[891] Niceron, xxiv. 219.
[892] 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.
Horace of Lambinus. 11. Acidalius, whose premature death robbed philological literature of one from whom much had been expected,[893] 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.[894] 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 Mancinellus, 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 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.[895] 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[896] emendation, no unusual failing of ingenious and spirited editors.
[893] The notes of Acidalius (who died at the age of 28, in 1595), on Tacitus, Plautus, and other Latin authors, are much esteemed. He is a bold corrector of the text. The Biographie Universelle has a better article than that in the 34th volume of Niceron.
[894] Biogr. Univ.
[895] 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 epoch 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.
[896] 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.
Of Cruquius. 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 appear 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.[897] 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.
[897] Biogr. Univ.
Henry Stephens. 13. Henry Stephens, thus better known among us than by his real surname Etienne, the most illustrious (if indeed he surpassed his father) of a family of great printers, began his labours at Paris in 1554, with the princeps editio of Anacreon.[898] He had been educated in that city under Danes Toussain and Turnebus;[899] and, though equally learned in both languages, devoted himself to Greek, as being more neglected than Latin.[900] The press of Stephens might be called the central point of illumination to Europe. In the year 1557 alone, he published, as Maittaire observes, more editions of ancient authors than would have been sufficient to make the reputation of another author. His publications, as enumerated by Niceron (I have not counted them in Maittaire) amount to 103, of which by far the greater part are classical editions, more valuable than his original works. Baillet says of Henry Stephens, that he was second only to Budæus in Greek learning, though he seems to put Turnebus and Camerarius nearly on the same level. But perhaps the majority of scholars would think him superior on the whole to all the three; and certainly Turnebus, whose Adversaria are confined to Latin interpretation, whatever renown he might deserve by his oral lectures, has left nothing that could warrant our assigning him an equal place. Scaliger, however, accuses Henry Stephens of spoiling all the authors he edited by wrong alterations of the text.[901] This charge is by no means unfrequently brought against the critics of this age.