classics, and only the other day we observed
a young German philologer gazing with much
interest at his epitaph.

All the above facts, however, would not
entitle Isaac Casaubon to a place in Household
Words, if he had not left behind him a
DIARY of the last seventeen years of his life,
which has been published in our own time, and
is a very curious and interesting work. The
manuscript remained in the possession of the
ecclesiastical authorities of Canterbury, where
Casaubon's son, Meric, held preferment, and
was printed a few years since by the University
of Oxford, under the care of Dr. John
Russell. It is in Latin, of course, and
Dr. John Russell edits it in Latin, and writes
a Latin preface to it; so that if a Roman
ghost, revisiting the earth, caught sight of it,
he would conclude that Casaubon and Dr.
Russell (one a Frenchman, and the other an
Englishman) were both countrymen of his
own, and that Britain was still a barbarous
island under Roman government. However,
an English translation would not have paid
its expenses in any case, and the University,
which brings out the work at its own cost,
has a right to present it to the world in
its own way. Be it ours to unroll Isaac
Casaubon from these wrappages and ancient
habiliments, and try to form a living notion
of him as a European man. We presume
that we shall do his memory no offence, by
rendering him into English; and we hope
that his warmest classical admirers will not
deny that he was once alive; that though he
wrote a dead language, even in his Diary
(Ephemerides he calls it), yet that he was a
good friendly scholar, eating and drinking
like the rest of us, and talking French—at
all events to his wife.

The old commentators who devoted their
lives to the interpretation of the classics
were a very remarkable class of men. The
world wants yet, an adequate account of
them. They were pioneers, backwoodsmen,
clearers of the forests, and drainers of the
marsh. We pride ourselves on our Dryden's
Virgil, our Pope's Homer, the insight of
Gibbon, the classicality of Gray. But, for
these great men the old commentators paved
the way. They made the classics readable
and intelligible. In fact, they made the roads
on which many a triumphal car of genius has
rolled smoothly along since; and, directly or
indirectly, every writer is indebted to them.
Their energy and enthusiasm were
unbounded —their love of learning, a passion—
their occasional pedantry and violence,
pardonable for the sake of these. Casaubon's
Diary gives us a glimpse of the domestic life
and private character of one of the most
famous of them. When his formal writings
for publication have exhausted their utility,
the world will still look at this Diary; and
his private jottings of the adventures of the
day will make many who care little for the
commentator think with interest of the man.

Casaubon belonged to the second generation
of the scholars of the Revival of Letters.
He belonged to the generation after Erasmus
and the elder Scaliger, and was contemporary
with the younger Scaliger. His father,
Arnauld Casaubon, was a minister of the
reformed religion. He fled from Dauphiné
to Geneva, where Isaac was born, in February,
fifteen hundred and fifty-nine. At nine years
old the boy spoke and wrote Latin pretty
easily. They taught Latin in those days very
much by conversation —a practice which
made children learn it early, but which
Ascham condemns as injurious to purity of
style. However, as it was the universal
language of communication among the learned,
and also among the great of the world,
familiarity with it was the great object to
attain. At twenty-four, Casaubon was a
Professor; at twenty-seven, he married a
daughter of the celebrated Henry Stephens,
by whom he had twenty children. With a
rising family of this kind springing up about
him, Isaac had to keep his Greek and
Latin learning " up," with a vengeance;
and the first thing we have to tell of his
studies is, that he worked like a horse, or
like anything you please to consider
industrious. His reading was such as some
gentlemen who draw large endowments out of
ancient foundations of learning in our day,
would probably consider incredible. Those
who make their fortunes for life by reading
"bits" and writing "bits" of scholarship—
with three centuries of learning at their back
to help them—differ from the Casaubons and
Scaligers, as the King of Naples does from
Julius Caesar. It is indeed the difference
between being carried in the penny steamboat,
and being one of the crew of the Argo.
It is the difference between a man who owes
everything to machinery which has been
made for him, and a man who owes
everything to himself.

Casaubon's routine employment as
Professor consisted of delivering lectures. But
his great occupation in life was editing
classics. Now, editing a classic, as we
sometimes see it done in England in our day,
though a respectable, is not a transcendently
great piece of work. First of all, of course
your edition is " based " on that of Bunkins,
Cunkins, or Dunkins, of Germany; which
entitles you to make what use of the labours
of those philologists you please. Then you
have got some fifty excellent commentaries
written before you were born, to help yourself
to. So far, so good; your edition soon gets
under weigh. You balance commentator
against commentator, and decide between
them;—this marks the man of judgment!
Then, you attack the last English editor, and
treat him with contempt. You call him a
certain Smith (Smithius quidam)— a man
without a tincture of learning (litteris ne
leviter quidem imbutus):—in English, it
would be impertinent,—in Latin, it is severe;