hich Casaubon's native city could not afford him,
he endeavoured to supply by cultivating the acquaintance of the learned
of other countries. Geneva, as the metropolis of Calvinism, received a
constant succession of visitors. The continental tour of the young
Englishman of birth was not complete without a visit to Geneva. It was
there that Casaubon made the acquaintance of young Henry Wotton, the
poet and diplomatist, who lodged in his house and borrowed his money. Of
more consequence to Isaac Casaubon was the acquaintance of Richard
Thomson ("Dutch" Thomson), fellow of Clare College, Cambridge; for it
was through Thomson that the attention of Joseph Scaliger, settled in
1593 at Leiden, was directed to Casaubon. Scaliger and Casaubon first
exchanged letters in 1594. Their intercourse, which was wholly by
letter, for they never met, passes through the stages of civility,
admiration, esteem, regard and culminates in a tone of the tenderest
affection and mutual confidence. Influential French men of letters, the
Protestant Jacques Bongars, the Catholic Jacques de Thou, and the
Catholic convert Philippe Canaye, sieur du Fresne, aided him by presents
of books and encouragement, and endeavoured to get him invited, in some
capacity, to France.

This was effected in 1596, in which year Casaubon accepted an invitation
to the university of Montpellier, with the title of _conseiller du roi_
and _professeur stipendie aux langues et bonnes lettres_. In Montpellier
he never took root. He held the professorship there only three years,
with several prolonged absences. The hopes raised by his brilliant
reception were disappointed; he was badly treated by the authorities, by
whom his salary was only paid very irregularly, and, finally, not at
all. He was not, at any time, insensible to the attractions of teaching,
and his lectures at Montpellier were followed not only by the students,
but by men of mature age and position. But the love of knowledge was
gradually growing upon him, and he began to perceive that editing Greek
books was an employment more congenial to his peculiar powers than
teaching. At Geneva he had first tried his hand on some notes on
Diogenes Laertius, on Theocritus and the New Testament, the last
undertaken at his father's request. His debut as an editor had been a
complete Strabo (1587), of which he was so ashamed afterwards that he
apologized for its crudity to Scaliger, calling it "a miscarriage." This
was followed