and some of his friendships were warm, almost to the very verge of romance. On the other hand, although habitually pacific, and even shrinking, he was of ardent temperament and quick impulses; and he was more than once betrayed, in the ardour of learned controversy, into exhibitions of angry intemperance which will startle those who are unfamiliar with the tone of literary warfare in the seventeenth century. With all this, few men have more industriously recorded the events of their own lives. For the last seventeen years of his life he kept a diary, in which every individual day has its own entry. Nor do we know any diary which, so far as its scope extends, reveals more unreservedly every thought, every aspiration, and every emotion of the writer; and it is accompanied by a correspondence more than ordinarily varied, voluminous, and comprehensive. Perhaps, however, for the purposes of the general biography, these advantages are more apparent than real. It may be said with truth that Isaac Casaubon's business, interest, and pleasure in life began and ended among his books; that he was a scholar and almost nothing more; that in his own eyes the time not bestowed upon study was lost; that for him the history of his day, to be recorded in his diary, was simply the progress which he had that day made in the particular author or subject which he happened to have on hand; that to this one engrossing interest all else-wife, children, patrons, friends—were secondary; that while his domestic affections were undoubtedly of the tenderest kind, he was unable to divest himself of the habitual consciousness that they were at best but impediments of what was the true business of his life; in one word, that his biography, as a whole, is fairly epitomised in the lines which are inscribed on his monumental tablet in Westminster Abbey : 'Qui nosse vult Casaubonum, Such appears to be the view of Mr. Pattison; and accordingly the key-note of his Life of Isaac Casaubon' is the history of his studies. Of these it would be difficult to find a more sympathetic historian, or one more fitted to understand and appreciate the labours which he describes. He has used with great skill and industry every material available for the illustration of them; every entry in Casaubon's voluminous Diary, every letter in the bulky folio of his printed Epistles, every reply of his numerous correspondents in the seven volumes of the Burney MSS. Still we cannot help thinking that he has leant unduly upon this view of the life, and has passed too lightly what may be called the social side of the subject. It is plain that he has done this advisedly. We can hardly agree, as he seems to think, that the attempt to reproduce Casaubon in a broader light would have been hopeless. It is true that the materials for the purpose are imperfect. He had no Boswell to report his conversation, even if his conversation had been of that stamp which gives life and sparkle to a biography; nor is there among his correspondents any very persistent collector of gossip from whom might be gathered continuous materials for an independent sketch-for those numberless minute social details which constitute the really distinctive elements of personal character. Nevertheless we think that both the Diary and Letters, if carefully studied with this object, would have supplied here and there little incidents, casual but suggestive allusions, which would serve to give life to the purely literary portraiture, which would at least impart a degree of individuality to the sketch, and would invest Casaubon with somewhat of that living human element—that 'chequer-work of beam and shade '-which we miss in Mr. Pattison's page. A great deal of the picturesqueness of the best. biographies is due to the skilful use of trivial, and to ordinary eyes, very unimportant materials. Some of the most effective scenes in Mr. Forster's Life of Goldsmith' are not drawn from any detailed record, but are made up of little touches derived from sources entirely independent of each other; and although it would be vain to hope, under any possible circumstances, for a portraiture of Casaubon as lifelike and as characteristic as that of poor Goldsmith, there are many facts and phrases in Casaubon's Diary-numberless minor indications of disposition or of manner-which might have served, if used with skill, to individualise the man, and thus to give life and form to the colder interest which attaches to the studies of the scholar. Isaac Casaubon was born at Geneva, on February 18, 1559. His father, Arnold Casaubon, was a member of an ancient and in some branches noble family of Gascony, and was one of those Huguenot immigrants to that city, who were driven out from France by the outburst of popular fanaticism which followed the Edict of Châteaubriand in 1551. Isaac's mother was Jehanne Mergine Rousseau, a native of Dauphiné. The exact date of the settlement of Casaubon's parents at Geneva is unknown, but it must have been before December 1556, in which month their first child was baptised. Arnold Casaubon was admitted as habitant' of Geneva on January 11, 1557. Two years after the birth of Isaac his father accepted a call to be pastor of the Huguenot congregation at Crêst, in Dauphiné, where the childhood of Isaac was passed, and where his youthful studies were pursued, under such instruction from his father as their precarious and wandering life permitted. When he was nine years old he was able to speak and write Latin, but at this time his father was called away to attend the contingent sent by Dauphiné to the Huguenot army. Isaac's lessons were thus of necessity suspended, and on his father's return, three years later, the boy was found to have forgotten all the precocious learning of his early years. This enforced relaxation of study was in all likelihood the means of saving his health, if not his life. On his father's return to Crêst, Isaac resumed his studies with redoubled ardour; and even when the renewed troubles of 1572 drove the family to the hills, he continued his lessons in the cave in which they had taken shelter; in silvis 'miseri, ingenti tamen animo.' From this date till his nineteenth year, his father had but little time to devote to teaching, and Isaac pursued his studies in Greek and Latin without a teacher, and with but few books. He himself in his later life wrote to a friend that 'he could hardly say that he began his 'studies till he was twenty.' He claims to be a self-taught man, ὀψιμαθής and αὐτοδίδακτος. 6 Αὐτὸς ἐὼν ἐρέτης, αὐτόστολος, αὐτόματος νοῦς. The beginning of study 'to which he here refers was his being sent to the Academy of Geneva in 1578. His name is not to be found in the matriculation-book, the entry of names having apparently been neglected for the two years 1577-8; nor is there, indeed, any record of his student life. His preceptor in Greek was Franciscus Portus, a native Greek, who regarded him as his best pupil, and before his death in 1581 recommended him as best qualified to succeed to the chair. This recommendation was acquiesced in by the council, but not till June 5, 1582, a year after the death of Portus. Casaubon held the professorship for fourteen years. The conditions of studentlife and professorial emoluments and advantages at Geneva in the sixteenth century would seem strange in these days; for the former, attendance at 6 A.M. in summer, and 7 A.M. in winter; a scanty breakfast eaten on the benches of the schoolroom; a charcoal brazier to thaw the half-frozen fingers; unglazed windows, over which the pupils were permitted as a favour to paste paper; a daily morning sermon, and three Sunday discourses; for the latter high work,' which, however, did not mean high pay.' Casaubon's stipend was just 107. a year, with rooms in the College; upon which provision he had the courage to marry in little more than twelve months after his appointment. His wife, Marie Prolyot, the daughter, like himself, of refugee parents, survived the marriage little more than eighteen months. She died in April 1585, leaving him an infant daughter, who must have died early, as no mention is found of her in the papers of Casaubon. Scanty as was this provision, he was not left long in the peaceful enjoyment of it. During the obstinate struggle of Geneva with the Duke of Savoy the schools fell away so notably that retrenchment became a thing of necessity. The first step was amalgamation of professorships, and, in 1585, Casaubon was burdened with the class of History, in addition to his own. In 1586 the professorships were suspended altogether, and the suspension continued at least until after 1590. How Casaubon struggled through this gloomy interval is unknown. In 1586 his father died at Die, in Dauphiné, Isaac alone, of all his children, being absent from the death-bed. His own notice of this bereavement is touching and characteristic. He received the intelligence while he was writing his 'notes on the fifth book of Strabo, and he confides his sorrow to his commentary, as his companion and friend. The reader of Strabo to this day is called upon to sympathise with 'Casaubon in his bereavement, in the middle of a difficulty 'which he leaves unexplained for that cause. It is not only 6 6 filial affection lacerated by death premature and unexpected. 'It is disgust with his own occupation at the moment when brought into sudden contrast with the memory of a parent 'whose every thought and every hour had been given to sacred 'things and the cause of God. "There is a difficulty here" -in Strabo's account of the southern shore of the Italian peninsula, which I leave to others who have more leisure for "such work. I have neither time nor spirit for the discussion ""of such things. My mind, overwhelmed by the intelligence 'just received, has no more taste for these classical studies, ""and demands a different strain to soothe and heal it.” '* 6.66 It was in the midst of these troubles that Casaubon married (April 24, 1586) his second wife, Florence, daughter of the great printer Henri Estienne ;-attracted no doubt by her beauty and amiable qualities, but hardly less, Mr. Pattison suspects, by the learned collections of her father. If such a hope, however, had entered into his views, it was doomed to * Isaac Casaubon, p. 28. VOL. CXLIII. NO. CCXCI. Nor disappointment. Far from gaining through his marriage free access to his father-in-law's library, he was thenceforth excluded from it even more jealously than before. He never saw the inside of Estienne's library except on one occasion, when his wife and he had the courage to break it open. indeed had he any other material advantage from this marriage. Even the little dowry which was promised him with his wife remained still unpaid at Henri Estienne's death. But he was more than compensated by the devotion and fidelity of Florence herself. How tenderly Casaubon was attached to his wife is evident throughout his Diary. Even the moments of impatience, consigned to the pages of that secret record, may be taken to prove affection and general harmony. He certainly complains bitterly on one occasion of her interrupting him. But over and above Casaubon's constitutional fretfulness, we must make allowance for the irritability engendered by a life of hard reading against time. Casaubon thought every moment lost in which he was not acquiring knowledge. He resented intrusion as a cruel injury. To take up his time was to rob him of his only property. Casaubon's imagination was impressed in a painful degree with the truth of the dictum "ars longa, vita brevis." As though with a presentiment that the end would come to him early, he struggles, all through a life of harass, to have his time for himself. To his wife struggling also, in her way, with the cares of a large household and narrow means, he may naturally have seemed at times apathetic to her difficulties, and selfishly "burying himself in his books." This is the true interpretation of the exceptional allusions in the Diary. Its general tone is that of true affection. When she is away from him he writes to her by every post, and sometimes cannot give his attention to his books owing to the pain he suffers at her absence. June 1599: "dolor ex uxoris absentia studia mea impediverunt," " to-day I got "two letters from my wife. When will the day come that I shall see "her again?" Every illness of hers is recorded, and his time, of which he is avaricious, is devoted to waiting upon her. Except in being too prolific-they had eighteen children-she proved an excellent scholar's wife, according to the model which is still traditional in Germany. She did not enter into her husband's pursuits, but she encouraged and sustained his temper naturally given to despondency. She is his "steady partner in all his vexations," ep. 750. She relieves him of all domestic cares, so that as he complains to Archbishop Spotswood, "when she is absent from him, he finds himself lost and helpless." She is sure to find, if it can be found, a valuable volume belonging to Lingelsheim, "because whatever she knows I have at "heart, she has at heart." In 1613 he writes: "I know by expe"rience what a great help in our studies is an agreeable and dearly"beloved wife." There is something touchingly simple in Florence's entry in the "Ephemerides," the solitary entry in her handwriting, February 23, 1601. Casaubon had gone out of Paris for the night to |