ity of
Reformation_ (1664), _On Credulity and Incredulity in Things natural,
civil and divine_ (1668).

CASAUBON, ISAAC (1550-1614), French (naturalized English) classical
scholar, was born at Geneva, on the 18th of February 1559, of French
refugee parents. On the publication of the edict of January 1562, the
family returned to France and settled at Crest in Dauphine, where Arnaud
Casaubon, Isaac's father, became minister of a Huguenot congregation.
Till he was nineteen, Isaac had no other instruction than what could be
given him by his father during the years of civil war. Arnaud was away
from home whole years together in the Calvinist camp, or the family were
flying to the hills to hide from the fanatical bands of armed Catholics
who patrolled the country. Thus it was in a cave in the mountains of
Dauphine, after the massacre of St Bartholomew, that Isaac received his
first lesson in Greek, the text-book being Isocrates _ad Demonicum_.

At nineteen Isaac was sent to the Academy of Geneva, where he read Greek
under Francis Portus, a native of Crete. Portus died in 1581, having
recommended Casaubon, then only twenty-two, as his successor. At Geneva
he remained as professor of Greek till 1596. Here he married twice, his
second wife being Florence, daughter of the scholar-printer, Henri
Estienne. Here, without the stimulus of example or encouragement, with
few books and no assistance, in a city peopled with religious refugees,
and struggling for life against the troops of the Catholic dukes of
Savoy, Casaubon made himself a consummate Greek scholar and master of
ancient learning. His great wants at Geneva were books and the sympathy
of learned associates. He spent all he could save out of his small
salary in buying books, and in having copies made of such classics as
were not then in print. Henri Estienne, Theodore de Beza (rector of the
university and professor of theology), and Jacques Lect (Lectius), were
indeed men of superior learning. But Henri, in those last years of his
life, was no longer the Estienne of the _Thesaurus_; he was never at
home, and would not suffer his son-in-law to enter his library. "He
guards his books," writes Casaubon, "as the griffins in India do their
gold!" Beza was engrossed by the cares of administration, and retained,
at most, an interest for theological reading, while Lect, a lawyer and
diplomatist, had left classics for the active business of the council.
The sympathy and help w