1
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FROM THE LIBRARY
OF
ROBERT MARK WENLEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
1896
1929
GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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1938
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UNIVERSITY
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VOL. I.
Preatest reliance
byth Philosophy Classes
Quim Maymnt Collegi,
25th April, 1889
PATTISON'S ESSAYS
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London
HENRY FROWDE

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ESSAYS
BY THE LATE
MARK PATTISON
SOMETIME RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE
COLLECTED AND ARRanged
BY
HENRY NETTLESHIP, M. A.
CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
VOL. I
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1889
[ All rights reserved]

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810
905
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11-23-38
ZV.
PREFACE.
WITH One exception, the Essays in these volumes are a
selection of what seemed to be the most generally in-
teresting and valuable among the many papers and
articles published by Mr. Pattison between the years
1845 and 1882. The exception is the fragment on the
Life of Joseph Scaliger, which occupies pages 196-243
of the first volume. This is printed from the author's
manuscript, and forms part of his unfinished Life of
Scaliger; the only part which was in a sufficiently
advanced state to be given to the public. Its character,
and its relation to the preceding essay on Scaliger,
are fully explained in a note prefixed by Mr. R. C.
Christie.
The rest of the articles and essays are reprinted, in most
cases after some editorial revision and correction, in the
shape in which Mr. Pattison left them. A large number
of them were found among his papers collected together
in their printed form; a circumstance which lends some
colour to the supposition that he may have intended to
republish them himself. There were very few addi-
tional notes or corrections, except in one case, that of
the Essay on Tendencies of Religious Thought in England
etc., originally published in Essays and Reviews (1860).
This Essay he had apparently intended to rewrite in a
much fuller form. He left, towards this new edition, a
page of introduction, one or two slight corrections, and a
number of illustrations and references collected from a
wide field of literature.
011-2, Ja
vi
PREFACE,
The essay on Oxford Studies, published in 1855, it has
been thought advisable, in consideration of its historical and
literary interest, to reprint without abridgment, although
many of the views expressed in it have been for some
time embodied in University legislation, while the maturer
judgment of its author on the whole subject is contained
in his Suggestions on Academical Organization (1868).
Professor E. A. Freeman has read over the articles on Gre-
gory of Tours and on Early Intercourse between England and
Germany. The articles on Antecedents of the Reformation,
The Stephenses, Muretus, Joseph Scaliger (including the
fragment), Huet, and Montaigne have been thoroughly
revised by Mr. Christie and Mr. I. Bywater; those on
the Tendencies of Religious Thought in England and on
Warburton by Mr. Leslie Stephen; that on Pope by Mr.
Leslie Stephen and Mr. W. J. Courthope. Dr. A. M.
Fairbairn has added some important supplementary notes
to the essays upon Calvin and upon the State of Theology
in Germany. An index of names has been contributed by
Mr. C. E. Doble, who has also carefully read through the
whole of the proofs, and occasionally supplied valuable
corrections. For general editorial superintendence the
present writer is responsible.
Such undoubted errors as have been noticed have been
silently corrected; and in cases where a modification of any
view expressed by Mr. Pattison, or an additional remark
or illustration, seemed to be imperatively called for, a note
has been added in brackets [ ] at the foot of the page.
The essays have been arranged, so far as was possible,
according to the connection of their subjects. Those
which treat of the history of philology and education
have been printed together, and form the bulk of the
first volume. In the same way those which deal with the
PREFACE.
vii
history of religious thought succeed each other in the
second volume. In all cases the date of the essay, and
the name of the book or periodical in which it was
first given to the world, are printed at the foot of the
left-hand page.
The thanks of the editors are due to Lady Dilke for
her permission to publish these papers; and, for the same
reason, to the editors and publishers of the various.
periodicals in which many of them originally appeared.
HENRY NETTLESHIP.
Besides the Essays reprinted in these volumes, Mr.
Pattison left in manuscript a Life of the elder Scaliger, and
was also the author of the following published articles :-
1842. Earliest English Poetry
1845. Wordsworth's Diary in France
1846. Church Poetry
•
British Critic.
Christian Remembrancer.
The same.
The same.
The same.
The same.
The Oxford Bede
Thiers's Consulate and Empire
1848. Mill's Political Economy
The Sugar Duties
1853. Diary of Casaubon
1857. The Birmingham Congress.
1863. Popular Education in Prussia
Mackay's Tübingen School.
1876. The Religion of Positivism.
Philosophy in Oxford
18877.
877. The Age of Reason
Evolution and Positivism
Books and Critics
1881. The Thing that might be
·
Uncertain in what periodical.
•
•
Quarterly Review.
Fraser's Magazine.
Westminster Review.
The same.
Contemporary Review.
Mind.
Fortnightly Review.
The same.
The same.
North American Review.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOL. I.
ARTICLE
I. GREGORY OF TOURS
II. EARLY INTERCOURSE OF ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
III. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION
IV. THE STEPHENSES
V. MURETUS
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER (Fragment)
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET
IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY
X. F. A. WOLF
•
XI. OXFORD STUDIES
PAGE
I
30
53
66
124
132
196
244
•
306
337
415
VOL. II.
XII. CALVIN AT GENEVA
I
XIII. TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ENGLAND,
1688-1750
42
XIV. LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON.
119
XV. THE CALAS TRAGEDY
•
177
XVI. PRESENT STATE OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY (1857) 210
XVII. LEARNING IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
XVIII. PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN
263
ANNE
309
XIX. LIFE OF MONTAIGNE
•
323
XX. POPE AND HIS EDITORS
•
350
XXI. BUCKLE'S HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN ENGLAND. 396
INDEX OF NAMES
433
1.
GREGORY OF TOURS¹.
W
(Christian Remembrancer, Vol. IX, 1845.)
HETHER or no there be any perfect ideal of his-
torical composition, the one best form of writing
history for all ages and countries, if we look to expe-
rience, we find that in fact each age has ever had a
fashion of its own, differing from that which preceded
and followed it. We do not speak of writers contem-
porary with the events they write of. Such, even though
the most jejune of annalists, must always have an interest
independent of their form. But we speak of regular his-
tory, complete accounts of nations or countries, compiled
in later times from books and records. Such history is a
distinct species of composition, a work of art, having its
own principles of taste to be guided and judged by.
Such history, almost more than any other branch of
literature, varies with the age that produces it. Contem-
porary history never dies; Thucydides and Clarendon are
immortal; but, on the other hand, no reputation is so
fleeting as that of the 'standard' historian of his day. A
review of the historical literature of any nation will discover
an endless series of decay and reproduction. The fate of
the historian is like those of the dynasties he writes of;
they spring up and flourish, and bear rule and seem
established for ever; but time goes on, their strength
¹ MICHELET. History of France. Part I. Translated by G. H. SMITH, F.G.S.
London: Whittaker. 1844.
THIERRY. Narratives of the Merovingian Era.
Whittaker. 1844.
VOL. I.
B
Translated.
London:
22
2
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
passes away, and at last some young and vigorous usurper
comes and pushes them from their throne. It is not
because new facts are continually accumulating, because
criticism is growing more rigid, or even because style
varies; but because ideas change, the whole mode and
manner of looking at things alters with every age; and so
every generation requires facts to be recast in its own
mould, demands that the history of its forefathers be
rewritten from its own point of view. When Hume
superseded Echard, his admiring contemporaries little
thought that Hume himself would so rapidly become
obsolete. Hooke was considered to have exhausted the
history of the Roman Republic, and his Roman History
to be the final book on the subject; but great as is the
distance between him and Arnold, it is inevitable, in the
course of things, that the next century will have to
compose its own 'History of Rome.' And these mutations
of popular favour involve the smaller satellites as well as
the great planets of the historical heaven; Mrs. Trimmer
and Goldsmith pale before the rising light of Keightley
and Mrs. Markham, as the subs of office quit their desks
when premiers deliver up their portfolios.
Our own immediate age is confessedly rich in works of
the historical class. Poetry we have almost none, and but
little philosophy; but history has attracted great attention
among us. If among the varied merits of the successful
writers of history who have appeared within the last
twenty years, we were to select one trait which seems
above others to be a common characteristic, it would be
their vivid descriptive character, their painting their narra-
tive to the eye. The personages of the story go through
their parts before us like actors on the stage, with a rich
and strongly-drawn background of scenery. We may call
this kind of history pictorial history. All writers, who are
themselves gifted with strong imaginations, are masters of
description; but with us this style is not a native gift, or
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
DIFFERENT STYLES OF HISTORICAL WRITING. 3
a happy genius, but the result of art, to be learnt like other
arts, or rather is attained by going through a uniform
mechanical process. Take two or three old chroniclers,
rapidly select the striking bits, such as will tell, translate
them in a quaint antique phrase; and whenever any town
is mentioned, get the description of it out of the nearest
county history, and the business is done. The herd of
superficial writers is, however, the index of the public
taste. No reader can be insensible to the spell which such
a master-hand as Thierry's wields by means of his graphic
narration.
If we are right in thinking that this picturesque character
is the common feature of our historians now, we may
venture further to assert that it is not accidentally so, that
it is no isolated fact, but only one instance of our whole
moral condition. So prevailing a taste is something more
than one of those transient fluctuating fashions which
change with each generation of general readers. It is a
tendency deeply seated in the mind of our age.
An attention, then, to external form, to accuracy of
representation, is characteristic of an age of refinement.
Such an age implies two things: a state of leisure and tran-
quillity, and a deficiency of moral energy, arising chiefly
from the smoothness with which the current of social life
runs down. Leisure gives a wide extent of knowledge and
information. Generations of antiquaries have heaped toge-
ther vast piles of facts, and have thus provided an abund-
ance of raw material ready for our use. The philologist
is the historian's pioneer; and no one can pretend fitly to
write of any period who has not made himself master of
all the facts concerning it; and then the second of the two
causes we have named, the quiet and even tenour of
existence, will determine our interest towards the secondary
rather than the primary objects of knowledge. A time of
peace and security inevitably tends to foster an umbratile
and academic science. Curiosity is withdrawn from the
B 2
4
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
momentous questions which have interest only for noble
souls; and an attenuated pedantry coldly wonders at the
'little importance of the points theologians have been ready
to die for.' Then is the age of little, well-informed minds.
It is only when the contest between good and evil becomes
sharp and deadly, when men are forced into daily and
hourly action in matters where they cannot be indifferent
spectators,—it is only in entering heart and soul into the
dust and heat of the Church's war with the world,—that
the mind comes within the sphere of great principles, and
begins to feel their imperious right to control its movements.
When religion and the interests of the soul are the subjects of
debate, the sparks of human energy are kindled as by a charm, and
spread with the rapidity of an electric fluid. Opinions work upon
actions, and actions re-act upon opinions; the defence of truth or
error stirs up the moral powers, and leads men on to deeds of
vigour; and the effects of active zeal reflect upon the opinions and
systems of men, and raise them to those heights of speculative and
logical abstraction, which are the wonder of beholders, and the
enigma of future generations.—Life of S. Germanus, p. 14.
It would be leading us too far from our subject to show
that an over-estimation of the trappings of social life is a
prevalent turn of mind among us now.
How it pervades
all art, painting, engraving, architecture; how it has driven
all true acting from the stage; how some have even sought
to find an instance to their purpose in Shakspeare himself;
for that his Romans are true Romans,-his barons, the
genuine Norman barons;-Shakspeare, who seems to
have purposely outraged costume, to have wantonly
trampled on historical proprieties, as if for the purpose of
showing that the true greatness of the dramatist lies in
exhibiting man,-the broad traits of human character,-
not the peculiarities of national manners.
If, however, it be the fact, that this taste be thus preva-
lent and deeply seated, the writer of history must conform
to it, and endeavour to use it in the best way it admits of
being used.
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PICTORIAL HISTORY.
10
5
Now, as we well know that mere chronology, or the
retention in the memory of facts, is often mistaken for
history, and yet that all that is true is, that such dry know-
ledge is only the alphabet of history; so, though this
pictorial history is far from being the proper end of his-
torical science, yet is it a most valuable assistance in the
study. 'That we do not understand the ancients unless
we frame distinct notions of such objects of their every-
day life, as we have in common with them, under the forms
their eyes were accustomed to; that we should go totally
astray if, on reading of a Roman house, a Roman ship,
Roman dress, or the interior of a Roman household, we
conceived the same notions which answer to those words in
our own days,' as Niebuhr says, is indisputable; but we need
continually to remember that such fidelity of conception is
but the vehicle of the truths which history seeks to teach us.
We must steer between two opposite faults; we must not
yield too much to imagination, which is to turn poet; nor,
on the other hand, must we confine ourselves to bare
cataloguing of facts, which is to act the antiquary instead
of the historian. Both these extremes are deviations from
the true path of history, but far from being both equally
faulty. The former is the generous error of an early and
simple age; the latter, the mean vice of a late and refined
one. The former is the tendency of buoyant and high-
hearted youth; the latter, of plodding and calculating
middle-life. In youth, the ideal is all-in-all to us; and the
imagination is all-sufficient to furnish and body forth the
shapes which Poetry has drawn for us. Poetry is then
the mind's natural aliment; we scorn facts, and prefer the
true to the actual. But society will not listen to what it
mocks at as 'mere theory'; and genius, which seems the
common inheritance of the young and ardent, after being
often cruelly overthrown by unexpected demands of proof
and data for its assertions, either retires altogether from
the attempt to make itself heard, or vents itself in the half-
1
6
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
reserve of poetry, or more commonly descends into the
arena of life to contend now on unequal terms against
the sharp pettifogging intellect by which the world's prizes
are carried off.
The same distinction obtains between an early and a late
age of the world, as between the youth and manhood of
the man. An early age dressed history in the garb of
fancy; it conceived the externals of man and the forms of
art, of which it read or heard, no otherwise than those
which it saw every day before its eyes. The Italian
painters of the sixteenth century drew the twelve patriarchs
and the senators of old Rome both equally in the robe of
the citizen of Florence, or the Apostles in a Dominican's
gown. Petrarch looks on Stefano Colonna as an old
patrician, and on Rienzi as a tribune of the people. As in
Dante's eyes Virgil was a Lombard; or as in the Middle
Ages the Parthenon was identified with the Temple of
the Unknown God, and the Temple of Theseus was sup-
posed a church of St. George. The richness of the Gothic
genius thus suffusing with its own hues and colouring, and
so blending into one all ages, nations, and faiths, as in the
harmonious variety of one of its gorgeous windows, sym-
bolizes the universal triumph of Christianity. In this
case, the mind, manly and vigorous, looks at the essential,
rather than the accident; at the man, rather than his dress.
It goes direct to the substance of history, to that which is
really philosophical in it, and neglects only the shell and
husk of history. Its conscience is more active than its
taste. It looks at actions to see what may be their ethic
content; what instruction for practice they afford. It is a
wise, but not a learned age.
But the tendency of a highly civilized age is to be
learned and informed rather than wise. Its points of
contact with the history of past times are many, but they
are all on the surface; it just misses the few deep points
on which the life and heart of the old age was centred. It
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PICTORIAL HISTORY.
7
attends to the externals of history, to 'the transitory forms
which it assumes, rather than to the principles of permanent
application which it includes.' Correctness of costume is
its great aim in writing history. Hence its personages are
like the figures in Madame Tussaud's exhibition, strong
likenesses, but of the body and clothes, not of the soul.
They are works of ingenuity, not of art. Last of all, a dry,
dusty, and soulless antiquarianism comes in and quenches
the lamp of history. More than one able historian has
made shipwreck on this shoal. In a laborious anxiety
to be correct, they have evaporated away all the spirit of
their book. It is a much worse symptom when this spirit
invades the sacred history of the Church. It has done so,
we fear, among us to a pernicious extent. A nation, indif-
ferent to the creeds, is seized with a sudden passion for
ecclesiastical art. We read Bingham, and fancy we are
studying ecclesiastical history. Descriptions of religious
ceremonies, the interior of monasteries, the dress and food
of the monks, are favourite reading with people who are
quite unable to follow, even in thought, the interior pur-
pose, the inward life, the description of whose outward
forms is their every-day study. Far more respectable and
consistent indeed than this fashionable coxcombry, which
pollutes by its patronizing dilettantism the relics of Middle
Age art, while it spurns the religion which inspired that
art, and can alone give it meaning, was the honest ferocity
of the sixteenth century which broke painted windows,
defaced coats of arms, cut up illuminated missals, and
violated sepulchral monuments-just as the Turks had
done at Constantinople—because they bore the image and
print of 'the Beast.'
At the head of the class of the pictorial historians stands.
Augustin Thierry¹. He is no mere antiquary. His graphic
narrative has all the vividness that art can give to description
of what the describer has not actually witnessed. Yet he
¹ His brother Amédée Thierry has written a laborious History of the Gauls.
8
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
never loses himself in mere ornamental description for de-
scription's sake. He uses it for the sake of giving relief to
the events. He paints to the understanding through the
eye. He stands thus midway between the contemporary his-
torian of the old age, and the modern antiquarian historian,
in the same way as Rubens stands between the old
masters, and the miniature Dutch school. For the Flemish
artist, transcendent as his merit is, has more affinity with
the latter school, which is yet so far beneath him, than
with the former. If, then, the error be guarded against of
thinking this knowledge of the external desirable for its
own sake of treating history as if it were a series of
tableaux vivans intended to please the eye, the picturesque
is one of the most happy and appropriate of the forms in
which history can clothe itself. It is naturally a great help
to a right understanding of the inward thing. 'For myself
I have seemed,' says one who is certainly not chargeable
with neglect of the substantials of historical science, 'to
gain a far more lively impression of what James I was,
ever since I read those humorous scenes in the Fortunes
of Nigel which remind one so forcibly that he spoke a
broad Scotch dialect¹.'
And it is not only the most fitting form, but some degree
of it may be safely said to be the indispensable form for
modern readers. Perspective is not essential to a picture
as a work of art: yet how grotesque and insupportable
would be a modern painting which should neglect it! The
eye once accustomed to it cannot dispense with it. No one
now reads Machiavel or Mitford; yet, notwithstanding all
the vast additions made since they wrote to our just know-
ledge of Greece and Rome, which of the more recent
historians who have so far surpassed them in accuracy
of detail, in scholarship, in familiarity with the habits and
temper of the classical nations, have come near them in the
vigour and truth which they threw into that history, in
1 Arnold's Lectures [p. 67, ed. 1849].
*
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
IMAGINATION AND THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 9
drawing from it lessons of practical wisdom and statesman-
like policy?
We can well understand how a mind, which either by
training or accident has habitually thus cultivated imagin-
ation in connexion with historical study, will find one of
its highest pleasures in actually visiting the scenes which
have been long familiar to it in books. This is the richest
reward of the student of history, one of the advantages
which his pursuit has over those of a more abstract nature,
when he is thus enabled to fix and localize the events on
which he speculates, to verify and give material substance
to what were otherwise the shadows of names and places.
It is this that gives its chief charm to travel. Indeed, the
instinct of pilgrimage, as it has been said, belongs not
exclusively to religion at all. It is the simplest dictate of
our nature, though piety has consecrated the practice, and
marked it for her own. Patriotism, poetry, philanthropy,
all the arts and all the finer feelings, have their pilgrimages,
their hallowed spots of intense interest, their haunts of fancy
and of inspiration. It is the first impulse of every genuine
affection, the tendency of the heart in its fervent youthhood;
and nothing but the cold scepticism of an age which Ed-
mund Burke so truly designated as that of calculators and
economists, could scoff at the enthusiasm that feeds on
[noble] ruins, that visits with emotion the battle-field, and
the ivied abbey, Shakspeare's grave, or Galileo's cell, or
Runymede, or Marathon ¹.'
The truth is, that that magnetic influence which irresis-
tibly draws our feet to spots on which our imagination has
long fed, is an instinct of our nature, and that in this, as
in other respects, the Church did but take into her service,
and propose a fitting object to, an impulse which will vent
itself in some form or other. There have been pilgrims
both before and since the ages of faith, the ages when the
Church bore sway over every action of life. Only she
¹ Prout's Reliques [i. 72, ed. 1836].
ΙΟ
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
1
sent them to the tombs of saints, and martyrs, and filled
their paths with sacred associations, instead of leaving
them to roam at will in search of the relics of pagans or
infidels, with Byron or Rousseau in their pockets as the
companions of their way. The Church cannot be said
to have created pilgrimages, or even to have encouraged
them—she suffered them, and gave them a direction which
might, at least, edify. But 'qui multum peregrinantur,
raro sanctificantur' is her doctrine. At the same time she
conceived doubtless, that she might do much worse than
in proposing to our imitation the example of those unknown
Three, the earliest Christian pilgrims, for whose guidance
and consolation in their journey a new star was created
—and in directing the footsteps of her children more
especially to that land which has been hallowed for ever
by the presence of one, who is the Lord, whose servants
the saints and martyrs are.
This is a task quite distinct from a love of grand scenery
a love of nature. For this we must go to particular spots
of the earth, where there are mountains, rocks, lakes.
North America or South Africa, lands the least interesting
to the historical traveller, will supply the richest objects to
the lover of scenery. It is the old historical lands of Europe
that the lover of history longs to explore. None of these
are more attractive to him than France. Its natural scenery,
pre-eminently in Western Europe at least, is tame, and
uniform; but rich beyond all others in the traces of the
men of old, and the associations of the past. For ourselves,
at least were we younger, we could gaze for hours with
Froissart on our knee, over that boundless plain of Lan-
guedoc, convicted of all guide-books of being arid, brown,
and wholly uninteresting. This old Languedoc, Roman and
Gothic still. 'Descend from Cahors,' says Michelet, 'its
slopes clothed with vines, and you will find yourself in the
country of the mulberries. Spread before you a landscape
of some thirty or forty leagues, a vast ocean of tillage, a
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
TRAVEL AND THE STUDY OF HISTORY.
11
confused mass, losing itself in the vapour of the distant
horizon, above which rises the fantastic outline of the
Pyrenees with their silvery peaks. Oxen, yoked together
by the horns, slowly, beneath the eye of an ardent sun,
labour this fertile valley. At mid-day, a storm; the ground
becomes a lake; in an hour the sun has restored it to its
state of dust. At night you enter some big dull town;
Toulouse if you will. At the first sound of that nasal
accent you might think yourself in Italy; and look at the
faces of the people, they are not French, quite another
thing, Moorish perhaps, or Spanish.'
Nor, we hope, are we singular. Among the shoals of
the frivolous and dissipated which this country annually
discharges upon the Continent, there are, we would hope,
to be found some few thoughtful travellers who are attracted
to foreign lands by a love of the localities associated with
the memory of the great and the saintly of ancient times.
Such is perhaps the nearest approach we may make to the
motives of the Christian pilgrim. Such a voyager, if it
has ever been his hap to turn his feet to Orleans, and
descending to the water-side to embark in one of the tiny
iron steamers belonging to M. Larochejacquelein, glide
with sinuous course down the Loire, its banks still clad
with the broom which gives their title to the Plantagenets,
the sunny and laughing landscape once only gloomily
broken as we sweep beneath the frowning Blois; such a
voyager will seldom feel this spell upon his spirit more
powerfully than when, before sunset of a long summer's
day, the little vessel is moored to the quay of Tours.
What a host of thoughts and images that one name
carries! The ecclesiastical capital of early France-what
Canterbury was to England-the depository of the wonder-
working remains of the Apostle of Gaul, the light of the
Western Church in the fourth century. The virtue of St.
Martin's precious relics was in most active operation
during the fifth and sixth centuries. The miracles and
12
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
/
li
power of the saint called forth the devotion and munifi-
cence of the people, poor and rich alike, and Tours became
the centre round which churches, monasteries, and religious
foundations crowded. Of all this what now remains? The
healing power had been long withdrawn, and at last Pro-
vidence was pleased to permit the body itself which He had
so highly endowed to be dishonoured and carried off. With
it went the splendour which had accumulated round it.
The Huguenots had pillaged the shrine; the Revolution
swept it away altogether. Of the vast basilica of St.
Martin, of whose abbey the king of France was abbot,
and a crowd of the great of all lands were canons, two
towers are all that remains. The church of St. Julian,
equal in size to most cathedrals, was in 1842 a coach-
house, and at the very time we are now writing is
placarded with bills, 'To be let or sold.' Grope among
those vineyards and orchards in the little village over the
bridge, you may detect an archway, and a piece of a wall;
that was the abbey of Marmoutier, founded by St. Martin
himself. All this is familiar enough to us in our own
country-but it strikes us more in one which is still to so
great an extent catholic as France. Are the Church's
saints in this respect like the heroes of the world, that there
may come a time when they shall be as though they had
never been? when all that the Church retains of them is
the memory of their example; and that a book is a more
enduring legacy than a saintly life, and a body gifted with
miraculous power?
For so it is, that while the Church of France possesses
not a vestige of St. Martin, another saint of the same city
of Tours has left a book which is not only esteemed in the
Church, but has had the honour, which the actions of
saints so seldom have, of commanding the respect of the
world. The 'History of the Franks' of St. Gregory is
not only a most valuable monument of the history of the
early French monarchy, but it is the only one. It is in
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
GREGORY'S HISTORY OF THE FRANKS.
13
this respect like Bede's 'History of the English Nation,'
though widely different from it in other respects. But for
Bede we should know nothing of the early history of the
Saxons in England-without Gregory of Tours, we should
be equally ignorant of the first settlement of the Franks in
Gaul. But in all other points it is a complete contrast to
Bede. In the first place, the style of Bede, if not elegant
Latin, is yet correct, sufficiently classical. It is a written
style, such as was learnt in the cloister schools by the help
of Donatus and the Rhetorica of Cicero, and matured by
reading the Latin fathers, St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose.
St. Gregory of Tours has no style, barely grammar; bar-
barisms and solecisms of all kinds abound, and the brevity
and conciseness with which events most important to the
understanding of his narrative are related, if they do not
make his meaning obscure, at least exact great attention
in a reader who wishes not to overlook anything. In the
opening he 'prays pardon of his readers if he should in
letter or syllable infringe the art of grammar, with which he
is indeed not fully imbued.' In fact, Bede is writing in a
dead language, Gregory in a living. Bede no doubt spoke
it and heard it spoken every day in cloister, but then he
had learned to do so from books; Saxon came first and
readiest to his lips; while the Latin which Gregory
writes is, with little difference, his native tongue. The
difference is not less in the matter of the two histories.
Bede viewed the world only from the retirement of his
cell. He knew events chiefly as they appeared in books.
Even the history of his own time is drawn from what was
communicated to him. So that, however correct it may be,
it wants that truth of delineation which can only be given
by one who has been himself an agent in the scenes he
describes. This St. Gregory was. For the ten books of
which his history consists may be divided, as regards the
authority on which it rests, into four portions. 1. All that
precedes the arrival of the Franks in Thuringia is little
14
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
more than a short chronological epitome of the history of
the world derived from some of the compendious chronicles
then in use, and abounding in errors. 2. From this period
to the middle of the sixth century his materials are chiefly
Sulpicius Alexander, the letters of Sidonius, St. Remigius,
and the Gesta of the saints of the period. 3. For the
generation preceding his own time his authority is tradi-
tion, chiefly that of his uncle St. Gallus and St. Avitus,
in whose house St. Gregory was brought up.
4. For
the last forty or fifty years he describes what he himself
was and knew, and in which he played an active part.
This is therefore the most valuable part of the book.
He occupied the see of Tours twenty-three years, from
573 to 596. The value and interest of the last five books
of his history which are occupied with this period, we
should rate far higher than any part of the writer who
stands in a similar relation to our own history, and with
whom we have already compared him. They are not the
learned and accurate arrangement of the annals of the
several Frankish kingdoms, the successions of the bishops,
royal houses, etc., all which is indeed most valuable to the
antiquary, but dry and profitless to others. On the
contrary, they present a living stirring picture of the Church
and State of those days: the rude violence, and unscru-
pulous cunning of the Merovingian princes; their am-
bition and lawless passions; brought into contact with a
moral power claiming their obedience, and forcing from
them a sort of recognition of its claims, while they at the
same time endeavoured by some clumsy expedient, or
grotesque ruse, to evade it. The Church studying the bar-
barian temper for the purpose of winning it to Christ; often
obliged to give way, but never compromising principle;
always yielding as to brute force, not out of a timid com-
plaisance; managing, coaxing the despot, as a fond nurse an
overgrown and dangerous child, not fawning upon him as
on a patron who has much to give. For no chair of
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
GREGORY AND HIS SURROUNDINGS.
15
!
dignified ease was a bishop's throne in the sixth century.
To do one's duty thoroughly is not easy in the most
peaceable times. But then a conscientious bishop might
be truly said to place his life in jeopardy every hour. Not
even within the precincts of a Turkish seraglio were the
knife and poison-cup more lavishly employed than by
Fredegonde.
This genuine female barbarian possessed herself of the poor king
of Neustria, more a theologian and grammarian than a prince; who
owed to the crimes his queen perpetrated in his name, the title of the
Frankish Nero. She made him first strangle his legitimate spouse
Galswinthe; her sons-in-law followed; then the rival king of Ostrasia,
Sighebert. This terrible woman, surrounded by men whom her
genius for murder had fascinated, deranging their minds by drugged
beverages, beautiful and deadly, devoted to pagan superstitions, might
be taken for a Scandinavian Walkirie¹.
Such was the true and patient policy of the Church, and
such the situation of those bishops who were faithful to
their Master's calling. For there were without doubt many
of a very different stamp, as the following narrative will
show, while it will at the same time give a far better idea
of the state of things under the Merovingian princes, than
any comments of ours. Gregory himself is the chief actor,
and exhibits in a situation of the utmost difficulty and peril,
a union of prudence, tact, firmness, and unshrinking
principle, which may furnish an example for a Christian
bishop in all ages.
It may just be premised for the sake of making our story
more intelligible, that the Franks had now been in Gaul
about a century (the event we are about to narrate occurred
in the year 577), and that the footing on which they stood
with regard to the old Gallo-Roman population was now
pretty well understood on both sides. The Franks were the
stronger, and therefore the masters; the Romans were the
more able, and therefore indispensable to their masters, who
1 Michelet, i. 227.
16
I. GREGORY of tours.
were thus obliged to use them well. And this good usage
was not entirely dependent on the caprice of the Frank,
but was secured by law, if that could be called security
which he had the power of violating whenever he chose.
They were something in the relation of the Turk and the
Greek in Greece, before the Greek revolution; with this
important difference, that the Frank owed submission to
the religion of the vanquished party, and learned with
implicit belief his faith from the mouth of the Roman
priest¹.
In a territorial point of view, the Frank empire was
divided into three portions-which the chronicles, latinizing
the Frank terms, call the kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia,
and Burgundia. Tours was comprehended in Neustria,
which, under Chilperic, extended from the Meuse almost
to the present southern limits of France. Chilperic's
capital was Soissons. Sighebert, king of Austrasia, or the
East, which extended from Bar-sur-Aube into Bohemia2,
had lately fallen a victim to Fredegonde's assassins, and
the throne was occupied by a minor, whose mother, the
famous Brunchilde, governed as regent for him. Merovig,
a son of Chilperic, but not of Fredegonde, had married
Sighebert's widow, Brunchilde. Sighebert was his uncle,
and marriage with his uncle's widow was forbidden by
the law of God, the canons of the Church. It was also,
but for quite another reason, highly displeasing to his
father Chilperic. Merovig however found one who was
willing, from personal attachment to himself, to violate the
canons, and to brave Chilperic's, or rather Fredegonde's
resentment, by performing the marriage sacrament between
himself and the Austrasian queen. This was the bishop of
Rouen, Praetextatus, who from the day when he had held
the young prince over the baptismal font, had felt for him
1 This analogy will hardly hold good; Romans held the highest secular offices,
and Franks were beginning to hold bishoprics. [E. A. F.]
2 It is hard to fix any definite border; the name was barely coming in in Gregory's
day. [E. A. F.]
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
OFFENCE AND TRIAL OF PRAETEXTATUS.
17
one of those devoted unreasoning attachments, of which
only a mother or nurse is thought capable.
This was Praetextatus's offence. It was Fredegonde's
object to punish him for it. And the surest and least
obnoxious means of doing so seemed to be, by bringing
him to a regular trial before a synod of bishops for his
flagrant infraction of the canon law, in giving the marriage
benediction to persons related in the degree in which
Merovig and Brunchilde were.
THE TRIAL OF PRAETEXTATUS.
The bishops within the limits of the kingdom of Neustria
were summoned to meet in synod, at Paris, at the latter
end of the spring of 577. Chilperic and Fredegonde
journeyed from their capital, Soissons, to attend it in
person. The assembly was to be held in the church of
St. Genoveva, which crowned a height at no great distance
from the Island City, then confined within the two arms of
the Seine. The church had been built by Clovis, at the
time of his departure for the war against the Visigoths.
Arrived at the destined spot, he hurled his battleaxe
straight before him, that the length of the edifice might
remain a standing monument of the vigour of the Frank
conqueror's right arm. It was one of those basilicas of the
fifth and sixth centuries, built in imitation of the earlier
Roman basilicas, more remarkable for the richness of their
decorations than for beauty of architectural proportions.
Its interior was ornamented with marble columns, and a
profusion of paint, carving, and gilding, like one of the
Jesuits' churches of the seventeenth century. Its roof was
sheeted, like St. Peter's, with copper.
On the appointed day, forty-five prelates were assembled
within its walls. The king, attended by some of his
leudes, armed only with their swords, entered, but the body
of inferior Franks who had followed him from Soissons
posted themselves, fully armed, outside, under the portico,
VOL. I.
C
18
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
occupying all the entrances. Under such circumstances an
obnoxious criminal stood, we might suppose, small chance
of justice. On entering, the king begged the attention of
the synod to two bales of stuffs, and a sack of coin, which
figured prominently on the pavement of the church, ob-
serving that they would prove of great importance in the
course of the inquiry.
The accused was now brought forward. The king rose,
and instead of addressing himself to the judges, turned
towards his adversary, and thus bluntly apostrophized
him :-' And what wert thou thinking of, O bishop, when
thou didst marry my enemy, Merovig, (for such he is, rather
than my son,) to his aunt, Brunchilde? Knewest thou not
what the canons enact touching this thing? And not only
herein hast thou offended, but, moreover, in that thou hast
plotted my death, in concert with him. Thou hast stirred
up the son to become his father's enemy; thou hast
seduced my people by bribes; and thou hast sought to
deliver my kingdom into the hands of another.' At these
words, the Frank warriors who crowded the doors of the
basilica, raised a fierce shout of indignation, demanding the
death of the traitor to their king; and as their fury kindled,
they pushed into the nave of the building, and showed an
inclination of executing at once the sentence they had
pronounced against the accused. The bishops, in alarm,
quitted their seats, and it required all the personal influence
of the king to check the turbulence of his irritated followers,
which he was not sorry, perhaps, to have exhibited in
terrorem to the assembly.
When order was in some measure restored, the criminal
was allowed to answer in his own behalf. Not at all
disconcerted by the scene that had just occurred, the wily
Roman undertook to justify himself. He could not deny
the fact of the uncanonical marriage, but he turned all his
defence to vindicate himself from the charge of treason.
Then Chilperic summoned his witnesses. Several persons
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
TRIAL OF PRAETEXTATUS.
19
of Frank origin came forward, and producing different
objects of value, declared that they had been given to them
by the bishop, on condition of their promising fidelity to
Merovig. Praetextatus, not at all disconcerted, replied,
'True, you have received presents from me more than
once, but they were not given you with any view of ex-
pelling the king from his kingdom. But when you had
bestowed valuable horses, or other things of like richness
upon me, how could I do otherwise than make you some
kind of return for them?' No more substantial evidence
being producible against the bishop, the synod broke up, and
the king retired to his residence, not a little chagrined at
having failed, with so many advantages in his favour, in
procuring a conviction.
The bishops were withdrawn to the sacristy of the
church, and were conversing in separate groups familiarly
enough, but with an awkward reserve on the main subject.
They distrusted one another. They knew what they ought
to think of the business in hand. It was evident that the
king sought the ruin of Praetextatus, and wished to make
them his instruments in effecting his purpose. They
would have refused their co-operation if they dared; but
they knew how dangerous it would be to do so.
While they were in this mood, they were surprised by
the abrupt entrance of Aetius, the Archdeacon of Paris.
Entering with equal suddenness on the thorny subject
which they were delicately shunning in their conversation
among themselves—' Hearken, O bishops¹ of the Lord!' he
cried; 'the present occasion is one of infinite moment for
you. According as you shall now act, you will either cover
yourselves with the renown of a good name, or you will
forfeit, in the face of all men, the character of faithful
ministers of God, if you betray a brother to destruction.'
But the spirit of timid reserve still kept the bishops silent,
and this generous appeal met no response.
1 'Sacerdotes,' a word which Gregory commonly confines to bishops. [E. A. F.]
C 2
20
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
The indignation of one among them was, however,
roused by their pusillanimous silence. Gregory of Tours,
finding that no one of more age or weight than himself
spoke, came forward and said, 'Holy bishops of God, and
you particularly, who are thought to enjoy a larger share
of the king's intimacy, hearken to me. Do you now give
the king godly counsel, and such as is fitting a bishop should
give; lest, now, this minister of God perish, by reason of
the king's displeasure, for which God shall assuredly punish
the king, and his realm. Remember, I pray you, what
saith the prophet, "If the watchman see a man's iniquity,
and tell him it not, behold he is guilty of the death of him
that dieth." (Ezek. xxxiii. 6.) And he reminded them
of the cases of Chlodomir, and the Emperor Maximus,
whose fate was considered a providential judgment on acts
of violence they had committed against two Christian
bishops. The bishops made no answer, and one by one
they crept away, one part to withdraw themselves from the
storm which they saw now inevitable; another party,
chiefly consisting of those of Frankish race, to make
their court to the king, by betraying the events of their
private conclave.
Chilperic was speedily informed that the man he had
to fear was the bishop of Tours. A messenger was im-
mediately despatched to summon 'his enemy' into his
presence. Gregory obeyed, and followed his conductor
with a calm and composed mind. He found the king in
the open air, sitting under a hut formed of the branches of
trees, in the midst of the encampment of his warriors.
Berthramn, the licentious bishop of Bordeaux, and Rag-
henemod, the bishop of Paris, who had been playing the
honourable part of informer against their colleague, were at
his side. Before them was a long table, on which were
bread and other meats, to be presented, according to the
Frank custom, to each new visitor.
'Thou, O bishop,' said the king, in an angry tone,
:
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
GREGORY AND CHILPERIC.
21
'shouldest deal justice to all men; but, behold, I receive it
not at thy hands. Thou art ready to become a partner in
this man's evil deeds. And so I find fulfilled in thee
that proverb, "The crow pecketh not out the crow's eye."'
'If any one of us, O king,' answered Gregory, 'trans-
gresses the path of righteousness, he may be set right by
thee; but if it is thou that transgressest, who shall set thee
right? We may, indeed, tell thee thy fault, and if thou
wilt thou hearest; but if thou wilt not hear, who is there
that shall pass sentence on thee, save Him who has declared
that He is Justice itself?'
'Nay, verily,' said Chilperic, 'of all the rest I obtain
justice, but of thee only can I not. This will I do, there-
fore, that thy injustice may be made apparent before all the
people. I will call together all the men of Tours, and I
will say to them, Raise your voice now against Gregory
the bishop, and cry aloud that he is unjust, and rendereth
justice to no man. And when they shall cry, then will I
too cry to them; I who am a king cannot have justice at
his hands, how then should you, who are beneath me?'
This flimsy hypocrisy, by which he who was all-powerful
sought to pass himself off as the victim of others' injustice,
inspired Gregory with a contempt which he could not dis-
semble, and he replied—' If I am unjust, it is in nothing of
which thou knowest. He to Whom the secrets of all hearts
are open, alone knows my conscience. As for the clamours
of the people which thou mayest excite, they are nought,
for all men will know that they cry at thy bidding. But
what need of more words? thou hast the law and the
canons; examine them diligently, and know if thou trans-
gressest them that the judgment of God awaits thee.'
The king, with the craft with which a barbarian knows
how to conceal his passion when he pleases, assumed an
air of familiarity, and pointing to a mess of pottage which
stood among the viands on the board, said with an air of
gentleness, 'See a mess prepared specially for thee;
22
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
nought hath gone into it save peas and some fowl.' This
was intended to flatter the bishop's vanity, as though it
was matter of notoriety that he abstained from more solid
food. But Gregory was not the dupe of this stratagem,
and bowing, in token of refusal, he answered,' My meat
ought to be to do the will of God, and not to take delight
in delicate meats. Thou who chargest others with injustice,
begin by promising that thou too wilt abide by the law and
the canons, and we may then credit that it is justice that
thou seekest.' Unwilling to break openly with the Bishop of
Tours, whose great popularity at Tours, and indeed all over
France, made him a person of much consideration, Chil-
peric lifted his hands, and calling the Almighty to witness,
swore that he would not in anything trespass against the
law and the canons. Then Gregory advanced to the table,
and took a morsel of bread, and drank some wine, a cere-
mony of hospitality which could not be omitted without
giving great offence. After this he retired to his lodging
in the Church of St. Julian.
In the course of that night, after they had chanted
nocturns, the bishop was roused by a loud and continued
knocking at the door of the house. Sending down a
servant to ascertain the cause, he was told that messengers
from Queen Fredegonde desired to see him. Being ad-
mitted to his presence they saluted him in the queen's
name, and told him that they were sent to pray him not to
show himself obstinately bent on thwarting her wish in
the matter now before the council. If he would declare
against Praetextatus, and nothing more was needed to
ensure his fall, they were authorized to promise him two
hundred pounds of silver. With his habitual calmness and
self-command, Gregory replied that he had but one voice
amongst many, and that even if he were to give way, it
would be far from deciding the matter. The messengers
rejoined that it was all that was needed, for that they had
already gained the votes of all the rest. Without changing
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PROCEEDINGS of fredegONDE AND CHILPERIC. 23
his tone the bishop replied, 'If the queen would give me a
thousand pounds in gold and silver, it would be impossible
for me to do anything but what the Lord commands me.
All that I can promise is, to join the other bishops in all
that they shall decide in conformity with the canon law.'
The messengers misunderstood these words, either from
their ignorance of what was meant by the canon law,
or from supposing that by 'the Lord' (Dominus) the bishop
intended the king, who was often so styled in ordinary
language. They accordingly withdrew to carry to the
queen this favourable report of the bishop's intentions.
The members of the synod were betimes next morning
in the church, and the king, recovered from his disappoint-
ment, was equally punctual. In order to reconcile his oath
of the previous evening with the accomplishment of the
vengeance meditated against Praetextatus, he brought to
bear all his literary and theological knowledge. He had
been diving into the collection of the canons, and had
pitched upon one which enacted the heaviest punishment
that could be inflicted on a clerk, that of deposition. All
that was now needed was to bring a charge against the
Bishop of Rouen, of such a nature as should fall within
this penalty. This caused Chilperic no great embarrass-
ment. When the judges and the accused had taken their
places, the king, with the gravity of a doctor expounding
ecclesiastical law, began: 'A bishop, convicted of theft,
shall be degraded from his episcopal functions. That is
the Church canon.' The synod was amazed at this open-
ing, and all the members demanded with one voice who
it was who was charged with the crime of theft. It is
he,' said the king, turning to Praetextatus, 'he him-
self; and have you not seen the matters of which he
has robbed me?'
The members of the council now remembered the bales
and the bag of money which the king had pointed out to
them at the opening of the sitting. Unexpected and
24
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
barefaced as was this new attack, Praetextatus replied with:
patience, 'You must, I think, recollect that when Queen
Brunchilde took her departure from Rouen, I went to you
and informed you that she had deposited in my custody five
bales of considerable size and weight; and that since then
her servants had frequently demanded that they should be
given up to them, but that I had always refused, not
wishing to do anything without your sanction. Your
answer to me at the time was, "Have nothing to do with
these goods, but let them return to her to whom they
belong, that they become not a cause of quarrel between
me and my nephew." Immediately on my return to Rouen,
I put one of the packages into the hands of the servants,
which was as much as they could convey away at one time.
When they returned for another, I again consulted your
magnificence, and you gave the same answer as before:
"Get rid of these goods, O bishop, lest they become an
occasion of quarrel!" Thus they carried away two more
of the bales, leaving two still with me. How, then, do you
now charge me with theft and robbery, as to goods which
I stole not, but which were put into my keeping?'
'If, then, it was a deposit intrusted to your keeping,' re-
torted the king, giving without scruple another turn to his
accusation, 'how came you to open one of the bales, and to
abstract from it a piece of gold tissue, which you cut into
small pieces, and distributed them among the men whom
you had engaged in the plot against me?'
'These men of whom you speak had, as I have before
said, made me presents; and having by me at the moment
nothing else to offer them in return, I took that, and do not
reproach myself now for having done so; for I regard as
my own all that belongs to my son Merovig, whom I took
out of the fount of baptism ¹.'
1
The king knew not what to say in answer to such a
1 This, it should be borne in mind, was the closest of ties at the time. Men who
heeded no other tie heeded this. [E. A. F.]
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PRAETEXTATUS YIELDS.
25
genuine expression of paternal regard on the part of the
aged bishop towards the young prince. Chilperic's re-
sources were exhausted; and the assurance he had at first
displayed was now succeeded by an air of embarrassment
and confusion; he broke up the sitting abruptly, and with-
drew disconcerted and discontent. Above all, he dreaded
the encounter with Fredegonde. Probably instigated by
her reproaches, he soon after summoned to his presence
those members of the council who were most at his
command, and among others, Berthramn and Raghenemod.
'I confess,' said he, 'I am beaten by the answers the
bishop has made, and well I wot he has spoken the truth.
Whither, then, shall I now turn, that the queen's vengeance.
may be satisfied? Go ye, all of you, to him, and say to
him, as if from yourselves, Thou knowest, brother, that the
king, Chilperic, is a good and merciful prince, and is
readily inclined to show mercy; humble thyself, therefore,
now before him, and confess that thou hast committed
that with which thou art now charged; then will we throw
ourselves at his feet, and beg for thy pardon.'
Whether the bishops persuaded their credulous and
feeble colleague that the king, tired of the prosecution, was
only anxious to extricate himself from it, without the
disgrace of a defeat,- or whether they wrought on his fears
by representing to him that his innocence, however mani-
fest, could not save him from the royal vengeance, if he
obstinately persisted in braving it,-Praetextatus, well
acquainted himself with the timidity and servility of his
judges, did not reject the proposal thus made to him. It
was at best, he might think, a last resource, when all others
should fail. His pretended friends, receiving the thanks of
the man whom they were betraying, returned to the king
to announce the success of their mission. The accused,
they said, having come into the snare that had been laid for
him, would make a full confession on the first appeal made
to him. Thus Chilperic was delivered from the necessity
26
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
of inventing any new expedient to assure the success of
the procedure.
The next morning, at the opening of the sitting, the
king, as if merely resuming the broken thread of the
previous day's argument, said, pointing to the witnesses
who were by, 'If all you intended was to make a present
to these men, how came you to demand an oath of them to
the purpose that they would be faithful to Merovig?'
Though his conscience must have been unstrung by the
secret engagement he had made with the bishops, Prae-
textatus, by an instinct of shame which, for the time,
overcame his fears, revolted from the falsehood which he
had bargained to tell against himself. 'I begged them
only,' was his answer, 'that they would be on terms of
private friendship with him; and for his good I would not
have appealed to men only, but would have called down, if
I could, the angels from heaven, being, as he is, my
spiritual son by baptism.'
At these words, which seemed to indicate a purpose on
the part of Praetextatus of persevering in his defence,
the king's anger broke forth into a violence which so
terrified the helpless old man, that all at once, falling on
his knees before the king, he cried out, 'I have indeed, O
most merciful king, sinned against Heaven and thee; I am
a wicked murderer! I have conceived the thought of
killing thee, and of placing thy son on thy throne.' As
soon as the king saw his adversary at his feet, his anger
passed away, and hypocrisy recovered its command.
Feigning to be overpowered by his emotions, he now, in
his turn, threw himself on his knees before the bishops,
'Do ye hear, ye men of religion, the criminal himself avow
his execrable attempt?' The bishops sprang from their
seats, and hastened to raise the king to his feet; those who
were not in the secret melted to tears, the others laughing
inwardly at the scene that was being acted before them.
As soon as Chilperic had recovered himself, as if unable
}
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PRAETEXTATUS CONDEMNED.
27
any longer to bear the sight of one who had pleaded
guilty to so great a crime, he ordered Praetextatus to
be removed from the church. He himself followed shortly
after, as if to leave the council to deliberate upon the
sentence it had now to give.
Immediately on his return to his palace, the king des-
patched to the synod the volume of the canons which had
formed the object of his study the preceding night. This
was probably the collection made by Dionysius Exiguus,
in 525, for it contained the Apostolical Canons, which were
not as yet admitted as part of ecclesiastical law in the
Gallic Church. The twenty-first of these canons was the
same which Chilperic had pronounced with so much
emphasis at the first meeting. This article had attracted
his notice for no other reason, than because it enacted the
penalty of deposition. But as the crimes against which it
enacted this penalty, viz. those of theft, adultery, and
perjury, as the king had himself previously quoted it, did
not happen to suit the present case, Chilperic had simply
erased the word 'theft' from the parchment, and sub-
stituted that of 'murder.' This truly barbarian trick
escaped detection at the time on the part of the bishops,
unacquainted, as most of them were, with a collection
which had not long been in existence, and was of no
authority among them. The Bishop of Tours was even
the only one who exclaimed against the appeal to a novel
code, and who made a fruitless effort to engage his
colleagues to decline the authority of the pretended Apo-
stolical Canons.
Condemned Praetextatus
This they would not do.
must be, and what did it signify by what semblance of law
or justice, when all for whose opinion they cared, the king,
Fredegonde, and the Frank warriors, would look at the
sentence, not at the grounds on which it professed to rest.
This artifice would do, since they could bethink themselves
of no better. The mock deliberation terminated, the
28
I. GREGORY OF TOURS.
parties were called in again to hear the sentence pro-
nounced. The fatal article having been read, the Bishop
of Bordeaux, acting as president of the council, addressed
the accused: 'Hearken, my brother, thou mayst now no
longer continue in communion with us, and in the enjoy
ment of our love, unless it shall please the king to admit
thee again into his royal favour, which thou hast now
lost.'
At this judgment, pronounced by the lips of a man who,
the evening before, had practised so basely on his unsus-
pecting simplicity, the condemned stood mute with surprise.
The king, not content with his victory, sought for some
further aggravation of his ignominious sentence. He
demanded that his robe should be torn off his back in the
church; and when this insult was demurred to on the
part of the bishops, he required that they should read over
his head the 108th Psalm, which contains the maledic-
tions applied by St. Peter, in the Acts, to Judas Iscariot.
This was the extreme and terrible punishment, usual
only in cases of sacrilege. Once again the voice of
the dauntless Gregory was lifted in behalf of the deserted
and friendless Praetextatus, and he reminded the king of
his oath not to act in anything against the canons. Finding
his proposal not entertained readily by the rest of the
bishops, Chilperic was fain to content himself with now
requiring that the judgment which had been given should
be entered on record, and a clause inserted that the de-
position should be perpetual. Gregory's former success
encouraged him to withstand the king's wishes again on
this point. The sentence, accordingly, of simple deposition
stood as at first pronounced.
Praetextatus was then handed over to some of the king's
guards, and conducted to a prison outside the walls of the
city, the ruins of which long after remained on the left bank
of the Seine. He made an attempt to escape during the
night, in which he failed, and was cruelly beaten by the
Christian Remembrancer, 1845.]
PRAETEXTATUS EXILED.
29
soldiers who had the custody of him. In a day or two, he
was sent into exile, or transported, the usual Frank punish-
ment for offenders of any rank or consideration. The
place of his exile was an island adjacent to the city of
Coutances-probably Jersey; then inhabited only, if
at all, by pirates, and serving as a kind of Siberia for the
kingdom of Neustria.
II.
EARLY INTERCOURSE
OF ENGLAND AND GERMANY¹.
TH
(Westminster Review, April, 1861.)
HE name of Dr. Pauli is already naturalized in our
historical literature as an esteemed, though not a
popular narrator of English story; as a writer of pains-
taking research, who goes back beyond the printed
annalists to original and documentary authorities. The
volume he here presents to his German readers of our
national history, embraces some episodical topics which
could not be introduced into the columns of his 'History
of England' without overloading his pages. He has
thrown this superfetation of his historical work into twelve
essays. They relate almost without exception to the
Plantagenet period, and should be read as excursuses to
accompany his text. The nature of them may be gathered
from the titles.
1. Canterbury. Conversion and Pilgrimage. 2. Monks
and Friars. 3. Parliament in the Fourteenth Century.
5. The Emperor Louis IV and King Edward III. 7.
Gower and Chaucer. 8. Wiclif. 9. Henry V, and King
Sigismund. IO. The Maid of Orleans. II. Humfrey,
Duke of Gloucester. 12. London in the Middle Ages
(with a plan).
The very titles will show that these fragments are
designed for the German, rather than the English reader.
¹ Bilder aus Alt-England. Von Reinhold PaulI. Gotha: Perthes. London
and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate. 1860.
Westminster Review, 1861.]
DR. PAULI.
31
The materials are derived from books already accessible
to us. There are few traces of fresh research or new
matter produced. Some of the papers are mere résumés
of English books, as the first on Canterbury is derived,
verbatim, from Dr. Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury.
In others, original matter supplements a rather flat treat-
ment of trite themes; and even when travelling over the
best-worn ground, Dr. Pauli's study of first-hand sources
gives a security to his step and a correctness to his
language, which induces the reader to trust him. Nos. 4
and 6, it will be noticed, are omitted in our list.
treats of England's earliest relations to Austria and Prussia;
the other of the Steelyard. These essays have a cha-
racter of originality beyond their companions. And though
No. 6 appeared in part some years ago in the Bremen
Sonntagsblatt, and was at the time noticed in some
English periodicals, the information contained in both will
probably be new to the greater part of our readers, and
well deserves the devotion of a few pages to it.
One
One great merit of Dr. Pauli's history is that, in writing
even of the middle ages, he makes us feel their bearing on
our own age. With most historians the past is the bygone.
We may be interested in the Plantagenets, because they
were Kings of England, and we are Englishmen. We
have parliamentary government and representative institu-
tions; and it is curious to look back to times when things
were so different; to an epoch when what was called a
parliament was an assembly entirely different from that
with whose incapacity we are familiar. Such is the spirit
in which the history of our ancestors is ordinarily pro-
pounded to us. With Dr. Pauli, things are different.
When he tells us what was doing in the thirteenth or
the fourteenth century, we are made to feel that it had
a bearing-remote indeed, but real-on what is being
done now. The current of English life has been constant
and continuous. As the child is father to the man, the
32
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
nineteenth century is what it is as the sequel, not of the
eighteenth only, but of all the centuries that have pre-
ceded it. It would be easy, of course, to exaggerate this
truth of the continuity of history into a falsehood; but
Dr. Pauli does not exaggerate it; he lets it just be felt
through his narrative—no more.
case.
If any one part of the English system rather than
another could be claimed as a modern growth, it is her
foreign policy. The Reformation, by creating an entirely
new political interest, the Protestant interest, and a new
classification of the States of Europe into Protestant and
Catholic, must, it should seem, have revolutionized our
foreign policy. This, however, is only very partially the
The physical conditions of our island home, the
preponderance of our commercial interests, and lastly, our
national character, have been ever the weightiest influences
in determining our continental connexions. These ma-
terial and moral interests have outweighed the religious
tie. But these interests have been all along the same, and
existed before the Reformation no less than since. When
England, in common with the rest of Europe, was Catholic,
these interests drew us towards North Germany, and
away from France. The attraction has been neither
greater nor less since North Germany, in common with
England, has become Protestant. Our island has indeed
been conquered by Italians, and conquered by French.
But only Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Danes, emigrants
from Northern Europe, have succeeded in nationalizing
themselves here. The Norman element itself was half
Danish, and was soon absorbed in the earlier Saxon race.
A good history of our foreign policy from the earliest
period would be very useful. The apathy shown on that
topic by the middle class of this country is the result of
ignorance. Where they know the bearings of a question
of foreign politics, they are by no means indifferent. They
are enthusiastic for Garibaldi; for a war between an
Westminster Review, 1861.]
FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND.
33
oppressed people and an oppressing tyrant is a situation
which it requires no historical knowledge to comprehend.
But when, instead of a national insurrection, it comes to
diplomacy, our ideas get confused. Simple fighting John
Bull can understand, but in a negotiation he can't see his
way. Hence it is that kings in the old times, and cabinet
ministers in modern, have been allowed to trifle with our
interests, and to fool away our resources without a murmur
on the part of the people. At other times the people
themselves, incapable of discerning where their true interest
lay, have cheered on their government into French wars
and continental alliances which wasted our strength and
incumbered us with debt.
One of Dr. Pauli's dissertations is devoted to tracing the
various connexions of England with Germany during the
feudal times. It is very slight and cursory. The writer
allows himself to be led by his materials, rather than takes
the pains necessary to collect the materials required to
elucidate the subject. He has happened, however, to light
upon some records which have never been produced before,
or which do not appear in our ordinary histories. Henry II
laid the foundation of a true foreign policy for England.
The position of this sovereign, as having to struggle
against the advance of the Romanizing principle in Europe,
led him almost inevitably to look for support to the old
Saxon institutions of the realm. The same influence led
him abroad to marry his daughter to Henry the Lion,
Duke of Brunswick. When, however, on the fall of Otto
IV, the posterity of Henry the Lion lost the imperial
crown, and by the partition of their Saxon territory
reduced the position of their house in North Germany,
England began to look in another quarter for support
against France and the Pope. In 1235, Isabella, the
sister of Henry III, was married to the Hohenstauffen
emperor, the hereditary foe of Rome, Frederic II. This
was a step in the right direction. But the weakness of
VOL. I.
D
34
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
Henry III would not suffer him to commit himself
heartily to a Ghibelline policy. The crown of England,
always at strife, and often at open war, with its own barons,
had a continued tendency to support itself by alliance with
the Church. The idea of a powerful coalition of northern
princes to resist the encroachments of Rome, backed by
France, was not yet understood in England as the true
national policy.
There was, however, always a Ghibelline party and a
Ghibelline feeling in the nation. After the overthrow of
the Hohenstauffen, the Ghibelline candidate for the empire,
Alonzo the Wise of Castile, had the favour, if not the
support, of England. Even after the German princes had
elected Rudolf of Hapsburg to the imperial crown (1273),
Edward I makes a pressing application to the Pope in
favour of Alonzo. He still professes to address Alonzo as
King of the Romans,' and promises him counsel and aid
against Rudolf 'Count of Almaine¹? In the course of
another year, however, better information was obtained in
England as to the character and position of Rudolf of
Hapsburg. German historians have complained that so
little notice is to be found of Rudolf in contemporary
annals out of Germany. The English State-paper Office
has supplied Dr. Pauli with convincing evidence of the
close attention which was paid in England to every step
and movement of the new emperor.
In 1276, we find the Emperor and the King of England
in constant communication; it grows more and more.
friendly as they perceive that they have so many interests
in common. We find no further mention of Alonzo. Very
shortly a treaty is on foot for a matrimonial alliance
between the houses of Plantagenet and Hapsburg. It was
the design of Rudolf to endow his second and favourite
son, Hartmann, with a splendid sovereignty in South
Germany. He designed to consolidate the possessions of
Alemannia, that is, Suabia.
Westminster Review, 1861.]
RUDOLF OF HAPSBURG AND EDWARD I.
35
his house in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, and to
annex to them those districts of the ancient kingdom of
Arles which he could recover for the empire, and to erect
the whole into a new principality, of which Hartmann was
to be king. The match, brilliant for Edward I, was not
without its advantages for the emperor. It is true that
Edward's possessions in Languedoc were much restricted
in comparison of those which his ancestors had once held.
The territories of the King of England were no longer
conterminous with the kingdom of Arles. But the mother
of Edward I was the daughter of a Count of Provence,
her uncles and cousins were Princes of Savoy. It would
occasion no surprise, then, if the first overtures for this
match came from the side of Hapsburg. This is not
certain; but Dr. Pauli thinks it may be inferred from the
fact, that the earliest notice on the subject which has
fallen in his way is an instruction to an English envoy at
the court of the emperor, to tender particular thanks to
Anne, Rudolf's queen, for the felicitous suggestion.
Immediately, i. e. in September, 1277, the Bishop of Basle
and another were sent to England with full powers to
negotiate the match. By the rich presents made by
Edward to the two envoys on their arrival, it is easy to see
how much importance was attached to the alliance on the
English side. A special envoy, Grandison, Bishop of
Verdun, was sent off to Vienna. The preliminaries were
signed in London in January, 1278. Edward, on his side,
is to give the moderate portion of 10,000 marks with his
daughter. Rudolf, on his part, is to give the bride a
present of 2000l., to invest Hartmann with lands to the
capital value of 10,000l., and to promise to use his utmost
exertions to get him elected King of the Romans so soon
as he himself shall have received the imperial crown
from the Pope; and further to prevail with the princes of
the empire to recognise him as King of Arles. These
conditions were not only accepted and ratified at Vienna,
.*
D 2
36
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
but a further addition was voluntarily made by Rudolf.
He assigns 1000 marks yearly as pinmoney to his son's
wife, secured upon the Swiss possessions of his house.
Edward, with his accustomed prudence, requires his
ambassador to observe the young prince, and to inform
himself of his character and disposition; but, above all, to
send to England exact particulars of the estates and lands
of which it was proposed that Hartmann should be put in
possession.
But when everything
So far all went rapidly forward.
was agreed upon, delay intervened, a delay which has
seemed so unaccountable that it has been supposed that
the emperor was not in earnest in his proposal of the
match. The whole tenor of the preceding negotiations.
negatives such a supposition. The splendid settlement
which Rudolf was ready to make upon his son, shows how
highly he valued the English alliance. But his attention
was diverted elsewhere by the quarrels in which he was
engaged on the eastern side of Germany, and especially
with Ottocar, King of Bohemia. And the fact that the
English princess was, as Dr. Pauli reminds us, only born
in 1272, and therefore at the definitive conclusion of the
treaty only six years of age, is of itself a sufficient
explanation. Dr. Pauli produces the despatch in which a
request for the postponement of the betrothal proceeds
from the English court. The imperial envoys had been
instructed to propose 8th September, 1278, for the
ceremony.
So far from being surprised at delay, we are rather
surprised that, after the lapse of a year or two, Edward
should begin to evince a little impatience. We say a year
or two, because Dr. Pauli is very confused in his dates,
and more than once gives the day and the month, without
remembering to add the year of an event. We should
like to know the date of the letter which the young
Hartmann addresses to his father and lord,-so he styles
Westminster Review, 1861.]
DELAY IN FULFILMENT OF THE TREATY.
37
the King of England-but Dr. Pauli only informs us that it
was written on the 10th of September. In this letter he
'offers, with true filial reverence, his best thanks to the
King for his goodness in promoting his marriage. He
promises to become ever more worthy of his fatherly
affection, more obedient, and desirous to please him. He
is now on the point of setting out for Austria to join his
father, to be present at the ceremony of the investiture of
his elder brother with the Duchy. He expects to be back
by All Saints, and will then await at Basle the arrival of
the expected English courier.' The letter is that of a boy,
dictated by his preceptor. The preceptor was one Magister
Peter, who, whatever his other qualifications may have.
been, had not earned his promotion by his Latin style.
The turgid and fulsome language of this letter, which
Master Peter is himself to bring to England, seems to
show that it was not first in the seventeenth century that
the German courts learned the Perrückensprache.
During this pause in the fulfilment of the treaty, the
friendly intercourse between the two courts is not
interrupted.
The decisive battle of the Marchfield, which made
Rudolf undisputed master of the Austrian provinces, was
fought on the 26th of August, 1278.
We find, from a household-book of Edward I, that, on
30th October, Herthelm, king-at-arms of the 'King of
Almaine,' receives a present on bringing the tidings of the
great victory. On the following 8th November, Edward
writes to his ambassador at Vienna, to say that he would
have written himself to congratulate Rudolf, were it not,
that before he could do so, the great news was already
in every mouth, and a letter would have seemed to be
out of date. The interest excited in England by events
passing in so distant a quarter as Moravia, was, it seems,
quite as general in the thirteenth century as it would be
now.
38
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
As time went on, the English court grew impatient. On
the German side there seems to have been some conscious-
ness of not having redeemed their engagements. The
Bishop of Basle (presumably in 1281), writes semi-officially
to the King a letter of excuse. 'He had, in more than
one interview, pressed upon the young prince to require
of his father the settlement of the promised income. He,
the Bishop, must confess that the delay was hardly ex-
cusable. On the first occasion the prince's journey to
England had been put off by indisposition, a second time
by urgent affairs. Since then his delay in setting out was
due to pure procrastination and dilatoriness. This he
could not excuse, but it was truly not his (the Bishop's)
fault; and he hoped the King, whose steady temper and
prudence were known to all the world, would not on this
account withdraw his royal favour from him. He would
gladly come to England again in the business, were he not
so loaded with debt, incurred in the campaign against the
King of Bohemia, and were he not in expectation of being
summoned by his sovereign to his aid in his impending
campaign against Hungary.'
At last the young Landgrave was ready. On the Sun-
day before Christmas, 21st December, 1281, he embarked
on the Rhine at Breisach, in Baden. A thick fog, as usual
at that season, rested on the river; they had not dropt
further than Rheinau when their barge came too close in
shore, and its mast was caught in the branch of a tree.
The frail craft capsized, and Hartmann, with nearly every
soul on board, went down in her.
The catastrophe was immediately announced in Eng-
land; but it was not till 17th August, 1282, that Rudolf,
who felt deeply the tragical loss of his favourite son,
himself communicated with Edward. His letter is then
only one of ceremony, to excuse his long silence and to
renew the assurance of his friendship, which was not
diminished by the sorrowful event.
Westminster Review, 1861.]
DEATH OF HARTMANN.
39
This, however, for nearly two centuries, was the only
approximation between an English dynasty and the House
of Austria. The Hapsburg influence lay in South Ger-
many, and was weak in the North. The attraction of
England was towards North Germany, to the Guelph
and Saxon houses. The marriage of Mary with Philip II
is the only instance of a union of any English dynasty
with the Hapsburg family.
With Northern Germany our connexion was, from the
earliest times, most intimate; our intercourse close and
constant. Here it was based, not on intermarriage between
royal houses, but on the solid footing of commercial
interests. It is only in quite recent times that the old
bonds of relationship, and community of material interests,
have been cemented by dynastic alliances. Our com-
mercial relations with the Baltic cities began with the very
· earliest existence of those towns, and soon shot up into one
of our leading national objects. These later intermarriages
seem the natural consequence of the occupancy of the
English throne, in the eighteenth century, by the line of
Hanover. Dr. Pauli, however, to whose strong historical
vision a vista of a few centuries is nothing, sees in them but
the sequel of the day when Otto the Great wedded Alfred's
grand-daughter. He reminds us that the white horse of
the arms of the county of Kent appears also in those of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, and that it is nothing more than
that ocean-horse (see-rappe) in which the poetic fancy of the
sea-roving Saxons saw an emblem of their high-prowed
vessels.
Our commercial historians, Macpherson (Annals of Com-
merce), etc., date the German Guildhall in London from
the concession of Henry III. This is not strictly correct;
it was the Hanseatic confederacy which obtained privileges
from Henry III. Long before the existence of the Hanse,
long before they fixed their factories in Lisbon, Bergen,
and Novogorod, a corporation of German merchants was
40
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
established, with privileges on the Thames. The laws of
Ethelred (978-1016) guarantee to those merchants who
come hither in ships from the Emperor's country, the
same privileges of trade as are enjoyed by the subjects
of the realm. In acknowledgment of this concession
they shall be bound to deliver for the King's use at
Christmas and Easter, two pieces of gray and one piece
of brown cloth, ten pounds of pepper, five pairs of gloves,
and two kegs of vinegar. The payment in kind, and not
in money, looks like a customary acknowledgment from
an old-established guild, and not the imposition of a new
tax. We see too that it is assumed that they winter in
England.
Hallam dates the establishment of the Cologne mer-
chants in London in 1220. This again is much too late a
date. Dr. Pauli cites a patent of Henry II (as usual,
without the date), in which he assures to the men of
Cologne the house they possess in London, with all the
wares it contains, and licenses the sale of Rhenish wine
at the same price as French is sold at. Richard I, after his
return, hastening home, rested one day in Cologne, and
in return for the magnificent reception prepared him by
the city, he releases the citizens from the quit-rent of
two shillings, which they were bound to pay annually for
their Guildhall in the city of London. All this was
in the century preceding the formation of the Hanseatic.
federation.
In the following century one North German city after
another obtains similar royal letters. King John admits
Bremen to the same rights as Cologne. Then follows
Hamburg, then Lübeck, and in the course of Henry III's
reign, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Greifswald. Finally,
in 1260, in spite of the murmurs and jealousy of the men
of Cologne, a general patent is issued conferring equal
trading privileges upon all 'merchants of Almaine who
possess the house in London known as the German
!
Westminster Review, 1861.]
›
THE STEELYARD.
4I
Guildhall' (Aula Teutonicorum). This original factory
and staple of the German merchants, vulgarly called 'The
Steelyard' (Stahlhof), still stands on the banks of the
Thames, not far above the landing quay of the steamers,
above London Bridge. It was till quite recent times
the property of the German towns, and was distinguish-
able by the style of its architecture, its green shutters,
and two or three green trees, forcibly recalling to the
spectator similar establishments in many an old Baltic
seaport.
The German traders were, then, fixed in England from
unknown antiquity. But it was not till the fourteenth cen-
tury that their guild rose into wealth and importance of the
first rank. In the reign of Edward III they had almost a
practical monopoly of our carrying trade, as the Italians in
Lombard-street had of the money market. The Germans
would not meddle with usury; they confined themselves
to importing the raw produce of Norway and the Baltic,
and the fruits of Spain and Portugal.
During Edward's wars our commerce with France was
wholly broken off. English wool and leather were
exported exclusively to Flanders. Edward's foreign policy
led him to draw closer the ties which connected our
country with Germany. He granted new privileges to the
Hanse association, for which they were always ready to
pay handsomely. Edward himself travelled up the Rhine
in 1338, and had an interview with the Emperor Louis IV,
at Coblentz. A few years later, 1345, came the failure of
the great Italian bankers, the Bardi, at Florence, owing to
their heavy loans to England, which were not repaid. Un-
deterred by Edward's repudiation, the Steelyard stept in.
Some of the large German houses in London, the Tide-
mann, the brothers Reule, the Clippings, advanced large
sums, taking care, however, to secure themselves by
mortgages of parts of the public revenue. The Tidemann
farmed for many years the tin-mines belonging to the
$
42
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
7
!
Duchy of Cornwall. The Crown jewels had been pledged
in Cologne for a sum of money; when the day came,
Edward was not in a condition to redeem them. The
Steelyard advanced what was required, and restored the
jewels. From this time forward the Germans began to
supplant the Jews and Lombards as negotiators of loans to
the Crown. The victories of Crecy and Poictiers may be
said to have been won by German capital.
With the end of the French wars the flourishing period
of the Hanse traders in London closed. The decline of
their greatness was owing in great measure to the rivalry
of native enterprise. Hitherto there had been no English
merchants who could pretend to vie with the great German
houses. But as soon as the French trade was again
opened, it fell naturally into the hands of English ship-
owners. In spite of the destructive struggle between the
Red and White Roses, a race of native merchants rapidly
rose to wealth and consequence. The opening of the
Indies, East and West, revolutionized the channels and
the direction of commerce. English enterprise was
awakened, and English shipping began to push and elbow
the Hanseatic, even in their own northern seas. In place
of the frail craft which had served for the coasting trade
for the Mediterranean and the Baltic, mighty galleons now
navigated the Atlantic. The Hanse had overlived itself.
Even the size of their vessels had increased; they could no
longer pass London Bridge and cast anchor before their
Steelyard as formerly. In other respects the Hanse
confederation showed no capacity for coping with the new
age, and the gigantic spirit of enterprise which was kindled
in England and Spain. In proportion as they declined in
vigour, the German traders in London insisted with more
pertinacity upon the letter of the charters and privileges
they had obtained. The English merchant-adventurer
sought in the German and Livonian towns of the Baltic
the same advantages which were accorded in the harbours
Westminster Review, 1861.]
ENGLAND AND THE HANSE.
43
of England to the trader of Lübeck or Dantzic. To his
astonishment and disgust, he found himself not permitted
even to trade there on any terms, sometimes forbidden
even to land. The Hanseatic traders would not understand
reciprocity. They imported their own goods duty-free
into England; they would not suffer the English merchant
to import his wool, even at a high duty, into a Hanse port.
Several seizures of English cargoes led to reprisals on our
part; reprisals led to a naval war. The unequal contest,
for such it then seemed, of England's infant navy against
the ancient consolidated maritime supremacy of the Han-
seatic Confederacy, raged with great fury for several years
of the fifteenth century. Trade throughout the whole of
Northern Europe suffered enormously, the destruction of
property on both sides was vast. In vain Cabinets en-
deavoured to mediate; the Hanse would be satisfied with
nothing less than free admission to English ports, and
exclusion of the English Company from theirs. The
English insisted that the Germans should pay the same
duties as other nations, since they chose to prohibit Eng-
lish traders from access to their ports. An action for
damages done to English merchants was brought against
the Steelyard Company, and they were cast in an enormous
amount, 13,520. sterling. As they could not, or would not
pay, several of the leading merchants were thrown into
gaol, and the buildings of the Company seized in execution.
The venerable Corporation was in danger of losing at once
its old privileges and its property,-nay, the quarrel with
England might have led to a more serious catastrophe,
nothing less than the fall of the whole Hanse Confede-
ration. For at the very moment when these things
occurred, about 1470, an internal dispute had broken out
between the western members headed by Cologne, and
the Baltic cities represented by Lübeck. The moderation
of the English Parliament composed the storm.
House of Commons took the matter in hand.
The
The
44
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
El.
happy circumstance that it was in Hanse vessels that
Edward IV effected his victorious return to England in
1471, promoted the desire for an amicable arrangement.
In 1474 peace was concluded at Utrecht; the German
merchants received back both their privileges and their
premises on the banks of the Thames.
Once again, in 1597, the citizens of Elbing and Stade
dared to put in force their old exclusive policy, and drove
the English traders from their port. But the relative
strength of the parties was now inverted. Elizabeth's
government was not to be trifled with. Drake and Norris in
a very short time brought in sixty Hanse vessels as prizes;
the Steelyard was seized and turned into a depôt for the
Admiralty; the Hanse yielded. The Steelyard Company
received back their old Guildhall, in the quiet possession
of which they were never again disturbed by Government.
Their premises indeed shared in the general destruction
by the great fire of 1666. When the Company proceeded
to rebuild, they no longer did so in the massive and
imposing style of the fourteenth century. Heavy vaulting
and strong outer walls for defence were discarded. With
the exception of a dwelling-house for the master of the
Steelyard, the remainder of the area was covered with ware-
houses and wharves no way different from those on either
side of them. But the Hanse no longer existed, and these
warehouses were let to private firms. The free towns of
Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, as heirs of the corporate
estate of the Hanseatic League, became possessed of the
Steelyard premises. They had no use for them, and in
1853 they were sold to some English Company for the
sum of 72,500/.
Has the reader seen the Arthushof at Dantzic? If he
has, he may form to himself some notion of what the
principal building of the Steelyard must have been before
1666. This was the Great Hall, serving for a council-
chamber on days of general convocation, and as a
Westminster Review, 1861.]
GUILDHALL OF THE STEELYARD COMPANY. 45
banqueting-room for the oft-recurring festivities. Round
the apartment, in recesses, and on every projecting ledge
of the heavy wainscot, was displayed in close array the
silver and pewter plate, with many a choice gem of work-
manship, presents to the Corporation from all parts of the
Continent. Among the portraits which hung above were
two allegorical pieces by Master Hans Holbein, repre-
senting the Triumph of Riches and the Triumph of Poverty
respectively. On one side of the Guildhall rose a tower,
with a fireproof chamber for the muniments and jewels of
especial value; on the other, a stone-vaulted kitchen,
where dinner could be dressed for an army of guests. On
the west side of the hall was the garden, where a vine or
two and some of the finer sorts of fruit were trained, and
where, in German fashion, on summer evenings, the elder
merchants sat over their pipe and beaker of Rhine wine,
while the younger amused themselves with claish, or
kegelspiel. The greater part of the area was covered with
the lofty warehouses, with booths for the exhibition of
samples on the groundfloor, stretching down to the quay.
Here every German merchant settled in London had his
separate office. Broad landing quays covered with cranes
lined the river bank. On the opposite, or northern side,
towards Thames Street, ran a lofty, massive front with
three fortified and portcullised gateways; over each was
an inscription in the German text, in which the moral is
better than the point. High above, the Imperial double
eagle figured in all its ugliness, like a scarecrow nailed to
a barn door. On the three other sides, thick walls and
turrets at the angles gave the whole the aspect and the
reality of a fortress—a little citadel in the heart of the city.
On more than one memorable occasion, the German
merchants owed the preservation of life and property to
these defences. In the great communistic uprising under
Wat Tyler in 1381, when no man of rank or property was
safe, the Esterlings-so the English called the Hanse
46
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY,
6
traders-lay in security behind their walls, while the
Flemish and other foreign residents fell helpless victims to
the rage of the populace.
One corner of the Thames Street frontage was occupied
by a wine-house. Here, as early as the fourteenth century,
the wines of Germany and the delicacies of Northern
Europe were at the call of the Londoner who chose to pay
for them. In the reign of James I, at a time when the world
of fashion had not yet migrated wholly to the west-end, the
Steelyard Tavern' was one of the favourite haunts of the
gallants. Not only the German relished for his breakfast
the good things, the smoked reindeer tongue, the caviare
and the salted lachs, here provided; the nobleman and the
bishop, the privy councillor and the judge, even the lord
chancellor himself, might be met with. 'Let us go to the
Stilliard, and drink Rhenish wine,' says one of the cha-
racters in 'Pierce Pennyless.' The lover of the Elizabethan
drama will readily recal many such allusions. To this day
a spirit-shop bearing the name of the 'Steelyard' preserves
the site, but not the reputation, of the old German house.
In the booths which lined the interior of the court might
be purchased all the choicest articles of luxury, before the
New World poured in so many objects hitherto unknown
to Europe. On the wharves the bulkier commodities
might be inspected. Norway sent her iron; Poland and
Lithuania, hemp, tallow, wax, and furs. Many a cargo of
salt cod for Lent, or for victualling the Navy, was there;
before all, the herring, which had not then migrated from
the Baltic, and which was accordingly a special delicacy.
Sometimes might be found a rare Livonian falcon, for
which the English noble was ready to give any price.
Rhine wine, and cloths from Flanders, of course formed
staple articles. From Spain and Portugal were drawn,
besides the products of the Peninsula, oriental articles, figs,
dates, and almonds, cinnamon, and all kinds of spices,
colours, drugs, even gold-dust and jewels. Such com-
Westminster Review, 1861.]
CONSTITUTION OF THE GUILD.
47
modities, however, as these found little market as yet in a
barbarous country like England, and they were chiefly
forwarded to Hamburg or Lübeck. The export trade of
the Steelyard was no less extensive than its import; it
consisted chiefly in raw produce, wool and hides, corn,
beer, and cheese.
The Corporation had its constitution, not materially
differing from those of other guilds. Every master had an
equal voice in their assemblies; every year they elected
from their body an alderman, who was assisted in the
business of administering their affairs by a committee of
nine members, in which every Hanse Town was in its turn
represented, according to a fixed cycle. By this body all
the affairs of the little world were managed. The inmates
of the Steelyard were submitted to an almost monastic
discipline. Masters and journeymen alike were obliged to
remain single. Peace and order were maintained by police
regulations of German minuteness and strictness. A blow
or an abusive expression subjected the offender to a fine.
Severer penalties awaited drunkenness, dissipation, or
dicing. The gates were closed at nine o'clock, and on no
pretext opened after that hour. The duties of the guild
towards the country and city of which they were denizens
were strictly defined, and most religiously attended to.
Every master was under an obligation, the same as the
natives, to keep an iron helmet and harness, and all arms
pertaining to a complete furnishing for war. The Germans
had their post assigned them in the ward of the city. The
maintenance and repair of the northern gate, Bishopsgate,
was assigned to them. This obligation they discharged
far down into Protestant and peaceful times, long after
London had ceased to fear a foreign foe, and the Bishop's
Gate had become only a relic of antiquarian curiosity.
All this material wealth and splendour was of course in
official connexion with the Church. The Steelyard, how-
ever, had no chapel within its limits; it was parochial,
48
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
and the Corporation attended the neighbouring church
of Allhallows. It has been even said that this church was
built by the Germans, which however was not the case;
but they maintained in it an altar, and had their own
masses said in it on special days. The Reformation did
not dissolve the connexion. The Steelyard passed with
the rest of the parish by the same easy gradations from
the old to the new faith; another proof how entirely
the German aliens were rooted in English soil. It might
have been anticipated that Luther's doctrines would have
made their way early among this little colony of his
countrymen. This was not the case; the Corporation
of the Steelyard were too well to do in the world to
be other than thoroughly English and thoroughly An-
glican. In 1526 Sir Thomas More made, as Chancellor,
a domiciliary visit in search of heretical books. He
was not very successful; for though he found several
copies of the Old and New Testament, they were all in
Latin. Some books of prayers, though in German, were
not Lutheran. The members of the Corporation took an
oath at the Cross of St. Paul's that they were not heretics,
nor harboured heretics among them. As soon, however,
as the Reformation was legally established in England we
find the Germans, notwithstanding the language, attending
the preachings in Allhallows. Several long rows of
benches in the nave were appropriated to them and
maintained at their charges. Several painted windows, in
which the double eagle held a conspicuous place, were
given by them. When the church was restored after the
fire, they presented to it that carved oak screen which still
separates the nave from the choir. It was the work of a
Hamburg artist. Over the door leading to the altar the
imperial eagle is again emblazoned, surmounted by the
royal arms of England. The inconvenience of service and
sermons in the English language was strongly felt. After
the great fire, they presented a petition to Charles II, that
Westminster Review, 1861.]
די
ALLHALLOWS AND LITTLE TRINITY.
49
one of the city churches which it was not intended to
rebuild, should be made over to them. A royal brief of
1673 assigned to them the little Trinity church which
was close to the Steelyard. From that time forward the
German settlers in London have enjoyed a service in their
own language.
There are
now three or four German Protestant
churches in London, of which this of the little Trinity is
the mother-church.
Dynastic alliances and commercial relations form the two
most important chapters in a history of the intercourse
between England and Germany. There are others which
lie among the byways of history, about which much might
still be recovered by minute research. One such is
suggested to us in Chaucer's description of his Knight;
who
Ful ofte time hadde the bord bygonne
Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce.
In Lettowe hadde he reysed and in Ruce
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
After the fall of Acre in 1291, the East was closed to the
arms of the Christians. The warrior of chivalry, panting
for adventure against Paynim hosts, had to seek his
opportunity nearer home. In two opposite corners of
Europe, a holy war of Christian against infidel was still
waged; in Spain against the Moors, in Prussia against the
Lithuanians. The latter of these permanent crusades was
carried on by the Teutonic Order. The Teutonic knights
had been transplanted from Palestine to the more national
service of extending the frontier of Christendom and of
Germany at the expense of the heathen Lithuanians and
Prussians as early as 1227. In 1235 Hermann von Salza,
Grand-Master of the Order, was in England. He came to
negotiate the marriage of Henry's sister Isabella with the
emperor; but he used the opportunity to make known the
VOL. I.
E
50
II ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
nature of the service in which he and his knights were
engaged, and to enlist English sympathy in the struggle
they were carrying on on the Baltic plains. As a token of
this sympathy, and an offering in the cause of the Church,
he obtained from the English treasury a warrant for an
annual payment of forty marks in furtherance of the good
cause, a payment which continued to be made for centuries.
It was not, however, till the fourteenth century, that Eng-
lish knights were attracted in any considerable numbers to
'reyse in Pruce,' by way of fulfilling their vow of fighting
against the infidels. In the commercial treaty of Marien-
burg (1388) between Richard II and the Grand-Master,
Conrad Zöllner von Rotenstein, the English King brings
forward as a fact which ought not ungratefully to be
overlooked by the other party, how many English knights
and squires, without regarding harm of life and substance,
had travelled beyond the seas to the aid of the Teutonic
Order against the unbelievers.
It was only two years after this treaty that an expedition
set out from England on a grander scale than ordinary. A
prince of the blood, Henry, Earl of Derby, eldest son of
John of Gaunt, was the. crusading knight. He was not the
first of his house who had been in 'Pruce'; his grand-
father, Henry of Lancaster, had made the same expedition
before him. Prudential reasons made it advisable just
then that the young Henry should absent himself from the
realm, where he had taken too active a part in the
opposition to the misgovernment of Richard II. But all
his life through, Henry IV nourished a secret desire to
fight for the Cross, and believed he should die at Jerusalem.
In the summer of 1390 he took ship, accompanied with
several hundred knights and men-at-arms. They reached
Dantzic on the 10th of August. Here he fitted himself
out with all necessaries for an autumn campaign against
the Lithuanians, who were supported by the Poles.
Foreign knights, who had been invited, came gradually in
Westminster Review, 1861.]
HENRY, EARL OF DERBY,
51
from all parts of Germany and France. When all was
ready their baggage was sent off by the Haff to Königsberg,
and the knightly troop proceeded by land as far as Memel.
Here, on the 27th of August, they encountered the foe,
and a smart but indecisive battle was fought. September
was spent in the siege of Wilna, which the season obliged
them to quit, and by the 20th of October the Earl of Derby
was back in Königsberg. We hear of at least one of his
knights having fallen in the field; but the earl had made
captive three youths, sons of a Lettish noble. The four
following months were passed in Königsberg. The
Christmas festival, from Christmas Day to the Epiphany,
was spent in carousal and amusements as usual in the
English court. The earl had already become weary of
crusading, but would not quit the country without seeing
something more of it. In February 1391 he left Königs-
berg, passed by Bromberg and Elbing to Marienburg, and
so from Dirschau, down the Vistula, to Dantzic. Here he
was detained by indisposition the whole of the month of
March. It was on the 12th of March that the election of a
new Grand-Master took place at Marienburg. Conrad von
Wallenrod was the choice of the chapter. We find him
making the English earl, in acknowledgment of his services,
the usual present of falcons. While in Dantzic, Henry
received a courier to announce that his uncle, the Duke of
Gloucester, had set off to join him, but had landed in
Norway, and for some reason or other returned home;
he also received intelligence that his countess had pre-
sented him with a son, afterwards Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester.
Easter was spent in Dantzic, and the earl made Easter
offerings of princely munificence to the three principal
churches of the city, in acknowledgment of the absolution
from his vow which he had obtained from the Pope. He
took ship at Dantzic, and after a prosperous voyage landed
in Hull, from whence he hastened to his castle of
E 2
52
II. ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
Bolingbroke. Ten years later, the Earl of Derby mounted
the throne of England. On the frequent occasions when
questions relating to the Baltic trade, and the privileges of
the Hanse came before the Council, Henry's personal
acquaintance with Prussian affairs was of material service.
He was the last sovereign of England who has ever
travelled further than Berlin. The relations between
England and the Baltic cities during his reign deserve
inquiry. The researches of the antiquaries of England
and Germany may still bring to light matter of interest
upon this chapter of our history.
Westminster Review, 1861.]
III.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE
REFORMATION¹.
(Fraser's Magazine, January, 1859.)
O prove that a jest is a jest, to enforce a bon mot
To by a historical argument, and to insist that the
laughable shall be laughed at, is a task no man would
willingly set himself. As soon as a joke wants explaining
it is a proof that it had better be forgotten.
But there are jeux-d'esprit which have done more in
their day than make men laugh; which have told upon
society or the course of public events. When this is
the case, they have ceased to be facetiae, and deserve our
serious consideration. The wit may be evaporated, and
the caricature cold, but a truth remains behind.
The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum have long passed
out of the category of fun into that of earnest. They
are now not even amusing; but they are more instructive
than piles of the controversial pamphlets of the same date.
They require a commentary however; and though pos-
sessing none of the profundity of Rabelais, they are almost
as inexplicable without a key. The general reader will
probably be satisfied with an abstract. Let him take our
word for it, he loses little by neglecting the original. It
would certainly cost him far more time to master it than it
is worth.
This opinion is indeed opposed to the high-flown praises
we find in many writers of the humour of the Epistolae.
1
Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum. New Edition. By PROFESSOR BÖCKING.
London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate. 1858.
54 III.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
.
From Paulus Jovius, who calls it 'the most delightful
specimen of raillery' (jucundissimum satirae illudentis
genus), down to David Strauss, Hutten's latest biographer,
we find the wit of the Epistles extolled with an hyperbole
that ensures disappointment. We may fatigue ourselves
in vain without being able to catch the point of view from
which Sir W. Hamilton could describe these 'Epistles'
as 'a masterpiece of wit.'
,
The truth is, that all such judgments on the part of
modern critics are judgments not only after the event, but
from it. That the Epistolae amused their own generation is
undoubted; though the story of Erasmus having burst an
imposthume on the face with laughter at them, be, like
all the best stories, fiction. But no product of human
ingenuity is so transient as a jest. Taste in the ridiculous
changes as rapidly as in dress. The grandsons of those
who had enjoyed the salt of Plautus, thought their ances-
tors stupid boors for having done so. We have all read
of that old Earl of Norwich, whose conceits, brilliant in
the Court of Charles I, were found insufferable thirty
years afterwards, in that of Charles II. Like perfume,
the more subtle and ethereal a piece of humour is, the
less is it portable. Like Burgundy, it will not cross the
sea. When we read of the effect produced on their con-
temporaries by the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, we may
be sure that a shot which told so well was skilfully aimed;
that the writer knew the temper of his countrymen, and
how to tickle them. His drawing is very rude, his puppets
clumsy bits of wood, but they were recognised by those
before whom they were played off. The audience were
all primed for the jest, and a very thin jest served them.
The times and the temper of the public mind in the year
1516 made the fortune of the Epistolae, which it is idle to
compare with a Falstaff, or even a Sancho.
Low as we must rate their humour, their historical
interest places them among the foremost facts of the
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
:
EFFECT OF THE EPISTOLAE.
55
period when the great Reformation drama is about to
open. Their influence, however, on the turn of events is
very variously estimated. While Sir W. Hamilton, in
exaggerating terms, affirms of 'this tremendous satire, that
it scattered dismay and ruin in its explosion, giving the
victory to Reuchlin over the Friars, and to Luther over the
Court of Rome,' Hallam, on the other side, contemptuously
says that 'in the mighty movement of the Reformation,
the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum had about as much
effect as the Mariage de Figaro on the French Revolu-
tion.' Herder, moderately, only claims for them to have
'effected for Germany incomparably more than Hudibras
for England,' whatever that may be. And Ranke, in his
spirit of judicial compromise, thinks that though 'not a work
of high creative genius, they had yet a vast influence.'
They did produce some effect. But it must be acknow-
ledged, in strict impartiality, that it was owing almost
entirely to the temper of the public mind, and little to the
intrinsic humour of the piece. A brief account shall be
given of the occasion on which the Epistolae Obscurorum
Virorum were produced. The Prelude to the great Refor-
mation movement will never lose its interest. But it
appears to arise before us, at the present crisis of opinion
in Europe, with a daily increasing attraction. Thoughtful
men, who can read the signs of our times, are becoming
aware of the close analogy which the existing conflict of
opinion bears to that which was going on in the times
just before Luther. The more human activity is forcibly
thwarted and checked in a political direction, the more it
is directed inwards on first principles. The 'repressive
measures' so loudly called for, and so vigorously applied,
have this effect at least. They tie down feverish irritability,
and anticipate aimless explosions. But the volcanic matter
beneath is not extinguished. Instead of breaking out in
flashes on the surface of politics, it feeds on the vitals of
opinion. Thus the analogies of the last century, with its
56 III. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
superficial scepticism and clash of constitutional theories,
fail us. To find a historical parallel, we are driven back to
the beginning of the sixteenth century, and to that time of
sullen ferment in which the abortive movement of Pro-
testantism was preparing in the public mind.
We are apt to regard the 'Reformation' as a revolution
in Theology and Church arrangements. It became so.
And the importance of that after-birth has thrown into the
background the true issue as it was originally joined
between the friends of progress and its enemies. To find
this issue as it stood in its less complex forms, we must
look to Germany before Luther. The universities of
Germany, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, found
themselves invaded by a number of men who were dis-
satisfied with the level of culture, and with the amount of
attainment possessed by the authorized and installed
dispensers of wisdom. These men were inconsiderable
in number, but formidable by their activity, their mutual
sympathy, and their definite purpose. This purpose was
not theological. It was no part of their aim to disturb a
single Church doctrine. Cultivation was their ideal. And
in the remains of the Greek and Latin writers, and in a
wider knowledge of natural objects, they had found a
means of culture for themselves, and now wished that the
same means should be made available for the general youth
of their fatherland. The old party in the universities, to
whom mental cultivation was an intelligible idea, but who
were well trained in the professional formulae of the
standard school-books, everywhere resisted. They ex-
pelled the 'Poets,' as the young Reformers were called,
forbade them to teach, and prohibited the newfangled books.
The new party were in earnest, and multiplied in spite
of persecution. The young men were fast going over to
their side. When a conservative party has only interest
to hold its supporters together, but has nothing to teach,
it will maintain its ground for a time, but must give way
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
HUMANIST MOVEMENT.
57
at last. The University of Cologne was, for various
reasons, the stronghold of the party of ignorance. And
in the University of Cologne the order of Dominicans, or
'preaching friars,' had long been in possession of the
greatest credit, and held the principal posts of honour.
The affair, in which the authorities of Cologne became
seriously embroiled with the whole of the rising Humanist
party throughout Germany, was, as usually happens in
these cases, not one arising out of the real merits of the
conflict between the old and the new. This affair is known
as 'the Reuchlin business,' and formed the prelude to the
matter of the Indulgences, by which Luther was called
into the field. In the Reuchlin business the obstructive
party were the assailants, whereas in the general struggle
they necessarily occupied the place of resistance. Just as
if they were not likely to have enough on their hands with
the rising strength of the Humanists, they about this time
sought a new quarrel.
new quarrel. They felt themselves strong
enough—this was only one generation before half the west
of Europe was lost to the Catholic Church—to make a
persecuting crusade against the Jews. It was not against
their bodies indeed, but this time only against their books.
The Dominicans of the University of Cologne felt their
repose disturbed by the existence of certain Hebrew books
which were not composed in a Christian spirit. The books
indeed were in Hebrew, and no one but the Jews and
Reuchlin could read them. But no matter; there was no
saying; they might be dangerous. Anyhow they were
wicked, and it was a scandal they should be suffered to
exist. The Dominicans applied to the Imperial court for a
mandate. Reuchlin, the only Oriental scholar among the
lawyers, was requested to give a written opinion on these
books. He handed in an opinion, the strictly professional
language of which exposed the ignorance and fanaticism
of the Cologne professors much more keenly than any
direct satire could have done. It grew into a controversy
58 111. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
between Reuchlin and the University of Cologne; and
Reuchlin being the head of the Humanist party, while
Cologne was the head-quarters of the party of ignorance,
it is not to be wondered at that the growing jealousy
between Humanist and Scholastic became gradually
absorbed into the episode of the Jewish books; while, on
the other hand, the Jewish books were lost sight of in the
new direction given to the passions of the old academical
party. They now turned like baulked hounds upon
Reuchlin, and swore his destruction. That venerable
scholar and jurist, who had spent a long life in the pursuit
of the best learning of his day, 'found himself in the
decline of life the victim of a formidable persecution,
which threatened ruin to himself and proscription to his
favourite studies.' Adversaries of the stamp of the
Cologne doctors do not long conduct a controversy by
argument. They had much more efficacious weapons at
command. They handed over one of Reuchlin's pamphlets
to a censor, to be searched for heresy. The censor, a
theological professor of Cologne, had no difficulty in
finding forty-three suspicious propositions in the pamphlet.
Protestantism, be it observed, was not thought of-we are
in the year 1510-Reuchlin had no idea of questioning an
iota of Catholic doctrine or tradition. Reuchlin was called
upon to retract, and in default was cited to appear before
the Court of Inquisition at Mentz. The Prior of the
Dominican convent at Cologne, Jacob Hochstraten, though
not inquisitor for the district, intended to sit in judgment
on his enemy.
A less well-connected or highly-placed man than Reuchlin
would have succumbed when all the weight of the Church,
the Dominicans, the Inquisition, and the University, was
brought against him. Fortunately he had powerful pro-
tectors. After various decisions in, and appeals from, the
provincial courts, both parties, in the year 1514, appealed
to Rome. To Rome Hochstraten went in person, not
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
REUCHLIN.
59
without good store of gold pieces, and backed by all the
influence of the Dominican confraternity in Christendom.
The friars procured condemnatory decrees from the Sor-
bonne, and from the theological Faculties of several of the
German Universities. Confident in their strength, they
ventured to talk, in case of an adverse decision, of an
appeal to a General Council. Reuchlin, though poor in
person, had his patrons and backers. He handed in a
memorial to the Papal Court, testifying to his edifying life
and doctrine, signed by the Emperor, divers Electors,
Princes, Bishops, Abbots, and fifty-three Swabian municipal
towns. No one, on either side, thought for a moment of
decision on the merits, or according to law. For where
the charge was heresy, or suspicion of heresy, what
'merits' were there? It was universally felt to be a party
struggle, and that the Court of Appeal would decide
according as its ear was obtained, or its fears worked
upon, by either of the parties. And these parties were,
not Reuchlin and Hochstraten, but the whole German
people divided into two hostile camps; the intelligent and
aspiring minds on the one side, on the other the ignorant,
the bigoted, and the haters of education, installed in
Church dignities. The excitement was universal through-
out Germany. The decision of the court was expected
with feverish anxiety. Every one seemed to have a pre-
sentiment that whichever way the decision might be,
matters would not rest there.
The policy of delay
While the cause was
The decision was long waited for.
is an old but never worn-out device.
thus pending, an appeal was made by Reuchlin's friends,
through the press, to the public, if such an expression
may be allowed of Germany in 1514. They published a
collection of private letters of celebrated men, addressed to
Reuchlin, partly on the affair of the Cologne prosecution,
partly on other topics. It was an indirect way of showing
by what a powerful phalanx of estimable men Reuchlin was
60 III. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
befriended. The collection contained the names of all
who were known for talent or learning in the Empire.
The Illustrium Virorum Epistolae ad Io. Reuchlinum
appeared in 1514. Within less than two years after them,
and while the Reuchlin Appeal was still pending at Rome,
came out in Germany a volume bearing the title Epistolae
Obscurorum Virorum ad Ven. Virum Magistrum Ortuinum
Gratium. It is a parody of the letters to Reuchlin.. The
addressee, Ortwin de Graes, was a real person, a West-
phalian by birth, and at this time Professor in the Faculty
of Arts at Cologne. He had taken a conspicuous, though
not the leading, part in the controversy with Reuchlin, and
had furnished the Cologne pamphlets with poetical pro-
logues, etc. For though a stiff champion of the old
method, he made pretensions to unite with 'Philosophy'
a smattering of 'Letters.' His correspondents are fictitious
personages, supposed to be young graduates (Magistri)
dispersed through the various Universities of Germany.
They entertain the worthy Professor with their studies
and occupations, their quarrels and brawls, and pour with
an unreserve, confident of sympathy, the history of their
joys and sorrows into his friendly ear. Their sorrows are
chiefly the affronts and contumelies they meet at the hands
of the upstart race of the 'Poets,' who are ruining the
credit of 'good learning' in the Universities; their joys
are suppers and carousals, and love-adventures of the least
sentimental kind. These scenes of clownish wrangling or
tavern amours are heightened, but not improbably height-
ened, by caricature. Humour is infused through them by
the naïve unconsciousness with which the victims tell their
own story, and are thus made to satirize themselves. The
good-natured Boeotians strut about with academical hon-
ours, and gravely complain that they do not receive the
respect due to learning. Piety they do not pretend to,
but an unrestricted zeal for the Church and for religion
makes up for the want of it. Thus they are not hypocrites,
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
DE GRAES AND HIS CORRESPONDENTS.
61
for they do not attempt to conceal from each other their
frailties. If they conceal them from the world, it is from
no wish to appear better than they are, but out of filial
duty to the common mother, Holy Church, whose sons
they are. Nor are they vicious. Their peccadilloes are
only occasional lapses, the necessity of the flesh, not the
licentiousness of the mind. They are excluded from
matrimony by their vow; their vow it is, therefore, which
forces the alternative upon them. They can argue this
point of practice with a casuistry in which subtlety and
stupidity are ingeniously yet most naturally blended.
They belong to that happy class of men who never want
reasons for that which they have resolved to do, and who
never fail to be convinced by them.
They carry the scholastic quibble into their hours of
recreation. At a degree dinner which had lately come off
at Leipzig, a dispute had arisen among the masters at
table whether a candidate for the Doctor's degree was to be
styled 'Magister nostrandus' or 'Noster Magistrandus.'
A correspondent of Ortwin, Thomas Longschneider, a
Bachelor of Divinity, lays this question before his former
tutor with the arguments pro and con. He does not forget
to describe the plentiful feast provided by the candidate,
the Hock and Malmsey, the Einbeck, Torjon, and Nürn-
berg beer. Another time Ortwin had happened to say of
a certain Doctor that he was a member of ten universities.
The acute Dr. Klorbius reminds him that though one body
may have many members, it is impossible that one member
can have many bodies.
Ortwin de Graes, who is so called because of the Divine
grace which enlightens him, is the general referee in more
serious cases. A Doctor of Laws meeting in the Zeil at
Frankfort a Magister with whom he was at enmity, passed
him without capping him. The Doctor excused himself
because the other was not in his academical gown. Again,
one eating an egg one Friday, in which the chick was
=
!
62 III. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
already formed, has scruples of conscience afterwards.
Will Ortwin, who is known to be deeply studied in all the
commentaries on the Book of the Sentences, resolve this
case? A brother had indeed suggested that as what was
eaten was an egg, any other substance that might happen
to be present in it was only there accidentally and not
essentially, and was no more to be regarded than maggots
in cheese, 'which we swallow unhesitatingly on fast days.
But these maggots, I have heard a Doctor of Physic say,
being worms, are reckoned as fish, whereas a chick is the
young of a fowl, and therefore flesh.'
With the ingenuity they display in splitting such straws,
goes along a ludicrous ignorance of the common points of
the classical scholarship of the day. They confound
Diomedes the Grammarian, with Homer's hero of the
same name. They are very indignant at the new Latin
which is being introduced by Reuchlin, who calls himself,
in Hebrew, Capnion. Greek and Hebrew, the new
studies so much cried up, they pronounce useless, yea mis-
chievous. For, first, the Scripture is already translated
to our hands; and secondly, it is too much honour to the
infidel Jews and the schismatical Greeks for Catholic
Christians to be learning their languages :-
How these conceited Humanists strut about with their new
learning, and talk of their Virgil and their Tully; but all the old
good books, Remigius, Joannes de Garlandia, Cornutus, they say
are stuff. How they do lie and vapour! One of them I myself
heard telling lately, how that there is in a certain country a river
whose name is Tagus, the sands of which be gold-dust! 'Whew!'
said I (to myself, though), 'for the thing is manifestly impossible.'
Yet our Magisters do not renounce their own claim to
be men of wit in their own kind. They are proud of
Ortwin as a 'poet,' and submit to him their poetical essays
(dictamina). They beg him to correct them, and above
all to make them scan, for they own that 'feet' are not
their strong point. Why should they fret themselves about
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
THE MAGISTERS AND THE HUMANISTS.
63
quantities, though? They are not 'secular poets,' but
theological, and should not spend their regards on childish
things such as metre, but look rather at the sense. The good
old-fashioned poetizing, such as the Magisters in Cologne
and Paris practise, is one thing; quite another is this
new-fangled verse-writing, brought in by undergraduates
who set up to have read Virgil and Pliny, and other new
authors. These secular poets string together nonsense,
while the Church poets sing the glories of the Saints.
And while the first interpret the Latin authors literally
only, the latter explain the fourfold sense. For are not
the stories of the Greek gods allegories, wherein is clothed
Christian truth?
We are not to suppose that the 'Magisters' of the Old
School sat quietly down with the slights put upon them by
these upstarts. The students might follow the new lead.
But among the graduates the Humanists were in a very
insignificant minority. Aesticampianus had begun to
lecture on the poets at Leipzig with great success. He
tried to introduce the classical authors instead of Petrus
Hispanus and the Parva Logicalia. The Doctors of the
Faculties were extremely galled by his encroachments :—
But they waited with great patience, till, as God would have it,
Aesticampianus, having to make an oration before the University,
spake amiss of Sacred Theology. Upon this they held a conclave.
And some said,—'What do we? If we dismiss this man, it will be
said that he is more learned than we.' But, said Magister Andrew
Delitsch,-"This Aesticampian is like the fifth wheel in the wagon,
he hindereth the other faculties, so that the students cannot properly
qualify in them.' Then the other Magisters swore that so it was, and
to sum up the whole concluded to expel him, whatever enmity it
might raise. . . . And so he is gone, and we would have you to know
that great harmony now reigns in the University. And Mag. Delitsch
lectures in Logic; and likewise Mag. Rotburg. This Mag. Rotburg
hath a book, which he hath compiled himself, which is thrice as
thick as Virgil his works. And in this book he hath set down goodly
things of Our Mother Church, and of the glories of the Saints.-Epist.
O. V. I. 17.
64
ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
III.
This collision between the old and the new; between
the rising intelligence which was invading the universities,
and the official ignorance which was installed in the
teacher's seat, forms a tragic background which throws
into relief the absurdities and grossièretés of the Magister's
private life. Besides this, a kind of unity is given to the
collection of detached letters by the allusions to the
Reuchlin process. The hopes and fears of the corre-
spondents fluctuate, from letter to letter, with the varying
news from Rome. One while they hear that Reuchlin
is ruined by the costs of the process, and therefore augur
a speedy victory. Hochstraten, too, has received a remit-
tance, and has given a grand entertainment to the cardinals
and auditors. But they have no confidence in Leo X.
He is little better than a poet himself, and knows little of
the Summa of St. Thomas. The general opinion in Rome
too is against them; and they are in despair at feeling all
around them in Germany the growing strength of the
Reuchlin conspiracy:-
'Would that I had never begun this cause!' writes one from
Rome; 'then I should be now in Cologne, and have meat and drink
to my liking, while here I have scarce dry bread, and nought but
jeering and ill turns on all hands; while Reuchlin is better known
here than in Germany, and is loved by many bishops, cardinals, and
courtiers. The vexations we undergo in this place would move a
stone to tears.'
This cursory attempt to convey to the English reader
some idea of the contents and tone of the Epistolae Obscu-
rorum Virorum, must not be concluded without the confes-
sion that it is a thing impossible to be successfully done.
A historical commentary indeed, which should explain the
allusions, and detect the real characters and events which
are mingled with the fictitious, would be both instructive
and interesting. This has never been attempted; nor
does Strauss, in his recent Life of Ulrich von Hutten, do
more than contribute a stray light here and there. But
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.].
STYLE OF THE EPISTOLAE.
65
the pleasantry of the piece is intimately blended with the
style-it should rather be said the language-in which it is
written. For the style of the Epistolae is not merely a
specimen of dog or burlesque Latin; it is a language by
itself. It is not the invention of the author, but a dialect
actually spoken by the sort of men into whose mouth it is
put. Doubtless it is a little overdrawn. All comic effects
must be. But it is only exaggerated nature. The basis
of classical Latin, interpolated during the long course of
the Middle Ages with Church phrases and vernacular
idioms, forms the substance of this Vulgar Tongue. In
its construction it is in perpetual conflict with the rules of
good Latinity, partly from the intrusion of the German
idiom, partly from the addle-headed understanding of the
characters supposed to write this nigger Latin.
But their usage is so uniform, so consistent with itself,
and appropriate to the sphere in which the ideas of these
dunces circulate, that we feel at this day that we are
reading a living, not a dead, language. Thus it is through
their language, rather than through their ideas, that these
Obscuri Viri are introduced to us. Their ideas indeed are
so narrow and grovelling, being little more than the expres-
sion of their gross passions, and their hatred of intelligence
which they feel to be above them, that they are soon
exhausted. A monotony of thought exists throughout
the book, but it is not wearisome, because it is felt to be
natural to the characters represented, and because we are
carried on by the novelty of the patois. Ménage has
remarked that, with the exception of the Supper of Tri-
malchio, there is no relic in the classical writers of that rustic
Latin which was spoken among the common people in
Italy; but that a valet in Plautus and Terence talks as
classically as his master. Among modern writers, on the
contrary, no comic resource is more usual than the intro-
duction of a joyous brogue or pedantic lingo in the mouth
of some appropriate character. What is peculiar to these
VOL. I.
F
66 III.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION.
Epistolae is, that this stage artifice is employed, not barely
to raise a laugh, but to expose the mental characteristics of
a numerous class in the actual society of the day; a class
which was principally remarkable for ignorance, stupidity,
and vulgar habits. Dulness and vulgarity are, indeed,
things in themselves offensive, and rather to be overlooked
than dragged into light. But at that juncture it was the
dull and the vulgar, whom the corrupt conservatism of the
Church of Rome maintained in the seats and honours of
the teacher. The writers of the Epistolae did not seek
them out as a subject for merriment, but had been them-
selves victims of their intolerance and stupidity. In
painting the Obscuri Viri of Cologne and Leipzig, they
were defending at once themselves and the cause of
education and literature in Europe.
Fraser's Magazine, 1859.]
IV.
THE STEPHENSES¹.
(Quarterly Review, April, 1865.)
ENRI ESTIENNE, on his death in 1598, found
H no one in the circle of his family or friends to
record his personal adventures, or to enumerate, in even
the barest memoir, his learned labours. Not till near
a century afterwards did the literary history of the six-
teenth century become the object of curiosity; and this
not in France itself. Catholic France, divided between
dreams of military glory without, and theological dispute
within, had no leisure for its own history. The taste
and temper of the age of Louis XIV were as alien from
those of France of the sixteenth century as if they had
belonged to two different peoples and countries. The
memory of its great Protestant worthies was left to be
cultivated by the refugees in England, Prussia, or the
Low Countries. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes
exiled not only the best living heads and hands of France,
but all the associations and traditions of the sixteenth
century with them.
The Stephenses (Fr. Estienne) found their first bio-
grapher in Theodore Jansson ab Almeloveen. The Latin
dissertation De Vitis Stephanorum of this laborious
Dutch compiler was published at Amsterdam in 1683.
Almeloveen had no traditional materials or family papers,
and worked merely from printed sources.
But it so
1 1. Caractères et Portraits Littéraires du XVIº. Siècle. Par M. LÉON
FEUGÈRE. Second Edition. 2 tomes. Paris, 1864.
2. Histoire du Livre en France. Par EDMOND WERDET. 3e partie, tome 1er
Les Estienne et leurs Devanciers depuis 1470. Paris, 1864.
F 2
68
THE STEPHENSES.
IV.
happens that in the case of Henri Estienne these printed
memoranda are more than usually abundant. During
threescore and two years of restless, nay, feverish activity,
Henri's press had never ceased to issue a stream of publi-
cations classical or fugitive, all superintended by himself,
many his own composition. Few of these want a Preface,
Dedication, Preliminary Epistle, or Monition of the pub-
lisher, in which the feelings of the hour, his own affairs,
his reasons for writing, or what had hindered him from
writing, are poured forth with a garrulous egotism which is
anything but eloquent or refined. But what these con-
fidences want in taste they offer in genuineness. And
being but occasional outbursts, they offer glimpses of
a personal history which they do not reveal. They
are the very material which at once attracts and baffles a
biographer.
After an interval of twenty-five years the same mine was
worked with more perseverance and on a more extensive
scale by Michel Maittaire, a French Protestant refugee,
naturalised in England, whose original name had been
Mettayer. But though Maittaire had himself suffered for
religion, he knew scarcely anything of the religious
antecedents of the Protestant Church. It is enough to
mention two facts:—(1) Maittaire brought out an edition
of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum as the serious
productions of their imputed authors; and (2) in his Lives
of the Stephenses he supposes Henri's books with 'the
olive' to have been printed at Paris,—a blunder almost in-
credible in a bibliographer, though Maittaire has been
followed in it by the compilers of the last-printed Bodleian
Catalogue.
Passing over Mr. Greswell's Parisian Greek Press,
which is only an abstract of Maittaire, we come to the first
work which the French dedicated to this truly national
subject. Renouard's Annales de l'Imprimerie des Estienne,
in its second and improved edition (Paris, 1843), if not
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
MAITTAIRE. FEUGÈRE.
69
exactly a model of bibliophilic accuracy, is yet, perhaps,
one of the best specimens of this kind of industry which
France has to show. But there was wanting a review of
the higher learning in France during the sixteenth century:
a field entirely forsaken by the French critics, who have
been so profuse in disserting upon the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
In 1854, the Académie Française conferred one of their
prizes on M. Feugère's 'Henri Estienne, Étude sur sa vie
et ses ouvrages,' which is now reprinted by M. Feugère in
the collected volumes of his Essays. As an Essay ‘cour-
onné par l'Académie,' it is necessarily a neat piece of com-
position. And this is all that can be said of it. M. Feugère
is indebted, almost wholly, to Renouard's Annales for his
facts. He omits many, tells the rest more diffusely, and in-
terweaves the ordinary reflections of a man of sense and
some reading, but of no special intimacy with the period.
We shall show below, in one signal instance, that he has not
even looked beyond the title-page of some books of which he
yet offers a detailed criticism. But M. Feugère's most de-
cisive disqualification for historiographer of the Estienne is
his imperfect knowledge of Greek. When M. Renouard
tells us that 'Jos. Scaliger ne voyoit pas sans dépit la supé-
riorité de Henri Étienne,' we smile at the sincerity with
which the estimable printer utters this absurdity. When
M. Feugère, however, in an essay which has received the
high sanction of the Académie Française, is equally unable
to discriminate between white and black in classical
philology, we are forcibly reminded of the absence of the
highest element of cultivation from the education of the
leading nation of Europe. If the French Academy regard
the production of a good French exercise as the object of
their annual competition, they are right in conferring the
crown on such essays as this of M. Feugère. As tending
to maintain historical criticism in France at its present
superficial level, it can but be matter of regret that the
70
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
Academy should sanction with its approbation so feeble and
secondhand a reproduction.
If the decision be a bad one, the subject of the thesis was
well chosen. A brief outline of the fortunes of the Press of
the Stephenses may serve to show what vital points of the
national life are involved in the subject proposed by the
Academy. 'In narrating the lives of the Estienne,'
says M. Feugère, 'biography rises to the elevation of
history.'
The family of the Estienne is found settled at Paris in
1502 in the person of Henri I of that name, the founder of
this dynasty of letters. He carried on the business of
a printer and bookseller with great success and credit for
twenty years. He published on his own account 118
different works, nearly all theological, liturgical, or scho-
lastic; hardly anything relating to the new studies, to
which the impulse was scarcely yet given in France.
Henri left his foreman Simon de Colines the guardian of his
children and his executor. Simon, whose surname does not
denote nobility, but only that his native place was the little
village of Colinée, in Brittany, married the widow 'afin de
s'éviter l'embarras d'une liquidation'¹. The peaceful and
prosperous diligence of these twenty years, in which the
foundations of the family renown were laid and its character
acquired, stand in strong contrast to the adventurous and
troubled lives of the son and the grandson, in which so
much glory was gained and so much misery endured.
Robert I, eldest son of Henri I, is found in possession
of the paternal establishment in 1526. It was in the
quarter of the University; in the street St. Jean de Beauvais.
The door was marked by the ensign which the father had
adopted, and which the son and grandson made famous-
an olive-tree, with spreading boughs. The same tree, with
the motto 'Noli altum sapere sed time' (Rom. XI. 20), was
1 Bulletin du Bouquiniste, No. 69.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
FAMILY.
71
taken by Robert for his printer's mark. Not only the
custom of the trade, but the law with its terrible penalties,
required every printer to affix his mark to every publication.
As late as 1650 the olive-tree was still over the door of the
same house, though now passed into different hands. So
at Bologna the Aldine anchor was still to be seen upon the
house of Antonio Manutio as late as the beginning of the
present century, when it was bought as a relic by an
Englishman. Robert I married a daughter of Josse Bade.
Bade, the friend of Erasmus, better known in literary
history as Badius Ascensius (i. e. of Asch, a village in
Flanders), was himself a learned printer, and his three
daughters married printers. Perrette-that was the name
of the daughter who fell to the share of Robert Estienne-
was a woman of sense, who had enjoyed that mascu-
line education which the Reformation introduced for
women, and which it was the first care of the Catholic
reaction to crush. Nothing more is known of Perrette
than the following casual notice, written by her son many
years after her death. Addressing his own son Paul in
1585, Henri says:—
And as I am on the topic of speaking Latin, I will add another
notable reminiscence of my father's family, by the which thou mayst
understand the facilities I enjoyed as a boy for acquiring that tongue.
There was a time when thy grandfather Robert entertained in his own
household ten men employed by him as correctors on his press, or in
other parts of his business. These ten persons were all of them men
of education; some of them of considerable learning; as they were
of different nations, so they were of different languages. This neces-
sitated them to employ Latin as the common medium of communica-
tion, not at table only, but about the house, so that the very maid-
servants came to understand what was said, and even to speak it a
little. As for your grandmother [Perrette,] except one made use of some
very unusual word, she understood what was said in Latin with the
same ease as if it had been French. As to myself and my brother
Robert, we were allowed at home to use no other language when-
ever we had to address my father, or one of his ten journeymen.—
Dedication to Aulus Gellius, 1585.
72
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
This is a glimpse, and the only one we can catch, of the
interior of Robert's household. Of the amount of his
professional labour, only a study of the bibliographical lists.
can convey an idea. From 1526 to 1559, when he died, a
space of thirty-three years, not a year elapses in which
he does not turn out several volumes, some of them
chefs-d'œuvre of art, all of them far surpassing anything
that had been before seen in France. Sometimes it is a
pocket Greek Testament in mignon letters, yet as clear as
the largest pica; sometimes a Bible in three massive folios,
with notes and various readings; sometimes an 'editio
princeps' of a Greek classic, or an entirely new Latin
Lexicon. With respect to most of these publications, it
must be remembered that the modest notice on the title,
'Parisiis, Robertus Stephanus,' conceals, instead of pro-
claims, the part that ought to be credited to himself. He
was at once printer, corrector, publisher, author. In-
deed, these functions were at that time neither separate
nor separable. Take, for example, his great Latin Dic-
tionary. In its origin this was nothing but a reprint of
Calepinus, the Ainsworth of schoolboys in the first half
of the sixteenth century. Calepin had long been com-
mon property, and in 1531 Robert designed a reprint of
it in the way of trade-school-books being then, as now,
one of the most lucrative employments of booksellers'
capital. In refitting it for press, however, Robert made so
many improvements and additions, that he felt himself
warranted in suppressing the name of brother Ambrogio of
Calepio, and substituting his own. Instead of publisher of
editor of an improved
a reprint of Calepinus, he became
and revised edition. In the final stage, the edition of 1543,
in 3 vols. folio, the Latinae Linguae Thesaurus has
become an entirely new work, of which Robert Stephens
has the full right to consider himself author. The merits of
this Thesaurus must not be judged by its present value in
the market—the best edition, that of Basle, 1740, has
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
LATIN LEXICON.
73
been bought in our time for ten shillings-but by the
fact that for more than two centuries it satisfied the de-
mands of learners, if not of scholars. Twenty years after
this edition (1759) Stephens's Latin Thesaurus became
Gesner's Thesaurus, by the same process by which
Robert Stephens had first occupied and then 'annexed'
Calepinus. Finally, Gesner's book in its turn became,
through a new transmigration and by the labours of
Forcellini (Padua, 1771), that comprehensive dictionary
which still holds its own against its more modern rivals,
under the title of Facciolati's Lexicon. It may be
observed that the stages of transition from publisher of
Calepin to author of a new Thesaurus are marked by
Robert himself. He calls the edition of 1543 in the title-
page 'ed. 2ª.' This led the accurate Hallam¹ to say,
that the Thesaurus was 'first published in 1535.' Really,
the edition of 1543 is only the full-grown form of the
original Dictionarium of 1531. It is true that Robert had
assistance in this huge labour of compilation, and it is
characteristic of him that he is scrupulous in acknow-
ledging how much he owes to this coadjutor, Thierry of
Beauvais. Of himself he modestly says, 'Ingenue fateor
nihil hic inesse de meo, praeter laborem et diligentiam.'
The Thesaurus would have been a good life's work for
most men. In the total of Robert Stephens's labours it was
but a single item. The whole number of publications,
great and small, which have been traced to his press is 527.
Many of these, certainly, are pamphlets, school-books,
or occasional verses of a few lines. On the other hand,
many are in massive folios, and more than one volume;
many, besides the Thesaurus, works of immense labour,
e. g. Greek texts, collated by himself. School-books largely
occupied the presses of every printer, and were too
profitable in their quick and certain sale to be neglected
by the most ambitious publisher. As showing the learned
1 Lit. of Europe, I. 306.
74
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
direction taken by education in France at that time, we may
give the following numbers of classical grammars printed
by Robert. These are three editions of Priscian; four-
teen of Donatus; ten of Colet, with Rabirius's additions;
about twenty of Despautière's various introductions;
thirteen of Pellisson; twelve of Melanchthon, and as many
of Linacre. These are Grammars from one press only.
Add all the other numerous elementary books, and those
of all the printers of Paris and Lyons, and we may form
some notion of what must have been the whole annual
consumption of Latin and Greek in the schools. At
what period, we may ask, did these classical schools
disappear from the soil of France? And to what is it
owing that a people, who seized upon Greek with so
much avidity in the second century of its importation
into the West, so entirely threw it up in the next
age?
Besides his school editions-Horaces and Virgils innu-
merable; of Terence he gave fourteen editions-Robert
Stephens brought out a few of the higher authors. These,
though brilliant in execution, are not many in number, at
least if compared with the fertility of the Aldine press. This
marks the fact that the enthusiasm for the new learning had
begun in France, but that a generation had not yet grown
up capable of absorbing whole editions of Greek authors
which were not used at school. Yet Robert gave eight
first editions of Greek books. These are:-1. Ecclesiastical
Histories of Eusebius and others; 2. Eusebius's Evangelic
Preparation; 3. Moschopoulos; 4. Dionysius of Halicar-
nassus; 5. Justin Martyr; 6. Dion Cassius; 7. Appian¹;
8. Alexander of Tralles. It was not till 1544, and therefore
at an advanced period of his printer's career, that Robert
turned his attention to Greek. Though a few unimportant
Greek books had previously appeared from other French
1 The Appian was completed by Charles Estienne, whose name appears on the
title-page.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
EDITIONS.
75
presses, the Paris Greek Press may be said to date its
commencement from the Eusebius of 1544. What is extra-
ordinary about this debut is, that as a typographical
achievement these volumes have never been surpassed
by any Greek which has appeared in France since.
To understand the direction given to the press in France
at this period, we must remember that two principal in-
fluences operated upon it simultaneously, but not in the
same way. These two influences were the demand of the
public, and the patronage of the Court. The patronage of
the sovereign was exerted, and successfully exerted, to
develop the material beauty and splendour of books. A
magnificent Greek type was cast at the cost of the royal
treasury. When a sumptuary law prohibited gilding in
houses and furniture, bookbinding was, by a special clause,
exempted from its operation. All that promoted that ex-
terior luxe which the French Librairie has always courted,
the expanse of margin, the thick-wove paper, and the
brilliant type that was the idea which the master of Rosso
and Cellini formed of his patronate of letters. His often-
quoted saying to Benvenuto Cellini, 'Je t'étoufferai dans
l'or,' expresses the materialist direction of the taste of
Francis I. And so in books: the magnificence of the
Revival has left its mark behind it in the Greek editions
which issued from the press of Robert Stephens, 'printer
to the King.' On the other hand, the spirit of curiosity
which had arisen among the public made far other demands
upon the press. It wanted to learn. It desired books,
not to place in a cabinet, but to read, in order to know.
First and foremost, to know the truth in the matter of
religion: next, to know the cause and remedies of the
evils, moral and material, by which the people felt them-
selves crushed; how to struggle with nature-to wrest
from her more comforts, more enjoyment. But the press
as the medium of knowledge-as an arena for debating
spiritual and social problems—was not the press which the
76
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
1
government of Francis I would encourage. This is the
explanation of the apparent inconsistency in the public acts
of that monarch, which has caused him to be represented
in such different lights. While Francis I is invoked by
some historians as the Father of Letters, the Maecenas
of the Arts, by others his memory is branded as that of a
bigot and persecutor, whose jealous despotism would not
tolerate the least dissent, the most gentle criticism, of the
acts of his ministers. The truth is, that Francis I was
both these at once. He was the munificent patron of art
and artists a patron also of letters and learned men.
This flattered that enormous appetite for personal glory
which possessed Francis I, like a true Frenchman. He
was also the author of a series of edicts, each rising above
its predecessor in the comprehensiveness of its clauses
and the rigour of its penalties, for restraining the freedom
of the press-the liberté d'imprimer. Emulous of the
credit which the Italian princes had acquired by their
patronage of Art, Francis I imitated the splendours of
Florence at Fontainebleau and in the Louvre. He would
have his own printer, a Typographus Regius, and his own
type, which should give editions that should eclipse any-
thing that had been done in Italy. But the propagation
of opinion, the formation of a body of knowledge, of an inde-
pendent court of judgment which might call before it State
and Church-this was subversive of all known principles
of government. A strong ruler such as Francis I would
annihilate the art of printing sooner than allow it to become
a vehicle of opinion. Hence the senseless ferocity of the
edict of 13th January, 1534, by which the Protector of
Letters forbids any printer from printing anything what-
ever without the royal licence, under pain of death. True,
the Parlement of Paris had the courage to refuse its
sanction to this blind decree. But the consequence of its
resistance was only that, as no law of the press existed, the
Government and its agents were enabled to deal as they
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
LITERATURE UNDER FRANCIS I.
77
liked with every unhappy publisher who incurred their
displeasure.
Had Robert Stephens's inclination led him to enrich
himself by school-books, or to ruin himself by magnificent
classics, he might have pursued either path in peace.
But though he prospered, lucre was never an object with
him, as his contemporaries unanimously testify. His zeal
for religious truth, as he believed it, was with him a
motive paramount to every other. There can be no doubt
that he had early imbibed in secret the new sentiments in
the matter of religion. We are not to suppose that he was
a concealed Lutheran. For a long time it was not clear
that the new opinions were to lead to a schism. It was a
sentiment diffused through society, a desire from within the
Church of a reform of doctrine and discipline. Robert
Stephens, while he neglected no precaution which pru-
dence dictated, devoted all the resources of his art to
further this movement. This he could best do by the
reproduction of the Scriptures in every variety of form.
His steady persistency in this path of self-sacrifice could
not be overcome by twenty-five years of persecution, and
he finally relinquished a thriving establishment and left
his home to begin the world again on a foreign soil, and in
declining years, sooner than forfeit the liberty of his press
in this respect.
The feeling with which the Catholic clergy view the
circulation of the Scriptures among the uneducated in their
mother-tongue at the present day is sufficiently understood
by Protestants. We have, therefore, no difficulty in con-
ceiving the vehement opposition with which the practice
was denounced by the Church in the sixteenth century.
Had Robert Stephens printed cheap French Bibles, his
persecution by the clergy would have required no explana-
tion. But as he confined himself to the Hebrew and
Greek originals, and to Latin versions, it is natural to ask,
Why was it that he became so obnoxious to the theologians
78
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
*
that they should have striven with all their might for many
years to crush him?
From the space which Theology occupied in the atten-
tion of the educated world, it might have been thought that
the Fathers, and especially the New Testament, would have
been among the first and most frequently repeated pro-
ducts of the new art. We find that this was not the case.
The Hebrew original of the Old Testament was brought
out in type both earlier and oftener than the Greek of the
New. But this was not for the service of Catholic, or even
of Christian, readers. It was for the account of the Jews
a numerous, wealthy, and educated body in all parts of
Europe, who constituted by themselves a body of readers
and purchasers. Similarly the clergy and the religious
houses created a demand for the Latin Vulgate, copies of
which were accordingly multiplied by the press without stint,
But the Humanists and the party of progress, who were
the patrons of Greek books, showed, at first, no interest in
the Greek Testament. They sought out most diligently
poets, orators, historians, and even philosophers, but made
no inquiry after MSS. of the Greek Testament. The whole
Greek Bible, not the LXX Version of the Old Testament
only, but the original text of the New Testament, was
regarded as the Bible of the schismatical Eastern Church.
The Bible of the Jews was in Hebrew, of the Greeks in
Greek; the Latin Bible was the Scripture of the orthodox
Catholic Church. The Vulgate, having for its author St.
Jerome, and for its sanction the usage of the Catholic Church,
was clothed with a majesty and authority which could not
be transferred to the Greek Text, till now unheard of in
the West. The difference, however, between an original
and a translation, was an idea which, when once presented
to the world, required only time to establish itself. At
first the Greek took its place by the side of the Latin. In
the Complutensian Polyglot the Vulgate is placed
between the Hebrew on one side, and the LXX Version
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOT. BIBLE OF 1545. 79
on the other. This the orthodox editors, apologising for
its introduction at all, compare to the crucifixion of Christ
between two thieves. At length Erasmus, in whom the
Humanist and Reformer were pretty equally mixed,
perceived what a powerful weapon the Greek original
might be made. Erasmus's Greek Testament, the 'editio
princeps,' appeared in 1516, and before his death, in 1536, it
had gone through seven editions. The only other edition of
the Greek Testament at that date was that contained in the
'Polyglot' printed at Alcala in Spain. As this was only
one tome of a voluminous Bible, and as the whole impres-
sion was limited to six hundred copies, this edition could
never be anything more than a curiosity in the libraries of
rich religious houses. The Complutensian Polyglot had
been the scheme of a Spanish prelate. Erasmus had got
the sanction of a Pope for his work. But the prelate was
Ximenes, a man of genius, and the Pope was Leo X.
Twenty years made a great difference. The Catholic
reaction began to set in, not only against Luther, but
against learning. The party of orthodoxy took their stand
upon the Vulgate translation. The Catholic world refused
to open its ears to the truth that a translation is a trans-
lation, and must needs be controlled by the original. They
were jealous of new translations, jealous of corrections of
the text of the Vulgate, jealous of the production of the
Greek original. Where they had the power, as in Italy, they
prevented by force these things being done. Where, as in
France, they had not yet the power, they endeavoured by
outcry and intrigue to enlist power on their side.
We cannot detail all the persecution of the Bible of
1545, or narrate that second crusade which was raised
against the Greek Testament of 1549, or those which each
successive edition called forth;-all of them fragments of
the larger history of Learning in France, during the period
of its fatal struggle with the University of Paris, the strong-
hold of scholasticism, and of the old method of education.
80
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
1.
To the private fortunes of Robert Stephens the perse-
cution proved disastrous. The issue of all his suits was
favourable to him; they always ended in his obtaining
licence to sell his Bibles and Testaments. But the
long-protracted delays destroyed his profits on them,
and the costs of attendance at Court must have eaten up
what other more harmless publications brought in. An
indemnity of 1500 crowns, which was awarded him, Robert
refused to accept; and, indeed, the Crown had not
power to enforce payment by the University. He essayed
one more effort, the supreme and matchless effort of his
art. This was the folio Greek Testament of 1550, in point
of beauty of execution still the most perfect edition which
the press has ever issued. It appeared in a different light
to the Sorbonne. The book had neither notes nor sum-
maries, and, beyond the bare text, nothing but the usual
patristic introduction to each book, parallel passages, and
for the first time the various readings of fifteen MSS.
in the margin. This was the signal for renewed persecu-
tion. He now made up his mind to provide for the safety
of his fortune, and it may be his life, by removal.
By the beginning of 1551 he was at Geneva, and had a
press at work. It was a retirement, not a flight. Yet
retirement had to be compassed with secrecy and caution.
He had begun, some time before, by sending off his eight
children-not to Geneva, but to various places-under
pretext of placing them at school, or in business. The
more transportable part of his machinery and stock was
quietly removed to Geneva; and he took his own depar-
ture from Paris, as if to attend the Lyons fair. He was no
sooner settled at Geneva, than he made open profession of
the reformed religion. The property remaining in Paris
was immediately placed, as he must have foreseen, in
sequestration, in conformity with the edict of Château-
briand. The same interest at Court, which had hitherto
protected Robert, was now successfully exerted in favour
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
GENEVA.
81
of his children. His brother Charles, a physician, obtained
the removal of the sequestration in favour of his nephews,
who, by a merciful fiction, were represented as minors, and
therefore as having committed the double offence of emi-
gration and apostacy under constraint, ‘par pure innocence,
obéissance, et crainte filiale.' The deed of discharge
represents the eldest, Henri, as only twenty, whereas he
was in fact twenty-four; and Robert, the second son, as
only eighteen, though he was really twenty-one. As
young Robert very shortly forsook his father and the re-
formed faith, returning to Paris and to the Catholic Church,
this gave a plausible colour to these representations.
From this time forward there were two Stephanian presses,
one in Paris in the old house
Beauvais, the other at Geneva.
not even rivalry between them.
friendly association of the two
as 1554.
in the Rue St. Jean de
There was no hostility,
There is evidence of the
establishments as early
Robert Estienne had withdrawn from Paris with the
view of being more free in the exercise of his art. 'If I
must print nothing but under censure of the Sorbonne,' he
says, 'I must have abandoned letters, and confined myself
to the Summa of Mandreston, the Logic of Enzinas, the
Morals of Angest, the Physics of Major.' But once in
Geneva he found it necessary to abandon letters for other
reasons. Greek was not heretical, but it was not en-
couraged. It was necessary here to consult the immediate
public, and the call of the public was for theological books.
Accordingly, Calvin's Catechism and Institutes were
among his earliest issues. The reformed congregations
did not want learned books, and, as they were miserably
poor, they did not want handsome books. He aired his
famous Greek types in the Greek Testament of 1551, but
though the types are the same, the paper and ink betray
their Swiss origin, and the volume is evidently adapted to
a cheaper market. This edition, however, notwithstanding
VOL. I.
G
82
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
its interior appearance, deserves notice as being the first
in which the division of verses now in universal use was
introduced.
Of the two-fold division of our Bibles, that into chapters
had a different origin and a different object from that into
verses. The former arose in the liturgical use of the
Scriptures in the Synagogue and in the Church, and long
preceded the invention of printing. The latter that into
verses—was an arrangement for convenience of reference,
and its application to the New Testament was posterior
to printed Bibles. In early-printed classical books, the
folio page is not unfrequently marked down the margin by
the first letters of the alphabet, at equal intervals. Even
yet, references to Plato are usually made in this form; e. g.
De Rep. 610. d., the figures indicating the pages of Henry
Stephens's edition of 1578. The same system was applied
to the Latin Bible for the first time in an edition of 1479.
It is attributed-on doubtful authority-to Meinhard, a
German monk. In 1491, Froben, the Basle printer, ex-
tended it to both Testaments. The wide circulation of
Froben's books gave it general currency, and for half a
century all Bibles followed his model, not only in the
Vulgate, but also in translations. The necessity of a
smaller subdivision, for exactitude of citation, was more and
more felt. The transition, a very simple one, from long to
shortened sections, numbered in figures instead of noted
by letters, was first made by Robert Stephens in his Greek
Testament of 1551, and extended to the Old Testament in
his Latin Bible of 1556-7. From that time forward all the
Protestant printers adopted his division, and since the
recension of the Vulgate under Clement VIII, in 1592, the
numbered verses of Stephens have established themselves
in the Roman Bibles. We have the fact, on the authority
of his son, that this operation was the occupation of a
tedious journey on horseback from Paris to Lyons. It is
not stated what journey. But from the first appearance of
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
TEXT OF THE BIBLE.
83
the verses being in 1551, we may with great probability con-
jecture that it was during that last journey when Robert
was quitting France for ever. The term 'verse,' which has
passed into almost every modern language, was not intro-
duced by Robert, who preferred to call them ' sectiunculae,'
small sections, being the Latin equivalent of the Greek
τμήματα.
The Testament of 1550 is an object of our interest on
another account, besides its typographical luxe. For this
reason we may revert to it for a moment. We have already
seen at how late a period of the classical revival it was
that the Greek Testament first received the attention of
scholars. The task of forming a correct text was scarcely
entered upon before it was relinquished. Erasmus's text
(1516) was the first. That of Robert Stephens's fourth edition
(1550) remained with a few unimportant variations the sole
and exclusive text in possession of all the printing-presses
of Europe down to 1831. The causes of this singular
exemption, which has deprived the text of the Sacred
Canon of those advantages which every other classical
writing has been free to enjoy, must be sought in the inner
history of theological opinion in modern Europe. The
Elzevir Testament of 1633 already styled Stephens's text,
'the received text'; 'textum habes nunc ab omnibus
receptum.' This technical term of criticism-'textus re-
ceptus'-is now applied to a text which really fluctuates
between the Elzevirian text of 1633 and the Stephanic text
of 1550. But as the variations are neither many nor
important, it is substantially true that our Greek Testament
is what Robert Stephens made it. And as the authorised
English Version was made from the same text, the New
Testament, as we in England read it, alike in our churches
as in our chapels, is what the edition of 1550 left it.
Had Robert Stephens formed his text according to the
best principles of criticism of his age, his work must still
have been to do over again now. But he was very far
G 2
84
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
from achieving even this. His proceeding was simply to
reprint Erasmus's fifth edition (1535), introducing into the
text such readings of the Complutensian editors as he
thought good for the context. The remaining most im-
portant varieties of the Spanish Bible, and of fifteen MSS.
which were collated by his son Henri, he placed in the
margin. Destitute as Stephens necessarily was of any
true standard of critical value, to follow Erasmus was
perhaps the best course he could have adopted. The
collations he has given have no value for us, partly as we
cannot identify all the MSS. he used, partly as those which
we can identify are not cited so that we can rely upon them.
Neither had they any value for his own age and country.
From a critical point of view it is impossible to deny Mr.
Tregelles's assertion that they seem rather an ornamental
appendage to the page, than to be there for any purpose.
Nor need we wonder that Stephens in the sixteenth
century did not know how to use his collations, when we
see the misconceptions which are circulated in our own
time as to the nature of various readings. Mr. Bagster,
e. g. advertises a New Testament 'with copious various
readings from the principal authorities!' and it has been
thought worth while at Cambridge, though not by the
University, to reproduce the Stephanian text of 1550,
which has gone through two editions. But though
Stephens's garnished margin may be to the critic a vain
display of printer's erudition, it was not without its in-
fluence on the progress of Biblical knowledge. There
stood the collations, a silent memorial to the scholar or the
theologian, as he turned over the pages of his Testament,
that the text of the sacred volume was still to make, and
thus they may have been the seed from which Mill's great
enterprise sprang. They were themselves no step in the
right direction, but they intimated the direction in which a
step had to be made. If a pedantic affectation of erudition
had inspired Robert Stephens to adorn his page with
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
NEW TESTAMENT.
TYPOGRAPHY.
85
cabalistic signs, he paid for a piece of ostentation the heavy
penalty of exile. He died at Geneva in. 1559, adding
another to the long list of illustrious and useful citizens
whom France, ungrateful as Athens, fanatical as Jerusalem,
has offered as victims to Catholic bigotry.
The life of the printer, a life practical, industrious, real,
if ever life was, has however collected its legend in passing
down the current of biography. Nay, as in the case of
other saints, the legend is more widely known than the
facts. Such is the fiction, that he hung out his proofs at
his street-door, offering a reward to any passer-by who
could detect an error of the press. This apocryphal
anecdote has even found its way into history. It may
be found in other Histories of France besides that of
Michelet¹, who is but too careless as to his authorities.
Such, again, is that honorific legend, belonging to the same
class as Titian's brush, which represents Francis I as
coming to pay Robert Stephens a visit in his printing-office,
and being told to wait till the printer had finished a sheet
he was busy correcting. This latter anecdote cannot be
traced higher than Daniel Heinsius, more than fifty years
after Robert's death. Incorporated in all the Lives, it is
now consecrated by art, forming the subject of one of
the vignettes which illustrate Didot's edition of Stephens's
Thesaurus.
No topic has been the object of more industrious re-
search than the Annals of Typography. English and
German, French and Dutch, antiquaries have vied with
each other in their devotion to clear up the obscurity which
hangs over the cradle and youth of the Art of Printing.
A mere catalogue of the books which have been written
on the subject forms a volume of itself. But a history of
Greek typography is still a desideratum. Of such a memoir,
the history of Francis I's types would form the most
1 VII. 208.
86
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
considerable chapter. The general reader may, perhaps,
be satisfied with the following very brief outline of the
subject.
The earliest printed books differ in nothing from the
MSS. of the same date, except in the fact that in the latter
the letters are formed with a pen; in the former they are
impressed from a stamp. The outline of the letter em-
ployed by the first generation of printers is therefore a fac-
simile of those employed by the contemporary generation
of scribes. Just so, the earliest wood-engraving closely
copies the style of illumination which was then fashionable.
The printer took up and continued the business of the
transcriber. The press in each country-Holland or Ger-
many-reproduced exactly the script-hand of each country,
Holland or Germany. A striking instance is afforded by
the earliest Italian press. The Lactantius of 1465, the
first (or second) book printed in Italy, was printed by two
of Fust's German workmen. Accordingly its types, though
distinctly not German, exhibit more or less the German or
Gothic forms. Within a very few years, however, the
correct and classic eye of the Italian discarded the bar-
barous flourishes of the Gothic letter. As early as 1470
Jenson engraved at Venice a letter which, with trifling
modifications, is that to this day in general use by the
printing-presses of Western Europe, and known as Roman.
It has been said, and often repeated, that this Roman
letter was an eclectic letter, invented by the Venetian
designers, after a comparison of many alphabets. We are
satisfied that this is an error. The Roman type of Jenson
was simply an engraved copy of the Italian script-hand of
the period. It was not in the power of the early printer to
introduce a new letter. The printer was a competitor in
the market with the transcriber. He was under a necessity
of producing the same article as the rival whom he was
seeking to undersell. The commission he gave his en-
graver was therefore to furnish him with a type closely
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTING.
87
conformed to the hand in established use by the copyist.
Otherwise the public could not have read his books with
sufficient ease.
The Italian transcriber of the fifteenth
century has thus had the unexpected honour of fixing the
letter-forms of France, Spain, Holland, England, and
through them of a large part of the world.
Turning from the Roman to the Greek letter, we find the
same law in operation under the different conditions of a
different language. Greek came to the West as a foreign
tongue, written in a foreign character. That character was
not, for it could not be, modified by the local forms of the
country which received it. The emigrant Greeks brought
with them to Florence or Milan the hand of their own
country. In transcribing a classic for an Italian patron in
Italy they used the same character they had been em-
ploying in Constantinople or Crete. Of Greek scribes
there were two kinds, the tachygraph (raɣvypápos), and the
calligraph (kaλλtуpápos). The English reader, who may
look for these two words in his Liddell and Scott, will
find that the distinction is not clearly recognized. The
Taɣvypáþoɩ (like the Latin 'Notarii') were the ordinary
scribes, whether they wrote slow or fast. The transcriber
of books, whether he wrote well or ill, was called кaλλɩyρápos,
and is familiar to us in the West as the 'scriptor librarius'
of Horace (Ars Poet. 354). We should have hardly thought
the meaning of these terms worth illustration, but that we
observe that a recent and able English editor of Plato has
fallen into error about them ¹. The transcribers formed a
distinct and numerous profession. The Greek literati who
escaped from the falling East found no better means of
procuring a livelihood in the West than by taking to the
business of transcriber, a trade which some of them had
already followed at home. Besides the fugitives, other
Greeks were attracted to Italy by the better market
which the rising taste for Greek classics opened to them
¹ Plato, Theaetetus, Oxford edition, 1861, preface, p. vii.
88
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
in the West. Our manuscript collections are still filled
with the products of Greek penmanship of the fifteenth
century.
The press did not attempt to compete with the Greek
penman till 1488, the year which brought forth the
Florentine Homer. As the engravers had turned out a
small quantity of Greek type as early as 1465—the citations
in the Subiaco Lactantius-the delay may be probably
attributed to the difficulty of producing a Greek letter
which should satisfy the eye of connoisseurs trained to the
graceful variety which rival calligraphs knew how to impart
to their letter. And this is undoubtedly the explanation of
another fact, viz. that the trade of the copyist of Greek
MSS., instead of sinking at once before the printer, held
its ground for nearly a century. Some of the most elegant
Greek books we possess in MS. were executed as late as
the middle of the sixteenth century. The truth was that
the engraver could not compete with the Eastern calligraph
in that beauty of form which the amateur of Greek books
had been taught to exact. The wide public demand for
Latin books made cheapness of production the first
condition. Here, consequently, the printer distanced the
copyist. The Greek market was a much more restricted
one. In it the public were supplied with cheap Greek
books by the Aldine and other presses. But for copies de
luxe, such as kings and collectors loved,-'chartae regiae,
novi libri,'-copyist and miniator still continued in request.
Aldus never learned-indeed he did not attempt-com-
petition here. Uniformity, regularity, evenness of line,
were from the first the aim of the printer. Variation of
curve, diversified combination of letters, infinite flexibility
within a constant type, so as to please without puzzling the
eye, remained to the last the arts of the calligraph.
Angelo Vergecio was the last of the professional
calligraphs. The Press, which was yearly perfecting itself
as a mechanical art, made, under the superintendence of
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
PRINTING OF GREEK.
89
Robert Estienne, an attempt to reproduce the graces of
the pen. Vergecio designed, and Garamond, the first
French engraver of the day, executed, the sets in various
sizes known ever afterwards as the 'Royal Greeks.' With
these types were produced the Greek books of Robert I,
of his son Henri II, and of other of the Estienne,
beginning with the Eusebius of 1544. They were liberally
communicated to other publishers, and were used not only
at Paris by Morel and Turnebus, but also at Heidelberg
and Basle. Even those printers who did not obtain founts
directly from these famous moulds, gradually conformed
the design of their letters to their model. It requires a
very experienced eye to pronounce if a book has been
printed with these types, or with a new type designed from
them. Thus Vergecio and Robert Stephens had the
honour of fixing the forms which the Greek Press all
over Europe followed for more than two centuries. It is
only within the last hundred years that, as beauty has
gradually given place to mechanical perfection, a new type
has been introduced into our Greek presses, which is as
remote from the Hellenic form of letter as our barbarous
enunciation is from the true sound of the language.
Robert Estienne left his Genevan establishment to his
eldest son Henri. Henri II (Henricus Stephanus Secun-
dus) was the eldest of nine children whom Robert had by
his first wife Perrette Bade. At the time of his father's
expatriation he was twenty-two. For, though the point is
not quite free from doubt, we incline with MM. Renouard
and Haag¹ to date Henri's birth in 1528, rather than in 1532,
for which M. Magnin, who is followed by M. Feugère, con-
tends. Henri had begun his education by finding Latin his
mother-tongue. His school-days had fallen in the first
intoxication of the Humanistic studies in France, when all
the world seemed engaged in learning or in teaching Greek.
1 La France Protestante, tome V, p. 15.
90
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
While quite a child he had acted the Medea of Euripides
in the original. The rhythm seized upon his imagination,
and he was caught more than once declaiming his part in his
sleep. He thus exemplified the system he afterwards ¹
strongly urged, viz. that in learning a dead language prac-
tice should precede grammar. La Gaucherie is said to have
followed this method with his pupil Henry IV of France.
At eleven our Henri began to attend the lessons of the
Professors Royal and others at the Collège de France,-
Danès, Toussain, Turnebus,-Greek scholars of a stamp
such as have never taught in Paris from that time to this.
Danès, the pupil of Budaeus and the master of Dorat,
pleased with the zeal and progress of the young Henri,
even gave him private assistance. This was a special privi-
lege, and Henri Estienne was proud in after years to
boast that he had enjoyed it. Great men repeatedly solicited
the same favour for their children; but Danès (Danaeus)
said that the son of so intimate and dear a friend as Robert
Estienne was an exception to his rule, and should be the
only one. At seventeen he was initiated into the work of
his life, having assisted in correcting the Dionysius of
Halicarnassus which Robert brought out in 1547, an ED.
PRINCEPS, and a splendid volume. From that moment he
devoted himself as a labour of love, not of profit, to the re-
production of the works of the ancients,-a task to which
he remained constant to the last, a period of fifty years.
Dionysius finished, Henri immediately (spring of 1547)
left home on a lengthened tour. He was absent more than
two years, but his journey had business, not pleasure, for
its object. Ancient learning was but a foreign importation,
not yet naturalised in France, and Italy had not yet ceased
to be its home. Greek books, Greek presses, Greek
scholars, he who wanted to see these could see them still
in perfection only in Italy. The Church, it is true, was
already awakened from her torpor and was fast on the way
¹ Dialogus de Graecae Linguae Studiis, 1587.
1
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
HENRI: HIS EARLY TRAVELS.
91
to crush learning, but the process was not accomplished
yet. Henri made the scholar's pilgrimage-Genoa, Rome,
Naples, Florence, Padua. His father's fame and con-
nection opened to him the friendship and literary aid of all
the Italian humanists, Sigonius, Victorius, Castelvetro,
Annibal Caro. At Venice he spent several months. He
seems to have been regularly employed in the office of
Paulus Manutius. In 1549 he returned to Paris with the
MSS. and collations which he had amassed in every
library. He assisted at the birth of the small Greek
Testament of 1549, and left home for another tour. This
time he turned his steps to the north, and visited Flanders,
Brabant, and England. In England it was known from
Poggio's report in 1418 that no inedited new Classics
were to be hoped for. But there were to be found there
not a few men enthusiastic for the new learning, and
especially ardent in the pursuit of that which represented
it-Greek. Cambridge was the home of these men, and
Cheke, now become this very year, 1549, Provost of
King's, the centre round which they moved. We have no
record of Henri's having visited Cambridge, and only know
that he was presented to the King, Edward VI. He
returned by Flanders and Brabant. Greek was read both
at Louvain and Cologne; but Ascham, who heard lectures
at both these places in 1550, reports to Cheke that they
were not equal to those of Car, the Regius Professor at
Cambridge. Henri got, however, books at Louvain,-a
Greek Anthology and Anacreon, both till then unknown.
He spent some months in the country, long enough to
acquire Spanish, and returned home to find his father on
the point of taking his final leave of Paris.
Having settled his father in Geneva, Henri set out on a
second journey to Italy, searched more libraries, and
collected more MSS. His principal find, this time, was
ten new books of Diodorus. It was on this journey that
he rendered an especial service to the French ambassador
92
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
at Venice. In the performance of his commission, what-
ever it was—it appears to have been of a delicate and
dangerous nature he had nearly got into trouble at
Naples, but extricated himself by the readiness with which
he spoke the Neapolitan patois. In 1555 we find him back
at Geneva and marrying.
In 1559 Robert Estienne died. By his will his Genevan
establishment passed to his son Henri. Two conditions
were annexed to the bequest. The presses were not to be
removed from Geneva; Henri was not to relapse to
Catholicism. In either of these cases the property was to
be forfeited to some charitable institution. The establish-
ment at Paris, which Robert had lost under the edict of
Châteaubriand, had already passed to the younger sons,
Robert and Charles, who had returned to the Catholic
Church.
Henri was thus fixed, whether he wished it or not, at
Geneva. For operations on the scale which he contem-
plated in imagination Geneva was, in some respects,
not unfavourably circumstanced. It was the capital of
Protestantism, so that the words 'Coloniae Allobrogum'
on a title-page were in themselves a recommendation of a
book to the whole Calvinistic world from Aberdeen to
Montpellier. Supported by the sympathies of a religious
party, it enjoyed at the same time the benefit of political
neutrality. The Estienne were able to obtain for their
books copyright protection on the one side from the King
of France for France; on the other from the Emperor for
the Empire. On the other hand, the disadvantages of the
locality for a learned press were not a few. It was too
distant from its market. For France, the long land-
carriage gave the publishers of Lyons and Paris a consider-
able advantage in competition with Geneva. But the
French demand for learned books was now diminishing
every year, as the violence of the Catholic reaction more
and more developed itself in that country. The German
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
GENEVA. THE CENSORSHIP.
93
demand, on the contrary, was on the rise, with a vast
future before it. But on this side Basle and Heidelberg
outflanked him with greater capital, and a phalanx of
scholars in their correcting-rooms against Estienne's single
arm.
Once we hear of the whole consignment to the
Frankfort Fair-then the bookseller's emporium, as Leipzig
now-being swamped on its way near Soleure. To its
natural remoteness, which it could not help, the little
republic added gratuitous impediment to a printer's trade
by its censorship. But this is a point on which a word of
explanation is necessary.
It is constantly repeated by the biographers that the
Estienne, in flying from Paris to Geneva, only exchanged
one set of persecutors for another-the Sorbonne for the
Consistory. The truth of this assertion is seeming, rather
than real. In Paris the danger arose from the savage
edict of Châteaubriand, denouncing confiscation and death
to any printer of heretical writings. The flight was a
flight for life, purchased by the sacrifice of half Robert's
hardly-earned fortune. In Geneva the Consistory was
meddlesome and inquisitorial, but not bloodthirsty. The
principle of surveillance over the Press adopted by the
authorities at Geneva was common to all Governments at
the time; their humane and lenient enforcement of it
peculiar to themselves. Henri was repeatedly being cited
before the Council, reprimanded, ordered to print cancels,
excommunicated. Once he was sentenced to a fine; but
the fine was only twenty-five crowns, which on his petition
were reduced to ten, and three weeks allowed for payment.
The interference was vexatious, but not ruinous. Further,
it does not appear that in any one instance the censures
on Henri had mere theological orthodoxy for their object.
He is generally cited for non-compliance with the regula-
tion prohibiting a printer from printing anything which
has not first been submitted to the Consistory, and received
their imprimatur. This was a police regulation, not
94
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
peculiar to Geneva. The reformed Synods had borrowed
it from the Catholics, only substituting the Consistory for
the Faculty, the Chancellerie, the Parliament, or some
civil authority. If Henri Estienne disregarded this
regulation, it was in a spirit of bravado and contempt for
the lenity or the weakness of the little State,—a contempt
which he was at no pains to disguise when brought up for
hearing. On one of these occasions (in 1580) the Register
has recorded the insolence with which the great printer,
who could boast the patronage and protection of Henri
III, braved the petty officials who dared to hamper the
operations of a press on which the eyes of Europe were
fixed. He showed himself, says the record, 'du tout enflé
et présomtueux,' telling the pastors that it was plain that
to please them a man must be a bit of a hypocrite. No
magistracy could pass such an insult unnoticed, and the
offender was committed for contempt. But the mediation
of the French ambassador was graciously accepted, and
Estienne was enlarged after a short confinement. On two
other occasions on which Henri was subject to the
indignity of a summons before the Consistory, the offence
was one against public morals. The Traité préparatif à
l'Apologie pour Herodote, a rambling farrago, poured out
by him in 1566 during the printing of his Herodotus, was
the first of these. This book is probably the best specimen
we have of the loose table-talk of the day, collected by a
man who spent much of his time upon the road. It was
the most popular of all Henri's books, passing through
thirteen editions in his lifetime. Much of the seasoning
of its anecdote was of that gross cast which might have
passed unchallenged in Paris, but which was particularly
odious to the discipline established at Geneva. Henri
knew perfectly well that this was so. In issuing the
book he was defying authority on the very point on which
it was most susceptible. He brought disgrace on the
city, it was said; he was known everywhere as the
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
GENEVA. ROAMING LIFE.
95
Pantagruel of Geneva. Calvin's abhorrence of Rabelais
is well known.
Persecution, then, Estienne had not to suffer at the
hands of his adopted country. If he had to endure much
vexatious interference, it was the ordinary treatment of
commerce by power, and greatly aggravated by his own
lawless and contumacious demeanour. In our own coun-
try's history we are sufficiently familiar with the meddle-
some and inquisitorial spirit of a Calvinistic presbytery,
when it undertakes to regulate morals. We have, therefore,
no difficulty in understanding how irritating these per-
petual checks were to an ill-regulated temper like that of
Henri Estienne; how he chafed against the clause in his
father's will which chained his press to Geneva; how
readily he seized any excuse for escaping to Paris. In this
way it was that he contracted in the latter part of his life.
those habits of roaming about Europe, purposeless and
reckless, of which his family and friends made such heavy
complaints. We have in Henri Estienne two characters
to combine into one picture; characters which have
appeared utterly irreconcilable to the biographers who
have not noticed that they belong to two separate parts of
his life. We have Henry Stephens, the compiler of the
Greek Thesaurus, the corrector and editor of seventy-four
Greek editions, fifty-eight Latin, three Hebrew, and writer
of some thirty original pieces (Latin translations not
included); and we have another Henry Stephens, as he
appears in Casaubon's letters, never at home, wandering
about Europe, no one knew whither, leaving his books
locked up, his presses deserted, and his business ruined.
The man who achieved so vast an amount of work
could not have been always the vagrant which he is
ordinarily represented. We would draw the line between
the two contrasted portions of his life about the year 1578,
when he first took himself off to Paris upon a squabble
with the Council. In the thirty years of his career which
A
96
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
preceded this fatal break his journeys were frequent, but
they were journeys of business. Even his two first tours
to Italy and England were a portion of his apprenticeship,
and had his profession for their object. His journey to
Vienna, in 1574, the only other distant journey undertaken
during this first period, was entirely a journey of business,
and very unwelcome to him. It is not till after 1578 that
his absences become prolonged, irregular, and mischievous
to the interests of his press. It is to the last twenty years
of his life that the regrets or reproaches of his friends are
alone applicable. But by 1579 he had already done thirty
years of labour, labour which might well have filled the
lives of three ordinary workers. A mere enumeration of
the publications which issued from his press conveys no
measure of the amount of this work. He was not a
publisher in our sense, but himself supplied the greater
part of the material for his own press. If he printed a Greek
author, he corrected the text himself; edited it himself;
revised when he did not make the Latin version, and often
added notes and appendices. His series of editions was
accompanied by a by-play of brochures, grammatical or
critical, written in the intervals of press-labour. The year
1566 is pointed to by M. Renouard as the most prolific in
Henri's career. M. Renouard, himself a practical printer,
knew what a compositor's room could do. In the two
years, 1566-7 taken together, Estienne put out,-1. A
Greek Anthology, in seven books; 550 small folio pages
of Greek type. 2. A Corpus of sixteen Greek poets who
wrote in heroic hexameters; 1300 pages of Greek, in large
folio. 3. A second edition of his Pindar, with revised Latin
translation, 570 pages of small 16mo. 4. Herodotus, with
Valla's translation, revised by H.S.; 750 folio pages. 5. A
new edition of the Greek Testament, with the Vulgate, and
Beza's version in parallel columns. 6. The medical writers,
Hippocrates and Galen excepted, in Latin versions;
3500 folio pages. 7. The works of the Greek Sophists;
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
EXCESSIVE LABOUR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 97
88 4to. pages. 8. Eight selected tragedies of Sophocles,
Aeschylus, and Euripides. 9. A Sophocles, though it does
not appear in M. Renouard's list, and we have never seen
it¹. In all these he not only corrected the press, but
corrected the text: the reader will please to observe the
distinction between these two functions. His textual
labours may not have a high critical value; but the
attention demanded by this revision of some 4000 pages
of Greek text is a drain upon the energies to which few
men are equal. Yet during this very time he was writing
his Apology for Herodotus, a volume of 600 closely
printed pages; not, indeed, a laboured production, but
certainly original, and full of matter. Little wonder
that such intemperate excesses of work should leave
him from time to time in a state of mental and physical
exhaustion. These fits of melancholy, which he called
his 'complaint,' and of which he has left a particular
description, were in fact nothing but the depression con-
sequent upon over-strain of mind, a disease familiar to our
times of over-refinement, though deemed strange then.
Estienne complains that he could find no account of such a
malady in the books of medicine. The nervous organization
from which he exacted so much must have been naturally
delicate; for he was subject besides to neuralgia in one
side of the head: 'hemicranium' was the term for it then,
from which is derived the French 'migraine'; English
'megrims.' Body and mind seemed on these occasions
paralyzed. He could think of nothing; least of all of his
ordinary occupations; could not bear to enter his library,
or to see the backs of his books. The crisis generally came
in about a fortnight. He often brought himself back to his
habits through the medium of some light employment, such
as designing a Greek alphabet for initial capitals.
Such prodigious efforts of feverish activity, checked by
1 See Appendix to Anth. Graec. The Stephanus Sophocles has the date 1568
on the title-page.
VOL. I.
H
98
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
pauses of entire prostration, drew on by the remedial
instincts of nature a craving for change of place and scene.
His restless spirit fretted against the walls of its narrow
prison. Goaded into petulance by the indiscreet surveil
lance of pious ministers, who cared nothing for Greek
books, he found solace or forgetfulness in constant motion.
Travelling, undertaken at first from curiosity and the love
of books, grew into a habit, and at last into a necessity of
life. The mere locomotion suited and soothed the cerebral
irritability. The author of Marmion has told us of the
exciting gallops which accompanied the composition of
that poem. And Montaigne has recorded that he wrote
best when walking about, and that his ideas seemed to
stagnate when he sat down. Estienne grew into spending
more and more of his time on horseback, exchanging it for
the tow-barge in his frequent visits to Frankfort. These
long days on the road or the river he beguiled by versifi-
cation,—' stephanizing' Melissus called it. To this habit
we owe the quantity of Latin verse-hexameter, elegiac,
hendecasyllabic, the metre various, but the matter always
vapid and pointless-which is scattered everywhere over
his own and his friends' books. Of one Greek epigram he
had made 300 different Latin versions; and his friend Paul
Biene (Melissus)¹, whose own verses fill a volume of
900
pages, wrote him a complimentary poem on the feat. He
draws a picture of himself perched up on his travelling-
saddle, tablets and pencil in one hand, and bridle in the
other; the bridle dropt altogether from time to time while
he jots down what 'his Muse just dictated to him.' Having
taste in horse-flesh, he preferred his own animal to post-
hacks, even where these were to be had, which was not
everywhere before Sully's reform of the posting system.
The conflicting claims of his 'Muse' and a fiery Turk
which he had bought at the Frankfort fair had once liked
to have proved fatal to him. The horse ran away with
¹ Schede is usually said to be his real name.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
LIFE ON HORSEBACK.
99
him; a turnpike-bar which he encountered in full career
was smashed, but horse and rider miraculously escaped
unhurt. Perhaps we have to thank the road for a good
deal more than we often think of the ocean of mediocre
Latin verse which the sixteenth century bequeathed to us.
At least we know that others besides Henri Estienne had
recourse to the same diversion; e. g. Lewis Bryskitt, who ac-
companied Sir Philip Sidney into Italy, tells us of him, that
Through pleasant woods and many an unknown way
He with him went; and with him he did scale
The craggy rocks of th' Alps and Apennine,
Still with the Muses sporting.
We observe, by the way, that complaints of the badness of
the inns, which make so large an item in the modern
tourist's notebook, are no part of Henri Estienne's griev
ances. We recollect only one, a complaint of German
cookery, for always overdoing the meat; and of German
stoves for overheating the bed-rooms. Mr. Mayhew may
lecture in vain. The faults are at least 300 years old.
After thirty years of such labour, who could have blamed
him had he concluded that it was time for him to begin to
live? But he did not renounce work. These later years,
though they did not produce any of the grander efforts of
his earlier time, such as the Thesaurus or the Plato,
yielded a considerable crop of aftermath, reimpressions of
his earlier editions, but revised, retouched, and augmented.
These later additions are not always improvements, some
cases excepted, where Casaubon's hand is plainly visible.
And it may be that the general execution of his later books
for beauty and correctness is below that of the earlier. If
it be so, the falling off is to be accounted for by poverty;
and the poverty was not the result of gadding about and
neglect of business.
The truth is that Henri Estienne had ruined himself
before his fits of absence began. And he had ruined
himself, not by neglecting his business, but, on the con-
H 2
100
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
trary, by over-publishing. Robert had died in good, if not
affluent circumstances; and Henri had inherited the bulk
of his father's fortune, as well as the business which had
created it. But already, in 1570, we find him reduced to
indigence. An entry in the register of Geneva has been
lately disinterred by M. Gaultier¹ from which we learn how
reduced the great printer had become at that date. He was
cited before the Council on an accusation of 'hardhearted-
ness' towards his brother Robert, who had recently died,
also in want. Henri's defence is thus recorded. He said-
that he had been no less sick than his brother. That, this notwith-
standing, he had aided him to the extent of his power; that he had
sent him capons, young chicken, and other delicacies. That some-
thing had indeed been said about his making an advance to his
brother; but that that was out of his power, as he himself was then
getting on upon discounted bills, and had not even victuals but what
he bought from one meal to another.
This was before the Thesaurus. Its publication (1572)
and that of Plato (1578) gave the finishing stroke to his
fortunes. He never recovered these efforts. In 1581 we
find him unable to pay a fine of ten crowns without being
allowed a respite of three weeks in which to raise it. The
dowry of his daughter Florence, married in 1580 to Casau-
bon, was unpaid at the time of the father's death, in 1598.
And the residuary estate left after payment of debts was
so insignificant, that Casaubon grudged a journey from
Montpellier to Geneva for the purpose of realising it.
In this embarrassment of his affairs we find a principal
and substantial cause of Henri's long absences. The
journeys were not the cause of the embarrassment. After
about 1578 it may be true that a very little vexation from
the authorities was enough to close his establishment, and
to send him off on his travels. But it was not only that by
absenting himself he fled from inquisitions into his 'hard-
heartedness,' or from the oppressive presence of warehouses
glutted with unsaleable quires; his visits to Court, whether
¹ Études sur la Typographie Génevoise, p. 66.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
POVERTY. THE BOOK TRADE.
ΤΟΙ
of King, Emperor, or Duke, had a practical and legitimate
object. Patronage was, in fact, the only resource of a
publisher of high-class books.
The conditions of the book-trade in the sixteenth century
were in this respect identical with those which now exist.
It was quite possible then as now for a publisher or printer
-for the trades were not distinct-to make a competency
by his business. Witness the Chouets, who in this
disastrous period, and in the same city, Geneva, grew rich
by bookselling; but it was by carefully eschewing classics,
Greek books especially-by abhorring white paper, brilliant
type, and luxe of any description. To use thin yellow paper
of Swiss manufacture, worn-out type, smudgy ink, to dis-
pense with correction of the text as a superfluity-but, above
all, to confine themselves to issuing popular books in large
impressions; such was the way to make publishing pay.
Neither Henri's ambition nor his genius was mercantile.
His passion was to edit classics. The experience of the
printing-press, only a century and a quarter old, warned
him in vain that such an ambition led to commercial failure.
Sweynheim and Pannartz had ruined themselves by Greek.
The Manutii had been only saved from bankruptcy by the
intervention of Paul IV. The market for learned books
was limited in point of numbers, and still more limited in
respect of means. The scholars were few, and they were
poor. Public libraries did not exist. A book, no matter
what its size, must be sold for a small sum, if it was to be
sold at all; its price could not be calculated upon its cost of
production: hence the publisher lost most on the heaviest
work in the largest number of volumes. Plantin, of
Antwerp, was almost brought to ruin by his Polyglot.
Dibdin, however, is wrong¹ in saying that he died poor.
Plantin retrieved himself by meaner publications, and
died opulent. Henri Estienne probably reasoned that
the great spread of learning had enlarged the demand
1 Bibl. Decam., II. 158.
1
102
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
for classical books, and that a remunerative sale could
now be counted on. The outburst of enthusiasm for
Greek studies-the 'ivresse de la Renaissance'—which
overspread France in his youth, deceived him in this
respect. He could not foresee the Catholic reaction, which
blighted the fair promise of learning in France, crushed
it out in Italy, and was by slow and sure steps pro-
ceeding to seal up the Empire against it. His publish-
ing time had indeed fallen on evil days. He did some-
thing to meet the necessity of the times. He uses Swiss
unbleached paper instead of French, and works his types
down too close to the bone. He lays himself out for
a wider circle of readers by introducing the Latin trans-
lation into the page along with the Greek. He embarked
many years of labour and heavy capital in a Greek
dictionary, guided by the well-established experience, that
a dictionary is sure to pay if it is good enough to supersede
its predecessors. It turned out indeed that this very
speculation, the Thesaurus, was of all his efforts that
which hurt him the most. But this was entirely owing to
an error of judgment in the execution-Henri's besetting
fault; he knew not when to stop. He had no method.
He had so much to say, and must blurt it all out then and
there. The more he could put into his Thesaurus, the
more perfect he thought he was making it. The way to
surpass previous lexicons was to contain more than they.
His matter thus accumulated far beyond any power he
possessed of methodizing it. He forgot, or did not know,
what experience has taught us, that it is an indispensable
condition of a lexicon that it should be in one volume.
His Thesaurus, with all its unquestionable merits, was
wrecked upon this rock: it was in five volumes. Estienne
himself laid the blame of his disappointment to Scapula's
plagiarism—' Quidam étéµvwv me capulo tenus abdidit
ensem.' But it was not by plagiarism that Scapula got
possession of the market, but by the clear instinct that
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
THE GREEK THESAURUS.
103
discerned the imperative condition of manageable bulk.
The Thesaurus was brought out in 1572; Scapula did
not appear till 1579. For seven years Estienne had the
field to himself. The Thesaurus did not go off even
when it had no competitor.
So suicidal a system as that of producing books which
could only be sold at a price below the cost of production,
could never have been entered upon had it not been
alimented by the resources of patronage. The Greek
press had never been made self-supporting. The printer
received back his outlay, not from the sale of the book,
but in the shape of gratuities from princes and wealthy
nobles, in return for presentation copies before publication.
What he got from the public by sale helped him out, but
was not his main reliance. Henri had been promised, and
had perhaps received for a short time, a regular salary
from the Fuggers of Augsburg, in order to enable him to
execute his designs in Greek printing. The sole acknow-
ledgment on his part was, that he described himself on the
title-page of his books, 'Fuggerorum Typographus.' For
a dedication a handsome present was expected; less for a
mere presentation copy. In the Thesaurus the net is
cast both high and wide. It is dedicated to the Emperor
Maximilian, Charles IX of France, Elizabeth of England,
Frederic Count Palatine, Augustus Elector of Saxony,
John George Elector of Brandenburg-a judicious mixture
of Catholic and Protestant. And as if an emperor, a king,
a queen, and three electors were not enough, the Univer-
sities of their respective countries are associated with the
names of these sovereign princes. With the name of
Elizabeth are coupled both the English Universities,
Oxford and Cambridge. There was not seldom difficulty
about the payment of the cash; ready money was of all
commodities the hardest to come by in those times; to a
prince or an emperor even harder than to other men. A
munificent sovereign like Maximilian II would promise
104
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
much, and intend it; but it took a long time to realise
value.
In this circumstance we find the reason of much of that
absenting himself from home, which was so grievously
complained of by Henri Estienne's family. His journey
to Vienna, in 1574, was undertaken solely with the object
of getting in dues of this description. These consisted
partly in the long-expected gratification due from the
Emperor on account of the Dedication of the Thesaurus
-partly arrears of the Fugger annuity, which had been
long withheld by a crazy representative of that opulent
family. When, in 1576, the death of Maximilian, and the
accession of a bigoted and priest-ridden Emperor, closed
that court against learning, Estienne turned his eyes
towards France. A petty squabble with the Council of
Geneva, in 1578, furnished him with a pretext for a visit to
Paris. From this time for several years his life was that of
a hanger-on of the court of Henri III-'vita semi-aulica,'
he says.
Henri III, weak and narrow-minded, was not
destitute of a taste for letters. It is the unexceptionable
testimony of D'Aubigné which thus characterises him:
'Prince d'agréable conversation avec les siens, amateur
des lettres.' The same annalist has preserved one of his
literary judgments, which evidences a taste independent of,
and superior to, that of the court by which he was sur-
rounded. Some of the courtiers present were condemning
the verses produced at the court of Navarre as not suffi-
ciently 'coulants.' 'For my part,' said the King, 'I am
weary of verses which say nothing in a great many words.
Now, these you blame are full of thoughts, images, and
emblems, like the classics. I like my wine to have a body.'
Estienne had not been long in Paris when he was sent for
by the King. The conversation turned upon the French
language. Next to Greek, this was Estienne's favourite
theme. Fresh from the publication of his Dialogues on
the corruption of French by Italian modes, he harangued
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
KING HENRI III.
105
fluently on this abuse, and maintained the superiority
of French to every modern tongue. The King requested
him to write down his thoughts at more length. Estienne
would have excused himself on the ground of not having
his notes, or any books, at hand. 'Trust to your excellent
memory,' was the Royal answer. He sate down to the
task, and the Précellence du Langage François, thrown
off in little more than a fortnight, was the result. It was
beautifully printed by Mamert Patisson, who had married.
the widow of Robert II, and succeeded to his business. It
was presented by the author, in proper form, to the King,
who expressed his satisfaction. For some months liberal
promises were made, but they remained promises; yet
Henri III-it is again D'Aubigné who testifies to it—was
'libéral au-delà tous les rois.' At last, August 12, when
Estienne was on the point of leaving France in despair,
came actually a patent conferring a life-pension of three
hundred livres annually upon Estienne, 'in consideration
of services rendered by himself and ancestors to the
Crown of France.' Nor was this all. The pension was
only to be the retaining fee: the Précellence was to
be separately paid by a douceur of a thousand crowns.
Munificence truly royal! and fully bearing out d'Aubigné's
character of the monarch. A thousand crowns was a sum
which Estienne had probably not handled for many a year.
He hastened to the Exchequer to cash his draft. The
cashier offered him six hundred down, on receiving his
receipt in full. Henri indignantly refused. 'Very well,'
was the contemptuous reply; 'vous reviendrez à l'offre et
ne la retrouverez pas.' He did think better of it, and
the cashier was as good as his word. By the advice of
those who understood better than himself what royal
finance was, Henri offered to take the six hundred, and got
-nothing! M. Renouard suggests that the cashier found
means, notwithstanding, to make the whole sum figure in
his accounts. Considering the profound corruption of the
106
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
French administration before Sully, we cannot say that the
suggestion is an improbable one; and Pierre Mollan-
that was his name—even in that time, was noted as 'grand
larron.' We do not know that the pension had a similar
fate. But we may infer it with probability from a letter of
Melissus, of some years later date. Melissus, writing in
1587, to Estienne, then at Geneva, to congratulate him on
the resolution he had taken to set his presses to regular
work again, expresses the wish, 'that his better genius had
guided him back to Geneva sooner, instead of leaving him
to be deluded by the empty promises of the Court of
France' ('inani Aulae Gallicae pollicitatione deceptum').
Such language would hardly have been addressed to him
had he been in receipt of a pension from Henri III.
The picture now becomes one of yearly increasing gloom.
We do not propose to dwell on it. A temper growing
more misanthropical, an understanding becoming more
infirm, yet as uncontrollably restless as ever, and dilapidated
fortunes which he sought to retrieve by mendicancy, not by
industry--this is the sad colour in which Henri's declining
years are presented to us by his own friends. In 1581 he
lost his second wife Barbe, to whom he appears to have
been tenderly attached. 'All Geneva,' he writes to a
friend, 'mourns with me the loss of my most dear wife.
In her, her noble birth was but an incentive to noble
thoughts and ways.' Some years afterwards he married a
third time at the age of fifty-eight; but he never seems to
have taken root again in home or in Geneva. He seems to
have become unequal to any new undertaking. His presses
languished, or produced only reimpressions. The hopes
he held out to his friends of reawakened activity about
1587 proved abortive. An earthquake threw down his
country house at Grière outside the walls of Geneva. We
catch a glimpse of him in a letter of Hotman's opening
a grave at the end of his garden to bury a daughter,
his niece, and her mother, three corpses, during the
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
DECLINING YEARS.
107
His
dreadful plague which visited Geneva in 1587.
absences from home became more prolonged and his
wanderings more purposeless. His egotism grew upon
him with fearful rapidity; he became churlish to his
family, and alienated his friends. Casaubon was now,
since 1586, established at Geneva as his son-in-law. Esti-
enne had been averse to the match, but had yielded to
Casaubon's submissive patience and persistence. The
father's opposition was not so unreasonable, as the young
lady was only nineteen when she was married. Florence
Estienne brought Casaubon no dower; at least it was never
paid, and could not be in the state to which the father's
affairs had come. The son-in-law did not even get, what
he perhaps would have valued more, access to the library.
This contained untold treasures of Greek; for besides his
own collections, Henri got from his friends everything he
could hear of, with the promise to edit it. He really meant
this when that promised day should come on which his
press was to begin to work again. It never did come, and
it was in vain that the owners petitioned for the return
of their MSS. Rittershusius had lent him his notes on
Oppian. Unable to get any reply from Estienne himself,
he had recourse to Casaubon, urging vehemently their
restitution, as they were of great importance to him.
Casaubon and Madame Estienne, after consulting together,
agreed in the extremity of the case to run the risk of
breaking open the prohibited chamber. The Oppian
was found. This was absolutely the only occasion on
which Casaubon ever saw the inside of the library; for in
1598 he tells Scaliger that he had never inspected Estienne's
books, not only not since his death, but never at all.
When it came to him to open it as one of the heirs-at-law,
he found it in a sad state of disorder and decay from
long neglect, but affording still astonishing evidence of
industry and learning in memoranda, papers, and notes, for
editing.
108 ·
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
We are unable to trace Estienne's later wanderings.
Even his family often did not know where he was. He
continued to pour forth diatribes; but they were below the
level even of the feeblest of his former effusions. He had
lost himself completely. He had taken up a craze upon
the danger to Europe from the advance of the Turks.
Danger truly enough there was; but it was a pitiable spec-
tacle, that of Henry Stephens leaving his own affairs in
confusion, or worse, and going all the way to Ratisbon
to hand in a memorial to the Diet against the Turks.
From this time everything he touched ran into this key.
He published a pamphlet professing to review Lipsius'
Latin style. 'It ought,' said Scaliger, 'to have been en-
titled De Latinitate Lipsii contra Turcas.'
He was often in actual need. One of the latest notices
of him we find is almost a begging letter addressed to the
Bishop of Würzburg. As this letter is unknown to all the
biographers, though it has been in print since 1831, we will
give an extract from it:-
I know not how it came to pass, Right Reverend Prince, that I
was not able to come near you, nor so much as to pay my respects to
you during the Diet at Ratisbon. And again, on my way back to
Frankfort, I remained a whole day at Würzburg, not without pre-
judice to my affairs, with the sole object of seeing you. But in vain.
At Ratisbon I called almost each day of my stay without being
admitted to see you once, while to all the other Princes there I was
admitted at once. I could not but remember our pleasant inter-
course during my former visit to the same city. Unable to wait upon
you in person with my present offering, I send a special messenger
with it, though little able to afford the expense. May he be the
bearer back again of tidings of your welfare, and also of some benefit,
so I venture to hope, for the humble individual who now addresses
you. . . . . For in addition to the two orations I send herewith, I
am meditating a further address on the subject of the crusade against
the Turk. But I am compelled to implore your aid to enable me to
bring it out. Long travel, and a long detention in this city, have
entirely exhausted my ready money. I have the less misgiving as to
meeting with refusal at your hands because I know you have at heart
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
JULIUS, BISHOP OF WÜRZBURG.
109
the cause in which I write, and have been told that you entertain a
kindly feeling towards myself.-H. Stephens to Bishop of Würzburg,
dated Frankfort, Jan. 17, 1595.
Julius, Bishop of Würzburg and Duke of East Franconia,
was one of the leaders of the Church reaction in Germany.
He boasted that he had converted 100,000 souls during
his episcopate; and he might have added to the boast
that no means had been left untried to effect these con-
versions. He affected the reputation of a patron of letters
—that is, of Jesuit letters. He is habitually addressed
by his protégés in the style of servile humility dear
to the ears of small German potentates and Maecenases.
For Estienne in his old age to be a suitor, and an un-
successful one, at the doors of such a man, was indeed
a bitter humiliation.
This dreary last act of his life was closed by an unbe-
friended death. He was seized by his last malady at
Lyons, while on one of his excursions. He had been
paying a visit to Casaubon, not long removed to Mont-
pellier, and was so far on his return. That he died in the
public hospital, and in a state of mental alienation, are
statements which have become, by the constant repetition
of the biographers, part of the tradition of literature. It is
quite time that the tradition should be revised. For the
latter statement there is, happily, no foundation whatever;
it arose entirely from misunderstanding the words of
Tollius, 'Opibus atque ipso etiam ingenio destitutus . .
vitae in nosocomio finem fecit¹.' Tollius meant to ex-
press that Estienne had before his death ceased to be
his better self-was no longer the man he had been.
He meant, in short, what Casaubon himself had often
enough said long before Estienne's death. E. g. in 1596
Casaubon thus writes to a friend: 'That Rhodoman has
been wronged by our good old man, I was grieved to
hear. But so it is; if any one ever was a living illustration
1 App. ad Valerian. p. 76.
1
110
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
of the Greek proverb, dis maîdes oi yépovres, it is he. I would
rather say and think this than anything more harsh.'
Indeed Tollius not only meant the same thing that
Casaubon means, but, it appears to us, had no other
authority for his statement than what he had gathered from
Casaubon's letters. The same Tollius, and in the same
passage, is the earliest authority for the death in the
hospital. Tollius, a Dutch professor, writing more than
fifty years after Estienne's death, knew nothing of its
circumstances but what he had read in books. In what
book he had found this circumstance of the hospital we
confess we have not been able to make out; but he did
not find it in the notices of Estienne's death which occur in
Casaubon's or Scaliger's letters. Yet his death at Lyons is
repeatedly mentioned in these letters, in the monody written
by his son Paul, and in De Thou's History. In none of
these is a hint given of the misery of his death having been
aggravated by its occurring in a public hospital. The only
other apparently independent authority which has been
produced is that of Colonia, in his Histoire Littéraire de
Lyon, II. 608. We say apparently independent; for we
are not quite sure that that Father is not giving us Tollius
amplified with that latitude of invention which local history
at that period allowed itself. We cannot, anyhow, allow
great authority to an historian who sums up Estienne's life
in these facts: that'he was driven from France for heresy,
wandered a long time in Germany, was brought back
by love of his country, and settled at Lyons, where he
became a compositor in a printing-office, and even a printer
himself.' From Casaubon's silence merely it cannot be
concluded that the hospital is a tragic fiction; for, as
M. Renouard reminds us, it was nothing but the usual
practice of travellers at that time, when they found them-
selves seriously ill, to cause themselves to be removed to
the public hospital, where they could have nursing and
attendance. It would be no evidence of destitution.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
DEATH.
III
He was interred in the common cemetery near the
Hôtel Dieu. A detachment of the burgher guard was
obliged to turn out to protect the interment from the
violence of the Catholic mob of Lyons, barbarized by the
efforts of the religious confraternities. He was pursued
beyond the grave by the especial hatred of the Catholic
world. Of this a remarkable example has been perpetu-
ated. It is not uncommon to find copies of the Thesaurus
in our libraries, in which the name 'Henricus Stephanus '
has been carefully obliterated from the title-page and
preface. A copy of the Pindar has been found in Spain,
in the cover of which are written these words: 'H.
Stephanus, autor damnatus, opus tamen hoc permissum.'
And M. Renouard had a copy of the De Latinitate, etc., in
which the author's name was erased wherever it occurred.
In a copy of the Thesaurus in our possession, not only is
the author's name pasted over, but where the name of
Queen Elizabeth occurs in the dedication, it has been
altered with a pen into 'Belsabeth.'
With all his many and yearly increasing faults, Henri
Estienne was no sooner dead than it appeared that his
friends both valued and loved him. He died in the end of
January, 1598, not the beginning of March, as De Thou,
followed by all the biographers, says. The news reached
Casaubon at Montpellier, February 2.
Scaliger's few words of regret deserve the more promin-
ence because no one was so keenly alive as the great critic to
the presumptuous incapacity with which Estienne tampered
with his Greek texts. He writes thus in May:-
His death is a great loss to Greek letters. You may say he might
have done much more for them, if he had remained true to them, or
true to himself. Indeed, I could not but regret his conduct while
living, nor can I help regretting his loss now he is gone. I grieve
that he did not produce what he might have produced; I grieve
again that I have lost a friend.-Scaliger to Casaubon, May 16, 1598.
The books which Henry Stephens has left behind him.
་
THE STEPHENSES.
I 12
IV.
י.
-
to perpetuate his name may be arranged in three classes:-
1. His editions of the Classics. 2. His own writings on the
Greek and Latin languages. 3. His writings on the
French language. A detailed discussion of his merits
as a philologian we can hardly undertake in these pages.
We shall be content to indicate their character in a few
general terms.
We must observe that the reader will in vain consult the
biographers for any such appreciation of Henry Stephens's
philological performances. The vague expressions of ad-
miration of his 'learning' and his 'science,' which the
literary handbooks annex to his name, stand in unexplained
contiguity to Scaliger's sentence of condemnation, ‘H. S.
omnes quotquot edidit libros, etiam meos, corrupit.' The
fact is that Henry Stephens had that intimate familiarity
with Greek idiom which can only be got by the incessant
and exclusive occupation of the thoughts, early begun,
long continued, with the forms, sounds, and habits of
the language. Greek was to him not a foreign tongue, he
had appropriated it. He thought in it and could speak it,
he said, and had done so upon one occasion at Venice,
with Michael Sophianos. This was his one and only
acquirement in philology. Of the philosophy of speech, of
its growth and etymology, he was as ignorant as he was
destitute of poetical taste, and literary tact. Yet so perfect is
his command of, and so sure his feeling for, the mechanism
of a Greek construction, that those who use his books
always find their admiration of this rare gift growing upon
them, and come at last to understand how scholars like
Schäfer, Küster, and Porson, speak of Henry Stephens with
the deepest respect as 'Vir summus.' It is only in time,
and by the use of his editions, that this respect is acquired.
When he treats a question of criticism he is another man;
garrulous, irrelevant, anile, almost without exception. No
one can help wishing that he had had the sense to take De
Thou's advice 'to leave off writing and to stick to his
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
HENRI ESTIENNE AS A SCHOLAR.
113
editing.' Unfortunately he took the very opposite course.
He almost ceased to print Greek, and poured forth a stream
of diatribes, each more impotent and futile than that which
had preceded it.
Henry Stephens as a Greek scholar has hitherto met at
the hands of his own countrymen with nothing but neglect
-a neglect which the Academy Prize Essay will but per-
petuate. As a French critic, however, he still holds a place
even in popular Manuals of the history of their literature.
The French have ever felt a lively interest in everything
that concerns the growth of their own language. It is the
province of philology which administers most directly to
the national vanity. It is the only approach to what we
call 'scholarship,' which has received assiduous cultivation
in France. From Du Bellay, whose Illustration de la
Langue Française was published in 1549, downwards,
their own speech has been a first object of solicitude on
the part of those, who, from time to time, have taken the
lead in the world of French letters. It would be imper-
tinent in a foreigner to interpose his own opinion in a
question of language. According to the best French
authorities, the condition of the French tongue in the reign
of Henri III was something of the following.
The Revival, introducing itself into France thirty years
earlier, had excited the spontaneous action of the French.
mind, and presented to it a whole world of new objects
and new forms. Both these presentations created an
urgent necessity for expression. Latin, the language
of the Church, of diplomacy, and of the professions, was
there ready to hand. Accordingly it was in Latin that the
new ideas and emotions first strove to vent themselves.
But along with the new thoughts, the classical models had
also inspired a new taste-the taste for beauty of form.
Accordingly the Latin of the Church was transformed into
new shapes, and invested with new colours, in order
to satisfy this double instinct, and the labour of educated
VOL. I.
I
114
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
men was to express modern thoughts with Augustan
elegance of Latinity. Such an attitude of mind, however,
was too unnatural and strained to be long maintained.
Written literature, it was soon found, could not afford to
be separated from the spoken language of business and
of gaiety. The loss of pith and vitality was ill concealed
under the hollow shell of sonorous elegance. Ciceronian-
ism became ridiculous or childish. But it was more easy
for the wits to explode Latinity, than to substitute a better
vehicle for the new thoughts which crowded in on society.
Not that there was, or could be, any doubt that the
substitute must be found in the vernacular. The problem
was to make the vernacular equal to the task which was
devolved upon it. French in the reign of Henri III was
still an unformed tongue. Its grammatical forms, its
accent, and its construction, were all undetermined and
fluctuating. More than this, it had no associations above
the level of ordinary life, and therefore when applied
to serious themes it degraded whatever it touched. All
who had wanted to use it for such themes felt the necessity
of raising the power and compass of the instrument. It
was that moment when thought had got ahead of language.
The sudden introduction of a complete system of general
truths, and of the ripe moral wisdom of the ancient world
through the classical revival, had filled the French
mind to overflowing. The language as it stood was
incapable of furnishing a proper vent for the accumulation
of knowledge with which it had become suddenly charged.
How was speech to enlarge its boundaries so as to be made
more nearly commensurate with the apprehended truths?
Two different attempts for the purpose, originating in two
very different quarters, were made at the same time.
1. The courtiers, deriving their inspiration from Italy,
and especially from Florence, sought to Italianize French.
They were guided not by theory, but by fashion. But it
was fashion prompted by an instinct-an instinct of good
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
FRENCH IN THE REIGN OF HENRI III. 115
>
society, turning spontaneously to a more polished instru-
ment of intercourse. France was at this moment receptive
of polish, and Italy was at hand to give it. The wave of
Italian imitation even reached English shores, as the poetry
of Wyatt, Lord Surrey, and others shows. But it was
feeble compared with the flood-tide which swept over
France in the reigns of Henri II and Henri III. Of the
invasion of the French language by the Italian stranger,
the most remarkable monument remaining is Henri
Estienne's Dialogues du Nouveau François Italianisé,
1578. The extent to which Italianization had proceeded at
Court is vouched by all the Memoirs of the time. We
should indeed be wrong if we were to take quite literally
all the examples which Estienne's satire pretends to give.
We are not to suppose that the Court of Henri III talked
like the 'Philausone' in the Dialogues, any more than
we suppose the Court of Elizabeth talked like 'Holofernes
in Love's Labour's Lost. Extravagances like 'strade'
for 'street'; 'past' for 'dinner'; 'spaceger' for 'to walk';
'garbe' for 'genteel appearance'; 'gaffe' for 'awkward';
may have been a passing fashion, or a jest, but cannot give
the measure of the extent to which Italian words had
actually taken root in the Court jargon. Still less can we
agree with M. Feugère that it was owing to Estienne's
satire that such an invasion of Italian words was repelled.
There is no evidence that the Dialogues were widely read.
The reasoning does not appear to us, at this day, very
effective. The satire remains to us as a curiosity; a
landmark of an important stage in the history of the
French language, and an evidence of Estienne's clear-
sightedness in the analogies of language. Yet he allowed
himself to be pushed by his theme into an exaggerated
purism. He pronounced sentence of exclusion against
a number of words which usage has retained. 'Secrétaire
d'état,' 'négociateur,' 'nonce,' 'salve' (of artillery), ´'fan-
tassin,' 'escadron,' 'drapeau,' 'créature' (of a great man),
I 2
116
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
are among the Italian importations of this period which
the current of the language has brought down with it
from the sixteenth century; individual adventurers who
have made good their footing on the territory, while
the main body of the invading army was successfully
repulsed.
2. That enlargement of the powers of the language which
polite conversation sought by an infusion from a living,
was attempted by the learned to be obtained from a dead,
tongue. The passionate fervour with which the French
mind embraced the classical writers when their treasures
were first opened to it very soon created the desire to
imitate them. French was not only to be modelled upon
Greek, but to be largely enriched by direct grafting of
Greek words. The school of Ronsard and the Pleiad, the
learned poets in the reign of Henri III, gave a transient
popularity to this forced system. They were the last who
had the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. No school of
French writers since then has been in possession of the
great tradition of classical antiquity. The exaggerated
Grecism of the Pleiad, perhaps, inspired French literature
with that aversion for Greek which has ever since marked
it; that disgust at 'pedantry,' which prevents French
writing from ever rising above the level of good drawing-
room conversation. The 'French muse of Ronsard,' says
Boileau, 'spoke Greek and Latin.' Yet Ronsard thought
himself too scrupulous, and regrets that he did not borrow
in a more wholesale manner:
Ah! que je suis marri que la muse française
Ne peut dire ces mots comme fait la grégoise,
Ocymore, dyspotme, oligochronien;
Certes! je les dirois du sang valérien !
Henri Estienne denounced in emphatic terms the mistake
of the Italianizers, and sided, though with great moderation,
with the learned party. Of his trilogy of treatises on this
subject, the Conformité du Langage Français avec le
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
FRENCH AND GREEK.
117
Grec, 1565, is an attempt to show that French idiom bears
a closer parallel to Greek than to Latin. From this the
conclusion is drawn that as Greek is the most perfect of
known tongues, French, which has so great affinity with it,
must take rank above all other languages. The Dialogues,
1578, of which we have already spoken, are directed
against the Italian innovators. Lastly, the Précellence du
Langage François, 1579, is intended to show the intrinsic
merits of French. French is quite equal, from its own
resources solely, to holding the highest place among the
modern dialects of Europe. The form of the tract is a
comparison of French and Italian. He will confine himself
to refuting the claim of Italian to be the first of languages.
For if he succeeds in showing that French is more excel-
lent than Italian, a fortiori it is more so than Spanish. 'Si
vinco vincentem te, multo magis vincam te.' He apologizes,
as usual, for the brevity and imperfection of his pleading
on the ground of haste. He undertook at the King's
request to write it in fifteen days, and without his notes,
which he had not brought with him. Consequently he has
only been able to produce a 'coup d'essai,' a prelude to a
work, not a work. His title-page bears 'Projet du Livre
intitulé,' etc. There are men in France who might plead
the same cause better than himself. But he does not con-
sider himself the most incompetent. The courtiers affected,
indeed, to say that Greek was his province, not French.
Well, he could talk Greek, and had done it before now.
But for all that he could talk French too. They said
he travelled so much abroad that the purity of his French
was corrupted. Had not the same reproach been cast
upon Xenophon, the purest of Attic writers ? These
journeys were never for any long period. They even help
him. As Plutarch says that painters judge their own works
better if they put them aside for a time, so by his occasional
absences he has become aware of many an intruding
neologism which escapes the notice of those who live
118
THE STEPHEenses.
IV.
always at home. The comparison of Italian with French
is conducted upon three points: 1. Gravité, by which he
means dignity, or weight, 2. Grace. 3. Copiousness.
The last head occupies the larger, and to us more interest-
ing portion of the volume. It was the point on which
the classically-educated Frenchman of that time felt more
solicitude than on any other. The attempts to translate
-and translation was one of the chief occupations of
the educated-the juxtaposition of French and Greek,
seem to have forced upon them the sense of the compara-
tive poverty of the modern idiom more keenly than any
other of its deficiencies. The progress of the language
was the ambition of every writer; and progress was
identified with a material increase of the vocabulary.
Henri Estienne echoes both these sentiments. But he will
not admit that poverty is inherent in the language. French
is rich enough, if we know how to use its resources. He
does not encourage the project of a Greek loan. He
directs us rather to the wealth of words which lurk in the
technical vocabulary of the arts, the terms of chase and
falconry; in games, such as mall, more played in France
than elsewhere. Old saws and proverbs embalm many
valuable words which might be revived. The old romances,
of which Henri was a diligent reader, are a real mine of old
language. And, lastly, there are the provincial dialects,
which must never be permitted to usurp the place of the
French, but from which it may borrow much with advant-
age. The true French is the speech of that district which is
still called by the country-people 'la France'; the district
between St. Denis and Argenteuil, in which Paris is
situated. Readers of Montaigne will recognise the very
suggestions made a few years afterwards in the Essais
(III. 5): 'Et que le Gascon y arrive, si le François n'y peut
aller.'
We have dwelt the longer on this tract of Henri
Estienne because this ambition to enrich the French
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
FRENCH AND THE CLASSICS.
119
language is the great characteristic of this period of French
literature. It is a characteristic which it owes to the first
contact of the French genius with the treasures of antiquity,
the first intoxication of the Revival, when the matured
thoughts of Greek and Roman sages were wrested from
the doctors and the scholars, and given to the men and
women of the world. This was the element which the
French understanding with its practical spirit and its clear
good sense absorbed from the classics. No country has
done less for the mere cultivation of Greek philology. No
nation appropriated with more avidity all that part of ancient
experience which was applicable to the immediate purposes
of life. The Plutarch of Amyot was the companion of
Henri IV. Our readers will recall the note, fresh as a
Channel breeze, addressed by Henri to the Queen from
ship-board off Calais :-
Vive Dieu! vous ne m'auriez sceu rien mander qui me fust plus
agréable que la nouvelle du plaisir de lecture qui vous a prins; Plu-
tarque me soubscrit toujours d'une fresche nouveauté; l'aymer c'est
m'aymer, car il a esté longtemps l'instituteur de mon bas aage; ma
bonne mère, à laquelle je doibs tout, me mit ce livre entre les mains,
encore que je ne fusse à peine plus un enfant de mamelle.
After appropriation came the necessity of expressing
these ideas in their own language. Hence the impatience
under its contracted limits, and the desire to expand these
limits by a material addition to the stock of usable words.
This phase of effort in French literature was a transient
one. It did not outlast the sixteenth century. It passed
away with the assimilating effort, with the occupation
of translation. When French ceased to be continually
paralleled with Greek its barrenness ceased to be painfully
felt. The occupation of enriching the language with
new terms gave way in the next century to the opposite
one of selecting and rejecting. This has remained ever
since the governing aim of French literary skill. Το
repel foreign elements, to weed, to exclude, to eliminate,
I 20
THE STEPHENSES.
IV.
such is the constant tendency of their taste in language.
In this way it is, by reversing the procedure of the great
writers of the sixteenth century, that French has been
modelled and chiselled to that academical finish which is
the pride of her approved writers. It has gained neatness,
point, and precision at the expense of compass, sweep, and
breadth of genius. Notwithstanding the different prin-
ciples from which they proceed, that of universal com-
prehension and that of fastidious exclusiveness, Henri
Estienne in the sixteenth, and the academicians of the
nineteenth century, are agreed on one point, viz. the pre-
eminence of French over every other modern idiom.
Estienne, in 1579, predicts that the speech of his country
will be the organ of European civilization with the same
assurance with which M. Nisard announces it to us as an
accomplished fact, that French is 'la langue de l'esprit
moderne; langue maternelle pour nous; langue adoptive
pour quiconque dans les lettres, les sciences, l'art du
gouvernement, dans les travaux de l'esprit ou de la
politique, a laissé ou laissera un nom durable.' ¹
1
We should have to rank Henri Estienne among political
writers, and in the very highest rank of such writers, could
we attribute to him the anonymous 'Discours merveilleux
de la Vie de Catherine de Médicis.' That all the bio-
graphers should follow each other in doing so will surprise
no one who has observed how in literary history a conjec-
ture passes into a certainty by repetition. We might,
however, justly have expected that a monograph couronné
by the Academy would have devoted special attention to
this point; for doubts had been thrown out in one or two
quarters as to the Stephanian authorship of this remark-
able pamphlet. M. Feugère alludes to the suspicions that
had been expressed, but only alludes to them. He simply
sets them aside, and goes on to give an outline of the
Discours, with remarks, and even a quotation, the whole
1 Lit. Franç. I. 458.
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
1.
VIE DE CATHERINE DE Médicis.
121
filling together more than six octavo pages, assuming it as
the production of Henri Estienne. It is, therefore, quite
impossible that M. Feugère can have given even a single
perusal to the volume of which he speaks so glibly, and so
prettily. Yet it consists in the edition now before us
(s. l. 1575) of only 95 pages in 12mo. It is, besides, by no
means an uncommon book, having been, as it well
deserved to be, repeatedly reprinted in France, and trans-
lated into the language of every country. To any one
possessing even that modicum of acquaintance with H.
Estienne's books and personal history which our prize
essayist does possess, a single perusal is sufficient. The
case is not even one of doubt. Henri Estienne neither did
write nor could have written the Discours Merveilleux.
The pamphlet is not, as M. Feugère thinks, a general
philippic against the Queen Mother. It is a very special
pleading, emerging at a particular moment, and directed to
a particular object. It is directed against the unauthorized
assumption of the Regency by Catherine during the interim
between the death of Charles IX and the return of his
brother and successor, Henri III, from Poland.
We are
able, from internal evidence, to assign certainly, not only
the year but the month of its composition. It was written
in the early part of July, 1574. It is addressed to the
burghers of Paris by a person on the spot, who possessed
a minute and personal acquaintance with the situation of
parties at the moment, not to say with every intrigue and
turn of affairs since the accession of Charles IX. Now, in
1574, Henri Estienne had been absent not only from Paris
but from France for many years. On the 16th May in that
year he was still at Geneva. Later in the summer he set
off on his first journey to Vienna, intent on quite other
business than the imprisonment of the Duke of Alençon
and the conspiracy (so called) of Lamole and Coconas.
Henri Estienne did not visit Paris till November, 1578, or
become intimate at Court till the spring of 1579. He never
122
IV. THE STEPHENSES.
at any time had the minute knowledge of contemporary
persons and politics which is possessed by the author of
the Discours Merveilleux. The Discours has not the
low verdeur of style of the Apologie pour Herodote, with
which M. Feugère absurdly compares it. It is, notwith-
standing its invective, a state paper, lofty in tone, masterly
in manner. It is written from a constitutional point of
view, and by one well read in the constitutional history of
his own country. In short, it is written in the interest of
the Duke of Alençon, and of that part of the noblesse
which formed the nucleus of the party of the Politiques.
Again, so far from displaying the passion of a Calvinist
sectary, which M. Feugère attributes to it, it is difficult to
make out to which religion the writer belongs, so careful
is he to avoid every allusion to the subject. It is, in short,
more preposterous to attribute the Discours Merveilleux
to Henri Estienne than to ascribe to him the Moyen de
Parvenir, as it is said that Charles Nodier did.
Finally, there is, though it is not mentioned by any of
Henri's biographers, an explicit disclaimer of the author-
ship by himself. That it should have escaped notice is
surprising, as it occurs in the very one of Henri's books
which is most read by the French-a book which is written
not in Latin but in French; and the passage in question
occurs within the first few pages of the Preface. Henri is
giving the reasons why he declines to follow out the com-
parison instituted in his tract between the Italians and
French into other points than that of language. One
reason is that it would be scurrilous to do so :—
Ma plume n'a point accoustumé de se mettre à telles matières qui
font tomber en des invectives (encore qu'aucuns m'ayent presté cette
charité de me vouloir faire auteur d'une plus dangereuse, moy pouvant
prouver mon alibi de cent lieues long).-Précellence du Langage
François. Preface.
M. Feugère has actually edited a reprint of this tract,
and yet in his Life of Henri Estienne has made no use
Quarterly Review, 1865.]
1
AUTHORSHIP DISCLAIMED BY HENRI ESTIENNE. 123
of this curious personal allusion. The allusion to the
Discours Merveilleux is unmistakable, and it proves two
things. First, that the false ascription of the Discours
to Estienne was made at the time, and was not an after in-
vention of bibliographers. Secondly, that already in 1579
the authorship had been not only denied, but disproved
by Henri. He had evidently succeeded in removing all
suspicions from himself; otherwise he could not have been
received at Court with so much favour as the suspected
author of so telling an attack upon the policy of the Queen
Mother. Who then was the author of the Discours
Merveilleux is a problem which we must leave to native
critics, and to the next French biographer of the Estienne.
V.
MURETUS¹.
A
(Times, August 23, 1882.)
CENTURY ago it would have been unnecessary to
ask the question, 'Who was Muretus?' In the
days of Latin scholarship, the days of Lowth and Joseph
Warton, Muretus, or extracts from him, was as familiar to
the sixth form boy as Terence or Ovid. Muretus was not a
classic, but a neo-Latin writer of the second half of the 16th
century. But of all the imitative classicists of the Renais-
sance, Muretus is the one best adapted to be put into the
hands of boys whom it is desired to train in a good Latin
style. Muretus's Latin wants the native verve of Joseph
Scaliger, and does not move with the easy colloquial free-
dom of Erasmus. Muretus's rhythm, in prose, is stately
and oratorical, but his style has salt and pungency, and he
is never content with the solemn and empty commonplaces
of the ordinary Ciceronian Latinists. They say nothing in
sounding periods; Muretus always has something to say
proper to his audience and the occasion, and tries to say
it as Cicero might have said it, without the superstitious.
avoidance of new or post-Augustan words which the
Ciceronians affected.
At the present moment our grammar school curriculum
is in a period of transition. Latin composition (so called) is
still exacted, but it is no longer cultivated with the at-
tention necessary to reach excellence. There are many
things of which it may be said that if they are worth doing
¹ Marc-Antoine Muret, un professeur français en Italie dans la seconde moitié
du 16me siècle. Par CHARLES DEJOB, Prof. de Rhétorique au Collège Stanislas
à Paris. Paris, 1882.
Times, August 1882.]
LATIN WRITING.
125
at all they are worth doing well. But of Latin style we
may say, what is much more, that if it is not taught well it
had better not be taught at all. It is not difficult to foresee
that, first, Latin versification, and, next, Latin prose, will
disappear from the grammar school. The art will not be
expelled; it will die a natural death. The article pro-
duced has now so little art or beauty to recommend it, that
it must soon be felt that it is not worth producing. As
long as Latin style was the first and highest accom-
plishment of our classical schools, Muretus, with his
finished periods of modernized Ciceronianism, was always
in demand. His imitation of the ancients was the most
perfect, because, unlike the servile procedure of Manutius.
and the Ciceronians, it was imitation, and not a copy.
Apart from Muretus's survival as a model of style, the
life of the man was known to historians of literature as a
typical life of a man of letters of the day. Muretus's day
was the age which followed the age of Erasmus. Born in
1526, and dying in 1585, Muretus fills the space between
Erasmus and the great French scholars, Scaliger and
Casaubon. A young professor of the University of France
has seized upon Muretus and produced a monograph
which, without being a model of research, is comparatively
free from the vexatious inaccuracy which disappoints us
so often in the French handling of literary history, and
which makes all French biographical collections untrust-
worthy. Muretus, a Limousin of bourgeois birth-he
assumed the de afterwards without any right to it-with-
out fortune and without education, raised himself merely
by writing good Latin, to fame, to wealth, to position, all
but to the purple. He achieved this, too, not by aid of a
good character, but in spite of a very bad one.
learned-'docte' even by the standard by which Scaliger
measured men-'too learned to be made a cardinal,' said
that prince of scholars. But Muretus's knowledge of
antiquity was not extensive when compared with that of
He was
126
V. MURETUS.
Lipsius or Sigonius-his forte lay wholly in style, or
'eloquence,' as it was then called. We hear much of the
value of 'style,' but it would be hard to find an instance
in which it did so much for any one as it did for Muretus.
We naturally ask by what means this valuable accom-
plishment was acquired. Not by instruction, for Muretus
was a self-taught man. 'From some perversity of dis-
position,' he says of himself, 'I never could endure any
of my tutors for three days.' Ruhnken, the great Dutch
Grecian, who edited the works of Muretus, has a simple
explanation of how he came to write like Cicero. After
observing that of the two most close imitators of Cicero,
Pliny and Manutius, the former has not a single sentence
which the master would have owned, and that the second,
Manutius, is a feeble reproduction, Ruhnken asks 'Why
is it that Muretus has succeeded?' It is because he had
a genius formed like Cicero's, while those of Pliny and
Manutius were not so. Ruhnken's explanation seems at
first sight trivial; it is really Buffon's dictum in the true
sense of that much-abused phrase, 'le style est l'homme
même'; style is not an accomplishment acquired by art
or study, but is the expression of the inner nature.
Like all self-taught men, Muretus had no sooner learnt
a little than he thought himself qualified to teach. Every-
thing connected with Montaigne is cherished by the
French. Montaigne is their Shakespeare; ‘a good enough
Shakespeare for the French,' Charles Lamb might have
said. So the name of Muretus is still held in honour
among our neighbours because Montaigne has recorded
that he had him for one of his 'précepteurs domestiques.'
The critics still dispute what this means, and the chronolo-
gists are puzzled to find a year when it could have been.
A foreigner may be permitted the conjecture that the form
of speech called 'gasconnade' has been employed by
Montaigne to enlist in his service a tutor of whom he can
say 'que la France et l'Italie recognoist pour le meilleur
Times, August 1882.]
HIS LATIN STYLE.
127
orateur du temps.' It may be observed that Cotton's
version 'orator' here misrepresents the French 'orateur,'
which means 'stylist,' not speaker.
Supporting himself by casual and vagrant tuition, Muretus
at last, like all men of literary ambition, gravitated to Paris.
He arrived at a propitious moment, and, thanks to his
compatriot Dorat, was admitted at once into the inner
circle of the audacious young Revolutionists, who had
flung down a challenge to all the received poetical canons.
The war-cry of these pre-Raphaelites in literature, who
had begun by calling themselves the 'Brigade,' but after-
wards placed themselves in the skies under the name of
the 'Pléiade,' was 'imitation of the ancients.' Nothing
could be more congenial to the classical taste of Muretus,
and he wooed the Muses in French like Dorat, and with
no better success. His French verses, says Colletet,
compassionately, 'pour estre escrits d'un style assez rude,
ne laissent pas de contenir plusieurs belles et nobles ex-
pressions.' Muret, as we may now call him, soon dis-
covered, with the instinct of genius, that, whatever Ronsard
and Du Bellay might do for him, imitation of the ancients
must be carried on in Latin. Some of his Latin pieces,
written under the inspiration of the Pleiad movement, are
probably the most perfect approach to a reproduction of
the exquisite grace of the Augustan elegy to be found in
the countless volumes of neo-latin versification. We may
notice in passing that the Tennysonian 'starlike sorrows
of immortal eyes' bears a near affinity to a line in these
Juvenilia—
Pande oculos, pande stellatae frontis honorem.
Muret renounced French composition, and confined him-
self to the modest rôle of commentator on the 'Amours'
of his friend Ronsard,
No two systems of life can be imagined more opposed
than that of Casaubon shutting himself in his poverty-
stricken garret alone with God and his Greek books, and
128
V. MURETUS.
the life of social pleasure and enjoyment which Muret,
equally poor, led at this time in Paris. On a sudden a
cloud rose on the horizon, and he had to withdraw from
Paris in haste. In what proportion the imputations of
heresy and immorality were mixed in the charge brought
against him we have no means of knowing. He fled to
Toulouse, pre-eminently the capital of fanaticism-a city
where immorality of the sort imputed might be over-
looked, but where the suspicion of Calvinism was death.
We must conclude that the fugitive felt that he could
more easily clear himself upon the one count than upon
the other. The odious accusation followed him here,
and he had to save himself again by flight. The only
hope now was Italy, where a more lenient view might be
taken of a moral offence, provided the offender was ready
to give signal proof of his hatred of the innovators in
religion. A short acquaintance with Italy showed Muret
that the way to redeem his character was not by amending
his conduct, but by loudly professing his attachment to the
Papacy. The rest of his life was laid out on this plan.
The infamous panegyric which he pronounced before
Gregory XIII, on the 23rd of December, 1572, upon the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, was only one of his frantic
endeavours to rehabilitate himself with the Catholic re-
action. Other of his official orations breathe the same
bloodthirsty sentiments. In his panegyric on Pius V he
celebrates the implacable hatred borne to the heretics by
the defunct, who thought life not worth living unless he
was engaged in purging them of their errors or the world
of their persons. That it should be necessary for Muret,
who was neither fanatical nor cruel, to hold this language,
is sufficient evidence of the state of feeling in Rome
during the Catholic reaction-it was the hatred which is
bred of fear, than which none is more desperate. Muret
has been called an 'atheist'; but this is a hasty version of
one of Joseph Scaliger's caustic speeches, to the effect
Times, August 1882.]
ROME AND VENICE.
129
that 'Muret would be a good Christian if he only believed
in God as well as he can talk about Him.'
These extravagances of orthodox assertion, the ex-
aggerations of a man who fears not to be believed, came
from Muret after he was firmly established at Rome, and
after he had become one of those rare persons for whose
utterances all Europe waits. To find anything like this
ascendency of the written word we must go back to the
days of Erasmus. But what Erasmus said was listened
for because of the position he occupied between con-
flicting parties-between the Revolution and the Church.
It was known that Erasmus could present of the event of
the day the true humanistic view-the view of reason
undimmed by sectarian passion. Muret had the ear of
the Latin-speaking world, not because of what he said,
but because he said it incomparably well. What he said
was but blatant Ultramontanism, so extreme that on one
occasion his oration had to be suppressed by the Court
of Rome because he had gone too far. But his dulcet
words, his rhythmic flow of sentence in the language
which all educated Europe spoke or read, charmed every
ear.
A speaker or writer must have some platform, some
vantage-ground. The modern publicist has his newspaper
or review; the writer of the 16th century required his
patron. This Muret found in the house of Este. His
Zoar of refuge when he escaped from the fires of Toulouse
had naturally been Venice, the hospitable city where all
immigrants were welcome and no questions asked. Here
he opened a lecture-room, and his silver tongue filled it at
once with patrician pupils. At this time the house of Este
distinguished itself above the other princely houses of
Italy by its patronage of learned men, and the Cardinal of
Este, Ippolito, brother of the reigning Duke, Ercole II,
was not merely ambitious of playing the part of Maecenas,
but wished to have such men as companions and inmates
VOL. I.
K
130
V. MURETUS.
of his palaces at Ferrara, at Rome, and at Tivoli. Offers
were made to the French fugitive. The officiousness of
some backstairs informer, or, as others say, a renewal of
misconduct on the part of Muret, had nearly closed this
door to the adventurer. But friends-at his worst, Muret
never wanted friends-contrived to reassure the Cardinal.
The offender promised good behaviour for the future, and
in 1559 Muret transferred himself to Ferrara, into the
Cardinal's palace, attached to his service, but without any
definite duties to perform. The conditions as to lodging
and pay were not brilliant. Two rooms were assigned
him for his own use, and another for his servant. But
they were not furnished, and as everything, silk excepted,
was cheaper at Venice than at Ferrara, Muret is advised
to bring his furniture with him. A batterie de cuisine,
however, will not be required, for he will eat at the
cardinal's table himself, and his servant with the domestics
of the house. If the chain was not gilded, it was as light
as it was possible to make it. The cardinal declared that
the service most agreeable to himself would be that Muret
should devote every instant of his time to letters. A
Roman cardinal endowed letters in the person of Muret,
in the same liberality of spirit as the Protestant University
of Leyden did thirty years later in the person of Joseph
Scaliger.
Muret had now got his foot on the first round of the
ladder of promotion. His pen, the enchanted wand which
had worked these wonders, continued to serve him still.
First employed in writing letters or speeches of mere
compliment, Muret was gradually engaged for more
serious occasions. The harangue which he composed
for the French envoy sent to congratulate Pius IV on his
elevation, in which he predicted that the Government of
France, inspired by 'the most exemplary lady, worthy of
all praise'-Catherine de Medicis-would succeed in
purging the kingdom of the heretics, secured for him
Times, August 1882.]
SUBSEQUENT CAREER.
131
the position of Official Orator of the Court of France.
Muret transferred himself to Rome, and in the year of his
patron's death, 1572, became Professor of Latin in the
University of Rome. From the chair of Latin he passed
to that of Jurisprudence; came back again to the classics;
took orders at fifty, preached sermons before the Pope, and
would have been raised to the purple by Gregory XIII
but that enemies were able to revive the old scandal
enough to defeat this, but not enough to tarnish the lustre
of the new priest. Indeed, it was probably less the
malignity of whisperers than the decay of the credit of
classical scholarship which made him miss this highest
honour. Of this decay, of the desertion of Muretus's
lecture-room, of the mutinous conduct of the students, of
the interference of the Government with the freedom of
the professors,-Muret was forbidden to lecture on Plato's
Republic and with difficulty obtained leave to expound
Tacitus, of the surveillance of the professors by the
bedells--of these and other chagrins of the life of a
humanist during the Catholic reaction, the author of this
biography has drawn a vivid picture from the letters and
lectures of Muretus. We know not any other source in
which can be studied the slow process by which Italy
was thrown into the intellectual slumber of three cen-
turies, from which she is only slowly awaking in our day.
K 2
VI.
JOSEPH SCALIGER¹.
(Quarterly Review, July 1860.)
ROM the space which Joseph Scaliger once filled
FRO
in the world—at least in the world of books-it
might have been thought that he would have found many
biographers. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
every writer of any figure had his Boswell. Joseph
Scaliger wrote the Life of his Father, Julius Caesar. But
Joseph himself is an exception. Professor Bernays, at
the distance of two hundred and fifty years, is the first
person who has undertaken to give any complete account
of perhaps the most extraordinary man who has ever
devoted his life to letters.
This remarkable silence is itself not without a cause.
Scaliger's great works in historical criticism had out-
stripped any power of appreciation which the succeeding
age possessed. It was not that his name was forgotten at
his death; on the contrary, his fame maintained itself at
least during all the first period of splendour of the Leyden
school, by whom reverence for Scaliger was exalted into a
culte. But this veneration was inspired by Scaliger's
secondary labours-by his gift of emendatory criticism,
and his skill in the Greek language. His merit came to
consist, with these worthy commentators, in his having
given good editions of two or three Greek authors, and,
with the schoolmasters, in his facility in writing verses.
But when it was found that the Variorum Classics were
vastly better edited, and that his Greek Iambics contained
metrical errors, his credit was shaken. In the philosophical
1 Joseph Justus Scaliger. Von JACOB BERNAYS. Berlin, Herz, 1855.
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
GREATNESS OF SCALIGER.
133
eighteenth century, when the tables were turned upon
classical learning, when, from having engrossed all the
honours of the republic of letters, the classics were voted
obsolete, or only endurable in a 'modern dress,' Scaliger
became a synonym for a pedant. When Churchill, foaming
at the mouth, would make his teeth meet in Warburton's
flesh, he can do no worse than compare him to 'the
Scaligers, the learned pedants of the sixteenth century.'
Only a scholar of comprehensive knowledge, here and
there one, such as Wesseling or Ruhnken, was capable of
measuring the stride of Scaliger. Gradually, and recently,
the revival of the study of the ancient world in Germany
has drawn attention to the founder of historical criticism,
and men have become aware of the gulf which divides the
emendatory critics, the 'syllabarum aucupes,' the herd of
grammarians and antiquaries, from the master-mind of
Joseph Scaliger. 'What, when compared with him,' cries
Niebuhr, 'is the book-learned Salmasius? Scaliger stood
on the summit of universal solid philological learning, in a
degree that none have reached since; so high in every
branch of knowledge, that from the resources of his own
mind he could comprehend, apply, and decide on, whatever
came in his way.'
Professor Bernays, himself a rare union of comprehensive
intellect with intimate familiarity with the details of the
literary history of the time, has at last restored the
younger Scaliger to his rightful throne. The powerful
delineation of his philological labours presented by Dr.
Bernays, throws quite a new light on the origin of
historical science in modern Europe. In laying before our
readers some notices of the personal life of the archcritic,
we must beg to refer them to the volume of the Breslau
Professor for a strictly scientific survey of his philological
and critical performances.
Joseph Juste de L'Escale was born at Agen, then in the
province of Guienne, 4-5 August, 1540. Joseph was the
134
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
tenth of fifteen children, whom his father had by his mar-
riage, at the age of 46, with Andiette de la Roque Lobejac,
aet. 16. De L'Escale is only the French form of Della
Scala, the title of the princely house of Verona, who were
dispossessed by the Venetians. From a cadet-branch of
this family Jules-César, the father of Joseph, believed him-
self descended. When the Jesuits afterwards got the ear
of literary Europe, they spent a vast amount of lying and
forgery in disproving this descent, and at last succeeded in
persuading the world of their story. The world was bored
enough with Joseph in his capacity of' Princeps litterarum':
it could not put up with having to acknowledge him
a Prince by blood besides. The Jesuit onslaught on
Scaliger-for we shall use henceforth the Latinized form
of the name is an important feature in his life, and will
have to be explained presently.
At eleven years of age Joseph was sent to a Latin
school at Bordeaux, a school where his elder brother
Sylvius had been before him, and whither two younger
brothers accompanied him. A fondness for bringing
celebrated names into contact has made the biographers
say that George Buchanan was one of his masters. But
Buchanan had quitted Bordeaux, where he had been
a master at the Collége de Guyenne, or High School, in
1544; and at the time that Scaliger went to school there,
Buchanan was in Portugal. A plague-or rather the
plague of 1555-breaking out at Bordeaux, the boys were
sent home. Joseph never returned to school; nor did he
get any regular instruction at home. But he enjoyed what
was more useful to him than any schooling could have
been-daily intercourse with his father. Julius Scaliger,
though advanced in the seventies, and broken by rheumatic
gout, still retained much of the vigour of his extraordinary
mind. He soothed his declining years with writing Latin
verses. Scarce a day passed but Joseph was called upon
to write to his dictation eighty, or one hundred, on one
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
EARLY YEARS.
135
occasion two hundred, lines. The prosody and grammar
of these effusions are far from exemplary, but there is a
command of the resources of the Latin vocabulary which
we may seek in vain in the thinner diction of the best
modern Latinists. Besides thus acting as his amanuensis,
he was required by his father to produce daily a short
declamation in Latin prose, turning on any story or matter
of fact he chose to select. In other respects he was left to
himself, and we do not hear of his yet attempting any
course of classical reading. But the daily practice of
speaking and writing a language, under the control of one
who knows it thoroughly, is worth more to a boy than any
amount of reading. We may fairly ascribe to this exercise
the athletic Latin prose which appears already fully
matured in Joseph's earliest production, the Conjectanea
in Varronem, and that firm grasp of the principles of ver-
sification which distinguished him from all the scholars of
his time. Bentley's judgment, 'nemo in arte metrica Scali-
gero peritior,' holds good, without exception, of all scholars
before and after Scaliger till Bentley himself. The praise
is relative; for no one knew better than Bentley that
Scaliger was not free from various erroneous opinions on
scansion, which Bentley himself was the first to correct.
To his own keen taste we must attribute it, that Joseph,
while he imbibed the good, rejected the bad. He has
escaped the faults of his father's style; the ambitious strain
which in Julius's Latinity fatigues the attention. The last
thing which a youthful taste learns is the might of sim-
plicity. The more artificial the model, the more captivat
ing to the tiro. We should remember this, if we would
do justice to the originality and native idiom which dis-
tinguishes Joseph's style, equally free from the platitudes
of Ciceronianism, and the hopeless involutions of con-
temporary French Latin.
More important, however, than the technical tuition, such
as it was, was the domestic intercourse he enjoyed as his
136
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
father's constant companion during the last four years.
of his life. To this we may trace his disposition for real
knowledge, and the observation of nature. His subse-
quent superiority over other scholars lay not merely in
his being a better scholar, but in his being something
more than a scholar. The knowledge of the other philo-
logians, however acute or book-learned, is bounded by
their books. They know what the ancients said on any
matter, but have seldom any practical knowledge of their
own. Scaliger, on the contrary, never loses sight of the
actual world. This power in him is, perhaps, a natural
gift; nothing more, in short, than vigour of understanding.
But its habitual direction and employment was an impulse
communicated by the father. Intimately connected with
this were the pains taken by Julius to impress upon all his
children the habit of truthfulness. 'We never went before
him,' says Joseph, 'but he bid us "Never tell a lie.”' In
Joseph, truth became less a moral habit and a rule of
conduct than the very law of his intellect. Its manifest-
ations explain his personal history as well as his books.
He found his vocation in philology in the single-eyed
endeavour to carry the real and the true into regions
in which arbitrary caprice, fancy, tradition, and prejudice,
had hitherto passed unquestioned. His straightforward-
ness in speaking, both of men and things, brought upon
him no little of that personal malignity of which he after-
wards became, in such a peculiar way, the object. Here,
again, the young man's simple nature assimilated the
good, and threw off the unwholesome elements of the
nourishment presented to him. He had no taste—perhaps
he was too young-for the subtle and sophisticating
Aristotelic speculations in which the father revelled.
Joseph afterwards read up Greek philosophy as matter
of duty, but never dwells upon it with pleasure. In his
rare allusions to such topics we may even think we trace a
tone of positive distaste. Dr. Bernays says there are only
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
YOUTH.
137
twenty quotations from Plato to be found in all his books.
These quotations, too, are chiefly from the lesser dialogues,
occasionally only from the Timaeus and the Laws. In
quoting the latter on one occasion he adds, 'that it is a
long time since he read that dialogue.'
It may excite our surprise that Julius should not have
attempted more instruction with a youth of the promising
capacity he must have discerned in his son Joseph. We
must call to mind the distractions caused by the pestilence,
which in 1555 reached Agen, and drove the family into the
country; the father's age and infirmities, and his probable
expectation that his end was imminent, when his son would
be free to return to Bordeaux. Besides this he had
neither the intention nor the wish to bring up any of his
children to letters as a pursuit. It does not appear that
Joseph had learned the rudiments of Greek at the time of
his father's death, 21st October, 1558. He certainly had
not learned more than the rudiments. He had seen
enough, however, to understand that 'not to know Greek
was to know nothing.' The death of his father affected him
so deeply as for some time to disorder his health. As
soon as he had recovered from the blow, he determined
to make good this deficiency.
Adrian Turnebus was at that time the most renowned
Greek scholar in France and in Europe. For a youth of
eighteen, who had yet to begin his grammar, less than the
first Grecian of the day might have served. But this is
a truth which only experiment can teach us. Joseph made
his way to Paris, and enrolled himself in Turnebus's class,
that he might imbibe Greek at the fountain-head. A trial
of two months opened his eyes, and he understood that to
begin one must begin at the beginning; a lesson, in
learning which two months were well spent. He adopted
the resolution-be it remembered he is nineteen-to shut
himself up in his chamber, and become his own teacher.
It is not said, but we may be certain that it was instinct,
138
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
·
not accident, which guided him to Homer. With the aid
of a Latin translation he went through it in one-and-twenty
days. From Homer he passed in order down the series of
the Greek poets; and four months sufficed to devour the
whole. The same instinct, and the same spirit of deter-
mination, guided him here in not interrupting his poetic
reading by any deviation into prose; the differences of
idiom being, he may have felt, distinct dialects, incapable
of being mastered at one effort. As he went along, he
formed a grammar for himself by his own observation
of the analogies, the only grammar he ever learnt. Huet,
alluding to the Scaliger feat, thinks it incredible, but on no
better ground than that he himself had made an un-
successful attempt to repeat the experiment. Gibbon,
more modestly, declares that he was well satisfied with
himself when he got through the same task in as many
weeks as Scaliger took days. We might quote against
these authorities Wyttenbach despatching Athenaeus in
fourteen days; or Milton's assertion that he had read
'all the Greek and Latin classics' in five years, if it were
not that parallel is misplaced in speaking of Scaliger and
Greek. There are things which a man cannot teach
himself. And this he had now to experience, when, elated
by his victory over Greek, he attempted to carry Hebrew
by storm in the same manner.
He did ultimately acquire
both Hebrew and Arabic. But Dr. Bernays, who has the
best title to judge in the case of the first-named tongue,
pronounces that he never reached, in Hebrew, that
practical hold upon the idiom—the usus linguae which was
the foundation of his critical skill in Latin and Greek.
This is sufficient to correct the idle romance of those
biographers who, in their ignorance, make Scaliger's
mythical eminence to consist in his knowing many lan-
guages. He spoke thirteen languages, says one of the
most recent of these open-mouthed wonderers,¹ as if
Poirson, Histoire du Règne de Henri IV, vol. IV, p. 230.
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
STUDIES.
139
Scaliger was a Wotton or a Mezzofanti. It illustrates
the way in which the French manufacture history, to say
that the origin of this extravagance is a flight of Du Bartas.
(Sem. seconde.)
Scaliger, merveille de notre age,
Le Soleil des sçavants, qui parle éloquemment
L'Hébrieu, Grecquois, Roman, Hispagnol, Alernant, etc.
Of the four years Scaliger spent at the University of
Paris, nothing is known¹. In 1563 he received an invi-
tation from a nobleman of Poitou, Louis Chasteigner, Lord
of La Roche-Pozay, to travel with him. The acquaintance,
which may have been formed at the university, ripened
into friendship. For thirty years Scaliger was domesti-
cated in this family, and when he finally quitted France in
1594, one of the sons accompanied him to Holland in the
character of pupil. A connection which might be useful
to him as a young man became necessary to him in after-
life; for in the course of the Civil Wars his little patrimony
perished in the wreck of the paternal property at Agen,
and the house of La Roche-Pozay became his asylum.
That Scaliger felt this dependence is certain: 'All my life,'
he says, 'I have eaten the bread of charity' (eleemosynis
vixi). But it was made as little galling to him as such
a clientship can be. As long as Louis lived, he treated
Scaliger as a brother; and the sons, Jean, who succeeded
his father as Lord of La Roche-Pozay in 1594, and Henri-
Louis, afterwards Bishop of Poitiers, inherited their father's
esteem for their illustrious guest. Of the period of thirty
years, 1563-1594, not more than half was actually spent by
Scaliger under his patron's roof. But it was always open
to him, and his books and papers-his only property—seem
to have been deposited in one of his Poitevin châteaux.
Such arrangements, where the great man took into his
house a man of learning nominally as his secretary or
1 See Appendix.
140
JOSEPH SCALIGER.
VI.
tutor to his children, but really as companion to himself,
were common enough at that time and long after. So
D'Ossat, afterwards Cardinal, read Plato with Paul de
Foix; so Locke lived with Shaftesbury; so Bentley,
though only tutor to his sons, ruled Stillingfleet's house-
hold, as the Bishop almost complainingly describes it. It
does not appear that the elder La Roche-Pozay was a man
of peculiarly classical tastes. Like all the seigneurs of
that disturbed period, he led of necessity a semi-military
life, in camps, and forays, and sieges. But even the
military noblesse of that day read Greek; and Louis
studied the theory of tactics in Polybius, which Scaliger
expounded to him as they rode. We gather too that they
had read, at least, the Latin poets systematically through,
though only Propertius and Statius are named¹.
These thirty years, during which Scaliger acquired his
knowledge and his reputation, were by no means years of
quiet and leisure. In reviewing the period himself, at its
close, he says (1594):—
If in our editions of classical authors hitherto we have not given
satisfaction to men of learning, and we know too well that we have
not, my excuse is the desultory nature of my life, and the want of
leisure, the indispensable condition of study. From the year 1563,
when I first went to live with M. de La Roche-Pozay, up to the pre-
sent moment, I have had no rest for mind or body, but have been
harassed by incessant anxieties, or movement from place to place.
His biographer is inclined to think this complaint a little
overcharged. But it certainly agrees with all the notices
contained in his correspondence relating to the period in
question. And when we look at the disturbed state of the
country-and especially of Poitou, the Marche, and the
Limousin during the greater part of the time, we shall
rather wonder how study so systematic could be carried
on at all, in a country where every château was at any
moment liable to be beaten up by a raid of the foe, or
¹ Comm. in Propert. II. 2, 12.
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
STUDY IN TIME OF WAR.
141
to have to find quarters for a troop of its own partizans.
He has repeatedly to excuse himself from answering some
query, because he is separated from his books. 'N'eust
été cette maudite et meschante guerre,' he could (1587)
have communicated to Dalechamp an important MS. for
his edition of Pliny. 'All public disorders are enemies to
this sort of literature,' complains Markland, meaning that
the public have thus something else to think of. But this
is a light evil. The man who was not content 'scribere sibi
et doctis' would have little of Scaliger's sympathy. His
own complaint, 'inter arma non esse Musis locum,' meant
much more. It was the complaint of a man who had
handled a matchlock, and who had had to snatch a hasty
read of a pocket classic by the light of a camp-lantern¹. To
reading such as Montaigne's, a bit here and then a bit there
'à pièces descousues,' such a life might be even favourable.
Scaliger, however, made it compatible not only with the
systematic study of the whole of the remains of the ancient
world, but with a work of plan, compass, and concentra-
tion, such as the De Emendatione Temporum.
We have said that of this period of thirty years during
which Scaliger was the inmate of the de La Roche-Pozay
family, only half, or thereabouts, was actually passed under
their roof. The first four years, 1563-1567, were occupied
in travelling with the young lord of La Roche-Pozay, who
was making his grand tour. Dr. Bernays makes him go as
ambassador to the Holy See; but this must be an error.
The Roman embassy of Louis de La Roche-Pozay was at
a later period, in 1576. In 1564 he was not yet thirty:
scarcely a ripe ambassadorial age, but the very best age
for a tour of instruction. Italy was their first destination.
They made a prolonged stay at Rome, went on to Naples,
and returned to Rome. At Rome Scaliger found his
countryman, Marc Antoine, commonly known by the
¹ Tuque mihi vigilis studiorum conscia curae,
Illustrans noctes parca lucerna meas.-Poemata, No. 44.
142
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
surname of Muretus. Muretus, when a youth, had been a
great favourite with Julius Scaliger; had visited at his
house at Agen, and used to call him 'Father.' He had
afterwards alienated Joseph by passing off upon him
some Latin lines of his own composition as a 'fragment
of Attius'; and Joseph had retorted by an epigram which
perhaps more than paid off the score. Muretus now
handsomely sank the quarrel, and remembered only the
old intimacy. He undertook to show the strangers the
lions of Rome. He very soon detected that in the son of
his old friend he had to do with an extraordinary man, and
as long as their stay in the Eternal City lasted, Muretus
never quitted Scaliger's side. He was able to be especially
useful, besides, in making him acquainted with all the
literati of the place. For Muretus, though in his youth he
had narrowly escaped being burnt at fanatical Toulouse
for the laxity of his talk and his behaviour, had quite
recovered himself, enjoyed high consideration at the
Court of Rome, and was in communication with all the
Italian érudits. Leaving Rome, the travellers visited the
· north of Italy and Venice. As may be supposed, Scaliger
did not neglect the opportunity of seeing the home and the
graves of his ancestors. His address to Verona-choli-
ambics in imitation of Catullus's lines to Sirmio-which
was then under the rule of Venice, breathes a spirit of
no feigned hatred against the 'City of Pirates, the city of
rapine and perjury, the poison-cup and the dagger,' the
ruiner and oppressor of the country of the Scaligers, the
proscriber of their very name. It is strange now, when
general sympathy is on the side of Venice, as fallen under
strange masters, to go back to a time when the republic
was herself the oppressor and ravisher instead of the
victim-'the arbiter of others' fate,' instead of 'suppliant
for her own.' On Venetian territory he took the precaution
of concealing his name. For the Venetians were very
jealous of their acquisition of the Veronese, and chose
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
ITALY.
143
to give out that the family of the Della Scala was extinct;
an assertion they would assuredly have made good upon
all claimants of the name who might venture within reach
of their police.
Of Italy, or rather of the Italians as they then were,
we shall not wonder that Scaliger carried away an un-
favourable impression. It was the time of the Catholic
and conservative reaction against the paganism and in-
difference of the Renaissance. Religious profession, and
zeal for the Church, were now in vogue. But Scaliger's
eye was not imposed upon by appearances :-'The Italians
are a set of atheists,' was the exaggerated phrase in which
he utters the opinion he had been obliged to form. The
phrase requires interpretation. It is aimed rather at the
hypocrisy than at the professed scepticism of the time.
Men did not disbelieve the truths of the Christian religion,
but they affected a zeal for the interests of the Church
beyond what they really felt. The free and ardent spirit
of curiosity which had animated the Italian mind in the
early part of the century was exhausted. In its place had
come, not secret unbelief, but callous acquiescence. The
soul, the heart, and the imagination were dormant or dead,
and were replaced by a cold and superficial polish of the
understanding. The zeal for the interests of the Church
which animated the religious orders was not participated
in by the literati, but they submitted to it. They were
cowed, not converted. Literature had degenerated into
style-a prolix and insipid effusion, which came not from
the mind. They had no longer thought or knowledge to
inspire their pen, yet their pen was more prolific than ever.
To all this Scaliger's habit of mind was in antipathy. He
could care for no knowledge but what was real. Truth,
not amusement, was his aim. His verbal criticism, on his
skill in which so much stress has at times been laid, was
never to him more than the road to exact knowledge.
The Italian scholar necessarily seemed to him a frivolous
144
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
and emasculate being, who used the classics as playthings,
ignorant of all that grand experience of life and the world
which was wrapped up in them. The dislike was, of
course, mutual. The simplicity and directness of Scaliger's
character provoked the bitterest hatred on the part of these
affected virtuosi; at least, the foundation was now laid
of that rancorous hostility with which he was afterwards
pursued by the whole clique of Catholic Latinists.
6
There were, however, several exceptions to a dislike
which was rooted in the very foundations of character.
Where his feelings were interested, Scaliger could like and
love even where he did not esteem. It is difficult to think
that he esteemed Muretus as a scholar. But this stylist
without convictions, who could write at least as well as
Cicero, only that unfortunately he had nothing to say,
found his way to Scaliger's affections. Scaliger never
names him but with a certain tenderness; grieves for his
death (in 1586); and always holds up his style as a model
of prose Latinity. He forgave him his panegyric on the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, evidently from the know-
ledge that Muretus did not mean anything by it, and
would have been as ready to write on the other side had
he been retained on it. There are not many Muretuses
in the world,' he said; 'if he only believed in the existence
of a God as well as he can talk about it, he would be an
excellent Christian.' On another occasion, in comparing
Muretus with Lipsius, he is made to say, 'Lipsius is
nothing to him'-a judgment which ought to have guided
those compilers of literary history who have pretended to
enter the narrow pedant Lipsius in a 'triumvirate' with
Scaliger and Casaubon. To the Italian friends of Scaliger
must be added the laborious antiquary Onufrio Panvinio.
As a native, and the historian, of Verona, he had a double
claim to a good reception from Scaliger, who was in-
troduced to him by Muretus. But the early death (in 1568)
of this prolific compiler-at thirty-nine he had written
Quarterly Review, 1860]
1
ITALY.
ENGLAND.
145
more volumes than he was years old-interrupted an
acquaintance to which Scaliger seems to look back with
interest. With these exceptions, we find no traces of par-
tiality for the Italians or their ways; for Rome and its
pharisaical religion only the deepest aversion. The lines.
in which he bids farewell to Rome in 1565-he never
returned there-are of such Archilochian bitterness that
Dr. Bernays will not reprint them. They are given by
Des Maizeaux in his notes on the 'Scaligerana'; but the
reader can dispense with them, as they only express the
writer's intense feeling without either elegance or point.
From Italy the travellers passed to England. In the
spring of 1566 we find Scaliger in Edinburgh, at that
moment when the public speech was of 'the discord be-
tween the Queen and her husband". But he brought away
from our island a not more favourable impression of our
countrymen than our neighbours in general were used to
do at that period. The barbarism of our manners, and the
want of those material accessories of civilisation among the
middle class which were in use on the Continent, predis-
posed our visitors against us; while the energy and quick
circulation of free life which now extorts their respect was
not yet developed. He made, however, some acquaintances
in Oxford and Cambridge; though his most valued Eng-
lish correspondents, William Camden and Richard Thom-
son, were later introductions. For Rainolds, President
of Corpus, the most learned theologian in the English
Church of that, perhaps of any time, Scaliger conceived a
profound respect, and lamented his death (1607) as a
calamity to all the Protestant churches. Rainolds and
Whitaker were known to him only by their writings.
Camden had never been out of England, and was not
personally acquainted with Scaliger; but he introduced
himself by letter at a later period, forwarding to Scaliger a
copy of his Britannia (1594). His only regular English
¹ Randolph to Cecil, 25 April, 1566.
VOL. I.
1
L
146
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
correspondent was Thomson, a person well known in the
learned world of his day, though now so wholly forgotten,
that Dr. Bernays calls him 'one Thomson.' He was an
M.A. of Clare Hall, and one of the translators of the Bible,
being grouped with Andrewes, Overall, and Saravia, for
the portion from Genesis to Kings. Having been born in
Holland, though of English parents, he had been led to
form foreign connections. He had travelled in France
and Italy, sought out the acquaintance of scholars wher-
ever he went, and maintained correspondence with them
afterwards. He returned to England and to Cambridge
in 1599, and from that time made the University his
residence, becoming proctor in 1612. In his youth he had
played at emending the classics. Farnaby acknowledges
his assistance in his preface to his Martial, in the dilet
tante Italian style apparently. But in James's reign he
was drawn in, like all the rest, to the growing theological
polemics, in which all learning was wrecked. He became
a strenuous champion of the Arminian side, and wrote
pamphlets 'by order' in support of Andrewes. The style
of these productions is better than their matter, and bears
marks of imitation of Scaliger's peculiar Latin. He does
not venture to name Scaliger, whose name was unpopular
with the theological belligerents, owing to his known
contempt for their ignorant squabbles, but he quotes him
once as 'the Muses' nightingale.' The stock of knowledge
he brings to the controversy is not more than respectable,
and may be measured by the fact that he is found
consulting Scaliger by letter as to whether S. Irenaeus
wrote in Latin or Greek. When we find Prynne styling
Thomson 'a dissolute, ebrious, and luxurious English-
Dutchman,' we must remember that any licence of abuse
was considered justifiable against an 'Arminian.'
Next to seeing and learning to know each other, the
great object of the journeys of the learned, then, was to
see MSS. At the present day, when the whereabouts
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
MANUSCRIPTS.
147
of all MSS. of the classics is ascertained, an editor may
still have to undertake a journey to Rome or to Florence
for the purpose of collation. In the sixteenth century,
when a scholar had read all the Greek that was in print,
it was still necessary that he should visit the great libraries,
in order to complete his knowledge by reading what as
yet existed only in MS. Though, by the end of the
century, the hopes long entertained of recovering more
of the capital productions of classical antiquity had pretty
well died away, there was still much of the Lower Empire,
of the Ecclesiastical writers, of the Grammarians and
Lexicographers, of great value for illustration and inter-
pretation of the nobler remains. The harvest of fragments
too, scarcely yet after the lapse of 300 years all gleaned,
had already begun. During his visit to Italy, Scaliger's
attention seems to have been given chiefly to inscriptions.
The labour he bestowed on their transcription, a task
which the frivolous Italian literati, who lived among them,
were too supine to undertake, is evidenced by the great
collection of Gruter. In this Corpus Inscriptionum,
published by the Commelins at Heidelberg, in 1601, a
large, if not the largest, part, was supplied by Scaliger.
Indeed so great was Scaliger's share in this work, com-
menced at his suggestion, continued by his encouragement,
and deriving its chief value from his corrections, and the
Indices, the labour of ten months of his life, that Gruter
is overpowered by his ally, and driven to the unmanly
device of concealing the extent of his obligations. In
Italy, Scaliger may have thought his time better employed
upon this most perishable class of ancient relic. In
England, where inscriptions were not to be had, his
attention was turned to the libraries. He seems to have
been disappointed at not finding here more Codices.
From this it may be inferred that the fact was not yet
generally known, that no English monastic house had
employed itself in the transcription of Greek MSS. He
L 2
148
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
soon perceived, however, that our strength lay in our
National Chronicles. Without any of the Renaissance
pedantry which contemned everything not written in
Ciceronian Latin, Scaliger admired the variety of our
monkish chroniclers, in which, for the Anglo-Norman
period, we yield neither to France nor Germany. None
of these were as yet in print-Archbishop Parker led the
way, with Matthew of Westminster, in 1567-and Scaliger
must have formed his opinion from the written copies.
What Greek we had did not escape him. He notices the
Cambridge MS. of Origen against Celsus, which was
not printed till 1605, an edition for which the Cambridge
copy was not employed. The Lexicon of Photius,
which was afterwards borrowed by Scaliger from England,
was not the famous Codex Galeanus, which had not yet
found its way into Trinity College Library, but a tran-
script made by Richard Thomson at Florence.
His first interest was for books, but by no means his
only one. We have no notice of his travels, and it is only
from casual hints in his later writings-a note here and
there in Eusebius, or an allusion in his Table-Talk, that
we see how various was his observation. The change in
the patois with each day's journey in Italy; the absence
in England of seignorial jurisdiction; the merit of the
Border ballads; the beauty of Mary Stuart; our burning
coal instead of wood in the north; the indolent lives of
Fellows of Colleges; the universal prevalence among us
Xof the sectarian point of view; these little memoranda of
travel are dropped here and there quite casually, and
belong to that habit of his mind already noticed, which
sought to bring all the parts of common knowledge to
bear upon the illustration of the ancients. If in these
matters of fact he is not always accurate, the errors will be
found chiefly in the Table-Talk, and are ascribable to
his reporters. But he is often right where his critics are
wrong, e.g. he speaks of the rich endowments of the
Quarterly Review, 1850.]
ENGLAND AND ENGLISH MANNERS.
149
Church of England, but qualifies this by saying, that the
Crown has invaded them, and extorted a moiety for itself.
Here the editor, Le Clerc, contradicts. But Le Clerc did
not know that Scaliger was speaking of those scandalous
cases, notorious enough in the reigns of Elizabeth and
James, where bargains were made for pensions to be paid
out of the episcopal revenues to royal favourites, or sees
kept vacant while a minister drew their income. So the
see of Ely lay vacant for eighteen years (1581–99); and An-
drewes, as is well known,was kept out of preferment, because
he refused to be a party to a transaction of this nature.
The feeling with which Scaliger left Italy was one of
pity or contempt for the mental and moral enervation of
its educated men. That with which he regarded the
English was rather aversion for our manners. It was
the repugnance of his French nature; for in these things
Scaliger was a genuine Frenchman. Time and ex-
perience did not qualify this sentiment. As late as 1603
he writes to Casaubon, then meditating settlement in this
country, to dissuade him :-
You would be going amongst a people who cherish a traditional
hatred of the French, and exchanging a certainty for an uncertainty.
Settlement in a foreign country is at best a hazardous experiment.
You would be incurring a great expense, and only get laughed at for
your pains by all the court-monkeys. I could tell you many tales of
their inhuman disposition, their inhospitable treatment of foreigners,
their peculiar grudge against our country. Even if it be in your fates
that you shall go to reside in England, at least do nothing to pre-
cipitate the event.
There is in these words something of the bitterness of
an exile; Scaliger had been ten years in Holland when
this was written. But he never speaks in this way of his
hosts, the Dutch, though all the honour and consideration
with which they treated him did not compensate him for
the loss of his own country. This ill-repressed antipathy
to English manners is the more remarkable, because
Scaliger had no Catholic sympathies. The repulsion
150
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
M
was not one of creed. In common with all the Protest-
ants, he looked to Elizabeth as the protector of the
reformed interest in Europe. In spite of community of
political interest his freer nature could not accommodate
itself to the starched puritanical reserve which formed
the typical character of the English gentleman of that age,
and was the very mould in which our domestic virtues
were originally cast.
In this patriotic spirit he returned to France only to find
that his own country offered him neither hope of an
honourable career, nor opportunity of studious retire-
ment. It was in a blaze with Civil War-that which is
styled by historians the Second War of Religion (1567–8).
In this, and in the third which grew out of it, Scaliger
was involved through his connexion with the La Roche-
Pozay family. For three years he led an unsettled
camp-life; moving from château to château in the train
of his patron, if not actually fighting under his banner.
He lost a great part of his early friends in the murderous
fights; was cheated out of his patrimony during the period
of lawlessness; and noted with despair the steady progress
of religious faction and its concomitant barbarism among
the noblesse, of penury and misery among the peasantry.
The political horizon of France and of Europe was over-
cast by the portentous shadow of Spain-the Spain of the
Jesuits and the Inquisition; of Philip II and the Armada.
The hearts of the brave and free were failing them for
fear. That fatal temper was forming, mixed of fanaticism
and infidelity, which broke out afterwards in the St.
Bartholomew and the League. France was no longer
a place for letters or learning. It was indeed scarcely a
time to complain of the neglect of science when virtue
itself was in danger of perishing; when, under the auspices
of the infamous Catherine, perfidy, disloyalty, and treachery,
were becoming religious duties. Scaliger determined to
withdraw from the sickening scene. Disgusted with life
·
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
FRANCE. CUJAS.
151
almost before he had entered upon it-he was (1570) in
his thirtieth year-he quitted Poitou and took refuge at
Valence, in Dauphiné. The comparative security of this
remote province, and the fame of Cujas, the greatest
civilian who had arisen since the revival of letters, had
drawn hither a crowd of auditors from all parts. Cujas
received him with open arms as a friend, not as a pupil,
and shortly succeeded in raising him from his despondency.
He entered with his usual zest into the spirit of the place,
undertaking the study of the Roman Law, to which he
had been till then a stranger. His proficiency was rapid,
and Cujas would have had him embrace the profession,
offering him an assistant-professorship. But Scaliger was
true to himself. He never for a day hesitated as to his
own career, or played with this and that. He had vowed
himself to philology, and he remained faithful to it as his
only and sufficient calling. He would master the Civil
Law but as an instrument of philological inquiry. How
indispensable a knowledge of this living tradition of Rome
is for the understanding of the Empire, scholars have
always recognized. What light may be reflected back
from the Imperial Law upon the earlier period of the
Republic has first been shown in our own day by the
brilliant results educed by Professor Mommsen and the
school forming around him. Cujas, too, was not only a
great lawyer, but a great critic. Scaliger pronounced—
but this was before Casaubon had published - Dorat
and Cujas the only living critics capable of making a
conjectural emendation. Cujas's valuable collection of
MSS. was treasure-trove to Scaliger. He fell upon them,
and was almost testily complained of by their owner
'd'avoir depucellé les manuscrits.' In his will Cujas had
left his books to one who knew so well how to use them.
This was after the death of his only son.
But three years
before his own death, Cujas's second wife brought him
a daughter, and Scaliger did not get a single volume.
1
152
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
•
The library, as well as the very considerable fortune
which the father had amassed, was speedily dissipated by
Susanna Cujas, in the course of her wild career.
Upon these days of his peaceful retirement in Dauphiné
Scaliger always looked back with a peculiar satisfaction,
though a sad one. He seems to have thought that if
ever creative impulse stirred within him it was then-
Tunc, tunc poeta, tunc Apollini carus
Vixi; Camenis tunc amicus audivi;
Nec ulla surdo plectra movimus Phoebo.
The sympathy of Cujas had first rallied him from a state of
intellectual despondency. In the circle gathered round the
great Jurist he found, for the first time, a congenial sphere:
a new and promising field of study opened before him.
The enthusiasm for his science, which Cujas knew how to
inspire into his pupils, communicated itself to Scaliger.
Politics and party passions were banished from this sanc-
tuary of Themis. Nihil hoc ad edictum praetoris' was
the playful way in which Cujas was wont to stop dispute
which began to take a political turn. Twenty years
younger than Cujas, Scaliger would inspire no jealousy in
his master, whose reputation was now established beyond
the reach of rivalry. In the voluntary homage of the
young law-students, who flocked from every quarter round
the 'Pearl of Lawyers,' was laid the foundation of that
universal fame to which Scaliger slowly rose. Upon this
growing celebrity Cujas placed the stamp of his own
countersign, when, in his published Commentary on the
Digest, he accepted an emendation as supplied him by
'doctissimus Josephus Scaliger, a quo pudet dissentire.'
Here too was formed, among other friendships, one most
valued by Scaliger and only broken by death, with De
Thou (Thuanus), the future President of the Parliament of
Paris. The History of De Thou, once the source in
which every practical statesman sought political wisdom—
Johnson designed to translate it, Pitt quoted it in Parlia-
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
DE THOU.
153
ment-is now scarcely known except to professed histo-
rians. In his Own Life (De Vita Sua), De Thou thus
speaks of his intimacy with Scaliger :-
It was at Valence that my friendship with Joseph Scaliger was
commenced. He had gone thither, on Cujas's invitation, in company
with Louis de Monjosieu and George Du Bourg. This friendship,
begun in the daily intercourse of Valence, has been continued since,
either by personal communication or by correspondence, for the space
of thirty-eight years uninterrupted. This friendship is the pride and.
pleasure of my life. All the calumny and misrepresentation which it
has occasioned me, are, in my opinion, balanced by the satisfaction
of an intercourse so honourable and so delightful to me. I know
that I have been reproached with it by mischievous men; but I both
glory in it publicly, and cherish it in my own breast. As for Scaliger's
sentiments on religion, I solemnly affirm that I never heard this great
man dispute on the controverted points of faith; and I am well
assured that he never did discuss them but upon provocation, and
then reluctantly. Independently of his religious opinions, were there
not in Scaliger the most transcendant attainments of human erudi-
tion? And did not the singular endowments bestowed upon him by
Heaven claim the veneration of all worthy men?
This apology for a friendship with a Huguenot is a
humiliating confession of the degraded state of public
opinion in France at the time it was written. But it
belongs to a later period, 1601.
This time of sunshine at Valence was as transient as the
happy days of our life too commonly are. It was just that
brief interval of about two years which separated the third
war of religion from the St. Bartholomew (1570-72). That
bloody night, however, was not the occasion of Scaliger's
leaving Valence. Queen Catherine had deputed Monluc,
Bishop of Valence, to negotiate the crown of Poland for
her son the Duke of Anjou. Cujas recommended Scaliger
to the bishop as one of his retinue. On the 22nd of
the fatal month of August, 1572, Scaliger, who happened to
be at Lyons on business, received notice to meet Monluc
at Strasburg. He set off, taking the route through Swit-
zerland, and slept at Lausanne on the dreadful night of the
154
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
24th, ignorant of the tragedy then enacting in Paris. Not
till he reached Strasburg did he learn the horrid news.
The other members of the embassy had already arrived at
the rendezvous, but Monluc did not make his appearance.
Disconcerted by the failure of their chief, and fearing
to remain so near the French frontier, while alarming
accounts were hourly coming in of the fury of the Catholic
populace in the provincial towns, the party determined on
dispersing. Scaliger was too glad to regain the shelter of
Swiss territory. He bent his steps, naturally, to Geneva.
For Scaliger, as we have said, was a Huguenot. The
date of his conversion, a step so decisive of the colour of
his future life, cannot be fixed to a day, only because there
was no formal abjuration and reception. He was brought
up in the Catholic faith, in which his father had died. But
the opinions of Julius had taken towards the close of his
life a very liberal complexion. Not that he embraced
Lutheran tenets, but he was disgusted with the wickedness
of the dominant churchmen. In his series of The Saints
there is a short poem addressed to St. Peter, which might
have been written by a Protestant, and which the Jesuits
accordingly mutilated when they reprinted the volume.
'Though my father,' said Joseph, 'had not a knowledge of
true religion, yet, had he lived in these days of the Jesuits,
he would have hated them; for anything like falsehood
and hypocrisy was what he could not abide.' It was not,
however, till Joseph had been four years in Paris, and had
completed his university course, that he was first taken by
a friend, M. de Buzanval, to hear a reformed preacher.
After this he submitted to the regular instruction of a
Huguenot pastor, and attended his last mass during his
stay at Rome, in 1566 probably, when he was twenty-six
years of age. We may allow the predisposing causes of
this conversion to have been the bias received from his
father's philosophical opinions, from the example of
Turnebus and De Salignac, and the indignation excited in
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
SCALIGER A HUGUENOT.
155
young and generous minds by the cruelties with which the
Government sought to put down the reformed opinions in
France. In Scaliger's youth hardly a day passed on which
some unhappy Huguenot was not roasted alive for his
religion. Such brutal scenes most surely revolt those
minds which they do not subdue. But, after allowing for
these influences, we must look within rather than without,
for the momentum which Scaliger's religious convictions
obeyed. The creed of a scholar or a man of science is
often a matter of small interest to him; he wears the
religion of his country as he does its garb. With Scaliger
it was not so. He could not have been a Catholic. For
his knowledge was not a professional skill, a linguistic,
a verbal art, or a literary taste. His criticism was to him
an instrument of truth. Philology was not an amusement
for the ingenious, but the mode of ascertaining the true
sense of ancient records. And the controversy as it came
to stand at the end of the century between Catholic and
Protestant was much more one of interpretation than it has
since become. We now think Scaliger's dictum, ‘All
controversies in religion arise from ignorance of criticism'
(Non aliunde dissidia in religione pendent quam ab ignor-
atione grammaticae¹), somewhat overdrawn. But it was
almost literally true at that time. Not only had the
Catholic theologians rested their case on all sorts of false
renderings and expositions of the Scripture and fathers,
on supposititious documents, on historical frauds, on ex-
ploded hypotheses, but their principle of interpretation was
a rotten one-the principle, namely, that that is the true
sense of a text which is conformable to the received
doctrine of the Church. A clear scientific insight into the
laws of interpretation inevitably forces the mind which
arrives at it to rebel against such a maxim. The spell is
broken, and it becomes aware that that may be the true
sense of Scripture which the Church may have ruled to be
1 1 Scalig., p. 86.
156
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
heresy. It was, therefore, impossible in the sixteenth
century for a consummate critic to be other than a Pro-
testant. 'Jamais superstitieux ne fut docte,' is a saying of
Scaliger which intimates his consciousness of the real
alliance between knowledge and the Protestant faith.
And, in another conversation, he says of his Augsburg
correspondent, Welser-'Romanism (superstitio) prevents
Welser from knowing more than he does.' A mere
antiquary like Sigonio, Latinists like Lipsius or Muretus,
textual critics and collators of MSS., might be either
Catholic or Protestant, as it happened. But where
character and intellect, knowledge and will, are intimately
blended, the entire man is of a piece and uniform; his
opinions are no longer matter of accident or impulse; he is
the law unto himself. The whole of Scaliger's utterance,
whether in conversation or in his books, is stamped with
this noble surrender of the understanding to the truth,
whatever it might be, as the inevitable law of his thoughts
which he had no choice but to obey.
The name of Scaliger appears in the City-Register as
admitted citizen of Geneva, 8th September, 1572. Geneva
became again at the St. Bartholomew, what it had been
thirty years before, on occasion of the edict of Chateau-
briand, the city of refuge for the unhappy Protestants
flying from death. It was now filled with refugees from
all parts of France, and they were received, as before, with
hearty welcomes. Among other former friends whom
Scaliger fell in with here was one of the Valence circle of
students, Claude Groulart. His name stands next on the
Register to that of Scaliger as 'Ecolier de Dieppe,' ad-
mitted on the same day. He became one of a number of
young students whom Scaliger gathered round him here,
as he did afterwards at Leyden, giving them regular in-
struction and more general encouragement and guidance
in their studies. Groulart returned to France on the
restoration of order, and rose to distinction in his native
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
GENEVA.
157
province in the only way in which advancement was
attainable, by conforming to the Catholic church. He
was afterwards one of the most strenuous advisers of
the abjuration of Henri IV.
Beza and the managers of the Genevan Academy—a
quasi-University set up by Calvin with a view to supply
ministers to the French churches-were urgent with
Scaliger to settle among them as a teacher in the institu-
tion. He was very reluctant. He never had any taste for
lecturing; but he yielded at last, predicting that he should
not satisfy the expectations formed of him. On the 31st
October, 1572, according to an entry in the Register of
the 'Venerable Company,' he was admitted 'Professor
of Philosophy.' Here he read on Aristotle's Organon,
and Cicero's De Finibus. The students' judgment was,
'Monsieur Scaliger did not beat about the bush like the
rest, but explained his author.' Groulart, who had begun
Greek late, said, 'he learnt more with Scaliger in a month
than with others in a year, because he never went off into
useless matter, and no difficulty stopped him.' Groulart's
Latin version of three orations of Lysias is reckoned
among the best specimens of translation, and was praised
as such a century later by Huet-a credit it probably
owes to its having been looked over by Scaliger. Geneva,
however, with its ecclesiastical police and the petty tyranny
of its pastors, was, at best, but a tolerable abode. Every
other interest was there as nothing in comparison with
church interests, and church interests were there under-
stood in a narrow spirit of sect which denounced all
Protestant communities beyond the strictly Calvinistic. To
the ordinary discomforts of exile was added for the refu-
gees the misery of want-alms the Republic was itself too
poor to give. They must work; and in a little town and
territory so overcrowded with foreigners, the supply of
labour was out of all proportion to the demand. Calvin, in
inviting a French seigneur to expatriate himself, had
158
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
warned him 'not to suppose he was coming to an earthly
paradise. Our people here are so wretchedly off, that I
am almost ashamed to speak thereof. You will have here
the pure word of God, and that is all. As for comforts,
you will have to take that which God shall give you,
and to do without those of which He shall think fit to
deprive you.' That Scaliger was not ungrateful for the
shelter afforded him, we gather from some verses written
at Geneva, in which he says—
metu dejectus, obsitus luctu,
Atratus, exspes, in tuum sinum fugi
Geneva, quae me patriae exulem terrae
Blanda atque amica caritate fovisti.
(
But lecturing was irksome to him. His vocation,' thinks
his intimate friend Vertunien, in 1574, is not 'caqueter en
chaire et pedanter.' When afterwards, at Leyden, Scaliger
counts among his blessings that here he 'is not deafened
with the harangues of professors, or the impertinences
of fanatical preachers' ('nullis cathedris pedagogorum
obstrepimur, nulla nos fanaticorum concionatorum mendi-
cabula obtundunt ¹,') we see what were his reminiscences
of Geneva. He took his leave in the summer of 1574, and
returned to France; not, however, to Valence, which Cujas
had now quitted, but to Poitou and the protection of his
friend and patron La Roche-Pozay.
Of the next twenty years of Scaliger's life (1574-1594),
hardly any events are recorded, because there were few to
record. We only know that he was domesticated with the
Lord of La Roche-Pozay, sharing the fortunes of that family,
which was throughout that turbulent period engaged
on the Royalist side. Their possessions lay in Touraine,
Poitou, La Marche, etc., the centre of French Calvinism, and
therefore the most exposed to the ravages of the Catholic
troopers. In times of peace, the family, and Scaliger with
them, were continually on the move from one château to
1 To Casaubon, January, 1601.
Į
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
LA ROCHE-POZAY.
159
another, in the old seignorial fashion. In times of dis-
turbance, they secured themselves in their castle of Preuilly
(in Touraine), which was sufficiently strong to hold at bay
any body of marauding leaguers from Bretagne, if they did
not bring artillery with them. Scaliger's books, of which
he gradually amassed a considerable number, were at
Abain, and the continual separation from them was a great
hindrance to him¹ in his various undertakings. Far from
being glued to his desk, he was perpetually in motion,
ready to take his turn of garrison-duty in case of necessity;
not unable or disinclined to join a party for la chasse, and
to spear a boar with his own hand. In 1581 he is paying a
visit of condolence to Cujas, who was now at Bourges; in
1583 he is at Nerac, at the court of the King of Navarre;
in 1584 he paid a visit to Paris; in 1586 he is staying
in Provence and though we know that he did not in
all this period quit France, it should seem that this is by
no means a full account of all his journeys in different
parts of the kingdom. As this locomotion, however, has
to be spread over twenty years, there was left ample
time for steady labour. In this respect, command of
his own time, Scaliger's position, humble as it was, was
not unfavourable.
If a man were desirous, at that day, of devoting himself
to classical learning, the only bread-winning profession
open to him was that of teacher (pedant they called it) in a
university or a school. Whatever might be the case in
Italy, in France church endowments were not employed
to reward or promote learning. The Huguenots had no
endowments, and the ministry among them was, if no
longer the road to martyrdom, at least a life incompatible
with any secular study. Scaliger is almost a solitary
instance of a man who gave up his life to study, without
1
¹ Dr. Bernays, p. 173, says at Preuilly, quoting De Reves, Epistres Françoises,
p. 53. But a comparison of that letter with Ep. ad Lips., Scaligeri Epistolae,
p. 88, leads us to the conclusion that they were kept at Abain.
160
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
being attached to a university. He was not married. His
personal wants were few, and provided for by the liber-
ality of his friend La Roche-Pozay. The remains of his
mother's fortune enabled him to provide himself with the
most necessary books. He found himself thus, in the
maturity of his powers and the fulness of his knowledge,
enabled to give up his undivided mind to literature, to
grasp it as a whole, and so to conceive and execute a
series of master-works, distinguished by the comprehen-
siveness of their range from the fragmentary patchwork of
the commentators, and by the fresh life of genius which
pervades them from the dull compilations of erudite
antiquaries.
In 1577 he brought out at the Paris press of Robert
Estienne an edition of the three Latin elegiac poets-
Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. In this and in the
Festus, which he had printed at the same place the year
before, he showed what he could effect, if he chose, in that
branch of criticism which restores corrupted text. This
very subordinate exercise of ingenuity was then rated,
doubtless, far beyond its real value. Yet even here the
prevailing procedure was conducted on erroneous prin-
ciples. The Italians had been the great offenders. Their
scholars had destroyed the integrity of the text of the Latin
classics by thrusting upon it any and every alteration
which occurred to them as an improvement or a novelty.
Emendation was, with them, a pastime with which an idle
hour might well be whiled away when society was not to be
had. Even the systematic correction of a complete author
was too large an undertaking for this enervated generation,
and the Italian presses produced nothing but volumes of
miscellaneous criticism or desultory marginalia. The
better specimens of this class, such as the Variae Lec-
tiones of Muretus, or those of Petrus Victorius, contain
little else but trifling remarks, or the common anecdotes
repeated from Plutarch or Suetonius, betraying the poverty
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
PRINCIPLES OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM.
161
of the land, and making us aware that the Italian man
could not get beyond the reading or the sphere of thought
which he reached in his school-days. This frivolous toying
with literature could only be expelled by presenting a
model of thorough treatment. The two French critics who
preceded Scaliger, Lambinus and Turnebus, had done
much to introduce a more manly turn of thought and a
more sustained industry into this department. They had,
too, entered upon the field of Greek—a language which
few Italian scholars had ever mastered, and for which they
had now become wholly incompetent. But even Lambinus
and Turnebus do not rise beyond the thought of making
classics an instrument of education-of editing 'in usum
studiosae juventutis.' Scaliger first showed the way to
that sound notion of textual criticism in which the genuine
tradition is made the basis, and alteration is only permitted
on condition of establishing itself by rigorous proof. True,
it has required a long experience and many attempts to
bring the rules of criticism, simple though they seem, into
the clear light in which they stand before a modern editor.
Both in establishment of text, and in accumulation of aids
to right interpretation, 300 years have, it may well be
supposed, added not a little. But we need not forget our
obligations to those who first taught criticism to walk in
the road in which it should go, who reclaimed it from a
hap-hazard guess-work, and made it a rational procedure
subject to fixed laws. This Scaliger's editions of the Cata-
lecta, of Festus, and of the three erotic Poets did. They
did it, too, with a mastery over not only the language,
but the literature, which was then the common language
and literature of all educated persons, and the result
was to attract general attention to Scaliger even beyond
university circles. It began to be understood that a
man had arisen who could not only do better than
any one else what every one else was doing, but who
was able to lead the way to a new method of treatment
VOL. I.
M
162
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
of ancient literature-a method which promised incalculable
results.
No sooner had Scaliger, by his Catullus, etc., placed
himself by common consent at the head of textual critics,
than he took leave for ever of diorthotic criticism, and
struck out a new path. He saw his way to a task, to
which the restoration of texts in their integrity, even could
it be completely achieved, was but a stepping-stone.
Leaving editing to others, he threw himself upon the
material contents of the books, and embarked, alone of all
the early philologers, upon the unexplored ocean of prim-
itive history—a voyage in which he had no predecessors,
and, till within the present century, no followers.
The transition to the new field of labour was his edition
of Manilius (1579), the five books of whose Astronomica,
the most difficult of the Latin classics, offer to the
interpreter a series of puzzles which frightened off the
smaller critics. Scaliger grappled with the problem, and
mathematicians assert, rather forced his way through it by
sheer dint of arm than solved it. As his object was
scientific, and not philological, he did nothing for the text
except where necessary for his purpose, viz. to make
Manilius a peg on which to hang a representation of the
astronomical system of the first century A.D. The Manilius
was, in fact, but an introduction to a comprehensive
chronological system which he brought out in 1583 in
his De Emendatione. By this grand effort of genius,
Scaliger may be said to have created for modern times the
science of chronology. Hitherto the utmost extent of
chronological skill which historians had possessed or
dreamed of had been to arrange past facts in a tabular
series as an aid to memory. Of the mathematical principles
on which the calculation of periods rests, the philologians
understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had
not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of
ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
THE DE EMENDATIONE TEMPORUM.
163
who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth
century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology.
With the modern light which Copernicus and Tycho Brahé
supplied, he went back upon the ancient epochs and
systems, and showed on what principles they had been
formed. Nor did he confine himself here within the range
of Roman antiquity, the narrow horizon which had so long
bounded the view of scholars. The various Greek modes
of reckoning time, the Hebrew calendar, those of the east
and west from Persia to Mexico, as far as the materials
were then accessible, are all subjected to scrutiny. In
ascending to primitive ages, he saw how chronology may
become to the critic an organ of discovery for times when
historical narrative fails us. This suggestion is seen
already in the first edition of the De Emendatione (1583).
Following out his own hint, he conceived the idea of
compiling a book which should embrace the archives of the
whole early world.
We are so accustomed to take this point of view of
Universal History that we do not readily imagine the effort
required to rise to it at a time when the primitive classical
ages were imperfectly known, when nothing at all was
known of the extra-classical world (Syria, Egypt, etc.), and
when between the classical and biblical world an impassable
barrier was considered to exist, and it was a cherished
principle of Protestant exegesis not to bring any secular
knowledge to the interpretation of Holy Scripture. Scaliger
was the first to perceive that the history of the ancient
world, so far as it could be known at all, could only be
known as a whole. Further, that the only direction in
which the facts of this remote period could be looked for
was in the remains of those chronologers of the empire,
who, copying statements they often did not understand,
transmitted in this way to future generations the universal
tradition of the human species. He set himself, accordingly,
to collect the distorted fragments of Berosus, Menander,
M 2
164
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
Manetho, and Abydenus-names which have ended by
riveting the attention of historical antiquaries. Ultimately
he resolved to adopt, as the basis of such a representation
of primitive tradition, Jerome's Latin translation of Euse-
bius's Chronicle. A few words may be necessary to
explain the importance of this Chronicle, one of the most
precious of the remains of Greek historical literature.
It is well known, even to the general reader of ancient
history, that the Greeks, for many ages, entirely neglected
the history of those whom they, in their narrow conceit,
termed the ‘Barbarians.' Pleasing their imaginations with
the romantic fables of Homer and Herodotus, they did not
suppose it worth while to obtain a real knowledge of the
past history of the great Oriental empires. Greek history
was thus for centuries merely Greek, national and local.
Even when they wrote about the Persians or Phoenicians.
they only reported travellers' tales, gleaned by word of
mouth in the evening khan or the mid-day agora.
It was
not till the time of Alexander that conquest opened to them
the real records of the Babylonian empire. As their sense
of nationality declined, their interest in what was foreign
gained ground. As their imagination lost its vigour, their
perception of truth and fact strengthened. Astronomical
observations began to furnish a new and certain basis for
the computation of past time. One by one the subjugated
nations laid open their annals to the eyes of their
conquerors, proud to contrast the hoary antiquity of their
pedigree with the recent origin of the Hellenes, whom they
looked upon as still in their childhood. The materials
were thus gradually accumulating for a general history of
the world and its inhabitants. But a focus was still lacking
which should draw together these scattered rays of history,
and present the nations of men as only different members
of one common family. The central point was, at last, in
the fulness of time, supplied from the Bible. From the
moment that the Jewish Scriptures became known to the
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
THE EUSEBIAN CHRONICLE.
165
Greeks, the sacred volume could not but take its place as
a compendium of the history of the world. With all the
exclusiveness of Jewish nationality, the Old Testament yet
presented what no book had done-the families of the
earth looking back to a past and forward to a future which
made them aware of the unity of their destinies. The
Alexandrian antiquaries at once adopted the Scripture
narrative as the centre round which to group all they
could find recorded of the Oriental empires. With the
growth of Christian ideas and Christian interests a con-
troversial element was imported into historical criticism.
It became a point of honour with the Christian annalist not
to allow to any other race an antiquity superior to that of
the Jewish people. It was the endeavour of the heathen anti-
quary to carry back, as far as possible, the commencement
of Babylonian or Egyptian dynasties. At the beginning
of the fourth century A.D., Eusebius, the learned Bishop
of Caesarea, undertook a synchronistical compilation of
the annals of all known nations, from the beginning of
the Assyrian empire to his own time. This harmony of all
sacred and profane history became at once the standard
chronology of the Christian world. The original Eusebian
work has perished in the wreck of Greek literature. But
a Latin translation by St. Jerome, with a continuation to
the death of the Emperor Valens (A.D. 378), has been the
fortunate vehicle which has conveyed to us, through the
middle ages, the contents of this inestimable document of
pre-classical history. For ages the scribes continued to
preserve it as an integral portion of the works of St.
Jerome, with a very remote idea of its value. On the
revival of letters neither the Paganizing littérateurs nor
the Protestant controversialists knew what to make of it,
and it was left out of their editions of Jerome's works as so
much useless lumber. Even Erasmus omitted it from his
scholar-like edition of that Father. It was not restored to
its proper place in his works, before the handsome but
166
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
uncritical edition of Verona, 1734. For the Italian literati
the Chronicle was devoid of interest, for they cared for
nothing but Roman history. To the Protestants anything
which placed the Biblical annals en rapport with the
history of other nations was a profanation; so far was the
level of theological attainment in the sixteenth century
sunk below even that of the times of Eusebius.
Scaliger had, as we have seen, from an early period,
proposed to himself an aim in philology which rose equally
above the aesthetic trifling of the Italian Ciceronians and
the narrow sectarianism of the Protestant biblicist. Ancient
learning was for him a means of instruction, not of amuse-
ment; a road to truth, not a storehouse of religious
polemics. The Eusebian Chronicle, in which no artifices
of style disguised the facts, in which the annals of all
nations are ranged side by side with the Jewish, seemed
to him the very object he was in search of to which to
apply his stores of erudition. If the substance of the
Chronicle was tempting, the form in which it has come
to our hands offered an irresistible attraction to Scaliger's
peculiar habits of mind. The Greek original having
perished, the question presented itself to him, How far
is the Latin version, as we have it, a faithful representative
of that original? Besides the general liability of all trans-
lation to minor errors, there was, in the present instance,
a greatly increased probability of such error by the rapidity
with which the translator had worked. It was, as the
Saint himself pleads, a 'tumultuarium opus,' needing, on
the score of correctness, much allowance from a friendly
reader. Nor was the duty of a translator from Greek into
Latin understood as we understand it in rendering from a
contemporary foreign language into our own. It was no
part of Jerome's purpose to preserve Eusebius's work.
He thought only of supplying the Western world with
a manual of general history. Omission and insertion,
when they tended to improve the book for the purposes
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
THE EUSEBIAN CHRONICLE.
167
for which it was now designed, were a merit, not a crime,
in a translator. Jerome had an eye not to the book-shelves
of the curious, who would collate and compare, but to
the communication of the elements of history to the West-
ern churches, in countries where civilization was already
trembling to its fall before the barbarian hordes. To these
occasions of error may be added the corrupt state of the
MSS. of the Chronicle, an evil to which a book full of
dates was especially exposed.
Proceeding on these facts, and following up the trail of
the Eusebian Greek which may be detected here and there
lurking in Byzantine writers, Scaliger fell upon the hypo-
thesis that the original Chronicle, as Eusebius published it,
had consisted of two books; that the first of these books
had either never been translated by Jerome at all, or had
irretrievably perished in the dark ages. That the reason
of this difference in the fate of the two portions of the
Chronicle was the different character of the two. The
later or second book, being a chronological table, had been
preserved for its practical utility as an epitome of ancient
history. That the first book, on the other hand, had not
been thought worth copying out, because it consisted of
extracts from Greek historians, who treated of Oriental
history; but, for us, it was precisely this lost first book of
Eusebius which possessed the highest value.
This hypothesis as to the extent and character of Euse-
bius's work was hazarded upon such slight data that we
need not be surprised at its seeming to ordinary critics
little more than a delusion. Extraordinary as it was, it
was far surpassed in audacity by the resolution he founded
upon it to reproduce the work of Eusebius in the original
Greek. The second book of the Chronicle, which existed
only in an abridged form in Jerome's Latin, was to be
restored complete in its original language. The first book,
which was totally lost, was to be recovered both as to
substance and language. Divinatorial criticism has often
#
168
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
6
undertaken to work wonders by conjecture operating
upon collation of MSS. Bentley's Prospectus of a New
Testament engaged to retrieve the text 'exactly as it was
at the Council of Nice, without the difference of twenty
words, or even of twenty particles:' a brag, by the way,
which Bentley did nothing to redeem. But we doubt if the
annals of editing can parallel this scheme of Scaliger for
the restitution of the Eusebian Chronicle. The resources
on which he relied in first undertaking the feat were his
skill in imitative translation and his command over the
whole extant remains of Greek literature. Of the first of
these methods-retranslation-he did not, in the end, make
any use. Of the extent of his research and his ingenuity in
detecting the smallest scrap of Eusebius, under whatever
disguise it might be hid, it may be sufficient to cite the
testimony of a witness not too well disposed towards
Scaliger. The Meticharist Aucher, in the preface to his
edition, says of Scaliger, Universam paene Graeciam
lustraverat, nec veterum scriptorum erat quisquam unde
aliquid in suam rem posset mutuari, qui diligentissimi
hominis aciem effugisset.' The fragments, however, thus
won from the wreck of antiquity would have gone but a
little way towards the restitution of a whole book, but for
a piece of luck which Fortune, with her propensity to help
the daring, threw in his way. In the year 1601 he had
come upon the track of a MS. chronicle by a Greek monk,
which possibly contained Eusebian fragments, and probably
was to be found in the Royal Library at Paris. The
MS. is found there. Scaliger, then at Leyden, writes letter
upon letter, supplicates and implores. But the librarian
Gosselin, then in the imbecility of extreme old age, would
not be moved either by the humble perseverance of Casau-
bon or the high authority of De Thou. At last, after a
year's siege, July, 1602, the MS. is obtained. He then
finds that 'this single writer is more towards his purpose
than all the other Greek authors put together:' for it
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
CHRONICLE OF SYNCELLUS.
169
turned out to be the Chronicle, since so well known to
chronologists, which was compiled by the monk George,
coadjutor (syncellus) of Constantinople at the beginning of
the ninth century. Syncellus has transcribed Eusebius
almost verbatim. Although Scaliger, in his exultation at
the discovery, was betrayed into the error of transferring
to the columns of his Eusebius much of Syncellus which
had never belonged to the Bishop of Caesarea, we can say
with Niebuhr that no one ever better deserved than Scaliger
the reward of such an antiquarian find at such a moment.
The Greek Eusebius, recovered by this and other aids-
which cannot be here described—appeared at last, in 1606,
as part of a folio Thesaurus Temporum, in which every
chronological relic extant in Greek or Latin was repro-
duced, placed in order, restored, and made intelligible.
The greatest triumph, however, achieved by this massive
volume was in connexion with the Eusebian Chronicon.
The Veronese edition of St. Jerome, as has been said, first
incorporated the Latin Hieronymian version in the Opera
Omnia of that Father. The editor, Dominico Vallarsi,
undertakes, in the preface to the Chronicle, to refute
Scaliger's theory of the extent and nature of Eusebius's
work. Though Vallarsi's scholarship is of the slipshod
Italian sort he has hardly a grammatical knowledge of
the Greek language he cannot be denied the praise of
industry and zeal in collecting all that had been written on
the subject. He writes clearly, and, by aid of the accumu-
lated light of 150 years, he is able to expose some of
Scaliger's errors. At the very time that Vallarsi was thus
presumptuously canvassing Scaliger's hypothesis, a MS.
volume was slowly finding its way to Constantinople, which
was destined to refute Vallarsi's learned reasonings by
the shortest and surest evidence that could be had. This
was nothing less than the long-desiderated Chronicle of
Eusebius, perfect, but in an Armenian translation. This
MS. of the 12th century-the translation itself dates from
170
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
the 5th-was brought to Italy, and at last in 1818 given to
the press in the Armenian convent at Venice. It then
appeared that Scaliger's divination had guided him right.
There was a first book, and Jerome had translated the
second only. Many also of Scaliger's emendations were
established, many of the omissions he had charged on
Jerome were found to be omissions. It may not be con-
cealed that this signal triumph was dashed by mistakes as
signal which the same discovery revealed. In assigning
the contents of this Book I, Scaliger had gone infinitely
astray: he had given to Eusebius much of Syncellus
which was really taken from Africanus, and for his charge
of bad faith against Eusebius there does not appear to be
the least foundation.
There is a curious piece of history connected with
another section of the Thesaurus Temporum. Among
the miscellaneous matters which make up its vast bulk,
there is one which has more than once been the subject of
misapprehension on the part of scholars. This is a com-
plete Olympiac table, from the 1st to the 249th Olympiad,
which Scaliger had drawn up with much pains, ransacking
every corner of Greek remains, edited or inedited, for
authorities. The pleasure he took in writing Greek, and
the convenience of citing the authorities in the original,
had induced him to compose it wholly in that language.
As it is printed in the Thesaurus in close sequence with
the series of continuators of Eusebius-it follows im-
mediately after the last of them, Nicephorus,—as no
express notice is given in the title, and as the Greek is
allowed to be an admirable imitation of antiquity, it is not
very surprising that hasty readers should have taken the
piece for a genuine classical relic. No thorough reader
could have done this, as Scaliger has given in one place ¹ a
distinct declaration of his own authorship, and has in others
alluded to it as his own compilation. These indications,
¹ P. 431, 2nd ed.
1
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
OLYMPIAC TABLE.
171
however, were easily missed by skimming readers. The
Olympiac Table has been a trap into which hasty and un-
wary readers have fallen one after another, while the
sharp-sighted and careful have avoided the snare. Sal-
masius and Petavius, in the earliest generation after
Scaliger, Bentley, Ruhnken, Wesseling, in the 18th century,
down to Niebuhr and Clinton in recent times, were much
too accurate readers for such a blunder. But Scheibel, in
his very learned monograph on this tract of Scaliger, has
enumerated some thirty names, including not only literary
men like Bayle and Lessing, but even professional critics
like Ottfried Müller and Heyne, who have cited the
Ολυμπιάδων Αναγραφή as a genuine Greek document. Meur-
sius corrected texts of ancient authors to force them to
agree with errors made by Scaliger in his Tables. Thomas
Reinesius even wrote a dissertation on the authorship of
the anonymous piece, and concluded from internal evidence
that its author was either a Gentile, or, at most, a Jew: a
warning to critics-the true scholar does not require it—
of the necessity of reading through every book they may
have occasion to cite.
To return to Scaliger's personal history. The publica-
tion, in 1583, of his De Emendatione placed him at once
beyond rivalry at the head of ancient learning; beyond
rivalry, but not beyond hatred-hatred all the more bitter
because rivalry was hopeless. In the chronic quarrel
which has disgraced the republic of letters ever since that
community existed, the combatants usually snapped right
and left, and gave as good as they got. It was a promis-
cuous mêlée, in which each abused everybody, and every
one came out a little the worse for the scuffle. But
the lofty pre-eminence to which Scaliger attained, and
which he himself determined to vindicate, gave the com-
batants for a season a common animosity, and every hand
was united against the despot. The envenomed propor-
172
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
tions which the attack on Scaliger attained, the importance
which came to be attached to it, and the whirlpool-force
with which it drew all around into its vortex, cannot be
understood without a view of the state of parties at the
period, which is beyond our limits. We can only give
here a very summary indication.
The year 1583 fell in a short breathing-time which was
granted to the unhappy country in the middle of its religious
troubles. It was a respite only, for there had been neither
compromise nor settlement. Both parties felt that it was
only through another armed struggle that their respective
positions could be definitively ascertained. The Reformed
doctrines were very far from being equally distributed over
the surface of the country. The Calvinists were massed
together in districts. This was their only chance of
security, for, where they were not strong enough to defend
themselves by force, they were butchered. In the district
between the Loire and the Garonne they had taken deep
root. So overwhelmingly Protestant was this district, that,
even so late as 1625, there was a scheme in the English
Council for erecting it into an independent Protestant
republic. It was here accordingly that the Catholic
seigneurs directed their most desperate efforts. The state
of those districts in 1581 is placed before us in a summary
of facts by a contemporary writer, who had gathered them
from official returns. In the two dioceses of Poitiers and
Luçon 58 Catholic priests and monks, and a far larger but
not ascertained number of Huguenot ministers, had
perished by a violent death since the beginning of the
troubles. There had fallen in the field 213 Catholic
gentlemen, 317 Protestant; of common soldiers 7000
Catholic, 11,000 Huguenot; 2100 houses had been burnt
or pulled down. These were natives of the province. Of
Frenchmen, natives of other parts of France, 40,000 had
fallen in the murderous fights or massacres within the
above-mentioned limits; 700 persons had been executed
1.
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
EVIL DAYS.
173
for religion, by the way, miscalled, of justice. Confiscation
had ruined the Huguenots; but the Catholic peasant was
scarcely better off: crushed by the war and the exactions
of the great seigneurs, who 'galopoient et traitoient pire-
ment le manant que s'il eût été leur esclave ¹
1
A country hardly breathing from such tragic scenes, and
looking forward to a not distant renewal of them, was not
a favourable arena for feats of learning or science. Of what
value are character or attainments in a society which only
asks of any one which side is he on? The mere material
wounds of the country, ghastly as they were, might have
been healed by a few years of peace. Then, it might be
thought, when security of person and property was restored,
knowledge would be again in honour. Then, the respect
due to one who through thirty hopeless years had devoted
himself to learning-the best learning then known—would
be reaped at last. But it was not so. In this respect.
Scaliger was most unfortunate. He may be said to have
fallen, if ever great man did, on evil days indeed. The
ascendancy of Henri IV brought at last the desired peace,
or its immediate prospect. The material wounds of civil
war began to close. Civility and letters began again to
raise their heads; but the moral wound inflicted upon
France by the wars of religion was not healed, nor in the
way to be. The result of the Civil Wars was no com-
promise upon equal terms between the parties; it was the
unqualified triumph of the Catholics, the permanent humili-
ation of the Huguenots. The Calvinists had risen in self-
defence; they had saved their necks at least till a better
opportunity; let them be thankful for getting off with life.
Strange! the Protestants were on the winning side, and
yet had to treat on unequal terms with their beaten enemies.
Even the reservations made in their favour could not be
carried out; public opinion would not allow of it. The
mob was against them. The League was defeated at Arques
1 Froumenteau: Le Secret des Finances de France, 1581, p. 250.
174
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
and Ivry, but Rome was triumphant. The war had been
begun for the extirpation of heresy: it succeeded in extir-
pating virtue, honour, and nobility of mind. Men emerged
from the long struggle with the conviction that a religious
faith was a political pretext-that zeal was a disease to
which the lower classes were subject, and upon which
wise men worked for their own ends. A philosophical
scepticism had become the creed of all thinking men.
Montaigne and Charron express the mind of the time.
But, whatever you might think, before all things you must
make open profession of Catholicism. To be a Huguenot
was to lose caste; to profess unbelief was to forfeit party
influence. The barefaced corruption of the Catholic
seigneurs who had taken up arms for religion, and laid
them down for a consideration, seemed to sanction any
amount of baseness in inferior men. That noble stamp
which we find upon the character of the great Huguenot
leaders-Coligny, Du Plessis-Mornay, D'Aubigné, La Noue
—died with that generation, and has never been reproduced
in France. An heroic breadth of soul, animated by a simple
piety, and chastised by a chequered experience, in which
adversity had far the larger share, is the common charac-
teristic of the Huguenot seigneur of the epoch. The
emergencies of the Civil Wars, acting upon the native
chivalry of the French noblesse, and supported by the
profound spiritual conviction of the Protestant, generated
this lofty type of character-the finest which the whole
range of French history has to show. The miseries of the
wars of religion were hardly too high a price to pay as a
school of such grand virtue. Ordinary times could not
have raised the men. The Duc de Maïenne hit the secret
of the Huguenot character when he said: 'Ces gens
étaient de père en fils apprivoisés à la mort.'
Scaliger had been schooled in this discipline. How far
he was from being a bigot has been seen: he had no
sympathy with the bigotry of his co-religionaries. The
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
CHARACTER AND POSITION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 175
fanatical section of them had as little liking for him; but it
was impossible for him to be other than Protestant, the
only creed which was compatible with his character or his
understanding. Had he been a mere man of letters, he
might have transferred himself, with Henry of Navarre,
from one church to the other, as so many others did. He
would then have shared the triumph and enjoyed the
rewards of the dominant religion. His declining years
might then have been surrounded with affluence and troops
of friends. His home might have been Paris, and the
whole Catholic world might have been united to do homage
to the last scion of the Della Scala; but the sacrifice of
mental independence was one which he could not make,
even at such a price. Abjuration, however fashionable and
convenient, was simply impossible for him. He does not
make any parade of his consistency, for he could not be
other than he was. This was so universally felt, that while
Casaubon was incessantly plied by solicitations to 'go
over,' no one ventured to hint such a step to Scaliger. He
was not ambitious of any post which was open to a
mere man of letters; but he sensibly felt his dependence.
He would have been glad to have been no longer a burden
upon his generous friends, and to have had the command
of a library of books; but the only resources were a
university chair or a pension. The French provinces
indeed stood thick with abbeys, priories, and rich eccle-
siastical sinecures; but these were appropriated by the lay
noblesse, who paid a curé a starving stipend for performing
the spiritual services. Merely being a Protestant was not
necessarily a bar to obtaining a rent-charge on such a
benefice. Sully had procured himself abbeys to the
amount of 40,000 francs a-year; but for such appropriation,
which was notoriously illegal, you must have power-only
a member of the haute noblesse could make or keep such
a prize. For a pension, Scaliger enjoyed that already, i. e.
the patent for it. Henri III, at a time when it was the
176
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
policy of the court to conciliate the Huguenots, had con-
ferred on Scaliger a pension of 2000 francs: he might
as easily have given 20,000; for in the then state of the
French finances, such a compliment was worth the value
of the paper on which it was written, and no more. When
Henri of Navarre came to the crown, De Thou and
Jeannin made efforts to get it paid; but nothing was to be
obtained for a Calvinist. Millions were being paid away to
the grand seigneurs in gratifications before they would lay
down their arms. And then Henri's mistresses were so
exorbitant. Lestoile indeed (Registre-Journal de Henri
IV, p. 525) asserts that Jeannin, then ambassador at the
Hague, made, by order of Henri, 'munificent presents to
the learned men in Leyden, Scaliger, Baudius, and others.'
It doubtless flattered the vanity of the Parisian badauds to
think so; and as Lestoile reports it, no doubt he heard it
said; but Scaliger never had a farthing. As late as 1608
Jeannin succeeded in getting Scaliger's name on the list of
pensions which were to be actually paid some time or other.
January, 1609, Scaliger died. As for the only professional
resource by which he could have maintained himself-
a university chair-we have already seen his aversion
to teaching; but had he been ever so inclined, that re-
source was not open to him in France. As long as Paris
was in the hands of the Leaguers, they had closed the
colleges, and massacred or driven out the regius pro-
fessors. After Henri became master of the capital, he
affected to patronize education, and set about the restora-
tion of the University. But this was in 1597, and by that
time Scaliger had found another asylum.
In 1590 Justus Lipsius, who had been twelve years
Professor of Roman History and Antiquities at the Uni-
versity of Leyden, applied to the curators for leave of
absence of some duration. He wished, he said, to try the
Spa waters for a disordered liver from which he suffered.
Though this was all he said, his intentions seem to have
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
LIPSIUS. LEYDEN UNIVERSITY.
177
been guessed. No one expected that he would ever return.
Nor was any one surprised when the news came that
Lipsius had followed the fashion, and conformed. He had
withdrawn to Mainz, and, in the Jesuit College there, had
been received into the bosom of the Catholic Church.
Lipsius, though of another order of mind to Scaliger,
yet ranked deservedly as the first of living Latin critics.
His loss was, therefore, felt as a severe blow to the rising
reputation of the young university. The question arose
how he was to be replaced.
The origin of the University of Leyden is well known.
In reward of the heroic defence made by its citizens, in the
memorable siege by the Spaniards, they received from the
States of the Netherlands an offer of a perpetual immunity
from taxation. The influence of John Van der Does, Lord
of Noortwyk, a distinguished statesman, better known as a
universal scholar by his Latinized name of Janus Douza,
prevailed upon the city to prefer the boon of the foundation
of the University. Douza, as one of its first curators, con-
tinued throughout his life to foster the school he had thus
called into being. Under his enlightened patronage the
University of Leyden grew in a single generation into the
first Protestant school in Europe. It was unable to vie with
elder foundations in the splendour of its endowments, and
Douza had recourse, of necessity, to the more economical,
but, at the same time, more efficacious system of honour.
'He knew,' says Sir W. Hamilton', 'that at the rate
learning was seen prized by the State in the academy it
would be valued by the nation at large. In his eyes
a university was not merely a mouth-piece of necessary
instruction, but a pattern of lofty erudition, and a stimulus
to its attainment. He knew that professors wrought more
by example and influence than by teaching; that it was
theirs to pitch high or low the standard of learning in
a country; and that as it proved arduous or easy to come
¹ Discussions on Philosophy, etc., p. 362.
VOL. I.
N
178
IV. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
up to them, they awoke either a restless endeavour after
an ever-loftier attainment, or were lulled into a self-satisfied
conceit.'
With such maxims of academical management nothing
was more natural than that Douza's eyes should be turned
towards Scaliger, when the question arose who should fill
the gap occasioned by the secession of Lipsius. The
precautions taken in approaching Scaliger, the homage to
his haughty claims, the express recognition of his princely
descent and his literary pre-eminence, testify at once the
earnestness of the desire felt to get him, and the notoriety
which even these personal traits of character had already
attained. They may have been made known to Douza
by Lipsius, who, however, knew Scaliger only by corre-
spondence. They may have been ascertained on the spot
by Dominic le Bauldier. This amusing personage, sharp-
sighted enough in reading the weaknesses of others, though
so laughably ignorant of his own, had left Leyden for
France in 1588, and had resided there ever since. With
his usual alacrity for doing every one's business, he wished
to negotiate the settlement of Scaliger in Lipsius's place at
Leyden-having on hand, at the same time, a little scheme
for bringing Lipsius to Paris.
stood that Scaliger was not to
slight tackle as Le Bauldier.
form was sent to wait upon him.
law-professor of Leyden, was the envoy. He carried, not
a nomination, but a petition addressed to Scaliger by the
Curators of the University, and a letter from the Govern-
ment-the States-General of the Netherlands-praying his
Lordship 'S'il plaise à votre Seigneurie servir de flambeau
et esperon aux études languissans de la jeunesse par deça.'
To reinforce these prayers the ambassador was further
provided with a dispatch to Henri from the States-General;
also a private letter from Prince Maurice to the same. The
States-General implore Henri to further their views upon
Douza, however, under-
be angled for with such
A regular deputation in
Gerard Tuning, a young
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
INVITED TO LEYDEN.
179
'the Phoenix of letters,' 'for the honour of God and the
promotion of the common cause';-Henri, who hated
Scaliger, because he saw through him, and would not
flatter him, and who had already made up his mind to
betray 'the common cause,' in order to secure the Crown
of France! Prince Maurice, better informed, avoids these
blunders, and writes a mere formal request.
With these credentials Tuning arrived at Dieppe, and
found the King engaged in the blockade of Rouen. Henri
was quite agreeable; had no objection to part with the
'Phoenix of letters'; had indeed particular reasons why
he should go to Holland; and wrote Scaliger a missive,
intimating in pretty plain terms that the sooner he took
himself off the better. Tuning started for Touraine, with
this letter under passport. But in spite of Ivry, the League
was still in force to the north of the Loire, and Tuning was
stopped and plundered. So he reached Preuilly with
nothing to produce of all these magnificent appeals, and
without even a scrap of writing to authenticate him. With
what honeyed words the diplomatist supplied the loss of
his instructions we do not know. Whatever they were they
were not successful. Scaliger sent back the negotiator
with letters to the Curators and the Prince, which, at least,
left room for further application. The Curators he ad-
dresses in a modest and grateful epistle :-
There is every reason why I should accede to the honourable pro-
posals you have been pleased to make to me. Civil rage has banished
letters from France. This country is no longer a home for men of
virtue. In Holland, it seems, I could be useful; here I am scarcely
held to possess common sense. More than all, from you I should
receive that consideration of which my country has never thought me
worthy. All these are strong motives; yet somehow there is wanting
a favourable wind to swell the sails of my desires. I cannot be more
explicit in writing; but Tuning will possess you by word of mouth
more fully of my meaning.
We can have no hesitation as to the feeling which
dictated this reply. Scaliger already foresaw the position
N 2
180
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
in which public affairs would finally adjust themselves;
a position in which the tried and the true, the loyal
adherents of the 'common cause' would be sacrificed to
gain the disaffected. He knew that the King and the
politiques' would be equally glad to be rid of the obliga-
tion of doing anything for him. All these were induce-
ments for him to go. But friends, less clear-sighted and
more sanguine, urged his stay. Things were not so
hopeless as he thought. The King meant well by his old
friends; if he were obliged to sacrifice himself to gain new
ones, he would never leave the old in the lurch; the time
would come when he might venture to avow them again.
And, even if things should go worse for the Huguenots
than it was likely they would do, did not that make it more
the duty of every good citizen to stand by his cause to the
last, and perish with the rest, rather than run away, save
himself, and leave the rest to their fate? This was an
argument which could not but weigh with Scaliger. To
which must be added, that it is hard for a man at fifty-two
to expatriate himself; to leave old friends and go amongst
strangers; to exchange the smiling and vine-covered slopes
of Touraine for the fogs and swamps of Leyden; hardest
of all, to tear oneself from the haunts and the home of
thirty years, however ungracious and inhospitable it may
have shown itself.
Some of the more staunch of the old Huguenot leaders
would not have Scaliger leave France without an effort to
retain him. Du Plessis-Mornay, as the head of this section
of Royalists, and the only one who still retained some
influence in the camp of Henri, was engaged to second their
scheme, which was to get Scaliger appointed preceptor to
the young Prince of Condé. As the King was still without
issue by his first marriage, the Prince of Condé was heir
presumptive to the crown. Such an appointment was
at once honourable and influential, Henri consented,
and at Du Plessis-Mornay's suggestion, the Princess.
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
!
THE PRINCE OF CONDE.
181
wrote herself to Scaliger. Her letter is so characteristic
of the person to whom it is addressed that we shall
give it in the original.
Monsieur de l'Escale,-Encore que de long-temps vos vertus
ayent illustré non seulement ceste France, mais toute l'Europe, si est
ce qu'il semble que Dieu vous offre une occasion pour leur donner
d'avantage de jour. Car bien qu'elles soyent espandues sur divers
peuples, je tiens la plus part indigne de recevoir ceste lumière; mais
si vos labeurs s'employent à former un prince tel qu'est celuy que je
desire qu'il preigne instruction de vous, ce sera faissant bien à un
aporter de l'utilité à tout cest éstat. La peine en sera moindre et la
gloire plus grande. Ces considerations si importantes me font
esperer qu'aurez très agreable le desir que j'ay que vouliez accepter
la charge d'instituer mon fils, lequel commence d'estre en aage pour
recevoir vos belles impressions; son esprit est plus avancé que ses
années. C'est pourquoy je croy, qu'ayant les premiers fondemens de
vous, l'oeuvre en sera plus parfaicte. L'esperance que l'on prent de
luy merite d'estre augmenté par les enseignements d'un si digne
personnage. Ne refusez donc, je vous prie, de servir au Roy mon
Seigneur en ceste occasion, lequel je sçay avoir ceste volonté, et
d'obliger toute ceste France à vous. Pour mon particulier, j'estimeray
atteindre au comble de ma plus grande felicité si je puisse acquerir
ce thrésor à mon fils; faisant peu d'estat de toutes les grandeurs du
monde si elles ne sont accompagnées de la vertu. Le Gentilhomme
vous dira plus particulièrement mon intention sur ce subject.
Auquel me remettant, je vous prieray le croire, et que je seray à
perpetuité,
Vostre très affectionnée et obligée amye,
KAT. DE LA TREMOILLE.
This request, urged almost in a tone of supplication,
Scaliger respectfully declined. He was not insensible to
the honour, but he could not turn courtier at his age. 'Je
ne veux point être courtisan,' he said to his friends. The
Princess had recourse to his friends, at the urgency, doubt-
less, of Du Plessis-Mornay, and got the elder La Roche-
Pozay to try his influence. But Scaliger knew far better
than his friends to what he could and could not adapt
himself, and he was firm in his refusal. As the offer made
182
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
to him had had Henri's special approbation, the King's
aversion to Scaliger was not likely to be lessened by his
rejection of it. This Scaliger too must have felt. After
an interval of twelve months came a second application
from Holland. Douza had now discovered that Scaliger's
disinclination to lecture was the insuperable obstacle to his
accepting Lipsius's chair. This only needed to be under-
stood to be set right. They did not want him to lecture:
nothing more was asked than his presence in Leyden,
where he might dispose of his time as he pleased, and con-
tinue the series of his great works free from the interrup-
tions to which he was exposed in France. At least, if
he could not resolve upon making a permanent settlement
among them, let him come provisionally, for a long visit,
and see for himself how he liked Leyden.
Scaliger now no longer resisted. But he would only
accept provisionally. He would come and see. He took
with him the young La Roche-Pozay, under the express
stipulation that he would bring him back himself within
the twelvemonth. His books and papers, too, he left
behind in Touraine. His true-hearted patron, the père
La Roche-Pozay, would not part with him on any other
terms. He was certain that, 'when peace was once
restored, some opening would be found for establishing
Scaliger in France; then he would come back to stay,
and they would yet spend their old age in each other's
society.' Florens Christian, however, who had been
Henri IV's tutor, and who knew his royal pupil well,
did not conceal that he thought differently. He wrote to
Scaliger-
Not to stand too stiffly upon the provisional character of the
Leyden appointment. Holland had the good fortune to be presided
over by a valiant and religious Prince, and a lover of learning,
Monsieur the Count of Nassau. Before you make up your mind for
leaving such a home, bethink yourself, if you please.
1
!
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
LEYDEN OFFER ACCEPTED.
183
Here, for greater security, the honest Calvinist drops
his French for Latin:-
Bethink yourself that the Princes of France excel truly all other
princes in blood and deeds of arms, but that learning must look else-
where for patronage and encouragement.
Henri IV hated Christian for his honesty, for his keen
sense of humour, and lastly for having been his tutor.
Scaliger felt that Christian was right. About the King's
sentiments he was left in no doubt. Henri was at the
trouble of writing him a second missive, brief enough,
expressing his satisfaction that he was at last going to
Holland, avoiding all allusion to the provisional character
of the visit on which Scaliger laid so much emphasis,
and not even paying him the compliment of regretting his
loss to France. On his road to the coast Scaliger had an
interview with the King for the purpose of taking his leave
of his Sovereign. 'So, M. de L'Escale, the Dutch want
to have you, and are going to allow you a good pension?
I'm very glad to hear it!' Then, breaking off, Henri put to
Scaliger a question which we cannot here repeat, which at
another time might have been a joke, but under the cir-
cumstances of this leave-taking was a cruel insult. A stolid
insensibility for the feelings of others was indeed the chief
ingredient in Henri's 'Béarnaise humour.' Scaliger took
ship for Holland at Dieppe about Midsummer, 1593.
Scaliger's reserved intention of returning to France
in spite of these discouragements at least saved him the
pang of feeling that he was quitting his own country
for ever.
But he never did revisit it. No overtures were
made to him till the last year of his life, while every
year things got gloomier, the Reformation dying out,
and France relapsing into Catholicism. In Leyden every
one strove to make his sojourn agreeable, and to soften the
pains of exile. Here he tasted for the first time his own
fame, and, what is better than fame, the silent recognition of
superior knowledge. He soon came to be upon a confi-
184
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
1
i
dential footing with the first men of the Republic, Olden-
barnevelt and Van der Mylen. In Douza's house he was
as one of the family. The widowed Princess of Orange,
a worthy daughter of Coligni, treasured him. Prince
Maurice of Nassau distinguished him by the most flattering
attention, placing him at table above his princely cousins,
and not requiring in return to be waited on at his levées, a
considerate indulgence for which Scaliger is particularly
thankful. His intimacy at the French Embassy, at least
after the arrival (in 1597) of a superior man, Choart de
Buzanvalle, in that service, gave him the best possible
point d'appui outside of Dutch circles. This intimacy was
not merely pleasant as being with a well-educated country-
man, but gave him the best insight into the interior of
European politics in that critical period when the Jesuits
were preparing their great conspiracy against the liberties
of Europe, which afterwards took the shape of the Thirty
Years' War.
Nothing could exceed the pious solicitude of the Cura-
tors to make their illustrious guest feel that he honoured
them in settling among them, not they him in inviting him.
They created for him a quite exceptional position, which
joined to the complete command of his own leisure all the
dignity and influence of high academic office. As he con-
tinued to protest his unfitness for public lecturing, they
ceased to press it upon him, and contented themselves
with his silent influence upon the place. He instantly
attracted round him, with the magnetic force of genius,
all the rising talent of the University. For intercourse
with young men Scaliger's temper was well adapted. He
appeared to them with all the prestige of his illustrious
fame, and the overwhelming weight of acquirements
without a parallel. Yet this hero of science, who seemed
to realise the most romantic ideal an ardent student could
form of universal knowledge, was ever ready to discuss
with them on familiar terms all in which they were inte-
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
SCALIGER AT LEYDEN.
185
rested-to talk over men and books-to enter upon the
merits of Livy or Statius, of Hesiod or Procopius, as
freshly as if he had been reading them for the first time.
Age had not subdued the vivacity of his temperament or
the vigour of his language. His pithy and direct judg
ments upon men and things made their way straight to the
understandings of the youth, who waited on his words,
because they interested their feelings. The timid and the
ill-natured complained that he was rash in assertion and
reckless in his censures-that there was more passion than
judgment in his opinions. 'His ability would be truly
wonderful,' writes in 1594 one who was ill-disposed to him,
's'il avoit l'esprit autant posé comme il l'a bizarre.' Ill-
nature is keen-sighted and generally hits its mark. But
this fearlessness of expression was the frankness of a noble
nature, not the médisance of a petty spite; and what justly
offended the caution of the aged and the prudent was
the very ingredient of conversation likely to attract the
young. The circle of young Dutch students who were
drawn to Leyden by Scaliger's presence there formed not
merely a future school of philology, but embraces almost
all the eminent names by which Holland was distinguished
in the next generation. For the younger Janus Douza,
Scaliger had conceived a tender affection. For his prema-
ture death he wept for days, 'comme une vieille.' He
recognised the early promise of Hugo Grotius, and pre-
dicted his future celebrity. It would be tedious to the
reader to enumerate names famous in the history or the
schools of Holland, but little known beyond its precincts.
One must not be omitted, that of his favourite and most
attached disciple, Daniel Heinsius. Scaliger interested
himself particularly in this youth, in forming him and
in promoting his temporal interests. He used his influence
to obtain for him the post of librarian, and till the last
never ceased befriending him. Heinsius repaid these
benefits by a devotion little short of idolatrous. Heinsius
186
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
never left his side, waited upon everything that fell from his
lips, watched by his death-bed, received his last words, and
edited his Remains. He was never with Scaliger, he said-
and he was with him daily-without feeling the inspiring
influence of his mental energy. Heinsius had made notes
of his table-talk; but they are unfortunately lost. From so
accomplished a note-taker they would have been, doubtless,
of superior value to the collection of the two Vassans which
we have. Dr. Bernays thinks that the inflated language
which Heinsius and others of the Leyden circle used in
speaking of their patron-saint, provoked, in the way of
reaction, the abuse which was lavished upon Scaliger. It
may have helped to give it currency; as, no doubt,
the circulation of the pungent sarcasms which Scaliger
threw about him upon pretentious ignorance aroused a
vast amount of personal animosity against him. Never,
perhaps, has any one in the history of letters wielded such
a power over reputations as Joseph Scaliger, from his
throne at Leyden. It cannot be said that he is unwilling
to praise where there is room for it. But his standard of
attainment is a lofty one. Himself at the top of know-
ledge, he surveyed from that eminence the attempts of
others, and measured exactly the degree in which they
approximated to success. He never tramples upon modest
and unassuming merit, however imperfect its attempts.
What he cannot stomach is presumptuous dogmatism,
ignorant of what it is to know. This class of writers, always
a large one, hopeless of corrupting or softening their inex-
orable critic, had no resource but to combine against him.
But it was not from them that the envenomed hostility
proceeded which broke in a storm upon the last ten years
of Scaliger's life. The provocative lay much deeper:
it lay in the attitude which, as a critic, Scaliger had taken
up towards the documentary evidence on which the
Catholic controversialists rested their case, and in the
irretrievable overthrow by him of the credit of the Jesuits
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
HOSTILITY OF THE JESUITS.
187
as expounders of antiquity, classical or ecclesiastical.
They were sunk past recovery by the fair weapons of
learning and argument. It only remained for them, by
a combined and systematic assault upon the individual,
to attempt to counterbalance that supremacy which his
powers and knowledge had, by this time, secured to the
Protestant cause. The danger to the Church, which could
not be parried upon the open field of erudition and critical
debate, might be averted by the moral assassination of the
Protestant champion.
In the history of the Society of Jesus, its Second
Period is marked by a desperate effort to obtain possession
of the region of letters and learning, in the same way as it
had, in its First Period, conquered that of religious senti-
ment. In the first half-century of its existence-1540-1590
-it had almost monopolized the reputation of sanctity,
of the skill to handle the tender conscience, to sound
the depths of casuistry. It had gained for the Church
a complete triumph upon the purely religious and devo-
tional ground. In the Middle Ages a triumph here would
have been enough. There was then no other public
opinion or common feeling. But in the sixteenth century
this was no longer the case. The mind of Europe was
awakened. He who would rule opinion now, must show,
not merely credentials of his piety, but proof of his know-
ledge. The women and the ignorant-both very important
conquests-had been recovered through the confessional
and the pulpit. But there remained to be subdued this
new, hitherto unknown, element of public opinion. The
Jesuits were not daunted by the formidable nature of their
novel enemy, though Church history supplied them with
no precedent to guide their tactics. They saw the strength
which the Reformation derived from possessing all the
leaders of the new school of Classical and Oriental
Philology. Elegant Latin writing was no longer enough.
New lines of inquiry and research were being opened
188
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
up, and men had no longer the same ear for polished versi-
fication and sounding oratorical periods. The philologers
must be converted, and their dangerous researches stopped
or diverted. The Society itself, too, must breed its own
philologians, and get up criticism in order to defend the
ecclesiastical traditions. In one part of this tactic they had
tolerable success. Muretus and Lipsius were carried
over in triumph. Of Casaubon they had strong hopes.
But Scaliger? He was known to be as immovable in his
Protestant faith, as he was invincible in the field of criticism
and knowledge of antiquity. As long as this Achilles
remained in the Protestant camp, his single arm secured
the victory to his party. There was but one resource
-tyrannicide. The knife of the bravo might take off the
captain who could not be worsted in the field. The pen of
the slanderer might write down the archcritic, whom it was
impossible to foil at his own weapons. The whole learning
of the Jesuit schools could not vindicate the integrity of
the false Decretals, or prove the works of Dionysius to be
the production of the convert of St. Paul, but persevering
calumny might silence those who dared to intimate the
imposture which had been so long palmed off upon the
world.
In this spirit the Jesuits entered the territory of letters.
Their efforts were but too successful. They clouded
the serenity of Scaliger's declining years, and have hung an
air of doubt round his character with posterity. Where
opinion has to be acted upon, truth, it is often taken for
granted, will in the end prevail. Not always, nor without
drawback. No individual, however superior, can fight
a party, even in the cause of truth. Even Achilles must
have his Myrmidons. Nor did the Jesuits merely succeed
in damaging the individual. They struck a heavy blow at
ancient learning, by introducing into it that spirit of per-
sonal polemic of which it never rid itself during the whole
of the seventeenth century. They not merely effectually
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
ATTACK OF THE JESUITS.
189
disguised the defeat of the Roman controversialists in
· a cloud of scurrilous personalities, but they created an
aversion to philological studies, lowered their credit, and
broke up the alliance which had in the outset been so
happily formed between honest research and the reformed
doctrines.
The signal of battle seems to have been given some-
where about the first year of the seventeenth century.
Scaliger's withdrawal from France had relieved him from
the local entanglements and hatreds of his own country,
only to expose him to a wider sphere of religious animosity.
It is remarkable that none of his assailants were French.
From whatever cause this proceeded, it was not from any
lurking sympathy. Neither then nor since have his
Catholic fellow-countrymen shown any remorse for having
exiled their illustrious compatriot, or made any attempt
to 'réclamer' him as their own. Flanders and Germany
were the positions from which the Jesuit guns were pointed
against Leyden. At Antwerp, Louvain, and Mainz, they
had establishments for training their literary banditti.
Here renegades from Protestantism were received, and
were especially welcome if they could bring contributions
of scandal against their old associates. Having lived with
the Protestants, they knew their friends' weak points;
ruined in character themselves, they were zealous to ruin
others. If an imputation could not be made to look
plausible, it could be made to look black; quantity was not
stinted; they were laid on, says Scaliger, 'by the waggon-
load,' Martin Delrio, who had taught at Liège and
Louvain in Scaliger's neighbourhood, but was now re-
moved to Gratz-one of the Jesuit strongholds for the
blockade of Germany-opened the game in 1601. Delrio's
language is comparatively decent. It is a noisy lament
over Scaliger as a blasphemer and contemner of the
'authority of the Church,' in denying the genuineness
of the writings of Dionysius, and in having affirmed
R
190
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
that monachism was unknown in the apostolic age. He
goes on to a personal description of Scaliger, offensive and
insulting, but not wholly untrue; a caricature rather than
a libel. Delrio, in fact, was only the light skirmisher put
forward to draw Scaliger's fire. But it would not do. The
man was too inconsiderable. Scaliger took no notice,
or awarded him only a conversational sarcasm.
The trenches were, therefore, opened on a new quarter.
Scaliger had that feeling for his Hebrew attainments which
we often have for that point which we are conscious is not
exactly our strongest. His reputation as an Orientalist was
a tender point with him. Serarius, a Jesuit of Mainz, who
had some skill in Hebrew, was set on with this bait. They
printed for him at their press in Mainz a book on The
Three Jewish Sects (Trihaeresion), in which, quite by the
way, some of the Hebrew criticisms in the De Emenda-
tione were called in question, but without violating the
received courtesies of controversy. Scaliger could not
resist the temptation. Though not replying himself, he
appended to a friend's reply to the book a contemptuously
savage demolition of Serarius; and, finding his hand in,
he could not refrain from a castigation of Delrio by the
way. More important was an epistle addressed to the
friendly editor of the volume, Drusius, Professor of Hebrew
at Franeker. In this epistle, written in a vein of caustic
humour, in which Scaliger has never been surpassed,
he throws down his challenge to the whole Order :—' Till
now he had kept silence under their provocations. If the
offence were repeated he should not take it so quietly
in future.' Friend and foe felt that this epistle was a de-
claration of war. The Heidelberg Calvinists congratulated
themselves upon this out-spokenness; and the Jesuits
no longer delayed the production of their heavy artillery.
In 1605 Carolus Scribanius, Rector of the Jesuit College at
Antwerp, produced the Amphitheatrum Honoris. The
Amphitheatre is not directed against Scaliger only; it
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
SERARIUS. AMPHITHEATRUM HONORIS.
191
includes the Calvinists generally. It is difficult to give
the English reader any idea of this production. It must
suffice to say that it is one of the most shamelessly beastly
books which have ever disgraced the printing press. The
leading characters among the Reformed are brought up
one after another, and the most filthy imputations alleged
against them, without the smallest evidence, or the pretence
of it. Even the titles of its chapters could not be reproduced
in these pages. In any moral condition of society the
compiler of such a mass of ordure would have been driven
from among men as a pollution of his species. But
fifty years of Jesuit reaction had told terribly on the moral
sense of Europe. Scribanius was a defender of the
Church, that was enough. The Amphitheatre speedily
reached a second edition, to which a new Part was added,
spiced with fresh turpitudes, and a special chapter on
Scaliger. Nothing gives a more shocking impression
of the depravity of party-spirit in those times than the
hearty reception given to this infamous production. It has
not a single redeeming point; neither wit, eloquence,
piquant scandal, nor plausibility of imputation. It is a
cesspool of filth, in which sectarian hate and an impure
imagination do not seek to disguise themselves by any arts
of composition. Good men were aghast, and recoiled from
this Amphitheatre of Horror; but the Catholic public
applauded; and when an attempt was made to get the sale
of the book prohibited in France, Henri IV interfered
in its favour, and sent the author a message of encourage-
ment, and letters of naturalization as a citizen.
In 1607 the Jesuits followed up this first success by a
second. The Amphitheatre had thrown dirt upon the
whole Protestant body promiscuously, and only in the
second edition had a point been made against Scaliger in
particular. He was now made the subject of a companion
volume, devoted entirely to himself, his personal history,
and character. The Supposititious Scaliger (Scaliger
192
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
Hypobolimaeus) of Gaspar Scioppius, is a thick quarto of
400 pages, in which all the slander and gossip about
Scaliger and his family which could be raked together in
the Jesuit colleges in Italy and Germany is retailed as
matter of fact. But instead of the obscure style and
clumsy composition of the Amphitheatre, the Supposi-
titious Scaliger is set off by all the arts of an accomplished
rhetorician. Scioppius was a master of Latin style; he
wields, with a force and nerve not inferior to Scaliger's
own, a precise and pungent diction,—a terrible weapon in
such a warfare and in the hands of such an adversary,
reckless of truth and only intent upon wounding his
opponent. We seem to see the steel of the assassin gleam
cold and keen in the moonlight, as he withdraws it again
and again to repeat his blow and make sure of his victim.
A more judicious selection of a champion the Jesuits could
not have made. No stronger proof can be given of the
impression produced by this powerful Philippic, dedicated
to the defamation of an individual, than that it has been the
source from which the biography of Scaliger, as it now
stands in our biographical collections, has mainly flowed.
Such is the power of style! The Jesuits, in their most
sanguine dreams, could never have hoped that the pure
fictions of Scioppius would establish themselves through-
out the literary world as the genuine tradition of the family
history of the Scaligers.
Scaliger was in his sixty-seventh year when this terrible
blow was dealt him. He might well reel under the shock.
A man of irreproachable purity of morals, of religious
habits, who had devoted every hour of his life to the
pursuit of knowledge, and had done more than any living
man to dignify the pursuits which all men agreed to
honour, might at least have thought he had earned a
peaceful, if not an honoured old age. And this was what it
was come to! As the reward of his toil, himself and his
ancestry were held up to the execration or ridicule of the
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
GASPAR SCIOPPIUS.
193
world, and the world received the portrait with rapture.
In denying his descent, the Jesuits had found out the heel
of Achilles. Upon his belief in his noble blood his whole
attitude and demeanour in the world had been founded.
If his intellect had broken the bonds of opinion and
enjoyed a freer scope and ampler range than that of
ordinary scholars, it was because he had started with a
consciousness of being the peer of the best and noblest in
Europe. His princely birth was but the other side of his
princely genius. He had sought and won this principality
in letters as some small compensation for the territorial
principality of which his forefathers had been robbed. He
had cherished, in this inward persuasion, a sensitive, even
irritable, love of truth, which had made him abhor disguise
and scorn prudence, and now he found himself exhibited
to the world as an impostor and a cheat. A sudden
revolution had shaken the foundations of his authority.
The proud fabric of his reputation was dashed to the
ground amid the jubilant exultations of enemies and the
cold condolence of friends. He was alone. Upon his
single head was discharged all the venom of a triumphant
party. The triumph, too, was not over himself, but over
science and learning, and over Scaliger as their represen-
tative. On every side the work of the Reformation was
being undone. A torrent of fanatical passion had set in,
and was sweeping away all that the human intellect had
for nearly a century been so laboriously constructing. It
was time for him to go; his life had been lived in vain.
Put away the Thesaurus Temporum! What are honour,
truth, virtue, science ?-A dream. The Jesuits are masters
of the world!
Recovered from his first consternation, Scaliger thought
it necessary to reply to Scioppius's libel, though he had
not noticed the Amphitheatre. His Confutatio Fabulae
Burdonum, published in his sixty-eighth year, is one of
the most vigorous specimens of Scaliger's unrivalled Latin
VOL. I.
O
194
VI. JOSEPH SCALIGER.
style. For the general reader this little tract is the most
attractive of anything which he has left. It is overflowing
with spirit and power, with historical knowledge and
literary allusion. As a refutation of Scioppius it is most
complete; but it had no success with the public. An
answer never has. It is the privilege of slander that it
does not admit of being removed, but attains its end by
being uttered. Casaubon, indeed, was hearty and sym-
pathetic; Heinsius was convinced; but the world regarded
the sympathy of the devoted Casaubon as little as the
indignation of the Leyden students. It was gratified to see
Scaliger humbled, and it would not hear of anything that
might abate its gratification. He was made to feel the
truth of what he had once said, 'Nunquam major est vis
calumniae quam in causâ optimâ.' All consolation and
support must be looked for within. The considerations he
had himself, some eight years before, offered to a friend
under a somewhat parallel infliction, show the direction his
thoughts would take in his own case. Thus he writes to
John Casel in 1600:—
You must remember how envy waits on merit as inseparably as
shadow on body. You would not be the object of this enmity if you
had not thus deserved it. I cannot recall any person of worth I have
ever known who has not at some time or other been the victim of
these malevolent passions, unless by studiously dissembling his gifts,
and painfully conforming to the fashion of living and thinking of
those around. But if you cannot escape envy you may vanquish it;
envy itself, I mean, not the envious, which is but a poor triumph.
Gifts of intellect and acquirements of learning are worth little if they
do not furnish the soul with resources to meet the spite they excite.
Perfer itaque et obdura. I am well acquainted with this sort of men,
and am indeed daily exposed to their assaults. I can however,
afford to laugh at their stupid malignity, and despise their rage; and
sustain myself by a good conscience and lofty purpose.
If victory is not always granted us, we are sure of
release. That hour was very near at hand. The Con-
futatio, which robbed better work of some valuable hours,
Quarterly Review, 1860.]
DEATH.
195
was finished in July, 1608. In October he began to feel
symptoms, the meaning of which he well understood. The
physicians who attended him complained of the difficulty of
prescribing for one who was too well acquainted with the
pharmacopoeia and the power of drugs. For two months
it amounted to little more than a sense of uneasiness,
against which he struggled as well as his strength per-
mitted. He did not intermit his usual reading; he could
take hardly any food, and his body was reduced to the last
stage of emaciation, but his mind was as vigorous as ever—
'vigilant,' says Heinsius, 'like a soldier at his post.' Up
to the very last he was correcting Polybius, and had drawn
a sketch of the pilum from the description of that weapon
in Lipsius's De Re Militari. About Christmas he took to
his bed; dropsy had declared itself.
'I came to him one morning,'-this is Heinsius's narrative,-and
asked him how he felt. 'My son,' he answered, 'you see me in
extremis. I cannot any longer bear up against the distress I suffer.
My body is worn out by lying here and by the stress of my malady.
My mind is as active as ever. If my enemies could see me now, they
would say it is the judgment of God upon me. You know how they
have said it of others. But you can testify to what you have seen.
Go on as you have begun. Watch over the memory of him who has
loved thee tenderly. God, I cannot doubt it, has thee in His favour.
He will continue to do so; do thou only acknowledge that all thou
hast is from Him. Be not ostentatious of thy gifts; they will shine
all the brighter. Whatever thou dost, shun arrogance and a haughty
temper. Never do aught against thy inward convictions for the sake
of advancement. Whatsoever is in thee is God's alone. Dear son!
thy Scaliger is leaving thee!'
On the 21st of January, 1609, at four in the morning,
he fell asleep in Heinsius's arms. The aspiring spirit
ascended before the Infinite. The most richly-stored
intellect which ever spent itself in acquiring knowledge
was in the presence of the Omniscient.
0 2
VII.
LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
(FRAGMENTS.)
[A
MONG Mr. Pattison's papers and collections two fragments
only of the life of Joseph Scaliger have been found in a
sufficiently advanced and connected state to allow of their being
given to the world. These are now printed as an Appendix to the
preceding article. The first (really made up of three fragments)
deals with Scaliger at the University of Paris, his Greek studies, and
his Greek and Latin verse. The second (written in 1880), which
appears intended to follow immediately upon this, deals with his
connection and residence with the family of Chasteigner de la
Roche Pozay. It contains frequent references to M. Tamizey de
Larroque's Lettres Inédites de J. J. Scaliger (Agen and Paris, 1879).
It must be borne in mind by the reader that no part of these
fragments had received the final corrections or revision of the author,
and that the whole is in an unfinished state. There are frequent
indications of contemplated additions, alterations, and notes.
Occasionally the same sentences are repeated in different places;
and it has been found necessary to insert a word or two here and
there for the purpose of connecting the sentences or paragraphs
together. A few trifling corrections have been made, and some
passages and suggestions for notes or amplifications omitted; but in
all other respects the fragments are as they were left by their author,
including several passages repeated from the Quarterly Article. But
though unfinished, these fragments appear to contain so much
matter of interest, not only in reference to Joseph Scaliger himself,
but also to the condition of France and to Greek studies there, that it
has been thought well to print them. The numerous references to
the Epistolae and the Scaligerana have been corrected and made
uniform. The edition of the Epistolae referred to is the Elzevir
edition of 1627; the Scaligerana are always cited from Des
Maizeux's edition, Antwerp, 1740.]
JOSEPH SCALIGER. EDUCATION.
I.
197
THOUGH bestowing great pains in perfecting Joseph in
Latin, his father made no attempt to teach him even the
elements of Greek. A barrier was thus placed before the
curiosity of the youth, and as he grew up he became
impatient to possess it. He exaggerated the value of the
unknown. 'I thought then,' he says, 'that not to know
Greek literature was to know nothing.' Every one in
France was saying the same. It was the moment in
French history when the passion for Greek was identified
with the passion for culture and education. For a moment
the ardour of the Italian renaissance, already extinct in the
country of its birth, flamed out again in France. The glow
and the inspiration were borrowed, but the ideal was with
a difference; for while the Italian enthusiasm was for the
Latin classics, the inheritance bequeathed to them by their
own ancestors, the remains of the Greek world became the
French Sangreal. The hidden wonders of Greek literature
it was which kindled the imagination of ingenuous French
youth. In this unexplored and infinite orbis novus'
were to be found the treasures of science, of history, of
philosophy, but above all of poetry. The lyric tradition of
the Langue d'oc connected itself by natural affinity with
the newly revealed Greek ode. The press of Paris began
to give Greek books in response to the new demand, and
the Collège de France, through Turnèbe or Dorat, was
supplying Greek teaching at a level which was not reached
in any other European school of that date.
To this source the young Scaliger rushed as soon as
he was released by his father's death, eager to slake his
thirst for learning. With the inexperience of his years he
had imagined that he had but to sit at the feet of Turnèbe,
and that the Greek language would flow into him from the
lips of the master. He commenced a diligent attendance
in the professor's lecture room, and to his great disap-
pointment found that he derived no benefit. But it was not
198
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
=
till after the experiment had been continued for two months
that he discovered that the fault lay, not with the teacher,
but with himself. He was listening to a course calculated
for advanced students, while he had not learnt the accidence
and the rules of syntax. It dawned upon him that one must
begin at the beginning,-a lesson in acquiring which two
months had not been thrown away. In disgust with himself
he forsook the Collége, and shut himself up in his chamber to
grapple with the mysteries of the language by sheer force
of intellect. He seized not a grammar, but a Greek
Homer with a Latin translation. His choice of Homer
was perhaps guided by finding in the title-page of the
Basle Homer of 1553 the tempting promise that 'by the
aid of their word for word rendering, and the helps in
their notes, beginners might master the poet without the
aid of a teacher¹.' He went through Homer-he does not
say
if both Iliad and Odyssey-in twenty-one days. Huet,
who, as a Frenchman and an ecclesiastic, has no love for
the Calvinist, pronounces this a piece of Scaliger's fan-
faronnade. The reason he offers is, that he himself had
made a similar experiment, and without success, though
he had convinced himself of the possibility of enclosing the
whole Iliad in a nut shell, which may seem at first sight
the more improbable feat of the two. Gibbon, with modest
sarcasm, declares (in his Autobiography) that he was
well satisfied with himself when he got through the same
task in as many weeks as Scaliger took days. Wyttenbach
took only fourteen days in reading Athenaeus, and Casaubon
only seven days over the one thousand folio pages of the
Greek of Photius's Bibliotheca, and twenty days over
the seven hundred pages of Basil. There are many
modes of reading, and the rate depends on what you read
for. The less the reader knows, the quicker he can get
¹ Adjecta Latina versione ad verbum . . . et difficiliorum thematum explicatione
marginibus hinc inde . . . adspersa, ut Graecae linguae tyronibus, vel citra vivam
praeceptoris vocem, cognoscere jam poetae scripta liceat.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
SELF-TAUGHT.
199
over the ground, as his attention is arrested by fewer
points.
The number of days is of small consequence. What
remains as the ascertained fact for Scaliger's mental
history is, that in Greek at least he was one of the self-
taught men. And this not for the reason that Casaubon
was so, because there was no one at hand who could
teach him, but because he would not learn from another.
Some minds are so ; too obstinate or too original to approach
any new subject along a prepared path, they must get at
it in their own way, or they cannot apprehend it at all.
The autodidact lies under some disadvantages. He loses
time; and time, in this short existence, is what no one
whose ambition is to exhaust literature can afford. He is
further liable to feed his self-confidence, and so not merely
to rouse the enmity of his compeers, but to disturb his
own intellectual balance. Scaliger's Gascon temperament,
propense to self-glorification, was unduly developed by
this solitary gymnastic, where he was matched against
an adversary over whom he was always victorious.
Vanity, his one moral weakness, grew into an overweening
arrogance, an outre-cuidance which made no account of
others, and demanded for himself a recognition of superi-
ority, which might have been rendered if he had not asked for
it, but which, when exacted as a due, the whole Dunciad
of Europe rose up to deny. If Scaliger's glory has been
obscured by his self-assertion, we must trace this in great
measure to these solitary years of study, during which,
unaided, he wrestled with the ordinary difficulties of the
Greek language, and the added obscurities of corrupt
texts; and overcame them. For the self-taught man can
at least count upon one set-off against the moral and
intellectual dangers of the process. He acquires a firmer
hold upon what he learns than can be ever obtained by
the favoured scholar, whose way is smoothed for him by
an expert teacher. In classical philology great names can
200
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
be placed to the credit of either system. And in this, as
in every other branch of endeavour, the great men must
always be regarded as exceptional phenomena. We must
be content with recording that Scaliger, as Casaubon,
was self-taught in Greek, and not go on to use the fact in
support of a theory.
In reading Homer, Scaliger's method was to draw out
a paradigm of the inflections for himself, and this was all
the grammar he ever had. The spirit of thoroughness
which guided him carried him through all the Greek poets
in four months. He abstained from touching the prose
writers till he had finished the poets. His instinct of
style made him feel that, where the idiom of poetry and
that of prose are so totally distinct as they are in Greek,
the one would be more completely mastered if it were not
mixed with the other. 'Between eighteen and twenty,' he
says,¹ 'I knew my three tragedians thoroughly.' Two
years were devoted wholly to Greek. He did not merely
read, but exercised himself in composition and verse-
making, both original and translated, in both languages,
Greek and Latin. As he had no master to correct his
lines, he must have formed his own prosody as well as
his own grammar. Some of these pieces of early date
still remain, having been offered, as the fashion then was,
as 'étrennes' to friends. There is, e. g., a translation into
Greek hexameters of the Moretum, done at Paris in 1561,
and tendered as a compliment to Pierre Ronsard, which
is astonishing as the work of one who had only begun
Greek two years before. There are translations from
other Latin poets, Virgil, Martial, Catullus, etc., of all
periods of Scaliger's life, of which Friedrich Wolf says
that they are as good as Nonnus or Quintus Smyrnaeus
could have written 2. And, according to Bentley's verdict,
Scaliger's metrical skill had never been surpassed by any
'Scaligerana Secunda, p. 577.
2 Darstellung d. Alterthumswissenschaft, p. 116.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
GREEK AND LATIN VERSES.
1
201
scholar since the revival of learning ¹. Bernays, however,
suggests that a higher place might be awarded to William
Canter. Versification was an accomplishment of which
Scaliger was not a little proud. Speaking in later life of
his early performance of this kind, he says, 'In that three
years, 1560-63, I amused myself with making verses fre-
quently in both languages; I turned much out of the
Latin poets into Greek, making it my aim that what I
wrote should not only be Greek, but should seem to be
my own. Many at this day can write creditable Greek
verses, but few with that happy idiomatic turn which there
ought to be in Greek 2. Except as showing the metrical
skill of the writer, the verses are worthless. Scaliger knew
this, and steadily declined requests to print, 'warned,'
he said, 'by Politian's example, though it was some ex-
cuse for Politian that he had marked on each copy of
verses the author's age at time of writing. If he were
to publish he would do the same, but, on the whole,
it was hardly worthy of Politian, in the maturity of his
genius, to have deliberately printed his schoolboy Greek
verses ³
39
Some force above the common, we may admit, must
have been at work to carry Scaliger at one bound to
where a whole seven years' apprenticeship hardly brings
on others. He himself has touched the true basis of
what we vaguely call 'gifts.' Speaking of a Pole who
had a new patent system of learning Greek he writes.
(1574), ‘As for your Polish friend's new method of learning
the Greek language, I can only say that each student's
own industry and pains, with—and this is the main point—
determination, is the best and only method¹'. In con-
versation with the friend to whom he thus wrote, he said,
'No language stops me, if I take a little pains. All the
languages I know I have learnt without grammar or
1 'Nemo in arte metrica Scaligero peritior.'
2 Epistolae, p. 51.
3 Ibid.
Menand., p. 67.
4 Ibid., p. 104.
202
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
dictionary, making my own as I went along. A slight
taste of any language is enough to give me an insight
into its analogies. Whoever would conquer what I have
conquered must do it in the sweat of his brow ¹.'
From Greek he would pass with the same ardour to the
conquest of Hebrew. The suggestion came from Guil-
laume Postel, but the inducement was, as in the case of
Greek, the belief of reaching through Hebrew an un-
travelled world of knowledge. Scaliger, during these
years of heroic application and renunciation, lodged over
a bookseller's shop. It may have been the shop of the
Marnef brothers, but, whoever the printer was, he was
an ally of Guillaume Postel. And it so happened that
that restless visionary wandered back to Paris, and
claimed hospitality from his bookseller when Scaliger
was in the house. Postel was in the fifties, and Joseph
Scaliger only twenty-three, but there was much in common
between them. Postel's real learning would seem to the
young man greater even than it really was, and his
enthusiasm for his ideas was met by an equal ardour
on the part of the inflammable Gascon. Postel was
self-taught, and, what is most seductive to a young
imagination, believed in the attainment to mysteries
hidden from the world through the key of the Oriental
tongues. Scaliger was fascinated by this apparition, a
compound of the prophet and the savant, who had been
all over the East, even at Constantinople, about which the
savour of Greek learning still lingered, and who knew
more tongues than any man living. The young man
resigned his bed to the elder³, and waited on his words.
Their intercourse only lasted three days, for that time
1 Scaligerana Prima, p. 142.
2 'Il apprit de lui mesmes tout l'artifice et parfaicte cognoissance de ceste langue.'
Thevet, Pourtraits et Vies, p. 589. Thevet knew Postel; the sketch in his huge folio
is drawn at first hand, and is the source of nearly all that is authentic in the many
lives in the books of reference which copy from each other without verification.
3 Meo lecto illi cessi, quum sperarem me ex congressu ejus quotidiano aliquem
fructum percepturum.' Epistolae, p. 706.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
GUILLAUME POSTEL. HEBREW.
203
sufficed for Postel to get into new trouble with the Parle-
ment, and to be carried off to a dungeon. But three
days had been enough to excite Scaliger's curiosity about
the Oriental tongues, and he thought now, as three years
before about Greek, that nothing was known if you did not
know Hebrew. He recognised at the time that the seer
was a little mad, and came to know afterwards that his
linguistic attainments did not go beyond the surface ¹.
Accordingly Scaliger fell upon Hebrew with the same
passion of study to which Greek had yielded. Either the
genius of the language wanted the qualities adapted to
his taste, or he was disappointed in the material contents
of the books. He never, in Bernays's judgment, attained
to that sure footing in Hebrew which characterises his
handling of Greek. 'He never overcame the disadvan-
tages which surely attend the learner who begins late
and is without a teacher. In spite of intuitions into the
higher problems of the language and literature with which
he occasionally surprises us, he wants that assured hold
of the common every-day tongue, that "usus linguae,"
which was at his command in Greek-a possession of
which the foundation was laid in enormous reading and
incessant translation in these early years in Paris 2.'
At a later date Scaliger acquired, besides Hebrew,
several languages of the Semitic group, Talmudic Hebrew,
Arabic, Syriac, Aethiopic, as also Persian. Though he is
apt to speak of his own performances with what seems to
us indecent triumph, he is always modest on the subject
of Hebrew. He knows his own limitation. 'My father
knew Arabic well, and I am not altogether unacquainted
with it,' he says to Vertunien³. And he writes at a later
time to Casaubon, 'I have turned over many volumes of
Arabic, and have made for myself out of my readings quite
'Linguarum non ignarus, sed nullius ad unguem peritus.' Scaligerana Prima,
Bernays, p. 36.
p. 141.
2
3 Scaligerana Prima, p. 112.
204
LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
VII.
1
a vocabulary. Yet I know for all that, that I have gone
a very little way in the language, and am indeed but a
mere tiro ¹' After the first onset under the impulse
derived from Postel, he ceased to regard his Oriental
reading as a pursuit for its own sake, and only sought in
it the subsidia indispensable for classical illustration, or
the chronological survey of all human history. Hence
we must correct the idle romance of the biographers,
who make, not knowing what to make, Scaliger's mythical
eminence to consist in his knowing many languages.
'He spoke thirteen languages,' writes the best modern
historian of the reign of Henri IV 2, copying that ready
source of all history for the French-the Biographie
Universelle. The origin of this extravagance which turns
Scaliger into a Wotton or a Mezzofanti is perhaps a flight
of Du Bartas (Semaine Seconde).
Scaliger, merveille de notre âge,
Le soleil des sçavants, qui parle éloquemment
L'Hebrieu, Grecquois, Roman, Hespagnol, Alemant.
There is certainly a shade of complacency in the way
in which Scaliger speaks of his linguistic acquirements
generally. That he seems to dwell most on his Arabic
is due to the fact that it was an acquirement of later date,
and one which was still being cultivated at the date when
his table-talk was being taken down by his young friends,
the Vassans, 1604-1606. But with all his pride in what
he had learned late, and with superfluous effort, he did not
deceive himself as to the extent of his knowledge. He
writes to Lydius, of the University of Franekar, in 1600:-
Our worthy friend and most learned man (Raphelengius) has
left behind great collections on the Arabic tongue, but nothing,
I suspect, in a state sufficiently finished for publication. He
had formed a lexicon of the language, copious it is, yet inferior
in this respect as well as in method and perspicuity to mine. Yet
1
Epistolae, p. 208.
2 Poirson, Hist. du Règne de Henri IV, 2nde édit. IV. 230.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
LINGUISTIC ACQUIREMENTS. PARIS.
205
he had the use of mine for two years, and has copied it verbatim
in his explanation of many words. Mine has 22,000 words, of
which more than 14,000 are roots. This Thesaurus I have collected
out of Arabic books, of which I myself possess store. Yet in spite
of this copious vocabulary, I am well aware that I cannot claim any-
thing like a thorough knowledge of the language, though I may
perhaps say that I know more of it than any living 'Latin,' as the
Orientals call us. I must be a mere log of a man if, knowing so
many thousand words, I did not understand something of Arabic.
And I do not neglect it still, but without satisfying myself, and,
therefore, without expecting to satisfy others¹.
The three years of ardent study [spent by Scaliger
at the University of Paris], were necessarily years of
close confinement and abstraction. They remind us of
the three years of solitary meditation in the heart of Paris,
during which Descartes passed his apprenticeship to philo-
sophy, about the same age, 'without seeing a single
friend, or so much as going out for a walk.' The
craving for solitude-menschenscheu-not uncommon at
that period of youth, concurring with a passion for
knowledge very uncommon, produces a furnace heat
of intense application, by which the mind and character
are, as it were, fused, and the young genius receives the
abiding ply and temper which alone can fix him for life
in the scholar's calling. Fifteen years later than this,
the Paris period, Vertunien bears witness that Scaliger's
'incredible love of letters had not abated 2; he is never
weary of study, nay he comes to us from it with renewed
spirits.'
There came, of course, an end to this superhuman strain
of the faculties, and to the total seclusion from human
kind which it involved. Before 1563 Scaliger had made
some acquaintances among the youth of his own age, and
even become known to one or two men who were already
celebrated. We have seen how a chance threw him at
once into an intimate acquaintance with Postel. William
Scaligerana Prima, p. 149.
1
Epistolae, p. 577.
2
206
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
Canter, about Scaliger's own age (b. 1542), was in Paris.
in 1561, and the two became intimates¹. 'A young man
well-learned, and united to me by ties of the closest
intimacy,' he writes of Canter, ten years later. But already
in 1561 he recognised in Canter a kindred passion for
Greek, for it is to him that he offers, in September of that
year, his first essay in Greek elegiacs, a translation of
Propertius, IV. 17.
In September 1562, Muretus came to France, and as
an old friend of his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger, and
his guest at Agen, Joseph was as much with him as
Muret's only occasional visits to Paris from Charlieu made
possible. Muretus had now had some years of Italian
polish, and in the opinion of the Italians it was only in
Italy that taste and style could be acquired 2. Muretus,
who had left France under a cloud, had now as secretary
to the special embassy of the Cardinal of Este become a
personage, and it may be to him that Scaliger owed his
introduction to some of the notabilities.
His most important introduction, however, of this period
was that to Dorat.
Jean Dorat was now, as Regius Professor of Greek
letters, at the height of his reputation 3. The character
of that renown marks a peculiar era in the history of the
French Revival. Budé, who had left the scene twenty
years before, had represented the beginning of the school
of erudition. Turnebus, Henri Estienne, Lambinus, and
others still living, were pioneers in that branch of philology
in which Scaliger was himself to achieve a higher fame,
¹ For the intimacy Catalecta, p. 48; for the date Poemata Graeca, p. 100.
2 'Nell' arrivar a Parigi mi pare vedere l' allegrezza y vostra conoscendovi tanto
dissimile da quello che eravate quando vi foste un' altra volta.' Manuzio to Muret
Dejob, p. 153.
3 The orthography of the name is Dorat, as it stands corrected by La Monnoye
in his additions to La Croix du Maine, I. 445, and not Daurat or d'Aurat. Aura-
tus, the Latinised form euphoniae gratia, led to constant puns by the epigrammatists
on the colour of his hair, from which Ménage has concocted an etymology such as
he loved. Menagiana, IV. 161 (edit. of 1716).
Fragments. Posthumous.]
JEAN DORAT.
207
knowledge applied to the restoration, purification, and in-
terpretation of ancient texts. The common aim of this
school was to prepare the classics for general reading,
it being assumed that the thing best worth reading extant
was the classics. Dorat represents that moment in
French literature—a moment which has never recurred—
when Greek learning was in alliance with public taste
and polite letters. In England this phase of accomplish-
ment, which survived till within the present century,
monopolised the name of scholarship. The English word
'scholar' has no equivalent in any living language.
Germany the word 'Gelehrte' is characteristic of a country
which has learning without a literature. France, which
has a literature pauperised by the absence of knowledge,
has no word which can represent 'scholar,' as for nearly
three centuries it has not known the class.
In
The school of Dorat were scholars in the English
sense of the word. They were humanists, who, like the
Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, desired to enjoy
all literature, to read the classics for their delectation.
They all read Greek and Latin, so that Jean Augier
produces himself as an exceptional person, who dared to
write poetry, though
Je n'ai jamais rien sceu n'y point estudié;
Ebreu, Grec, ny Latin, je n'ay point oublié.-
And as the enjoyment and appreciation of poetry is the
most thorough test, and the last reward, of the mastery of
any tongue, their aim implied in it something more than a
slight acquaintance with the classics. The key to the
classical fairy land was in Dorat's possession, and to him.
came all neophytes for initiation.
Dorat has left behind him a volume of Poems ¹, chiefly
Latin, some Greek and French interspersed. The printer's
errors which abound, the faults of grammar and prosody
1 Ioannis Aurati Lemovicis Poetae et Interpretis Regii Poematia. Lutet. Parisior.,
ap. Gul. Linocerium, 1586.
:
208
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
which may be detected in this volume, must be ascribed in
all charity to the advanced age of the author when his
sheets were passed through the press, the year, viz., before
his death. He died in the Armada year, 1588, at the age
of
eighty, having turned out in his life time some 50,000 verses,
from which the 15,000 printed in the volume whose title is
given in the note are a selection. In the whole mass I
cannot discover a spark of poetic feeling. Nor as Latin com-
position are Dorat's verses set off by any of those felicities
of imitative diction which relieve the monotony of the
modern Latinists' set themes. Scaliger, who pronounced
Muretus to be' elegantissimus poeta,' can only by a stretch
of indulgence apply the epithet 'bonus' to Dorat. This
moderate commendation, too, he limits by assigning a reason,
'because he can turn his muse on to any subject'.' The
sentiment which runs through the book is always mean,
sometimes, as in the epigrams on Ramus, or the insult to
the corpse of Coligny, base and brutal. But Scaliger, at
the time he praised Dorat's poetry, had not seen the
printed book, and knew only what might have been
handed about in MS. Much of the Gallo-Latin verse of
the time is of a poor quality-e. g., that of L'Hôpital and
Lambinus; but in Dorat's book we should say that we
have the dregs of the French renaissance.
Yet this abject verse writer is one of the Pleiad. There is
one explanation of this paradox. Dorat was canonised by
the gratitude of his pupils. A man of the meanest order of
ideas, which he couched in shambling Latin, Dorat possessed
the key of the new learning. Every schoolmaster could
teach Latin, but few were there in France who could teach
Greek. Turnebus, though he knew it, could not teach it.
Dorat, by the testimony of Scaliger, this time able to
employ a superlative, was 'Graecae linguae peritissimus.'
1 'Qui cum ad omne argumenti genus carmina accommodet, bonus poeta dici
omnino meretur.' Scaligerana Prima, p. 26. I take this opportunity of noting that
the article in the Scaligerana Secunda which begins 'Auratus, elegantissimus
poeta,' is wrongly headed. For Auratus' read 'Muretus.'
Fragments. Posthumous.]
DORAT.
209
'There are no real students left,' he said at another time,
'with one exception, that is, Dorat. It is not given to every
one to be able to restore an author to his original beauty
and integrity. I know no one at this day who is capable
of doing this, except Cujas and Dorat.' What little emenda-
tory work Dorat did, he gave away, e. g., Opsopoeus had,
and prized, his emendations on the Sibyllines. All his
energy went into his teaching. In his private lodging in
the Collége de Coqueret was held an Academy of classical
letters, an imitation of the Academies of Italy. Binet tells
us, in his life of Ronsard, that Dorat, 'foreseeing that Ron-
sard would one day be the Homer of France, and desiring
that his spirit should be nursed with appropriate aliment,'
took him and read to him the Prometheus of Aeschylus
from beginning to end. 'Why is it, master,' cried Ronsard,
'that you have hidden such riches from me for so long?'
Blind to the poverty of his own verses, the grateful
pupils saw in the man who introduced them to these
mysteries, 'the Homer and the Pindar of France, a beacon
light to show the way to such as would visit the oracle of
the muses.' 'Out of Dorat's school,' says Du Verdier,
'issued more poets than did warriors out of the Trojan
horse¹' Add to Greek science a delight in teaching, and
we understand how the ardent youth of France who, at
this moment like Scaliger himself, believed that he who did
not know Greek knew nothing, thronged to the Collége
de Coqueret to get what it was difficult to get elsewhere,—
an initiation into the new mysteries. The enthusiasm for
the poets was supplied by the pupils; what Dorat could
give was the power to read them. It was their gratitude
for help of this kind that enrolled Dorat in the Pleiad,
a rank from which his own performance must have em-
phatically excluded him. Nothing is more common than
to find skill and delight in the niceties of grammatical
1 'Jean Dorat, à bon droit appelé Homère Gaulois, et Pindare Grec-latin, le
plus rare et subtil esprit de notre siècle,' etc. Du Verdier, IV. 404.
VOL. I.
Р
210
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
interpretation, combined with a deadness to the beauties
conveyed through the words explained.
It would have been difficult for any ambitious youth fed
upon the classics to be in Paris in those years, without
being drawn in by the fashion of writing verses. The
mode of the day has always been a determining power in
French literature. At the court of the last three Valois
poetry was a universal passion, but the fashion in this
instance was more than the fancy of a day. It was a
necessity of the French genius complying with the new
intellectual conditions created by the facts of the age, and
especially by the rediscovery of the Greek and Latin
classics. The classics came late to France, only after Italy
had done with them; and when they did come, they were at
first a monopoly of a few 'eruditi,' such as Budaeus. To
the learned they revealed themselves as an inexhaustible
accession of knowledge. But the learned were blind to
them as objects of beauty. It was to the young men of the
Pleiad and their friends that this revelation first came.
With the intoxication of delight came the ambition to
imitate,―to write like the Greeks, and in Greek. But the
remoteness of the language, spoken by none, read by none
but themselves, was an insurmountable obstacle to this.
Then they all wrote in Latin, which was read by all who
read anything. This was what the Italian humanists had
done. The Italian renaissance had been a Latin renaissance,
and had left in its outcome a vast neo-Latin literature,
especially verse literature. Had the French renaissance
come fifty years earlier, it is possible that in France too
a neo-Latin poetry might have been all that came of it.
As it was, this result was at one time not improbable. It
seemed likely that the poetic outburst of the middle of the
century would clothe itself in Latin, and not in French.
Everything that was written ran into verse, and all verse
was Latin verse. Even Joachim Du Bellay, whose Défense
Fragments. Posthumous.]
VERSE: LATIN AND FRENCH.
211
et Illustration was a vigorous plea for the use of French,
was driven to write in Latin in order to reach a wider public'.
It was only gradually, and after many tens of thousands of
Latin verses had been written, that the Latin vein dried up,
and was left to the schools and Jesuit colleges, while those
who aspired to be poets decided for their native tongue.
As soon as this revolution was accomplished, a sea of
French verse broke over the printing press and threatened
to submerge all other production. Latin had at least
required some metrical skill and linguistic training. To
write French verse required none. Sonnets, odes, elegies,
epigrams, chansons, mascarades, quatrains, dithyrambes,
were being indited on all sides. Lawyers, doctors, theo-
logians, Catholics and Huguenots, Queen Margaret, the
printers Gilles Corrozet, and Robert Estienne (II), Chan-
cellor Pasquier, the nun Anne de Marquetz, the ladies
Des Roches, the Captain at arms Odet de la Noue, the
Calvinist minister La Roche Chandieu, to take examples
at random, were all carried away by the stream of fashion,
and wrote French verses.
It is customary in the histories of French literature to
glorify this transition from Latin to French as an epoch in
their poetical annals. It was, in fact, the resurrection of
the French language, and the definitive dismissal of Latin
from the world of letters. The Latin versifiers of the
period are for ever consigned to oblivion, while the poets
of the Pleiad and their contemporaries have had a kind of
revival in our day. In speaking, however, of the poets of
1540-1600, we must distinguish between what they were for
the language, and what they were for the literature of
France. It was a misfortune or a mistake for anyone after
1540 to choose to write in Latin. For the French language
the poets of this age were all that their panegyrists have
said of them. For the literature, the average of the Latin
poetry of the period must be ranked on a par with the
¹ See his apology to Ronsard, Les Regrets. Euvres, II. 172.
P 2
212
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
vernacular. There is, in all those attributes of poetry that
are separable from language, no difference between them.
They exhibit the same limitation in the choice of subject;
in the range of idea, French and Latin poets alike are
occupied with monotonous complaints of the obduracy of
some beauty, or insipid laudation of the exploits of a Valois
or a Guise. The French or the Latin poet is equally
penniless, and equally impudent in his mendicancy of place
or pension. If some of the most interesting stanzas in
Du Bellay's French are the autobiographical passages, the
same is the case with the hexameters of L'Hôpital, who
tells us his own affairs, in Latin as 'facile' as Du Bellay's
French¹. The Latin verse of this period is no way inferior to
the French, turns on the same subjects, runs in the same
lines. It is of a totally different complexion from the unreal
but more correct exercises of the Jesuit schools of the seven-
teenth century. In the period 1540-1600 the two languages
had a fair trial side by side, and the spoken language, as
was inevitable, came out victor in the competition.
The story of the Pleiad is inseparably bound up with
the history of classical study of which it was an outcome.
It is doubtful whether Scaliger was a pupil of Dorat
for Greek; but the school of Dorat, with various members
of which he was brought in contact during these years
1560-1563, had a powerful influence upon the direction
of his taste and studies.
Julius Caesar's prolific vein of verse has been men-
tioned. As his father's amanuensis, Joseph's metrical
sense was in daily exercise, and he very early began the
practice of verse-making. When he lost his father, and
removed to Paris, it seemed as if the philological study
of Latin would absorb his energies, and the time-wasting
(so our age deems it) accomplishment of verse would be
laid aside as a frivolous and puerile pastime. Thus his
first appearance in print, the Conjectanea (1565), shows
1 'Des Portes n'est pas net, Du Bellay trop facile.' Regnier, Sat. IX.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
PRACTICE OF GREEK AND LATIN VERSE-MAKING. 213
But even during the
little or no metrical interest.
course of reading of which the Conjectanea are the fruit,
Scaliger did not drop the habit of versification. Transla-
tions into Latin from the Anthology, and into Greek
from various Latin poets, were his continual recreation.
But they were also more than a recreation. They
nourished that feeling for style which is the indispensable
condition of reading poetry, and, therefore, of that reading
of a dubious text which involves the thought of how it
might be corrected, or, in other words, of what the logic of
the verse shows the author must have really written.
The decision of our¹ classical teachers to disuse, in the
schools of 1880, the exercise of verse-making is not here
meant to be impugned. That decision rests upon another
order of consideration. But for the high accomplishment
of classical scholarship, the training of the ear to metrical
rhythm and quantity is as necessary as the training of
the mind in syntax. The union in Scaliger of philological
analysis with constructive composition was necessary
to form that fertility of conjectural emendation which,
however he abused it, must ever be the object of our
wonder. The two interests, the interest of research
and that of style,-possessed him alternately. Giving in
the Varro (1565) and the Festus (1575) specimens of
knowledge of the classical remains, he was all the while
collecting and emending the fragments of the Latin poets
(Catalecta, 1573), revising the three elegiacs, translating
Lycophron, the Orphics, the Ajax of Sophocles. Nor
after he was embarked in the much more serious and
absorbing historical investigations of which the De Emen-
datione and the Thesaurus are the monuments, did he dis-
use his old pastime of verse-making. Many of the versions.
printed in the volume of his Poemata, e. g., the Martial,
the Gallus, the Cato, are of the later Leyden time.
1 [The editors are unable to discover to what educational measure Mr. Pattison
is referring.]
214
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
!
Bentley's casual remark, styling Scaliger 'a very great
poet,' is before my eyes, warning me against the hazards
of an incompetent criticism. Let Scaliger's Latin verses
pass as poetry, if such they be; at least we are on firm
ground in saying that his verse-making was an important
element of his critical force. While with the Italian
humanists, from Petrarch to Muretus, style was the
end and goal of all classical reading, and with the later
school, of which Casaubon is the representative, mere
erudition is taken for the key of ancient literature, in
Scaliger the cultivation of Latin poetry gave a constructive
quality to his criticism, which the criticism of memory
and erudition never reaches. Scaliger may, at first, by
collision with the Ronsardists, have dreamed that he
too was born in Arcadia, and that he might shine among
the thousand stars of the poetical sky. But he soon
saw, from the very success and popularity of the Pleiad,
that Latin, as the future vehicle of poetry, was doomed,
and thenceforward only versified for his own pastime,
or as an exercise useful for the employment in which
he most delighted, that of rectifying the copy and
penetrating the subtler sense of the remains of the
Latin poets. Yet he ever and again, on a journey or
during the sleepless nights of age, recurred to the old
trade of verse-making, rallying himself upon it afterwards
as a weakness, and always relapsing again. 'I have
prostituted my hours in writing complimentary verses to
everybody like Dorat; I will do so no more'; he said to
the Vassans¹. And again: 'If my verse pieces, original
and translated, were to be printed, they would make a
volume. Du Puy kept everything, I never looked after
them myself; as soon as made, I throw them aside. I
hate my own things. Sometimes I have turned the same
piece over again, forgetting that I had translated it before."'
This disdain of poetizing as beneath the dignity of a
¹ Scaligerana Secunda, p. 561.
1
Fragments. Posthumous.]
HIS LATIN VERSES.
215
gentleman may be partly an affectation of the day; for
we find it often, especially among men of action. We
may recall the disdain with which d'Aubigné speaks
of the 'poésies qu'il a autrefois brouillées en sa jeunesse,'
though at the same time he provided by his will for the
reprint of his Tragiques ¹. Nor was it only the men of
the sword who affected to despise themselves for writing
verses; Joachim du Bellay, one of the Pleiad, asks his
readers in the address prefixed to his Jeux Rustiques,
only to employ in reading his Jeux the same hours
which he employed in writing them, viz., those hours
which are ordinarily given to play, to shows, to banquets,
'et autres telles voluptez de plus grand fraiz.' In
Scaliger, always thinking as he did of his birth, this
affectation may have had some place. But he must
also be credited, like Étienne Pasquier, with sufficient
acuteness to have seen that his own verses were not equal
in flow and ease to those of the best Latinists of the re-
naissance, Bembo or Politian2, and with sufficient acute-
ness to see what Étienne Pasquier and the better spirits
of his generation saw, that for all modern subjects it
had become necessary to use the modern idiom.
Like Pasquier, Scaliger in his later years turned to
poetry, book reading, and composing, as a solace. No
topic recurs more often in his mouth than the poets.
To give some instances: 'Bembo and Sadolet are good
poets'; 'Ronsard is a great poet in the French language';
Du Bellay is equally great in his native tongue and
in Latin, in which he sometimes reaches (which few
have done) the ease and sweetness of Catullus'; 'there
are three things in which I consider myself a judge—
wine, poetry, and character'; 'of verse no one can
be a judge, who is not himself a writer of verse³.
1
¹ Pontus de Tyard. Crepit. II. 38.
2 He calls Bembo 'bonus' and Politian 'excellens poeta.' Scaligerana Prima,
28, 114.
³ Scaligerana, passim.
216
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
=
?
It does not appear that Scaliger ever attempted verse in
the vernacular. He knew the axiom, 'Fais tous vos vers à
Paris,' and, conscious of his own Gasconism,wisely abstained,
though exhorted to the attempt by Ronsard himself.
How canst thou expect to be read, Latinist, when Statius, Lucan,
Seneca, Silius, and Claudian can scarce find a hearing, and stand
but as dumb shadows in a study, to be spoken of but twice or thrice
in a lifetime, though they were great masters in their mother tongue.
And thou expectest to be read who hast learnt at school, by dint of
the birch, that foreign tongue which those great men spoke naturally
and without effort, to their valets, nurses, chambermaids. Oh, how
often have I wished that those divine heads, sacred to the muses, of
Joseph Scaliger, Daurat, Pimpont, d'Emery, Florent Chrestien,
Passerat, would employ some hours in such honourable labour !¹
Of Scaliger's Latin verse we have a small volume, once
an indispensable part of every library, now swept away as
filling space which can be better occupied. Scaliger
himself is not responsible for this volume, which was
printed seven years after his death by Scriverius, a Dutch
gentleman, who collected books, and had a taste for classics,
Latin especially 2.
Scriverius seems to have got possession of the originals
when Scaliger's papers were dispersed. Their author
had sufficient affection for his verses not to destroy them,
but did not think a volume of verse a becoming production
for one of his age and standing. Upon that which he
looked upon as a trifling toy, and which in our age has
lost even that value, criticism would be wasted.
We may
briefly state the contents of a book which has a necessary
place in a biography of Scaliger. Nearly two-thirds of
the volume are taken up with translation; of Greek into
Latin, and Latin into Greek. These are merely feats
of ingenuity. Translation of a classic, one of the best of
¹ Preface to Franciade. [De Thou was seigneur of Emery, and Vaillant de
Guelle, Abbé of Pimpons or Paimpont.]
2 'Scriverius habet multos bonos libros; non legit'; (i.e., does not lecture in the
university) doctus est, sed latine.' Scaligerana Secunda, p. 567.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
THE POEMATA.
217
exercises, can never have literary value, as it is impossible
to reproduce in another language the form and grace,
which, and not the material contents, constitute the charm
of poetry or style. The Latin version of the Orphic
hymns Scaliger himself calls 'a very faulty piece¹.' It
seems to have been written in the Varro-Festus period,
and to have been an experiment as to how many obsolete
Latin words could be got into a page of it. The version
of the Ajax of Sophocles had been printed by Scaliger
himself in 1574. This again was a mere posturing on
the tight rope in the manner much admired in that
age, each line of the original having a line in the same
metre answering to it in the Latin. If Muretus made
merry over it, it was less because of the misuse of
àrchaisms, than because Scaliger had here forsaken
classical purity to comply with a pedantic whim. Another
favourite amusement of Scaliger's vacant hours was col-
lecting the rich treasures of proverbial sayings scattered
over the remains of the Greek classics, and moulding each
into a single line, hexameter, iambic, or trochaic. His
first collection of this kind was sent to Pierre Pithou
in 1584. He went on adding to it, and in 1594 allowed
Morel to print it with his (Scaliger's) name. By an impu-
dent act of plagiarism, the Jesuit Andreas Schottus re-
printed the collection in his Adagia, 1612, barely naming
Scaliger in the preface, but in such a way as to disguise
the fact that the versification is Scaliger's work. To
the reader of Schottus's proverbs the lines present them-
selves as genuine classical remains on the same footing
as the proverbs of Zenobius or Diogenianus.
The original portion of the volume of Poemata presents
to us a little more personal interest. Some of these
pieces will come for notice when we mention the occasions
which gave rise to them. Here let it be only said
in general, that Scaliger's Latin verse distinguishes itself
1 Epistolae, p. 179.
218
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
from the contemporary verse in two points; first by its real
character. He never falls into the conventional platitudes
in which the average poet loves to expatiate. The Latin
verses of other poets have a common family resemblance,
and might be mutually exchanged; Scaliger's have an
individual stamp, and are unmistakably his own. We
are reminded of Goethe's saying of Schiller: 'I have never
heard from him an insignificant word¹. Secondly, by the
absence of the amatory love which pervades all the Latin,
and indeed the French poetry of the period. We have none
of the counterfeit despair, sighs, and groans which weary
us through so many hundred pages of the Valesian poets.
II.
1
IN 1563 Dorat had gone for the summer vacation into
the Limousin, of which he was a native, on the invitation of
one of the young nobles of the province, Louis Chasteigner
de la Rochepozay. When Dorat, at the close of the
holidays, had to return to Paris to resume his lectures.
in the Collége de France, he was requested by this
nobleman to send him a young man who was capable
of reading the classics with him. Dorat, in a happy
moment, recommended Scaliger. In this way Scaliger
entered the household in which he was domesticated
for the next thirty years of his life. In one or other
of the many châteaux belonging to this family and its
connections, he actually resided for at least half of that
period at three different times, always returning thither
as to his home, and being regarded by all the members
of the family as an indispensable part of it. The shelter
afforded him on the various 'terres' of the Chasteigner
enabled Scaliger to pass through the disastrous period
of the religious wars in safety, though not in peace, gave
him a roof over his head, a place to gather such a library
as he had, and independent leisure for study without
¹ Said by Goetheto' a friend of Sterling.' Caroline Fox's Journal (1882), p.140.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
WITH THE FAMILY OF ROCHEPOZAY.
219
the drudgery of teaching. 'Ever since my father's death,
he says, 'I have lived on charity'
There is an unmistakable tinge of bitterness in this
sally, as in his saying at another time, 'I should have
been better off if I had been son of Van der Vec, the
tradesman; I should have had a sackfull of crowns 2.
In proportion as a man's experience is wide, in that pro-
portion he rates the advantages of wealth. Yet Scaliger
was not insensible to the advantages he derived from
his peculiar position, nor ungrateful to the noble family
to whom he was indebted for it.
In one point of the greatest importance hardly any
scholar of that or the previous generation can be named
whose time was so largely at his own disposal. All
the great philological names recall a life of struggle with
poverty, or with the time-wasting exigences of teaching,
the only escape from poverty. Erasmus, who did not
teach, had to correct the press for a maintenance, or
degraded himself by whining mendicancy. Muretus saved
a small fortune out of his appointments, but his composure
was wrecked in perpetual contest with Roman students
determined not to learn. Scaliger, without wife or family,
was placed by a munificent patron in a position of almost
entire independence. Relieved alike of domestic cares and
the anxieties of bread-winning, he came to classical studies
with that single mind from which alone genial fruit can
be raised. Others may accumulate the lore which grows
by industrious reading; the freshness and elasticity which
accompanied Scaliger through his survey of the whole
2
Scaligerana Secunda, p. 559.
'J'aimerois mieux estre fils de Van der Vec, marchand, j'aurois des escus.' Ibid.,
p. 556. 'L'érudition n'est pas le chemin de la fortune.' Huetiana, p. 209.
Passerat had made the same discovery at twenty-seven :-
• Comme moi insensé, qui guidé de jeunesse,
Ayant peu de souci, d'honneur et de richesse,
Les muses ay suivi et leur mestier appris,
Mestier sans nul profit, trompeur des bons esprits.'
Goujet, XIV. 16; and see p. 18.
220
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
classical world, and which gives life to his slightest utter-
ance, can only come of an aristocratic nature, unbroken
by the servile anxieties of work for wages and to please
a master. The ever-present consciousness of noble
descent was here combined with the singular fortune
of enlightened patronage by a powerful house, to produce
a critic with the mind of a 'grand seigneur.' This lordly
temper vented itself in that masterful wilfulness of phrase,
which not seldom degenerates into hectoring gasconnade,
and that contempt for others, which he was at no pains
to conceal, and which inevitably brought upon him the
outpouring of the spite of all the pedants and dunces
of Europe. The phrases 'prince of letters,' 'aquila in
nubibus,' expressed the feeling of contemporaries for
that distinction which pervaded Scaliger's conception and
style, marking him as a gentleman over against the petty
race of scholastic philologians.
The practice of entertaining a scholar,-partly as tutor,
partly as reader or secretary, or as companion with only
nominal duties-was one not unusual among the French
nobles of the sixteenth century. As the only literature
then extant was the classical, it was Latin and Greek
which were the object of their talk and their readings,
and the companion was, therefore, required to have a
knowledge, not only of these languages, but of the books
written in them. Literature meant learning. Francis I,
who had some taste for letters, always had a learned
reader at hand to entertain him at his meals with literary
discourse. Duchâtel (Castellanus), who had been formerly
Greek corrector in Froben's printing-house along with
Erasmus, officiated among others in this capacity, and
was very successful in putting the King to sleep while he
was expounding. De Thou¹ relates how Paul de Foix,
going as French envoy to Rome in 1574, took Arnaud
d'Ossat with him, and beguiled the way as they rode
¹ De Vita Sua Hist., VII. 13.
4
Fragments. Posthumous.]
ENTERTAINMENT OF SCHOLARS.
221
over the plains of Lombardy by having Plato expounded
to him. Paul, it seems, was impatient of the decorative
element in the Platonic dialogue, and required his reader
to reduce the fairy artifice of philosophical poetry to
its residuum of solid doctrine. If d'Ossat was successful
in doing this, we understand how he should have risen
to diplomatic eminence, and been entrusted with the
delicate negotiation of Henri IV, the reconcilement with
the Holy See¹. English life has not been without similar
examples. So Hobbes was domesticated with the house
of Cavendish; so Locke lived with Shaftesbury. Marvel
entered Fairfax's household nominally as tutor to his
daughter Mary; and Bentley, though only in the same
capacity to the son of Stillingfleet, ruled the household,
as the bishop almost complainingly describes it.
The expression used by Scaliger to denote his relation
to the family of Chasteigner, 'in contubernio,' 'I was
domesticated with,' is precisely accurate. The terms on
which he lived with Louis may be gathered from the few
indications to be found in his books. In thirty years he
lived about half the time under the roof of the Chasteigner,
but always when absent he was, if not in attendance
on some member of the family, considered as attached
to its service. It was in the suite of one of the Chasteigners
that Scaliger saw Rome, and narrowly missed a journey to
Poland in attendance on another.
The Chasteigners were one of the oldest and most
respected, though only of the second rank in point of power
or property, among the families of Poitou. Talent had
¹ So Salmon Macrin had lived with Cardinal Bouhier; Nicolas Berauld in the
family of the Cardinal of Châtillon; Lambinus in that of the Cardinal de Tournon ;
l'asserat in that of Henri de Mesmes; Jean de la Jessée ap. the Duc d'Alençon.
Goujet, XIII. 179. Niphus (grandson of Agostino) is referred to by De Thou' dum
in Foxii familia esset.' Thuani Vita, p. 16. The habit was a development of one
which in the former age had been confined to princes, as Jean Marot was 'escripvain'
to Anne of Brittany.
2 Ab anno 1563, ex quo in contubernio generosi Ludovici Castanei Rupipozaei
esse coepi.' Epistolae, p. 52.
222
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
always been abundant in the family, and its members had
filled many high offices, civil and military. At one time
and another they had possessed among them as many as
150 manors. In the sixteenth century they were chiefly
represented by the branch entitled by the genealogists
Chasteigner of Réaumur, but known familiarly as the
Rochepozay from one of their principal châteaux. At the
time at which Scaliger entered the family, the head of it
was Jean, third of that name. Jean had led an active life in
the service of the crown, and had received a musket ball in
the thigh at the siege of Pavia, 1525, in consequence of
which he limped in his gait. He had filled many important
offices, and received many honours, among them the much-
coveted collar of the Order of St. Michael. He had married
an heiress, Claude Monleon, who had brought great estates
into the family, among them the manors of Abain, Mont-
faucon, Bernay, and La Mothe Quinemont, with the
châteaux of Touffou and Talmont. All these lying at no
great distance from the possessions of Rochepozay, made
this seigneur a considerable territorial lord in the provinces.
of Poitou and the Marche. Jean was now seventy-three,
and was withdrawn from active life. Of his sixteen children
two sons, Roch and Antoine, had fallen in the service of
the crown before 1563. Both had fought in Italy; the
Rochepozay family had all an inclination towards Italy,
whether in war or peace, and Roch had had a romantic
adventure about six years before Scaliger's arrival in Poitou.
Roch was captain in the forces which Francis of Guise
commanded in Italy in the unfortunate campaign of
1556-7. He was defending Ascoli against the Duke of
Alba, and, being wounded in a sortie, fell into the hands
of the Spaniards (July 1557). His captor sold him for
500 crowns to Francesco d'Ivarro, who, aware of his quality
and overrating it, put upon him the enormous ransom of
15,000 crowns, demanding over and above 4,000 for his
keep. Peace was made, but it did not bring release to
Fragments. Posthumous.]
THE CHASTEIGNERS.
223
Roch. In vain were orders sent from Spain that he
should be exchanged. He was too great a prize to be
easily parted with. His owner 'le tenait aussi haut que si
c'eût été un prince de France.' He was first deposited in
the castle at Naples, and afterwards transferred to Milan.
He solaced his captivity by learning Spanish, and by
writing verses in that and in the Italian language. His
brother Louis was sent to Milan to endeavour to get easier
terms, but in vain. Roch was in his third year of prison
when he succeeded in making his escape by the good old
fashion of taking out the bricks in the wall of his chamber.
After many hairbreadth escapes in the hue and cry that
was raised after him, he reached Bergamo in the dress of
a charcoal burner.
After his return to Poitou, Roch was engaged in many
desultory fights and expeditions against the Huguenots.
He distinguished himself at the assault of Poitiers, when
on 1 August, 1562, the marshal S. André retook that city,
with the usual consequence, a general butchery of the
Huguenots. But very shortly after, at the siege of Bourges,
in the same year, Roch was killed, and his next brother
François became heir to the estates.
It was in the lifetime of Jean, when, after the death of
Roch, François had stept into the position of eldest son,
that Scaliger entered the Rochepozay household. It was
not to François, however, that Scaliger was attached as
companion, but to his younger brother Louis. Of François
we hear nothing which would lead us to think that he
possessed the tastes or accomplishments of his brothers.
Roch, besides being an accomplished cavalier and writing
verses, had the singular fortune of having his epitaph
written in Latin by Scaliger, and in French by Ronsard.
Antoine, who was trained for the Church and provided with
an abbey-that of Nanteuil-en-Vallée-though he afterwards
transferred himself to arms, had published a volume of
poésies in celebration of the Italian campaign of Francis I.
224
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
Antoine's career in arms had been a short one, he having
fallen at the siege of Terouenne in 1553. The sword
devoured the French noblesse now with frightful rapidity,
and nothing but their extraordinary prolific powers could
have made head against the ravages of the religious wars.
Roch and Antoine, two accomplished cavaliers of the best
French type, having been swept away, the family were
represented by François from 1562 to 1567 as heir-apparent ;
and on the death of Jean, in 1567, from that date to 1579, as
lord of the united domains of Rochepozay and Monleon.
Of François history can only tell that he held offices about
the court, and was acceptable to the princes of the house
of Valois, accompanying Henri III into Poland, and being
retained by him about his person, as chambellan, after his
return to occupy the throne of France.
In 1579, the three elder brothers having been removed
by war, the fourth brother, Louis, became guardian to his
nephew René, and by René's death in 1591, succeeded to
all the family honours and possessions. Louis was born.
at Rochepozay in 1535, and was thus five years Scaliger's
senior. A fourth son, he was destined for the Church, and
sent to the University of Paris, where he is said to have
heard Turnebus and Dorat. It is possible that the
lectures of these celebrated scholars awoke in Louis the
love of letters, the tradition of which was hereditary in his
house¹. The attraction of Italy, the land of ancient
culture, early worked upon Louis, and he took the oppor-
tunity of his brother Roch accompanying the Duke of
Guise to visit Rome and Naples. At twenty-one, and
living in a camp, we need not be surprised that the military
fever broke out in his blood, and finding a detachment
going to Malta, under the command of Chanteroux,
a Huguenot, Louis joined it with the design of becoming
a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem. Some disgust,—the
1 Even their connections had a tincture. Scaliger says of M. de Beaufort, who
was married to Louis' wife's sister, that 'pour un homme d'espée il a beaucoup de
lettres.' Larroque, p. 104.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
LOUIS DE CHASTEIGNER.
225
family tradition said dislike of the sea-diverted Louis
from this fancy, and he returned to Poitou to receive
the abbey of Nanteuil, which had been held by his
brother Antoine, who had died in 1553. In 1559 Louis
was again in Italy about the business of his brother Roch's
ransom.
It was in 1563 that Scaliger came to Rochepozay as
classical reader to Louis. This was shortly after the death
of Roch, at which date Louis had transferred himself from
the Church to arms, and called himself Monsieur d'Abain.
In dropping the tonsure, Louis did not lay aside his love
of reading. In two visits to Rome in 1565, and again in
1566, he was accompanied by Scaliger. The long slow
horse stages were beguiled by the reading of some classical
author. As D'Ossat had summarised Plato for Paul de
Foix on the road to Italy, so, and on the same route,
Scaliger discussed Polybius with Louis de Chasteigner,
the pupil, when he reached the inn, writing down the
suggestions on the margin of his copy. Scaliger has
recorded his readings of the Latin poets, notably Pro-
pertius and Statius, with Louis¹. Again, when Louis was
fifty, and had been ambassador at Rome, Scaliger writes to
Du Puy: 'M. d'Abain is returned from Italy more hungry
for good letters than ever; he gives to study every hour
he can spare from business. All the good Greek and
Latin books which M. Muret has read with him,-Plutarch,
Demosthenes, Seneca, Thucydides, are full of fine con-
jectures. I assure you that he is really learned in the
Greek tongue 2.'
In 1567 Louis married Claude du Puy, who brought
him an independent fortune. He was engaged throughout
the series of murderous but resultless fights of the following
years, and was present at the battles of St. Denys, Jarnac,
1
For Statius see Larroque, p. 284. They had spent a whole winter over
Thucydides. See Dejob's 'Muret,' p. 383, note.
2 Larroque, p. 125.
VOL. I.
Q
226
LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
VII.
and Moncontour.
It was characteristic of the time that
these scenes of horror and carnage alternated with feasts
and shows at court, and with the passion for the polite
learning which was imbibed from Italy. In the intervals
of slaughter Louis read the Latin poets.
Out of this close companionship a personal affection
grew up between the two men which was not interfered
with by religious dissension, or impaired by lapse of years.
In the last letter Louis writes, 23 May, 1593, he explains
how the exigencies of the campaign detain him from
coming to take leave of his friend at his final departure
from France. The three sons of the house had all been
more or less pupils of Scaliger. One son, who bore the
title of Baron of Maleval, had been killed in 1591 in one of
the thousand skirmishes. The two next in age were
entrusted to Scaliger's care for the purpose of being
brought up by him at Leyden. Henri Louis did actually
accompany him to Holland; the third son, Roch, was only
prevented from doing so by illness.
After thirty years of this close intimacy Louis writes
from Preuilly to Scaliger in Holland :--
I cannot express to you (22 September, 1593) how much happiness
I have derived from your presence in this place. Your return from
your visit to Holland, whenever it takes place, will not be so soon as
my wishes would make it. I spend my leisure time in looking round
upon the books which you have chosen for me as my favourites, and
which you have left for my use on the table of your study. Pray you
believe that I shall always cherish the books, whether mine or yours,
till the happy day of your return. This is a vexatious business, this
of Roch's sickness, by which he is prevented from accompanying you
on your journey. He is now at Nanteuil with his aunt Schomberg
to be nursed. Monsieur and Madame de Schomberg will send him
after you if they see a safe opportunity, that he may have the honour
of being with you and rendering you the service which he owes to
you. I beg you will often let me hear from you, and I will not fail
on my part to let you know how I fare¹.
1 Epistres Françoises, 52.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
FRIENDSHIP WITH LOUIS.
Again, in another letter, Louis writes :—
227
The greatest happiness I can have in this world is, that we may
pass our old age together¹.
This was not to be. Louis died at sixty in September
1595. When the news reached Scaliger at Leyden, his
tears flowed the whole day for the loss of his friend,-a
loss to a man of fifty-five irreparable.
The life of the student must be passed in the study, and
is proverbially barren of incident for the biographer.
When we consider the state of France during the thirty
years in which Scaliger was building up the fabric of his
comprehensive learning, it is impossible that there should
not have been much to tell of personal adventure and that
of the kind usually found most exciting, of siege and battle,
of flight and escape, the alarms and casualties of a guerilla
warfare. These thirty years of accumulation, 1562-1592,
were the years of France's agony, in which every house
was divided against itself, law and civil order suspended,
the worst excesses on the part of the Catholics committed
with impunity, except that vengeance was occasionally
taken by the suffering Huguenots, when at a moment, or
at any point, they found themselves in strength. No part
of France was more violently torn by religious discord
than those provinces which lay between the Loire and the
Dordogne; Poitou, the Marche, the Limousin, Angoumois,
Perigord, Saintonge. Calvin's residence at Angoulême,
the intercourse of the woollen manufacturers of Aubusson
with Geneva, or other partial influences, have been
variously assigned as the causes of this tendency. The
truth is, that the Calvinists were most numerous in those
parts of France in which material well-being and education
had made most progress. For it was not the lower
populace, but the more educated bourgeoisie, who were
chiefly open to the novel ideas. Thus the reformed
congregations were far from being equally distributed
1 Epistres Françoises, 54.
心
​Q 2
228
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
over the face of the kingdom. The Calvinists were
massed in districts. This was their only chance of safety,
for where they were not strong enough to hold their own
in arms, they were butchered.
Even in 1625, after one generation of decimation by the
sword, and another of legal proscription, the Calvinists
were still so numerous in this west-central region, that
there was a scheme before the English council for erecting
it into an independent Protestant republic. And the
Rochepozay family was, as we have seen, in constant
activity in all the campaigns and desultory skirmishes of
the time, as they could not help being, inasmuch as
their domains lay in different parts, but about the very
heart, of the district of which the reformed doctrines had
taken hold. Rochepozay itself is still found, in 1608, in
the list of disaffected Huguenot villages.
There must, therefore, have been no lack of stirring
adventure in the life of one, who, as inmate, shared the
fortunes and the sentiments of the Chasteigner family.
But whatever of such scenes Scaliger may have gone
through, no record of them was ever made. While of
Casaubon, for the whole of his student life, we know not
only where he was each day, but what books he read from
hour to hour, in the case of Scaliger we are reduced to
those dignified, almost apologetic phrases in which his
autobiographical fragment veils his achievement of a com-
plete survey of classical antiquity. . . . To trace the
growth and progress of Scaliger's classical study is im-
possible; some outline of his external movements it is
possible to draw. From such an outline will become
apparent the significance of these two impediments to
mental development, constant change of place, and constant
harass of the feelings from the sufferings of his friends,
and from the bitter attacks of which he himself became
the object. Under these two categories ranges itself
almost all a biographer can tell of Scaliger's life.
!.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
IMPEDIMENTS TO MENTAL DEVELOPMENT. 229
A glance at the chronological table in the appendix¹ will
show how incessant was the locomotion to which Scaliger
was driven by the shifting emergencies of civil war. His
domestication with a powerful seigneur, lord of many
strongholds, assured him an enviable security, but it was
at the cost of following the family in their migrations
at any hour of the day or night. Between their castles
of Preuilly, Rochepozay, and Touffou in Poitou, Abain in
Chantemille in the Marche of Limousin, the Chasteigner
were incessantly on the move. Desultory reading of a
classic, one book at a time, which might be carried in
the pocket and noting an emendation as he rode along,
would seem to be all that was possible in such a life.
For concentric effort directed steadily upon one point
is required unbroken leisure, and the command of a
complete library. Neither of these indispensable con-
ditions was at Scaliger's command till after 1593. By
one of those wayward coordinations of things in which
fate delights, the thirty years, 1563-1593, in which Scaliger
was passing his apprenticeship to learning, were the thirty
years' war of France-a reign of terror, during which
repose and concentration were impossible. As to books,
Scaliger had in time collected a tolerable library of his
What came to him of his mother's fortune, after
his brother had grasped all he could, and the Agen
lawyers had intercepted the lawyers' share, had been
expended upon the purchase of books. To get books
of some sort was probably then no more difficult, though
requiring more time, than it is now. But to get together
the books you want, though not easy now, was then a
task of special vigilance, energy, and perseverance. The
immense facilities now brought within every one's reach
by the establishment of public libraries, did not exist.
The King's library was only in process of formation.
own.
¹ [The contemplated chronological table of the events of Joseph Scaliger's life
here referred to does not seem to have been in fact prepared by Mr. Pattison.]
230
LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
VII.
Such as it was, it was all but inaccessible to Scaliger.
It was in the charge of Gosselin, whose view of his office
was that he was guardian of these treasures for the King,
and that 'readers' were intruders. Scaliger had made
attempts to get at some of the mass of unpublished Greek
locked up there. In 1605, writing to Casaubon, he says,
'You must, now you are appointed (i.e., keeper of the
King's library), make the MSS. available both for your-
self and for the public. Hitherto the library has been
serviceable to neither, the librarian (Gosselin) being too
ignorant to use it himself, and too jealous or churlish to
allow the use of it to others. I knew him forty-three
years ago' (therefore in 1562)¹. Occasionally, as in the
case of that of the Célestins of the Marche of Limousin 2.
he penetrates into a monastic library, but with little result.
The library of Fleury, which was in friendly hands, was
dispersed in the beginning of the troubles. His letters
are filled with entreaties to friends to lend him books.
He importunes Pierre Pithou, returning to the charge
five times, to lend him a MS. Macrobius ³. He employs
the agency of Arnaud du Ferrier, Ambassador at Venice,
and of Hostager, a merchant at Marseilles, to get
Armenian MSS. from the Levant. Nor is it only MSS.
which were hard to find, even new books, if not printed
in Paris, had to be got by favour. Books printed at
Geneva had to be smuggled into France. He writes to
Du Puy in 15864, 'Faber's Seneca I shall be able to get,
as it is being printed in Paris, but Hotoman's Brutum
1 Epistolae, p. 273.
3
2 This convent was open to him, because the Du Puys, ancestors of Madame
d'Abain, were founders, but 'ils n'ont livre qui vaille.' (Scaliger to Dalechamps,
1584.) [In Bernays, p. 312.]
³ Larroque, pp. 21, et seq.
* Larroque, p. 225. Again he writes in 1586, ' If your friend who once lent you
a Koran is at Paris now, I entreat you to get the loan of it for three weeks, for though
I have many copies of the Koran, I have not the Sunna which is at the end of his
copy. You will be singularly helpful to me, if you will get this book for me.'
(Idem, p. 261.)
Fragments. Posthumous.]
WANT OF BOOKS.
231
1
Fulmen I have not seen. I entreat you also to get me
a book of Lipsius which Cujas has written to me about,
De Pronunciatione.' His appeals on this subject are
almost piteous. 'I am here at the end of the world,' he
writes from Chantemille to Claude du Puy, in 1586, ‘among
the shepherds, cattle, rocks, sabots, trowels of the Li-
mousin, so that the only channel by which I can hear of
new books is through you who live in the light of men ¹.'
And again from Abain, in 1585, 'I am here shut up in a
corner of the world where I can learn no news of books;
there is much printed of which I know nothing 2. During
the years in which Louis was ambassador he sent home
to Scaliger everything which came out in Rome. Casaubon
sends him copies or extracts from the King's library in
Paris. Nor was Scaliger sparing of either money or
trouble himself. Turnebus's Synesius 'must be got for me,'
(1603), 'cost what it will³. In 1602 he writes to Du Puy,
'There are many quite common books which I cannot
obtain by any device; and if one such does come to my
hands by a chance, God knows how the booksellers make
me pay for it. So that the few books which I have got
¹ Larroque, p. 226.
2 Ibid., p. 197. There was one library in Poitou belonging to a canon of Saint
Hilaire, George Bito, qui a une belle librairie, et quelque chose d'exquis. J'ai
promesse de lui, que quand j'irais à Poictiers, je jouerai de tout ce qui est en sa biblio-
thèque' (Ibid., p. 37). Otherwise the barbarous destitution of these provinces
was such that it was difficult to find a sheet of writing paper, and your ink you
must bring with you. 'I am here' (Chantemille, 1576), 'in the Marche of
Limousin with Madame d'Abain, where I have difficulty in finding paper to write to
you on' (Ibid., p. 47).
Though Poictiers otherwise affords 'une grande solitude de lettres et une grande
legerté et promptitude à faire sédition' (Larroque, 55); yet there were persons
about who knew enough to know that Scaliger's books were worth stealing, e.g.,
the larron who pocketed the Statius on the margin of which he had made corrections
(Ibid., p. 284). He writes to Du Puy, 1588, Sylburg seems to think that I
have a rich library filled with rare books. Those who are acquainted with my
means know that this is not the case' (Ibid., p. 273).
'Je crois qu'on me pourra appeler fol, de ce qu'en si malheureux temps je cherche
des livres, la ou il fauldroit plus tost faire provision de viaticum pour passer la mer,
si ces fureurs de guerre durent' (Larroque, p. 141).
s Larroque, p. 377.
232
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
together have cost me a sum I should be ashamed to tell,
and no one would believe me if I did¹.'
Incessant change of residence, and a famine of books,
were not the only hindrances to that integration of the
remains of classical antiquity which Scaliger had learnt
from Cujas to regard as his aim. He himself, as we have
seen, placed 'animi perturbationes' on a par with these
impediments.
If we call to mind what was passing all around him,
it must be matter of astonishment that 'mental disturbance'
did not entirely suspend, instead of merely impeding,
study. We must not apply the analogy of our own
so-called 'Great Rebellion,' to interpret the temper of
the belligerents in the thirty years' religious war of France.
Barbarous and uninstructed as the English court and
nobility in the time of Charles I. were, the military pro-
ceedings were conducted with humanity and some regard
to the usages of war. Other reasons there were for this
comparative forbearance, but the chief reason was the
nearly even balance of force between the two parties
throughout the struggle. 'In the beginning of the civil
war old Lord Northampton said he would burn Stene
House, but Mr. Crewe sent him word he had too good
a house at Ashby to begin such practices 2.' In France
there was no such equilibrium of parties; no organisation
or generalship on the part of the minority to balance their
inferiority in force. It was a reign of terror by the
Catholics, only kept in check by the bursts of despair
when the Calvinists, leaving their homes to pillage, went
out as an army strong enough to hold its own. Defeated
or victorious in the field, the result was the same when
they returned, decimation awaited them. They found no
military leader to organise a standing force on a 'new
model,' and no parliament to vote pay and supplies.
In the dawn of Protestantism it had seemed as if 'la
• Life of Lord Crewe, p. 6.
¹ Larroque, p. 347.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
RELIGIOUS WAR IN FRANCE.
233
prêche' was going to carry all before it. It swept over
the land like a fire in a forest. An eyewitness, who was at
Orleans in 1561, describes congregations of as many as
ten thousand persons meeting four times a week under
the city walls. And as late as 1563 an experienced
diplomatist like Hubert Languet thought that the re-
formed doctrines had sunk deep into the minds of the
majority of the French nation. But as soon as the
clergy, who had been taken by surprise, had had time
to organise resistance, it was seen how unfounded these
calculations were. As soon as the test of physical force
was applied, it was found that, except in a very few
cities, the Protestant leaven had not reached the mass
of the nation. By wholesale massacre or partial execu-
tion, the proportion of Protestants was being continually
diminished. We have but to look through the pages
of any one of the contemporary Mémoires, such as
Perussis, 'Discours des Guerres de la Comté de Venaissin,'
or the Commentaries of Monluc, to see that from an
early date the numerical weakness of the Huguenots
had been discovered, and that thenceforward anything
was allowable against them.
At Angers, for example, on the 4th April, 1562, we
find the Huguenot inhabitants masters of the city, not
of the castle. During their supremacy they were guilty
of disorderly conduct, not molesting their Catholic fellow-
townsmen, but breaking open churches and destroying
'images.' And this they did in spite of the exhortations
of Theodore Beza, who came and preached to them,
and urged them to abstain from such demonstrations.
But their reign was short. The 12th May, the governor
of Anjou, the Duc de Montpensier, entered the castle
with two companies, and deputed a commission to judge
the rioters. The executions began on the 14th May,
and from that date until the 13th March, 1563, when
the peace of Amboise held the conquerors' hands, they
234
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
went on incessantly. The first victims were Mathurin
Boujon, revenue officer, and Jehan de Montmartre, Protes-
tant pastor, who were, by sentence, hung at the Sanita
Croix of the Place Neuve. Also Jehan Divry, royal
sergeant, was hung at the Place du Pilon, as Huguenot
and robber. These entries go on for many pages of
the contemporary chronicler. It will be observed that
one of the two crimes for which sentence is passed is
being a Huguenot, and that it ranks with robbery, the
last, we may be sure from the known strictness of the
Huguenots, being only there to save appearances¹. This
was in one year. The sum of the whole in this
one city of Angers is thus given by another, not con-
temporary, chronicler, Pierre Raugeard. 'The Cabinet
du roi affirms that during the troubles, inclusive of
the St. Bartholomew, there were killed at Angers and
in Anjou 7,500 persons. The number is in my opinion
exaggerated. Be that so or no, this vermin has not yet
been exterminated from Angers. There comes from time
to time some commission agent or traitant, or other
vagabond stranger of this false religion.'
These things were done in Angers, at no great distance
from Abain. At Poitiers, yet nearer the places of Scaliger's
habitual sojourn. . . .
The state of these districts in 1581 is placed before
us in a summary of facts by a contemporary writer. In
the two dioceses of Poitiers and Luçon seventy Catholic
priests and monks, and a far larger, but not ascertained,
number of Huguenot ministers had perished by a violent
death since the beginning of the troubles. There had
1
Journal de Louvet, pp. 265-280. But the two gallows which were in daily
activity not getting through the work fast enough, the Duke of Montpensier
published 'à son de trompe' permission to the Catholic inhabitants to fall
upon the Huguenots, suggested´in short a wholesale massacre. His permission
was made use of, and it was calculated that only 250 Huguenots escaped. Godard
Faulcner, L'Anjou et ses Monuments. Angers, 1839.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR.
235
1
fallen in the field 213 Catholic gentlemen, 317 Protestant;
of common soldiers 7,000 Catholic, 11,000 Huguenot; 2,100
houses had been burnt or pulled down. These were
natives of the district. Of Frenchmen, natives of other
parts of France, 40,000 had fallen in the murderous
massacres, within the above mentioned limits; 700 persons,
these all Huguenots, had been executed for religion ¹
Here we are only taking account of life. The waste
of the means of life and the material of civilisation,
who shall compute? The insecurity of property paralysed
all industry, and made thrift useless. Here again the
penalties were unequally divided between the parties.
Not so many places were ravaged by the Protestants
as suffered from the Catholic troops, but as many or
more in proportion to their numbers. This was in spite
of all the efforts of the Huguenot leaders. While the
Catholic nobles with savage ferocity ordered execution
upon a Huguenot town, frequently in violation of the
terms of capitulation, the Protestant seigneurs used all
the authority they had to prevent outrage. Some acts
of robbery were committed at the outset on the occupation
of Orleans in 1562. Prompt punishment was inflicted
on the offenders. But far more efficacious than punish-
ment was the influence of religion. The captains were
seconded by the ministers, numbers of whom, Beza
among them, flocked to Orleans to support the cause
by their preaching. La Noue, who looked on now with
the eye of a veteran, bears testimony to the admirable
discipline of the Prince of Condé's army. That which
was more effectual in maintaining good order was the
constant and urgent appeal of the preachers, admonishing
the army that they should not employ their arms for
the oppression of the poor people. Besides, the zeal
for religion, with which the major part was at first ani-
mated, had great force to restrain. So that without com-
"
¹ Froumenteau, Secrets des Finances de France, pt. I. p. 250.
236
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
pulsion each man kept himself in a voluntary restraint
more efficacious than the fear of punishment¹.'
But it was impossible, from the nature of the case,
that this good behaviour should last. While the Catholic
armies consisted in large part of regular troops or Swiss
levies paid out of the taxes, the Huguenot forces were
composed of volunteer gentlemen, each bringing a small
squadron of some dozen or twenty cavaliers mounted at
his expense. The cost of the maintenance of these ex-
temporised soldiers had to be borne by voluntary con-
tributions levied upon themselves. In the nature of
things this resource was soon exhausted. 'It is,' says
La Noue², 'un mal nécessaire aux armées huguenots
d'estre toujours sans argent.' Very early in the history of
the struggle freebooting-la picorée-established itself, as
in the German thirty years' war, as the only system on
which resistance could be maintained. Even more search-
ing and wasting than the passage of regular troops was
the permanent guerilla kept up between the nobles of
the provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, and the Limousin.
Every gentleman fortified his own house as best he could,
and each was on the alert, night and day, to surprise
that of his neighbour.
Such was the 'milieu' in which, for thirty years,
Scaliger's 'Lehrjahre,' his studies, had to be carried on.
The reader may judge if his own expression be ex-
aggerated: 'From the year 1563 to this day, I do not
think I have had any time free from either removals,
or from mental disturbance ³.' How paltry seem the
complaints so often heard from other students, of the in-
roads upon their time which are made by the necessary
calls of daily life. Every page of Casaubon's diary is
filled with ejaculations at the thoughtless friendliness of
the neighbours and gossips who dropt in to his study
2 Ibid., ch. IX. p. 603.
¹ La Noue, Mém., ch. VI. p. 598.
3 Epistolae, p. 52.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
1
INTERRUPTIONS TO STUDY, 1563–1593.
1
237
for half an hour's chat, he fuming inwardly all the while
they stayed. The life led by Scaliger for thirty years was
wholly different. It was not that of the irritable and
recluse student, whose nerves are jarred by every in-
terruption; it was a life lived in the open air, a life of
backwards and forwards, constantly in the saddle, amid
the warlike bustle of a Poitevin château, beset by cruel
and merciless enemies. 'Je n'ai pas beaucoup estudié;
il m'a fallu plus courir qu'estudier ¹,' he said, speaking
of his early life from the secure retreat of Leyden. At
an earlier date, in 1593, he excuses the imperfections of
his books by pleading that all his life he has not known
what leisure was-leisure 'in which studies best thrive,'
(otium quo maxime studia aluntur2). He is occasionally
sarcastic on the barbarism of Poitou and the Marche,
'a land in which paper and ink are hard to come by ".'
'For love's sake,' he writes to Lipsius, 'tell me if you
have put out anything lately. No one can be shocked
at my not knowing this or anything else, in this barbarian
world where letters are extinct 4.
t4" To another corre-
spondent he says, 'Tell me if you have seen anything
new this Frankfort fair; for where I am there is no
talk but of surrendering or not surrendering towns".'
3
Sad as had been the consequences of the occasional
passage of civil war over the province, the worst times for
Poitou were to come during the last three years of
Scaliger's residence there. Notwithstanding the brilliant
victory of Ivry, 13th March, Henri IV had still, in 1590, no
hold on the provinces south of the Loire. The royalist
party in Poitou was still strong, but it had no concerted
action, because it had neither leader, nor any centre of
operations, such as the League possessed in Poitiers.
Poitiers, the capital of the province, had now become
furiously ligueur, the citizens going in their devotion to the
Epistolae, p. 52.
¹ Scaligerana Secunda, p. 556.
Larroque, p. 47.
Epistolae, p. 89.
2
5 Larroque, p. 35.
238
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
==
Guises even beyond their governor, the Vicomte de la
Guierche, who accordingly became an object of their dis-
trust. The governor for the King, the Prince of Conti, with-
out military capacity, deaf and with an impediment in his
speech, was quite unequal to a position to which his
birth alone had advanced him. Thus the royalist seigneurs
were left to themselves, and to a harassing warfare
of skirmishes and surprises. Malicome at Parthenay,
D'Aubigné at Maillezais, Pierre de Chouppes at Loudun,
Preaux at Châtellerault, Saint Gelais at Niort, La Boulaye
at Fontenay-le-comte, dominated their respective neigh-
bourhoods, and kept the ligueurs of Poitiers on the alert.
Had these royalist seigneurs been united, they might have
overpowered or blockaded Poitiers; but taken singly La
Guierche was too strong for them. They cut off the
communications of the city, and straitened its supplies,
causing it great inconvenience. Especially annoying were
the strong places possessed or influenced by the Chas-
teigner family, whose castles, Touffou, Abain, Rochepozay,
and Preuilly, lay all around Poitiers. La Guierche, though
suspected of being willing to treat with Henri IV., was
compelled by public opinion to undertake some enterprise
against these nearest fastnesses. Every now and then he
made a raid from Poitiers, and fell upon one or other
of the royalist strongholds. In March 1590 he made
himself master of Chauvigny,—of the town, for the citadel
still held out. But in the town he took a valuable prize—
no less than Louis de la Chasteigner himself, who had
thrown himself into the place to aid in its defence. Louis
had to purchase his freedom by surrendering, in June, the
castle. With Chauvigny fell Touffou, one of the Chas-
teigner castles, which, though fortified, could not resist
the artillery which La Guierche could bring against it.
In September a more important place, Mirebeau, was
reduced, and with Mirebeau fell Abain, which, though
moated, could not be held against artillery. The Chas-
Fragments. Posthumous.]
1590-1592.
239
teigner family and Scaliger with them had made a timely
retreat to Preuilly. Preuilly, perched upon its rock,
boasted itself impregnable, but it might be reduced by
blockade.
'The Vicomte,' writes Scaliger to De Thou, 'has called to his aid
the governor of Perigord, with a strong body of Perigordins, has
beaten down Touffou with a cannon and two culverins, and has
promised to serve all my lord's castles the same. We hear that the
resolution has been taken in the council of the Laestrygones of
Poitiers to seize the town of Preuilly, to establish troops there in
snug quarters, and to blockade the castle, which they can neither
carry by storm, nor breach by guns, being indeed a morsel too
hard for their teeth. We are all mounting guard, and keeping
a good look out. God be our aid! to Whom alone I ever have
recourse.'
As soon as the season of 1592 opened, La Guierche
moved in the direction of Preuilly, and invested Saint-Savin,
a strongly fortified abbey in its neighbourhood. Captain
Taillefer surrendered on terms, and in violation of the
capitulation was immediately hanged, and the garrison mas-
sacred. While the siege of Saint-Savin was in progress,
and the enemy might be expected any day before Preuilly,
Scaliger wrote as follows to Lipsius¹:-
Whatever you may be about, of one thing I am sure, that you
are not idle, your corner of the world, too, being the only one which
has been left out of the general mêlée. Happy you whom a neutral
zone separates from the fighting ground! As for us, our foes are
those of our own household, and every hour we are in expectation of
having to do battle. Where I am is the Château of Preuilly, one of
the strongest in Touraine, to which I returned twelve months ago,
leaving all my dearest companions (his books) at Abain, hardly
hoping that I shall ever see them again, so violent are the con-
vulsions into which our country is thrown. Don't imagine that I am
using empty phrases. The enemy is at this moment besieging
a neighbouring château; when that is taken-and taken it must be,
having little natural or artificial defences—it is certain that we
shall be the next attacked, and have to sustain a siege, perhaps
1
¹ Larroque, p. 291.
240
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
an assault. Think of your Scaliger as here fighting for life and
liberty in company with many other good and stout fellows. You
will see from this exordium that you are not to look for any new
fruit of my studies. This ruinous civil war, due to our own folly,
is the obstruction, not only of my studies, but of letters in France
altogether. The only hope of learning is in our most gracious King.
And at the rate things are going, it is to be feared that I shall quit
the world before the King can appease this storm. For my part,
having lost my worldly goods, cut off from my silent instructors,
I am out of humour with classics altogether, and am come to
care very little what happens. Our friend, De Thou, is braver,
and is always at work at some profitable stuff. I suppose you
have seen his learned poem On Hawking. You should also see
some of his biblical paraphrases turned most elegantly into Latin
verse. If the muse in France do not die, it will be De Thou whom
we shall have to thank¹.
The attack on Preuilly was diverted by the advance
of the Prince of Conti at the head of a considerable force.
But a sad calamity fell on the Chasteigners in the death of
the eldest son Henri, Baron of Maleval, who was killed by
a shot from a harquebuse in the attempt, which was suc-
cessful, to recover Champigny. While Scaliger was
composing Henri's epitaph 2, and a threnody in Latin hexa-
meters, the father was contriving revenge. Chance threw
the opportunity in his way. The hereditary seat of the
family of the vicomte-La Guierche-was the next domain
to that of Preuilly, from which the château of the seig-
neurie was only a short distance. The father of the
vicomte, out of respect to his age, had continued all through
the troubles to occupy this château of La Guiefche under
a protection jointly accorded by Henri IV and by the Duc
de Mayenne. Of course, the condition of such an excep-
tional protection was neutrality. It was discovered by
the watchful eye of his neighbour that the old La Guierche
was habitually violating his neutrality by harbouring ligueur
bands, and allowing his son's troopers free passage over
the bridge which crosses the Creuse at the château. The
1
¹ Epistolae, p. 88.
2 Funerum liber (Poemata, 67 and 70).
་
1.
Fragments. Posthumous.]
DEATH OF HENRI. EXPLOIT OF LOUIS.
241
governor of Loches determined to suppress the nuisance,
and laid siege to La Guierche. The young Villequier
hurried to its relief from Poitiers with his light troops and
one of his culverins. He arrived too late, the château had
surrendered. He tried to seize the bridge. Beaten off in
a furious assault, he retreated towards Poitiers. But
an ardent enemy was on his track. Louis Chasteigner
had got together his friends in haste, and, joined by the
garrison of Châtellerault, overtook the ligueurs at the bridge
of Château d'Ile. They were driven into the river by the
superior numbers of the royalists. The Vienne, swollen
by the winter's rains (it was 6th February, 1592) could not
be forded. La Guierche, disabled by gout, threw himself
into a boat which he had reserved for himself in case of
disaster. It was filled with fugitives and sank. The
disaster of this day is compared by contemporary chroni
clers to that of Coutras, so murderous was it for the de-
feated party, and achieved with such little loss to the victor.
Scaliger, whose age, now over fifty, compelled him to
be left for garrison duty, is very indignant at the attempts
made to deprive his patron of the credit of the victory. He
writes to De Thou :-
M. d'Abain is in his government, and has got a cannon and three
culverins against the walls of Chénérailles¹. If every governor did
his duty as zealously, the King would be better served. I am
astonished at the impudence of a certain Thraso, who is taking
to himself the credit of our victory over the Vicomte La Guierche,
and has gone so far as to put it in print. All the world here knows
that he was not at all willing to ride, and it was only when he saw
M. d'Abain actually in the saddle, that he made up his mind to
follow. I beg that you, when you hear the affair talked of, will make
known the truth2.
It was not, then, from Scaliger himself, but from some one
present in the affair, that De Thou derived the detailed
account of this brilliant coup-de-main of Louis de Chas-
teigner which he has given in his history.
1 Now the chef-lieu of a canton of La Creuse.
VOL. I.
R
Larroque, p. 295.
242
VII. LIFE OF JOSEPH SCALIGER.
In 1591, by the death of his nephew René, a minor, Louis
had become head of the family, and had come into posses-
sion of the lordships of La Rochepozay, Talmont, and
Touffou. He had also been nominated by the King gover-
nor of the Marche of Limousin. Under his vigorous ad-
ministration, backed by his recent victory, the royalist
cause had gained the upper hand in these provinces. But
in the rest of the kingdom it was not so. The Duc de
Mercœur was holding Bretagne almost as an independent
sovereign, nominally for the league, really for himself.
Even in Poitou, Poitiers was neither reduced nor reducible
by any force the royalist seigneurs had at their command.
In the winter of 1591-2 the orderly settlement of the
country, and its return to the habits and pursuits of peace,
seemed as distant as ever.
In this condition of his country, Scaliger was gradually
brought to lend an ear to a proposal which was being
persistently urged upon him, to leave it, and to seek a haven
for his declining years in a land where letters and learning
were known and esteemed. The thought of expatriation
had crossed his mind before now. The difficulty was to
know where to go. Overtures were now made to him
from the only country in Europe in which letters and
learning could at this date (1591) be said to have a home.
Italy had nursed the embers of Roman civility for the
modern world. When the time was ripe it was in Italy
that the ardour for the classics and all that is implied
in their study burst forth. This splendid development of
the free energy of cultivated intelligence, nourished upon
the classics, which we call the Renaissance, ran its course
in Italy in little more than a century. In 1591 it was
a thing of the past. Partly it had been checked by en-
countering the old enemy of humanity, the enemy long
before met in Alexandria and Constantinople,-the spirit of
ascetic devotion. But chiefly it had been suppressed by
force by the ecclesiastical authorities, who, though at first
[Fragments. Posthumous.]
EXPATRIATION. THE LOW COUNTRIES.
243
carried away by the contagion, soon came to perceive that
the principles of humanism were incompatible with their
own supremacy. The Protestant countries tolerated,
without encouraging, learning. Geneva was
Geneva was a step-
mother to Casaubon and Henri Estienne. Central Ger-
many was barbarous, and on the Rhine a feeble glimmer
of classical tradition hovered for a time round the library
of the Count-Palatine at Heidelberg.
It was in the Low Countries that humanist studies, when
they were dying out in Italy, found a refuge, and took
a new and unexpected development. The soil had been
long preparing in the lower stratum of the grammar schools.
It is worthy of note in the history of learning that, whereas
in other countries universities preceded grammar schools,
in the Netherlands universities were a development of the
grammar school. To find the solid foundation of learning
among the Dutch, we must go back to the fourteenth
century and to the Hieronymite brotherhood. The few
who, after the completion of their schooling, desired to
carry on their classical studies, made the journey to Italy
for the purpose.
Louvain was erected into a 'studium
generale' in 1425; but it was not till the foundation of the
'collegium trilingue,' in 1517, that Louvain was able to
provide at home the humanist culture which during the
whole of the fifteenth century could only be obtained in
Italy. When Protestantism was established in Holland,
access to Louvain was cut off for the United Provinces.
It became necessary that the new republic should have
a university of its own, [and this was founded at Leyden].
R 2
VIII.
PETER DANIEL HUET
[Quarterly Review, 1855.]
N a passage of the Critical Review, pronounced
'ingenious and well expressed' by Johnson, and,
therefore, inserted by Boswell into the Life, the re-
viewers divide the egotists into four classes. In the
third class they place 'those who have given import-
ance to their own private history by an intermixture
of literary anecdotes and the occurrences of their own
times; the celebrated Huetius has published an enter-
taining volume on this plan.' If any person's curiosity
has ever led him to search the great collection of French
Mémoires for Huet's, he must have been disappointed.
They are not there, because they are written in Latin.
P. D. Huetii Commentarius de Rebus ad Eum (sic)
pertinentibus, is a small volume published at The Hague
in 1718, and has never been reprinted. It is somewhat
meagre in facts, and feeble in presentation of character,
which may well be explained by the fact that the author
had just recovered from a severe illness at the age of
eighty-five, when he wrote it. He had known most
of the celebrated men of his time, and has recorded
the names of some hundreds of persons in his pages;
but the record bears a greater resemblance to the Second
Book of the Iliad than to Lord Clarendon.
In 1809
Dr. Aikin manipulated the volume; in his hands the
¹ Huet, Évêque d'Avranches; ou Le Scepticisme Théologique. Par Christian
Bartholmèss. Paris, 1850.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.
245
small 12mo grew into two vols. 8vo., being an English
version with 'notes biographical and critical,' in the
doctor's way. Coleridge was certainly too hard upon
the doctor when he called him 'an aching void'; but
it must be admitted that the biographical notices do not
show any very profound acquaintance with the literature
of the time, and may, we believe, all be readily found
in a rather well-known book, the Biographie Universelle,
or perhaps in the General Biography of which the
excellent doctor was editor. M. Bartholmèss is, as far
as we know, the next person who has laboured upon
Huet; but in the treatise whose title is given above, he
has confined himself to the philosophical opinions of the
Bishop of Avranches.
Peter Daniel Huet was born at Caen, in 1630, of Catholic
parents, as he thanks God. And indeed it was a mis-
fortune in more than one way to have had Huguenot
parents in France in the seventeenth century. He
showed, from the first, a good disposition for learning,
and was fortunate in excellent teachers in the university
of his native place, among whom he always considered
himself particularly indebted to the Jesuit Mambrun,
Professor of Philosophy, who bestowed peculiar pains
upon his most promising pupil. Having lost his father
when young, Huet found himself, at one-and-twenty, in
possession of a moderate independence. His first use
of this was to visit the bookshops in the Rue St. Jacques,
and he returned to Caen laden with books, and with an
ardent desire for the acquisition of knowledge of every kind.
The community of European learning had not yet been
broken up by the dissociating forces of the growth of
the new dialects, and the consolidation of the great
monarchies. The republic of letters was still one, of
which Latin was the diplomatic tongue. The national
literatures were indeed born, but they were yet in their
infancy. The highest talents, the sommités, rose above
246
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
the national and vernacular into the European sphere.
The scholar especially was a citizen of the world, not
only in his fame and in his tastes, but in his abode.
Literature was thus, like capital, a highly movable com-
modity, attracted hither or thither as the conditions
favourable to its development were presented in any
part of Europe. Precisely in the middle year of the
century, 1650, and for about four years before and as
many after that date, the centre of attraction was found
in a new and apparently most unlikely quarter. The
rise of Sweden into the first rank of European powers
in the seventeenth century, like that of Prussia in the
eighteenth, is an instance of what may be done for the
most backward and unpropitiously situated countries by
the personal character of their rulers.
The military
genius of Gustavus Adolphus and the administrative
abilities of Oxenstierna had forced, not developed, a
rude, poor, and remote country into political consequence.
To the glories of arms it appeared that was about to
be added the splendour of letters,—
De conducendo loquitur iam rhetore Thule.
Christina, the hero's daughter, inherited that genius so
nearly allied in the Vasa family to the insanity in which,
in more than one instance, it afterwards terminated. This
natural capacity had received by Oxenstierna's care a
cultivation which had placed her only too far in advance
of her own semi-barbarous subjects. She asserts in her
Memoirs of Herself, that 'at fourteen she knew all the
languages, all the sciences, and all the accomplishments
her instructors thought fit, or were able, to teach her.'
She then taught herself, without any master, German,
French, Italian, and Spanish. Nor were her powers
shown only in languages or accomplishments. Philosophy,
politics, and the details of business, in turns displayed
her vigorous mind, felicitous memory, and quick appre-
hension. 'Elle a tout vu, elle a tout lu, elle sait tout,'
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN.
247
says a private correspondent to Gassendi. After making
allowance for the natural exaggeration of those who
found all these superior gifts in a crowned head and
a girl, there will remain, not indeed an intellectual
prodigy, but a rare union of great qualities, which in a
happier era of her country's existence might have inspired
the national mind with some of her own life and
genius. She had not however the material out of which
she could develop a national taste, and she sought to
engraft foreign learning on the Scandinavian stock. The
learned men of the day were chiefly gathered in or
about the Low Countries. The reviving ascendency of
orthodoxy was crushing letters in Italy; in England they
had not yet taken root; in Germany a barbarous war,
and equally barbarous religious polemic, had nipped them
in the bud. To the Low Countries then, and to France
the philosophical Queen turned her eyes. From the
Dutch universities came Grotius, Saumaise, Isaac Voss,
Descartes, Conring, Meibom; from France Chevreau,
Naudé, Raphael du Fresne, Bochart. All these were
provided with posts and pensions about the court. Besides
those who settled in Sweden, the Queen's correspondence
embraced nearly all the learned men of the day.
Huet, who was only twenty-two at this time, was not
yet so known abroad as to receive a direct invitation
from the patroness herself. But he had before this
introduced himself to Bochart. Samuel Bochart was
one of those men of solid learning and grave piety
who adorned for a very brief period of the seventeenth
century the French Huguenot Church. In Oriental
lore, indeed, he was one of the leading scholars of
his age, and his Geographia Sacra, recently published,
was the most learned work on biblical antiquities that
had yet been produced. He was settled as minister
of a Calvinist congregation at Caen, and being professor
in the Calvinist College there, was a teacher of such repute
248
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
master.
as to attract pupils from England. Lord Roscommon,
the Earl of Strafford's nephew, was among them, and
we may perhaps trace the superior scholarship, as well
as the 'unspotted lays' of the poet, to his Calvinist
His name is still visible at Caen in the Rue
Bochart (so named in 1833); and in the Public Library
may be found some of his books, with marginal notes
in his own hand, Huet had sought assistance and advice
in his endeavours to teach himself Greek and Hebrew.
This led to an intimacy, though such was the position
of the Protestants in Caen, where the Catholic University
overshadowed them, that it was agreed that the visits of the
young student to the Calvinist minister should be paid
after dark. His own fame and the recommendations of
Isaac Voss procured Bochart a flattering summons to
Stockholm. Inferior as was the position of a Dissenter
in France, it was with reluctance he accepted the invi-
tation. He offered to take Huet with him. The young
student, eager for self-improvement, and now his own
master, wanted to travel. To visit foreign universities,
and to seek the intercourse of scholars, was then as
much a part of a scholar's education, as to visit capitals,
and to be introduced at court, was part of the gentleman's.
But it was to Italy he designed to go with these views.
Though the spirit of the former century was fled or
banished from that country, it still, as the birthplace of
learning, possessed attractions for scholars beyond any of
those tramontane districts in which letters were as yet but
young. Bochart, by much persuasion, prevailed on Huet
to change Italy for Sweden, not by any hope of prefer-
ment, but by visions of the illustrious men they would
see in passing through Holland, and the 'vestiges of
Gothic antiquity to be found among the rocks of
Denmark.'
Just as they were ready to start Huet fell ill, and was
obliged to be left behind. Bochart, however, was detained
Quarterly Review, 1855.1
TRAVELS.
249
long by contrary winds in the mouth of the Seine, and
his young companion, travelling in a car instead of on
horseback on account of his weakness, reached Havre
just in time to hear that Bochart had sailed that morning.
He came up with him, however, at Amsterdam. Here
the travellers joined Isaac Voss, who was on his return
to Sweden, and a commodious carriage was engaged to
carry the three. At Leyden Huet saluted and cultivated
Saumaise; at Utrecht a recurrence of his disorder pro-
cured him the distinction of being attended by the
physician Du Roy, the antagonist of Descartes. In
Denmark we do not hear that he found any Gothic
antiquities; his chief object of inquiry appears to be
Tycho Brahe, an interest which he ascribes to a boyish
impression derived from a print of the Observatory at
Uranienberg, in the frontispiece of one of that astro-
nomer's treatises with which he had been familiar at
the house of a relation. He preferred a visit to the
isle of Huen to lionizing Copenhagen. He did, however,
see the King, going to church for that purpose, and
made himself so conspicuous by staring through his
spectacles in the gallery opposite to that which was
occupied by the royal family, that His Majesty (as
he afterwards heard) complained at dinner of the rude-
ness of the Frenchman. His travelling companions did
not share his astronomical enthusiasm, so, while they
walked about the city, he took a boat to Huen. On
landing on the island he found the Lutheran minister ex-
tremely hospitable, and no less ignorant, for he had never
so much as heard the name of Tycho Brahe. An
old man, however, was at last found who pointed out
to them the site. For the site was all that remained
even then of Uranienberg, and all the ingenious con-
structions that had surrounded it-for nearly twenty years
the centre of European science, the cradle of modern
astronomy. The report of Picard, who was sent in 1671
250
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
by the 'Académie des Sciences' to determine the exact
position of the instruments, confirms Huet's description
in every particular. The reflections which this scene
of desolation calls forth from our traveller are more like
those of his old age than of his youth. May I be
thought not to have lived in vain!' was the wish with
which Tycho Brahe had expired. 'How,' thinks Huet,
'can he be considered as having reaped the fruit of his
labour, who experienced the enmity of the King and
nobles of his country? Who saw his toils held in con-
tempt; their products abortive, and himself prohibited
by order of the court from continuing his observations!'
Here speaks the sub-preceptor of the Dauphin and the
Gallican prelate, not the young protégé of the Calvinist
professor. How half a century of Louis XIV had debased
the minds of even the men of letters, may be seen by
comparing this outburst with the attitude of Casaubon to
Henri IV. The ill-will of the Danish nobility! What
a different spirit breathes in the dying speech of the
Dane! We may console ourselves by the reflection
that posterity thinks no worse of Tycho Brahe because
he was persecuted by the Danish nobles, the name of one
of whom is only preserved by the fact of his having
played the part of petty tyrant towards the astronomer.
Huet, too, might have remembered that Tycho had
before his exile entertained a king (our own James I
in 1590); that when he left Denmark he only exchanged
the patronage of a king for that of an
that of an emperor
(Rudolph II); and that Christian IV of Denmark himself,
who was a boy at the time of his disgrace and no way
blamable, made every reparation to the memory of the
man of science whose greatness he had learned to ap-
preciate.
At Helmstadt, at that time the first town in the Swedish
jurisdiction, a Queen's messenger brought Voss an order
to return immediately to Holland, and not to show himself
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
HUEN: STOCKHOLM.
251
at court till he had made satisfaction to Saumaise for an
injury which the latter considered that Voss had done him.
Voss may have been in the wrong, but this despotic style
of treatment of her preceptor and adviser must have
forcibly reminded her guests of the precarious tenure
of this royal patronage of science. 'One sucks the orange
and throws away the skin,' said Frederic II, when he was
beginning to be tired of the tutelage of Voltaire. And
who shall blame the princely orange-eaters, as long as the
oranges show so much anxiety to be sucked? Thus our
party, not a whit disconcerted by the fate of their com-
panion, continued their route to Stockholm. They arrived
in June 1652, a season propitious for exhibiting the rich
vegetation of the environs, the profusion of flowers, lilies
of the valley, wood strawberries, and cherries all around
exciting Huet's admiration and surprise, as he was not
prepared for such products in a northern latitude. The
season of court sunshine did not appear so favourable.
Descartes was dead. Voss and Saumaise were absent, as
we have seen. The rest of the 'cohors philosophorum'
were not just then in high favour. They were rather
thrown into the shade by a certain lively Frenchman,
named Bourdelot, half abbé, half physician, but whole
courtier ; one of those insinuating, intriguing, 'omnia novit'
personages, 'busy and astute,' in whom we recognise
the type of the Greek Colax repeated. We should
not be disposed to rely much on his having been stigma-
tized as 'a monstrous liar and gambler,' by Guy Patin;
whose 'médisances atroces' were scattered over good
and bad alike. But we know the antipathy that nature
has implanted between the plausible adventurer, and the
man of genuine knowledge. Especially the physician
whose success has chiefly been owing to his address in
the drawing-room, or his agreeable qualities at the levée,
must ever be the natural foe of the man of real science,
whose independence of mind disdains those small acts
252
PETER DANIEL HUET.
VIII.
of conciliation and courtesy by which the other ingratiates
himself. And we must accept the opinion of Huet, himself
not at all indisposed to worship rank-an opinion delivered
without any appearance of rancour-that the dismissal of
Voss, and the cold reception of Bochart were to be ascribed
to the ascendency of this unworthy creature. But it should
be added to the exculpation of the young Queen, that
this precise moment was with her one of those intervals of
revulsion after overstrained intellectual exertion, which
have often occurred in the mental history of young genius.
Hume's sober description of his depression after an intel-
lectual debauch of which only a young and ardent mind is
capable is well known. Whatever this singular woman
did, she did with the same untempered ardour. She rode,
she shot, she plunged into state-business with 'fureur.'
So when she embarked on books it was the same. She
expected Descartes in her study at five o'clock every
morning, and shortened his life by an exertion so severe to
the philosopher whose favourite place of study was his bed.
Her passion for knowledge was a real, not an affected
passion, but it had its pauses of lassitude, and of one of
these, Bourdelot, or (for it is characteristic of the class to
have an alias) Michon, availed himself to insinuate the
motives likely to combat the love of study in the mind of a
girl. First, as her medicus, he forbade her touching books.
She was 'hurting her health' by studying. This was un-
deniable. He then tried to bring to bear the ridicule with
which a learned lady was regarded by the elegant dames
of the French court. He amused her by his wit and court
anecdote, contrasting strongly with the grave discourse on
Tacitus and the Ideas of Plato which she had with Naudé
and Bochart. She gradually gave up her books, and
almost repented that she had ever learned anything. This
disposition was only transient; her character was too solid
to be long under the influence of a frivolous man. But
it lasted during Huet's stay, and occasioned his departure.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CHARACTER OF CHRISTINA.
253
Huet was a man of research in books, and of an inquiring
mind into objects of nature and antiquities. But he had no
discernment. We gain from him no notion of what the
Swedish court, or the learned foreign coterie was like. He
praises Oxenstierna, but it is in the same vague laudatory
style in which he speaks of every great man whom he has
occasion to mention. How little he knew with whom he
had to deal may be seen in his notion of the Queen's own
character, when he affirms that 'her disposition was so weak
and flexible that she was entirely dependent on other
people's opinions.' Few sovereigns have thought more
for themselves than the daughter of Gustav Adolph. Even
if Huet could not see this at the time, it is singular that he
should have written thus with her later history before him,
though there is abundant testimony from much better
judges-e. g., Chassut, the envoy from the court of France
-to her precocious exhibition of a firm, decisive, right-
judging mind, carrying independence even to eccentricity.
Huet was easily able to console himself for the compara-
tive neglect of the court, by the ample library, both printed
and MS., which had been formed at Stockholm, partly out
of the plunder of the German monasteries, partly by judi-
cious purchases made under the superintendence of Voss.
He soon attached himself to a MS. of Origen on St.
Matthew, and his hours were occupied in making that tran-
script of this book, which became subsequently the found-
ation of his edition. Origen excepted, however, Huet
found nothing to induce him to prolong his stay, and,
though a native of Normandy, he feared the rigours of a
Scandinavian winter. To the indifference of the young
Queen to the Socratic discourse and society in which she
had once delighted, were added the murmurs of the native
courtiers at the pensions and emoluments lavished on the
foreign favourites. An old grievance. 'These Scottish
men spend a' our Queenis fee,' cry the Norwegians in
the ballad. And the behaviour of the French, pro-
254
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
bably, was not conciliatory. We find Huet making
epigrams on the gross manners of the Swedes, and
the Calvinist minister, Bochart, enjoying them and showing
them sub rosâ to the Queen, who relished them quite
as much, but very judiciously suggested that their cir-
culation should be confined to the French and Dutch
residents.
Another circumstance urged him to return home. His
previous intimacy with Bochart, his having accompanied him
to a Protestant court, and his continued residence there, had
given rise to reports injurious to his religious consistency.
He, therefore, applied for permission to depart, pleading
business at home, and voluntarily offering a promise to
return to Sweden in the spring. He tells us honestly
enough that at the time he gave this pledge to the
Queen, he made a private resolution never to come back
again. He does not offer any apology for this perfidy,
which he even vented in hendecasyllables, though these
he did not show the Queen. Dr. Aikin evidently does
not like the look of the lie as it stands, and suggests
'that it may admit of some excuse from the apparent
control exercised over him by a sovereign of whom he was
not the subject.' The casuistry of this we leave to the
reader. Huet, who had had the benefit of a Jesuit educa-
tion, evidently thinks such a trifle beneath his notice.
However, his return, had he meant it, would have been
otherwise impossible; for Christina's abdication took place
within less than two years. This finally scattered the
philosophical colony; but the experiment had had quite
sufficient trial to enable us to pronounce upon it. It must
undoubtedly be added to the record of failures on the part
of princes to create a taste for learning, and a society
of learned men, in a court where the native tendencies
to such a state were wanting. Though a short, it is not
the least instructive, chapter in the history of patronage.
An absolute sovereign can suppress, but cannot create
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
ROYAL PATRONAGE OF LEARNING.
255
learning, by any mere acts of power. It is with the
products of mind as with those of industry. All the costly
efforts of the late Sultan or of Mehemet Ali have been
unable to naturalize a single manufacture in Constantinople
or in Egypt. So the predisposing causes must exist
in a country-a people must be sufficiently enlightened
to receive the higher cultivation, or they will look upon
the importation of a cargo of philosophers with contempt
and aversion. When the preparatory stage has been
passed through, a liberal patron may do much, and an
Augustan age may then be evoked from the resources
of a country 'by a proper organization of institutions
and arrangements for education, of attractions to great
powers, of aids to great necessities, of inducements to great
exertions, of liberty and freedom to great energies.'
As to Huet's special share in this disappointment, it
was not great. He was young; he was not one of the
invited, but had travelled on his own account, and, if
overlooked at the time, his merit was not unappreciated.
For he was afterwards invited by the Swedish nobility
to become preceptor to their young king; and by Christina
to join her court after she had finally established it at
Rome. He declined both proposals.
The next twenty years-from his return from Sweden
till his being appointed sub-preceptor to the Dauphin in
1670—were passed by Huet at Caen, though with frequent
visits to Paris, in a life much more congenial to his tastes.
It was spent in study unusually excursive and diversified in
its range, but profound, serious, methodical in its purpose.
In his own words, 'I laboured to furnish myself with an
accurate knowledge of antiquity, and to attain to the very
fountains of erudition.' He was not engaged in any
profession, yet his means, though moderate, were not such
as to allow him to indulge his wish of removing his abode
to the capital. The difference of expense between pro-
vincial and Parisian life was still greater at that time than
256
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
at the present. The literary task which he had prescribed
himself, and which he carried on leisurely without suffering
it to absorb him from the reading by which he was forming
himself, was the editing of Origen. Of the six books into
which his Memoirs are divided, two record this period.
There is nothing that deserves the name of events; the
narrative is divided between the subjects of study, and the
connections continually formed with learned men. For next
to study, which he sustained throughout this whole period
with all the zeal of a profession, he seems to have made the
acquisition of learned acquaintance an object of special
pursuit. The large space which these connections occupy
in his memoranda shows that in looking back on his life
they were not the least cherished of his recollections. Few
have united in an equal degree the true solitary passion for
books, with the social instincts and the desire for an un-
limited extension of friendships. That his love of reading
was more than a mere taste, that it was a devotion, real,
serious, and engrossing, is certain from his whole history.
The best known story about him perhaps is that, preserved
in the Segraisiana, of the countryman who was denied
access to him after he was bishop of Avranches, because
the Bishop was studying. The applicant retired, grumbling
a wish that the King would send a bishop 'qui a fait ses
études.' Yet the list of his literary acquaintance is prodi-
gious; extending, as it does, to every person of even third
and fourth rate eminence in letters in France, and including
many of Germany, Holland, and even England. He
declares ¹ that at the age of twenty he was already 'in cor-
respondence with Sirmond, Petau, Dupuis, Bochart,
Blondel, Labbé, Bouilland, Naudé, Saumaise, Heinsius,
Voss, Selden, Descartes, Gassendi, Ménage.' This list was
swollen by the time he had reached the age of forty to some
hundreds. True, many of these correspondences went no
further than a single exchange of complimentary letters, or
1
1 Huetiana.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
LITERARY ACQUAINTANCES.
257
a single visit of ceremony; but they were not the less stored
up in the memory of one of the parties, and to originate
them was a serious occupation of his life. Nor was much
preliminary introduction thought necessary. To the greater
savans the young Norman, in the pride of conscious merit,
made a tender of his spontaneous admiration by letter. Did
a great court personage, known as making any pretensions
to 'taste,' visit Caen, he waited on him immediately, and
explained his pretensions. Chance brought in not a few,
as in the case of Madelenet, Richelieu's late secretary.
'I see
It was accident that threw me into the harbour of Gabriel
Madelenet's friendship. As I was looking over the catalogue of
publications in a bookseller's shop [in Paris], and was ordering those
of some modern poets to be sent home, Madelenet came in.
you like poetry,' said he, 'and to judge by the selection you have
made, you have a just taste in it. I have some that I can show
you, which you may perhaps not dislike,' at the same time pulling
out, etc. I contracted a friendship with Madelenet, whom I regarded
as a poet of no humble strains, but worthy to be compared to the
ancients.¹
Huet must have been a treasure to this class of poet, well
known to Boileau, who-
Aborde en récitant quiconque le salue,
Et poursuit de ses vers les passans dans la rue.
The great means, however, by which men of science
sought mutual acquaintance and improvement was in
Academies. This was the age of Academies in France.
They were borrowed from Italy, where they had already
gone into decay with the decline of learning. But in
France they were still in all the freshness of youth, and
had not yet become mere empty titles of honour, or clubs
for the publication of Transactions. They were centres of
personal communication between men of common tastes
and pursuits. All of them, even the Académie Française,
had arisen in friendly meetings in private houses. The
earliest members were opposed to being chartered, and
¹ Memoirs, p. 168.
VOL. I.
S
258
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
always looked back to their private and unpremeditated
réunions in the house of Valentine Conrart as their Golden
Age, when the members, without noise and parade, and
in the freedom of familiar intercourse, conversed at their
ease on topics that interested them. Caen for a provincial
city was singularly rich in men of letters and liberal
pursuits. It was for Normandy very much what Mont-
pellier was for the South of France. Besides its
University, much the most distinguished school of the
North of France,-many persons of birth and fortune had
retired there for the sake of society. The University of
Caen had possessed a classical press in the fifteenth
century, and a Horace printed there in 1480 is among the
bibliographical rarities. It was the original berceau of the
Academy movement in France. Nor has it lost its char-
acter. It was here that in 1830 sprang up the 'Société
pour la Conservation des Monumens Historiques,' which
has been the means of rescuing so many remains of
antiquity from destruction. Here, too, in 1833, originated
the scientific congress of the savans of France and Europe.
An Academy had been formed here during Huet's absence
in Sweden, and the first tidings which greeted him on his
return were that he and Bochart had been chosen asso-
ciates during their absence. The meetings were origin-
ally held in the private mansion of one of the members,
and from the first the society numbered some men of
distinction in its ranks. Among these was Segrais, whose
pastoral poems are still included in the collections of the
Poets of France, though he is better known by his con-
nection with the romance of Zaïde, written by Madame La
Fayette. Of this Academy Bayle writes in 1684, 'Il n'y a
point d'Académie dans le reste de l'Europe qui soit composée
de plus habiles gens que celle de Caen.' It survived the
Revolution, and continues to subsist in vigour, publish-
ing from time to time respectable volumes of Memoirs.
The name of Huet is still the boast of this enlightened
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
ACADEMIES OF CAEN.
259
body. It endeavoured only a few years ago to com-
memorate him in a mode widely adopted in France and
Germany, though hardly known among ourselves, viz.,
by proposing a prize for an éloge. The éloge is intended to
be not a vague and fulsome panegyric, like the old discours
de réception at the Académie, but according to the better
taste now prevailing there, a general survey of the subject.
However, the spirit of the degenerate sons of Caen did not
respond to the invitation. Twice was the prize proposed
without any success-'bis patriae cecidere manus'; the
third time, in 1851, only two essays were sent in, to neither
of which were the judges able to award the prize. The
dissertation we have placed at the head of this paper, and
which still leaves much to be desired, comes from a different
quarter.
But this assembly was confined to literature, and Huet's
active and inquiring mind embraced a much wider domain.
The rapid strides which physical discovery was daily
making attracted general attention, and Huet joined with
his usual eagerness in the pursuit, which speedily led to
associating a few persons who were to meet once a week
at his house to carry on the subject. This was the founda-
tion of the Academy of Sciences of Caen, an association
which soon acquired a high reputation and received appro-
bation and contributions to its funds from Colbert.
As there had been sent me from London some accurate obser-
vations by members of the Royal Society, in which the anatomy of
the human body was exhibited, we determined to join our labours in
this part of physics. And as the public hospital of the city was in
the vicinity of my house, we commissioned one of our body who was
a surgeon, that when any of the patients should die of an unknown
malady, he should give me a summons that we might ascertain the
disease and the cause of death by dissection. Nor did we employ
our industry on the human body alone, but carried our researches
into those of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, serpents, and insects. In this
course it is incredible how many new and singular objects, well
worthy of remark, came under our observation, all which I carefully
S 2
260
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
recorded. And although we had no lack of careful dissectors, yet we
sometimes, when peculiar nicety of experiment was required, em-
ployed our own hands. For myself, being shortsighted, it was par-
ticularly my study to obtain demonstrations of the fabric of the eye.
I can safely affirm that with my own hand I have dissected more
than 300 eyes taken from the heads of animals of every species. And
that I might more clearly understand what it was that chiefly con-
duced to acuteness of vision, I compared the eyes of those animals
that are thought to enjoy the quickest sight, with those whose sight
is supposed to be weak and dull, as owls. I carefully separated the
parts of the eye, and compared vitreous humour with vitreous humour,
membrane with membrane, nerve with nerve.
His inquiries extended to astronomy and to chemistry,
which he called 'a compendium of nature' (naturae brevi
arium), though he did not, as might be expected, entirely
shun the quicksands of alchemy. It was in this Academy
that the principles of the Cartesian philosophy, physical and
metaphysical, first attracted Huet's attention. He possessed
a set of astronomical instruments, observed eclipses, pro-
cured 'the newly-invented instruments,' a thermometer
and barometer, and himself projected a hygrometer, and
an anemometer. By so much activity and public spirit
shown in so many departments of knowledge, Huet began
to be considered one of the leaders of learning in France,
and he was gratified accordingly by finding his name
in Colbert's list of literary pensions. This measure, which
included the savans of foreign countries as well as those
of France, is usually put forward by the historians as one
of the splendid and judicious liberalities of the Grand
Monarque, which has been too little followed by less abso-
lute governments. When examined, however, Louis XIV's
patronage of letters will be found to contain as much base
metal as the other glories of the siècle. We are obliged to
pronounce it a piece of preposterous ostentation, intended,
not to encourage learning-the free spirit of which was
as hateful to Louis as it is to all despots,—but to be
returned in adulation, for which his appetite was insatiable,
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
VARIETY OF STUDIES.
261
and the only effect of which was to humiliate the receivers,
and to include the learned class of Europe in that promis-
cuous crowd of adoring worshippers who were prostrate
before the narrow mind and selfish heart, which was now
disposing, for its own gratification, of the wealth and
resources of the most flourishing country in Europe. It
should be added that the total sum devoted to this
purpose was only 100,000 livres, and that as soon as the
finances became embarrassed, these pittances were among
the first objects of retrenchment.
But the circle of Huet's multifarious pursuits is not yet
exhausted. He addicted himself to poetry with the same
enthusiasm as to anatomy or chemistry, and to the society
of poets as congenially as if he had not been the founder
and life of an 'Académie des Sciences.' His taste for
natural scenery was hearty and sincere. He loved country
walks, and to lie in the shade of the old oaks with Savary,
who read to him his verses. He liked to make visits at
country-houses, and has celebrated one in the neighbour-
hood of Caen, where-
the rocky coast was excavated into caverns by the waves. Burying
myself in one of these, I remained whole days with no other com-
panion than a book; enjoying the prospect of a smooth sea and ves-
sels gliding by with favourable breeze, or at other times of a raging
ocean.
He also declared against the reigning style in gardening,
condemning as a depravation in taste the 'jardin à la
mode,' with its hot, broad, sanded walks, and jets d'eau
of muddy ditch-water; daring, and this in the days of
Versailles, to prefer to these
larcins et supercheries de l'art, ces gazons rustiques, ces pelouses
champêtres, les ombrages verts de ces hêtres touffus, et de ces grands
chênes qui se trouvèrent à la nativité des temps, une fontaine sortant
à gros bouillons du pied d'un rocher, roulant sur un sable doré les
plus claires et les plus fraîches eaux du monde ¹.
¹ Huetiana.
262
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
Segrais was his townsman and intimate, till they had
a coolness about the interpretation of a line in Virgil.
With Chapelain, the French Blackmore, he maintained
a regular correspondence, and had read (we could not
venture so incredible an assertion on anything less than
his own authority) the twelve unpublished books of
Chapelain's epic. The twelve published books of this,
the first, and except the Henriade, only epic in the
French language, the public and the critics were agreed
to consign to oblivion. Huet is persuaded that, had they
seen the whole twenty-four, their decision would have
been different. He had been one of the select few admitted
to a reading of the Guirlande of Julie, the unpublished
poems of the Hôtel Rambouillet.
I had often begged, and been often promised, a sight of this
famous volume, a new-year's present from the Duc de Montausier to
his mistress, Julie d'Augennes. At last one day, as we were rising
from table, the Duchess d'Uzés consented to gratify my curiosity.
She locked me into her cabinet alone with the Guirlande, and did
not return to release me till dark. I can affirm that I never in my
life passed a more agreeable afternoon¹.
Huet himself poured forth poetry in the earlier period
of his life, with a facility of which he was proud, but as
he wrote then chiefly in Latin, his verses have not found
their way into the collections. Poetry, indeed, was culti-
vated in Caen with no less favour than the sciences.
There had formed round Segrais quite a school known
as the Caen Poets. When the court, the city, and the
French Académie were once at issue upon the merits
of two sonnets, the Duchesse de Longueville proposed
that the case should be referred to the Caen songsters,
and that their sentence should be decisive. French poetry,
however, was the only poetry read in Paris, and he who
wrote in Latin had to content himself with a reputation
in Holland. A 'young friend' who visited Huet at
1 Huetiana.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
VERSES. ESSAY ON ROMANCE.
263
Caen, 'extorted from' him various pieces of verse,
carried them off to The Hague, and, 'without my con-
currence' put them to press. 'Thus I was regarded as
a tolerable poet in Holland, while in France I was
scarcely supposed to have reached the foot of Parnassus¹.'
Huet must have been gratified by the state of poetical
taste in Holland, for his Poemata went through repeated
editions. These effusions, though M. Bartholmèss indeed
thinks the immortal odes on Aulnai equal to those which
Tibur inspired, have not usually been ranked among the
choicest specimens of modern Latinity in vigour or polish;
but they breathe a natural taste for rocks and rivers, and
smiling scenery, their general topic, which contrasts favour-
ably with the frigid and conventional gallantries of most
of the vernacular verse of that age.
A much better known work of Huet, his Essay on the
Origin of Romances, shows him to us in a new walk of
literature. This is perhaps the most original of all his
productions, one in which, though he has had many
followers, he had no predecessor, except Giraldi of
Ferrara. It shows a vast amount of 'novel-reading'
in a man who had read so much else, and was indeed
a proof of an extraordinary memory, if we are to take to
the letter what he says, that it was written during a visit
to Marie de Rohan, in a sequestered convent of nuns,
seven miles distant from Paris. It originally appeared
prefixed, as a preface, to the celebrated novel of Zaïde.
This story by the Comtesse La Fayette marks an epoch
in the history of fiction, as the first transition from the
heroic romance to the tale of probable adventures and
contemporary manners. The authoress, a very accom-
plished woman, who had learned Latin from Ménage and
Rapin, pleasantly observed to Huet that they had made
a marriage between their children. It was not an un-
propitious union between the most popular novel of the
1 Memoirs.
264
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
day, and this instructive and not heavy essay. Translation
speedily carried them through Europe, and as Zaïde has
been the prolific parent of the modern novel, so the Traité
de l'Origine des Romans has been the source to which
Hurd, Percy, Scott, Dunlop, Schulz, may be traced, though
the more extended research and better historical criticism of
the modern investigators have entirely superseded Huet's
attempt, and made it even seem superficial by their side.
He was, too, not merely a critic of romances, he had
written his novel. This was composed at four-and-twenty.
And it is singular that all the incidents were taken from
real occurrences, although it was inspired by the reading
aloud to his sisters, before they became religious, the
5500 pages of Honoré d'Urfé's Astrée, one of the most
unreal and airy of the pastoral insipidities. He had long
before, when a boy, exhausted Amadis de Gaul, and the
chivalrous romances of the Spanish school; and his first
classical attempt had been a translation from the Greek
romance of Longus. Diane de Castro, ou le Faux Yncas,
found, however, no sympathizing friend to steal away
with it and get it imprinted at The Hague. It remained
in the secrecy of his desk for fifty years, and was only
published after his death as a curiosity when public taste
had long gained a new direction.
He had a turn for antiquities, and spent no little time
in researches into local history. We have seen how the
'Gothic remains' tempted him into Denmark. He did not
overlook those of his own country. When he became
bishop of Avranches he drew up a history of the province
-the Avranchin,—and a list of all the noble families who
had territorial possessions in it. These still exist in
manuscript. Of his native place he undertook a more
complete survey. Les Origines de la Ville de Caen
came to a second edition in 1706. The first was a very
incomplete, hasty, superficial affair. He interleaved it,
and brought it out altogether rewritten. Topography,
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
LOCAL ANTIQUITIES.
265
like everything else, has undergone great improvements.
Few antiquarian histories of that date are satisfactory now.
But the Origines de Caen are marked by peculiar faults
characteristic of the author- paradox, fanciful theory,
unsupported conjecture. He cites documents vaguely,
without the requisite specification; they are often not
correctly copied; sometimes their import is misunderstood.
He continually uses the loose phrases, 'on dit,' 'on croit,'
'on pense à Caen.' He had formed in his mind a system
as to the original ground plan of the city, with which he
endeavours to force the existing facts into harmony, often
with violence enough. Indeed, in this work as much as in
any other, may be seen all the faults of criticism which
make Heyne long afterwards describe him as 'vir opinioni-
bus plura superstruens parum explorata.' How much
topographical science has improved since that date may be
seen by comparing Huet's work with the scholar-like
contributions to the same subject-the Antiquities of Nor-
mandy-made by the Abbé De la Rue.
These subjects were, after all, the recreations of his
leisure; we have yet to mention the more serious labours
of his life. Ever since his return from Sweden he had
been engaged on Origen, and his repeated visits to Paris
at this period had for their object the preparation for this
great work. The collations for the text, and the collection
of materials for the life of Origen, might well have employed
the whole time and strength of the most retired scholar.
But it does not seem to have interfered with the various
occupations and the mixed society in which Huet so freely
engaged himself. The theological subject was the one to
which he attached himself by preference, and the editing of
Origen was to him a work of devotion as well as philology.
For the mere critical part of the task he had no love, and
often spoke with contempt of those 'weeders of the soil of
letters '-the verbal emendators. Hence he has succeeded
better in the historical and biographical province than in
266
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
the textual; and his Origeniana have been repeated in all
the subsequent editions of Origen, and still form the most
valuable contribution that has been made to the illustration
of that great writer. Huet's edition, in 2 vols. folio,
appeared in 1669. It contained only the exegetical works
of his author. The rest were intended to follow, but Huet
some years afterwards formally renounced the design,
partly from the intervention of other engagements, partly
from finding that the labour of editing was one above his
strength. It is observable that, though Caen was the seat of
the university of the North, and the administrative capital
of Lower Normandy, Huet was obliged to print his Origen
at Rouen, whither he went to reside while it was passing
through the press. He designed a dedication-a more
important matter then than now-to the Bishops of the
Gallican Church. He made this offer to them then sitting
in Assembly in Paris, and it was graciously accepted. At
a hint from Colbert, however, the bishops were thrown
over, and the name of the King substituted. An unworthy
yet necessary compliance; only too characteristic of the
servility of the age, and of the grasping cupidity of Louis,
jealous of every scrap of compliment or homage which was
to be had.
In estimating the edition we must pay due regard to the
state of Greek criticism at that epoch. If we test Huet's
Greek text by this standard, we find that it will bear
comparison with the best specimens of Greek editing then
produced. He had neither the experience in the task
nor the knowledge of the language possessed by Cas-
aubon. But in the fidelity with which he represents the
readings of his MS. authorities-he had only two-he
equals or exceeds that great scholar. In conjectural
criticism he displays a wonderful sagacity, best proved
by the fact that many of his emendations have been
established by the Barberini and Bodleian MSS. On
the other hand, his knowledge of Greek is unequal to
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
EDITION OF ORIGEN.
267
his acuteness and ingenuity. He detects a corruption
by a quick perception of logic rather than by acquaint-
ance with idiom. Hence he often offers both words
and grammar which are not Greek at all, or not the
Greek of Origen's age. But the most serious blot on his
critical character is his assuming, as a principle of editing,
that, where there is doubt, the reading must be decided by
dogmatical considerations. Not, be it observed, that he
considers that what Origen wrote ought to be altered, but
that Origen, being a Father (though not a saint) of the
Church, must have written that which was orthodox. To
expect him to have been emancipated from this idea, is to
expect him to have been above his age. To understand
the full extent of Huet's merits, it is only necessary to
have an acquaintance, however slight, with the edition of
the De la Rues. This splendid product of the labour and
learning of the French Benedictines is sadly marred by the
incompetence of its editors in Greek. They appear unable
to value rightly Huet's suggestions, and, as we must
suspect, from theological antipathy, to be studiously
concealing the large extent to which they are nevertheless
indebted to him.
This edition of Origen cost him one of his oldest
friendships,—that of Bochart. During the preparation of
his work Huet had been in the habit of communicating
to Bochart his notes and manuscripts; and among the
rest the transcript which he had made of the Stockholm
MS. of Origen's Commentary on St. Matthew. This
work of Origen contains a passage not a little famous
in the Eucharistic controversies, which has been uni-
formly cited by all the Protestant writers as decisive
of his opinion against Transubstantiation.
What was
Bochart's astonishment when he found that this passage,
or at least the most telling part of it, was absent from
Huet's transcript! Bochart himself knew assuredly that
it was to be found in the Stockholm volume, for he had
268
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
more than once produced it, to the great discomfiture of two
Jesuit Pères who were secretly preparing Christina for
her change of religion. He mentioned the omission among
his partisans in Caen, and though he declares that he
himself was cautious to spare his friend's character,
others, who did not know Huet so well, conceived, not
unnaturally, great suspicions of his honesty. Huet
complained that Bochart was traducing him, and ‘a
correspondence' ensued. Huet, at first, stoutly main-
tained the fidelity of his copy; and that the disputed
passage was wanting in the original MS., but challenged
Bochart to send for it to Caen. Bochart replied that
he might as well desire him to ask for the moon, as
for a MS. which was so jealously guarded; that Christina
would not allow it even to be taken to a private room for
the purpose of copying it; and that no one knew this better
than Huet, as he had himself been refused that permission.
After some shifting of ground on the part of Huet, he
at last admitted that the omission was an oversight in
transcription. He took care to insert it in its proper
place in printing the text of his edition, and in an article
of his Origeniana discusses its import, which he finds
to be perfectly compatible with the Catholic doctrine on
Transubstantiation. These are the facts of the case, and,
it must be allowed, they look very ugly. Nevertheless his
integrity comes out, on inquiry, unimpeachable. The
omission was an oversight, ascribable to a common cause
of such lacunae, viz., homoioteleuton. Bochart, in the
handsomest way, expresses his satisfaction on this point.
But Huet's character for honesty can only be established
at the expense of his vigilance as a collator. To have
overlooked such a passage, which the controversialists,
from the time of Erasmus downwards, had been fighting
over like a dead Patroclus, was inexcusable carelessness.
The suspicions created in the minds of the learned in
the Protestant communities by the blunder were so far
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
STOCKHOLM MANUSCRIPT. RELIGION.
269
from being unnatural, that, as Bochart says, 'all the history
of literature can scarce furnish a parallel instance.'
To these manifold engagements of thought, some of
them very engrossing and laborious, must be added, to
complete our picture of this active and versatile genius,
that it was eminently susceptible of the sentiment of
piety. Literary tastes, in proportion as they are strong,
are notoriously combined with religious indifference;
when they are dominant they seem to extinguish the
sentiment of religion altogether, as in Voltaire and Goethe.
On the other hand, strong devotional tendencies are apt
to absorb and centre in themselves all the other powers,
and to diminish the energies necessary for other pursuits,
if not to decline them as profane. Huet united an intense
passion for literature with urgent inclinations to a life
of religious contemplation. While a boy at college he
had been captivated by the austerities of a Dominican
convent in Caen, and had been only prevented from
joining that order, in which one of his sisters was a
nun, by forcible detention on the part of his friends.
He was sufficiently aware, afterwards, that they had
acted wisely for him. Yet from time to time the
religious instinct showed itself on the surface. He
gratified it through one of the best provisions of the
Roman Catholic Church, the practice of spiritual retreats,
till it led him to enter orders, to assume the manage-
ment of a diocese, and finally to resign those duties
for the leisure of a monastic life, though not under one
of the austere rules. One of those retreats occurred
soon after the completion of the Origen, somewhere
about 1670, and at the time that the reform of La Trappe
was exciting much attention in France, though Huet
nowhere mentions De Rancé. He went for the purpose
as far as the Jesuits' college of La Flèche:
It was some time since I had duly explored the recesses of my
conscience and unfolded them in the Divine presence. For this pur-
270
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
pose I repaired with alacrity to La Flèche, where my friend and
former preceptor, Mambrun, presided over the theological studies.
After enjoying some conversation with him on our affairs, I resolved
to set apart an entire week for the attentive recollection of all the
errors of my past life, and the more careful regulation of my future
days pursuant to the injunctions of the Divine law. And oh! that
I had in earnest adhered to my engagements! but I too readily suf-
fered myself to be borne away by the fire of youth, the allurements of
the world, and the pleasures of study, which by their variety so filled
my breast, and closed up all its inlets with an infinity of thought,
that it gave no admission to those intimate and charming conferences
with the Supreme Being. Under this feebleness of soul with respect
to Divine things I have laboured during the whole course of my life;
and even now the frequent wanderings of a volatile mind blunt my
aspirations to God, and intercept all the benefit of my prayers.
When from time to time God has invited me to godly exercises for
the purpose of confirming in my soul the sense of piety, and washing
away the stains contracted from intercourse with men, it hath been
my custom to retire to places suitable to those intentions—either to
the Jesuits' College at Caen, or the Praemonstratensian Abbey of
Arden, one league distant from Caen, or to our own Aulnai after I
was placed at the head of it¹.
During this retreat at La Flèche, the desire to renounce
the world for good revived in him with all its former
strength. This time it was Mambrun who interposed his
judgment to prohibit a vow which must have entailed
inevitable misery on a spirit so independent and restless,
and tastes so various, as Huet's. The Jesuit Professor,
with the skill of his Order, may have understood a tem-
perament with which he could little sympathize. He is one
of the most vigorous of the Jesuit Latin poets. But his
servility of imitation was such that he wrote ten Eclogues,
four Georgics—which, however, treat of the culture of the
mind, and an Epic on Constantine in twelve books.
Huet's life had hitherto been provincial, though his
connections and his reputation were extending through
the world of letters. In the year 1670 he was drawn
1 Memoirs, p. 174.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
MAMBRUN. MONTAUSIER.
271
within the sphere of the court, having been selected to be
sub-preceptor to the Dauphin. He owed this distinction
to the friendship and discernment of the Duc de Montausier,
who had become acquainted with him in his capacity of
royal lieutenant of Normandy. Montausier, by birth, by
military services, and by rank, was one of the most
distinguished nobles about the court. But he was still
more distinguished by virtues little known and little
valued in that atmosphere, sincerity and independence of
mind. His were among the few lips from which the
King ever heard the truth. Yet such was his grace of
manner and dignified bearing, that Louis heard from him
the plainest language without offence. The courtiers,
intolerant of a manly freedom of thought and speech
which they dared not exercise themselves, called him
'a cynic,' 'a bunch of nettles,' and insinuated that the
Misanthrope of Molière had been drawn from him. The
sarcasms of these sycophants signify nothing more than
what Madame de Sévigné meant when she said that the
Duke 'reminded her of the old times of chivalry,' or
what Montesquieu implied in saying, that 'Montausier
had in him something of the old Greek philosophers.'
We might rather wonder how such a man, the fittest,
and therefore the most unlikely, in the kingdom, came
to be selected as Governor to the Dauphin. But Louis,
at least up to this period of his reign, chose his servants
well. The King consulted Montausier as to whom he
would wish to have under him as instructors for his royal
pupil. He had made up his mind in favour of Huet,
but as Louis was extremely jealous of his patronage,
it was necessary to employ artifice to bring him to the
desired selection. The Governor read over to the King
a list of the persons who offered themselves as candidates
for the office, amounting to near a hundred. He then
subjoined to it the names of those who had not offered,
but seemed to him worthy of the post, stating the
272
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
i
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qualifications of each, and concluded by saying he thought
he might name out of the whole number three men
who seemed most eminently fitted for the duty-Ménage,
Bossuet, and Huet. He foresaw that Ménage would
be rejected; Bossuet he did not think would be preferred,
as a man who had spent all his life in theological con-
troversies; and that, therefore, the choice must end in
Huet. He was mistaken, however. The King caught
at the name of the celebrated preacher, whom he thought
a very proper man for preceptor, but consented to
have Huet appointed his second. The sub-preceptor,
in his Memoirs, characteristically slurs over his sub-
ordination to the Bishop of Méaux, of which he need
not have been ashamed, in the ambiguous phrase 'suc-
centuriatus adjungor,' which Dr. Aikin, by translating
'coadjutor,' converts into a positive misrepresentation.
This mark of distinction was flattering, and the change
of life, at first, agreeable enough to Huet. But, on the
whole, he does not appear to have derived much satis-
faction from it. In his pupil he could have none. The
Dauphin had all the coldness, indifference, and dull
sensuality of the Bourbons. After he had outgrown
schooling he never touched a book, and with all the
care expended in his education, his literature was limited
to the Article de Paris in the Gazette de France, con-
taining the births, deaths, and marriages. For this man
the Discourse on Universal History was written by
Bossuet, the Delphin Classics arranged by Huet!
a princely dunce, of whom scarce anything is recorded
than that he was fond of killing weasels in a barn, could
have been improved by any training, it might have been
by that of Montausier, who was not likely to show less
spirit in his conduct to his pupil than he did to his
pupil's father. The Prince chose to pretend one day
that his Governor had struck him, and called for his
pistols in a fury. 'Bring his Highness's pistols,' said
If
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
THE DAUPHIN.
273
the Duke coolly. Then turning to the Dauphin, 'Now,
sir, let us see what you mean to do with them.' On
another occasion the Dauphin was practising pistol-firing
at a mark, and his balls were very wide of the target.
The Marquis de Créqui had next to fire, and though
an excellent shot, he went a foot further from the
mark than the Dauphin. 'Ah! little serpent,' cried
Montausier, 'you ought to be strangled.' When the
Duke gave up his post, and was taking his final
leave of the Prince, he did it with the words, 'Sir, if
you are an honest man, you will love me; if you are
not, you will hate me, and I shall console myself.'
The Dauphin was nine years old when Huet was
thus placed in his household in 1670, and the next
ten years were accordingly spent by him in attendance
on the court. Fond of society, and not insensible to
the charms of intercourse with the great, so favourable
a position was naturally pleasing to him; but as the
novelty wore off, the want of men of literature and
knowledge in the frivolous circle of Versailles, and the
tedious formalities of court etiquette, made him pine for
opportunity to resume his beloved occupations. The
lessons, no doubt, were neither long nor frequent, but
the attendance was constant, the regular hours which
the King exacted from every one about him, the dressing,
the continual removals of the court from Versailles to
Marly, from Marly to Paris, from Paris to Fontainebleau,
seemed to preclude all possibility of continuous study.
Nevertheless all these difficulties were overcome by the
ardour and determination of Huet. And it was during these
years that he executed the longest and (after the Origen)
most laborious of his works, the Demonstratio Evangelica,
and that he superintended the publication of the celebrated
series of the Delphin Classics. The want of leisure for
uninterrupted thought, the want of books of reference
which he could not carry about, and had not even room
VOL. I.
T
274
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
to set up in the narrow apartments of the smaller palaces-
all these obstacles he met by extreme diligence and
great economy of time. He employed readers who read
to him while dressing, while travelling, while going to
sleep. Often after devoting the day to the Dauphin,
on the approach of evening, he rode off to Paris and
spent large part of the night in his library, searching
out and copying passages, returning at daybreak to the
Prince. Huet, however, was not the stiff pedant who
could not enjoy the world, or the recluse philosopher
whose finer fancies perished by contact with it, and he
seems to have mingled, when he chose, with ease and
satisfaction in the amusements of the palace. The author
of the Demonstratio Evangelica did not disdain to execute
a specimen of minute calligraphy-twenty verses of the
Iliad written in a single line of a narrow slip of paper—
to convince some incredulous person who would not
believe the account of the Homer which was contained
in a walnut-shell; nor to celebrate in elegiacs the virtues
of tea. He must have been one of the earliest to adopt
the use of the beverage in France, as he says he derived
the hint from the Voyages of Alex. Rhodius, the Jesuit.
It appears that the leaves were boiled on the fire.
The experiment succeeded so much beyond my hopes, that I
seemed to have acquired a new stomach, strong and active, and no
longer subject to indigestion. On this account tea rose so high in
my esteem, that I scarcely suffered a day to pass without drinking it.
I derived from it the further advantage that its salutary leaves, with
their benign vapours, swept the brain, thus meriting the title of
brushes of the understanding.
Amidst these engagements was completed (in 1679)
the Demonstratio Evangelica, the publication by which
Huet's theological character was established. It shows
great erudition and some originality. But the title
was borrowed from a work by Eusebius, and the
form from Spinoza. A conversation with a learned
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
DEMONSTRATIO EVANGELICA.
275
Jew of Amsterdam had suggested to him the subject.
He affects to adopt the mathematical method of proof,
begins with definitions, postulates, and axioms, and builds
on them ten propositions. All this is, of course, illusory,
and, as was said at the time, the author has demonstrated
nothing but his own learning. The more original and
characteristic part of the book is the fanciful tracing of
pagan personages and ceremonies to Hebrew sources.
He liberally reduces to myths the sages of antiquity,
most of whom he finds to be only fancy portraits copied
from Moses-imaginations pursued to such a length as
to be rejected at once even at a period in which the
derivation of the heathen religions from the Jewish was
an accepted belief. This system of Huet, says Voltaire,
'n'a trouvé aucun partisan, tout absurde qu'il est.' We
must again repeat the caution that the merit of books,
as of opinions, is relative to the age in which they appear.
It will be enough to mention the repeated editions and
translations into most of the languages of Europe of
the Demonstratio Evangelica, to prove that it continued
to be the standard work on the Evidences, till it was
superseded by the more methodical productions of Ab-
badie among the Protestants, and the Abbé Houtteville
among the Catholics. Complimentary letters from friends
cannot go for much; yet that of Leibnitz to Huet has
all the weight that a name can give. The author was
perhaps more flattered by the great Condé having read
the work through immediately, which he records with
satisfaction, though he does not mention the letter of
Leibnitz.
Better known at the present day is the other undertaking
with which Huet was occupied during the period of his at-
tendance on the Dauphin. This is the celebrated series of
the Delphin Classics. Every schoolboy is now familiar with
the demerits of these editions, yet the project forms an
epoch in the history of classical learning in France. The
T 2
276
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
credit of the design rests between the Duke of Montausier
and Huet. The latter, a man not given to taking less than
his share of such honours, ascribes it entirely to the duke,
and Montausier's talent and knowledge quite warrant the
claim. The classics were the companions of his cam-
paigns; he read them with pleasure and facility, but still
was often at a loss in a difficulty. Commentators were too
bulky to be carried about in the field, and he had often
wished for compendious editions which should give just
such assistance as was wanted by a soldier, who was
scholarly but not erudite.
Whether Montausier or Huet were the actual projector of
the Delphin Classics, it was one of those happy ideas which,
though due to the suggestion of some one individual, hap-
pens to be precisely the thing which the public is wanting.
Ancient learning, in France, had been suffering a gradual
decay since the time of Francis I. It is beside the purpose
to suggest the causes of this decline, but the fact is
notorious. The public were growing indifferent to the
subject; the universities languished; the Jesuit schools
were lapsing into sloth; men of learning were not
so learned, nor so prominent, as they had been in a former
generation. Along with this eclipse of classical lore was
going on steady development of a wholly new body of
knowledge. This later growth was various, and was not
at that time mapped out into distinct branches; but it
was mainly physical and mathematical, in part also meta-
physical. The momentum had been given in the former
subjects by Kepler, Galileo, and Bacon-though the last
was not himself a discoverer in physics. In metaphysics
the impulse had sprung chiefly from Descartes, though
he had also pursued with distinction some branches of
mathematical science. But in all its parts, one char-
acteristic of the new knowledge and of its cultivators
was an entire renunciation of the dependence on anti-
quity. They broke off the whole connection with the
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
THE DELPHIN CLASSICS.
277
past, and passed rapidly from the idolatry to the disdain
of the great names of ancient learning. Bacon and
Descartes, Spinoza and Malebranche, agree in this re-
spect. By this withdrawal of the best and the inquiring
minds from classical learning it lost its depth and
progress. But it still maintained itself as an institution,
constituted the formal education, and the knowledge of
Latin (at least) was recognized as universally necessary.
The learned languages ceased to engross attention for
their own sakes, just in proportion as they became more
identified with general literature and liberal cultivation.
At such a period a demand not unnaturally arose for
popular editions of the more generally read authors; not
new recensions containing the fruits of a life's study, but
easy abridgments of the best commentaries adapted for
common use. To this new want the Variorum Classics in
Holland and the Classics in usum Delphini in France
were the reply. There was this difference between them,
that, while the Variorums were the bookseller's speculation,
the cost of the Delphin Classics was defrayed out of the
royal purse. Popular as they afterwards proved, so
small was their sale at first, that no sooner was the
treasury subscription withdrawn than the printing of
them stopped. On the Dauphin's marriage, in 1680, the
Ausonius was withdrawn from the press at the 160th page,
and it was not till 1730 that a Paris bookseller was found
bold enough to take up and complete this, the last of the
series. It is not often that state patronage has meddled
so successfully with the press. Nearly sixty volumes
were produced in about ten or twelve years' time. The
assignment of the contributors, the choice of the authors,
and the general superintendence, fell to Huet. One
day in every fortnight he went to Paris, where the dif-
ferent editors attended at stated hours, each with the por-
tions of his work which he had finished. But it is not
to be supposed that he examined every note so as to make
278
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
J
himself responsible for it. The collaborateurs were all
French, most of them young professors connected with
the University of Paris, and none of them names distin-
guished in the annals of philology. Perhaps the best known
are Madame Dacier, (Charles) De la Rue, and the para-
doxical Hardouin. Huet sought the co-operation of Leib-
nitz, at this time residing in Paris, and had proposed to him
to edit Vitruvius. Leibnitz consented to be employed, but
excused himself from Vitruvius as requiring a knowledge of
architecture, and chose Martianus Capella. He made some
progress, and submitted a specimen of his illustrations on
this favourite classic of the middle ages to Huet. But on
his quitting Paris soon after he seems to have dropped the
task, and it is not known what became of his notes. The
latest editor of Capella, Kopp, does not appear to have
known anything of his abortive attempt¹.
The series was confined to Latin authors: the scholar-
ship of all the universities of France at that time would
have been unequal to a collection of Greek classics. It is
true that all the lists of the Delphin editions in the Biblio-
graphies include the Callimachus of Madame Dacier.
But that is an error, for her Callimachus is not, and does
not profess to be, numbered among the Delphins. It has
none of the marks: it is not dedicated to the Dauphin, but
to Huet; it has not the words 'in usum serenissimi
Delphini,' nor the well-known engraved title 'Arion and the
dolphin.' The new features which Huet designed in the
scheme were the ' ordo verborum,' which was placed under-
neath the text, and a complete verbal index to accompany
each author. And finally he intended that all the separate
indexes should be fused into one general index, and thus
constitute a complete vocabulary of the language; though
this part of the work was never executed. The other
portions of the plan were not strictly novel. There
existed already complete verbal indexes; to Lucretius by
¹ [The same is true of Hermann and Eyssenhardt.]
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
THE DELPHIN CLASSICS.
279
Pareus, to Juvenal by Lange, to Virgil by Erythraeus,
besides others. Again, the paraphrase, or ordo, had been
applied to Horace and Juvenal by Ceruto; to the Aeneid
of Virgil, by Pontanus; to the Eclogues and Georgics by
Frischlinius. The novelty lay in its being uniformly car-
ried through the whole of the Latin poets. The merit of
the different editions is very unequal. One of them
only, the Panegyrici Veteres by De la Baune, has preten-
sions to be a scholar's book. The sole contribution, we
believe, to original criticism which the series can show was
furnished by Huet himself. This was in the shape of
some notes on Manilius, a very difficult author, who
had fallen into the hands of an editor who was not
equal to the task, though of some reputation in the Uni-
versity. Huet's appendix in part redeemed the character
of the work. For some of his conjectural emendations
he has merited to be coupled with Scaliger in the phrase
'virose gregios,' by the next editor of Manilius, Richard
Bentley, a critic not merciful to rash correctors. The me-
diocrity of portions of the editing Huet candidly admits,
apologizing for it by the youth of some of the persons em-
ployed, and their impatience of dry labour,—an impatience,
we may add, which is at the bottom of the inferiority of the
French nation in classical criticism. That the Delphins
held their ground so long in the schools and colleges of
France and England is perhaps rather a mark of the low
state of scholarship than of their own merits. Still, with
all their defects, a contribution on such a scale towards the
popularization of classical literature is worthy to rank as
part of the magnificence of the siècle. Certainly it may do
so in point of costliness, if Huet be correct in saying that
the whole undertaking cost upwards of 200,000 livres-a
sum at the then rate of exchange equal to about £15,000
sterling, rather a large bill for school-books for the
Dauphin. Colbert, however, who had encouraged the
enterprise, willingly opened the treasury for the purpose.
280
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
In 1680, on the Dauphin's marriage, Huet was released
from the irksome restraint of court attendance, and was
once more his own master. He immediately returned to
his old occupations, and seems to have proposed to himself
with great satisfaction a life of literary ease in the society of
men of letters. The means were provided him in an abbey,
given him by the King-which, to make the retirement
more agreeable, was in his own province, Aulnai, twelve
miles south of Caen. He had qualified himself during
his preceptorship to hold a benefice by becoming a prêtre.
Such a step, in such a situation, must suggest suspicions
of his sincerity; but they would be unjust. He had
always designed himself for the ecclesiastical profession,
had as early as 1656 received the ecclesiastical tonsure
from Harlai, then Archbishop of Rouen, and had mainly
directed his studies towards religious subjects from this
consideration. But it was the fashion then, both with
the literary and the gay class of clergy, to defer the
final step, as they did baptism in the early centuries,
that they might enjoy life a little first. They received
the tonsure, and even the lesser orders, without changing
their dress, or their mode of living. It was during the
preparation of the Demonstratio that serious thoughts
forced themselves on Huet, and determined him to bring
this period of probation to a close. He had, as with a
presentiment of the length of days in store for him,
indulged himself with a long youth. Though forty-six
before he took priest's orders, he had still nearly fifty
years of life before him. The change of dress was an
important matter in the midst of a court. A sudden
assumption of the black soutane would have assuredly
exposed him to the raillery of the court ladies and the
sneers of the foplings. Bossuet advised his withdrawing
for some days, while his friends should announce his
purpose of taking orders, and then appearing at once in the
ecclesiastical habit. Huet preferred, however, to make the
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
ORDINATION. AULNAI.
281
change gradually. He shortened his hair a little every
day, and left off bit by bit the gay apparel he had hitherto
worn, and thus slid by degrees from the militaire into the
abbé, without attracting attention by a sudden meta-
morphosis. This serious business smoothly got over,
he received priest's orders, and then set to work to learn
the rites belonging to his function. In a month he was
prepared for the ordeal, terrible to the young priest, of the
'première Messe'; and, like De Rancé, shunning publicity
on the occasion, he performed the Holy Office in the crypt
of the Church of St. Geneviève.
In 1681 he bade a glad farewell to Versailles, and took
up his residence at Aulnai. The situation of his abbey
and the scenery were exactly suited to his tastes in
those matters. D'Olivet describes it as 'une solitude
agréablement située dans le Boccage qui est le canton le
plus riant de la Basse Normandie¹.' Huet himself says:-
Such is the variety of hills, valleys, groves, meadows, fields, foun-
tains, rivulets, gardens, trees, either in clumps or in long rows, that I
recollected nothing more pleasant and refreshing. Add to this the
salubrity of the air and the sweet tranquillity of the spot; so that if
Providence had granted me the power of choosing a retreat to my
own fancy, I should have wished for nothing different from this.
Though driven from it by the approach of winter, yet when I had
once tasted its delights, I returned thither with the greatest satisfaction
every year at the earliest flight of the swallow and the first song of
the nightingale. There I passed whole summers in charming retire-
ment, occupied day and night in meditating abstruse points, for the
study of which I had never found so suitable a residence².
The reader will perhaps prefer to dispense with the Latin
lyrics (Ionici a majore, we believe they are called), which
wind up the praises of this Tempe.
Ten pleasant summers were passed in this charming
retirement. For the winters he retreated to Caen, or
more generally to Paris. Poetry and philosophy, pious
1
Éloge de Huet.
2 Memoirs.
282
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
meditation, and modern literature, with society, elegant or
learned, filled up the smooth-gliding days. 'It is but a five
days' journey from Paris to Caen,' he writes to Bernard,
'there is a diligence once a week, the road excellent,
and my chariot shall meet you in Caen, if you will pay me
a visit here.' Bernard, Savilian Professor of Astronomy,
was residing in Paris as tutor to the Dukes of Grafton and
Northumberland. Upon no period of his life did Huet
look back with so much satisfaction. Aulnai was his
Tusculum, and he attached its name to his favourite work,
the Quaestiones Alnetanae. Is not this indeed the picture
of the lettered abbé in the Golden Age? Not the good-
humoured and luxurious sluggard, intrigant and bon-vivant,
and un peu athée, of the pre-revolution times. This was not
yet the age of-
•
happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.
Our Abbé is a real, nay a hard student, and recognizes his
sacred calling as an obligation to direct his reading to
sacred subjects, though without declining a wholesome
mixture of others. We need not doubt which side he
took in the dispute just now agitating the convents on the
subject of 'profane learning,' between Mabillon and De
Rancé. Huet, devout as he was, could not but lament the
extravagant folly of the noble fanatic in interdicting the
religious from all studies. He writes to Mabillon on
the publication of the excellent little Traité des Études
Monastiques :-
Aulnai, 13th August, 1691.—I am delighted that you have under-
taken to disabuse them [the religious] of what has been so indus-
triously inculcated of late years, namely, that ignorance is a necessary
quality of a good religious. I am at this moment in a place where I
have found this doctrine upheld-a doctrine so favourable to idleness
in the cloister, which is the parent of all kinds of laxity. In vain I
cite your example, and that of your illustrious brethren. But your
book may do some good, if only I can prevail on them to read it.
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
*
STUDIES AT AULNAI.
283
But that may be difficult, as when one is in love with one's faults
one shuns their remedies.
Now it was that Huet revived his Hebrew learning,
added to it Syriac and Arabic, above all addicted himself
to philosophy, going back to the sources, examining the
earliest Greek philosophers, and for this purpose making
Diogenes Laertius his constant companion. Yet there was
a weakness about this life, and it is fatally apparent in the
products of it. His zeal of study, his interest in the
subjects, was not relaxed; his pen (as the phrase is) was
more fluent than ever. Yet none of the works-and they
are many-which he produced after 1681 can add to his
reputation. He is copious and multifarious without being
laborious. We see no more of the massive erudition of
the Origeniana, nothing of the comprehensive method of
the Demonstratio. Is this simply to be ascribed to age,
and his having wasted his ten best years on the Dauphin
and the Delphin Classics? Or was it that he had got upon
an alien subject, for which his powers were really unfitted?
Or, lastly, was it the discouraging circumstances of the
times, the general neglect of learning, the absorption of all
interest into frivolous and fanatical theological quarrels?
That all these causes contributed is probable. But we are
more inclined to refer the falling off in vigour, and grasp,
and work, to the very ease and comfort of his outward
existence. College endowments are often a temptation to
stop short in the path of solid learning; cathedral chapters
have been singularly unprolific of works of earnest labour
or severe thought. To the sleek and dignified Abbé litera-
ture had become an amusement, no longer the serious
business and occupation of life. Turned fifty, and having
achieved what Huet had done-Origen, the Demonstratio,
and the Delphin Classics,-he could not be blamed for
this. Had he retired from the field altogether, he had
retired with honour. But he continued on the contrary to
write and publish, and only ceased to give the mind and
284
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
toil which had made his first productions valuable. Scho-
lars, philosophers, or poets, have an undoubted right to
enjoy themselves in their own way; and the spectacle
of an independent leisure amused and adorned by litera-
ture is one we love to contemplate. But if they write, it
must not be alleged in defence of shortcomings that they
only write for amusement. To write is to deliver opinions
and to instruct others, who in a greater or less degree
depend on what they read for guidance. An opinion
then, crudely formed, hastily expressed, inadequately ex-
pounded, weakly defended, yet backed by a name per-
haps deservedly eminent, is an offence to be visited with
all the rigours of criticism.
Before we proceed to give some account of Huet's
philosophical writings, we must notice what was really
only a short interlude in his musing life—his episcopate.
In 1685 he was nominated by the King to the see of
Soissons, but never was more than bishop-designate
of that place. No instruments of any kind could be
obtained from Rome during the embroilment of the
Court of France with the Papal See. In the meantime
he had exchanged Soissons for Avranches with another
bishop-designate-Brulart, whose native place of Sillery
was in the neighbourhood of Soissons, as Avranches was
of Caen. On the arrangement of matters between Louis
and Innocent he was consecrated bishop, in 1692. He
filled the see only seven years, when he voluntarily re-
signed it, and, in 1699, returned to the life of study which
he had learned to value more by the temporary estrange-
ment. The well-known anecdote to which we have
already alluded intimates to us that even during the years
of the episcopate the books were not laid aside. But we
must not hastily infer from the story that the episcopal
duties were neglected for the books. Far from this, he
set himself with an activity, not universal among prelates,
to look into the affairs of his diocese which the long
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
EPISCOPATE.
285
He
interregnum had thrown somewhat into disorder.
held annual visitations, made the acquaintance of all his
clergy, and promulgated an entirely new set of synodal
statutes for the regulation of the diocese, founded on the
primitive codes. These are extant, and are said by the
Abbé Des Roches to be a complete treatise of theology.
He was not fond of long sermons, and one of his orders is,
that the sermon or explanation of the Gospel should never
exceed half an hour. The Norman litigiousness extended
itself to his clergy, who were in the habit of going to law
with each other on the most frivolous matters. To check
this spirit, and to complete the work of the bringing in the
Huguenots to the Church, which his predecessor Froulai
had nearly achieved, appear to have been the only memor
able acts of his episcopate.
Avranches is proud of her bishop, whose name now
distinguishes a Place which occupies the site of the
cathedral. Of that church, at the door of which Henry II
received absolution for the murder of Becket, a single
stone, called 'la Pierre d'Henri II,' is all that remains.
But it was not, as the usually accurate Murray tells
us, the victim of a revolutionary mob. It had become
dilapidated from neglect; the roof fell and some chil-
dren were hurt by it; and the walls, being pronounced
dangerous, were pulled down by order of the maire in
1799.
The infirmities of the Bishop increased with his years;
he did not like the place for a residence, the water dis-
agreed with him, and he would not, in spite of the numerous
precedents for such a course, continue to hold the office
without discharging the duties. The see was not rich,
and he gladly accepted as a retirement the abbey of Fon-
tenai, two miles from Caen. He lived twenty-two years
after his resignation, partly at Fontenai, chiefly at Paris,
but with frequent visits in the season to the waters of
Bourbon. He neglected not the acts and thoughts of
286
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
piety, but the studies which had been the pursuit of his
youth were the solace of his age. No works of any
moment were to be expected from him, yet he continued
to evince his lively interest in letters by occasional pieces.
It was now that he compiled the Origines de Caen, of
which we have before spoken. He would turn off short
pieces in French while riding in his carriage through
the streets, and he continually added to his Latin com-
positions. He had already fixed on the future owners of
his cherished books, of which in so long a life he had
amassed not a few. He had seen with grief De Thou's
magnificent collection dispersed under the hammer, and he
could not bear the thought that his own should undergo
the same fate. To the man who is destitute of living ties
of affection, books become an object of attachment. Nor
is it wonderful, when we consider the communion his mind
has held with them; they have been more to him than friends.
Cujas, the civil lawyer, directed in his will that his library
should be sold separately, jealous that any one man should
possess what he had possessed. Huet's desire was to keep
his together. He made an agreement with the Jesuit house
in Paris, by which he made over to them his collection, by
a deed of gift, stipulating that he should enjoy the use of
it during the remainder of his life, and apartments in
their Maison Professe in the Rue St. Antoine. None of
the books were on any account to be taken out of the
library, and in every one of the volumes was to be entered
the caution, 'Ne extra hanc bibliothecam efferatur.' Ménage
followed his example, and the popularity of the Jesuits
soon swelled their store till it became one of the most
considerable in Paris. Little could Huet foresee the short
duration of the perpetuity he thought he had thus secured,
and that within half a century after his death public pro-
scription would strike this powerful society, and confis-
cation disperse their fine library. Many of Huet's books,
after various migrations, are at present deposited in the
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
THE MAISON PROFESSE.
287
somewhat perilous locality of the Hôtel de Ville¹. They
had had one narrow escape before they reached the Rue
St. Antoine. The room of which Huet was locataire had
long been ruinous, and one day fell in altogether while he
was absent, and the volumes lay exposed for the passers-by
to help themselves, till the Jesuit Pères heard of the acci-
dent and came to their rescue.
In the Maison Professe he enjoyed apartments with
a north aspect, which he preferred, and the society of
his friends. Bourdaloue, an inmate of the same roof,
visited him almost every evening, and told him the events
of the day. Twice a week his friends met by agreement
at a fixed hour at his room, and this private reception
became almost a petite académie of veteran literati.
In the summer he sometimes removed to Fontenai, and
sometimes to the baths of Bourbon. From the waters
he found great benefit in his declining years. The
physicians of the place insisted on very strict rules of
diet, and, above all, prohibited study. Huet, who had
nearly doubled the years that ought to make a man his
own physician, would neither alter his diet nor give up his
books. Read he would himself, and he seems to have set
the fashion at Bourbon, for he tells a pleasant story of how
he caught 'an elegant and modest young lady,' Marie de
Rochechouart, reading a pocket Plato in a corner.
But in spite of the Bourbon waters a man cannot pass
three score and ten with perfect immunity. Every year
brought a new ailment, or took away a friend. First he
lost Bourdaloue; in the same year his eldest sister, a
woman of great sense and piety. Then another sister
who was retired into a convent of the Visitation, and to
whom he had been much attached. Both of them had passed
their eightieth year. These were so many warnings, but
his time was still distant. After he was turned seventy he
1
¹ [Mr. Pattison's presentiment has proved but too well founded; the books, like
the Hôtel de Ville itself, were destroyed by fire during the reign of the Commune.]
288
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
;
had his first attack of the gout, and completely got the
better of it so as never to be troubled with it again. In
1712, when upwards of eighty, he had so severe an illness
that he was given over by the physicians, and received the
last rites. He recovered, but says that neither his senses
nor his memory were ever again what they had been
before the attack. Up to this illness he had not been used
to employ a reader or an amanuensis. Yet it was after this
that he drew up, at the request of friends, those Memoirs
of his life on which our narrative has been chiefly founded,
and also threw together the miscellaneous observations
which were published after his death as the Huetiana. A
few days before he died he recovered his memory, and
all his mental powers in their full vigour. 'He employed
the precious moments,' says the Abbé Olivet, 'in acts of
religion, and died peaceful and full of trust in God.'
The event took place in the Jesuit house in Paris,
January 26th, 1721, in the ninety-first year of his age.
His portrait has been engraved on copper by Edelinck.
That prefixed to the Leipzig reprint of the Demonstratio
was a spurious affair, making him, so he himself thought,
look like a groom or porter, with a round, heavy, vacant
countenance. His complexion was of unusual paleness.
Though naturally of a robust constitution, studious habits
had enfeebled the powers of his stomach, and he was,
as Lord Bacon says of himself, 'all his life puddering with
physic.' He held it a vulgar error that a learned life was
unfavourable to health, and used to cite the many instances
of the longevity of men of letters. His diet was temperate,
not to say sparing. After forty he ceased to eat supper,
and at dinner only partook of plain dishes, avoiding
ragouts, and mixing with his water scarcely an eighth
part of wine. In the evening he drank a dish of tea,
or of a medicinal broth, known as Delorme's 'bouillon
rouge.' A strange affection of the legs which almost
took from him the use of them was ascribed by his
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
DEATH.
CONSTITUTION AND HABITS.
289
physician to the hot-water bottle, which he had em-
ployed all his life as a remedy for cold feet. Later he
was subject to frequent slight attacks of bilious fever,
for which he found the waters of Bourbon efficacious. It
gratified him to remember that this had been the malady
of the great Lipsius. In society he was agreeable and
fond of conversation, in which nothing like pedantry or
display of learning appeared. In private life he was
amiable, though a little too sensitive of slight or neglect.
It is hinted by his friend and admirer, the Abbé Olivet,
that he was not altogether free from Norman pugnacity,
and fondness for the chicane and technicalities of law.
His piety was consistent and ardent, but he did not fall
in with the devoteeism which prevailed in the later years
of Louis XIV. For forty years he never omitted spending
two or three hours every day on the study of the Scriptures,
regarding the sacred books, he says, 'not only as the source.
of religion, but as of all books the most fitted to form and
exercise the man of learning.' As a priest he was bound
to, and observed, the daily recital of his breviary. One of
his chaplains (after he was bishop) took notice that in the
performance of this duty he ran over the office with his
eye only, without pronouncing the words, and remarked it
to him. 'I did not know' said the Bishop, 'that this was
the requirement of the Church; but, as it is so, I shall
immediately conform to it.' Religious feeling, indeed,
was hereditary in Huet. His father had been brought
up a Protestant, and had been converted to Catholicism,
not in the later days of the wholesale conversions by
order of Government, but after a long and anxious study
of the subject. 'Sa conversion se fit,' says Huet, ‘en
connaissance de cause.' His son found among his papers
a thick volume of notes and memoranda on the contro-
verted points, including a statement of the reasons which
had determined his decision. His second sister, having
been left a widow, retired at fifty into a convent of the
VOL. I.
U
290
PETER DANIEL HUET.
VIII.
Visitation of Caen. His third sister took the vows at
an early age in the celebrated abbey of Dominican nuns
at Pont-l'Évêque. Here she killed herself by excessive
austerities, dying of a complaint brought on by total ab-
stinence from all liquids.
Huet's rank as a writer will have been gathered from
the preceding pages. It will be seen that he belongs to
the class which German writers on the History of Litera-
ture have denominated Polymaths.' There were few
accessible subjects into which he had not gone, and
he had distributed his attention pretty equally among
a large number of them. We cannot say that he shows
any declared aptitude for one of them above the rest.
This was the natural constitution of his mind. He says
justly of himself, 'In whatever branch of knowledge it
has been my fortune to be at any time deeply engaged,
the riches and beauties I have discerned in it have made
me envy the men who had given themselves up to
the cultivation of it.' He has here described the feelings
of the youthful student when he first gazes from the
heights on the fair fields of knowledge; they were Huet's
feelings throughout his life. To a student gifted with this
universality of taste there are two roads open, if he wishes
to make his faculty available, and abhors, as all men
with a true genius for knowledge must, the superficial.
He may pursue all the separate sciences he engages in
so far as to found on his cursory knowledge of each
a profound study of the powers of the human mind,
the progress of knowledge, past and to come, the history
and destinies of the human race; or he may select some
one science to be followed to its limits, using his proficiency
in other branches as aids in that chosen subject. No one
knew this better than Huet, or has stated it better, but he
did not act on it. He took neither of these courses, and
having followed many topics farther than most men, he is
not a master on any one. On none of the themes that
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CHARACTER OF HIS WRITINGS.
291
he handled has he left the unmistakable mark of genius;
though for some he has shown unusual aptitude. Meta-
physics, theology, philology, classical editing, both Greek
and Latin, archaeology, special topography, physics, poetry,
fiction, and general literature, all these have been touched
by his pen; in none of them has he erected the 'monu-
mentum aere perennius.' His remarks on general subjects
are always worth reading; but they show the man of
extensive learning rather than the master-mind. He wrote
in both French and Latin, but he evidently preferred the
latter. His vernacular style never shook off the effects of
so many years of the vie de province. Like our Scottish-
English writers of the last century, he avoids provincial
vulgarity at the expense of idiom, and is correct without
being elegant. He was very sensitive to the gibes made
upon his French by the wits-the régenteaux à l'Université,
as he calls them. 'Do they pretend that I have been forty
years at the very source of purity, and thirty member of
the Academy, for nothing¹?' His Latin is Jesuit-Latin-
faultless, fluent, and perfectly clear. Yet with these merits,
or what ought to be merits, it is not pleasant reading from
its want of character and its insipidity. It is like filtered
water from which all savour has been strained away with
the impurities. He himself has remarked the oratorical
character of the Jesuit-Latin style, and has ascribed it to
their habit of regenting, or holding vivâ voce disputations,
in their colleges. The cause, however, lies deeper than
this; and the nature of Jesuit education is faithfully re-
flected in the smooth monotony of their Latin.
In his outward fortunes Huet offers a rare exception
to the ordinary career of the great scholars. In his
case his private means secured him against that painful
struggle with penury which makes so much of the
history of many men of learning, in an age and a country
where Church endowments absorbed a large part of
1 Letter of December 12th, 1702, to T. Martin.
U 2
292
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
the national wealth. His subsequent promotion was
owing to the accident of having been selected for the
post of Preceptor to the Dauphin. But his own ardour
of study was pure and independent of such aims. Fond
of society, flattered by the notice of the great, vain of
social distinction,-all these inclinations were overcome
by the yet more absorbing passion for knowledge. For
this he resigned court life and a bishopric, and, if he
may be believed, found his reward in doing so.
Those men make a great mistake who turn to study with a view
to arrive by it at honours and riches. The retirement, the inaction,
the unfitness for business and the common occupations of life, the
habit of interior meditation and abstraction, are not qualities which
equip us for the road of fortune. But there were men of old, Demo-
critus, Epimenides, and others, who held themselves recompensed
for the sacrifice of the favours of the world by the pleasures of the
mind-pleasures more vivid, exciting, and elevating than any others.
He on whose cradle the Muse has smiled will hold cheap the ap-
plause of the multitude, the seductions of wealth and honours, and
will seek the rewards of his labour in itself. He will not be repelled
by its infiniteness, or its unfruitfulness-rather his passion for ac-
quisition will grow with the extent of his acquisitions. These are not
unmeaning words of praise; I speak of what I have experienced-an
experience which length of days has only confirmed. If anything
could make me desire my life prolonged, it would be to have time to
learn that of which I am still ignorant. As for Joseph Scaliger, who
said 'that if he had had ten sons he would not have brought up one
to his own career, but would have sent them to seek preferment in
the courts of princes,' he held language unworthy of his eminent
learning-language, too, contradicted by his own life-long pursuit of
knowledge.
We are not now holding up such lives as Huet's and
Scaliger's as models for general imitation; but it may at
least correct our judgments to recollect what we are
too much given to overlook in our comparative estimate of
literature as a profession, namely, the satisfactions which
may be drawn from the pursuit of it for its own sake.
Compared with the other professions, as a profession, it
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
LITERATURE AS A PROFESSION.
293
may deserve the accusations which disappointed writers
have heaped on it. If you want a livelihood and a worthy
career, still more, if your ambition ascends to fame, honours,
wealth, seek it not by authorship; seek it in trade, on the
stock-exchange, at the bar. The chosen few only in whom
the appetite for knowledge with which all are born has
not been quenched by the more vehement passions, love,
ambition, or avarice, may see in a life like that of Huet that
it is as possible to find happiness in the pursuit of know-
ledge as in the pursuit of any other object. This is the
proper moral of a literary biography. The moral commonly
drawn is either that pre-eminence in letters leads to the
usual rewards, as surely as any other excellence; or, that
mediocrity in literature, unlike mediocrity in other pursuits,
leads to failure. These observations are often true, but
they are not the main truth.
The subject of philosophy was that which principally
engaged his attention during the latter half of his life, and
it was by the opinions he promulgated on it that he became
most widely known throughout the learned world, and
excited the greatest amount of opposition and hostility.
His first publication of this sort, Censura Philosophiae
Cartesianae, appeared in 1689. The last, the Traité Philo-
sophique de la Foiblesse de l'Esprit Humain, was published
posthumously at Amsterdam, in 1723. However slight may
be the intrinsic merit of these works, yet the positions taken
up in them, and the storm of controversy raised, especially
by the last, make them important features in the history
of modern philosophy. The History of Cartesianism after
the death of its founder has still to be written; and though so
much has been published on Descartes himself, we know
no source to which we can turn for a view of the fortunes
of his system, though two fragments of M. Cousin are
most important contributions to it. The remarks which
follow will be strictly confined to the personal share which
the Bishop of Avranches had in these controversies.
294
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
:
+
:
The seventeenth century witnessed the rise and growth of
a vernacular literature in France. This growth and expan-
sion was not accomplished without a violent struggle with
the old learning and literature. In the preceding century,
the sixteenth, nothing that can be called a French literature
existed. All books of solid character were composed in
Latin, and addressed to a learned and a European public.
In the eighteenth century Latin is entirely disused, and
French writers, on whatever subjects, address a French-
reading public and in French. During the intermediate
period, the latter half of the seventeenth century, the
authors and their readers were separated into two camps:
the adherents of the old school who used Latin, the
converts of the new who employed French. But the
language was but the dress or uniform by which the
respective armies were distinguished. Their character,
subjects, method, opinions, were wholly distinct and irre-
concilable. The great modern revolution in thought to
which the Reformation was but the preface was then
commencing in earnest. It was not merely a change of
opinion on speculative points of theology, or metaphysics,
but an entire metamorphosis of the human mind and all its
habits. Any such total change must imply as its pre-
liminary a revolution in philosophy, and that revolution
was due in France to Descartes. His principal doctrines
must be well known to our readers. There was in them
a mighty power of truth, with a vast addition of fantastic
error. But it is not requisite for our purpose to recall any
one of Descartes' doctrines; for the term Cartesianism, as
applied after Descartes' death (1651), must not be taken to
mean only those peculiar dogmas on Physics and Meta-
physics which he had promulgated. It was the title, either
of convenience or opprobrium, which the men of the old
learning fastened on their opponents, on the men of
progress, of free thought. The battle was nominally
fought under the banner of Aristotle on the one side and
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CARTESIANISM.
295
Descartes on the other-the Aristotelian orthodoxy and
the Cartesian heresy; but it was really only another epoch
of the old struggle, between a dead tradition and the living
energy of mind; between conventional formulae, which had
long ceased to mean anything, and a serious faith. The
course and issue of such a conflict could not be doubtful.
All the genius, the original thinkers, the wits, and the
popular writers, fell in of course with the movement.
The Jansenists, or the religious party, the Oratorians,
who had succeeded the Jesuits as the most successful
teachers, the higher clergy, Bossuet as well as Fénelon,
were, in the extended sense of the term, Cartesians, whether
or no they rejected substantial forms, or had ever heard of
the Vortices. On the other side were ranged the lower
clergy, whose ignorance removed them from any intellec-
tual influences; the universities, the lawyers, and the men
of business; and above all the Jesuits. The Jesuits set in
motion the arms of authority-the French Government,
which they were able to command, and the See of Rome,
the inveterate enemy of intellectual progress. It will be
easily understood how Huet came to be found in the ranks
of the antiquated party. He was intimately lie with the
Jesuits; he had been brought up at La Flèche; he re-
turned in old age to be an inmate of their Maison Professe
in Paris. He did not like Bossuet, who eclipsed him at
court, and held him at a distance. He was on friendly
terms with the lawyers, and all the men of sense (les gens
sensés) detested this new-fangled nonsense, which they
were sure the Jansenists had only taken up out of spite to
the Jesuits. But, above all, Huet was devotedly attached
to classical studies, and it was an error, though a natural
one, of the new school to pour unmeasured contempt upon
the ancients. This lies at the bottom of Huet's anti-
Cartesianism. He is ever complaining of the neglect of
antiquity, of the growing ignorance of Greek and Latin,
and the decay of sound philological lore—all which he
296
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
ascribed to Cartesianism; and rightly so, if the term be
taken in the extended sense we have given it. His Censura
is professedly directed against 'that audacious contemner
of Christian and ancient learning' (meaning Descartes).
Madame de Sévigné, who honestly believed that the haute
noblesse disposed at will of the souls of authors as of
the bodies of the peasants, thought he wrote against
Descartes to please the Duke of Montausier. M. Bar-
tholmèss thinks Huet was converted by a letter of Isaac
Voss. Not so. Huet belonged by nature and pursuits to
the past world.
Huet fought Cartesianism with two weapons-argument
and ridicule. The ridicule is contained in the Nouveaux
Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cartésianisme. He
dictated this to a secretary at a time when his eyes were
weak and he was precluded from more serious study. He
calls it a jocular romance, 'ludicra fabula.' But the jest is
extremely thin. It is, in fact, a poor imitation of the Père
Daniel's Voyage du Monde de Descartes-itself not
a very felicitous performance. The Jesuits have never
succeeded in humour, which requires a geniality, a native
growth and raciness of character, to which their education
is directly opposite. Huet pretends to disclose the secret
that Descartes had not, as had hitherto been believed, died
in Sweden. Like another Zalmoxis, he had feigned death
and had a mock funeral, but had really retired into Finland,
wearied of maintaining so long the onerous dignity of
oracle of mankind. Here had gathered round him a small
academy of young Laps, to whom he laid down the law in
all the comfort of incognito.
The foppery of Descartes, his green coat and cap with
the white feather, are not omitted, and we may recognise
the philosopher even in Huet's dim water-colour drawing.
But it was not easy for humour to make a man like
Descartes ridiculous; and as D'Alembert says, 'S'il fallait
absolument que le ridicule restât à quelqu'un, ce ne serait
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
CENSURA PHILOSOPHIAE CARTESIANAE.
297
pas à Descartes.' Huet's serious polemic is not much more
formidable. This is the Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae,
written in Latin. It is chiefly noticeable in the history of
the controversy as having called out the reply of Sylvain
Regis¹—a reply of which Fontenelle has said that it is a
model of moderate and courteous controversy. To the
personalities of Huet-and Huet, who is always complaining
of 'la médisance des gens de Caen, leur vice favori,' had
not been sparing of banter more angry than smart-Regis
makes no retort. Over the argumentation of Huet, vague,
declamatory, and superficial, Regis had no difficult victory.
He exposes with calm superiority the misunderstandings
of an antagonist who never penetrates into the real meaning
of the points at issue; who has no more grasp of the views
of Descartes than he has of those of which he professes to
be the champion, and who deals only in external analogies
collected on the surface. After the labours of Dugald
Stewart and Cousin, the true sense of the 'Cogito, ergo
sum' is known to even the tiro in metaphysics. It was
completely mistaken by Huet, who cannot distinguish it
from Pyrrhonism; nowhere can a more luminous and
correct exposition of it be found than in this brochure of
Sylvain Regis. That Bossuet preserved a total silence to
Huet on his book, and that Arnauld openly disapproved, is
as much to be ascribed to their sense of its incompetency
as to their Cartesian leanings. Huet was much more in
his sphere in determining the Situation of the Terrestrial
Paradise (1691), and in describing the Voyages of
Solomon's Navy round the Cape of Good Hope (1698)
-divertisements with which he relieved his more serious
pursuits.
We now come in the last place to the mention of Huet's
peculiar philosophical opinions, which attracted much
more notice than his feeble polemic against the Cartesians.
It is remarkable that the eccentric book in which these
¹ P. D. Huetii Censura, etc. Paris, 1692.
298
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
opinions were broached, was not the inconsiderate effusion
of his youth, but the deliberate meditations of his old age.
The first rédaction of the Traité Philosophique, etc., was
drawn out in 1690, and for the remaining thirty years of
his life, to his last moments, he was continually retouching
it. He spent as much labour on it as Bacon on the
Novum Organon. He wrote it in French, then translated
it into Latin, and made several copies of it, which he
entrusted to different persons to secure its publication.
But he foresaw the storm it would raise, and never could
resolve on bringing it out himself, and so expose himself to
the attacks of those whom he was wont to call 'the vulgar
of the republic of letters.' The French original was
published by the Abbé Olivet, in 1723, a year after the
author's death. The outcry was immediate and universal.
The communication of books was quicker then than it has
ever been since till the last few years; the book was imme-
diately translated into German and into English. The echo
of the clamour is preserved in the periodical literature of
the next ten years. Refutations appeared in every quarter
of Europe, even in Italy. In Holland it was answered by
Crousaz, the leader of the Cartesians there; in Italy by
Muratori. So great was the scandal that it seemed to
extend by implication to everything connected with Huet,
among the rest to the Jesuits. They endeavoured to
extricate themselves by roundly asserting that the book
was spurious. But that evasion was speedily stopped by
Olivet's producing the original manuscript as a voucher; he
referred the authenticity of it to the forty of the Academy.
The sensation excited was not due to any book-merits in
the treatise itself. It has not the weight of a profound
discussion; it has not the popularity of an elegant essay.
The very same opinions had been broached by Huet in an
earlier work, without attracting any general attention—in
the Quaestiones Alnetanae (1690),—a work which, like
Hume's Treatise, might be said to have 'fallen still-born
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
TRAITÉ DE LA FOIBLESSE.
299
from the press.' What made the Traité de la Foiblesse
tell, was the high character of the author, known to have
spent an unusually long life in study and religious exercises,
and its inconsistency with his whole career. It seemed,
says Voltaire, who reports the opinion of the world, that the
Traité de la Foiblesse contradicted the Demonstratio.
A bishop of eminent piety, the bosom friend of Bourdaloue,
the élève and inmate of the Jesuits, the savant of whom
Le Clerc could say without contradiction that 'he was the
most learned man left in Europe'-had left, as his last
legacy to his fellow-men, a work of the most outrageous
scepticism.
The term scepticism has come to be so peculiarly applied
to religious doubt, that it may be necessary to say that we
mean it at present in its original sense,-philosophical doubt.
The two have indeed sometimes gone together, as in Hume.
More often they have been separate; the peculiarity of
Huet's case was, that he aimed to build religious certainty on
philosophical doubt. The drift of the Traité de la Foiblesse
is summed up in the sentence already enunciated in the
Quaestiones Alnetanae-'Ad credendum utile esse non
credere.' His Pyrrhonism is the porch or gateway to the
Christian faith. Scepticism becomes the instrument, the
'New Organon,' of religion. Human reason had been
variously treated as an impediment or aid, as preparatory or
supplementary to faith. Huet removes it altogether. We
know and can know nothing. Not only scientific, but
ordinary knowledge is impossible; our perceptions are
illusory, our ideas baseless, our reasonings fallacious. No-
thing is certain but the revealed doctrines of the Christian
faith. As the ancient school of Pyrrhonists had made
this doubt the foundation of a scheme of life and action,
-that, viz., of passive indifference to good or ill fortune--
so Huet builds on his doubt the Christian blessedness, the
peace of God.
The Traité de la Foiblesse, a small 12mo volume of
300
PETER DANIEL HUET.
VIII.
barely 300 pages, is divided into three parts. The first
offers to prove the proposition, that the human under-
standing cannot by aid of the reason only attain any certain
knowledge of truth; the second part explains the right
method of philosophizing; and the third meets objections.
The metaphysical proofs offer nothing original; nor are
they stated with any precision or peculiar skill. They are
the old Pyrrhonian arguments, collected from all sides--
largely from Sextus Empiricus; and M. Bartholmèss has
traced Huet's obligations to Martin Shoock's De Scepti-
cismo, by means of the Bishop's own copy, now in the
Library in Paris. It is curious to see in what condition
the celebrated argument, afterwards pushed to its furthest
consequence by Berkeley and Hume, appears in the Traité.
It stands the very first of the metaphysical proofs.
Qui est qui osera dire, que l'image, ou ombre, ou espèce, qui
s'écoule de ce corps extérieur, qui se présente à nous, est sa véritable
ressemblance, sans aucune différence? . . . Par quel art, par quelle
industrie mon entendement, qui juge de cette ressemblance, peut-il
comparer cet objet extérieur avec son image? puisque l'un et l'autre
sont hors de mon entendement ?
Those who are at all acquainted with the history of
the representative theory of perception will not fail to
perceive two things. First, as a psychological statement,
how far short that of Huet falls of the point to which
Berkeley and Hume extended the same observation of
which we have here the rudiments; and, secondly, how
much more keen, skilful, and efficacious as a weapon of
scepticism is the use Hume makes of the discovery. How
do you know that the sensible species you perceive is a
true copy of the material object? Do you not irresistibly
believe,' says Hume, 'that the sensible image you perceive
is a true copy of the external object from which it emanates?
Yet you see you have no means of knowing that there is
any external object at all behind it. Therefore, you find
yourself irresistibly impelled to a belief for which you see
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
TRAITÉ DE LA FOIBLESSE.
301
there can be no grounds!' We may further observe that
the argument against causation does not appear in the
Traité. He could not have been acquainted with Joseph
Glanvill, as he was ignorant of English, and Glanvill had not
been translated. There are traces, we think, that Hume
had read the tracts of Huet; though the chief points of
sceptical metaphysics were so abundantly scattered over
the fugitive literature of the period, that they would be
unconsciously imbibed by anybody whose mind was
occupied on the subject. And so it might easily be,
that the argument from the insecurity of arithmetical
processes, which occurs in the Quaestiones Alnetanae,
might be suggested to Hume by some casual book, and
yet made his own by subsequent reflection in the way
in which he appropriates it in the Treatise of Human
Nature. There is no branch of criticism so delicate as
that whose office it is to track the transmission of thought
in books. There are a few notable and distinctly proved
cases of plagiarism. These cases apart, there are not many
in which it is possible to affirm that one philosopher bor-
rowed from any particular predecessor. In such researches
resemblances are mistaken for parallels, parallels are
construed into appropriations. It might be a curious
amusement for any person having time on his hands,
to take such a book, say, as Hume's Essays, and to
trace each idea back into previous literature. The result
would have a far higher importance than any detection
of individual plagiarism, which in so original a thinker as
Hume would hardly have any place. It might supply
materials to a future historian of philosophy-it might
illustrate that process by which the grand masses of
thought, deposited in earlier ages, become ground down
into the diluvial surface spread over modern literature.
On the origin and on the nature of that particular alliance
between scepticism and belief, of which Huet is so illustri-
ous an example, a few general remarks may be made.
302
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
Its origin may be assigned readily enough to the gradual
progress of the human mind in the seventeenth century.
The history of philosophy in that century is summed up in
the one fact of its emancipation of thought from control.
Guided by this clue, we shall find our way easily through
all the fantastic errors, or the jarring controversies of the
various sects. The opposite schools of Gassendists and
Cartesians were at variance with each other, but they
were one and all struggling with the authority of the
Church. That war was internecine. The systems of
Descartes and of Gassendi might be mixed with enormous
error, but their errors no less than their truths tended to
one point, the awakening and general spirit of free inquiry.
Well does Dugald Stewart ask, 'Whether the truths which
Descartes taught, or the errors into which he fell, were
more instructive to the world?' Bit by bit the several
provinces of human knowledge were being conquered
from the despotism of the old traditional system. But this
progress was not obtained without the most pertinacious
resistance on the part of authority. We have seen above
how they employed physical force to crush the opinions
which they disliked; they also employed argument. The
writers against Cartesianism were as numerous, perhaps
as well informed, as its supporters. Their arguments on
the special points of controversy were at least no worse, their
errors not greater, perhaps not so great as those of the
advocates of the new opinions. Yet they lost ground
every day, not because they were beaten in the argument
on the controverted points, but because the ground of
authority, the real ground on which they rested, was
shaking under them. The Jesuit polemics might ridicule
the vortices, might upset the innate ideas, might plausibly
defend the substantial forms. All these victories in detail
had no effect whatever on the general result of the war,
never arrested for one moment the growing confidence of
the human mind in its right to independence. What was
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
SCEPTICISM AND BELIEF.
303
When
to be done? Should they withdraw their forces from the
extended frontier they were vainly endeavouring to cover,
and concentrate their whole strength for the defence of the
capital? Should they, that is, resign the Church's claims
to dictate a creed on physical science, philosophy, morals,
politics, in order to strengthen and secure her authority
on religion? This was what the more far-sighted and
moderate among the Conservative party were willing to do.
But they conceived the desperate design of first ruining
the territory they were preparing to evacuate. Before
philosophy was handed over to the philosophers, the old
Aristotelian citadel was to be blown into the air.
the human mind entered on the inheritance it had conquered
at so much cost, it should find nothing but the arid desert
of scepticism awaiting it. This was the enterprise that
Huet undertook. A theologian and a scholar rather than
a metaphysician, he was a devoted adherent of the old
system with which all the stores of learning, classical and
modern, had become identified. Things had changed their
position since the time of Erasmus. Then the men of learn-
ing, the scholars, were reformers; now the reformers were
a class of men who depreciated book-knowledge. But Huet,
though hating Cartesianism for its innovating and destruc-
tive character, had no philosophical conviction of the truth
of Aristotelianism. He cared, not for Aristotle, but for the
treasures of wisdom which rested, or seemed to rest, on the
foundation of Aristotle. If these could be saved in any
other way, he would willingly give up the Aristotelian
metaphysic.
It will thus be seen that Huet, the sceptic, must be
referred to that class of philosophers who have taken up
philosophy, not as an end, but as a means—not for its own
sake, but for the support of religion. We do not mean that
he was insincere in what he wrote, but that he was not a
genuine metaphysician. Le Clerc is certainly wrong when
he says that he regards all that his friend had written on
304
VIII. PETER DANIEL HUET.
that subject as 'pures badineries'; but we must agree in
his sentence that 'reasoning on abstract subjects was not
Huet's forte.' His insight was too deep to allow his philo-
sophy to be a mere disguise; it was not deep enough to
give his thoughts any real philosophical value. Huet's
scepticism was no hypocrisy, it was not put on, in the
Jesuit spirit, for the sake of serving the Church. It was
a suit of clothes, not a mask; only we see the scholar
peeping through the holes in the cloak of Pyrrho—' in quâ
se transducebat Ulysses.' Now philosophical argument,
however ingenious, that is not the native growth of a
philosophic mind, is of as small worth as the most elegant
verses written by one who is no poet. But of all the forms
of philosophy, scepticism is that one which must be
absolutely worthless if not indigenous. For it is not a
doctrine, it is a state. It does not consist of a set of
propositions which may be reasoned upon by the under-
standing, while the sentiments are not engaged. It is a
crisis in the history of the mind which must occur, but
cannot be fabricated. When this condition does seize
a great and developed intellect, it is the most deeply
interesting phenomenon that the human mind offers for
our study. The Pensées of Pascal is such a disclosure.
What confers the inexpressible attraction which those
fragments have for all who think, is, that it is a real history
of the sorrows and conflicts of the understanding. Such
as scepticism, if it be a disease, is a disease that can only
take hold of a sincere mind; for it is caused by the
endeavour to reach a foundation for opinion, and the
struggle is desperate because it is felt to be one for life
or death. Of such terrible reality of conflict Huet was not
an instance. With him philosophical scepticism was a
tranquil doctrine, sincerely embraced indeed and ingeni-
ously defended—a paradox and nothing more. It neither
racked his soul, nor shortened his physical existence.
In the even tenor of his studious life, and his days
Quarterly Review, 1855.]
ATTITUDE TOWARDS PHILOSOPHY.
305
extended beyond the usual time by the cheerful enjoyment
of contemplation and reading, we may rather compare
him to some Greek philosopher of the New Academy
or the Garden; indeed, we may apply to him the very
words in which Valerius Maximus describes Carneades,
'Laboriosus et diuturnus sapientiae miles; siquidem,
nonaginta expletis annis, idem illi vivendi ac philoso-
phandi finis fuit.'
VOL. I.
X
IX.
A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY
HISTORY¹.
(Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.)
PART I.
F truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has its revenge
IF
in being truer than fact. It is the privilege of the
novelist, as of the artist, to place before us that truth
which is in things, but which is concealed by the facts.
The attempt has often been made, by artists of every
calibre, from Thackeray to Cuthbert Bede, to draw uni-
versity life. The celebrity of some of the authors has
diffused some of these sketches widely. Every one who
has read anything has probably read the adventures of
Arthur Pendennis at St. Boniface's.
Nor is Thackeray the only great writer who has sought
to place the life of Oxford or Cambridge on his canvas.
John Henry Newman, in Loss and Gain, Charles Kingsley,
in Alton Locke, have been attracted by some features
of the universities which seemed to them to afford a
groundwork for their ideal creations. Dr. Farrar's Julian
Home, Mr. Hughes's Tom Brown at Oxford, Verdant
Green, and Peter Priggins, are other attempts at various
levels to bring university manners before us.
All these I have named are of our day, and may still
be found in our circulating libraries. Such sketches soon
fade, and are replaced by newer portraits painted in the
costume of to-day. Many have preceded these and passed
away. Perhaps some of my present readers never heard
of Reginald Dalton, though it is a novel written by no
¹ [These articles were originally written and delivered as lectures.]
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
NOVELS AND UNIVERSITY LIFE.
307
less a person than Lockhart, son-in-law and biographer
of Scott, and editor of the Quarterly for many years.
As Charles Kingsley's vigorous boat race lives in the
memory of the readers of Alton Locke, so Lockhart
has transmitted in Reginald Dalton a vivid picture of
a town and gown row. He has also preserved the tra-
dition, at least I know not where else it is to be found,
of the window in Hertford College out of which Charles
J. Fox leapt in order to join in one. Still less known-
rather, totally unknown-is the spirited sketch of Mr.
Dickinson, called Vincent Eden, which has never emerged
from the pages of the magazine in which it first appeared.
If Reginald Dalton, which is only fifty years old, has
sunk below the horizon, I may assume that Tom Warton's
slight sketch of the day of a fellow of a college is as
unknown to the modern world as if it were a classic.
Tom Warton, as he was familiarly called by his brother
academicians, who were proud of his learning and fond
of his sociable qualities, was himself a Fellow of Trinity,
Oxford. He, therefore, discreetly places his fellow of a
college at Cambridge. I will quote a few sentences of
it:-'9. Turned off my bedmaker for waking me at eight.
Consulted my weather-glass. No hopes of a ride before
dinner. 10. After breakfast transcribed half a sermon
from Dr. Hickman. N.B. never to transcribe any more
from Calamy. Mrs. Pilcocks, at my curacy, has one
volume of Calamy lying in her parlour-window. II. Into
the cellar. Mem. My mountain will be fit to drink in
a month's time. To remove the five year old port
into the new bin. 12. Shaved. Barber's hand shakes.
1. Dined alone in my room on a sole. Shrimp sauce
not so good as Mr. H. of Peterhouse and I used to eat
at the Mitre in Fleet Street. Sate down to a pint of
Madeira. Mr. H. surprised me over it. We finished
two bottles of port together, and were very cheerful.
To dine with Mr. H. at Peterhouse on Wednesday. One
X 2
308 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
of the dishes, a leg of pork and pease by my desire.
6. Newspaper in the common room. 7. Returned to my
room. Made a tiff of warm punch, and to bed before
nine. Did not fall asleep till ten, a young fellow-commoner
being very noisy over head,' etc., etc.
This is not painting from the life, but mere caricature.
I have quoted these few sentences not for their wit, but
because they indicate that whereas the tide of public
opinion now sets against the non-resident fellow, a cen-
tury ago it was the resident fellow for whose energies
college life furnished no proper outlet.
Of all these draughtsmen the one who has approached
nature most nearly is, as it seems to me, the author of
Pendennis. There is a sad reality about Arthur's career—
high hopes at the outset quenched in the petty miseries
of debt-brilliant talents wasted not in debauchery, but
in achieving social distinction-social distinction which
was confined to the undergraduate world-'the freshmen
did not know which was greatest, Pendennis of St.
Boniface or the Proctor.'
There have been many parodies of prize poems—but
was ever prize poem imitated so happily as by Thackeray?
-'A. P.'s poem did not get the prize, but all the men
of St. Boniface's knew that it ought to have got it,' when
the author presented them with copies splendidly bound
in morocco with gilt edges. Subject, The Crusades :-
On to the breach, ye
soldiers of the Cross,
Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss;
Ye dauntless archers, twang your crossbows well,
On, bill and battleaxe and mangonel;
Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult,
Jerusalem is ours! 'id Deus vult!'
To such fictitious representations as I have named
above, various as they are in power of drawing and
vividness of colour, one observation is generally applicable.
They present us only with one aspect of university life,
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
THE UNIVERSITY NOVEL.
309
and that its most superficial aspect. It is what I may
call the street view of life. The novelist sets up his
camera lucida in the middle of the High Street and lets
the passing figures mirror themselves as they flit to and
fro. He gives us what he sees. And he sees all from
the student's side. And as the worst regulated student's
life affords the most telling materials for fiction, it is
the life of the idle and disorderly which is usually pre-
sented for our edification by the novelist. In all these
drawings there is a level uniformity such as pervaded
the new comedy at Athens. In that stage of dramatic
development, the repertory of character was limited to
the young scapegrace in the capital, and his severe
governor from the country, the designing hetaera, and
the saucy slave who abetted his young master's dissi-
pations; and on this slender cast of parts the changes
were rung to infinite variety without novelty. So in the
university novel we have the stereotyped parts of the
fast undergraduate, beset by duns, contrasted with the
slow reading man in woollen socks and spectacles, who
is his foil and his butt-the deluded father, the inefficient
proctor, a pompous and incapable tutor, a gyp thievish
and patronizing, the breakfast and the wine-party, the
ruffian of the playground, who is the admired hero of
the bevy of charming girls who come up to Commemora-
tion in pink ribands. The fast young man is the first
part, the reading student is only brought on the scene
to be quizzed, and the senior part of the university
become stage dons, who are only there to provoke our
derision by various forms of the witty definition of
'donnism,' 'a mysterious carriage of the body intended
to conceal the defects of the mind.' If some of our
fictionists have left this traditional groove, as, e. g., Dr.
Farrar in Julian Home, it has been by sacrificing alto-
gether the local colouring. Loss and Gain has some
characteristic scenes a tutor's breakfast is, or was, a
310 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY,
peculiar institution of the place-was, I say, for we are
too busy for breakfast now; and Dr. Newman has happily
rendered it. But, on the whole, in Loss and Gain, only
one transient phase of Oxford life was depicted-that,
viz., which really passed over us in my own recollection,
when our promising young men spent the time which
ought to have been devoted to study in endeavouring to
find the true Church.
If we want to know what Cambridge and Oxford are,
we can derive a little, and but very little, help from the
pictures which the novelist has drawn for us.
We must
pass from fiction to fact, and ask, What writers of
memoirs, of autobiography, of reminiscences, have given
us any authentic pictures of academic life?
The first remark we shall have to make upon this
survey of our materials is, that such memorials as we
are in search of are almost wholly wanting. It is true
that there have been from time to time, both in Oxford
and Cambridge, men who have kept diaries, or committed
to paper their personal recollections. Some of these
books have preserved the memory of curious particulars,
and we are thankful to their authors for the pains they
have taken to hand them down to us. Hearne's Diary
for Oxford, at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
and Gunning's Reminiscences for Cambridge, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, have thus conveyed
to us authentic facts and circumstances which would have
been otherwise lost. But there is no diarist who has
been a sufficiently painstaking observer to give us what
we want a picture of university life in his day. The
annals of Oxford extend now over the long period of
seven hundred years. For more than half of that period
the art of printing has been practised in England. The
society has been a learned and literary association, and
the men who have composed it have been always clerks,
with every appliance for writing. They have had among
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
ANTHONY WOOD.
311
them abundance of leisure. Yet the whole of this long
period has not produced a single memoir writer to whom
it has occurred as an investment of his mental activity
to leave to posterity a faithful account of university life,
studies, teaching, as he knew and saw them.
The writer to whom Oxford history owes most, I might
say owes everything, is Anthony Wood, or à Wood, as it
was his fancy to sign himself.
The archaeologist has often been-certainly not by any
necessary effect of his studies, but he has often been-
a man of confined vision. Anthony Wood's horizon of
ideas was as narrow as could consist with any education.
He had passed through the usual Oxford curriculum of
his day; he was postmaster at Merton, and M.A. of the
University. But in the seventeenth century it was possible
to have received this, the highest education which the
country could give, without having had the intelligence
opened at all. Wood was in this respect neither better
nor worse than the average M.A. of the time of Charles II.
Yet, even while I am confessing this much, I fear that
I am being ungrateful to one to whom we owe so much,
that it may be truly said that without Wood a history
of Oxford would now be impossible. It was not his
fault that he lived at a time when the narrow interests
of ephemeral party supplied the place of ideas. The
best education which the University could give at that
date did not go beyond that which is now supplied to
the passmen. It did not go beyond the languages,-or
rather the Latin language, for Greek was rare, and the
amount of it slight,-the technical part of logic, the rudi-
ments of geometry. Of Wood we may say that he could
read Latin with ease, and that he was a considerable
proficient in music. His instrument, I may mention, was
the violin, which was brought into fashion by Charles II
at the Restoration, at which time it superseded the bass-
viol and the theorbo.
312 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
Within this circumscribed sphere Wood had a pursuit
which raised in him an enthusiasm that would have
been impossible with a wider education and more varied
interests. The object of the pursuit was local antiquities,
especially those of his University and native city. Here
he gained in intension what his training had forfeited in
extension. It is perhaps impossible in an epoch like the
present, and a country like Britain, when a multiplicity
of interests force themselves upon the notice of every
citizen, that a passion for antiquarian research such as
urged Wood should ever be generated in us modern
Englishmen. He began at the age of seventeen tran-
scribing inscriptions and monuments. As soon as he
became his own master, upon taking his B.A. degree,
at twenty-one, he 'entered into the public library, which
he took to be the happiness of his life, and into which
he never went without great veneration,' and began to
read the books on antiquities and heraldry. Burton's
Leicestershire was the first book which he analysed.
Guillim's Heraldry 'gave him great delight.' When
Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire came to Oxon.,
'being accounted the best book of it's kind that hitherto
was made extant, my pen cannot enough describe, how
A. Wood's tender affections, and insatiable desire of know-
ledg, were ravished and melted downe by the reading
of that book. What by music and rare books that
he found in the public library, his life, at this time and
after, was a perfect Elysium.' Nor did he merely play with
his subject as a dilettante, but worked at it long workman's
hours. When we hear that he was seven or nine hours
a day for months together perusing charters, evidences,
and rent-rolls, in any college muniment-room to which
he could get admittance, we shall not wonder that his
eyes suffered, and that it was a great relief to him
when Dr. Barlow, Provost of Queen's, gave him 'a large
magnifying-glass, which cost 40s.' His earnestness,
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
WOOD'S GREAT WORK.
313
Dr. Rawlinson records, 'was such that he would burst
out bleeding suddenly, insomuch that he had a basin
frequently held under him, that he might not spoil his
papers.' This is something more than antiquarian taste,
-this is a passion out of which must needs spring
something great and memorable. And his great work
on the history of Oxford-I say work, for the History
and Antiquities and the Athenae Oxonienses, though two
books, are parts of one work-Wood's great work is monu-
mental, having regard to the enormous number of par-
ticular facts collected and arranged the work of ten years'
unceasing labour.
Besides compiling this great historical work, Wood has
served us in another capacity. I have spoken of the
dearth of academics who have been writers of memoirs
of their own times. Of the few that we have Wood is
the principal. While he was labouring in his vocation
of collecting the antiquities of the University, and writing
its history, he was keeping a diary. It is not by any
means a regularly-kept diary; it is fitful in its entries,
and the events it notices are personal. But what an
opportunity for a chronicler or memoir-writer! The half
century from the Chancellorship of Laud in 1630 to the
attempt of James II on Magdalen College in 1687, was
filled with stirring and critical events which place it in
strong contrast to the unattractive repose of the two
centuries which have elapsed since. The year of Wood's
birth was 1632; that of his death 1695. His life, there-
fore, exactly coincided with this period of crisis and alarm,
in which the University played a part and attracted an
attention which it has never done since.
Born a citizen of Oxford in the ancient stone-house
opposite the fore-front of Merton College, commonly
called Postmasters' Hall,' he passed all his life within
the walls of the city. Though as a boy he was sent
out to school, it was only to Thame, within an easy
314
IX.
A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
distance. The new code, or Caroline statutes, and the
charter obtained by Laud, were occurrences of his child-
hood, but he must have known those who knew the
history of these important constitutional measures. But
constitutional reforms, however important in themselves,
retire into the shade before the clash of arms. In 1642
came the battle of Edgehill, and three days later the
royal army entered Oxford, which from that day forward
became the royalist capital, and the residence of the court.
As a boy Wood saw the wonderful lines of defence drawn
round Oxford, almost the only skilled operation of the
whole civil war. This fortification, carried out according
to the rules of art, stands in curious contrast to the
primitive ingenuity of other of the defensive measures;
as we read that, on September 2, 'barbed arrows were
provided for 100 scholars to shoot against such soldiers
as should come against them.' Of Bechmann, the en-
gineer who devised these lines, nothing is certainly
known beyond his name. Is it possible that he was
the 'Beckman' who was afterwards employed by the
Government of Charles II to fortify Sheerness and
Tilbury?
Be that as it may, by Bechmann's science, and by the
expenditure of the whole of the available resources of
the University, Oxford was converted into the strongest
fortress in the kingdom. The first hasty fortifications
which had been thrown up in 1643, under the superin-
tendence of Richard Rallingson, a B.A. of Queen's
College, had been made so available by 1646, that Fairfax
at once recognised that the place was impregnable, and
could only be reduced by famine. But all these opera-
tions were at a severe cost to the University. Not only
was all college plate surrendered to the mint, their ready
money given to pay the troops, the lead torn from the
roofs to make bullets, the timber in the outskirts cut
down-e. g., the grove of the hospital of St. Bartholomew,
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
SIEGE OF OXFORD.
315
which belonged to Oriel-these material depredations
were not all. Discipline, nay, study, were at an end.
The scholars were enrolled in battalions to man the lines,
the college servants worked in the trenches, the schools
were employed as granaries. What must have been the
effect upon the students of keeping guard and drinking
with Prince Rupert's troopers may easily be imagined.
Some of the colleges, those which had the better rooms,
were taken possession of by the court-Henrietta Maria,
e. g., lived in Merton-others served as quarters for the
officers and soldiers. What strikes us most is the help-
lessness of the besiegers. The art of defence had out-
stripped that of attack. In the first siege, 1645, the
Parliamentaries were quiet besiegers, and 'fought only
with their perspective glasses,' says Wood. In the second
siege, 1646, we see from the number of letters which
we still have, that to pass the parliamentary lines was
a matter of every-day occurrence. Nor was anything
to be hoped from treachery. The citizens indeed were
for the parliament; and this, not only because the Uni-
versity was for the King, but naturally enough, when they
remembered how Birmingham and Bristol had been
treated by Prince Rupert, whose notions of living on
plunder had been formed in Germany. But the citizens
were overawed by a garrison of 5,000 men, and by the
royalist zeal of the University, and the numerous clientèle
of the colleges. They could only show their inclinations
by their lukewarmness in working at the trenches. Where
they should have sent a contingent of 120 workmen they
sent but twelve; they dared not refuse altogether. With
a garrison strong in numbers, and confident in its military
powers, thirty-eight pieces of ordnance, abundant supplies
of corn, and two powder mills at Osney, there seemed
little hope of Oxford being soon reduced.
But one fortress cannot stem the tide of war, and that
was now running everywhere against the King. In April
316 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
the Governor of Woodstock sent word that he could
hold out no longer. On April 26, at midnight, in the
disguise of Ashburnham's servant, Charles left Oxford,
and passed the lines, it should seem, without difficulty.
He told his Privy Council that he was going to London
to put himself into the hands of the Parliament, and he
accordingly followed the Henley road as far as Harrow.
But his own secret and fatal resolution had been formed
to take refuge with the Scottish army. Abandoned by
the King, the surrender of Oxford was a matter of course.
The indignation of the military ran high at finding that
the place was to be given up, provisioned as it was not
only with corn, but with butchers' meat and all the
luxuries of a well-supplied market for six months. The
soldiers said it was surrendered because the ladies could
not have fresh butter every morning to breakfast. Yet
the pourparlers for the conditions occupied two months,
and it was not till Midsummer Day, June 24, that the
royalist garrison marched out. Highly to the credit of
the Roundhead army, no excesses or plunder were per-
mitted—no reprisals for the savage license which Prince
Rupert had indulged his troopers in. But the condition
of the University was disastrous. There were no rents.
to be had from the farmers, there were no scholars to
let the college rooms to. The halls, which were still
numerous, were ruined, except Magdalen Hall and New
Inn Hall, which were selected as nurseries for scholars
of the Presbyterian faction. In the colleges were scarce
any inhabitants but the principals and their families.
'There was scarce,' says an eye-witness, 'the face of
a university left.'
These were the stirring incidents among which Wood's
boyhood fell. In the year after the surrender, 1647, he
was entered at Merton College. The internal revolutions
of the next fifteen years, if less imposing, had a constitu-
tional importance greater than that of battle and siege.
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
OXFORD AFTER THE SURRENDER.
317
I run hastily over them. For a whole year after the
surrender, the University, prostrate and all but deserted,
was left to itself. During the interval it began slowly
to repeople itself.
But besides the royalist and Episco-
palian members of the old stamp, there began to show
themselves within the University precincts a new popu
lation. There were some of them declared roundheads,
or independents, but some of them also members of the
Anglican Church, who had been kept under, or kept
out by the cavalier majority and the test oaths. To
this ominous brood the gownsmen gave the nick-name
of 'seekers,' which carried a double reference to their
own cant expression of seeking the Lord in prayer, and
their desire of succeeding to the places from which the
malignants were now to be expelled. At last, in June
1647, appeared the visitors appointed under an Act of
Parliament. Their first step was to cite the doctors and
masters to appear in the convocation house on June 4,
between the hours of nine and eleven. At nine punctually
the vice-chancellor appeared, and sat there two hours.
with exemplary patience. At the last stroke of eleven,
having first ascertained that the clock was not in advance
of the dial, he moved out of the convocation house. As
he passed through the court of the schools he met the
visitors in solemn march towards the appointed meeting.
They had been detained in church by a preposterously
long exhortation from one of their number. Raising
his cap the vice-chancellor said, 'Good morning, gen-
tlemen; it is now some minutes past eleven.' With
these words he passed on home towards Christ Church.
The visitors entered the empty hall of convocation.
They were done the legal hour for which the citation
had been served was passed: there was no help for
it. This ingenious ruse could but respite, it could not
divert the blow. The defect of form was soon remedied,
and enlarged powers were given to the visitors. They
318 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
were now empowered to exact a subscription or oath
to the covenant, and to remove any person who had
either borne arms against the Parliament, or contri-
buted money to its enemies. This placed the whole
University at their mercy. An elaborate protest was
drawn up, and passed in full convocation, with one dis-
sentient voice, setting forth the various reasons why they
could not, as matter of conscience, give their signature
as required. They also protested against the authority
under which the visitors acted. For though the Act of
Parliament still ran in the name of Charles Rex, they
were not satisfied, they said, that it really had the assent
of the crown, as of course it had not.
It was now evident that it was not an affair of political
principle, but of corporate spirit. The issue was, that
after giving sufficient time, and exhausting every expedient
of accommodation, all those who refused the subscription
were deprived of their places, and others who were well
disposed to the Parliament were put in their room. When
we call to mind that for the greater part of the men
thus expelled, deprivation meant destitution, as no man
possessed of any private means could be fellow of a
college, we must admire the heroism with which they
took the penalty of defeat. On the other hand, we must
accord our highest praise to the moderation of the vic-
torious party.
Instead of using their omnipotence to
deprive as many as they could, they endeavoured to
induce all they could persuade to stay and submit, and
this, though of all malignants the Oxford malignants had
been the most inveterate, and indeed had been the main-
stay of the royalist cause. Indeed, from the forward
part which Oxford had played in the war, it might justly
have been feared that the Parliament on its victory would
have proceeded, not only to personal vengeance, but to
organic change. Nay, such was the ferment in the mind
of the nation, that not merely revolution, but even total
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT.
319
abolition were among the possible results of the crisis.
For not only individuals, but the university as a cor-
porate body had engaged itself in the interest of Church
and King, and of all that was now regarded with the
greatest abhorrence. It must be regarded as in the
highest degree creditable to the statesmanlike views of
the leaders of the party, that they were content with a
change in the personnel, and of substituting their adherents
for their enemies, when it would have been so easy and
obvious to have proceeded to confiscation. That such
extreme measures were talked of is certain. But among
the parliamentary leaders of the moment were men en-
lightened enough to recognise the claims of learning,
and the national value of learned institutions. Much, no
doubt, was due to the personal weight of Selden and
Prynne, and the reform for the moment went no further
than turning the Puritan minority, which had all along
existed, into a majority. It was a fortunate step on the
part of these new academics, when they tendered the chan-
cellorship in 1650 to Oliver Cromwell. As republican
and levelling principles got the upper hand, and a more
fanatical and narrow-minded set of men were coming into
power, universities were likely to have been voted a
superfluity. To the roundheads the institutions had been
obnoxious as royalist, to the independents they were
obnoxious as learned. The superior intelligence and
vigorous hand of the Lord Protector it was which now
raised the seats of learning from the destruction to which
the ignorant fanaticism of the republicans and levellers
inevitably doomed them. The moment the universities
recognized Cromwell's authority he gave them his pro-
tection and enlightened patronage.
This was in 1650. Oxford had now a ten years' repose,
during which, though godliness and discipline were the
primary care of the authorities, encouragement to study
was not wanting. Then came the Restoration and the
320 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
ejected; the old men, but
Wood, who in 1650 had
reaction. The new men were
not the old ways, came back.
heard the convocation house resound with the cheerful
acclamations of the M.A.s, when Oliver's letter, dated
Edinburgh, was read, in which he accepted the chancellor-
ship, now in 1661 heard the same plaudits attending the
nomination of Hyde, Lord Clarendon, to the same office.
In the same convocation house in which the parliamentary
visitors had held their visitation, Charles II held a parlia-
ment. To Oxford he brought his gay and brilliant court,
not for a visit, but for a long residence; here Lady
Castlemaine, in one of the fellows' rooms at Merton,
gave birth to a Fitzroy, and would walk in Trinity
Lime-walk-Christ Church Broad-walk was not yet-with
a lute playing before her, or attend the college chapel
'like an angel, but half-dressed,' thought the demure dons,
who had never seen French fashions. Wood, who had
seen the Book of Common Prayer banished from the
college chapels for thirteen years, from 1647 to 1660, lived
to see in 1686 mass celebrated in University College,
and Christ Church presided over by a Roman Catholic
dean. The closing scene of these political oscillations
arrived in 1687. In that year the history of the University
is again, for a moment, the history of England; for in that
year James II, in imitation of Louis XIV, made his
memorable attempt to force his own religion upon the
University.
This story has been often told¹-told, indeed, by each
historian of England in his turn. Mackintosh had told
it with a fulness of detail which seemed to preclude
all attempt to rewrite it after him. Yet Macaulay did
rewrite it, and his elaborate narrative hides from view
an amount of solid research which is generally thought
to be incompatible with style. It would be, indeed,
¹ [All the documents bearing on the case have been printed by Dr. Bloxam in his
volume entitled Magdalen College and King James II (1886).]
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
MAGDALEN COLLEGE AND JAMES II.
321
presumptuous to rewrite the story after Macaulay. In
resuming, in a few sentences, the chief features of the
situation, it is intended only to direct attention to the
attitude of the University towards the Government.
In March, 1687, the presidentship of Magdalen College
became vacant by death. The election of president is
vested by statute in the fellows. But it was not without
precedent that the Crown should recommend a candidate
to the choice of the electors, and on such occasions it had
been the practice for the electors to show respect to the
letters of the Sovereign. In such recommendations the
Crown had never attempted to put forward any candidate
who did not possess the statutable qualifications. The
statutes of Magdalen required that the president should
be chosen out of those who were, or had been, fellows
of Magdalen or of New College. On this occasion
James II recommended to the electors one Antony
Farmer, a junior M.A. of Magdalen, but not a fellow;
he was, therefore, not statutably eligible. He was further
disqualified by Act of Parliament, being a Roman Catholic
convert. But the King's letters mandatory contained what
were called dispensing clauses,-'Any statute, custom, or
constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, wherewith
we are graciously pleased to dispense in his behalf.'
It does not appear that the fellows, however they might
feel aggrieved by it, questioned the royal prerogative which
interfered with their freedom of choice. It does not even
appear that they questioned at first the dispensing power.
But the person recommended to them was intolerable. In
the then irritated state of feeling it was monstrous to think
of putting a Roman Catholic at the head of a body of
Protestant fellows; and the personal character of Farmer
was such as was calculated to degrade the college in
public estimation. As it would have been highly indis-
creet to have urged against Farmer that he was of the
King's religion, the fellows rest their petition of remon-
VOL. I.
Y
322 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
strance on his moral character. We cannot, therefore,
lay much stress upon the allegations of this kind which
the fellows bring against Farmer, as they must be regarded
as intended to mask the objection they felt, but dared not
make, to his religion. Though the odious picture which
Macaulay has drawn of Farmer is exaggerated, it is
confessed on all hands that his youth, levity, presumption,
and want of general conduct, made him an unfit person to
be sent to preside over a society of grave and virtuous
divines. The court were sensible of their error; they dropt
Farmer, and a new mandate was sent down. But, before
this mandate arrived, the fellows had elected John Hough,
who had the statutable qualifications, and he had been
admitted by the visitor. The fellows stood by the man of
their choice. The Crown was equally obstinate in main-
taining its new nominee, Samuel Parker, Bishop of
Oxford. The King had formidable engines at his dis-
posal; first, the Court of High Commission, presided
over by the Lord Chancellor, and that Lord Chancellor
Jeffreys; secondly, a visitation of the college. Both these
instruments of coercion were brought to bear. The fellows
appeared before the Court of High Commission, sitting
in London, when Hough's election was pronounced void.
And a subaltern commission was sent down to Oxford to
admit Parker, if necessary by force, and generally to visit
the college. Parker was admitted, Hough withdrew of
his own accord.
If it were ever admissible to speak of what might have
been, instead of what was, we should be tempted to do so
at this point, and to say that if James had stopped here,
the University and the college would have acquiesced in
what had been done, and nothing further would have been
heard of the Magdalen College case. But James, or the
Catholic junta which directed the government, elated with
success, ventured on a further aggression. The material
victory gained was not enough; there must be a moral
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
PARKER AND GIFFORD.
323
triumph. They now required the fellows of Magdalen to
make a submission in writing, to sign a humble apology
for their conduct, and an acknowledgment of the legality
of the commission, as well as of what had been done under
it. This overweening demand plainly betrays its origin.
It issues not from the policy of the statesman who
respects the subjects whom he governs, but the despotism
of the Society of Jesus, which is not content with obedience
in fact, but aspires to crush and break the wills of its
disciples. To the demand now made the fellows of
Magdalen returned a refusal. The High Commission
was set in action once more. The fellows and demies
were ejected, and their places filled with Roman Catholics
nominated by the Crown. The Bishop of Oxford, who
had been some time in declining health, died, and Bona-
venture Gifford, a Roman Catholic bishop, was nominated
president. Magdalen was become a Catholic college.
Such is a brief outline of the last occasion on which Oxford
has appeared on the stage of national history. Two
hundred years have nearly elapsed since, during which
our annals offer no events but those which belong to the
peaceful pursuits of letters, or the humble duties of
education.
One remark is called for by the Magdalen College case.
It is, I believe, popularly thought that the issue tried in
this case was either that of the dispensing power, or that
of the legality of the High Commission. But it was not
So. There were indeed in this case, on the part of the
King, many exertions of power either directly illegal or of
doubtful legality. He had superseded the free choice of
the electors by a mandate designating a particular person.
He had exercised the dispensing power twice for persons
who were not fellows of Magdalen or of New; twice for
Roman Catholics. He had brought the fellows of Magdalen,
members of a lay corporation, before the High Commission
Court-a court for ecclesiastical causes-the commission
Y 2
324
A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
IX.
of that court itself being illegal. Lastly, he had assumed
to visit the college by a subaltern commission delegated by
the High Commission, and had visited not to inquire,
but to hear, to determine, and to punish.
All these exertions of prerogative being either illegal
or of doubtful legality, according to the opinion of the
lawyers of that day, it might have been supposed that
the fellows would have taken their stand upon their
legal rights. But they do not do so. The plea they put
forward is, as against Farmer, that of objectionable moral
character; as against Parker, the fact that they had elected
Hough before the mandate to elect Parker arrived; as
against the dispensation, that they take an oath in their
statutes not to accept any dispensation. On every point
they evade the great constitutional issue; or rather they
decline to make common cause with the constitutional
party. The fact is, they were all members of the Church
of England, and members of the University of Oxford.
And the Church and the University had for three genera-
tions been committing themselves more and more deeply
to the high doctrines of prerogative and Divine right. It
was not open to them, now that this prerogative was
suddenly played against themselves, to turn round and
affirm that there were limitations to it.
None of James's violent acts contributed so much to his
downfall as this assault on Magdalen. By his own.
confession afterwards (Burnet, p. 799), 'the King, both
at Faversham and after his return to Whitehall, justified
all he had done, but spoke a little doubtfully of the
business of Magdalen College.'
Yet it appears that the parties concerned, the fellows of
Magdalen, the invasion of whose rights awakened all this
sympathy, never raised the constitutional issue, but put
forward the merely personal plea of their oaths and their
consciences-a plea in which the nation had no interest.
It was not till a late stage in the proceedings that Hough
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE.
325
timidly, and as an after-thought, brought out a protest
against the jurisdiction of the Court of High Commission.
It is another instance to be added to the many which
history furnishes, of great principles having been vindi-
cated by the agency of men who are wholly unconscious
of what they were doing. The triumph of civil liberty
over arbitrary power in 1688 was due in great measure to
the passive resistance of the fellows of Magdalen, as the
emancipation of the human mind from the control of the
clergy in the sixteenth century was due in great measure
to the preaching of Luther. But the vindication of civil
liberty was no more in the thoughts of the fellows of
Magdalen, than the emancipation of the intellect was in
the intention of Luther.
PART II.
A UNIVERSITY is the organ of the intellectual life of the
nation; it is the school of learning, the nursery of the
liberal arts, the academy of the sciences, the home of
letters, the retreat of the studious and the contemplative.
Wherever and whenever this ideal may have been
realised in history, it was not in that chapter of the history
of Oxford which we have open at present-viz., the epoch
of the Restoration.
Anthony Wood's Diary, which is scanty for the period
of the civil war, becomes more full for the reigns of
Charles II and James II. Our diarist, as has been
already explained, has no intention of presenting us
with a picture of Oxford-its pursuits, politics, studies,
fashions, personages; he notes down only such occur-
rences as he himself was personally concerned in. Yet,
from his memoranda we can collect a better idea of the
state of things in Oxford during this period than we have
the means of forming for any part of the time which has
elapsed from Anthony Wood's death down to our own age.
326 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
I confine myself on the present occasion to the relations
between the University of Oxford and the Government of
the country. It will be seen that, while the intellectual
influence of Oxford upon the nation was of secondary
importance, its social influence was great, and its political
importance considerable. Indeed, it was because of the
social influence which it possessed, because its roots were
struck deep and wide in the soil of England, that it became
of consequence to Government to get possession of it, and
to manipulate the influence of the University in the
service of the Crown.
That portion of the English people which in the Restora-
tion period constituted public opinion was animated by
two principal sentiments, by which it judged of all public
questions, and of the conduct of its Government. These
sentiments were sentiments, not of affection, but of aversion.
The nation was not so much animated by loyal attachment
to the hereditary prince, as it was urged by the dread
of republicanism and military tyranny. It was not so
much devoted to the Church of England, as it loathed
and abominated Presbyterianism and Popery. Ill-informed.
of foreign affairs, ignorant of the secret intrigues of diplo-
macy, and destitute of political experience, the public creed
of these classes was summed up in two articles-the
support of the Crown, the maintenance of the Church
of England. When, then, in the person of James II,
a Catholic sovereign mounted the throne, and when the
sovereign began without disguise to manifest his intention
of making his own religion the dominant religion, the
monarchical party-i.e., the great bulk of the nation-
was placed in a new and puzzling dilemma. The two
sentiments which had hitherto made up their whole
politics were rudely torn asunder. Without being them-
selves changed, they found their position altered for them.
The crown and the government seemed to have gone
round to their enemies, and they themselves to be occu-
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
1687. THE CROWN AND THE PEOPLE. 327
pying the place of the despised Nonconformists and
Papists, upon whose necks they had for twenty years
past been treading. This dilemma was now brought
home to the members of the University in the most
urgent and personal form. Their professions of absolute
obedience to their prince had been public and repeated,
and James, who was without a spark of generous feeling,
was determined to exact performance.
In 1687 the two parties-the King, and his devoted ad-
herents, 'the chancellor, masters, and scholars' of Oxford-
were brought face to face. For in the summer of that
year it was resolved that the court should make a pro-
gress in the provinces.
Of the old life of the kings of England one of the
habitual features was a 'progress.' These progresses
took place every year. They were not merely summer
excursions for health or pleasure, they were, like fox-
hunting, political institutions of public utility. Though of
the 2,000, or more, domain estates of the Norman kings,
the greater part was at farm, many were still, as we
should say, in hand. To consume the produce it was
far easier for the court to go to the spot, than to trans-
port the provisions to the court. On progress the
sovereign became acquainted with the country of which
he personally conducted the government. He learned
not only its physical features, and its commercial capaci-
ties, but the temper and disposition of the various districts.
Local feeling was much more deeply marked, and had
a much more decided preponderance over national feel-
ing then than now. And even now, under the reign
of the daily paper, the local opinion of Wales, of Lanca-
shire, of Devonshire, is only to be gauged by being upon
the spot. The practice of progress, interrupted during
the civil war, had not been in favour with Charles II,
for whom country life had no attractions, and who pre-
ferred, like Louis XIV, to have the nobles come round
328 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
his court in the capital to visiting them in their castles.
But in 1687 it was determined, in view of the gathering
discontent, to regain popularity, and to reconcile the
people to the court policy by resuming the disused
progress.
The expedient was not unsuccessful. So far as outward
demonstrations of loyalty and respect went, it was evident
that a king of England, though he professed a hated
religion, had still a powerful hold on the hearts of the
people. There was, as yet, no reaction against royalty.
This people, whose fathers had cut off the head of their
king, and set up a republic, had conceived such an
abhorrence of republicanism, that they were eager to
welcome a prince whom they knew to be cruel, tyrannical,
bigoted, without generosity, without patriotism, a tool of
the great anti-national party in Europe.
It was settled that James was to take Oxford on his way
back. In this sanctuary of unspotted loyalty the Catholic
policy of the court had stirred a very uneasy feeling. But
now it was not only general measures which created
apprehension. Incredible advances had been made to-
wards introducing Romanism into the college foundations.
The heads of Christ Church and of University were not
only Catholics, but Catholic converts, which was worse.
Besides Massey, Dean of Christ Church, and Obadiah
Walker, Master of University, two fellows of University
College and one fellow of Brasenose had a license to
absent themselves from chapel and to decline the oaths.
of supremacy, etc. As for the Magdalen case, the situation
at the moment of the King's visit was that Sunderland had
sent from Bath, under date August 21, a peremptory
letter commanding the fellows to admit the Bishop of
Oxford president of the college, the election of Hough
having been pronounced null and void by sentence of
the ecclesiastical commission. These measures, follow-
ing upon the Declaration of Indulgence, were little less
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
ness.
VISIT OF THE KING TO OXFORD.
329
than a declaration of war against the Established Church
and the University. Yet such was the deep-rooted Tory
feeling of the place, that no doubt was entertained that the
person of the sovereign would meet with a respectful
reception by the authorities, whatever opinion of his
policy they might cherish in the secrecy of their bosoms.
The time was September, the depth of our long vacation.
But in the seventeenth century September saw not only
the doctors and masters, but many of the undergraduates
already back in their chambers. It so happened that our
Anthony Wood was absent on one of his visits to London
at the time. But on his return his first care was to
institute inquiry after all the particulars of the visit, and
to commit them to paper with his usual scrupulous minute-
His narrative is so precise and detailed, that even
had he been present he could hardly have told us more.
The royal cavalcade was to enter from Woodstock, on
Saturday, September 3. The whole University as-
sembled at 3 p.m. at the Vice-Chancellor's.
now dead, so Ironside, the Warden of Wadham, had
at length become Vice-Chancellor. Having received
notice by their messenger that the King's party was
at hand, the authorities all got on horseback at Wad-
ham Gate-why on horseback I cannot tell, seeing they
proposed to go no further than the top of St. Giles's.
Twenty-three doctors in scarlet, the proctors in their
formalities, nineteen M.A.s, the esquire bedels with their
golden chains about their necks-all with their foot-cloths
and lackeys. The posts and rails before the houses in
St. Giles's had been removed, the ditches filled up, and
the street made level. The North Gate, commonly called
Bocardo, by which the procession was to enter the city,
had been beautified by being whitewashed, the arms over
the gate new painted. The city were also on foot in their
companies the glovers, the cordwainers, the tailors, the
mercers—each company with its ensign bearing the arms
Fell was
330
IX. A CHAPTer of univerSITY HISTORY.
of the guild; the common councilmen, the bailiffs, the city
sergeants, the town-clerk, the recorder, and the mayor with
his mace-bearer, are not forgotten in Anthony Wood's enu-
meration. At the top of St. Giles's they met the procession.
The Vice-Chancellor began his Latin address on his knees,
while the great bells of St. Mary's and of Carfax were
sounding. The King bid him stand and speak; and when
he had done the King raised his hat-'an old French
coarse hat not worth a groat.' The ceremony of delivering
up the bedels' staves, and of returning them, was not for-
gotten, and the cavalcade, the Vice-Chancellor, and the bedels
having been got on horseback again, not without difficulty,
moved down North Gate Street, now called Cornmarket,
and down Fish Street, now called St. Aldate's, to Christ
Church great gate. The way was lined, though it was
September 3, with gownsmen-undergraduates on one
side, M.A.s on the other and such doctors as had not
ridden out stood with the dean and canons at Christ
Church gate, Tom-gate-then quite new, having been
finished by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682. The waits
or band of wind instruments belonging to the City and
University saluted the King as he passed Carfax; and the
conduit, Nicholson's conduit, which then stood in the
centre of the cross, and is now in Nuneham Park, ran with
claret for the vulgar. The King was housed in the
dean's lodgings. At supper the dean and canons stood
round the King's chair, and he conversed freely with them,
telling them he was senior to most of them, that he had
been entered on the books of Christ Church after Edgehill
in 1642. The next day was Sunday, and there was the usual
Anglican sermon at St. Mary's. But it was not honoured
by the presence of royalty or of the dean of Christ Church.
The King was at Dean Massey's private chapel in Canter-
bury quadrangle to hear mass, and a sermon by a secular
priest called William Hall, which was applauded and
admired by all in the chapel, which was very full. The
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
VISIT OF THE KING TO OXFORD.
331
King's religion was unpopular in the University, but the
pure detestation of popery which had reigned in the time
of Elizabeth and James I was no longer known. It was no
longer sinful to witness the mass or to listen to a Catholic
sermon. After dinner the fellows of Magdalen, twenty-one
in number, waited on the King by order. They fell on
their knees and presented their petition. He refused to
receive it, and he rated them, still kneeling, in a tone and in
words the vulgar insolence of which passed unheeded amid
the flagrant illegality of the orders to which he was exacting
obedience. In the afternoon he paid a visit-the only
college he deigned to visit to University College, and
in it the only thing which interested him was Walker's
private chapel. His mind, like that of all converts, was
wholly engaged with the interests of the Church he had
attached himself to. One being presented to him as Mr.
Clark of All Souls, the King, hearing the name of All
Souls, inquired, 'Are not you bound by statute to pray
for the dead?' When Dr. Plot, the celebrated naturalist,
was presented to him, the inquiry which was thought
appropriate to be addressed to him was what he thought
of the holy well in Flintshire. At six on the Sunday after-
noon the Vice-Chancellor and doctors waited on the King
to present him with a Bible printed at the Theatre and
a pair of gloves, and to ask him to accept of a collation in
the Selden Library in the morning. Anthony Wood gives
us a menu of the entertainment, if entertainment it could be
called, where the King ate alone at the bountifully-spread
board. He invited no one to sit and eat, and etiquette for-
bade their seating themselves unbidden. Accordingly the
slice of shoulder of mutton and of partridge, which formed the
King's meal, cost the University £160 (= £700 at the present
day). The abundance of dishes which had been provided
were scrambled for by the courtiers, who pelted each other
with sweetmeats, which were thrown about the books and
ladies' dresses, and in the face of Dr. Derham, of Magdalen
332 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
Hall. The King took his leave of the Vice-Chancellor
at the great gate behind the Theatre, leading into the
continuation of Broad Street, which was then known as
Canditch. As he stepped into his coach he delivered
himself of some parting advice. Wood has recorded the
words. They are noticeable as being in the same key as
the Declaration of Indulgence. James's mind was one
which held only one idea at a time. The idea which was
possessing him at present was that which was embodied
in the Declaration, viz., the introduction of his own religion
under the guise of 'toleration,'-a new principle which had
been set agoing by the philosophers and latitudinarians.
'Then the King, going to the great door behind the
Theatre in Canditch to take coach, turned aside to the
Vice-Chancellor and doctors, and said: "I must commend
unto ye again love and charity, that there be a right
understanding among you. I must tell you that in the
King my father's time the Church of England's men and
the Catholics loved each other, and were, as 'twere, all one;
but now there is gotten a spirit which is quite contrary,
and what the reason is I cannot tell. There are some
among you that are the occasion of those things, but
I know them, and I shall take notice of them for the
future.""
It was not only to the personal presence of the monarch
that this homage was rendered. The creed of the Uni-
versity, the private conviction of its individual members,
went in the direction of personal government, beyond what
any Tory lawyer would have affirmed to be law-beyond
anything which James himself would have ventured to
claim. Only four years before James's visit, in July 1683,
and it so happened on the same day on which Lord.
Russell was put to death, the convocation of the University
had passed a decree which embodied a confession of faith.
In form it mimicked the damnatory style of the Roman
curia or of the Sorbonne. In this 'judgment and decree'
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
'JUDGMENT AND DECREE' OF 1683.
333
twenty-seven propositions, extracted from various books,
were condemned as 'damnable doctrines, destructive to the
sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and
of all human society.' The books from which these
propositions were extracted—a whole library of authors,
including the names of Hobbes, Baxter, Milton, Knox,
Bellarmine, the Solemn League and Covenant—were
ordered to be burnt by the hands of our marshal, in the
court of our schools. Who it was that committed the
University to this presumptuous piece of folly, or who
extracted the propositions, I do not know¹. Perhaps it was
Bishop Fell, as nothing of importance was done by the
University without his approval. And we know that Fell
had an animosity against Hobbes. It was into the account
of Hobbes, which Anthony Wood had written with laud-
able impartiality, that Fell intruded some of his most
audacious interpolations. He made Wood say, e.g., of the
Leviathan, that it was a 'monstrous' book, 'librum mon-
strosissimum, qui nunc non solum in Anglia, sed in vicinis
gentibus publico damno notissimus est.' Wood wrote on
the occasion an apologetic letter to Hobbes, to which
Hobbes replied with the magnanimity that might have
been expected. As for the bishop's invectives, he only
says, 'It would indeed have hurt me much, if the man were
either a competent judge of abstract matters, or were a
man of note for learning either at home or abroad.'
Public burning of books is a silly game at which two can
play. Thirty years later the Whig corporation of the city
of London retaliated upon the Tory University, and the
Oxford decree of 1683 was burnt by the hands of the
common hangman before the Royal Exchange in the
presence of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London and
Middlesex.
If it was Fell who procured the passing of the decree of
1683, it was done in the name of the University. Another
1 [It was drawn up by Dr. Jane: Hearne's Collections, ii. 292.]
334
A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
IX.
scandalous transaction in the following year, 1684, was not
the act of the University, but was carried out by himself as
head of Christ Church. As at once bishop of the diocese
and head of Christ Church-he held deanery and bishopric
of the same see-Fell exercised a commanding influence
in the place, such as has never since been in the hands of
any individual. As holding those places, and wielding that
power, and being in 1684 sixty years of age, desire of
preferment could have counted for little among Fell's
motives for compliance with the illegal requirements of the
court. He was, besides, a man of enlarged liberality and
public spirit, an open-handed benefactor of his college.
Though not a man of learning in a special degree (as
Hobbes intimates), he had edited Cyprian, and was a
munificent patron of learning, and an encourager of study
among the young gownsmen. Having the command of
the University Press, it was his custom to print every year
some book, commonly a classical author, for distribution
on New Year's Day among the members of his house. His
natural strength of character and energy dominated all
his compeers. As one instance of his ascendency in the
University, it is affirmed by Wood that Gilbert Ironside,
Warden of Wadham, could not be nominated Vice-
Chancellor in Dr. Fell's lifetime, because Dr. Fell did not
think him fit for the office. Though Fell was not the
University, yet we may say that the will and intelligence
of the University were embodied in his person. Yet
this is the answer which this eminent man sends to the
court in the matter of Locke. John Locke held in 1684
a studentship at Christ Church which he had enjoyed
ever since 1651. Residence was not required of a stu-
dent of Christ Church holding a 'physic place,' and
Locke had committed no breach of the statutes of
his college. But he had been secretary to, and inti-
mately trusted by, the late Lord Shaftesbury, and it was
determined by the court to inflict some penalty upon a
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
FELL AND LOCKE.
335
prominent Whig. Sunderland sent a short note to the
Dean of Christ Church, intimating the King's pleasure to
have Locke removed from his studentship. A fellowship,
or studentship, is a place the tenure of which is for life,
subject to the observance of certain conditions laid down
by the statutes of the foundation. Locke had fulfilled all
these conditions, and his studentship was not voidable.
The Dean had no statutable power to deprive a student.
And though the crown was, or claimed to be, Visitor of
Christ Church, yet a visitor has no power to deprive,
except for offences to which the penalty of deprivation is by
statute annexed, and after hearing the parties. The answer
returned by Fell to Sunderland's letter was as follows:-
RIGHT HON. I have received the honour of your lordship's letter,
wherein you are pleased to inquire concerning Mr. Locke's being a
student of this house, of which I have this account to render, that he
being, as your lordship is truly informed, a person who was much
trusted by the late Earl of Shaftesbury, and who is suspected to be
ill-affected to the government, I have for divers years had an eye upon
him; but so close has his guard been on himself, that, after several
strict inquiries, I may confidently affirm there is not any one in the
college, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word
either against, or so much as concerning, the government; and
although very frequently, both in public and in private, discourses
have been purposely introduced, to the disparagement of his master,
the Earl of Shaftesbury, his party and designs, he could never be
provoked to take any notice, or discover in word or look the least
concern. So that I believe there is not in the world such a master
of taciturnity and passion. He has here a physician's place, which
frees him from the exercise of the college, and the obligations which
others have to residence in it; and he is now abroad upon want of
health; but, notwithstanding that, I have summoned him to return
home, which is done with this prospect, that if he comes not back,
he will be liable to expulsion for contumacy; and if he does, he
will be answerable to your lordship for what he shall be found to
have done amiss; it being probable, that though he may have been
thus cautious here, where he knew himself to be suspected, he has
laid himself more open in London, where a general liberty of speaking
was used. . . . If he does not return by the 1st of January next, I
336 IX. A CHAPTER OF UNIVERSITY HISTORY.
shall be enabled of course to proceed against him to expulsion. But
if this method seem not effectual or speedy enough, and his Majesty,
our founder and visitor, shall please to command his immediate
remove, upon the receipt thereof, directed to the dean and chapter, it
shall accordingly be executed by, etc., etc.
J. OXON.
To this epistle Sunderland replies by sending the King's
'commands for the immediate expulsion of Mr. Locke.'
Fell's reply was as follows:-
RIGHT HONOURABLE,-I hold myself bound to signify to your
lordship that his Majesty's command for the expulsion of Mr. Locke
from this college is fully executed.
The deprivation of Locke is excused by Lord Grenville
on the ground that it was the act, not of the dean and
chapter, but of the Crown, and that the college authorities
merely registered a mandate which they were bound to
obey. But the dean and chapter did more than register it;
they, to use their own words, 'put it in execution.' If they
had not executed it, there would have been great difficulty
in enforcing it. Nor can the legality of the mandate have
been clear even to them. At least, four years later, when
the fellows of Magdalen were expelled by the prerogative
of the Crown, exercised by commission, after the parties
were heard, which Locke was not, no doubt was enter-
tained in the University of the illegality of the proceed-
ing. Yet the Magdalen College case was conducted with
some show of the forms of justice, which were not
attempted to be preserved in the case of a Whig and a
friend of Shaftesbury.
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.]
!
F.
X
F. A. WOLF¹.
(North British Review, June, 1865.)
A. WOLF is known to us in this country, if
at all, in connection with a certain theory of the
origin of the Homeric poems. Here is a German life of
him, in two volumes, in which that authorship is barely
alluded to. Professor Arnoldt treats of Wolf as a teacher
exclusively. If sectional biography be defensible at all,
Professor Arnoldt needs no apology for bringing forward
Wolf in this capacity. Wolf was eminently the professor;
very secondarily the writer. Everything that he wrote,
even his famous Prolegomena to Homer, was thrown upon
paper under some casual inducement. He left no elaborate
work; nothing with which he was himself satisfied. His
editions were prepared for the use of his classes. On the
other hand, it was he who created, and who himself gave
the first example of, that enthusiasm for philological studies,
which for sixty years-two generations-has been the
quickening life of German education. Wolf seized, more
completely than any one since the first teachers of the
Renaissance, that side of classical studies by which they
are qualified, more completely than any other studies, to
form and inspire the opening mind. Equally removed from
the grammatical pedantry of the old schoolmaster, and the
superficial Schöngeisterei of the French Lyceum, Wolf, at
once accurate and genial, struck out a new and original
¹ Friedrich August Wolf in seinem Verhältnisse zum Schulwesen und zur Päda-
gogik dargestellt. Von Prof. Dr. J. F. J. ARNOLDT. 2 Bde., 8vo. Braunschweig,
1861-2.
VOL. I.
Z
338
X. F. A. WOLF.
path. Wolf is the true author of modern classical culture.
It appears to us impossible to find any other material
of mental cultivation which can expand the soul as classical
literature can expand it, and equally impossible, in the
application of that literature to its purpose, to find any
better example of method than that of Wolf.
It would require a volume to do justice to what Wolf
was and effected in this function. We can pretend to do
no more than direct the reader's attention to it in the
following brief outline of his life and labours. In doing
this, we shall have recourse, besides Wolf's own remains,
which have never been collected, to an older biography,
written by his son-in-law, Körte. It is by no means a well-
written book, but it is naïve, simple, unaffected, real.
Above all, it is a living book, a natural account of a man
by another man. Professor Arnoldt's book, on the other
hand, is written by a Prussian official. It is not in any
spoken language, but in that written dialect which is
current in Prussian bureaux. All imagination, all colouring,
all individuality is expelled from these dreary sentences,
which average ten lines each, and of which we feel sure
that no English or French readers would ever get through
ten pages without nausea.
Friedrich August Wolf was born in 1759, in the
same year as Porson, of whom Wolf himself has noted
that his birth was¹ exactly 200 years after that of
Casaubon. His father was in
His father was in very humble circum-
stances. He was village schoolmaster and organist of
Hainrode, a little village at the foot of the Harz, not far
from Nordhausen. He was afterwards promoted to be.
assistant-teacher in the girls' school at Nordhausen, the
highest preferment he ever reached. But in the Harz
poverty was not a synonym for demoralization. The
housekeeping of the poor schoolmaster was exemplary.
The tone of the family was quiet, high-minded, and aimed
¹ (Lit. An., III. 285).
North British Review, 1865.]
PARENTS. EARLY TRAINING.
339
at good breeding. Of his mother Wolf always spoke with
tender affection. To her he owed the awakening of his
intellectual life. She it was who had taught him to aim
high. He never forgot her delight with him, when to the
question-what he would like to be? the child stammered
out, ‘A superdent' (superintendent, i. e., 'a bishop'). He
often quoted her favourite axioms: 'Poor! no one is poor
but the devil; this is why people say, " Poor devil!" She
would not hear of good disposition unless where the
conduct was also good: 'Neighbour's cow is well dis-
posed, but gives no milk.' The schoolmaster had also his
proverbial philosophy. The secret of happiness, he
thought, might be communicated in half a dozen axioms:
'Take thankfully whatever Providence sends'; 'Nihil ad
nos'; 'Optationes tabes sunt animi,' characterise the mild
wisdom of the much-enduring German.
The father had had a little education; enough to make
him ardently desire it for his son. He was so impatient to
begin, that before the infant was two years old, he knew
a large number of Latin words, and had acquired a sort
of notion of declension and conjugation. By the time he
was eight years old, the boy had learnt Latin enough
to read an easy writer, the rudiments of Greek and French;
could sing and play the piano. His memory was as
remarkable as Porson's. At this age he could retain from
ten to fifteen lines on hearing them once read over. The
father tried on him a variety of experiments which Wolf long
afterwards recognised in Quintilian. But his ordinary way
was the simple way: continued reading aloud with distinct
utterance and exact pronunciation, learning by heart and
repeating, combined with mental arithmetic. The removal
to Nordhausen brought a grammar school within reach.
Nordhausen is now a Prussian town with a manufacturing
population of 16,000. It was then a quiet Imperial city,
within its own walls, and with perhaps not half that number
of inhabitants. But it had its grammar school, the
Z 2
340
X. F. A. WOLF.
stepping-stone for the very poorest of its citizens to the
university and the world. Young Wolf rapidly passed
through all the forms to the top of the school. At twelve
he had learnt all the Latin and Greek his masters here
could teach. They would teach nothing else. The best
of them, Hake, finding the boy reading Wieland's Mu-
sarion, snatched the book from his hands, not because
it was a bad book, but because it was written in German.
Of this Nordhausen we know all about the head-masters,
the second-masters, and down to the assistant-masters.
Not one of them who had the honour of teaching, or
misteaching, F.A. Wolf, but is handed down to posterity at
full-length for what he accomplished or what he neglected.
Poor old Rector Fabricius, intrepidly teaching Greek
grammar on the verge of seventy, and solemnly ad-
monishing his boys to avoid 'nefandas libidines, et linguas
novicias,' was really learned in literary history. His
successor in the rectorate, Hake, is described as a first-rate
teacher, but was cut off at thirty-eight by a complaint
brought on by over-study. Of him Wolf always spoke
with gratitude for what he had learned of him in the few
months he was under him. The next rector, Albert, was an
ignoramus. The best thing he could do was what he did,-
shut up the school for months together. Wolf now fell into
bad hands, or what seemed so. The
The young music-master
was fast, if not dissipated; but also variously accomplished,
a union of qualities fascinating to a boy of fifteen, eager to
learn everything and know life. Comrading with him,
Wolf, it seems, fell into bad habits. But they cannot have
been very bad, as we find nothing specified worse than
loafing, and playing practical jokes on the rector, whose
incapacity for his post was notorious in the city. We
suppose the spirits and precocity of the boy were too
much for the Kleinstädter, in whose eyes the music-master,
Frankenstein, was a veritable rip, a 'cantor Tigellius.'
When the schoolmaster's son forsook Greek for French,
North British Review, 1865.]
NORDHAUSEN.
341
his ruin must have been half accomplished. These frolics,
however, left no traces in Wolf's later life, unless so far
as they may have contributed, together with his own
native vein of humour, to save him from starching into
a Prussian martinet. In Wolf the man was never ex-
tinguished under the doctor. He himself always main-
tained that he owed much to the cynical precentor, whom
he called 'a rough diamond.' Frankenstein knew little
Latin and Greek, but he was a good French scholar, and
could read Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and English. Under
his auspices Wolf took up French and Italian together;
pushed these with his characteristic impetuosity as far as
to read Molière and the Jerusalem Delivered, and then
began Spanish. As Frankenstein's housekeeper had
mislaid the Spanish dictionary in her lodger's bed, Wolf
was obliged to get through Don Quixote with help of a
Dutch translation, thus pulling a pair of sculls. Dictio-
naries were not to be had at the Nordhausen stationer's.
Frankenstein had to lend his pupil his own wretched
Italian vocabulary; and as he could only part with it for a
short time, Wolf set to work and copied out all the
words to which neither Latin nor French would help him.
He got the loan of a Bailey for one month, wrote out
one-third, and committed the rest to memory. He found
a Jew in the city to teach him the rudiments of Hebrew
grammar, and then threw himself with all his might into
music, learning five or six instruments, and studying
general bass, as if he had been designed, like his younger
brother Theodore, for the musical profession. He took
dancing lessons, and of course fell in love, not with any of
the young ladies-little girls, and beneath the notice of
a man of sixteen-but with a charming widow who superin-
tended the class.
Such was Wolf's idle time in Nordhausen eyes. It was
not long before he began to think so himself. He returned
with more zest than ever to classics. Having fared so ill
342
X. F.A.WOLF.
in the way of teachers, he resolved, like Scaliger, to begin
again, and be his own teacher. Had his tutors been
better, there was something in Wolf's nature which would
not be taught. He thought it some peculiarity of his mind
that he never could bear a teacher three days together.
He was still nominally at school. But the masters con-
nived at his absence, judging, like Gibbon's Magdalen
tutors, that his time would be better employed elsewhere.
He always maintained that the character is formed between
twelve and fifteen. Of himself he said, that all that he
afterwards became he was at thirteen. Certainly the bent
his studies now took was that which they ever afterwards
obeyed. He resolved to devote himself to classics, and
drew out an extensive scheme of self-education. An idea
possessed him that, owing to the incompetency of his
masters, he had been fundamentally mistaught. What if all
he had been told as history should turn out mere fable?
Beginning again with the declensions, he read with new
eyes the Latin and Greek classics, some carefully, others
more cursorily; learnt by heart whole books of Homer,
much of the Tragedians and Cicero, and went through the
whole of Scapula and Faber's Thesaurus. He early saw
how important it is to know in what books required
information is to be looked for. He had long exhausted
the scanty school library, of which he exercised, as by
natural right, the guardianship. He borrowed of the two
ministers and the physician, the only persons in the Im-
perial free city who had books. In Ilfeld, a neighbouring
town, he found, besides another school library, a collection
of books belonging to one of the masters, Leopold, who
had edited some Lives of Plutarch. From his frequent
visits here himself and his mother would return home both
loaded with books. When he got hold of a book which
he had not time to read, he committed the title to memory,
and ran over the preface and table of contents. In this
way he laid the foundation of his extensive knowledge of
North British Review, 1865.]
BETWEEN SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.
343
the literature of Philology. An instinct of good sense
kept him in his youth to the best authors, and in their
proper order. As his horizon widened, his ambition to
exhaust it grew. He used to look back with a shudder
at what he exacted from his constitution in those two
years, between school and university. He would sit up
the whole night in a room without a stove, his feet in
a pan of cold water, and one of his eyes bound up to
rest the other. It was high time that this suicidal process
should cease, when, in April 1777, it was brought to a close
by his removal to the university.
Göttingen, 1777-1779.-He had already been to Göt-
tingen, trudging from Nordhausen on foot, in March of the
previous year, to secure a lodging and make the necessary
arrangements. The second journey he had the luxury of
an Einspänner to carry his clothes and books, and might
himself mount on the top when tired. Though they left
Nordhausen at dawn, it was dark before they reached the
last village, where they had to put up for the night. Wolf's
first act on entering Göttingen was to recruit himself with
a good sleep, after which he set out to be matriculated.
Wolf insisted on being inscribed in the matriculation-book
as 'Student of Philology.' The prorector, Baldinger, an
M.D. of some celebrity, laughed at the absurdity, and
informed him there was no such faculty. Medicine, Law,
Arts, and Theology were the four faculties; if he wanted
(God forbid he should!) to become a schoolmaster, the way
was to enter as student of theology. Wolf, with his
habitual obstinacy, refused to see the force of this. He
meant to study philology, and did not intend to study
theology; why should he be called what he was not?
The prorector gave up the point, and Wolf was actually
inscribed as 'Student of Philology,' the first instance, not
only at Göttingen, but at any university. The matriculation
was an epoch in German education.
344
X. F. A. WOLF.
After the prorector came the rector. This was no
other than Heyne, already at the height of his celebrity,
and all-powerful in the university. Wolf had waited on
Heyne the year before, bringing a letter of introduction.
Heyne had received the awkward youth with his habitual
discourtesy. Heyne, who was in fact overwhelmed with
more business than he could get through, always had the
air of grudging the minutes he gave to those he had to see
officially. You saw that he was wishing the whole time
that you would go. He hastily glanced at the letter, and
asked young Wolf, who had been stupid enough to advise
him to study 'what he called philology'? Wolf blundered
out that this was the only study that had ever had any
attraction for him. 'Attraction! but it is not one of the
university studies at all! You must be either theologian
or jurist, and then you may give a little time by the way to
classics, if you find you have leisure. That's the way I
did!' Wolf was struck dumb at hearing the great
philologian, whose name was awful through all the schools
of North Germany, slight his own art, and repel a would-
be disciple. Recovering himself, he explained that 'he
looked not for bread, but for fame. Not that he was well
off, but that his liking for classical studies was so strong,
he was ready to make sacrifices to gratify it. Were it only
on account of the greater intellectual freedom, he vastly
preferred these studies to theology. No philologian was
branded as a heretic for holding singular opinions.' For
an instant Heyne was surprised out of his official reserve,
and exclaimed, 'Freedom! where is freedom to be found in
this life? The young must obey; and, in after-life, let
alone our superiors, there is always the public usurping an
authority over our actions. As for classical studies, they
are the straight road to starvation. At this moment lie on
my desk letters from rectors and correctors (head and
second masters of grammar schools), who tell me that they
would be glad to be hanged, from actual destitution. Not
North British Review, 1865.]
STUDIOSUS PHILOLOGIAE. HEYNE.
345
all the learning in the world can get a thaler out of the
purses of school committees. Professors in the classical
department are but a little better paid. There are about
four-at most six-good chairs of philology in Germany.'
The young aspirant modestly suggested that one of those
six he destined for himself. After this there was nothing
left for Heyne but to laugh. He took a friendly leave of
the future professor of philology, kindly intimating that
any lectures of his for which Wolf entered his name
should cost him nothing.
Heyne had not forgotten this conversation when Wolf
came before him the second time. After a little demur
the Studiosus Philologiae of the matriculation-book was
suffered to pass. But when Wolf would have entered into
some explanations about himself, Heyne abruptly wished
him good-day, and retreated into his study. He left the
youth, of whom he must have seen that he required and
deserved advice and guidance in no ordinary degree,
without either. He neither examined him, nor ascertained
his point of proficiency, nor showed any inclination to
interest himself in his reading in any way. Heyne's
indifference made a deep impression upon Wolf. It is
true, indeed, that it read him a useful lesson. When he
became professor, he made it a rule never to send a
student away without seeing him, and giving him his best
attention. However pressed by business, however pre-
occupied with literary research, he regarded a call from a
pupil as a first claim on his time; this, too, at Halle,
surrounded by students whose poverty made them
importunate, while Heyne had to do with the better-bred
and better-to-do Hanoverians. Wolf took care not to
inflict upon his own pupils the discomforts which Heyne's
slight had entailed upon himself. So far Heyne had
unintentionally done him a service. But from this first
interview all the relations of scholar and teacher received
an unhappy bias, from which they never recovered, and
346
X. F. A. WOLF.
which exercised an important influence on Wolf's whole
career.
Before leaving the professor's apartment, Wolf entered
his name for a private course on the Iliad. This was then
Heyne's crack lecture. He was known to be preparing an
edition of Homer which was to drive out of the field all
others,—not an impossible enterprise, seeing that Ernesti's
revision of Clarke was in possession. Wolf came to this
course with the overstrained anticipations of a freshman.
He took pains, which freshmen do not always take, in
preparing for it. He noted all the books cited in the
introductory lecture, assembled them round him, and spent
often twenty hours in preparation for a single lecture.
The result was that at the end of five weeks, and the first
book of the Iliad, Wolf absented himself.
He was
disappointed. The lecturer's commentary seemed to him
superficial. Heyne said of himself that he prelected as 'a
dog drinks from the Nile.' There was a 'hesitation—what
seemed to Wolf a helplessness-in his method.' 'We
might read so and so, but it is better, perhaps, to keep the
old reading.' 'Emendation is a hazardous game!' 'Can
any one explain that?' Wolf's desertion could not escape
even the short-sighted Heyne. He had his revenge on the
deserter. Next semester Heyne announced a course on
Pindar. The obscurities of Pindar particularly stimulated
Wolf, who had long exhausted the little light that the
commentators-Schmid, to wit, and Benedict-could afford.
He attended to give in his name. 'This,' said Heyne,
'is a private course, to which only advanced students are
to be admitted.' Wolf indignantly demanded to be
examined. Heyne took no notice of this, but declined to
take his name. Some time afterwards, Heyne, who was
placable, offered Wolf a nomination to his philological
seminary, on condition of sending in the usual written
exercise. Wolf retaliated by neither giving in the exercise
nor taking notice of the offer. This headstrong temper
North British Review, 1865.]
LECTURES AT GÖTTINGEN.
347.
clung to Wolf through life. What made his conduct on
this occasion more foolish, was that Heyne's voice was all-
powerful with the Hanoverian Government, and that a
Göttingen student could not carry with him into the world
any better recommendation than to have been one of
Heyne's seminarists.
To the Nordhausen boy, Göttingen had meant Heyne.
If he could not learn from Heyne, what could he learn
from such poor creatures as Vollborth, Suchfort, Kulen-
kamp, a pastor, who, however, lectured upon Sophocles?
They lived upon fragments of Heyne, carried off years
before in their Hefte. It is true that Göttingen contained
Michaelis, and Walch, and Meiners, and Blumenbach.
Wolf attended regularly or irregularly, and admired the
learning of Walch, and the critical method of Michaelis.
But they did not teach classics. He gradually withdrew
from the class-rooms altogether. The first day of a new
course would see him there diligently taking down all the
authorities which on such occasions the lecturer would
recite and criticise. Armed with this bibliographical list
he hurried to the library, carried off, by favour of one of
the sub-librarians, a basket-load of books, and shut himself
in his room till he had gone through them.
The marks of a 'reading man' in a German university
are the number of the courses he undertakes, the regularity
with which he attends to the hour, and the diligence with
which his pen follows the professor's voice. Wolf
despised Hefte, and even to give his attention to a speaker
for an hour was irksome to him. But if he was little seen
in the Auditorium, he was never to be found in the streets,
the Kneipe, or the Conditorei. He gave up lectures to save
time. Of this he was so great an economist, that he
grudged the time spent in walking from one lecture to
another, in dressing, but especially in hair-dressing. This
last he put a stop to at the end of the first week. He had
his hair cut short, and replaced the pigtail by a perruque, in
348
X. F. A. WOLF.
defiance of the singularity, thus saving himself the hours
wasted in waiting upon the friseur. He simplified his
dressing of washing, of course, there is no mention―till
he could boast that the operation cost him three minutes
out of his day. His acquaintances were many, but he
contracted few or no intimacies. He had no leisure for
friendship. It was rarely that a comrade knocked at his
door. He himself was as sparing in his visits to others.
He was never even present at a students' drinking-bout,
till at Halle, after he had become professor. His Nord-
hausen attachment, though not an engagement, preserved
him from vulgar temptation, and he had not the entrée of a
single house in the town. During the whole three years
of his university life he had no female society. His books
were all in all to him. The weekly batch which he drew
from the public library must be got through in the time.
Recreations he had none. We are not surprised to hear
that at the end of his first year he was prostrated by a
severe attack of illness. The skill of Baldinger and Weiss
saved his life, and a visit to his native air recruited him.
But he had learnt a lesson, and from this time forward his
lamp was always extinguished by midnight.
In later life, and in a published letter, Wolf did not
hesitate to ascribe the irregularity of his studies at the
university to Heyne's neglect of him. With Wolf's after-
career before us, we cannot help thinking that his own
headstrong and self-willed character had at least as much
to do with it. In the result it was as well. Since Gibbon,
who took to Magdalen ‘a stock of learning which might
have puzzled a doctor,' so extraordinary a student had
perhaps never entered a university. Not that Göttingen,
in 1777, had sunk to the level of Oxford in 1754. Even
Wolf might at eighteen have learnt from a less than
Heyne. Heyne was essentially a dull, wooden man,-a
pigtail professor after all. But there was life within, if you
could break through to it. Heyne had an apprehension of
North British Review, 1865.]
1
DEBT TO HEYNE.
349
antiquity as a real world. Without any originality of view
himself, he had the skill to adapt the suggestions of more
philosophical modern minds to the ancient world. He
mediated between the ancient and the modern world.
He did not invent historical science, but he first applied it,
as it was supplied to him by others, to antiquity. Before
him the mythology of Greece and Rome was a farrago of
nursery tales. He at least led the way to an intelligent
interpretation of it. To have been near Heyne, to have
caught his points of view, would have been of great
service to Wolf. That Wolf did learn from Heyne, that he
did get from him, not directly but indirectly, all that
Heyne was capable of giving him, appears to us highly
probable. Most of us learn through our sympathies.
But there are natures who also learn through their
antipathies, natures which acquire from that which they
resist. Wolf did not want drilling in the technical part of
scholarship--a part which was Heyne's weakest side. He
wanted insight, method, suggestions of meaning, drift, and
purpose. His keen ear, on the watch for every whisper,
collected, we do not doubt, by other methods as much of
this sort as he could have got from attending Heyne with
the utmost diligence. Wolf himself admitted that he had
learned from Heyne. He would have been more liberal
in his acknowledgments had it not been necessary for him
to defend himself against Heyne's claim to have suggested
his Homeric theories. This claim Wolf indignantly
rejected. But, putting the Homeric theory aside, we say
that Heyne contributed to form Wolf.
The process,
indeed, was not that of docile attendance in a lecture-room,
but rude collision, perhaps necessary to sharpen the
attention of a defiant and unreceptive mind such as that of
Wolf. Wolf was quite capable of nursing his resentments,
and sacrificing comfort to brooding over the wounds of
pride.
But the restlessness of his faculties would not
allow him to miss any notions which might be floating in
350
X. F. A. WOLF.
his neighbourhood. Negligent as he was of lectures,
Wolf carried away from Göttingen all that for his purposes
was to be learnt there.
This was Wolf, who,
The professors, however shut up in their Fachstudien,
could not but remark the presence of such a phenomenal
student. They did so, but without understanding the
phenomenon. Indeed, looked at from the dons' side,
there was so much presumption and self-conceit—the
commonest of all phenomena-that they may be pardoned
for not having looked beyond. How must the great Heyne
have been ruffled, when going one morning to the library
for the literature illustrative of the Latin classic on which
he was going to lecture, he found the whole apparatus
criticus to that author swept clean out of the shelves!
Who could have got the books? There was only one
person who knew his way to them.
in his usual odd way of following a lecture without
attending it, was reading ahead of Heyne's course on Latin
literature; reversing the usual practice, and being present
in spirit, not in the flesh. He was an uncanny inmate of a
comfortable university. Still more so when he began to
give lectures as a private tutor, and got considerable
classes. They were glad to get rid of him. This Heyne
managed. Though not a seminarist, Heyne made him the
offer of a place in the Government school at Ilfeld, of
which Heyne was curator. This school was a select
grammar school of the higher class; not a local Gymnasium,
but a grammar school on the English system, where about
forty boys were boarded. Places in it were much coveted,
and Wolf was at once pleased and surprised by the offer.
Heyne, however, contrived to mortify him by requiring of
him a trial lesson. The pretext of this was, that the
appointment rested with the Ilfeld masters. It did so
formally. But it was well known that Heyne's recommend-
ation was a command, and that he repeatedly sent his own
seminarists to fill vacancies without further ceremony. A
North British Review, 1865.]
ILFELD SCHOOL.
351
letter from Heyne to the head-master of Ilfeld has been
discovered in the school archives there, which leaves us in
no doubt as to his feeling towards Wolf:-
30th August 1779.—... Herr Wolf ... has capacity, but I don't
like him. We must not go by that in this case. I have told him that
he goes to Ilfeld to give a probationary lesson, and that he is not to
think that he has got the place. I beg you will put him to a severe
trial, and specially to test him on the point of docility. Set him a
passage in Greek and another in Latin to put a class through, and let
him, besides, correct an exercise which you have dictated to your
boys.
Wolf was fully alive to the affront contrived for him,
but had the good sense to submit. He was of course.
appointed, but only to the second of two assistant-master-
ships which were vacant at the same time. On 29th October,
1779, he went through the ceremony of induction into his
new post. There is a 'report' to Heyne upon his lesson;
'report' on that report by Heyne to the department at
Hanover; 'rescript' of minister ordering Wolf's installa-
tion; 'deed' of installation, four pages in length; execution
of deed by Wolf; finally, ceremony of 'induction' to office,
-which office is that of fourth master in a school of forty
boys. Surely the paper-lust of a German bureau is
satiated. Not at all; there is yet the 'report' of the
induction ceremonial, chronicling with faithful prolixity
how the new Collaborator was introduced at ten a.m. into
the great class-room, where the assembled school was
addressed by Director Meisner,-here abstract of director's
discourse, whereupon the pupils promised fealty to Wolf;
how, between eleven and twelve, he was led round the
rooms and introduced to each boarder singly; how, at
twelve, they sat down to table; how, after dinner, they
took him to the music-lesson, etc. All these documents
are still to be seen in the archives at Ilfeld or Hanover.
Ilfeld and Osterode, 1779-1783.-We will not be betrayed
by our authorities into a detailed account of Wolf's school
352
X. F. A. WOLF.
life. Two points only must be noticed. The proportion
of masters to boys was liberal, consequently none of the
masters were overwhelmed with work. Much time was
thus left to Wolf for his own studies. Homer-here we
see Heyne's influence-had occupied him much at Göttin-
gen. It continued to do so; and it was at Ilfeld that his
ideas on the composition of the Homeric poems took root
in his mind. He had some negotiation with a publisher
at Berlin about a volume of Homeric Researches which
he projected. It fortunately came to nothing then. He
had already begun to work upon Plato, and contemplated
an Introduction to Plato for the use of students. This
was also dropped. But he actually published an edition
of the Symposium (Leipzig, 1782). It is remarkable for
having notes and preface in German, being one of the
earliest examples of this innovation. But we are not to
infer that Wolf deliberately approved the fashion which
soon set in. He had an unavowed object in his experi-
ment. The great Friedrich's Letter to his Minister Von
Zedlitz, in 1779, had sounded like the call of a trumpet
through all the schools of North Germany. Wherever
there was found a man of ambition or of zeal, his secret
hope and prayer was to receive a call to Prussia. What
Wolf's secret thoughts were, may be gathered not only
from the allusion in the Preface to 'the philosopher on the
throne and his enlightened minister,' from the compliment
to Gedike, at that time all-powerful with Von Zedlitz, but
from the character of the innovation, which aims at that
'logical analysis of the matter' on which the Letter had
laid such peculiar stress.
Besides the Symposium, Wolf printed an edition for
school use of Lillo's Fatal Curiosity, with a short account
of the author's life in English. A copy of this would be a
bibliographical curiosity, since all the efforts of Wolf's
biographer to recover one have been unsuccessful. But
these were the divertisements of his leisure. Wolf was
North British Review, 1865.]
ILFELD.
353
never the writer. And though a prodigious reader, he
threw now an undiminished energy into his school work.
He soon became the life of Ilfeld. He reformed more
than one malpractice in the school, and yet contrived to
keep on good terms with his colleagues. He even im-
proved his footing with Heyne. We can easily understand
that he had frequent collisions with the director. Meisner
was a personage irritably jealous of his authority, and
here was the youngest of his staff continually throwing
him into the shade. Nothing could have withstood Wolf's
ascendency had his judgment been equal to his force of
character. He was ever and anon putting himself in the
wrong from neglect of official etiquettes. He would bring
a complaint directly before a college meeting, instead of
lodging it with the director, whose place it was, by the
statutes, to bring it before the meeting. Then the director
triumphed. At other times we find Meisner whining to
Heyne: 'I know not how I am to carry on the directorate,
when it comes to such a pass that the young people are
grasping at all the power! I must beg that my authority
may be upheld, as is very needful.'
Wolf had already, at twenty-two, outgrown a subordinate
sphere, when, in the autumn of 1781, he was promoted,
in the most unexpected way, to an independent post. He
happened to see an advertisement in a newspaper, already
three months old, that the municipality at Osterode, in
the Harz, would shortly proceed to the election of a head-
master at their grammar school. Within an hour Wolf
was in a vehicle on the road to Osterode. He found on
arrival that the place was as good as promised to one
Krause, a private tutor at Göttingen. Wolf, not to be
daunted, got leave to deliver a trial lesson, and so capti-
vated the electors, with the Superintendent at their head,
that they threw poor Krause overboard, and proceeded to
elect Wolf unanimously. There was a momentary hitch,
owing to the High Consistory in Hanover exacting a
VOL. I.
A a
354
X. F. A. WOLF.
theological examination, to which Wolf declined to submit.
This was got over. The promotion to be Rector of
Osterode school, with its 700 thalers a year and house,
was the more welcome to Wolf, as he had recently
engaged himself with Sophia Hüpeden, daughter of a
Justizamtmann at Neustadt. In March 1782 he was
settled at Osterode with his bride. In August 1783 he
left it for Halle. In that short interval he had re-organized
a school fallen to decay during the rectorate of his blind
and aged predecessor, who had been thirty years in office,
restored its credit in the neighbourhood, and so enhanced
his own reputation that two offers of better schools came
to him before the end of the year. One of these, that of
Gera, with a salary of 900 thalers, and a seat in the
Consistory, was a highly desirable offer. To Gera he
would have gone, when, just at the moment, came the
much-desired call to a Prussian university. The Sym-
posium had hit the mark. It had been brought under the
notice of Von Zedlitz. Inquiries had been made at
Göttingen and at Ilfeld, and of Reiz in Leipzig, and, in
spite of an unfavourable reply from Heyne, a call had
been sent to a Chair of Philology and Pädagogik in the
University of Halle. This sounds excellent; but alas,
the parsimony of the great King! who wanted good
professors, but thought they ought to be had very cheap ;
only 300 thalers could be allowed for philology and
pädagogik. Only £45 a year and no house! The curate,
mentioned by Bishop Blomfield in one of his pamphlets,
who advertised to teach 'the Greek language, according
to the method of the late Professor Porson, in six lessons,
for one guinea,' could hardly have undersold one of
Friedrich's professors.
No prudent man, about to become a father, would have
decided as Wolf did. He decided for Prussia, every way,
purse included,-wisely, as the event showed. But his
decision was most disinterested at the time. A Prussian
North British Review, 1865.]
OSTERODE. HALLE.
355
university then had other inducements more attractive
even than pay; and first-rate men are more willing to
starve than an inferior class, for these inducements. The
fault was not with Von Zedlitz, who did what he could;
but the purse-strings were held so tight by the King that
money was not to be got. Even to build the new library
at Halle he must squeeze the funds out of the sum allowed
for the professors. 'You have my thanks,' wrote Von
Zedlitz to Wolf, 'for preferring Halle to Gera; the greater
resort of men of learning, the concourse of hearers, and
liberty of thought, may in some measure compensate
you for the sacrifice.' How are things changed since
1783!
Halle, 1783-1806.-Wolf had never lost an opportunity
or wasted an hour. Here he was, at twenty-four, with a
learned reputation, a secured position, and a career opened
before him, such as other men hope to attain at forty.
The twenty-three years spent at Halle were bright, happy,
and genial. He had an occupation in which he delighted,
into which he threw himself heart and soul. He had
the satisfaction of doing a great and growing work, of
breathing a new life, not only into Halle, but into all the
Protestant universities of Germany. Gesner, Ernesti,
and Heyne, had indeed been pioneers of the road, but
the impulse to movement on it came from Wolf. Like
all great men and great movements, they would not have
been what they were but that the time was come for them.
In 1783 two tendencies were in conflict in German
education—an old and a new. The innovators were of
that school of which Locke was the philosopher and
Rousseau the prophet. They loudly denounced the waste
of youthful years and freshness on the pedantic methods
of the grammar schools, the confinement of instruction
within the narrow orbit of the dead languages and theology,
and called for a modern education for modern life. On
the other hand, the schools and universities were in
A a 2
356
X. F. A. WOLF.
possession, and, in the name of orthodoxy, clung with
fierce tenacity to Latin and Greek. The modern party
had the advantage of having with them the sympathies
of the age, the power of the press, and the penetrative
propagand of French literature. The call for school
reform had spread widely over the north of Europe, but
nowhere had it met with a readier response than in North
Germany. Its representatives here were that advanced
section of reformers of whom Basedow is the best known.
Men of strong character and of eccentric career, these
reformers who surrounded Basedow were seldom on
sufficiently good terms with consistories to be presentable
to public schools, even by so liberal a government as that
of Friedrich II. They were, therefore, obliged to attempt
their reform from without, by setting up an institution
of their own-the Philanthropinum at Dessau. Their
programme was a radical reform of the methods hitherto
used. Education was no longer to bear the stamp of the
convent. We must follow nature in everything, and let
the child grow. Education of the head is everything,
for the road to the heart is through the head. What is
taught must be realities. Languages are only to be learnt
for the matters to which they are the key. There is so
much in the modern world worth knowing, that all super-
fluities must be retrenched from our course to find room
for the essential. All dead languages, however curious
their literature, belong to the superfluous. All teaching
should be by intuition. Learning should be made agree-
able to the child. Man is by nature good. God, the
Almighty Father, loves all His children. The love of
man is natural to man; children should be trained through
love. They should regard themselves as citizens of the
world. Such were the principles of the reformers.
In Prussia, with which we have more particularly to do,
the views and efforts even of this more extreme party were
looked on with a certain degree of approbation. Von
North British Review, 1865.]
BASEDOW AND THE REFORMERS.
357
Zedlitz, the enlightened Cultus-minister of Friedrich II,
was quite willing to introduce into Prussia what was
good in their plans. He sent Schütz, one of the Halle
professors, to Dessau to inquire and report. The report
was not favourable. But the breaking-up of the estab
lishment at Dessau, in the latter years of the eighth
decennium (Basedow withdrew in 1778), was for education,
says Schlosser, 'what the dispersion at Babel was for
civilization in Asia.' The Dessau teachers carried their
ideas with them into every country. Trapp was brought
to Halle. A new professorship, that of pädagogik, was
created expressly for him, and a kind of training-school—
Erziehungsinstitut,-recently erected, was committed to
his guidance.
Halle was not an unpromising soil for the experiment.
It was a new university. Founded in 1696, it had not a
tap-root running deep into the classical revival of the
sixteenth century. It had itself originated in a certain
reforming movement. Not in the movement for the
reform of education, which had not yet begun, but in that
movement for the regeneration of Protestantism, which
was afterwards known by the name of Pietism. Halle
was the Pietist university, and had shared the vicissitudes
of that religious movement with which it had been asso-
ciated. Pietism had begun as a life, had stiffened into a
doctrine, and was dying out in the shape of a party. Its
principle of life was fled, but its tenacity of existence
remained. The theological faculty at Halle had sunk
into being what the theological faculties at the older uni-
versities had long been,-merely the gate to the ministry.
The three-year course was curtailed to two years, and
only the barely necessary lectures given or attended.
But the faculty of theology was the gate, not only to the
ministry, but also to the scholastic profession. The
masters of the middle schools, and in great part also
of the grammar schools, qualified for their posts in
358
F. A. WOLF.
X.
theology. It was necessary, therefore, that Latin and
Greek should be taught even to theological students.
And accordingly classical lectures were given in the
theological Seminarium by professors of no mean merit,
e.g., by Christian Gottfried Schütz, and by the young
Niemeyer. At the same time that Trapp was appointed
professor of pädagogik (1779), Niemeyer was named In-
spector of the Seminarium, and charged with the classical
teaching in it. Trapp was not only a disciple of the
new movement, but himself one of the Philanthropinists.
Niemeyer was neither. A Halle man by birth and con-
nection, and a great-grandson of Francke, Niemeyer
belonged by nature to Pietism. A pupil of Semler and
Nösselt, he was drawn by education towards a more
liberal school of thought. But though a theological
professor, Niemeyer's interests were educational. He
threw himself with all his power into the effort now
making to raise the character of the teacher. The schools
had been taught by the clergy. School-teaching was a
temporary occupation engaged in by a young theologian
till he could get a parish. The very first step must be
to make it an independent profession, with its own pro-
spects and rewards, and above all, with its proper training.
He who was to teach must first learn what he was to
teach, and not qualify for the office by learning something
else. If he was to teach classics he must learn classics,
not theology. On this principle the training-institute at
Halle was to be managed. It was to be a school for
breeding masters of grammar schools, and humanistic
studies were to form a chief part of its curriculum.
Niemeyer was to give the classical instruction; Trapp
was to lecture on the art of teaching (pädagogik).
Trapp turned out an entire failure. Successful at
Dessau, in a school with boys, he was useless as a
lecturer in a university. The reason of this is simple.
He was a zealous empiric, and not well-grounded in any
North British Review, 1865.]
TRAINING-INSTITUTE.
359
branch of knowledge. He found that he had mistaken
his vocation, and, in the third year of his experiment,
withdrew to Hamburg, to take charge of a school. When
Trapp resigned, Von Zedlitz wrote to the King that he
did not consider the loss irreparable, and that he was
already in treaty 'with an able man in the Electorate of
Hanover.' This was Wolf, who came to Halle to succeed
Trapp. 'Do your best,' wrote Von Zedlitz, 'to remove
from Halle the only reproach to which it is open,—that
it is not a school of philology.' This was what his patron
intended, and he himself understood his call in this sense.
Wolf's opening semester disappointed the expectations
of himself no less than his friends. It seemed likely that
he would turn out, like Trapp, a mistake, only on the
other side. Trapp knew nothing. Wolf found himself
lecturing above the heads of his pupils. He had thrown
all his energy and science into his lectures, but met with
no response. He found himself without sympathy, without
appreciation, without a class. He fell into profound dis-
couragement. He had forgotten that Halle was not
Göttingen, where the labours of Gesner and Heyne, in a
course of years, had slowly created a school of classical
taste and research. The ground required preparing for
a crop. What was the 'science of the ancient world'
Alterthumswissenschaft-to the sons of Saxon peasants,
who came to the University only to qualify for places
where, as pastors or schoolmasters, they might earn a
livelihood, and lead an easy existence? Biester, Von
Zedlitz's secretary, consoled him by reminding him 'that
Heyne had experienced the same indifference when he
first began at Göttingen. He must persevere; sound,
thorough teaching would make its way in the end. The
state of things he described in the University was a
serious evil, and to check it would be a signal service.'
Another friend gave him some advice very necessary
in his narrow circumstances. I am sure that Von Zedlitz
360
X. F. A. WOLF.
means you well, and intends to increase your salary.
But take my advice, and keep yourself always well in-
formed of the exact state of the University chest. When
you come to know the esprit de corps in Halle, you will
find that for every 150 thalers that become vacant there
are 150 claimants. Let it be known at once among your
colleagues that the first vacant 150 thalers are promised
to you, and that you only accepted the call on that under-
standing. Ministers have short memories, no blame to
them. Luckily they do not take it amiss to be reminded
of one's existence. Do not forget this. Lastly, if you
wish to have a friend in Biester, send him a paper for his
monthly, and decline payment.' Another friend added
some useful hints on the personnel of the University. He
ought to be extremely reserved at first on coming into
a place where the other professors were mostly so much
his seniors, and where the feeling towards the training-
institute, towards the minister himself, and his educational
theories, was so various. He should be on his guard
against Semler-an incautious man, and a strong anti-
Zedlitzian. Nösselt would be no friend, as his object was
gently to push Niemeyer. He would find the concerts
of the bookseller Gebauer a good neutral ground, where
much might be picked up under cover of the piano. Let
them call you close at first. Time will justify your
behaviour as no more than prudent.
Thus encouraged, Wolf resolved to persevere. He
threw up the training-school, of which he saw at once that
he, at least, could make nothing, and laid himself out for
philological teaching exclusively. To conquer indifference,
to cure apathy, and to inspire new life into classical
teaching, was to be his work. In a few years he succeeded;
entirely changed the spirit of the University of Halle, and
through it of all the higher education in Germany, waking
in schools and universities an enthusiasm for ancient litera-
ture, second only to that of the Revival in the sixteenth
North British Review, 1865.]
IDEA OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION.
361
century. From this, in fact, comes in great part both the
direction and the force which have ever since been
impressed on secondary education in Germany. If we
would explore the secret of the superiority of their classical
training, we must go back to its source, to the principles
and practice developed at Halle by F. A. Wolf. A very
summary notice is all that can be attempted here.
If we wish to raise the universities from their present
torpor, we must begin by raising the schools. The only
way of raising the schools is to send them better-prepared
schoolmasters. School reform means schoolmaster reform.
When the masters are better able to teach, the scholars
will come better prepared to the university. Not that
university studies should be anticipated at school. There
is too much of this in our present schools. The master
delivers lectures, and the boys ape the manners of students.
There is a clear line of demarcation between school in-
struction and university instruction, which ought never to
be overstepped. The characteristic of university instruc-
tion may be denoted by the word 'science': Wissenschaft.
I call all teaching scientific which is systematically laid out
and followed up to its original source, e.g., a knowledge of
classical antiquity is scientific, when the remains of anti-
quity are connectedly studied in the original languages.
School teaching, on the other hand, is directed to the
memory and imagination. It must be preparatory to, not
anticipatory of, the university.
How are well-prepared schoolmasters to be got for our
schools? How, that is, are able young men to be got to
take the trouble of educating themselves as schoolmasters?
Partly by exterior inducements, by better payment, and
higher distinction-honor et praemium,-not only by raising
the stipends generally, but by occasional presents to
deserving men. Wolf always passes more lightly over
this head than we should expect, seeing that inadequate
payment was, and still is, a Prussian schoolmaster's first
362
X. F. A. WOLF.
#
grievance. We must remember that he was a professor,
i.e., a paid servant of Government, and lived through evil
times, when a murmur was 'sedition.' The omission in
part may fairly be ascribed to his own disinterestedness.
But he does recur to it from time to time, as in his half-
ironical Instructions to Schoolmasters: 'Be always in
good health, and know how to fast courageously when-
ever necessary.' By exterior rewards, then, but not by
them only. The first condition of a good teacher is that
he should be a teacher, and nothing else; that he should
be trained as a teacher, and not brought up to some other
profession. In a word, the schools will never be better as
long as the schoolmasters are theologians by profession.
The theological course in a university, with its smattering
of classics, is about as good a preparation for a classical
master as a course of feudal law would be. Examinations
may be better than no test of fitness at all, but they are
insufficient tests of fitness for office. You must train your
masters under your own eye. No regulations can make
good schools; we must have men. Even training cannot
do all. To the making a successful teacher there
belongs a special charisma. No man should dedicate
himself to the profession who does not feel a special
vocation to it. A zeal for his occupation, a love for youth,
a genuine, deeply-seated religious devotion to the service
of the young, can alone make the toilsome occupation of
school-teacher endurable.
In pursuance of this principle, Wolf, in 1786, prevailed
upon the Chancellor of the University, Von Hoffmann, to
erect a philological Seminarium. This was an institution
parallel to the theological Seminarium, and intended for
the special training of classical teachers, as that was for
divines. The 'exterior' inducements were not great: a
'bourse,' or exhibition of 40 thalers, tenable for two years.
Wolf, as inspector, had 100 thalers. As the total number
of seminarists was limited to twenty-four, the total cost of
North British Review, 1865.]
THE PHILOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
363
an establishment which exercised so vast an influence on
education was about £180 a year. Forty thalers may have
been not unwelcome to an indigent Halle student. Still,
in the fact that sixty candidates offered themselves for the
first examination, we see evidence that Wolf's teaching
had already, in the third year, begun to tell. No one was
eligible till he had completed his first year of residence,
though any student of any faculty might be present at the
seminary lectures. As it was a new experiment, the
original regulations were very simple, and in practice were
being continually altered or added to. Indeed, scarce a se-
mester passed without some modification being suggested
by experience. When, in 1810, Wolf was asked for a
sketch of his method, he could only say that it so happened
that the practice of the philological Seminarium had never
been reduced to written rules. Perhaps this was not so
purely accidental. Wolf's tendencies were autocratic. He
was very jealous of interference, even by authority. When
once the Department of Education (Oberschulcollegium)
ventured to suggest that the instruction given in the
seminary might be made more popular, Wolf immediately
sent in his resignation. As inspector he was bound to
send in a report every half year, but it was rarely forth-
coming till he had been several times admonished of his
duty. He would allow no sub-tutor in the seminary but
pupils of his own training; young men like J. L. Thilo, or
Immanuel Bekker, entirely devoted to his views. The
seminary thus was not only Wolf's creation, but was
wholly controlled and inspired by him.
The material inducements to philology as a profession
being so meagre, Wolf insisted that in the subject itself
lay an all-sufficient inducement. He had known many an
ardent young man to whom it was compensation enough,
for starving pay, that he would be always engaged with the
very study, which, were he rich, he would have made his
occupation. What was this study? Not the acquisition
364
X. F. A. WOLF.
of the Greek and Latin languages. The languages, Latin
especially, had been regarded as introductory to the pro-
fessions; as a qualification for the study of law or theology.
This was the meanest view that could be taken of the
subject. Again, the languages had been regarded as the
road to the literature; and the literature was supposed to
constitute what was called 'learning.' This was a tradi-
tional superstition. There had, indeed, been a time when
this was really the fact. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the works of the ancients were regarded, not
only as masterpieces of art, but as the storehouse of
all knowledge. Education consisted then in appropriating
their thoughts. All the sciences were to be founded upon
the principles they had laid down. The history of the
ancient world was the only school of the politician or the
diplomatist. These views were true and fruitful in their
day. They could be no longer either. The sciences had
attained such a development, that any school handbook
contained more truths of this sort than all the writings of
antiquity. As vehicles of thought the modern languages
had superseded Latin. Nor, again, did the use of philo-
logy lie in tracing the past history of science. True,
there were dark corners in the sciences, which could be
illuminated by a knowledge of their past. But this was
only a special application of their knowledge, not that
which conferred on it its universal value.
To find this value we must rise to a higher elevation.
Classical learning might be compared to a vast mountain-
range, of which the successive peaks offered wider and
wider prospects. On each of these summits men had been
inclined, at various periods in the history of learning, to
rest as at the end of their journey. The toil of reaching
many of these heights was often well repaid, but they
were not the top. The time was now come when we
might comprehend philology as a whole, as no longer
subsidiary to other studies, as a science in itself, having
North British Review, 1865.]
SCIENCE OF PHILOLOGY.
365
its own end. He would propose to define this end as
'knowledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity.'
The expression seems to have been supplied by Wilhelm
von Humboldt¹. It is largely developed by Wolf. When
we speak of 'knowing human nature,' we naturally think
of that empirical worldly craft which is got by much
mixing with men. In our definition the expression bears
the full sense of the words: the study of man's nature
with its original forces and qualities, and the modifi-
cations which varied circumstances impose on those forms.
This knowledge cannot be got from life. To get it we
must have our eye continually directed upon some great
nation, and follow the education of that nation through all
its successive stages. We must study a community, not
individuals. And what, in the knowledge of individuals,
the study of some great man's biography is for us, that,
in the knowledge of humanity, is done for us by the
history of some highly cultivated nation. This is a
knowledge which cannot be communicated by teaching.
In this respect it is like philosophy; it grows up in the
mind as the result of long-continued occupation with the
object. It is a constantly growing picture of a national
existence, to which we are insensibly adding fresh traits.
To create and preserve our conception of a full and
harmonious national life, requires our most strenuous
mental effort; nothing less, in short, than the devotion of
our whole will and attention. The sources from which
this conception is to be drawn are threefold-1. The
written remains; 2. The works of art; and, 3. Other
remains, such as buildings, inscriptions, coins, implements,
weapons, etc.
To map out in detail the manifold sections into which
this complex study branches, was the object of a special
course, called in German university language, 'Ency-
clopaedia of Philology.' There is in print one draft of
1 Humboldt to Wolf, Werke, V. 18.
366
X. F. A. WOLF,
such a course¹, which, as dating in 1807, may be pre-
sumed to be in the form which Wolf finally approved.
It has been translated into French; but it is almost
unknown in this country, though we find that George
Bancroft, the American historian, had projected an
English translation, which, however, he did not exe-
cute. In it Wolf marshals the whole contents of philo-
logy into six introductory, and eighteen material divisions.
The six introductory disciplines prepare the student
for entering within the circle of historical and real
knowledge contained in the other eighteen branches.
These eighteen antiquarian sciences are themselves so
many means, which, united, conduct to the contemplation
of antiquity. This end, this epopteia, or actual admission
to the mysteries, is none other than that knowledge
of which we have already spoken-the knowledge of
man in the ancient world, as exhibited in an eminent
organic common life. This attainment is the final reward
of the true student. It is in his constant endeavour to
grasp this many-sidedness of thought and feeling that
consists his progress, his self-culture. As a condition of
this higher culture on the student's part, Wolf insisted on
a feeling for the ideal. He resisted with all his power that
mean habit of thought, by which he was surrounded in
Halle, of looking at learning as the cow that kept the
family in milk. He was fond of quoting that sentence of
Aristotle, where he is explaining why drawing should form
a part of all liberal education 2. 'Recte studet qui sibi et
vitae studet' should be our motto. Liberal studies followed
in an illiberal spirit sink below any mechanical art in
worth. It should be our constant endeavour to keep alive
in our own bosoms a love for study. In reading with the
fear of examination ('Examenscheu ') before our eyes, this is
impossible. 'Perverse studere qui examinibus studeant.'
1 Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft, I. 1.
2 Τὸ ζητεῖν πανταχοῦ τὸ χρήσιμον ἥκιστα ἁρμόττει τοῖς ἐλευθέροις.—Polit. VIII. 3.
North British Review, 1865.]
AIM OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDY.
367
Making classical study thus comprehensive, and fixing
its aim thus high, Wolf descended in practice to the
minutiae of grounding. He regarded all university in-
struction as, at most, introducing the learner to the subject;
teaching him to find his own way in it. He would not
load his pupils with the outpouring of his own learning.
He aimed at infusing his own spirit into them, that,
entering into fresh combinations in new personalities, it
might strike out fresh and rich results for science. He
refused, indeed, unprepared students in the Seminarium,
requiring every one to bring with him a competent know-
ledge of Greek and Latin. The student must rise up to
the instruction, not the instruction descend to him. He
looked to the energy of the individual as the source of his
progress. In the seminary all the work was done by the
pupils themselves. The inspector presided and directed,
like the moderator in the old universities, but did not
lecture. The exercises (Uebungen) were of three kinds:
interpretation, disputation, teaching a school-class. On an
'interpretation' day the student whose turn it was under-
took not merely to render, or 'construe' his author, but to
support his interpretation by reasons. He was bound to
show that he had used the best that commentators offered,
but that he had, by reflection and comparison, made it his
own. The interpretation was to be strictly of the sense, no
exposition of the beauties, of the passage; not aesthetical,
but grammatical. When necessary only it might be critical
of the text, e.g., emendation is an admissible way of meeting
a difficulty in Martial, not so in Virgil. 'You are to
imagine you have before you the head form in a grammar
school.' Though only one, or two at most, students were
to be put on in the hour, yet every one was to prepare
himself as fully as if it were his turn to interpret. The
whole exercise was to be gone through in Latin, except
when Wolf directed German, of which occasions he never
gave notice beforehand. A whole paragraph of connected
368
X. F. A. WOLF.
meaning was to be taken at once. The main drift to be
first stated in few words. Then to pass to the secondary
propositions; then to the words which were to be explained
singly. This method to be strictly adhered to, to avoid
confusion in the train of thought. The seminarist whose
turn it was to interpret represented the professor for the
time. When the interpreter got on tolerably, Wolf would
allow him to proceed to the end of the hour without
interrupting him once. But if he perceived in the per-
former assumption, self-conceit, or a tendency to shirk
difficulties, his interference and correction were incessant.
Many a seminarist who had incurred this fate, deservedly
or undeservedly, 'will remember as long as he lives,' says
Schulz, 'the agony of such an hour'. The disputations,
also in Latin, were vivâ voce, but not extemporaneous. The
respondent, who chose his own opponent, had eight days'
notice of his theme. They were to collect all the matter
they could on the subject from books, and then arrange it
in writing. The opponent must select for attack main
points, not errors of expression or trivial matters. He was
not to linger pertinaciously on one weak point, but to pass
on to the next. Two hours per week were allotted to
interpretation. Disputations were held at intervals of
perhaps six weeks. Wolf was far from disapproving some
vehemence in these contests, and thought a disputant
should take in good part all that passed. Only, they must
not come to blows, arguments too hard. Acrimony of
feeling should not be shown, such amenities as 'quisquis
talia blaterat est taxandus' were improper; the individual
should never be attacked. So long as disputant and
opponent kept to the point, Wolf, as moderator, hardly
interfered at all. It was generally a sign of dissatisfaction
when he broke in on the dispute in German; though even
Wolf had days on which Latin would not come fluently
from his tongue. Not only the disputations, but all the
¹ Erinnerungen von F. A. Wolf, Berlin, 1836.
North British Review, 1865.]
PRACTICE IN THE SEMINARY.
369
exercises in the seminary, were open to the public, and
were in fact attended regularly by all the classical students.
The school-lessons were given by the seminarists twice a
week, in one of the schools of the Francke Institute, one
in the first form, where a Greek poet was read; the other
in the third, in Latin syntax. Before going into the lesson,
Wolf would give minute directions how to conduct it. The
first lesson in each semester he gave himself, in the presence
of the seminarists. After that he left them to go on alone.
But he took care to be privately informed how the lessons
had prospered, and administered praise or blame accord-
ingly. By practice only, he was ever insisting, and not by
theoretical rules, can one learn to teach. It is just like any
other art. One cannot learn to make shoes by drawing
them with chalk on the wall, without leather.
The Seminarium was one instrument, silently efficacious,
by which Wolf raised classical studies in Germany. His
public lectures were the more brilliant and popular instru-
ment of his success. In his Encyclopädie he sketched a
comprehensive scheme of philological research; he was
prepared himself to give striking examples of original
treatment in a great variety of the subjects into which he
had partitioned it. He lectured, independently of the
Seminarium, fourteen hours a week in summer, and
seventeen in the winter semester. He considered two
lectures a day a proper average for a professor. Who-
ever attempts to read three hours, he would say, sinks into
a mere Heftleser. During the twenty-three years he was
at Halle, he seems to have read at least fifty different
courses. Of these many were interpretations of classical
authors. Among the authors read we find the Iliad.
This course was the most frequently repeated; ten times
during the twenty-three years, i. e. every second year, for
it was begun in 1785. The Odyssey was given three
times; the Homeric Hymns once. We find besides the
Greek dramatists, Hesiod, Theognis, Pindar, Aristophanes,
B b
VOL. I.
370
X. F. A. WOLF.
Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Plato, Xenophon,
Lucian, Longinus. Aristotle only occurs once, and that
the Poetics; the Gospels (Matthew and Mark) once. The
usual Latin authors were also read. The subjects to which
separate courses of original lectures were devoted, were
as follows:-1. Encyclopaedia of Philology; 2. History of
Greek Literature; each of these nine times repeated;
3. History of Latin Literature, five times; 4. Roman
Antiquities, seven times; 5. Survey of Ancient History,
six times; 6. Greek Antiquities, six times; 7. Composition
generally; 8. Latin Composition; 9. History of Philology;
10. Principles of History; 11. General introduction to
Plato's writings; 12. Introduction to reading of Homer;
13. Numismatics; 14. Ancient Geography; 15. Ancient
Painting. He never printed any of these lectures; indeed,
he did not write them out at length. He inserted in the
Jena Literary Gazette a prohibition of any attempt to
publish any of them under his name. They would be
misrepresentations, he said; not intentionally, but because
suggestions thrown out orally have a freedom which
cannot belong to a formal written statement. But many
copies were in circulation from the students' note-books,
of which four or five have since been printed. None of
these, say his pupils, give more than a distant notion of
his incomparable manner. Sparks struck from his anvil
flew into every part of Germany, and beyond it; and
may be found, says Bernhardy¹, in the most remote
corners. He disapproved the mechanical note-taking of
the German lecture-rooms, though he would occasionally
dictate a sentence to be taken down, when he wished
it to be thought over. Nor would he ever dictate trans-
lation, a favourite refuge of the lazy, but preferred to
distribute sheets of a printed version. His lectures were
all prepared, but all extempore; a few notes only before
him. Occasionally, overtaken by the hour, he had to come
1 Griech. Lit. I. 168.
North British Review, 1865.1
HIS LECTURES.
371
before his class quite unprepared; and they never thought
him more fresh and genial than at those times. All voices
are united as to the power and impressiveness of his
delivery. Carl von Raumer, who heard him in 1803,
speaks of the peculiar spell which his vast learning, keen
criticism, and ardent interest in his subject threw round
the hearer. Goethe, on a visit to Wolf in 1805, prevailed
upon one of the daughters to conceal him, more than once,
behind the hangings during a lecture. The poet has
recorded, in his own untranslatable words¹, that his
expectations were fulfilled by 'the spontaneous deliver-
ance of a full mind, a revelation issuing from a thorough
knowledge, and diffusing itself over the audience with
spirit, taste, and freedom.' Bernhardy says it rather
resembled clever and witty conversation than formal
teaching. Even grown-up men would fain have put
themselves to school to him; as Jacobs (the editor of the
Anthologia), who, after he was master of the school at
Gotha, formed a plan for going to Halle for a year to hear
Wolf. Pupils, who became professors in their turn, even
copied his singularities, his rapid movement from the
door to the desk, his constant hemming, his immovable
look fixed on the text-book before him. The 'wit' of
which Bernhardy speaks is not to be understood of small
jokes, intended to raise a laugh along the benches. This
he despised, as a man who is rich in jewels does not forge
small coin. It was rather a vein of lively thought running
through all he uttered. 'Les hommes n'ont jamais montré
plus d'esprit, que lorsqu'ils ont badiné' found its exemplifi-
cation in Wolf. The examples by which he would illustrate
a rule were not merely striking, they were of that sort
which impresses itself for ever upon the memory.
His aim in lecturing was not to communicate knowledge,
but to stimulate. Full of knowledge as he was, he would
only suggest, point out how and when a subject could be
¹ Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1805.
B b 2
372
X. F. A. WOLF.
studied. Hence the impossibility of setting down his
lectures in black and white. He did not enunciate truths,
but, starting from some far-off point already established,
arranged the extant material, examined the evidence as
in open court, and so, after full hearing of both sides,
allowed the result to establish itself before the mental eye.
One bust, and one only, ornamented his lecture-room,
that of Lessing. This was symbolical of the spirit which
breathed through all he said, the spirit of critical inquiry,
which adheres precisely to the evidence, which discrimi-
nates with truth-loving care the certain from the probable,
and scrupulously marks the exact shade of probability.
In a new course he would define the aim of the par-
ticular study in hand, mark the point from which it should
be begun, and then indicate the books and other materials
from which help was to be got. He generally gave a
brief chronological outline of the literature, assigning
his time, place, and value to every labourer in the field,
in few and telling words. He marked the gaps and blanks
in any province of learned investigation, suggesting them as
undiscovered tracts to the enterprise of the young scholar.
In interpretation lectures he would begin very slowly,
dwelling long on short portions, and grammatically
analyzing at length. He treated the class as beginners
requiring to be initiated gradually. As the semester
advanced the pace was quickened, and more was directed
to be read at home. He would have each writer illustrated
only by himself or contemporary writers. He laid great
stress on translation, insisting on the idiom of the language
into which the translation was being made. He recom-
mended that a verbal translation should be made the basis,
and gradually improved upon till a new whole was pro-
duced. He would take for his text-book the author to
whom his own studies were directed, whether he was
editing or reviewing, e. g., he lectured on the Homeric
Hymns on occasion of Ilgen's edition (1796). This, he
North British Review, 1865.]
REACTION AGAINST THE NEW REALISM.
373
found, contributed to throw a fresh interest into the
lectures.
To estimate the effort of a single mind, in proposing an
aim thus lofty for classical studies, and in pushing them
with so much vigour, we must remember that it was at the
very crisis when the philanthropists seemed almost to
have grasped their victory. They had succeeded in dis-
crediting the study of the ancient languages, in general
opinion, for the first time since the Renaissance. A reform
of the grammar schools on their principles seemed imminent.
Wolf represents the reaction against the new realism.
His love for the investigation of antiquity was one impulse;
but an antagonism to the prevalent views on education
was also ever present. The presumption and ignorance
of the philanthropists irritated him; their growing popu-
larity alarmed him. He would not have conceived so
completely his ideal of human culture as based on the
traditions of the Greek world, had it not been brought out
in sharp contrast with the school of useful knowledge.
Even in 1786, the tone in which he speaks of humane
studies is one of despondency. Alluding to the promise
afforded by a young pupil, he writes, 'This is the only kind
of solace left for us, who are occupied with matters which
are in little esteem with the public. Every day sees the
prospects of these studies become more and more clouded.
The new hierophants now abroad desire to preserve
their disciples from all tinge of literature, else they would
no longer command their devotion.' As time goes on
the danger passes away, and Wolf's language becomes
more hopeful. He is not less strenuous in denouncing
the main principle of the innovators,-'education in know-
ledge of the useful'; but he is forward to welcome what is
true and good in their doctrines. He spoke highly of the
early forerunners of Philanthropinism, Comenius and
Locke. Of Rousseau's Emile he said it contained many
good hints, especially on the treatment of the early years.
374
X. F. A. WOLF.
of infancy and childhood. Even Trapp's Pädagogik he
praises, as offering many practical observations on mental
training. He condemned all running-down of science, and
favoured attempts of the moderate eclectics, e.g. Niemeyer
(Grundsätze der Erziehung), to adopt as much as was prac-
ticable from the philanthropists.
Notwithstanding, he brings out in later years, with in-
creasing emphasis, the educational ideal which had been
steadily growing more distinct to him. This is the pure
Greek ideal; as he defines it in 1807, a purely human
education, and elevation of all the powers of mind and
soul to a beautiful harmony of the inner and outer man,
the ¿ykúkλios Taideía of the ancients. As long as there
exists in the world a generation who make this elevation
their aim, so long will they turn to the ancients for instruc-
tion and encouragement in prosecuting it. The simplicity,
the dignity, the grand comprehensive spirit of their works,
will ever make them a source from which the human soul
will draw perpetual youth. Those grand old Greek char-
acters are to us not personages displayed upon a remote
historical stage, but intimate friends whom we have known
and esteemed and loved. The banishment of this ideal
from German schools would be the greater mistake, inas-
much as there is a peculiar affinity between the Greek and
the Teutonic mind. Wolf appeals to Goethe (Dedication
to Museum):—
May your powerful aid be exerted to save our country from the
sacrilegious hands which would tear from it the palladium of ancient
learning! Be it in our language, be it in our blood, I know not, but
no people of the modern world has fallen so readily in as we have
with the tone of Greek poetry and oratory. We are not deterred
from approaching the shrines of these heroes by the strange forms
with which they surround themselves; we alone have never attempted
to beautify their simplicity, to drape over their indelicacies.
Wolf's writings cannot be treated on their merits. They
were strictly a part of his professional activity. He was
North British Review, 1865.]
EDUCATIONAL IDEAL.
WRITINGS.
375
eminently a teacher, not a writer. Everything he wrote, or
projected writing, not excepting the celebrated Prolego-
mena, was an occasional publication arising out of some
call or suggestion of his public teaching. Of this kind
he printed not a little; and for one book which he achieved
he projected twenty. We shall only mention a few among
these to which particular interest attaches. In 1778 he
added 'Remarks,' and promised an Appendix, to a trans-
lation of Harris's Hermes. But the second volume, which
should have contained Wolf's dissertations, never appeared.
In the next year he was reading Demosthenes from
the point of view of Attic law. He had hitherto relied on
second-hand authorities for this branch, and was deter-
mined to do so no longer. As he read the wish grew
up to show in a single specimen how the mass of material,
collected by the industry of ages, on Demosthenes should
be dealt with by an editor. It so happened that at this time
a scheme was on foot for a collective publication of Greek
classics. Körte, Wolf's excellent biographer, confounds ¹
this with another plan, promoted or patronized by
Ruhnken, for a series of Latin classics. The Greek
series was to be under the editorship of C. G. Schütz,
then editor of the Jena Literary Gazette.
Both pro-
jects were of that comprehensive character which rising
scholars, in the exuberance of their powers, have formed,
and will continue to form, in each generation,-projects
of which the wrecks lie about us in our libraries, in vain.
warning future adventurers of their certain fate. Of the
two schemes with which Wolf was connected neither..
as far as we know, produced any fruit, beyond the Leptines,
which Wolf brought out in 1789. He intended his edition
for advanced readers, not for schools. He would not
have any classic read in schools which it required much
antiquarian knowledge to understand. Wolf's material
having been appropriated by all succeeding editors, has
1 Körte, I. 252.
376
X. F. A. WOLF.
become pretty well known in this country in our schools
and universities, though not in its original shape. A book
better known among us, Böckh's Public Economy of Athens,
owed its suggestion directly to Wolf's Leptines. The
books both of Wolf and his pupil are not antiquarian
books, but are penetrated by that tacit reference to the
conditions of modern society, in which Wolf first led
the way. The Leptines, at the time of its appearance,
excited the attention of the learned world. It drew a com-
plimentary letter from Heyne, who characteristically gives
himself the air of knowing all that Wolf has to say, and,
therefore, approving all he has said. The Leptines enjoyed
that immunity from censure which is often accorded to
first publications. Not, indeed, that it needed indulgence,
unless it were for the warmth of its outbreaks against
Reiske, the last editor of Demosthenes. Even these were
forgiven to a young scholar, who, from a truer critical
standpoint, condemned the system of arbitrary emendation
in which the editors of the eighteenth century indulged.
We may remember that Porson felt bound to speak with
no less severity of Reiske on this ground. In the lapse of
time Wolf himself detected his own errors, and twenty-
seven years afterwards (1816) advertised a corrected edition,
ab erroribus olim commissis purgatior. But this, too, re-
mained among unfulfilled projects.
A similar fate awaited the Variae Lectiones of Muretus
and the Select Dialogues of Lucian. Of each of these
undertakings Wolf brought out a vol. I., and there dropped
them. In 1792 he revised the text of Herodian for the
Francke press. It was too hurriedly done; he was ex-
tremely dissatisfied with his recension, and was always
talking of an improved edition, but never put a hand to
it. An edition of the Tusculan Disputations, in the same
year, arose again out of the class-room. He thought this
treatise much better fitted for beginners than the Offices,
which, however, had established themselves by preference
North British Review, 1865.]
LEPTINES.
TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
377
in the schools. Wolf had an afternoon lecture on the
Tusculans, which was rather a favourite of his. It was
probably attended by the younger students, and he himself
may have regarded it as a relaxation after other collegia,
which required preparation. Orelli, who had a copy as
taken down by some auditor, hints that Wolf had allowed
himself great latitude in this lecture, with an eye to en-
livening the afternoon, and that he would by no means
have stood to all that he had said. Yet the extracts of
the course which Orelli published (at the end of his edition,
Zürich, 1829) are rich in keen remark on the force of words
and phrases, from which others besides beginners may
learn much. Wolf himself had no thought of publish-
ing these Scholia, as we truly call them. What he edited
was the text only; an 'egregia recensio,' in Orelli's
judgment, of a book, in which, after all Bentley had
done for it, still lingered (and even yet linger) not a few
corruptions.
The Prolegomena to Homer (1795) had the same casual
origin. The work to which he owed European fame was
written without premeditation or the least anticipation
of such a result. The Francke press, finding their school-
Homer exhausted, asked Wolf to revise the text for a new
edition. For twenty years he had had Homer, and the
problem of the Homeric text, before him. Homeric criti-
cism was an untouched soil. The scholars of the seven-
teenth century, who had tampered with every author,
had held aloof from Homer as from sacred ground. The
text was a mere 'vulgate,' formed by continued reprinting
with accumulating errors from the Venetian or Florentine
editions. Clarke, whose name is a byword among school-
boys, but who really possessed more metrical skill than
any preceding editor, had done good service in expelling
some of the more gross of these errors. Ernesti made
(1759) improvements on Clarke, and this text (Ernesti-
Clarkianus) was in complete possession of the field. No
378
X. F. A. WOLF.
1
principle guided the editors. It was taken for granted that
the ordinary canons of editing applied straight away to the
Homeric text. Nor would it have been easy for any one,
who had not seen the Venetian Scholia, to have discovered
that it was not so. The Venetian Scholia were published
by Villoison in 1788, and were immediately read with
eagerness. Yet no scholar, Heyne least of all, saw in them
what Wolf saw in them, the true principle on which the
text must be constituted. Even as late as 1803 we find
Elmsley laying it down that 'the plan which is adopted
by the generality of enlightened editors' is the right
one, and commending Heyne for having followed it. The
history of the Homeric text opened Wolf's eyes to
the fact that the Homeric text is a unique case; that
here we cannot make it our object to approximate our
book to the book as it came from the hands of the author,
and that the only thing left for us is to choose one
among the Alexandrian texts as our norma.
He was
thus prepared to undertake, for a mere school edition, a
revolution in the text of Homer, the extent and merits
of which were only slowly appreciated after a lapse of
years.
As there was to be no exegetical commentary or notes
of any kind, Wolf's emendations ran the risk of being over-
looked, or rejected as wanton, without some justification.
This he proposed to provide in a preface, the original
intention of which was simply to give an account of his
method of dealing with the text. The bearing of the Pro-
legomena should ever be borne in mind in reading them.
The Wolfian hypothesis has been treated in this country
as a mere wanton paradox, the amusement of the vacant
hours of a perverse ingenuity. It was really only an
attempt to sketch the history of the text, with the purpose
1 ¹ Ed. Rev., vol. II., p. 314.
2 This error still lingers. Dindorf calls his Homer Ad optimorum librorum
fidem expressa. In any sense of the words 'best manuscripts,' the Marc. 454
must be the best, and this Dindorf has not collated.
North British Review, 1865.]
HOMER.
379
of showing the principle on which that text must necessarily
be arranged.
met with in his reading
His notes were mostly
The material was all at hand. He had long been in the
habit of making a note of all he
that bore on this favourite topic.
on single sheets or scraps of paper. When anything was
to be written, these memoranda were gone through and
winnowed. The views over which he was meditating were
always present to him; he had but to marshal his proofs
and illustrations. In the instance of Homer this material
was unusually abundant. The ideas to which he was now
going to give birth had been maturing for twenty years.
A great deal has been written on the question of Wolf's
originality. He had seen Wood's Essay on the Original
Genius of Homer; for though the essay had only 'crept
out to the extent of seven copies' at home, one of those
seven had found its way to Germany, and a translation had
appeared at Frankfort (1773), before the book was actually
published in England. Casaubon's hint, and Bentley's
more confident assertion, were both known to him. On
the other hand, Vico was not known to him, even in
1795. But it is unnecessary to turn over the moderns in
search of a prompter; Wolf has said nothing which is
not embodied in the well-known passage of Josephus¹
which is quoted everywhere, and which is itself the
expression of a fact which was known to all the critics.
of the Ptolemaic age.
Be this as it may, whoever was the suggester, the
suggestion had early struck root in Wolf's mind, and
found it congenial soil. In 1779, while still a stu-
dent at Göttingen, he had written for Heyne an exer-
cise, which had defended some heretical paradox on
Homer. In the following year he offered Nicolai, the
Berlin publisher, a dissertation On the Origin of the
Homeric Poems. Seeing that the dissertation was un-
¹ Cont. Apion. I. 2.
380
F. A. WOLF.
X.
.
written, and the projector a youth of one-and-twenty, we
cannot say that Nicolai was unwise in declining the offer.
The thought, banished for a time, occurred again and again,
as his studies ranged more widely over classical antiquity.
Yet, as his ideas gained in distinctness, they appeared to
him to lose in probability. The ardour of youthful discovery
was gradually tempered by a sense of the doubtfulness
of all conclusions on a point of such high antiquity. In
this state of mind he happened to meet with the notion in a
flimsy French book, Perrault, Parallèle des Anciens et des
Modernes, 1690. Disgusted at finding himself in such bad
company, he fell back at once on the traditional belief. He
endeavoured with all his might to establish this opinion by
evidence. Even after he had recurred to his original view,
he continued for twelve years to assume in his public
lectures the received origin of the poems. Thus it was,
that once embarked on the question of the text of Homer,
he found it impossible to quit it in few words. So the
Preface grew into the Prolegomena, and the Prolegomena
into a volume. He had begun printing at once, as if it
were to cost him but a few days' writing. The whole was
composed with the printer at his heels-his lectures and
other official duties going on all the while. 'The fair
(Leipzig) hurries a man like death!' he wrote on one
proof-sheet. Marks of this haste are apparent enough in
the Prolegomena.
If we measure the Prolegomena by the impression
produced by them on the course of classical learning,
we shall be unable to name any other single work whose
influence is to be compared to theirs. It was no momentary
diversion, but an abiding impulse. Ingens philologiae
emendatio,' Böckh once (in 1834) ascribed to the Prolego-
mena. He might have said they had inaugurated a new
epoch in philology. Paradoxes startle, die out, and are
forgotten. The Prolegomena turned critical inquiry into a
new direction, which it has ever since obeyed. They first
North British Review, 1865.]
THE PROLEGOMENA.
381
taught scholars that the resources of Greek and Latin were
not exhausted when the languages were learned, but that
the languages were but a step to an almost unexplored field
of investigation. If, on the other hand, we measure the
Prolegomena by the standard of the best critical essays
which modern learning has given us, we shall not be able
to place them in the highest rank. This is owing in part
to a crudity of style, a fault not uncommon in great extem-
pore orators. 'Each step,' writes Körte, 'is firm; each
word of exact precision. The Latin is that of a man who
thinks out his expression; it is at once his own and
genuinely Roman.' But the excellent biographer is carried
here far beyond the mark by his enthusiasm. Haste has,
it appears to us, interfered greatly with clearness of style.
But beyond this there is undeniably a crudity of con-
ception. This defect was inevitable. The Homeric pro-
blem was too complicated to be capable of being thought
out by the first mind which grappled with it. The question
has been wrought out with much greater precision and
fulness of detail since by Lachmann, Lehrs, Nitzsch,
Lauer, Hermann, Köchly, La Roche; and to their writings,
inferior as they are in grasp and genius to Wolf, the young
scholar who intends to study Homer must now have
recourse.
As a discussion of the special question, the Prole-
gomena have passed into oblivion. The book is laid
aside. The author's name stands out brighter than ever,
as we come more closely to discern how vast was the step
he made on the way towards a true conception of the early
times of Greek history. Niebuhr has been accused by
Blum¹ of disingenuousness in not mentioning Wolf's
Prolegomena as having suggested his idea, that the
early history of Rome was founded on poems. There
is no disingenuousness in the case. The fact is, that
the leading ideas of Wolf's Prolegomena were of that
Einleitung in Roms alte Geschichte.
:
382
X. F. A. WOLF.
character that they became at once, with all their
consequences, the common property, not of scholars
only, but of all the world. The conception we all have
of popular poetry seems to us so self-evident, that
our difficulty is to understand that it was not always
possessed. It requires an effort to remember that for ages
even scholars applied the same measure to Virgil and
Tasso as to Homer; that they confounded the artificial
imitation with the genuine product of the creative imagi-
nation. Even on the more special question of the origin
of the Homeric poems, whatever there may be to
retrench in Wolf's arguments, his main proposition has
maintained itself unshaken. His views have been con-
tinually gaining ground; and as Nitzsch himself before his
death became a convert, we may safely say that no scholar
will again find himself able to embrace the unitarian
hypothesis.
We have a curious proof of this double character of the
Wolfian ideas, viz. their originality and their obviousness,
in the reception which the Prolegomena experienced on
their publication.
Wolf had wished to confine the discussion of his views.
to the learned world. With this intention he wrote in
Latin, and obstinately resisted all the proposals made
him for any German version of his argument. In spite
of his precautions, however, the little literary journals were
very soon up in arms. The readers of Homer, or those
who wished to pass for such, were shocked, and pained,
and distressed by this impious attempt to take their Homer
from them. It was but a part of the Jacobinical crusade
against everything which our fathers had believed, every
name which they had held in honour. The clamour
affected Wolf little, if at all. The public was not then such
many-headed monster as it has since become; it had not
so many throats to scream with. Wolf waited to hear
what the learned world would say. In Holland, which held
North British Review, 1865.]
RECEPTION OF THE PROLEGOMENA.
383
then the first place in learning, in England, in France, not
a single voice was raised on his side. Villoison declared
the book a 'literary impiety,' and is said to have regretted
the publication of the Scholia, which had placed arms in
the hands of the German critic. Sainte-Croix, who, by
courtesy, took rank among the learned, refuted Wolf
without reading his book. Fauriel, indeed, at a later time,
transplanted the Wolfian idea to French soil; but in 1795
he was only twenty-two. In England, Elmsley, in 1813,
could only count about 'ten men who really study the
minutiae of Greek¹' Of that number Elmsley himself
was confessedly among the first. But Elmsley in 1795
was only twenty-two. Even ten years later, when he
wrote his review of Heyne's Homer2, he betrays a weak-
ness as a Homeric scholar, which seems out of propor
tion to his strength when put forth on the dramatists.
Ruhnken, then at the head of European philologists, to
whom the Prolegomena were dedicated, felt himself un-
comfortably shaken in his habitual notions, but was too
old to catch the new point of view on which conviction
depended.
If Wolf got no assent from the scholars, he got, at least,
nothing but bare contradiction. The thorough investi-
gation of the subject could not take place till a generation
of younger men arose, trained in the very ideas which
Wolf's own teaching set afloat. Wolf had been long re-
moved from the scene before anything worthy of the name
of a counter argument appeared.
Besides the learned, there was another class whose
judgment on the subject Wolf valued, and to whose con-
sideration he had expressly recommended it. These were
the poets. Their verdict was not on the whole favourable.
Wilhelm von Humboldt indeed sympathized and approved.
¹ A. Blomfield's Memoir of C. J. Blomfield (ed. 1863), vol. I.
2 Ed. Rev. July 1803.
P. 12.
384
X. F. A. WOLF.
He undertook to read the whole of Homer through again
to test the hypothesis of the Prolegomena by his own
impressions. Wieland, with radical levity, is said to have
congratulated the world that 'we were now rid of one
superstition more'; but for himself appears to have gone
on believing in the unity. Flaxman, to whom Lord
Spencer had shown the Prolegomena on their appearance,
gave his cordial approval, and endeavoured to spread the
Wolfian notions in the two English universities. Nor was
his conviction that of a moment, for in 1804 he writes to a
friend :-
A perfection of arts and manufactures, as described in the Odys-
sey, is not to be found in countries without money or commerce. The
Alexandrian critics could well supply these embellishments, yet what
they have done seems wonderfully cautious. The successions of criti-
cal hands through which these poems have passed, must naturally
give them a sort of homogeneous surface which we judge by, rather
than the nice agreement of inornate parts, in supposing they were
the production of one man. The Prolegomena strongly enforce the
following truth, that human excellence in art and science is the ac-
cumulated labour of ages.
Flaxman's opinion, as this extract shows, must be taken
in the character of the artist, not of the critic, though his
acquaintance with what had been said on Homer must
have been great, if it be true that he had consulted more
than 2,000 works during the composition of his Outlines.
Schiller, like Walter Scott, set aside the rhapsodic origin
of the poems without a hearing, as 'necessarily barbarous.'
From Voss, least of all, was assent to be expected. Voss
had just achieved the triumph of making Homer the public
property of German readers. Through Voss's trans-
lations Homer was at this moment (1795) the rage. Voss
could not admit that he had anything to learn about his
poet. His very position forced him to head the cry
against the Wolfian heresies. Voss indeed was probably
a sincere believer. For it was precisely that uniform tone
North British Review, 1865.]
THE POETS.
385
of simplicity and nature which distinguishes the Homeric
poetry from all artificial writing-it was precisely this tone.
which Voss had succeeded in preserving in his German
version.
Of all the poets by far the most important to Wolf was
the opinion of Goethe. Goethe, too, had caught the
Homeric fever which Voss had originated. The images
of the cycle were fermenting in his mind with such
vehemence, that he meditated an original epic, to be called
the Achilleis. At Wilhelm von Humboldt's recommend-
ation he read the Prolegomena, and re-read the Iliad
thereupon. He felt himself deeply stirred by the sug-
gestive pages. He was carried away by the brilliant specu-
lation which seemed opened here on the history of genius
and poetic fiction. The theory of a collective Homer,' he
wrote to Schiller, 'is favourable to my present scheme, as
lending a modern bard a title to claim for himself a place
among the Homeridae.' This is 'the broad road' which
his epigram celebrates :—
Erst die Gesundheit des Mannes, der endlich vom Namen Homeros
Kühn uns befreiend, uns auch ruft in die vollere Bahn!
In the spring of 1796 he sent Wolf a copy of Wilhelm
Meister. In the letter which accompanied the gift, he said,
'Perhaps you will soon have from me the announcement
of an epic poem, in which I do not conceal how much I am
indebted to that conviction you have so firmly implanted
in my mind.' Before long, however, Goethe returned to
a faith in the unity, and this for the very same reason
which had made him a convert to the rhapsodic origin,-
conformity with his own subjective state of mind. He
had embraced the new notions because they seemed 'to
resolve the two epics back into the original poetic ocean,
out of which I may draw at pleasure.' He returned to the
old faith when the Achilleis was given up; he found the
cyclic material no longer plastic for his purposes. Goethe's
palinode is sung in the lines headed Homer wieder
VOL. I.
C C
386
X. F. A. WOLF.
Homer¹? The date would be curious; but as Goethe's
works are printed at present absolutely without editorial
superintendence, we have not the means of fixing it.
While the ruck of critics and poets were running down
the Prolegomena as heretical novelties, a far more con-
siderable adversary came forward with an insinuation
of the opposite kind. If there was one among the poets
who might have been expected to give a hearty welcome
to the Wolfian ideas-one, too, whose recommendation
of them would have been all-powerful with the outside
world-it was Herder. Herder's services to literature,
great in many directions, had been in none more con-
spicuous than in the light he had been the first to throw
on the origin of poetical fiction. Taking up a hint first
thrown out by a far greater man-Lessing-Herder had
enforced and popularized the distinction between natural
and artificial poetry. These discussions, and the estab-
lishment of the critical principle which Herder brought
forward, were the proximate cause of that revolution in
poetical taste which took place in Germany and England
at the close of the last century. Immediately after bringing
out the Prolegomena, Wolf had paid a visit to Jena and
Weimar, and had there enjoyed the society of Goethe, of
Wilhelm von Humboldt, and of Wieland, but had perceived,
or imagined, that Herder had held aloof from him. A
German is always ready to imagine that he is being cut;
but in this instance it was not mere German susceptibility.
On Wolf's return to Halle he saw in the Horen, then
the leading critical monthly, a paper, headed 'Homer,
Time's Favourite.' The anonymous author of the essay
gave himself a supercilious air of overhauling, from a
priori ground, the conclusions which Wolf had worked
out, with modest hesitancy, on the ground of history.
The writer dropped the remark by the way, that the
rhapsodic origin of the Homeric poems had been long
1 Werke, II. p. 335.
North British Review, 1865.]
HERDER.
387
known to himself; that he had been long accustomed to
regard Homer, like Thot and Hermes, as a constellation
of lesser stars; that when a boy he had discovered the
distinct authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey; that
when travelling, not long before, in Italy, he had casually
met with the newly-published Venetian Scholia, and had
been astonished to find the suspicions of his childhood
so strikingly confirmed. In all this we have nothing
more than the omniscient trick of the modern weekly
reviewer, who has learned all he affects to know from
the book he is running down-a trick become so vul-
garized, that we hardly now understand Wolf's indignation.
We certainly should never take his mode of defence, by
replying to such a critique. This he did by inserting
a paragraph in the Jena Literary Gazette for October,
begging the public not to decide, on such insufficient
grounds as the Horen offered, a question of complicated
historical evidence; and promising a German reproduction
of the Prolegomena by a friend. The public laughed
at the advertisement, and believed Herder, pending the
appearance of the friend's book, which never appeared.
The advertisement only showed that Herder had found
the author's weak side. Wolf had been silent while run
down as a teacher of heretical paradox, but could not
bear to have his originality called in question.
Herder might possess the ear of the public, but among
the learned he counted for nothing. It was notorious
that he possessed neither the linguistic nor the historical
knowledge requisite to form an opinion on the question.
He was, in short, the modern reviewer, and accomplished
in all his arts, for, if we may believe Garve, he had not
even read the Prolegomena when he wrote his paper in
the Horen. Wolf would have done better, as he himself
acknowledged afterwards, to have taken no notice of
Herder's impertinence. The case was different with
Heyne. Wolf wrote to Heyne complaining of Herder's
CC 2
388
F. A. WOLF.
X.
behaviour, and begging Heyne, should he think fit, to
review the Prolegomena in the Göttingen Gelehrte An-
zeige, to put the Homeric question fully before the public,
going, as fully as could be done in a periodical, into the
arguments for and against the hypothesis. Heyne had
already written his notice. It is contained in the number
for 21st November, 1795. In it Heyne had coolly treated
the Prolegomena as the 'firstfruit of the unexampled
labours of Villoison.' He had gone on to say that the
case had always seemed to him a very simple one; that
he had always held Wolf's views in his lectures, from
which he even intimated that Wolf had originally derived
them. That there might be no mistake, Heyne returned
to the charge in the next number for 19th December.
Wolf hated controversy, as calling him away from his
proper pursuits. But it was impossible, he thought, to
let this challenge pass. If any hesitation remained, it
was removed by a long letter he received from Heyne,
dated 28th February, 1796, which professed to be an
answer to Wolf's letter of the preceding November.
In this letter Heyne makes a cold compliment to Wolf
on the extent of his researches; but, he adds immediately,
'so many years as I have occupied myself with Homer,
it would be difficult to say anything that could be new
to me.' He goes on to say that these ideas had early
presented themselves to him as matter of course, for
indeed they had occurred to many other readers of Homer.
How early he had entertained these thoughts he could
not say, but at least as early as he had read Macpherson's
Ossian. He could not say what were his opinions as
far back as 1779. Did not remember the essay on the
subject which Wolf had sent in to him in that year.
Recollected that he had talked with Herder on the subject
His own object in editing Homer (Heyne's
Homer did not appear till 1802) was different-interpre-
tative merely. Had he had more leisure he might have
in 1770.
North British Review, 1865.]
HEYNE.
He
389
engaged in the historical inquiry as Wolf had done.
Wolf was fortunate in not having his time so broken
in upon by incessant official calls. Wolf had spoken
first, got the start of him. gladly renounced the
honours of priority in his favour. Only let the truth be
spoken! by whom was of little consequence. That had
always been his way of thinking. His own temperament,
too, was different from Wolf's. Things appeared certain
to some people which looked very doubtful to others. No
matter! There were many roads to heaven. Let each
go his own. Throughout the letter, which is long and
embarrassed, Heyne does not repeat the charge of pla-
giarism. But he does not withdraw it. The utmost
concession he makes is, 'Had you come earlier to an
understanding with me, my article in the Anzeige would
have been expressed differently in many secondary par-
ticulars. Not that I ever say what I do not think; but
what I say may be variously modified in expression.'
Such a letter was not likely to conciliate Wolf. He
now resolved to make no reply to Heyne except in print.
This he did in a pamphlet published in 1797, called
Letters to Heyne. This pamphlet we only know through
Körte's account, who says it is a model of polemical
elegance. The general merits of the controversy are
obvious enough. As occupant of a leading chair in the
wealthiest and most frequented of the German universities,
and manager of one of the most considerable literary
reviews, Heyne, even had he been a man of ordinary
learning, must have possessed great weight in the aca-
demical world. But Heyne's learning was not ordinary.
He had been for years considered to stand at the head
of classical learning in Germany; to have in Europe no
superior but Ruhnken. Without originality or philo-
sophical power, without any grasp of the ancient world,
without any real sense for scientifically historic inquiry,
he had succeeded, by the adoption of hints thrown out
390
X. F. A. WOLF.
by Lessing or by Winckelmann, in giving a novelty to
his notes on classical books. He became the popular
editor of school classics, and Heyne's editions were re-
printed with avidity in Holland and England. His merits
as a commentator are great, because the best commentator
is the man who best adapts what others have struck out.
The consideration which a conjuncture of favouring cir-
cumstances had procured him, was far beyond his real
philological capacity. He had come to be thought-
indeed, to think himself-the undoubted source of all the
philological activity in Germany. Wolf's Prolegomena,
dedicated not to him, but to Ruhnken, were an act of
rebellion against a lawfully constituted sovereign, an al-
together monstrous product, the work of one who had
been an ill-conditioned student, but who might have
caught up some good notions from Heyne's lectures.
Heyne, we doubt not, honestly believed himself the
original parent of anything there might be good in the
Prolegomena. A letter of Heyne's has been since pro-
duced, of date 1790, in which, writing to Zoega, he speaks
of the rhapsodic origin of the Homeric poems, and says.
that 'it cannot be established by historical evidence.' The
fact is of no moment whichever way it be decided.
Whether Heyne had previously rejected or received the
rhapsodic origin, the originality of the Prolegomena re-
mains the same. They are there to speak for themselves.
Heyne contributed as much to them as Perrault or Wood.
It is the whole conception, not the single hypothesis,
which belongs to Wolf. His modern spirit of critical
inquiry separates him from Heyne, as it does from Gesner,
Ernesti, and the other German scholars of that century.
The Prolegomena had the fate of all innovating books.
Their real influence lay far below the superficial questions
agitated in the contemporary controversy. That influence
was silent and gradual, and was not fully felt til near
a generation later, till Niebuhr and Ottfried Müller. Even
North British Review, 1865.]
GÖSCHEN HOMER. CICERO.
391
in 1804 (Preface to the Göschen Homer), Wolf could say
of himself that 'he had few readers save those who had
read to misrepresent.'
Whatever disgusts this reception of the Prolegomena
may have occasioned Wolf, it did not divert him from
Homer. He projected two simultaneous editions of the
text, one to be accompanied with a commentary. There
was to be a volume of introduction, and several volumes of
notes. One edition, without commentary or notes, was all
that was ever executed. It is the Göschen Homer (1804),
and is remarkable for a beauty of execution little regarded
at that time, or at any time, in Germany, and for correctness.
Wolf boasts in the Preface to the Iliad that the two volumes
do not contain a single printer's error. This exactness
was attained (by Schäfer's help) in spite of repeated altera-
tions of the adopted reading, such as almost drove the
publisher to despair. While the book was printing, Wolf
was not merely correcting the proof, but changing the
reading again and again. He would hear nothing of com-
mercial objections, but insisted upon ever new revises
till he was quite satisfied that further improvement was
impossible.
Our notice of Wolf's publication during the Halle
period must be concluded by barely mentioning the Four
Orations of Cicero (1801), in which he established, by an
exhaustive inquiry, the suspicions of their genuineness,
first broached by Markland. In the Preface to this volume
he hinted that there remained among the Ciceronian
orations still another speech which was really a rhetorician's
production. He wished to have the amusement of seeing
on what speech the guessers would pitch. But he did not
make them wait long, for in the next year came out
his Oratio pro Marcello (1802). Körte relates a curious
episode in the history of Wolfian criticism. Boissonade,
who was strongly against Wolf on the Homeric question,
pronounced for him against the pseudo-Cicero, and wrote a
392
X. F. A. WOLF.
précis of the argument of the Marcellina for the Journal
des Débats. It was declined, on the ground that the
Débats was on principle against innovation. The oration
has passed for ages as Cicero's; and this journal, said the
editor, 'will not swerve from the principles of Rollin and
the University of Paris, who never contested the authorship
of these speeches.' This, which we have on the best
authority, that of Bast, who was in intimate relations with
Boissonade, is probably the correct version of the story
told by Von Gieslen, a literary Dane, who was in Paris
in 1806, that a journal refused a notice of Wolf's essay
because 'the Academy had declared the Oration Pro
Marcello genuine.'
The reader of anything that Wolf published during
the Halle period will judge it amiss, if he does not bear
in mind all through the subordinate relation in which it
stands to his oral teaching. With Wolf the written work
was ever only a makeshift, only intended to supplement the
spoken word. When he had to write he felt in fetters.
'A printed exposition,' he complains, 'wants the freedom one
has in speaking¹.' Markland, he thinks, would have done still
greater things than he has, if, instead of that scrupulosity
which suggested to him misgivings where others could see no
cause for them, he had come into collision with other minds
as a public teacher; a remark this, founded on the fact that
Markland had refused the Regius Professorship of Greek.
But Wolf forgot, or did not know, that a Greek Professor in
the English universities did not 'teach,' that there was, in
fact, no public teaching in those seminaries, which decently
shrouded the incompetency of their tutors in the privacy of
a private apartment. To Wolf the pen was detestable.
He wrote with great labour, polished indefatigably, and
drove his publishers to despair by his never-ended correc-
tions. Böckh, who had been his pupil, testifies to 'the
pains, the anxiety, the finish he was wont to bestow on
¹ Lit. Anal., IV. 387.
North British Review, 1865.]
DISLIKE OF WRITING.
393
what he wrote ¹.' He never satisfied himself with anything
he put on paper. His translation of the first hundred lines
of the Odyssey cost him so much thought, that when
the publishers pressed him to complete it, he said he would
only do it for a ducat a line. That was the cost of the time.
The 'pride' of which Böckh speaks was that of one who
would not as he could, because he could not as he would.
He was not 'piger scribendi ferre laborem,' but too
solicitous 'scribendi recte.' Besides that, he had a genial
enjoyment in his own pursuits, which never allowed him
to regard his stores as mere material to be produced
in print. He realised in himself Goethe's axiom, that 'the
man who has life in him feels himself to be here for
his own sake, not for the public.' His dissatisfaction with
his own productions was mingled with a contempt-at
a later time too pronounced-for the public. 'Does the
public,' he asks, 'by buying our books, or oftener by
leaving them unbought, imagine it acquires a right to
complain that they are not finished? A much better
ground of complaint would be, that an author had neg-
lected to make his own mind complete!' With such
feelings we may rather wonder at the amount which
he actually achieved, and the still larger amount he pro-
jected writing. He was never, during the Halle period,
without some laborious editing on hand, while three or
four more schemes were floating in his imagination. Each
subject in succession engaged him vividly, and engrossed
him wholly for the time. As soon as the first interest was
over, his creative faculty was exhausted. Hence, of what
he did publish so much is unfinished. The Prolegomena
themselves are a fragment; the second or technical part
was never written. Nor, though he lived twenty years
after the publication of the Preface of 1804, did he ever
return to the Homeric question again. Friedländer has
''Quanta cura, quam anxie, quam subtiliter Wolfius solitus sit quae scribebat
pensitare.'
Se
394
X. F. A. WOLF.
蠱
​,
suggested that this was because he feared to find his belief
in his own conclusions shaken; and De Quincey says, 'He
had raised a ghost he could not lay.' But it was the habit
of his mind. 'The gods,' he used to say, 'take no more
account of the promises of authors than they do of lovers'
vows. If they did, Wolf would have a heavy account
to settle; for the titles and contents of his unwritten books
fill many pages in Körte's Life. Among other things,
he wished to recall all his editions, and re-issue them in
corrected recensions. Especially the Herodian and the
Hesiod-notwithstanding Gaisford's favourable opinion of
the latter tormented him with the remembrance of their
imperfections.
Wolf, then, must ever be looked upon as the teacher, not
the writer. Even in 1796, at the height of his literary
reputation, and full of Homeric schemes, he wrote of himself
to Ruhnken, 'Docendo aliquanto plus quam scribendo
delector.' The life of academical teacher satisfied his whole
nature. From the moment this occupation was taken from
him, he lost his equilibrium, and never was the same man
again. A student once ventured to ask him if he really
meant to deliver a course of lectures of which he had given
notice on 'the black board.' 'To be sure,' was the
answer, 'lecturing is necessary to my digestion!' His joy
was in teaching, to be among his pupils, whether in or
out of the class-room. Their delight in hearing him
equalled his. Long after he had ceased to be professor,
and only four years before his death, on a tour in Switzer-
land, a number of old pupils collected round him—he had a
particular liking for the Swiss students-and nothing
would serve them but that Wolf must give them a lecture
on a passage in the Odyssey, just to reproduce old times.
Heyne's bad manner with the students had left a deep
impression on Wolf. He felt strongly the necessity of
friendly sympathy between student and professor. He
encouraged the young men to bring their difficulties to
North British Review, 1865.]
RELATIONS WITH THE STUDents.
395
him. If they were shy of coming to him, he would visit
them in their lodgings. He opened to them his house,
and even his library, though he occasionally paid heavily
for this liberality. Hanhart, in his Recollections of his
teacher, says that he has more than once known Wolf
rebuy his own books at a book-stall, where they had been
turned into money by the rascally borrower. He made
excursions with the students in the vacation; he took them
to the theatre when the Weimar corps-Goethe's corps-
came to Lauchstedt. He generally gave a farewell supper
to those pupils who were leaving the University. Though
he drank with them-Wolf drank a great deal of wine and
smoked hard-though he bore himself among them as
an old comrade rather than a superior, he never forfeited.
their respect. His witty and clever talk fascinated them,
while his power of sarcasm kept them in awe. Though
his supper-parties sometimes did not break up till after
midnight, they did not lose their character of intellectual
reunions. The students knew that he disapproved excess,
and that he had more than once severely condemned their
drinking-bouts in his semestral addresses¹. Besides liking
him for his comradeship, and admiring his conversation,
they paid the reverential homage of devoted pupils to his
mental superiority and surpassing attainments. Everything
about Wolf was real and sound. He required no 'nimbus.'
He hated all affectation. 'He left donnishness,' he would
say, 'to others whose learned rubbish required setting off.'
'Vornehmthun bleibe denen überlassen, die ihren gelehr-
ten Jammer damit ausstaffiren müssen.' The enthusiasm
he excited in Halle is testified on all hands. It was
not confined to the pupils of his own department. Escher,
Professor of International Law at Zürich, told Nüssli that
the greatest help he had ever had in his professional
1 'Modo hoc memineritis, per assiduitatem lectionis et auditionis, per propriarum
virium in commentando et scribendo pericula, non per compotationes, ganeas, aleam
et lustra, neque adeo per aquas amoenas vicini agri' (Passendorf probably), ' viam
ducere ad sanctam sapientiam.'-F. A. W. ap. Arnoldt, I. 131.
396
X. F. A. WOLF.
studies had been Wolf's philological lectures. Wolf
indeed always distinguished between his 'pupils' and his
'hearers.' When the latter left his class to go over to
their own faculty, he did not lose sight of them, calling
them, jokingly, 'degeneres bonarum artium.' Among his
own pupils, again, he distinguished those who, as he said,
'carried the thing farther.' But three of his seminarists.
were especially dear to him, Heindorf, Immanuel Bekker,
and August Böckh. Heindorf, a born Berliner, came
recommended to him in 1794 by Spalding. Wolf from
the very first took kindly to the affectionate youth, who,
on his part, surrendered his whole being with the blind
devotion of an idolater. Wolf became not merely his
teacher, but replaced to him his father, whom he had
lost. Heindorf's talents were not above the average,
but his industry was extraordinary, and his disposition
singly directed towards the good and the beautiful.
These qualities promoted his intellectual growth, to the
astonishment of his former tutors, who, when he returned
home after leaving the University, said that 'Wolf had
awoke in him what they never thought was there.' Wolf
had set him on Plato as a congenial study. Among Wolf's
thousand projects an edition of Plato was one; this was
about 1797. Not that he contemplated, he said, a satis
factory edition-'justa editio.' This was a thing to dream
of, but it would require a couple of generations to produce
it¹. Meantime, preliminary work might be done towards
it. This was the origin of Heindorf's Plato, of which
the first volume is dedicated to Wolf, 'ea qua parentem
filius prosequitur pietate.'
Heindorf, in his turn, prepared Immanuel Bekker for
the university, and sent him up in 1803. The feminine
and mystic nature of Heindorf had clung with tender
abandonment to the master's side. Bekker's hardy temper
had more powerful attractions for Wolf. Wolf soon dis-
'As this was about 1797, the predicted edition is now, 1865, a little overdue.
North British Review, 1865.]
HEINDORF AND BEKKER.
397
covered that the indomitable perseverance of this soul
of iron shrank from no labour, was to be daunted by
no difficulties. Bearing all the while the extreme of
poverty with stoical impassibility, young Bekker threw
himself upon the classics with the whole force of a
character determined to conquer. As the teacher raised
his demands, the pupil rose to meet them.
No task
could be proposed to him which he did not accomplish,
nay, exceed.
This was exactly the stuff which Wolf
had long been looking for, out of which to build a
philologian. Before Bekker was twenty-one, Wolf had
got him placed near himself, as Inspector of the seminary
and Repetent in the university.
Wolf's relations with the students seem to have been
more agreeable than those with his colleagues at Halle.
This is no more than a conjecture, which we cannot
verify without examination of his correspondence, yet
unpublished.
His son-in-law passes lightly over this
point; a fact in itself suspicious. Arnoldt, as usual,
offers no light. The character of the man, his after-
conduct in Berlin, where this character asserted itself
without stint, make it certain that he was difficult to
get on with. That overweening ascendency which was
gratified by the homage of pupils met with constant
checks from equals. That irritation was left behind in
Wolf's mind from this source may be gathered from
some casual expressions. In a letter, e. g., of 1807, after
he had left Halle, he is giving his reasons for declining
a professorship in the new foundation of Berlin: 'When
one has been doing one's best in a university for twenty-
one years, one has had enough of the bitterness and
jealousies of colleagueship:' 'so hat man die Bitterkeiten
einer neidischen Collegenschaft zur Genüge genossen.'
Great allowance may be made for his position in Halle,
thoroughly disinterested and great-natured, surrounded
by smaller men, with a keen sense of their personal
398
X. F. A. WOLF.
interests, and only half a heart in their profession. Of
the corps of professors Semler is the only one with
whom we find Wolf in hearty friendship. This intimacy
was founded upon congenial sentiments. The two had
in common the same love of truth and unshackled inquiry,
the same zeal of critical research. Semler's years--he
was born in 1725-removed all thought of rivalry. He
welcomed in the young professor a colleague of scientific
zeal in the middle of a world of academical tradesmen.
In spite of Semler's many weaknesses, Wolf remained
attached to him to the last, when his old friends fell off.
He published a short account of Semler's last days. And
when Semler died, in 1791, Wolf, as pro-rector, issued
the official invitation to his public funeral, in which he
did not omit to speak of him as 'verum, bonum, ac decens
unice curans.'
Wilhelm von Humboldt, writing to Wolf¹, condoles
with him over his isolation in Halle. But if Wolf
was uncomfortable with his colleagues, he was compen-
sated by a yearly enlarging circle of distant friends.
These friends knew him only by his geniality and his
enthusiasm for knowledge, not by his difficult temper
and haughty disdain of pretenders to learning. The im-
pressionable mind of Wilhelm von Humboldt, athirst for
acquisition, and keenly alive to every movement of ideas,
yielded at the first contact to the fascination of Wolf's
bold and original speculation. Von Humboldt, who had
married a Miss Dacheroeden, had become early acquainted
with Wolf under her father's roof, at Erfurt. He entered
keenly into Wolf's Homeric Researches, read Homer
incessantly with Madame von Humboldt, and seemed
given up for the time to classical antiquity, under the
guidance of this new master. From his literary retire-
ment at Tezel he maintained a correspondence with Wolf,
whose occasional answers he piously preserved in a
1 Werke, V. 90.
North British Review, 1865.]
SEMLER.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT.
399
splendidly bound album, lettered 'Wolfiana.' In vacation,
Wolf visited him at his country seat, and saw him oftener
when Humboldt came to settle at Jena. Nothing can be
further from the truth than to say that Wilhelm von
Humboldt was superficial. He sought to get to the
bottom of every subject he approached. But such was
the eager mobility of his intelligence, that he grasped
at a field of knowledge such as only superficial men
ordinarily attempt to cover. He did not flit to and fro
sipping each flower alternately, but everything had its
turn. While it was in vogue it was all in all. Contact
with Wolf threw him upon Greek antiquity as if he had
found a life pursuit. He came in contact with Schiller,
and Schiller drew him away into poetry and aesthetics.
But though Homer was forgotten, Wolf was not. When
he became minister, Von Humboldt had no object more
at heart than to give Wolf an eminent sphere of labour;
nor did he ever drop the tone of humble deference in
which his earliest letters were written.
Even the imperial soul of Goethe had been moved for a
moment, as we have seen, by the magnetic storm of
Homeric investigation. The personal intercourse of Wolf
and Goethe was continued to its subsidence. In 1805,
Wolf spent some enjoyable days on a visit at Weimar.
Goethe came once (at least) to Halle to visit Wolf, and
has left on record his testimony to the instruction he
derived from Wolf's conversation. In the summer of
1797, only a year before Ruhnken's death, Wolf made
a journey to Holland expressly to see Ruhnken. He
was accompanied by his daughter, Joanna, and a pupil
named Ochsner, afterwards professor at Zürich. Ochsner
ought to have performed the duty of reporter on this
interesting occasion. As he did not, we cannot deny
that Wolf's translation of his name, ókvŋpós, is appropriate.
On an article of Wolf's, written twenty years afterwards ¹,
1 De David. Ruhnkenii celebri quodam reperto literario, Lit. Anal., II. 515.
1
400
F. A. WOLF.
X.
-
7
a charge has been founded against Wolf of turning
against Ruhnken dead, whom living he had honoured.
The charge is brought by Bake, in his preface to
the Apsines, which he edited for the Oxford press.
'Wolf,' says Bake (a Dutchman and a disyllable),
'lacerated the memory of the dead with highly unbe-
coming and uncalled-for sarcasm.' Any one but a Dutch-
man can see, by looking at the paper in question in the
Analecta, that Wolf is jesting. It never would have
occurred to Wolf, who had so much of the kind to
answer for himself, to make it a serious accusation against
any man that he had not written something he had said
in print he intended to write. And of Ruhnken we could
prove, were it necessary, that Wolf always expressed
himself with the reverence every scholar feels for one
of the greatest names in classical learning.
In the list of Wolf's correspondents are two English
names, Butler and Falconer, but their letters are not
published. One glimpse we obtain of him directly from
an English source, but not during the Halle period. In
the summer of 1813, E. V. Blomfield, then fellow of
Emanuel, paid a visit to Prussia, which had been long
closed to English travellers. One of the first objects
of his tour was to acquaint himself with the state of
German scholarship, for which he was qualified by a
knowledge of the language, then a rare accomplishment.
On his return he sent a few notes of what he had learned
to the Museum Criticum. They are meagre enough. But
we may gather from them that Blomfield had become
aware of the fact, probably not understood in this country
before, that F. A. Wolf occupied, in the opinion of his
countrymen, the highest place in classical philology¹.
The list of his correspondents is so large, that we
should be inclined to think that Wolf had too much,
rather than too little of this kind of intercourse on his
1 Mus. Crit. I. 374; II. 524.
North British Review, 1865.]
CORRESPONDENTS. OFFER FROM LEYDEN.
401
hands. The central situation of Halle, too, close to Jena
and Leipzig, conveniently near Weimar and Berlin, must
have brought him many visitors. And to the disposition
to be hospitable, which he had always had, were now
added the means. His salary, for the two professorships,
had been gradually raised to 2,100 thalers, exclusive of
fees. Besides this he had a pension as foreign member
of the Berlin Academy, which had grown from 200 to
900 thalers. Altogether, his situation at Halle was one
with which he may well have felt thoroughly satisfied.
That he did so feel, his repeated refusals to accept the
calls which poured in from all quarters are sufficient
proof. Some of these invitations were set aside at once;
others not without much self-conflict and consultation with
friends. One, to Leyden, was especially tempting. The
curators offered him a chair of 'Greek Language and
Antiquities,' vacated by Luzac's involuntary resignation.
The fame of Leyden,-Ruhnken was still living-the
wealth of its libraries and literary appliances, exercised
a powerful attraction. Wolf took time to consider, and
set his daughters to learn Dutch. Voss, whom he had
consulted, wrote to him, 'Ruhnken's letter is quite affect-
ing. But were I the invited, I should act upon the old
saying, "He who sits comfortable should sit still." I
should stay where I was, and write to Berlin to demand
a rise of 1,000 thalers in my salary.' On the other hand,
Spalding, who confessed that he did not know what
patriotism was, strongly urged his acceptance.
confusion of political affairs in Holland, and the great
expensiveness of Leyden, seem to have been the deter-
mining motives to his refusal. It turned out fortunately;
for Luzac, who had appealed against the curators to the
States-General, got his professorship back again. An
invitation to Copenhagen, to be Director-in-Chief of
Secondary Instruction in Denmark, with a salary of 1,800
thalers, Wolf actually accepted. This fell through, owing
D d
VOL. I.
The
402
X. F. A. WOLF.
to some tracasseries, which Körte cannot explain. In
the great intellectual movement in Bavaria, in the first
years of the century, Wolf was not overlooked. Hegel
was induced to leave Jena for Nürnberg, and the magni-
ficent offer was made to Wolf of a seat in the Academy of
Sciences at Munich, with a pension of 4,500 florins, and
next to nothing to do but to write what he liked.
Wolf decided notwithstanding to remain at Halle, little
dreaming of the impending catastrophe which was to
sweep away professors, students, and university in one
common ruin. He declined the Munich call in 1805.
In August 1806 Prussia declared war against Napoleon.
It took Napoleon just six weeks to annihilate the Prussian
army. The valley of the Saale became the theatre of
the short and decisive campaign. Halle was occupied
by one of the main Prussian corps. Wolf had full oppor-
tunity of seeing what these swaggering patriots were
like. It is remarkable that Hegel at Jena, and Wolf at
Halle, both foresaw what would inevitably happen, while
every one around them was exulting in the assurance
of an easy victory. Wolf incurred for the moment great
obloquy on account of his 'unpatriotic' sentiments. One
of his colleagues sent his little boy to him every morning
with some great news, adding on one occasion, 'The
Prussians are conquering, and will conquer!' 'My lad,'
said Wolf, 'you have not learnt your tenses; the
Prussians are conquering, have conquered, and will
conquer.' But Wolf was overruled. The University threw
itself passionately into the anti-Gallican movement. In
spite of his opposition, it joined the town of Halle in an
appeal for a subscription for clothing for a Prussian
regiment. This appeal, couched in terms which Wolf
thought highly unbecoming a university, was circulated
in the papers, and, of course, fell into the hands of the
enemy. On the morning of the 17th October, impelled
by curiosity to see war, Wolf had gone out early into
North British Review, 1865.]
CATASTROPHE OF JENA.
403
the quarters of Duke Eugene of Württemberg before the
town. He immediately perceived that something was
wrong, retired hastily and barricaded his house.
By
II a.m. the French were in the town. Wolf, alone in
the house, with his daughter and a kitchen-maid, awaited
their fate. More than one attempt was made to force
an entrance, in vain. Order was speedily restored, thanks
to the excellence of French discipline, and the regular
quartering parties began to go round. Several applicants
were sent away. At last they committed themselves to
a sapeur whose manner Wolf thought promising. Not-
withstanding his blood-stained and fire-eating appearance,
he behaved with such courtesy to the young lady, that
he was installed in Wolf's lecture-room. She asked him
where the Emperor was. 'L'Empereur, mademoiselle,
où il est ? il est ici, il est là, il est partout!'
Having thus fortunately escaped individual peril, Wolf
was necessarily involved in the general proscription which
the university had brought upon itself. On the 20th October,
an order of the day, issued by General Ménard, the
commanding officer, suspended the lectures, and sent all
the students to their homes with French passes. A stroke
of the pen thus deprived Wolf at once of his means
of subsistence and his occupation. It was a mysterious
crisis, such as happens in few lives. From this moment.
forward nothing would go straight with him. He had
fallen out with fortune, and was never reconciled with
her.
Berlin, 1807-1824.-Goethe at this critical moment came
forward with advice. It was, as Goethe's advice usually
was, the very best that could have been given. Use
this enforced leisure to write. Unfortunately, like most
good advice, it was particularly unpalatable. During the
winter indeed of 1806-7, Wolf occupied himself, per otia
Gallica, as he said, with his Encyclopädie. To this
leisure we probably owe the grand fragment with which
D d 2
404
X. F. A. WOLF.
the Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft opens. But
early in the spring he left for Berlin, which became his
residence from this time forward. The prospect at first
was gloomy. He was reduced from affluence to poverty,
from a settled occupation, which had become necessary
for him, to an uncertain expectation. A roomy house
and garden was ill exchanged for a lodging in a noisy
street (No. 10, Dorotheenstrasse), where the partitions
were so thin that what went on in the next room was
necessarily heard. But this was only temporary. As
Prussia slowly recovered from the blow of Jena, the
prospect brightened. The policy of the Government was
to compensate their country for its loss of territory by
urging its moral and intellectual development. A uni-
versity was to be created at Berlin, and to be filled with
celebrities drawn from every part of Germany. Wilhelm
von Humboldt was in the Ministry of Education. Under
these circumstances, not only would there be a place
for Wolf, but it was certain that one of the foremost
places would be laid at his feet. He was only forty-
eight, in the possession of sound health, and the full
vigour of his faculties, and here was opening to him the
prospect of a more brilliant career upon a wider theatre.
A reign of intellect was being inaugurated in Berlin.
At Halle he had had a hard struggle to create an appre-
ciation for his subject in a confined circle. Now, the
most intellectual capital in Europe was waiting to catch
instruction from his lips. The man who when young
had never lost a chance now threw away a certainty
of success.
We are not going to write in detail the sad history
of the wilfulness of genius. We shall invoke no muse to
sing the wrath of this Achilles. The truth, however, ought
to be told for the sake of the lesson which it conveys.
Wolf had no self-knowledge. Far from having the per-
fectly-poised self-estimate of Goethe, he had not even
North British Review, 1865.]
BERLIN.
405
the ordinary judgment of average men of the world.
Long accustomed to feel himself the first man in a
village, he thought he was to continue to hold the same
place in Berlin. Impulsive and enthusiastic, his vanity
and ambition ran away with him. He would not have a
professorship. Well, he would have a professorship, but
would not be tied to the duties of it like the other profes-
sors. He would hold his seat and pension in the Academy,
but he would not be bound by the same obligations
as the other academicians. The reason of this coquetry
with duties which he could perform better than any one
else, was that he secretly wished to be intrusted with
functions which he could not perform at all. He wanted
to enter the Government, of course in the department
of Education. He secretly wished this, but would not
say so. Von Humboldt divined his wish, and endeavoured
to gratify it. He met with great opposition from in-
fluential persons, from all around. It was unprecedented,
and might be inconvenient to introduce into a department
a man of fifty, not bred to the civil service; above all,
a man who, like Wolf, had ideas of his own. Von Hum-
boldt persisted. It was, in his eyes, of such importance to
have Wolf's aid in organising the superior instruction,
that all other considerations ought to give way. He
prevailed; we suspect he employed his personal influence
with the King on this occasion. An exceptional place
was created for Wolf, in order to give play to his know-
ledge and experience in classical training. He was named
Director of the Scientific Delegacy of the Department
of Public Instruction, besides being a member of the
department itself. But this did not please Wolf. Nothing
would have pleased him, except being absolute. He
did not understand being member of a consultative board.
He had no deference for the opinions of others. He
wanted to override his colleagues in the department, as
he had overridden his colleagues at Halle. He spurned
406
X. F. A. WOLF.
at official etiquette. In this miserable display of fractious-
ness and vanity, Von Humboldt showed himself truly
magnanimous. Superior to all petty considerations, he
waived all affronts, and overlooked all irregularities, for the
sake of preserving to the State Wolf's talents. Wolf, not
knowing what he wanted, or what was good for him,
like a child, was crying to be Staatsrath. He complained,
most unjustly, that Von Stein would have made him
Staatsrath, and that Von Humboldt stood in his way.
'Do you know what it is, my dear fellow,' was Humboldt's
soothing reply, 'to be Staatsrath in a Department? If
you did, you would not desire it. Ask Süvern if he
has been able to do a single thing on his own account this
whole summer. You would be overwhelmed with writing
and official business. I have created for you a position in
which you are at hand to give your advice; you have
nothing to do, and yet are secure of your salary however
little. you do. As Director you have a rank above a
Staatsrath; as member of the department you have equal
rank with the Staatsräthe, without their burdensome
duties.' Wolf suffered himself to be named Director of
the Delegacy,—a delegacy which consisted of men so dis-
tinguished as L. Spalding, Schleiermacher, Tralles, Bern-
hardi, and Erman. But hardly had he entered upon
his new duties when he withdrew from them. He would
not resign, but he would not act. He retired to his house,
and, like Lord Chatham in the inn at Marlborough,
declared that the state of his health did not allow him
to attend the sittings. In truth, there was disease of
body; an obstinate ague hung about him all the summer
of 1809 and the following winter, and a constant disorder
or dissatisfaction of mind, discontent with himself, with
his circumstances, with everybody around him. His
gathering spleen was vented promiscuously upon insti-
tutions, arrangements, persons.
Yet there was greatness
of mind even in his frowardness. There was always truth
North British Review, 1865.]
FAILURE IN OFFICE.
407
in his criticisms, even when most ill-timed, or ill-judged in
the measure of their severity. In his personal censures he
never condescended to petty spite, though he might be
harsh, and, as in the case of Heindorf, even cruel. He
was prolific in throwing out ideas of what might be
done, all of them admirable, but he himself would be
the first to thwart any attempt to realise them. He wanted
to have a philological Seminar on the same plan as that
with which he had worked such wonders at Halle, but
on a larger scale. A philological seminary was established.
But one of the provisions in its statutes displeased him, and
he declined to have anything to do with it.
Wolf had now had rope enough, and he had completely
succeeded in strangling his own reputation. The patience
of the officials was exhausted. But the Philistines were
now strong enough to turn upon Samson and bind him.
Upon one point they were determined: not to have so
impracticable a man as a colleague in any department of
administration. The only thing that could be done with
him was to make him lecture. He was fit for nothing but
to be a professor. So he ended in the very thing which in
his first pride he had most disdained, in his going back to
his old work of lecturing, and being tied up by a stringent
regulation to deliver his lectures or be mulcted of his
stipend. The triumph of the red-tapists was complete.
Their predictions were verified to the letter. Wolf's
wilfulness furnished the bureaux with a convincing proof
of their creed, that the man of ideas is an inferior being,
not to be trusted with the real business of life. Blissful
Beamtenthum may long point a moral from Wolf's history.
We can easily forgive him for having wrecked his own
prospects. It is more difficult to get over the injury he has
done the cause, by having furnished in his conduct so
signal a confirmation of the popular prejudice as to the
unpractical character of learning.
Thus ignominiously ended Wolf's administrative career.
408
X. F. A. WOLF.
It might have been speedily forgotten, if he had returned
with concentrated strength to that field of philological
research in which he was able to assert his uncontested
supremacy. He did at last condescend to lecture; but
his charm was fled. He never could get fairly into the
swing again. The spring of that incomparable teaching
talent was broken. He became irregular and careless,
and his class-rooms emptied. He had hearers, but no
pupils more. He was himself no longer the same man.
'What was become of the Halle wolf? Eaten up by the
Berlin wolf,' said the wits of the wine-cellars. A spirit of
contradiction, of universal negation, seized him, which
disgusted even the unexclusive Goethe. He writes to
Zelter, 28th August, 1816, after Wolf had been on a visit
to him:-
It has come to this pass, that Wolf now not only contradicts every-
thing one says, but denies everything that exists. It drives one posi-
tively to despair, however one may be prepared for the kind of thing.
This preposterous temper grows upon him, and makes his society,
which might be so instructive, intolerable. One even catches the
craze one-self; and I find myself saying before him the very opposite
of what I really think. One can see, however, what an effective
teacher this man must have been in earlier times, when he was as
positive as he now is negative.
Become powerless in the professor's chair, it might be
supposed that he would have taken refuge in the press,
and devoted his splendid leisure to the execution of some
of the thousand projects of editing and writing which his
fertile invention had suggested. He did very little of this
kind in the seventeen years of his Berlin life, and that
little not his best; for the Darstellung der Alterthums-
wissenschaft, though published in this period, was written
earlier. The Analecta, published in 1816, show here and
there rays of light such as Wolf's genius alone could have
flashed forth; but these are momentary and fitful gleams.
Of any sustained effort he seems to have become incapable.
North British Review, 1865.]
IMPRACTICABILITY OF TEMPER.
409
The Plato, advertised with much pomp, went no farther
than a title-page full of promises; for the edition of the
Phaedo (1811), and that of the Euthyphro, Apology, and
Crito (1820), did not belong to the Plato, but were only
texts for the use of schools. Literature, too, had ceased
to be a healthy occupation, and become but another
material for embroiling him with his friends. His in-
supportable peremptoriness alienated them one by one.
He engaged with Buttmann to start a new classical journal,
the Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft. But with Wolf
copartnership was impossible. His associates must be
his slaves, or at best his tools. He led off in the first
number of the Museum with a masterly paper, and then
retired in dudgeon. He would have nothing more to do
with it. We are involuntarily reminded of the scenes
between Hegel and Varnhagen von Ense on the com-
mittee of redaction of the Berliner Jahrbücher. Hegel,
too, was domineering and pertinacious-'tyrannised,' to
use a Berlin expression, and had more than once nearly
ruined the enterprise. But Hegel knew how to be beaten,
and to yield, and continued to the last to lend a hearty
support to the periodical of his school. Wolf quarrelled
with Buttmann; he quarrelled also with the gentle and
submissive Heindorf. Heindorf's offence was the heinous
one of having edited Plato. Finding that the master went
on promising and did nothing towards the edition, Hein-
dorf ventured on an edition of his own, humbly professing
that it was only a stop-gap till the edition should make its
appearance. For this Wolf fell upon him with savage
ferocity, the more cruel because Heindorf was known
to be dying. 'Ce chagrin philosophe est un peu trop
sauvage!' This onfall called forth a violent inyective
in a pamphlet said to be the joint production of Buttmann,
Schleiermacher, Schneider, Niebuhr, and Böckh, in which
Wolf's arrogance was retorted with insult, and his 'literary
bankruptcy' exposed to scorn and contempt. It was not
410
F. A. WOLF.
X.
well done, notwithstanding the constellation of names con-
nected with it; so at least Zelter reported to Goethe¹. Yet,
taken together with the odium accumulated on all sides, it
produced an evident impression. He pretended not to
have read it, and refused to answer it on that ground-
'Weil ich solche Art Wische nicht zu lesen pflege!'
He became more and more withdrawn; the 'distinguished
Eremite,' Schleiermacher nicknamed him. Zelter de-
scribes him as rather subdued by the universal howl.
'You would be vastly amused if you could see the Ise-
grimm just now. There are a few who take his part; but
he is abused and run down to such a degree, that he can-
not help feeling a little uneasiness. He looks like washed
leather, and puts up with a good deal that would have been
once intolerable to him2. The dedication of the Analecta is
the outpouring of a sore and wounded egotism; out of place
in the front of a volume of classical criticism, but a curious.
page of mental revelation. Even in the middle of a critical
article-one on Horace he cannot restrain himself from
outbreaks such as this:-'... even if it had been otherwise
worth the while of a scholar such as Lambinus to vex
himself to death about the misrendering of a couple of
words, when there is so much besides in this world out
of joint.' The punishment he inflicted on Schleiermacher
for his share in the pamphlet is given with much better
temper—almost with Porson's quietness. It consisted in
printing a single sentence of the Phaedo side by side with
Schleiermacher's German version, marking the errors-
almost as many as there are words-by italics. Schleier-
macher's weakness as a translator of Plato could not be
more severely exposed.
For this lamentable displacement of genius there was to
be no remedy but the final remedy of all. Wolf's health
had been gradually giving way for some time. In 1822 he
1 Zelter to Goethe, 2cth October, 1816.
"Zelter to Goethe, II. 328.
North British Review, 1865.]
LEAVES BERLIN. DEATH.
had a serious attack of illness.
411
He celebrated his birth-
day, 15th February, 1824, with the presentiment that it was
the last. His physician ordered a southern climate, and
recommended Nice. On his applying for the necessary
leave of absence, the answer was that it would be granted
on the usual condition,-the withdrawal of half the salary.
This was to deprive him of the means of going at all,
for Wolf had saved nothing. But by a direct application
to the King, the special indulgence of leave of absence
on full pay was obtained. So certain did he make that
his petition would be granted, that he had started without
waiting for an answer, and the leave, together with his
passport, overtook him at Frankfort. He left Berlin on the
14th April, saying, 'I will either return strong and sound,
or lay my bones in classic soil.' He took the route of
Strassburg and Lyons, having friends or pupils to see at
almost every place he stopped at. He halted a week at
the country-seat of the Faure family at St. Peray, where
everything was done that could contribute to soothe and
cheer the visibly declining strength, additionally tried by
the heat and hurry of a rapid journey. At Montpellier he
was still able to go about and see everything. His own
imprudent management of himself precipitated the cata-
strophe. At Cette he insisted on bathing in the sea, that he
might feel the Mediterranean. Impatient to get to the end
of his journey, he would not be diverted from going
through to Marseilles from Avignon in one day, though
he had to get up at three a.m. to do it. Arrived at
Marseilles, on the very next day he would go out to
see the town. A fearful mistral (19th July) could not
keep him within doors. He would bathe, and would
drink not much wine, but quantities of iced water, and eat
confitures. Diarrhoea and other dangerous symptoms set
in, which he met with more baths and more iced water.
On the 8th August he died. He was buried in classic
ground—the old Phocaean Massilia. All attempts to
·
412
X. F. A. WOLF.
discover, in 1852, the site of his grave in the cemetery
were fruitless. Instead of a monument on the site,
a marble bust, by Heidel, was placed to his memory
by the Association of German Philologians in the aula of
the University of Halle.
In personal appearance Wolf had an imposing, dignified,
somewhat imperious air. He was slightly above the
middle size, broad-shouldered, deep-chested; hands and
feet well proportioned. A capacious forehead, prominent
eye-brow, searching blue eye, combined to express keen-
ness and force of mind. The lips betrayed the interplay
of good-humour and raillery, without any trace of the
cynicism which unhappily appeared in his conduct at
one period of his life. For in Wolf the social man was
rarely disturbed by the crosses which vexed the existence
of the public man. In his life-career he was a disappointed
man; and his deliberate views of men and things were
soured by his disappointment.
But in social life his
powerful nature resumed its sway; his intellect then
retained, of the griefs of the professor, only a caustic
tinge, which gave poignancy to his wit. He must, we
think, have been a difficult person to live with, as are
all men of precise habits, and prodigious attention in
organising detail. He was separated from his wife in
1802, by mutual consent, she taking the eldest and
youngest daughter, Wolf the second, Wilhelmina, after-
wards married to W. Körte, Wolf's biographer. Körte,
who is evidently on his father-in-law's side, says that
Wolf's friends approved of the separation. We should
like to hear the women's account of the matter, to apply
Sydney Smith's well-known saying. Of domestic unhap-
piness it is idle for persons outside to judge; though Körte
is not reserved, scarcely delicate, in the revelations which
he permits himself. Wolf must have been a petty tyrant,
exacting, without being harsh or inconsiderate. He was,
e. g. so avaricious of his time that he would make his
North British Review, 1865.]
PERSON AND CHARACTER.
413
appointments to minutes, and he expected others to be
punctual to the moment, while he refused himself to be
bound by his own engagement. He expected cleanliness
and order in the house, and yet was habitually careless in
his own person. He had been trained when young in
habits of rigid economy; he had in his nature a disposition.
to expensive furnishings. Instead of balancing each other,
these opposite inclinations alternately ruled him, and led
to laughable contradictions in conduct. His household
seldom had enough of the necessary, often an abundance
of the superfluous. He liked the society of women; with
clever or educated women the sarcasm of his wit, and the
despotism of his temper, were laid aside, or merged in the
deep sympathies of his nature which they brought out.
With these he never overstepped the line which separates
raillery from sneer. His memory was inexhaustible in
traits of character and anecdotes of the persons he had
lived with; especially of the originals which university
life in the old time tended to produce. He never gave
himself airs on the strength of his reputation; persons
were known to have been with him months at a time.
without finding out that they had to do with one of the
most learned men of the day. Yet at times he would
express his personal feelings with an emphasis which
shocked weaker natures. He used to chuckle immensely
over Bentley's striking out as spurious the words of Terence,
'Adversus nemini, Nunquam praeponens se illis.' His
hatred of affectation was conspicuous in either direction.
He would not assume to be what he was not; nor would
he affect modesty. The conversation once turned in his
presence on a German dictionary of great pretensions,
which was in high favour. Wolf showed, giving examples,
that it was nothing beyond one of the ordinary second-
hand compilations. The lady of the house, thinking to
disarm the severity of the critic, said, among other things,
'And you cannot think, professor, what a high esteem the
414
X. F. A. WOLF.
author has for you.' 'Well,' was the reply, 'for his
opinion of me my man has good reason; his lexicon
is not the less a scrubby book on that account.' He hated
letter-writing, but when he did write, wrote carefully.
The letters of female correspondents he would keep for
months open on his desk among his papers, and read
them over and over again. Other letters he left for years
unanswered. There is a vast collection of letters in the
Berlin library, but they are entirely letters to Wolf. Of
his own letters a few are published in the Schütz collection.
They turn on personal affairs, and are biographically of
great interest, but do not enter on classical topics. None
of Wolf's books convey an impression of what he was.
His letters, if they could be recovered, and if there were
enough of them, might do so. His greatest work were
his pupils, and, directly or indirectly, through them the
whole school of German philologians of the nineteenth
century.
North British Review, 1865.]
XI.
OXFORD STUDIES.
[Oxford Essays, 1855.]
HE Oxford Reform Act is now in operation. It has
THE
not yet had time to fulfil or to disappoint the hopes.
of its promoters or the fears of its opponents. But, within
and without, there is a pause of expectation, balanced
equally between hope and fear. A favourable moment is
thus offered, not for reviving the discussion, but for
reviewing the situation. Of the settlement of details, of
the adjustment of interests, both ourselves and Parliament
may well be weary. In that thankless and irritating;
though indispensable labour, the great principles at stake
are apt to slide out of view. But the theoretical preacher,
who prudently retires from the din of debates, or the
jostling of divisions, may be welcomed back again by the
very parties to whom, in the hour of actual conflict, he had
seemed but a babbling sophist. We do not now come
forward as advocates or accusers; we do not propose to
criticise the new measure. If we assume the chair of the
judge, it is not in any self-sufficient spirit, but for the
sake of imposing on ourselves the restraint of moderation,
of abstinence from controversy; and also because that
is now the only platform from which anything that
deserves to be said ought to be offered. But when we
ask our readers to rise above the petty and personal
interests of the hour, we are not going to lose sight of
facts. We are not writing a romance of an academic
Utopia, to gain the cheap triumph of pointing out the
.
416
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
shortcomings of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. We have far too
pressing a sense and experience of Oxford as it is, to wish
to be speculating tanquam in aliena republica. We aim
not at the reform or overthrow of existing institutions,
but desire to see them attain their full stature and
elevation. But though weary of controversy, and de-
clining to gossip away for ever the doctrines of life, the
sober discussion of our prospects cannot be said to be
closed. It is more than ever incumbent on thoughtful
men, whose sphere lies in the Universities, to review
their own views, to realise the connexion of those bodies
with the nation, and to draw from careful, and continued,
study of the national problem, more enlarged conceptions
of the duties, the powers, the glorious opportunities
opening to us. Such discussion is practical in the best
sense. It is a platform on which hostile parties may meet
as friends, and forget that they belong to a party.
Nothing more distinguishes the man of insight from
the mere partisan than this: that the effort to understand
his opponent's ground brings out his own distinctly to
his eye. In the attempt to grasp the opposite principle,
we correct and extend our own. Is there any Oxford
M.A. of fair mind, who would not say that during the
last four years of discussion, his ideas on the duties of a
University have not been considerably enlarged and
modified? With much still of blind prejudice and un-
informed tenacity among the mass, there are many hope-
ful symptoms.
Indeed, whatever may have been the case when we
came to the voting paper, where the dominant party
naturally used its numerical superiority without mercy,
in the out-of-door discussion a fairer spirit is discernible.
There, we divide less into two political parties,—there
we find that the real opponents in this place are not so
much the Conservatives against the Reformers, as the
thoughtful and improvable against the inert, immovable
Oxford Essays. 1855.]
STATE OF THE QUESTION.
+
417
mass, there the haughty Radical finds that not all the
political wisdom of the University is centered in the score
or so members of his own coterie; there the loyal Tory
learns that his Liberal friend is as cautious and con-
servative as himself; and both together, the thinking
and reasonable men of both parties, should open their
eyes to the truth, that the real enemies of both are the
unthinking and the narrow-minded, the self-called practical
men,—the men who resist alteration as such, not because
they perceive that its scope will be mischievous, but
because they cannot comprehend its scope at all,-the
men who ridicule Reform as visionary, and cry down.
Reformers as theorists and doctrinaires, - men to whom
history opens her pages in vain, for they have settled
their principles and have nothing to learn,-men whose
only argument is precedent, yet who are wholly ignorant
of the past in which that precedent originated,—men
whose term of abuse is 'German,' and yet have less than
a child's knowledge of the nature of German institutions.
They assume to themselves to be the practical men, and
their only claim to the title is never to have looked at a
demonstration or a theory. Such men are our real foes.
Entrenched in the highest posts, and backed by numbers,
they present our great difficulty in dealing with our
arrangements from within. Assuredly the House of
Commons is not an assembly in which such principles as
are involved in our case can be best scrutinized, yet
external aid is indispensable to deal with such an im-
practicable mass.
But with the select class of independent and reasonable
men, the epoch of discussion is very far from being
closed, if for this reason only, that the very case under
consideration is taking a more extensive form. The
accidents of a division, last session, removed for us one
principal obstacle, not prematurely indeed, but before we
were expecting it, and before, at the ordinary rate at
VOL. I.
E e
418
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
which public opinion travels, we could otherwise have
got it. Opinion has scarcely yet had time to follow out
the immense practical benefit which the restoration of our
connexion with the nation at large may be to the spirit
and substance of our education itself. Amid the rapid
growth and development of population and of wealth,
amid the diffusion and improvement of the lower de-
partments of education, the Universities have narrowed
in influence, have decayed in numbers, and (till recently)
become paralyzed in any power of elevating the character
or expanding the intellect. A subject so wide is far be-
yond the present limits. We propose to do no more than
to consider the character of the education at present given
in the University. We do not profess to advance any-
thing new on a subject on which so much has been
already said and written, and on which the utmost to
which any one can aspire is to invigorate the connexion
between our actual arrangements, and the principles on
which they rest. We shall-
First, lay down the general conditions under which alone
the higher education in a University can be efficient at the
present day; and
Secondly, consider what arrangements of our studies,
examinations, etc. can be made, so as best to forward such
conditions.
I.
The first and indispensable condition of the efficiency of
the higher education is an intellectual activity, general,
pervading, sustained; and that this activity be directed
upon the central and proper object of human knowledge.
It must be an energetic action of intellect, not a mere
intellectual power, which may be found in societies the
most sluggish and unimproving. It must be pervading ;
not the monopoly of a few leading minds—a state of things
which is too apt to keep down talent and to discourage
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
HIGHER EDUCATION. ITS CONDITIONS.
419
the diffident. It must be sustained-self-sustaining; not
dependent on the casual excitement of some great
occasions; not blown into bursts of flame by topics or
controversies imported from without, but fed with its own
subject from within. But while not taking the colour and
form of the fleeting circumstances of the day, it must be
closely allied with the general intellect of the nation; it
must participate in, if it will lead, the movement of thought
through the country. The University must be the in-
tellectual capital of the country, attracting to itself, not all
the talent, but all the speculative intellect. It should be
an independent body, fenced round by its own privi-
leges-prescriptive rights too sacred to be easily in-
vaded-with its own annals and code of laws. But
political independence is of less consequence to it than
social. It should have sufficient social status for its
honours and dignities to be in themselves rewards, and
that its members should not be under the temptation to
secure for themselves other positions, political or ecclesi-
astical, to which their academical place would then rank
as subordinate. If there be not some proportion between
the prizes which public life, or the professions, and those
which the University itself, offer, the former will always
draw off the highest talent, and leave only the second-rate
and mediocre for academic labours. This measure of
independence may be secured by incorporation, if on a
sufficiently large scale, and does not absolutely require
a provincial site. Yet such a locality is, on the whole,
preferable to a metropolitan one, though it was not
unnatural in the founders of the London University
to choose the capital for their institution. They saw the
evils of the isolation of Oxford and Cambridge from
the existing spirit of the nation, and with the view of
re-opening the long-closed connexion between the English
world and University education, placed themselves in
London, where the pressure of material interests and the
E e 2
420
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
intrusion of the other manifold relations of that com-
plicated life have deadened the purely academic life.
Individuals may rise above such influences anywhere, but
there is no corporate mental activity. The London
University has been crushed under the superior weight
of metropolitan life. A university should be situated, like
the poet's garden, 'Not wholly in the busy world, nor
quite beyond it.'
The
That this mental activity should be associated does not
mean only that it should be defended from external attack
or interruption by an esprit du corps. It is required,
in order that it may efficiently teach.
For the higher
education differs from the primary in this important
respect, that the higher education is communicated from
the teacher to the taught, by influence, by sympathy, by
contact of mind with mind. In teaching the elements
of grammar or geometry, as in teaching an art, the teacher
lays down rules, and sees that the pupil remembers and
conforms to them. The process is mechanical.
memory only and the lower faculties of the understanding
are called into play on both sides-pupil and teacher alike.
But it is otherwise in the higher spheres of mind. There,
the teacher must act with his whole mind, on the pupil's
whole mind. He does not then teach rules, not because
rules are not framed in the highest parts of subjects,
but because no rules or formulae can reach the faculties
of mind there addressed. Therefore, in the higher
education no teaching can be dogmatic. The instructor
does not lay down principles, he initiates into methods;
he is himself an investigator, and he is inviting the pupil
to accompany him on his road; he does not go down
to the pupil's level, but he assumes the pupil to his. Not,
indeed, that the best mind at twenty can see with the
distinctness, or embrace with the grasp, of matured
intellect, but its mode of apprehension is (when rightly
led) the same in kind; he is conscious that he is dealing
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
CHARACTER OF THE HIGHER INSTRUCTION. 421
with realities, not with words-that he is now among
truths, and not merely among the things which men have
said about truths. He begins to perceive that books
and systems are not things to be learned in themselves,
but are only so many different object-glasses through
which we can look at things.
In advancing this as a description of the higher instruc-
tion, we are aware that we are saying, not indeed what
is doubtful, but what is liable to be misunderstood, and,
still more, to be misrepresented. It may be necessary,
therefore, to say that we are not advocating a vague
philosophism as the educational medium. What we have
advanced is not mysticism, nor transcendentalism, no,
nor Hegelianism; nor yet are we advocating the pre-
scribed cultus, 'the worship of the beautiful and the true.'
Seriously, the 'indefinite' in philosophy, 'views' in
history and politics, 'theories' in physical science, are
equally, and on the same grounds, improper in teaching.
But there is a difference between the elementary and the
higher branches of each of these subjects. When the
elementary, which can be taught as rule and dogmatically,
has been passed, we arrive at those parts of the subject
where experiment and discovery in the physical, and
speculation in the moral sciences begin. This is the very
vital sphere of the higher education. Nor until the
learner reaches this sphere does he arrive at the final
stage of his training. To say that he must not be
introduced to it till the foundation has been solidly laid
in the distinct inculcation and apprehension of the funda-
mental ideas of the science, is to assert a truism. But a
University which confines itself to the elements of the
sciences really repudiates its function, and becomes a
school. The education which stops where rules and
formulae end, is not only imperfect in respect of the
knowledge which it conveys of the object, but imperfect in
respect of the training of the mind which it accomplishes.
422
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
It has not called into play the higher powers of the
intellect at all; it has not communicated an impulse to the
original and independent exercise of the judging and
discriminating faculties; but until it has done this, the
labour spent in acquiring the rudiments is so much
thrown away. The elements of any knowledge are not
that knowledge, they are only the road to it. But to
suppose that when you have passed through the beaten
road, you launch into a land where all is cloud and mist,
that when the elementary is transcended, all is vague and
undefinable, is a supposition that could only be entertained
by those who never arrived there. It is true that the
helps and guidance which definitions ready made to
the hands have so far afforded us begin to fail, but
it is just in that failure that consists the superior
gymnastic of this stage. The mind is then beginning
to test its own powers of discernment, then only beginning
truly to know. The meaning and bearing, the ground
and principle of the notions of which the understanding
has been hitherto recipient, begin to unfold themselves
in their mutual relations, and the foundations and sym-
metry of the whole structure to stand revealed. It has
been said that where rules end, genius begins. This
is true, but is not to be understood as implying that because
rules end, a teacher can do no more. On the contrary,
it is precisely there that the utility of the best instructor
begins. All scholars will recognise this distinction in
their own subject. When grammar, and lexicon, and
metrical canon have done all they can for us, then begins
the discipline for the sake of which the earlier school
labour was put upon us at all, then commences the
influence of the critical tact, the fine practised taste of
the classical teacher. Genius, it is true, can in this
sphere do most for the few, but training can do much
for the many.
This province belongs not only to the
ευφυής, but also to the γεγυμνασμένος. In the sciences,
Oxford Essays, 1855,]
HIGHER PHILOSOPHY NOT INDEFINITE.
423
moral and physical, there is a province corresponding
to this. Nor is there any more vagueness or uncertainty
attaching to an apprehension in the higher philosophy,
than there is to a perception of cultivated taste in poetry,
or a judgment of sage experience in politics. The truth is,
that as it is only those who are not scholars themselves
who question the utility of classical studies, so it is only
those who are untrained in philosophy, who accuse the
transcendental of indefiniteness. The analogy holds
throughout. For as the contemners of classical scholar-
ship would be right, if scholarship stopped with the rudi-
ments of the language—with grammar, syntax, and pros-
ody, with the laws of construction and accent,—stopped,
in short, where with the majority of school-educated
Englishmen it does stop,-then it would be true that
the spending six or eight years in painfully acquiring
two languages is an egregious folly. Just so it is with
logic. The logic of the schools, a certain more or less.
arbitrary collection of formal laws of reasoning, is the
grammar of the higher moral or physical sciences. But
the whole utility of this grammar is annihilated, if it be
not followed up by an advance into those sciences. Logic
is indispensable as the preliminary of Philosophy; it
is useless if Philosophy be not contemplated as the apex
of the education which Logic inaugurates. As the
grammar-school system, by which the rudiments of Latin
and Greek were painfully inflicted through eight barren
years, was a monstrous and truncated phenomenon, when
its proper complement, the higher philology, was cut off
by the incapacity of the college tutor; so the school
logic has been in a preposterous situation since the
University schools ceased to afford the higher philo-
sophical teaching, in which alone the art of logic found its
use and application.
That the learner then should ascend into the higher
regions of his subject, is required to the end that the
1
424
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
"
higher faculties of his mind should be reached. It is also
required to the end that the instructor should put forth
the vigour of his mind. We can only usefully teach
where our interest is fresh and our knowledge enlarging.
No one now will dispute that the aim of education is
less to inform the mind, than to exercise and call out
the faculties. This is true of every stage of education;
but it is less so of the very lowest, and holds good
in an increasing ratio as we ascend to the highest stage of
the educational process. Children must be shown objects.
Till a certain quantity of common observation has been
made and stored up, the child's mind has no materials
to act upon. When the
When the powers of observation and
imagination have been awakened, we aim at strengthening
the reasoning faculty, by arithmetic or geometry; that of
generalisation, by history or natural history. When we
come, finally, to cultivate the higher powers of reflection
or consciousness, or the intuitions of the Reason, the
media of this discipline are neither so patent nor so
universally possessed. No one can be a qualified in-
structor in this province of Philosophy, whose own
thoughts are not actively and habitually conversant with
these speculations. Equally is this the case in the highest
generalizations of moral, political, and economic science,
where it is indispensable that the constant testing of
the principle by its inductive base should be maintained.
The moment the doctrine has stiffened in the teacher's
mind into a dogma, i.e. when it has lost its connexion with
the facts it represents, it has become unfit for the purposes
of teaching. It becomes information, it is no longer
knowledge. The tree has no longer its root in the soil it
has become a withered trunk. This is why we cannot
teach from our recollections, however trustworthy they
may be. The higher education can no more be committed
to memory, and learnt by rote or by books, than religion
can be transmitted by tradition or by a document. A vital

Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PHILOSOPHICAL TEMPER COMMUNICABLE.
425
faith is communicated immediately by spirit to spirit.
And so, the philosophical temper, the last acquisition
and the highest reward of the intellectual course, -can
only be communicated by the mind which possesses it.
In the almost total abeyance of the higher studies in this
country, we have come to regard this scientific spirit
as purely the gift of nature, and are unaware of the extent
to which culture can create and command it. True,
it cannot be conveyed to all. Men of intelligence there
are who seem wanting in the organ of philosophical
power. There must be aptitude on the part of the
recipient. But that is no more than is required for the
communication of religious or moral truth. And there is
no reason for thinking that philosophy, which is only
a just and perfect judgment on the bearings and relations
of knowledge, should not be as generally attainable as
a wise judgment in practical matters is. And should
our Universities, ceasing to be schools of grammar and
mathematics, resume their proper functions, it will be
found that a far larger proportion of minds than we now
suspect, are capable of arriving at this stage of progress.
For be it again repeated, it is not a knowledge, but
a discipline, that is required; not science, but the
scientific habit; not erudition, but scholarship. And those
who have not leisure to amass stores of knowledge,
to master in detail the facts of science, may yet acquire
the power of scientific insight, if the opportunity is
afforded them. It is the want of this discernment, and
the absence of the proper cultivation of it, which produces
that deluge of crude speculation and vague mysticism
which pervades the philosophical and religious literature
of the day, and which is sometimes wrongly ascribed
to the importation of Philosophy itself, and its recent
unreasonable intrusion on our practical good sense.
The
business of the highest education is, not to check, but
to regulate this movement; not to prohibit speculation,
426
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
but to supply the discipline which alone can safely
wield it.
It is then necessary to the existence of a higher or acade-
mical education, that there exist a scientific and philo-
sophical activity; that this be organized in an institution;
that by position, endowments, privileges, the institution
and its members be sustained in a social independence. It
remains to mention one condition of the utility of such an
intellectual society, and that is its connexion with the
State; for it is possible for such an institution to be organ-
ized with the view of giving some peculiar bent or mould
of its own to the minds of youth, as, e. g. the Society of
Jesus, which avowedly sought to stereotype intellect in
antagonism to the progressive course of philosophy. But
the University must be in intimate connexion with the
general movement of the world, and its connexion with
the State must be determined by the relation of the in-
tellectual activity which the University enshrines and
incorporates, to the general national activity; for a
University is not to be considered an incorporation of
teachers only, but one for the support and nurture of the
higher intellect of the country. In order even to teach, the
teachers must be themselves learners, and in progress, in
the great school which our own age is to each of us, as we
come to understand its spirit and progress. They should
be independent, then, but not isolated; they must be in
sympathy and quick communion with the general move-
ment of national mind—indeed, they will be themselves no
small part of it; they will at least embody and represent
that movement; they will at once show and control it;
through them it will find its full vent. In its University
the national mind will work and live as its proper organ ;
here only will it fully develope itself. As the condition of
social, and to some extent political, independence, is
necessary to prevent material interests from stifling and
absorbing studies, so the condition of sympathy with the
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
CONNEXION OF UNIVERSITIES WITH THE STATE. 427
general mind is necessary, both to sustain the required
activity, and to make the University a proper seminary for
the education of the national youth. The nation does not
hire a number of learned men to teach its children; it
educates them itself through an organ into which its own
best intellect, its scientific genius, is regularly drafted.
This education is, in short nothing but the free action of
life and society, localized, economized, and brought to
bear.
This will perhaps seem to some fanciful and far-fetched,
but it is really the substantial ground of the right, and the
measure, of legislative interference. It is a principle well
enough understood among us in its practical shape, be-
cause in that shape none has been more strenuously re-
sisted by a party, of whom most are found within the
Universities. On the claim of legal independence, as it is
technically defended, we say nothing at present; but the
intellectual isolation, in which Oxford at least has for
many generations found herself, in which she has forfeited
her usefulness and shipwrecked her power, has its de-
fenders. The fact of the estrangement between the Uni-
versity and the world without, between the endowed and
privileged educating body and the nation which has en-
dowed and privileged it, and preserves to it the exclusive
right of bestowing certificates of education,-this fact is not
only not denied but gloried in. 'The academical establish-
ments of some parts of Europe,' says Dugald Stewart,' are
not without their use to the historian of the human mind.
Immovably moored to the same station by the strength of
their cables and the weight of their anchors, they enable
him to measure the rapidity of the current by which the
rest of mankind is borne along.' What is cast upon us as
heavy censure from without is taken up from within as our
highest title to respect. Now, waiving the question as to
which party, the University or the national movement, be
right, one thing must be admitted, viz. that the severance
428
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
between them is an unfortunate schism. If the great ex-
pansion of science, literature, and art, which has taken
place in the country at large be really a part of the great
European progress in civilization, then we, who have re-
sisted it for two centuries step by step, are blamable for
not having pressed eagerly in its wake. If, on the other
hand, the ancient ways in which we still struggle to stand
are the right ways, and the world without us is spinning
down the grooves of change from bad to worse, then must
we suspect that we have not done our duty in leavening
the mass, and being in possession of the key of knowledge,
have not opened wide enough the gates of the temple of
truth. We have had in our hands unchallenged the higher
education of the nation, on the direction and efficiency of
which depends the direction of all the subordinate, primary
and secondary; if these have taken a wrong direction, or
sought out mistaken methods, it is from our neglect alone
that the error began. But whichever alternative be true,
it imports to the national welfare that the schism be closed
without loss of time; be this to be done by reconverting
the nation to the academical system, or be ours the
nobler part to have to confess a mistake, and to admit
within our precincts, by a postliminium, all that is good,
and true, and sound out of the wealth of knowledge that
has been accumulating at our gates.
Not, indeed, that the University should be dependent
on the mere popular fancy, the fashion of the day. It
should be in harmony with the nation, not with the mob;
national, not popular. Without entering into the question
whether popular teaching, such as given in mechanics'
institutes, or evening lectures, be useful, or merely an
amusement, such is not to be the character of university
teaching. Indeed, the position we are assigning to the
University is the very opposite pole to the superficial. It
might with more justice be objected to us that we aim too
high, than that we popularize too much. It requires but
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
UNIVERSITIES NATIONAL, NOT POPULAR. 429
little acquaintance with the history of philosophy and
science to know that the progress of movement and dis-
covery begins at the top, and works downward. The
creed of the few philosophic minds in one age becomes by
the law of social progress the creed of the mass of educated
men in the next age; and in the following, if not artificially
checked, is diffused through the mass. The leading minds
in each age, who are the first to make the discovery or
propound the idea, or rather who from their position as
possessors of the wisdom of the past, are enabled first to
discern and interpret the ever-ripening growth, the harvest
of time (for discoveries are 'potius temporis partus
quam ingenii,'), so far from having been acceptable to
the popular taste, are usually alienated or disregarded,
persecuted, proscribed, or ridiculed, according as the
humour of the times is sternly serious, feebly decorous, or
childishly frivolous. If the University, then, be in vital
connexion with the national intellect, if it take the position
above assigned it as the organ and expression of the
national movement, it would be more likely to be found
unpopular, and to be misunderstood from its advanced
view, than tending to sciolism and superficial knowledge.
For it is possible for a society of scholars, philosophers,
and naturalists to be out of sympathy with the mind of the
country, by being greatly before it, or greatly behind it.
The former situation may be seen at this moment in
Germany, in the department of speculative philosophy.
There the political repression consequent on 1848-50 has
checked the general development on those subjects, and
left the leading minds apparently high and dry above tide-
mark: a state of things which is often mistaken for a
reaction of thought towards some form or other of the past.
But in the English Universities the separation has taken
place below. We first fell into arrear of the great move-
ment of metaphysics and physics at the end of the seven-
teenth century, and before the close of the eighteenth
к
430
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
century the current literature and the general level of
science had risen above our mark. Not till this neap-tide
at Oxford, and till the standard of attainment with us had
fallen below the average attainment of general education,
did the reaction within begin. In the first twenty-five
years of the present century our standard was gradually
raised. Recent improvements have done more; but they
have all been limited by the prevailing idea of bringing up
a University education to the level of the best education
now extant in the country. They have successively intro-
duced, between 1793 and 1848, mathematics, botany,
chemistry, mineralogy, geology, political economy, San-
skrit, and the modern languages of Europe. The new
branches of knowledge, after they had struggled into
being, and established themselves without, were received,
no matter how reluctantly and ungraciously, first into the
University precincts, and in 1850 some of them into her
curriculum. All this, however, even when it shall have
been fully done, is but the first step towards regaining
our position. Even supposing that all these branches of
knowledge, instead of being but barely represented in the
University, could be taught here, it would but be bringing
us up to the level of pursuit and attainment without. It
would only be making us into a place of miscellaneous
accomplishment. 'Such an idea of a University,' it has
been said, 'is to consider it a sort of bazaar or pantech-
nicon, in which wares of all kinds are heaped together for
sale in stalls independent of each other, and that to save
the purchasers the trouble of running about from shop to
shop; or an hotel or lodging-house, where all professions
and classes are at liberty to congregate, each of them
strange to each, and each about its own work or pleasure.'
We might have incorporated all the principal branches of
science pursued in the country, but there would still
remain the final step to take. We should then be rein-
stated on an equality with the average education; it would
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
THE SCIENCES AND LIBERAL EDUCATION.
431
still remain that we should re-enter on the domain of
Philosophy which has so long been abandoned to chance
occupants. Until we have done this, until we have re-
placed ourselves on the pedestal of the highest science,
and re-absorbed into our system the minds that create
and lead thought, we shall not have recovered the in-
fluences and conditions necessary to the higher education.
If then we seem to coincide with a class of objectors
who are dissatisfied with that idea of a University which
would make it a great open school of all the useful arts
and popular sciences, it is a coincidence from a diametri-
cally opposite point of view. Those who remember the
sneers with which the old Universities greeted the
establishment of the London University, as a 'new-fangled
radical scheme of pantology,' may measure the progress
of opinion, by noting how differently they were then
received, from what was felt by all educated men, when in
the present year, Lord Derby attempted to jeer at science
in the presence of the British Association. The classicist
scorners, from their miserable rag of Latin writing
and logic, looked then with the contempt of ignorance
on all the wonders of the new learning. According to our
view of a University, the whole body of sciences, inductive
and exact, forms the indispensable groundwork, but only
the groundwork, of that liberal education which it is the
business of a University to provide. In the positions
which each of the two parties in that controversy occupied,
there was a point of right on either side. The classicists
rightly maintained the principle of a liberal education
versus useful knowledge; though the classical languages
in their hands had ceased to be adequate instruments of
such liberal culture. The friends of useful knowledge, on
the other hand, saw clearly enough the grand error of the
public schools and Universities, in shutting out the great
bulk of generally accessible knowledge, and bringing up
their élèves like Plato's men in the cave. They compared
432
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
the learned languages with the physical sciences or
mathematics, as acquisitions, and saw that the utility of
the one was unlimited, of the other very narrow indeed.
They did not know that the classical system in its origin
was not a mere communication of the grammar of a couple
of dead languages, but had comprehended a complete
cultivation of mind, an expansion of the faculties adequate
to the whole field of knowledge. It had dwindled in time
into a cramping pedantry, under which the herd of
students learnt nothing, a few only of the better sort
acquired taste and skill in composition, but were utterly
left out of the whole region of thought in which their
contemporaries were occupied. University men in those
days published essays or sermons, neatly worded, with a
classical allusion or two happily introduced; but they
ceased to have anything to say to the world without.
Like those who, when Galileo's telescope was first
produced, refused to look through it, they declined to
know anything of the new movement, content with
asserting in their rational moments, that it was all
superficies, glitter and show, and humbug; or, when
irritated, that it was materialist, godless, atheistical. As
the movement advanced, triumphant contempt was suc-
ceeded by sorrowful lamentation over the decay of 'sound
learning.' All England was represented as rushing madly
to folly and ruin, and Oxford as the one spot where the
true old principles of English education were still under-
stood. 'We are about,' it was said, in 1840, 'to take
precisely the same step in advance to ruin which was
made at Athens by the first appearance of the foreign
sophists¹.' And in one respect these cries of despair did
not exaggerate. They did not exaggerate the greatness
of the crisis. It was, and is, a crisis in the history of the
higher education in this country. Now, first, after two
centuries of unbroken practice, not a reform, but a
¹ Sewell, W., Introduction to Plato, 1841.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
CLASSICS AND MODERN SCIENCE.
433
revolution in the system of our secondary education is
in progress. The controversy between the impugners of
an exclusively classical education, and the favourers of
the modern sciences, is not an episode of that revolution;
it contains the very pith of it, but it contains it in a some-
what narrow and distorted form. It is not a little curious,
in reviewing the controversy on classical education which
has been going on for the last fifty years, to note that
though the inevitable progress of things is gradually but
silently giving the preponderance to the modern sciences,
the advantage in the controversy has, till quite lately, been
with the defenders of classical studies. The untenable
position of the public schools and Universities has been
supported by the classicists on a true principle, while the
sound cause of scientific knowledge has been mostly
argued by the naturalists on a false one. The classicists
have not only written well, and brought out in a clear
light many of the secondary benefits of the dead language
training, but they have held to the fundamental idea of
intellectual culture as the great end of education. Their
error lies in their not understanding that the study of
antiquity, of the past, even when much more profound
than it usually is, cannot now convey that culture. Their
opponents, on the other hand, in the free possession and
enjoyment of the wonderful field of real knowledge, have
lost sight of the truth, that for the purposes of education,
knowledge is only a means, a means to intellectual
development. They will stake the issue on the compara-
tive utility of the Classics and of Science, whereas they
ought to place it on the comparative fitness of the two
subjects to expand the powers, to qualify for philosophical
and comprehensive view. In short, they confound life
with education, and forget, or know not, that though a
useful and practical life may be the end of education, yet
that the perfection of education consists in the perfection
and enlargement of the intellect per se.
While the men of
F f
VOL. I.
434
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
science continue to declare the educational use of science
to be what Bacon most justly pronounced its practical
end, viz. its employment to command the powers of the
material world, they offer an easy victory to the classicists,
who rightly stand up for the principle of mental cultivation.
As soon as the classicists extend their view of mental
cultivation, and admit the philosophical and speculative
development as a much higher type of that cultivation
than the mere æsthetic perfection at which they now aim,
they will see that the study of a few writers who may be
models of literary taste is quite inadequate to bestow that
cultivation.
The 'Classical education' controversy-the cause
'Things v. Words'-merges in a much more extensive
one. We have said that the present is a crisis or revolu-
tion in the higher education, agreeing in this with those
who dread or deplore the change they daily see effecting
itself. To understand it fully, we must recur to what was
just now laid down on the connexion of education with
the actual progress of thought in the nation at large.
The lower branches of education differ in this respect
from the higher, that in the latter, nothing can be arbitrary.
Where training and strengthening the faculties only are
the objects, many different studies may, in different ways,
serve the purpose, and where one school may employ
mathematics, another may employ logic, or oral disputa-
tions, or repetitions, with the same happy results. But
when disciplinal studies have done their best, and we
come to those whose purpose is to liberalize or expand
the mind, here we have no discretion, no latitude of
choice. The end here is the cultivation of mind in itself,
for its own sake; the nurture and growth of the mind to
the full proportions; no mere training of particular
faculties to be employed in special services. To this end
there is but one means, the end being the harmonious
development of the intelligence, a given rational nature
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
LIBERAL CULTURE AND TEACHING.
435
with unvarying properties. The means are nothing less
than all the extant knowledge of the age in which we
happen to live; a variable quantity and material. Intelli-
gence is relative to its object. If we fix our aim steadily
on a perfect culture, a philosophical comprehensiveness of
thought, we cannot afford to ignore any important class
of ascertained facts; for a liberal culture is not the
knowledge of facts, but intellectual grasp-not a collective
acquaintance with many sciences, but a harmonious survey
of knowledge, in all its parts, as a whole: and the liberal
teacher is so, not by virtue of an elaborate acquaintance
with the details of any one branch, but by his just and
methodical combination of the principles of all. Such
words as 'profound,' 'thorough,' are apt to mislead us
on this subject. A man is said to have a 'thorough'
knowledge of his subject when he knows it in all its
details; but also he is a 'profound' man, who knows the
fundamental principles of all knowledge in their mutual
bearings and relations. In this sense, nothing can be
known profoundly, if known independently. If we have
not a view of the universe of things, if we do not conceive
of Man, Nature, and God, taken together; then, however
perfect our acquaintance with any one province, it seems
it cannot be a profound knowledge. So that these words,
'deep,' 'thorough,' etc., have a good and true sense when
said of knowledge in two very opposite directions; when
all the facts and cases are distinctly possessed, on the one
hand; on the other, when they are properly built into a
scientific structure. A complete or perfect knowledge,
then, will require both those conditions, must be thorough
in both senses. And, be it observed, mere generalization
will not do. It is not enough that we systematize,
methodize, theorize. Nothing less than the system which
explains all systems, the theory which places all the facts,
the universal method, must be thought of. It is true,
indeed, that general views, even baseless ones, are more
П
1
F f 2
436
XI. OXFORD studies.
liberalizing than the study of particular facts. Even a
false system elevates the thoughts; but to be general
without being exact, to systematize without reference to
facts, this is to be superficial. In some countries and
periods, this tendency has ruled the national mind, and
has possessed itself of the higher education. In France,
the impulse given, when about thirty years ago the
University and philosophical studies began to raise their
head for the first time since their de facto suppression
under the despotism of Louis XIV, was in this spirit.
The literature and educated men of that country are
characterized by habits of rapid generalisation, a power
of looking at things in masses, and speaking of them in
the dialect of philosophy. But being based on no
complete knowledge or solid acquisition of any kind, this
habit is essentially false and misleading, and indeed is
little more than a brilliant imposture. Liberal education
in France is not yet considered worth having for its own
sake, or as a qualification for life; it is wholly subordinate
to the purpose of shining in society; only so much of it
is attained as shall serve as a qualification for conversation,
and no accomplishment is so showy and dazzling as the
easy and habitual use of the language of philosophical
culture. The fact that society demands for its currency
this cheap and spurious imitation of the true metal, while
it warns us of a danger, at the same time renders the
homage of hypocrisy to virtue. Allow education any play
the
at all, begin to impart knowledge, and the mind will
systematize it. If you are not prepared with the true and
all-comprehensive method, you must expect to see a
partial, hasty, one-sided, superficial philosophy spring up;
for philosophy there will be, if there is knowledge at all.
But it is a mistake to suppose, as is sometimes done, that
this superficiality of French secondary education is owing
to its not being conducted as our own is, on the basis of
the ancient languages; to a want, in short, of the grounding
Oxford Essays, 8155.]
'UNIVERSALITY.
437
in Greek which our grammar-schools give. On the con-
trary, its superficiality is owing to its being exclusively a
language training instead of a science training; the
difference between it and our own being only that they
employ a modern literature, and the terminology of the
philosophy of the day, while we employ an ancient
language and literature. Their University education is
undoubtedly superficial and inferior in its aim to ours;
but it is more expeditious, and answers its purpose, such
as that is, with perhaps fifty per cent. of the students. Ours
aims higher, but is so ill-constructed and slovenly, that a
very small proportion of the students go far enough in
Greek to derive any benefit, even a superficial one, from
what they learn of it.
The liberal education, then, which it is the office of a
University to supply, being this enlargement or illumi-
nation of mind-this mental breadth-what Bacon¹ calls
'Universality,' it is necessary that it be real: i. e. that it be
based on knowledge, that it be a comprehensive view of
science, and not a mere acquaintance with the terminology
of science. On the one hand, an education in facts, in
some one or more special art or science, is not liberal
education at all; on the other, the mere habit or power of
taking general views, universal notions as learnt from
literature, is a hollow and spurious liberalizing of the
mind. Such notions are to it, abstractions-mere words.
To teach the sciences only is not an education at all; it
is only a communication of knowledge. An education by
literature does in some measure liberalize the mind, but it
is at second-hand, through other men's thoughts, and in
the way of tradition; it is a fallacious fabric, a sophistical
power of words, rather than an eternal possession of truth
and reality. Real speculative knowledge demands the
combination of the two ingredients, right reason and facts
i
If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he does not
consider that from thence all professions are supplied.—Advancement of Learning.
+
438
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
to reason upon. Invention, acuteness, connexion of
thought, are necessary, on the one hand, for the progress
of philosophical knowledge; and, on the other hand, the
precise and steady application of these faculties to facts
well known and clearly conceived¹.' A University must
aim at compassing a complete cycle of knowledge; it
must embrace the more important sciences under all the
three branches, physical, mathematical, moral; but it does
not aim at teaching these in and for themselves. Nor
even does it teach them solely for the discipline which the
exact learning of any one thing carries with it. The
former supposition, that the sciences were to be taught as
so much useful knowledge, has been an error attending
many of our recent attempts at University reform. That
knowledge is taught chiefly for the sake of the discipline
of learning it, is the equally imperfect view 2 of their
opponents. The sciences must be cultivated by a Uni-
versity, but only as a means and material of that science
of sciences which is to follow upon them, and in the
acquisition of which a University education consists. To
this the sciences are introductory, but not only as prepa-
ratory discipline, as progymnasmata, but as being the
substance and body of which philosophy is the spirit
and animating soul. What the facts of a single science
are to that systematic arrangement of them which makes
them into a science, that the complexus of all the sciences
is to the great Method, the architectonic science, which
arranges all knowledge in one harmonious structure,
appointing its place, assigning its value, and arranging in
a regular series each incorporate branch. 'There is a
method which consists in placing one or more particular
things or notions in subordination either to a pre-con-
¹ Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, Introduction.
2 Some expressions of Sir W. Hamilton (e.g. Discourses, etc., Appendix,
p. 674) might be produced as seeming to favour this view; but a reference to other
parts of his papers on the subject of education will show that he places intellectual
discipline in proper subordination to the higher effect of philosophical training.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
TRUE PURPOSE OF A UNIVERSITY.
439
ceived universal idea, or to some lower form of the latter—
some class or order which derives its intellectual signi-
ficancy and scientific worth from being an ascending step
towards the universal. Without this master-thought there
can be no true method; and according as the general
conception more or less clearly manifests itself throughout
all the particulars, as their connexion and bond of unity,
according as the light of the idea is freely diffused through
and completely illumines the aggregate mass, the method
is more or less perfect¹. Many other secondary purposes
may be served by a University; it may be the home and
nurse of learned men, it may promote the progress of
science, it may qualify for the learned professions. None
of these are its true or primary purpose. If science be
promoted by a University, well and good; but such
promotion is not to be required of it. Academies or
learned societies are for the furtherance of special sciences.
In France, the Institute performs this office well, even
while the University is extremely deficient. The pro-
motion of their science is the sole end of such societies;
but in a University every science sinks into a means to a
worthier end the cultivation of mind. This is the one
use to which it puts knowledge the light in which it
regards science. The products of a University are not
inventions, improvements, discoveries, novel speculations,
books, but the fully educated man; the Teρì ñâv teñaidev-
μένος.
Méros. Its one great achievement is that philosophical spirit
which has been finely described as 'un talent acquis par
le travail, et par l'habitude, pour juger sainement de toutes
les choses du monde. C'est une intelligence à qui rien
n'échappe, une force de raisonnement que rien ne peut
ébranler, un goût sûr et réfléchi de tout ce qu'il y a de bon
ou de vicieux dans la nature. C'est la règle unique du
vrai et du beau 2.
1
¹ S. T. Coleridge in Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.
'Abbé Nauze, Des Rapports que les Belles Lettres et les Sciences ont entr'elles,
quoted by J. H. Newman, Lectures, p. 395.
440
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
A perfect liberal education and the formation of a good
judgment or philosophical temper are identical, and it is
for the sake of this greatest and noblest of human pro-
ducts, that an institution for the higher education employs
knowledge. 'Philosophy is reason exercised on know-
ledge; the elements of the physical and moral world,
sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions,
individualities, are all viewed, not in themselves, but as
relative terms, suggesting a multitude of correlatives, and
gradually, by successive combinations, converging one and
all to their true centre¹.' A University must be founded
on Philosophy, and Philosophy must be founded on
adequate knowledge, and no knowledge is adequate that
does not compass all the great groups of facts which
history and experience or experiment have accumulated
and classified. Speculation, to be vital, must be in im-
mediate contact with the facts about which it is occupied,
and it is a well-established fact in the history of liberal
education, that the periods in which the theory and the
practice of it have made the greatest improvement, have
been periods immediately succeeding some of the great
discoveries in science, or some of the great impulses to the
study of facts 2. A new impulse to the observation of
nature, revived attention to historical and antiquarian
1
J. H. Newman, Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, p. 289.
The substance of this sermon has been repeated by the author in the Discourses on
University Education addressed to the Catholics of Dublin. (See particularly
Discourses 5 and 6.) The author, writing down to an uneducated and prejudiced
audience, to whom party terms are almost the only intelligible language, en-
leavours from time to time to adapt his meaning, and to apologise for having
formed just views of education before he became a Catholic. These adaptations,
however, have not been suffered to mar the admirable clearness and breadth with
which he delivers the principles.
2 That logical method improves not by the study of mind but by the study of
nature, has been observed by several writers. See Whewell, History of the
Inductive Sciences, Introduction; and Poste, Translation of the Posterior Analytics,
Introduction. That improvements in education follow improvements in logical
method has lately been insisted on by Whewell, Lecture at the Royal Institution,
p. 7, thus very much modifying the opinions on the subject he had expressed in
1837, in his Principles of University Education, p. 24, etc.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
•
EPOCHS IN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE.
441
research, has always had a tendency to rekindle specu-
lative studies, and the revival of speculation has next acted
on the educational practice of Europe. Three such epochs
specially distinguish themselves. The philosophical teach
ing of Aristotle summed up the collected civil experience
and natural knowledge of free Greece, and on the philo-
sophical arrangements of the peripatetic schools were
founded the earliest Universities or liberal schools of
Greece and Western Asia, in which the old Greek semi-
military education was expanded into an organized system
of human culture. The great Universities of Western
Europe took their rise or their greatness in the keenly
speculative period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
itself the reflection and reaction of thought on the masses
of knowledge which time had been re-collecting or re-
discovering, and which political circumstances then first
made available as new material. Lastly, the Novum
Organon, and the Method of Descartes, improved philo-
sophical methods, were thrown up very early in the
revival of physical knowledge. And if the new specu-
lative philosophy to which they have given birth has not
penetrated our Universities, it is only because it has been
excluded by the strong arm in possession, and we have
shut out too, as long as we could, the physical knowledge
on which it is based. On the continent, however, before
the great German University development of recent times,
it was remarked by Crousaz, that a great improvement in
the established modes of academical education had been
brought about by the 'Art de Penser¹' The same law of
the progress of thought, and its action on educational
systems, may be discerned in the history of particular
countries, or of special subjects; e. g. the celebrity of
Bologna in the twelfth century consequent on the revival-
by Irnerius of civil law studies. It may be sufficient at
3 Crousaz, Logic, Preface, quoted by Dugald Stewart, Prelim. Diss. Works,
vol. I. p. 163.
hue
442
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
ས
present to have pointed to the general fact of the sequence
-science, speculation, educational impulse—in the history
of civilization, which, indeed, is that of education; for
education is only the natural result of the instinct to
communicate our culture; an instinct active in proportion
as the culture is vigorous and enlarged. An accomplish-
ment, or a skill, its possessor desires to monopolize; talent
excites admiration, not sympathy. Enlargement of mind,
as of character, seeks to propagate itself; the more that
share it, the greater our gain. Intellect attracts intellect in
proportion to its capacity: there is a freemasonry of
intelligence, as such; even while we are young, we are
conscious of this before we can comprehend it. The
young are worshippers of talent and contemn learning, yet
they feel the power of genius and intellect; and, as
Alcibiades held Socrates's robe, for the virtue that went
out from him, the most intelligent pupil seeks the most
intellectual instructor.
To establish the true theory of liberal education, it is
important to note this historical sequence. And not only
does the discovery of new fact originate activity of thought,
but that activity of thought can only be true and just,
where it is in vital and permanent connexion with the
knowledge on which it is engaged. But speculation has
a fatal tendency to overstep this limit, to wander away
from its subject, to turn back on itself, to become
speculation on speculation. From a philosophy it becomes
a philosophical literature. From an harmonious arrange-
ment of actually possessed and extant knowledge, it
becomes a series of conjectures of possible systems, not
determined by the facts, but determined only by the
nature of the systems which went before. In this state,
speculative philosophy, or, as it should rather be called,
conjectural systematizing, is most unfit for the educational
medium. And it is through this retroversion of thought
on itself that an age of high cultivation can be succeeded

Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PERIODS OF DECLINE IN SPECULATION.
443
by one in which civilization stands still, and the education
which depends on it sinks into inaction. Turning to
history, we may mark two great periods at which this
annihilation of mental activity by itself, and the consequent
loss of the higher education, has occurred. One such
epoch may be found in contrasting the fifth with the
middle and close of the fourth century of the Christian
era, though in this instance the case is so complicated
with other conditions, that we cannot stay to disentangle
our point of illustration. The second is more generally
known, the silencing of the Latin philosophy by itself,
and the consequent decay of University life which had
arisen with it, till it was a second time re-invigorated at
the classical revival, or the restoration to the world of a
new material for thought and observation. Whether the
present mighty German speculative activity, splendidly as
it is now exerting its force as the lever of all thought,
and the determinator of the higher education wherever
such education exists, not in Germany only, but throughout
Europe; whether this movement will finish by a similar
suicidal end, or will be saved by continually maintaining
its connexion with life and nature; as this is a future
contingency, it cannot be cited in instance on either side.
It has been from an observation of such periods of the
decline of speculation, when it has begun to be theoretical
merely, that some writers, not adverse to freedom of
thought as such, have condemned philosophy as an unfit
medium of education. Such a sentence is just only of
philosophy when it has ceased to be a true analysis and
harmony of knowledge in its real relations, and has
become a notional form; but it is false in theory, for
without a just philosophy there can be no perfect education.
It is false in fact, for history shows us that discoveries of
new fields of fact have only stimulated liberal study
through the impulse which they have given to inquiry
and speculation.
444
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
If we turn to the history of our own University, to see
how far that bears out the principle now maintained, viz.
that the fate of the higher education in any country is
intimately associated with the progress and fortunes of
philosophy in that country, or that liberal education
depends on the state of free knowledge; we shall find, in
our recent history, signal confirmation of that law. It is
true that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries supply no
less certain evidence of its truth. The reason we do not
now appeal to this epoch is, that the philosophical history
of that period is so little generally known, and so erro-
neously conceived, in this country, that we should only
embarrass our argument by the introduction of so much
fresh disputable matter. It would be of no use to appeal
to the rise and fall of the scholastic philosophy; when,
owing to the narrow theological medium through which
our history is looked at, all the intellectual product of the
times before the Reformation is only thought of as so
much cobweb and rubbish, and the epochs of its energy
and decay are involved in one contemptuous neglect.
For this reason, we pass over the wonderful purely
philosophical out-throw of the thirteenth century; the
mixed philosophical and literary revival accompanying
the Wycliff struggle; the suppression of which was the
death-blow of the medieval type of University life, and
threw back English civilization for two centuries. The
next revival was the classical renaissance; a purely literary
and artistic movement. This reached its acme about the
reign of Henry VII, and first years of Henry VIII. It
had its first birth indeed earlier, soon after the middle of
the fifteenth century, and did not expire till towards the
middle of the sixteenth century, in the religious troubles
of the close of Henry's reign. Out of this impulse sprang
the colleges; some of them into being; all of them into
the preponderating element in the University: though as
usual the institutional change was not effected till the
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
OXFORD AND THE RENAISSANCE.
445
intellectual force which occasioned it was already past its
meridian vigour. The classical revival was not a local or
temporary phenomenon, it was European; and so far from
originating in this country, it was communicated to us
from Italy through Paris, and by the patronage of the
noble and wealthy found its way into Oxford and
Cambridge. It was the movement of the day, finding its
home and sphere in the Universities. The rapidity and
success with which it superseded other studies, at Oxford
especially, which on this occasion took the lead, contrast
with the slowness with which it won its way in Paris,
against the logicians, or in Germany, against the viri
obscuri. This is to be ascribed to its having been taken up
by the colleges, old and new, which were just then rising
into social consideration, and which by the timely adoption
of the new studies obtained an entire ascendancy over the
monastic hospitia, as well as over the University schools,
which clung to the old learning, and shared its fall. We
must not overrate the positive acquirements of that age
of Oxford¹. Compared with what has since been reached,
they are but the attempts of children. Compared with
contemporary Italy, they lagged far behind. It is suffi-
cient that all the life-blood that was in circulation was
flowing freely through the University veins. The only
subject which at that time had power to give cultivation
was the remains of ancient learning. The life of the old
scholastic studies was fled, and all the wisest and most
enlarged minds, as Fox and Wolsey, saw the necessity of
adopting the new studies as the basis of education. The
Church, indeed, was not to be led by the wise or liberal,
¹ We cannot, in our limits, adduce evidence, and must confine ourselves to
results. If we quote the well-known passage from Erasmus's letter, dated Oxford,
December 1497, it is to qualify his exaggerating compliment. Our argument is
only on the free participation of Oxford in the movement, and does not turn on
the amount of philological knowledge actually reached. 'Mirum est dictu, quam
hic passim, quam dense veterum librorum seges efflorescat; tantum eruditionis
non illius protritae ac trivialis, sed reconditae, exactae, antiquae, Latinae Graecae-
que, ut jam Italiam nisi visendi gratia non multum desideres.'
446
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
and clung tenaciously to the old, not because they were
the better, but because they were the accustomed. Thus,
when classical studies were first introduced, and succeeded
philosophy in the academic curriculum, they owed their
immense superiority to their accidental relations to that
particular philosophy, not to their essential fitness for
education. In the first place, that philosophy had entirely
lost all life and meaning; it was no longer an organic
structure of free thought, it was petrified into a soulless
orthodoxy. The secular arm had been engaged to kill
the Wycliff movement, and that last upthrow of Latin
philosophy was amply avenged in its fall, by seeing the
triumphant party seal their own death-warrant in the act.
The principles of the scholastic philosophy lost their hold
on the general mind, which sought out now an entirely
new direction, and found it in the Greek and Latin classics,
on which it eagerly fastened. The classical revival we
have called a literary movement, as distinct from the
previous direction of thought, which was philosophical;
but it contained in it a truly speculative germ. We are
not alluding to the mystical Platonism of Ficinus, and the
disputes between the Aristotelians and the Platonists,
which broke out in the bosom of the new studies. These
scarcely penetrated to England; but the study of heathen
literature led to an entirely new mode of viewing things.
It called men to a new standing point from which to
observe the external world. Though literary and not
philosophical, it shifted reason from the catholic starting
point to another, from which, as soon as things were
looked at and speculated on, an entirely new philosophical
direction was given. Thus, historically, classical studies
were not adopted into the higher education, as the result
of a long and varied academical experience. They began
in defiance of that experience; they rushed in, as it were,
in vacuum, to fill the void, where a philosophy, which had
lost its root in science, had ceased to be. It was not ripe
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL.
447
wisdom, but barbarism, which gave the classics the
surprising power which they undoubtedly exercised over
the whole intellect of that age. They were the new
discovery to which the whole attention of Europe was
turned. For it may be well asked, how came it that the
classics were only turned out when they were, viz. at the
end of the fifteenth century? Had not men had the best
of them in their hands for centuries? And, as for the
rest, they knew well enough where to look for them,
when they wanted them. The usual supposition, that the
classics and classical taste were imported into the West
from Constantinople on its fall, is no true account of this
revolution in thought. The objects were old enough, but
the eyes to see them had been wanting. It would be more
than a mere metaphor to say that the mind of Europe was
in the stage of the boy's mind, when, after toiling through
grammar and parsing, the graces and beauties of com-
position first begin to dawn on him; but as soon as, in
and through the perceptions of taste, the ideas of the
ancient world began to open to Europe, a speculative
interest began to arise out of the literary. The classics,
then, came in and established themselves on a totally
different ground from that on which their retention can
now be maintained. They came in neither as language
nor as philology, but as a revelation of a whole new cycle
of ideas. They must always retain a singular value; but
they can never again be adequate to engage the whole
active thought of the civilized world, till it shall re-enter
that period of infancy in which it was at the time of the
revival. When literature and art are the highest intel-
lectual objects cultivated by a people, it argues a great
weakness in the mental power of the nation, either
generally, or in the particular age of which we are speaking.
The classics must always have a subordinate part: they
never can have an exclusive occupation of any institution
professing to give a culture adequate to our existing
448
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
knowledge of the universe, and its material and spiritual
laws.
This period, then, of Oxford Studies, which we may say
terminated with the commencement of the agitation of the
matter of the King's divorce, was the latest era in our
history, at which we find Oxford in the full enjoyment
of all the extant culture. Behind the Italian Universities,
scarcely behind Paris, but in either instance, only so far
behind as England in general had, in the baronial wars,
relapsed towards barbarism. Whatever speculative ac-
tivity, whatever knowledge existed in the kingdom, was
fully possessed, employed, in the University, was edu-
cative there. How the disastrous years that ensued, the
remainder of Henry's reign, those of Edward VI and
Mary--blighted all culture, crushed all spirit, and checked
progress,—expulsis sapientiae professoribus, atque omni bona
arte in exilium acta,-it is beside the present purpose to
bring forward. This, too, was the period of the deepest
degradation for the Universities-materially, morally, in-
tellectually. Their numbers fell off, their property lay
at the King's mercy, all independent spirit was broken,
and education was reduced to enforcing conformity to the
Six articles which Henry had declared to be the standard
of truth. Gardiner, as Chancellor of Cambridge, wrote to
the Vice-Chancellor 'that the King's gracious Majesty
had, by the inspyracion of the Holy Ghost, composed all
matters of religion,' and exhorting the teachers not to
'spend your philosophy about sounds, but take that which
is set forth to you! When twenty years of tranquillity
and order had restored the possibility of intellectual life,
we find two results. First, that taste, poetry, and
literature, were the first intellectual fruit to revive after
the moral pestilence which had desolated the nation.
The reign of Elizabeth produced accordingly a rich
¹ Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, quot. ap. Huber, English Universities, I. p.
267.
Oxford Essays, 1855.1
HENRY VIII AND ELIZABETH.
449
harvest of poetry and general literature, but it was not
till the beginning of the next century that speculative
thought and the severer studies again raised their heads.
Secondly, that the movement of the national mind is
carried on no longer within the Universities, but without
them. From that time to the present, the Universities
have ceased to originate, to rule, even to respond to, or be
affected by, such intellectual activity as the nation has
possessed. The whole of that sphere of thought in which
a liberal training consists, or by which it can be accom-
plished, has been abandoned by them. So far as it has
gone on at all, it has gone on without them. Ever since
Henry VIII's first interference with opinion here, the
Universities have been kept in dependence by the State;
under Elizabeth, and under James and Charles, the fetters
were drawn tighter and tighter, and education, starved by
its severance from the living current of thought and opinion,
gradually died out. Much has been said and written in the
late controversies on the 'independence' of the Universities
of the civil power. That we should have the management
of our own affairs, and the regulation of our own studies,
has been contended for as a sacred principle. Most
justly; and much more precious still, as the one great
condition, without which we cannot fulfil our functions as
national teachers, is independence of thought. Our depri-
vation of this great prerogative has told with equally
fatal force on the University from which philosophy has
been banished, and on literature without, in which specu-
lation has gone on without the discipline and cultivation
which should have regulated, controlled, balanced it. It
is not, certainly, the business of a University to provide a
national literature. But in some sort it is responsible for
its defects. A grave defect of taste or principle in the
current literature of an age, is argument of a fault in
the higher education which is administered. In the
characteristics of our popular literature, in its aimlessness,
VOL. I.
G g
as
450
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
its mixture of strength and sophistry, its vague baseless
theorizing, in the utter absence of the true philosophical
spirit, we must recognize the want of the harmonizing
hand of liberal culture. Rude, native strength there
is in plenty. This we owe to our freedom. Direction and
purpose there is none; for the sacred central fire has
been extinguished, and we go about sticking up lights
in corners. What Fichte, writing in 1794, said of the
Prussians, is very applicable to ourselves now: 'Whilst
within the circle which common experience has drawn
around us, men take larger views, and pass more accurate
judgments than in any former period; the majority are
completely misled, as soon as they take a single step
beyond this limit.' Such philosophical teaching as the
nation has had, has come to it from without in the pro-
found silence of its proper teachers. Cartesianism, Locke,
the Scotch school, German influences, all these have
in turn moved and swayed and affected the life and
thought of successive generations, while Oxford has
had nothing to say on the subject, has condemned, re-
jected, and finally ended by unconsciously adopting a
residuum of each into its modicum of logic, the only shape
in which it retained any fragment of philosophy.
We would not be thought harsh or unjust to 'alma
mater.' Many excellent influences flowed from Oxford,
many good men imbibed wisdom and holy inspiration,
if not from her studies, at least from their own studies
within her precincts, even during this long period of her
captivity. In another connexion it may be our pleasing
task to point out some of these; we speak now of one
point only, though that the vital one-of liberal education.
On a calm survey of our history, it must be admitted,
however surprising the fact to those who have never
so considered it, that from the time that Henry VIII
violently crushed learning here, till quite recent times, viz.
till the Examination Statute of 1804, Oxford had ceased
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
TYRANNY OF THE GOVERNMENT.
45I
from the proper functions of a University, had ceased
to be a school of liberal culture on a philosophical basis,
was restricted to an inferior sphere, and exerted only
casual, secondary, incidental influences. Were we now
passing a judgment, or awarding praise or censure,
it would be easy to show that the blame was wholly with
the Government, which had gagged the University, and
not the University itself, which had but the choice of
submission or destruction. Every true friend of Oxford
must own with gratitude the service rendered towards
recovering our liberty by Sir W. Hamilton, writing in the
Edinburgh Review. The light thrown by his articles
on the position and duties of a University has contributed
much to the enlightenment of the public mind on a
subject, of which the history and principles had almost
passed into oblivion. The tone of those articles, however,
was hostile to a degree it would probably not have been,
had the venerated writer sufficiently remembered that we
were not the causes of our own imbecility. The King and
Parliament had tied our hands, and made a theological
and philosophical school an impossibility; they had left us
nothing but school books. The counts of the indictment,
therefore, against Oxford were perfectly just, but it was
laid against the wrong parties.
But we are not offering criticism or awarding reproof;
we are endeavouring to trace one effect to its causes. The
revival under Elizabeth extended to letters only, and even
this very imperfectly; in the higher branches what little
was taught did not go beyond the rudiments. What
Whitgift was to Cambridge, Laud was, a little later,
to Oxford. Both of them men of the narrowest views as
to the nature and claims of the intellect, wholly intent
on making the Universities political tools, subservient to
the maintenance of the existing state of things. Stability
was, indeed, to both a primary object; Whitgift, looking
backwards, might well dread a repetition of the violent
Gg 2
452
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
oscillations of 1540-62; Laud, looking forwards, could not
but be conscious of the thick-coming storm. The mea-
sures then taken in the cause of order, security, and
permanence, had the effect of drying up the very springs
of our life, and cut us off from giving or receiving from the
nation at large a healthy intellectual impulse. Then was
laid the foundation of that fatal divorce between the
Universities and the national mind, which has lasted ever
since. This alienation reached its acme, politically, about
the middle of the last century, when Oxford had become
identified with the sullen and anti-national Jacobite faction;
morally and intellectually, about the close of the century,
when it can scarcely be said that the University gave any
education at all. We sustained our very existence by
means of our political connexion and our landed property,
and had altogether lost our hold on the national mind.
Speaking only of Oxford, and omitting exceptional in-
stances, such as the prelections of Sanderson on Moral
Philosophy in 1643, or those of Blackstone on English
Law in 1754, we may say, that from the Laudian Statutes
of 1636, till the First Examination Statute of 1801, the
11
University curriculum became more and more narrow,
the efficiency of what remained, less and less. Those
very statutes, indeed, still remained to testify to a com-
prehensive and elaborate scheme of liberal culture,
erected on a philosophical survey of the whole field of
human knowledge in a distant age, but of which not only
were the regulations disused, but the very meaning and
import was no longer understood by the academies
themselves. The very idea of a complete or liberal
education had long been altogether lost, and of course the
means and appliances thereto could no longer be wielded,
or the different stages of proficiency marked. These
degrees (gradus), indeed, were maintained, but they only
denoted social status, or determined academic precedence;
even in the humbler province of mental discipline, the
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
453
eighteenth century performed still less than the seven-
teenth. In the seventeenth, the oral disputations both
required some training, and put it publicly to proof;
at a later period these were allowed to become bare forms;
a mere shred of the old logic was dogmatically taught,
no longer understood either by the teacher or the learner.
Oxford's aim had dwindled to teaching the classics;
but even here it may be affirmed that the standard of
attainment was deplorably low, for, as a discipline, the mere
construction of sentences is very imperfect unless accom-
panied by composition. But Latin composition was
hardly taught at all in the University; the few tutors
of colleges who had a competent acquaintance with the
text of the classics, confined their instructions to hearing
a class construe a Greek or Latin author. What this
instruction amounted to, Mr. Fynes Clinton has recorded ;
writing in 1823 he says: 'When I first went to Oxford
(in 1799) Greek learning was perhaps at the lowest point
of degradation; during the seven years of my residence
there, four of them as an undergraduate, I never received
a syllable of instruction concerning Greek accents, or
Greek metres, or the idiom of Greek sentences; in short,
no information on any one point of grammar, or syntax, or
metre; those subjects were never named to me¹.' Yet
Christ Church, under Cyril Jackson, was probably more
efficiently tutored than any other college at the same date.
Oxford, in fact, was become a mere grammar-school,
and a bad classical school, inasmuch as the tutors of
colleges were, on the average, inferior scholars to the
head-masters of public schools. A well-taught boy from
such a school could learn nothing in a tutor's lecture-room,
and by being classed with the half-taught and the un-
taught, and in the general absence of all supervision
or motive, he probably lost ground; indeed in taste and
general reading, if not in scholarship, the elite of the
Fynes Clinton, Autobiography, p. 230.
1
454
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
students were probably superior to the Dons, whom they
looked down upon as ignorant, lazy, and somewhat
sensual pedants. No responsibilities were acknowledged
towards the undergraduate; college emoluments were
'preferment,' the private freeholds of independent gentle-
men. The reaction came from the very extremity of
the disease. Had Oxford, deprived of the power to give a
universal culture, maintained reputation and efficiency
as a classical school, or taught any one branch well,
as Cambridge did mathematics, no great complaint would
have been made. For the demand for liberal education by
the educated classes is liable to the same great obstacle
as the demand for primary education by the working
classes; when they are without it, when it does not exist
among them, they do not feel the need of it. The nation
then did not expect of the University that it should give
the higher cultivation, for it knew not of any such thing;
but as soon as Oxford training was felt to be sensibly
below the average school training which did exist out
of Oxford, then the evil was begun to be met, though
its extent was very far from being appreciated.
This movement, which commenced about the beginning
of the present century, following the progress of opinion
out of doors, went through two stages. In the first
twenty-eight or thirty years the object was to restore
to Oxford a disciplinal power in an efficient classical
training analogous to that which was working vigorously,
by means of mathematics, at Cambridge; and to supple-
ment language, which was felt to be inferior to mathe-
matics as a discipline, Logic was now revived. Logic
was almost a lost art at Oxford. When Copleston (Bishop
of Llandaff) was appointed tutor of Oriel, he found, to
his great perplexity, that he had to lecture in logic, which
had just been prescribed by the statute of 1801. Before
the statute 'the tutors of each college had lectured their
pupils in whatever they thought fit, without reference
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
455
to any examination but their own. Logic was by the
greater part regarded as a system of useless or obsolete
subtleties, to be laid on the same shelf with astrology
and alchemy. Mr. Copleston accordingly, having re-
ceived no instruction in it (at Corpus College), and having
no living help to apply to, collected and read all the books
he could meet with that professed to treat of it. From
this chaos of loose materials, mixed with rubbish, he
formed in his own mind a coherent system, etc.¹'
Disciplinal studies thus successfully restored, the next
great question was the enlargement of the curriculum. It
was now admitted that, for a part at least of its students,
the Oxford training discharged its duty as an invigorator
of the faculties, but it failed in the extent and nature of the
knowledge it imparted. It was felt both within and
without that there must be something wrong about an
education which totally neglected all the vast stores of
useful knowledge, scientific and historical, which were in
possession and daily use by all but academically educated
men. We have pointed out already the mixture of truth
and error which this stage of the reform contained. How
it was right as to its demand for the incorporation of the
new knowledge, wrong as to the ground on which it
urged its claim, viz. the useful and practical character of
those branches of information. In this question the
University is still engaged. The examination statute of
1850, which erected two new schools, having been a
somewhat awkward attempt, as all first attempts must
be, to satisfy this demand, time, experience, and further
discussion are wanted before we shall be able rightly to
assimilate the new studies. At the time we adopted them
we scarcely knew the full meaning of what we were doing.
We felt that we could not be without them, yet we did not
know why we wanted them. Some, who opposed the
¹ Remains of Bishop Copleston. By R. Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin,
1834.
•
456
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
statute, thought it was a deep-laid scheme of the scientific
men to crush sound classical education; others, who
favoured it, thought it was a concession to a cry of the
day, which only wanted quieting by yielding to it, and are
still sanguine that the new subjects will subside into their
former insignificance. All are clear that our present
position is not final, and that something is still required to
harmonize and adapt our practice. A careful consider-
ation of the old academical system prior to the classical
renaissance, and of the practice of the Greek Universities,
from which it was derived, is required to familiarize us
with that principle which can alone give light and method
to our heterogeneous practice, and enable us confidently to
take the next and final step, and restore to the country a
truly normal school of liberal education, affording a perfect
human culture, disciplining the reason, refining the taste,
embracing all knowledge, including all the sciences, no
longer jostling against, or anathematized by theology, but
in their proper subordination to it as the master science,
derived from them, and reflecting back on them life and pur-
pose. This will be the most difficult of all the steps we have
had to make. In what we have hitherto done, we have
had opinion from without to guide and urge us on.
Public
opinion has now nearly pushed on education in Oxford
(speaking of our studies only, and not of our management,
in which very much remains to be done) to the level of its
own light and requirements on the subject. It has nearly
got what it wants of us, and will not force us much
further. It found us simply receiving the youth and
sending them away again at the end of three years without
any teaching at all, but what they gave each other and
themselves. It forced us, first, to continue or improve
the work of the classical schools, and Oxford became
forthwith an advanced grammar-school, where young men
were continued at boys' lessons. It then obliged us to
incorporate a variety of arts and sciences, and we are now
$
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
+
PUBLIC OPINION.
457
on the way, we trust, to become an institute where much
useful and practical knowledge may be well and solidly
taught. But neither the training nor the information,
neither the disciplinal nor the practical studies, will satisfy
the requirements of a perfect human culture, till there
be reared upon them, as the roof and crown towards
which all the parts of the building converge, a true and
informing Philosophy. If we should make this attempt, it
is certain that we shall no longer have the support of the
public opinion that has helped us so far; it is very pro-
bable that it may turn against us. Useful acquirement and
a vigorous discipline limit the horizon of the best popular
idea of education. Enlargement or enlightenment of mind
it does not conceive as an object. Perhaps it cannot.
Περιττά, καὶ θαυμαστὰ, καὶ χαλεπά, καὶ δαιμόνια, ἄχρηστα δέ must
perhaps ever remain the popular conception of philoso-
phical and theological principles.
There are, however, two grounds for hope that this
crowning triumph of education may still be won by the
Universities of this country. First, there exists a kind of
perception of the value of mental enlargement, not at all
on its true grounds as valuable in itself and for eternity,
but for its practical utility. To this the Indian Civil Ser-
vice reporters appeal when they say: 'It is undoubtedly
desirable that the Civil servant of the Company should
enter on his duties while still young; but it is also desir-
able that he should have received the best, the most liberal,
the most finished education that his native country
provides. Such an education is the best preparation for
every calling which requires the exercise of the higher
powers of the mind.' And Mr. Roundell Palmer goes still
further¹: 'Of the value of an academical education even
in a strictly professional point of view, when given on a
sufficiently comprehensive system, I entertain no doubt.
Superior mental cultivation tells very much in every pro-
1
Suggestions, &c., published by Committee of Tutors' Association, p. 21.
458
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
fession; it enlarges the views, improves the judgment, and
obtains for its possessor consideration and influence in the
ordinary intercourse of mankind. It may not introduce a
man to business at the beginning of his career, but when
he has begun to rise, it helps him to advance more rapidly
than he otherwise could; it adorns and dignifies his
success; and it qualifies him for any elevation in the
social scale to which that success may lead.' More
theoretically, but to the same purpose, Mr. Davison
wrote¹: 'Of the intellectual powers, the judgment is that
which takes the foremost lead in life. How to form it to
the two habits it ought to possess, exactness and vigour,
is the problem. It would be ignorant presumption so
much as to hint at any routine of method by which these
qualities may with certainty be imparted to every or any
understanding. Still we may safely lay it down that they
are not to be got by any "gatherer of simples," but are the
combined essence and extracts of many different things,
drawn from much varied reading and discipline first, and
observation afterwards. For if there be a single intelli-
gible point on this head, it is, that a man who has been
trained to think upon one subject, or for one subject only,
will never be a good judge even in that one; whereas the
enlargement of his circle gives him increased knowledge
and power in a rapidly increasing ratio. So much do
ideas act, not as solitary units, but by grouping and com-
bination; and so clearly do all the things that fall within
the proper province of the same faculty of the mind, inter-
twine with and support each other. Judgment lives as it
were by comparison and discrimination. Be it understood
that by "judgment" is now meant, not that homely, useful
quality of intellect that guards a person from committing
mistakes to the injury of his fortunes or common reputa-
tion; but that master principle of business, literature and
talent, which gives him strength in any subject he chooses
1 Remains of T. Davison, quoted by J. H. Newman, Discourses, &c., p. 276.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
'JUDGMENT.
459
to grapple with, and enables him to seize the strong point
in it.' What Davison in this passage calls 'judgment' is
what we have called the philosophical spirit, a power of
judging of every object or event on its true ground and
nature, and not from some casual association, accident,
prejudice, or the habits and conventionalities of the day.
The means he proposes for the formation of such a
power are inadequate for the full development of it, but
it is enough for our present purpose to show that the
practical bearing and utility of an enlarged understanding
are sufficiently recognised. And this superiority is one
which will be increasingly felt and recognised as civili-
zation advances and education spreads. Empirical know-
ledge is a power as against ignorance; but a mere empi-
rical knowledge will not avail against the more perfect
machinery of a scientific knowledge. Our national excel-
lences have been all of the material, mechanical, practical
sort; good sense, vigour, determination, readiness. And
with these we have triumphed in competition with nations
which have been deficient in them. But already we are
beginning to find our wealth, population, and materials too
vast for our capacities of system. We have no system
in anything; our affairs go on by dint of our practical
sense; a stupid precedent supplying on all occasions the
place of method. We are unable to organize our labour
market or our commerce; to codify our law; to ad-
minister any one department on a principle of manage-
ment; and every Act of Parliament that is passed
presents a laughable array of puzzling contradictions.
We can build more solidly, durably, quickly, than at
any former time, but we have no architecture; we add
room to room, but we cannot lay out an interior. All
our arts of design are become mere copyings from
patterns. We have brave and enduring soldiers; officers
of resolution and skill, but no generalship. We have the
stores and supplies of war in profusion; no capacity for
460
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
organizing a commissariat. There is a corresponding de-
ficiency in our education. We have some excellent dis-
cipline, in practical life, in public schooling, in the energy
of our trade; we have no systematic education. All this
is beginning to be understood and felt; and there is a
remedy. The necessary tendency of advancing civilization
is to divide and subdivide the applications, as of labour, so
of thought. The professions tend to split up into
branches; and skill in one becomes more and more incom-
patible with skill in another. The more a subject has been
explored, the more time does it take each succeeding
student to follow the steps of his predecessors. To
prevent the disabling effects of this speciality of pursuit, it
becomes the more requisite to secure at starting a breadth
of cultivation, a scientific formation of mind, a concert of
the intellectual faculties. There is an organization of
thought as well as of labour. What is wanted is to get
this recognized as the proper remedy; and to have it
understood that this commanding superiority, this enlarge
ment of mind, this grasp of things as they are, this clear-
sightedness, sagacity, philosophical reach of mind, is to a
great degree communicable by training. We, indeed, are
far from estimating this power by its applicability. Mental
enlargement we know to be self-valuable, not useful; but
if it can be introduced to notice under colour of being use-
ful in life, so be it, so only that it is introduced. The
difficulty is to get the thing recognized at all by those who
have it not. Cleverness, talent, skill, fluency, memory,
all
these are understood and rated in the market. A culti-
vated mind, just because it is above all price, is apt to be
overlooked altogether. It argues some discernment, and
a considerable degree of education, in a society in which
such gifts are even appreciated as useful. And let it once
establish itself, even under false pretences, such is its
marvellous ascendancy, that, like refined manners, it will
conquer and propagate and extend itself by sympathy, by
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PHILOSOPHICAL GRASP COMMUNICABLE.
461
imitation, above all, by education. In this subject
eminently, it is true that the beginning is everything.
Comprehensive intellect is nothing in any given sphere of
society, until the persons of whom that society consists
can be brought to see that such a thing exists. Once its
existence understood, and then, like law, or like con-
science, which indeed is nothing but a comprehensive
understanding of moral relations, its right to judge and
decide is admitted as of course. In this way it is that all
diffusion of elementary education is, distantly, yet even-
tually, a step towards the restoration of the higher. Sound
Whether or no Government should, or should not, make
primary education compulsory, one good effect at least
results from its being left to win its way slowly and un-
assisted; viz. that its progress and improvement are
purely due to an experimental conviction, on the part of
the population, of its usefulness in life. It is thus put on
the footing of a social privilege, rather than of a legal obli-
gation; but if its perceived utility be a sufficient leverage
to erect and extend primary education, its force will be
tenfold greater in elevating and developing it. And as the
development of primary is into secondary education, so
that of secondary is into liberal education. So far then is
a tendency to, or demand for, useful knowledge, from
being in rivalry with liberal culture, that it is its necessary
harbinger and provocative. Useful knowledge is, indeed,
the true rival of the classical system, of an exclusively
literary training, with its dilettante criticism, its fastidious
taste, its affected scorn of the practical. Or again, the
masculine good sense of the usefully-trained man turns
with instinctive aversion from a mere notional and fantastic
philosophy-a philosophy of cobwebs, of distinction and
definition—from a mere speculative literature; but a true
and living knowledge, and only such a knowledge of
things can be extensively useful, feels the necessity
of philosophical view just in proportion to its extent and
food
462
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
profundity. As our acquaintance with the facts of any
subject has a tendency to form itself into a science of
that subject, so a science has a tendency to carry itself
on into the fundamental science of knowing and being,
on which its own principles depend. A science, in fact,
is a philosophy of its own subject, and this is the way
in which a single science, without a knowledge of any
other, may, by itself, often go a great way to supply
the place of a proper philosophical culture. Some
sciences are more, some less philosophical: thus, while
the classificatory sciences do not even admit of being
reasoned, such a science as Astronomy, on the other
hand, rises above the level of a disciplinal study,
habituating as it were the mind to grasp the illimitable
realms of space by a simple principle; and has thus,
in Cambridge education, almost served the purpose of
a philosophy.
Our other ground of hope for the restitution of philo-
sophical studies in Oxford, lies in the progress they have
recently made within the University. The Oxford exami-
nation system has remarkably exemplified the tendency of
mental activity, not only to improve its own method, but to
expand into some sort of philosophical speculation. In
this instance, it is literature and logic which have deve-
loped into philosophy. It is not so much that the standard.
of attainment for honours has risen, as that the quality of
attainment has altered. The examination intended by the
original statute was one in Literae humaniores exclusively;
for though Literae humaniores were defined (inaccurately
to be sure) to include 'moral and political science so far as
derivable from the ancient writers,' yet the framers
certainly contemplated nothing more than the reading of
treatises of Aristotle, Plato, or Cicero. Aristotle's Nico-
machean Ethics, said to have been introduced by Shep-
herd, soon became the favourite book; but it was read as
so much Greek, the sense of the words so far followed, or
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES.
463
sometimes drawn out as a logical exercise into syllogistic
form. The same was the case with Logic, though, in this
case, the Greek treatises were too difficult to be construed,
even by the average scholarship of those days, and logic
was studied in a Latin manual, compiled from the Latin
school-followers of Aristotle. But it was read in the same
meagre way, some facility being acquired in the appli-
cation of the technical rules, without any attempt to pene-
trate the principles. Meanwhile scholarship went on
rapidly rising, and though the number of Greek authors
usually read by candidates for honours became con-
tracted, yet this was owing to, and was compensated by,
the concentration of attention on the very choicest writers,
and the greater accuracy with which their words were
weighed. As the language became more facile, the sub-
stance of books so pregnant with instruction as the
Greek poets and historians could not but gain on the
attention. The theory of the Greek drama, its purport
and history; the principles of ancient art, poetic, rhetoric,
were intelligently studied. Aristotle soon riveted atten-
tion in a peculiar way; and from this time a history of the
study of Aristotle in the University is a history of Uni-
versity improvement. We may distinguish four periods
through which the study of Aristotle has passed in Oxford
in the last half century. 1. The first, which we have just al-'
luded to, we may call the scholar's period. The Rhetoric,
Poetic, and Ethics alone were used and mastered as a
portion of Greek literature, as Sophocles or Demosthenes
might be. Of this period Cardwell's edition may be taken
as the representative, though not published till 1830, which
was well into the second period. 2. This was the common
sense age, springing from reaction against the mere techni-
cal or verbal style of the preceding period. Archbishop
Whately, with great naturalness and originality, applied
common sense to elucidate the old logic, and breathed
life into the dry bones of Aldrich, which, he very success-
464
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
fully showed, were not the mere nonsense they had been
assumed to be. The Ethics were now discovered to be an
eminently practical treatise; so far from being a string of
syllogistic technicalities written in good Greek, they came
home to our business and bosoms, and told us of the com-
monest things we were doing every day of our lives.
Common sense was the only interpreter: everything was
plain and easy, except a few passages, which were mere
exploded subtleties; indeed it was rather a superficial
book than otherwise, and not by any means equal in
depth to Butler's Sermons. These were the days of John
and Thomas, making coats, and mending shoes (about this
there is a great deal in Aristotle), of riding, cricket, and
mixing puddings. It was much such a conception of Aris-
totle as Cicero had of Greek philosophy; it was an ex-
perimental study of a collection of moral precepts, or
rather a subjective assimilation than an objective study of
them. Mr. Sewell saw in the Platonic Socrates and the
sophists the noble resistance of Oxford to the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Mr. Oakley saw in
the Ethics an adumbration of the Catholic system. The
earlier part of the ecclesiastical polity of Hooker is to the
political view of Aristotle what the Analogy and Sermons
of Bishop Butler are to his ethical; a Christian commen-
tary showing how these subjects may be vindicated from
profane uses¹.' The account of habit, and the dependence
of intellectual discernment on moral goodness, were felt to
be peculiarly valuable, and brave efforts were made to find
'conscience' in the sixth book, but with doubtful success;
for while some said it was there as plain as a pike-staff,
others thought that this was an idea which Aristotle, not
having enjoyed the full light of revelation, could not, of
course, have had. 3. Reaction against the practical and
common sense interpreters produced the third, which we
1 Remarks on Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics as a branch of the studies
pursued in the University of Oxford, by the Rev. Frederick Oakley.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PERIODS OF PROGRESS.
465
shall call the critical school. Formal logic was the pet
study of this period. Abp. Whately was laughed out of
court for an ignoramus, and Sir W. Hamilton reigned
in the schools. The Organon (of Aristotle) was fairly at
tempted, and it began to be thought that the way to
understand the Ethics was by comparison with other parts
of the author. Reconciling passages was much in vogue;
tabular arrangements and harmonising of different parts,
but all in a dry, textual, logical way, were the principal
methods used by the private tutors, who now acquired the
ascendant, and the real direction of the studies of the Uni-
versity. The college tutor was now more than ever behind,
and could in no degree supply the information required.
This critical period was not itself scientific, but it did emi-
nent service in preparing the way for the fourth, or scientific
period, on which we have already entered. The former
period amassed passages, familiarised us with the text,
collated authorities; thus it served as the proper critical
introduction to an enlightened teaching of Aristotle, when
an eminence was gained from which a survey of the whole
Aristotelian system could be taken, and its proper place be
assigned it in relation to the general course of philosophy.
So utterly had the Aristotelian tradition perished in
Oxford among the tutors, that it may be questioned if five-
and-twenty years ago there was one tutor, unless we ex-
cept Dr. Hampden, who understood that philosophy as a
whole, or could have expounded rightly any one of the
more profound metaphysical or ethical doctrines of that
system, in the way in which the best private tutors are in
the habit of doing now. No doubt very essential aid in
this work of re-discovery has been derived from Germany,
but German philosophy would have been as dead a letter
to us in respect to Aristotle, as it is in respect of its appli-
cation to the canonical books, if there had not existed an
active spirit of inquiry on the subject within. For the
Aristotelian movement with us has not been a mere anti-
Hh
VOL. I.
4
466
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
quarian's question, it is a real philosophical revival; it
may have taken the shape of comment, or interpretation of
a document, yet, as we know some of the most vital reli-
gious questions may assume the same form, so our intel-
lectual movement has not been the less real for having in
its early stage attached itself to the resuscitation of Greek
philosophy.
II.
This brings us naturally to the second division of our
subject, in which we propose to offer some practical
suggestions for the further promotion of the good work so
happily inaugurated here. And if we have been at all
successful in showing that the course of things here,
during the past half century, has been one of steady
progress, and in one direction; and that direction no
arbitrarily selected one; but that the movement being
a real one, it is obeying the laws of the general intellectual
movement, and tending more and more to be brought
within its orbit; if this be accepted, it will follow that
the practical measures to be adopted fall under one simple
principle, the removal, cautious but timely, of the im-
pediments to the improvement which is accomplishing
itself. Here is no dangerous overthrow of what exists, no
violent measures required, no remodelling of our education
from without. The really living power in Oxford lies,
whatever indications may be thought adverse, at this
moment, in the movement of speculative thought in the
place. True, the Tories, joined with the Tractarians,
are in an immense numerical majority here; but as the
Tractarians do not realise their own principles with the
vivid instinct with which their present leader does, and in
consequence often fall off from their allegiance to him
on the side of liberal measures, the numerical feebleness
of the liberal party is, in some measure, masked. But we
do not wish to speak or to provoke the thought of party
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
SCHOOL OF LITERAE HUMANIORES.
467
division at this moment. Our object is only to show how
an intellectual impulse which already exists, and which
is of itself capable of regenerating University education,
may be practically assisted towards taking further effect
on our existing institutions and arrangements for the
promotion of study.
That the Examination Statute of 1850 is imperfect in
detail, and must be without loss of time retouched, is felt
already by the tutors. That its principle of incorporating
the new studies, and more precisely defining and limiting
the old, was good, has been implied in what we have
said. In considering the examinations, the candidates for
honours and the pass-men must always be spoken of
separately. And first, of the examinations for honours.
One felt evil here is the ambiguous character of the
'Literae Humaniores' honour. The old First class in
'Literae Humaniores' attained its high value from its
being the one and only test to which the student was
subject through his whole career. He was examined,
and examined once only, over the whole ground of his
previous studies, and a mark set upon him which deter-
mined, not only for the University, but, in a great measure,
for life, his intellectual calibre and standing. But since
this honour has been divided with Moderations, and
co-ordinated with other honours in three other schools, it
is obvious that the classical First, though it may imply
a higher attainment, is in a great measure shorn of its
ancient splendour. In a great measure, we say, for it still
ranks above every other species of first class. But not
merely is it thus depreciated in current extrinsic value;
there is a growing uncertainty what intrinsic value in the
man that honour-rank denotes. This uncertainty was
growing up before 1850. As long as the University
curriculum was purely classical, or contained a mere
nominal quantity of memorial logic, it was a well-under-
stood stamp, which indicated the whole intellectual power
Hh2
468
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
and capacity of the student as exhibited through ancient
language and literature. The only element of variation at
that period was, that the honour was, like other things
in life, equally open to idle talent and dull industry. And
the exercise of a little discretion by the examiners was
enough to strike a balance between the two, and reduce
the variation from this double element to a minimum.
But as philosophical studies gained the great development
of which we have spoken, not only did the divarication
between ability and work continually widen, but a new
element of uncertainty came in, in the difference between
taste and scholarship on the one hand, and attainment
in Aristotle (science, it was called) on the other. This was
sought to be met by compensation, i. e. allowing high
attainment, either in Aristotle only, or in language only,
with moderate competence in the other portion of the
subject, to obtain the honour of the first class. But as
the study of Aristotle continued to grow and overshadow,
and threaten to swamp 'scholarship' altogether, it was
endeavoured (in 1850) to provide a refuge for that subject
by detaching it from the old, and erecting an examination
in language only. But as there was no intention of
surrendering the principle of 'classical education,' instead
of putting the language and literature examination side by
side with the old Literae Humaniores examination, and
leaving an option between them, the language School was
made into a previous examination at an earlier part of the
student's course. And this is the present system. Now,
besides the blemishes which arose from compromise in
this scheme, such as that 'divinity' was, unnecessarily, to
quiet the High Church party, and, 'logic' preposterously,
to satisfy the old Tories, intruded into the Moderation
school; besides these blots, which might have been
avoided, there are other and grave inconveniences in
the present arrangement, for which no one is to blame,
but which experience has made felt. The Literae Huma-
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
' MODERATIONS' AND FINAL SCHOOL.
469
niores honour is made more ambiguous than ever by
the very subdivision which was intended to relieve it.
It is no longer the one test and stamp of classical
attainment; for with the immense development which
philosophy has attained within the limits of the study
of ancient literature, that combination of qualities has been
entirely and for ever dispersed, never to be again reunited.
On the other hand, it is not a purely philosophical
examination, for besides the modicum (very imperfectly
taught and learnt) of History, which the Literae Huma-
niores examination includes, a considerable amount of
Scholarship is still required. Latin composition, even
though not exacted by the Statute, was retained by
the first examiners under the new Statute, and has
been continued ever since. This requirement, and the
maintenance of Scholarship generally, however anomalous
it may seem, was, we think, not without reason; since,
as long as the philosophy studied is exclusively, as by the
present Statute it is, the Greek originals, it would be
falsetto indeed to examine in Aristotle and Plato (and
the same will apply to Thucydides and Tacitus), without
exacting full competence in the language in which they
are written. The language is in such writers inseparable
from the matter.
The next inconvenience felt under the present arrange-
ment is the too close crowding of the two examinations,
the Moderation and the final Literae Humaniores examin-
ation. The examination in language occurs too early
in the student's career to allow of his having derived
anything like the culture which classical training is
intended and is able to confer; while the time-about
one year and a-half, which remains after Moderations-is
now well ascertained to be too short to allow of a proper
and well-digested course of moral science. Science
and Scholarship were separated to ease the student
for honours of the burden of carrying on two hetero-
470
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
geneous courses at the same time. It is now felt that
time was itself an element indispensable in the cultivating
effect of both subjects; especially in philosophical studies,
a certain time is necessary to gain a firm grasp of the
ideas. Were the object only the reading and getting
up of three or four books, the time, measured by the
quantity, might well have seemed enough;—but when
what is to be done is to rise to a new range of thought,
and to get oneself tolerably at home in it, a long time
is lost at the commencement before anything like a ray of
light appears; and the last six months, just the time
which the new Statute has cut off, was probably the
time in which (under the old) the student's progress
was most decisive. Thus Moderations and the Final
School, instead of relieving, are mutually destroying
each other.
A third inconvenience, sensibly felt, yet of which, for
obvious reasons, it is difficult for those who feel it
most to speak, is the incompetency and varying views
of examiners in the School of Philosophy. This had
been a growing evil in the last days of the old Statute;
it is evident a priori that it will become more and more
so in proportion as the subject of examination becomes
special; indeed, the very fact that the new Statute has
restrained and specialised the subjects in the School
of Literae Humaniores must remove from our remark
any appearance of presumption or impertinence; for
when the field of labour has become so divided, it can
be no imputation on the talents or general attainments
of any man who attained a first class under the old
system, that he has not dedicated himself specially to
the Greek philosophers, when, perhaps, he has been
successfully cultivating theology, or law, or some other
branch of general knowledge. Yet such is the expansion
which the moral and logical sciences have just now
attained, and such the proficiency of the best students.
Oxford Essays, 1855.1
DIFFICULTIES IN EXAMINING.
471
in them-and others by foregoing Moderation honours
can join in the race with the best,-that general ability
alone will no longer be a sufficient qualification for an
examiner in this School. A classical examiner, in-
sufficiently versed in Greek philosophy, or having an
average textual knowledge of one or two treatises of
Aristotle, is entirely at a loss in judging the philosophical
power of a candidate who has been carefully trained by an
eminent private tutor. To a given question the examiner
expects a given answer, or the words of a given passage
of Aristotle. If he does not receive that, he puts aside
anything else that may be offered by the examinee as
irrelevant, and observes, that 'he does not know his
books;' whereas the case might be that he not only
'knew' them, but understood them too, and for that very
reason explained, and did not merely repeat, them. Owing
to this want of special study, and of a just appreciation
of the claims of this particular subject, there is a constant
struggle on the part of classical examiners to go back
to the old system of general literature, or, worse still,
to restrict examinations to a call for a memorial and
unintelligent repetition of the contents of given books.
We very often hear much eloquent declamation against
substituting 'loose and vague generalities' for 'exact
knowledge,' all being too often set down as loose and
vague which the speaker does not recognise as the
identical words of one of the authorised text-books.
Whatever may be the value of book knowledge in
historical matter, and we would give full weight to
Dr. Whewell's¹ excellent remarks on the cultivation
of the memory, extending it even to defence of cram,
it is the very distinction of philosophical study as the
highest power of culture, that it is nothing if it be not
an understanding study. The one and only test of profi-
ciency in this study which can be of any use, is one which
Cambridge Education, Art 110.
472
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
J
can ascertain how far the candidate's own understanding
has operated on, and has assimilated, his materials. If he
only reproduces what he has read in his book, or heard
· from a professor, the result is equally valueless. It is
sometimes said that it is as easy to cram general views as
to cram special statements; undoubtedly it is; but what
an examiner ought to call out, is neither general views.
nor special statements as such, but the examinee himself.
So far from its being possible to cram 'generalities
in such a way as to deceive an examiner, there is no way
in which a candidate will more certainly expose himself
than in essaying language which he has not verified.
A single written answer might escape detection; but in a
long paper, which took four or five hours to write out,
such a thing would be impossible. A vivâ voce examina-
tion would instantly unmask such an imposture; for (as
Whewell says) 'one or two very simple questions will at
once ascertain whether the student really understands the
language which he pretends to translate, or the reasoning
which he pretends to give.' The high character of the in-
struction afforded by the best private tutors, and the
public lectures on Logic and Moral Philosophy, the
increased study of such books as Mill's Logic, and
the influence within the Schools themselves of the author
of the Prolegomena Logica, have all tended to raise
the standard of the philosophical examinations to the
present high level; the examinations have been pushed up
by the attainments of the candidates, but they can now
expand no further 'in the same direction, unless the
candidates can obtain a longer time for preparation, and
unless every encouragement be given to full development
of the subject by the style of the examinations.
Such are some of the defects in the working of the
present system of examination for honours. What
remedies in detail should be adopted to meet them, is a
very perplexing question. If we venture to offer one or
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS.
473
two suggestions, it is with great diffidence, and with the
full belief that better may yet be devised. But if our
principle be a just one, viz. that Oxford studies are now in
the stage of transition from literature and language to
philosophy, and that in the latter subject will in future
reside the true life and culture of our education; if we are
about to rise from a ludus literarius, from a school of
taste, and expression and composition, and the art of
reasoning, from rhetoric, and logic, and poetic, into a
University based on the faculty of a completely equipped
philosophy; if we are to pass from amusement, from the
graces and accomplishments and preliminaries, to teach a
real knowledge of things in their causes, it will follow that
the subject which demands our first care, and to the
interests of which all others must be postponed, is the
Philosophy School. The subject of this School must be
more distinctly defined, rhetoric and poetic struck out;
'dialectica' so explained as to exclude such parts of logic
as the Prior Analytics and the scholastic logic. The
questions should be printed, both that the examiners may
be held closely to the definition when made, and that the
students may be continually reminded of the range within
which the topics of examination lie. The practice of
examining in books instead of in subjects, which is an
abuse of the Statute even as it stands ¹, should be
corrected, and the book subordinated to the subject,
instead of the subject lost sight of in the book, as at
present. The title of the School would require to be
changed. A difficulty will occur about the History. But
though in time, if the importance of single subjects should
gain ground, and their subdivision consequently become
1
The Statute defines 'Literae Humaniores' as comprising the following sub-
jects: 'Per literas humaniores quoad ad hanc scholam attinet, intelligimus non
tantum linguas Graecam et Latinam, sed et historias Graecam et Romanam
(eas videlicet quae antiquae habentur), et quae ad historiam pertinent, chrono-
logiam, geographiam, antiquitates, rhetoricam quoque et poeticam; moralem
insuper et politicam scientiam, quatenus a scriptoribus veteribus derivanda sint,
etc.;' it goes on, however, afterwards to speak of books.
474
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
necessary, ancient history would have to be transferred to
the present History School, and made a third optional
period in that School, yet the time is not ripe for that
change. The study of ancient history in Oxford is very
greatly in arrear of that of ancient philosophy. The pri-
vate tutors have not taken up the subject to any extent,
and there are no public lectures corresponding to those of
Professors Wall and Wilson. As to the books to be used
in the Philosophical School, at present probably no
improvement could be made upon the Nicomachean
Ethics and the Politics of Aristotle, and the Republic of
Plato. But whether these or any other systematic
treatises be used, the systems are not to be taught in
themselves, but as so many successive points in the his-
tory of human thought developing itself in speculation.
Only in this way can systems of philosophy become the
basis of a positive science, and offer a real object to
human inquiry. A system is a fact in the history of
philosophy; a real fact connected with other preceding
and subsequent facts; the nature and extent of its
relations to such precedents and subsequents is the only
positive knowledge which we can extract from ancient
systems. It then becomes a question where our philo-
sophical students should stop; at the Graeco-roman
philosophy, or at the Neo-platonist, or at the Medieval? or
should they be invited into the vast field of modern specu-
lation? Here, perhaps, a plan recently introduced in the
School of Modern History might be borrowed with
advantage. The outline of the history of philosophy from
the earliest Greek schools down to (say) Kant, might be
required of all candidates (for honours) in this School, and
then some of the leading philosophical developments
might be enumerated, one or more of which the candidates
might be expected to prepare minutely from the original
sources. The anomalous practice, which is still not quite
disused in this School, of coupling Butler's Sermons with
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
475
Aristotle's Ethics, as though there was some peculiar
affinity between the two, can only tend to confound the
student's conception of the nature of the science he is
studying. If English ethics in the eighteenth century
were admitted as a legitimate subject in the School, then
Butler would occupy his own proper place-an important
one-in that series. Taken as he is now, the solitary
modern philosopher who figures in the examination
papers, he not only assumes an importance to which he is
no way entitled, but fosters a very erroneous notion that
the Sermons and the Ethics taken together somehow
make up an orthodox system of morals. The Christian
bishop corrects the Heathen. The particular lacuna in
the Aristotelian system which Butler is (or was) supposed
to supply, is the doctrine of Conscience; a supposition
wholly illusory. When Butler was introduced into that
School (by Dr. Hampden, Fellow of Butler's College), it
was as a protest against the rigid pedantry which prohibited
all English reading. Now that the reason has ceased, the
interloper might fairly be excluded. Logic should, as now,
be taken up as a subject, not in any treatise; but the first
book of the Novum Organum, from the genuine philo-
sophical spirit which inspires it, more thoroughly perhaps
than any other modern book, might be made an exception.
To preserve uniformity of practice in the conduct of the
examinations, adherence to the subjects as defined, and a
stability of the standard of attainment required for the
several classes, the examinations should be placed under
the supervision of Boards, as recommended by the Royal
Commission. Above all, it is imperatively required that
the examiners should be selected as specially qualified.
At present, under the procuratorial nomination, these
appointments go the round of the College tutors. The
tutors of the Proctor's college naturally expect to have the
examinerships which fall to him divided amongst them.
The appointment should be vested in persons as far as
476
XI. OXFORD STUDIES,
possible removed from College interests, and capable of
selecting out of the whole University the persons best
qualified in the respective subjects of each School.
These Boards of Curators should not, we are inclined to
think, be the same with the proposed Board (or Boards) of
Studies. They should be small, consisting of two, or at
most three, members, and have no other function to per-
form but this one of nominating the examiners. They
might be either permanent, or nominated every year ad
hoc, by the Boards of Studies.
The grand difficulty here is the distribution of the dif
ferent subjects among the Schools, and the adjustment of
the Schools to the whole academic course. This difficulty
is occasioned by the variety of studies claiming recogni-
tion, compared with the short time-three years-into
which they are to be crammed; and also by a conflict of
opinion as to the relative claims of the different branches.
The suggestions we have made above might, if they ap-
prove themselves to the University, be adopted at once;
on this part of the arrangement any suggestions must be
prospective merely. For according to the view we have
taken, the present state of our studies is essentially a
transition state; a very hopeful state, we would add, for it
is a progressive improvement intimately connected with
the general progress of the country. We cannot precipi-
tate this transition; all we can do is, by setting steadily
before us our real situation, to adopt such arrangements
from time to time as may facilitate the movement. All
such expedients must be considered as temporary only; no
thought can be entertained of restoring at once a studium
generale, whose studies shall exactly square with the per-
fect theoretical division and order of the whole province of
knowledge. As to the first point, then, the conflicting
claims of different branches of study. And here we have
to adjust two distinct cases of divided interests. First,
there are the claims of the classical languages, against the
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
PHILOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
477
claims of the new subjects. And, secondly, the claims of
general cultivation against that of professional preparation.
We cannot concur in the opinion entertained by some
that cultivation commensurate with the range of the
human intellect can be given by means of literature. It is
true, we may distinguish between the old 'classical scho-
lar,' who rose no higher than to be a man of taste in
poetry and the fine arts, and the modern 'philology,' with
its laborious inductions and profound æsthetical criticism,
etc. This study, indeed, possesses in the science of Com-
parative Philology, on which Classical Philology must now
be necessarily based, a positive science, which illuminates
it with a philosophical light of its own. Comparative
Philology thus renders to classical studies the same ser-
vice which the Civil Law did to the erudite scholars of
the seventeenth century, or, as we said above, Physical
Astronomy may do to a Cambridge mathematical course,
supply the want to the student of a genuine and entire
positive philosophy. But a philology even of this enlarged
kind is after all but a special subject, a magnificent
subject indeed, but not the sun and centre of the system
of knowledge. Philology taken at its widest must always
borrow many of the principles it uses from a science higher
and more comprehensive than itself. That scientific phi-
losophy, which ultimately supplies the principles of all
other knowledge, can never be displaced from its lawful
position, without producing an ill-balanced, imperfect
system of education. At the same time a purely scientific
education, without the emollient graces and amenities of
literature, is apt to generate a harsh, unpliant character to
the intellect. Such a character we often see in the
Scotch; an intellect of admirable vigour and solidity, but
unwieldy and offensive in its social manifestations. These
views would not be satisfied by the adjustment of Schools
offered by the Commissioners. They propose that
general studies, which they identify, according to the error
478
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
of the age, with classical literature, should terminate with
the first examination; and that after this, special studies
should begin, one of these special branches to be Philo-
logy. Any arrangements of subjects into 'schools,' should
keep in view the making the Philosophical School the
centre of attraction. Into this it should endeavour to bring
all, to this it should assign its highest rewards, and for this
it should allow as much time as possible. The Philoso-
phical School might be postponed to the latest possible
period before the B.A. degree; and honours in that
School should exempt the student from the obligation to
pass in
any other. It ought to be exclusively an honour
examination; a 'pass' philosophy being a wholly nuga-
tory affair. We might contemplate the distant prospect of
making honours in that School a sine quâ non condition for
becoming a candidate for College Fellowships, all such, at
least, as were not appropriated by Statute to the special
studies. In what part of the course, then, should the clas-
sical honours come? This is a great difficulty; we con-
fess ourselves unable to suggest anything better than the
present arrangement, which places them at the end of the
second year of residence. To palliate some of the felt
evils of that arrangement, honours should not be allowed
to be gained in that examination (Moderations) later than
the ninth term from matriculation; but then residence
should commence in the term subsequent to matriculation,
and Responsions should be shifted back to the close of the
first term of residence. This is, after all, but a lame con-
clusion; but the real truth is that for a double course of
study, which is to embrace both classics and philosophy,
three years is too small an allowance of time. Modera-
tions and the final examination are, it is now complained,
spoiling each other. The real truth is, that the subjects
of philology and philosophy, have, since the establishment
of the examination system, acquired such dimensions on
our hands, that we cannot pack both of them into a space
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
SHORTNESS OF TIME ALLOWED.
479
of time formerly filled by the mere shadow-the bare
image, of one of them. Look back on the golden days
when the student, an honour student even, his Little-go
past, had an endless vista of time to lounge through his
eight or ten books in. How much better they could be
read! When we had nothing to do, we did it well; now
inopes nos copia fecit. Two vast and inexhaustible subjects
have risen up among us, just discovered in all their
wonderful proportions, and we are obliged to shut up our
study of each just at the moment when we are beginning
to appropriate and substantiate them. Is it visionary to
hope that a solution of the dilemma may be found in an
enlargement of the time? That, in order to ripen the
golden fruit, an additional year may be added to the
academic course, and the present nominal four years may
become really four? We know, indeed, that the current
of opinion appears at present to set strongly the other
way; and that even three years is grudged as too much to
be wasted on useless studies. Merchants, solicitors, fathers.
of the middle class in general, who design their sons for
business, want them away at twenty years of age, and
would not like that they should 'lose any more time'
before beginning life. Now, so far from complaining of
this state of public opinion as erroneous, our hopes for the
future of liberal University education arise from its being
so general and well-founded. Under the old Oxford
system, while nothing, or nothing but Greek and Latin,
was taught, while the only habits acquired or encouraged
by the authorities were those most adverse to success in
practical or professional life, viz. idle, dissipated, dandified
habits, and the peculiar incapacities for business or action
which were supposed to constitute the gentleman, this
aversion for Oxford was not only natural, but right and
wise. But let it once be felt that Oxford can teach
something more than Latin writing and the gentlemanly
vices-that a real, palpable, and practical superiority of
480
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
character and intellect can be acquired here—and the
same well-judging class who withheld their sons from the
contamination of rakish gentlemen commoners, and the
scandalous neglect of classical tutors, will grudge neither
time nor cost for the purchase of such superiorities. It
must be admitted, indeed, that the middle classes in
England are far too intent on show, on outside, on wealth
and its appurtenances. But is not one great cause of this
the absence of any counterbalancing moral and intel-
lectual vigour in the clerical and educated class? By
their fruits shall ye know them. Had the Universities
maintained a power of turning out a better stamp of
man, wealth would never have become the one absorbing
idea that it has become with the middle class. Respect-
ability has usurped the honours of virtue, chiefly from this
very poisoning of the sources of the higher education.
But it was a just and not a false sentiment at bottom
which has kept the middle classes away from Oxford as it
then existed, 'a slaughter-house of intellect.' And the
same cause, a thorough moral and intellectual reform, to
which we may hopefully look for an increase of our
numbers, will also enable us to enlarge the time, such
enlargement being absolutely required for a proper per-
formance of the process of education. Let confidence
be restored in us, and we shall find them not only
willing to come, but willing to stay longer. Besides,
the extra year need not be all so much added; it
might fairly be subtracted in part from school-time.
Let only the school-work be properly taken up and
carried on by the tutor, and not be as it is at pre-
sent, when the sixth form of a good school finds that,
in exchanging lesson for lecture, he has gone back a
couple of years in the standard of requirement. Besides
this, we may fairly look to the still growing elevation of
the quality of instruction afforded by the grammar-schools.
When the other great schools shall do what Rugby,
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. MODERATIONS. 481
almost alone, at present does, and when two years of such
more advanced instruction as a high class of lecturers,
combined under a professor of Comparative Philology in
the University can alone give, shall have been added, the
Moderation Examination (for honours) would then go far
towards doing as much as need be done in this inferior
division of liberal education. There would then remain
two whole years for the philosophical course; and in this
course, as the history of Greek philosophy and Greek
authors would form so considerable an element, a still
further expansion of the language portion of the earlier
division of the general course would be gained by the
way.
On the conduct of the first examination-Moderations-
it may be remarked that it should differ from the final, in
being on books, rather than on subjects. This results
from the very nature of literature, that the book, in all
its individuality, as the embodiment in a highly artificial
shape of the substance of a great mind, is the primary
object of attention. This precious part of our education
ought not to be lost, and happily it is the part which is
best understood and most perfectly carried out at present.
All that is necessary here is to guard against that abusive
tendency to which all book examination and preparation
from time to time leans, to look to the bare recollection
of the contents of the book. The examination should be
carefully directed to testing the scholar's progress in taste
and discernment, by translation, interpretation, comment,
imitation. To these ends attentive reading is an indis-
pensable means. But attentive reading should be left to
the catechetical instructor to enforce. The examination
should not itself descend to test it. Here again the
regular publication of the questions and exercises would
serve as a safeguard to the examinations, and a beacon
to the students and the tutors. It is hardly necessary
to observe that logic and divinity, as wholly heterogeneous
VOL. I.
I i
482
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
matter, should be excluded from this School. Indeed, if
scholarship, as is to be hoped, continues to expand, it
will no doubt come to seem to our successors as ludicrous
that the same examiners should examine in logic and in
Greek, as it does now to us that before 1825 the same
persons should have examined in mathematics and physics,
and in the Literae Humaniores. Individuals here and
there may be qualified, but it is impossible to expect a
regular supply of examiners who have made sufficient
study of two such distinct subjects. The only subject, as
distinct from books, which this School should include is
philology and universal grammar.
On this scheme we should have a complete curriculum of
general studies, divided into two stages. In the first stage
the Literae Humaniores, in a select list of the best Greek
and Latin authors, but illuminated by the initiatory philo-
sophies of grammar and philology. In the second stage
a general philosophy of the laws of knowledge, but based
on a combination of the recorded history of speculative
thought (especially the Greek epoch) with the extant
condition of the special sciences. In this way our general
course would be a complete liberal culture, uniting the
speculative vigour of the middle age University with the
humane polish and elegant studies of the classical revival.
By restricting and subordinating the latter to the former it
would avoid the enervating effects of literature as an
exclusive pursuit; by connecting the philosophy with the
actual data of the sciences, moral and natural, it will be
secured from that spurious logical development in which
it has at various times lost its credit. When this was once
done it would remain to define the place of special
studies. Here, again, we are not going to propose any
immediate change in the recently adopted arrangements.
Time must be given for natural studies to grow up and
effect a lodgment in Oxford, under cover of the present
confessedly imperfect framework. But the principle
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
SEMI-PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS. MEDICINE. 483
which, in conformity with the general views we have taken,
should be maintained, is to restrict our special schools to
that intermediate ground which lies in each subject,
between general culture and purely practical knowledge
-to those portions of special branches, in short, which
may be called semi-professional. We cannot better
explain what we mean than by quoting the clear statement
of what this ground is in medicine, given by Dr. Acland.
'A complete school of medicine is impossible here, but
a school for the branches of knowledge, introductory to
the study of practical medicine, could be carried on here
with success. At the outset of his studies in the great
hospitals, the medical student has his mind distracted by
the multiplicity of subjects which must be taken up at
once. Often he has to attend four or five lectures in a
day, on various subjects, besides his hospital hours; by
the time these are over he is so worn out that he has no
time or energy to arrange what he has heard, still less to
inquire further and examine books illustrative of the
lectures. Now if these subjects were divided into par-
tially professional and wholly professional, and the former
could be disposed of while in residence at Oxford, how
great would be the gain to the student. For these studies.
he would have the quiet of this place instead of the hurry
and bustle of the hospital; his mind would be fixed on
comparatively few subjects, which he would have time to
master thoroughly ¹.'
To engraft this semi-professional medical training on the
general course might be the object to which the Physical
School should be directed, aided as it will be by the
appliances of the new Museum. And this purpose, as a
preparatory training for students in medicine, is perhaps
all that the Physical School here could attempt. For
there is little hope that these studies, ultimately destined
though they are to revolutionize opinion on some of the
¹ Letter to Dr. Jacobson on the Extension of Education, by Dr. Acland.
I i 2
484
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
most prevalent points of speculation, can be largely
pursued by non-medical students. But even 'the pre-
sence of a set of intelligent young men, actively engaged
in the pursuit of natural knowledge as a truth and a
reality,' will be of no inconsiderable benefit to the general
students, while from mixture with the students in philo-
sophy, the tendencies of professional study to narrowness
and one-sidedness would be usefully corrected. In the
internal arrangements of this School it might be as well
if the mechanical philosophy were separated into a sub-
department of its own, and candidates allowed to pass on
either subject apart from the other.
What the Physical School in Oxford might do for
the medical student, that the History School might do for
the law student, as semi-professional and preparatory to
the practitioner's chambers. The only modifications.
necessary to bring the School, as it is now worked, into
this position, are 1. That it should not attempt to cover
so much historical ground. This will be effected in great
measure by the excellent resolution lately adopted of
allowing the candidate for honours to select some one
period or event of narrow compass, in combination with a
general outline of English history. 2. The substitution
of the Civil for English law. This is a point of great
importance, as involving two of the principles now
contended for: first that the School, as a Law School,
should not be strictly professional, but only preparatory to
the proper professional studies; secondly, that the school,
as a portion of a university training, should include a liberal
and enlarging element. This the Civil law is in a most
eminent degree, while English law is just the reverse.
Indeed the antipathy which common law lawyers have
usually shown to the Roman law, speaks their own
condemnation, and is one of the most striking exempli-
fications of Hobbes's dictum, that 'when reason is against a
man, he will be against reason.' But the very direct
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
HISTORY AND LAW.
485
practical benefits which would accrue not only to the
individual practitioner and to the profession, but to the
whole system of English society-mightily influenced as
that is by the maxims and practice of the courts of law
and the rights of property-from some foundation of en-
lightened jurisprudence being laid, before taking to the
arbitrary technicalities which in our law books simulate
the form of abstract general maxims, are far too numerous
to be mentioned here. Indeed, the desuetude and even
direct discouragement of the academical study of the
Roman law during the last two centuries has been a
concurrent cause with the neglect of philosophy, of that
contracted habit of the national mind to which this
country owes at once its success and its littleness; its
success in the practical employments of commerce, its
incapacity for enlarged views either of national welfare, or
of foreign policy. The same superstition of Puritanism,
which in the seventeenth century proscribed the specu-
lative theology and philosophy as being popish, operated
too against the imperial constitutions, which were tainted
by their Roman origin. Thus religious bigotry concurred
with the old anti-hierarchical traditions of the Inns of
Court in expelling from our academical course two of the
most enlightening and liberalizing studies which it had
contained.
For the general student in the History School, however,
a more valuable scientific element even than the civil code
is offered by political economy. Indeed, history, unless
combined with a study of the positive laws of human
welfare, is little better than a portion of elegant literature.
It is void of any instructive power, and sinks into an
amusement, into curious research, or at best becomes so
much information for conversational purposes. This
subject we may hope to see grow upon this School. It
should not be treated as a special subject, which, like
Roman law, may or may not be known. It should be
486
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
understood to be the theoretical science of history, and
should be required of all candidates, except the law
students, who have not time for it. Besides the vital
connexion of this subject with history, this science is
especially the home growth of Britain. It is the only
science of which it can be said that the principles have
been discovered and extended chiefly by Englishmen; the
best books on it are written in the English language, and
the very facts themselves on which its inductions are
based have been supplied by the mercantile and industrial
development of Great Britain. The treatise of Ricardo is
almost the perfection of a logically reasoned science
applied to an adequate collection of carefully examined
phenomena.
The two remaining subjects which exist as special studies
by the side of our general course, are theology and
mathematics. The present Theological School, as a
voluntary examination without honours, has been a
failure; it might be made effective by either (1) establishing
honours in it, or (2) allowing it to count for one of the
two Schools in which every candidate for the first degree
must at present pass. Against the first alternative there is
a very strong feeling in Oxford; and though many of the
reasons offered in justification of that feeling are un-
tenable, we are not disposed to think it at present
expedient to establish such honours. We have alluded to
one cause of the decay of the professional study of
theology, and so far as philosophy has suffered from the
same evils, and has been resuscitated by the examination
system, no doubt competition and honorary rewards would
have the same efficiency in the kindred study of theology.
Nor do we doubt that such a revived study would be
highly useful, not only in the clerical profession, but to
the nation at large. The divisions, schisms, and parties
by which we are torn, may have their violence restrained
and their rancour assuaged by a spirit of charity and a
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY.
487
sentiment of tolerance. But such a temper, however
estimable, can, at most, but still the surface, it cannot
reach the seat of the disease. An enlightened study of
speculative theology, so far from creating difference,
alleviates it; it transfers it at least from the regions of
passion and political interests to that of calm debate, and
instead of mutually anathematizing sects, we have the
calmer dissensions of the schools. The spirit of sec-
tarianism, which has got so fearful a hold over the
English and still more over the Scotch portion of the
kingdom, and forms in itself a new evil engendered upon
the original evil of schism, is not so much the effect of
want of charity as of ignorance. For this a revived
professional study of divinity would be a direct remedy;
but, under present circumstances, it would be altogether
impossible to institute a sound and enlightened study of
scientific theology in Oxford. It would be restricted to a
blind getting up of the divinity of the seventeenth century
which Dr. Pusey still wishes to enforce as the standard of
the English Church. The reading of such writers,
thoroughly sectarian in spirit, offensively polemic in tone,
and in whose treatment theology is degraded to a justifi-
cation of the peculiar politics, home and foreign, at that
time pursued by the court of England, could but serve to
foster and perpetuate the very evil under which we labour.
We must wait till philosophical studies have had time and
scope among us. As Greek literature has paved the way
for the philosophical revival, so the latter will be pro-
pedeutic to a revived study of Christian antiquity. At
present our divinity is too much bound up with passions
and party-feelings to be a subject of intellectual treatment;
we might, however, look forward to the establishment of
a competitive examination in the subject of ecclesiastical
history solely. This might at a distant time develop into
a School of doctrinal theology.
We now come to the last of the Schools in special
488
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
subjects, viz. the Mathematical School. The utility of
mathematics, as it is a much debated, is supposed by many
educated men to be a debatable point. It is not so to
anything like the extent usually thus assumed; but as we
cannot enter on the controversy here, and are under the
necessity of dogmatizing, we shall refer at once to our
fundamental principle. On that principle, viz. a general
cultivation divided into two stages, first, a preparatory
discipline of the faculties, and second, education proper,
or the expansion of the intellect by putting it in pos-
session of a theoretic philosophy commensurate with
knowledge;—the place of pure mathematics in such a
scheme is immediately determined. They are a discipli-
nal study only, and must belong exclusively to the
preparatory course. Here their place is by the side of
language and literature; whether as a training for
Philosophy they rank below the Literae Humaniores, or,
as Plato places them, above, for this is a debatable
point,-is not material, but they ought to accompany
language studies. As disciplinal studies they operate not
directly in strengthening the reasoning power, but on
the power of attention, of holding steadily to an abstract
conception, and thinking and reasoning about it. In this
way they are the proper propedeutic to Philosophy, and in
an eminent way the discipline for it (rà μalýμara). But this
character belongs only, or chiefly, to Arithmetic and
Geometry, or the direct treatment of the conceptions of
space. In the indirect or analytic method, in which a
symbolical notation is substituted for the conception, the
very circumstance which gives it its vast superiority as an
instrument of discovery or invention, renders it inferior as
a mental exercise. The method of notation, indeed, as a
wonderful device for abridging or expediting processes of
proof, deserves to be learnt as a portion of useful know-
ledge; but the language once acquired, it has no educa-
tional value; nay, the habit of confining the intellect to
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
.
SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS.
489
such studies is positively injurious to it. In conformity
with these views we would, 1. not give honours in
mathematics later than the end of the second year from
matriculation. The senior mathematical scholarships
which exist at present, open to B.A.'s, would be useful for
the exceptional cases of a decided turn for these pursuits,
and might do something to sustain the higher branches of
the subject, if that be thought an object. 2. Require
elementary geometry as a sine quâ non for passing the
previous examination (Responsions). It should be four
instead of two books of Euclid, and fresh problems should
be always set and required; the habit of following the
ready-made proof as given in the book is a very inferior
exercise of thought. It would be a far better exercise for
the learner to be limited to the most rudimentary pro-
positions of the science, and taught how to prove them
himself, than to learn six books of Euclid in the way in
which they are mostly learnt; the truth, indeed, is, that in
the slovenly way in which the two books are now taught
and learnt, the reasoning is scarcely followed or appre-
hended; not that the demonstrations are wholly learnt off;
it is a mixture of the two processes; the reasoning is
partially apprehended, the gaps supplied by dint of
memory.
Should the suggestions of the Indian Civil Service
Commission be carried out, and should it be found
possible to give the requisite instruction in Oxford, a
special School might be instituted for Indian candidates,
honours in which might not only dispense the successful
candidate from the second examination proposed in the
report, but might confer precedence to the appointments
in the Service.
But should the whole scheme of University studies ever
come to be revised on a sound and just view of education,
we think the propriety of establishing honours in the
special or bye-subjects would be regarded as doubtful. A
490
XI. OXFORD studies.
University should teach, should encourage, all the chief
branches of human knowledge. Agreed: but it should
teach and encourage them subordinately; Ist, subordin-
ately to its own general course of liberal study; 2nd,
subordinately to the future professional study of them.
To the professional corps, medical, legal, etc., must be left
to ascertain and to certify the fitness of a candidate to
become a practitioner. This a University honour could
not prove, for the subject would not be followed far
enough; and for general purposes special studies should
never entitle to University honours, inasmuch as for those
purposes they have no value in and for themselves, and
only derive it from their being the substratum for philo-
sophy. At the same time, to drive the incapable or the
unwilling into the Philosophy School would be worse than
useless; we should wish, if possible, to see the Philosophy
School reserved as the only honour examination (i. e. at
the final examinations for the B.A. degree), and as solely
an honour examination. Those who succeeded in obtain-
ing at least a fourth class in this School to be entitled to
the B.A. degree; those who failed, or did not compete
for honours in this School, to be required to pass in any
two other Schools.
While we are thus endeavouring to perfect and attune a
complicated scheme of examinations, it should ever be
borne in mind that the utility of examinations is entirely to
be judged of by their effect on our studies. It is, indeed,
true that all the vast steps towards improvement made
in the last half century have been the direct consequences
of the Examination Statute, and it is no unnatural infer-
ence, that we have but to make the system yet more
searching, to put on the screw tighter and tighter, to
attain still further success. This, however, is not the case;
there is in the very nature of intellectual pursuits an
absolute limit to the stimulus which examination can give.
We have no wish, indeed, to appear to give any sanction
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
EXAMINATIONS.
491
to that popular cry which quashed the civil service reform
last session, and which, under pretext of a 'character'
test, seeks to preserve patronage, favouritism, and all
the worst abuses of old Toryism. We utterly reject
the preposterous claim put forward by a party among the
fellows of colleges, that fellowships and collegiate offices
are the freeholds of the present holders, who may live like
gentlemen, performing no duties, owing no responsi
bilities¹. But, disowning all participation in this cry
against the intellectual tests, yet all who are acquainted
with the working of examinations are aware that the
system may be overdone. The beneficial stimulus which
examination can give to study is in an inverse ratio to the
quality of intellectual exertion required. In the lowest
stages of learning even instruction proceeds by question
and answer, and compulsory examination is the only mode
of enforcing the smallest amount of acquisition. At the
other end of the scale of intellect, the highest genius
and the most fully instructed mind would be incapable
of producing a specimen of itself within a given time
and upon a given demand. Between these points is
the range where a voluntary competition may be usefully
brought to bear. Examinations are sometimes spoken
of as a necessary evil; they are not so; they are a positive
good, when guided by two principles: first, that the
examination is instituted for the sake of testing with
what success the study has been pursued, and not the
study pursued that it may be examined into; and,
secondly, that the thing an examination is to scrutinize is
proficiency, not preparation. That all attempts to supply
the want of genuine comprehension of the subject by the
appropriation of others' thoughts on the subject, are an im-
posture to be detected, not an effort to be rewarded. For,
strange as it may be thought, so much more painful is the
¹ See Objections to the Government Scheme, by Charles Neate, M.A., Fellow of
Oriel, 1854.
Wucation
492
XI. OXFORD STUDIES.
effort to comprehend than that to attend, that most minds
will go through ten times the amount of mechanical labour
in learning memoriter that which it would involve no
labour at all to apprehend or perceive. They save
thereby the peculiar pains attending a voluntary exertion
of the mind's activity, and purchase that exemption at
the easier rate of a laborious, fatiguing, uninstructive
passivity. Besides these abuses to which they may
lead, examinations may become evils by their too fre-
quent recurrence. The stagnant lethargy of the old
days enjoyed one supreme privilege, which the system
that woke us to life has robbed us of for ever. In the
then undisturbed repose of academic leisure, the student
had, at least, the full fruition of thought and books. He
had time to read. 'Deep self-possession, an intense
repose,' could do for the higher faculties what no 'getting
up' of books ever can do. 'There is a source of power,'
it has been beautifully remarked', 'almost peculiar to
youth and youthful circumstances, that not always are
we called upon to seek, sometimes, and in childhood above
all, are we sought:'
There are powers,
Which of themselves our minds impress;
And we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Such a condition, however enviable it may be, was
obviously a sacrifice of the many for the benefit of the few.
It is no argument against education that the greatest genius
is always self-nurtured. We should, however, be on our
guard that we do not now reverse the case, and sacrifice
the best minds to the necessity of stimulating the many.
We must not over-examine or over-lecture the honour
men. We should, for them, rather have one great exami-
nation distinctly planned to try the quality of their intellect,
than be continually probing the extent of their information
or acquirements. We do not want to turn out poets or
¹ De Quincey, Autobiography, vol. I. p. 115.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
RESTLESSNESS.
493
philosophers. If such persons are of any use, nature will
But we can and ought to set before
provide them.
ourselves and the students, a high ideal of intellectual
expansion and cultivation, and to remember ourselves and
inculcate on others, that intellectual character, and not the
acquisition of facts, is the true preparation for life. For
this it may be questioned whether the bustle, and stir,
which accompanies our intellectual activity here, be not
unfavourable; it partakes more of hurry than of energy.
'No great intellectual thing,' it has been said¹,' was ever
done by great effort.' There is an overwork caused by
the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and
the hope of accomplishing them by immense efforts.
'Hope as vain as it is pernicious; not only making men
overwork themselves, but rendering all the work they do
unwholesome to them.' The truth is, that this is not, with
us in Oxford, an intellectual over-excitement; it is a moral
defect. But though a moral defect, it is a consequence of
the degradation of our studies, of our being occupied with
the trivial, with mere school lessons, and not with the one
object which can permanently engage and sustain the
intellect. The best and most zealous teachers and pupils
accordingly endeavour to make up for the want of the true
inward energy of philosophical pursuit by a spurious
activity in the endeavour to embrace many things. We
have no faith in our own method, and, consequently, can
inspire none. Other minor causes of this unwholesome
and feverish pulse there are. The short period of an
eight weeks' term, an arrangement which has probably no
parallel in any other University, makes it impossible to
lecture on a great subject with that steady, patient,
thorough procedure which is requisite to let it make its
due impression on the mind. And yet with our present
mental temperament we find the eight weeks quite enough
to jade and exhaust the spirits, and make the vacation
1 Ruskin's Pre-Raphaelism, p. II.
T
494
OXFORD STUDIES.
XI.
welcome. There is to be added, too, the lamentable waste
of energy in Oxford, necessary to overcome the dull
passive resistance which every tutor of high aims is
nearly sure to encounter within his own college, as well
as without. Within his college, perhaps solitary, doing all
all
the work, and attracting all the ill-will; without, met by the
cold repulse of authorities devoid of sympathy for any
intellectual pursuit.
We have detained our readers so long in attempting to
trace the history of the studies of the University, and in
ascertaining how our method of study and our system of
teaching and examining affects and is capable of affecting
those who are candidates for honours, that we must
forbear to give the attention we should wish to pay to the
position of those students who do not aspire beyond the
ordinary degree. They form a class equally important,
and far more numerous; and the responsibility which the
care of their training and discipline involves must always
weigh heavily on those who wish that the education of the
University should be for minds of every capacity, and at
every stage of culture, what it might be, and ought to be.
We prefer leaving this great branch of our subject wholly
untouched, to treating it in a hurried and unsatisfactory
manner. How the great mass of students should be made
to receive what a University should be fitted to afford
them is a problem too vast, and a source of anxiety and
reflection too deep, to be investigated at the close of
lengthened observations on other matters.
Oxford Essays, 1855.]
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