in Germany, for the promotion of ancient learning, besides that already
mentioned of the Rhine, established by Camerarius of Dalberg, and Conrad
Celtes, in the preceding age. Wimpfeling presided over one at Strasburg
in 1514, and we find another at Augsburg in 1518. It is probable that
the religious animosities which followed stood in the way of similar
institutions; or they may have existed without obtaining much
celebrity.[879]
[879] Jugler, in his Hist. Litteraria, mentions none between that of
the Rhine, and one established at Weimar in 1617, p. 1994.
|Libraries.|
37. Italy was rich, far beyond any other country, in public and private
libraries. The Vatican, first in dignity, in antiquity, and in number of
books, increased under almost every successive pope, except Julius II.,
the least favourable to learning of them all. The Laurentian library,
purchased by Leo X., before his accession to the papacy, from a
monastery at Florence, which had acquired the collection after the fall
of the Medici in 1494, was restored to that city by Clement VII., and
placed in the newly-erected building which still contains it. The public
libraries of Venice and Ferrara were conspicuous; and even a private
citizen of the former, the Cardinal Grimani, is said to have left one of
8000 volumes; at that time, it appears, a remarkable number.[880] Those
of Heidelberg and Vienna, commenced in the fifteenth century, were still
the most distinguished in Germany; and Cardinal Ximenes founded one at
Alcala.[881] It is unlikely that many private libraries of great extent
existed in the empire; but the trade of bookselling, though not yet, in
general, separated from that of printing, had become of considerable
importance.
[880] Tiraboschi, viii. 197-219.
[881] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 206 et alibi.
CHAPTER X.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.
_Progress of classical learning--Principal critical scholars--Editions
of ancient authors--Lexicons and Grammars--Best writers of Latin--
Muretus--Manutius--Decline of taste--Scaliger--Casaubon--Classical
learning in England under Elizabeth._
|Progress of Philology.|
1. In the first part of the sixteenth century we have seen that the
foundations of a solid structure of classical learning had been laid in
many parts of Europe; the superiority of Italy had generally become far
less conspicuous, or might perhaps be wholly denied; in all the German
empire, in France, and partly in England, the study of ancient
literature had been almost uniformly progressive. But it was the
subsequent period of fifty years, which we now approach, that more
eminently deserved the title of an age of scholars, and filled our
public libraries with immense fruits of literary labour. In all matters
of criticism and philology, what was written before the year 1550 is
little in comparison with what the next age produced.
|First editions of classics.|
2. It may be useful in this place to lay before the reader at one view
the dates of the first editions of Greek and Latin authors, omitting
some of inconsiderable reputation or length. In this list I follow the
authority of Dr. Dibdin, to which no exception will probably be taken:--
Ælian 1545. _Rome._
Æschylus 1518. _Venice_, _Aldus_.
Æsop 1480? _Milan._
Ammianus 1474. _Rome._
Anacreon 1554. _Paris._
Antoninus 1558. _Zurich._
Apollonius Rhodius 1496. _Florence._
Appianus 1551. _Paris._
Apuleius 1469. _Rome._
Aristophanes 1498. _Venice._
Aristoteles 1495-8. _Venice._
Arrian 1535. _Venice._
Athenæus 1514. _Venice._
Aulus Gellius 1469. _Rome._
Ausonius 1472. _Venice._
Boethius Absque anno. circ. 1470.
Cæsar 1469. _Rome._
Callimachus Absque anno. Florence.
Catullus 1472. _Venice._
Ciceronis Opera 1498. _Milan._
Cicero de Officiis 1465. _Mentz._
Cicero Epistolæ Famil. 1467.} _Rome._
---- Epistolæ ad Attic. 1469.}
---- de Oratore 1465. _Mentz and Subiaco._
---- Rhetorica 1490. _Venice._
---- Orationes 1471. _Rome._
---- Opera Philosoph. 1469.} _Rome._
1471.}
Claudian. Absque anno. _Brescia._
Demosthenes 1504. _Venice._
Diodorus, v. lib. 1539. _Basle._
---- xv. lib. 1559. _Paris._
Diogenes Laertius 1533. _Basle._
Dio Cassius 1548. _Paris._
Dionysius Halicarn. 1546. _Paris._
Epictetus 1528. _Venice._
Euripides 1513. _Venice._
Euclid 1533. _Basle._
Florus 1470. _Paris._
Herodian 1513. _Venice._
Herodotus 1502. _Venice._
Hesiod. Op. et Dies 1493. _Milan._
---- Op. omnia 1495. _Venice._
Homer 1488. _Florence._
Horatius Absque anno.
Isocrates 1493. _Milan._
Josephus 1544. _Basle._
Justin 1470. _Venice._
Juvenal Absque anno. _Rome._
Livius 1469. _Rome._
Longinus 1584. _Basle._
Lucan 1469. _Rome._
Lucian 1496. _Florence._
Lucretius 1473. _Brescia._
Lysias 1513. _Venice._
Macrobius 1472. _Venice._
Manilius Ante 1474. _Nuremburg._
Oppian 1515. _Florence._
Orpheus 1500. _Florence._
Ovid 1471. _Bologna._
Pausanias 1516. _Venice._
Petronius 1476?
Phædrus 1596. _Troyes._
Photius 1601. _Augsburg._
Pindar 1513. _Venice._
Plato 1513. _Venice._
Plautus 1472. _Venice._
Plinii, Nat. Hist. 1469. _Venice._
Plinii Epist. 1471.
Plutarch Op. Moral. 1509. _Venice._
---- Vitæ 1517. _Venice._
Polybius 1530. _Haguenow._
Quintilian 1470. _Rome._
Quintus Curtius Absque anno. _Rome._
Sallust 1470. _Paris._
Seneca 1475. _Naples._
Senecæ Tragediæ 1484. _Ferrara._
Silius Italicus 1471. _Rome._
Sophocles 1512. _Venice._
Statius 1472?
Strabo 1516. _Venice._
Suetonius 1470. _Rome._
Tacitus 1468? _Venice._
Terence Ante 1470? _Strasburg._
Theocritus 1493. _Milan._
Thucydides 1502. _Venice._
Valerius Flaccus 1474. _Rome._
Valerius Maximus Ante 1470? _Strasburg._
Valleius Paterculus 1520. _Basle._
Virgil 1469. _Rome._
Xenophon 1516. _Florence._
|Change in character of learning.|
3. It will be perceived that even in the middle of this century, some
far from uncommon writers had not yet been given to the press. But most
of the rest had gone through several editions, which it would be tedious
to enumerate; and the means of acquiring an extensive, though not in all
respects very exact, erudition might perhaps be nearly as copious as at
present. In consequence, probably, among other reasons, of these
augmented stores of classical literature, its character underwent a
change. It became less polished and elegant, but more laborious and
profound. The German or Cisalpine type, if I may use the word, prevailed
over the Italian, the school of Budæus over that of Bembo; nor was Italy
herself exempt from its ascendancy. This advance of erudition at the
expense of taste was perhaps already perceptible in 1550, for we cannot
accommodate our arbitrary divisions to the real changes of things; yet
it was not hitherto so evident in Italy, as it became in the latter part
of the century. The writers of this age, between 1550 and 1600,
distinguish themselves from their predecessors not only by a disregard
for the graces of language, but by a more prodigal accumulation of
quotations, and more elaborate efforts to discriminate and to prove
their positions. Aware of the censors whom they may encounter in an
increasing body of scholars, they seek to secure themselves in the event
of controversy, or to sustain their own differences from those who have
gone already over the same ground. Thus books of critical as well as
antiquarian learning often contain little of original disquisition,
which is not interrupted at every sentence by quotation, and in some
instances are hardly more than the adversaria, or commonplace books, in
which the learned were accustomed to register their daily observations
in study. A late German historian remarks the contrast between the
Commentary of Paulus Cortesius on the scholastic philosophy, published
in 1503, and the Mythologia of Natalis Comes, in 1551. The first, in
spite of its subject, is classical in style, full of animation and good
sense; the second is a tedious mass of quotations, the materials of a
book rather than a book, without a notion of representing anything in
its spirit and general result.[882] This is, in great measure, a
characteristic of the age, and grew worse towards the end of the
century. Such a book as the Annals of Baronius, the same writer says, so
shapeless, so destitute of every trace of eloquence, could not have
appeared in the age of Leo. But it may be added, that, with all the
defects of Baronius, no one, in the age of Leo, could have put the
reader in the possession of so much knowledge.
[882] Ranke, Die Päpste des 16ten und 17ten Jahrhunderts, i. 484.
|Cultivation of Greek.|
4. We may reckon among the chief causes of this diminution of elegance
in style, the increased culture of the Greek language; not certainly
that the great writers in Greek are inferior models to those in Latin,
but because the practice of composition was confined to the latter. Nor
was the Greek really understood, in its proper structure and syntax,
till a much later period. It was however a sufficiently laborious task,
with the defective aids then in existence, to learn even the single
words of that most copious tongue; and in this some were eminently
successful. Greek was not very much studied in Italy; we may perhaps
say, on the contrary, that no one native of that country, after the
middle of the century, except Angelus Caninius and Æmilius Portus, both
of whom lived wholly on this side of the Alps, acquired any remarkable
reputation in it; for Petrus Victorius had been distinguished in the
earlier period. It is to France and Germany that we should look for
those who made Grecian literature the domain of scholars. It is
impossible to mention every name, but we must select the more eminent;
not however distinguishing the labourers in the two vineyards of ancient
learning, since they frequently lent their service alternately to each.
|Principal scholars: Turnebus.|
5. The university of Paris, thanks to the encouragement given by Francis
I., stood in the first rank for philological learning; and as no other
in France could pretend to vie with her, she attracted students from
every part. Toussain, Danes, and Dorat were conspicuous professors of
Greek. The last was also one of the celebrated pleiad of French poets,
but far more distinguished in the dead tongues than in his own. But her
chief boast was Turnebus, so called by the gods, but by men
Tournebœuf, and, as some have said, of a Scots family, who must have
been denominated Turnbull.[883] Turnebus was one of those industrious
scholars who did not scorn the useful labour of translating Greek
authors into Latin, and is among the best of that class. But his
reputation is chiefly founded on the Adversaria, the first part of which
appeared in 1564, the second in 1565, the third, posthumously, in 1580.
It is wholly miscellaneous, divided into chapters, merely as
resting-places to the reader; for the contents of each are mostly a
collection of unconnected notes. Such books, truly adversaria or
commonplaces, were not unusual; but can of course only be read in a
desultory manner, or consulted upon occasion. The Adversaria of Turnebus
contain several thousand explanations of Latin passages. They are
eminent for conciseness, few remarks exceeding half a page, and the
greater part being much shorter. He passes without notice from one
subject to another the most remote, and has been so much too rapid for
his editor, that the titles of each chapter, multifarious as they are,
afford frequently but imperfect notions of its contents. The phrases
explained are generally difficult; so that this miscellany gives a high
notion of the erudition of Turnebus, and it has furnished abundant
materials to later commentators. The best critics of that and the
succeeding age, Gesner, Scaliger, Lipsius, Barthius, are loud in his
praises; nor has he been blamed, except for his excess of brevity and
rather too great proneness to amend the text of authors, wherein he is
not remarkably successful.[884] Montaigne has taken notice of another
merit in Turnebus, that with more learning than any who had gone before
for a thousand years, he was wholly exempt from the pedantry
characteristic of scholars, and could converse upon topics remote from
his own profession, as if he had lived continually in the world.
[883] Biogr. Univ.--The penultimate of Turnebus is made both short and
long by the Latin poets of the age, but more commonly the latter,
which seems contrary to what we should think right. Even Greek will
not help us, for we find him called both τουρνεβος [tournebos] and
τουρνηβος [tournêbos]. Maittaire, Vitæ Stephanor, vol. iii.
[884] Blount, Baillet. The latter begins his collection of these
testimonies by saying that Turnebus has had as many admirers
as readers, and is almost the only critic whom envy has not
presumed to attack. Baillet, however, speaks of his correction of
_Greek_ and Latin passages. I have not observed any of the
former in the Adversaria; the book, if I am not mistaken, relates
wholly to Latin criticism. Muretus calls Turnebus, “Homo immensa
quadam doctrinæ copia instructus, sed interdum nimis propere, et
nimis cupidè amplexari solitus est ea quæ in mentem venerant.”
Variæ Lectiones, l. x. c. 18. Muretus, as usual with critics,
_vineta cædit sua_; the same change might be brought against
himself.
|Petrus Victorius.|
6. A work very similar in its nature to the Adversaria of Turnebus was
the Variæ Lectiones of Petrus Victorius (Vettori), professor of Greek
and Latin rhetoric at Florence during the greater part of a long life,
which ended in 1585. Thuanus has said, with some hyperbole, that
Victorius saw the revival and almost the extinction of learning in
Italy.[885] No one, perhaps, deserved more praise in the restoration of
the text of Cicero; no one, according to Huet, translated better from
Greek; no one was more accurate in observing the readings of
manuscripts, or more cautious in his own corrections. But his Variæ
Lectiones, in 38 books, of which the first edition appeared in 1583,
though generally extolled, has not escaped the severity of Scaliger, who
says that there is less of valuable matter in the whole work than in one
book of the Adversaria of Turnebus.[886] Scaliger, however, had
previously spoken in high terms of Victorius: there had been afterwards,
as he admits, some ill-will between them; and the tongue or pen of this
great scholar are never guided by candour towards an opponent. I am not
acquainted with the Variæ Lectiones of Victorius except through my
authorities.
[885] Petrus Victorius longæva ætate id consecutus est, ut literas in
Italia renascentes et pæne extinctas viderit. Thuanus ad ann, 1585,
apud Blount.
[886] Scaligerana Secunda.
|Muretus.|
7. The same title was given to a similar miscellany by Marc Antony
Muretus, a native of Limoges. The first part of this, containing eight
books, was published in 1559, seven more books in 1586, the last four in
1600. This great classical scholar of the sixteenth century found in the
eighteenth one well worthy to be his editor, Ruhnkenius of Leyden, who
has called the Variæ Lectiones of Muretus “a work worthy of Phidias,” an
expression rather amusingly characteristic of the value which verbal
critics set upon their labours. This book of Muretus contains only
miscellaneous illustrations of passages which might seem obscure, in the
manner of those we have already mentioned. Sometimes he mingles
conjectural criticisms; and in many chapters only points out parallel
passages, or relates incidentally some classical story. His emendations
are frequently good and certain, though at other times we may justly
think him too bold.[887] Muretus is read with far more pleasure than
Turnebus; his illustrations relate more to the attractive parts of Latin
criticism, and may be compared to the miscellaneous remarks of
Jortin.[888] But in depth of erudition he is probably much below the
Parisian professor. Muretus seems to take pleasure in censuring
Victorius.
[887] The following will serve as an instance. In the speech of
Galgacus (Taciti vita Agricolæ) instead of “libertatem non in
præsentia laturi,” which indeed is unintelligible enough, he would
read, “in libertatem, non in populi Romani servitium nati.” Such a
conjecture would not be endured in the present state of criticism.
Muretus, however, settles it in the current style; vulgus quid
probet, quid non probet, nunquam laboravi.
[888] The following titles of chapters, from the eighth book of the
Variæ Lectiones, will show the agreeable diversity of Muretus’s
illustrations:--
1. Comparison of poets to bees, by Pindar, Horace, Lucretius. Line
of Horace--
Necte meo Lamiæ coronam;
illustrated by Euripides.
2. A passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, lib. ii. explained
differently from P. Victorius.
3. Comparison of a passage in the Phædrus of Plato, with Cicero’s
translation.
4. Passage in the Apologia Socratis, corrected and explained.
5. Line in Virgil, shown to be imitated from Homer.
6. Slips of memory in P. Victorius, noticed.
7. Passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric explained from his Metaphysics.
8. Another passage in the same book explained.
9. Passage in Cicero pro Rabirio, corrected.
10. Imitation of Æschines in two passages of Cicero’s 3rd
Catilinarian oration.
11. Imitation of Æschines and Demosthenes in two passages of
Cicero’s Declamation against Sallust. [Not genuine.]
12. Inficetus is the right word, not infacetus.
13. Passage in 5th book of Aristotle’s Ethics corrected.
14. The word διαψευδεσθαι [diapseudesthai], in the 2d book of
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, not rightly explained by Victorius.
15. The word asinus, in Catullus (Carm. 95) does not signify an
ass, but a mill-stone.
16. Lines of Euripides, ill-translated by Cicero.
17. Passage in Cicero’s Epistles misunderstood by Politian and
Victorius.
18. Passage in the Phædrus explained.
19. Difference between accusation and invective, illustrated from
Demosthenes and Cicero.
20. Imitation of Æschines by Cicero. Two passages of Livy amended.
21. Mulieres eruditas plerumque libidinosas esse, from Juvenal and
Euripides.
22. Nobleness of character displayed by Iphicrates.
23. That Hercules was a physician, who cured Alcestis when given
over.
24. Cruelty of king Dejotarus, related from Plutarch.
25. Humane law of the Persians.
|Grater’s Thesaurus Criticus.|
8. Turnebus, Victorius, Muretus, with two who have been mentioned in the
first volume, Cœlius Rhodiginus, and Alexander ab Alexandro, may be
reckoned the chief contributors to this general work of literary
criticism in the sixteenth century. But there were many more, and some
of considerable merit, whom we must pass over. At the beginning of the
next century, Gruter collected the labours of preceding critics in six
very thick and closely printed volumes, to which Paræus, in 1623, added
a seventh, entitled “Lampas, sive Fax Liberalium Artium,” but more
commonly called Thesaurus Criticus. A small portion of these belong to
the fifteenth century, but none extend beyond the following. Most of the
numerous treatises in this ample collection belong to the class of
Adversaria, or miscellaneous remarks. Though not so studiously concise
as those of Turnebus, each of these is generally contained in a page or
two, and their multitude is consequently immense. Those who now by
glancing at a note obtain the result of the patient diligence of these
men, should feel some respect for their names, and some admiration for
their acuteness and strength of memory. They had to collate the whole of
antiquity, they plunged into depths which the indolence of modern
philology, screening itself under the garb of fastidiousness, affects to
deem unworthy to be explored, and thought themselves bound to become
lawyers, physicians, historians, artists, agriculturists, to elucidate
the difficulties which ancient writers present. It may be doubted also,
whether our more recent editions of the classics have preserved all the
important materials which the indefatigable exertions of the men of the
sixteenth century accumulated. In the present state of philology, there
is incomparably more knowledge of grammatical niceties, at least in the
Greek language, than they possessed, and more critical acuteness perhaps
in correction, though in this they were not always deficient; but for
the exegetical part of criticism--the interpretation and illustration of
passages, not corrupt, but obscure--we may not be wrong in suspecting
that more has been lost than added in the eighteenth and present
centuries to the _savans in us_, as the French affect to call them, whom
we find in the bulky and forgotten volumes of Gruter.
|Editions of Greek and Latin Authors.|
9. Another and more numerous class of those who devoted themselves to
the same labour, were the editors of Greek and Roman authors. And here
again it is impossible to do more than mention a few, who seem, in the
judgment of the best scholars, to stand above their contemporaries. The
early translations of Greek, made in the fifteenth century, and
generally very defective through the slight knowledge of the language
that even the best scholars then possessed, were replaced by others more
exact; the versions of Xenophon by Leunclavius, of Plutarch by Xylander,
of Demosthenes by Wolf, of Euripides and Aristides by Canter, are
greatly esteemed. Of the first, Huet says, that he omits or perverts
nothing, his Latin often answering to the Greek, word for word, and
preserving the construction and arrangement, so that we find the
original author complete, yet with a purity of idiom, and a free and
natural air not often met with.[889] Stephens however, according to
Scaliger, did not highly esteem the learning of Leunclavius.[890]
France, Germany, and the Low Countries, besides Basle and Geneva, were
the prolific parents of new editions, in many cases very copiously
illustrated by erudite commentaries.
[889] Baillet. Blount. Niceron, vol. 26.
[890] Scaligerana Secunda.
|Tacitus of Lipsius.|
10. The Tacitus of Lipsius is his best work, in the opinion of Scaliger
and in his own. So great a master was he of this favourite author, that
he offered to repeat any passage with a dagger at his breast, to be used
against him on a failure of memory.[891] Lipsius, after residing several
years at Leyden in the profession of the reformed religion, went to
Louvain, and discredited himself by writing in favour of the legendary
miracles of that country, losing sight of all his critical sagacity. The
Protestants treated his desertion and these later writings with a
contempt which has perhaps sometimes been extended to his productions of
a superior character. The article on Lipsius, in Bayle, betrays some of
this spirit; and it appears in other Protestants, especially Dutch
critics. Hence they undervalue his Greek learning, as if he had not been
able to read the language, and impute plagiarism, when there seems to be
little ground for the charge. Casaubon admits that Lipsius has
translated Polybius better than his predecessors, though he does not
rate his Greek knowledge very high.[892]
[891] Niceron, xxiv. 219.
[892] Casaub. Epist. xxi. A long and elaborate critique on Lipsius
will be found in Baillet, vol. ii. (4to edit.), art. 437. See also
Blount, Bayle, and Niceron.
|Horace of Lambinus.|
11. Acidalius, whose premature death robbed philological literature of
one from whom much had been expected,[893] Paulus Manutius, and Petrus
Victorius, are to be named with honour for the criticism of Latin
authors, and the Lucretius of Giffen or Giphanius, published at Antwerp,
1566, is still esteemed.[894] But we may select the Horace of Lambinus
as a conspicuous testimony to the classical learning of this age. It
appeared in 1561. In this he claims to have amended the text, by the
help of ten manuscripts, most of them found by him in Italy, whither he
had gone in the suite of Cardinal Tournon. He had previously made large
collections for the illustration of Horace, from the Greek philosophers
and poets, from Athenæus, Stobæus and Pausanias, and other sources with
which the earlier interpreters had been less familiar. Those
commentators, however, among whom Hermannus Figulus, Badius Ascensius,
and Antonius Mancinellus, as well as some who had confined themselves to
the Ars Poetica, Grisolius, Achilles Statius (in his real name Estaço,
one of the few good scholars of Portugal), and Luisinius, are the most
considerable, had not left unreaped a very abundant harvest of mere
explanation. But Lambinus contributed much to a more elegant criticism,
by pointing out parallel passages, and by displaying the true spirit and
feeling of his author. The text acquired a new aspect, we may almost
say, in the hands of Lambinus, at least when we compare it with the
edition of Landino in 1482; but some of the gross errors in this had
been corrected by intermediate editors. It may be observed, that he had
far less assistance from prior commentators in the Satires and Epistles
than in the Odes. Lambinus, who became professor of Greek at Paris in
1561, is known also by his editions of Demosthenes, of Lucretius, and of
Cicero.[895] That of Plautus is in less esteem. He has been reproached
with a prolixity and tediousness, which has naturalised the verb
_lambiner_ in the French language. But this imputation is not in my
opinion applicable to his commentary upon Horace, which I should rather
characterise as concise. It is always pertinent and full of matter.
Another charge against Lambinus is for rashness in conjectural[896]
emendation, no unusual failing of ingenious and spirited editors.
[893] The notes of Acidalius (who died at the age of 28, in 1595), on
Tacitus, Plautus, and other Latin authors, are much esteemed. He is
a bold corrector of the text. The Biographie Universelle has a
better article than that in the 34th volume of Niceron.
[894] Biogr. Univ.
[895] This edition by Lambinus is said to mark the beginning of one of
the seven ages in which those of the great Roman orator have been
arranged. The first comprehends the early editions of separate
works. The second begins with the earliest entire edition, that of
Milan in 1498. The third is dated from the first edition which
contains copious notes, that of Venice, by Petrus Victorius, in
1534. The fourth, from the more extensive annotations given not
long afterwards by Paulus Manutius. The fifth, as has just been
said, from this edition by Lambinus, in 1566, which has been
thought too rash in correction of the text. A sixth epoch was made
by Gruter, in 1618; and this period is reckoned to comprehend most
editions of that and the succeeding century; for the seventh and
last age dates, it seems, only from the edition of Ernesti, in
1774. Biogr. Univ., art. Cicero. See Blount, for discrepant
opinions expressed by the critics about the general merits of
Lambinus.
[896] Henry Stephens says, that no one had been so audacious in
altering the text by conjecture as Lambinus. In Manutio non tantam
quantam in Lambino audaciam, sed valde tamen periculosam et citam.
Maittaire, vitæ Stephanorum, p. 401. It will be seen that Scaliger
finds exactly the same fault with Stephens himself.
|Of Cruquius.|
12. Cruquius (de Crusques) of Ypres, having the advantage of several new
manuscripts of Horace, which he discovered in a convent at Ghent,
published an edition with many notes of his own, besides an abundant
commentary, collected from the glosses he found in his manuscripts,
usually styled the Scholiast of Cruquius. The Odes appear at Bruges,
1565; the Epodes at Antwerp, 1569; the Satires in 1575; the whole
together was first published in 1578. But the Scholiast is found in no
edition of Cruquius’s Horace before 1595.[897] Cruquius appears to me
inferior as a critic to Lambinus; and borrowing much from him as well as
Turnebus, seldom names him except for censure. An edition of Horace at
Basle, in 1580, sometimes called that of the forty commentators,
including a very few before the extinction of letters, is interesting in
philological history, by the light it throws on the state of criticism
in the earlier part of the century, for it is remarkable that Lambinus
is not included in the number, and it will, I think, confirm what has
been said above in favour of those older critics.
[897] Biogr. Univ.
|Henry Stephens.|
13. Henry Stephens, thus better known among us than by his real surname
Etienne, the most illustrious (if indeed he surpassed his father) of a
family of great printers, began his labours at Paris in 1554, with the
princeps editio of Anacreon.[898] He had been educated in that city
under Danes Toussain and Turnebus;[899] and, though equally learned in
both languages, devoted himself to Greek, as being more neglected than
Latin.[900] The press of Stephens might be called the central point of
illumination to Europe. In the year 1557 alone, he published, as
Maittaire observes, more editions of ancient authors than would have
been sufficient to make the reputation of another author. His
publications, as enumerated by Niceron (I have not counted them in
Maittaire) amount to 103, of which by far the greater part are classical
editions, more valuable than his original works. Baillet says of Henry
Stephens, that he was second only to Budæus in Greek learning, though he
seems to put Turnebus and Camerarius nearly on the same level. But
perhaps the majority of scholars would think him superior on the whole
to all the three; and certainly Turnebus, whose Adversaria are confined
to Latin interpretation, whatever renown he might deserve by his oral
lectures, has left nothing that could warrant our assigning him
an equal place. Scaliger, however, accuses Henry Stephens of spoiling
all the authors he edited by wrong alterations of the text.[901] This
charge is by no means unfrequently brought against the critics of this
age.
[898] An excellent life of Henry Stephens, as well as others of the
rest of his family, was written by Maittaire, but which does not
supersede those formerly published by Almeloveen. These together
are among the best illustrations of the philological history of the
16th century that we possess. They have been abridged, with some
new matter, by Mr. Greswell, in his Early History of the Parisian
Greek Press. Almeloveen, Vitæ Stephanorum, p. 60. Maittaire, p. 200.
[899] Almeloveen, p. 70. His father made him learn Greek before he had
acquired Latin. Maittaire, p. 198.
[900] The life of Stephens in the 36th volume of Niceron is long and
useful. That in the Biographie Universelle is not bad, but
enumerates few editions published by this most laborious scholar,
and thus reduces the number of his works to twenty-six. Huet says
(whom I quote from Blount), that Stephens may be called “The
Translator par excellence;” such is his diligence and accuracy, so
happy his skill in giving the character of his author, so great his
perspicuity and elegance.
[901] Omnes quotquot edidit, editve libros, etiam meos, suo arbitrio
jam corrupit et deinceps corrumpet. Scalig. Prima, p. 96. Against
this sharp, and perhaps rash, judgment, we may set that of
Maittaire, a competent scholar, though not like Scaliger, and
without his arrogance and scorn of the world. Henrici editiones
ideo miror, quod eas, quam posset accuratissime aut ipse aut per
alios, quos complures noverat, viros eruditos, ad omnium tum
manuscriptorum tum impressorum codicum fidem, non sine maximo
delectu et suo (quo maximè in Græcis præsertim pollebat) aliorumque
judicio elaboravit. Vitæ Stephanorum, t. ii. p. 284. No man perhaps
ever published so many editions as Stephens; nor was any other
printer of so much use to letters; for he knew much more than the
Aldi or the Juntas. Yet he had planned many more publications, as
Maittaire has collected from what he has dropped in various places,
p. 469.
|Lexicon of Constantin.|
14. The year 1572 is an epoch in Greek literature, by the publication of
Stephens’s Thesaurus. A lexicon had been published at Basle in 1562, by
Robert Constantin, who, though he made use of that famous press, lived
at Caen, of which he was a native. Scaliger speaks in a disparaging tone
both of Constantin and his lexicon. But its general reputation has been
much higher. A modern critic observes, that “a very great proportion of
the explanations and authorities in Stephens’s Thesaurus are borrowed
from it.”[902] We must presume that this applies to the first edition;
for the second, enlarged by Æmilius Portus, which is more common, did
not appear till 1591.[903] “The principal defects of Constantin,” it is
added, “are first the confused and ill-digested arrangement of the
interpretation of words, and secondly, the absence of all distinction
between primitives and derivatives.” It appears by a Greek letter of
Constantin, prefixed to the first edition, that he had been assisted in
his labours by Gesner, Henry Stephens, Turnebus, Camerarius, and other
learned contemporaries. He gives his authorities, if not so much as we
should desire, very far more than the editors of the former Basle
lexicon. This lexicon, as was mentioned in the first volume, is
extremely defective and full of errors, though a letter of Grynæus,
prefixed to the edition of 1539, is nothing but a strain of unqualified
eulogy, little warranted by the suffrage of later scholars. I found,
however, on a loose calculation, the number of words in this edition to
be not much less than 50,000.[904]
[902] Quarterly Review, vol. xxvii.
[903] The first edition of this Lexicon sometimes bears the name of
Crespin, the printer at Basle; and both Baillet and Bayle have
fallen into the mistake of believing that there were two different
works. See Niceron, vol. xxvii.
[904] Henry Stephens in an epistle, De suæ Typographiæ statu ad quosdam
amicos, gives an account of his own labours on the Thesaurus. The
following passage on the earlier lexicons may be worth reading. Iis
quæ circumferuntur lexicis Græco-Latinis primam imposuit manum
monachus quidam, frater Johannes Crastonus, Placentinus,
Carmelitanus; sed cum is jejunis expositionibus, in quibus
vernaculo etiam sermone interdum, id est Italico, utitur, contentus
fuisset, perfunctoriè item constructiones verborum indicasset,
nullos autorum locos proferens ex quibus illæ pariter et
significationes cognosci possent; multi postea certatim multa hinc
inde sine ullo delectu ac judicio excerpta inseruerunt. Donec
tandem indoctis typographis de augenda lexicorum mole inter se
certantibus, et præmia iis qui id præstarent proponentibus, quæ
jejunæ, et, si ita loqui licet, macilentæ antea erant expositiones,
adeo pingues et crassæ redditæ sunt, ut in illis passim nihil aliud
quam Bœoticam suem agnoscamus. Nam pauca ex Budæo, aliisque idoneis
autoribus, et ea quidem parum fideliter descripta, utpote parum
intellecta, multa contra ex Lapo Florentino, Leonardo Aretino,
aliisque ejusdem farinæ interpretibus, ut similes habent labra
lactucas, in opus illud transtulerunt. Ex iis quidem certe locis in
quorum interpretatione felix fuit Laurentius Valla, paucissimos
protulerunt; sed pro perverso suo judicio, perversissimas quasque
ejus interpretationes, quales prope innumeras a me annotatas in
Latinis Herodoti et Thucydidis editionibus videbis, delegerunt
egregii illi lexicorum seu consarcinatores seu interpolatores,
quibus, tanquam gemmis, illa insignirent. Quod si non quam multa,
sed duntaxat quam multorum generum errata ibi sint, commemorare
velim, merito certe exclamabo, τί ηρῶτον, τί δ' επειτα, τί δ'
ὑστάτιον καταλέξω [ti prôton, ti d’ epeita, ti d’ hustation
katalexô]; vix enim ullum vitii genus posse a nobis cogitari aut
fingi existimo, cujus ibi aliquod exemplum non extat, p. 156. He
produces afterwards some gross instances of error.
|Thesaurus of Stephens.|
15. Henry Stephens had devoted twelve years of his laborious life to
this immense work, large materials for which had been collected by his
father. In comprehensive and copious interpretation of words it not only
left far behind every earlier dictionary, but is still the single Greek
lexicon; one which some have ventured to abridge or enlarge, but none
have presumed to supersede. Its arrangement, as is perhaps scarce
necessary to say, is not according to an alphabetical, but radical
order; that is, the supposed roots following each other alphabetically,
every derivative or compound, of whatever initial letter, is placed
after the primary word. This method is certainly not very convenient to
the uninformed reader; and perhaps, even with a view to the scientific
knowledge of the language, it should have been deferred for a more
advanced stage of etymological learning. The Thesaurus embodies the
critical writings of Budæus and Camerarius, with whatever else had been
contributed by the Greek exiles of the preceding age, and by their
learned disciples. Much, no doubt, has since been added to what we find
in the Thesaurus of Stephens, as to the nicety of idiom and syntax, or
to the principles of formation of words, but not, perhaps, in
copiousness of explanation, which is the proper object of a dictionary.
“The leading defects conspicuous in Stephens,” it is said by the critic
already quoted, “are inaccurate or falsified quotations, the deficiency
of several thousand words, and a wrong classification both of primitives
and derivatives. At the same time, we ought rather to be surprised that,
under existing disadvantages, he accomplished so much even in this last
department, than that he left so much undone.”
|Abridged by Scapula.|
16. It has been questioned among bibliographers, whether there are two
editions of the Thesaurus; the first in 1572, the second without a date,
and probably after 1580. The affirmative seems to be sufficiently
proved.[905] The sale, however, of so voluminous and expensive a work
did not indemnify its author; and it has often been complained of, that
Scapula, who had been employed under Stephens, injured his superior by
the publication of his well-known abridgment in 1579. The fact, however,
that Scapula had possessed this advantage, rests on little evidence, and
his preface, if it were true, would be the highest degree of effrontery:
it was natural that some one should abridge so voluminous a lexicon.
Literature, at least, owes an obligation to Scapula.[906] The temper of
Henry Stephens, restless and uncertain, was not likely to retain riches;
he passed several years in wandering over Europe, and having wasted a
considerable fortune amassed by his father, died in a public hospital at
Lyons in 1598,[907] “opibus,” says his biographer, “atque etiam ingenio
destitutus in nosocomio.”
[905] Niceron (vol. xxvi.) contends that the supposed second edition
differs only by a change in the title-page, wherein we find rather
an unhappy attempt at wit, in the following distich aimed at
Scapula:
Quidam επιτεμνων [epitemnôn] me capulo tenus abdidit ensem:
Æger eram a scapulis; sanus at huc redeo.
But it seems that Stephens, in his Palæstra de Lipsii Latinitate,
mentions this second edition, which is said by those who have
examined it, to have fewer typographical errors than the other,
though it is admitted that the leaves might be intermixed without
inconvenience, so close is the resemblance. Vid. Maittaire, p.
356-360. Brunet, Man. du Libr. Greswell, vol. ii. p. 289.
[906] Maittaire says that Scapula’s lexicon is as perfidious to the
reader as its author was to his master, and that Dr. Busby would
not suffer his boys to use it, p. 358. But this has hardly been the
general opinion. See Quarterly Review, _ubi suprâ_.
[907] Casaubon writes frequently to Scaliger about the strange behaviour
of his father-in-law, and complains that he had not even leave to
look at the books in the latter’s library, which he himself scarce
ever visited. Nôsti hominem, nôsti mores, nôsti quid apud eum
possim, hoc est, quam nihil possim, qui videtur in suam perniciem
conspirâsse. Epist. 21. And, still more severely, Epist. 41. Nam
noster, etsi vivens valensque, pridem numero hominum, certe
doctorum, eximi meruit; ea est illius inhumanitas, et quod invitus
dico, delirium; qui libros quoslibet veteres, ut Indici gryphi
aurum, aliis invidet, sibi perire sinit, sed quid ille habeat aut
non, juxta scio ego cum ignavissimo. After Stephens’s death, he
wrote in kinder terms than he had done before: but regretting some
publications, by which the editor of Casaubon’s letters thinks he
might mean the Apologie pour Herodote, and the Palæstra de Justi
Lipsii Latinitate; the former of which, a very well-known book,
contains a spirited attack on the Romish priesthood, but with less
regard either for truth or decorum in the selection of his stories
than became the character of Stephens; and the latter is of little
pertinence to its avowed subject. Henry Stephens had long been
subject to a disorder natural enough to laborious men, quædam
actionum consuetarum satietas et fastidium, Maittaire, p. 248.
Robert Stephens had carried with him to Geneva in 1550, the punches
of his types, made at the expense of Francis I., supposing,
perhaps, that they were a gift of the king. On the death, however,
of Henry Stephens, they were claimed by Henry IV., and the senate
of Geneva restored them. They had been pledged for 400 crowns, and
Casaubon complains as of a great injury, that the estate of
Stephens was made answerable to the creditor, when the pledge was
given up to the king of France. See Le Clerc’s remarks on this in
Bibliothèque Choisie, vol. xix. p. 219. Also a vindication of
Stephens by Maittaire from the charge of having stolen them (Vitæ
Stephanorum, i. 34), and again in Greswell’s Parisian Press, i.
399. He seems above the suspicion of theft; but whether he had just
cause to think the punches were his own, it is now impossible to
decide.
|Hellenismus of Caninius.|
|Vergara’s grammar.|
17. The Hellenismus of Angelus Caninius, a native of the Milanese, is
merely a grammar. Tanaquil Faber prefers it not only to that of
Clenardus, but to all which existed even in his own time. It was
published at Paris in 1555. Those who do not express themselves so
strongly, place him above his predecessors. Caninius is much fuller than
Clenardus; the edition by Crenius (Leyden, 1700), containing 380 pages.
The syntax is very scanty; but Caninius was well conversant with the
mutations of words, and is diligent in noting the differences of
dialects, in which he has been thought to excel. He was acquainted with
the digamma, and with its Latin form. I will take this opportunity of
observing that the Greek grammar of Vergara, mentioned in the first
volume of this work (p. 488), and of which I now possess the Paris
edition of 1557, printed by William Morel (ad Complutensem editionem
excusum et restitutum) appears superior to those of Clenardus or
Varenius. This book is doubtless very scarce; it is plain that Tanaquil
Faber, Baillet, Morhof, and, I should add, Nicolas Antonio, had never
seen it,[908] nor is it mentioned by Brunet or Watts.[909] There is,
however, a copy in the British Museum. Scaliger says that it is very
good, and that Caninius has borrowed from it the best parts.[910]
Vergara had, of course, profited by the commentaries of Budæus, the
great source of Greek philology in western Europe; but he displays, as
far as I can judge by recollection more than comparison, an ampler
knowledge of the rules of Greek than any of his other contemporaries.
This grammar contains 438 pages, more than 100 of which are given to the
syntax. A small grammar by Nunez, published at Valencia in 1555, seems
chiefly borrowed from Clenardus or Vergara.
[908] Blount, Baillet.
[909] Antonio says it was printed at Alcala, 1573; deinde Parisiis,
1550. The first is of course a false print; if the second is not so
likewise, he had never seen the book.
[910] Scaligerana Secunda. F. Vergara, Espagnol, a composé une bonne
grammaire Grecque, mais Caninius a pris tout le meilleur de tous,
et a mis du sien aussi quelque chose dans son Hellenismus. This, as
Bayle truly observes, reduces the eulogies Scaliger has elsewhere
given Cannius to very little. Scaliger’s loose expressions are not
of much value. Yet he who had seen Vergara’s grammar, might better
know what was original in others, than Tanaquil Faber, who had
never seen it.
|Grammars of Ramus and Sylburgius.|
18. Peter Ramus, in 1557, gave a fresh proof of his acuteness and
originality, by publishing a Greek grammar, with many important
variances from his precursors. Scaliger speaks of it with little
respect; but he is habitually contemptuous towards all but his immediate
friends.[911] Lancelot, author of the Port Royal grammar, praises highly
that of Ramus, though he reckons it too intricate. This grammar I have
not seen in its original state, but Sylburgius published one in 1582,
which he professes to have taken from the last edition of the Ramean
grammar. It has been said that Laurence Rhodomann was the first who
substituted the partition of the declensions of Greek nouns into three
for that of Clenardus, who introduced or retained the prolix and
unphilosophical division into ten.[912] But Ramus is clearly entitled to
this credit. It would be doubted whether he is equally to be praised, as
he certainly has not been equally followed, in making no distinction of
conjugations, nor separating the verbs in μι [mi] from those in
ὡ [ô], on the ground that their general flexion is the same. Much has
been added to this grammar by Sylburgius himself, a man in the first
rank of Greek scholars; “especially,” as he tells us, “in the latter
books, so that it may be called rather a supplement than an abridgment
of the grammar of Ramus.” The syntax in this grammar is much better than
in Clenardus, from whom some have erroneously supposed Sylburgius to
have borrowed; but I have not compared him with Vergara.[913] The Greek
grammar of Sanctius is praised by Lancelot; yet, from what he tells us
of it, we may infer that Sanctius, though a great master of Latin, being
comparatively unlearned in Greek, displayed such temerity in his
hypotheses as to fall into very great errors. The first edition was
printed at Antwerp in 1581.
[911] Scaligerana. Casaubon, it must be owned, who had more candour
than Scaliger, speaks equally ill of the grammar of Ramus. Epist.
878.
[912] Morhof, l. iv. c. 6. Preface to translation of Matthiæ’s Greek
grammar. The learned author of this preface has not alluded to
Ramus, and though he praises Sylburgius for his improvements in the
mode of treating grammar, seems unacquainted with that work which I
mention in the text. Two editions of it are in the British Museum,
1582 and 1600: but, upon comparison, I believe that there is no
difference between them.
The best of these grammars of the sixteenth century bear no sort of
comparison with those which have been latterly published in
Germany. And it seems strange at first sight, that the old
scholars, such as Budæus, Erasmus, Camerarius, and many more,
should have written Greek, which they were fond of doing, much
better than from their great ignorance of many fundamental rules of
syntax we could have anticipated. But reading continually, and
thinking in Greek, they found comparative accuracy by a secret
tact, and by continual imitation of what they read. Language is
always a mosaic work, made up of associated fragments, not of
separate molecules; we repeat, not the simple words, but the
phrases and even the sentences we have caught from others. Budæus
wrote Greek without knowing its grammar, that is, without a
distinct notion of moods or tenses, as men speak their own language
tolerably well without having ever attended to a grammatical rule.
Still many faults must be found in such writing on a close
inspection. The case was partly the same in Latin during the Middle
Ages, except that Latin was at that time better understood than
Greek was in the sixteenth century; not that so many words were
known, but those who wrote it best had more correct notions of the
grammar.
[913] Vossius says of the grammarians in general, ex quibus doctrinæ
et industriæ laudem maxime mihi meruisse videntur Angelus Caninius
et Fridericus Sylburgius. Aristarchus, p. 6. It is said that, in
his own grammar, which is on the basis of Clenardus, Vossius added
little to what he had taken from the two former. Baillet, in
Caninio.
|Camerarius, Canter, Robortellus.|
19. A few more books of a grammatical nature, falling within the present
period, may be found in Morhof, Baillet, and the bibliographical
collections; but neither in number nor importance do they deserve much
notice.[914] In a more miscellaneous philology, the Commentaries of
Camerarius, 1551, are superior to any publication of the kind since that
of Budæus in 1529. The Novæ Lectiones of William Canter, though the work
of a very young man, deserve to be mentioned as almost the first effort
of an art which has done much for ancient literature--that of restoring
a corrupt text, through conjecture, not loose and empirical, but guided
by a skilful sagacity, and upon principles which we may without
impropriety not only call scientific, but approximating sometimes to the
logic of the Novum Organum. The earlier critics, not always possessed of
many manuscripts, had recourse, more indeed in Latin than in Greek, to
conjectural emendation; the prejudice against which, often carried too
far by those who are not sufficiently aware of the enormous ignorance
and carelessness which ordinary manuscripts display, has also been
heightened by the random and sometimes very improbable guesses of
editors. Canter, besides the practice he showed in his Novæ Lectiones,
laid down the principles of his theory in a “Syntagma de Ratione
emendandi Græcos Auctores,” reprinted in the second volume of Jebb’s
edition of Aristides. He here shows what letters are apt to be changed
into others by error of transcription, or through a source not perhaps
quite so obvious--the uniform manner of pronouncing several vowels and
diphthongs among the later Greeks, which they were thus led to confound,
especially when a copyist wrote from dictation. But besides these
corruptions, it appears by the instances Canter gives, that almost any
letters are liable to be changed into almost any others. The
abbreviations of copyists are also great causes of corruption, and
require to be known by those who would restore the text. Canter,
however, was not altogether the founder of this school of criticism.
Robortellus, whose vanity and rude contempt of one so much superior to
himself as Sigonius, has perhaps caused his own real learning to be
undervalued, had already written a treatise, entitled “De Arte sive
Ratione corrigendi Antiquorum Libros Disputatio;” in which he claims to
be the first who devised this art, “nunc primum à me excogitata.” It is
not a bad work, though probably rather superficial, according to our
present views. He points out the general characters of manuscripts, and
the different styles of handwriting; after which he proceeds to the
rules of conjecture, making good remarks on the causes of corruption and
consequent means of restoration. It is published in the second volume of
Gruter’s Thesaurus Criticus. Robortellus, however, does not advert to
Greek manuscripts, a field upon which Canter first entered. The Novæ
Lectiones of William Canter are not to be confounded with the Variæ
Lectiones of his brother Theodore, a respectable but less eminent
scholar. Canter, it may be added, was the first, according to
Boissonade, who, in his edition of Euripides, restored some sort of
order and measure to the choruses.[915]
[914] In the British Museum is a book by one Guillon, of whom I find
no account in biography, called Gnomon, on the quantity of Greek
syllables. This seems to be the earliest work of the kind; and he
professes himself to write against those who think “quidvis licere
in quantitate syllabarum.” It is printed at Paris, 1556; and it
appears by Watts that there are other editions.
[915] Biogr. Univ. The Life of Canter in Melchior Adam is one of the
best his collection contains; it seems to be copied from one by
Miræus. Canter was a man of great moral as well as literary
excellence; the account of his studies and mode of life in this
biography is very interesting. The author of it dwells justly on
Canter’s skill in exploring the text of manuscripts, and in
observing the variations of orthography. See also Blount, Baillet,
Niceron, vol. xxix., and Chalmers.
|Editions by Sylburgius.|
20. Sylburgius, whose grammar has been already praised, was of great use
to Stephens in compiling the Thesaurus; it has even been said, but
perhaps with German partiality, that the greater part of its value is
due to him.[916] The editions of Sylburgius, especially those of
Aristotle and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are among the best of that
age; none, indeed, containing the entire works of the Stagyrite, is
equally esteemed.[917] He had never risen above the station of a
schoolmaster in small German towns, till he relinquished the employment
for that of superintendent of classical editions in the press of Wechel,
and afterwards in that of Commelia. But the death of this humble and
laborious man, in 1596, was deplored by Casaubon as one of the heaviest
blows that learning could have sustained.
|Neander.|
21. Michael Neander, a disciple of Melanchthon and Camerarius, who
became rector of a flourishing school at Isfeld in Thuringia soon after
1550, and remained there till his death in 1595, was certainly much
inferior to Sylburgius; yet to him Germany was chiefly indebted for
keeping alive, in the general course of study, some little taste for
Grecian literature, which towards the end of the century was rapidly
declining. The “Erotemata Græcæ Linguæ” of Neander, according to
Eichhorn, drove the earlier grammars out of use in the schools.[918] But
the publications of Neander appear to be little more than such extracts
from the Greek writers as he thought would be useful in education.[919]
Several of them are gnomologies, or collections of moral sentences from
the poets; a species of compilation not uncommon in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, but neither exhibiting much learning nor
favourable to the acquisition of a true feeling for ancient poetry. The
Thesaurus of Basilius Faber, another work of the same class, published
in 1571, is reckoned by Eichhorn among the most valuable school-books of
this period, and continued to be used and reprinted for two hundred
years.[920]
[916] Melchior Adam, p. 193. In the article of the Quarterly Review,
several times already quoted, it is said that the Thesaurus “bears
much plainer marks of the sagacity and erudition of Sylburgius than
of the desultory and hasty studies of his master, than whom he was
more clear-sighted;” a compliment at the expense of Stephens, not
perhaps easily reconcileable with the eulogy a little before passed
by the reviewer on the latter, as the greatest of Greek scholars
except Casaubon. Stephens says of himself, quem habuit
(Sylburgius), novo quodam more dominum simul ac præceptorem, quod
ille beneficium pro sua ingenuitate agnoscit (apud Maittaire, p.
421). But it has been remarked that Stephens was not equally
ingenuous, and never acknowledges any obligation to Sylburgius, p.
583. Scaliger says, Stephanus non solus fecit Thesaurum; plusieurs
y ont mis la main; and in another place, Sylburgius a travaillé au
Trésor de H. Estienne. But it is impossible for us to apportion the
disciple’s share in this great work; which might be more than
Stephens owned, and less than the Germans have claimed. Niceron,
which is remarkable, has no life of Sylburgius.
[917] The Aristotle of Sylburgius is properly a series of editions of
that philosopher’s separate works, published from 1584 to 1596. It
is in great request when found complete, which is rarely the case.
It has no Latin translation.
[918] Geschichte der Cultur. iii. 277.
[919] Niceron, vol. xxx.
[920] Eichhorn, 274.
|Gesner.|
22. Conrad Gesner belongs almost equally to the earlier and later
periods of the sixteenth century. Endowed with unwearied diligence, and
with a mind capacious of omnifarious erudition, he was probably the most
comprehensive scholar of the age. Some of his writings have been
mentioned in the first volume. His “Mithridates, sive de Differentiis
Linguarum” is the earliest effort on a great scale to arrange the
various languages of mankind by their origin and analogies. He was
deeply versed in Greek literature, and especially in the medical and
physical writers; but he did not confine himself to that province. It
may be noticed here, that in his Stobæus, published in 1543, Gesner
first printed Greek and Latin in double columns.[921] He was followed by
Turnebus, in an edition of Aristotle’s Ethics (Paris, 1555), and the
practice became gradually general, though some sturdy scholars, such as
Stephens and Sylburgius, did not comply with it. Gesner seems to have
had no expectation that the Greek text would be much read, and only
recommends it as useful in conjunction with the Latin.[922] Scaliger,
however, deprecates so indolent a mode of study, and ascribes the
decline of Greek learning to these unlucky double columns.[923]
[921] This I give only on the authority of Chevillier, Origine de
l’Imprimerie de Paris.
[922] Id. p. 240.
[923] Scalig. Secunda. Accents on Latin words, it is observed by
Scaliger (in the Scaligerana Prima), were introduced within his
memory; and, as he says, which would be more important, the points
called comma and semi-colon, of which Paulus Manutius was the
inventor. But in this there must be some mistake: for the comma is
frequent in books much older than any edited by Manutius.
|Decline of taste in Germany.|
23. In the beginning of the century, as has been shown in the former
volume, the prospects of classical literature in Germany seemed most
auspicious. Schools and universities, the encouragement of liberal
princes, the instruction of distinguished professors, the formation of
public libraries, had given an impulse, the progressive effects of which
were manifest in every Protestant state of the empire. Nor was any
diminution of this zeal and taste discernible for a few years. But after
the death of Melanchthon in 1560, and of Camerarius in 1574, a literary
decline commenced, slow but uniform and permanent, during which Germany
had to lament a strange eclipse of that lustre which had distinguished
the preceding age. This was first shown in an inferiority of style, and
in a neglect of the best standards of good writing. The admiration of
Melanchthon himself led in some measure to this; and to copy his manner
(genus dicendi Philippicum, as it was called) was more the fashion than
to have recourse to his masters, Cicero and Quintilian.[924] But this,
which would have kept up a very tolerable style, gave way, not long
afterwards, to a tasteless and barbarous turn of phrase, in which all
feeling of propriety and elegance was lost. This has been called
Apuleianismus, as if that indifferent writer of the third century had
been set up for imitation, though probably it was the mere sympathy of
bad taste and incorrect expression. The scholastic philosophy came back
about the same time into the German universities, with all its technical
jargon, and triumphed over the manes of Erasmus and Melanchthon. The
disciples of Paracelsus spread their mystical rhapsodies far and wide,
as much at the expense of classical taste as of sound reason. And when
we add to these untoward circumstances the dogmatic and polemical
theology, studious of a phraseology certainly not belonging to the
Augustan age, and the necessity of writing on many other subjects almost
equally incapable of being treated in good language, we cannot be much
astonished that a barbarous and slovenly Latinity should become
characteristic of Germany, which, even in later ages, very few of its
learned men have been able to discard.[925]
[924] Eichhorn, iii. 268. The Germans usually said Philippus for
Melanchthon.
[925] Melchior Adam, after highly praising Wolf’s translation of
Demosthenes, proceeds to boast of the Greek learning of Germany,
which, rather singularly, he seems to ascribe to this translation:
Effecit ut ante ignotus plerisque Demosthenes, nunc familiariter
nobiscum versetur in scholis et academiis. Est sanè quod gratulemur
Germaniæ nostræ, quod per Wolfium tantorum fluminum eloquentiæ
particeps facta est. Fatentur ipsi Græci, qui reliqui sunt hodie
Constantinopoli, præ cæteris eruditi, et Christianæ religionis
amantes, totum musarum chorum, relicto Helicone, in Germaniam
transmigrâsse. (Vitæ Philosophurum.) Melchior Adam lived in the
early part of the seventeenth century, when this high character was
hardly applicable to Germany; but his panegyric must be taken as
designed for the preceding age, in which the greater part of his
eminent men flourished. Besides this, he is so much a compiler that
this passage may not be his own.
|German learning.|
|Greek verses of Rhodomann.|
24. In philological erudition we have seen that Germany long maintained
her rank, if not quite equal to France in this period, yet nearer to her
than to any third nation. We have mentioned several of the most
distinguished; and to these we might add many names from Melchior Adam,
the laborious biographer of his learned countrymen; such as Oporinus,
George Fabricius, Frischlin, Crusius, who first taught the Romaic Greek
in Germany. One, rather more known than these, was Laurence Rhodomann.
He was the editor of several authors; but his chief claim to a niche in
the temple seems to rest upon his Greek verses, which have generally
been esteemed superior to any of his generation. The praise does not
imply much positive excellence; for in Greek composition, and especially
in verse, the best scholars of the sixteenth century make but an
indifferent figure. Rhodomann’s life of Luther is written in Greek
hexameters. It is also a curious specimen of the bigotry of his church.
He boasts that Luther predicted the deaths of Zuingle, Carlostadt, and
Œcolampadius, as the punishment of their sacramentarian hypothesis.
The lines will be found in a note,[926] and may serve as a fair
specimen of as good Greek as could perhaps be written in that age of
celebrated erudition. But some other poems of Rhodomann, which I have
not seen, are more praised by the critics.
[926]
Και τα μεν ὡς τετελεστο μετα χρονον, ὡς μεμορητο
ὡς γαρ δωδεκαμηνος ἑλιξ τριτος ετρεχε Φαιβου,
δη τοτε μοιρα, θεου κρυφιην πρησσουσα μενοινην,
μαντοσυναις επεθηκε θεοφραδεεσσι τελευτην
ανδρος, ὁσ ουτιν' απρηκτον απο κραδιης βαλε μυθον.
αμφω γαρ στυγερον πλαγξηνορε δογματος αρχω
οικιολαμπαδιον και κιγκλιον εφθασεν ατη
ποτμου δακρυοεντος' ἱνα φριξειε και αλλος
ατρεκιης προς κεντρον αναιδεα ταρσον ιαψαι.
ουδε μεν οξυηορους καρολοσταδιος φυγε ποινας,
τον δε γαρ αντιβολών κρυερῳ μετα φασματι δαιμων
εξαπινης εταραξε, και ηρπασεν οὑ χρεος ηευ.
[Kai ta men hôs tetelesto meta chronon, hôs memorêto;
hôs gar dôdekamênos helix tritos etreche Phaibou,
dê tote moira, theou kryphiên prêssousa menoinên,
mantosynais epethêke theophradeessi teleutên
andros, hos outin' aprêkton apo kradiês bale mython.
amphô gar stygerou planxênore dogmatos archô
oikiolampadion kai kinklion ephthasen atê
potmou dakruoentos; hina phrixeie kai allos
atrekiês pros kentron anaidea tarson iapsai.
oude men oxymorous karolostadios phyge poinas,
ton de gar antibolôn kruerô meta phasmati daimôn
exapinês etaraxe, kai êrpasen hou chreos êeu.]
|Learning declines;|
|except in Catholic Germany.|
25. But, at the expiration of the century, few were left besides
Rhodomann of the celebrated philologers of Germany; nor had a new race
arisen to supply their place. Æmilius Portus, who taught with reputation
at Heidelberg, was a native of Ferrara, whose father, a Greek by origin,
emigrated to Genoa on account of religion. The state of literature, in a
general sense, had become sensibly deteriorated in the empire. This was
most perceptible, or perhaps only perceptible, in its most learned
provinces, those which had embraced the Reformation. In the opposite
quarter there had been little to lose, and something was gained. In the
first period of the Reformation, the Catholic universities, governed by
men whose prejudices were insuperable even by appealing to their
selfishness, had kept still in the same track, educating their students
in the barbarous logic and literature of the Middle Ages, careless that
every method was employed in Protestant education to develop and direct
the talents of youth; and this had given the manifest intellectual
superiority, which taught the disciples and contemporaries of the first
reformers a scorn for the stupidity and ignorance of the popish party,
somewhat exaggerated, of course, as such sentiments generally are, but
dangerous above measure to its influence. It was therefore one of the
first great services which the Jesuits performed to get possession of
the universities, or to found other seminaries for education. In these
they discarded the barbarous school-books then in use, put the
rudimentary study of the languages on a better footing, devoted
themselves, for the sake of religion, to those accomplishments which
religion had hitherto disdained; and by giving a taste for elegant
literature, with as much solid and scientific philosophy as the
knowledge of the times and the prejudices of the church would allow,
both wiped away the reproach of ignorance, and drew forth the native
talents of their novices and scholars. They taught gratuitously, which
threw, however unreasonably, a sort of discredit upon salaried
professors:[927] it was found that boys learned more from them in six
months than in two years under other masters; and, probably for both
these reasons, even protestants sometimes withdrew their children from
the ordinary gymnasia and placed them in Jesuit colleges. No one will
deny that, in their classical knowledge, particularly of the Latin
language, and in the elegance with which they wrote it, the order of
Jesuits might stand in competition with any scholars of Europe. In this
period of the sixteenth century, though not perhaps in Germany itself,
they produced several of the best writers whom it could boast.[928]
[927] Mox, ubi paululum firmitatis accessit, pueros sine mercede
docendos et erudiendos susceperunt; quo artificio non vulgarem
vulgi favorem emeruere, criminandis præsertim aliis doctoribus,
quorum doctrina venalis esset et scholæ nulli sine mercede
paterent, et interdum etiam doctrina peregrina personarent.
Incredibile dictu est, quantum hæc criminatio valuerit. Hospinian,
Hist. Jesuitarum, l. ii. c. 1. fol. 84. See also l. i. fol. 59.
[928] Ranke, ii. 32. Eichhorn, iii. 266. The latter scarcely does
justice to the Jesuits as promoters of learning in their way.
|Philological works of Stephens.|
26. It is seldom that an age of critical erudition is one also of fine
writing; the two have not perhaps a natural incompatibility with each
other, but the bond-woman too often usurps the place of the free-woman,
and the auxiliary science of philology controls, instead of adorning and
ministering to the taste and genius of original minds. As the study of
the Latin language advanced, as better editions were published, as
dictionaries and books of criticism were more carefully drawn up, we
naturally expect to find it written with more correctness, but not with
more force and truth. The expostulation of Henry Stephens de Latinitate
Falso Suspecta, 1576, is a collection of classical authorities for words
and idioms, which seem so like French, that the reader would not
hesitate to condemn them. Some of these, however, are so familiar to us
as good Latin, that we can hardly suspect the dictionaries not to have
contained them. I have not examined any earlier edition than that of
Calepin’s dictionary, as enlarged by Paulus Manutius, of the date of
1579, rather after this publication by Henry Stephens, and certainly it
does not appear to want these words, or to fail in sufficient authority
for them.
|Style of Lipsius.|
27. In another short production by Stephens, De Latinitate Lipsii
Palæstra, he turns into ridicule the affected style of that author, who
ransacked all his stores of learning to perplex the reader. A much later
writer, Scioppius, in his Judicium de Stylo Historico, points out
several of the affected and erroneous expressions of Lipsius. But he was
the founder of a school of bad writers, which lasted for some time,
especially in Germany. Seneca and Tacitus were the authors of antiquity
whom Lipsius strove to emulate. “Lipsius,” says Scaliger, “is the cause
that men have now little respect for Cicero, whose style he esteems
about as much as I do his own. He once wrote well, but his third century
of epistles is good for nothing.”[929] But a style of point and affected
conciseness will always have its admirers, till the excess of vicious
imitation disgusts the world.[930]
[929] Scaligerana Secunda.
[930] Miræus, quoted in Melchior Adam’s Life of Lipsius, praises his
eloquence, with contempt of those who thought their own feeble and
empty writing like Cicero’s. See also Eichhorn, iii. 299; Baillet,
who has a long article on the style of Lipsius and the school it
formed (Jugemens des Savans, vol. ii. p. 192, 4to edition); and
Blount; also the note M. in Bayle’s article on Lipsius. The
following passage of Scioppius I transcribe from Blount:--“In Justi
Lipsii stylo, scriptoris ætate nostra clarissimi, istæ apparent
dotes; acumen, venustas, delectus, ornatus vel nimius, cum vix
quicquam proprie dictum ei placeat, tum schemata nullo numero,
tandem verborum copia; desunt autem perspicuitas, puritas,
æquabilitas, collocatio, junctura et numerus oratorius. Itaque
oratio ejus est obscura, non paucis barbarismis et solœcismis,
pluribus vero archaismis et idiotismis, innumeris etiam neoterismis
inquinata, comprehensio obscura, compositio fracta et in particulas
concisa, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilis captatio.”
|Minerva of Sanctius.|
28. Morhof, and several authorities quoted by Baillet, extol the Latin
grammar of a Spaniard, Emanuel Alvarez, as the first in which the
fancies of the ancient grammarians had been laid aside. Of this work I
know nothing farther. But the Minerva of another native of Spain,
Sanchez, commonly called Sanctius, the first edition of which appeared
at Salamanca in 1587, far excelled any grammatical treatise that had
preceded it, especially as to the rules of syntax, which he has reduced
to their natural principles, by explaining apparent anomalies. He is
called the prince of grammarians, a divine man, the Mercury and Apollo
of Spain, the father of the Latin language, the common teacher of the
learned, in the panegyrical style of the Lipsii or Scioppii.[931] The
Minerva, enlarged and corrected at different times by the most eminent
scholars, Scioppius, Perizonius, and others more recent, still retains a
leading place in philology. “No one among those,” says its last editor
Bauer, “who have written well upon grammar, has attained such reputation
and even authority as the famous Spaniard whose work we now give to the
press.” But Sanctius has been charged with too great proneness to
censure his predecessors, especially Valla, and with an excess of
novelty in his theoretical speculations.
[931] Baillet.
|Orations of Muretus.|
|Panegyric of Ruhnkenius.|
29. The writers, who in this second moiety of the sixteenth century
appear to have been most conspicuous for purity of style, were Muretus,
Paulus Manutius Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus, to whom we may add our
own Buchanan, and perhaps Haddon. The first of these is celebrated for
his Orations, published by Aldus Manutius in 1576. Many of these were
delivered a good deal earlier. Ruhnkenius, editor of the works of
Muretus, says that he at once eclipsed Bembo, Sadolet, and the whole
host of Ciceronians; expressing himself so perfectly in that author’s
style that we should fancy ourselves to be reading him, did not the
subject betray a modern hand. “In learning,” he says, “and in knowledge
of the Latin language, Manutius was not inferior to Muretus; we may even
say, that his zeal in imitating Cicero was still stronger, inasmuch as
he seemed to have no other aim all his life than to bear a perfect
resemblance to that model. Yet he rather followed than overtook his
master, and in this line of imitation cannot be compared with Muretus.
The reason of this was that nature had bestowed on Muretus the same kind
of genius that she had given to Cicero, while that of Manutius was very
different. It was from this similarity of temperament that Muretus
acquired such felicity of expression, such grace in narration, such wit
in raillery, such perception of what would gratify the ear in the
structure and cadence of his sentences. The resemblance of natural
disposition made it a spontaneous act of Muretus to fall into
the footsteps of Cicero; while, with all the efforts of Manutius, his
dissimilar genius led him constantly away; so that we should not wonder
when the writings of one so delight us that we cannot lay them down,
while we are soon wearied with those of the other, correct and polished
as they are, on account of the painful desire of imitation which they
betray. No one, since the revival of letters,” Ruhnkenius proceeds,
“has written Latin more correctly than Muretus; yet even in him a few
inadvertencies may be discovered.”[932]
[932] Mureti opera, cura Ruhnkenii, Lugd. 1789.
|Defects of his style.|
30. Notwithstanding the panegyric of so excellent a scholar, I cannot
feel this very close approximation of Muretus to the Ciceronian
standard; and it even seems to me that I have not rarely met with modern
Latin of a more thoroughly classical character. His style is too
redundant and florid; his topics very trivial. Witness the whole oration
on the battle of Lepanto, where the greatness of his subject does not
raise them above the level of a schoolboy’s exercise. The celebrated
eulogy on the St. Bartholomew Massacre, delivered before the Pope, will
serve as a very fair specimen, to exemplify the Latinity of
Muretus.[933] Scaliger, invidious for the most part in his characters of
contemporary scholars, declares that no one since Cicero had written so
well as Muretus, but that he adopted the Italian diffuseness, and says
little in many words. This observation seems perfectly just.
[933] O noctem illam memorabilem et in fastis eximiæ alicujus notæ
adjectione signandam, quæ paucorum seditiosorum interitu regem a
præsenti cædis periculo, regnum a perpetua bellorum civilium
formidine liberavit! Qua quidem nocte stellas equidem ipsas luxisse
solito nitidius arbitror, et flumen Sequanam majores undas
volvisse, quo citius illa impurorum hominum cadavera evolveret et
exoneraret in mare. O felicissimam mulierem Catharinam, regis
matrem, quæ cum tot annos admirabili prudentia parique solicitudine
regnum filio, filium regno conservasset, tum demum secura regnantem
filium adspexit! O regis fratres ipsos quoque beatos! quorum alter
cum, qua ætate cæteri vix adhuc arma tractare incipiunt, eâ ipse
quater commisso prælio fraternos hostes fregisset ac fugasset,
hujus quoque pulcherrimi facti præcipuam gloriam ad se potissimum
voluit pertinere; alter, quamquam ætate nondum ad rem militarem
idonea erat, tanta tamen est ad virtutem indole, ut neminem nisi
fratrem in his rebus gerendis æquo animo sibi passurus fuerit
anteponi. O diem denique illum plenum lætitiæ et hilaritatis, quo
tu, beatissime pater, hoc ad te nuncio allato, Deo immortali, et
Divo Ludovico regi, cujus hæc in ipso pervigilio evenerant, gratias
acturus, indictas a te supplicationes pedes obiisti! Quis
optabilior ad te nuncius adferri poterat? aut nos ipsi quod
felicius optare poteramus principium pontificatus tui, quam ut
primis illis mensibus tetram illam caliginem, quasi exorto sole,
discussam cerneremus? vol. i. p. 197, edit. Ruhnken.
|Epistles of Manutius.|
31. The epistles of Paulus Manutius are written in what we may call a
gentleman-like tone, without the virulence or querulousness that
disgusts too often in the compositions of literary men. Of Panvinius,
Robortellus, Sigonius, his own peculiar rivals, he writes in a friendly
spirit and tone of eulogy. His letters are chiefly addressed to the
great classical scholars of his age. But, on the other hand, though
exclusively on literary subjects, they deal chiefly in generalities, and
the affectation of copying Cicero in every phase gives a coldness and
almost an air of insincerity to the sentiments. They have but one note,
the praise of learning; yet it is rarely that they impart to us much
information about its history and progress. Hence they might serve for
any age, and seem like pattern forms for the epistles of a literary man.
In point of mere style there can be no comparison between the letters of
a Sadolet or Manutius on the one hand, and those of a Scaliger, Lipsius,
or Casaubon on the other. But while the first pall on the reader by
their monotonous elegance, the others are full of animation and pregnant
with knowledge. Even in what he most valued, correct Latin, Manutius, as
Scioppius has observed, is not without errors. But the want of perfect
dictionaries made it difficult to avoid illegitimate expressions which
modern usage suggested to the writer.[934]
[934] Sciopp. Judicium de Stylo Historico.
|Care of the Italian Latinists.|
32. Manutius, as the passage above quoted has shown, is not reckoned by
Ruhnkenius quite equal to Muretus, at least in natural genius. Scioppius
thinks him consummate in delicacy and grace. He tells us that Manutius
could hardly speak three words of Latin, so that the Germans who came to
visit him looked down on his deficiency. But this, Scioppius remarks, as
Erasmus had done a hundred years before, was one of the rules observed
by the Italian scholars to preserve the correctness of their style. They
perceived that the daily use of Latin in speech must bring in a torrent
of barbarous phrases, which “claiming afterwards the privileges
of acquaintance” (quodam familiaritatis jure), would obtrude their
company during composition, and render it difficult for the most
accurate writer to avoid them.[935]
[935] Scioppius, Judicium de Stylo Historico, p. 65. This was so little
understood in England, that, in some of our colleges, and even
schools, it was the regulation for the students to speak Latin when
within hearing of their superiors. Even Locke was misled into
recommending this preposterous barbarism.
|Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus.|
33. Perpinianus, a Valencian Jesuit, wrote some orations, hardly
remembered at present, but Ruhnkenius has placed him along with Muretus,
as the two Cisalpines (if that word may be so used for brevity), who
have excelled the Italians in Latinity. A writer of more celebrity was
Osorius, a Portuguese bishop, whose treatise on glory, and, what is
better known, his History of the Reign of Emanuel, have placed him in a
high rank among the imitators of the Augustan language. Some extracts
from Osorius de Gloria will be found in the first volume of the
Retrospective Review. This has been sometimes fancied to be the famous
work of Cicero with that title, which Petrarch possessed and lost, and
which Petrus Alcyonius has been said to have transferred to his own book
De Exilio. But for this latter conjecture there is, I believe, neither
evidence nor presumption; and certainly Osorius, if we may judge from
the passages quoted, was no Cicero. Lord Bacon has said of him, that
“his vein was weak and waterish,” which these extracts confirm. They
have not elegance enough to compensate for their verbosity and
emptiness. Dupin, however, calls him the Cicero of Portugal.[936] Nor is
less honour due to the Jesuit Maffei (Maphæus), whose chief work is the
History of India, published in 1586. Maffei, according to Scioppius, was
so careful of his style, that he used to recite the breviary in Greek,
lest he should become too much accustomed to bad Latin.[937] This may
perhaps be said in ridicule of such purists. Like Manutius, he was
tediously elaborate in correction; some have observed that his History
of India has scarce any value except for its style.[938]
[936] Niceron, vol. ii.
[937] De Stylo Hist. p. 71.
[938] Tiraboschi, Niceron, vol. v. Biogr. Univ.
|Buchanan, Haddon.|
34. The writings of Buchanan, and especially his Scottish history, are
written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness.[939] Many of our own
critics have extolled the Latinity of Walter Haddon. His Orations were
published in 1567. They belong to the first years of this period. But
they seem hardly to deserve any high praise. Haddon had certainly
laboured at an imitation of Cicero, but without catching his manner or
getting rid of the florid, semi-poetical tone of the fourth century. A
specimen, taken much at random, but rather favourable than otherwise,
from his oration on the death of the young brothers of the house of
Suffolk, at Cambridge, in 1550, is given in a note.[940] Another work of
a different kind, wherein Haddon is said to have been concerned jointly
with Sir John Cheke, is the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, the
proposed code of the Anglican Church, drawn up under Edward VI. It is,
considering the subject, in very good language.
[939] Le Clerc, in an article of the Bibliotheque Choisie, vol. viii.,
pronounces a high eulogy on Buchanan, as having written better than
any one else in verse and prose; that is, as I understand him,
having written prose better than any one who has written verse so
well, and the converse.
[940] O laboriosam et si non miseram, certe mirabiliter exercitam, tot
cumulatam funeribus Cantabrigiam! Gravi nos vu’nere percussit
hyems, æstas saucios ad terram afflixit. Calendæ Martiæ stantem
adhuc Academiam nostram et erectam vehementer impulerunt, et de
priori statu suo depresserunt. Idus Juliæ nutantem jam et
inclinatam oppresserunt. Cum magnus ille fidei magister et
excellens noster in vera religione doctor, Martinus Bucerus,
frigoribus hybernis conglaciavisset, tantam in ejus occasu plagam
accepisse videbamur, ut majorem non solum ullam expectaremus, sed
ne posse quidem expectari crederemus. Verum postquam inundantes, et
in Cantabrigiam effervescentes æstivi sudores, illud præstans et
aureolum par Suffolciensium fratrum, tum quidem peregrinatum a
nobis, sed tamen plane nostrum obruerunt, sic ingemuimus, ut
infinitus dolor vix ullam tanti mali levationem invenire possit.
Perfectus omni scientia pater, et certe senex incomparabilis,
Martinus Bucerus, licet nec reipublicæ nec nostro, tamen suo
tempore mortuus est, nimirum ætate, et annis et morbo affectus.
Suffolcienses autem, quos ille florescentes ad omnem laudem,
tanquam alumnos disciplinæ reliquit suæ, tam repente sudorum
fluminibus absorpti sunt, ut prius mortem illorum audiremus, quam
morbum animadverteremus.
|Sigonius, de Consolatione.|
35. These are the chief writers of this part of the sixteenth century
who have attained reputation for the polish and purity of their Latin
style. Sigonius ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in the same class, since
his writings exhibit not only perspicuity and precision, but as much
elegance as their subjects would permit. He is also the acknowledged
author of the treatise De Consolatione, which long passed with many for
a work of Cicero. Even Tiraboschi was only undeceived of this opinion by
meeting with some unpublished letters of Sigonius, wherein he confesses
the forgery.[941] It seems, however, that he had inserted some authentic
fragments. Lipsius speaks of this counterfeit with the utmost contempt,
but after all his invective can scarcely detect any bad Latinity.[942]
The Consolatio is, in fact, like many other imitations of the
philosophical writings of Cicero, resembling their original in his
faults of verbosity and want of depth, but flowing and graceful in
language. Lipsius, who affected the other extreme, was not likely to
value that which deceived the Italians into a belief that Tully himself
was before them. It was, at least, not everyone who could have done this
like Sigonius.
[941] Biog. Univ. art. Sigonio.
[942] Lipsii Opera Critica. His style is abusive, as usual in this age.
Quis autem ille suaviludius qui latere se posse censuit sub illâ
personâ? Male mehercule de seculo nostra judicavit. Quid enim tam
dissimile ab illo auro, quam hoc plumbum? ne simia quidem Ciceronis
esse potest, nedum ut ille.... Habes judicium meum, in quo si
aliqua asperitas, ne mirere. Fatua enim hæc superbia tanto nomini
se inserendi dignissima insectatione fuit.
|Decline of taste and learning in Italy.|
36. Several other names, especially from the Jesuit colleges, might, I
doubt not, be added to the list of good Latin writers by any competent
scholar, who should prosecute the research through public libraries by
the aid of the biographical dictionaries. But more than enough may have
been said for the general reader. The decline of classical literature in
this sense, to which we have already alluded, was the theme of complaint
towards the close of the century, and above all in Italy. Paulus
Manutius had begun to lament it long before. But Latinus Latinius
himself, one of the most learned scholars of that country, states
positively in 1584, that the Italian universities were forced to send
for their professors from Spain and France.[943] And this abandonment by
Italy of her former literary glory, was far more striking in the next
age, an age of science, but not of polite literature. Ranke supposes
that the attention of Italy being more turned towards mathematics and
natural history, the study of the ancient writers, which do not
contribute greatly to these sciences, fell into decay. But this seems
hardly an adequate cause, nor had the exact sciences made any striking
progress in the period immediately under review. The rigorous orthodoxy
of the church, which in some measure revived an old jealousy of heathen
learning, must have contributed far more to the effect. Sixtus V.
notoriously disliked all profane studies, and was even kept with
difficulty from destroying the antiquities of Rome, several of which
were actually demolished by this bigoted and barbarous zeal.[944] No
other pope, I believe, has been guilty of what the Romans always deemed
sacrilege. In such discouraging circumstances we could hardly wonder at
what is reported, that Aldus Manutius, having been made professor of
rhetoric at Rome, about 1589, could only get one or two hearers. But
this, perhaps, does not rest on very good authority.[945] It is agreed
that the Greek language was almost wholly neglected at the end of the
century, and there was no one in Italy distinguished for a knowledge of
it. Baronius must be reckoned a man of laborious erudition; yet he wrote
his annals of ecclesiastical history of twelve centuries, without any
acquaintance with that tongue.
[943] Tiraboschi, x. 387.
[944] Ranke, i. 476.
[945] Id. 482. Renouard, Imprimerie des Aides, iii. 197, doubts the
truth of this story, which is said to come on the authority alone
of Rossi, a writer who took the name of Erythræus, and has
communicated a good deal of literary miscellaneous information, but
not always such as deserves confidence.
|Joseph Scaliger.|
37. The two greatest scholars of the sixteenth century, being rather
later than most of the rest, are yet unnamed; Joseph Scaliger and Isaac
Casaubon. The former, son of Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and, in the
estimation at least of some, his inferior in natural genius, though much
above him in learning and judgment, was perhaps the most extraordinary
master of general erudition that has ever lived. His industry was
unremitting through a length of life; his memory, though he naturally
complains of its failure in latter years, had been prodigious; he was,
in fact, conversant with all ancient, and very extensively with modern
literature. The notes of his conversations, taken down by some of his
friends, and well-known by the name of Scaligerana, though full of
vanity and contempt of others, and though not always perhaps faithful
registers of what he said, bear witness to his acuteness, vivacity, and
learning.[946] But his own numerous and laborious publications are the
best testimonies to these qualities. His name will occur to us more than
once again. In the department of philology, he was conspicuous as an
excellent critic, both of the Latin and Greek languages; though Bayle,
in his own paradoxical, but acute and truly judicious spirit, has
suggested, that Scaliger’s talents and learning were too great for a
good commentator; the one making him discover in authors more hidden
sense than they possessed, the other leading him to perceive a thousand
allusions which had never been designed. He frequently altered the text
in order to bring these more forward; and in his conjectures is bold,
ingenious, and profound, but not very satisfactory.[947] His critical
writings are chiefly on the Latin poets; but his knowledge of Greek was
eminent; and, perhaps, it may not be too minute to notice as a proof of
it, that his verses in that language, if not good according to our
present standard, are at least much better than those of Casaubon. The
latter, in an epistle to Scaliger, extols his correspondent as far above
Gaza, or any modern Greek in poetry, and worthy to have lived in Athens
with Aristophanes and Euripides. This cannot be said of his own
attempts, in which their gross faultiness is as manifest as their
general want of spirit.
[946] The Scaligerana Prima, as they are called, were collected by
Francis Vertunien, a physician of Poitiers; the Secunda, which are
much the longest, by two brothers, named De Vassan, who were
admitted to the intimacy of Scaliger at Leyden. They seem to have
registered all his table-talk in commonplace books alphabetically
arranged. Hence, when he spoke at different times of the same
person or subject, the whole was published in an undigested,
incoherent, and sometimes self-contradictory paragraph. He was not
strict about consistency, as men of his temper seldom are in their
conversation, and one would be slow in relying on what he has said;
but the Scaligerana, with its many faults, deserves perhaps the
first place among those amusing miscellanies, known by the name of
Ana.
It was little to the honour of the Scaligers, father and son, that
they lay under the strongest suspicions of extreme credulity, to
say nothing worse, in setting up a descent from the Scala princes
of Verona, though the world could never be convinced that their
proper name was not Burden, of a plebeian family, and known as such
in that city. Joseph Scaliger took as his device, Fuimus Troes; and
his letters, as well as the Scaligerana, bear witness to the stress
he laid on this pseudo-genealogy. Lipsius observes on this, with
the true spirit which a man of letters ought to feel, that it would
have been a great honour for the Scalas to have descended from the
Scaligers, who had more real nobility than the whole city of
Verona. (Thuana, p. 14). But unfortunately the vain, foolish, and
vulgar part of mankind cannot be brought to see things in that
light, and both the Scaligers knew that such princes as Henry II.
and Henry IV. would esteem them more for their ancestry than for
their learning and genius.
The epitaph of Daniel Heinsius on Joseph Scaliger, pardonably
perhaps on such an occasion, mingles the real and fabulous glories
of his friend.
Regius a Brenni deductus sanguine sanguis
Qui dominos rerum tot numerabat avos,
Cui nihil indulsit sors, nil natura negavit,
Et jure imperii conditor ipse sui,
Invidiæ scopulus, sed cœlo proximus, illa,
Illa Juliades conditur, hospes, humo.
Centum illic proavos et centum pone triumphos,
Sceptraque Veronæ sceptrigerosque Deos;
Mastinosque, Canesque, et totam ab origine gentem,
Et quæ præterea non bene nota latent.
Illic stent aquilæ priscique insignia regni,
Et ter Cæsareo munere fulta domus
Plus tamen invenies quicquid sibi contulit ipse,
Et minimum tantæ nobilitatis eget.
Aspice tot linguas, totumque in pectore mundum;
Innumeras gentes continet iste locus.
Crede illic Arabas, desertaque nomina Pœnos,
Et crede Armenios Æthiopasque tegi.
Terrarum instar habes; et quam natura negavit
Laudem uni populo, contigit illa viro.
[947] Niceron, vol. xxiii. Blount, Biogr. Univ.
|Isaac Casaubon.|
38. This eminent person, a native of Geneva[948]--that little city, so
great in the annals of letters--and the son-in-law of Henry Stephens,
rose above the horizon in 1583, when his earliest work, the Annotations
on Diogenes Laertius, was published; a performance of which he was
afterwards ashamed, as being unworthy of his riper studies. Those on
Strabo, an author much neglected before, followed in 1587. For more than
twenty years Casaubon employed himself upon editions of Greek authors,
many of which, as that of Theophrastus, in 1593, and that of Athenæus,
in 1600, deserve particular mention. The latter, especially, which he
calls, “molestissimum, difficillimum et tædii plenissimum opus,” has
always been deemed a noble monument of critical sagacity and extensive
erudition. In conjectural emendation of the text, no one hitherto had
been equal to Casaubon. He may probably be deemed a greater scholar than
his father-in-law Stephens, or even, in a critical sense, than his
friend Joseph Scaliger. These two lights of the literary world,
though it is said, that they had never seen each other,[949] continued
till the death of the latter in regular correspondence and unbroken
friendship. Casaubon, querulous but not envious, paid freely the homage
which Scaliger was prepared to exact, and wrote as to one superior in
age, in general celebrity, and in impetuosity of spirit. Their letters
to each other, as well as to their various other correspondents, are
highly valuable for the literary history of the period they embrace;
that is, the last years of the present, and the first of the ensuing
century.
[948] The father of Casaubon was from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.
He fled to Geneva during a temporary persecution of the Huguenots,
but returned home afterwards. Casaubon went back to Geneva in his
nineteenth year for the sake of education. See his life by his son
Meric, prefixed to Almeloveen’s edition of his epistles.
[949] Morhof, l. i. c. xv. s. 57.
|General result.|
39. Budæus, Camerarius, Stephens, Scaliger, Casaubon, appear to stand
out as the great restorers of ancient learning, and especially of the
Greek language. I do not pretend to appreciate them by deep skill in the
subject, or by a diligent comparison of their works with those of
others, but from what I collect to have been the more usual suffrage of
competent judges. Canter, perhaps, or Sylburgius might be rated above
Camerarius; but the last seems, if we may judge by the eulogies bestowed
upon him, to have stood higher in the estimation of his contemporaries.
Their labours restored the integrity of the text in the far greater part
of the Greek authors--though they did not yet possess as much metrical
knowledge as was required for that of the poets--explained most dubious
passages, and nearly exhausted the copiousness of the language. For
another century mankind was content, in respect of Greek philology, to
live on the accumulations of the sixteenth; and it was not till after so
long a period had elapsed, that new scholars arose, more exact, more
philosophical, more acute in “knitting up the ravelled sleeve” of
speech, but not, to say the least, more abundantly stored with erudition
than those who had cleared the way, and upon whose foundations they
built.
|Learning in England under Edward and Mary.|
40. We come, in the last place, to the condition of ancient learning in
this island; a subject which it may be interesting to trace with some
minuteness, though we can offer no splendid banquet, even from the reign
of the Virgin Queen. Her accession was indeed a happy epoch in our
literary, as well as civil annals. She found a great and miserable
change in the state of the universities since the days of her father.
Plunder and persecution, the destroying spirits of the last two reigns,
were enemies, against which our infant muses could not struggle.[950]
Ascham, indeed, denies that there was much decline of learning at
Cambridge before the time of Mary. The influence of her reign was, not
indirectly alone, but by deliberate purpose, injurious to all useful
knowledge.[951] It was in contemplation, he tells us (and surely it was
congenial enough to the spirit of that government) that the ancient
writers should give place in order to restore Duns Scotus, and the
scholastic barbarians.
[950] The last editor of Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses bears witness to
having seen chronicles and other books mutilated, as he conceives,
by the protestant visitors of the university under Edward, “What is
most,” he says, “to the discredit of Cox (afterwards bishop of
Ely), was his unwearied diligence in destroying the ancient
manuscripts and other books in the public and private libraries at
Oxford. The savage barbarity with which he executed this hateful
office can never be forgotten,” &c., p. 478. One book only of the
famous library of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, bequeathed to
Oxford, escaped mutilation. This is a Valerius Maximus. But as Cox
was really a man of considerable learning, we may ask whether there
is evidence to lay these Vandal proceedings on him rather than on
his colleagues.
[951] “And what was the fruit of this seed? Verily, judgment in
doctrine was wholly altered; order in discipline very much changed;
the love of good learning began suddenly to wax cold; the knowledge
of the tongues, in spite of some that therein had flourished, was
manifestly contemned, and so the way of right study manifestly
perverted; the choice good authors of malice confounded; old
sophistry, I say not well, not old, but that new rotten sophistry,
began to beard and shoulder logic in their own tongue; yea, I know
that heads were cast together, and counsel devised, that Duns, with
all the rabble of barbarous questionists, should have dispossessed,
of their places and room, Aristotle, Plato, Tully, and Demosthenes;
whom good Mr. Redman, and those two worthy stars of the university,
Mr. Cheke and Mr. Smith, with their scholars, had brought to
flourish as notably in Cambridge, as ever they did in Greece and in
Italy; and for the doctrine of those four, the four pillars of
learning, Cambridge then giving no place to no university, neither
in France, Spain, Germany, nor Italy.”--P. 317.
|Revival under Elizabeth.|
41. It is indeed impossible to restrain the desire of noble minds for
truth and wisdom. Scared from the banks of Isis and Cam, neglected or
discountenanced by power, learning found an asylum in the closets of
private men, who laid up in silence stores for future use. And some of
course remained out of those who had listened to Smith and Cheke, or the
contemporary teachers of Oxford. But the mischief was effected,
in a general sense, by breaking up the course of education in the
universities. At the beginning of the new queen’s reign, but few of the
clergy, to whichever mode of faith they might conform, had the least
tincture of Greek learning, and the majority did not understand
Latin.[952] The protestant exiles, being far the most learned men of the
kingdom, brought back a more healthy tone of literary diligence. The
universities began to revive. An address was delivered in Greek verses
to Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1564, to which she returned thanks in the
same language.[953] Oxford would not be outdone. Lawrence, regius
professor of Greek, as we are told by Wood, made an oration at Carfax, a
spot often chosen for public exhibition, on her visit to the city in
1566; when her majesty, thanking the university in the same tongue,
observed “it was the best Greek speech she had ever heard.”[954] Several
slight proofs of classical learning appear from this time in the
“History and Antiquities of Oxford;” marks of a progress, at first slow
and silent, which I only mention, because nothing more important has
been recorded.
[952] Hallam’s Constit. Hist. of Eng. i. 249.
[953] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 270.
[954] Wood. Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford.
|Greek Lectures at Cambridge.|
42. In 1575, the queen having been now near twenty years on the throne,
we find on positive evidence, that Greek lectures were given in St.
John’s College, Cambridge; which, indeed, few would be disposed to
doubt, reflecting on the general character of the age and the length of
opportunity that had been afforded. It is said in the life of Mr. Bois,
or Boyse, one of the revisers of the translation of the Bible under
James, that “his father was a great scholar, being learned in the Hebrew
and Greek excellently well, which, considering the manners, that I say
not, the looseness of the times of his education, was almost a miracle.”
The son was admitted at St. John’s in 1575. “His father had well
educated him in the Greek tongue before his coming; which caused him to
be taken notice of in the college. For besides himself there was but one
there who could write Greek. Three lectures in that language were read
in the college. In the first, grammar was taught, as is commonly now
done in schools. In the second, an easy author was explained in the
grammatical way. In the third was read somewhat which might seem fit for
their capacities who had passed over the other two. A year was usually
spent in the first, and two in the second.”[955] It will be perceived,
that the course of instruction was still elementary; but it is well
known that many, perhaps most students, entered the universities at an
earlier age than is usual at present.[956]
[955] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 327. Chalmers.
[956] It is probable that Cambridge was at this time better furnished
with learning than Oxford. Even Wood does not give us a favourable
notion of the condition of that university in the first part of the
queen’s reign. Oxford was for a long time filled with popish
students, that is, with conforming partisans of the former
religion; many of whom, from time to time, went off to Douay.
Leicester, as chancellor of the university, charged it, in 1582,
and in subsequent years, with great neglect of learning; the
disputations had become mere forms, and the queen’s lecturers in
Greek and Hebrew seldom read. It was as bad in all the other
sciences. Wood’s Antiquities and Athenæ, _passim_. The colleges of
Corpus Christi and Merton were distinguished beyond the rest in the
reign of Elizabeth; especially the former, where Jewel read the
lecture in rhetoric (at an earlier time, of course), Hooker in
logic, and Raynolds in Greek. Leicester succeeded in
_puritanizing_, as Wood thought, the university, by driving off the
old party, and thus rendered it a more effective school of learning.
Harrison, about 1586, does not speak much better of the
universities; “the quadrivials, I mean arithmetic, music, geometry
and astronomy, are now small regarded in either of them.”
Description of Britain, p. 252. Few learned preachers were sent out
from them, which he ascribes, in part, to the poor endowments of
most livings.
|Few Greek editions in England.|
43. We come very slowly to books, even subsidiary to education, in the
Greek language. And since this cannot be conveniently carried on to any
great extent without books, though I am aware that some contrivances
were employed as substitutes for them, and since it was as easy to
publish either grammars or editions of ancient authors in England as on
the Continent, we can, as it seems, draw no other inference from the
want of them than the absence of any considerable demand. I shall
therefore enumerate all the books instrumental to the study of Greek
which appeared in England before the close of the century.
|School books enumerated.|
44. It has been mentioned in another place that two alone had been
printed before 1550. In 1553 a Greek version of the second Æneid, by
George Etherege, was published. Two editions of the Anglican liturgy in
Latin and Greek, by Whitaker, one of our most learned theologians,
appeared in 1569;[957] a short catechism in both languages, 1573
and 1578. We find also in 1578 a little book entitled χριοτιανισμου
στοιχειωσις εις την παιδων ωθελειαν ἑλληνιστι και λατινιστι εκτεθεισα.
[christianismou stoicheiôsis eis tên paidôn ôpheleian hellênisti kai
latinsti ektetheisa.] This is a translation, made also by Whitaker, from
Nowell’s Christianæ Pietatis Prima Institutio, ad Usum Scholarum Latine
Scripta. The Biographia Britannica puts the first edition of this Greek
version in 1575; and informs us also that Nowell’s lesser Catechism was
published in Latin and Greek, 1575; but I do not find any confirmation
of this in Herbert or Watts. In 1575, Grant, master of Westminster
School, published Græcæ Linguæ Spicilegium, intended evidently for the
use of his scholars; and in 1581 the same Grant superintended an edition
of Constantin’s Lexicon, probably in the abridgment, under the name of
the Basle printer Crespin, enriching it with four or five thousand new
words, which he most likely took from Stephens’s Thesaurus. A Greek,
Latin, French, and English lexicon, by John Barret or Baret, in
1580,[958] and another by John Morel (without the French), in 1583, are
recorded in bibliographical works; but I do not know whether any copies
have survived.
[957] Scaliger says of Whitaker, O qu’il etoit bien docte! Scalig.
Secunda.
[958] Chalmers mentions an earlier edition of this dictionary in 1573,
but without the Greek.
|Greek taught in schools.|
45. It appears, therefore, that before even the middle of the queen’s
reign the rudiments of the Greek language were imparted to boys at
Westminster school, and no doubt also at those of Eton, Winchester, and
St. Paul’s.[959] But probably it did not yet extend to many others. In
Ascham’s Schoolmaster, a posthumous treatise, published in 1570, but
evidently written some years after the accession of Elizabeth, while
very detailed, and in general, valuable rules are given for the
instruction of boys in the Latin language, no intimation is found that
Greek was designed to be taught. In the statutes of Witton School in
Cheshire, framed in 1558, the founder says:--“I will there were always
taught good literature, both Latin and Greek.”[960] But this seems to be
only an aspiration after an hopeless excellence; for he proceeds to
enumerate the Latin books intended to be used, without any mention of
Greek. In the statutes of Merchant Taylor’s School, 1561, the high
master is required to be “learned in good and clean Latin literature,
and also in Greek, if such may be gotten.”[961] These words are copied
from those of Colet, in the foundation of St. Paul’s School. But in the
regulations of Hawkshead School in Lancashire, 1588, the master is
directed “to teach grammar and the principles of the Greek tongue.”[962]
The little tracts indeed, above-mentioned, do not lead us to believe
that the instruction, even at Westminster, was of more than the
slightest kind. They are but verbal translations of known religious
treatises, wherein the learner would be assisted by his recollection at
almost every word. But in the rules laid down by Mr. Lyon, founder of
Harrow School, in 1590, the books designed to be taught are enumerated,
and comprise some Greek orators and historians, as well as the poems of
Hesiod.[963]
[959] Harrison mentions, about the year 1586, that at the great
collegiate schools of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, boys “are
well entered in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues and
rules of versifying.” Description of England, prefixed to
Holingshed’s Chronicles, p. 254 (4to edition). He has just before
taken notice of “the great number of grammar-schools throughout the
realm, and those very liberally endowed for the relief of poor
scholars, so that there are not many corporate towns now under the
queen’s dominion that have not one grammar-school at the least,
with a sufficient living for a master and usher appointed for the
same.”
[960] Carlisle’s Endowed Schools, vol. i. p. 129.
[961] Id. vol. ii. p. 49.
[962] Id. vol. i. p. 656.
[963] Id. ii. 136. I have not discovered any other proofs of Greek
education in Mr. Carlisle’s work. In the statutes or regulations of
Bristol School, founded in the sixteenth century, it is provided
that the head master should be “well learned in the Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew.” But these must be modern, as appears, _inter alia_, by
the words “well affected to the Constitution in Church and State.”
|Greek better known after 1580.|
46. We have now, however, descended very low in the century. The
twilight of classical learning in England had yielded to its morning. It
is easy to trace many symptoms of enlarged erudition after 1580. Scot,
in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, and doubtless many other writers,
employ Greek quotations rather freely; and the use of Greek words, or
adaptation of English forms to them, is affected by Webb and Puttenham
in their treatises on poetry. Greek titles are not infrequently given to
books; it was a pedantry many affected. Besides the lexicons
above-mentioned, it was easy to procure, at no great price, those of
Constantin and Scapula. We may refer to the ten years after 1580 the
commencement of that rapid advance, which gave the English nation, in
the reign of James, so respectable a place in the republic of letters.
In the last decennium of the century, the Ecclesiastical Polity of
Hooker is a monument of real learning, in profane as well as theological
antiquity. But certainly the reading of our scholars in this period was
far more generally among the Greek fathers than the classics. Even this,
however, required a competent acquaintance with the language.
|Editions of Greek.|
47. The two universities had abandoned the art of printing since the
year 1521. No press is known to have existed afterwards at Cambridge
till 1584, or at Oxford till 1586, when six homilies of Chrysostom in
Greek were published at a press erected by Lord Leicester at his own
expense.[964] The first book of Herodotus came out at the same place in
1591; the treatise of Barlaam on the Papacy in 1592; Lycophron in the
same year; the Knights of Aristophanes in 1593; fifteen orations of
Demosthenes, in 1593 and 1597; Agatharcides in the latter year. One
oration of Lysias was printed at Cambridge in 1593. The Greek testament
appeared from the London press in 1581, in 1587, and again in 1592; a
treatise of Plutarch, and three orations of Isocrates, in 1587; the
Iliad in 1591. These, if I have overlooked none, or if none have been
omitted by Herbert, are all the Greek publications (except grammars, of
which there are several, one by Camden, for the use of Westminster
School, in 1597,[965] and one in 1600, by Knolles, author of the History
of the Turks) that fall within the sixteenth century; and all,
apparently, are intended for classes in the schools and
universities.[966]
[964] Herbert.
[965] This grammar by Camden was probably founded on that of Grant,
above-mentioned; cujus rudimenta, says Smith, the author of
Camden’s life, cum multa ex parte laborarent deficerentque, non tam
reformanda, quam de novo instituenda censens, observationibus quas
ex Græcis omne genus scriptoribus acri judicio et longo usu
collegerat, sub severum examen revocatis, grammaticam novam non
soli scholæ cui præerat, sed universis per Angliam scholis deinceps
inservituram, eodem anno edidit.--P. 19, edit. 1691.
The excessive scarcity of early school-books makes it allowable to
mention the Progymnasma Scholasticum of John Stockwood, an edition
of which, with the date of 1597, is in the Inner Temple Library. It
is merely a selection of epigrams from the Anthologia of H.
Stephens, and shows but a moderate expectation of proficiency from
the studious youth for whom it was designed: the Greek being
written in interlinear Latin characters over the original, ad
faciliorem eorundem lectionem. A literal translation into Latin
follows, and several others in metre. Stockwood had been master of
Tunbridge School: Scholæ Tunbridgiensis olim ludimagister; so that
there may possibly have been earlier editions of this little book.
[966] The arrangement of editions recorded in Herbert, following the
names of the printers, does not afford facilities for any search. I
may, therefore, have omitted one or two trifles, and it is likely
that I have; but the conclusion will be the same. Angli, says
Scaliger, nunquam excuderunt bonos libros veteres, tantum vulgares.
|And of Latin classics.|
48. It must be expected that the best Latin writers were more honoured
than those of Greece. Besides grammars and dictionaries, which are too
numerous to mention, we find not a few editions, though principally for
the purposes of education:--Cicero de Officiis (in Latin and English),
1553; Virgil, 1570; Sallust, 1570 and 1571; Justin, 1572; Cicero de
Oratore, 1573; Horace and Juvenal, 1574. It is needless to proceed
lower, when they become more frequent. The most important classical
publication was a complete edition of Cicero, which was, of course, more
than a schoolbook. This appeared at London in 1585, from the press of
Ninian Newton. It is said to be a reprint from the edition of Lambinus.
|Learning lower than in Spain.|
49. It is obvious that foreign books must have been largely imported, or
we should place the learning of the Elizabethan period as much too low
as it has ordinarily been exaggerated. But we may feel some surprise
that so little was contributed by our native scholars. Certain it is,
that in most departments of literature they did not yet occupy a
distinguished place. The catalogue by Herbert, of books published down
to the end of the century, presents no favourable picture of the queen’s
reign. Without instituting a comparison with Germany or France, we may
easily make one with the classed catalogue of books printed in Spain,
which we find at the close of the Bibliotheca Nova of Nicolas Antonio.
Greek appears to have been little studied in Spain, though we have
already mentioned a few grammatical works; but the editions of Latin
authors, and the commentators upon them, are numerous; and upon the
whole it is undeniable that, in most branches of erudition, so far as we
can draw a conclusion from publications, Spain, under Philip II., held a
higher station than England under Elizabeth. The poverty of the English
church, the want of public libraries, and the absorbing influence of
polemical theology will account for much of this; and I am not by any
means inclined to rate our English gentlemen of Elizabeth’s age for
useful and even classical knowledge below the hidalgos of Castile. But
this class were not the chief contributors to literature. It is,
however, in consequence of the reputation for learning acquired by some
men distinguished in civil life, such as Smith, Sadler, Raleigh, and
even by ladies, among whom the queen herself, and the accomplished
daughters of Sir Antony Cooke, Lady Cecil, and Lady Russell, are
particularly to be mentioned, that the general character of her reign
has been, in this point of view, considerably overrated. No Englishman
ought, I conceive, to suppress this avowal, or to feel any mortification
in making it; with the prodigious development of wisdom and genius that
illustrated the last years of Elizabeth, we may well spare the
philologers and antiquaries of the Continent.
|Improvement at the end of the century.|
50. There had arisen, however, towards the conclusion of the century, a
very few men of such extensive learning as entitled them to an European
reputation. Sir Henry Savile stood at the head of these: we may justly
deem him the most learned Englishman, in profane literature, of the
reign of Elizabeth. He published, in 1581, a translation of part of
Tacitus, with annotations not very copious or profound, but pertinent,
and deemed worthy to be rendered into Latin in the next century by the
younger Gruter, and reprinted on the Continent.[967] Scaliger speaks of
him with personal ill-will, but with a respect he seldom showed to those
for whom he entertained such sentiments. Next to Savile we may rank
Camden, whom all foreigners name with praise for the Britannia. Hooker
has already been mentioned; but I am not sure that he could be said to
have much reputation beyond our own shores. I will not assert that no
other was extensively known even for profane learning: in our own
biographical records several may be found, at least esteemed at home.
But our most studious countrymen long turned their attention almost
exclusively to theological controversy, and toiled over the prolix
volumes of the fathers; a labour not to be defrauded of its praise, but
to which we are not directing our eyes on this occasion.[968]