In the sixteenth and the latter part of the fifteenth century, a man of learning filled a very prominent and distinguished place in the world’s esteem. Public attention was not then distracted by the multitude of claimants; for scarcely any country but Italy possessed a national literature; and few branches of knowledge were much prized, except the faculties of divinity, law, and physic, and the newly-opened stores of Greek and Roman antiquity. As Latin was still the universal language of Europe, that which was done in one country soon and readily became known to the learned men of all; and if the general standard of information was low, those who possessed it abundantly towered the higher above their fellows. Though there were then fewer helps to learning, it was a time of great discoveries and much excitement. A modern scholar of far inferior calibre may have a more accurate knowledge of antiquity, and a deeper insight into the minutiÆ of the ancient languages, than the greatest men of the age of which we speak; but as far as regards the mass of information gained by their individual labour, few indeed could venture to compete with such men as Casaubon, Lipsius, GrÆvius, the Scaligers, and others. And the honour paid them was proportionate to their merits. Princes and States courted them, Universities competed for their residence, Europe at large took an interest in their quarrels and controversies; and as humility and charity were not the graces in which they most abounded, the interest in these subjects was in no danger of perishing for want of agitation. Of this remarkable class of men, none were more admired by their contemporaries than the two Scaligers.

Julius CÆsar Scaliger, the elder, was as singular a mixture of great talent, learning, vanity, and presumption, as the world has often seen. He was born, probably at Verona, in 1484, being the son, according to the best authorities, of a miniature painter, named Benedict Bordoni, was baptized by the name of Julius, studied at the University of Padua, adopted the medical profession, and having attracted the favourable notice of Antoine de la Rovere, Bishop of Agen in Gascony, accompanied him thither, in 1525, in the quality of domestic physician. We are not informed of the exact time at which he thought fit to make addition to his real name, but in 1528 he obtained letters of naturalization under the sounding appellation of Julius CÆsar de Lescalle de Bordoms, or Bordonis; and in 1529 he married a girl of sixteen, by whom he had a very numerous family. This is his real history, as far as it is known; but the truth was far too commonplace to satisfy his passion for notoriety, and he invented a new version of his history, to the following effect:—

He called himself the son of Benedict de la Scala, one of the bravest captains of the fifteenth century (of whom it is observed that his name unfortunately occurs in no contemporary historian), and through him descended from the ancient family of Princes of Verona. He was born near the Lago di Guarda; and having narrowly escaped, in infancy, the jealous search of the Venetians, who were anxious to cut off every scion of his house, was brought up as a page in the service of the Emperor Maximilian. He served with distinction in the Italian wars. But the desire of recovering Verona, the inheritance of his family, from Venice, ever haunted him; and seeing no chance any other way, he became a monk, in hope of rising to the Holy Chair, and rendering the resources of the papacy subservient to the gratification of this ruling passion. The frivolous and wearisome observances of the cloister soon disgusted him, and he (broke his vows, we presume, and) returned to his old trade as a soldier, and again distinguished himself in the wars of Piedmont, while at the same time he studied the ancient languages, philosophy, and medicine. At the solicitation of the Bishop of Agen he closed his adventurous course, as is above related. This extravagant story, entirely without foundation in any of its parts, and garnished with abundance of gasconade, was stoutly upheld by the elder Scaliger, and generally believed by his contemporaries: the younger Scaliger wrote a book to maintain it, with equal stoutness, but without equal success.

After Scaliger took up his abode at Agen, his chief employment was the cultivation of learning; his chief passion, the acquisition of fame. In this he succeeded to the extent of his wishes; and we need seek no stronger proof of the ascendancy which he gained over his contemporaries, than the general acceptation of the wonderful story which we have just told. De Thou said of him, that the age did not furnish his equal, nor antiquity his superior; and Lipsius classed him with Homer, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, and named him ‘the miracle and glory of his age.’ Unquestionably he possessed a vast fund of knowledge, was an excellent Latin scholar, and wrote extremely well in Latin prose. Of Greek his knowledge probably was much less; he did little for Greek literature, and appears not to have taught his son Joseph so much as the rudiments of the language. His many fine qualities were sadly obscured by a temper arrogant and overbearing in the last degree: on this subject it is enough to refer to the abuse which he lavishes on a better man than himself, the excellent Erasmus, in their controversy concerning Ciceronianism. Unfortunately, he bequeathed the same overweening vanity and propensity to scurrilous language to his still more distinguished son, the original of our portrait.

Joseph Justus Scaliger, the tenth child of this singular man, was born at Agen, August 4, 1540. At the age of eleven he was sent with two of his brothers to study at the University of Bourdeaux; but at the end of three years the plague broke out, and he returned in consequence to his paternal home. The elder Scaliger from that time forward took charge of Joseph’s education: concerning his method of teaching we know little more than that he obliged his pupil to compose an essay every day upon some historical subject. He died in 1558; and in the following year Joseph Scaliger went to Paris, and devoted himself to the study of Greek under the celebrated Turnebus. At that time his acquaintance, if he had any, with the language was very slight. Before two months elapsed he found the progress of his master too slow to please him; and resolving to take the matter into his own hands, he made himself cursorily acquainted with the conjugations, and set to work at once upon Homer, whom he read through in twenty-one days, constructing a grammar for himself as he went along. The other Greek poets he perused in the same manner in four months. The orators and historians he took next in order; but these extraordinary exertions rest upon his own testimony, which in things connected with the gratification of his vanity cannot be considered unimpeachable. After two years’ study of Greek he undertook Hebrew and other Oriental languages, which he learned without assistance in the same manner. He certainly possessed an uncommon talent for the study of languages: it is stated by Du Bartas that he knew thirteen,—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, French, English, Ethiopian, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Persian. His habits throughout life were very laborious; he slept little, and sometimes passed days almost without taking food. Heinsius, in his first oration, reports that he had often heard Scaliger speak of having been in Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and engaged so deeply in his Hebrew studies as for a long time not to be aware of the tumult without. On the contrary, the Vassans, collectors of the ‘Scaligera secunda,’ state, also on the authority of Scaliger’s private conversation, that he was at Lausanne when the massacre took place. The matter is of little moment, excepting in so far as it may serve to illustrate the speaker’s boastful disregard for veracity.

Joseph Scaliger embraced the Reformed religion in 1562, and in the following year became domestic tutor in a noble family named Roche-Pozay. In this connexion he was very fortunate: his patron was a generous and discerning man, by whose liberality he was enabled to visit the principal Universities of France and Germany. He studied theology at Geneva under Beza, and shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572, was invited to accept the chair of philosophy in the University of that city: this he declined, but it appears that he did give lectures there in 1578. In 1573 he ventured to return to his patron’s estate near Tours, and there composed the greater portion of his works. He visited Italy, whence he brought home a number of inscriptions, which he communicated to Gruter, with leave to publish them in his ‘Thesaurus;’ and he even extended his travels to our northern, and then uninviting, realm of Scotland.

The multiplicity of Scaliger’s labours did not enrich him. “Poverty,” he says in one of his letters, “has been my faithful companion through life, and I never thought to lose her company.” But his spirit was lofty and independent, and he refused on more than one occasion large sums of money, which those who esteemed his merits would have forced upon him. In 1593 he was invited by the States of Holland to accept the professorship of belles-lettres at Leyden, with a liberal salary. This he accepted, so that the close of his life was spent in independence. Unfortunately for his tranquillity, his evil genius of vanity led him in 1594 to publish his testimony to the truth of his own illustrious descent, in his ‘Letter concerning the Antiquity of the Family Della Scala’ (Epistola de vetustate et splendore gentis ScaligerÆ, et vita Jul. C. Scaligeri, &c.). It is here, says Niceron, that the vanity and presumption of Scaliger appear to the greatest advantage; and Scioppius, a brother critic and scholar, who expressed the highest regard and admiration for the Leyden professor, so long as they were on terms of mutual admiration, no sooner felt a touch of Scaliger’s power of sarcasm, than he attacked him in this weak point, in the ‘Scaliger hypobolimÆus; hoc est, Elenchus EpistolÆ Joan. Burdonis, pseudo-Scaligeri, de vetustate et splendore gentis ScaligerÆ: 1607.’ Scaliger replied in ‘Confutatio stultissimÆ Burdonum fabulÆ: 1608,’ in which, though the letter of his adversary was short enough, he professed to have detected 499 falsities. Scaliger retorted on Scioppius, whose life and conversation were open enough to attack, in his ‘Confutatio stultissimÆ Burdonum fabulÆ: 1608,’ published under the name of Rutgersius, one of his pupils. It has been said that the veteran controversialist died of chagrin in consequence of Scioppius’s book. This, however, is not much in accordance with his character; at all events, his annoyance was long in killing him, for he did not die till 1609, and his disease was a dropsy. High honours were paid by the University to his memory; a funeral oration was pronounced in his praise by the eminent scholar Heinsius, and a monument was erected to him at the public expense.

For the fullest account of Scaliger’s very numerous works, we refer to Niceron, ‘MÉmoires pour servir À l’histoire des Hommes Illustres,’ vol. 23. The earliest of them, ‘Conjectanea in Varronem,’ was composed when the author was only twenty years old. Another of his earlier productions was an edition of ‘Lycophron,’ with a version into Latin iambics, for which he has obtained the sarcastic commendation of having by a tour de force of which no other person was capable, made the translation quite as unintelligible as the original. He translated the ‘Ajax’ of Sophocles, in the same metre. He has commented upon CÆsar, Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius, Persius, Ausonius, Manilius, the tragedies of Seneca, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, &c. His original works contain treatises on astronomy, mathematics, numismatics, and chronology, and various departments of philological and antiquarian research. He flattered himself that he had discovered and propounded in his ‘Cyclometrica Elementa duo; nec non Mesolabium;’ a method for the quadrature of the circle: but the fallacy which deceived him was soon exposed by Vieta and others. Scaliger’s most important and most original work is that ‘De Emendatione Temporum, 1583,’ which merits especial praise, as being the first attempt to produce a system of chronology. It contains a vast quantity of learning, in the collection of which the author was greatly assisted by his knowledge of the Oriental languages, as well as of Greek and Latin. That he is often in error is, in this instance, hardly a blemish upon his merited fame: in so vast an untrodden field it was impossible to avoid mistakes. And doubtless this would have been willingly conceded, but for his presumptuous, uncharitable, and abusive manner of treating the mistakes of others: those who had suffered from his venomous tongue, of course were ready and eager to revenge themselves at the first opportunity. In the second and third editions he made considerable alteration. Petavius, another eminent chronologer of the same age, who had the advantage, it is to be recollected, of all that Scaliger had done before him, finds great fault with the ‘De Emendatione;’ but he allows that “the learning diffused through it, the immense variety of topics which it embraces, the novelty of the subject, and the decided tone of the author, procured for him a very high reputation.” It was in this that Scaliger propounded the Julian period, as a sort of common measure for the various eras; but it never became general, and has fallen into complete disuse. The same Petavius, in speaking of Scaliger’s letters, which are full of curious matter, easy and familiar, and brilliant without affectation (EpistolÆ Omnes, 1627, published by Heinsius), declared, that if he had then seen these “divine letters,” he would never have attacked the author of them. Scaliger’s poems (Poemata Omnia, collected and published in 1615) have not done much for his fame, though he boasted of his critical skill in poetry. “Je me connais en trois choses—in vino, poesi, et juger des personnes. Si bis hominem alloquar, statim scio qualis sit.” (Scaligerana secunda.) From his translation of select epigrams of Martial into Greek (Florilegium Martialis Epigrammatum, cum versione GrÆca metrica, 1607) a list of sixty-four faults, false quantities and barbarisms, has been drawn up and preserved in the ‘Menagiana,’ vol. i. p. 325; many of them, however, are very trifling.

Concerning Scaliger’s character as a critic, we may quote the opinion of Bayle—‘Nouvelles de la RÉpublique des Lettres,’ for June 1684—“I know not whether it might not be said that Scaliger had too much wit and learning to write a good commentary; for his wit enabled him to find in the authors on whom he commented more refinement and genius than in fact they possessed; and his deep knowledge of literature was the cause of his fancying a thousand points of connexion between the thoughts of a writer and some rare matter of antiquity. And having made up his mind as to the reference contained in the passage, he proceeded forthwith to correct it accordingly. Unless it should rather be thought that the desire of throwing light upon some mystery of learning, unobserved by previous critics, led him to fancy hidden meanings where they did not really exist. Be this as it may, his notes are full of conjectures, bold, ingenious, and learned; but it is not clear that the authors always meant to say all that he has made them. It is possible to go as far wide of the real meaning, by having too much wit, as by having too little; and it will not do to believe that the lines of Horace and Catullus contain all the erudition which it pleases Messieurs the notemakers to bestow upon them.” This passage will sufficiently explain the grounds of the bitter saying, that Scaliger was born to corrupt, rather than to correct, the classics.

The praises bestowed on him by his contemporaries, however, were most extravagant. Heinsius says, in his Funeral Oration, “Men call him differently, an abyss of erudition, a sea of sciences, the sun of doctors, the divine progeny of a divine father, of the race of gods, the greatest work and miracle, the extreme reach of Nature.” His great contemporaries, Casaubon, Lipsius, and De Thou, adopt a somewhat similar style of exaggerated commendation. Such expressions of course are to be taken with allowance; rather as specimens of the taste of the age than as the deliberate testimony of those who use them. That Scaliger was profoundly learned and of immense acquirement, will not be denied; that it is impossible to push things farther than he has, will not now be asserted, “because,” says Niceron, “it has been done by many.” Unfortunately, this extravagant admiration contributed, no doubt, by feeding his vanity, to exacerbate that intolerably scurrilous and malignant humour, the worst part of his character, which he inherited, with his great talents, from his remarkable father.

The Table-Talk, as we may call it, of Scaliger has been collected in two series, entitled ‘Scaligerana, Prima et Secunda.’ For the history of these see Niceron, or the preface to Des Maizeaux’s edition. They bear the same unfavourable impress of character as the rest of his writings: “the pride, arrogance, and venom of an angry pedant reign from the first leaf to the last; and they are sometimes defective in point of learning.” So says Vigneul Marville, and his judgment is fully confirmed by others. “The Scaligerana,” says D’Israeli, “will convince us that he was incapable of thinking or speaking favourably of any person.” We have already quoted one passage which gives a specimen of the strange way in which French and Latin are mixed up in the second series, and we conclude with another, which contains an amusing instance of his vanity, both for himself and his father:—“Auratus dicebat Jul. CÆs. Scaligerum Regi alicui facie similem. Oui, À un Empereur! Il n’y a Roi qui eÛt si belle faÇon que lui. Regardez moi! je lui ressemble en tout, et partout, le nez aquilin.”