CHAPTER XXV.

THE NETHERLANDS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Le Clerc

IN the Netherlands the age that corresponds to that of Bentley in England opens with the name of one whose pretensions to scholarship brought him into conflict with the great English critic. Jean Le Clerc, or Clericus (1657-1736), the son of a Greek Professor at Geneva, was educated at Geneva, Grenoble and Saumur, and, after a brief stay in England, settled for the rest of his life in the Netherlands. It was in 1683 that he took up his abode in Amsterdam; in the following year he was appointed to a Professorship in the Arminian College, and he continued to reside there for more than half century. His published works extended over the wide domain of theology, philosophy, and scholarship. The last of these is represented primarily by his Ars Critica, a work in three volumes, which was thrice reprinted'. He here deals with the study, interpretation and criticism of the Classics, ending with an examination of the historic credibility of Quintus Curtius. It was regarded by J. M. Gesner as a liber quantivis pretii. In Latin, he produced an edition of the grammarian Festus, the poets C. Pedo Albinovanus and P. Cornelius Severus (the reputed author of the Aetna), and, lastly, the whole of Livy. In Greek, he edited Hesiod, the fragments of Menander and Philemon (1709), and the Dialogues of Aeschines Socraticus. He also published Greek scholia on Lucian, collected Latin in

1 Joannis Clerici Ars Critica, in qua ad studia linguarum Latinae Graecae et Hebraicae via munitur; veterumque emendandorum, spuriorum scriptorum a genuinis dignoscendorum et judicandi de eorum libris ratio traditur (1696— 1700).

2 Isagoge, § 135. Cp. Van der Hoeven, De Joanne Clerico (1843), 151–4.

scriptions', and promoted the sale of a new issue of the Lexicon Philologicum of Matthias Martinius (1623) by contributing a brief Etymological Dissertation (1701), which agrees with that Lexicon in the fatal error of deriving Greek from Hebrew. He had a wide reputation as a reviewer, being the editor and principal writer of the Bibliothèque successively designated Universelle (1686-93), Choisie (1703-13), and Ancienne et Moderne (1714–27). In these his chief aim was to give a careful summary of the contents of the works reviewed, only occasionally indulging in a 'very gentle confutation". It was one of these reviews that is supposed to have led to his memorable feud with Bentley.

Bentley was apparently nettled by the way in which his contributions to Davies' Tusculan Disputations (1709) had been noticed by Le Clerc in the Bibliothèque Choisie3. A few months later, Le Clerc produced an edition of the fragments of Menander and Philemon. He had collected these from the Dramatic Excerpts of Grotius, and the Indices of Meursius and Fabricius, and in the course of his work he had given abundant proof of his ignorance of Greek metre, even printing passages of prose in lines outwardly resembling those of verse. Thereupon Bentley immediately wrote out his own corrections of 323 of the fragments, restoring the metre and exposing the many metrical mistakes committed by Le Clerc. The MS, under the assumed name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, was sent to a Dutch scholar at Utrecht, Pieter Burman, who had a feud with Le Clerc, and was only too glad to publish the MS. As soon as the work appeared, its authorship was manifest, and, within three weeks, the first edition of this exposure of the metrical demerits of Le Clerc was completely exhausted (1710). Jacob Gronovius, who had a feud with Bentley as well as with Le Clerc, wrote a pamphlet abusing both'; and Jan Cornelis de Pauw of Utrecht, under the name of Philargyrius Cantabrigiensis, attacked Bentley in a pamphlet which was published with a lengthy preface by Le Clerc.

In 1711 Le Clerc printed an apologetic account of his literary career, concluding with some letters addressed to himself

1 Van der Hoeven, 175 f.

2 Life and Writings (1712), 19; cp. Hallam, ii 274, 548*.

3 xx (1710) 213–227 (the tone, however, is, on the whole, complimentary and distinctly deferential).

4 Infamia Emendationum in Menandrum nuper editarum. Cp. Mähly's Bentley, 128.

For fuller details, see Monk's Life of Bentley, i 267—280; cp. Bentley's Correspondence, 397-411 Wordsworth, and Van der Hoeven, De Joanne Clerico, 80-98 (1843); also Mähly's Bentley, 129, and Jebb's Bentley, 125.

by Graevius and Spanheim1; and, when Bentley's Horace was published, in the same year, Le Clerc wrote a review which is liberal in its tone and reflects credit on its writer. Though he has obviously no claims to being a specialist on Greek metre, he deserves the credit of being a courteous and well-informed reviewer. He was helpful to Cambridge scholars such as John Davies, and Wasse and Needham'; and he must be gratefully remembered as the industrious editor of the ten folio volumes of the standard edition of Erasmus'.

Burman

Pieter Burman (1668-1741), Bentley's ally in the feud with Le Clerc, was a pupil of Graevius at Utrecht and of Jacob Gronovius at Leyden. In 1696 he was appointed professor of History and of 'Eloquence' (i.e. Latin). at Utrecht, and in 1715 was transferred to the corresponding Professorship at Leyden, where he passed the remaining twentysix years of his life. As an editor he confined himself to the Latin Classics. Of the poets, he edited Phaedrus, Horace, Claudian, Ovid, Lucan, and the Poetae Latini Minores, besides producing a new edition of the Valerius Flaccus of N. Heinsius, and leaving materials for an edition of Virgil posthumously published by his nephew. Of the writers of prose, he edited Petronius, Velleius Paterculus, Justin, Quintilian, Suetonius. We also have his Variae Lectiones and Observationes Miscellaneae, his Orationes and Poëmata, and his Somnium, sive Iter in Arcadiam novam (1710). He owed his interest in the Latin poets, and his skill in versification, to Broekhuyzen and Francius, and one of his own poems commemorates the third Jubilee of Leyden (1725)". He distinguished himself for a time at the bar. As an editor of Latin poets, he was regarded by Ruhnken as equal to

1 Engl. Transl. 1712.

Bibl. Choisie, xxvi (1713) 260-279; Monk, i 332.

3 Van der Hoeven, 98.

On Le Clerc, see his own Life (1711) and Parrhasiana (E. T. 1700), and Van der Hoeven, De Joanne Clerico, 299 pp. (1843); also L. Müller, 47 f. Longius a Lipsii laude abest ultimus Velleii editor, Petrus Burmannus, praesertim in eo scriptore recensendo, in quo, propter crebras corruptelas, res omnis ad acumen criticum, quo illum minus valuisse scimus, rediret (Ruhnken, Opusc. 542, ed. 1823).

Peerlkamp, De Poëtis Lat., 489 f.; L. Müller, 213.