Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/560

 he was at any rate the first to show what conjecture could do towards restoring a hopelessly corrupt passage. The work, however, on which his fame as a scholar is most surely based is the Thesaurus Græce Linguæ. After making due allowance for the fact that considerable materials for the work had been already collected by his father, and that he received considerable assistance from the German scholar Sylburg, he is still entitled to the very highest praise as the producer of a work which was of the greatest service to scholarship and which in those early days of Greek learning could have been produced by no one but a giant. Two editions of the Thesaurus have been published in this century—at London by Valpy (1815–25) and at Paris by Didot (1331–63). It was one of Henri Estienne’s great merits that, unlike nearly all the French scholars who preceded him, he did not neglect his own language. While Bude wrote French with difficulty and considered it hardly a fit language for a scholar to use, Henri Estienne was loud in its praises and gave practical proof of its capabilities. Of his French writings three were devoted to this theme : (1) Conformité du Langage François avec le Grec (published in 1575, but without date; ed. L. Feugere, 1850), in which French is shown to have, among modern languages, the most affinity with Greek, the first of all languages ; (2) Deux Dialogues du nouveau François Italianizé (Geneva, 1578 ; reprinted, 2 vols., 1883), directed against the fashion prevailing in the court of Catherine de' Medici of using Italian words and forms ; (3) Project du Livre Intitulé de la Precellence du Langage François (Paris, 1579; ed. Feugere, 1853), which treats of the superiority of French to Italian. An interesting feature of this tract is the account of French proverbs, and, Henry III. having expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of some of them, Henri Estienne published, in 1594, (4) Les Premices on le I. livre des Proverbes Epigrammatizez (never reprinted and very rare). Finally, there remains (5) the Apologie pour Hérodote, the work by virtue of which Henri Estienne belongs to literature. The ostensible object of the book is to show that the strange stories in Herodotus may be paralleled by equally strange ones of modern times. Virtually it is a bitter satire on the writer’s age, especially on the Roman Church. Put together without any method, its extreme desultoriness makes it difficult to read continuously, but the numerous stories, collected partly from various literary sources, notably from the preachers Menot and Maillard, partly from the writer’s own multifarious experience, with which it is packed, make it an interesting commentary on the manners and fashions of the time. But satire, to be effective, should be either humorous or righteously indignant, and, while such humour as there is in the Apologie is decidedly heavy, the writer’s indignation is generally forgotten in his evident relish for scandal. The style is, after all, its chief merit. Though it bears evident traces of hurry, it is, like that of all Henri Estienne’s French writings, clear, easy, and vigorous, uniting the directness and sensuousness of the older writers with a suppleness and logical precision which at this time were almost new elements in French prose. An edition of the Apologie has recently been published by Liseux (ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879), after one of the only two copies of the original uncancelled edition that are known to exist. The very remarkable political pamphlet entitled Discours Merveilleux de la Vie et des Déportements de Catherine de Médicis, which appeared in 1574, has been ascribed to Henri Estienne, but the evidence both internal and external is conclusive against his being the author of it. Of his Latin writings the most worthy of notice are the De Latinitate falso suspccta (1576), the Pseudo-Cicero (1577), and the Nizoliodidascalus (1578), all three written against the Ciceronians, and the Francofordiense Emporium (1574), a panegyric on the Frankfort fair (reprinted with a French translation by Liseux, 1875). He also wrote a large quantity of indifferent Latin verses, including a long poem entitled Musa Monitrix Principum (Basel, 1590).

STEPHENS, ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1812–1883), American statesman, was born in Georgia, February 11, 1812. In spite of many difficulties imposed by poverty and ill-health, he became a lawyer and politician of great reputation and popularity. He was one of the Whig leaders of his State until about 1850, and then drifted into the Democratic party through the rising discussions of slavery, serving in Congress from 1843 until 1859. In 1860 he opposed secession warmly; but when his State had seceded he “followed his State,” and was elected vice-president of the Confederate States. Whatever there was of opposition to the despotic tendencies of Jefferson Davis gathered around Stephens as a centre ; and the vice-president was never an influential member of the Confederate administration. His popularity in Georgia was unbounded, and he was elected representative in Congress in 1877-82, and governor, 1882-83, dying in office. In person he was small and extremely emaciated, seldom weighing more than 90 pounds, and always in delicate health ; but his powers as an orator were remarkable. Cleveland’s A. H. Stephens in Public and Private and Johnston and Browne’s Life of A. H. Stephens are the main authorities for Stephens’s life. His political opinions are fully given in his work, The War between the States.

STEPHENS, JOHN LLOYD (1805–1852), traveller, was born 28th November 1805, at Shrewsbury, N.J., United States. Having been admitted to the bar, he practised his profession for about eight years in New York city. In 1834, the state of his health rendering it advisable that he should travel, he visited Europe, and for two years made a tour through many countries of that continent, extending his travels to Egypt and Syria. On his return to New York he published (under the name of "George" Stephens) in 1837 Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petr&a, and the Holy Land. This work was followed next year by the publication, also in two volumes, of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland. In 1839 Stephens arranged with Frederick Catherwood of London, who had accompanied him on some of his travels, and illustrated the above-mentioned publications, that they should make an exploration together in Central America, with a view to discovering and examining ancient art said to exist in the dense forests of that tropical region. Stephens, meantime, was appointed United States minister to Central America. The joint travels of Stephens and F. Catherwood occupied some eight months in 1839 and 1840. As the result of these researches Stephens published in 1841 Incidents of Travels in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. In the autumn of 1841 the two travellers made a second exploration of Yucatan, the fruits of which were gathered up in a work published by Stephens in 1843, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. This work describes the most extensive travels executed till that date by a stranger in the peninsula, and, as the author claims, “contains account of visits to forty-four ruined cities or places in which remains or vestiges of ancient populations were found.” It fixed the sites of many prehistoric cities and supplied correct delineations of their existing monuments. This publication enjoyed a wide popularity, and made such an impression on Prescott the historian that he urged Stephens to prosecute his researches of American antiquities in Peru. Stephens was, however, disinclined to so distant an expedition. He became a director of the newly-formed American Ocean Steam Navigation Company, which established the first American line of trans-Atlantic steamships. He visited Panama to reconnoitre the ground with a view to the construction of a railway across the isthmus, and, first as vice-president and then as president of the Panama Railway Company, spent the greater part of two years in superintending the project. His health was, however, entirely undermined by his long and incautious exposure to the deadly climate of Central America, and he died at New York on the 10th October 1852.

Stephens made no pretensions to the title of a scientific traveller. He had, however, a natural curiosity after all kinds of human knowledge, shrewd and accurate powers of observation, and a more than common measure of perseverance, tact, and resource.