66 I. Who," says Burman, "would not admire the CHAP. liberal erudition and unpretending modesty of the learned of that age, who, worn as they were by those long and weary labours of which they freely complain in their correspondence with each other, though they knew that such occupations as these could gain for them no better name than that of common clerks or mere drudges, yet hesitated not to abandon for the advantage of the public those pursuits which a higher fame might be expected to reward? Who in these times would imitate the generosity of Scaliger, who, when he might have ascribed to himself this addition to the work of Smetius, gave away his own right to Gruter, and declined to let his name be prefixed either to the index which he had wholly compiled, or to the many observations by which he corrects and explains the inscriptions, and desired, in recompence for the industry of Gruter, that he alone should pass with posterity as the author of the work?” * Gruter, it is observed by Le Clerc, has committed many faults: he often repeats the same inscriptions, and still more frequently has printed them from erroneous copies; his quotations from authors, in whom inscriptions are found, sometimes want exactness; finally, for which he could not well be answerable, a vast many have since been brought to light. In consequence of the publication of * Id. p. 6. + Bibl. Choisie, vol. xiv. p. 51. Burman, ubi supra, gives a strange reason for reprinting Gruter's Inscriptions with all their blemishes, even the repetitions; namely, that it was convenient to preserve the number of pages which had been so CHAP. I. Works on Gruter's Inscriptions, the learned began with incredible zeal to examine old marbles for inscriptions, and to insert them in any work that had reference to antiquity. Reinesius collected as many as make a respectable supplement.* But a sort of æra in lapidary learning was made by Selden's description, in 1629, of the marbles, brought by the Earl of Arundel from Greece, and which now belong to the university of Oxford. These contain a chronology of the early times of Greece, on which great reliance has often been placed, though their antiquity is not accounted very high in comparison with those times. 27. The Jesuit Donati published, in 1633, Roma tiquity. vetus et nova, which is not only much superior to any thing previously written on the antiquities of the city, but is preferred by some competent judges to the later and more known work of Nardini. Both these will be found, with others of an earlier date, in the third and fourth volumes of Grævius. The tenth volume of the same collection contains a translation from the history of the Great Roads of the Roman Empire, published in French by Nicolas Bergier in 1622; ill arranged, it has been said, and diffuse, according to the custom of his age, but inferior, Grævius declares, in variety of learning to no one work that he has inserted in his numerous volumes. Guther, whose treatise on the pontifical law of Rome appears in the fifth volume, was, says the editor, "a man of various and extended reading, who had made extracts from every class of writers, but had not always digested his learning or weighed what he wrote. * Burman, ubi supra. I. Hence much has been found open to criticism in СНАР. his writings, and there remains a sufficient harvest of the same kind for any one who should care to undertake it." The best work on Roman dress is by Octavius Ferrarius, published partly in 1642, partly in 1654. This has been called superficial by Spanheim; but Grævius, and several other men of learning, bestow more praise.* The Isiac tablet, covered with emblems of Egyptian antiquity, was illustrated by Pignoria, in a work bearing different titles in the successive editions from 1605; and his explanations are still considered probable. Pignoria's other writings were also in high esteem with the antiquaries. It would be tedious to enumerate the less important productions of this kind. A minute and scrupulous criticism, it has been said, distinguished the antiquaries of the seventeenth century. Without, perhaps, the comprehensive views of Sigonius and Panvinius, they were more severely exact. Hence forgery and falsehood stood a much worse chance of success than before. Annius of Viterbo had deceived half the scholars of the preceding age. But when Inghirami, in 1637, published his Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, monuments of Etruscan antiquity, which he pretended to have discovered at Volterra, the imposture was speedily detected.‡ of Cluve 28. The Germania Antiqua of Cluverius was Geography published in 1616, and his Italia Antiqua in 1624. rius. * Niceron, v. 80. Tiraboschi, xi. 300. † Niceron, vol. xxi. Biog. Univ. Salfi (Continuation de Ginguéné), xi. 358. CHAP. I. Meursius. These form a sort of epoch in ancient geography. The latter, especially, has ever since been the great repertory of classical illustration on this subject. Cluverius, however, though a man of acknowledged ability and erudition, has been thought too bold an innovator in his Germany, and to have laid down much on his own conjecture.* 29. Meursius, a native of Holland, began when very young, soon after the commencement of the century, those indefatigable labours on Grecian antiquity, by which he became to Athens and all Hellas what Sigonius had been to Rome and Italy. Niceron has given a list of his publications, sixty-seven in number, including some editions of ancient writers, but for the most part confined to illustrations of Greek usages; some also treat of Roman. The Græcia feriata, on festivals and games; the Orchestra, on dancing; the Eleusinia, on that deeply interesting and in his time almost untouched subject, the ancient mysteries, are collected in the works of this very learned person, or scattered through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum of Gronovius. "Meursius," says his editor, "was the true and legitimate mystagogue to the sanctuaries of Greece." But his peculiar attention was justly shown to "the eye of Greece,' Athens. Nothing that bore on her history, her laws and government, her manners and literature, was left by him. The various titles of his works seem almost to exhaust Athenian antiquity: De Populis Attica Athena Attica- Cecropia Regnum Atticum - Archontes Athenienses - Pi * Blount. Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Üniv. I. Emmius. sistratus - Fortuna Attica Atticarum Lectionum CHAP. Libri IV.- Piraeus-Themis Attica-SolonAreopagus-Panathenæa-Eleusinia - Theseus— Eschylus-Sophocles et Euripides. It is manifest that all later learning must have been built upon his foundations. No one was equal to Meursius in this province; but the second place is perhaps due to Ubbo Emmius, professor of Greek at Gro- Ubbo ningen, for his Vetus Græcia Illustrata, 1626. The facilities of elucidating the topography of that country were by no means such as Cluverius had found for Italy; and in fact little was done in respect to local investigation in order to establish a good ancient geography till recent times. Samuel Petit, a man placed by some in the very first list of the learned, published in 1635 a commentary on the Athenian laws, which is still the chief authority on that subject. 30. In an age so peculiarly learned as this part of the seventeenth century, it will be readily concluded that many books must have a relation to the extensive subject of this section; though the stream of erudition had taken rather a different course, and watered the provinces of ecclesiastical and mediæval more than those of heathen antiquity. But we can only select one or two which treat of chronology, and that chiefly because we have already given a place to the work of Scaliger. of Lydiat. 31. Lydiat was the first who, in a small treatise Chronology on the various calendars, 1605, presumed in se- Calvisius. veral respects to differ from that of the dictator of literature. He is in consequence reviled in Scaliger's Epistles as the most stupid and ignorant of |