[916] Melchior Adam, p. 193. In the article of the Quarterly Review, several times already quoted, it is said that the Thesaurus “bears much plainer marks of the sagacity and erudition of Sylburgius than of the desultory and hasty studies of his master, than whom he was more clear-sighted;” a compliment at the expense of Stephens, not perhaps easily reconcileable with the eulogy a little before passed by the reviewer on the latter, as the greatest of Greek scholars except Casaubon. Stephens says of himself, quem habuit (Sylburgius), novo quodam more dominum simul ac præceptorem, quod ille beneficium pro sua ingenuitate agnoscit (apud Maittaire, p. 421). But it has been remarked that Stephens was not equally ingenuous, and never acknowledges any obligation to Sylburgius, p. 583. Scaliger says, Stephanus non solus fecit Thesaurum; plusieurs y ont mis la main; and in another place, Sylburgius a travaillé au Trésor de H. Estienne. But it is impossible for us to apportion the disciple’s share in this great work; which might be more than Stephens owned, and less than the Germans have claimed. Niceron, which is remarkable, has no life of Sylburgius.
[917] The Aristotle of Sylburgius is properly a series of editions of that philosopher’s separate works, published from 1584 to 1596. It is in great request when found complete, which is rarely the case. It has no Latin translation.
Neander. 21. Michael Neander, a disciple of Melanchthon and Camerarius, who became rector of a flourishing school at Isfeld in Thuringia soon after 1550, and remained there till his death in 1595, was certainly much inferior to Sylburgius; yet to him Germany was chiefly indebted for keeping alive, in the general course of study, some little taste for Grecian literature, which towards the end of the century was rapidly declining. The “Erotemata Græcæ Linguæ” of Neander, according to Eichhorn, drove the earlier grammars out of use in the schools.[918] But the publications of Neander appear to be little more than such extracts from the Greek writers as he thought would be useful in education.[919] Several of them are gnomologies, or collections of moral sentences from the poets; a species of compilation not uncommon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but neither exhibiting much learning nor favourable to the acquisition of a true feeling for ancient poetry. The Thesaurus of Basilius Faber, another work of the same class, published in 1571, is reckoned by Eichhorn among the most valuable school-books of this period, and continued to be used and reprinted for two hundred years.[920]
[918] Geschichte der Cultur. iii. 277.
[919] Niceron, vol. xxx.
[920] Eichhorn, 274.
Gesner. 22. Conrad Gesner belongs almost equally to the earlier and later periods of the sixteenth century. Endowed with unwearied diligence, and with a mind capacious of omnifarious erudition, he was probably the most comprehensive scholar of the age. Some of his writings have been mentioned in the first volume. His “Mithridates, sive de Differentiis Linguarum” is the earliest effort on a great scale to arrange the various languages of mankind by their origin and analogies. He was deeply versed in Greek literature, and especially in the medical and physical writers; but he did not confine himself to that province. It may be noticed here, that in his Stobæus, published in 1543, Gesner first printed Greek and Latin in double columns.[921] He was followed by Turnebus, in an edition of Aristotle’s Ethics (Paris, 1555), and the practice became gradually general, though some sturdy scholars, such as Stephens and Sylburgius, did not comply with it. Gesner seems to have had no expectation that the Greek text would be much read, and only recommends it as useful in conjunction with the Latin.[922] Scaliger, however, deprecates so indolent a mode of study, and ascribes the decline of Greek learning to these unlucky double columns.[923]
[921] This I give only on the authority of Chevillier, Origine de l’Imprimerie de Paris.
[922] Id. p. 240.
[923] Scalig. Secunda. Accents on Latin words, it is observed by Scaliger (in the Scaligerana Prima), were introduced within his memory; and, as he says, which would be more important, the points called comma and semi-colon, of which Paulus Manutius was the inventor. But in this there must be some mistake: for the comma is frequent in books much older than any edited by Manutius.]