In the age of the revival the first Englishman who studied Greek was a Benedictine monk, William of Selling (d. 1494), who paid two visits to Italy. At Canterbury he inspired with his own love of learning his nephew, England. Linacre, who joined him on one of those visits, studied Greek at Florence under Politian and Chalcondyles, and apparently stayed in Italy from 1485 to 1499. His translation of a treatise of Galen was printed at Cambridge in 1521 by Siberch, who, in the same year and place, was the first to use Greek type in England. Greek had been first taught to some purpose at Oxford by Grocyn on his return from Italy in 1491. One of the younger scholars of the day was William Lilye, who picked up his Greek at Rhodes on his way to Palestine and became the first high-master of the school founded by Colet at St Paul’s (1510).
(b) That part of the Modern Period of classical studies which succeeds the age of the Revival in Italy may be subdivided into three periods distinguished by the names of the nations most prominent in each.
1. The first may be designated the French period. It begins with the foundation of the Royal Readers by Francis I. in 1530, and it may perhaps be regarded as extending to 1700. This period is marked by a many-sided erudition The French period. rather than by any special cult of the form of the classical languages. It is the period of the great polyhistors of France. It includes Budaeus and the elder Scaliger (who settled in France in 1529), with Turnebus and Lambinus, and the learned printers Robertus and Henricus Stephanus, while among its foremost names are those of the younger (and greater) Scaliger, Casaubon and Salmasius. Of these, Casaubon ended his days in England (1614); Scaliger, by leaving France for the Netherlands in 1593, for a time at least transferred the supremacy in scholarship from the land of his birth to that of his adoption. The last sixteen years of his life (1593-1609) were spent at Leiden, which was also for more than twenty years (1631-1653) the home of Salmasius, and for thirteen (1579-1592) that of Lipsius (d. 1606). In the 17th century the erudition of France is best represented by “Henricus Valesius,” Du Cange and Mabillon. In the same period Italy was represented by Muretus, who had left France in 1563, and by her own sons, Nizolius, Victorius, Robortelli and Sigonius, followed in the 17th century by R. Fabretti. The Netherlands, in the 16th, claim W. Canter as well as Lipsius, and, in the 17th, G.J. Vossius, Johannes Meursius, the elder and younger Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, J.F. Gronovius, J.G. Graevius and J. Perizonius. Scotland, in the 16th, is represented by George Buchanan; England by Sir John Cheke, Roger Ascham, and Sir Henry Savile, and, in the 17th, by Thomas Gataker, Thomas Stanley, Henry Dodwell, and Joshua Barnes; Germany by Janus Gruter, Ezechiel Spanheim and Chr. Cellarius, the first two of whom were also connected with other countries.
We have already seen that a strict imitation of Cicero was one of the characteristics of the Italian humanists. In and after the middle of the 16th century a correct and pure Latinity was promoted by the educational Literary Latin. system of the Jesuits; but with the growth of the vernacular literatures Latin became more and more exclusively the language of the learned. Among the most conspicuous Latin writers of the 17th century are G.J. Vossius and the Heinsii, with Salmasius and his great adversary, Milton. Latin was also used in works on science and philosophy, such as Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687), and many of the works of Leibnitz (1646-1705). In botany the custom followed by John Ray (1627-1705) in his Historia Plantarum and in other works was continued in 1760 by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. The last important work in English theology written in Latin was George Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicenae (1685). The use of Latin in diplomacy died out towards the end of the 17th century; but, long after that date negotiations with the German empire were conducted in Latin, and Latin was the language of the debates in the Hungarian diet down to 1825.
2. During the 18th century the classical scholarship of the Netherlands was under the healthy and stimulating influence of Bentley (1662-1742), who marks the beginning of the English and Dutch period, mainly represented The English and Dutch period. in Holland by Bentley’s younger contemporary and correspondent, Tiberius Hemsterhuys (1685-1766), and the latter scholar’s great pupil David Ruhnken (1723-1798). It is the age of historical and literary, as well as verbal, criticism. Both of these were ably represented in the first half of the century by Bentley himself, while, in the twenty years between 1782 and 1803, the verbal criticism of the tragic poets of Athens was the peculiar province of Richard Porson (1759-1808), who was born in the same year as F.A. Wolf. Among other representatives of England were Jeremiah Markland and Jonathan Toup, Thomas Tyrwhitt and Thomas Twining, Samuel Parr and Sir William Jones; and of the Netherlands, the two Burmanns and L. Küster, Arnold Drakenborch and Wesseling, Lodewyk Valckenaer and Daniel Wyttenbach (1746-1829). Germany is represented by Fabricius and J.M. Gesner, J.A. Ernesti and J.J. Reiske, J.J. Winckelmann and Chr. G. Heyne; France by B. de Montfaucon and J.B.G.D. Villoison; Alsace by French subjects of German origin, R.F.P. Brunck and J. Schweighäuser; and Italy by E. Forcellini and Ed. Corsini.
3. The German period begins with F.A. Wolf (1759-1824), whose Prolegomena to Homer appeared in 1795. He is the founder of the systematic and encyclopaedic type of scholarship embodied in the comprehensive term The German period. Altertumswissenschaft, or “a scientific knowledge of the old classical world.” The tradition of Wolf was ably continued by August Böckh (d. 1867), one of the leaders of the historical and antiquarian school, brilliantly represented in the previous generation by B.G. Niebuhr (d. 1831).
In contrast with this school we have the critical and grammatical school of Gottfried Hermann (d. 1848). During this period, while Germany remains the most productive of the nations, scholarship has been more and more international and cosmopolitan in its character.
19th Century.—We must here be content with simply recording the names of a few of the more prominent representatives of the 19th century in some of the most obvious departments of classical learning. Among natives of Germany the leading Germany. scholars have been, in Greek, C.F.W. Jacobs, C.A. Lobeck, L. Dissen, I. Bekker, A. Meineke, C. Lehrs, W. Dindorf, T. Bergk, F.W. Schneidewin, H. Köchly, A. Nauck, H. Usener, G. Kaibel, F. Blass and W. Christ; in Latin, C. Lachmann, F. Ritschl, M. Haupt, C. Halm, M. Hertz, A. Fleckeisen, E. Bährens, L. Müller and O. Ribbeck. Grammar and kindred subjects have been represented by P. Buttmann, A. Matthiae, F.W. Thiersch, C.G. Zumpt, G. Bernhardy, C.W. Krüger, R. Kühner and H.L. Ahrens; and lexicography by F. Passow and C.E. Georges. Among editors of Thucydides we have had E.F. Poppo and J. Classen; among editors of Demosthenes or other orators, G.H. Schäfer, J.T. Vömel, G.E. Benseler, A. Westermann, G.F. Schömann, H. Sauppe, and C. Rehdantz (besides Blass, already mentioned). The Platonists include F. Schleiermacher, G.A.F. Ast, G. Stallbaum and the many-sided C.F. Hermann; the Aristotelians, C.A. Brandis, A. Trendelenburg, L. Spengel, H. Bonitz, C. Prantl, J. Bernays and F. Susemihl. The history of Greek philosophy was written by F. Ueberweg, and, more fully, by E. Zeller. Greek history was the domain of G. Droysen, Max Duncker, Ernst Curtius, Arnold Schäfer and Adolf Holm; Greek antiquities that of M.H. Meier and G.F. Schömann and of G. Gilbert; Greek epigraphy that of J. Franz, A. Kirchhoff, W. von Hartel, U. Köhler, G. Hirschfeld and W. Dittenberger; Roman history and constitutional antiquities that of Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), who was associated in Latin epigraphy with E. Hübner and W. Henzen. Classical art and archaeology were represented by F.G. Welcker, E. Gerhard, C.O. Müller, F. Wieseler, O. Jahn, C.L. Urlichs, H. Brunn, C.B. Stark, J. Overbeck, W. Helbig, O. Benndorf and A. Furtwängler; mythology (with cognate subjects) by G.F. Creuzer, P.W. Forchhammer, L. Preller, A. Kuhn, J.W. Mannhardt and E. Rohde; and comparative philology by F. Bopp, A.F. Pott, T. Benfey, W. Corssen, Georg Curtius, A. Schleicher and H. Steinthal. The history of classical philology in Germany was written by Conrad Bursian (1830-1883).
In France we have J.F. Boissonade, J.A. Letronne, L.M. Quicherat, M.P. Littré, B. Saint-Hilaire, J.V. Duruy, B.E. Miller, É. Egger, C.V. Daremberg, C. Thurot, L.E. France, Benoist, O. Riemann and C. Graux; (in archaeology) A.C. Quatremère de Quincy, P. le Bas, C.F.M. Texier, the duc de Luynes, the Lenormants (C. and F.), W.H. Waddington and O. Rayet; and (in comparative philology) Victor Belgium, Holland, Henry. Greece was ably represented in France by A. Koraes. In Belgium we have P. Willems and the Baron De Witte (long resident in France); in Holland, C.G. Cobet; in Denmark, J.N. Madvig. Among the scholars of Great Britain and Ireland may be mentioned: England. P. Elmsley, S. Butler, T. Gaisford, P.P. Dobree, J.H. Monk, C.J. Blomfield, W. Veitch, T.H. Key, B.H. Kennedy, W. Ramsay, T.W. Peile, R. Shilleto, W.H. Thompson, J.W. Donaldson, Robert Scott, H.G. Liddell, C. Badham, G. Rawlinson, F.A. Paley, B. Jowett, T.S. Evans, E.M. Cope, H.A.J. Munro, W.G. Clark, Churchill Babington, H.A. Holden, J. Riddell, J. Conington, W.Y. Sellar, A. Grant, W.D. Geddes, D.B. Monro, H. Nettleship, A. Palmer, R.C. Jebb, A.S. Wilkins, W.G. Rutherford and James Adam; among historians and archaeologists, W.M. Leake, H. Fynes-Clinton, G. Grote and C. Thirlwall, T. Arnold, G. Long and Charles Merivale, Sir Henry Maine, Sir Charles Newton and A.S. Murray, Robert Burn and H.F. Pelham. Among comparative philologists Max Müller belonged to Germany by birth and to England by adoption, while, in the United States, his ablest counterpart was W.D. Whitney. B.L. Gildersleeve, W.W. Goodwin, Henry Drisler, J.B. Greenough and G.M. Lane were prominent American classical scholars.
The 19th century in Germany was marked by the organization of the great series of Greek and Latin inscriptions, and by the foundation of the Archaeological Institute in Rome (1829), which was at first international in its character. The Athenian Institute was founded in 1874. Schools at Athens and Rome were founded by France in 1846 and 1873, by the United States of America in 1882 and 1895, and by England in 1883 and 1901; Schools of Rome and Athens. and periodicals are published by the schools of all these four nations. An interest in Greek studies (and especially in art and archaeology) has been maintained in England by the Hellenic Society, founded in 1879, with its organ the Journal of Hellenic Studies. A further interest in Greek archaeology has been awakened in all civilized lands by the excavations of Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Epidaurus, Sparta, Olympia, Dodona, Delphi, Delos and of important sites in Crete. The extensive discoveries of papyri in Egypt have greatly extended our knowledge of the administration of that country in the times of the Ptolemies, and have materially added to the existing remains of Greek literature. Scholars have been enabled to realize in their own experience some of the enthusiasm that attended the recovery of lost classics during the Revival of Learning. They have found themselves living in a new age of editiones principes, and have eagerly welcomed the first publication of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (1891), Herondas (1891) and Bacchylides (1897), as well as the Persae of Timotheus of Miletus (1903), with some of the Paeans of Pindar (1907) and large portions of the plays of Menander (1898-1899 and 1907). The first four of these were first edited by F.G. Kenyon, Timotheus by von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Menander partly by J. Nicole and G. Lefebre and partly by B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt, who have also produced fragments of the Paeans of Pindar and many other classic texts (including a Greek continuation of Thucydides and a Latin epitome of part of Livy) in the successive volumes of the Oxyrhynchus papyri and other kindred publications.