Chapter X (2)

[923] Scalig. Secunda. Accents on Latin words, it is observed by
Scaliger (in the Scaligerana Prima), were introduced within his
memory; and, as he says, which would be more important, the points
called comma and semi-colon, of which Paulus Manutius was the
inventor. But in this there must be some mistake: for the comma is
frequent in books much older than any edited by Manutius.

|Decline of taste in Germany.|

23. In the beginning of the century, as has been shown in the former volume, the prospects of classical literature in Germany seemed most auspicious. Schools and universities, the encouragement of liberal princes, the instruction of distinguished professors, the formation of public libraries, had given an impulse, the progressive effects of which were manifest in every Protestant state of the empire. Nor was any diminution of this zeal and taste discernible for a few years. But after the death of Melanchthon in 1560, and of Camerarius in 1574, a literary decline commenced, slow but uniform and permanent, during which Germany had to lament a strange eclipse of that lustre which had distinguished the preceding age. This was first shown in an inferiority of style, and in a neglect of the best standards of good writing. The admiration of Melanchthon himself led in some measure to this; and to copy his manner (genus dicendi Philippicum, as it was called) was more the fashion than to have recourse to his masters, Cicero and Quintilian.[924] But this, which would have kept up a very tolerable style, gave way, not long afterwards, to a tasteless and barbarous turn of phrase, in which all feeling of propriety and elegance was lost. This has been called Apuleianismus, as if that indifferent writer of the third century had been set up for imitation, though probably it was the mere sympathy of bad taste and incorrect expression. The scholastic philosophy came back about the same time into the German universities, with all its technical jargon, and triumphed over the manes of Erasmus and Melanchthon. The disciples of Paracelsus spread their mystical rhapsodies far and wide, as much at the expense of classical taste as of sound reason. And when we add to these untoward circumstances the dogmatic and polemical theology, studious of a phraseology certainly not belonging to the Augustan age, and the necessity of writing on many other subjects almost equally incapable of being treated in good language, we cannot be much astonished that a barbarous and slovenly Latinity should become characteristic of Germany, which, even in later ages, very few of its learned men have been able to discard.[925]

[924] Eichhorn, iii. 268. The Germans usually said Philippus for
Melanchthon.

[925] Melchior Adam, after highly praising Wolf’s translation of
Demosthenes, proceeds to boast of the Greek learning of Germany,
which, rather singularly, he seems to ascribe to this translation:
Effecit ut ante ignotus plerisque Demosthenes, nunc familiariter
nobiscum versetur in scholis et academiis. Est sanè quod gratulemur
Germaniæ nostræ, quod per Wolfium tantorum fluminum eloquentiæ
particeps facta est. Fatentur ipsi Græci, qui reliqui sunt hodie
Constantinopoli, præ cæteris eruditi, et Christianæ religionis
amantes, totum musarum chorum, relicto Helicone, in Germaniam
transmigrâsse. (Vitæ Philosophurum.) Melchior Adam lived in the
early part of the seventeenth century, when this high character was
hardly applicable to Germany; but his panegyric must be taken as
designed for the preceding age, in which the greater part of his
eminent men flourished. Besides this, he is so much a compiler that
this passage may not be his own.

|German learning.|

|Greek verses of Rhodomann.|

24. In philological erudition we have seen that Germany long maintained her rank, if not quite equal to France in this period, yet nearer to her than to any third nation. We have mentioned several of the most distinguished; and to these we might add many names from Melchior Adam, the laborious biographer of his learned countrymen; such as Oporinus, George Fabricius, Frischlin, Crusius, who first taught the Romaic Greek in Germany. One, rather more known than these, was Laurence Rhodomann. He was the editor of several authors; but his chief claim to a niche in the temple seems to rest upon his Greek verses, which have generally been esteemed superior to any of his generation. The praise does not imply much positive excellence; for in Greek composition, and especially in verse, the best scholars of the sixteenth century make but an indifferent figure. Rhodomann’s life of Luther is written in Greek hexameters. It is also a curious specimen of the bigotry of his church. He boasts that Luther predicted the deaths of Zuingle, Carlostadt, and Œcolampadius, as the punishment of their sacramentarian hypothesis. The lines will be found in a note,[926] and may serve as a fair specimen of as good Greek as could perhaps be written in that age of celebrated erudition. But some other poems of Rhodomann, which I have not seen, are more praised by the critics.

[926]
Και τα μεν ὡς τετελεστο μετα χρονον, ὡς μεμορητο
ὡς γαρ δωδεκαμηνος ἑλιξ τριτος ετρεχε Φαιβου,
δη τοτε μοιρα, θεου κρυφιην πρησσουσα μενοινην,
μαντοσυναις επεθηκε θεοφραδεεσσι τελευτην
ανδρος, ὁσ ουτιν' απρηκτον απο κραδιης βαλε μυθον.
αμφω γαρ στυγερον πλαγξηνορε δογματος αρχω
οικιολαμπαδιον και κιγκλιον εφθασεν ατη
ποτμου δακρυοεντος' ἱνα φριξειε και αλλος
ατρεκιης προς κεντρον αναιδεα ταρσον ιαψαι.
ουδε μεν οξυηορους καρολοσταδιος φυγε ποινας,
τον δε γαρ αντιβολών κρυερῳ μετα φασματι δαιμων
εξαπινης εταραξε, και ηρπασεν οὑ χρεος ηευ.

[Kai ta men hôs tetelesto meta chronon, hôs memorêto;
hôs gar dôdekamênos helix tritos etreche Phaibou,
dê tote moira, theou kryphiên prêssousa menoinên,
mantosynais epethêke theophradeessi teleutên
andros, hos outin' aprêkton apo kradiês bale mython.
amphô gar stygerou planxênore dogmatos archô
oikiolampadion kai kinklion ephthasen atê
potmou dakruoentos; hina phrixeie kai allos
atrekiês pros kentron anaidea tarson iapsai.
oude men oxymorous karolostadios phyge poinas,
ton de gar antibolôn kruerô meta phasmati daimôn
exapinês etaraxe, kai êrpasen hou chreos êeu.]

|Learning declines;|

|except in Catholic Germany.|

25. But, at the expiration of the century, few were left besides Rhodomann of the celebrated philologers of Germany; nor had a new race arisen to supply their place. Æmilius Portus, who taught with reputation at Heidelberg, was a native of Ferrara, whose father, a Greek by origin, emigrated to Genoa on account of religion. The state of literature, in a general sense, had become sensibly deteriorated in the empire. This was most perceptible, or perhaps only perceptible, in its most learned provinces, those which had embraced the Reformation. In the opposite quarter there had been little to lose, and something was gained. In the first period of the Reformation, the Catholic universities, governed by men whose prejudices were insuperable even by appealing to their selfishness, had kept still in the same track, educating their students in the barbarous logic and literature of the Middle Ages, careless that every method was employed in Protestant education to develop and direct the talents of youth; and this had given the manifest intellectual superiority, which taught the disciples and contemporaries of the first reformers a scorn for the stupidity and ignorance of the popish party, somewhat exaggerated, of course, as such sentiments generally are, but dangerous above measure to its influence. It was therefore one of the first great services which the Jesuits performed to get possession of the universities, or to found other seminaries for education. In these they discarded the barbarous school-books then in use, put the rudimentary study of the languages on a better footing, devoted themselves, for the sake of religion, to those accomplishments which religion had hitherto disdained; and by giving a taste for elegant literature, with as much solid and scientific philosophy as the knowledge of the times and the prejudices of the church would allow, both wiped away the reproach of ignorance, and drew forth the native talents of their novices and scholars. They taught gratuitously, which threw, however unreasonably, a sort of discredit upon salaried professors:[927] it was found that boys learned more from them in six months than in two years under other masters; and, probably for both these reasons, even protestants sometimes withdrew their children from the ordinary gymnasia and placed them in Jesuit colleges. No one will deny that, in their classical knowledge, particularly of the Latin language, and in the elegance with which they wrote it, the order of Jesuits might stand in competition with any scholars of Europe. In this period of the sixteenth century, though not perhaps in Germany itself, they produced several of the best writers whom it could boast.[928]

[927] Mox, ubi paululum firmitatis accessit, pueros sine mercede
docendos et erudiendos susceperunt; quo artificio non vulgarem
vulgi favorem emeruere, criminandis præsertim aliis doctoribus,
quorum doctrina venalis esset et scholæ nulli sine mercede
paterent, et interdum etiam doctrina peregrina personarent.
Incredibile dictu est, quantum hæc criminatio valuerit. Hospinian,
Hist. Jesuitarum, l. ii. c. 1. fol. 84. See also l. i. fol. 59.

[928] Ranke, ii. 32. Eichhorn, iii. 266. The latter scarcely does
justice to the Jesuits as promoters of learning in their way.

|Philological works of Stephens.|

26. It is seldom that an age of critical erudition is one also of fine writing; the two have not perhaps a natural incompatibility with each other, but the bond-woman too often usurps the place of the free-woman, and the auxiliary science of philology controls, instead of adorning and ministering to the taste and genius of original minds. As the study of the Latin language advanced, as better editions were published, as dictionaries and books of criticism were more carefully drawn up, we naturally expect to find it written with more correctness, but not with more force and truth. The expostulation of Henry Stephens de Latinitate Falso Suspecta, 1576, is a collection of classical authorities for words and idioms, which seem so like French, that the reader would not hesitate to condemn them. Some of these, however, are so familiar to us as good Latin, that we can hardly suspect the dictionaries not to have contained them. I have not examined any earlier edition than that of Calepin’s dictionary, as enlarged by Paulus Manutius, of the date of 1579, rather after this publication by Henry Stephens, and certainly it does not appear to want these words, or to fail in sufficient authority for them.

|Style of Lipsius.|

27. In another short production by Stephens, De Latinitate Lipsii Palæstra, he turns into ridicule the affected style of that author, who ransacked all his stores of learning to perplex the reader. A much later writer, Scioppius, in his Judicium de Stylo Historico, points out several of the affected and erroneous expressions of Lipsius. But he was the founder of a school of bad writers, which lasted for some time, especially in Germany. Seneca and Tacitus were the authors of antiquity whom Lipsius strove to emulate. “Lipsius,” says Scaliger, “is the cause that men have now little respect for Cicero, whose style he esteems about as much as I do his own. He once wrote well, but his third century of epistles is good for nothing.”[929] But a style of point and affected conciseness will always have its admirers, till the excess of vicious imitation disgusts the world.[930]

[929] Scaligerana Secunda.

[930] Miræus, quoted in Melchior Adam’s Life of Lipsius, praises his
eloquence, with contempt of those who thought their own feeble and
empty writing like Cicero’s. See also Eichhorn, iii. 299; Baillet,
who has a long article on the style of Lipsius and the school it
formed (Jugemens des Savans, vol. ii. p. 192, 4to edition); and
Blount; also the note M. in Bayle’s article on Lipsius. The
following passage of Scioppius I transcribe from Blount:--“In Justi
Lipsii stylo, scriptoris ætate nostra clarissimi, istæ apparent
dotes; acumen, venustas, delectus, ornatus vel nimius, cum vix
quicquam proprie dictum ei placeat, tum schemata nullo numero,
tandem verborum copia; desunt autem perspicuitas, puritas,
æquabilitas, collocatio, junctura et numerus oratorius. Itaque
oratio ejus est obscura, non paucis barbarismis et solœcismis,
pluribus vero archaismis et idiotismis, innumeris etiam neoterismis
inquinata, comprehensio obscura, compositio fracta et in particulas
concisa, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilis captatio.”

|Minerva of Sanctius.|

28. Morhof, and several authorities quoted by Baillet, extol the Latin grammar of a Spaniard, Emanuel Alvarez, as the first in which the fancies of the ancient grammarians had been laid aside. Of this work I know nothing farther. But the Minerva of another native of Spain, Sanchez, commonly called Sanctius, the first edition of which appeared at Salamanca in 1587, far excelled any grammatical treatise that had preceded it, especially as to the rules of syntax, which he has reduced to their natural principles, by explaining apparent anomalies. He is called the prince of grammarians, a divine man, the Mercury and Apollo of Spain, the father of the Latin language, the common teacher of the learned, in the panegyrical style of the Lipsii or Scioppii.[931] The Minerva, enlarged and corrected at different times by the most eminent scholars, Scioppius, Perizonius, and others more recent, still retains a leading place in philology. “No one among those,” says its last editor Bauer, “who have written well upon grammar, has attained such reputation and even authority as the famous Spaniard whose work we now give to the press.” But Sanctius has been charged with too great proneness to censure his predecessors, especially Valla, and with an excess of novelty in his theoretical speculations.

[931] Baillet.

|Orations of Muretus.|

|Panegyric of Ruhnkenius.|

29. The writers, who in this second moiety of the sixteenth century appear to have been most conspicuous for purity of style, were Muretus, Paulus Manutius Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus, to whom we may add our own Buchanan, and perhaps Haddon. The first of these is celebrated for his Orations, published by Aldus Manutius in 1576. Many of these were delivered a good deal earlier. Ruhnkenius, editor of the works of Muretus, says that he at once eclipsed Bembo, Sadolet, and the whole host of Ciceronians; expressing himself so perfectly in that author’s style that we should fancy ourselves to be reading him, did not the subject betray a modern hand. “In learning,” he says, “and in knowledge of the Latin language, Manutius was not inferior to Muretus; we may even say, that his zeal in imitating Cicero was still stronger, inasmuch as he seemed to have no other aim all his life than to bear a perfect resemblance to that model. Yet he rather followed than overtook his master, and in this line of imitation cannot be compared with Muretus. The reason of this was that nature had bestowed on Muretus the same kind of genius that she had given to Cicero, while that of Manutius was very different. It was from this similarity of temperament that Muretus acquired such felicity of expression, such grace in narration, such wit in raillery, such perception of what would gratify the ear in the structure and cadence of his sentences. The resemblance of natural disposition made it a spontaneous act of Muretus to fall into the footsteps of Cicero; while, with all the efforts of Manutius, his dissimilar genius led him constantly away; so that we should not wonder when the writings of one so delight us that we cannot lay them down, while we are soon wearied with those of the other, correct and polished as they are, on account of the painful desire of imitation which they betray. No one, since the revival of letters,” Ruhnkenius proceeds, “has written Latin more correctly than Muretus; yet even in him a few inadvertencies may be discovered.”[932]

[932] Mureti opera, cura Ruhnkenii, Lugd. 1789.

|Defects of his style.|

30. Notwithstanding the panegyric of so excellent a scholar, I cannot feel this very close approximation of Muretus to the Ciceronian standard; and it even seems to me that I have not rarely met with modern Latin of a more thoroughly classical character. His style is too redundant and florid; his topics very trivial. Witness the whole oration on the battle of Lepanto, where the greatness of his subject does not raise them above the level of a schoolboy’s exercise. The celebrated eulogy on the St. Bartholomew Massacre, delivered before the Pope, will serve as a very fair specimen, to exemplify the Latinity of Muretus.[933] Scaliger, invidious for the most part in his characters of contemporary scholars, declares that no one since Cicero had written so well as Muretus, but that he adopted the Italian diffuseness, and says little in many words. This observation seems perfectly just.

[933] O noctem illam memorabilem et in fastis eximiæ alicujus notæ
adjectione signandam, quæ paucorum seditiosorum interitu regem a
præsenti cædis periculo, regnum a perpetua bellorum civilium
formidine liberavit! Qua quidem nocte stellas equidem ipsas luxisse
solito nitidius arbitror, et flumen Sequanam majores undas
volvisse, quo citius illa impurorum hominum cadavera evolveret et
exoneraret in mare. O felicissimam mulierem Catharinam, regis
matrem, quæ cum tot annos admirabili prudentia parique solicitudine
regnum filio, filium regno conservasset, tum demum secura regnantem
filium adspexit! O regis fratres ipsos quoque beatos! quorum alter
cum, qua ætate cæteri vix adhuc arma tractare incipiunt, eâ ipse
quater commisso prælio fraternos hostes fregisset ac fugasset,
hujus quoque pulcherrimi facti præcipuam gloriam ad se potissimum
voluit pertinere; alter, quamquam ætate nondum ad rem militarem
idonea erat, tanta tamen est ad virtutem indole, ut neminem nisi
fratrem in his rebus gerendis æquo animo sibi passurus fuerit
anteponi. O diem denique illum plenum lætitiæ et hilaritatis, quo
tu, beatissime pater, hoc ad te nuncio allato, Deo immortali, et
Divo Ludovico regi, cujus hæc in ipso pervigilio evenerant, gratias
acturus, indictas a te supplicationes pedes obiisti! Quis
optabilior ad te nuncius adferri poterat? aut nos ipsi quod
felicius optare poteramus principium pontificatus tui, quam ut
primis illis mensibus tetram illam caliginem, quasi exorto sole,
discussam cerneremus? vol. i. p. 197, edit. Ruhnken.

|Epistles of Manutius.|

31. The epistles of Paulus Manutius are written in what we may call a gentleman-like tone, without the virulence or querulousness that disgusts too often in the compositions of literary men. Of Panvinius, Robortellus, Sigonius, his own peculiar rivals, he writes in a friendly spirit and tone of eulogy. His letters are chiefly addressed to the great classical scholars of his age. But, on the other hand, though exclusively on literary subjects, they deal chiefly in generalities, and the affectation of copying Cicero in every phase gives a coldness and almost an air of insincerity to the sentiments. They have but one note, the praise of learning; yet it is rarely that they impart to us much information about its history and progress. Hence they might serve for any age, and seem like pattern forms for the epistles of a literary man. In point of mere style there can be no comparison between the letters of a Sadolet or Manutius on the one hand, and those of a Scaliger, Lipsius, or Casaubon on the other. But while the first pall on the reader by their monotonous elegance, the others are full of animation and pregnant with knowledge. Even in what he most valued, correct Latin, Manutius, as Scioppius has observed, is not without errors. But the want of perfect dictionaries made it difficult to avoid illegitimate expressions which modern usage suggested to the writer.[934]

[934] Sciopp. Judicium de Stylo Historico.

|Care of the Italian Latinists.|

32. Manutius, as the passage above quoted has shown, is not reckoned by Ruhnkenius quite equal to Muretus, at least in natural genius. Scioppius thinks him consummate in delicacy and grace. He tells us that Manutius could hardly speak three words of Latin, so that the Germans who came to visit him looked down on his deficiency. But this, Scioppius remarks, as Erasmus had done a hundred years before, was one of the rules observed by the Italian scholars to preserve the correctness of their style. They perceived that the daily use of Latin in speech must bring in a torrent of barbarous phrases, which “claiming afterwards the privileges of acquaintance” (quodam familiaritatis jure), would obtrude their company during composition, and render it difficult for the most accurate writer to avoid them.[935]

[935] Scioppius, Judicium de Stylo Historico, p. 65. This was so little
understood in England, that, in some of our colleges, and even
schools, it was the regulation for the students to speak Latin when
within hearing of their superiors. Even Locke was misled into
recommending this preposterous barbarism.

|Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus.|

33. Perpinianus, a Valencian Jesuit, wrote some orations, hardly remembered at present, but Ruhnkenius has placed him along with Muretus, as the two Cisalpines (if that word may be so used for brevity), who have excelled the Italians in Latinity. A writer of more celebrity was Osorius, a Portuguese bishop, whose treatise on glory, and, what is better known, his History of the Reign of Emanuel, have placed him in a high rank among the imitators of the Augustan language. Some extracts from Osorius de Gloria will be found in the first volume of the Retrospective Review. This has been sometimes fancied to be the famous work of Cicero with that title, which Petrarch possessed and lost, and which Petrus Alcyonius has been said to have transferred to his own book De Exilio. But for this latter conjecture there is, I believe, neither evidence nor presumption; and certainly Osorius, if we may judge from the passages quoted, was no Cicero. Lord Bacon has said of him, that “his vein was weak and waterish,” which these extracts confirm. They have not elegance enough to compensate for their verbosity and emptiness. Dupin, however, calls him the Cicero of Portugal.[936] Nor is less honour due to the Jesuit Maffei (Maphæus), whose chief work is the History of India, published in 1586. Maffei, according to Scioppius, was so careful of his style, that he used to recite the breviary in Greek, lest he should become too much accustomed to bad Latin.[937] This may perhaps be said in ridicule of such purists. Like Manutius, he was tediously elaborate in correction; some have observed that his History of India has scarce any value except for its style.[938]

[936] Niceron, vol. ii.

[937] De Stylo Hist. p. 71.

[938] Tiraboschi, Niceron, vol. v. Biogr. Univ.

|Buchanan, Haddon.|

34. The writings of Buchanan, and especially his Scottish history, are written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness.[939] Many of our own critics have extolled the Latinity of Walter Haddon. His Orations were published in 1567. They belong to the first years of this period. But they seem hardly to deserve any high praise. Haddon had certainly laboured at an imitation of Cicero, but without catching his manner or getting rid of the florid, semi-poetical tone of the fourth century. A specimen, taken much at random, but rather favourable than otherwise, from his oration on the death of the young brothers of the house of Suffolk, at Cambridge, in 1550, is given in a note.[940] Another work of a different kind, wherein Haddon is said to have been concerned jointly with Sir John Cheke, is the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, the proposed code of the Anglican Church, drawn up under Edward VI. It is, considering the subject, in very good language.

[939] Le Clerc, in an article of the Bibliotheque Choisie, vol. viii.,
pronounces a high eulogy on Buchanan, as having written better than
any one else in verse and prose; that is, as I understand him,
having written prose better than any one who has written verse so
well, and the converse.

[940] O laboriosam et si non miseram, certe mirabiliter exercitam, tot
cumulatam funeribus Cantabrigiam! Gravi nos vu’nere percussit
hyems, æstas saucios ad terram afflixit. Calendæ Martiæ stantem
adhuc Academiam nostram et erectam vehementer impulerunt, et de
priori statu suo depresserunt. Idus Juliæ nutantem jam et
inclinatam oppresserunt. Cum magnus ille fidei magister et
excellens noster in vera religione doctor, Martinus Bucerus,
frigoribus hybernis conglaciavisset, tantam in ejus occasu plagam
accepisse videbamur, ut majorem non solum ullam expectaremus, sed
ne posse quidem expectari crederemus. Verum postquam inundantes, et
in Cantabrigiam effervescentes æstivi sudores, illud præstans et
aureolum par Suffolciensium fratrum, tum quidem peregrinatum a
nobis, sed tamen plane nostrum obruerunt, sic ingemuimus, ut
infinitus dolor vix ullam tanti mali levationem invenire possit.
Perfectus omni scientia pater, et certe senex incomparabilis,
Martinus Bucerus, licet nec reipublicæ nec nostro, tamen suo
tempore mortuus est, nimirum ætate, et annis et morbo affectus.
Suffolcienses autem, quos ille florescentes ad omnem laudem,
tanquam alumnos disciplinæ reliquit suæ, tam repente sudorum
fluminibus absorpti sunt, ut prius mortem illorum audiremus, quam
morbum animadverteremus.

|Sigonius, de Consolatione.|

35. These are the chief writers of this part of the sixteenth century who have attained reputation for the polish and purity of their Latin style. Sigonius ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in the same class, since his writings exhibit not only perspicuity and precision, but as much elegance as their subjects would permit. He is also the acknowledged author of the treatise De Consolatione, which long passed with many for a work of Cicero. Even Tiraboschi was only undeceived of this opinion by meeting with some unpublished letters of Sigonius, wherein he confesses the forgery.[941] It seems, however, that he had inserted some authentic fragments. Lipsius speaks of this counterfeit with the utmost contempt, but after all his invective can scarcely detect any bad Latinity.[942] The Consolatio is, in fact, like many other imitations of the philosophical writings of Cicero, resembling their original in his faults of verbosity and want of depth, but flowing and graceful in language. Lipsius, who affected the other extreme, was not likely to value that which deceived the Italians into a belief that Tully himself was before them. It was, at least, not everyone who could have done this like Sigonius.

[941] Biog. Univ. art. Sigonio.

[942] Lipsii Opera Critica. His style is abusive, as usual in this age.
Quis autem ille suaviludius qui latere se posse censuit sub illâ
personâ? Male mehercule de seculo nostra judicavit. Quid enim tam
dissimile ab illo auro, quam hoc plumbum? ne simia quidem Ciceronis
esse potest, nedum ut ille.... Habes judicium meum, in quo si
aliqua asperitas, ne mirere. Fatua enim hæc superbia tanto nomini
se inserendi dignissima insectatione fuit.

|Decline of taste and learning in Italy.|

36. Several other names, especially from the Jesuit colleges, might, I doubt not, be added to the list of good Latin writers by any competent scholar, who should prosecute the research through public libraries by the aid of the biographical dictionaries. But more than enough may have been said for the general reader. The decline of classical literature in this sense, to which we have already alluded, was the theme of complaint towards the close of the century, and above all in Italy. Paulus Manutius had begun to lament it long before. But Latinus Latinius himself, one of the most learned scholars of that country, states positively in 1584, that the Italian universities were forced to send for their professors from Spain and France.[943] And this abandonment by Italy of her former literary glory, was far more striking in the next age, an age of science, but not of polite literature. Ranke supposes that the attention of Italy being more turned towards mathematics and natural history, the study of the ancient writers, which do not contribute greatly to these sciences, fell into decay. But this seems hardly an adequate cause, nor had the exact sciences made any striking progress in the period immediately under review. The rigorous orthodoxy of the church, which in some measure revived an old jealousy of heathen learning, must have contributed far more to the effect. Sixtus V. notoriously disliked all profane studies, and was even kept with difficulty from destroying the antiquities of Rome, several of which were actually demolished by this bigoted and barbarous zeal.[944] No other pope, I believe, has been guilty of what the Romans always deemed sacrilege. In such discouraging circumstances we could hardly wonder at what is reported, that Aldus Manutius, having been made professor of rhetoric at Rome, about 1589, could only get one or two hearers. But this, perhaps, does not rest on very good authority.[945] It is agreed that the Greek language was almost wholly neglected at the end of the century, and there was no one in Italy distinguished for a knowledge of it. Baronius must be reckoned a man of laborious erudition; yet he wrote his annals of ecclesiastical history of twelve centuries, without any acquaintance with that tongue.

[943] Tiraboschi, x. 387.

[944] Ranke, i. 476.

[945] Id. 482. Renouard, Imprimerie des Aides, iii. 197, doubts the
truth of this story, which is said to come on the authority alone
of Rossi, a writer who took the name of Erythræus, and has
communicated a good deal of literary miscellaneous information, but
not always such as deserves confidence.

|Joseph Scaliger.|

37. The two greatest scholars of the sixteenth century, being rather later than most of the rest, are yet unnamed; Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon. The former, son of Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and, in the estimation at least of some, his inferior in natural genius, though much above him in learning and judgment, was perhaps the most extraordinary master of general erudition that has ever lived. His industry was unremitting through a length of life; his memory, though he naturally complains of its failure in latter years, had been prodigious; he was, in fact, conversant with all ancient, and very extensively with modern literature. The notes of his conversations, taken down by some of his friends, and well-known by the name of Scaligerana, though full of vanity and contempt of others, and though not always perhaps faithful registers of what he said, bear witness to his acuteness, vivacity, and learning.[946] But his own numerous and laborious publications are the best testimonies to these qualities. His name will occur to us more than once again. In the department of philology, he was conspicuous as an excellent critic, both of the Latin and Greek languages; though Bayle, in his own paradoxical, but acute and truly judicious spirit, has suggested, that Scaliger’s talents and learning were too great for a good commentator; the one making him discover in authors more hidden sense than they possessed, the other leading him to perceive a thousand allusions which had never been designed. He frequently altered the text in order to bring these more forward; and in his conjectures is bold, ingenious, and profound, but not very satisfactory.[947] His critical writings are chiefly on the Latin poets; but his knowledge of Greek was eminent; and, perhaps, it may not be too minute to notice as a proof of it, that his verses in that language, if not good according to our present standard, are at least much better than those of Casaubon. The latter, in an epistle to Scaliger, extols his correspondent as far above Gaza, or any modern Greek in poetry, and worthy to have lived in Athens with Aristophanes and Euripides. This cannot be said of his own attempts, in which their gross faultiness is as manifest as their general want of spirit.

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

It was little to the honour of the Scaligers, father and son, that
they lay under the strongest suspicions of extreme credulity, to
say nothing worse, in setting up a descent from the Scala princes
of Verona, though the world could never be convinced that their
proper name was not Burden, of a plebeian family, and known as such
in that city. Joseph Scaliger took as his device, Fuimus Troes; and
his letters, as well as the Scaligerana, bear witness to the stress
he laid on this pseudo-genealogy. Lipsius observes on this, with
the true spirit which a man of letters ought to feel, that it would
have been a great honour for the Scalas to have descended from the
Scaligers, who had more real nobility than the whole city of
Verona. (Thuana, p. 14). But unfortunately the vain, foolish, and
vulgar part of mankind cannot be brought to see things in that
light, and both the Scaligers knew that such princes as Henry II.
and Henry IV. would esteem them more for their ancestry than for
their learning and genius.

The epitaph of Daniel Heinsius on Joseph Scaliger, pardonably
perhaps on such an occasion, mingles the real and fabulous glories
of his friend.

Regius a Brenni deductus sanguine sanguis
Qui dominos rerum tot numerabat avos,
Cui nihil indulsit sors, nil natura negavit,
Et jure imperii conditor ipse sui,
Invidiæ scopulus, sed cœlo proximus, illa,
Illa Juliades conditur, hospes, humo.
Centum illic proavos et centum pone triumphos,
Sceptraque Veronæ sceptrigerosque Deos;
Mastinosque, Canesque, et totam ab origine gentem,
Et quæ præterea non bene nota latent.
Illic stent aquilæ priscique insignia regni,
Et ter Cæsareo munere fulta domus
Plus tamen invenies quicquid sibi contulit ipse,
Et minimum tantæ nobilitatis eget.
Aspice tot linguas, totumque in pectore mundum;
Innumeras gentes continet iste locus.
Crede illic Arabas, desertaque nomina Pœnos,
Et crede Armenios Æthiopasque tegi.
Terrarum instar habes; et quam natura negavit
Laudem uni populo, contigit illa viro.

[947] Niceron, vol. xxiii. Blount, Biogr. Univ.

|Isaac Casaubon.|

38. This eminent person, a native of Geneva[948]--that little city, so great in the annals of letters--and the son-in-law of Henry Stephens, rose above the horizon in 1583, when his earliest work, the Annotations on Diogenes Laertius, was published; a performance of which he was afterwards ashamed, as being unworthy of his riper studies. Those on Strabo, an author much neglected before, followed in 1587. For more than twenty years Casaubon employed himself upon editions of Greek authors, many of which, as that of Theophrastus, in 1593, and that of Athenæus, in 1600, deserve particular mention. The latter, especially, which he calls, “molestissimum, difficillimum et tædii plenissimum opus,” has always been deemed a noble monument of critical sagacity and extensive erudition. In conjectural emendation of the text, no one hitherto had been equal to Casaubon. He may probably be deemed a greater scholar than his father-in-law Stephens, or even, in a critical sense, than his friend Joseph Scaliger. These two lights of the literary world, though it is said, that they had never seen each other,[949] continued till the death of the latter in regular correspondence and unbroken friendship. Casaubon, querulous but not envious, paid freely the homage which Scaliger was prepared to exact, and wrote as to one superior in age, in general celebrity, and in impetuosity of spirit. Their letters to each other, as well as to their various other correspondents, are highly valuable for the literary history of the period they embrace; that is, the last years of the present, and the first of the ensuing century.

[948] The father of Casaubon was from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.
He fled to Geneva during a temporary persecution of the Huguenots,
but returned home afterwards. Casaubon went back to Geneva in his
nineteenth year for the sake of education. See his life by his son
Meric, prefixed to Almeloveen’s edition of his epistles.

[949] Morhof, l. i. c. xv. s. 57.

|General result.|

39. Budæus, Camerarius, Stephens, Scaliger, Casaubon, appear to stand out as the great restorers of ancient learning, and especially of the Greek language. I do not pretend to appreciate them by deep skill in the subject, or by a diligent comparison of their works with those of others, but from what I collect to have been the more usual suffrage of competent judges. Canter, perhaps, or Sylburgius might be rated above Camerarius; but the last seems, if we may judge by the eulogies bestowed upon him, to have stood higher in the estimation of his contemporaries. Their labours restored the integrity of the text in the far greater part of the Greek authors--though they did not yet possess as much metrical knowledge as was required for that of the poets--explained most dubious passages, and nearly exhausted the copiousness of the language. For another century mankind was content, in respect of Greek philology, to live on the accumulations of the sixteenth; and it was not till after so long a period had elapsed, that new scholars arose, more exact, more philosophical, more acute in “knitting up the ravelled sleeve” of speech, but not, to say the least, more abundantly stored with erudition than those who had cleared the way, and upon whose foundations they built.

|Learning in England under Edward and Mary.|

40. We come, in the last place, to the condition of ancient learning in this island; a subject which it may be interesting to trace with some minuteness, though we can offer no splendid banquet, even from the reign of the Virgin Queen. Her accession was indeed a happy epoch in our literary, as well as civil annals. She found a great and miserable change in the state of the universities since the days of her father. Plunder and persecution, the destroying spirits of the last two reigns, were enemies, against which our infant muses could not struggle.[950] Ascham, indeed, denies that there was much decline of learning at Cambridge before the time of Mary. The influence of her reign was, not indirectly alone, but by deliberate purpose, injurious to all useful knowledge.[951] It was in contemplation, he tells us (and surely it was congenial enough to the spirit of that government) that the ancient writers should give place in order to restore Duns Scotus, and the scholastic barbarians.

[950] The last editor of Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses bears witness to
having seen chronicles and other books mutilated, as he conceives,
by the protestant visitors of the university under Edward, “What is
most,” he says, “to the discredit of Cox (afterwards bishop of
Ely), was his unwearied diligence in destroying the ancient
manuscripts and other books in the public and private libraries at
Oxford. The savage barbarity with which he executed this hateful
office can never be forgotten,” &c., p. 478. One book only of the
famous library of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, bequeathed to
Oxford, escaped mutilation. This is a Valerius Maximus. But as Cox
was really a man of considerable learning, we may ask whether there
is evidence to lay these Vandal proceedings on him rather than on
his colleagues.

[951] “And what was the fruit of this seed? Verily, judgment in
doctrine was wholly altered; order in discipline very much changed;
the love of good learning began suddenly to wax cold; the knowledge
of the tongues, in spite of some that therein had flourished, was
manifestly contemned, and so the way of right study manifestly
perverted; the choice good authors of malice confounded; old
sophistry, I say not well, not old, but that new rotten sophistry,
began to beard and shoulder logic in their own tongue; yea, I know
that heads were cast together, and counsel devised, that Duns, with
all the rabble of barbarous questionists, should have dispossessed,
of their places and room, Aristotle, Plato, Tully, and Demosthenes;
whom good Mr. Redman, and those two worthy stars of the university,
Mr. Cheke and Mr. Smith, with their scholars, had brought to
flourish as notably in Cambridge, as ever they did in Greece and in
Italy; and for the doctrine of those four, the four pillars of
learning, Cambridge then giving no place to no university, neither
in France, Spain, Germany, nor Italy.”--P. 317.

|Revival under Elizabeth.|

41. It is indeed impossible to restrain the desire of noble minds for truth and wisdom. Scared from the banks of Isis and Cam, neglected or discountenanced by power, learning found an asylum in the closets of private men, who laid up in silence stores for future use. And some of course remained out of those who had listened to Smith and Cheke, or the contemporary teachers of Oxford. But the mischief was effected, in a general sense, by breaking up the course of education in the universities. At the beginning of the new queen’s reign, but few of the clergy, to whichever mode of faith they might conform, had the least tincture of Greek learning, and the majority did not understand Latin.[952] The protestant exiles, being far the most learned men of the kingdom, brought back a more healthy tone of literary diligence. The universities began to revive. An address was delivered in Greek verses to Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1564, to which she returned thanks in the same language.[953] Oxford would not be outdone. Lawrence, regius professor of Greek, as we are told by Wood, made an oration at Carfax, a spot often chosen for public exhibition, on her visit to the city in 1566; when her majesty, thanking the university in the same tongue, observed “it was the best Greek speech she had ever heard.”[954] Several slight proofs of classical learning appear from this time in the “History and Antiquities of Oxford;” marks of a progress, at first slow and silent, which I only mention, because nothing more important has been recorded.

[952] Hallam’s Constit. Hist. of Eng. i. 249.

[953] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 270.

[954] Wood. Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford.

|Greek Lectures at Cambridge.|

42. In 1575, the queen having been now near twenty years on the throne, we find on positive evidence, that Greek lectures were given in St. John’s College, Cambridge; which, indeed, few would be disposed to doubt, reflecting on the general character of the age and the length of opportunity that had been afforded. It is said in the life of Mr. Bois, or Boyse, one of the revisers of the translation of the Bible under James, that “his father was a great scholar, being learned in the Hebrew and Greek excellently well, which, considering the manners, that I say not, the looseness of the times of his education, was almost a miracle.” The son was admitted at St. John’s in 1575. “His father had well educated him in the Greek tongue before his coming; which caused him to be taken notice of in the college. For besides himself there was but one there who could write Greek. Three lectures in that language were read in the college. In the first, grammar was taught, as is commonly now done in schools. In the second, an easy author was explained in the grammatical way. In the third was read somewhat which might seem fit for their capacities who had passed over the other two. A year was usually spent in the first, and two in the second.”[955] It will be perceived, that the course of instruction was still elementary; but it is well known that many, perhaps most students, entered the universities at an earlier age than is usual at present.[956]

[955] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 327. Chalmers.

[956] It is probable that Cambridge was at this time better furnished
with learning than Oxford. Even Wood does not give us a favourable
notion of the condition of that university in the first part of the
queen’s reign. Oxford was for a long time filled with popish
students, that is, with conforming partisans of the former
religion; many of whom, from time to time, went off to Douay.
Leicester, as chancellor of the university, charged it, in 1582,
and in subsequent years, with great neglect of learning; the
disputations had become mere forms, and the queen’s lecturers in
Greek and Hebrew seldom read. It was as bad in all the other
sciences. Wood’s Antiquities and Athenæ, _passim_. The colleges of
Corpus Christi and Merton were distinguished beyond the rest in the
reign of Elizabeth; especially the former, where Jewel read the
lecture in rhetoric (at an earlier time, of course), Hooker in
logic, and Raynolds in Greek. Leicester succeeded in
_puritanizing_, as Wood thought, the university, by driving off the
old party, and thus rendered it a more effective school of learning.

Harrison, about 1586, does not speak much better of the
universities; “the quadrivials, I mean arithmetic, music, geometry
and astronomy, are now small regarded in either of them.”
Description of Britain, p. 252. Few learned preachers were sent out
from them, which he ascribes, in part, to the poor endowments of
most livings.

|Few Greek editions in England.|

43. We come very slowly to books, even subsidiary to education, in the Greek language. And since this cannot be conveniently carried on to any great extent without books, though I am aware that some contrivances were employed as substitutes for them, and since it was as easy to publish either grammars or editions of ancient authors in England as on the Continent, we can, as it seems, draw no other inference from the want of them than the absence of any considerable demand. I shall therefore enumerate all the books instrumental to the study of Greek which appeared in England before the close of the century.

|School books enumerated.|

44. It has been mentioned in another place that two alone had been printed before 1550. In 1553 a Greek version of the second Æneid, by George Etherege, was published. Two editions of the Anglican liturgy in Latin and Greek, by Whitaker, one of our most learned theologians, appeared in 1569;[957] a short catechism in both languages, 1573 and 1578. We find also in 1578 a little book entitled χριοτιανισμου στοιχειωσις εις την παιδων ωθελειαν ἑλληνιστι και λατινιστι εκτεθεισα. [christianismou stoicheiôsis eis tên paidôn ôpheleian hellênisti kai latinsti ektetheisa.] This is a translation, made also by Whitaker, from Nowell’s Christianæ Pietatis Prima Institutio, ad Usum Scholarum Latine Scripta. The Biographia Britannica puts the first edition of this Greek version in 1575; and informs us also that Nowell’s lesser Catechism was published in Latin and Greek, 1575; but I do not find any confirmation of this in Herbert or Watts. In 1575, Grant, master of Westminster School, published Græcæ Linguæ Spicilegium, intended evidently for the use of his scholars; and in 1581 the same Grant superintended an edition of Constantin’s Lexicon, probably in the abridgment, under the name of the Basle printer Crespin, enriching it with four or five thousand new words, which he most likely took from Stephens’s Thesaurus. A Greek, Latin, French, and English lexicon, by John Barret or Baret, in 1580,[958] and another by John Morel (without the French), in 1583, are recorded in bibliographical works; but I do not know whether any copies have survived.

[957] Scaliger says of Whitaker, O qu’il etoit bien docte! Scalig.
Secunda.

[958] Chalmers mentions an earlier edition of this dictionary in 1573,
but without the Greek.

|Greek taught in schools.|

45. It appears, therefore, that before even the middle of the queen’s reign the rudiments of the Greek language were imparted to boys at Westminster school, and no doubt also at those of Eton, Winchester, and St. Paul’s.[959] But probably it did not yet extend to many others. In Ascham’s Schoolmaster, a posthumous treatise, published in 1570, but evidently written some years after the accession of Elizabeth, while very detailed, and in general, valuable rules are given for the instruction of boys in the Latin language, no intimation is found that Greek was designed to be taught. In the statutes of Witton School in Cheshire, framed in 1558, the founder says:--“I will there were always taught good literature, both Latin and Greek.”[960] But this seems to be only an aspiration after an hopeless excellence; for he proceeds to enumerate the Latin books intended to be used, without any mention of Greek. In the statutes of Merchant Taylor’s School, 1561, the high master is required to be “learned in good and clean Latin literature, and also in Greek, if such may be gotten.”[961] These words are copied from those of Colet, in the foundation of St. Paul’s School. But in the regulations of Hawkshead School in Lancashire, 1588, the master is directed “to teach grammar and the principles of the Greek tongue.”[962] The little tracts indeed, above-mentioned, do not lead us to believe that the instruction, even at Westminster, was of more than the slightest kind. They are but verbal translations of known religious treatises, wherein the learner would be assisted by his recollection at almost every word. But in the rules laid down by Mr. Lyon, founder of Harrow School, in 1590, the books designed to be taught are enumerated, and comprise some Greek orators and historians, as well as the poems of Hesiod.[963]

[959] Harrison mentions, about the year 1586, that at the great
collegiate schools of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, boys “are
well entered in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues and
rules of versifying.” Description of England, prefixed to
Holingshed’s Chronicles, p. 254 (4to edition). He has just before
taken notice of “the great number of grammar-schools throughout the
realm, and those very liberally endowed for the relief of poor
scholars, so that there are not many corporate towns now under the
queen’s dominion that have not one grammar-school at the least,
with a sufficient living for a master and usher appointed for the
same.”

[960] Carlisle’s Endowed Schools, vol. i. p. 129.

[961] Id. vol. ii. p. 49.

[962] Id. vol. i. p. 656.

[963] Id. ii. 136. I have not discovered any other proofs of Greek
education in Mr. Carlisle’s work. In the statutes or regulations of
Bristol School, founded in the sixteenth century, it is provided
that the head master should be “well learned in the Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew.” But these must be modern, as appears, _inter alia_, by
the words “well affected to the Constitution in Church and State.”

|Greek better known after 1580.|

46. We have now, however, descended very low in the century. The twilight of classical learning in England had yielded to its morning. It is easy to trace many symptoms of enlarged erudition after 1580. Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, and doubtless many other writers, employ Greek quotations rather freely; and the use of Greek words, or adaptation of English forms to them, is affected by Webb and Puttenham in their treatises on poetry. Greek titles are not infrequently given to books; it was a pedantry many affected. Besides the lexicons above-mentioned, it was easy to procure, at no great price, those of Constantin and Scapula. We may refer to the ten years after 1580 the commencement of that rapid advance, which gave the English nation, in the reign of James, so respectable a place in the republic of letters. In the last decennium of the century, the Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker is a monument of real learning, in profane as well as theological antiquity. But certainly the reading of our scholars in this period was far more generally among the Greek fathers than the classics. Even this, however, required a competent acquaintance with the language.

|Editions of Greek.|

47. The two universities had abandoned the art of printing since the year 1521. No press is known to have existed afterwards at Cambridge till 1584, or at Oxford till 1586, when six homilies of Chrysostom in Greek were published at a press erected by Lord Leicester at his own expense.[964] The first book of Herodotus came out at the same place in 1591; the treatise of Barlaam on the Papacy in 1592; Lycophron in the same year; the Knights of Aristophanes in 1593; fifteen orations of Demosthenes, in 1593 and 1597; Agatharcides in the latter year. One oration of Lysias was printed at Cambridge in 1593. The Greek testament appeared from the London press in 1581, in 1587, and again in 1592; a treatise of Plutarch, and three orations of Isocrates, in 1587; the Iliad in 1591. These, if I have overlooked none, or if none have been omitted by Herbert, are all the Greek publications (except grammars, of which there are several, one by Camden, for the use of Westminster School, in 1597,[965] and one in 1600, by Knolles, author of the History of the Turks) that fall within the sixteenth century; and all, apparently, are intended for classes in the schools and universities.[966]

[964] Herbert.

[965] This grammar by Camden was probably founded on that of Grant,
above-mentioned; cujus rudimenta, says Smith, the author of
Camden’s life, cum multa ex parte laborarent deficerentque, non tam
reformanda, quam de novo instituenda censens, observationibus quas
ex Græcis omne genus scriptoribus acri judicio et longo usu
collegerat, sub severum examen revocatis, grammaticam novam non
soli scholæ cui præerat, sed universis per Angliam scholis deinceps
inservituram, eodem anno edidit.--P. 19, edit. 1691.

The excessive scarcity of early school-books makes it allowable to
mention the Progymnasma Scholasticum of John Stockwood, an edition
of which, with the date of 1597, is in the Inner Temple Library. It
is merely a selection of epigrams from the Anthologia of H.
Stephens, and shows but a moderate expectation of proficiency from
the studious youth for whom it was designed: the Greek being
written in interlinear Latin characters over the original, ad
faciliorem eorundem lectionem. A literal translation into Latin
follows, and several others in metre. Stockwood had been master of
Tunbridge School: Scholæ Tunbridgiensis olim ludimagister; so that
there may possibly have been earlier editions of this little book.