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ardous 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 precipitate 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 honor 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 was not one of creed. In common with all the Protestants, 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 neither hope of an honorable career, nor opportunity of studious retirement. 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 connection with the La RochePozay 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 many 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, penury and misery among the peasantry. The political horizon of France and of Europe was overcast by the portentous shadow of Spain-the Spain of the Jesuits and the Inquisition; of Phillip 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 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 revivial 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-D'Aurat and Cujas the only living critics capable of making a conjectural emendation. Cujas' 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, Čujas second wife brought him a daughter, and Scaliger did not get a single volume. The library, as well as the very considerable fortune which the father had amassed, were 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 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."

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.

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 This time of sunshine at Valence was as science, which Cujas knew how to inspire transient as the happy days of our life too into his pupils, communicated itself to Scali- commonly are. It was just that brief interger. Politics and party passions were ban- val of about two years which separated the ished from this sanctuary of Themis. "Nihil third war of religion from the St. Bartholhoc ad edictum prætoris " was the playful omew (1570-72). That bloody night, howway in which Cujas was wont to stop dispute ever, was not the occasion of Scaliger's leavwhich began to take a political turn. Twenty ing Valence. Queen Catherine had deputed years younger than Cujas, Scaliger would Monluc, Bishop of Valence, to negotiate the inspire no jealousy in his master, whose rep-crown of Poland for her son the Duke of utation was now established beyond the reach Anjou. Cujas recommended Scaliger to the of rivalry. In the voluntary homage of the bishop as one of his retinue. On the 22nd young law-students, who flocked from every of the fatal month of August, 1571, Scaliger, quarter round the "pearl of lawyers," was who happened to be at Lyons on business, laid the foundation of that universal fame received notice to meet Monluc at Strasburg. to which Scaliger slowly rose. Upon this He set off, taking the route through Switgrowing celebrity Cujas placed the stamp of zerland, and slept at Lausanne on the dreadhis own countersign, when, in his published ful night of the 24th, ignorant of the tragedy "Commentary on the Digest," he accepted then enacting in Paris. Not till he reached an emendation as supplied him by "doctissi- Strasburg did he learn the horrid news. mus Josephus Scaliger, a quo pudet dissen- The other members of the embassy had altire." Here, too, was formed, among other ready arrived at the rendezvous, but Monluc friendships, one most valued by Scaliger and did not make his appearance. Disconcerted only broken by death, with De Thou (Thua- by the failure of their chief, and fearing to nus), the future president of the parliament remain so near the French frontier, while of Paris. The "History" of De Thou, once alarming accounts were hourly coming in of the source in which every practical statesman the fury of the Catholic populace in the prosought political wisdom-Johnson designed vincial towns, the party determined on disto translate it, Pitt quoted it in parliament persing. Scaliger was too glad to regain -is now scarcely known except to professed the shelter of Swiss territory. He bent his historians. In his "Own Life" (De Vità steps, naturally, to Geneva. Sud), De Thou thus speaks of his intimacy with Scaliger

For Scaliger, as we have said, was a Huguenot. The date of his conversion, a step so decisive of the color of his future life, "It was at Valence that my friendship with cannot be fixed to a day, only because there Joseph Scaliger was commenced. He had gone was no formal adjuration and reception. He thither, on Cujas' invitation, in company with was brought up in the Catholic faith, in Louis de Monjosieu and George Du Bourg. which his father had died. But the opinions This friendship, begun in the daily intercourse of Julius had taken towards the close of his of Valence, has been continued since, either by life a very liberal complexion. Not that he personal communication or by correspondence, for the space of thirty-eight years uninterrupted. embraced Lutheran tenets, but he was disThis friendship is the pride and pleasure of my gusted with the wickedness of the dominant life. All the calumny and misrepresentation churchmen. In his series of "The Saints" which it has occasioned me, are, in my opinion, there is a short poem addressed to St. Peter, balanced by the satisfaction of an intercourse so which might have been written by a Prothonorable and so delightful to me. I know that estant, and which the Jesuits accordingly I have been reproached with it by mischievous mutilated when they reprinted the volume. men; but I both glory in it publicly, and cherish Though my father," said Joseph, "had not 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 transcendent attainments of human erudition? And did not the singular endowments bestowed upon him by Heaven claim the veneration of all worthy men?"

a knowledge of true religion, yet, had he lived in these days of the Jesuits, he would have hated them; for any thing 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 Buzanvalle, to hear a reformed preacher. After this he submitted to the regular instruction of a Huguenot

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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 Chateaubriand, 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," admitted 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 instruction 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 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.

pastor, and attended his last mass during Welser-"Romanism (superstitio) prevents his stay at Rome, in 1660 probably, when he Welser from knowing more than he does." was twenty-six years of age. We may al- A mere antiquary like Sigonio, Latinists like low the predisposing causes of this conver- Lipsius or Muretus, textual critics and collasion to have been the bias received from his tors of MSS., might be either Catholic or father's philosophical opinions, from the ex- Protestant, as it happened. But where charample of Turnebus and De Salignac, and the acter and intellect, knowledge and will, are indignation excited in young and generous intimately blended, the entire man is of a minds by the cruelties with which the gov- piece and uniform; his opinions are no ernment sought to put down the reformed longer matter of accident or impulse; he is opinions in France. In Scaliger's youth the law unto himself. The whole of Scalihardly a day passed on which some unhappy ger's utterance, whether in conversation or Huguenot was not roasted alive for his relig- in his books, is stamped with this noble surion. Such brutal scenes most surely revolt render of the understanding to the truth, those minds which they do not subdue. But, whatever it might be, as the inevitable law after allowing for these influences, we must of his thoughts which he had no choice but look within rather than without, for the mo- to obey. mentum 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 ignoratione Grammatica, 1 Scalig. p. 86), 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 exploded 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 heresy. It was, therefore, impossible in the sixteenth century for a consummate critic to be other than a Protestant. "Jamais superstitieux ne fût docte," is a saying of Scali, ger which intimates his consciousness of the real alliance between knowledge and the Protestant faith. And, in another conversation, he says of his Augsburg correspondent,

He

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 institution. He was very reluctant. 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 tunes of that family, which was throughout with others in a year, because he never went that turbulent period engaged on the royaloff into useless matter, and no difficulty ist side. Their possessions lay in Touraine, stopped him." Groulart's Latin version of Poitou, La Marche, etc., the centre of French three orations of Lysias is reckoned among Calvinism, and therefore the most exposed the best specimens of translation, and was to the ravages of the Catholic troopers. In praised as such a century later by Huet-a times of peace, the family, and Scaliger with credit it probably owes to its having been them, were continually on the move from looked over by Scaliger. Geneva, however, one château to another, in the old scignorial with its ecclesiastical police and the petty fashion. In times of disturbance, they setyranny of its pastors, was, at best, but a cured themselves in their castle of Preuilly tolerable abode. Every other interest was (in Touraine), which was sufficiently strong there as nothing in comparison with church to hold at bay any body of marauding leaguinterests, and church interests were there ers from Bretagne, if they did not bring understood in a narrow spirit of sect which artillery with them. Scaliger's books, of denounced all Protestant communities be- which he gradually amassed a considerable yond the strictly Calvinistic. To the ordi- number, were at Abain, and the continual nary discomforts of exile was added for the separation from them was a great hindrance refugees the misery of want-alms the re- to him in his various undertakings. Far public was itself too poor to give. They from being glued to his desk, he was permust work; and in a little town and terri-petually in motion, ready to take his turn tory so overcrowded with foreigners, the of garrison-duty in case of necessity; not supply of labor was out of all proportion to the demand. Calvin, in inviting a French seigneur to expatriate himself, had 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

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 labor. In this respect, command of his own time, Scaliger's posi tion, humble as it was, was not unfavorable.

"... metu dejectus, obsitus luctu, Atratus, exspes, in tuum sinum fugi Geneva, quæ me patriæ exulem terræ If a man were desirous, at that day, of Blanda atque amica caritate fovisti." devoting himself to classical learning, the only bread-winning profession open to him But lecturing was irksome to him. "His was that of teacher (pedant they called it) vocation," thinks his intimate friend Ver- in a university or a school. Whatever tunien, in 1574, is not "caqueter en chaire might be the case in Italy, in France church et pedanter." When afterwards, at Ley- endowments were not employed to reward den, Scaliger counts among his blessings or promote learning. The Huguenots had that here he is not deafened with the ha- no endowments, and the ministry among rangues of professors, or the impertinences them was, if no longer the road to martyrof fanatical preachers" ("nullis cathedris dom, at least a life incompatible with any pedagogorum obstrepimur, nulla nos fana- secular study. Scaliger is almost a solitary ticorum concionatorum mendicabula obtun-instance of a man who gave up his life to dunt."-To Casaubon, January, 1601), 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 de 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 for

study, without being attached to a university. He was not married. His personal wants were few, and provided for by the liberality of his friend de 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

De Reves, p. 53. But a comparison of that letter with Ep. ad Lips., p. 88, leads us to the conclusion that they were kept at Abain.

Dr. Bernays, p. 173, says at Preuilly, quoting

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 comprehensiveness 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.

tempts 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, three hundred 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 "Catalecta," of Festus, and 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 gencral 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 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 forever 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 primitive historya voyage in which he had no predecessors, and, till within the present century, no followers.

In 1577 he brought out at the Paris press of Robert Estienne an edition of the three Latin elegiac poets-Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertiùs. 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 principles. 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 "Varia Lectiones" 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 of the land, and making us aware that the Italian man could not get beyond the reading or the sphere of thought The transition to the new field of labor which he reached in his school-days. This was his edition of Manilius (1579), the five frivolous toying with literature could only be books of whose "Astronomica," the most expelled by presenting a model of thorough difficult of the Latin classics, offer to the intreatment. The two French critics who pre- terpreter a scries of puzzles which frightceded Scaliger, Lambinus, and Turnebus, ened off the smaller critics. Scaliger graphad done much to introduce a more manly pled with the problem, and, mathematicians turn of thought and a more sustained indus- assert, rather forced his way through it by try with this department. They had, too, sheer dint of arm than solved it. As his obentered upon the field of Greek-a language ject was scientific, and not philological, he which few Italian scholars had ever mastered, did nothing for the text except where necesand for which they had now become wholly sary for his purpose, viz. to make Manilius a incompetent. But even Lambinus and Tur- peg on which to hang a representation of the nebus do not rise beyond the thought of astronomical system of the first century, A.D. making classics an instrument of education The Manilius was, in fact, but an introducof editing "in usum studiosa juventutis." tion to a comprehensive chronological sysScaliger first showed the way to that sound tem which he brought out in 1583 in "De notion of textual criticism in which the gen- Emendatione." By this grand effort of uine tradition is made the basis, and altera- genius, Scaliger may be said to have created tion is only permitted on condition of estab- for modern times the science of chronollishing itself by rigorous proof. True, it has ogy. Hitherto the utmost extent of chronrequired a long experience and many at-ological skill which historians had possessed

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