Note 907 — Chapter X

Casaubon writes frequently to Scaliger about the strange behaviour of his father-in-law, and complains that he had not even leave to look at the books in the latter’s library, which he himself scarce ever visited. Nôsti hominem, nôsti mores, nôsti quid apud eum possim, hoc est, quam nihil possim, qui videtur in suam perniciem conspirâsse. Epist. 21. And, still more severely, Epist. 41. Nam noster, etsi vivens valensque, pridem numero hominum, certe doctorum, eximi meruit; ea est illius inhumanitas, et quod invitus dico, delirium; qui libros quoslibet veteres, ut Indici gryphi aurum, aliis invidet, sibi perire sinit, sed quid ille habeat aut non, juxta scio ego cum ignavissimo. After Stephens’s death, he wrote in kinder terms than he had done before: but regretting some publications, by which the editor of Casaubon’s letters thinks he might mean the Apologie pour Herodote, and the Palæstra de Justi Lipsii Latinitate; the former of which, a very well-known book, contains a spirited attack on the Romish priesthood, but with less regard either for truth or decorum in the selection of his stories than became the character of Stephens; and the latter is of little pertinence to its avowed subject. Henry Stephens had long been subject to a disorder natural enough to laborious men, quædam actionum consuetarum satietas et fastidium, Maittaire, p. 248.