097 



STEPHEN, RT. HON. SIR JAMES. 



STEPHENS. 



693 





over thought no more about submitting to Home, granted the Polish 

 king a considerable subsidy. The projects of Bathori against Mubcovy, 

 which are supposed to have had for their object a change in the form 

 of the government of that country, were cut short by his death, 

 after a short illness at Grodno, on the 12th of December 1586, at the 

 age of fifty-four. 



The wars in which he was engaged did not prevent Bathori from 

 paying due attention to the civil affairs of the country, in which the 

 following improvements were introduced during his reign. The 

 province of Mazovia, which had hitherto been governed by a separate 

 code, was induced by Stephen to adopt the general laws of Poland, 

 with some few exceptions. The statute-book of Lithuania was en- 

 larged by the addition of many new articles. Tlie statute of Culm, 

 by which the towns of Prussia were governed, was revised. Many 

 salutary laws respecting the property of the crown and the privileges 

 of the nobles were enacted. But the most important civil act of this 

 king was the establishment of tribunals or supreme courts of justice 

 for Poland and Lithuania. They were composed of members elected 

 for the session by the same voters who returned the nuncios, or 

 members of the diet. This institution, which supplanted the admi- 

 nistration of justice by the king, aud rendered it independent of the 

 crown, continued till the dissolution of Poland. 



Stephen Bathori was very fond of learning and a great patron of 

 learned men. In his early life he was imprisoned for two years in a 

 fortress, by the emperor of Austria, which time he spent in the study 

 of the classics, and particularly in that of the 'Commentaries' of 

 Caesar, which he is said to have known by heart. He is supposed to 

 have been originally a Protestant, but to have been induced by the 

 representations of a Roman Catholic bishop to abjure secretly his 

 creed and become a Roman Catholic on his accession to the crown of 

 Poland, so that many believe that he had always conformed to the 

 Roman Catholic church. Some learned Jesuits having gained his 

 confidence, he became a great patron of their order, and founded for 

 them the University of Wilna and the College of Polotzk, which he 

 richly endowed. He was however strongly opposed to religious into- 

 lerance, and maintained evenhanded justice amongst the various 

 denominations which prevailed in Poland. He left no issue, and 

 resigned, on his election to the throne of Poland, the principality of 

 Transylvania to his brother Sigismund. 



STEPHEN, THE RIGHT HON. SIR JAMES, K.C.B., LL.D., 

 is the son of James Stephen, Esq., Master of Chancery, (well known 

 for his writings'and exertions between 1815 and 1830 on the subject 

 of colonial slavery) and was born about the year 1790. He was 

 educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1812. 

 Having chosen the legal profession, he was called to the Bar at 

 Lincolu's-Inn. He had hardly begun practice as a Chancery barrister, 

 when, in 1812 or 1813, he became connected officially with the public 

 service as counsel of the Colonial Department. For eleven years he 

 was at once counsel for this department and a Chancery barrister in 

 extensive practice. He then retired from the Bar, and became at the 

 same time both counsel to the Colonial Department and counsel to 

 the Board of Trade. He held these offices jointly for ten years ; after 

 which, during the Whig government which succeeded the Reform Bill, 

 he left the Board of Trade and became assistant-under-sccretary for 

 the Colonies. From the assistant-under-secretaryship he was sub- 

 sequently promoted to the permanent under-secretaryship ; spending 

 fourteen years in the two offices together. He was thus connected 

 with the civil service thirty-five years in all, during the whole of 

 which time his relations were mainly with the Colonial Department. 

 His impressions of the state of our government offices, aud of the 

 colonial office in particular, derived from this long experience, were 

 published, with other opinions on the same subject, in a Blue-book in 

 1855, when the question of the re-organisation of the civil service, by 

 the adoption of the system of appointments, by competitive examina- 

 tion instead of by patronage, was first agitated. The opinion there 

 expressed on the condition of the public service, as regards the 

 intellectual capacity and culture of the majority of those comprising 

 it, is by no means favourable; but the writer speaks of splendid 

 exceptions. Of these exceptions the writer himself was certainly one. 

 While in the Colonial Office he was one of the ablest and most efficient 

 public servants that the state possessed ; and his final retirement from 

 the colonial under-secretaryship in 1847 was a great loss to that 

 department. He then received the honour of knighthood. It w.'.s 

 not only however as a public official that he had up to that time dis- 

 tinguished himself. A man of general thought and culture, he had all 

 along employed his leisure in studies ranging beyond the topics that 

 interested him as an official ; and he had latterly contributed exten- 

 sively to the ' Edinburgh Review ' on subjects relating to the History 

 of the Church and the developement of religious opinions. A collection 

 of these articles, already widely known and appreciated in their 

 scattered shape, was published in two volumes in 1849, under the title 

 of ' Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.' In the same year Sir James 

 Stephen was appointed to succeed William Smyth, M.A., as Regius 

 Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge ; which 

 office he still holds. In 1851, he published in two volumes, 'Lectures 

 on the History of France.' This work is now in a third edition ; and 

 there have been several editions of its predecessor. The two together 

 have given the author a high and peculiar place in our graver con- 



temporary literature. Among other slighter things which Sir James 

 has published, are one or two lectures delivered to popular institutions. 

 One of Sir James's sons, who has followed the legal profession, is like- 

 wise known by various writings. His brother, Sin GKORQE STEPHEN, ia 

 also known as the author of ' Adventures of a Gentleman in Search of a 

 Horse,' 'Adventures of an Attorney,' 'The Juryman's Guide,' 'The 

 Clerk,' and The Governess,' in C. Knight's series of ' Guides to 

 Trade ; ' of a novel, entitled ' The Jesuit at Cambridge ; ' and of a 

 pamphlet on ' The Niger Trade and the African Blockade,' as con- 

 nected with the slave-trade, a subject in which he has always taken 

 much interest. 



STEPHENS (French, ETIENNE or ESTIENNE ; Lat., STEPHA- 

 NUS) is the name of a family of the most illustrious scholars and 

 printers that has ever appeared. Several of the members of this 

 family bore the same Christian name, which has produced much con- 

 fusion in the accounts that have been given of them. We shall give 

 the lives of them in a chronological succession, and distinguish those 

 of the same name by the epithets the first, the second, &c. The 

 earliest among them who distinguished himself is 



HENRY STEPHENS I., who was born at Paris; the year of his birth 

 is uncertain, though it is generally supposed that it was about 1470. 

 He had his printing establishment at Paris, in a place which he calls 

 " e regione scholse decretorum," which is now called "Rue de 1'Ecole 

 de Droit." The earliest work which is said to have been printed by 

 him is of the year 1502, the year before that in which his son Robert 

 was born. The works which he printed were mostly on theological, 

 philosophical, mathematical, and medical subjects, and he published 

 very few editions of the classical writers. On the title-page of his 

 publications are represented two men looking at a shield which stands 

 between them, and contains three lilies, and above them a hand hold- 

 ing a closed book. Above the heads of the two men is the device 



' Plus olei quam vini.' At the bottom of the title-page he sometimes 

 gives only his initials, H. S., and sometimes his full name. All the 

 works that came from his press were very correctly printed, as he 

 always revised the proofs. A list of his publications is given by 

 Maittaire ('Historia Stephanoi um,' ii. 1, p. 1-9, and by Renouard 

 voL i.), from which we extract the following : In 1512 he published 

 the 'Itinerarium Antonini;' in 1519 the works of Dionysius Areo- 

 pagita; in 1521 an extract of the ' Arithmetica ' of Boethiue. In 1522 

 his son Robert was engaged in the printing establishment of his father- 

 in-law Simon de Colines, who calls himself the successor of Henry 

 Stephens, and married his widow. From this fact we must infer that 

 Henry Stephens died in 1521 or 1522. He left three sons, Francis, 

 Robert, and Charles. 



FRANCIS STEPHENS i., was the eldest of the three sons of Henry 

 Stephens. He was a partner of Simon de Colines : there are very 

 few books known to be printed by him. The earliest is a work called 

 'Vinetum,' printed in 1537. In 1543 he published a 'Psalterium 

 Grsecum,' in 16mo, in which the titles and initials of the verses are 

 printed in red. The last of the publications is the 'Andria' of 

 Terence, in 8vo. His mark on the title-page is a tripod, which stands 

 upon a book, and from which a vine-branch rises. The year of his 

 birth as well as of his death are unknown. A list of his publications is 

 given by Maittaire, p. 31, and by Renouard, vol. i. 



ROBERT STEPHENS i., the second son of Henry Stephens I., was born 

 at Paris in 1503. In his youth he studied the Latin, Greek, and 

 Hebrew languages, and he made such progress, that at an early 

 period of his life he gave extraordinary proofs of his learning, and 

 was subsequently placed by his contemporaries above the greatest 

 scholars that had ever lived. After the death of his father, he was 

 for some time engaged in the printing-office of Simon de Colhres, hia 

 father-in-law, and he appears, as early as his nineteenth year, to have 

 had the entire management of the printing, correcting, and editing 

 of several works, for in 1522 there appeared from the establishment 

 of De Colines, an edition of the New Testament (Novum Testamentum, 

 Latine, 16mo), which, although a copy of the Vulgate, was more 

 correctly printed than any previous edition, and also contained some 

 corrections by Robert Stephens. The professors of the Sorbonne, 

 alarmed at the appearance of a new edition of a book which they 

 wished to keep from the public, especially at a time when Protes- 

 tantism was making rapid progress, inveighed in their lectures against 

 the audacious youth, and declared that the book should be burnt. 

 But their anger produced little effect. A short time after this he 

 married Petronella, a daughter of the celebrated scholar and printer 

 Jodocus Badius, a woman of great talents, who understood and spoke 

 Latin as well as her mother-tongue. As the house of Stephens was 

 visited by scholars and eminent men of all countries, Latin became 

 the ordinary language of conversation ; and it is said that the children 

 and even the servants acquired some facility in speaking it. After his 

 marriage he established a separate printing-office for himself, though 

 he remained in the same street in which his father's office was 

 situated. The earliest publication from his own establishment was 

 ' Apuleii Liber de Deo Socratis,' 8vo, 1525. Others believe that he 

 had no separate establishment till two years later, and that Cicero's 

 ' Partitiones Oratorise ' and ' Persii Satyrse' (1527) were the first works 

 that were issued from it. These works were followed by a great 

 number of Roman authors, and Latin translations from the Greek 

 and other languages, some of which were made by himself. For many 



