crates that most avowed, several physicians, not at all adhering to Paracelsus, endeavoured to set up a rational experience against the Greek school, when they thought them at variance. Joubert of Montpellier, in his Paradoxes (1566), was a bold innovator of this class; but many of his paradoxes are now established truths. Botal of Asti, a pupil of Fallopius, introduced the practice of venesection on a scale before unknown, but prudently aimed to show that Hippocrates was on his side. The faculty of medicine, however, at Paris condemned it as erroneous and very dangerous. His method, nevertheless, had great success, especially in Spain."

SECT. IV.-ON ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

New Tes

43. This is a subject over which, on account of my total ignorance of Eastern languages, I am glad to Syriac verhasten. The first work that appears after the w middle of the century is a grammar of the Syriac, tament. Chaldee, and Rabbinical, compared with the Arabic and Ethiopic languages, which Angelo Canini, a man as great in Oriental as in Grecian learning, published at Paris in 1554. In the next year Widmandstadt gave, from the press of Vienna, the first edition of the Syriac version of the New Testament." Several lexicons and grammars of this tongue, which is in fact only a dialect not far removed from the Chaldee, though in a different alphabetical character, will be found in the bibliographical writers. The Syriac may be said to have been now fairly added to the literary domain. The Antwerp Polyglot of Arias Montanus, besides a complete Chaldee paraphrase of the Old Testament, the Complutensian having only contained the Pentateuch, gives the New Testament in Syriac, as well as Pagnini's Latin translation of the Old."

Hebrew critics.

44. The Hebrew language was studied, especially among the German Protestants, to a considerable extent, if we may judge from the number of grammatical works published within this period. Among these Morhof selects the Erotemata Linguæ Hebrææ by Neander, printed at Basle in 1567. Tremillius, Chevalier, and Drusius among Protestants, Masius and Clarius in the church of Rome, are the most conspicuous names. The first, an Italian refugee, is chiefly known by his translation of the Bible into Latin, in which he was assisted by Francis Junius. The second, a native of France, taught Hebrew at Cambridge, and was there the instructor of Drusius, whose father had emigrated from Flanders on the ground of religion. Drusius himself, afterwards professor of Hebrew at the university of Franeker, has left writings of more permanent reputation than most other Hebraists of the sixteenth century; they relate chiefly to biblical criticism and Jewish antiquity, and several of them have a place in the Critici Sacri and in the collection of Ugolini. Clarius is supposed to have had some influence on the decree of the council of Trent, asserting the authenticity of the Vulgate. Calasio was superior, probably, to them all, but his principal writings do not belong to this period. No large proportion of the treatises published by Ugolini ought, so far as I know their authors, to be referred to the sixteenth century.

45. The Hebrew language had been early studied in Its study in England, though there has been some controversy England. as to the extent of the knowledge which the first translators of the Bible possessed. We find that both Chevalier read lectures on Hebrew at Cambridge not long after the queen's accession, and his disciple Drusius at Oxford, from 1572 to 1576. Hugh Broughton was a deeply learned rabbinical scholar. I do not know that we

b Drusius is extolled by all critics except Scaliger (Scaligerana Secunda), who seems to have conceived one of his personal prejudices against the Franeker professor, and depreciates his moral character. Simon thinks Drusius the most learned and judicious writer we find in the Critici Sacri. Hist. Critique du V T., p. 498. Biogr. Univ. Blount.

с

Clarius, according to Simon, knew

Hebrew but indifferently, and does little more than copy Munster, whose observations are too full of Judaism, as he consulted no interpreters but the rabbinical writers. Masius, the same author says, is very learned, but has the like fault of dealing in rabbinical expositions. p. 499. d Wood's Hist. and Antiquities. In 1574 he was appointed to read publicly in Syriac.

could produce any other name of marked reputation; and we find that the first Hebrew types, employed in any considerable number, appear in 1592. These are in a book not relating directly to Hebrew, Rheses Institutiones Linguæ Cambro-Britannica. But a few Hebrew characters, very rudely cut in wood, are found in Wakefield's Oration, printed as early as 1524.

gins to be

46. The Syriac and Chaldee were so closely related to Hebrew, both as languages, and in the theolo- Arabic begical purposes for which they were studied, that studied. they did not much enlarge the field of Oriental literature. The most copious language, and by far the most fertile of books, was the Arabic. A few slight attempts at introducing a knowledge of this had been made before the middle of the century. An Arabic as well as Syriac press at Vienna was first due to the patronage of Ferdinand I. in 1554, but for a considerable time no fruit issued from it. But the increasing zeal of Rome for the propagation of its faith, both among infidels and schismatics, gave a larger sweep to the cultivation of Oriental languages. Gregory XIII. founded a Maronite College at Rome in 1584, for those Syrian Christians of Libanus who had united themselves to the Catholic church; the cardinal Medici, afterwards grand duke of Florence, established an Oriental press, about 1580, under the superintendence of John Baptista Raimondi ; and Sixtus V. in 1588 that of the Vatican, which, though principally designed for early Christian literature, was possessed of types for the chief Eastern languages. Hence the Arabic, hitherto almost neglected, began to attract more attention; the Gospels in that language, were published at Rome in 1590 or 1591; some works of Euclid and Avicenna had preceded; one or two elementary books on grammar appeared in Germany; and several other publications belong to the last years of the century. Scaliger now entered upon the study of Arabic with all his indefatigable activity. Yet, at the end of the century, few had penetrated far into a region so novel and extensive, and in which the subsidiary means of knowledge were so imper

Preface to Herbert's Typographical Antiquities.

Eichhorn, v. 641, et alibi. Tiraboschi, viii. 195. Ginguéné, vol. vii. p. 258.

fect. The early grammars are represented by Eichhorn as being very indifferent, and in fact very few Arabic books had been printed. The edition of the Koran by Pagninus in 1529 was unfortunately suppressed, as we have before mentioned, by the zeal of the court of Rome. Casaubon, writing to Scaliger in 1597, declares that no one within his recollection had even touched with the tips of his fingers that language, except Postel in a few rhapsodies; and that neither he nor any one else had written any thing on the Persic. Gesner, however, in his Mithridates, 1558, had given the Lord's prayer in twenty-two languages; to which Rocca at Rome, in 1591, added three more; and Megiser increased the number, in a book published next year at Frankfort, to forty."

SECT. V.-ON GEOGRAPHY.

Voyages in the Indies — Those of the English Of Ortelius and others.

voyages by

Ramusio.

47. A MORE important accession to the knowledge of Collection of Europe as to the rest of the world, than had hitherto been made through the press, is due to Ramusio, a Venetian who had filled respectable offices under the republic. He published, in 1550, the first volume of his well-known collection of Travels; the second appeared in 1559, and the third in 1565. They have been reprinted several times, and all the editions are not equally complete. No general collection of travels had hitherto been published, except the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, and though the greater part perhaps of those included in Ramusio's three volumes had appeared separately, others came forth for the first time. The Africa of Leo Africanus, a baptized Moor, with which Ramusio

Nostra autem memoria, qui eas linguas vel axe, quod aiunt, daxTuλ attigerit, novi neminem, nisi quod Postellum nescio quid muginatum esse de lingua Arabica memini. Sed illa quam tenuia,

quam exilia! de Persicâ, quod equidem memini neque ille, neque alius quisquam vel yg to yousov. Epist. ciii.

h Biogr. Univ. arts. Megiser and Rocca.

begins, is among these; and it is upon this work that such knowledge as we possessed, till very recent times, as to the interior of that continent, was almost entirely founded. Ramusio in the remainder of this volume gives many voyages in Africa, the East Indies, and Indian Archipelago, including two accounts of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, and one of Japan, which had very lately been discovered. The second volume is dedicated to travels through northern Europe and Asia, beginning with that of Marco Polo, including also the curious, though very questionable voyage of the Zeni brothers, about 1400, to some unknown region north of Scotland. In the third volume we find the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, with all that had already been printed of the excellent work of Hernando d'Oviedo on the Western world. Few subsequent collections of voyages are more esteemed for the new matter they contain than that of Ramusio.i

up

they

48. The importance of such publications as that of Ramusio was soon perceived, not only in the sti- Curiosity mulus they gave to curiosity or cupidity towards awakened. following up the paths of discovery, but in calling the attention of reflecting minds, such as Bodin and Montaigne, to so copious a harvest of new facts, illustrating the physical and social character of the human species. But from the want of a rigid investigation, or more culpable reasons, these early narratives are mingled with much falsehood, and misled some of the more credulous philosophers almost as often as they enlarged their knowledge.

Other

49. The story of the Portuguese conquests in the East, more varied and almost as wonderful as romance, was recounted in the Asia of Joam de Barros voyages. (1552), and in that of Castanheda in the same and two ensuing years; these have never been translated. The great voyage of Magellan had been written by one of his companions, Pigafetta. This was first published in Italian in 1556. The History of the Indies by Acosta, 1590, may perhaps belong more strictly to other departments of literature than to geography.

Biog. Univ.