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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

Quidam επιτεμνων 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.

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. 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. |Vergara’s grammar.| 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.

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 from those in ὡ, 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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

German learning. 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. |Greek verses of Rhodomann.| 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.

Learning declines; 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. |except in Catholic Germany.| 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]

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]

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.

Orations of Muretus. 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. |Panegyric of Ruhnkenius.| 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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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. 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.

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]

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]

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.

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]

Learning in Scotland. 51. Scotland had hardly as yet partaken of the light of letters; the very slight attempts at introducing an enlarged scheme of education, which had been made thirty years before, having wholly failed in consequence of the jealous spirit that actuated the chiefs of the old religion and the devastating rapacity that disgraced the partisans of the new. But in 1575, Andrew Melville was appointed principal of the university of Glasgow, which he found almost broken up and abandoned. He established so solid and extensive a system of instruction, wherein the best Greek authors were included, that Scotland, in some years time, instead of sending her own natives to foreign universities, found students from other parts of Europe repairing to her own.[969] Yet Ames has observed that no Greek characters appear in any book printed in Scotland before 1599. This assertion has been questioned by Herbert. In the treatise of Buchanan, De Jure Regni (Edinburgh, 1580), I have observed that the Greek quotations are inserted with a pen. It is at least certain that no book in that language was printed north of the Tweed within this century, nor any Latin classic, nor dictionary, nor any thing of a philological nature except two or three grammars. A few Latin treatises by modern authors on various subjects appeared.[970] It seems questionable whether any printing-press existed in Ireland: the evidence to be collected from Herbert is precarious; but I know not whether any thing more satisfactory has since been discovered.

Latin little used in writing. 52. The Latin language was by no means so generally employed in England as on the Continent. Our authors have from the beginning been apt to prefer their mother-tongue, even upon subjects which, by the usage of the learned, were treated in Latin; though works relating to history, and especially to ecclesiastical antiquity, such as those of Parker and Godwin, were sometimes written in that language. It may be alleged that very few books of a philosophical class appeared at all in the far-famed reign of Elizabeth. But probably such as Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft, Roger’s Anatomy of the Mind, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity would have been thought to require a learned dress in any other country. And we may think the same of the great volumes of controversial theology; as Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, Cartwright’s Platform, and Whitgift’s Reply to it. The free spirit, not so much of our government, as of the public mind itself, and the determination of a large portion of the community to choose their religion for themselves, rendered this descent from the lofty grounds of learning indispensable. By such a deviation from the general laws of the republic of letters, which, as it is needless to say, was by no means less practised in the ensuing age, our writers missed some part of that general renown they might have challenged from Europe; but they enriched the minds of a more numerous public at home; they gave their own thoughts with more precision, energy, and glow; they invigorated and amplified their native language, which became in their hands more accommodated to abstract and philosophical disquisition, though, for the same reason, more formal and pedantic than any other in Europe. This observation is as much intended for the reigns of James and Charles as for that of Elizabeth.

Sect. II.

Principal Writers—Manutius, Sigonius, Lipsius—Numismatics—Mythology—Chronology of Scaliger.

Early works on antiquities. 53. The attention of the learned had been frequently directed, since the revival of letters, to elucidate the antiquities of Rome, her customs, rites, and jurisprudence. It was more laborious than difficult to commonplace all extant Latin authors; and, by this process of comparison, most expressions, perhaps, in which there was no corruption of the text, might be cleared up. This seems to have produced the works already mentioned, of Cælius Rhodiginus and Alexander ab Alexandro, which afford explanations of many hundred passages that might perplex a student. Others had devoted their time to particular subjects, as Pomponius Lætus, and Raphael of Volterra, to the distinctions of magistrates; Marlianus, to the topography of ancient Rome; and Robortellus, to family names. It must be confessed that most of these early pioneers were rather praiseworthy for their diligence and good-will, than capable of clearing away the more essential difficulties that stood in the way: few treatises, written before the middle of the sixteenth century, have been admitted into the collections of Grævius and Sallengre. But soon afterwards an abundant light was thrown upon the most interesting part of Roman antiquity, the state of government and public law, by four more eminent scholars than had hitherto explored that field, Manutius, Panvinius, and Sigonius in Italy, Gruchius (or Grouchy) in France.

P. Manutius on Roman Laws. 54. The first of these published in 1558 his treatise De Legibus Romanorum; and though that De Civitate did not appear till 1585, Grævius believes it to have been written about the same time as the former. Manutius has given a good account of the principal laws made at Rome during the republic; not many of the empire. Augustinus, however, archbishop of Tarragona, had preceded him with considerable success; and several particular laws were better illustrated afterwards by Brisson, Balduin, and Gothofred. It will be obvious to any one, very slightly familiar with the Roman law, that this subject, as far as it relates to the republican period, belongs much more to classical antiquity than to jurisprudence.

Manutius, De Civitate. 55. The second treatise of Manutius, De Civitate, discusses the polity of the Roman republic. Though among the very first scholars of his time, he will not always bear the test of modern acuteness. Even Grævius, who himself preceded the most critical age, frequently corrects his errors. Yet there are marks of great sagacity in Manutius; and Niebuhr, who has judged the antiquaries of the sixteenth century as they generally deserve, might have found the germ of his own celebrated hypothesis, though imperfectly developed, in what this old writer has suggested; that the populus Romanus originally meant the inhabitants of Rome intra pomœria, as distinguished from the cives Romani, who dwelt beyond that precinct in the territory.[971]

Panvinius—Sigonius.

Gruchius. 56. Onuphrius Panvinius, a man of vast learning and industry, but of less discriminating judgment, and who did not live to its full maturity, fell short, in his treatise, De Civitate Romana, of what Manutius (from whom, however, he could have taken nothing) has achieved on the same subject, and his writings, according to Grævius, would yield a copious harvest to criticism.[972] But neither of the two was comparable to Sigonius of Modena,[973] whose works on the Roman government not only form an epoch in this department of ancient literature, but have left, in general, but little for his successors. Mistakes have of course been discovered, where it is impossible to reconcile, or to rely upon, every ancient testimony; and Sigonius, like the other scholars of his age, might confide too implicitly in his authorities. But his treatises, De Jure Civium Romanorum, 1560, and De Jure Italiæ, 1562, are still the best that can be read in illustration of the Roman historians and the orations of Cicero. Whoever, says Grævius, sits down to the study of these orations, without being acquainted with Sigonius, will but lose his time. In another treatise, published in 1574, De Judiciis Romanorum, he goes through the whole course of judicial proceedings, more copiously than Heineccius, the most celebrated of his successors, and with more exclusive regard to writers of the republican period. The Roman Antiquities of Grævius contain several other excellent pieces by Sigonius, which have gained him the indisputable character of the first antiquary, both for learning and judgment, whom the sixteenth century produced. He was engaged in several controversies; one with Robortellus,[974] another with a more considerable antagonist, Gruchius, a native of Rouen, and professor of Greek at Bordeaux, who, in his treatise, De Comitiis Romanorum, 1555, was the first that attempted to deal with a difficult and important subject. Sigonius and he interchanged some thrusts, with more urbanity and mutual respect than was usual in that age. An account of this controversy, which chiefly related to a passage in Cicero’s oration, De Lege Agraria, as to the confirmation of popular elections by the comitia curiata, will be found in the preface to the second volume of Grævius, wherein the treatises themselves are published. Another contemporary writer, Latino Latini, seems to have solved the problem much better than either Grouchy or Sigone. But both parties were misled by the common source of error in the most learned men of the sixteenth century, an excess of confidence in the truth of ancient testimony. The words of Cicero, who often spoke for an immediate purpose, those of Livy and Dionysius, who knew but imperfectly the primitive history of Rome, those even of Gellius or Pomponius, to whom all the republican institutions had become hardly intelligible, were deemed a sort of infallible text, which a modern might explain as best he could, but must not be presumptuous enough to reject.

Paulus Manutius calls Panvinius, ille antiquitatis helluo, spectatæ juvenis industriæ ... sæpe litigat obscuris de rebus cum Sigonio nostro, sed utriusque bonitas, mutuus amor, excellens ad cognoscendam veritatem judicium facit ut inter eos facile conveniat. Epist. lib. ii. p. 81.

Sigonius on Athenian polity. 57. Besides the works of these celebrated scholars, one by Zamoscius, a young Pole, De Senatu Romano (1563), was so highly esteemed, that some have supposed him to have been assisted by Sigonius. The latter, among his other pursuits, turned his mind to the antiquities of Greece, which had hitherto, for obvious reasons, attracted far less attention than those of ancient Italy. He treated the constitution of the Athenian republic so fully, that, according to Gronovius, he left little for Meursius and others who trod in his path.[975] He has, however, neglected to quote the very words of his authorities, which alone can be satisfactory to a diligent reader, translating every passage, so that hardly any Greek words occur in a treatise expressly on the Athenian polity. This may be deemed a corroboration of what has been said above, as to the decline of Greek learning in Italy.

Patrizzi and Lipsius on Roman militia. 58. Francis Patrizzi was the first who unfolded the military system of Rome. He wrote in Italian a treatise, Della Milizia Romana, 1583, of which a translation will be found in the tenth volume of Grævius.[976] It is divided into fifteen parts, which seem to comprehend the whole subject: each of these again is divided into sections; and each section explains a text from the sixth book of Polybius, or from Livy. But he comes down no lower in history than those writers extend, and is consequently not aware of, or but slightly alludes to, the great military changes that ensued in later times. On Polybius he comments sentence by sentence. He had been preceded by Robortellus, and by Francis, Duke of Urbino, in endeavouring to explain the Roman castrametation from Polybius. Their plans differ a little from his own.[977] Lipsius, who some years afterwards wrote on the same subject, resembles Patrizzi in his method of a running commentary on Polybius. Scaliger, who disliked Lipsius very much, imputes to him plagiarism from the Italian antiquary.[978] But I do not perceive, on a comparison of the two treatises, much pretence for this insinuation. The text of Polybius was surely common ground, and I think it possible that the work of Patrizzi, which was written in Italian, might not be known to Lipsius. But whether this were so or not, he is much more full and satisfactory than his predecessor, who, I would venture to hint, may have been a little over-praised. Lipsius, however, seems to have fallen into the same error of supposing that the whole history of the Roman militia could be explained from Polybius.