[868] Pandect. Univers., lib. 14. Gesner may be said to make great use of Turner; a high compliment from so illustrious a naturalist. He quotes also a book on quadrupeds lately printed in German by Michael Herr. Turner, whom we shall find again as a naturalist, became afterwards dean of Wells, and was one of the early puritans. See Chalmers’s Dictionary.
Agricola. 23. Agricola, a native of Saxony, acquired a perfect knowledge of the processes of metallurgy from the miners of Chemnitz, and perceived the immense resources that might be drawn from the abysses of the earth. “He is the first mineralogist,” says Cuvier, “who appeared after the revival of science in Europe. He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoology; the chemical part of metallurgy, and especially what relates to assaying, is treated with great care, and has been little improved down to the end of the eighteenth century.” It is plain that he was acquainted with the classics, the Greek alchemists, and many manuscripts. Yet he believed in the goblins, to whom miners ascribe the effects of mephitic exhalations.[869]
[869] Biogr. Univ.
Sect. IV.
On Oriental Literature.
Hebrew. 24. The study of Hebrew was naturally one of those which flourished best under the influence of protestantism. It was exclusively connected with scriptural interpretation; and could neither suit the polished irreligion of the Italians, nor the bigotry of those who owned no other standard than the Vulgate translation. Sperone observes in one of his dialogues, that as much as Latin is prized in Italy, so much do the Germans value the Hebrew language.[870] We have anticipated in another place the translations of the Old Testament by Luther, Pagninus, and other Hebraists of this age. Sebastian Munster published the first grammar and lexicon of the Chaldee dialect in 1527. His Hebrew grammar had preceded in 1525. The Hebrew lexicon of Pagninus appeared in 1529; and that of Munster himself in 1543. |Elias Levita.| Elias Levita, the learned Jew who has been already mentioned, deserves to stand in this his natural department above even Munster. Among several works that fall within this period we may notice the Masorah (Venice, 1538, and Basle, 1539), wherein he excited the attention of the world by denying the authority and antiquity of vowel points, and a lexicon of the Chaldee and Rabbinical dialects, in 1541. “Those,” says Simon, “who would thoroughly understand Hebrew should read the treatises of Elias Levita, which are full of important observations necessary for the explanation of the sacred text.”[871] |Pellican.| Pellican, one of the first who embraced the principles of the Zwinglian reform, has merited a warm eulogy from Simon for his Commentarii Bibliorum, (Zurich, 1531-1536, five volumes in folio), especially for avoiding that display of rabbinical learning which the German Hebraists used to affect.[872]
[870] P. 102 (edit. 1596).
[871] Biogr. Univ.
[872] Id.
Arabic and Oriental literature. 25. Few endeavours were made in this period towards the cultivation of the other Oriental languages. Pagnino printed an edition of the Koran at Venice in 1530; but it was immediately suppressed; a precaution hardly required, while there was no one able to read it. But it may have been supposed, that the leaves of some books, like that recorded in the Arabian Nights, contain an active poison that does not wait for the slow process of understanding their contents. Two crude attempts at introducing the Eastern tongues were made soon afterwards. One of these was by William Postel, a man of some parts and more reading, but chiefly known, while he was remembered at all, for mad reveries of fanaticism, and an idolatrous veneration for a saint of his own manufacture, la mère Jeanne, the Joanna Southcote of the sixteenth century. We are only concerned at present with his collection of alphabets, twelve in number, published at Paris in 1538. The greater part of these are Oriental. An Arabic grammar followed the same year; but the types are so very imperfect, that it would be difficult to read them. A polyglott alphabet on a much larger scale appeared at Pavia the next year, through the care of Teseo Ambrogio, containing forty languages. Ambrogio gave also an introduction to the Chaldee, Syriac, and Armenian; but very defective, at least as to the two latter. Such rude and incorrect publications hardly deserve the name of beginnings. According to Andrès, Arabic was publicly taught at Paris by Giustiniani, and at Salamanca by Clenardus. The Æthiopic version of the New Testament was printed at Rome in 1548.