Note 946 — Chapter X

The Scaligerana Prima, as they are called, were collected by Francis Vertunien, a physician of Poitiers; the Secunda, which are much the longest, by two brothers, named De Vassan, who were admitted to the intimacy of Scaliger at Leyden. They seem to have registered all his table-talk in commonplace books alphabetically arranged. Hence, when he spoke at different times of the same person or subject, the whole was published in an undigested, incoherent, and sometimes self-contradictory paragraph. He was not strict about consistency, as men of his temper seldom are in their conversation, and one would be slow in relying on what he has said; but the Scaligerana, with its many faults, deserves perhaps the first place among those amusing miscellanies, known by the name of Ana.