Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/185

Rh and becoming a devouring passion which excluded all other ambition. He began to perceive that the editing Greek books was an employment more congenial to his peculiar powers than teaching. At Geneva he had first tried his hand in some notes on Diogenes Laertius and on Theocritus, of small account. His debut as an editor had been a complete Strabo (1587), of which he was so ashamed afterwards that he apologized for its crudity to Scaliger, calling it &quot; a miscarriage.&quot; This was followed by the text of Polyoenus, an editio princeps, 1589 ; a text of Aristotle, 1590 ; and a few notes contributed to Estienne s editions of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Pliny s Epistolce. It is not till we come to his edition of Theophrastus s Ckarac- teres, 1592, that we have a specimen of that peculiar style of illustrative commentary, at once apposite and profuse, which distinguishes Casaubon among annotators. At the time of his removal to Montpellier he was engaged upon what is the capital work of his life, his edition of, and commentary on, Athenaeus. In 1598 we find Casaubon at Lyons, superintending the passage of his Athenceus through the press. Here he lived in the house of De Vic, &quot; surintendant de la justice,&quot; a Catholic, but a man of acquirements, whose connections were with the circle of liberal Catholics in Paris. In the suite of De Vic, Casaubon made a flying visit to Pans, and was presented to Henry IV. The king was very gracious, and said something about employing Casaubon s services in the &quot; restoration &quot; of the fallen university of Paris. With the hopes thus excited he returned to Montpellier. In January 1599 he received a summons to repair to Paris. But the terms of the letter missive were so vague, that, though it bore the sign manual, Casaubon hesitated to act upon it. However, he resigned his chair at Montpellier, but instead of hastening to Paris, he lingered more than a year at Lyons, in De Vic s house, waiting for the appoint ment to a Paris professorship. None came, but instead there came a summons from De Vic, who was in Paris, to come to him in all haste on an affair of importance. The business proved to be the Fontainebleau Conference. Casaubon allowed himself to be persuaded to sit as one of the referees who were to adjudicate on the challenge sent to Du Plessis Mornay by Cardinal Duperron. By so doing he placed himself in a false position, as Scaliger said : &quot; Non debebat Casaubon interesse colloquio Plessiaeano ; erat asinus inter simias, doctus inter imperitos &quot; (Scali- gerana 2 a ). The issue was so contrived that the Protestant party could not but be pronounced to be in the wrong. By concurring in the decision, which was unfavourable to Du Plessis Mornay, Casaubon lent the prestige of his name to a court whose verdict would without him have been worthless, and confirmed the suspicions already current among the Reformed churches that, like his friend and patron Canaye de Fresne, he was meditating abjuration. From this time forward he became the object of the hopes and fears of the two religious parties ; the Catholics lavishing promises, and plying him with arguments ; the Reformed ministers insinuating that he was preparing to forsake a losing cause, and only higgling about his price. We now know enough of Casaubon s mental history to know how erroneous were these computations of his motives. But, at the time, it was not possible for the immediate parties to the bitter controversy to understand the intermediate position between Genevan Calvinism and Ultramontanism to which Casaubon s reading of the fathers had conducted him. Meantime the efforts of De Thou and the liberal Catholics to retain him in Paris were successful. The king repeated his invitation to Casaubon to settle in the capital, and assigned him a pension. No more was said about the university. The recent reform of tha university of Paris had closed its doors to all but Catholics ; and though the chairs of the College de France were not governed by the statutes of the university, public opinion ran so violently against heresy, that Henry IV. dared not appoint a Calvinist to a chair, even if he had desired to do so. But it was designed that Casaubon should succeed to the post of sub-Jibrarian of the royal library when it should become vacant, and a patent of the reversion was made out in his favour. In November 1 604, Jean Gosselin died in extreme old age ; and Casaubon succeeded him as sub librarian, with a salary of 400 livres in addition to his pension. In Paris Casaubon remained till 1610. These ten years were the brightest period of his life. He had attained the reputation of being, after Scaliger, the most learned man of the age, an age in which learning formed the sole standard of literary merit. He was placed above penury, though not in easy circumstances. He had such facilities for religious worship as a Huguenot could have, though he had to go out of the city to Hablon, and afterwards to Charenton, for them. He enjoyed the society of men of learning, or who took an interest in learned publications. He had the best opportunities of seeing men of letters from foreign countries as they passed through Paris. Above all, he had wealth of Greek books, both printed and in MS., the want of which he had felt painfully at Geneva and Montpellier, and which no other place but Paris could at that period have supplied. In spite of all these advantages we find Casaubon restless, and ever framing schemes for leaving Paris, and settling elsewhere. It was known that he was open to offers, and offers came to him from various quarters, from Nimes, from Heidelberg, from Sedan. His friends Lect and Diodati wished, rather than hoped, to get him back to Geneva. The causes of Casaubon s discomfort in Paris were various, but the principal source of uneasiness lay in his religion. The life of any Huguenot in Paris was hardly secure in these years, for it was doubtful if the police of the city was strong enough to protect them against any sudden uprising of the fanatical mob, always ready to re- enact the St Bartholomew. But Casaubon was exposed to persecution of another sort. Ever since the Fontainebleau Conference an impression prevailed that he was wavering. It was known that he rejected the outre anti-popery opinions current in the Reformed churches ; that he read the fathers, and wished for a church after the pattern of the primitive ages. He was given to understand that he could have a professorship only by recantation. When it was found that he could not be bought, he was plied by con troversy. Henry IV., who liked Casaubon personally, made a point of getting him to follow his own example. By the king s orders Duperron was untiring in his efforts to convert him. Casaubon s knowledge of the fathers was that of a scholar ; Duperron s that of an adroit polemist ; and the scholar was driven to admit that the polemist was often too hard for him. These encounters mostly took place in the king s library, over which the cardinal, in his capacity of aumonier, exercised some kind of authority ; and it was therefore impossible for Casaubon to avoid them. On the other hand the Huguenot theologians, and especially Du Moulin, chief pastor of the church of Paris, accused him of conceding too much, and of having departed already from the lines of strict Calvinistic orthodoxy. When the assassination of Henry IV. gave full rein to the Ultramontane party at court, the obsessions of Duperron became more importunate, and even menacing. It was now that Casaubon began to listen to overtures which had been faintly made before, from the bishops and the court of England. In October 1610 he came to this country in the suite of the ambassador, Lord Wotton of Marley. lie 