvidence. He had been
afflicted above thirty years by a disease requiring surgical assistance,
which he altogether neglected till it became incurable. He died January
16, 1794, at the house of his friend Lord Sheffield, and was buried in
his lordship’s family vault at Fletching in Sussex.
Of his miscellaneous works, the following are some of the most
remarkable:—
_Historical._ ‘Outlines of the History of the World (written between
1755 and 1763); ‘Mémoire sur la Monarchie des Mèdes’ (do.);
‘Introduction à l’Histoire Générale de la République des Suisses’
(1767); ‘Antiquities of the House of Brunswick’ (1790).
_Classical and critical._ ‘Essai sur l’Etude de la Littérature’; ‘Nomina
Gentesque Antiquæ Italiæ’ (1763 and 1764); ‘Remarques sur les Ouvrages
et sur le Caractère de Salluste, Jules César, Cornèle Nepos, Tite Live,
&c.’; ‘Critical Observations on the Design of the 6th Book of the Æneid’
(1770); ‘Vindication of the History of the Decline and Fall.’
_Miscellaneous._ ‘Mémoire Justicatif;’ ‘Principes des Poids, des
Monnoies, et des Mesures des Anciens’ (1759); and ‘Dissertation sur les
anciennes Mesures du Bas Empire’; ‘Selections from the Extraits
raisonnés de mes Lectures, and from the Recueil de mes Observations’
(from 1754 to 1764); ‘Remarks on Blackstone’s Commentaries’ (1770).
These, and many more than these, were the subjects to which he applied
his extensive erudition—with more or less success, but never without
throwing some light on whatever he undertook to treat.
[Illustration]
SCALIGER.
In the sixteenth and the latter part of the fifteenth century, a man of
learning filled a very prominent and distinguished place in the world’s
esteem. Public attention was not then distracted by the multitude of
claimants; for scarcely any country but Italy possessed a national
literature; and few branches of knowledge were much prized, except the
faculties of divinity, law, and physic, and the newly-opened stores of
Greek and Roman antiquity. As Latin was still the universal language of
Europe, that which was done in one country soon and readily became known
to the learned men of all; and if the general standard of information
was low, those who possessed it abundantly towered the higher above
their fellows. Though there were then fewer helps to learning, it was a
time of great discoveries and much excitement. A modern scholar of far
inferior calibre may have a more accurate knowledge of antiquity, and a
deeper insight into the minutiæ of the ancient languages, than the
greatest men of the age of which we speak; but as far as regards the
mass of information gained by their individual labour, few indeed could
venture to compete with such men as Casaubon, Lipsius, Grævius, the
Scaligers, and others. And the honour paid them was proportionate to
their merits. Princes and States courted them, Universities competed for
their residence, Europe at large took an interest in their quarrels and
controversies; and as humility and charity were not the graces in which
they most abounded, the interest in these subjects was in no danger of
perishing for want of agitation. Of this remarkable class of men, none
were more admired by their contemporaries than the two Scaligers.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
JOSEPH SCALIGER.
_From a Print engraved by Edelinch._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]
Julius Cæsar Scaliger, the elder, was as singular a mixture of great
talent, learning, vanity, and presumption, as the world has often seen.
He was born, probably at Verona, in 1484, being the son, according to
the best authorities, of a miniature painter, named Benedict Bordoni,
was baptized by the name of Julius, studied at the University of Padua,
adopted the medical profession, and having attracted the favourable
notice of Antoine de la Rovere, Bishop of Agen in Gascony, accompanied
him thither, in 1525, in the quality of domestic physician. We are not
informed of the exact time at which he thought fit to make addition to
his real name, but in 1528 he obtained letters of naturalization under
the sounding appellation of Julius Cæsar de Lescalle de Bordoms, or
Bordonis; and in 1529 he married a girl of sixteen, by whom he had a
very numerous family. This is his real history, as far as it is known;
but the truth was far too commonplace to satisfy his passion for
notoriety, and he invented a new version of his history, to the
following effect:—
He called himself the son of Benedict de la Scala, one of the bravest
captains of the fifteenth century (of whom it is observed that his name
unfortunately occurs in no contemporary historian), and through him
descended from the ancient family of Princes of Verona. He was born near
the Lago di Guarda; and having narrowly escaped, in infancy, the jealous
search of the Venetians, who were anxious to cut off every scion of his
house, was brought up as a page in the service of the Emperor
Maximilian. He served with distinction in the Italian wars. But the
desire of recovering Verona, the inheritance of his family, from Venice,
ever haunted him; and seeing no chance any other way, he became a monk,
in hope of rising to the Holy Chair, and rendering the resources of the
papacy subservient to the gratification of this ruling passion. The
frivolous and wearisome observances of the cloister soon disgusted him,
and he (broke his vows, we presume, and) returned to his old trade as a
soldier, and again distinguished himself in the wars of Piedmont, while
at the same time he studied the ancient languages, philosophy, and
medicine. At the solicitation of the Bishop of Agen he closed his
adventurous course, as is above related. This extravagant story,
entirely without foundation in any of its parts, and garnished with
abundance of gasconade, was stoutly upheld by the elder Scaliger, and
generally believed by his contemporaries: the younger Scaliger wrote a
book to maintain it, with equal stoutness, but without equal success.
After Scaliger took up his abode at Agen, his chief employment was the
cultivation of learning; his chief passion, the acquisition of fame. In
this he succeeded to the extent of his wishes; and we need seek no
stronger proof of the ascendancy which he gained over his
contemporaries, than the general acceptation of the wonderful story
which we have just told. De Thou said of him, that the age did not
furnish his equal, nor antiquity his superior; and Lipsius classed him
with Homer, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, and named him ‘the miracle and
glory of his age.’ Unquestionably he possessed a vast fund of knowledge,
was an excellent Latin scholar, and wrote extremely well in Latin prose.
Of Greek his knowledge probably was much less; he did little for Greek
literature, and appears not to have taught his son Joseph so much as the
rudiments of the language. His many fine qualities were sadly obscured
by a temper arrogant and overbearing in the last degree: on this subject
it is enough to refer to the abuse which he lavishes on a better man
than himself, the excellent Erasmus, in their controversy concerning
_Ciceronianism_. Unfortunately, he bequeathed the same overweening
vanity and propensity to scurrilous language to his still more
distinguished son, the original of our portrait.
Joseph Justus Scaliger, the tenth child of this singular man, was born
at Agen, August 4, 1540. At the age of eleven he was sent with two of
his brothers to study at the University of Bourdeaux; but at the end of
three years the plague broke out, and he returned in consequence to his
paternal home. The elder Scaliger from that time forward took charge of
Joseph’s education: concerning his method of teaching we know little
more than that he obliged his pupil to compose an essay every day upon
some historical subject. He died in 1558; and in the following year
Joseph Scaliger went to Paris, and devoted himself to the study of Greek
under the celebrated Turnebus. At that time his acquaintance, if he had
any, with the language was very slight. Before two months elapsed he
found the progress of his master too slow to please him; and resolving
to take the matter into his own hands, he made himself cursorily
acquainted with the conjugations, and set to work at once upon Homer,
whom he read through in twenty-one days, constructing a grammar for
himself as he went along. The other Greek poets he perused in the same
manner in four months. The orators and historians he took next in order;
but these extraordinary exertions rest upon his own testimony, which in
things connected with the gratification of his vanity cannot be
considered unimpeachable. After two years’ study of Greek he undertook
Hebrew and other Oriental languages, which he learned without assistance
in the same manner. He certainly possessed an uncommon talent for the
study of languages: it is stated by Du Bartas that he knew
thirteen,—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, French,
English, Ethiopian, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Persian. His habits
throughout life were very laborious; he slept little, and sometimes
passed days almost without taking food. Heinsius, in his first oration,
reports that he had often heard Scaliger speak of having been in Paris
during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and engaged so deeply in his
Hebrew studies as for a long time not to be aware of the tumult without.
On the contrary, the Vassans, collectors of the ‘Scaligera secunda,’
state, also on the authority of Scaliger’s private conversation, that he
was at Lausanne when the massacre took place. The matter is of little
moment, excepting in so far as it may serve to illustrate the speaker’s
boastful disregard for veracity.
Joseph Scaliger embraced the Reformed religion in 1562, and in the
following year became domestic tutor in a noble family named
Roche-Pozay. In this connexion he was very fortunate: his patron was a
generous and discerning man, by whose liberality he was enabled to visit
the principal Universities of France and Germany. He studied theology at
Geneva under Beza, and shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in
1572, was invited to accept the chair of philosophy in the University of
that city: this he declined, but it appears that he did give lectures
there in 1578. In 1573 he ventured to return to his patron’s estate near
Tours, and there composed the greater portion of his works. He visited
Italy, whence he brought home a number of inscriptions, which he
communicated to Gruter, with leave to publish them in his ‘Thesaurus;’
and he even extended his travels to our northern, and then uninviting,
realm of Scotland.
The multiplicity of Scaliger’s labours did not enrich him. “Poverty,” he
says in one of his letters, “has been my faithful companion through
life, and I never thought to lose her company.” But his spirit was lofty
and independent, and he refused on more than one occasion large sums of
money, which those who esteemed his merits would have forced upon him.
In 1593 he was invited by the States of Holland to accept the
professorship of belles-lettres at Leyden, with a liberal salary. This
he accepted, so that the close of his life was spent in independence.
Unfortunately for his tranquillity, his evil genius of vanity led him in
1594 to publish his testimony to the truth of his own illustrious
descent, in his ‘Letter concerning the Antiquity of the Family Della
Scala’ (Epistola de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ, et vita
Jul. C. Scaligeri, &c.). It is here, says Niceron, that the vanity and
presumption of Scaliger appear to the greatest advantage; and Scioppius,
a brother critic and scholar, who expressed the highest regard and
admiration for the Leyden professor, so long as they were on terms of
mutual admiration, no sooner felt a touch of Scaliger’s power of
sarcasm, than he attacked him in this weak point, in the ‘Scaliger
hypobolimæus; hoc est, Elenchus Epistolæ Joan. Burdonis,
pseudo-Scaligeri, de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ: 1607.’
Scaliger replied in ‘Confutatio stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ in
which, though the letter of his adversary was short enough, he professed
to have detected 499 falsities. Scaliger retorted on Scioppius, whose
life and conversation were open enough to attack, in his ‘Confutatio
stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ published under the name of
Rutgersius, one of his pupils. It has been said that the veteran
controversialist died of chagrin in consequence of Scioppius’s book.
This, however, is not much in accordance with his character; at all
events, his annoyance was long in killing him, for he did not die till
1609, and his disease was a dropsy. High honours were paid by the
University to his memory; a funeral oration was pronounced in his praise
by the eminent scholar Heinsius, and a monument was erected to him at
the public expense.
For the fullest account of Scaliger’s very numerous works, we refer to
Niceron, ‘Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des Hommes Illustres,’ vol.
23. The earliest of them, ‘Conjectanea in Varronem,’ was composed when
the author was only twenty years old. Another of his earlier productions
was an edition of ‘Lycophron,’ with a version into Latin iambics, for
which he has obtained the sarcastic commendation of having by a _tour de
force_ of which no other person was capable, made the translation quite
as unintelligible as the original. He translated the ‘Ajax’ of
Sophocles, in the same metre. He has commented upon Cæsar, Catullus,
Tibullus and Propertius, Persius, Ausonius, Manilius, the tragedies of
Seneca, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, &c. His original works contain
treatises on astronomy, mathematics, numismatics, and chronology, and
various departments of philological and antiquarian research. He
flattered himself that he had discovered and propounded in his
‘Cyclometrica Elementa duo; nec non Mesolabium;’ a method for the
quadrature of the circle: but the fallacy which deceived him was soon
exposed by Vieta and others. Scaliger’s most important and most original
work is that ‘De Emendatione Temporum, 1583,’ which merits especial
praise, as being the first attempt to produce a system of chronology. It
contains a vast quantity of learning, in the collection of which the
author was greatly assisted by his knowledge of the Oriental languages,
as well as of Greek and Latin. That he is often in error is, in this
instance, hardly a blemish upon his merited fame: in so vast an
untrodden field it was impossible to avoid mistakes. And doubtless this
would have been willingly conceded, but for his presumptuous,
uncharitable, and abusive manner of treating the mistakes of others:
those who had suffered from his venomous tongue, of course were ready
and eager to revenge themselves at the first opportunity. In the second
and third editions he made considerable alteration. Petavius, another
eminent chronologer of the same age, who had the advantage, it is to be
recollected, of all that Scaliger had done before him, finds great fault
with the ‘De Emendatione;’ but he allows that “the learning diffused
through it, the immense variety of topics which it embraces, the novelty
of the subject, and the decided tone of the author, procured for him a
very high reputation.” It was in this that Scaliger propounded the
Julian period, as a sort of common measure for the various eras; but it
never became general, and has fallen into complete disuse. The same
Petavius, in speaking of Scaliger’s letters, which are full of curious
matter, easy and familiar, and brilliant without affectation (Epistolæ
Omnes, 1627, published by Heinsius), declared, that if he had then seen
these “divine letters,” he would never have attacked the author of them.
Scaliger’s poems (Poemata Omnia, collected and published in 1615) have
not done much for his fame, though he boasted of his critical skill in
poetry. “Je me connais en trois choses—in vino, poesi, et juger des
personnes. Si bis hominem alloquar, statim scio qualis sit.”
(Scaligerana secunda.) From his translation of select epigrams of
Martial into Greek (Florilegium Martialis Epigrammatum, cum versione
Græca metrica, 1607) a list of sixty-four faults, false quantities and
barbarisms, has been drawn up and preserved in the ‘Menagiana,’ vol. i.
p. 325; many of them, however, are very trifling.
Concerning Scaliger’s character as a critic, we may quote the opinion of
Bayle—‘Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,’ for June 1684—“I know
not whether it might not be said that Scaliger had too much wit and
learning to write a good commentary; for his wit enabled him to find in
the authors on whom he commented more refinement and genius than in fact
they possessed; and his deep knowledge of literature was the cause of
his fancying a thousand points of connexion between the thoughts of a
writer and some rare matter of antiquity. And having made up his mind as
to the reference contained in the passage, he proceeded forthwith to
correct it accordingly. Unless it should rather be thought that the
desire of throwing light upon some mystery of learning, unobserved by
previous critics, led him to fancy hidden meanings where they did not
really exist. Be this as it may, his notes are full of conjectures,
bold, ingenious, and learned; but it is not clear that the authors
always meant to say all that he has made them. It is possible to go as
far wide of the real meaning, by having too much wit, as by having too
little; and it will not do to believe that the lines of Horace and
Catullus contain all the erudition which it pleases Messieurs the
notemakers to bestow upon them.” This passage will sufficiently explain
the grounds of the bitter saying, that Scaliger was born to corrupt,
rather than to correct, the classics.
The praises bestowed on him by his contemporaries, however, were most
extravagant. Heinsius says, in his Funeral Oration, “Men call him
differently, an abyss of erudition, a sea of sciences, the sun of
doctors, the divine progeny of a divine father, of the race of gods, the
greatest work and miracle, the extreme reach of Nature.” His great
contemporaries, Casaubon, Lipsius, and De Thou, adopt a somewhat similar
style of exaggerated commendation. Such expressions of course are to be
taken with allowance; rather as specimens of the taste of the age than
as the deliberate testimony of those who use them. That Scaliger was
profoundly learned and of immense acquirement, will not be denied; that
it is impossible to push things farther than he has, will not now be
asserted, “because,” says Niceron, “it has been done by many.”
Unfortunately, this extravagant admiration contributed, no doubt, by
feeding his vanity, to exacerbate that intolerably scurrilous and
malignant humour, the worst part of his character, which he inherited,
with his great talents, from his remarkable father.
The Table-Talk, as we may call it, of Scaliger has been collected in two
series, entitled ‘Scaligerana, Prima et Secunda.’ For the history of
these see Niceron, or the preface to Des Maizeaux’s edition. They bear
the same unfavourable impress of character as the rest of his writings:
“the pride, arrogance, and venom of an angry pedant reign from the first
leaf to the last; and they are sometimes defective in point of
learning.” So says Vigneul Marville, and his judgment is fully confirmed
by others. “The Scaligerana,” says D’Israeli, “will convince us that he
was incapable of thinking or speaking favourably of any person.” We have
already quoted one passage which gives a specimen of the strange way in
which French and Latin are mixed up in the second series, and we
conclude with another, which contains an amusing instance of his vanity,
both for himself and his father:—“Auratus dicebat Jul. Cæs. Scaligerum
Regi alicui facie similem. Oui, à un Empereur! Il n’y a Roi qui eût si
belle façon que lui. Regardez moi! je lui ressemble en tout, et partout,
le nez aquilin.”
[Illustration: