[25] The following are the heads of the fourth chapter of the first book, which may serve as a specimen of the Adversaria: Ad Victoris Uticensis librum primum notæ et emendationes. Limites. Collimitia. Quantitas. H. Stephanus notatur. Impendere. Totum. Omnimodè. Dextrales. Asta. Francisii Balduini audacia castigatur. Tormenta antiqua. Liguamen Arx capitis. Memoriæ. Cruciari. Balduinus denuo aliquoties notatur. It is true that all this farrago arises out of one passage in Victor of Utica, and Barthius is far from being so desultory as Turnebus: but 3000 columns of such notes make but a dictionary without the help of the alphabet. Barthius tells us himself that he had finished two other volumes of Adversaria, besides correcting the first. See the passage in Bayle, note K. But he does not stand on very high ground as a critic, on account of the rapidity with which he wrote, and, for the same reason, has sometimes contradicted himself. Bayle. Baillet, n. 528. Niceron, vol. vii. Morhof, lib. v. 1. 10. |Other critics--English.| 15. Rigault, or Rigaltius, Petit, Thysius, and several more, do honour to France and the Low countries during this period. Spain, though not strong in classical philology, produced Ramiresius de Prado, whose Πεντηκονταρχος [Pentêkontarchos], sive quinquaginta militum ductor, 1612, is but a book of criticism with a quaint title.[26] In Latin Literature we can hardly say that England made herself more conspicuous than in Greek. The notes of John Bond on Horace, published in 1606, are properly a work of the age of Elizabeth: the author was long a schoolmaster in that reign. These notes are only little marginal scholia for the use of boys of no great attainments; and in almost every instance, I believe, taken from Lambinus. This edition of Horace, though Antony Wood calls the author a most noted critic and grammarian, has only the merit of giving the observations of another concisely and perspicuously. Thomas Farnaby is called by Baillet one of the best scholiasts, who says hardly anything useless, and is very concise.[27] He has left notes on several of the Latin poets. It is possible that the notes are compiled, like those of Bond, from the foreign critics. Farnaby also was a schoolmaster, and schoolmasters do not write for the learned. He has however been acknowledged on the continent for a diligent and learned man. Wood says he was “the chief grammarian, rhetorician, poet, Latinist, and Grecian of his time; and his school was so much frequented, that more churchmen and statesmen issued thence than from any school taught by one man in England.”[28] [26] This has been ascribed by some to his master Sanctius, author of the Minerva, Ramirez himself having been thought unequal to such remarks as we find in it. Baillet, n. 527. [27] N. 521. [28] Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. iii. |Salmasius.|