Chapter 14

SeeLife and Remains, by Rev. W. Otter (1824).

CLARKE, SIR EDWARD GEORGE(1841- ), English lawyer and politician, son of J.G. Clarke of Moorgate Street, London, was born on the 15th of February 1841. In 1859 he became a writer in the India office, but resigned in the next year, and became a law reporter. He obtained a Tancred law scholarship in 1861, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1864. He joined the home circuit, became Q.C. in 1880, and a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn in 1882. In November 1877 he was successful in securing the acquittal of Chief-Inspector Clarke from the charge brought against certain Scotland Yard officials of conspiracy to defeat justice, and his reputation was assured by his defence of Patrick Staunton in the Penge murder case (1877), and of Mrs Bartlett against the charge of poisoning her husband (1886). Among other notable cases he was counsel for the plaintiff in the libel action brought by Sir William Gordon-Cumming (1890) against Mr and Mrs Lycett Green and others for slander, charging him with cheating in the game of baccarat (in this case the prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VII., gave evidence), and he appeared for Dr Jameson, Sir John Willoughby and others when they were tried (1896) under the Foreign Enlistment Act. He was knighted in 1886. He was returned as Conservative member for Southwark at a by-election early in 1880, but failed to retain his seat at the general election which followed a month or two later; he found a seat at Plymouth, however, which he retained until 1900. He was solicitor-general in the Conservative administration of 1886-1892, but declined office under the Unionist government of 1895 when the law officers of the crown were debarred from private practice. The most remarkable, perhaps, of his speeches in the House of Commons was his reply to Mr Gladstone on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill in 1893. In 1899 differences which arose between Sir Edward Clarke and his party on the subject of the government’s South African policy led to his resigning his seat. At the general election of 1906 he was returned at the head of the poll for the city of London, but he offended a large section of his constituents by a speech against tariff reform in the House of Commons on the 12th of March, and shortly afterwards he resigned his seat on grounds of health. He published aTreatise on the Law of Extradition(4th ed., 1903), and also three volumes of his political and forensic speeches.

CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN(1810-1888), American preacher and author, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 4th of April 1810. He was prepared for college at the public Latin school of Boston, and graduated at Harvard College in 1829, and at the Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He was then ordained as minister of a Unitarian congregation at Louisville, Kentucky, which was then a slave state. Clarke soon threw himself heart and soul into the national movement for the abolition of slavery, though he was never what was then called in America a “radical abolitionist.” In 1839 he returned to Boston, where he and his friends established (1841) the “Church of the Disciples.” It brought together a body of men and women active and eager in applying the Christian religion to the social problems of the day, and he would have said that the feature which distinguished it from any other church was that they also were ministers of the highest religious life. Ordination could make no distinction between him and them. Of this church he was the minister from 1841 until 1850 and from 1854 until his death. He was alsosecretary of the Unitarian Association and, in 1867-1871 professor of natural religion and Christian doctrine at Harvard. From the beginning of his active life he wrote freely for the press. From 1836 until 1839 he was editor of theWestern Messenger, a magazine intended to carry to readers in the Mississippi Valley simple statements of “liberal religion,” involving what were then the most radical appeals as to national duty, especially the abolition of slavery. The magazine is now of value to collectors because it contains the earliest printed poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was Clarke’s personal friend. Most of Clarke’s earlier published writings were addressed to the immediate need of establishing a larger theory of religion than that espoused by people who were still trying to be Calvinists, people who maintained what a good American phrase calls “hard-shelled churches.” But it would be wrong to call his work controversial. He was always declaring that the business of the Church is Eirenic and not Polemic. Such books asOrthodoxy: Its Truths and Errors(1866) have been read more largely by members of orthodox churches than by Unitarians. In the great moral questions of his time Clarke was a fearless and practical advocate of the broadest statement of human rights. Without caring much what company he served in, he could always be seen and heard, a leader of unflinching courage, in the front rank of the battle. He published but few verses, but at the bottom he was a poet. He was a diligent and accurate scholar, and among the books by which he is best known is one calledTen Great Religions(2 vols., 1871-1883). Few Americans have done more than Clarke to give breadth to the published discussion of the subjects of literature, ethics and religious philosophy. Among his later books areEvery-Day Religion(1886) andSermons on the Lord’s Prayer(1888). He died at Jamaica Plain, Mass., on the 8th of June 1888.

HisAutobiography, Diary and Correspondence, edited by Edward Everett Hale, was published in Boston in 1891.

(E. E. H.)

CLARKE, JOHN SLEEPER(1833-1899), American actor, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 3rd of September 1833, and was educated for the law. He made his first appearance in Boston as Frank Hardy inPaul Pryin 1851. In 1859 he married Asia Booth, daughter of Junius Brutus Booth, and he was associated with his brother-in-law Edwin Booth in the management of the Winter Garden theatre in New York, the Walnut Street theatre in Philadelphia and the Boston theatre. In 1867 he went to London, where he made his first appearance at the St James’s as Major Wellington de Boots in Stirling Coynes’sEverybody’s Friend, rewritten for him and calledThe Widow’s Hunt. His success was so great that he remained in England for the rest of his life, except for four visits to America. Among his favourite parts were Toodles, which ran for 200 nights at the Strand, Dr Pangloss inThe Heir-at-law, and Dr Ollapod inThe Poor Gentleman. He managed several London theatres, including the Haymarket, where he preceded the Bancrofts. He retired in 1889, and died on the 24th of September 1899. His two sons also were actors.

CLARKE, MARCUS ANDREW HISLOP(1846-1881), Australian author, was born in London on the 24th of April 1846. He was the only son of William Hislop Clarke, a barrister of the Middle Temple who died in 1863. He emigrated forthwith to Australia, where his uncle, James Langton Clarke, was a county court judge. He was at first a clerk in the bank of Australasia, but showed no business ability, and soon proceeded to learn farming at a station on the Wimmera river, Victoria. He was already writing stories for theAustralian Magazine, when in 1867 he joined the staff of the MelbourneArgusthrough the introduction of Dr Robert Lewins. He also became secretary (1872) to the trustees of the Melbourne public library and later (1876) assistant librarian. He founded in 1868 the Yorick Club, which soon numbered among its members the chief Australian men of letters. The most famous of his books isFor the Term of his Natural Life(Melbourne, 1874), a powerful tale of an Australian penal settlement, which originally appeared in serial form in a Melbourne paper. He also wroteThe Peripatetic Philosopher(1869), a series of amusing papers reprinted fromThe Austral-asian; Long Odds(London, 1870), a novel; and numerous comedies and pantomimes, the best of which wasTwinkle, Twinkle, Little Star(Theatre Royal, Melbourne; Christmas, 1873). He married an actress, Marian Dunn. In spite of his popular success Clarke was constantly involved in pecuniary difficulties, which are said to have hastened his death at Melbourne on the 2nd of August 1881.

SeeThe Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume(Melbourne, 1884), containing selections from his writings with a biography and list of works, edited by Hamilton Mackinnon.

CLARKE, MARY ANNE(c. 1776-1852), mistress of Frederick duke of York, second son of George III., was born either in London or at Oxford. Her father, whose name was Thompson, seems to have been a tradesman in rather humble circumstances. She married before she was eighteen, but Mr Clarke, the proprietor of a stonemasonry business, became bankrupt, and she left him. After otherliaisons, she became in 1803 the mistress of the duke of York, then commander-in-chief, maintaining a large and expensive establishment in a fashionable district. The duke’s promised allowance was not regularly paid, and to escape her financial difficulties Mrs Clarke trafficked in her protector’s position, receiving money from various promotion-seekers, military, civil and even clerical, in return for her promise to secure them the good services of the duke. Her procedure became a public scandal, and in 1809 Colonel Wardle, M.P., brought eight charges of abuse of military patronage against the duke in the House of Commons, and a committee of inquiry was appointed, before which Mrs Clarke herself gave evidence. The result of the inquiry clearly established the charges as far as she was concerned, and the duke of York was shown to have been aware of what was being done, but to have derived no pecuniary benefit himself. He resigned his appointment as commander-in-chief, and terminated his connexion with Mrs Clarke, who subsequently obtained from him a considerable sum in cash and a pension, as the price for withholding the publication of his numerous letters to her. Mrs Clarke died at Boulogne on the 21st of June 1852.

See Taylor,Authentic Memoirs of Mrs Clarke; Clarke (? pseud.),Life of Mrs M.A. Clarkek;Annual Register, vol. li.

CLARKE, SAMUEL(1675-1729), English philosopher and divine, son of Edward Clarke, an alderman, who for several years was parliamentary representative of the city of Norwich, was born on the 11th of October 1675, and educated at the free school of Norwich and at Caius College, Cambridge. The philosophy of Descartes was the reigning system at the university; Clarke, however, mastered the new system of Newton, and contributed greatly to its extension by publishing an excellent Latin version of theTraité de physiqueof Jacques Rohault (1620-1675) with valuable notes, which he finished before he was twenty-two years of age. The system of Rohault was founded entirely upon Cartesian principles, and was previously known only through the medium of a rude Latin version. Clarke’s translation (1697) continued to be used as a text-book in the university till supplanted by the treatises of Newton, which it had been designed to introduce. Four editions were issued, the last and best being that of 1718. It was translated into English in 1723 by his brother Dr John Clarke (1682-1757), dean of Sarum.

Clarke afterwards devoted himself to the study of Scripture in the original, and of the primitive Christian writers. Having taken holy orders, he became chaplain to John Moore (1646-1714), bishop of Norwich, who was ever afterwards his friend and patron. In 1699 he published two treatises,—one entitledThree Practical Essays on Baptism, Confirmation and Repentance, and the other,Some Reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton’s Life, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and, the Canon of the New Testament. In 1701 he publishedA Paraphrase upon the Gospel of St Matthew, which was followed, in 1702, by theParaphrases upon the Gospels of St Mark and St Luke, and soon afterwards by a third volume upon St John. They were subsequently printed together in two volumes and have since passed through several editions. He intended to treat in the same manner the remaining books of the New Testament, but his design was unfulfilled.

Meanwhile he had been presented by Bishop Moore to the rectory of Drayton, near Norwich. As Boyle lecturer, he dealt in 1704 with theBeing and Attributes of God, and in 1705 with theEvidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. These lectures, first printed separately, were afterwards published together under the title ofA Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, in opposition to Hobbes, Spinoza, the author of the Oracles of Reason, and other Deniers of Natural and Revealed Religion.

In 1706 he wrote a refutation of Dr Henry Dodwell’s views on the immortality of the soul, and this drew him into controversy with Anthony Collins. He also wrote at this time a translation of Newton’sOptics, for which the author presented him with £500. In the same year through the influence of Bishop Moore, he obtained the rectory of St Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf, London. Soon afterwards Queen Anne appointed him one of her chaplains in ordinary, and in 1709 presented him to the rectory of St James’s, Westminster. He then took the degree of doctor in divinity, defending as his thesis the two propositions:Nullum fidei Christianae dogma, in Sacris Scripturis traditum, est rectae rationi dissentaneum, andSine actionum humanarum libertate nulla potest esse religio. During the same year, at the request of the author, he revised Whiston’s English translation of theApostolical Constitutions.

In 1712 he published a carefully punctuated and annotated edition (folio 1712, octavo 1720) of Caesar’sCommentaries, with elegant engravings, dedicated to the duke of Marlborough. During the same year he published his celebrated treatise onThe Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. It is divided into three parts. The first contains a collection and exegesis of all the texts in the New Testament relating to the doctrine of the Trinity; in the second the doctrine is set forth at large, and explained in particular and distinct propositions; and in the third the principal passages in the liturgy of the Church of England relating to the doctrine of the Trinity are considered. Whiston informs us that, some time before the publication of this book, a message was sent to him from Lord Godolphin “that the affairs of the public were with difficulty then kept in the hands of those that were for liberty; that it was therefore an unseasonable time for the publication of a book that would make a great noise and disturbance; and that therefore they desired him to forbear till a fitter opportunity should offer itself,”—a message that Clarke of course entirely disregarded. The ministers were right in their conjectures; and the work not only provoked a great number of replies, but occasioned a formal complaint from the Lower House of Convocation. Clarke, in reply, drew up an apologetic preface, and afterwards gave several explanations, which satisfied the Upper House; and, on his pledging himself that his future conduct would occasion no trouble, the matter dropped.

In 1715 and 1716 he had a discussion with Leibnitz relative to the principles of natural philosophy and religion, which was at length cut short by the death of his antagonist. A collection of the papers which passed between them was published in 1717 (cf. G. v. Leroy,Die philos. Probleme in dem Briefwechsel Leibniz und Clarke, Giessen, 1893). In 1719 he was presented by Nicholas 1st Baron Lechmere, to the mastership of Wigston’s hospital in Leicester. In 1724 he published seventeen sermons, eleven of which had not before been printed. In 1727, on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he was offered by the court the place of master of the mint, worth on an average from £1200 to £1500 a year. This secular preferment, however, he absolutely refused. In 1728 was published “A Letter from Dr Clarke to Benjamin Hoadly, F.R.S., occasioned by the controversy relating to the Proportion of Velocity and Force in Bodies in Motion,” printed in thePhilosophical Transactions. In 1729 he published the first twelve books of Homer’sIliad. This edition, dedicated to William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, was highly praised by Bishop Hoadly. On Sunday, the 11th of May 1729, when going out to preach before the judges at Serjeants’ Inn, he was seized with a sudden illness, which caused his death on the Saturday following (May 17, 1729).

Soon after his death his brother Dr John Clarke, dean of Sarum, published, from his original manuscripts,An Exposition of the Church Catechism, and ten volumes of sermons. TheExpositionis composed of the lectures which he read every Thursday morning, for some months in the year, at St James’s church. In the latter part of his life he revised them with great care, and left them completely prepared for the press. Three years after his death appeared also the last twelve books of theIliad, published by his son Samuel Clarke, the first three of these books and part of the fourth having, as he states, been revised and annotated by his father.

In disposition Clarke was cheerful and even playful. An intimate friend relates that he once found him swimming upon a table. At another time Clarke on looking out at the window saw a grave blockhead approaching the house; upon which he cried out, “Boys, boys, be wise; here comes a fool.” Dr Warton, in his observations upon Pope’s line,

“Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise,”

says, “Who could imagine that Locke was fond of romances; that Newton once studied astrology; that Dr Clarke valued himself on his agility, and frequently amused himself in a private room of his house in leaping over the tables and chairs?”

Philosophy.—Clarke, though in no way an original thinker, was eminent in theology, mathematics, metaphysics and philology, but his chief strength lay in his logical power. The materialism of Hobbes, the pantheism of Spinoza, the empiricism of Locke, the determinism of Leibnitz, Collins’ necessitarianism, Dodwell’s denial of the natural immortality of the soul, rationalistic attacks on Christianity, and the morality of the sensationalists—all these he opposed with a thorough conviction of the truth of the principles which he advocated. His fame as theologian and philosopher rests to a large extent on his demonstration of the existence of God and his theory of the foundation of rectitude. The former is not a purely a priori argument, nor is it presented as such by its author. It starts from a fact and it often explicitly appeals to facts. The intelligence, for example, of the self-existence and original cause of all things is, he says, “not easily proved a priori,” but “demonstrably proved a posteriori from the variety and degrees of perfection in things, and the order of causes and effects, from the intelligence that created beings are confessedly endowed with, and from the beauty, order, and final purpose of things.” The propositions maintained in the argument are—“(1) That something has existed from eternity; (2) that there has existed from eternity some one immutable and independent being; (3) that that immutable and independent being, which has existed from eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is, necessarily existing; (4) what the substance or essence of that being is, which is self-existent or necessarily existing, we have no idea, neither is it at all possible for us to comprehend it; (5) that though the substance or essence of the self-existent being is itself absolutely incomprehensible to us, yet many of the essential attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable as well as his existence, and, in the first place, that he must be of necessity eternal; (6) that the self-existent being must of necessity be infinite and omnipresent; (7) must be but one; (8) must be an intelligent being; (9) must be not a necessary agent, but a being endued with liberty and choice; (10) must of necessity have infinite power; (11) must be infinitely wise, and (12) must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme governor and judge of the world.”In order to establish his sixth proposition, Clarke contends that time and space, eternity and immensity, are not substances, but attributes—the attributes of a self-existent being. Edmund Law, Dugald Stewart, Lord Brougham, and many other writers, have, in consequence, represented Clarke as arguing from the existence of time and space to the existence of Deity. This is a serious mistake. The existence of an immutable, independent, and necessary being is supposed to be proved before any reference is made to the nature of time and space. Clarke has been generally supposed to have derived the opinion that time and space are attributes of an infinite immaterial and spiritual being from theScholium Generale, first published in the second edition of Newton’sPrincipia(1714). The truth is that his work on the Being and Attributes of God appeared nine years before thatScholium. The view propounded by Clarke may have been derived from the Midrash, the Kabbalah, Philo, Henry More, or Cudworth, but not from Newton. It is a view difficult to prove, and probably few will acknowledge that Clarke has conclusively proved it.His ethical theory of “fitness” (seeEthics) is formulated on the analogy of mathematics. He held that in relation to the will things possess an objective fitness similar to the mutual consistency of things in the physical universe. This fitness God has given to actions, as he has given laws to Nature; and the fitness is as immutable as the laws. The theory has been unfairly criticized byJouffroy, Amédée Jacques, Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Brown and others. It is said, for example, that Clarke made virtue consist in conformity to the relations of things universally, although the whole tenor of his argument shows him to have had in view conformity to such relations only as belong to the sphere of moral agency. It is true that he might have emphasized the relation of moral fitness to the will, and in this respect J.F. Herbart (q.v.) improved on Clarke’s statement of the case. To say, however, that Clarke simply confused mathematics and morals by justifying the moral criterion on a mathematical basis is a mistake. He compared the two subjects for the sake of the analogy.Though Clarke can thus be defended against this and similar criticism, his work as a whole can be regarded only as an attempt to present the doctrines of the Cartesian school in a form which would not shock the conscience of his time. His work contained a measure of rationalism sufficient to arouse the suspicion of orthodox theologians, without making any valuable addition to, or modification of, the underlying doctrine.Authorities.—See W. Whiston’sHistorical Memoirs, and the preface by Benjamin Hoadly to Clarke’sWorks(4 vols., London, 1738-1742). See further on his general philosophical position J. Hunt’sReligious Thought in England,passim, but particularly in vol. ii. 447-457, and vol. iii. 20-29 and 109-115, &c.; Rob. Zimmermann in theDenkschriften d. k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe, Bd. xix. (Vienna, 1870); H. Sidgwick’sMethods of Ethics(6th ed., 1901), p. 384; A. Bain’sMoral Science(1872), p. 562 foll., andMental Science(1872), p. 416; Sir L. Stephen’sEnglish Thought in the Eighteenth Century(3rd ed., 1902), c. iii.; J. E. le Rossignol,Ethical Philosophy of S. Clarke(Leipzig, 1892).

In order to establish his sixth proposition, Clarke contends that time and space, eternity and immensity, are not substances, but attributes—the attributes of a self-existent being. Edmund Law, Dugald Stewart, Lord Brougham, and many other writers, have, in consequence, represented Clarke as arguing from the existence of time and space to the existence of Deity. This is a serious mistake. The existence of an immutable, independent, and necessary being is supposed to be proved before any reference is made to the nature of time and space. Clarke has been generally supposed to have derived the opinion that time and space are attributes of an infinite immaterial and spiritual being from theScholium Generale, first published in the second edition of Newton’sPrincipia(1714). The truth is that his work on the Being and Attributes of God appeared nine years before thatScholium. The view propounded by Clarke may have been derived from the Midrash, the Kabbalah, Philo, Henry More, or Cudworth, but not from Newton. It is a view difficult to prove, and probably few will acknowledge that Clarke has conclusively proved it.

His ethical theory of “fitness” (seeEthics) is formulated on the analogy of mathematics. He held that in relation to the will things possess an objective fitness similar to the mutual consistency of things in the physical universe. This fitness God has given to actions, as he has given laws to Nature; and the fitness is as immutable as the laws. The theory has been unfairly criticized byJouffroy, Amédée Jacques, Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Brown and others. It is said, for example, that Clarke made virtue consist in conformity to the relations of things universally, although the whole tenor of his argument shows him to have had in view conformity to such relations only as belong to the sphere of moral agency. It is true that he might have emphasized the relation of moral fitness to the will, and in this respect J.F. Herbart (q.v.) improved on Clarke’s statement of the case. To say, however, that Clarke simply confused mathematics and morals by justifying the moral criterion on a mathematical basis is a mistake. He compared the two subjects for the sake of the analogy.

Though Clarke can thus be defended against this and similar criticism, his work as a whole can be regarded only as an attempt to present the doctrines of the Cartesian school in a form which would not shock the conscience of his time. His work contained a measure of rationalism sufficient to arouse the suspicion of orthodox theologians, without making any valuable addition to, or modification of, the underlying doctrine.

Authorities.—See W. Whiston’sHistorical Memoirs, and the preface by Benjamin Hoadly to Clarke’sWorks(4 vols., London, 1738-1742). See further on his general philosophical position J. Hunt’sReligious Thought in England,passim, but particularly in vol. ii. 447-457, and vol. iii. 20-29 and 109-115, &c.; Rob. Zimmermann in theDenkschriften d. k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe, Bd. xix. (Vienna, 1870); H. Sidgwick’sMethods of Ethics(6th ed., 1901), p. 384; A. Bain’sMoral Science(1872), p. 562 foll., andMental Science(1872), p. 416; Sir L. Stephen’sEnglish Thought in the Eighteenth Century(3rd ed., 1902), c. iii.; J. E. le Rossignol,Ethical Philosophy of S. Clarke(Leipzig, 1892).

CLARKE, THOMAS SHIELDS(1860- ), American artist, was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on the 25th of April 1860, and graduated at Princeton in 1882. He was a pupil of the Art Students’ League, New York, and of the École des Beaux Arts, Paris, under J.L. Gérôme; later he entered the atelier of Dagnan-Bouveret, and, becoming interested in sculpture, worked for a while under Henri M. Chapu. As a sculptor, he received a medal of honour in Madrid for his “The Cider Press,” now in the Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, and he made four caryatides of “The Seasons” for the Appellate Court House, New York. He designed an “Alma Mater” for Princeton University, and a model is in the library. Among his paintings are his “Night Market in Morocco” (Philadelphia Art Club), for which he received a medal at the International Exposition in Berlin in 1891, and his “A Fool’s Fool,” exhibited at the Salon in 1887 and now in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

CLARKE, WILLIAM BRANWHITE(1798-1878), British geologist, was born at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, on the 2nd of June 1798. He received his early education at Dedham grammar school, and in 1817 entered Jesus College, Cambridge; he took his B.A. in 1821, was ordained and became M.A. in 1824. In 1821 he was appointed curate of Ramsholt in Suffolk, and he acted in his clerical capacity in other places until 1839. Having become interested in geology through the teachings of Sedgwick, he utilized his opportunities and gathered many interesting facts on the geology of East Anglia which were embodied in a paper “On the Geological Structure and Phenomena of Suffolk” (Trans. Geol. Soc.1837). He also communicated a series of papers on the geology of S.E. Dorsetshire to theMagazine of Nat. Hist.(1837-1838). In 1839, after a severe illness, he left England for New South Wales, mainly with the object of benefiting by the sea voyage. He remained, however, in that country, and came to be regarded as the “Father of Australian Geology.” From the date of his arrival in New South Wales until 1870 he was in clerical charge first of the country from Paramatta to the Hawkesbury river, then of Campbelltown, and finally of Willoughby. He zealously devoted attention to the geology of the country, with results that have been of paramount importance. In 1841 he discovered gold, being the first explorer who had obtained itin situin the country, finding it both in the detrital deposits and in the quartzites of the Blue Mountains, and he then declared his belief in its abundance. In 1849 he made the first actual discovery of tin in Australia and in 1859 he made known the occurrence of the diamond. He was also the first to indicate the presence of Silurian rocks, and to determine the age of the coal-bearing rocks in New South Wales. In 1869 he announced the discovery of remains ofDinornisin Queensland. He was a trustee of the Australian museum at Sydney, and an active member of the Royal Society of New South Wales. In 1860 he publishedResearches in the Southern Gold-fields of New South Wales. He was elected F.R.S. in 1876, and in the following year was awarded the Murchison medal by the Geological Society of London. His contributions to Australian scientific journals were numerous. He died near Sydney, on the 17th of June 1878.

CLARKSON, THOMAS(1760-1846), English anti-slavery agitator, was born on the 28th of March 1760, at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, where his father was headmaster of the free grammar school. He was educated at St Paul’s school and at St John’s College, Cambridge. Having taken the first place among the middle bachelors as Latin essayist, he succeeded in 1785 in gaining a similar honour among the senior bachelors. The subject appointed by the vice-chancellor, Dr Peckhard, was one in which he was himself deeply interested—Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare?(Is it right to make men slaves against their will?). In preparing for this essay Clarkson consulted a number of works on African slavery, of which the chief was Benezet’sHistorical Survey of New Guinea; and the atrocities of which he read affected him so deeply that he determined to devote all his energies to effect the abolition of the slave trade, and gave up his intention of entering the church.

His first measure was to publish, with additions, an English translation of his prize essay (June 1786). He then commenced to search in all quarters for information concerning slavery. He soon discovered that the cause had already been taken up to some extent by others, most of whom belonged to the Society of Friends, and among the chief of whom were William Dillwyn, Joseph Wood and Granville Sharp. With the aid of these gentlemen, a committee of twelve was formed in May 1787 to do all that was possible to effect the abolition of the slave trade. Meanwhile Clarkson had also gained the sympathy of Wilberforce, Whitbread, Sturge and several other men of influence. Travelling from port to port, he now commenced to collect a large mass of evidence; and much of it was embodied in hisSummary View of the Slave Trade, and the Probable Consequences of its Abolition, which, with a number of other anti-slavery tracts, was published by the committee. Pitt, Grenville, Fox and Burke looked favourably on the movement; in May 1788 Pitt introduced a parliamentary discussion on the subject, and Sir W. Dolben brought forward a bill providing that the number of slaves carried in a vessel should be proportional to its tonnage. A number of Liverpool and Bristol merchants obtained permission from the House to be heard by council against the bill, but on the 18th of June it passed the Commons. Soon after Clarkson published anEssay on the Impolicy of the Slave Trade; and for two months he was continuously engaged in travelling that he might meet men who were personally acquainted with the facts of the trade. From their lips he collected a considerable amount of evidence; but only nine could be prevailed upon to promise to appear before the privy council. Meanwhile other witnesses had been obtained by Wilberforce and the committee, and on the 12th of May 1789 the former led a debate on the subject in the House of Commons, in which he was seconded by Burke and supported by Pitt and Fox.

It was now the beginning of the French Revolution, and in the hope that he might arouse the French to sweep away slavery with other abuses, Clarkson crossed to Paris, where he remained six months. He found Necker head of the government, and obtained from him some sympathy but little help. Mirabeau, however, with his assistance, prepared a speech against slavery, to be delivered before the National Assembly, and the Marquis de la Fayette entered enthusiastically into his views. During this visit Clarkson met a deputation of negroes from Santo Domingo, who had come to France to present a petition to the National Assembly, desiring to be placed on an equal footing with the whites; but the storm of the Revolution permitted no substantial success to be achieved. Soon after his return home he engaged in a search, the apparent hopelessness of which finely displays his unshrinking laboriousness and his passionateenthusiasm. He desired to find some one who had himself witnessed the capture of the negroes in Africa; and a friend having met by chance a man-of-war’s-man who had done so, Clarkson, though ignorant of the name and address of the sailor, set out in search of him, and actually discovered him. His last tour was undertaken in order to form anti-slavery committees in all the principal towns. At length, in the autumn of 1794, his health gave way, and he was obliged to cease active work. He now occupied his time in writing aHistory of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which appeared in 1808. The bill for the abolition of the trade became law in 1807; but it was still necessary to secure the assent of the other powers to its principle. To obtain this was, under pressure of the public opinion created by Clarkson and his friends, one of the main objects of British diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna, and in February 1815 the trade was condemned by the powers. The question of concerting practical measures for its abolition was raised at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, but without result. On this occasion Clarkson personally presented an address to the emperor Alexander I., who communicated it to the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia. In 1823 the Anti-Slavery Society was formed, and Clarkson was one of its vice-presidents. He was for some time blind from cataract; but several years before his death on the 26th of September 1846, his sight was restored.

Besides the works already mentioned, he published thePortraiture of Quakerism(1806),Memoirs of William Penn(1813),Researches, Antediluvian, Patriarchal and Historical(1836), intended as a history of the interference of Providence for man’s spiritual good, andStrictureson several of the remarks concerning himself made in theLife of Wilberforce, in which his claim as originator of the anti-slavery movement is denied.See the lives by Thomas Elmes (1876) and Thomas Taylor (1839).

See the lives by Thomas Elmes (1876) and Thomas Taylor (1839).

CLARKSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Montgomery county, Tennessee, U.S.A., situated in the N. part of the state, about 50 m. N.W. of Nashville, on the Cumberland river, at the mouth of the Red river. Pop. (1890) 7924; (1900) 9431, of whom 5094 were negroes; (1910 census) 8548. It is served by the Louisville & Nashville, and the Illinois Central railways, and by passenger and freight steamboat lines on the Cumberland river. The city hall, and the public library are among the principal public buildings, and the city is the seat of the Tennessee Odd Fellows’ home, and of the South-Western Presbyterian University, founded in 1875. Clarksville lies in the centre of the dark tobacco belt—commonly known as the “Black Patch”—and is an important tobacco market, with an annual trade in that staple of about $4,000,000, most of the product being exported to France, Italy, Austria and Spain. The city is situated in a region well adapted for the growing of wheat, Indian corn, and vegetables, and for the raising of live-stock; and Clarksville is a shipping point for the lumber—chiefly oak, poplar and birch—and the iron-ore of the surrounding country, a branch of the Louisville & Nashville railway extending into the iron district. The city’s principal manufactures are flour and grist mill products, chewing and smoking tobacco and snuff, furniture, lumber, iron, and pearl buttons. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,210,112, being 32% greater than in 1900. The municipality owns its water-works. Clarksville was first settled as early as 1780, was named in honour of General George Rogers Clark, and was chartered as a city in 1850.

CLASSICS. The term “classic” is derived from the Latin epithetclassicus, found in a passage of Aulus Gellius (xix. 8. 15), where a “scriptor ‘classicus’” is contrasted with a “scriptor proletarius.” The metaphor is taken from the division of the Roman people intoclassesby Servius Tullius, those in the first class being calledclassici, all the restinfra classem, and those in the lastproletarii.1The epithet “classic” is accordingly applied (1) generally to an author of the first rank, and (2) more particularly to a Greek or Roman author of that character. Similarly, “the classics” is a synonym for the choicest products of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. It is to this sense of the word that the following article is devoted in two main divisions: (A) the general history of classical (i.e.Greek and Latin) scholarship, and (B) its place in higher education.

(A) General History of the Study of the Classics

We may consider this subject in four principal periods:—(i.) theAlexandrian, c. 300-1B.C.; (ii.) theRoman,A.D.c. 1-530; (iii.) theMiddle Ages, c. 530-1350; and (iv.) theModern Age, c. 1350 to the present day.

(i.)The Alexandrian Age.—The study of the Greek classics begins with the school of Alexandria. Under the rule of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247B.C.), learning found a home in the Alexandrian Museum and in the great Alexandrian Library. The first four librarians were Zenodotus, Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus. Zenodotus produced before 274 the first scientific edition of theIliadandOdyssey, an edition in which spurious lines were marked, at the beginning, with a short horizontal dash called anobelus(—). He also drew up select lists of epic and lyric poets. Soon afterwards a classified catalogue of dramatists, epic and lyric poets, legislators, philosophers, historians, orators and rhetoricians, and miscellaneous writers, with a brief biography of each, was produced by the scholar and poet Callimachus (fl. 260). Among the pupils of Callimachus was Eratosthenes who, in 234, succeeded Zenodotus as librarian. Apart from his special interest in the history of the Old Attic comedy, he was a man of vast and varied learning; the founder of astronomical geography and of scientific chronology; and the first to assume the name ofφιλόλογος. The greatest philologist of antiquity was, however, his successor, Aristophanes of Byzantium (195), who reduced accentuation and punctuation to a definite system, and used a variety of critical symbols in his recension of theIliadandOdyssey. He also edited Hesiod and Pindar, Euripides and Aristophanes, besides composing brief introductions to the several plays, parts of which are still extant. Lastly, he established a scientific system of lexicography and drew up lists of the “best authors.” Two critical editions of theIliadandOdysseywere produced by his successor, Aristarchus, who was librarian until 146B.C.and was the founder of scientific scholarship. His distinguished pupil, Dionysius Thrax (born c. 166B.C.), drew up a Greek grammar which continued in use for more than thirteen centuries. The most industrious of the successors of Aristarchus was Didymus (c. 65B.C.-A.D.10), who, in his work on the Homeric poems, aimed at restoring the lost recensions of Aristarchus. He also composed commentaries on the lyric and comic poets and on Thucydides and Demosthenes; part of his commentary on this last author was first published in 1904. He was a teacher in Alexandria (and perhaps also in Rome); and his death, aboutA.D.10, marks the close of the Alexandrian age. He is the industrious compiler who gathered up the remnants of the learning of his predecessors and transmitted them to posterity. The poets of that age, including Callimachus and Theocritus, were subsequently expounded by Theon, who flourished under Tiberius, and has been well described as “the Didymus of the Alexandrian poets.”

The Alexandrian canon of the Greek classics, which probably had its origin in the lists drawn up by Callimachus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, included the following authors:—

Epic poets(5): Homer, Hesiod, Peisander, Panyasis, Antimachus.Iambic poets(3): Simonides of Amorgos, Archilochus, Hipponax.Tragic poets(5): Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Ion, Achaeus.Comic poets, Old(7): Epicharmus, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, Pherecrates, Crates, Plato.Middle(2): Antiphanes, Alexis.New(5): Menander, Philippides, Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus.Elegiac poets(4): Callinus, Mimnermus, Philetas, Callimachus.Lyric poets(9): Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides of Ceos.Orators(10): Demosthenes, Lysias, Hypereides, Isocrates, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Isaeus, Antiphon, Ándocides, Deinarchus.Historians(10): Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Philistius, Theopompus, Ephorus, Anaximenes, Callisthenes, Hellanicus, Polybius.

Epic poets(5): Homer, Hesiod, Peisander, Panyasis, Antimachus.

Iambic poets(3): Simonides of Amorgos, Archilochus, Hipponax.

Tragic poets(5): Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Ion, Achaeus.

Comic poets, Old(7): Epicharmus, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, Pherecrates, Crates, Plato.Middle(2): Antiphanes, Alexis.New(5): Menander, Philippides, Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus.

Elegiac poets(4): Callinus, Mimnermus, Philetas, Callimachus.

Lyric poets(9): Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides of Ceos.

Orators(10): Demosthenes, Lysias, Hypereides, Isocrates, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Isaeus, Antiphon, Ándocides, Deinarchus.

Historians(10): Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Philistius, Theopompus, Ephorus, Anaximenes, Callisthenes, Hellanicus, Polybius.

The latest name in the above list is that of Polybius, who died about 123B.C.Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus and Theocritus were subsequently added to the “epic” poets. Philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, were possibly classed in a separate “canon.”

While the scholars of Alexandria were mainly interested in theverbal criticismof the Greekpoets, a wider variety of studies was the characteristic of the school of Pergamum, the literary rival of Alexandria. Pergamum was a home of learning for a large part of the 150 years of the Attalid dynasty, 283-133B.C.

The grammar of the Stoics, gradually elaborated by Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, supplied a terminology which, in words such as “genitive,” “accusative” and “aorist,” has become a permanent part of the grammarian’s vocabulary; and the study of this grammar found its earliest home in Pergamum.

From about 168B.C.the head of the Pergamene school was Crates of Mallus, who (like the Stoics) was an adherent of the principle of “anomaly” in grammar, and was thus opposed to Aristarchus of Alexandria, the champion of “analogy.” He also opposed Aristarchus, and supported the Stoics, by insisting on anallegoricalinterpretation of Homer. He is credited with having drawn up the classified lists of the best authors for the Pergamene library. His mission as an envoy to the Roman senate, “shortly after the death of Ennius” in 169B.C., had a remarkable influence on literary studies in Rome. Meeting with an accident while he was wandering on the Palatine, and being detained in Rome, he passed part of his enforced leisure in giving lectures (possibly on Homer, his favourite author), and thus succeeded in arousing among the Romans a taste for the scholarly study of literature. The example set by Crates led to the production of a new edition of the epic poem of Naevius, and to the public recitation of theAnnalsof Ennius, and (two generations later) theSatiresof Lucilius.

(ii.)The Roman Age.—(a)Latin Studies.—In the 1st centuryB.C.the foremost scholar in Rome was L. Aelius Stilo (c. 154-c. 74), who is described by Cicero as profoundly learned in Greek and Latin literature, and as an accomplished critic of Roman antiquities and of ancient authors. Of the plays then passing under the name of Plautus, he recognized twenty-five as genuine. His most famous pupil was Varro (116-27), the six surviving books of whose great work on the Latin language are mainly concerned with the great grammatical controversy on analogy and anomaly—a controversy which also engaged the attention of Cicero and Caesar, and of the elder Pliny and Quintilian. The twenty-one plays of Plautus accepted by Varro are doubtless the twenty now extant, together with the lostVidularia. The influence of Varro’s last work on the ninedisciplinae, or branches of study, long survived in the seven “liberal arts” recognized by St Augustine and Martianus Capella, and in thetriviumandquadriviumof the middle ages.

Part of Varro’s treatise on Latin was dedicated to Cicero (106-43), who as an interpreter of Greek philosophy to his fellow-countrymen enlarged the vocabulary of Latin by his admirable renderings of Greek philosophical terms, and thus ultimately gave us such indispensable words as “species,” “quality” and “quantity.”

The earliest of Latin lexicons was produced about 10B.C.by Verrius Flaccus in a work,De Verborum Significatu, which survived in the abridgment by Festus (2nd centuryA.D.) and in the further abridgment dedicated by Paulus Diaconus to Charles the Great.

Greek models were diligently studied by Virgil and Horace. Their own poems soon became the theme of criticism and of comment; and, by the time of Quintilian and Juvenal, they shared the fate (which Horace had feared) of becoming text-books for use in schools.

Recensions of Terence, Lucretius and Persius, as well as Horace and Virgil, were produced by Probus (d.A.D.88), with critical symbols resembling those invented by the Alexandrian scholars. His contemporary Asconius is best known as the author of an extant historical commentary on five of the speeches of Cicero. InA.D.88 Quintilian was placed at the head of the first state-supported school in Rome. His comprehensive work on the training of the future orator includes an outline of general education, which had an important influence on the humanistic schools of the Italian Renaissance. It also presents us with a critical survey of the Greek and Latin classics arranged under the heads of poets, historians, orators and philosophers (book x. chap. i.). The lives of Roman poets and scholars were among the many subjects that exercised the literary skill of Hadrian’s private secretary, Suetonius. One of his lost works is the principal source of the erudition of Isidore of Seville (d.A.D.636), whose comprehensive encyclopaedia was a favourite text-book in the middle ages. About the time of the death of Suetonius (A.D.160) a work entitled theNoctes Atticaewas begun by Aulus Gellius. The author is an industrious student and a typical scholar, who frequents libraries and is interested in the MSS. of old Latin authors. Early in the 4th century the study of grammar was represented in northern Africa by the Numidian tiro, Nonius Marcellus (fl. 323), the author of an encyclopaedic work in three parts, lexicographical, grammatical and antiquarian, the main value of which lies in its quotations from early Latin literature. About the middle of the same century grammar had a far abler exponent at Rome in the person of Aelius Donatus, the preceptor of St Jerome, as well as the author of a text-book that remained in use throughout the middle ages. The general state of learning in this century is illustrated by Ausonius (c. 310-393), the grammarian and rhetorician of Bordeaux, the author of theMosella, and the probable inspirer of the memorable decree of Gratian (376), providing for the appointment and the payment of teachers of rhetoric and of Greek and Latin literature in the principal cities of Gaul. His distinguished friend, Q. Aurelius Symmachus, the consul ofA.D.391, aroused in his own immediate circle an interest in Livy, the whole of whose history was still extant. Early in the 5th century other aristocratic Romans interested themselves in the textual criticism of Persius and Martial. Among the contemporaries of Symmachus, the devoted adherent of the old Roman religion, was St Jerome (d. 420), the most scholarly representative of Christianity in the 4th century, the student of Plautus and Terence, of Virgil and Cicero, the translator of theChronologyof Eusebius, and the author of the Latin version of the Bible now known as the Vulgate. St Augustine (d. 430) confesses to his early fondness for Virgil, and also tells us that he received his first serious impressions from theHortensiusof Cicero, an eloquent exhortation to the study of philosophy, of which only a few fragments survive. In his survey of the “liberal arts” St Augustine imitates (as we have seen) theDisciplinaeof Varro, and in the greatest of his works, theDe Civitate Dei(426), he has preserved large portions of theAntiquitatesof Varro and theDe Republicaof Cicero. About the same date, and in the same province of northern Africa, Martianus Capella produced his allegorical work on the “liberal arts,” the principal, and, indeed, often the only, text-book of the medieval schools.

In the second half of the 5th century the foremost representative of Latin studies in Gaul was Apollinaris Sidonius (fl. 470), whoseLetterswere modelled on those of the younger Pliny, while his poems give proof of a wide though superficial acquaintance with classical literature. He laments the increasing decline in the classical purity of the Latin language.

An interest in Latin literature lived longest in Gaul, where schools of learning flourished as early as the 1st century at Autun, Lyons, Toulouse, Nîmes, Vienne, Narbonne and Marseilles; and, from the 3rd century onwards, at Trier, Poitiers, Besançon and Bordeaux.

About ten years after the death of Sidonius we find Asterius, the consul of 494, critically revising the text of Virgil in Rome. Boëthius, who early in life formed the ambitious plan of expounding and reconciling the opinions of Plato and Aristotle, continued in the year of his sole consulship (510) to instruct his fellow-countrymen in the wisdom of Greece. He is a link between the ancient world and the middle ages, having been the last of the learned Romans who understood the language and studied theliterature of Greece, and the first to interpret to the middle ages the logical treatises of Aristotle. He thereby gave the signal for the age-long conflict between Nominalism and Realism, which exercised the keenest intellects among the Schoolmen, while the crowning work of his life, theConsolatio Philosophiae(524), was repeatedly expounded and imitated, and reproduced in renderings that were among the earliest literary products of the vernacular languages of modern Europe. His contemporary, Cassiodorus (c. 480-c. 575), after spending thirty years in the service of the Ostrogothic dynasty at Ravenna, passed the last thirty-three years of his long life on the shores of the Bay of Squillace, where he founded two monasteries and diligently trained their inmates to become careful copyists. In his latest work he made extracts for their benefit from the pages of Priscian (fl. 512), a transcript of whose great work on Latin grammar was completed at Constantinople by one of that grammarian’s pupils in 527, to be reproduced in a thousand MSS. in the middle ages. More than ten years before Cassiodorus founded his monasteries in the south of Italy, Benedict of Nursia (480-543) had rendered a more permanent service to the cause of scholarship by building, amid the ruins of the temple of Apollo on the crest of Monte Cassino, the earliest of those homes of learning that have lent an undying distinction to the Benedictine order. The learned labours of the Benedictines were no part of the original requirements of the rule of St Benedict; but before the founder’s death his favourite disciple had planted a monastery in France, and the name of that disciple is permanently associated with the learned labours of the Benedictines of the Congregation of St Maur (seeMaurists).

(b)Greek Studies.—Meanwhile, the study of the Greek classics was ably represented at Rome in the Augustan age by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. 30-8B.C.), the intelligent critic of the ancient Attic orators, while the 1st century of our era is the probable date of the masterpiece of literary criticism known as the treatiseOn the Sublimeby Longinus (q.v.).

The 2nd century is the age of the two great grammarians, Apollonius Dyscolus (the founder of scientific grammar and the creator of the study of Greek syntax) and his son Herodian, the larger part of whose principal work dealt with the subject of Greek accentuation. It is also the age of the lexicographers of Attic Greek, the most important of whom are Phrynichus, Pollux (fl.A.D.180) and Harpocration.

In the 4th century Demosthenes was expounded and imitated by the widely influential teacher, Libanius of Antioch (c. 314-c. 393), the pagan preceptor of St Chrysostom. To the same century we may assign the grammarian Theodosius of Alexandria, who, instead of confining himself (like Dionysius Thrax) to the tenses ofτύπτωin actual use, was the first to set forth all the imaginary aorists and futures of that verb, which have thence descended through the Byzantine age to the grammars of the Renaissance and of modern Europe.

In the 5th century we may place Hesychius of Alexandria, the compiler of the most extensive of our ancient Greek lexicons, and Proclus, the author of a chrestomathy, to the extracts from which (as preserved by Photius) we owe almost all our knowledge of the contents of the lost epics of early Greece. In the same century the study of Plato was represented by Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370-c. 413) and by the Neoplatonists of Alexandria and of Athens. The lower limit of the Roman age of classical studies may be conveniently placed in the year 529. In that year the monastery of Monte Cassino was founded in the West, while the school of Athens was closed in the East. The Roman age thus ends in the West with Boëthius, Cassiodorus and St Benedict, and in the East with Priscian and Justinian.

(iii.)The Middle Ages.—(a)In the East, commonly called theByzantine Age, c. 530-1350. In this age, grammatical learning was represented by Choeroboscus, and lexicography by Photius (d. 891), the patriarch of Constantinople, who is also the author of aBibliothecareviewing and criticizing the contents of 280 MSS., and incidentally preserving important extracts from the lost Greek historians.

In the time of Photius the poets usually studied at school were Homer, Hesiod, Pindar; certain select plays of Aeschylus (Prometheus, SeptemandPersae), Sophocles (Ajax, ElectraandOedipus Tyrannus), and Euripides (Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, and, next to these,Alcestis, Andromache, Hippolytus, Medea, Rhesus, Troades,) also Aristophanes (beginning with thePlutus), Theocritus, Lycophron, and Dionysius Periegetes. The principal prose authors were Thucydides, parts of Plato and Demosthenes, with Aristotle, Plutarch’sLives, and, above all, Lucian, who is often imitated in the Byzantine age.

One of the distinguished pupils of Photius, Arethas, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (c. 907-932), devoted himself with remarkable energy to collecting and expounding the Greek classics. Among the important MSS. still extant that were copied at his expense are the Bodleian Euclid (888) and the Bodleian Plato (895). To the third quarter of the 10th century we may assign the Greek lexicon of Suïdas, a combination of a lexicon and an encyclopaedia, the best articles being those on the history of literature.

Meanwhile, during the “dark age” of secular learning at Constantinople (641-850), the light of Greek learning had spread eastwards to Syria and Arabia. At Bagdad, in the reign of Mamun (813-833), the son of Harun al-Rashid, philosophical works were translated by Syrian Christians from Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. It was in his reign that Aristotle was first translated into Arabic, and, shortly afterwards, we have Syriac and Arabic renderings of commentators on Aristotle, and of portions of Plato, Hippocrates and Galen; while in the 10th century new translations of Aristotle and his commentators were produced by the Nestorian Christians.

The Arabic translations of Aristotle passed from the East to the West by being transmitted through the Arab dominions in northern Africa to Spain, which had been conquered by the Arabs in the 8th century. In the 12th century Toledo was the centre of the study of Aristotle in the West, and it was from Toledo that the knowledge of Aristotle spread to Paris and to other seats of learning in western Europe.

The 12th century in Constantinople is marked by the name of Tzetzes (c. 1110-c. 1180), the author of a mythological, literary and historical miscellany called theChiliades, in the course of which he quotes more than four hundred authors. The prolegomena to his scholia on Aristophanes supply us with valuable information on the Alexandrian libraries. The most memorable name, however, among the scholars of this century is that of Eustathius, whose philological studies at Constantinople preceded his tenure of the archbishopric of Thessalonica (1175-1192). The opening pages of his commentaries on theIliadand theOdysseydwell with enthusiasm on the abiding influence of Homer on the literature of Greece.

While the Byzantine MSS. of the 11th century (such as the Laurentian MSS. of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the Ravenna MS. of Aristophanes) maintain the sound traditions of the Alexandrian and Roman ages, those of the times of the Palaeologi give proof of a frequent tampering with the metres of the ancient poets in order to bring them into conformity with theories recently invented by Moschopulus and Triclinius. The scholars of these times are the natural precursors of the earliest representatives of the Revival of Learning in the West. Of these later Byzantines the first in order of date is the monk Planudes (d. 1330), who devoted his knowledge of Latin to producing excellent translations of Caesar’sGallic Waras well as Ovid’sMetamorphosesandHeroides, and the classic work of Boëthius; he also compiled (in 1302) the only Greek anthology known to scholars before the recovery in 1607 of the earlier and fuller anthology of Cephalas (fl. 917).

The scholars of the Byzantine age cannot be compared with the great Alexandrians, but they served to maintain the continuity of tradition by which the Greek classics selected by the critics of Alexandria were transmitted to modern Europe.

(b)In the West(c. 530-c. 1350).—At the portal of the middle ages stands Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), who had little (if any) knowledge of Greek and had no sympathy with thesecularside of the study of Latin. A decline in grammatical learning is exemplified in the three Latin historians of the 6th century, Jordanes, Gildas and Gregory of Tours (d. 594), who begins his history of the Franks by lamenting the decay of Latin literature in Gaul. The historian of Tours befriended the Latin poet, Venantius Fortunatus (d.c.600), who is still remembered as the writer of the three well-known hymns beginningSalve festa dies,Vexilla regis prodeunt, andPange lingua gloriosi proelium certaminis. The decadence of Latin early in the 7th century is exemplified by the fantastic grammarian Virgilius Maro, who also illustrates the transition from Latin to Provençal, and from quantitive to accentual forms of verse.

While Latin was declining in Gaul, even Greek was not unknown in Ireland, and the Irish passion for travel led to the spread of Greek learning in the west of Europe. The Irish monk Columban, shortly before his death in 615, founded in the neighbourhood of Pavia the monastery of Bobbio, to be the repository of many Latin MSS. which were ultimately dispersed among the libraries of Rome, Milan and Turin. About the same date his fellow-traveller, Gallus, founded above the Lake of Constance the monastery of St Gallen, where Latin MSS. were preserved until their recovery in the age of the Renaissance. During the next twenty-five years Isidore of Seville (d. 636) produced in hisOriginesan encyclopaedic work which gathered up for the middle ages much of the learning of the ancient world.

In Italy a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the 5th and 6th centuries led to an estrangement between the Greek and Latin Churches. The year 690 is regarded as the date of the temporary extinction of Greek in Italy, but, in the first quarters of the 8th and the 9th centuries, the iconoclastic decrees of the Byzantine emperors drove many of the Greek monks and their lay adherents to the south of Italy, and even to Rome itself.

In Ireland we find Greek characters used in the Book of Armagh (c.807); and, in the same century, a Greek psalter was copied by an Irish monk of Liége, named Sedulius (fl. 850), who had a wide knowledge of Latin literature. In England, some sixty years after the death of Augustine, the Greek archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690) founded a school for the study of Greek, and with the help of an African monk named Hadrian made many of the English monasteries schools of Greek and Latin learning, so that, in the time of Bede (d. 735), some of the scholars who still survived were “as familiar with Greek and Latin as with their mother-tongue.” Among those who had learned their Greek at Canterbury was Aldhelm (d. 709), “the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success.” While Aldhelm is known as “the father of Anglo-Latin verse,” Latin prose was the literary medium used by Bede in his celebratedEcclesiastical Historyof England (731). Nine years after the death of Bede (735), Boniface, “the apostle of Germany,” sanctioned the founding of Fulda (744), which soon rivalled St Gallen as a school of learning. Alcuin (d. 804), who was probably born in the year of Bede’s death, tells us of the wealth of Latin literature preserved in the library at York. Through the invitation of Charles the Great, he became associated with the revival of learning which marks the reign of that monarch, by presiding over the School of the Palace (782-790), and by exercising a healthy influence as abbot of St Martin’s at Tours (796-804). Among the friends of Alcuin and the advisers of Charles was Theodulfus, bishop of Orleans and abbot of Fleury (d. 821), who is memorable as an accomplished Latin poet, and as the initiator of free education. Einhard (d. 840), in his classic life of Charles the Great, models his style on that of Suetonius, and shows his familiarity with Caesar and Livy and Cicero, while Rabanus Maurus (d. 856), who long presided over Einhard’s school of Fulda, was the first to introduce Priscian into the schools of Germany. His pupil, Walafrid Strabo, the abbot of Reichenau (d. 849), had a genuine gift for Latin poetry, a gift agreeably exemplified in his poem on the plants in the monastic garden. In the same century an eager interest in the Latin classics is displayed by Servatus Lupus, who was educated at Fulda, and was abbot of Ferrières for the last twenty years of his life (d. 862). In his literary spirit he is a precursor of the humanists of the Renaissance. Under Charles the Bald (d. 877) there was a certain revival of interest in literature, when John the Scot (Erigena) became, for some thirty years (c. 845-875), the head of the Palace School. He was familiar with the Greek Fathers, and was chosen to execute a Latin rendering of the writings of “Dionysius the Areopagite,” the patron saint of France. In the preface the translator praises the king for prompting him not to rest satisfied with the literature of the West, but to have recourse to the “most pure and copious waters of the Greeks.” In the next generation Remi of Auxerre was the first to open a school in Paris (900). Virgil is the main authority quoted in Remi’s Commentary on Donatus, which remained in use until the Renaissance. During the two centuries after John the Scot, the study of Greek declined in France. In England the 9th century closes with Alfred, who, with the aid of the Welsh monk, Asser, produced a series of free translations from Latin texts, including Boëthius and Orosius and Bede, and theCura Pastoralisof Gregory the Great.

In the 10th century learning flourished at Aachen under Bruno, brother of Otto I. and archbishop of Cologne (953-965), who had himself learned Greek from certain Eastern monks at the imperial court, and who called an Irish bishop from Trier to teach Greek at the imperial capital. He also encouraged the transcription of Latin MSS., which became models of style to Widukind of Corvey, the imitator of Sallust and Livy. In the same century the monastery of Gandersheim, south of Hanover, was the retreat of the learned nun Hroswitha, who celebrated the exploits of Otho in leonine hexameters, and composed in prose six moral and religious plays in imitation of Terence. One of the most prominent personages of the century was Gerbert of Aurillac, who, after teaching at Tours and Fleury, became abbot of Bobbio, archbishop of Reims, and ultimately pope under the name of Silvester II. (d. 1003). He frequently quotes from the speeches of Cicero, and it has been surmised that the survival of those speeches may have been due to the influence of Gerbert. The most original hellenist of this age is Luitprand, bishop of Cremona (d. 972), who acquired some knowledge of Greek during his repeated missions to Constantinople. About the same time in England Oswald of York, who had himself been educated at Fleury, invited Abbo (d. 1004) to instruct the monks of the abbey recently founded at Ramsey, near Huntingdon. At Ramsey he wrote for his pupils a scholarly work dealing with points of prosody and pronunciation, and exhibiting an accurate knowledge of Virgil and Horace. During the same half-century, Ælfric, the abbot of Eynsham (d. c. 1030), aided Bishop Æthelwold in making Winchester famous as a place of education. It was there that he began hisLatin Grammar, hisGlossary(the earliest Latin-English dictionary in existence), and hisColloquium, in which Latin is taught in a conversational manner.

In France, the most notable teacher in the first quarter of the 11th century was Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (d. 1029). In and after the middle of that century the Norman monastery of Bec flourished under the rule of Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom had begun their career in northern Italy, and closed it at Canterbury. Meanwhile, in Germany, the styles of Sallust and Livy were being happily imitated in theAnnalsof Lambert of Hersfeld (d. 1077). In Italy, where the study of Latin literature seems never to have entirely died out, young nobles and students preparing for the priesthood were not infrequently learning Latin together, in private grammar schools under liberal clerics, such as Anselm of Bisate (fl. 1050), who describes himself as divided in his allegiance between the saints and the muses. Learning flourished at Monte Cassino under the rule of the Abbot Desiderius (afterwards Pope Victor III.). In this century that famous monastery had its classical chronicler in Leo Marsicanus, and its Latin poet in Alfanus, the future archbishop of Salerno.

The Schoolmen devoted most of their attention to Aristotle, and we may here briefly note the successive stages in their gradually increasing knowledge of his works. Until 1128 only the first two of the five parts of theOrganonwere known, and those solely in Latin translations from the original. After that date two more became known; the whole was familiar to Johnof Salisbury in 1159; while thePhysicsandMetaphysicscame into notice about 1200. Plato was mainly represented by the Latin translation of theTimaeus. Abelard (d. 1142) was acquainted with no Greek works except in Latin translations, but he has left his mark on the history of European education. The wide popularity of his brilliant lectures in the “schools” of Paris made this city the resort of the many students who were ultimately organized as a “university” (c. 1170). John of Salisbury attended Abelard’s lectures in 1136, and, after spending two years in the study of logic in Paris, passed three more in the scholarly study of Latin literature at Chartres, where a sound and healthy tradition, originally due to Bernard of Chartres (fl. 1120), was still perpetuated by his pupils. In that school the study of “figures of speech” was treated as merely introductory to that of the classical texts. Stress was laid on the sense as well as the style of the author studied. Discussions on set subjects were held, select passages from the classics learned by heart, while written exercises in prose and verse were founded on the best ancient models. In the general scheme of education the authority followed was Quintilian. John of Salisbury (d. 1180), the ripest product of this school, is the most learned man of his time. His favourite author is Cicero, and in all the Latin literature accessible to him he is the best-read scholar of his age. Among Latin scholars of the next generation we have Giraldus Cambrensis (d. c. 1222), the author of topographical and historical writings on Ireland and Wales, and of other works teeming with quotations from the Latin classics. During the middle ages Latin prose never dies out. It is the normal language of literature. In England it is used by many chroniclers and historians, the best known of whom are William of Malmesbury (d. 1142) and Matthew Paris (d. 1259). In Italy Latin verse had been felicitously applied to historic themes by William of Apulia (fl. 1100) and other Latin poets (1088-1247). In the 12th century England claims at least seven Latin poets, one of these being her only Latin epic poet, Joseph of Exeter (d. 1210), whose poem on the Trojan war is still extant. The Latin versifier, John of Garlandia, an Englishman who lived mainly in France (fl. 1204-1252), produced several Latin vocabularies which were still in use in the boyhood of Erasmus. The Latin poets of French birth include Gautier and Alain de Lille (d. c. 1203), the former being the author of theAlexandreis, and the latter that of theAnti-Claudianus, a poem familiar to Chaucer.

During the hundred and thirty years that elapsed between the early translations of Aristotle executed at Toledo about 1150 and the death in 1281 of William of Moerbeke, the translator of theRhetoricand thePolitics, the knowledge of Aristotle had been greatly extended in Europe by means of translations, first from the Arabic, and, next, from the original Greek. Aristotle had been studied in England by Grosseteste (d. 1253), and expounded abroad by the great Dominican, Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), and his famous pupil, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Among the keenest critics of the Schoolmen and of the recent translations of Aristotle was Roger Bacon (d. 1294), whoseOpus majushas been recognized as theEncyclopédieand theOrganonof the 13th century. His knowledge of Greek, as shown in hisGreek Grammar(first published in 1902), was clearly derived from the Greeks of his own day. The medieval dependence on the authority of Aristotle gradually diminished. This was partly due to the recovery of some of the lost works of ancient literature, and the transition from the middle ages to the revival of learning was attended by a general widening of the range of classical studies and by a renewed interest in Plato.

The classical learning of the middle ages was largely second-hand. It was often derived from glossaries, from books of elegant extracts, or from comprehensive encyclopaedias. Among the compilers of these last were Isidore and Hrabanus, William of Conches and Honorius of Autun, Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. 1250), Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264), and, lastly, Brunetto Latini (d. 1290), the earlier contemporary of Dante. For Aristotle, as interpreted by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, Dante has the highest regard. To the Latin translations of Aristotle and to his interpreters he refers in more than three hundred passages, while the number of his references to the Latin translation of theTimaeusof Plato is less than ten. His five great pagan poets are Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan; Statius he regards as a “Christian” converted by Virgil’sFourth Eclogue. His standard authors in Latin prose are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus and Orosius. His knowledge of Greek was practically nil. Latin was the language of his political treatise,De Monarchia, and even that of his defence of the vulgar tongue,De Vulgari Eloquio. He is, in a limited sense, a precursor of the Renaissance, but he is far more truly to be regarded as the crowning representative of the spirit of the middle ages.

(iv.)The Modern Age.—(a) Our fourth period is ushered in by the age of the Revival of Learning in Italy (c. 1350-1527). Petrarch (1304-1374) has been well described as “the first of modern men.” In contrast with theItaly.Schoolmen of the middle ages, he has no partiality for Aristotle. He was interested in Greek, and, a full century before the fall of Constantinople, he was in possession of MSS. of Homer and Plato, though his knowledge of the language was limited to the barest rudiments. For that knowledge, scanty as it was, he was indebted to Leontius Pilatus, with whose aid Boccaccio (1313-1375) became “the first of modern men” to study Greek to some purpose during the three years that Leontius spent as his guest in Florence (1360-1363). It was also at Florence that Greek was taught in the next generation by Chrysoloras (in 1396-1400). Another generation passed, and the scholars of the East and West met at the council of Florence (1439). One of the envoys of the Greeks, Gemistus Pletho, then inspired Cosimo dei Medici with the thought of founding an academy for the study of Plato. The academy was founded, and, in the age of Lorenzo, Plato and Plotinus were translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499). TheApologyandCrito, thePhaedo, PhaedrusandGorgiasof Plato, as well as speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines, with theOeconomics, EthicsandPoliticsof Aristotle, had already been translated by Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444); theRhetoricby Filelfo (1430), and Plato’sRepublicby Decembrio (1439). A comprehensive scheme for translating the principal Greek prose authors into Latin was carried out at Rome by the founder of the manuscript collections of the Vatican, Nicholas V. (1447-1455), who had belonged to the literary circle of Cosimo at Florence. The translation of Aristotle was entrusted to three of the learned Greeks who had already arrived in Italy, Trapezuntius, Gaza and Bessarion, while other authors were undertaken by Italian scholars such as Guarino, Valla, Decembrio and Perotti. Among the scholars of Italian birth, probably the only one in this age who rivalled the Greeks as a public expositor of their own literature was Politian (1454-1494), who lectured on Homer and Aristotle in Florence, translated Herodian, and was specially interested in the Latin authors of the Silver Age and in the text of thePandectsof Justinian. It will be observed that the study of Greek had been resumed in Florence half a century before the fall of Constantinople, and that the principal writers of Greek prose had been translated into Latin before that event.

Meanwhile, the quest of MSS. of the Latin classics had been actively pursued. Petrarch had discovered Cicero’s Speechpro Archiaat Liége (1333) and theLetters to AtticusandQuintusat Verona (1345). Boccaccio had discovered Martial and Ausonius, and had been the first of the humanists to be familiar with Varro and Tacitus, while Salutati had recovered Cicero’s lettersAd Familiares(1389). During the council of Constance, Poggio, the papal secretary, spent in the quest of MSS. the interval between May 1415 and November 1417, during which he was left at leisure by the vacancy in the apostolic see.

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