most the extinction of learning in Italy (a). No one perhaps deserved more praise in the restoration of the text of Cicero; no⚫ one, according to Huet, translated better from Greek; no one was more accurate in observing the readings of manuscripts, or more cautious in his own corrections. But his Varia Lectiones, in 38 books, of which the first edition appeared in 1583, though generally extolled, has not escaped the severity of Scaliger, who says that there is less of valuable matter in the whole work than in one book of the Adversaria of Turnebus (b). Scaliger however had previously spoken in high terms of Victorius: there had been afterwards, as he admits, some ill-will between them; and the tongue or pen of this great scholar are never guided by candour towards an opponent. I am not acquainted with the Variæ Lectiones of Victorius except through my authorities. 7. The same title was given to a similar miscellany by Marc Antony Muretus, a native of Limoges. The first part of this, containing eight books, was published in 1559, seven more books in 1586, the last four in 1600. This great classical scholar of the sixteenth century found in the eighteenth one well worthy to be his editor, Ruhnkenius of Leyden, who has called the Variæ Lectiones of Muretus "a work worthy of Phidias ;" an expression rather amusingly characteristic of the value which verbal critics set upon their labours. This book of Muretus contains only miscellaneous illustrations of passages which might seem obscure, in the manner of those we have already mentioned. Sometimes he mingles conjectural criticisms; and in many chapters only points out parallel passages, or relates incidentally some classical story. His emendations are frequently good and certain, though at other times we may justly think him too bold (c). Muretus is read with far more pleasure than Turnebus; his illustrations relate more to the attractive parts of Latin criticism, and may be compared to the miscellaneous remarks of Jortin (). But in depth of erudition he is probably much below (a) Petrus Victorius longæva ætate id consecutus est, ut literas in Italia renascentes et pæne extinctas viderit. Thuanus ad ann. 1585. apud Blount. (6) Scaligerana Secunda. (c) The following will serve as an instance. In the speech of Galgacus (Taciti vita Agricolæ) instead of " libertatem non in præsentia laturi," which indeed is unintelligible enough, he would read, " in libertatem, non in populi Romani servitium nati. "Such a conjecture would not be endured in the present state of criticism. Mu retus, however, settles it in the current style; vulgus quid probet, quid non probet, nunquam laboravi. (d) The following titles of chapters, from the eighth book of the Varia Lectiones, will show the agreeable diversity of Muretus's illustrations: 1. Comparison of poets to bees, by Pindar, Horace, Lucretius. Line of Horace Necte meo Lamiæ coronam; illustrated by Euripides. 2. A passage in Aristotle's Rhetoric, lib. ii. explained differently from P. Victorius. the Parisian professor. Muretus seems to take pleasure in cen· suring Victorius. 8. Turnebus, Victorius, Muretus, with two who have been mentioned in the first volume, Coelius Rhodiginus, and Alexander ab Alexandro, may be reckoned the chief contributors to this general work of literary criticism in the sixteenth century. But there were many more, and some of considerable merit, whom we must pass over. At the beginning of the next century, Gruter collected the labours of preceding critics in six very thick and closely printed volumes, to which Paræus, in 1623, added a seventh, entitled "Lampas, sive Fax Liberalium Artium," but more commonly called Thesaurus Criticus. A small portion of these belong to the fifteenth century, but none extend beyond the following. Most of the numerous treatises in this ample collection belong to the class of Adversaria, or miscellaneous remarks. Though not so studiously concise as those of Turnebus, each of these is generally contained in a page or two, and their multitude is consequently immense. Those who now by glancing at a note obtain the result of the patient diligence of these men, should feel some respect for their names, and some admiration for their acuteness and strength of memory. They had to collate the whole of antiquity, they plunged into depths which the indolence of modern philology, screening itself under the garb of fastidiousness, affects to deem unworthy to be explored, and thought themselves bound to become lawyers, physicians, histo 3. Comparison of a passage in the Phædrus of Plato, with Cicero's translation. 4. Passage in the Apologia Socratis, corrected and explained. 5. Line in Virgil, shown to be imitated from Homer. 6. Slips of memory in P. Victorius noticed. book of Aristotle's Rhetoric, not rightly explained by Victorius. 15. The word asinus, in Catullus (Carm, 95.) does not signify an ass, but a millstone. 16. Lines of Euripides, ill translated by Cicero. 17. Passage in Cicero's Epistles misun 7. Passage in Aristotle's Rhetoric ex- derstood by Politian and Victorius. plained from his Metaphysics. 8. Another passage in the same book explained. 9. Passage in Cicero pro Rabirio, corrected. 10. Imitation of Eschines in two passages of Cicero's 3d Catilinarian oration. 11. Imitation of Eschines and Demosthenes in two passages of Cicero's Declamation against Sallust. [Not genuine.] 12. Inficetus is the right word, not infa cetus. 13. Passage in 5th book of Aristotle's Ethics corrected. 14. The word diafrudeolar, in the 2d 18. Passage in the Phædrus explained. 19. Difference between accusation and invective, illustrated from Demosthenes and Cicero. 20. Imitation of Eschines by Cicero. Two passages of Livy amended. 21. Mulieres eruditas plerumque libidinosas esse, from Juvenal and Euripides. 22. Nobleness of character displayed by Iphicrates. 23. That Hercules was a physician, who cured Alcestis when given over. 24. Cruelty of king Dejotarus, related from Plutarch. 25. Humane law of the Persians. rians, artists, agriculturists, to elucidate the difficulties which ancient writers present. It may be doubted also, whether our more recent editions of the classics have preserved all the important materials which the indefatigable exertions of the men of the sixteenth century accumulated. In the present state of philology, there is incomparably more knowledge of grammatical niceties, at least in the Greek language, than they possessed, and more critical acuteness perhaps in correction, though in this they were not always deficient; but for the exegetical part of criticism-the interpretation and illustration of passages, not corrupt, but obscure we may not be wrong in suspecting that more has been lost than added in the eighteenth and present centuries to the savans in us, as the French affect to call them, whom we find in the bulky and forgotten volumes of Gruter. 9. Another and more numerous class of those who devoted themselves to the same labour, were the editors of Greek and Roman authors. And here again it is impossible to do more than mention a few, who seem, in the judgment of the best scholars, to stand above their contemporaries. The early translations of Greek, made in the fifteenth century, and generally very defective through the slight knowledge of the language that even the best scholars then possessed, were replaced by others more exact; the versions of Xenophon by Leunclavius, of Plutarch by Xylander, of Demosthenes by Wolf, of Euripides and Aristides by Canter, are greatly esteemed. Of the first, Huet says, that he omits or perverts nothing, his Latin often answering to the Greek, word for word, and preserving the construction and arrangement, so that we find the original author complete, yet with a purity of idiom, and a free and natural air not often met with (a). Stephens however, according to Scaliger, did not highly esteem the learning of Leunclavius (6). France, Germany, and the Low Countries, besides Basle and Geneva, were the prolific parents of new editions, in many cases very copiously illustrated by erudite commentaries. 10. The Tacitus of Lipsius is his best work, in the opinion of Scaliger and in his own. So great a master was he of this favourite author, that he offered to repeat any passage with a dagger at his breast, to be used against him on a failure of memory (c). Lipsius, after residing several years at Leyden in the profession of the reformed religion, went to Louvain, and discredited himself by writing in favour of the legendary miracles of that (a) Baillet. Blount. Niceron, vol. 26. (4) Scaligerana Secunda. (e) Niceron, xxiv, 119. country, losing sight of all his critical sagacity. The Protestants treated his desertion and these later writings with a contempt which has perhaps sometimes been extended to his productions of a superior character. The article on Lipsius, in Bayle, betrays some of this spirit; and it appears in other Protestants, especially Dutch, critics. Hence they undervalue his Greek learning, as if he had not been able to read the language, and impute plagiarism, when there seems to be little ground for the charge. Casaubon admits that Lipsius has translated Polybius better than his predecessors, though he does not rate his Greek knowledge very high (a). 11. Acidalius, whose premature death robbed philological literature of one from whom much had been expected (6), Paulus Manutius, and Petrus Victorius, are to be named with honour for the criticism of Latin authors, and the Lucretius of Giffen or Giphanius, published at Antwerp, 1566, is still esteemed (c). But we may select the Horace of Lambinus as a conspicuous testimony to the classical learning of this age. It appeared in 1561. In this he claims to have amended the text, by the help of ten manuscripts, most of them found by him in Italy, whither he had gone in the suite of Cardinal Tournon. He had previously made large collections for the illustration of Horace, from the Greek philosophers and poets, from Athenæus, Stobæus, and Pausanias, and other sources with which the earlier interpreters had been less familiar. Those commentators, however, among whom Hermannus Figulus, Badius Ascensius, and Antonius Mancinillus, as well as some who had confined themselves to the Ars Poetica, Grisolius, Achilles Statius (in his real name Estaço, one of the few good scholars of Portugal), and Luisinius, are the most considerable, had not left unreaped a very abundant harvest of mere explanation. But Lambinus contributed much to a more elegant criticism, by pointing out parallel passages, and by displaying the true spirit and feeling of his author. The text acquired a new aspect, we may almost say, in the hands of Lambinus, at least when we compare it with the edition of Landino in 1482; but some of the gross errors in this had been corrected by intermediate editors. It may be observed, that he had far less assistance from prior commentators in the Satires and (a) Casaub. Epist, xxi. A long and elaborate critique on Lipsius will be found in Baillet, vol. ii. (4to edit.), art 437. See also Blount, Bayle, and Niceron. (b) The notes of Acidalius (who died at the age of 28, in 1595,) on Tacitus, Plautus, and other Latin authors, are much esteem- Epistles than in the Odes. Lambinus, who became professor of Greek at Paris in 1561, is known also by his editions of Demosthenes, of Lucretius, and of Cicero (a). That of Plautus is in less esteem. He has been reproached with a prolixity and tediousness, which has naturalised the verb lambiner in the French language. But this imputation is not, in my opinion, applicable to his commentary upon Horace, which I should rather characterise as concise. It is always pertinent and full of matter. Another charge against Lambinus is for rashness in conjectural (6) emendation, no unusual failing of ingenious and spirited editors. 12. Cruquius (de Crusques) of Ypres, having the advantage of several new manuscripts of Horace, which he discovered in a convent at Ghent, published an edition with many notes of his own, besides an abundant commentary, collected from the glosses he found in his manuscripts, usually styled the Scholiast of Cruquius. The Odes appeared at Bruges, 1565; the Epodes at Antwerp, 1569; the Satires in 1575: the whole together was first published in 1578. But the Scholiast is found in no edition of Cruquius's Horace before 1595 (c). Cruquius appears to me inferior as a critic to Lambinus; and borrowing much from him as well as Turnebus, seldom names him except for censure. An edition of Horace at Basle, in 1580, sometimes called that of the forty commentators, including a very few before the extinction of letters, is interesting in philological history, by the light it throws on the state of criticism in the earlier part of the century, for it is remarkable that Lambinus is not included in the number, and it will, I think, confirm what has been said above in favour of those older critics. 13. Henry Stephens, thus better known among us than by his real sirname Etienne, the most illustrious (if indeed he surpassed (a) This edition by Lambinus is said to mark the beginning of one of the seven ages in which those of the great Roman orator have been arranged. The first comprehends the early editions of separate works. The second begins with the earliest entire edition, that of Milan, in 1498. The third is dated from the first edition which contains copious notes, that of Venice, by Petrus Victorius, in 1534. The fourth, from the more extensive annotations given not long afterwards by Paulus Manutius. The fifth, as has just been said, from this edition by Lambinus, in 1566, which has been thought too rash in correction of the text. A sixth poch was made by Gruter, in 1618; and this period is reckoned to comprehend most editions of that and the succeeding century; for the seventh and last age dates, it seems, only from the edition of Ernesti, in 1774. Biogr. Univ., art. Cicero. See Blount, for discrepant opinions expressed by the critics about the general merits of Lambinus. (b) Henry Stephens says, that no one had been so audacious in altering the text by conjecture as Lambinus. In Manutio non tantam quantam in Lambino audaciam, sed valde tamen periculosam et citam. Maittaire, vitæ Stephanorum, p. 401. It will be seen that Scaliger finds exactly the same fault with Stephens himself. (e) Biogr. Univ. |