[Edit. Feb. 29:]...that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre to the world's view...
Edward Bensly notes that this comes from the dedication to a posthumous edition of Julius Caesar Scaliger's (1484–1558) Epistolae et orationes (Leyden, 1600), which read: "...aliqua scriptorum........quæ nondum communem theatri huius lucem aspexerant."
Jules César Scaliger was an interesting character: a page and protégé of Emperor Maximilian, he studied art under Albrecht Dürer. He fought with great valor in the battle of Ravenna in 1512, which claimed the lives of his brother and father. He then abandoned military life to pursue studies in Bologna. In 1525 he moved to Agen, as the physician to the noble Rovere family. He spent the rest of his life in that town, his reputation as a scholar and physician growing. In the 1520s, he was:
J.C. Scaliger, as well as his son, Joseph Juste, who managed to surpass his father in erudition, will be seen again and again in Anatomy...a majestic looking man of some forty years of age who was to become renowned as one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance. ... [S]o great became his fame in all branches of learning that it was for long considered he was the greatest scholar who had ever dwelt in France.Vernon Hall, Jr., Life of Julius Caesar Scaliger, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new ser., vol. 40, part 2, 1950.
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