Its study in England. 46. The Hebrew language had been early studied in England, though there has been some controversy as to the extent of the knowledge which the first translators of the Bible possessed. We know that both Chevalier read lectures on Hebrew at Cambridge not long after the queen’s accession, and his disciple Drusius at Oxford, from 1572 to 1576.[1417] Hugh Broughton was a deeply learned rabbinical scholar. I do not know that we could produce any other name of marked reputation; and we find that the first Hebrew types, employed in any considerable number, appear in 1592. These are in a book not relating directly to Hebrew, Rheses Institutiones Linguæ Cambro-Britannicæ. But a few Hebrew characters, very rudely cut in wood, are found in Wakefield’s Oration, printed as early as 1524.[1418]
[1417] Wood’s Hist. and Antiquities. In 1574, he was appointed to read publicly in Syriac.
[1418] Preface to Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities.
Arabic begins to be studied. 47. The Syriac and Chaldee were so closely related to Hebrew, both as languages, and in the theological purposes for which they were studied, that they did not much enlarge the field of oriental literature. The most copious language, and by far the most fertile of books, was the Arabic. A few slight attempts at introducing a knowledge of this had been made before the middle of the century. An Arabic as well as Syriac press at Vienna was first due to the patronage of Ferdinand I. in 1554, but for a considerable time no fruit issued from it. But the increasing zeal of Rome for the propagation of its faith, both among infidels and schismatics, gave a larger sweep to the cultivation of oriental languages. Gregory XIII. founded a Maronite College at Rome in 1584, for those Syrian Christians of Libanus who had united themselves to the catholic church; the cardinal Medici, afterwards grand Duke of Florence, established an oriental press in the city about 1580 under the superintendence of John Baptista Raimondi; and Sixtus V. in 1588 that of the Vatican, which, though principally designed for early Christian literature, was possessed of types for the chief eastern languages. Hence the Arabic, hitherto almost neglected, began to attract more attention; the gospels in that language were published at Rome in 1590 or 1591; some works of Euclid and Avicenna had preceded; one or two elementary books on grammar appeared in Germany; and several other publications belong to the last years of the century.[1419] Scaliger now entered upon the study of Arabic with all his indefatigable activity. Yet, at the end of the century, few had penetrated far into a region so novel and extensive, and in which the subsidiary means of knowledge were so imperfect. The early grammars are represented by Eichhorn as being very indifferent, and in fact very few Arabic books had been printed. The edition of the Koran by Pagninus in 1529 was unfortunately suppressed, as we have before mentioned, by the zeal of the court of Rome. Casaubon, writing to Scaliger in 1597, declares that no one within his recollection had even touched with the tips of his fingers that language, except Postel in a few rhapsodies; and that neither he nor any one else had written anything on the Persic.[1420] Gesner however in his Mithridates, 1558, had given the Lord’s Prayer in twenty-two languages; to which Rocca at Rome, in 1591, added three more; and Megiser increased the number, in a book published next year at Frankfort, to forty.[1421]
[1419] Eichhorn, v. 641, et alibi. Tiraboschi, viii. 195. Ginguéné, vol. vii. p. 258.
[1420] Nostra autem memoria, qui eas linguas vel ακρῳ quod aiunt, δακτυλῳ,, attigerit, novi neminem, nisi quod Postellum nescio quid muginatum esse de lingua Arabica memini. Sed illa quam tenuia, quam exilia! de Persicâ, quod equidem memini, neque ille, neque alius quisquam vel γρὺ το λεγομενον. Epist. ciii.
[1421] Biogr. Univ. arts. Megiser and Rocca.
Sect. V.—On Geography.
Voyages in the Indies—Those of the English—Of Ortelius and others.
Collection of Voyages by Ramusio. 48. A more important accession to the knowledge of Europe as to the rest of the world, than had hitherto been made through the press, is due to Ramusio, a Venetian who had filled respectable offices under the republic. He published in 1550 the first volume of his well-known collection of Travels; the second appeared in 1559, and the third in 1565. They have been reprinted several times, and all the editions are not equally complete. No general collection of travels had hitherto been published, except the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, and though the greater part perhaps of those included in Ramusio’s three volumes had appeared separately, others came forth for the first time. The Africa of Leo Africanus, a baptized Moor, with which Ramusio begins, is among these; and it is upon this work that such knowledge as we possessed, till very recent times, as to the interior of that continent, was almost entirely founded. Ramusio in the remainder of this volume gives many voyages in Africa, the East Indies, and Indian Archipelago, including two accounts of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and one of Japan, which had very lately been discovered. The second volume is dedicated to travels through northern Europe and Asia, beginning with that of Marco Polo, including also the curious, though very questionable voyage of the Zeni brothers, about 1400, to some unknown region north of Scotland. In the third volume we find the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, with all that had already been printed of the excellent work of Hernando d’Oviedo on the western world. Few subsequent collections of voyages are more esteemed for the new matter they contain than that of Ramusio.[1422]