Estienne

It is by his work in connexion with the Bible, and especially as an editor of the New Testament, that he is on the whole best known. The text of his New Testament of 1550, either in its original form or in such slightly modified form as it assumed in the Elzevir text of 1634, remains to this day the traditional text. But this is due rather to its typographical beauty than to any critical merit. The readings of the fifteen MSS. which Robert’s son Henri had collated for the purpose were merely introduced into the margin. The text was still almost exactly that of Erasmus. It was, however, the first edition ever published with a critical apparatus of any sort. Of the whole Bible Robert printed eleven editions—eight in Latin, two in Hebrew and one in French; while of the New Testament alone he printed twelve—five in Greek, five in Latin and two in French. In the Greek New Testament of 1551 (printed at Geneva) the present division into verses was introduced for the first time. The editiones principes which issued from Robert’s press were eight in number, viz. Eusebius, including the Praeparatio evangelica and the Demonstratio evangelica as well as the Historia ecclesiastica already mentioned (1544-1546), Moschopulus (1545), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (February 1547), Alexander Trallianus (January 1548), Dio Cassius (January 1548), Justin Martyr (1551), Xiphilinus (1551), Appian (1551), the last being completed, after Robert’s departure from Paris, by his brother Charles, and appearing under his name. These editions, all in folio, except the Moschopulus, which is in 4to, are unrivalled for beauty. Robert also printed numerous editions of Latin classics, of which perhaps the folio Virgil of 1532 is the most noteworthy, and a large quantity of Latin grammars and other educational works, many of which were written by Maturin Cordier, his friend and co-worker in the cause of humanism.

His principal works are Praedium Rusticum (1554), a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favourite book down to the end of the 17th century; Dictionarium historicum ac poëticum (1553), the first French encyclopaedia; Thesaurus Ciceronianus (1557), and De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, with well-drawn woodcuts (1548). He also published a translation of an Italian comedy, Gli Ingannati, under the title of Le Sacrifice (1543; republished as Les Abusez, 1549), which had some influence on the development of French comedy; and Paradoxes (1553), an imitation of the Paradossi of Ortensio Landi.

Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly. For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as printer, editor or original writer, was enormous. The productions of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his father’s books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink, inferior to them in general beauty. The best, perhaps, from a typographical point of view, are the Poëtae Graeci principes (folio, 1566), the Plutarch (13 vols. 8vo, 1572), and the Plato (3 vols. folio, 1578). It was rather his scholarship which gave value to his editions. He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though by the latter half of the 16th century nearly all the important Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published, his untiring activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his press. The most important have been already mentioned. Henri’s reputation as a scholar and editor has increased of late years. His familiarity with the Greek language has always been admitted to have been quite exceptional; but he has been accused of want of taste and judgment, of carelessness and rashness. Special censure has been passed on his Plutarch, in which he is said to have introduced conjectures of his own into the text, while pretending to have derived them from MS. authority. But a late editor, Sintenis, has shown that, though like all the other editors of his day he did not give references to his authorities, every one of his supposed conjectures can be traced to some MS. Whatever may be said as to his taste or his judgment, it seems that he was both careful and scrupulous, and that he only resorted to conjecture when authority failed him. And, whatever the merit of his conjectures, he was at any rate the first to show what conjecture could do towards restoring a hopelessly corrupt passage. The work, however, on which his fame as a scholar is most surely based is the Thesaurus Graecae linguae. After making due allowance for the fact that considerable materials for the work had been already collected by his father, and that he received considerable assistance from the German scholar Sylburg, he is still entitled to the very highest praise as the producer of a work which was of the greatest service to scholarship and which in those early days of Greek learning could have been produced by no one but a giant. Two editions of the Thesaurus were published in the 19th century—at London by Valpy (1815-1825) and at Paris by Didot (1831-1863).

It was one of Henri Estienne’s great merits that, unlike nearly all the French scholars who preceded him, he did not neglect his own language. In the Traité de la conformité du langage françois avec le Grec (published in 1565, but without date; ed. L. Feugère, 1850), French is asserted to have, among modern languages, the most affinity with Greek, the first of all languages. Deux Dialogues du nouveau françois italianizé (Geneva, 1578; ed. P. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1885) was directed against the fashion prevailing in the court of Catherine de’ Medici of using Italian words and forms. The Project du livre intitulé de la Précellence du langage françois (Paris, 1579; ed. E. Huguet, 1896) treats of the superiority of French to Italian. An interesting feature of the Précellence is the account of French proverbs, and, Henry III. having expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of some of them, Henri Estienne published, in 1594, Les Premices ou le I. livre des Proverbes epigrammatizez (never reprinted and very rare).

Finally, there remains the Apologie pour Hérodote, his most famous work. The ostensible object of the book is to show that the strange stories in Herodotus may be paralleled by equally strange ones of modern times. Virtually it is a bitter satire on the writer’s age, especially on the Roman Church. Put together without any method, its extreme desultoriness makes it difficult to read continuously, but the numerous stories, collected partly from various literary sources, notably from the preachers Menot and Maillard, partly from the writer’s own multifarious experience, with which it is packed, make it an interesting commentary on the manners and fashions of the time. But satire, to be effective, should be either humorous or righteously indignant, and, while such humour as there is in the Apologie is decidedly heavy, the writer’s indignation is generally forgotten in his evident relish for scandal. The style is, after all, its chief merit. Though it bears evident traces of hurry, it is, like that of all Henri Estienne’s French writings, clear, easy and vigorous, uniting the directness and sensuousness of the older writers with a suppleness and logical precision which at this time were almost new elements in French prose. An edition of the Apologie has recently been published by Liseux (ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879), after one of the only two copies of the original uncancelled edition that are known to exist. The very remarkable political pamphlet entitled Dìscours merveilleux de la vie et actions et déportemens de Catherine de Medicis, which appeared in 1574, has been ascribed to Henri Estienne, but the evidence both internal and external is conclusive against his being the author of it. Of his Latin writings the most worthy of notice are the De Latinitate falso suspecta (1576), the Pseudo-Cicero (1577) and the Nizoliodidascalus (1578), all three written against the Ciceronians, and the Francofordiense Emporium (1574), a panegyric on the Frankfort fair (reprinted with a French translation by Liseux, 1875). He also wrote a large quantity of indifferent Latin verses, including a long poem entitled Musa monitrix Principum (Basel, 1590).

The primary authorities for an account of the Estiennes are their own works. In the garrulous and egotistical prefaces which Henri was in the habit of prefixing to his editions will be found many scattered biographical details. Twenty-seven letters from Henri to John Crato of Crafftheim (ed. F. Passow, 1830) have been printed, and there is one of Robert’s in Herminjard’s Correspondence des Réformateurs dans de pays de langue française (9 vols. published 1866-1897), while a few other contemporary references to him will be found in the same work. The secondary authorities are Janssen van Almeloveen, De vitis Stephanorum (Amsterdam, 1683); Maittaire, Stephanorum historia (London, 1709); A.A. Rénouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Estienne (2nd ed., Paris, 1843); the article on Estienne by A.F. Didot in the Nouv. Biog. gén.; Mark Pattison, Essays, i. 67 ff. (1889); L. Clément, Henri Estienne et son œuvre française (Paris, 1899). There is a good account of Henri’s Thesaurus in the Quart. Rev. for January 1820, written by Bishop Bromfield.