Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 38.3 (1917) 333-342 (at 334):

In the medley of books with which my cage is littered there is a volume bound in pigskin, that wonderful material which is proof against superheated houses and noxious gases,—M.A. Mureti Orationes, Epistolae Hymnique Sacri, Lipsiae, Sumptibus Viduae Gothofredi Grossii MDCLX, acquired in the early days when I had a mania for Latin composition, an art in which Muretus was a past master. I soon tired of Muretus and his elegances. Justus Lipsius was more to my native bad taste. Perhaps I was prejudiced against Muretus because in one of his letters he warned young scholars against the art of dipping in which Andrew Lang was to shew himself such an adept, an art without which there would have been no joy in my own life. If some of my friends think that I have lost myself in Brief Mention, others are of the opinion that I have found myself there. And what else, pray, are Muretus' own 'Variae Lectiones'? Now apropos of the commonplace as to the divergent points of view, which I have been illustrating, one of Muretus' orations came up to my mind. Not long ago I was looking with undisguised horror at the Lusitania medal—horror heightened by the sight of the wonderful model of the boat, when I bethought me of the words in which Muretus extolled what some people still call the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. And this is the way in which the gentle humanist, who was capable of writing affectionate letters, almost deliquescent letters, to his young friends, spoke of that dreadful night: 'Qua nocte stellas equidem ipsas luxisse nitidius arbitror et flumen Sequanae maiores undas volvisse quo citius illa impurorum hominum cadavera evolveret et exoneraret in mare.' And then we are told not to believe in the wholesale butchery of the Peloponnesian War and taught to juggle with the Greek numerals.

A translation of this oft-quoted sentence from Muretus is probably superflous, but nevertheless:

On which night I think the stars themselves shone the brighter, and the River Seine rolled greater waves the quicker to remove and unload into the sea those corpses of foul men.

The sentence occurs in Muretus' Oration XXII (Post Lanienem Parisiensem, addressed to Pope Gregory XIII), vol. I, p. 229 of the Tauchnitz edition of his Orationes.

David Irving, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of George Buchanan, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1817), p. 64 (on Muretus):

[H]is elaborate encomium on the massacre of St. Bartholomew must be remembered to his eternal infamy. The guilt of those execrable politicians who produced this unparalleled scene of butchery, is hardly to be compared to that of the enlightened scholar who could calmly extol so damnable a deed.

Walter Savage Landor, "King James I and Isaac Casaubon," Imaginary Conversations:

Medals were coined by order of Gregory XIII. to commemorate Saint Bartholomew's day: on one side is the pope, on the other is the slaughter. He commanded it also to be painted in the Vatican, where the painting still exists. In popes no atrocity is marvellous or remarkable; but how painful is it to find a scholar like Muretus exulting in a massacre!

Gildersleeve was partly Huguenot by extraction, and Huguenots were the victims of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.