HENRY Stephens, eldest son of ROBERT, was born at Paris in 1528, and became the most learned of all his learned family. He was esteemed, after the death of Budæus, the best Greek scholar of his time. It seems to have been about the year 1546 when his father took him into business; yet, before he could think of fixing, he resolved to travel into foreign countries, to examine libraries, and to connect himself with learned men. He went into Italy in 1547, and staid there two years; and returned to Paris in 1549, when he subjoined some Greek verses, made in his youth, to a folio edition of the New Testament in Greek, which his father had just finished. In 1550, he went over to England; and in 1551 to Flanders, where he learned the Spanish tongue of the Spaniards, who then possessed those countries, as he had before learned the Italian in Italy. On his return to Paris, he found his father preparing to leave France: it is not known whether he accompanied him to Geneva; but if he did, it is certain that he returned immediately after to Paris, and set up a printing-house. In 1554, he went to Rome, visiting his father at Geneva as he went; and the year after, to Naples. He returned to Paris, by the way of Venice, in 1556. This was upon business, committed to him by the government. Then he settled to printing in good earnest, and gave the world most beautiful and correct editions of all the ancient Greek and other valuable writers. He called himself at first Printer of Paris; but, in 1558, took the title of Printer to Ulric Fugger, a very rich German, who allowed him a considerable pension. He was at Geneva in 1558, to see his father, who died the year after; and he married in 1560. Henry III. of France was very fond of Stephens, sent him to Switzerland in search of ma-
nucripts, and gave him a pension. He took him to court, and made him great promises: but the troubles which accompanied the latter part of this king's reign, not only occasioned Stephens to be disappointed, but made his situation in France so dangerous, that he thought it prudent to remove, as his father had done before him, to Geneva. He bestowed great labour and expense on compiling his Theſaurus Linguae Graecæ, to the empowerment of his family: for though the work is highly esteemed to this day by the learned, yet these being but few, the demand from them did not reimburse him; and, to add to his misfortune, Scapula his servant treacherously extracted the most useful parts, and published an epitome, which destroyed the sale of the Theſaurus. He died in 1598; leaving a son, Paul, and two daughters, one of whom had espoused the learned Casaubon in 1586.