STEPHENS (Fr. Enienne). The family of the celebrated printers and publishers of this name (descended from a noble Provencal family) is found settled at Paris toward 1500 in the person of Henry Stephens, supposed to have been born about 1470, and died in 1520. In Paris Henry carried on the business of printer and book-seller for upward et 20 years. In 1526 Robert, his second son, b. 1503, is femur' in possession of the business. Every year of Robert's life is marked by the issue from his printing-press of several vol umes, many of them masterpieces of art, and all of them surpassing anything of the kind previously seen in France. lIe was at once printer, publisher, commentator, and author. Though prosperous, lie showed unmistakably that truth—or that which to him was trnth—was of more value in his eyes than worldly gain. Having secretly become a convert to the doctrines of the reformation, he endeavored for some time to reconcile his convictions with the outward demeanor required by his position. But the convictions were ton strong, or the nature of the man too truth-loving. His Bible of 1545, and his Greek Testament of 1549, each drew down upon him a public prosecution; and though the prosecutions failed legally, they were disastrous to his private fortune. sent his family to Geneva, he followed them there in 1549. Robert, his second son, shortly returned to Paris, where he resumed his father's business, returning to the Roman Catholic church.
In flying from Paris to Geneva, the Stephens family found that they had but exchanged Roman Catholic for Protestant persecution.
Henry the second, born at Paris in 1528, and succeeding his father Robert on his death in 1559. was repeatedly called before the council, reprimanded, ordered to print cancels, and excommunicated. Though Henry possessed the same literary industry and ability
as his father, he was unfortunately deficient in his father's practical turn of mind. Devoted to his art and to his calling, he seems to have been utterly wanting in worldly prudence. In two years we find that he had revised and published more than •.000 pages of Greek text; while at the same time he was writing his Apologia pro Ilerodote. a work of formidable length and learning. Rendered nervous and irritable by an overworked brain, and by pecuniary difficulties, which were gather:ng fast around him, the petty surveillance and censorship of the pious pastors of Geneva became intolerable to him. Traveling, originally undertaken from literary cariosity, grew hue a necessity of life. In 1573 he visited Paris, where for several years he became a hanger-on of the court of Henry III., who bestowed upon him a pension, wl;ich the state of the royal exchequer rendered merely a nominal one. Quitting Paris, he wandered in poverty over Europe, his own family often ignorant of wucre he was to 1,0 found. Ile (lied at Lyons in 1598. Great as a publisher and commentator, Henry Stephens does.not seem to have possessed much power as an original thinker. His mastery of Greek_ seeing to have been almost complete, and as a critic of the French language he is still esteemed in France. See ,Caract&es et Portraits Litteraires du S;Oc.70 XVI., by H. Leon Fcugere (Paris, 1864); also article in Quarterly Review (Loud. April, 1835); and article "Estienne," in the Nouvelle Deographie Generale.