The multiplicity of Scaliger’s labours did not enrich him. “Poverty,” he says in one of his letters, “has been my faithful companion through life, and I never thought to lose her company.” But his spirit was lofty and independent, and he refused on more than one occasion large sums of money, which those who esteemed his merits would have forced upon him. In 1593 he was invited by the States of Holland to accept the professorship of belles-lettres at Leyden, with a liberal salary. This he accepted, so that the close of his life was spent in independence. Unfortunately for his tranquillity, his evil genius of vanity led him in 1594 to publish his testimony to the truth of his own illustrious descent, in his ‘Letter concerning the Antiquity of the Family Della Scala’ (Epistola de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ, et vita Jul. C. Scaligeri, &c.). It is here, says Niceron, that the vanity and presumption of Scaliger appear to the greatest advantage; and Scioppius, a brother critic and scholar, who expressed the highest regard and admiration for the Leyden professor, so long as they were on terms of mutual admiration, no sooner felt a touch of Scaliger’s power of sarcasm, than he attacked him in this weak point, in the ‘Scaliger hypobolimæus; hoc est, Elenchus Epistolæ Joan. Burdonis, pseudo-Scaligeri, de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ: 1607.’ Scaliger replied in ‘Confutatio stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ in which, though the letter of his adversary was short enough, he professed to have detected 499 falsities. Scaliger retorted on Scioppius, whose life and conversation were open enough to attack, in his ‘Confutatio stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ published under the name of Rutgersius, one of his pupils. It has been said that the veteran controversialist died of chagrin in consequence of Scioppius’s book. This, however, is not much in accordance with his character; at all events, his annoyance was long in killing him, for he did not die till 1609, and his disease was a dropsy. High honours were paid by the University to his memory; a funeral oration was pronounced in his praise by the eminent scholar Heinsius, and a monument was erected to him at the public expense.