to him what personal interchange of confidence is to those who mix in the bustle of every-day society. His dear friend and faithful patron, Calignon, Chancellor of Navarre Lefebre, the king's physician; Hadrian Williams, a young and ardent scholar, who was to him almost as a son; all were carried off between 1606 and 1609. But the loss that pressed most heavily upon him was that of Scaliger, which took place in January 1609. The relations of Scaliger and Casaubon, as friends, were exceedingly curious and almost unexampled. Their intercourse had been wholly by letter. They never once met, and yet their friendship was not alone fast and intimate, but affectionate and even tender. It was a friendship half of the intellect, half of the heart; but there was a warmth about it which is rarely experienced, and still more rarely maintained, except under the genial influence of mutual interchange of expressions and offices of personal affection. In reading their correspondence it is hardly possible to imagine that the writers had never known each other except by letter. Casaubon's letters to Scaliger are by far the most characteristic in the entire body of his correspondence.

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'Casaubon's letters to Scaliger are truly autobiographical. In the whole folio volume, among more than 1,200 letters, there are none which have the same confiding tone, the perfect trust that what is said will fall on a friendly ear, and be secure of friendly response. Scaliger is an accurate and satisfactory correspondent; replying himself to each topic started in the letter he is answering; a punctuality which Casaubon does not imitate. From no one does Casaubon receive in his griefs that solid comfort which Scaliger was prompt to offer. "I cannot "tell you," writes Casaubon, in July 1608, "the satisfaction your last gave me. It was so unmistakably evident how much you loved me, "and how deeply you felt my adverse fortune. You were the only one who sympathised with me when I was swindled by the petty 66 tyrants of the lake (Geneva). And now again this thunderbolt has "fallen on my house (death of Philippa), your letters show that you "feel it with me. The labour you spent in writing to me was not "thrown away, die yέpor, the reading of your epistle was no small "comfort to me." Casaubon's affectionate nature having found a strong soul to which to cling, abandoned itself to the culte of the hero with a devotion which bordered on idolatry. "I know," he writes in 1605, "what the good and the learned owe to you; how much more "do I owe! Were I to spend my life in your service, in executing your commands, I could not repay a tenth part of the debt. What a "father is to a son, that you are to me; I am your devoted client." While the loss was recent, he writes to Kirchmann :-" What tears are "enough at this funeral? Past ages have never seen his like; 66 perhaps no future time will. The more conversant anyone becomes "with letters, the more grand will he find that incomparable hero in

"his writings!" To Du Plessis Mornay he says, "his death has taken "away all my courage. Now I can do nothing more." (Pp. 271-3.)

Mr. Pattison ascribes to these various causes which have been detailed, more than to the constitutional restlessness which other biographers impute to him, the constant negotiations for change in which we find Casaubon engaged during the entire term of his residence in Paris. At different periods between 1604 and 1610 we find him in correspondence with the authorities at Nismes, at Sedan, and at Heidelberg, with a view to the transfer of his services to one or other of these cities. The most favourable offer in the entire appears to have been. from Nismes, where he was invited to accept the rectorate in conjunction with a professorship, at a salary of 600 écus, with a free house and other advantages. The proposal from Heidelberg was less advantageous in a pecuniary point of view, but it was more congenial to Casaubon's tastes, being of the professorship of Ecclesiastical History; and at one time he had actually accepted the place, although from some unexplained cause the project was afterwards allowed to drop.

A last and decisive impulse, however, was given to these wavering deliberations by the tragedy of May 14, 1610. Casaubon could not hesitate longer as to the course to be pursued. After the death of Henry IV., he felt that his home must be elsewhere than at Paris.

It is true there was one condition on which he might not only secure, but enhance almost at pleasure, all the advantages which he had hitherto enjoyed;-namely, by conforming to the Roman Church. There can be no doubt that immediately after Henry IV.'s death, the controversy was pressed upon him with renewed activity, and that Casaubon's own correspondence of this period presents some indications that give colour to the rumours as to his wavering' which then prevailed. Mr. Pattison, however, has at all events made it clear that Casaubon's wavering' (which was not confined to this period, but appears in various degrees at intervals through the whole series of his Letters and his Diary), was purely intellectualthe effort of an honest and honourable soul to find out on 'which side his actual opinions placed him. His struggle was 'not between his conscience and his preferment; it was an 'intellectual struggle, an endeavour to choose between the ' rival churches.' The allegation that he at this time promised 'to Cardinal Du Perron to make his recantation at Whit'suntide, but was anticipated by an invitation to England,' is undoubtedly a cruel calumny; and Mr. Pattison most justly observes that at the very moment at which he is represented as

himself meditating abjuration, the perversion of his eldest son John, of which he heard August 14, drew from him the bitter cry of anguish which is recorded in his Diary under ' that date.'

The invitation to England' referred to in the malevolent rumour mentioned by Mr. Pattison, had been first conveyed indirectly to Casaubon through Sir George Carew, in whose family Casaubon's daughter Philippa had died; but in July 1610 Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote him a formal invitation, with an offer of a prebendal stall at Canterbury valued at 887. yearly, with house, fuel, and corn, together with an engagement on the part of Bancroft and the other bishops to augment this offer by a contribution from themselves so as to make the amount equal to his actual income at Paris, until he could be further provided out of the revenues of the Church. It is almost certain, moreover, that this invitation originated from the King, who was desirous to secure the services of Casaubon for some polemical purpose similar to that which he had in view when he commissioned 'his ambassador at the Hague to find "some smart Jesuit "with a quick and nimble spirit" to write against Vorstius.' Casaubon, as holding his office directly under the crown, was unwilling to leave France without the royal permission, and it was not till October that he succeeded in obtaining leave of absence, and even then with the condition that he should leave his family in France, and should engage to return whenever he might be summoned. With this qualified permission he took his final departure in the suite of the ambassador, Lord Wotton of Marley, on October 17th. He reached London on the 29th of the same month, and was at once presented to the Archbishop, by whom he was very graciously received. He had a second interview with him two days later; but the hopes which he may have built on the promise of Bancroft's patronage were deceived, that prelate dying on the 12th of the following month. The truth, however, is that after Casaubon's presentation to the King, on November 8th, no other patron was needed in order to secure his footing in England.

'Casaubon was rapidly established in the royal favour. The King was insatiable of his conversation, was always sending for him, and keeping him talking for hours. James talked well himself, liked a good hearer, but was ready, which is not always the case with good talkers, to listen in return. In graver conversation he was perhaps even superior to what he was in light talk. "He loved speculative discourse upon moral and political subjects; and his talent for conducting such "discussions is a frequent theme of admiration, not only among his

6

courtiers, but in the unsuborned writings of the foreigners who "visited him." Casaubon, on his part, was a ready talker, and if his French was not good, his matter was inexhaustible. His memory supplied him with an endless store of diversified information on the topics which James liked best. The conversation was conducted in French, which James spoke fluently, though we may suppose with a Scotch accent. Casaubon, who never could accomplish English, and was compelled with the bishops to stumble on in Latin, found his tongue set free in the court circle. Of these conversations, serious or gossiping, he has only recorded one, and that very scantily. It was one of the first; in November 1610, on the day on which the King commemorated by a solemn service his delivery at Gourie House. The conversation was directed by the King to general literature. Of Tacitus, James said they were wrong who thought him the one historian who was a master of political wisdom. Casaubon was delighted to reply that in his late preface to "Polybius," he had passed a similar judgment, and that the historical lesson to be learnt from "Polybius was far more instructive. The King blamed Plutarch for his partiality against Cæsar. In Commines he noticed his flippancy, and his hatred of the English. Casaubon, whose idea of a king's conversation was formed upon that of Henri IV.,, wise and rusé, but who had at most read Amyot's French Plutarch, was astounded by finding here a king who could pronounce opinions original and not unjust, on classical authors which he had read himself.' (Pp. 314-6.)

James at once took upon himself the charge of a fitting provision for Casaubon, and bestowed on him a pension of 3007., in addition to the Canterbury prebend, with a promise of 'a something more on the Church establishment hereafter.' It was a considerable time, however, before Casaubon's final settlement in England was satisfactorily arranged, and it was not till October 1611 that Madame Casaubon joined him in Loudon. Moreover the Queen still refused him permission to remove his books from France. Even the partial use of them was grudgingly accorded, and the personal solicitation of the King himself to the Queen, that Casaubon should be permitted to transfer himself to England only succeeded in obtaining the great scholar as a loan.'

The results of this removal to England, however, were far from satisfactory for Casaubon. Unhappily, the favour into which he was received by King James was fatal to all chance of that happy leisure for study to which he had looked forward as the most precious gift of fortune. The King became a claimant on his time more formidable than any he had hitherto encountered. He was expected to present himself every Sunday wherever the court, which was constantly migrating, might chance to be at Theobald's, Royston, Hampton Court, Holdenby, Newmarket, or elsewhere. And as regarded his learned

studies, the distractions were even greater. The King had long ceased to care for anything but controversial divinity, and, even on this subject, had ceased to read anything beyond the pamphlets of the day. Mr. Pattison defends Casaubon from the imputation of falling down to the rank of a salaried pamphleteer; but the royal taste so completely determined the tone of literary society that Casaubon found himself involved, by the very necessities of his position, in polemical discussions that possessed no vital interest for him, while they consumed the hours which he measured with so jealous watchfulness. It was purely in obedience to this impulse that he wrote the letter to Fronto le Duc, and that to Cardinal du Perron.

the

It was only in undertaking, at the King's desire, the Exer'citationes in Baronium,' Casaubon was able to follow in any degree the bent of his own genius. In this he only carried out a project the idea of which he had long entertained. So far back as 1605 he would gladly have taken subject but for his fear of the French censorship, and he now entered upon it with his characteristic ardour. Apart from the question of the absolute merit of the work, its completion within the short time devoted to it by Casaubon must be regarded one of the most extraordinary literary feats upon record. The Diary enables us to track him through all its successive steps. He commenced in January 1612, and spent the first weeks in reading and arranging authorities upon the period comprised in Baronius's first volume. On March 23rd he began to sketch in outline the plan of his own work; and on April 27th he is regularly at work in the composition-in detached notes at first; but in the end of July he has entered upon the continuous criticism, in which he follows Baronius step by step through the order of the Annals. At the end of December he had reached his four hundredth page, and on the 20th of the following April he was able to announce to De Thou that he had reached the end of the period with which he meant to deal in the first instalment of the publication. On May 16th he had so far completed the revision of his rough draft as to be ready to copy for the press. Before settling down to this task, however, he went to Oxford for a holiday; and it is instructive to look over the record of his holiday recreations, the scene of which it is hardly necessary to say was the Bodleian. It would be tedious to enumerate the books read, collated, or extracted by him during this short visit. Mr. Pattison has recorded them carefully (pp. 407-8). It will be enough to say that the extracts made by him at Oxford with his own hand include twenty-three