sufficient to quote the eulogium of the celebrated De Thou, who affirms that France and Christendom owe a deeper debt of gratitude to him than to their greatest captains; and that he has done more to immortalize the reign of Francis I., than all that monarch's own most famous exploits.

HENRY STEPHENS, the eldest son of Robert, was one of the most learned men that ever lived, and so voluminous an author, that if he had spent his life in writing books, he would have left us enough to admire in the evidence of his industry and fertility. But instead of this being the case, his days were passed partly amidst the toils of a laborious occupation, and partly under the pressure of misfortune and penury, and in wandering about in quest even of mere subsistence. He was born in 1528; and after having been carefully educated, and having travelled in Italy, England, and the Netherlands, appears to have accompanied his father when he left Paris for Geneva. He soon, however, returned to the former city; and although known to be attached, like his father, to the reformed faith, contrived to obtain permission to settle there as a printer, about the year 1557. From this time there continued to issue from his press a succession of editions of the classic writers, and other works, not only printed with the greatest care and correctness, but abounding in new and improved readings, which the labours and ingenuity of the editor had discovered, and almost always accompanied by learned prefaces and commentaries from his own pen, which are read by scholars to this day with profit and admiration. But the great work, to the compilation of which he devoted himself with especial ardour and assiduity, was his celebrated Thesaurus, or Dictionary of the Greek Language. This extraordinary performance was the fruit of twelve years of laborious application, aided by an

'acquaintance with his subject unrivalled among his contemporaries, and more extensive, perhaps, than has been possessed by any scholar since his time. The undertaking, however, had completely exhausted the pecuniary resources of the unfortunate author; and nothing could have saved him from ruin, except a much more rapid sale of the work than its magnitude, and necessarily high price, in almost any circumstances admitted. He struggled with his difficulties for some years, and might, perhaps, have eventually succeeded in surmounting them; when his hopes were on a sudden extinguished by the appearance of a rival publication, professing to be the work of John Scapula. This person had, it appears, been employed as a clerk, or corrector of the press, in Stephens's office, during the printing of the Thesaurus; and the story commonly told is, that while acting in this capacity he had secretly applied himself, with a base industry, to the compilation of an abridgment of that great work, which he was thus enabled to bring into the market in sufficient time to ruin the sale of the larger and dearer publication. As it seems unquestionable, however, that the first edition of Scapula's Dictionary did not make its appearance till seven years after the publication of that of Stephens, it is unnecessary to suppose the former to have acted quite so treacherously as is generally alleged, seeing that seven years were surely sufficient to finish an abridgment of a work which the original author had taken only twelve years to compile; and that, therefore, Scapula's performance may be very easily conceived to have been begun, not while he was superintending the printing of his master's Thesaurus, but some time after its publication. In making this remark, we do not mean to dispute either the justice of the charge of plagiarism which has been brought against

Scapula, or the fact, that the appearance of his book, notwithstanding the time which elapsed between its publication and that of the work from which it was stolen, considerably injured the sale of the latter. The truth is, that this abridgment, looked upon even as such, was a performance of very considerable ability, and much more commodious for consultation in ordinary cases than the larger work. It has ever since its appearance ranked as one of the most valuable auxiliaries to which recourse can be had in the study of Greek; and has, without doubt, contributed essentially to the diffusion of a knowledge of that language-a circumstance which makes one learned writer observe, that Scapula has done at least as much service to scholars in general as he did injury to his master; while another goes the length of maintaining, with more sensibility, it will be thought, to the interests of Greek learning than to the principles of morality and honourable conduct, that the glory of the author of so excellent a work ought in nowise to suffer diminution from any incorrectness of conduct he may have been guilty of in the preparation of it. It is not at all improbable that many copies of the large Thesaurus still remained unsold when the abridgment came out; while that event would completely put an end to the idea of a second edition, however necessary, to meet the great expenditure that had been incurred.

Stephens continued, for some years after this misfortune, to labour with unwearied diligence both as a printer and as an author, sustained partly by the patronage and promises of the king, Henry III., whom he soon found, however, to be more liberal of profession than performance. As a last resource, therefore, he left Paris, where the loss of his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, had recently added to his calamities, and spent several years in wandering from one

city to another, in the constantly disappointed hope of finding some means of re-establishing his ruined fortunes. We find him at one time at Orleans, then again at Paris, and then successively in Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary. At last, having fallen. sick at Lyons, he died there in an almshouse, in the year 1598, at the age of seventy.

The history of this great scholar has been often quoted as a signal illustration of the ill fortune not unfrequently attendant upon a life devoted to literature. Undoubtedly, learning and genius are not exempted from the disappointments and sorrows of this world, any more than ignorance; and sometimes the stroke of misfortune is more keenly felt from the sensibility which high intellectual cultivation has conferred upon the sufferer. In the mere pursuit of wealth, too, it may be that the disinterestedness and comparative forgetfulness of self, which an attachment to letters has a tendency to beget in him who is under its influence, shall sometimes leave him a little way behind a more eager competitor, by allowing him to overlook opportunities of which a more unscrupulous man would take advantage, or seducing him to turn aside after speculations promising him more of glory than of profit. This, we believe, is the most and the worst that can be said as to the natural tendency of learning to bring misfortunes upon the head of its possessor-which is all that is meant, we

suppose, by the " unhappy fate of the learned," and other phrases of like import. Now, even if nothing could be advanced from the same view of the subject to counterbalance all this, there would not be much in it; for it is no great disparagement of mental cultivation, which is prodigal of so many far higher and better rewards, to say, that it has no particular tendency to put money in a man's pocket, or even that it may sometimes chance to impede in a

slight degree the mere accumulation of treasure, by the affection which it creates for richer sources of enjoyment. If it should not bring overflowing wealth, which, at best, is but one of the means of happiness, it will bring happiness itself-wealth for the mind, if not for the purse. And as for the other accusation, that the more a man's nature is refined by education and a taste for knowledge, the more sensibly will he feel such calamities as may befall him, it amounts merely to this, that the more intense the life, the more delicate and shrinking the sensibility; the higher the elevation, the more dangerous the fall. If it be held that our nature approaches nearest to its perfection, when it most resembles that of a tortoise or a vegetable, then, for this reason, we might argue, on the same grounds, that intellectual cultivation is pernicious and unwise. But it is forgotten, throughout the whole of this dispute, that even in the world's ordinary pursuits and business, science and literature must give their cultivators, upon the whole at least, as many and as important advantages as they can possibly deprive them of. There is no probability at all in the supposition, that the possession of superior learning has generally had the effect of preventing its owners from succeeding in the world. On the contrary, it has most likely, in ninety-nine instances out of every hundred, materially contributed to their success, and procured for them a degree of advancement to which the generality of their less accomplished associates never ventured even to aspire. We might refer for proof to many of the names we have already had occasion to mention in these pages, as well as to many others we have yet to notice. The misfortunes of a man whose life has been principally devoted to literary pursuits, make a more touching narrative than those