[693] A list of the Variorum editions will be found in Baillet, Critiques Grammairiens, n. 604.
James Gronovius. 2. The place of the elder Gronovius, in the latter part of this present period, was filled by his son. James Gronovius, by indefatigable labour, and by a greater number of editions which bear his name, may be reckoned, if not a greater philologer, one not less celebrated than his father. He was, at least, a better Greek critic, and in this language, though far below those who were about to arise, and who did, in fact, eclipse him long before his death, Bentley and Burman, he kept a high place for several years.[694] |Grævius.| Grævius, another German whom the Dutch universities had attracted and retained, contributed to the Variorum editions, chiefly those of Latin authors, an erudition not less copious than that of any contemporary scholar.
[694] Baillet, n. 548. Niceron, ii., 177.
Isaac Vossius. 3. The philological character of Gerard Vossius himself, if we might believe some partial testimonies, fell short of that of his son Isaac; whose Observations on Pomponius Mela, and an edition of Catullus, did him extraordinary credit, and have placed him among the first philologers of this age. He was of a more lively genius, and perhaps hardly less erudition, than his father, but with a paradoxical judgment, and has certainly rendered much less service to letters.[695] Another son of a great father, Nicolas Heinsius, has by none been placed on a level with him; but his editions of Prudentius and Claudian are better than any that had preceded them.
[695] Niceron, vol. xiii.
Decline of German learning. 4. Germany fell lower and lower in classical literature. A writer, as late as 1714, complains, that only modern books of Latin were taught in the schools, and that the students in the universities despised all grammatical learning. The study, “not of our own language, which we entirely neglect, but of French,” he reckons among the causes of this decay in ancient learning; the French translations of the classics led many to imagine that the original could be dispensed with.[696] |Spanheim.| Ezekiel Spanheim, envoy from the court of Brandenburg to that of Louis XIV., was a distinguished exception; his edition of Julian, and his notes on several other writers, attest an extensive learning, which has still preserved his name in honour. As the century drew nigh to its close, Germany began to revive; a few men of real philological learning, especially Fabricius, appeared as heralds of those greater names which adorn her literary annals in the next age.
[696] Burckhardt, De Linguæ Latinæ hodie neglectæ Causis Oratio, p. 34.
Jesuit colleges in France. 5. The Jesuits had long been conspicuously the classical scholars of France; in their colleges the purest and most elegant Latinity was supposed to be found; they had early cultivated these graces of literature, while all polite writing was confined to the Latin language, and they still preserved them in its comparative disuse. “The Jesuits,” Huet says, “write and speak Latin well, but their style is almost always too rhetorical. This is owing to their keeping regencies (an usual phrase for academical exercises) from their early youth, which causes them to speak incessantly in public, and become accustomed to a sustained and polished style above the tone of common subjects.”[697] Jouvancy, whose Latin orations were published in 1700, has had no equal, if we may trust a panegyric, since Maffei and Muretus.[698]
[697] Huetiana, p. 71.
[698] Biogr. Univ.