In 1531 he printed his first oration against
Erasmus, in defence of
Cicero and the
Ciceronians (
Oratio pro Cicerone contra Erasmum, Paris 1531), dismissing Erasmus as a literary parasite, a mere corrector of texts. It is notable for its vigorous invective and, like his subsequent writings, its excellent
Latin. It has been said of it, however, that it misses the point of his opponent's treatise
Ciceronianus. Erasmus did not reply, thinking it was the work of a personal enemy, Meander. Scaliger then wrote a second oration (published in 1536), also full of invective. The orations were followed by a large amount of Latin verse, which appeared in successive volumes in 1533, 1534, 1539, 1546 and 1547. This verse appeared in numerous editions, but was less appreciated by later critics. (One of them,
Mark Pattison, agreed with the judgment of
Pierre Daniel Huet, who said: "par ses poésies brutes et informes Scaliger a déshonoré le Parnasse".) He also published a brief tract on comic metres (
De comicis dimensionibus) and a work
De causis linguae Latinae (Lyons 1540; Geneva 1580; Frankfurt 1623), in which he analyzes the style of Cicero and indicates 634 mistakes of
Lorenzo Valla and his humanist predecessors, claimed to be the earliest Latin
grammar using scientific principles and method. He published no other purely literary works in his lifetime. His
Poetices libri septem ("Seven books on Poetics", Lyons 1561; Leyden 1581) appeared after his death. They contained many paradoxes and some elements of personal animosity (especially in his reference to
Étienne Dolet), but also contain acute criticism based on the
Poetics of Aristotle, "imperator noster; omnium bonarum artium dictator perpetuus" ("our Emperor, dictator forever of all good qualities in the arts"), an influential treatise in the history of
literary criticism. Like many of his generation Scaliger prized
Virgil above
Homer. His praise of the tragedies of
Seneca over those of the Greeks influenced both
Shakespeare and
Pierre Corneille. Scaliger intended to be judged primarily as a philosopher and a man of science and regarded classical studies as a means of relaxation. He was noted for his powers of observation and his tenacious memory. His scientific writings are all in the form of commentaries. It was not until he was seventy that (with the exception of a brief tract on the
De insomniis of
Hippocrates) he felt that any of them were ready for publication. In 1556 he printed his
Dialogue on the
De plantis attributed to
Aristotle, and in 1557 his
Exotericarum exercitationum ("Exoteric Exercises", or simply
Exercitationes) on
Gerolamo Cardano's
De Subtilitate. His other scientific works, commentaries on
Theophrastus'
De causis plantarum and Aristotle's
History of Animals, he left in a more or less unfinished state, and they were not printed until after his death. His work shows no sign of the
inductive reasoning attributed to the
scientific method. Unlike his contemporary
Konrad von Gesner, he was not led by his botanical studies to a natural system of classification. He rejected the discoveries of
Copernicus. He was guided by Aristotle in
metaphysics and in
natural history and by
Galen in medicine, but did not follow them uncritically. He is best known for his critical
Exotericarum Exercitationes on Cardan's
De Subtilitate (1557), a book approaching
natural philosophy and which had a long popularity. The
Exercitationes display encyclopaedic knowledge and accurate observation; but, as noted by
Gabriel Naudé, they are not flawless. They had an influence upon
natural historians, philosophers and scientists such as
Lipsius,
Francis Bacon,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and
Johannes Kepler.
Charles Nisard wrote that Scaliger's object seems to be to deny all that Cardan affirms and to affirm all that Cardan denies. Yet
Leibniz and
Sir William Hamilton recognize him as the best modern exponent of the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle.
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