HENRI ESTIENNE (1S31-1598), sometimes called Henri II., was the eldest son of Robert. In the preface to his edition of Aulus Gellius (1585), addressed to his son Paul, he gives an interesting account of his father's household, in which Latin was used as a common language. At fifteen he became a pupil of Pierre Danes, at that time the first Greek scholar in France. In 1545 he began to attend the lectures of Jacques Toussain, royal professor of Greek, and was employed by his father to collate a ms. of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In the year 1547 he went to Italy, where he spent three years in hunting for and collat ing mss. and in intercourse with learned men. In 155o he visited England, where he was favourably received by Edward VI., and then Flanders, where he learnt Spanish. In 1551 he joined his father at Geneva, which henceforth became his home. In 1554 he published, as the firstfruits of his researches, two first editions, viz. a tract of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the so called "Anacreon." In 1556 he discovered at Rome ten new books (xi.—xx.) of Diodorus Siculus. In 1557 he issued at Geneva three first editions, viz. Athenagoras, Maximus Tyrius, and some frag ments of Greek historians, including Appian's 'AvveqaX tics, and 'Ifinpuc, and an edition of Aeschylus, in which for the first time the Agamemnon was printed in entirety and as a separate play. In 1559 he printed a Latin translation from his own pen of Sextus Empiricus, and an edition of Diodorus Siculus with the new books. Under his father's will he became in owner of his press, subject, however, to the condition of keeping it at Geneva. In 1566 he published his best-known French work, the Apologie pour Herodote. Some passages being considered ob jectionable by the Geneva consistory, he was compelled to cancel the pages containing them. Within sixteen years twelve editions were printed. In 1572 he published his magnum opus, the Thesaurus Graecae linguae (5 vols. fol.). The publication in 15 78 of his Deux Dialogues du nouveau f rancois italianize brought him into a fresh dispute with the consistory. To avoid their censure he went to Paris, and resided at the French court for a year. On his return to Geneva he was summoned before the consistory, and, proving contumacious, was imprisoned for a week. From this time his life became more and more of a nomad one. He is to be found at Basel, Heidelberg, Vienna, Pest, everywhere but at Geneva, these journeys being undertaken partly in the hope of procuring patrons and purchasers. His press stood nearly at a standstill. A few editions of classical authors were brought out, but each successive one showed a falling off. Such value as the later ones had was chiefly due to the notes furnished by Casaubon, who in 1586 had married his daughter Florence. In 1597 he left Geneva for the last time. After visiting Montpellier, where Casaubon was now professor, he started for Paris, and died at Lyons at the end of January 1598. Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly. For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as printer, editor or original writer, was enormous. The productions of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his father's books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink, inferior to them in general beauty. The best, perhaps, from a typographical point of view, are the Poetae Graeci principes (folio, 1566) , the Plutarch (13 vols. 8vo, 1572), and the Plato (3 vols. folio, 1578). It was rather his scholarship which gave value to his editions. He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though by the latter half of the i6th century nearly all the important Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published, his untiring activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his press. Estienne only resorted to conjecture when authority failed him. He was the first to show what conjecture could do towards restoring a hopelessly corrupt passage. The work, however, on which his fame as a scholar is most surely based is the Thesaurus Graecae linguae. After making due allowance for the fact that considerable materials for the work had been already collected by his father, and that he received considerable assistance from the German scholar Sylburg, he is still entitled to the very highest praise as the producer of a work which was of the greatest service to scholarship and which in those early days of Greek learning could have been produced by no one but a giant. Two editions of the Thesaurus were published in the i9th century—at London by Valpy (1815-1825) and at Paris by Didot (1831-1863).
It was one of Henri Estienne's great merits that, unlike nearly all the French scholars who preceded him, he did not neglect his own language. In the Traite de la conformite du langage francois avec le Grec (published in 1565, but without date ; ed. L. Feugere, 185o) , French is asserted to have, among modern languages, the most affinity with Greek, the first of all languages. Deux Dialogues du nouveau francois italianize (Geneva, 1578 ; ed. P. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1885) was directed against the fashion prevailing in the court of Catherine de' Medici of using Italian words and forms. The Project du livre intitule de la Precellence du langage francois (Paris, ed. E. Huguet, 1896) treats of the superiority of French to Italian. An interesting feature of the Precellence is the account of French proverbs, and, Henry III. having expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of some of them, Henri Estienne published, in Les Premices ou le I. livre des Proverbes epigrammatizez (never reprinted and very rare) .
Finally, there remains the Apologie pour Herodote, his most famous work. The ostensible object of the book is to show that the strange stories in Herodotus may be paralleled by equally strange ones of modern times. Virtually it is a bitter satire on the writer's age, especially on the Roman Church. A modern edition was published by Liseux (ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879), after one of the only two copies of the original uncancelled edition that are known to exist.
The primary authorities for an account of the Estiennes are their own works. In the garrulous and egotistical prefaces which Henri was in the habit of prefixing to his editions will be found many scattered biographical details. Twenty-seven letters from Henri to John Crato of Crafftheim (ed. F. Passow, 183o) have been printed, and there is one of Robert's in Herminjard's Correspondence des Reformateurs dans de pays de langue francaise (9 vols. published 1866-1897), while a few other contemporary references to him will be found in the same work. The secondary authorities are Janssen van Almeloveen, De vitis Stephanorum (Amsterdam, 1683) ; Maittaire, Stephanorum historia (London, i7o9) ; A. A. Renouard, Annales de l'imprimerie des Estienne (and ed., Paris, 1843) ; the article on Estienne by A. F. Didot in the None. Biog. gen.; Mark Pattison, Essays, i. 67 ff. (1889) ; L. Clement, Henri Estienne et son ceuvre francaise (Paris, 1899) . There is a good account of Henri's Thesaurus in the Quart. Rev. for January 182o, written by Bishop Blomfield.