Learning. In the Italian age of scholarship the chief aim (as we have noticed) has been the imitation of classical models of style and of life. Erasmus Century XVI, Italy Spain Portugal An important link between the Revival of Learning in Italy and its diffusion in Europe has been found in the widely extended influence of the cosmopolitan scholar, Erasmus. The sixteenth century in Italy includes the names of Victorius and Robortelli, of Sigonius and Muretus; it is marked by a special interest in Aristotle's treatise On the Art of Poetry, and also by the eager study of classical archaeology. Italy has points of contact with Spain in the persons of Antonio of Lebrixa and Agostino of Saragossa, and with Portugal in that of Achilles Statius. Greek learning, as we have seen, was transmitted from Italy to France by Gregorius Tifernas, by John Lascaris and by Jerome Aleander. The French period of classical learning, with its many-sided erudition, begins with Budaeus, the inspirer of the foundation of the Collège de France. Budaeus is soon followed by the printer-scholars Robert and Henri Estienne, the authors of the great Thesauri of Latin and of Greek. The elder Scaliger, an immigrant from Italy, is succeeded by Lambinus, by the younger and greater Scaliger, and by Casaubon. France The French period In the Netherlands the influence of Erasmus is best seen in his fostering of the Collegium Trilingue of Louvain. In the period between 1400 and the foundation of Netherlands England the university of Leyden in 1575, the interests of education are well represented by Vivès, those of Greek scholarship by Canter who died in 1575, and those of Latin by Lipsius, who lived on to 1606. In England the fifteenth century is marked by the visits of Poggio and Aeneas Sylvius, and by the early renaissance which had its source in the Latin teaching of Guarino at Ferrara. In the same century the study of Greek was begun by the Benedictine monk, William of Selling, and was continued by his nephew, Linacre, and by Grocyn, and, in the sixteenth century, by Sir John Cheke and his contemporaries. In Scotland, during the same century, the foremost name in scholar Germany ship was that of Buchanan. The spread of learning in Germany is associated with the names of Agricola and Reuchlin, followed by those of able and industrious preceptors such as Melanchthon and Camerarius and Sturm, and by erudite editors such as Xylander and Sylburg. Netherlands England The seventeenth century in Italy has proved to be mainly an age of archaeologists and of imitators of the Latin Century XVII, Italy poets. In France its greatest names are Salmasius, France Du Cange, and Mabillon. In the Netherlands Lipsius was succeeded in 1593 by Scaliger at Leyden, which was also the principal scene of the labours of Salmasius. In the period between 1575 and 1700, the natives of the Netherlands included Gerard Vossius and Meursius, the elder and the younger Heinsius, with Gronovius, Graevius, and Perizonius. In the seventeenth century in England we have had Savile and Gataker and Selden, with the Cambridge Platonists, and the scholarly poets, Milton and Cowley and Dryden. Towards its close we have seen the stars of Dodwell and of Barnes beginning to grow pale before the rising of the sun of Bentley. In the same century in Germany we have a Germany link with England and the Netherlands in the name of Gruter, while erudition was well represented by the Polyhistor of Morhof. A school of Roman history flourished at Strassburg. Improved text-books are associated with the name of Cellarius, and we have points of contact with several of the countries of Europe in the cosmopolitan Spanheim. Century Italy France The eighteenth century in Italy is marked, in Latin lexicography, by the great name of Forcellini; in Greek chronology, by Corsini, and, in Italian history, by Muratori. France claims Montfaucon and a long array of learned archaeologists, while a knowledge of the old Greek world was popularised by Barthélemy. Alsace was the home of able scholars, such as Brunck and Schweighäuser. The century closes with Villoison, whose publication of the Venetian Scholia to the Iliad led to the opening of a new era in Homeric controversy. In England, in the first half of the century, our greatest name is that of Bentley, and in the second England The English and Dutch period that of Porson. It is the age of historical and literary, as well as verbal, criticism. Netherlands In the Netherlands, the native land of the learned Latinists, Burman and Drakenborch, it was under the influence of Bentley that Hemsterhuys attained his mastery of Greek. Hemsterhuys handed on the tradition to Valckenaer and to Ruhnken, who in his turn was succeeded by Wyttenbach. The friendly relations between the English and Dutch scholars of this age have led to the eighteenth century being regarded as the English and Dutch period of scholarship. Germany Meanwhile, Germany is represented by the learned Fabricius, by the lexicographers Gesner, Scheller and J. G. Schneider, by the Latin scholar Ernesti, and the self-taught Greek scholar Reiske. An intelligent interest in the history and criticism of ancient art is awakened by Winckelmann and Lessing; Herder becomes one of the harbingers of the New Humanism; and a new era in classical learning is opened by Heyne at Göttingen. Late in the eighteenth century the Homeric controversy is raised anew by F. A. Wolf, and is carried on with varying fortunes during the whole of the nineteenth century. The whole of that century belongs to the German period, which is characterised by the systematic or encyclopaedic type of classical learning embodied in the term Alterthumswissenschaft. Century XIX, Germany The German period The early part of the century is the age of Wolf's contemporaries, Voss and Jacobs, Humboldt and the Schlegels; of Heeren and Niebuhr, Schleiermacher and Heindorf, Buttmann and Bekker. After the death of Wolf two rival schools of classical learning confront one another in the grammatical and critical school of Hermann, and the historical and antiquarian school of Boeckh. The school and the traditions of Hermann are represented by Lobeck, Passow, Meineke, Lachmann, Lehrs, Spengel, Ritschl, Halm, Sauppe, Nauck, Ribbeck, and Blass. The school of Boeckh, who had been preceded by Niebuhr and had Welcker for his great contemporary, is ably represented by his pupils K. O. Müller and Bernhardy. Among independent scholars with a certain affinity with this school are the archaeologists, Jahn (a pupil of Hermann, as well as of Boeckh), and Brunn and Furtwängler; the historians, Curtius and Mommsen; the geographers, Kiepert and Bursian; mythologists such as Preller; students of ancient music such as Westphal; investigators of ancient religions such as Usener and Rohde. In the Science of Language the principal names include Bopp and Benfey, Corssen and G. Curtius, Schleicher and Steinthal, and the 'New Grammarians' of the present generation. In France the foremost names have been those of Boissonade and Quicherat, Egger and Thurot, Riemann and Graux, together with a long line of geographers, historians and archaeologists, whose work has been largely inspired by the French School of Athens. Classical archaeology has in fact proved the main strength, and the very France salvation of French scholarship. In Holland, the Holland greatest name has been that of Cobet, while Belgium Belgium is best represented by Thonissen and Willems, the Scandinavia Scandinavian nations by Madvig, Greece by Koraës, Greece Russia by a group of scholars beginning with Russia Graefe and ending with Iernstedt, and Hungary Hungary by Télfy and Abel. In England the beginning England and the end of the century have been marked at Cambridge by the names of Porson and Jebb, at Oxford by those of Elmsley and Monro, while the outer world claims the great name of Grote. In the United States of America Latin was well represented by Lane and by others at Harvard, and Greek at Yale by Seymour, whose latest publication dealt with the earliest possible theme of classical study, Life in the Homeric Age. The present work began with the study of Homer, and with the study of Homer it ends. The great classical authors live for ever, but they are interpreted anew by the scholars of each succeeding generation. In our own times, the Homeric controversy has proved as immortal as the Homeric poems, which, in the language of an English critic, remain unsurpassed in the poetry of the world:— United States of America Read Homer once, and you can read no more; 1 John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, An Essay upon Poetry (1682), Works, i 146, ed. 1723. ADDENDA. Multum nuper amisimus. Quint. x i 90. Zeller THE veteran historian of Greek philosophy, Eduard Zeller (1814 -1908), a native of Würtemberg, was educated at the seminary of Maulbronn and at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin. After he had held professorships of Theology at Bern and at Marburg, the liberality of his opinions led to his being transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy, and he filled a professorship in that Faculty for ten years at Heidelberg (1862-72) and for twenty-two in Berlin (1872-94). Even in his life-time he received the distinction of a statue outside the Brandenburger Thor, the counterpart in Berlin of the Propylaea at Athens. The evening of his days he spent at Stuttgart, the capital of the land that gave him birth. He is remembered as the author of the standard work in three volumes on the 'Philosophy of the Greeks", together with an outline of that subject in a single volume'. His principal work was preceded by his Platonische Studien (1839), and followed by his annotated translation of Plato's Symposium, by his collected Vorträge and Abhandlungen, and by a volume on 'Religion and Philosophy among the Romans' (1866). One of his numerous subsequent publications on questions connected with the history of Greek philosophy discusses Dr Henry Jackson's papers on Plato's earlier and later theory of ideas; and the closing words of the paper, in which Dr Jackson, in opposition to Bonitz and Zeller, 97). 1 1844-52; vol. i, 1902; ii, 1889; iii, 1902; E.T. in 6 vols. (18682 1883; 19057. 4 S. Ber. Berlin Acad. 1887, 197—220 (Bursian lxvii 43); list in Index to Bursian's Jahresb. 1873-95. |