Laudator Temporis Acti

Essays by the Late Mark Pattison, Vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), pp. 137-139 (on Joseph Scaliger):

It does not appear that Joseph had learned the rudiments of Greek at the time of his father's death, 21st October, 1558. He certainly had not learned more than the rudiments. He had seen enough, however, to understand that 'not to know Greek was to know nothing.' The death of his father affected him so deeply as for some time to disorder his health. As soon as he had recovered from the blow, he determined to make good this deficiency.

Adrian Turnebus was at that time the most renowned Greek scholar in France and in Europe. For a youth of eighteen, who had yet to begin his grammar, less than the first Grecian of the day might have served. But this is a truth which only experiment can teach us. Joseph made his way to Paris, and enrolled himself in Turnebus's class, that he might imbibe Greek at the fountain-head. A trial of two months opened his eyes, and he understood that to begin one must begin at the beginning; a lesson, in learning which two months were well spent. He adopted the resolution—be it remembered he is nineteen—to shut himself up in his chamber, and become his own teacher. It is not said, but we may be certain that it was instinct, not accident, which guided him to Homer. With the aid of a Latin translation he went through it in one-and-twenty days. From Homer he passed in order down the series of the Greek poets; and four months sufficed to devour the whole. The same instinct, and the same spirit of determination, guided him here in not interrupting his poetic reading by any deviation into prose; the differences of idiom being, he may have felt, distinct dialects, incapable of being mastered at one effort. As he went along, he formed a grammar for himself by his own observation of the analogies, the only grammar he ever learnt. Huet, alluding to the Scaliger feat, thinks it incredible, but on no better ground than that he himself had made an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the experiment. Gibbon, more modestly, declares that he was well satisfied with himself when he got through the same task in as many weeks as Scaliger took days. We might quote against these authorities Wyttenbach despatching Athenaeus in fourteen days; or Milton's assertion that he had read 'all the Greek and Latin classics' in five years, if it were not that parallel is misplaced in speaking of Scaliger and Greek. There are things which a man cannot teach himself. And this he had now to experience, when, elated by his victory over Greek, he attempted to carry Hebrew by storm in the same manner. He did ultimately acquire both Hebrew and Arabic. But Dr. Bernays, who has the best title to judge in the case of the first-named tongue, pronounces that he never reached, in Hebrew, that practical hold upon the idiom—the usus linguae which was the foundation of his critical skill in Latin and Greek. This is sufficient to correct the idle romance of those biographers who, in their ignorance, make Scaliger's mythical eminence to consist in his knowing many languages. He spoke thirteen languages, says one of the most recent of these open-mouthed wonderers,¹ as if Scaliger was a Wotton or a Mezzofanti.

¹ Poirson, Histoire du Règne de Henri IV, vol. IV, p. 230.