English learning. Duport. 11. It has been observed in the last volume, that while England was very far from wanting men of extensive erudition, she had not been at all eminent in ancient or classical literature. The proof which the absence of critical writings, or even of any respectable editions, furnishes, appears weighty; nor can it be repelled by sufficient testimony. In the middle of the century James Duport, Greek professor at Cambridge, deserves honour by standing almost alone. “He appears,” says a late biographer, “to have been the main instrument by which literature was upheld in this university during the civil disturbances of the seventeenth century; and though little known at present, he enjoyed an almost transcendant reputation for a great length of time among his contemporaries as well as in the generation which immediately succeeded.”[704] Duport however has little claim to this reputation except by translations of the writings of Solomon, the book of Job, and the Psalms, into Greek hexameters, concerning which his biographer gently intimates that “his notions of versification were not formed in a severe or critical school,” and by what has certainly been more esteemed, his Homeri Gnomologia, which Le Clerc and bishop Monk agree to praise, as very useful to the student of Homer. Duport gave also some lectures on Theophrastus about 1656, which were afterwards published in Needham’s edition of that author. “In these,” says Le Clerc, “he explains words with much exactness, and so as to show that he understood the analogy of the language.”[705] “They are upon the whole calculated,” says the bishop of Gloucester, “to give no unfavourable opinion of the state of Greek learning in the university of that memorable crisis.”
[704] Museum Criticum, vol. ii., p. 672 (by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol).
[705] Bibliothèque Choisie, xxv., 18.
Greek not much studied. 12. It cannot be fairly said that our universities declined in general learning under the usurpation of Cromwell. They contained, on the contrary, more extraordinary men than in any earlier period, but not generally well affected to the predominant power. Greek, however, seems not much to have flourished, even immediately after the restoration. Barrow, who was chosen Greek professor in 1660, complains that no one attended his lectures. “I sit like an Attic owl,” he says, “driven out from the society of all other birds.”[706] According indeed to the scheme of study retained from a more barbarous age, no knowledge of the Greek language appears to have been required from the students, as necessary for their degrees. And if we may believe a satirical writer of the time of Charles II., but one whose satire had great circulation and was not taxed with falsehood the general state of education both in the schools and universities was as narrow, pedantic, and unprofitable, as can be conceived.[707]
[706] See a biographical memoir of Barrow prefixed to Hughe’s edition of his works. This contains a sketch of studies pursued in the university of Cambridge from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, brief indeed, but such as I should have been glad to have seen before, p. 62. No alteration in the statutes, so far as they related to study, was made after the time of Henry VIII. or Edward VI.
[707] Eachard’s Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy. This little tract was published in 1670, and went through ten editions by 1696.
Gataker’s Cinnus and Antonius. 13. We were not, nevertheless, destitute of men distinguished for critical skill, even from the commencement of this period. The first was a very learned divine, Thomas Gataker, one whom a foreign writer has placed among the six protestants most conspicuous, in his judgment, for depth of reading. His Cinnus, sive Adversaria Miscellanea, published in 1651, to which a longer work, entitled Adversaria Posthuma, is subjoined in later editions, may be introduced here; since, among a far greater number of scriptural explanations, both of these miscellanies contain many relating to profane antiquity. He claims a higher place for his edition of Marcus Antoninus the next year. This is the earliest edition, if I am not mistaken, of any classical writer published in England with original annotations. Those of Gataker evince a very copious learning, and the edition is still perhaps reckoned the best that has been given of this author.
Stanley’s Æschylus. 14. Thomas Stanley, author of the History of Ancient Philosophy, undertook a more difficult task, and gave in 1663 his celebrated edition of Æschylus. It was, as every one has admitted, by far superior to any that had preceded it; nor can Stanley’s real praise be effaced though it may be diminished, by an unfortunate charge that has been brought against him, of having appropriated to himself the conjectures, most of them unpublished, of Casaubon, Dorat, and Scaliger, to the number of at least three hundred emendations of the text. It will hardly be reckoned a proof of our nationality, that a living English scholar was the first to detect and announce this plagiarism of a critic, in whom we had been accustomed to take pride, from these foreigners.[708] After these plumes have been withdrawn, Stanley’s Æschylus will remain a great monument of critical learning.
[708] Edinburgh Review, xix., 494. Museum Criticum, ii., 498. (Both by the Bishop of London.)
Other English philologers. 15. Meric Casaubon by his notes on Persius, Antoninus, and Diogenes Laertius, Pearson by those on the last author, Gale on Iamblichus, Price on Apuleius, Hudson, by his editions of Thucydides and Josephus, Potter by that of Lycophron, Baxter of Anacreon, attested the progress of classical learning in a soil so well fitted to give it nourishment. The same William Baxter published the first grammar, not quite elementary, which had appeared in England, entitled, De Analogia, seu Arte Latinæ Linguæ Commentarius. It relates principally to etymology, and to the deduction of the different parts of the verb from a stem, which he conceives to be the imperative mood. Baxter was a man of some ability, but, in the style of critics, offensively contemptuous towards his brethren of the craft.