42 CHAPTER XXVI. GERMANY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. (i) FABRICIUS, Gesner, Ernesti, Reiske. Leibnitz IN the year 1700 the earliest of German Academies was founded in Berlin. The intellectual originator of that Academy was the many-sided man of genius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), whose scholarly tastes are represented by his Latin poems1, by his speculations on the origin of language, and by his prompting the empress Catharine of Russia to collect the vocabularies of many nations3. At the age of eight, he had taught himself Latin with the aid of an illustrated edition of Livy and the Opus Chronologicum (1605) of Calvisius. Before he was twelve, he wrote Latin verses and had begun Greek. At Jena, in 1663, he attacked the imitators of the harsh and obscure Latinity of Lipsius', and published a treatise in which he proposed to prove the spuriousness of the 'Epistles of Phalaris' on the ground of their being written in the Attic dialect and in the style of Lucian. In 1670 he wrote an essay on philosophic style as an introduction to an edition of the Antibarbarus of Nizolius; and in Paris, three years later, during his correspondence with Huet on a proposed edition of Martianus Capella, he protested against the contempt for Plato and Aristotle 1 Roenickius, Carmina Latina Selectiora (1748), 3 f. 2 Benley, Gesch. der Sprachwissenschaft, 243 f; Haupt, Opusc. III i 215 222 (Bursian, i 358 n). 3 Max Müller's Lectures, i 144 n. 285. Julian Schmidt, Gesch. des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland von Leibnitz bis Lessings Tod (1681—1781), i 101. 5 Haupt, Opusc. 111 i 219. Sorley on Leibnitz, in Enc. Brit.; ii 146 n. 2 supra. S. III. expressed by certain students of the natural sciences'. To the end of his life he could still recite long passages from Virgil. A celebrated theologian of Augsburg, J. J. Brucker (16961770), author of the Historia Critica Philosophiae, was elected a member of the Berlin Academy in 1731, but, in the first half of the century, the interests of classical learning were far less promoted by the Academy than by masters of German schools, who studied the Classics in connexion with the general history of literature. J. A. Fabricius Foremost among these was Johann Albert Fabricius (16681736), a student in the university of his native town of Leipzig, who, from 1699 to 1711, was successively an assistant-master and a head-master at Hamburg. He had already produced, in the three small volumes of his Bibliotheca Latina, a comprehensive biographical and bibliographical work on the Latin literature of the classical period (1697). He was still holding a scholastic appointment, when he began his far more extensive Bibliotheca Graeca, a work that, in the course of fourteen quarto volumes, traverses the whole range of Greek literature down to the fall of Constantinople (1705-28). It is founded, so far as possible, on a first-hand knowledge of every edition quoted, and it has supplied the basis for all subsequent histories of Greek Literature. The 350 quarto pages, assigned to Homer alone, include indices to all the authors cited in the scholia and in Eustathius. The earlier work on Latin literature was subsequently continued in the five volumes of the Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis (1734)*, while the modern literature of Classical Antiquities was surveyed in the Bibliotheca Antiquaria (1713-6), and that of Numismatics in a new edition of Banduri's Bibliotheca Nummaria (1719). The varied learning and indomitable industry displayed in these four and twenty volumes may fairly entitle their author to be regarded as the modern Didymus. But the list of his published works is not yet 1 Haupt, /. c., 221 f; cp. Pattison, Essays, i 278. 2 Finally revised ed. 1721; also in two vols. quarto, Venice, 1728 (better than Ernesti's ed. of 1773 f), and in six vols. Florence, 1858. Ed. Harless in 12 vols. 1790-1809 (incomplete); index, 1838. Suppl. by Schöttgen, 1746; also ed. Mansi, Padua, 1754 exhausted. He edited Sextus Empiricus, the life of Proclus by Marinus, and the commentary of Chalcidius on Plato's Timaeus1, while his valuable edition of Dion Cassius, including a full commentary, was completed after his death by his son-in-law and biographer, Reimar2. Bergler Fabricius counted among his correspondents the leading scholars of his age. He was assisted in the compilation of the Bibliotheca Latina by the Danish scholar, Christian Falster3; and, in that of the Bibliotheca Graeca, by Küster*. He was also largely aided in the latter by Stephan Bergler (c. 1680—c. 1746), who, by his knowledge of Greek, might have attained a place among the foremost scholars of his time, but was reduced to the level of a literary hack by an insatiable craving for drink. Early in the century he was a corrector of proofs at Leipzig; in 1705 he left for Amsterdam, where he produced indices to the edition of Pollux begun by Lederlin and continued by Hemsterhuys, and himself completed Lederlin's edition of Homer (1707). We next find him helping Fabricius at Hamburg and elsewhere. During his second stay at Leipzig, he produced an excellent edition of Alciphron (1715); his edition of Aristophanes was published after his death by the younger Burman (1760); his work on Herodotus is represented only by some critical notes in the edition of Jacob Gronovius (1715); while his Latin translation of Herodian was not published until 1789. His rendering of a modern Greek work on moral obligations led to his being invited to undertake the tuition of the author's sons at Bucharest, a position for which his intemperate habits made him peculiarly unfit. However, he was thus enabled to send Fabricius a few notes on the Greek мss in his patron's library. After this he disappears from view. On his patron's death in 1730, he is said to have left for Constantinople, and to have adopted the religion of Islam. If so, he probably ended his days in perfect sobriety". Antiquarian and legal lore was the domain of Fabricius' contemporary, Christian Gottlieb Schwarz (1675-1751), who by his wide and varied learning raised the reputation of the university of Schwarz Altdorf. A large part of that learning lies buried in a vast number of programs, and in the exegetical and critical notes to an edition of the Panegyric of the younger Pliny (1746)7. 1 Printed with the ed. of Hippolytus. H. S. Reimar, De Vita et Scriptis J. A. F. Commentarius, Hamburg, 1737; Bursian i 360-2; for portrait see Frontispiece to this volume. 3 Cp. chap. xxxviii init. ii 445 supra. • Nic. Mavrokordatos, περὶ τῶν καθηκόντων, 1722. • Cp. Burman's Aristophanes, i 2–14; Reimar, De Vita Fabricii, 169 f, 222 f; Saxe, Onom. vi 78—81; Bursian, i 362-4. 7 Bursian, i 371 f. expressed by certain students of the natural sciences'. To the end of his life he could still recite long passages from Virgil. A celebrated theologian of Augsburg, J. J. Brucker (1696— 1770), author of the Historia Critica Philosophiae, was elected a member of the Berlin Academy in 1731, but, in the first half of the century, the interests of classical learning were far less promoted by the Academy than by masters of German schools, who studied the Classics in connexion with the general history of literature. Foremost among these was Johann Albert Fabricius (16681736), a student in the university of his native town J. A. Fabricius of Leipzig, who, from 1699 to 1711, was successively an assistant-master and a head-master at Hamburg. He had already produced, in the three small volumes of his Bibliotheca Latina, a comprehensive biographical and bibliographical work on the Latin literature of the classical period (1697). He was still holding a scholastic appointment, when he began his far more extensive Bibliotheca Graeca, a work that, in the course of fourteen quarto volumes, traverses the whole range of Greek literature down to the fall of Constantinople (1705-28). It is founded, so far as possible, on a first-hand knowledge of every edition quoted, and it has supplied the basis for all subsequent histories of Greek Literature. The 350 quarto pages, assigned to Homer alone, include indices to all the authors cited in the scholia and in Eustathius. The earlier work on Latin literature was subsequently continued in the five volumes of the Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis (1734)*, while the modern literature of Classical Antiquities was surveyed in the Bibliotheca Antiquaria (1713-6), and that of Numismatics in a new edition of Banduri's Bibliotheca Nummaria (1719). The varied learning and indomitable industry displayed in these four and twenty volumes may fairly entitle their author to be regarded as the modern Didymus. But the list of his published works is not yet 1 Haupt, /. c., 221 f; cp. Pattison, Essays, i 278. Finally revised ed. 1721; also in two vols. quarto, Venice, 1728 (better than Ernesti's ed. of 1773 f), and in six vols. Florence, 1858. 3 Ed. Harless in 12 vols. 1790-1809 (incomplete); index, 1838. Suppl. by Schöttgen, 1746; also ed. Mansi, Padua, 1754. exhausted. He edited Sextus Empiricus, the life of Proclus by Marinus, and the commentary of Chalcidius on Plato's Timaeus1, while his valuable edition of Dion Cassius, including a full commentary, was completed after his death by his son-in-law and biographer, Reimar?. Bergler Fabricius counted among his correspondents the leading scholars of his age. He was assisted in the compilation of the Bibliotheca Latina by the Danish scholar, Christian Falster3; and, in that of the Bibliotheca Graeca, by Küster1. He was also largely aided in the latter by Stephan Bergler (c. 1680—c. 1746), who, by his knowledge of Greek, might have attained a place among the foremost scholars of his time, but was reduced to the level of a literary hack by an insatiable craving for drink. Early in the century he was a corrector of proofs at Leipzig; in 1705 he left for Amsterdam, where he produced indices to the edition of Pollux begun by Lederlin and continued by Hemsterhuys, and himself completed Lederlin's edition of Homer (1707). We next find him helping Fabricius at Hamburg and elsewhere. During his second stay at Leipzig, he produced an excellent edition of Alciphron (1715); his edition of Aristophanes was published after his death by the younger Burman (1760); his work on Herudotus is represented only by some critical notes in the edition of Jacob Gronovius (1715); while his Latin translation of Herodian was not published until 1789. His rendering of a modern Greek work on moral obligations led to his being invited to undertake the tuition of the author's sons at Bucharest, a position for which his intemperate habits made him peculiarly unfit. However, he was thus enabled to send Fabricius a few notes on the Greek MSS in his patron's library. After this he disappears from view. On his patron's death in 1730, he is said to have left for Constantinople, and to have adopted the religion of Islam. If so, he probably ended his days in perfect sobriety". Antiquarian and legal lore was the domain of Fabricius' contemporary, Christian Gottlieb Schwarz (1675-1751), who by his wide and varied learning raised the reputation of the university of Schwarz Altdorf. A large part of that learning lies buried in a vast number of programs, and in the exegetical and critical notes to an edition of the Panegyric of the younger Pliny (1746)7. 1 Printed with the ed. of Hippolytus. 2 H. S. Reimar, De Vita et Scriptis J. A. F. Commentarius, Hamburg, 1737; Bursian i 360-2; for portrait see Frontispiece to this volume. 3 Cp. chap. xxxviii init. • ii 445 supra. • Nic. Mavrokordatos, περὶ τῶν καθηκόντων, 1722. Cp. Burman's Aristophanes, i 2-14; Reimar, De Vita Fabricii, 169 f, 222 f; Saxe, Onom. vi 78—81; Bursian, i 362-4. 7 Bursian, i 371 f. |