Chapter X (3)

[966] The arrangement of editions recorded in Herbert, following the
names of the printers, does not afford facilities for any search. I
may, therefore, have omitted one or two trifles, and it is likely
that I have; but the conclusion will be the same. Angli, says
Scaliger, nunquam excuderunt bonos libros veteres, tantum vulgares.

|And of Latin classics.|

48. It must be expected that the best Latin writers were more honoured than those of Greece. Besides grammars and dictionaries, which are too numerous to mention, we find not a few editions, though principally for the purposes of education:--Cicero de Officiis (in Latin and English), 1553; Virgil, 1570; Sallust, 1570 and 1571; Justin, 1572; Cicero de Oratore, 1573; Horace and Juvenal, 1574. It is needless to proceed lower, when they become more frequent. The most important classical publication was a complete edition of Cicero, which was, of course, more than a schoolbook. This appeared at London in 1585, from the press of Ninian Newton. It is said to be a reprint from the edition of Lambinus.

|Learning lower than in Spain.|

49. It is obvious that foreign books must have been largely imported, or we should place the learning of the Elizabethan period as much too low as it has ordinarily been exaggerated. But we may feel some surprise that so little was contributed by our native scholars. Certain it is, that in most departments of literature they did not yet occupy a distinguished place. The catalogue by Herbert, of books published down to the end of the century, presents no favourable picture of the queen’s reign. Without instituting a comparison with Germany or France, we may easily make one with the classed catalogue of books printed in Spain, which we find at the close of the Bibliotheca Nova of Nicolas Antonio. Greek appears to have been little studied in Spain, though we have already mentioned a few grammatical works; but the editions of Latin authors, and the commentators upon them, are numerous; and upon the whole it is undeniable that, in most branches of erudition, so far as we can draw a conclusion from publications, Spain, under Philip II., held a higher station than England under Elizabeth. The poverty of the English church, the want of public libraries, and the absorbing influence of polemical theology will account for much of this; and I am not by any means inclined to rate our English gentlemen of Elizabeth’s age for useful and even classical knowledge below the hidalgos of Castile. But this class were not the chief contributors to literature. It is, however, in consequence of the reputation for learning acquired by some men distinguished in civil life, such as Smith, Sadler, Raleigh, and even by ladies, among whom the queen herself, and the accomplished daughters of Sir Antony Cooke, Lady Cecil, and Lady Russell, are particularly to be mentioned, that the general character of her reign has been, in this point of view, considerably overrated. No Englishman ought, I conceive, to suppress this avowal, or to feel any mortification in making it; with the prodigious development of wisdom and genius that illustrated the last years of Elizabeth, we may well spare the philologers and antiquaries of the Continent.

|Improvement at the end of the century.|

50. There had arisen, however, towards the conclusion of the century, a very few men of such extensive learning as entitled them to an European reputation. Sir Henry Savile stood at the head of these: we may justly deem him the most learned Englishman, in profane literature, of the reign of Elizabeth. He published, in 1581, a translation of part of Tacitus, with annotations not very copious or profound, but pertinent, and deemed worthy to be rendered into Latin in the next century by the younger Gruter, and reprinted on the Continent.[967] Scaliger speaks of him with personal ill-will, but with a respect he seldom showed to those for whom he entertained such sentiments. Next to Savile we may rank Camden, whom all foreigners name with praise for the Britannia. Hooker has already been mentioned; but I am not sure that he could be said to have much reputation beyond our own shores. I will not assert that no other was extensively known even for profane learning: in our own biographical records several may be found, at least esteemed at home. But our most studious countrymen long turned their attention almost exclusively to theological controversy, and toiled over the prolix volumes of the fathers; a labour not to be defrauded of its praise, but to which we are not directing our eyes on this occasion.[968]

[967] They are contained in a small volume, 1649, with Savile’s other
treatise on the Roman Militia.

[968] It is remarkable that, in Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, by far
the most learned work in theological erudition which the age
produced, he quotes the Greek fathers in Latin; and there is a
scanty sprinkling of Greek characters throughout this large volume.

|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.

[969] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, vol. i. p. 72.

[970] The list of books printed in Scotland before 1550, which I have
given on p. 167, on the authority of Herbert, appears not to be
quite accurate. Pinkerton’s Scottish Poems (1786), i. 104; (1792),
i. 22.

|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]

[971] The first paragraph of the preface to Niebuhr’s history deserves
to be quoted. “The History of Rome was treated, during the first
two centuries after the revival of letters, with the same
prostration of the understanding and judgment to the written letter
that had been handed down, and with the same fearfulness of going
beyond it, which prevailed in all the other branches of knowledge.
If any one had asserted a right of examining the credibility of the
ancient writers and the value of their testimony, an outcry would
have been raised against his atrocious presumption. The object
aimed at was, in spite of all internal evidence, to combine what
was related by them; at the utmost, one authority was in some one
particular instance postponed to another as gently as possible, and
without inducing any further results. Here and there, indeed, a
free-born mind, such as Glareanus, broke through these bonds; but
infallibly a sentence of condemnation was forthwith pronounced
against him; besides, such men were not the most learned, and their
bold attempts were only partial, and were wanting in consistency.
In this department, as in others, men of splendid talents and the
most copious learning conformed to the narrow spirit of their age;
their labours extracted from a multitude of insulated details what
the remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any
single work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities. What they
did in this respect is wonderful; and this is sufficient to earn
for them an imperishable fame.”

|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.

[972] In Onuphrio Panvinio fuerunt multæ literæ, multa industria, sed
tanta ingenii vis non erat, quanta in Sigonio et Manutio, quorum
scripta longe sunt limatiora.

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.

[973] It appears from some of the Lettere Volgari of Manuzio, that the
proper name of Sigonius was not Sigonio, but Sigone. Corniani (vol.
vi. p. 151) has made the same observation on the authority of
Sigone’s original unpublished letters. But the biographers, as well
as Tiraboschi, though himself an inhabitant of the same city, do
not advert to it.

[974] The treatises of Robortellus, republished in the second volume
of Gruter’s Lampas, are full of vain glory and affected scorn of
Sigonius. Half the chapters are headed, Error Sigonii. One of their
controversies concerned female prænomina, which Robortellus denied
to be ancient, except in the formula of Roman marriage, Ubi tu
Cajus, ego Caja; though he admits that some appear in late
inscriptions. Sigonius proved the contrary by instances from
republican times. It is evident that they were unusual, but several
have been found in inscriptions. See Grævius, vol. ii. in
præfatione.

|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.

[975] Nonnulla quidem variis locis attigit Meursius et alii, sed
teretiore prorsus et rotundo magis ore per omnia Sigonius. Thesaur.
Antiq. Græc. vol. v.

|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.

[976] Primus Romanæ rei militaris præstantiam Polybium secutus detexit,
cui quantum debeant qui post illum in hoc argumento elaborarunt,
non nescient viri docti qui Josephi Scaligeri epistolas, aut Nicii
Erythræi Pinacothecam legerunt. Nonnulli quidem rectius et
explicatius sunt tradita de hac doctrina post Patricium a Justo
Lipsio et aliis, qui in hoc stadio cucurrerunt; ut non difficulter
inventis aliquid additur aut in iis emendatur, sed præclare tamen
fractæ glaciei laus Patricio est tribuenda. Grævius in præfat. ad
10mum volumen. This book has been confounded by Blount and Ginguéné
with a later work of Patrizzi entitled Paralleli Militari, Rome,
1594, in which he compared the military art of the ancients with
that of the moderns, exposing, according to Tiraboschi (viii. 494),
his own ignorance of the subject.

[977] All these writers err, in common, I believe, with every other
before General Roy, in his Military Antiquities of the Romans in
Britain (1793), in placing the prætorium, or tent of the general,
near the front gate of the camp, called Porta Prætoria, instead of
the opposite, Porta Decumana. Lipsius is so perplexed by the
assumption of this hypothesis, that he struggles to alter the text
of Polybius.

[978] Scalig. Secunda. In one of Casaubon’s epistles to Scaliger, he
says: Franciscus Patritius solus mihi videtur digitum ad fontes
intendisse, quem ad verbum alii, qui hoc studium tractarunt, cum
sequuntur tamen ejus nomen ne semel quidem memorarunt. Quod equidem
magis miratus sum in illis de quorum candore dubitare piaculum esse
putassem.

|Lipsius and other antiquaries.|

59. The works of Lipsius are full of accessions to our knowledge of Roman antiquity, and he may be said to have stood as conspicuous on this side of the Alps as Sigonius in Italy. His treatise on the amphitheatre, 1584, completed what Panvinius, De Ludis Circensibus, had begun. A later work, by Peter Fabre, president in the parliament of Toulouse, entitled “Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletica,” 1592, relates to the games of Greece as well as Rome, and has been highly praised by Gronovius. It will be found in the eighth volume of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum. Several antiquaries traced the history of Roman families and names; such as Fulvius Ursinus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Pighius, Castalio, Golzius.[979] A Spaniard of immense erudition, Petrus Ciaconius (Chacon), besides many illustrations of ancient monuments of antiquities, especially the rostral column of Duilius, has left a valuable treatise, De Triclinio Romano, 1588.[980] He is not to be confounded with Alfonsus Ciaconius, a native also of Spain, but not of the same family, who wrote an account of the column of Trajan. Pancirollus, in his Notitia Dignitatum, or rather his commentary on a public document of the age of Constantine so entitled, threw light on that later period of imperial Rome.

[979] Grævius, vol. vii.

[980] Blount, Niceron, vol. xxxvi.

|Saville on Roman militia.|

60. The first contribution that England made to ancient literature in this line was the “View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries concerning Roman Warfare,” by Sir Henry Saville, in 1598. This was translated into Latin, and printed at Heidelberg, as early as 1601. It contains much information in small compass, extending only to about 130 duodecimo pages. Nor is it borrowed, as far as I could perceive, from Patrizzi or Lipsius, but displays an independent and extensive erudition.

61. It would encumber the reader’s memory were these pages to become a register of books. Both in this and the succeeding periods we can only select such as appear, by the permanence, or, at least, the immediate lustre of their reputation, to have deserved of the great republic of letters better than the rest. And in such a selection it is to be expected that the grounds of preference or of exclusion will occasionally not be obvious to all readers, and possibly would not be deemed, on reconsideration, conclusive to the author. In names of the second or third class there is often but a shadow of distinction.

|Numismatics.|

62. The foundations were laid, soon after the middle of the century, of an extensive and interesting science--that of ancient medals. Collections of these had been made from the time of Cosmo de Medici, and perhaps still earlier; but the rules of arranging, comparing, and explaining them were as yet unknown, and could be derived only from close observation, directed by a profound erudition. Eneas Vico of Venice, in 1555, published “Discorsi sopra le Medaglie degl’Antichi;” “in which he justly boasts,” says Tiraboschi, “that he was the first to write in Italian on such a subject; but he might have added that no one had yet written upon it in any language.”[981] The learning of Vico was the more remarkable that he was by profession an engraver. He afterwards published a series of imperial medals, and another of the empresses; adding to each a life of the person and explanation of the reverse. But in the latter he was excelled by Sebastian Erizzo, a noble Venetian, who four years after Vico published a work with nearly the same title. This is more fully comprehensive than that of Vico: medallic science was reduced in it to fixed principles, and it is particularly esteemed for the erudition shown by the author in explaining the reverses.[982] Both Vico and Erizzo have been sometimes mistaken; but what science is perfect in its commencement? It has been observed that the latter, living at the same time in the same city, and engaged in the same pursuit, makes no mention of his precursor; a consequence, no doubt, of the jealous humour so apt to prevail with the professors of science, especially when they do not agree in their opinions. This was the case here; Vico having thought ancient coins and medals identical, while Erizzo made a distinction between them, in which modern critics in numismatic learning have generally thought him in the wrong. The medallic collections, published by Hubert Golzius, a Flemish engraver, who had examined most of the private cabinets in Europe, from 1557 to 1579, acquired great reputation, and were long reckoned the principal repertory of that science. But it seems that suspicions entertained by many of the learned have been confirmed, and that Golzius has published a great number of spurious and even of imaginary medals; his own good faith being also much implicated in these forgeries.[983]

[981] Tiraboschi, ix. 266. Ginguéné, vii. 292. Biogr. Univ.

[982] Idem.

[983] Biogr. Univ.

|Mythology.|

63. The ancient mythology is too closely connected with all classical literature to have been neglected so long as numismatic antiquity. The compilations of Rhodiginus and Ab Alexandro, besides several other works, and indeed all annotations on Greek and Latin authors, had illustrated it. But this was not done systematically; and no subject more demands a comparison of authorities, which will not always be found consistent or intelligible. Boccaccio had long before led the way, in his Genealogiæ Deorum; but the erudition of the fourteenth century could clear away but little of the cloud that still in some measure hangs over the religion of the ancient world. In the first decade of the present period we find a work of considerable merit for the times, by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent scholars of that age, entitled Historia de Diis Gentium. It had been preceded by one of inferior reputation, the Mythologia of Natalis Comes. “Giraldi,” says the Biographie Universelle, “is the first who has treated properly this subject, so difficult on account of its extent and complexity. He made use not only of all Greek and Latin authors, but of ancient inscriptions, which he has explained with much sagacity. Sometimes the multiplicity of his quotations renders him obscure, and sometimes he fails in accuracy, through want of knowing what has since been brought to light. But the Historia de Diis Gentium is still consulted.”

|Scaliger’s Chronology.|

64. We can place in no other chapter but the present a work, than which none published within this century is superior, and perhaps none is equal in originality, depth of erudition and vigorous encountering of difficulty, that of Joseph Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum. The first edition of this appeared in 1583; the second, which is much enlarged and amended, in 1598; and a third, still better, in 1609. Chronology, as a science, was hitherto very much unknown; all ancient history, indeed, had been written in a servile and uncritical spirit, copying dates, as it did everything else, from the authorities immediately under the compiler’s eye, with little or no endeavour to reconcile discrepancies, or to point out any principles of computation. Scaliger perceived that it would be necessary to investigate the astronomical schemes of ancient calendars, not always very clearly explained by the Greek and Roman writers, and requiring much attention and acuteness, besides a multifarious erudition, oriental as well as classical, of which he alone in Europe could be reckoned master. This work, De Emendatione Temporum, is in the first edition divided into eight books. The first relates to the lesser equal year, as he denominates it, or that of 360 days, adopted by some eastern nations, and founded, as he supposes, on the natural lunar year, before the exact period of a lunation was fully understood; the second book is on the true lunar year and some other divisions connected with it; the third on the greater equal year, or that of 365 days; and the fourth on the more accurate schemes of the solar period. In the fifth and sixth books he comes to particular epochs, determining in both many important dates in profane and sacred history. The seventh and eighth discuss the modes of computation, and the terminal epochs used in different nations, with miscellaneous remarks and critical emendations of his own. In later editions these two books are thrown into one. The great intricacy of many of these questions, which cannot be solved by testimonies, often imperfect and inconsistent, without much felicity of conjecture, serves to display the surprising vigour of Scaliger’s mind, who grapples like a giant with every difficulty. Le Clerc has censured him for introducing so many conjectures, and drawing so many inferences from them, that great part of his chronology is rendered highly suspicious.[984] But, whatever may be his merit in the determination of particular dates, he is certainly the first who laid the foundations of the science. He justly calls it “Materia intacta et a nobis nunc primum tentata.” Scaliger in all this work is very clear, concise, and pertinent, and seems to manifest much knowledge of physical astronomy, though he was not a good mathematician, and did little credit to his impartiality, by absolutely rejecting the Gregorian calendar.

[984] Parrhasiana, ii. 363.

|Julian period.|

65. The chronology of Scaliger has become more celebrated through his invention of the Julian period; a name given, in honour of his father, to a cycle of 7980 years, beginning 4713 before Christ, and consequently before the usual date of the creation of the world. He was very proud of this device; “it is impossible to describe,” he says, “its utility; chronologers and astronomers cannot extol it too much.” And what is more remarkable, it was adopted for many years afterwards, even by the opponents of Scaliger’s chronology, and is almost as much in favour with Petavius as with the inventor.[985] This Julian period is formed by multiplying together the years of three cycles once much in use--the solar of twenty-eight, according to the old calendar, the lunar or Metonic of nineteen, and the indiction, an arbitrary and political division, introduced about the time of Constantine, and common both in the church and empire, consisting of fifteen years. Yet I confess myself unable to perceive the great advantage of this scheme. It affords, of course, a fixed terminus, from which all dates may be reckoned in progressive numbers, better than the æra of the creation, on account of the uncertainty attending that epoch; but the present method of reckoning them in a retrograde series from the birth of Christ, which seems never to have occurred to Scaliger or Petavius, is not found to have much practical inconvenience. In other respects, the only real use that the Julian period appears to possess is, that dividing any year in it by the numbers 28, 19, or 15, the remainder above the quotient will give us the place such year holds in the cycle, by the proper number of which it has been divided. Thus, if we desire to know what place in the Metonic cycle the year of the Julian period 6402, answering to the year of our Lord 1689, held, or in other words, what was the Golden Number, as it was called, of that year, we must divide 6402 by 19, and we shall find in the quotient a remainder 18; whence we perceive that it was the eighteenth year of a lunar or Metonic cycle. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which has greatly protracted the solar cycle by the suppression of one bissextile year in a century, as well as the virtual abandonment of the indiction, and even of the solar and lunar cycles, as divisions of time, have greatly diminished whatever utility this invention may have originally possessed.

[985] Usus illius opinione major est in chronicis, quæ ab orbe condito
vel alio quovis initio ante æram Christianam inchoantur. Petav.
Rationarium Temporum, part ii. lib. i. c. 14.