scholars have pointed out, this is due rather to its typographical beauty than to any critical merit. The readings of the fifteen MSS. which Robert’s son Henri had collated for the purpose were merely introduced into the margin. The text was still almost exactly that of Erasmus. It was, however, the first edition ever published with a critical apparatus of any sort. Of the whole Bible Robert printed eleven editions,—eight in Latin, two in Hebrew, and one in French ; while of the New Testament alone he printed twelve, five in Greek, five in Latin, and two in French. In the Greek New Testament of 1551 (printed at Geneva) the present division into verses was introduced for the first time. The editions principes which issued from Robert’s press were eight in number, viz., Eusebius, including the Præparatio Evangelica and the Demonstratio Evangclica as well as the Historia Ecclcsiastica already mentioned (1544–46), Moschopulus (1545), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (February 1547), Alexander Trallianus (January 1548), Dio Cassius (January 1548), Justin Martyr (1551), Xiphilinus (1551), Appian (1551), the last being completed, after Robert’s departure from Paris, by his brother Charles, and appearing under his name. These editions, all in folio, except the Moschopulus, which is in 4to, are unrivalled for beauty. Robert also printed numerous editions of Latin classics, of which perhaps the folio Virgil of 1532 is the most noteworthy, and a large quantity of Latin grammars and other educational works (many of them written by his friend Maturin Cordier) in the interests of that cause of which he proved himself so stout a champion, the new learning.
Charles Estinne (1504 or 1505–1564), the third son of Henri, was, like his brother Robert, a man of considerable learning. After the usual humanistic training lie studied medicine, aud became a doctor of that faculty in the university of Paris. In 1540 he accompanied the French ambassador Lazare Baif to Italy in the capacity of tutor to his natural son Antoine, the future poet. In 1551, when Robert Estienne left Paris for Geneva, Charles, who had remained a Catholic, took charge of his printing establishment, and in the same year was appointed king’s printer. He died in 1564, according to some accounts in prison, having been thrown there for debt.
His principal works are Prædium Rusticum, a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favourite book down to the end of the 17th century; Dictionarium Historicum ac Poeticum (1553), the first French encyclopaedia ; Thesaurus Ciceronianus; and Paradoxes, a free version of the Paradossi of Ortensio Laudi, with the omission of a few of the paradoxes and of the impious and indecent passages (Paris, 1553; Poitiers, 1553). He was also the author of a treatise on anatomy and of several small educational works.
Henri Estienne (1528–1598), sometimes called “Henri II.,” was the eldest son of Robert. In the preface to his edition of Aulus Gellius (1585), addressed to his son Paul, he gives an interesting account of his father’s household, in which, owing to the various nationalities of those who were employed on the press, Latin was used as a common language, being understood and spoken more or less by every member of it, down to the maid-servants. Henri thus picked up Latin as a child, but at his special request he was allowed to learn Greek as a serious study before Latin. At the age of fifteen he became a pupil of Pierre Danes, at that time the first Greek scholar in France. Two years later he began to attend the lectures of Jacques Toussain, one of the royal professors of Greek, and in the same year (1545) was employed by his father to collate a MS. of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In 1547, after attending fora time the lectures of Turnebe, Toussain’s successor, he went to Italy, where he spent two years in hunting for and collating MSS. and in intercourse with learned men. In 1550 he was in England, where he was favourably received by Edward VI. Thence he went to Flanders, where he learnt Spanish. In 1551 he joined his father at Geneva, which henceforth became his home. In 1554 he gave to the world, as the firstfruits of his researches, two first editions, viz., a tract of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Anacreon, both printed by his uncle Charles. In 1556 Henri was again in Italy, where he discovered at Rome ten new books (xi.-xx.) of Diodorus Siculus. In 1557 he issued from the press which in the previous year he had set up on his own account at Geneva three first editions, viz., Athenagoras, Maximus Tyrius, and some fragments of Greek historians, including Appian’s Ἀννιβαλική and Ἰβηρική, and an edition of Æschylus, in which for the first time the Agamemnon was printed in entirety and as a separate play. In 1558 he was appointed printer to Huldrich Fugger, one of the celebrated family of Augsburg bankers, a post which he held for ten years. In 1559 he printed a Latin translation from his own pen of Sextus Empiricus, and an edition of Diodorus Siculus with the new books. In 1566 he published his best known French work, the Apologie pour Hérodote, or, as he himself called it, L’Introduction au Traité de la Conformité des Merveilles Anciennes avec les Modernes ou Traité preparatif à l’Apologie pour Hérodote. Some passages in the original edition being considered objectionable by the Geneva consistory, he was compelled to cancel the pages containing them. The book became highly popular. Within sixteen years twelve editions were printed. In 1572 Henri published the great work upon which he had been labouring for many years, the Thesaurus Græcge Linguæ, in 5 vols. folio. The publication in 1578 of his Dialogues du nouveau François Italianizé brought him into a fresh dispute with the consistory. To avoid their censure he went to Paris, and resided at the French court for the whole of 1579. On his return to Geneva in the spring of 1580 he was summoned before the consistory, and, proving contumacious, was imprisoned for a week. From this time his life became more and more of a nomad one. He is to be found at Basel, Heidelberg, Vienna, Pesth, everywhere but at Geneva, these journeys being undertaken partly in the hope of procuring patrons and purchasers for his books (for the large sums which he had spent on such publications as the Thesaurus and the Plato of 1578 had almost ruined him), partly from the increasing restlessness of his disposition. But the result of these long absences was that his press stood nearly at a standstill. A few editions of classical authors were brought out, but each successive one showed a falling off. Such value as the later ones had was chiefly due to the notes furnished by Casaubon, who in 1586 had married Henri’s daughter Florence. Henri’s last years were marked by ever-increasing infirmity of mind and temper. In 1597 he left Geneva for the last time. After visiting Montpellier, where Casaubon was now professor, he made for Paris, but was seized with sudden illness at Lyons, and died there in his seventieth year, at the end of January 1598.
Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly. For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as printer, editor, or original writer, was enormous. The productions of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his father’s books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink, inferior to them in general beauty. The best, perhaps, from a typographical point of view, are the Poetæ, Græci Principes (folio, 1566), the Plutarch (13 vols. 8vo, 1572), and the Plato (3 vols. folio, 1573). It was rather Henri Estienne’s scholarship which gave value to his editions. He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though by the latter half of the 16th century nearly all the important Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published, his untiring Activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his press. The most important have been already mentioned. Henri’s reputation as a scholar and editor has increased of late years. His familiarity with the Greek language has always been admitted to have been quite exceptional; but he has been accused of want of taste and judgment, of carelessness and rashness. Special censure has been passed on his Plutarch, in which he is said to have introduced conjectures of his own into the text, while pretending to have derived them from MS. authority. But a recent editor, Sintems, has shown that, though like all the other editors of his day he did not give references to his authorities, every one of his supposed conjectures can be traced to some MS. Whatever may be said as to his taste or his judgment, it seems that he was both careful and scrupulous, aud that he only resorted to conjecture when authority failed him. And, whatever the merit of his conjectures,
