affectionate, rather irritable man, now turned
of fifty—when all Paris, one day in May,
started at the death-wound of the assassinated
Henry the Fourth. That king had
altogether treated him well,—had respected
his conscience, and checked his enemies; and
now Paris was an intolerable and an unsafe
residence. Casaubon had corresponded,
occasionally, with James the First; and now,
that king being on the English throne, a
negotiation had sprung up between them,
and it was proposed to Casaubon to come
over to London. For this purpose, he had
to get leave from the French court. The
position of great scholars in those days
was a singular one. They were courted
from place to place in Europe, and, as they
approached the towns of their new appointments,
the magistrates and professors came
out to meet them a mile outside the gates.
Yet, they had the utmost difficulty in getting
their salaries. And, in the same way, though
every king of high pretensions considered a
great scholar an ornament to his court and
city,—though kings recognised them personally
with honour (Henry the Fourth wrote
to Joseph Scaliger, on one occasion, with his
own hand),—yet, when installed, the scholar
was a kind of servant. If he wanted to leave
the city he must get permission. When he
asked permission, he was sometimes refused
it, for fear he should not come back. The
lives of scholars were, indeed, full of strange
contradictions; they had the splendour of
reputation which a singer has in our times,
combined with fortune enough to pay for the
singer's bouquets, and hampered with restrictions
and troubles infinitely vexatious.

In October of sixteen hundred and ten,
Casaubon obtained permission to visit
England, and came over in company with Wotton;
leaving his family and books in Paris. He
was sea-sick, like other great and little men,
and lay groaning, below, on a heap of sailors'
jackets, duly entered in the Ephemerides, as
"vestes nautarum." He stayed a little while,
at Canterbury, with Dr. Charier, and then
came to London, " through a most pleasant
country," he observes: as Kent, we know,
still is. He duly arrived at Gravesend
(" Gravesinda " sounds odd in our days!)
and went first to the house of the Dean of
St. Paul's—Overall.

On the eighth of November, he was
presented to King James, at St. Theobald's, and
attended him at dinner. The ceremonial was,
that you stood, while the king ate and drank,
and made observations on sacred and profane
literature, at his good pleasure. An irreverent
modern might consider this a little dull;
but times are changed. Casaubon stood— a
kind of learned dumb-waiter—with bishops
and others; and conversation went on.
"There was much conversation with this
great and wise king on all kinds of literature.
The talk turned on Tacitus, on Plutarch, on
Commines, and others. Not without
astonishment, did I hear so great a monarch
pronouncing opinions on letters!"

Casaubon was sincere; and we can respect
his sincerity, without supposing that the
king was a paragon. Learning was rare:
learned kings were rarer still. James had
been well educated; and, if he had a feature
in his character not utterly low and mean,
that feature was a kind of love of learning,
such as is found in many a " dominie " of his
country. He was glad to get a chance of
showing off to a scholar: a scholar in those
days was glad to find anything like personal
appreciation of his merits in a king. James
actually asked Casaubon, to his table to dine
with him, which is recorded by biographers
with wonder. But, generally, Casaubon's
place was at the king's chair, along with the
bishops and scholars, as above-mentioned.
Casaubon soon found that the king's
perpetual summonses of him were a serious
interruption to his studies. His wife's
absence, too, and that of his library, were
annoying. He was solicited to take up his
residence in England; and the king bestowed
on him a prebend in Westminster, a prebend
in Canterbury, and a pension. There is on
record an autograph order of James's to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer about Casaubon,
which is certainly the best specimen of his
Majesty's humour that we have ever seen:—
"Chancelor of my Excheker, I will have
Mr. Casaubon paid befor me, my wife, and
my barnes." (23rd September, 1612.)

With what glee would the world have
hailed in the scholar's pages any mention of
the great authors of that period—any little
note about Shakspeare or Ben Jonson! Had
Casaubon ever fancied that there was a man
then alive in England, whose poetry was
more beautiful than that of all the ancients
whom he knew so well? There is something
affecting in the world's indifference to its
great men. Casaubon, learned, wise, good-
hearted as he was, probably never thought all
his life, that any modern could write
anything worth reading, except of course such
moderns as the Scaligers and others, who
were proud to devote their laborious lives to
the illustration of the classics. Our language
he knew nothing of; nor was it indeed of any
great importance to him that he did not: all
those discussions on theology and the classics
with the king and the bishops went on in
Latin.

Casaubon's wife joined him here; and he
likewise obtained his books at last—not without
sore annoyance from custom-house authorities.
He established himself in a house in St. Mary
Axe: " marvellously expensive," says the
Diary: where the poor uxor suffered most,
knowing nothing of English, and finding the
climate inclement. In those days, too, the
strong and growing Puritan feeling spread
itself among the lower orders, and Casaubon
—as a friend to the English church, and,
perhaps, as a suspected papist—was liable to