CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.

SECT. I.

_Decline of merely philological, especially Greek, Learning--Casaubon-- Viger--Editions of Greek and Latin Classics--Critical Writings--Latin Style--Scioppius--Vossius--Successive Periods of modern Latinists._

|Learning of 17th century less philological.|

1. In every period of literary history, if we should listen to the complaints of contemporary writers, all learning and science have been verging towards extinction. None remain of the mighty, the race of giants is no more; the lights that have been extinguished burn in no other hands; we have fallen on evil days, when letters are no longer in honour with the world, nor are they cultivated by those who deserve to be honoured. Such are the lamentations of many throughout the whole sixteenth century; and with such do Scaliger and Casaubon greet that which opened upon them. Yet the first part of the seventeenth century may be reckoned eminently the learned age; rather however in a more critical and exact erudition with respect to historical fact, than in what is strictly called philology, as to which we cannot, on the whole, rank this so high as the preceding period. Neither Italy nor Germany maintained its reputation, which, as it has been already mentioned, had begun to wane towards the close of the sixteenth century. The same causes were b work, the same preference of studies very foreign to polite letters, metaphysical philosophy, dogmatic theology, patristic or mediæval ecclesiastical history, or, in some countries, the physical sciences, which were rapidly gaining ground. And to these we must add a prevalence of bad taste, even among those who had some pretensions to be reckoned scholars. Lipsius had set an example of abandoning the purest models; and his followers had less sense and taste than himself. They sought obsolete terms from Pacuvius and Plautus, they affected pointed sentences, and a studied conciseness of period, which made their style altogether dry and jejune.[1] The universities, and even the gymnasia or schools of Germany, grew negligent of all the beauties of language. Latin itself was acquired in a slovenly manner, by help of modern books, which spared the pains of acquiring any subsidiary knowledge of antiquity. And this neglect of the ancient writers in education caused even eminent scholars to write ill, as we perceive in the supplements of Freinshemius to Curtius and Livy.[2]

[1] Biogr. Univ. art. Grævius. Eichhorn, iii. 1. 320.

[2] Eichhorn, 326.

|Popularity of Comenius.|

2. A sufficient evidence of this is found in the vast popularity which the writings of Comenius acquired in Germany. This author, a man of much industry, some ingenuity, and little judgment, made himself a colossal reputation by his Orbis Sensualium Pictus, and still more by his Janua Linguarum Reserata, the latter published in 1631. This contains, in 100 chapters subdivided into 1000 paragraphs, more than 9300 Latin words, exclusive, of course, of such as recur. The originality of its method consists in weaving all useful words into a series of paragraphs, so that they may be learned in a short time, without the tediousness of a nomenclature. It was also intended to blend a knowledge of things with one of words.[3] The Orbis Sensualium Pictus has the same end. This is what has since been so continually attempted in books of education, that some may be surprised to hear of its originality. No one, however, before Comenius seems to have thought of this method. It must, unquestionably, have appeared to facilitate the early acquirement of knowledge in a very great degree; and even with reference to language, if a compendious mode of getting at Latin words were the object, the works of Comenius would answer the purpose beyond those of any classical author. In a country where Latin was a living and spoken tongue, as was in some measure the case with Germany, no great strictness in excluding barbarous phrases is either practicable or expedient. But, according to the received principles of philological literature, they are such books as every teacher would keep out of the hands of his pupils. They were, nevertheless, reprinted and translated in many countries; and obtained a general reception, especially in the German empire, and similarly circumstanced kingdoms.[4]

[3] Biogr. Univ.

[4] Baillet, Critiques Grammairiens, part of the Jugemens des Sçavans (whom I cite by the number or paragraph, on account of the different editions), No. 634, quotes Lancelot’s remark on the Janua Linguarum, that it requires a better memory than most boys possess to master it, and that commonly the first part is forgotten before the last is learned. It excites disgust in the scholar, because he is always in a new country, every chapter being filled with words he has not seen before; and the successive parts of the book have no connection with one another.

Morhof, though he would absolutely banish the Janua Linguarum from all schools where good Latinity is required, seems to think rather better of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, as in itself a happy idea, though the delineations are indifferent, and the whole not so well arranged as it might be. Polyhistor. lib. ii. c. 4.

|Decline of Greek learning.|

3. The Greek language, meantime, was thought unnecessary, and few, comparatively speaking, continued to prosecute its study. In Italy it can merely be said that there were still professors of it in the universities; but no one Hellenist distinguishes this century. Most of those who published editions of Greek authors in Germany, and they were far from numerous, had been formed in the last age. The decline was progressive; few scholars remained after 1620, and a long blank ensued, until Fabricius and Kuster restored the study of Greek near the end of the century. Even in France and Holland, where many were abundantly learned, and some, as we shall see, accomplished philologers, the Greek language seems to have been either less regarded, or at least less promoted by eminent scholars, than in the preceding century.[5]

[5] Scaliger, even in 1602, says: Quis hodie nescit Græcè? sed quis est doctus Græcè? Non dubito esse aliquot, sed paucos, et quos non novi ne de nomine quidem. Te unum novi et memoriæ avorum et nostri sæculi Græcè doctissimum, qui unus in Græcis præstiteris, quæ post renatas apud nos bonas literas omnes nunquam præstare potuissent. He goes on to speak of himself, as standing next to Casaubon, and the only competent judge of the extent of his learning; qui de præstantia doctrinæ tuæ certo judicare possit, ego aut unicus sum, aut qui cæteros hac in re magno intervallo vinco. Scal. Epist. 72.

|Casaubon.|

4. Casaubon now stood on the pinnacle of critical renown. His Persius in 1605, and his Polybius in 1609, were testimonies to his continued industry in this province.[6] But with this latter edition the philological labours of Casaubon came to an end. In 1610 he accepted the invitation of James I., who bestowed upon him, though a layman, a prebend in the church of Canterbury, and, as some, perhaps erroneously, have said, another in that of Westminster.[7] He died in England within four years after, having consumed the intermediate time in the defence of his royal patron against the Jesuits, and in writing Animadversions on the Annals of Baronius; works ill-suited to his peculiar talent, and in the latter of which he is said to have had but little success. He laments, in his epistles, the want of leisure for completing his labours on Polybius; the king had no taste but for theology, and he found no library in which he could pursue his studies.[8] “I gave up,” he says, “at last, with great sorrow, my commentary on Polybius, to which I had devoted so much time, but the good king must be obeyed.”[9] Casaubon was the last of the great scholars of the sixteenth century. Joseph Scaliger, who, especially in his recorded conversation, was very sparing of praise, says expressly, “Casaubon is the most learned man now living.” It is not impossible that he meant to except himself; which would by no means be unjust, if we take in the whole range of erudition; but in the exactly critical knowledge of the Greek language, Casaubon had not even a rival in Scaliger.

[6] The translation that Casaubon has here given of Polybius has generally passed for excellent, though some have thought him a better scholar in Greek than in Latin, and consequently not always able to render the sense as well as he conceived it. Baillet, n. 902. Schweighauser praises the annotations, but not without criticism, for which a later editor generally finds room in an earlier. Reiske, he says, had pointed out many errors.

[7] The latter is contradicted by Beloe, Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v., p. 126, on the authority of Le Neve’s Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ.

[8] Jacent curæ Polybianæ, et fortasse æternum jacebunt, neque enim satis commodus ad illa studia est locus. Epist. 705. Plura adderem, nisi omni librorum præsidio meorum deficerer. Quare etiam de commentariis Polybianis noli meminisse, quando rationes priorum meorum studiorum hoc iter mirificè conturbavit, ut vix sine suspirio ejus incepti possim meminisse, quod tot vigiliis mihi constitit. Sed neque adest mea bibliotheca, neque ea studia multum sunt ad gustum illius, cujus solius, quamdiu hic sum futurus, habenda mihi ratio. Ep. 704 (Feb. 1611). Rex optimus atque ευσεβεστατος [eusebestatos] rebus theologicis ita delectatur, ut aliis curis literariis non multum operæ impendat. Ep. 872. Ego quid hic agam, si cupis scire, hoc unum respondebo, omnia priora studia mea funditus interiisse. Nam maximus rex et liberalissimus unico genere literarum sic capitur, ut suum et suorum ingenia in illo detineat. Ep. 753.

[9] Decessi gemens a Polybiano commentario, quem tot laboribus concinnaveram; sed regi optimo parendum erat. Ep. 854. Feb. 1613.

|Viger de Idiotismis.|

5. A long period ensued, during which no very considerable progress was made in Greek literature. Few books occur before the year 1650 which have obtained a durable reputation. The best known, and, as I conceive, by far the best of a grammatical nature, is that of Viger de Idiotismis præcipuis Græcæ Linguæ, which Hoogeveen and Zeunius successively enlarged in the last century. Viger was a Jesuit of Rouen, and the first edition was in 1632. It contains, even as it came from the author, many valuable criticisms, and its usefulness to a Greek scholar is acknowledged. But, in order to determine the place of Viger among grammarians, we should ascertain by comparison with preceding works, especially the Thesaurus of Stephens, for how much he is indebted to their labours. He would probably, after all deductions, appear to merit great praise. His arrangement is more clear, and his knowledge of syntax more comprehensive, than that of Caninius or any other earlier writer; but his notions are not unfrequently imperfect or erroneous, as the succeeding editors have pointed out. In common with many of the older grammarians, he fancied a difference of sense between the two aorists, wherein even Zeunius has followed him.[10]

[10] An earlier treatise on Greek particles by Devarius, a Greek of the Ionian Islands, might have been mentioned in the last volume. It was republished by Reusmann, who calls Devarius, homo olim haud ignobilis, at hodie pæne neglectus. He is thought too subtle in grammar, but seems to have been an excellent scholar. I do not perceive that Viger has borrowed from him.

|Weller’s Greek grammar.|

6. In a much lower rank, we may perhaps next place Weller, author of a Greek grammar, published in 1638, of which its later editor, Fischer, says that it has always stood in high repute as a school-book, and been frequently reprinted; meaning, doubtless, in Germany. There is nothing striking in Weller’s grammar; it may deserve praise for clearness and brevity; but, in Vergara, Caninius, and Sylburgius, there is much more instruction for those who are not merely schoolboys. What is most remarkable is, that Weller claims as his own the reduction of the declensions to three, and of the conjugations to one; which, as has been seen in a former chapter,[11] is found in the grammar of Sylburgius, and is probably due to Ramus. This is rather a piece of effrontery, as he could scarcely have lighted by coincidence on both these innovations. Weller has given no syntax; what is added in Fischer’s edition is by Lambert Bos.

[11] Page 239.

|Labbe and others.|

|Salmasius de Lingua Hellenistica.|

7. Philip Labbe, a French Jesuit, was a laborious compiler, among whose numerous works not a few relate to the grammar of the Greek language. He had, says Niceron, a wonderful talent in multiplying title pages; we have fifteen or sixteen grammatical treatises from him, which might have been comprised in two or three ordinary volumes. Labbe’s Regulæ Accentuum, published in 1635, was once, I believe, of some repute; but he has little or nothing of his own.[12] The Greek grammars published in this age by Alexander Scot and others are ill-digested, according to Lancelot, without order or principle, and full of useless and perplexing things;[13] and that of Vossius, in 1642, which is only an improved edition of that of Clenardus, appears to contain little which is not taken from others.[14] Erasmus Schmidt is said by Eichhorn to be author of a valuable work on Greek dialects;[15] George Pasor is better known by his writings on the Hellenistic dialect, or that of the Septuagint and New Testament. Salmasius, in his Commentarius de Hellenistica, (Leyden, 1643), has gone very largely into this subject. This, he says, is a question lately agitated, whether there be a peculiar dialect of the Greek Scriptures; for, in the last age, the very name of Hellenistic was unknown to scholars. It is not above half a century old. It was supposed to be a Hebrew idiom in Greek words; which, as he argues elaborately and with great learning, is not sufficient to constitute a distinct dialect, none of the ancients having ever mentioned one by this name. This is evidently much of a verbal dispute; since no one would apply the word to the scriptural Greek, in the same sense that he does to the Doric and Attic. Salmasius lays down two essential characteristics of a dialect: one, that it should be spoken by people differing in locality; another, that it should be distinguishable by single words, not merely by idiom. A profusion of learning is scattered all round, but not pedantically or impertinently; and this seems a very useful book in Greek or Latin philology. He may perhaps be thought to underrate the peculiarities of language in the Old and New Testament, as if they were merely such as passed current among the contemporary Greeks. The second part of this Commentary relates to the Greek dialects generally, without reference to the Hellenistic. He denies the name to what is usually called the common dialect, spoken, or at least written, by the Greeks in general after the time of Alexander. This also is of course a question of words; perhaps Salmasius used a more convenient phraseology than what is often met with in grammarians.

[12] Niceron, vol. xxv.

[13] Baillet, n. 706.

[14] Id. n. 711.

[15] Geschichte der Cultur, iii. 325.

|Greek editions--Savile’s Chrysostom.|

8. Editions of Greek classics are not so numerous as in the former period. The Pindar of Erasmus Schmidt, in 1614, and the Aristotle of Duval, in 1619, may be mentioned: the latter is still in request as a convenient and complete edition. Meursius was reckoned a good critical scholar, but his works as an editor are not very important. The chief monument of his philological erudition is the Lexicon Græco-Barbarum, a glossary of the Greek of the lower empire. But no edition of a Greek author published in the first part of the seventeenth century is superior, at least in magnificence, to that of Chrysostom by Sir Henry Savile. This came forth, in 1612, from a press established at Eton by himself, provost of that college. He had procured types and pressmen in Holland, and three years had been employed in printing the eight volumes of this great work; one, which both in splendour of execution, and in the erudition displayed in it by Savile, who had collected several manuscripts of Chrysostom, leaves immeasurably behind it every earlier production of the English press. The expense, which is said to have been eight thousand pounds, was wholly defrayed by himself, and the tardy sale of so voluminous a work could not have reimbursed the cost.[16] Another edition, in fact, by a Jesuit, Fronto Ducæus (Fronton le Duc), was published at Paris within two years afterwards, having the advantage of a Latin translation, which Savile had imprudently waived. It has even been imputed to Ducæus, that, having procured the sheets of Savile’s edition from the pressmen while it was under their hands, he printed his own without alteration. But this seems an apocryphal story.[17] Savile had the assistance, in revising the text, of the most learned coadjutors he could find in England.

[16] Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v., p. 103. The copies sold for 9_l_. each; a sum equal to nearly 30_l_. at present, and from the relative wealth of the country, to considerably more. What wonder that the sale was slow? Fuller, however, tells us, that when he wrote, almost half a century afterwards, the book was become scarce. Chrysostomus, says Casaubon, a Savilio editur privata impensa, animo regio. Ep. 738 (apud Beloe). The principal assistants of Savile were, Matthew Bust, Thomas Allen, and especially Richard Montagu, afterwards celebrated in our ecclesiastical history as bishop of Chichester, who is said to have corrected the text before it went to the press. As this is the first work of learning, on a great scale, published in England, it deserves the particular commemoration of those to whom we owe it.

[17] It is told by Fuller, and I do not know that it has any independent confirmation. Savile himself says of Fronto Ducæus, “Vir doctissimus, et cui Chrysostomus noster plurimum debet.” Fuller, it may be observed, says that the Parisian edition followed Savile’s “in a few months,” whereas the time was two years; and, as Brunet (Manuel du Libraire) justly observes, there is no apparent necessity to suppose an unfair communication of the sheets, even if the text should be proved to be copied.

|Greek learning in England.|

9. A very few more Greek books were printed at Eton soon afterwards; and though that press soon ceased, some editions of Greek authors, generally for schools, appeared in England before 1650. One of these, the Poetæ Minores of Winterton, is best known, and has sometimes been reprinted; it does little credit to its original editor, the text being exceedingly corrupt, and the notes very trifling. The Greek language, however, was now much studied;[18] the age of James and Charles was truly learned; our writers are prodigal of an abundant erudition, which embraces a far wider range of authors than are now read; the philosophers of every class, the poets, the historians and orators of Greece, to whom few comparatively had paid regard in the days of Elizabeth, seem as familiar to the miscellaneous writers of her next successors, as the fathers of the church are to the theologians. A few, like Jeremy Taylor, are equally copious in their libations from both streams. But though thus deeply read in ancient learning, our old scholars were not very critical in philology.

[18] It might appear, at first sight, that Casaubon intended to send his son Meric to Holland, under the care of Heinsius, because he could not get a good classical education in England. Cupio in Græcis, Latinis, et Hebraicis literis ipsum serio exerceri. Hoc in Anglia posse fieri sperare non possumus: nam hic locupletissima sunt collegia, sed quorum ratio toto genere diversa est ab institutis omnium aliorum collegiorum. Ep. 962 (1614). But possibly he meant that, on account of his son’s foreign birth, he could not be admitted on the foundation of English colleges, though the words do not clearly express this. At the king’s command, however, Meric was sent to Oxford. One of Casaubon’s sons went to Eton school; literis dat operam in gymnasio Etoniensi. Ep. 737 (apud Beloe’s Anecdotes; I had overlooked the passage). Theological learning, in the reign of James, opposed polite letters and philology, Est in Anglia, says Casaubon, theologorum ingens copia; eo enim fere omnes studia sua referunt. Ep. 762. Venio ex Anglia (Grotius writes in 1613), literarum ibi tenuis est merces; theologi regnant, leguleii rem faciunt; unus ferme Casaubonus habet fortunam satis faventem, sed, ut ipse judicat, minus certam. Ne huic quidem locus fuisset in Anglia ut literatori, theologum induere debuit. Epist. Grot. p. 751.

|Latin editions--Torrentius.|

10. In Latin criticism, the pretensions of the seventeenth century are far more considerable than in Greek. The first remarkable edition, however, that of Horace by Torrentius, a Belgian ecclesiastic, though it appeared in 1602, being posthumous, belongs strictly to the preceding age. It has been said that Dacier borrowed much for his own notes from this editor; but Horace was so profusely illustrated in the sixteenth century, that little has been left for later critics, except to tamper, as they have largely done, with his text. This period is not generally conspicuous for editions of Latin authors; but some names of high repute in grammatical and critical lore belong to it.

|Gruter.|

11. Gruter, a native of Antwerp, who became a professor in several German universities, and finally in that of Heidelberg, might have been mentioned in our history of the sixteenth century, before the expiration of which some of his critical labours had been accomplished. Many more belong to the first twenty years of the present. No more diligent and indefatigable critic ever toiled in that quarry. His Suspiciones, an early work, in which he has explained and amended miscellaneous passages, his annotations on the Senecas, on Martial, on Statius, on the Roman historians, as well as another more celebrated compilation which we shall have soon to mention, bear witness to his immense industry. In Greek he did comparatively but little; yet he is counted among good scholars in that language. All others of his time, it has been said, appear mere drones in comparison with him.[19] Scaliger indeed, though on intimate terms with Gruter, in one of his usual fits of spleen, charges him with a tasteless indifference to the real merit of the writers whom he explained, one being as good as another for his purpose, which was only to produce a book.[20] In this art Gruter was so perfect, that he never failed to publish one every year, and sometimes every month.[21] His eulogists have given him credit for acuteness and judgment, and even for elegance and an agreeable variety; but he seems not to have preserved much repute except for his laborious erudition.

[19] Baillet, n. 483. Bayle. Niceron, vol. ix.

[20] Non curat utrum charta sit cacata, modo libros multos excudat. Scalig. secunda.

[21] Bayle, note i.

|Heinsius.|

12. Daniel Heinsius, conspicuous as secretary of the synod of Dort, and a Latin poet of distinguished name, was also among the first philologers of his age. Many editions of Greek and Latin writers, of annotations upon them, Theocritus, Hesiod, Maximus Tyrius, Aristotle, Horace, Terence, Silius, Ovid, attest his critical skill. He is praised for a judicious reserve in criticism, avoiding the trifles by which many scholars had wearied their readers, and attending only to what really demanded the aid of a critic, as being corrupt or obscure. His learning was very extensive and profound, so that in the panegyrical tone of the times, he is set above all the living, and almost above all the dead.[22]

[22] Baillet, n. 517.

|Grotius.|

13. Grotius contributed much to ancient philology. His editions of Aratus, Stobæus, the fragments of the lost Greek dramas, Lucan and Tacitus are but a part of those which he published. In the power of illustrating a writer by parallel or resembling passages from others, however remote, his taste and fondness for poetry, as much as his vast erudition, have made him remarkable. In mere critical skill, he was not quite so great a master of the Greek as of the Latin language; nor was he equal to restoring the text of the dramatic poets.

|Rutgersius, Reinesius, Barthius.|

14. The Variæ Lectiones of Rutgersius, in 1618, whose premature death cut off a brilliant promise of erudition, are in six books, almost entirely devoted to emendation of the text, in such a miscellaneous and desultory series of criticisms, as the example of Turnebus and other scholars had rendered usual.[23] Reinesius, a Saxon physician, in 1640 put forth a book with the same title, a thick volume of about 700 pages, of multifarious learning, chiefly, but not exclusively, classical. He is more interpretative, and less attentive to restore corrupted texts than Rutgersius.[24] The Adversaria of Gaspar Barthius are better known. This work is in 60 books, and extends to about 1500 pages in folio. It is exactly like those of Turnebus and Muretus, an immense repertory of unconnected criticisms and other miscellaneous erudition. The chapters exceed in number the pages, and each chapter contains several articles. There is, however, more connection, alphabetical or otherwise, than in Turnebus; and they are less exclusively classical, many relating to mediæval and modern writers. The sixtieth book is a commentary on a part of Augustin de Civitate Dei. It is difficult to give a more precise notion of Barthius; he is more _æsthetic_ than Turnebus, but less so than Muretus; he explains and corrects fewer intricate texts than the former, but deals more in parallel passages and excursive illustrations.[25] Though Greek appears more than in Turnebus, by far the greater part of Barthius’s Adversaria relates to Latin, in the proportion of at least fifteen to one. A few small poems are printed from manuscripts for the first time. Barthius, according to Morhof, though he sometimes explains authors very well, is apt to be rash in his alterations, hasty in his judgments, and has too much useless and frivolous matter. Bayle is not more favourable. Barthius published an edition of Statius, and another of Claudian.

[23] “This work,” says Niceron (vol. xxxii.), “is in esteem: the style is neat and polite, the thoughts are just and refined; it has no more quotations than the subject requires.”

[24] Bayle observes of the writings of Reinesius in general, that “good judges of literature have no sooner read some pages, but they place him above those philologers who have only a good memory, and rank him with critics who go beyond their reading and know more than books have taught them. The penetration of their understanding makes them draw consequences, and form conjectures, which lead them to discover hidden treasures. Reinesius was one of these, and made it his chief business to find out what others had not said.”

[25] The following are the heads of the fourth chapter of the first book, which may serve as a specimen of the Adversaria: Ad Victoris Uticensis librum primum notæ et emendationes. Limites. Collimitia. Quantitas. H. Stephanus notatur. Impendere. Totum. Omnimodè. Dextrales. Asta. Francisii Balduini audacia castigatur. Tormenta antiqua. Liguamen Arx capitis. Memoriæ. Cruciari. Balduinus denuo aliquoties notatur. It is true that all this farrago arises out of one passage in Victor of Utica, and Barthius is far from being so desultory as Turnebus: but 3000 columns of such notes make but a dictionary without the help of the alphabet. Barthius tells us himself that he had finished two other volumes of Adversaria, besides correcting the first. See the passage in Bayle, note K. But he does not stand on very high ground as a critic, on account of the rapidity with which he wrote, and, for the same reason, has sometimes contradicted himself. Bayle. Baillet, n. 528. Niceron, vol. vii. Morhof, lib. v. 1. 10.

|Other critics--English.|

15. Rigault, or Rigaltius, Petit, Thysius, and several more, do honour to France and the Low countries during this period. Spain, though not strong in classical philology, produced Ramiresius de Prado, whose Πεντηκονταρχος [Pentêkontarchos], sive quinquaginta militum ductor, 1612, is but a book of criticism with a quaint title.[26] In Latin Literature we can hardly say that England made herself more conspicuous than in Greek. The notes of John Bond on Horace, published in 1606, are properly a work of the age of Elizabeth: the author was long a schoolmaster in that reign. These notes are only little marginal scholia for the use of boys of no great attainments; and in almost every instance, I believe, taken from Lambinus. This edition of Horace, though Antony Wood calls the author a most noted critic and grammarian, has only the merit of giving the observations of another concisely and perspicuously. Thomas Farnaby is called by Baillet one of the best scholiasts, who says hardly anything useless, and is very concise.[27] He has left notes on several of the Latin poets. It is possible that the notes are compiled, like those of Bond, from the foreign critics. Farnaby also was a schoolmaster, and schoolmasters do not write for the learned. He has however been acknowledged on the continent for a diligent and learned man. Wood says he was “the chief grammarian, rhetorician, poet, Latinist, and Grecian of his time; and his school was so much frequented, that more churchmen and statesmen issued thence than from any school taught by one man in England.”[28]

[26] This has been ascribed by some to his master Sanctius, author of the Minerva, Ramirez himself having been thought unequal to such remarks as we find in it. Baillet, n. 527.

[27] N. 521.

[28] Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. iii.

|Salmasius.|

16. But the greatest in this province of literature was Claude Saumaise, best known in the Latin form Salmasius, whom the general suffrage of his compeers placed at their head. An incredible erudition, so that it was said, what Salmasius did not know, was beyond the bounds of knowledge, a memory such as none but those great scholars of former times seem to have possessed, a life passed, naturally enough, in solitary labour, were sufficient to establish his fame among the learned. His intellectual strength has been more questioned; he wrote, it has been alleged, on many subjects that he did not well understand, and some have reduced his merit to that of a grammatical critic, without altogether rating this so highly as the world has done.[29] Salmasius was very proud, self-confident, disdainful, and has consequently fallen into many errors, and even contradictions, through precipitancy. In his controversy with Milton, for which he was little fitted, he is rather feeble, and glad to escape from the severity of his antagonist by a defence of his own Latinity.[30] The works of Salmasius are numerous, and on very miscellaneous subjects; among the philological, his Annotations on the Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores seem to deserve mention. But the most remarkable, besides the Commentary on the Hellenistic Dialect, of which an account has been given, is the Plinianæ Exercitationes, published in 1629. These remarks, nominally on Pliny, are, in the first instance, on Solinus. Salmasius tells us that he had spent much time on Pliny; but finding it beyond the powers of one man to write a commentary on the whole Natural History of that author, he had chosen Solinus, who is a mere compiler from Pliny, and contains nothing from any other source. The Plinianæ Exercitationes is a mass of learning on the geography and natural history of Pliny in more than 900 pages, following the text of the Polyhistor of Solinus.[31]

[29] Baillet, n. 511, is excessively severe on Salmasius; but the homage due to his learning by such an age as that in which he lived cannot be extenuated by the censure of a man like Baillet, of extensive, but rather superficial attainments, and open to much prejudice.

[30] Milton began the attack by objecting to the use of _persona_ for an individual man; but in this mistaken criticism uttered himself the solecism _vapulandum_. See Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. This expression had previously been noticed by Vavasseur.

[31] Nemo adeo ut propriam, suumque veluti regnum, sibi criticen vindicatum ivit, ac Claudius Salmasius, qui, quemadmodum nihil unquam scripsit, in quo non insignia multa artis criticæ vestigia deprehendas, ita imprimis, ut auctores cum notis et castigationibus absolutissimis editos taceamus, vasto illo Plinianarum Exercitationum opere, quantum in eo eruditionis genere valeret demonstratum dedit. Morhof. lib. v. c. 1. § 12. The Jesuits, Petavius and Harduin, who did not cordially praise any Protestant, charged this book with passing over real difficulties, while a mass of heterogeneous matter was foisted in. Le Clerc (or La Croze) vindicates Salmasius against some censures of Harduin in Bibl. Univ. vol. iv.

|Good writers of Latin.|

17. It had been the desire of those who aspired to reputation for taste and eloquence to write well in Latin, the sole language, on this side of the Alps and Pyrenees, to which the capacity of choice and polished expression was conceded. But when the French tongue was more cultivated and had a criticism of its own, this became the natural instrument of polite writers in France, and the Latin fell to the merely learned who neglected its beauties. In England it had never been much studied for the purposes of style; and though neither in Germany nor the Low Countries it was very customary to employ the native language, the current Latin of literature was always careless and often barbarous. Even in Italy the number of good writers in that language was now very scanty. Two deserve to be commemorated with praise, both historians of the same period. The History and Annals of Grotius, in which he seems to have emulated, with more discretion than some others, the nervous brevity of Tacitus, though sometimes not free from a certain hardness and want of flow, nor equal, consequently, in elegance to some productions of the sixteenth century, may be deemed a monument of vigorous and impressive language. The Decades of Famianus Strada, a Roman Jesuit, contain a history of the Flemish war, not written certainly in imitation of Tacitus, whom the author depreciated, but with more classical spirit than we usually find in that age. Scarcely any Latin, however, of this period is equal to that of Barclay in the Argenis and Euphormio. His style, though rather diffuse, and more florid than that of the Augustan age, is perhaps better suited to his subjects, and reminds us of Petronius Arbiter, who was probably his model.

|Scioppius.|

|His Philosophical Grammar.|

18. Of the grammatical critics, whose attention was solely turned to the purity of Latin style, two are conspicuous, Gaspar Scioppius and Gerard Vossius. The first, one of those restless and angry spirits whose hand is against all the world, lived a long life of controversy and satire. His productions, as enumerated by Niceron, mostly anonymous, are about one hundred; twenty-seven of which, according to another list, are grammatical.[32] The Protestants, whom he had abandoned, and the Jesuits whom he would not join, are equally the objects of his anger. In literature, he is celebrated for the bitterness of his attacks on Cicero, whom he spared as little as he did his own contemporaries. But Scioppius was an admirable master of the Latin language. All that is remembered of his multifarious publications relates to this. We owe to him a much improved edition of the Minerva of Sanctius. His own Grammatica Philosophica, (Milan, 1628,) notwithstanding its title, has no pretentions to be called anything more than an ordinary Latin grammar. In this I observed nothing remarkable but that he denies the gerund and supine to be parts of the verb, considering the first as passive participles, and the second as nouns substantive; a theory which seems erroneous.

[32] Niceron, vol. xxxv. Biog. Univ.

|His Infamia Famiani.|

19. The Infamia Famiani of Scioppius was written against Famianus Strada, whom he hated both as a Jesuit, and as one celebrated for the beauty of his style. This book serves to show how far those who wrote with some eloquence, as Strada certainly did, fell short of classical purity. The faults pointed out are often very obvious to those who have used good dictionaries. Scioppius is however so fastidious as to reject words employed by Seneca, Tacitus, and even Phædrus, as of the silver age; and sometimes probably is wrong in his dogmatic assertion of a negative, that no good authority can be found.

|Judicium de Stylo Historico.|

20. But his most considerable work is one called Judicium de Stylo Historico, subjoined to the last, and published after his death, in 1650. This treatise consists chiefly of attacks on the Latin style of Thuanus, Lipsius, Casaubon, and other recent authors; but in the course of it we find the remarks of a subtle and severe observer on the ancients themselves. The _silver_ age he dates from the latter years of Augustus, placing even Ovid within it. The _brazen_ he carries up to Vespasian. In the silver period he finds many single words as well as phrases not agreeable to the usage of more ancient authors. As to the moderns the Transalpine writers, he says, speaking as an Italian, are always deficient in purity; they mingle the phraseology of different ages as preposterously as if they were to write Greek in a confusion of dialects; they affect obscurity, a broken structure of periods, a studied use of equivocal terms. This is particularly perceived in the school of Lipsius, whose own faults, however, are redeemed by many beauties even of style.[33] The Italians, on the contrary, he proceeds to say, read nothing but what is worthy of imitation, and shun every expression that can impair the clearness and purity of a sentence. Yet even in Manutius and in the Jesuit Maffei, he finds instances of barbarism, much more in the French and German scholars of the sixteenth age; expressing contempt upon this account for his old enemy, Joseph Scaliger. Thuanus, he says, is full of modern idioms; a crime not quite unpardonable, when we remember the immensity of his labour, and the greater importance of other objects of it that he had in view.

[33] Transalpinis hominibus ex quotidiano Latini sermonis inter ipsos usu, multa sive barbaræ, sive plebeiæ ac deterioris notæ, sic adhærescere solent, ut postea cum stylum arripuere, de Latinitate eorum dubitare nequaquam iis in mentem veniat. Inde fit ut scripta eorum plerumque minus puritatis habeant, quamvis gratia et venustas in iis minime desideretur. Nam hæc natura duce melius fiebant, quam arte aut studio. Accedit alia causa cur non æquè pura sit multorum Transalpinorum oratio, quod nullo ætatis discrimine ac delectu in autorum lectione versantur, et ex omnium commixtione varium quoddam ac multiforme pro suo quisque ingenio dicendi genus effingunt, contempto hoc Fabii monito: “Diu non nisi optimus quisque et qui credentem sibi minime fallat, legendus est, sed diligenter ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem; nec per partes modo scrutanda omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus.” Itaque genus illud corruptæ orationis, seu κακοζηλιας [kakozêlias], effugere nequeunt, quod κοινισμον [koinismon] vocant, quæ est quædam mista ex variarum linguarum ratione oratio, ut si Atticis Dorica, Ionica, Æolica etiam dicta confundas; cui simile est si quis sublimia humilibus, vetera novis, poetica vulgaribus, Sallustiana Tullianis, æneæ et ferreæ ætatis vocabula aureis et argenteis misceat, qui Lipsio deductisque ab eo viris, solennis et jam olim familiaris, est morbus. In quibus hoc amplius, verba maxime impropria, comprehensionem obscuram, compositionem fractam, aut in frustula concisam, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilem captationem passim animadvertas. Magnis tamen, non nego, virtutibus vitia sua Lipsius redimit, imprimis acumine, venere, salibus (ut excellens viri ingenium ferebat) tum plurimis lectissimis verbis loquendique modis, ex quibus non tam facultatem bene scribendi, ejusque, quod melius est, intellectum ei deesse, quam voluntatem, quo minus rectiora malit, ambitiuscule, plaususque popularis studio præpediri intelligas. Italorum longè dispar ratio. Primum enim non nisi optimum legere et ad imitandum sibi proponere solent; quod judicio quo cæteras nationes omnium consensu superant, imprimis est consentaneum. Deinde nihil non faciunt, ut evitent omnia, unde aliquid injucundæ et contaminandæ orationis periculi ostenditur. Latinè igitur nunquam loquuntur, quod fieri vix posse persuasum habeant, quin quotidianus ejus linguæ usus ad instar torrentis lutulentus fluat, et cujusque modi verborum sordes secum rapiat, quæ postea quodam familiaritatis jure sic se scribentibus ingerant, ut etiam diligentissimos fallant, et haud dubie pro Latinis habeantur. Hoc eorum consilium cum non intelligant Transalpini, id eorum inscitiæ perperam assignant. Sic rectè Paulo Manutio usu venit, ut quoniam vix tria verba Latina in familiari sermone proferre poterat, eam Germani complures, qui loquentem audituri ad eum venerunt, vehementer præ se contemnerent. Huic tamen nemo qui sanus sit ad puritatis et elegantiæ Latinæ summam quicquid defuisse dixerit, p. 65.

|Gerard Vossius de Vitiis sermonis.|

21. Gerard Vossius, a far greater name in general literature than Scioppius, contributed more essentially to these grammatical rules; and to him, perhaps, rather than to any other one man, we may refer the establishment of as much correctness of writing as is attainable in a dead language. Besides several works on rhetoric and poetry, which, as those topics were usually treated in ages of more erudition than taste or philosophy, resolved themselves into philological disquisitions, looking only to the language of the ancient writers, we have several more strictly within that province. The long use of Latin in writings on modern subjects, before the classical authors had been studied, had brought in a host of barbarisms, that even yet were not expelled. His treatise De Vitiis Sermonis et Glossematis Latino-barbaris is in nine books; four published in 1645, during the author’s life; five in 1685. The former are by far the most copious. It is a very large collection of words in use among modern writers, for which there is no adequate authority. Of these many are plainly barbarous, and taken from the writers of the middle ages, or at best from those of the fifth and sixth centuries. Few of such would be used by any tolerable scholar. He includes some which, though in themselves good, have a wrong sense given to them. Words however occur, concerning which one might be ignorant without discredit, especially before the publication of this treatise, which has been the means of correcting the ordinary dictionaries.

22. In the five posthumous books, which may be mentioned in this place, having probably been written before 1650, we find chiefly what the author had forgotten to notice in the former, or had since observed. But the most valuable part relates to the “falso suspecta,” which fastidious critics have unreasonably rejected, generally because they do not appear in the Augustan writers. Those whom he calls “Nizoliani verius quam Ciceroniani,” disapproved of all words not found in Cicero.[34] It is curious to perceive, as Vossius shows us, how many apparently obvious words do not occur in Cicero; yet it would be mere affectation to avoid them. This is perhaps the best part of Vossius’s treatise.

[34] Paulus Manutius scrupled to use words on the authority of Cicero’s correspondents, such as Cælius or Pollio; a ridiculous affectation, especially when we observe what Vossius has pointed out, that many common words do not occur in Cicero. It is amazing to see the objections of these Ciceronian critics.

|His Aristarchus.|

23. We are indebted to Vossius for a still more important work on grammar, the Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatica, which first appeared in 1635. This is in seven books; the first treats of grammar in general, and especially of the alphabet; the second of syllables, under which head he dwells at great length on prosody;[35] the third (which, with all the following, is separately entitled De vocum Analogia) of words generally, and of the genders, numbers, and cases of nouns. The same subject occupies the fourth book. In the fifth, he investigates verbs; and in the sixth, the remaining parts of speech. The last book relates to syntax. This work is full of miscellaneous observations, placed for the most part alphabetically under each chapter. It has been said that Vossius has borrowed almost everything in this treatise from Sanctius and Scioppius. If this be true, we must accuse him of unfairness; for he never mentions the Minerva. But the edition of this grammar by Scioppius was not published till after the death of Vossius. Salmasius extolled that of the latter above all which had been published.[36]

[35] In this we find Vossius aware of the rule brought to light by Dawes, and now familiar, that a final vowel is rarely short before a word beginning with s and a mute consonant.

[36] Tuum de grammatica à te accepi exactissimum in hoc genere opus, ac cui nullum priorum aut prisci ævi aut nostri possit comparari. Apud Blount in Vossio. Daunou says of the grammatical and rhetorical writings of Vossius: Ces livres se recommandent par l’exactitude, par la méthode, par une littérature très étendue. Gibert en convient, mais il trouve de la prolixité. D’autres pourraient n’y voir qu’une instruction sérieuse, souvent austère, et presque toujours profitable. Biogr. Univ.

|Progress of Latin Style.|

24. In later times the ambition of writing Latin with accuracy and elegance has so universally declined, that the diligence of Scioppius and Vossius has become hardly valuable except to schoolmasters. It is, however, an art not contemptible, either in respect to the taste and discernment for which it gives scope in composition, or for the enhanced pleasure it reflects on the pages of ancient writers. We may distinguish several successive periods in its cultivation since the first revival of letters. If we begin with Petrarch, since before his time there was no continuous imitation of classical models, the first period will comprise those who desired much, but reached little, the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, destitute of sufficient aids, and generally incapable of clearly discriminating the pure from the barbarous in Latin. A better æra may be dated from Politian; the ancients were now fully known, and studied with intense labour; the graces of style were frequently caught; yet something was still wanting to its purity and elegance. At the end of a series of improvements, a line marked by Bembus, Sadolet, and Longolius, we arrive at a third period, which we may call that of Paulus Manutius, the golden age of modern Latinity. The diligence in lexicography of Robert Stephens, of Nizolius, of Manutius himself, and the philological treatises of their times, gave a much greater nicety of expression; while the enthusiasm with which some of the best writers emulated the ancients inspired them with a sympathetic eloquence and grace. But towards the end of the century, when Manutius, and Muretus, and Maphæus, and others of that school had been removed by death, an age of worse taste and perhaps of more negligence in grammar came on, yet one of great scholars, and of men powerful even in language; the age of Lipsius, of Scaliger, of Grotius. This may be called the fourth period; and in this apparently the purity of the language, as well as its beauty, rather declined. Finally, the publications of Scioppius and Vossius mark the beginning of another period, which we may consider as lasting to the present day. Grammatical criticism had nearly reached the point at which it now stands; the additions, at least, which later philologers, Perizonius, Burman, Bentley, and many others have made, though by no means inconsiderable, seem hardly sufficient to constitute a distinct period, even if we could refer them properly to any single epoch. And the praise of eloquent composition has been so little sought after the close of the years passed in education, or attained only in short and occasional writings, which have left no durable reputation behind, that we may consider the Latin language, for this purpose, to have silently expired in the regions of polite literature.

SECT. II.

_Antiquities of Rome and Greece--Gruter--Meursius--Chronology._

|Gruter’s collection of inscriptions.|

25. The antiquities of Greece and Rome, though they did not occupy so great a relative space in the literature of this period as of the sixteenth century, were, from the general increase of erudition, not less frequently the subject of books than before. This field indeed is so vast, that its harvest had in many parts been scarcely touched, and in others very imperfectly gathered by those we have already commemorated, the Sigonii, the Manutii, the Lipsii, and their fellow-labourers in ancient learning. The present century opened with a great work, the Corpus Inscriptionum by Gruter. A few endeavours had long before been made[37] to collect the ancient inscriptions, of which the countries once Roman, and especially Italy, were full. The best work hitherto was by Martin Smetius of Bruges, after whose death his collection of inscriptions was published at Leyden in 1588, under the superintendence of Dousa and Lipsius.

[37] See p. 160.

|Assisted by Scaliger.|

26. Scaliger first excited his friend Gruter to undertake the task of giving an enlarged edition of Smetius.[38] He made the index for this himself, devoting the labour of the entire morning for ten months (a summo mane ad tempus cœnæ) to an occupation from which so little glory could accrue. “Who,” says Burman, “would not admire the liberal erudition and unpretending modesty of the learned of that age, who, worn as they were by those long and weary labours of which they freely complain in their correspondence with each other, though they knew that such occupations as these could gain for them no better name than that of common clerks or mere drudges, yet hesitated not to abandon for the advantage of the public those pursuits which a higher fame might be expected to reward? Who in these times would imitate the generosity of Scaliger, who, when he might have ascribed to himself this addition to the work of Smetius, gave away his own right to Gruter, and declined to let his name be prefixed either to the index which he had wholly compiled, or to the many observations by which he corrects and explains the inscriptions, and desired, in recompence for the industry of Gruter, that he alone should pass with posterity as the author of the work?”[39] Gruter, it is observed by Le Clerc, has committed many faults: he often repeats the same inscriptions, and still more frequently has printed them from erroneous copies; his quotations from authors, in whom inscriptions are found, sometimes want exactness; finally, for which he could not well be answerable, a vast many have since been brought to light.[40] In consequence of the publication of Gruter’s Inscriptions, the learned began with incredible zeal to examine old marbles for inscriptions, and to insert them in any work that had reference to antiquity. Reinesius collected as many as make a respectable supplement.[41] But a sort of æra in lapidary learning was made by Selden’s description, in 1629, of the marbles, brought by the Earl of Arundel from Greece, and which now belong to the university of Oxford. These contain a chronology of the early times of Greece, on which great reliance has often been placed, though their antiquity is not accounted very high in comparison with those times.

[38] Burman in Præfatione ad Gruteri Corpus Inscript. Several of Scaliger’s epistles prove this, especially the 405th addressed to Gruter.

[39] Id. p. 6.

[40] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xiv., p. 51. Burman, _ubi supra_, gives a strange reason for reprinting Gruter’s Inscriptions with all their blemishes, even the repetitions; namely, that it was convenient to preserve the number of pages which had been so continually referred to in all learned works, the simple contrivance of keeping the original numeration in the margin not having occurred to him.

[41] Burman, _ubi supra_.

|Works on Roman antiquity.|

27. The Jesuit Donati published, in 1633, Roma vetus et nova, which is not only much superior to anything previously written on the antiquities of the city, but is preferred by some competent judges, to the later and more known work of Nardini. Both these will be found, with others of an earlier date, in the third and fourth volumes of Grævius. The tenth volume of the same collection contains a translation from the history of the Great Roads of the Roman Empire, published in French by Nicolas Bergier in 1622; ill arranged, it has been said, and diffuse, according to the custom of his age, but inferior. Grævius declares, in variety of learning to no one work that he has inserted in his numerous volumes. Guther, whose treatise on the pontifical law of Rome appears in the fifth volume, was, says the editor, “a man of various and extended reading, who had made extracts from every class of writers, but had not always digested his learning or weighed what he wrote. Hence much has been found open to criticism in his writings, and there remains a sufficient harvest of the same kind for any one who should care to undertake it.” The best work on Roman dress is by Octavius Ferrarius, published partly in 1642, partly in 1654. This has been called superficial by Spanheim; but Grævius, and several other men of learning, bestow more praise.[42] The Isiac tablet, covered with emblems of Egyptian antiquity, was illustrated by Pignoria, in a work bearing different titles in the successive editions from 1605; and his explanations are still considered probable. Pignoria’s other writings were also in high esteem with the antiquaries.[43] It would be tedious to enumerate the less important productions of this kind. A minute and scrupulous criticism, it has been said, distinguished the antiquaries of the seventeenth century. Without, perhaps, the comprehensive views of Sigonius and Panvinius, they were more severely exact. Hence forgery and falsehood stood a much worse chance of success than before. Annius of Viterbo had deceived half the scholars of the preceding age. But when Inghirami, in 1637, published his Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, monuments of Etruscan antiquity, which he pretended to have discovered at Volterra, the imposture was speedily detected.[44]

[42] Niceron, v. 80. Tiraboschi, xi. 300.

[43] Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.

[44] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné xi. 358.

|Geography of Cluverius.|

28. The Germania Antiqua of Cluverius was published in 1616, and his Italia Antiqua in 1624. These form a sort of epoch in ancient geography. The latter, especially, has ever since been the great repertory of classical illustration on this subject. Cluverius, however, though a man of acknowledged ability and erudition, has been thought too bold an innovator in his Germany, and to have laid down much on his own conjecture.[45]

[45] Blount. Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.

|Meursius.|

|Ubbo Emmius.|

29. Meursius, a native of Holland, began when very young, soon after the commencement of the century, those indefatigable labours on Grecian antiquity, by which he became to Athens and all Hellas what Sigonius had been to Rome and Italy. Niceron has given a list of his publications, sixty-seven in number, including some editions of ancient writers, but for the most part confined to Illustrations of Greek usages; some also treat of Roman. The Græcia feriata, on festivals and games; the Orchestra, on dancing; the Eleusinia, on that deeply interesting and in his time almost untouched subject, the ancient mysteries, are collected in the works of this very learned person, or scattered through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum of Gronovius. “Meursius,” says his editor, “was the true and legitimate mystagogue to the sanctuarius of Greece.” But his peculiar attention was justly shown to “the eye of Greece,” Athens. Nothing that bore on her history, her laws and government, her manners and literature, was left by him. The various titles of his works seem almost to exhaust Athenian Antiquity: De Populis Atticæ--Athenæ Atticæ--Cecropia--Regnum Atticum--Archontes Athenienses--Pisistratus--Fortuna Attica--Atticarum Lectionum Libri IV.--Piraeus--Themis Attica--Solon--Areopagus-- Panathenæa--Eleusinia--Theseus--Æschylus--Sophocles et Euripides. It is manifest that all later learning must have been built upon his foundations. No one was equal to Meursius in this province; but the second place is perhaps due to Ubbo Emmius, professor of Greek at Groningen, for his Vetus Græcia Illustrata, 1626. The facilities of elucidating the topography of that country were by no means such as Cluverius had found for Italy; and in fact little was done in respect to local investigation in order to establish a good ancient geography till recent times. Samuel Petit, a man placed by some in the very first list of the learned, published in 1635 a commentary on the Athenian laws, which is still the chief authority on that subject.

30. In an age so peculiarly learned as this part of the seventeenth century, it will be readily concluded that many books must have a relation to the extensive subject of this section; though the stream of erudition had taken rather a different course, and watered the provinces of ecclesiastical and mediæval more than those of heathen antiquity. But we can only select one or two which treat of chronology, and that chiefly because we have already given a place to the work of Scaliger.

|Chronology of Lydiat. Calvisius.|

31. Lydiat was the first who, in a small treatise on the various calendars, 1605, presumed in several respects to differ from that of the dictator of literature. He is in consequence reviled in Scaliger’s Epistles as the most stupid and ignorant of the human race, a portentous birth of England, or at best an ass and a beetle, whom it is below the dignity of the author to answer.[46] Lydiat was however esteemed a man of deep learning, and did not flinch from the contest. His Emendatio Temporum, published in 1609, is a more general censure of the Scaligerian chronology, but it is rather a short work for the extent of the subject. A German, Seth Calvisius, on the other hand, is extolled to the skies by Scaliger for a chronology founded on his own principles. These are applied in it to the whole series of history, and thus Calvisius may be said to have made an epoch in historical literature. He made more use of eclipses than any preceding writer; and his dates are reckoned as accurate in modern as in ancient history.[47]

[46] Ante aliquot dies tibi scripsi, ut scirem ex te quis sit Thomas Lydiat iste, quo monstro nullum portentosius in vestra Anglia natum puto; tanta est inscitia hominis et confidentia. Ne semel quidem illi verum dicere accidit. And again:--Non est similis morio in orbe terrarum. Paucis asinitatem ejus perstringam ut lector rideat. Nam in tam prodigiosè imperitum scarabæum scribere, neque nostræ dignitatis est, neque otii. Scalig. Epist. 291. Usher, nevertheless, if we may trust Wood, thought Scaliger worsted by Lydiat. Ath. Oxon. iii. 187.

[47] Blount. Biogr. Univ.

|Petavius.|

32. Scaliger, nearly twenty years after his death, was assailed by an adversary whom he could not have thought it unworthy of his name to repel. Petau, or Petavius, a Jesuit of uncommon learning, devoted the whole of the first of two large volumes, entitled Doctrina, Temporum, 1627, to a censure of the famous work De Emendatione Temporum. This volume is divided into eight books; the first on the popular year of the Greeks; the second on the lunar; the third on the Ægyptian, Persian, and Armenian; the fourth on the solar year; the fifth treats of the correction of the paschal cycle and the calendar; the sixth discusses the principles of the lunar and solar cycles; the seventh is entitled an introduction to computations of various kinds, among which he reckons the Julian period; the eighth is on the true motions of the sun and moon, and on their eclipses. In almost every chapter of the first five books, Scaliger is censured, refuted, reviled. It was a retribution upon his own arrogance; but published thus after his death, with no justice done to his great learning and ability, and scarcely the common terms of respect towards a mighty name, it is impossible not to discern in Petavius both an envious mind, and a partial desire to injure the fame of a distinguished protestant. His virulence indeed against Scaliger becomes almost ridiculous. At the beginning of each of the first five books, he lays it down as a theorem to be demonstrated, that Scaliger is always wrong on the particular subjects to which it relates; and at the close of each, he repeats the same in geometrical form as having been proved. He does not even give him credit for the invention of the Julian period, though he adopts it himself with much praise, positively asserting that it is borrowed from the Byzantine Greeks.[48] The second volume is in five books, and is dedicated to the historical part of chronology, and the application of the principles laid down before. A third volume in 1630, relating to the same subjects, though bearing a different title, is generally considered as part of the work. Petavius, in 1633, published an abridgment of his chronological system, entitled Rationarium Temporum, to which he subjoined a table of events down to his own time, which in the larger work had only been carried to the fall of the empire. This abridgment is better known, and more generally useful than the former.

[48] Lib. vii., c. 7.

|Character of this work.|

33. The merits of Petavius as a chronologer have been differently appreciated. Many, of whom Huet is one, from religious prejudices rejoiced in what they hoped to be a discomfiture of Scaliger, whose arrogance had also made enemies of a large part of the literary world. Even Vossius, after praising Petavius, declares that he is unwilling to decide between men who have done for chronology more than any others.[49] But he has not always been so favourably dealt with. Le Clerc observes, that as Scaliger is not very perspicuous, and Petavius has explained the former’s opinions before he proceeds to refute them, those who compare the two will have this advantage, that they will understand Scaliger better than before.[50] This is not very complimentary to his opponent. A modern writer of respectable authority gives us no reason to consider him victorious. “Though the great work of Petavius on chronology,” says M. St. Martin, “is certainly a very estimable production, it is not less certain that he has in no degree contributed to enlarge the boundaries of the science. The author shows too much anxiety to refute Scaliger, whether right or wrong; his sole aim is to destroy the edifice, perhaps too boldly elevated by his adversary. It is not unjust to say that Petavius has literally done nothing for positive chronology; he has not even determined with accuracy what is most incontestable in this science. Many of the dates which he considers as well established, are still subject to great doubt, and might be settled in a very different manner. His work is clear and methodical; and, as it embraces the whole of chronology, it might have become of great authority: but these very qualities have rendered it injurious to the science. He came to arrest the flight which, through the genius of Scaliger, it was ready to take, nor has it made the least progress ever since; it has produced nothing but conjectures, more or less showy, but with nothing solid and undeniable for their basis.”[51]

[49] Vossius apud Niceron, xxxvii. 111. Dionysius Petavius permaulta post Scaligerum optime observavit. Sed nolim judicium interponere inter eos, quorum uterque præclare adeo de chronologia meritus est, ut nullis plus hæc scientia debeat.... Qui sine affectu ac partium studio conferre volet quæ de temporibus scripsere, conspiciet esse ubi Scaligero major laus debeatur, comperiet quoque ubi longe Petavio malit assentiri; erit etiam ubi ampliandum videatur; imo ubi nec facile veritas à quoquam possit indagari. The chronology of Petavius was animadverted upon by Salmasius with much rudeness, and by several other contemporaries engaged in the same controversy. If we were to believe Baillet, Petavius was not only the most learned of the order of Jesuits, but surpassed Salmasius himself _de plusieurs coudées_. Jugemens des Sçavans, n. 513. But to judge between giants we should be a little taller ourselves than most are. Baillet, indeed, quotes Henry Valois for this preference of Petavius to any other of his age, which, in other words, is much the same as to call him the most learned man that ever lived; and Valois was a very competent judge. The words, however, are found in a funeral panegyric.

[50] Bibl. Choisie, ii. 186. A short abstract of the Petavian scheme of chronology will be found in this volume of Le Clerc.

[51] Biogr. Univ. art. Petavius.