not done much for his fame, though he boasted of his critical skill in poetry. “Je me connais en trois choses—in vino, poesi, et juger des personnes. Si bis hominem alloquar, statim scio qualis sit.” (Scaligerana secunda.) From his translation of select epigrams of Martial into Greek (Florilegium Martialis Epigrammatum, cum versione Græca metrica, 1607) a list of sixty-four faults, false quantities and barbarisms, has been drawn up and preserved in the ‘Menagiana,’ vol. i. p. 325; many of them, however, are very trifling. Concerning Scaliger’s character as a critic, we may quote the opinion of Bayle—‘Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,’ for June 1684—“I know not whether it might not be said that Scaliger had too much wit and learning to write a good commentary; for his wit enabled him to find in the authors on whom he commented more refinement and genius than in fact they possessed; and his deep knowledge of literature was the cause of his fancying a thousand points of connexion between the thoughts of a writer and some rare matter of antiquity. And having made up his mind as to the reference contained in the passage, he proceeded forthwith to correct it accordingly. Unless it should rather be thought that the desire of throwing light upon some mystery of learning, unobserved by previous critics, led him to fancy hidden meanings where they did not really exist. Be this as it may, his notes are full of conjectures, bold, ingenious, and learned; but it is not clear that the authors always meant to say all that he has made them. It is possible to go as far wide of the real meaning, by having too much wit, as by having too little; and it will not do to believe that the lines of Horace and Catullus contain all the erudition which it pleases Messieurs the notemakers to bestow upon them.” This passage will sufficiently explain the grounds of the bitter saying, that Scaliger was born to corrupt, rather than to correct, the classics.