Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/507

Rh R E U R E U 489 certainly not written till the last ten years of his life, and they do not go further than the year 1655. They are addressed in the form of narrative to a lady who is not known, though guesses have been made at her identity. In the beginning there are some gaps. They display, in a rather irregular style and with some oddities of dialect and phrase, extraordinary narrative skill and a high degree of ability in that special art of the 17th century the drawing of verbal portraits or characters. Few things of the kind are superior to the sketch of the early barri- cade of the Fronde in which the writer had so great a share, the hesitations of the court, the bold adventure of the coadjutor himself into the palace, and the final triumph of the insurgents. Dumas, who has drawn from this passage one of his very best scenes in Vingt Ans apres, has done little but throw Retz into dialogue and amplify his language and incidents. Besides these memoirs and the very striking youthful essay of the Conjuration de Fiesque, Retz has left diplomatic papers, sermons, Mazarinades, and correspondence in some con- siderable quantity. The Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz were first published in a very imperfect condition in 1717 at Nancy. The first satisfactory edition was that which appeared in the twenty -fourth volume of the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat (Paris, 1836). They were then re-edited from the autograph manuscript by Geruzez (Paris, 1844), and by Champollion-Figeac with the Mazarinades, &c. (Paris, 1859). In 1870 a complete edition of the works of Retz was begun by M. Feillet in the collection of Grands ficri-vains. The editor dying, this passed into the hands of M. Gourdault and then into those of M. Chantelauze, who had already published studies on the connexion of St Vincent de Paul with the Gondi family, &c. The edition is still incomplete, and the critical biography of Retz which it may be expected to contain is much wanted. (G. SA. ) REUBEN (13-lsn, 'Povpw P<w0tX), eldest son of Jacob and of Leah (Gen. xxix. 32). Reuben plays no great part in the patriarchal legend ; in the Elohistic version of the story of Joseph he appears in a somewhat favourable light, but in Gen. xxxv. 22 he is charged with a grave offence, which in Gen. xlix. 4 is given as a reason why the tribe which called him father did not take in Hebrew history the place proper to its seniority. The Reubenites settled east of the Jordan on the Moabite border. In Judges v. they are described as a pastoral tribe which took no share in the patriotic movement under Barak and Deborah. The Moabites soon proved too strong for them (comp. MOAB, vol. xvi. p. 534) and overspread their country (comp. Isa. chap. xv. sq. with Josh. xiii. 16 sq.); in Deut. xxxiii. 6 the tribe appears as threatened with extinction. Dathan and Abiram (Num. xvi., Deut. xi. 6), whom the earth swal- lowed up for rebellion against Moses, were Reubenites. After this time only the book of Chronicles has any- thing considerable to relate of the tribe (1 Chron. v. 1 sq., 18 sg.). REUCHLIN, JOHN (1455-1522), the first great German humanist and the restorer of Hebrew and in large measure also of Greek letters among his countrymen, was born February 22, 1455, at Pforzheim in the Black Forest, where his father was intendant of the Dominican monastery. In the pedantic taste of his time the name was Grsecized by his Italian friends into Capnion, a form which Reuchlin himself uses as a sort of transparent mask when he introduces himself as an interlocutor in the De Verbo Mirifico. For his native place Reuchlin always retained an affection ; he constantly writes himself Phorcensis, and in the De Verbo, when he tells how he had sojourned at Paris and almost all the great schools of France and Germany, as well as at several Italian seats of learning and finally at Rome, the "caput studiorum," he does not forget to ascribe to Pforzheim his first disposition to letters. Here he began his Latin studies in the monastery school, and, though in 1470 he was a short time in Freiburg, that university seems to have taught him little. Reuchlin's career as .a scholar appears to have turned almost on an accident; his fine voice gained him a place in the household of the margrave of Baden, and by and by, having already some reputation as a Latinist, he was chosen to accompany to the university of Paris the third son of the prince, a lad some years his junior, who was destined for an ecclesiastical career. This new connexion lasted but a year or so, but it determined the course of Reuchlin's life. He now began to learn Greek, which had been taught in the French capital since 1470, and he also attached himself to the leader of the Paris realists, John a Lapide, a really worthy and learned man, whom he presently followed to the vigorous young university of Basel (1474). At Basel Reuchlin took his master's degree (1477), and began to lecture with success, teaching a more classical Latin than was then common in German schools, and also explaining Aristotle in Greek. His studies in this language had been continued at Basel under Andronicus Contoblacas, and here too he formed the acquaintance of the bookseller Amorbach, for whom he prepared a Latin lexicon ( Vocabularius Breviloquus, 1st ed. 1475-76), which did good service in its time and ran through many editions. This first publication and Reuchlin's account of his teaching at Basel in a letter to Cardinal Hadrian, February 1518, show that he had already found the work which in a larger sphere occupied his whole life. He was no original genius, but a born teacher. He had neither brilliant literary power like Erasmus nor epoch-making ideas like Luther, but he was the great master of all Germany, guiding his countrymen to sound learning, first in Latin and then in Greek and in Hebrew. But this work of teaching was not to be done mainly from the professor's chair. Reuchlin soon left Basel to seek further Greek training with George Hieronymus at Paris, and learn to write a fair Greek hand that he might support himself by copying MSS. And now he felt that he must choose a profession. His choice fell on law, and he was thus led to the great school of Orleans (1478), and finally to Poitiers, where he became licentiate in July 1481, and so could look forward to honourable office in his native country, where he could pursue his scholarly tastes in an independent position. From Poitiers Reuchlin came in December 1481 to Tiibingen. There he found friends to recommend him to Count Eberhard of Wiirtemberg, who was about to journey to Italy and required an interpreter. Reuchlin was selected, and in February 1482 left Stuttgart for Florence and Rome. The journey lasted but a few months, but it brought the German scholar into contact with several learned Italians, and his connexion with the count became permanent. On his return to Stuttgart he was named Geheimrath, and soon after he became doctor of laws and assessor in the high court. About this time he appears to have married, but little is known of hit; married life. He left no children ; but in later years his sister's grandson Melanchthon was almost as a son to him till the Reformation estranged them. Reuchlin's life at Stuttgart was often broken by important missions, and in 1490 he was again in Italy. Here he saw Pico, to whose Cabbalistic doctrines he afterwards became heir, and also made the friendship of the pope's privy secretary, Questemberg, which was of service to him in his later troubles. Again in 1492 he was employed on an embassy to the emperor at Linz, and here he began to read Hebrew with the kaiser's Jewish physician Loans. He knew something of this language before, but Loans's instruction laid the basis of that thorough knowledge which he afterwards improved on his third visit to Rome in 1498 by the instruction of Obadiah Sforno of Ceseno.. XX. 62