Mark Pattison

“ Whatever his subject, he pours over it his stream of illustration, drawn from the records of all ages and countries. His Essays are not merely instructive as history; they are, like Milton’s blank verse, freighted with the spoils of all the ages. As an historian Macaulay has not escaped the charge of partisanship. ”

“ Macaulay’s enlightened views and measures drew down on him, however, the abuse and ill-will of Anglo-Indian society. Fortunately for himself he was enabled to maintain a tranquil indifference to political detraction by withdrawing his thoughts into a sphere remote from the opposition and enmity by which he was surrounded. Even amid the excitement of his early parliamentary successes literature had balanced politics in his thoughts and interests. ”

“ But the charge of partiality, as urged against Macaulay, means more than that he wrote the history of the Whig revolution from the point of view of those who made it. When he is describing the merits of friends and the faults of enemies his pen knows no moderation. He has a constant tendency to glaring colours, to strong effects, and will always be striking violent blows. He is not merely exuberant but excessive. ”

“ At Geneva he remained as professor of Greek till 1596. Here he married twice, his second wife being Florence, daughter of the scholar-printer, Henri Estienne. Here, without the stimulus of example or encouragement, with few books and no assistance, in a city peopled with religious refugees, and struggling for life against the troops of the Catholic dukes of Savoy, Casaubon made himself a consummate Greek scholar and master of ancient learning. His great wants at Geneva were books and the sympathy of learned associates. ”

“ These deductions made, the circuit of his knowledge still remains very wide—as extensive perhaps as any human brain is competent to embrace. His literary outfit was as complete as has ever been possessed by any English writer; and, if it wants the illumination of philosophy, it has an equivalent resource in a practical acquaintance with affairs, with administration, with the interior of cabinets, and the humour of popular assemblies. ”

“ Macaulay was a steadfast friend, and no act inconsistent with the strictest honour and integrity was ever imputed to him. When a poor man, and when salary was of consequence to him, he twice resigned office rather than make compliances for which he would not have been severely blamed. In 1847, when his seat in parliament was at stake, he would not be persuaded to humour, to temporize, even to conciliate. ”

“ This law has its source in the nature of man as a social being; it would be valid even were there no God, or if God did not interfere in the government of the world. These positions, though Grotius’s religious temper did not allow him to rely unreservedly upon them, yet, even in the partial application they find in his book, entitle him to the honour of being held the founder of the modern science of the law of nature and nations. ”

“ Their intercourse, which was wholly by letter, for they never met, passes through the stages of civility, admiration, esteem, regard and culminates in a tone of the tenderest affection and mutual confidence. ”

“ He enjoyed the society of men of learning, or of men 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 ample facilities for using 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. ”

“ His friends Lect and Giovanni 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 at that time, 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. ”

“ In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar and joined the northern circuit. But he soon gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the house of commons than in the court. His first attempt at a public speech, made at an anti-slavery meeting in 1824, was described by the Edinburgh Review as “a display of eloquence of rare and matured excellence.” His first considerable appearance in print was in No. 1 of Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, a periodical which enjoyed a short but brilliant existence, and which was largely supported by Eton and Cambridge. ”

“ The English bishops were equally delighted to find that the great French scholar was an Anglican ready made, who had arrived, by independent study of the Fathers, at the very via media between Puritanism and Romanism, which was becoming the fashion in the English Church. Casaubon, though a layman, was collated to a prebendal stall in Canterbury, and a pension of £300 a year was assigned him from the exchequer. ”

“ CASAUBON, ISAAC (1550–1614) , French (naturalized English) classical scholar, was born at Geneva, on the 18th of February 1559, of French refugee parents. On the publication of the edict of January 1562, the family returned to France and settled at Crest in Dauphiné, where Arnaud Casaubon, Isaac’s father, became minister of a Huguenot congregation. Till he was nineteen, Isaac had no other instruction than what could be given him by his father during the years of civil war. ”

“ When the abolition of slavery came before the house as a practical question, Macaulay had the prospect of having to surrender office or to vote for a modified abolition, viz. twelve years’ apprenticeship, which was proposed by the ministry, but condemned by the abolitionists. He was prepared to make the sacrifice of place rather than be unfaithful to the cause to which his father had devoted his life. ”

“ The lives of men of letters are often records of sorrow or suffering. The life of Macaulay was eminently happy. Till the closing years (1857–1859) , he enjoyed life with the full zest of healthy faculty, happy in social intercourse, happy in the solitude of his study, and equally divided between the two. For the last fifteen years of his life he lived for literature. ”

“ The De jure praedae further demonstrates that Grotius was originally determined to this subject, not by any speculative intellectual interest, but by a special occasion presented by his professional engagements. He was retained by the Dutch East India Company as their advocate. One of their captains, Heemskirk, had captured a rich Portuguese galleon in the Straits of Malacca. The right of a private company to make prizes was hotly contested in Holland, and denied by the stricter religionists, especially the Mennonites, who considered all war unlawful. ”

“ In 1838 Macaulay and his sister Hannah, who had married Charles Trevelyan in 1834, returned to England. He at once entered parliament as member for Edinburgh. In 1839 he became secretary at war, with a seat in the cabinet in Lord Melbourne’s ministry. His acceptance of office diverted him for a time from prosecuting the plan he had already formed of a great historical work. But in less than two years the Melbourne ministry fell. In 1842 appeared his Lays of Ancient Rome, and in the next year he collected and published his Essays. ”

“ It was necessary to Grotius’s defence of Heemskirk that he should show that the Portuguese pretence that Eastern waters were their private property was untenable. Grotius maintains that the ocean is free to all nations. The occasional character of this piece explains the fact that at the time of its appearance it made no sensation. It was not till many years afterwards that the jealousies between England and Holland gave importance to the novel doctrine broached in the tract by Grotius, a doctrine which Selden set himself to refute in his Mare clausum (1632) . ”

“ Grotius had already passed from occupation with the classics to studies more immediately connected with his profession. In the winter of 1604 he composed (but did not publish) a treatise entitled De jure praedae. The MS. remained unknown till 1868, when it was brought to light, and printed at the Hague under the auspices of Professor Fruin. It shows that the principles and the plan of the celebrated De jure belli, which was not composed till 1625, more than twenty years after, had already been conceived by a youth of twenty-one. ”

“ A form of edict drawn by Grotius was published by the states, recommending mutual toleration, and forbidding ministers in the pulpit from handling the disputed dogmas. To the orthodox Calvinists the word toleration was insupportable. They had the populace on their side. This fact determined the stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, to support the orthodox party—a party to which he inclined the more readily that Olden Barneveldt, the grand pensionary, the man whose uprightness and abilities he most dreaded, sided with the Remonstrants. ”

“ As in many other points Grotius inevitably recalls Erasmus, so he does in his attitude towards the great schism. Grotius was, however, animated by an ardent desire for peace and concord. He thought that a basis for reconciliation of Protestant and Catholic might be found in a common piety, combined with reticence upon discrepancies of doctrinal statement. His De veritate religionis Christianae (1627) , a presentment of the evidences, is so written as to form a code of common Christianity, irrespective of sect. ”

“ It is not till we come to his edition of Theophrastus’s Characteres (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. ”

“ The historian Hallam thinks that he had “become personally unpopular”; but these outrages from the vulgar seem to have arisen solely from the cockney’s antipathy to the Frenchman. Casaubon, though he could make shift to read an English book, could not speak English, any more than Mme Casaubon. ”

“ But the most serious cause of discomfort in his English residence was that his time was no longer his own. He was perpetually being summoned out of town to one or other of James’s hunting residences that the king might enjoy his talk. ”

“ He was driven by a storm on the coast near Dantzig. He got as far as Rostock, where he found himself very ill. Stockman, a Scottish physician who was sent for, thought it was only weakness, and that rest would restore the patient. ”

“ It forms the most valuable record we possess of the daily life of a scholar, or man of letters, of the 16th century. (M. P.)
A few minor changes have been made in the above article, compared with its form in the 9th edition. The most complete account of Casaubon is the full biography by Mark Pattison (1875) , of which a second and revised edition, by H. Nettleship, was published in 1892; the most recent work on the subject is Isaac Casaubon, sa vie et son temps, by L. J. Nazelle (1897) ; there is a monograph on the Fontainebleau conference by J. A. Lalot (1889) . ”