scholar wasted his time in showing up a book which must have become discredited without his help, it is most unfair to blame the king, as has been done, for bringing about this perversion of industry. Casaubon had intended to criticise Baronius long before he came to England. He always looked upon ecclesiastical history as the proper field for his labours, and though, during the wearisome task of tracking out the Romanist church historian's bad scholarship and mistakes, he may now and then lament over his unfinished ‘Polybius,’ there is no doubt that his theological work was a labour of love; for though to us Casaubon is the great classical scholar, he wished to be, first, the theological, and only in a secondary degree the classical, student. A book was published by Christopher Wolf in 1610 with the attractive title of ‘Casauboniana.’ It contains only some desultory remarks on books. To Meric Casaubon [q. v.] we are indebted for the six volumes of the ‘Ephemerides,’ by far the most interesting volume of all that Isaac has left us. Meric Casaubon also corresponded with John Evelyn about some of the elder Casaubon's notes upon trees and plants (see Evelyn, Diary, ed. Wheatley, iii. 271 et seq.)
Casaubon has, in our own day, found a biographer whose love of learning was like his own, and whose monograph of the great scholar is one of the gems of English literature. Unfortunately, death deprived the English world of letters of Mark Pattison on 30 July 1884
[Pattison's Life of Isaac Casaubon; Almeloveen's Is. Casauboni Vita (1709); Casaubon's Ephemerides (ed. Dr. Russell, 1850); Casaubon's Works, passim.]
CASAUBON, MERIC (1599–1671), classical scholar, was the son of Isaac [q. v.] and Florence Casaubon. He was born in 1599 at Geneva, and received his christian name from his godfather, Meric de Vic. He was educated in his early years at Sedan, which, being on the confines of a protestant district, offered facilities for escape in case of a religous persecution. He was the only one of Isaac Casaubon's sons in whom the father could find any comfort. He remained at Sedan until 1611, when he joined his father, who was by this time settled in England. He was then sent to Eton, on the foundation, and in 1614 proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford. In the April of that year King James had sent a mission to the dean and chapter of Christ Church, requiring them 'to admitt a sonne of Isaak Casaubon into the rome of a scholer of the foundation of that house, that should first become voide.' Isaac had intended to send his son to Leyden, to study under Heinsius, but as Meric was the only son who could avail himself of the king's kindness, he arranged that Meric should spend some time at Christ Church and then travel abroad, In 1614 the father died, and Meric was admitted to a studentship at Christ Church, which he held for thirteen years. He took his B.A. degree in 1618. and his M.A. in 1621, and in the same year published a book in defence of his father against the calumnies of the Roman catholics. This juvenile work pleased the king, and also found approbation among his father’s admirers in France, especially Meric de Vic, through whose instrumentality he was invited to settle in France with offers of promotion. He determined, however, to remain in England. At the early age of twenty-five he was collated, by his father's friend, Bishop Andrewes, to the rectory of Bleadon in Somersetshire; Archbishop Laud gave him, in 1628, a prebend at Canterbury; in 1634, the vicarage of Minster in the Isle of Thanet, and in the same year the vicarage of Monckton, also in the Isle of Thanet. He had, in 1624, published another vindication of his father, which he wrote by the express command of the king, and he formed a design of continuing his father's unfinished 'exercitations' agamst Baronius. In 1636 he was created D.D. at Oxford by order of Charles I, who was then residing at the university. About 1644 he was deprived by the parliament of all his preferments, and, according to Walker (Sufferings of the Clergy), 'was abused, fined, and imprisoned.' But in 1649 he received, through a Mr. Greaves, a lawyer of Gray's Inn, a message from Oliver Cromwell to come to Whitehall 'to confer about matters of moment;' as his wife lay dead in the house he could not come; but the message was twice repeated. Cromwell's business with him was to request him, royalist as he was, 'to write a history of the late war, desiring withal that nothing but matters of fact should be impartially set down,' Meric declined, on the very natural ground 'that he would be forced to make such reflections as would be ungrateful, if not injurious, to his lordship.' Cromwell was not offended. On the contrary, he ordered 'that upon the first demand three or four hundred pounds should be delivered to him by a London bookseller without acknowledging the benefactor;' but Meric did not avail himself of the offer. Mr. Greaves was then commissioned to tell him that, 'if he would do as requested, the lieutenant-general would restore him all his father's books, which were then in the royal library having been purchased by King James, and
