Grammars of Ramus and Sylburgius. 18. Peter Ramus, in 1557, gave a fresh proof of his acuteness and originality, by publishing a Greek grammar, with many important variances from his precursors. Scaliger speaks of it with little respect; but he is habitually contemptuous towards all but his immediate friends.[911] Lancelot, author of the Port Royal grammar, praises highly that of Ramus, though he reckons it too intricate. This grammar I have not seen in its original state, but Sylburgius published one in 1582, which he professes to have taken from the last edition of the Ramean grammar. It has been said that Laurence Rhodomann was the first who substituted the partition of the declensions of Greek nouns into three for that of Clenardus, who introduced or retained the prolix and unphilosophical division into ten.[912] But Ramus is clearly entitled to this credit. It would be doubted whether he is equally to be praised, as he certainly has not been equally followed, in making no distinction of conjugations, nor separating the verbs in μι from those in ὡ, on the ground that their general flexion is the same. Much has been added to this grammar by Sylburgius himself, a man in the first rank of Greek scholars; “especially,” as he tells us, “in the latter books, so that it may be called rather a supplement than an abridgment of the grammar of Ramus.” The syntax in this grammar is much better than in Clenardus, from whom some have erroneously supposed Sylburgius to have borrowed; but I have not compared him with Vergara.[913] The Greek grammar of Sanctius is praised by Lancelot; yet, from what he tells us of it, we may infer that Sanctius, though a great master of Latin, being comparatively unlearned in Greek, displayed such temerity in his hypotheses as to fall into very great errors. The first edition was printed at Antwerp in 1581.
[911] Scaligerana. Casaubon, it must be owned, who had more candour than Scaliger, speaks equally ill of the grammar of Ramus. Epist. 878.
[912] Morhof, l. iv. c. 6. Preface to translation of Matthiæ’s Greek grammar. The learned author of this preface has not alluded to Ramus, and though he praises Sylburgius for his improvements in the mode of treating grammar, seems unacquainted with that work which I mention in the text. Two editions of it are in the British Museum, 1582 and 1600: but, upon comparison, I believe that there is no difference between them.
The best of these grammars of the sixteenth century bear no sort of comparison with those which have been latterly published in Germany. And it seems strange at first sight, that the old scholars, such as Budæus, Erasmus, Camerarius, and many more, should have written Greek, which they were fond of doing, much better than from their great ignorance of many fundamental rules of syntax we could have anticipated. But reading continually, and thinking in Greek, they found comparative accuracy by a secret tact, and by continual imitation of what they read. Language is always a mosaic work, made up of associated fragments, not of separate molecules; we repeat, not the simple words, but the phrases and even the sentences we have caught from others. Budæus wrote Greek without knowing its grammar, that is, without a distinct notion of moods or tenses, as men speak their own language tolerably well without having ever attended to a grammatical rule. Still many faults must be found in such writing on a close inspection. The case was partly the same in Latin during the Middle Ages, except that Latin was at that time better understood than Greek was in the sixteenth century; not that so many words were known, but those who wrote it best had more correct notions of the grammar.
[913] Vossius says of the grammarians in general, ex quibus doctrinæ et industriæ laudem maxime mihi meruisse videntur Angelus Caninius et Fridericus Sylburgius. Aristarchus, p. 6. It is said that, in his own grammar, which is on the basis of Clenardus, Vossius added little to what he had taken from the two former. Baillet, in Caninio.
Camerarius, Canter, Robortellus. 19. A few more books of a grammatical nature, falling within the present period, may be found in Morhof, Baillet, and the bibliographical collections; but neither in number nor importance do they deserve much notice.[914] In a more miscellaneous philology, the Commentaries of Camerarius, 1551, are superior to any publication of the kind since that of Budæus in 1529. The Novæ Lectiones of William Canter, though the work of a very young man, deserve to be mentioned as almost the first effort of an art which has done much for ancient literature—that of restoring a corrupt text, through conjecture, not loose and empirical, but guided by a skilful sagacity, and upon principles which we may without impropriety not only call scientific, but approximating sometimes to the logic of the Novum Organum. The earlier critics, not always possessed of many manuscripts, had recourse, more indeed in Latin than in Greek, to conjectural emendation; the prejudice against which, often carried too far by those who are not sufficiently aware of the enormous ignorance and carelessness which ordinary manuscripts display, has also been heightened by the random and sometimes very improbable guesses of editors. Canter, besides the practice he showed in his Novæ Lectiones, laid down the principles of his theory in a “Syntagma de Ratione emendandi Græcos Auctores,” reprinted in the second volume of Jebb’s edition of Aristides. He here shows what letters are apt to be changed into others by error of transcription, or through a source not perhaps quite so obvious—the uniform manner of pronouncing several vowels and diphthongs among the later Greeks, which they were thus led to confound, especially when a copyist wrote from dictation. But besides these corruptions, it appears by the instances Canter gives, that almost any letters are liable to be changed into almost any others. The abbreviations of copyists are also great causes of corruption, and require to be known by those who would restore the text. Canter, however, was not altogether the founder of this school of criticism. Robortellus, whose vanity and rude contempt of one so much superior to himself as Sigonius, has perhaps caused his own real learning to be undervalued, had already written a treatise, entitled “De Arte sive Ratione corrigendi Antiquorum Libros Disputatio;” in which he claims to be the first who devised this art, “nunc primum à me excogitata.” It is not a bad work, though probably rather superficial, according to our present views. He points out the general characters of manuscripts, and the different styles of handwriting; after which he proceeds to the rules of conjecture, making good remarks on the causes of corruption and consequent means of restoration. It is published in the second volume of Gruter’s Thesaurus Criticus. Robortellus, however, does not advert to Greek manuscripts, a field upon which Canter first entered. The Novæ Lectiones of William Canter are not to be confounded with the Variæ Lectiones of his brother Theodore, a respectable but less eminent scholar. Canter, it may be added, was the first, according to Boissonade, who, in his edition of Euripides, restored some sort of order and measure to the choruses.[915]
[914] In the British Museum is a book by one Guillon, of whom I find no account in biography, called Gnomon, on the quantity of Greek syllables. This seems to be the earliest work of the kind; and he professes himself to write against those who think “quidvis licere in quantitate syllabarum.” It is printed at Paris, 1556; and it appears by Watts that there are other editions.
[915] Biogr. Univ. The Life of Canter in Melchior Adam is one of the best his collection contains; it seems to be copied from one by Miræus. Canter was a man of great moral as well as literary excellence; the account of his studies and mode of life in this biography is very interesting. The author of it dwells justly on Canter’s skill in exploring the text of manuscripts, and in observing the variations of orthography. See also Blount, Baillet, Niceron, vol. xxix., and Chalmers.
Editions by Sylburgius. 20. Sylburgius, whose grammar has been already praised, was of great use to Stephens in compiling the Thesaurus; it has even been said, but perhaps with German partiality, that the greater part of its value is due to him.[916] The editions of Sylburgius, especially those of Aristotle and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are among the best of that age; none, indeed, containing the entire works of the Stagyrite, is equally esteemed.[917] He had never risen above the station of a schoolmaster in small German towns, till he relinquished the employment for that of superintendent of classical editions in the press of Wechel, and afterwards in that of Commelia. But the death of this humble and laborious man, in 1596, was deplored by Casaubon as one of the heaviest blows that learning could have sustained.