In 1589, the city of Geneva was being besieged by the Duke of Savoy. The siege continued, in form at least, during the ensuing nine years, and although it was, of course, not practicable during the whole of that period to maintain a close investment, the city suffered all the privations and many of the horrors of continued war.

Geneva contained in 1589, at the time of the beginning of the siege, a population of about 12,000. It was able to muster for its defence 2186 men capable of bearing arms. Against this little force the Duke brought up an army of 18,000 regular troops, with the determination to destroy the nest of heretics once for all. The importance of destroying the city was fully understood by the Catholic party, and was especially urged by S. Francis de Sales. The schools and the printing-presses were particularly pointed out by the Saint as instruments of mischief. The struggle against these odds was a gallant one, but the little Republic succeeded in preserving its existence and its independence, although when, by the peace of Vervins in 1598, it was released from its state of siege, it had lost out of its little levy nearly three fourths.

Isaac Casaubon, who, later, took rank as one of the most learned scholars of his time, was born in Geneva in 1559. He was the son of Arnold Casaubon, a Protestant pastor of Dauphiné. He held the Chair of Greek and of History in the Academy of Geneva from 1581 to 1596, (a term which included the period of the great siege) when he migrated to Montpellier. Isaac’s salary as professor in Geneva was two hundred and eighty florins, to which he was able to add ninety florins from boarding students. On this meagre income he ventured (in 1584) to marry a wife and managed also to bring together a considerable collection of books.

This first wife, who was a native of Geneva, died in two years, leaving a daughter. In 1586, Casaubon took for his second wife Florence, the daughter of Henry Estienne.

One of the manuscript-dealers with whom Casaubon, as an impecunious collector, came into relations, was Darmarius, described as one of the last of the caligraphs, a class which in Italy and in the university towns of Germany survived for nearly half a century the invention of printing. Darmarius had access to the libraries of Venice and Florence and travelled about Europe to sell his copies. His manuscripts, says Pattison, were not works of art like the productions of the pen of a Vergecio or a Rhosus, made to adorn the collections of princes and cardinals. The books sold by Darmarius were hasty transcripts, written on poor paper, chiefly of certain unpublished works that he had found in the library of Cardinal Bessarion.[34] They did not make up for their want of beauty by the accuracy of their text, for the transcriber does not seem to have known even the grammar of classic Greek, but for these wretched copies he was able to secure from scholars hungry for books, great prices. For a Polyæmus, Casaubon paid, in 1578, “a great sum,” magno ære, and for a Julius Africanus three hundred crowns, almost its weight in silver, but neither of these authors was as yet in print.

The admission of Casaubon into the family of the great publisher, so far from adding to his opportunities for getting his writings before the public, did not even secure for him any additional facilities for their preparation. Reference has already been made in the sketch of Henry Estienne to the jealous selfishness with which, particularly in the later years of his life, he retained in his own hands his collections of books and of manuscripts. But few friends appear to have ever secured from him permission to utilise his literary stores, while of his learned son-in-law he was particularly jealous. Casaubon was one of the few scholars in Europe who was competent to edit, from the original, a Greek text, and although in certain respects Estienne’s scholarly ideals were high, he seems to have laid more stress upon his individual prestige than upon the advance of learning.

Impecunious as Casaubon was during by far the greater portion of his life, he appears to have been always ready to give orders or commissions for the purchase of books or manuscripts. In some cases he was able to arrange to pay for these by services in one direction or another; in 1592, for instance, Henricus Petri of Basel sends him two copies of his second edition of Homer, one for the King of France and one for himself, the gift being accompanied with the request that Casaubon would secure for the book a (copyright) privilege for France.[35] In 1608, Biondi of Venice has a standing commission to send books to Casaubon.[36] Many presents of manuscripts were made to Casaubon, and in other instances manuscripts and books were loaned to him which were never returned. Pattison speaks of this part of Casaubon’s collection as becoming his by “process of adhesion.” In 1595, Casaubon writes to Commelin, a publisher of Heidelberg, as follows:

“If I ask you to send me direct all that issues from your press, it is not, believe me, dearest Commelin, because I am unwilling to buy these, but because I am unable. Our booksellers here in Geneva are a blind sort, who are unwilling to bring back from Frankfort any books that may not pay. I except Favre, who is not so stupid as the rest. You will have to write to De Tournes [a printer of Geneva] directing him to deliver to me the Chrysostom, as he refuses to do so without your express commands.” Casaubon’s complaint about the lack of enterprise on the part of the booksellers of Geneva has, of course, been frequently enough repeated by scholars of later date, who are not always able to understand that the bookseller who takes unwise risks in accumulating stock that may not sell, will very soon cease to be a bookseller at all. His annoyance at De Tournes for declining to hand over property of Commelin’s without authority from the owner is equally naïve.

Casaubon tells us that Geneva in his day had a public library, but that the collection, although valuable, was very small. The Commentaries published by Casaubon in 1592, on Perseus, Theophrastus, Suetonius, and Diogenes Laertius, were based upon the lectures given by him in the Geneva Academy. The volumes were printed in Geneva, but I can find no record of the arrangement made by him of their publication. The references that he makes to the several sources of his very small income include no mention of receipts from the sale of his books, and it seems probable that these brought to their author no returns other than the occasional expression of recognition or honorarium on the part of scholarly patrons. If Henry Estienne had been willing to give to these Commentaries the service of the imprint of his Paris House, the commercial results would probably have been much more satisfactory, but, whatever the difficulty, it was the case that no writings of Casaubon were issued by his father-in-law.

Casaubon tells us that the ministers of Geneva exercised a strict surveillance over the teaching both of the scholar and of the Academy, and that a professor in the latter could not even publish without first submitting his book to the censorship of divines. It seems probable that the Calvinistic scrutiny in Geneva may easily have been in its narrowness and in its persistency a more serious obstacle during the last ten years of the sixteenth century, in the way of publishing and literary undertakings, than the censorship of the Catholic theologians of Paris.

It is the conclusion of Pattison (which is not in harmony with the earlier descriptions of the intellectual activities of Geneva) that during the term of Casaubon’s work there existed in the town nothing that could properly be called a literary interest. There was a poor and starved seminary for pious instruction; an academic printing-press devoted to the production of sermons and text-books; a theology not formal or nominal, but interfused throughout the life and the thought of each day. An armed enemy crouched at the gates of the city, watching his opportunity for the death spring; while each week brought news of some fresh outrage on believers with whom Geneva was in sympathy in the countries where the Catholic reaction was in its full tide.

On this ungenial soil, Casaubon developed out of his own instincts the true ideal of classical learning. Not a scheme of philology, as we now conceive it, but the idea of a complete mastery, by exhaustive reading, of the thought of the ancient world, a reconstruction of Greek and Roman antiquity out of the extant remains of the literature.[37] Casaubon’s first literary work of importance, the Animadversiones on Athenæus, was printed at Lyons in the year 1600. He was at the time occupying a Chair in the Protestant University of Montpellier, but there was no press in Montpellier with facilities for printing Greek text. In fact, the printing of books in the city appears to have begun only in 1597. Seventy years earlier, Rabelais had been obliged to have printed at Lyons his edition of the Hypocratic Aphorisms. Casaubon endeavoured to induce a Geneva printer to establish in Montpellier a Press with a Greek font and a skilled corrector, but the business connected with the little University did not offer sufficient encouragement for the undertaking. It may be remembered that Oxford did not possess any Greek type until 1586, and that Greek was first printed in Cambridge some years later. Pattison is of opinion that there was probably at the time a Greek Press at Toulouse, but no heretic could print or even sojourn in this city of fanatical Romanism, a city in which even the edict of toleration could never be put in force.

What Casaubon would, of course, have preferred and what ought, through his father-in-law, to have been secured for him, was the advantage of the Greek Press of Paris, which, during the previous half-century, had secured for itself a well-earned pre-eminence. For the impecunious professor a journey to Paris was, however, at this time, out of the question, and he was obliged to content himself with a provincial publisher. Of the book-trade of the French provinces, Lyons was at that time the centre. In facilities for reaching the book markets of Switzerland and Germany, it had advantages over Paris itself. Its connections with Italy were, of course, very much more direct than those possessed by the publishers of Paris, and it utilised these connections not only for the prompt importation of the publications of France, of Florence, and of Rome, but for the reproduction, often in pretty close fac-simile, of the more noteworthy books issued from the Italian presses. With the smaller outlay requisite in reprinting works upon which the expense of editing and preparing for the press had already been covered, the publishers of Lyons were able to undersell Aldus and his successors and to secure for the Aldine texts a large part of the returns from the markets of southern Europe. They did not even limit their “appropriations” to the productions of foreign publishers, such as Aldus of Venice, Froben of Basel, and Koberger of Nuremberg. We find continual record of complaints on the part of the publishers of Paris that their “privileges” were not respected and that their more marketable books were reproduced by their piratical competitors in Lyons. The “enterprise” of the publishers in Lyons seems not even to have been restricted by their relations with the Catholic Church, for they built up a trade in the production of Calvinistic hymn-books for the use of the congregations of Switzerland.

The printers of Geneva, who were naturally of the opinion that Calvinism was their legitimate stock in trade and should be for them an exclusive possession, equally unmindful of their denominational obligations, retorted by manufacturing cheap editions of missals, books of hours, and even of Jesuit publications. The Lyonese printers availed themselves of the brand of heretic to secure the confiscation at the frontier of a good many shipments of the books from Geneva even when these books belonged to “orthodox” Jesuit literature. The Genevese could not easily meet this weapon, as there was at that time in force in the Republic no index expurgatorius, and there was, therefore, no means of securing an examination of books on the frontier. They continued, however, their invasion of the French market after peace had been restored between France and the Republic, and they managed to evade the prohibition or the restriction upon the importation of books printed in the Protestant city of Geneva, by placing upon their title-pages the name of some other publishing centre, such as Cologne or Antwerp. Occasionally even, the name of a French city was substituted for the obnoxious Geneva. For instance, the edition of Aristotle, printed in 1590 by Le Maire of Geneva, had upon it the title Lugdunæ (Lyons).

Henry Estienne died at Lyons in January, 1598, and Casaubon, on his way to Geneva, to look after the settlement of his wife’s interest in the estate, stopped at Lyons. He found there, in the person of a certain Meric de Vic, a patron who was willing to co-operate with him in the publication of the Animadversiones, and who, afterwards, gave him the means of making his visit to Paris. In later years, De Vic was known as a friend and patron of Grotius. I have been able to find no exact record of the arrangement with the Lyons publisher. The work was printed for the account of the author, by Antoine de Harsy, the cost being in large part provided by De Vic.

Pattison speaks of De Harsy as “one of those cormorants who about this time began to sit hard by the tree of knowledge,”[38] but he does not give us the evidence for this unfavourable estimate. He goes on to say, as if in mitigation of his harsh description of Casaubon’s first publisher, that up to this time the publisher had usually been the friend of the author, and often his collaborator, even when not an author in his own name.

In arriving at Geneva, after the death of Estienne, Casaubon entered, only for the second time in his life, his father-in-law’s library. “Such a wreck of vast projects! A memorial of stupendous labour!” he exclaimed, on seeing it. We learn from his diary that it was due to his influence that the co-heirs permitted the manuscripts to pass to Paul Estienne, to whom the Greek Press had been bequeathed. The printed books were sold for the benefit of the creditors. Such a termination of the scholarly labours and enormous energy of Estienne was hardly to have been looked for.

In the year 1600, at the instance of his friend De Vic, Casaubon journeyed to Paris, where he was hoping to receive from the King some kind of appointment that would secure him an income. He was received for a time as the guest of his wife’s cousin, Henry Estienne. The publishing business of the old House of Estienne was then being carried on in Paris by the Patissons, who had connected themselves with the family by marriage.

The position which Casaubon understood from De Vic had been promised by the King was not secured without discouraging delay. He had hoped to be associated in some way with the instruction of Greek in the University, but his Protestant faith proved an insuperable obstacle to any University appointment. In 1601, after he had been kept waiting nearly a year, a royal patent was given to him as keeper of the Royal Library, where he succeeded the mathematician Gosselin. The salary was 1,200 livres, and the duties of the post left to the incumbent a large measure of leisure time.

The Paris of that day contained about 400,000 people. Coryat, writing in 1608, says that the Rue S. Jacques was “very full of booksellers that have faire shoppes most plentifully furnished with bookes.” The library in which the scholar from Geneva now found himself installed contained about nine hundred works, a large proportion of which were in manuscript. The collection of Greek manuscripts was said to be second only to that of the Vatican.[39]

The new librarian found himself in favour with the King, who visited the library from time to time and made gracious inquiries of the keeper concerning the contents of the books. It was said by Scaliger of Henry IV. that he could not keep his countenance and could not read a book. Moderate as was the salary of the keeper of the King’s books, it was, by not a few of those in authority in a Court where literature was held in such low esteem, considered to be a wasteful and excessive expenditure. “You cost the King too much, Sir,” said Sully to Casaubon; “your pay exceeds that of two good captains, and you are of no use to the country.”[40]

Casaubon’s position in Paris proved, after a few years, to be an impossible one. It had, it seems, been the expectation of the King that his librarian would, for the sake of remaining in Paris, follow the royal example and accept (in form at least) the faith of Rome. This course the student from Geneva had, however, no idea of taking. The opposition of the theologians of the University and of the politicians of the Court (including the great minister Sully) proved in the end sufficient to withdraw from the librarian the King’s favour, and Casaubon foresaw that he could not be assured of the continuance of the royal protection. At the invitation of some scholarly English friends—Spottswood, later, Archbishop of Glasgow, and Lamb, afterwards Bishop of Galway,—Casaubon went to London, ostensibly for a visit. He was presented to King James, whose ambition to be recognised as a member of the fraternity of European scholars induced him to offer to Casaubon a pension of three hundred pounds if he would make his home in England. The offer was accepted, and the remaining years of Casaubon’s life were spent in London, with an occasional sojourn in Ely, where his good friend, Bishop Andrews, was always ready to tender appreciative hospitality.

One of the famous controversial publications of the latter half of the sixteenth century was the series entitled the Magdeburg Centuries. The purpose of the Lutheran writers of this work was to present a true history of the Church of Christ. According to this Protestant view, the Church had been instituted in the Apostolic age in perfect purity, but had been perverted by a process of slow canker, until it had become the Church, not of Christ but of Anti-Christ, an instrument not for saving men, but for destroying them. The Centuries were completed, in 1574, in no less than thirteen folio volumes. It was evident that, for a work of this compass, no wide circulation could be looked for with the impecunious public of Protestant Germany, but the historical thesis of which these folios were the laborious evidence made a deep impression upon the thought of the time.[41]

A young priest named Baronius was selected by the authorities in Rome, or rather by S. Philip Neri, to prepare a reply to the Centuries, and he devoted his life to the task. The result was the production of the Annales Ecclesiastici, the most comprehensive work which the controversies of the Protestant revolt had as yet produced. The Annales were completed, as far as the work of Baronius was concerned, in thirteen folio volumes, in 1600, but the series was continued by various writers until, in the edition issued at Lucca in 1738-1786, it had grown to thirty-eight folio volumes, a work of which purchase was difficult and perusal impossible.

Of the original work, the circulation, considering the bulk and the costliness of the volumes, was unprecedented. The printing was done at the Papal Press, the same press which had originally been organised by Paul Manutius. The cost was borne by the papal treasury and the full weight of the authority of the influence of the Church was given to securing the widest possible distribution. As a result, edition after edition was taken off by the demands from the libraries of the monasteries, the cathedral chapters, and the Jesuit colleges and also by individual prelates and princes, who had remained in the orthodox fold.[42] The amount of the original labour put into the book by Baronius must have been enormous, as his texts, his notes, and even his extracts were all made with his own hand. According to his own statement, the continuous labour could never have been supported, had it not been in the first place for the stimulating authority of S. Philip Neri, and secondly for the special aid given by the Virgin, the saints, and the apostles Peter and Paul. Pattison sums up the purpose and the result of the work as follows: “Baronius exhibited the visible unity and impeccable purity of the Church founded upon Peter and handed down inviolate; such at this day as it had ever been ... the Annales transferred to the Catholic party the preponderance in the field of learning, which ever since Erasmus had been on the side of the innovators.”

It was the turn of the Protestants to feel the need of an antidote to Baronius and an attempt to supply this need was made in the Exercitationes of Casaubon. Casaubon’s work, however, never passed beyond the status of a fragment, although this fragment was sufficiently ponderous to form eight hundred folio pages. According to the Protestant authorities, Casaubon had no difficulty in showing the great lack of accurate scholarship on the part of Baronius and in pointing out in the earlier portions of the Annales (it was only the first two volumes that were considered in his Exercitationes) an enormous number of errors and misstatements. It was in fact difficult to understand how the task of writing the early history of the Church could have been undertaken (even with the aid of S. Peter and S. Paul) by an author who was ignorant both of Greek and of Hebrew. The volume of Exercitationes did not, however, secure any such general circulation or wide-spread influence with Protestant readers as had been gained among the Catholics by the great series of Annales. There was no ecclesiastical authority to induce the purchase as an act of piety and no ecclesiastical machinery available to further circulation.

These three works seemed to me to call for some special reference, because they present noteworthy and characteristic examples of the theological controversies of the century and of the employment of scholarly labour to secure or to affirm the foundations of religious faith. The very great advantages possessed by the Roman writer in securing immediate channels of distribution and an assured reading public are also to be noted in connection with the serious obstacles existing at the time in the way of any general distribution of books by means of such machinery as was available for the publishers.

The Exercitationes was printed for Casaubon by the King’s printer in London and was issued by a publisher named Bell. I can find no record of the publishing arrangement, but the cost of the undertaking appears to have been provided for in part by the royal treasury and in part by the aid of Bishop Andrews, who was an old friend of the author.

Casaubon’s sojourn in England was more favourable for his literary labour than had been his position as royal librarian in Paris, but while he was the most industrious of students, and, according to his biographies, practically killed himself by close application to his desk, the number of his completed works is but inconsiderable. Pattison gives the titles or descriptions of not less than twenty-four books, which had been planned out and many of which had been in part written, but which remained at the death of the scholar either fragments or simply titles.

Of the twenty-five works that were finished during the lifetime of the scholar, a portion were afterwards characterised by himself as juvenilia which he was unwilling even to acknowledge. The edition of Theophrastus, published in 1592, is the first work with which in later years Casaubon expressed himself as satisfied. No one of the books appears to have retained for itself a literary life, that is to say, to have become a part of the world’s literature or even to have remained in demand with the scholars. It was the case with Casaubon, as with Scaliger, that his reputation has remained greater than that of his productions. The scholar was more important than his books. It seems evident, as far as can be gathered from the scanty references to business details in Casaubon’s correspondence, that he never earned anything, at least directly, through the labours of his pen. His books must all have produced deficiencies instead of profits, and the sum required for their publication had to be obtained from the few wealthy friends who were able to appreciate the value to the world of a life devoted to scholarship.

Casaubon died in London in 1614, in his 55th year.