Classical stu dies. D'Ewes' account. Downes. Barrow. The researches of young classical students appear to have extended to authors which a private tutor of the present day would probably look somewhat coldly upon, when viewed in connection with the Tripos. "I afterwards finished Florus," writes D'Ewes', "transcribing historical abbreviations out of it in mine own private study; in which also I perused most of the other authors, and read over Gellius' Attic Nights, and part of Macrobius' Saturnals.” "I was, during the latter part of my stay at Cambridge, for most part a diligent frequenter of Mr Downes' Greek Lectures, he reading upon one of Demosthenes' Greek Orations, De Corond; of whom I think it fit to take occasion in this place to transmit somewhat to posterity.... He had been Greek professor in the University about thirty years, and was at this time accounted the ablest Grecian of Christendom, being no native of Greece, which Joseph Scaliger himself confessed of him long before, as I was informed, having received an elaborate letter from him, upon some discontent taken by him against him." The following is D'Ewes's account of a private visit to the Greek professor:-"He entertained me more familiarly and lovingly than before, and offered me that kindness again which he had done at my late being with him, to read to me and some other gentlemen a private lecture in his house; but my small stipend my father allowed me, affording no sufficient remuneration to bestow upon him, I excused myself in it, telling him that I was shortly to depart from the University, and therefore it would be in vain for me to enter upon any further course for the attaining of the Greek tongue, in which I could not attain any exact knowledge without many years' study." It is only too probable that Downes's allurements to 1 Life of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, I. 121. 2 Ibid. 139. 3 Ibid. 141. learning met generally with but poor success. Some forty years later we find that the lectures of the Greek professor failed to attract even an audience. 66 I sit," says Barrow, "like an Attic owl driven out from the society of all other birds'." An attempt which he made to introduce the Greek tragedians to the attention of his scanty auditory met with so little encouragement that he was compelled to fall back on Aristotle: "Egimus ego et Sophocles meus in vacua Orchestra; defuit illi etiam Tpтaywviaτýs, chorus affuit nullus, ne quidem puerorum; qui canentibus accinerit nemo erat, nec qui saltantibus applauderet, nec qui obstreperet loquentibus......Superest ut in unum Aristotelem spes nostræ velut in sacram anchoram reclinent: ut ad Lyceum ceu ad arcem Sophiæ munitissimam, portum studii certissimum, aram disciplinæ, confugiamus." Extent of reading would seem to have excluded or left but small leisure for authors which now engross so much of the student's attention. No mention appears to be made of Thucydides as a college subject during this period, while Theophrastus was discussed from the professorial chair: Eschylus is rarely quoted, and Pindar, though we find an edition by Erasmus Schmidt appearing in 1619, still less. I find no instance of the employment of Lucretius as a class-book3; and, had there existed the scholar 1 Oratio Sarcasmica in Schola Græca. Opusc. IV. 111. 2 Ibid. 115. 3 "I have sent," writes Sir Thomas Browne to his son Edward, in 1676, "by Mr Bickerdik, Lucretius his six bookes, De Rerum Natura, because you lately sent me a quotation out of that author, that you might have one by you to find out quotations which shall considerably offer themselves at any time. Otherwise I do not much recommend the reading or studying of it, there being divers impieties in it, and 'tis no credit to be punctually versed in it; it containeth the Epicurean naturall philosophie." Sir T. Browne's Works, Vol. 1. 209. The edition of Lambinus, published in 1564, does not appear to have done much for the study of Lucretius until Creech popularised his labours ship and taste necessary to the appreciation of his mastery over the Latin tongue at the period of its greatest vigour, it may be doubted whether his philosophy would not have outbalanced the claims of his splendid genius. Of the inimitable beauties of the Latin poets of the præ-Augustan school there is not a glimpse of anything like adequate recognition: the rhetorical strains of Lucan, on the other Thomas May. hand, were so generally admired, that Thomas May, in 1633, published a supplement to the Pharsalia, carrying the history down to the death of Cæsar. It is certainly no injustice to this continuation to say that, though not without some happy passages, it hardly reaches even the level of the original. Indeed, if we except the names of Meric Casaubon, Milton, Herbert, Barrow, and Duport, it is in 1695*. Spenser, indeed, who was a sizar at Pembroke, and who evinces throughout his great poem an intimate acquaintance with both the Aristotelian and the Platonic philosophy, has sufficiently proved his familiarity with the Roman poet by an almost literal translation of the fine passage at the commencement of the first book (see Faerie Queen, IV. 10, 44); while Bacon, in his Essays, shows a like acquaintance with an author whom he doubtless found a more congenial spirit than Aristotle. Among the sermons of John Smith of Queens' also (see p. 90) are two, marked by considerable learning and argumentative power, expressly directed against the philosophy of Lucretius; and in Evelyn's Diary, May 12, 1656, we have the following entry: "Was published my essay on Lucretius, with innumerable errata, by the negligence of Mr Triplet, who undertook the correction of the press in my absence." [Editor's note:— "A translation into English Verse of the first book only."] There is also to be met with a very amusing translation by the celebrated Mrs Lucy Hutchinson. Scholarship, as opposed to mere learning, certainly declined in England as in France during the century which followed the reign of the Scaligers. (See Munro's Lucretius, Introd. pp. 11-13.) Textual criticism, the great arena of modern scholarship, was, at this period, held in something like contempt. * "Note here, Lucretius dares to teach As all our youth may learn from Creech" Prior's Alma, Canto I. doubtful whether we could point to any scholar in England during the earlier part of the century, who possessed that refined form of scholarship represented in the present day by so nice a sense of the beauties and delicacies of Greek and Latin verse. With regard to Casaubon, οὔ τι τόσος γε ὅσος Τελαμώνιος Αίας, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μείων, Versification. Meric Casaubon though his scholarship appears unquestionable, it was devoted to another field of labour. Milton, indeed, stands in Milton. almost painful contrast to his University from his superiority in this as in more important traits. "His Latin poems," says Mr Hallam, "are in themselves full of classical elegance, of thoughts natural and pleasing, of a diction culled with taste from the gardens of ancient poetry, of a versification remarkably well-cadenced and grateful to the ear. Herbert, though deficient in neatness, shows a George Herfacility and smoothness in this department of composition which could only have been attained by long familiarity with the best models and considerable practice. The same remarks will apply to Barrow's verse', of which Barrow. Hallam says, it is "forcible and full of mind, but not sufficiently redolent of antiquity." Of his Latin prose we shall hereafter have occasion to give a specimen; though full of vigour and evincing a complete mastery over the 1 We meet however with such inaccuracies as "pollice spiritum," &c. His Greek verses it seems almost ungenerous to criticise when we recollect that they appeared at a time when the canons of the Iambic metre were so imperfectly understood; but the following stanzas will sufficiently show that his acquaintance with the laws of Greek prosody was not much superior to that of Le Clerc himself: Μῆτερ, γυναικῶν αἴγλη, ἀνθρώπων ἔρις, Οδύρμα Δαιμόνων, Θεοῦ γεώργιον, Πῶς νῦν ἀφίστασαι, γόου καὶ κινδύνου Ημᾶς λιποῦσα κυκλόθεν μεταιχμίους. κ.τ.λ. bert. language, it certainly cannot be denominated as Cicero nian'. The enthusiasm of the period, for such it really was, was directed rather to the subject matter than the style; and that, again, was estimated quite as much from a theological as a classical point of view. Barrow's admiration of Chrysostom, for instance, probably outweighed his attachment for the whole range of Latin poetry, and his unpublished manuscripts, still preserved in the library of Trinity College, abound with quotations from the whole range of patristic theology. An amusing instance of the average 1 We meet, for instance, with the frequent use of such words as "sultis,” "effulminans," 99.66 'cordicitus," "jugiter," "proficuus." Mr Hallam (Hist. of Lit. of Europe, I. 516) gives a list of all the books instrumental to the study of Greek at the close of the preceding century. It is with some reluctance that I have arrived at the conclusion that the account given by Lord Macaulay of the general proficiency of Cambridge students in classical learning during the reign of Charles the Second, though exaggerated in detail, is just as a whole. No evidence, it is certain, can be adduced of more authority than Barrow's; and his language can only be taken as implying that during the first half of the century there had been a manifest decline in the attention bestowed on classics. No stress can be laid on isolated instances, nor even on the attainments of the translators of our Authorized Version. To one indeed of these we are indebted for evidence of a directly opposite character. Boyce, who was admitted to St John's in 1575, tells us that "his father had educated him in the Greek tongue before his coming, which caused him to be taken notice of in the college. For besides himself there was but one there that could write Greek. Three lectures in that language were read in the college. In the first, grammar was taught as is now commonly done in school. In the second, an easy author was explained in the grammatical way. the third was read somewhat which might seem fit for their capacities who had passed over the other two. A year was usually spent in the first, and two in the second." (Peck's Desiderata, p. 327.) Patristic literature seems to have commanded a greater attention than that of classic Greece or Rome. By far the most splendid edition of a Greek author during this period was that of Chrysostom, published in 1612, by Sir Henry Savile, the provost of Eton. It was in eight volumes, each volume costing, it is said, upwards of a £1000. (Beloe's Anecdotes, V. 103.) In |