before the publication of his Greek Thesaurus, in 1572. From the Fair he went down the Rhine to the venerable Cologne. With Bacharach [a small village below Mayence, on the Rhine] he was so delighted that he celebrated it in a Latin poem. Basle, Strasburg and Heidelberg he visited on his way to the Fairs, and on his return. At a later period, in 1574, he became acquainted with the interior of the country; he visited Ratisbon, Vienna, and travelled in a part of Hungary. He was in Germany, for the last time, in 1595, three years before his death. It has been said that he resided three successive years in Frankfort and Ratisbon, beginning in 1593, and that he carried on printing in the former place; but this last assertion cannot be proved. When the emperor Rudolph II, with whom, as well as with both his predecessors, Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, he was personally acquainted, held a diet in Ratisbon, in 1594, and recommended the vigorous prosecution of the Turkish war, Stephens presented the Diet two written addresses, in one of which he refuted Hubert Folieta's book on the Greatness of the Turkish Empire, and in the other urged the Diet to carry on the war against the hereditary foe of Christendom with all their power.*

That he was pleased with the Germans and their mode of life, we may, without overweening national vanity, infer from his frequent residence in Germany. There was one thing, however, with which he could not sympathize, the carousing propensity of the Germans. But he made ample amends, in the true spirit of a philologist, not only by his poetical effusions, "Thirst for the Cup" (Cylicodipsia), and "Loathing of Intemperance" (Methysomisia), but by collecting from the Greek Anthology, from Lucias [Lucian?], Libanius and Basil, and from Seneca and Pliny every thing that related to this vice, and publishing it with a Latin translation of the Greek extracts. He seems not to have been versed in the German language. The reason is obvious: the Latin was then the language not only of the schools, but of the court and of the refined circles of Germany.

Even in his treatise De Latinitate Lipsiana, he has much more to do with the Turkish war than with Lipsius's Latin,

HIS HORSEMANSHIP AND POETRY.

The equestrian taste of Stephens, it would seem, was hereditary. It is well known of Robert, that he divided the chapters of the Bible into verses mostly on horseback; and the biblical critics say, that his horse must have frequently stumbled, for the marks of division are often in the wrong place. Henry's horse was in reality his Pegasus, upon which, according to his own declaration, nearly every thing of any value originated which is to be found among his Greek and Latin poems. This will appear by no means incredible, when we consider that he made all his journeys alone and on horseback; and that, in the absence of books, he could not better divert his mind from the various discomforts attendant on travelling than in this manner. Thus in the old Roman spirit, his leisure hours were devoted entirely to the muses. With what facility he composed verses, we learn, not merely from the great number of his poems, but from the traces of genius every where apparent. These happy passages were never the fruit of elaborate industry; on the contrary, the finishing hand is often wanting. He could compose with equal facility in the Greek language and in the Latin. These circumstances will explain why the higher lyric strain and the epic, were not attempted. The number of his epigrams, in which he was highly successful, is very great. No one copied the Grecian models more skilfully, except Grotius. His vein was naturally satirical, as we see it in his "Methysomisia " and "Cylicodipsia," and, most of all, in the "Musa Monitrix Princepum" [the Muse, the Monitress of Princes], a production of great historical value.

HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE.

His French poems, written mostly while he was at court, not as the learned Genevan Estienne [Stephens], but as the Sieur de Griére [the title taken from his country-seat], are nearly forgotten. But his prose writings along with those of Montaigne and Amyot, are among the most important monuments for the history of the language. They have an antique air, are simple and animated, and abound in strength and in graphic descriptions. The most celebrated of them are his "Defence of Herodotus," in which he vindicates the character of the historian from the

charge of incredulity and unfaithfulness, and galls his Catholic opponents, by drawing a parallel between the wonders of Herodotus and those of the priests; and his "Life of Catharine de Medici," in which he expresses in bold language the profligacy of the French monarch's own mother. Stephens is the only French philologist of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who could write better in his native language than in Latin.

HIS EDITIONS OF ANCIENT AUTHORS.

Stephens extended his usefulness far beyond the confines of France, by his editions of the ancient classics, especially the Greek. Their least merit consisted in their typographical execution; for it is not to be denied, that Robert, aided as he was by his royal sets of type and his fine Paris paper, secured a more splendid mechanical execution than Henry. The design of Henry was, by means of convenient editions, to circulate the most important Greek authors widely, and, indeed, to render them universally accessible. There is scarcely a writer, either of prose or poetry, from the time of Homer and Hesiod to that of Demosthenes, from the commencement of Grecian literature to the end of its golden period, under the Macedonian supremacy, whose works did not receive from him particular attention, and, for that age, great improvements. Homer, Hesiod, Theognis, the early philosophical poets, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Ctesias, Plato and the Attic orators, all shared his labors. Aristophanes is the only name missing in the whole series, and the design was cherished of editing his works. He neglected no poet of distinction, even of the Alexandrine age and of later times, except Nonnus. Hippocrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, are the earliest prose writers in the chronological series, of whom he took little notice. On the other hand, he issued complete editions of the later authors Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Appian, Dio Cassius, Herodian, Diogenes Laertius, Maximus Tyrius, Sextus Empiricus and others, to which we must add, as worthy of special regard, those that had hitherto existed only in manuscript, viz., the Anacreontic Poems, the contest between Homer and Hesiod and other similar pieces, many epigrams of the Greek Anthology, parts of Aristotle, and several

declamations of Themistius, Himerius and Polemon. In his editions of Roman authors, he limited himself to parts of Cicero, to Virgil and Horace, Pliny the Younger, Gellius and Macrobius. In his invaluable collection of the fragments of the earlier Latin poets, he availed himself of the preparations which his father had made.

With the desire to make the Greek authors accessible to all scholars, was necessarily connected that of correcting the text, in order to render it intelligible and easy for use. It is true, that for the critic of the present day, the most valuable labors of Stephens, with regard to the text, are those of presenting a very exact copy of manuscripts now lost. The nice textual criticisms, which distinguish the present age, were scarcely known then; there were so many gross errors and corruptions to be removed by simple methods, and especially by conjectural emendation, that an exquisite knowledge of the critical art, which is hardly appreciated at the present time, was much less so then. The extensive travels and literary connections of Stephens put him in possession of many rare and important manuscripts. But he employed them only for restoring passages decidedly and grossly corrupted; and where these helps failed him, he resorted to his own talent at divination, which was for the most part skilfully applied. But this is the very practice of which the greatest complaints have been made in regard to his editions, particularly those of Plato and Plutarch. In fact, he has been accused not only of haste and negligence, but of fraud and deception. To attempt his defence against the first charge, would be worse than useless. Stephens must have renounced his natural activity and versatile habits, before it would have been possible for him to labor with the cautious circumspection and minute accuracy for which Frederic Sylburg, his admirable contemporary, was proverbial. If we take into consideration his restless activity and rapid execution, and the difficulties with which literary intercourse was then attended, we can have no other feeling than that of astonishment at what he accomplished. As to dishonesty and deception, they were so foreign to his nature, that the very attempt to exonerate him from such a charge would be unjust to his memory. His edition of Plato, which has been most severely attacked, was, for two full centuries, the only one in which this author was

studied, while J. F. Fischer, Stephens's bitterest accuser, could, as an editor, make his way through only a few of the dialogues, and even these are now nearly forgotten.

HIS GREEK THESAURUS.

If all the other works of Stephens had passed into oblivion, his Thesaurus, a work of the most untiring diligence and unbounded research, distinguished alike for sound judgment and a deep knowledge of the language, would perpetuate his name with increasing glory till the latest times. Robert Stephens had performed a valuable service in his Thesaurus of the Latin language, and Charles Stephens had made important contributions to an accurate knowledge of the Ciceronian phraseology, by his Thesaurus of Cicero; but an incomparably more difficult task remained to be accomplished in a similar work, embracing the whole Greek language. Since the first rude attempt by John Craston, a Carmelite monk, of Placenza (1497), none but the deeply learned William Budaeus and Robert Constantine, a physician, had labored in the department of Greek lexicography with any considerable success. The immense materials to be collected and elaborated lay in huge and rude masses, and required a man of an ardent and active mind, who could devote his whole life to the work. It was the design of Robert Stephens to construct such a work, beginning at the very foundations; and that restless scholar made considerable preparations; but an early death interrupted him. This work he earnestly commended to his son, as the choicest and dearest inheritance, and he could not have committed it to better hands.

How it was, that Henry Stephens accomplished such a work is inexplicable,-inconceivable. Robert died in 1559, and twelve years from that time, on the first of March, 1572, the whole Thesaurus, in five folio volumes, was completed, and appeared in Geneva, and not, as many still believe, in Paris. This period was not one of leisure, devoted exclusively to that work in his study at Geneva. It was interrupted by repeated journeys in France and Germany; and, besides, every year brought forth from his hands some other production, frequently of no moderate compass. We will specify a part of them: Diodorus in 1559, Pindar and the Fragments of the other lyric poems