Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

THE
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
WITH
MEMOIRS.
VOLUME II.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET, AND 13, PALL-MALL EAST.

1833.

[PRICE ONE GUINEA, BOUND IN CLOTH.]

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Duke-Street, Lambeth.

PORTRAITS, AND BIOGRAPHIES
CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

Engraved by T. A. Dean.
LORD CHANCELLOR SOMERS.
From a Picture by Sir G. Kneller,
in the possession of the Royal Society.
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

GALLERY OF PORTRAITS.

SOMERS.

John Somers was born at Worcester, in an ancient house called the White Ladies, which, as its name seems to import, had formerly been part of a monastery or convent. The exact date of his birth cannot be ascertained, as the parish registers at Worcester, during the civil wars between Charles I. and his Parliament, were either wholly lost, or so inaccurately kept as not to furnish any authentic information. It appears probable, however, from several concurring accounts, that he was born about the year 1650. The family of Somers was respectable, though not wealthy, and had for several generations been possessed of an estate at Clifton, in the parish of Severnstoke, in Gloucestershire. Admiral Sir George Somers, who in the reign of James I. was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, and afterwards died there, leaving his name to that cluster of islands, is said by Horace Walpole, in his ‘Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,’ to have been a member of the same family. The father of Somers was an attorney, in respectable practice at Worcester; who, in the civil wars, became a zealous Parliamentarian, and commanded a troop in Cromwell’s army.

Of the early education of Somers, we have only a meagre and unsatisfactory account. The house called the White Ladies, in which he was born, was occupied by a Mr. Blurton, an eminent clothier of Worcester, who had married his father’s sister. This lady, having no son of her own, adopted Somers from his birth, and brought him up in her house, which he always considered as his home till he went to the university. He appears for some years to have been a day-scholar in the college-school at Worcester, which before his time had attained a high character for classical education, under the superintendence of Dr. Bright, a clergyman of great learning and eminence. At a subsequent period, we find him at a private school at Walsall in Staffordshire: he is described by a school-fellow as being then “a weakly boy, wearing a black cap, and never so much as looking out when the other boys were at play.” He seems indeed to have been a remarkably reserved and “sober-blooded” boy. At a somewhat later period Sir F. Winnington says of him, that “by the exactness of his knowledge and behaviour, he discouraged his father and all the young men that knew him. They were afraid to be in his company.” In what manner his time was occupied from the period of his leaving school until he went to the university, is unknown. It has been suggested that he was employed for several years in his father’s office, who designed him for his own department of the profession of the law. There is no positive evidence of this circumstance, though the conjecture is by no means improbable. It cannot, however, be doubted that, during this period, he devoted much of his time to the study of history and the civil law, and laid in a portion of that abundant store of constitutional learning which afterwards rendered him the ornament of his profession, and of the age in which he lived. About this time also he formed several connexions, which had great influence upon his subsequent success in life. The estates of the Earl of Shrewsbury were managed by Somers’s father; and as that young nobleman had no convenient residence of his own in Worcestershire, he spent much of his time at the White Ladies, and formed an intimate friendship and familiarity with young Somers. In 1672 he was also fortunate enough to be favourably noticed by Sir Francis Winnington, then a distinguished practitioner at the English bar, who was under obligations to his father for his active services in promoting his election as a Member of Parliament for the city of Worcester. Winnington is described by Burnet as a lawyer who had “risen from small beginnings, and from as small a proportion of learning in his profession, in which he was rather bold and ready, than able.” It is natural to suppose that such a man, feeling his own deficiencies, would readily perceive with what advantage he might employ the talents and industry of Somers in assisting him both in Westminster Hall and in Parliament. It was probably with this intention that Winnington advised him to go to the university, and to prosecute his studies with a view to being called to the bar.

In 1674 Somers was entered as a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, being then about three and twenty years of age. The particulars of his progress through the university are not recorded; but here, as at school, his contemporaries could perceive few indications of those splendid talents which afterwards raised him to such extraordinary eminence. His college exercises, some of which are still extant, are said to have been in no respect remarkable; and he quitted the university without acquiring any academical honours beyond his Bachelor’s degree. Mr. Somers was called to the bar in 1676, by the Society of the Middle Temple; but he continued his residence at the university for several years afterwards, and did not remove to London until the year after his father’s death, in 1681, upon which event he succeeded to his paternal estate at Severnstoke. During his residence at Oxford he had the advantage of being introduced by the Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir F. Winnington to many of the patriotic opponents of the arbitrary measures of the Court. At this time he published several tracts, which sufficiently displayed to the world his familiar and accurate knowledge of constitutional history. His first acknowledged work was the Report of an Election Case, and is entitled ‘The Memorable Case of Denzil Onslow, Esq., tried at the Assizes in Surrey, July 20, 1681, touching his election at Haslemere in Surrey.’ His next performance was ‘A Brief History of the Succession, collected out of the Records and the most authentic Historians.’ This work was written at the time when the proposal to bring in a Bill to exclude the Duke of York from the succession occupied universal attention, and excited the most intense interest. The object of Mr. Somers’s tract was to exhibit the principles upon which the Parliament of England has authority to alter, restrain, and qualify the right of succession to the Crown; and he places the historical arguments in support of this proposition in a forcible and convincing light. Indeed, though it might be difficult to justify such a proposition by abstract arguments upon what is called the theory of the British Constitution, it has been so repeatedly acted upon in several periods of our history, that even in the time of Charles II. the practice had, as Somers justly contended, to all intents and purposes established and sanctioned the principle. An excellent tract upon the same subject, entitled ‘A just and modest Vindication of the two last Parliaments,’ which appeared shortly after the breaking up of the Oxford Parliament in March, 1681, has been partly ascribed to Somers. Burnet says that this tract, which he characterizes as “the best writ paper in all that time,” was at first penned by Algernon Sidney, but that a new draught was made by Somers, which was corrected by Sir William Jones. Upon occasion of the attempt of the Court party in 1681, by the illegal examination of witnesses under the direction of the King’s Counsel in open court, to induce a grand jury at the Old Bailey to find a true bill for high treason against the Earl of Shaftsbury, Mr. Somers wrote his celebrated tract entitled ‘The Security of Englishmen’s Lives, or the Trust, Power, and Duty of the Grand Juries of England explained.’ Of this work, Bishop Burnet says, “It passed as writ by Lord Essex, though I understood afterwards it was writ by Somers, who was much esteemed, and often visited by Lord Essex, and who trusted himself to him, and writ the best papers that came out in that time.” In later times, this work has been universally ascribed to Somers. During his residence at Oxford, Somers was not inattentive to polite literature; he published a translation of some of Ovid’s Epistles into English verse, which at the same time that it shows that he could never have borne so distinguished a rank as a poet, as he afterwards attained as a lawyer and statesman, is by no means a contemptible performance. His translations from Ovid, and a version of Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades, are the only published proofs of his classical studies at Oxford.

In the year 1682 he removed to London, and immediately commenced an assiduous attendance upon the courts of law, which at that time was considered as the highway of the legal profession. Under the powerful patronage of Sir Francis Winnington, who had been Solicitor-General, and was then in the full stream of business, he rose with considerable rapidity into good practice at the bar. In 1683 he appeared as junior counsel to Winnington in the defence to an important political prosecution instituted against Pilkington and Shute, with several other persons, for a riot at the election of sheriffs for the city of London. His employment in a case of so much public expectation may be taken as a proof that at that time his professional merits were in some degree appreciated; and in the reign of James II. his practice is said to have produced £700 a-year, which at that time was a very large income for a common lawyer of five years’ standing. But such was the character for research and industry which he had attained within a very few years from the commencement of his professional career, that on the trial of the Seven Bishops in 1688, he was introduced as counsel into that momentous cause at the express and peremptory recommendation of Pollexfen, one of the greatest lawyers of that day. The rank of the defendants, the personal interest of the King in the question at issue, the general expectation excited by this conflict amongst all classes of the people, and above all, the event of the prosecution which drove James from his throne and kingdom, and immediately introduced the Revolution of 1688, render the trial of the Seven Bishops one of the most important judicial proceedings that ever occurred in Westminster Hall. It was no trifling testimony, therefore, to the high estimation in which Somers was held by experienced judges of professional merit, that he should be expressly selected by the counsel for the defendants to bear a part in the defence. We are told that upon the first suggestion of Somers’s name, “objection was made amongst the Bishops to him, as too young and obscure a man; but old Pollexfen insisted upon him, and would not be himself retained without the other; representing him as the man who would take most pains and go deepest into all that depended on precedents and records[^[1]].” How far the leading counsel for the Bishops were indebted to the industry and research of Somers, for the extent of learning displayed in their admirable arguments on that occasion, cannot now be ascertained; his own speech, as reported in the State Trials, contains a summary of the constitutional reasons against the existence of a dispensing power in the King, expressed in clear and unaffected language, and applied with peculiar skill and judgment to the defence of his clients.

[1]. Kennett’s Complete History, vol. iii. p. 513, n.

The intimate connexion of Somers with the leaders of that political party by whom the Revolution was effected, and in particular with his early friend Lord Shrewsbury, leaves little room for doubt that he was actively employed in devising the means by which that important event was brought about. It is said by Tindal that he was admitted into the most secret councils of the Prince of Orange, and was one of those who planned the measure of bringing him over to England. Immediately upon the flight of James II., the Prince of Orange, by the advice of the temporary assembly which he had convened as the most proper representative of the people in the emergency of the time, issued circular letters to the several counties, cities, and boroughs of England, directing them to summon a Parliamentary Convention. On this occasion Mr. Somers was returned as a representative by his native city of Worcester. We find him taking a conspicuous part in the long and laborious debates which took place in that assembly respecting the settlement of the government. Upon a conference with the Lords upon the resolution, “that James II. having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom had abdicated the government, and that the throne had thereby become vacant,” Mr. Somers spoke at great length, and with much learning, in support of the original resolution against some amendments proposed by the Lords. This resolution having been ultimately adopted by both Houses of Parliament, and the Prince and Princess of Orange having been declared King and Queen of England, a committee was appointed, of which Somers was a member, to bring in heads of such things as were necessary for securing the Protestant religion, the laws of the land, and the liberties of the people. The Report of this Committee, which was a most elaborate performance, having been submitted to the examination of a second committee, of which Somers was chairman, formed the substance of the Declaration of Rights which was afterwards assented to by the King and Queen and both Houses of Parliament, and thus adopted as the basis of the Constitution.

It is impossible to ascertain with precision the particular services rendered by Somers in the accomplishment of this great measure. There was perhaps no individual at that moment in existence who was so well qualified to lend important aid in conducting his country with safety through the difficulties and dangers of a change of government, and in placing the interests of the nation upon a secure and solid foundation. Fortunate was it for the people of England and their posterity that the services of a man of his industry and settled principles, of his sound constitutional information, and his rational and enlightened views of the relative rights and duties of kings and subjects, were at that critical juncture available to his country; and that, at the instant of the occurrence of this momentous revolution, his character was sufficiently known and appreciated to render those services fully effective.

Shortly after the accession of William and Mary, Somers was appointed Solicitor-General, and received the honour of knighthood. Bishop Burnet says, that in the warm debates which took place in Parliament on the bill respecting the recognition of the King and Queen, and the validity of the new settlement of the government, it was strongly objected by the Tories that the convention, not being summoned by the King’s writ, had no legal sanction; and that Somers distinguished himself by the spirited and able manner in which he answered the objection. “He spoke,” says Burnet, “with such zeal and such an ascendant of authority that none were prepared to answer it; so that the bill passed without more opposition. This was a great service done in a very critical time, and contributed not a little to raise Somers’s character.”

In April, 1692, Sir John Somers became Attorney-General, and in the month of March following was appointed Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal. While he presided in the Court of Chancery as Lord-Keeper, he delivered his celebrated judgment in the Bankers’ case, which Mr. Hargrave describes as “one of the most elaborate arguments ever delivered in Westminster Hall.” It is said that Lord Somers expended several hundred pounds in collecting books and pamphlets for this argument. In 1697 he was appointed Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron Somers of Evesham.

In the year immediately succeeding his elevation to the peerage, it was the fate of Lord Somers to experience the virulence of party animosity, and the selfishness and instability of royal favour. His influence with the King, and the moderation and good sense with which he had restrained the impetuosity of his own party, had been long the means of preserving the Whig administration; and the Tories saw plainly that there were no hopes for the attainment of their objects so long as Lord Somers retained the confidence of the King. William had been, from the commencement of his reign, continually vacillating between the two parties according to the circumstances of his affairs; at this period he was so incensed and embarrassed by the conduct of the contending parties in the House of Commons, that he readily listened to the leaders of the Tories, who assured him that they would undertake to manage the Parliament as he pleased, if he would dismiss from his councils the Lord Chancellor Somers, whom they represented to be peculiarly odious to the Commons. In fact, the Tory party in the House of Commons had, in the course of the stormy session of Parliament which commenced in November, 1699, made several violent but ineffectual attacks upon the Lord Chancellor. The first charge brought against him was, that he had improperly dismissed many gentlemen from the commission of the peace: upon a full explanation of all the circumstances, this charge was proved to be so utterly groundless that it was abandoned by those who had introduced it. The second accusation had no better foundation than the first. Great complaints having been made of certain English pirates in the West Indies, who had plundered several merchant ships, it was determined to send out a ship of war for the purpose of destroying them. But as there was no fund to bear the charge of such an expedition, the King proposed to his ministers that it should be carried on as a private undertaking, and promised to subscribe £3,000 on his own account. In compliance with this recommendation, Lord Somers, the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earls of Romney, Oxford, Bellamont, and several others, contributed a sufficient sum to defray the whole expense of the armament. Unfortunately one Captain Kidd was appointed to command the expedition, who was unprincipled enough to turn pirate himself, and having committed various acts of robbery on the high seas, was eventually captured, brought to England, and some time afterwards tried and executed for his offences. It was then insinuated that the Lord Chancellor and the other individuals who had subscribed towards the expedition were engaged as partners in Kidd’s piratical scheme; so that an undertaking, which was not only innocent, but meritorious and patriotic, was construed by the blindness of party prejudice into a design for robbery and piracy. A resolution in the House of Commons, founded upon this absurd imputation, was rejected by a great majority. Shortly afterwards, after ordering a list of the Privy Council to be laid before the House, a question was moved in the House of Commons, “that an address should be made to his Majesty to remove John Lord Somers, Chancellor of England, from his presence and councils for ever.” This motion, however, was also negatived by a large majority. The prosecution of these frivolous charges against Lord Somers was a source of perpetual irritation to the King, in consequence of the vexatious delay it occasioned to the public service, and the virulent party spirit which it introduced into the House of Commons; and it was under the influence of this feeling, and in order to deliver himself from a temporary embarrassment, that he selfishly determined to adopt the interested advice of the Tory leaders, and to remove the Lord Chancellor from his office. He accordingly intimated to Lord Somers that it was necessary for his service that he should resign the seals, but wished him to make the resignation himself, in order that it might appear as if it was his own act. The Chancellor declined to make a voluntary surrender of the seals, as such a course might indicate a fear of his enemies, or a consciousness of misconduct in his office; upon which Lord Jersey was sent with an express warrant for the seals, and Lord Somers delivered them to him without hesitation.

The malignity of party spirit was not satisfied by the dismissal of Lord Somers from his office, and from all participation in the government. Soon after his retirement, namely in the year 1701, the celebrated Partition Treaties gave occasion to much angry debate in both Houses of Parliament. His conduct, with respect to these treaties, seems to have been entirely irreproachable; but it became the subject of much misrepresentation, and the most unreserved invective and abuse in the House of Commons. It appears that in 1698, when the King was in Holland, a proposal was made to him by the French Government for arranging the partition of some of the territories belonging to the crown of Spain upon the expected death of Charles II. This partition was to be made in certain defined proportions between the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the Dauphin of France, and the Archduke Charles, the second son of the Emperor. The King entertained these proposals favourably, and wrote to Lord Somers, who was at that time Lord Chancellor, desiring his opinion upon them, and commanding him to forward to him a commission in blank under the great seal, appointing persons to treat with the Commissioners of the French Government. Lord Somers, after communicating with Lord Orford, the Duke of Shrewsbury, and Mr. Mountague, as he had been authorized to do, transmitted to the King their joint opinions, which suggested several objections to the proposed treaty, together with the required commission. This was the “head and front of his offending” in this respect; for the treaty was afterwards negotiated abroad, and finally signed without any further communication with Lord Somers.

Understanding that he was accused in the House of Commons of having advised and promoted the Partition Treaties, Lord Somers requested to be heard in that House in his defence. His request being granted, he stated to the House, in a calm and dignified manner, the history of his conduct respecting the treaties, and contended, with much force and eloquence, that in the whole course of that transaction he had correctly and honestly discharged his duty both as Chancellor and as a Privy Councillor. After he had withdrawn, a warm debate ensued, which terminated in a resolution, carried by a small majority, “that John, Lord Somers, by advising his Majesty to conclude the Treaty of Partition, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour.” Similar resolutions were passed against the Earl of Orford and Lord Halifax, and all of them were impeached at the bar of the House of Lords. The articles of impeachment against Lord Somers principally charged him with having affixed the great seal to the blank commission sent to the King in Holland, and afterwards to the treaties; with having encouraged and promoted the piracies of Captain Kidd; and with having received grants from the Crown for his own personal emolument. To each of these articles Lord Somers answered promptly and fully; to the two first he replied the facts of each case as above related; and in answer to the third, he admitted that the King had been pleased to make certain grants to him, but denied that they had been made in consequence of any solicitation on his part. After many frivolous delays and repeated disputes between the two Houses, a day was fixed for the trial of the impeachment; on which day the Commons not appearing to prosecute their articles, the Lords, by a considerable majority, acquitted Lord Somers of the charges and dismissed the impeachment.

The violence and folly exhibited in the conduct of these proceedings opened the eyes of the King to his error in having changed his ministry at so critical a time. He found to his infinite disquietude that instead of enabling him to manage the Commons as they had promised, the Tory leaders had rendered them more intractable and imperious than before; and that instead of sincerely endeavouring to promote peace abroad and quiet government at home, they were actuated entirely by motives of private passion and revenge. In this state of affairs he again directed his attention to Lord Somers, in consequence, probably, of the urgent advice of Lord Sunderland, and wrote him a note from Loo, dated the 10th of October, 1701, assuring him of the continuance of his friendship. By the united exertions of Somers and Sunderland a negotiation was entered into with a view to the formation of a Whig ministry; but after some little progress had been made, the death of the King, in March 1702, put an end to the project, and the succession of Queen Anne confirmed the establishment of the Tory administration.

The state of parties for some years after the accession of Queen Anne excluded Somers from taking any active part in political affairs. It is probable that at this period of his life he devoted his attention to literature and science, as in 1702 he was elected President of the Royal Society. He afterwards applied himself with diligence to the removal of several gross defects in the practice of the Courts of Chancery and Common Law. In 1706 he introduced into the House of Lords an extensive and effectual bill for the correction of such abuses. In passing through the House of Commons “it was found,” says Burnet, “that the interest of under-officers, clerks, and attorneys, whose gains were to be lessened by this bill, was more considered than the interest of the nation itself. Several clauses, how beneficial soever to the subject, which touched on their profit, were left out by the Commons.” Still the Act “for the Amendment of the Law and the better advancement of Justice,” as it now stands amongst the statutes of the realm, effected a very important improvement in the administration of justice.

Lord Somers is said to have had a chief hand in projecting the scheme of the Union with Scotland; and in discussing and arranging the details of this great measure in the House of Lords, he appears to have been one of the most frequent and distinguished speakers, though he was then labouring under great bodily infirmity.

In the year 1708, on occasion of the temporary return of the Whigs to power, Lord Somers again formed part of the administration and filled the office of President of the Council. But the powers of his mind were at this time much enfeebled by continual ill-health; and it was probably with feelings of satisfaction that the change of parties in 1710, by causing his dismissal from office, enabled him finally to retire into private life.

Of the mode in which the remaining period of his life was spent after his removal from public business, little is known. There is, however, no doubt that the concluding years of his existence were darkened by much sickness and some degree of mental alienation on the accession of George I. he formally took his seat at the Council-Board; but a paralytic affection, which had destroyed his bodily health, had so impaired the faculties of his mind as to incapacitate him entirely for business. At intervals, however, when the pressure of disease was suspended, he appears to have recurred with strong interest to passing events in which the welfare of his country was involved. When the Septennial Bill was in progress, Lord Townshend called upon him: Lord Somers embraced him, congratulated him on the progress of the bill, and declared that “he thought it would be the greatest support possible to the liberty of the country.” On a subsequent occasion, when informed by the same nobleman of the determination of George I. to adopt the advice of his ministry, by executing the full rigour of the law against Lord Derwentwater, and the other unfortunate persons concerned in the Rebellion of 1715, he is said to have asked with great emotion, and shedding many tears, “whether they meant to revive the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla?”

He soon afterwards sunk into a state of total imbecility, from which, on the 26th of April, 1716, he was happily released by death.

Engraved by R. Woodman.
JOHN SMEATON.
From an original Picture ascribed to Mortimer,
in the possession of the Royal Society.
Under the Superintendance of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

SMEATON.

John Smeaton will long be remembered as one of the most laborious and most successful civil engineers whom Britain has produced: a class to which our country is deeply indebted for its commercial greatness. He was born at Austhorpe, near Leeds, May 28, 1724. His father was an attorney, and intended to bring his son up to his own profession: but the latter finding, to use his own words, “that the law did not suit the bent of his genius,” obtained his parent’s consent that he should seek a more congenial employment.

From a very early age he had shown great fondness for mechanical occupations. “His playthings,” it is said by one long acquainted with him, “were not the playthings of children, but the tools men work with; and he appeared to have greater entertainment in seeing the men in the neighbourhood work, and asking them questions, than in any thing else.” At the age of eighteen he was in the habit of forging iron and steel, and melting metal for his own use: and he possessed tools of every sort for working in wood, ivory, and metal. Some of these were of his own construction; and among them an engine for rose-turning, and a lathe by which he had cut a perpetual screw, a thing little known at that time.

In the year 1750 he established himself in the Great Turnstile in Holborn, as a philosophical instrument-maker. While he followed this trade, he became known to the scientific circles by several ingenious inventions; among which were a new kind of magnetic compass, and a machine for measuring a ship’s way at sea. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1753; and contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions, one of which, entitled ‘An Experimental Enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills and other machines, depending on a circular motion,’ obtained the gold medal in 1759.

In 1755 the Eddystone light-house was destroyed by fire. At this time Smeaton had never practised as an architect or engineer. But the proprietors, to use his own words, “considered that to reinstate it would require, not so much a person who had been merely bred, or who had rendered himself eminent in this or that given profession, but rather one who from natural genius had a turn for contrivance in the mechanical branches of science.” Thinking thus, they applied to the President of the Royal Society to recommend a fitting person, and he without hesitation named Smeaton. We shall speak hereafter of the difficulties which attended this work, and the method of its execution; the nature of it is familiar to every reader. Two light-houses had been destroyed within half a century: his own, after the lapse of seventy-three years, stands unimpaired;—a proud monument of the power of man to overcome the elements. This building was finished in 1759, and established his reputation as a civil engineer: but it was some time before he devoted his attention solely to practising in that capacity. In 1764 he was appointed one of the Receivers of the Greenwich Hospital Estates, and in the discharge of his duty, he suggested various improvements which were of material service to the property. He resigned that office about 1777, in consequence of the increase of his other business. In 1766 he was employed to furnish designs for new light-houses at the Spurn Head, at the mouth of the Humber, and after considerable delay, was appointed Surveyor of the Works in 1771. These were completed in April, 1777. Among other undertakings he repaired and improved the navigation of the river Calder; he built the bridge over the Tay, at Perth, and some others on the Highland road, north of Inverness; he laid out the line, and superintended the execution of a considerable portion of the great canal connecting the Forth and Clyde. His high reputation was shown shortly after the two centre arches of old London bridge had been thrown into one. The foundations of the piers were discovered to be damaged, and the danger of the bridge was esteemed so imminent that few persons would venture to pass over it. The opinions of the architects on the spot were deemed unsatisfactory; and Smeaton, being at the time in Yorkshire, was summoned by express, to say what should be done. He found that the increased volume of water passing through the centre arch had undermined the piers; and removed the danger by the simple expedient, the success of which he had proved on the river Calder, of throwing in a large quantity of rough stone about them. The interstices of the heap soon are filled up by sand and mud, and the whole is consolidated almost into one mass, and forms a secure and lasting barrier. The best known of Smeaton’s works, after the Eddystone light-house, is the magnificent pier and harbour of Ramsgate. This undertaking was commenced in 1749, and prosecuted for some time with very imperfect success. In 1774 Smeaton was called in; and he continued to superintend the progress of the works till their completion in 1791. The harbour is now enclosed by two piers, the eastern nearly 2000, the western 1500 feet in length, and affords a safe and a much needed refuge to ships lying in the Downs, even of five and six hundred tons, which before, when driven from their anchors by stress of weather, were almost certain to be cast ashore and wrecked.

It would be vain to enumerate all the projects in which he was consulted, or the schemes which he executed. The variety and extent of his employments may be best estimated from his Reports, of which a complete collection has been published by the Society of Civil Engineers, in consequence of the liberality of Sir Joseph Banks, who had purchased, and presented them to the Society for this purpose. They fill three quarto volumes, and constitute a most interesting and valuable series of treatises on every branch of engineering; as draining, bridge-building, making and improving canals and navigable rivers, planning docks and harbours, the improvement of mill-work, and the application of mechanical improvements to different manufactures. His papers in the Philosophical Transactions are published separately, and fill another quarto volume. They contain descriptions of those early inventions which we have mentioned, and of an improved air-pump, and a new hygrometer and pyrometer; together with his treatise on Mill-work, and some papers which show that he was fond of the science of astronomy, and practically skilled in it.

His health began to decline about 1785, and he endeavoured to withdraw from business, and to devote his attention to publishing an account of his own inventions and works; for as he often said, “he thought he could not render so much service to his country as by doing that.” He succeeded in bringing out his elaborate account of the Eddystone Light-house, published in 1791. But he found it impossible to withdraw entirely from business: and it appears that over-exertion and anxiety did actually bring on an attack of paralysis, to which his family were constitutionally liable. He was taken ill at his residence at Austhorpe, in September, 1792, and died October 28, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He had long looked to this disease as the probable termination of his life, and felt some anxiety concerning the likelihood of out-living his faculties, and in his own words, of “lingering over the dregs after the spirit had evaporated.” This calamity was spared him: in the interval between his first attack and his death, his mind was unclouded, and he continued to take his usual interest in the occupations of his domestic circle. Sometimes only he would complain, with a smile, of his slowness of apprehension, and say, “It cannot be otherwise: the shadow must lengthen as the sun goes down.”

His character was marked by undeviating uprightness, industry, and moderation in pursuit of riches. His gains might have been far larger; but he relinquished more than one appointment which brought in a considerable income, to devote his attention to other objects which he had more at heart; and he declined the magnificent offers of Catharine II. of Russia, who would have bought his services at any price. His industry was unwearied, and the distribution of his hours and employments strictly laid down by rule. In his family and by his friends he was singularly beloved, though his demeanour sometimes appeared harsh to strangers. A brief, but very interesting and affectionate account of him, written by his daughter, is prefixed to his Reports, from which many of the anecdotes here related have been derived.

Of the many great undertakings in which Smeaton was engaged, the most original, and the most celebrated, is the Eddystone light-house. The reef of rocks known by the name of the Eddystone lies about nine miles and a half from the Ram Head, at the entrance of Plymouth Sound, exposed to the full swell of the Atlantic, which, with a very moderate gale, breaks upon it with the utmost fury. The situation, directly between the Lizard and Start points, makes it of the utmost importance to have a light-house on it; and in 1698 Mr. Winstanley succeeded in completing one. This stood till 1703, but was entirely carried away in the memorable storm of November 26, in that year. It chanced, by a singular coincidence, that shortly before, on a doubt of the stability of the building being uttered, the architect expressed himself so entirely satisfied on that point, that “he should only wish to be there in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens.” He was gratified in his wish; and perished with every person in the building. This building was chiefly, if not wholly of timber. In 1706 Mr. Rudyerd commenced a new light-house, partly of stone and partly of wood, which stood till 1755, when it was burnt down to the very rock. Warned by this accident, Smeaton resolved that his should be entirely of stone. He spent much time in considering the best methods of grafting his work securely on the solid rock, and giving it the form best suited to secure stability; and one of the most interesting parts of his interesting account, is that in which he narrates how he was led to choose the shape which he adopted, by considering the means employed by nature to produce stability in her works. The building is modelled on the trunk of an oak, which spreads out in a sweeping curve near the roots, so as to give breadth and strength to its base, diminishes as it rises, and again swells out as it approaches to the bushy head, to give room for the strong insertion of the principal boughs. The latter is represented by a curved cornice, the effect of which is to throw off the heavy seas, which being suddenly checked fly up, it is said, from fifty to a hundred feet above the very top of the building, and thus to prevent their striking the lantern, even when they seem entirely to enclose it. The efficacy of this construction is such, that after a storm and spring tide of unequalled violence in 1762, in which the greatest fears were entertained at Plymouth for the safety of the light-house, the only article requisite to repair it was a pot of putty, to replace some that had been washed from the lantern.

To prepare a fit base for the reception of the column, the shelving rock was cut into six steps, which were filled up with masonry, firmly dovetailed, and pinned with oaken trenails to the living stone, so that the upper course presented a level circular surface. This part of the work was attended with the greatest difficulty; the rock being accessible only at low water, and in calm weather. The building is faced with the Cornish granite, called in the country, moorstone; a material selected on account of its durability and hardness, which bids defiance to the depredations of marine animals, which have been known to do serious injury by perforating Portland stone when placed under water. The interior is built of Portland stone, which is more easily obtained in large blocks, and is less expensive in the working. It is an instructive lesson, not only to the young engineer, but to all persons, to see the diligence which Smeaton used to ascertain what kind of stone was best fitted for his purposes, and from what materials the firmest and most lasting cement could be obtained. He well knew that in novel and great undertakings no precaution can be deemed superfluous which may contribute to success; and that it is wrong to trust implicitly to common methods, even where experience has shown them to be sufficient in common cases. For the height of twelve feet from the rock the building is solid. Every course of masonry is composed of stones firmly jointed and dovetailed into each other, and secured to the course below by joggles, or solid plugs of stone, which being let into both, effectually resist the lateral pressure of the waves, which tends to push off the upper from the under course. The interior, which is accessible by a moveable ladder, consists of four rooms, one over the other, surmounted by a glass lantern, in which the lights are placed. The height from the lowest point of the foundation to the floor of the lantern is seventy feet; the height of the lantern is twenty-one feet more. The building was commenced August 3, 1756, and finished October 8, 1759; and having braved uninjured the storms of seventy-three winters, is likely long to remain a monument almost as elegant, and far more useful, than the most splendid column ever raised to commemorate imperial victories. Its erection forms an era in the history of light-houses, a subject of great importance to a maritime nation. It came perfect from the mind of the artist; and has left nothing to be added or improved. After such an example no accessible rock can be considered impracticable: and in the more recent erection of a light-house on the dangerous Bell-rock, lying off the coast of Forfarshire, between the Frith of Tay and the Frith of Forth, which is built exactly in the same manner, and almost on the same model, we see the best proof of the value of an impulse, such as was given to this subject by Smeaton.

Light-houses of (1) Winstanley, (2) Smeaton, and (3) Rudyerd.

Engraved by Robert Hart.
BUFFON.
From an original Picture by Drouais in the
collection of the Institute of France.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

BUFFON.

Buffon is reported to have said—and the vanity which was his predominant foible may have given some colour to the assertion—“I know but five great geniuses, Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself.” Probably no author ever received from his contemporaries so many excitements to such an exhibition of presumption and self-consequence. Lewis XV. conferred upon him a title of nobility; the Empress of Russia was his correspondent; Prince Henry of Prussia addressed him in the language of the most exaggerated compliment; and his statue was set up during his life-time in the cabinet of Lewis XVI., with such an inscription as is rarely bestowed even upon the most illustrious of past ages[^[2]]. After the lapse of half a century we may examine the personal character, and the literary merits, of this celebrated man with a more sober judgment.

[2]. Majestati naturæ par ingenium.

The history of Buffon is singularly barren of incident. At an early age he devoted himself to those studies of natural history which have rendered his name so famous; and at eighty years old he was still labouring at the completion of the great plan to which he had dedicated his life.

George Lewis le Clerc Buffon was born at Montbar, in Burgundy, on the 7th September, 1707. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, was a man of fortune, who could afford to bestow the most careful education upon his children, and leave them unfettered in the choice of an occupation. The young Buffon had formed an acquaintance at Dijon with an Englishman of his own age, the Duke of Kingston. The tutor of this nobleman was, fortunately, an accomplished student of the physical sciences; and he gave a powerful impulse to the talents of Buffon, by leading them forward in their natural direction. Without the assistance of this judicious friend, the inclination of his mind towards honourable and useful exertion might have been suppressed by the temptations which too easily beset those who have an ample command of the goods of fortune. It was not so with Buffon. Although he succeeded, at the age of twenty-one, to the estate of his mother, which produced him an annual income of 12,000l., he devoted himself with unremitting assiduity to the acquisition of knowledge. Having travelled in Italy, and resided some little time in England, he returned to his own country, to dedicate himself to the constant labours of a man of letters. His first productions were translations of two English works of very different character—‘Hales’ Vegetable Statics,’ and ‘Newton’s Fluxions;’ and, following up the pursuits for which he exhibited his love in these translations, he carried on a series of experiments on the strength of timber, and constructed a burning mirror, in imitation of that of Archimedes.

The devotion to science which Buffon had thus manifested marked him out for an appointment which determined the course of his future life. His friend, Du Fay, who was the Intendant of the ‘Jardin du Roi’ (now called the ‘Jardin des Plantes’), on his death-bed recommended Buffon as the person best calculated to give a right direction to this establishment for the cultivation of natural history. Buffon seized upon the opportunities which this appointment afforded him of prosecuting his favourite studies, with that energetic perseverance for which he was remarkable. He saw that natural history had to be written in a manner that might render it the most attractive species of knowledge; and that philosophical views, and eloquent descriptions, might supersede the dry nomenclatures, and the loose, contradictory, and too-often fabulous narratives which resulted from the crude labours of ill-informed compilers. To carry forward his favourite object, it was necessary that the museum, over which he had now the control, should be put in order and rendered more complete. He obtained from the government considerable funds for the erection of proper buildings; and the galleries of the ‘Jardin des Plantes,’ which now hold the fine collection of mammals and birds, were raised under his superintendence. Possessing, therefore, the most complete means which Europe afforded, he applied himself to the great task of describing the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms of nature. A large portion of this immense undertaking was left unperformed, although, to use his own words, he laboured fifty years at his desk; and much of what he accomplished was greatly diminished in value by his determination to see natural objects only through the clouded medium of his own theories. But, nevertheless, he has produced a work which, with all its faults, is an extraordinary monument of genius and industry, and which will long entitle him to the gratitude of mankind. “We read Buffon,” says Condorcet, “to be interested as well as instructed. He will continue to excite a useful enthusiasm for the natural sciences; and the world will long be indebted to him for the pleasures with which a young mind for the first time looks into nature and the consolations with which a soul weary of the storms of life reposes upon the sight of the immensity of beings peaceably submitted to necessary and eternal laws.”

Buffon was in some particulars unqualified for the laborious duty he had undertaken. He delighted to indulge in broad and general views, and to permit his imagination to luxuriate in striking descriptions. But he had neither the patience, nor the love of accuracy, which would have carried him into those minute details which give to natural history its highest value. He, however, had the merit and the good fortune, in the early stages of his undertaking, to associate himself with a fellow-labourer who possessed those qualities in which he was deficient. The first fifteen volumes of ‘L’Histoire Naturelle,’ which treat of the theory of the earth, the nature of animals, and the history of man and viviparous quadrupeds, were published between 1749 and 1767, as the joint work of Buffon and Daubenton. The general theories, the descriptions of the phenomena of nature, and the pictures of the habits of animals, were by Buffon. Daubenton confined himself to the precise delineation of their physical character, both in their external forms and their anatomy. But Daubenton refused to continue his assistance in the ‘History of Birds;’ for Buffon, unwilling that the fame which he had acquired should be partaken by one whom he considered only as a humble and subordinate labourer, allowed an edition of the History of Quadrupeds to be published, of which the descriptive and anatomical parts had been greatly abridged. In the History of Birds, therefore, Buffon had to seek for other associates; and the form of the work was greatly changed from that of the previous volumes. The particular descriptions are here very meagre, and anatomical details are almost entirely excluded. In some of the volumes, Buffon was assisted by Guéneau de Montbeillard, who, instead of endeavouring to attain the accuracy of Daubenton, affected to imitate the style of his employer. To the three last volumes of the Birds the Abbé Bexon lent his aid. The nine volumes of Birds appeared between 1770 and 1783. Buffon published alone his ‘History of Minerals,’ which appeared in five volumes, between 1783 and 1788. Seven volumes of Supplements complete the Natural History. The first appeared in 1773; the last was not published till the year after its author’s death, in 1789. The fifth volume of these Supplements is a distinct work, the Epochs of Nature[^[3]].

[3]. The best edition of the works of Buffon is the first, of 36 vols. 4to.

The study of natural history, and the composition of his great work, occupied the mind of Buffon from his first appointment as Intendant of the ‘Jardin du Roi,’ to within a few days of his death. In the prosecution of the plan he had laid down, he never permitted the slightest interruption. Pleasure and indolence had their attractions;—but they never held him for many hours from his favourite pursuits. Buffon spent the greater part of his time at Montbar, where, during some years, his friend Daubenton also resided. It was here that Buffon composed nearly the whole of his works. Many interesting details have been preserved of his habits of life, and his mode of composition. He was, like all men who have accomplished great literary undertakings, a severe economist of his time. The employment of every day was fixed with the greatest exactness. He used almost invariably to rise at five o’clock, compelling his man-servant to drag him out of bed whenever he was unwilling to get up. “I owe to poor Joseph,” he used to say, “ten or twelve volumes of my works.” At the end of his garden was a pavilion which served him as a study. Here he was seated for many hours of every day, in an old leathern chair, before a table of black birch, with his papers arranged in a large walnut-tree escritoire. Before he began to write he was accustomed to meditate for a long time upon his subject. Composition was to him a real delight; and he used to declare that he had spent twelve or fourteen hours successively at his desk, continuing to the last in a state of pleasure. His endeavours to obtain the utmost correctness of expression furnished a remarkable proof of the persevering quality of his mind. He composed, and copied, and read his works to friends, and re-copied, till he was entirely satisfied. It is said that he made eleven transcripts of the Epochs of Nature. In his domestic habits there was little to admire in the character of Buffon. His conversation was trifling and licentious, and the grossness which too often discloses itself in his writings was ill-concealed in his own conduct. He paid the most minute attention to dress, and delighted in walking to church to exhibit his finery to his wondering neighbours. Although he was entirely devoid of religious principle, and constantly endeavoured in his writings to throw discredit upon the belief of a great First Cause, he regularly attended high mass, received the communion, and distributed alms to pious beggars. In his whole character there appears a total absence of that simplicity which is the distinguishing attribute of men of the very highest genius.

The literary glory of Buffon, although surpassed, or even equalled, during his life, by none of his contemporaries, with the exception perhaps of Voltaire and Rousseau, has not increased, and is perhaps materially diminished, after having been tried by the opinions of half a century. In literature, as well as in politics, as we have learnt to attach a greater value to accurate facts, have we become less captivated by the force of eloquence alone. Buffon gave an extraordinary impulse to the love of natural history, by surrounding its details with splendid images, and escaping from its rigid investigations by bold and dazzling theories. He rejected classification; and took no pains to distinguish by precise names the objects which he described, because such accuracy would have impeded the progress of his magnificent generalizations. Without classification, and an accurate nomenclature, natural history is a mere chaos. Buffon saw the productions of nature only in masses. He made no endeavour to delineate with perfect accuracy any individual of that immense body, nor to trace the relations of an individual to all the various forms of being by which it is surrounded. Although he was a profound admirer of Newton, and classed Bacon amongst the most illustrious of men, he constantly deviated from the principle of that philosophy upon which all modern discovery has been founded. He carried onward his hypotheses with little calculation and less experiment. And yet, although they are often misapplied, he has collected an astonishing number of facts; and even many of his boldest generalities have been based upon a sufficient foundation of truth, to furnish important assistance to the investigations of more accurate inquirers. The persevering obliquity with which he turns away from the evidence of Design in the creation, to rest upon some vague notions of a self-creative power, both in animate and inanimate existence, is one of the most unpleasant features of his writings. How much higher services might Buffon have rendered to natural history had he been imbued not only with a spirit of accurate and comprehensive classification, but with a perception of the constant agency of a Creator, of both of which merits he had so admirable an example in our own Ray.

The style of Buffon, viewed as an elaborate work of art, and without regard to the great object of style, that of conveying thoughts in the clearest and simplest manner, is captivating from its sustained harmony and occasional grandeur. But it is a style of a past age. Even in his own day, it was a theme for ridicule with those who knew the real force of conciseness and simplicity. Voltaire described it as ‘empoulé;’ and when some one talked to him of ‘L’Histoire Naturelle,’ he drily replied, ‘Pas si naturelle.’ But Buffon was not carried away by the mere love of fine writing. He knew his own power; and, looking at the state of science in his day, he seized upon the instrument which was best calculated to elevate him amongst his contemporaries. The very exaggerations of his style were perhaps necessary to render natural history at once attractive to all descriptions of people. Up to his time it had been a dry and repulsive study. He first clothed it with the picturesque and poetical; threw a moral sentiment around its commonest details; exhibited animals in connection with man, in his mightiest and most useful works; and described the great phenomena of nature with a pomp of language which had never before been called to the service of philosophical investigation. The publication of his works carried the study of natural history out of the closets of the few, to become a source of delight and instruction to all men.

Buffon died at Paris on the 16th April, 1788, aged 81. He was married, in 1762, to Mademoiselle de St. Bélin; and he left an only son, who succeeded to his title. This unfortunate young man perished on the scaffold, in 1795, almost one of the last victims of the fury of the revolution. When he ascended to the guillotine he exclaimed, with great composure, “My name is Buffon.”

A succinct and clear memoir of Buffon, by Cuvier, in the Biographie Universelle, may be advantageously consulted. Nearly all the details of his private life are derived from a curious work by Rénault de Séchelles, entitled Voyage à Montbar, which, like many other domestic histories of eminent men, has the disgrace of being founded upon a violation of the laws of hospitality.

Engraved by R. Woodman.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
From an Enamel after Holbein,
in the possession of Thomas Clarke Esq.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

MORE.

This great man was born in London, in the year 1480. His father was Sir John More, one of the Judges of the King’s Bench, a gentleman of established reputation. He was early placed in the family of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor of England. The sons of the gentry were at this time sent into the families of the first nobility and leading statesmen, on an equivocal footing; partly for the finishing of their education, and partly in a menial capacity. The Cardinal said more than once to the nobility who were dining with him, “This boy waiting at table, whosoever lives to see it, will one day prove a marvellous man.” His eminent patron was highly delighted with that vivacity and wit which appeared in his childhood, and did not desert him on the scaffold. Plays were performed in the archiepiscopal household at Christmas. On these occasions young More would play the improvisatore, and introduce an extempore part of his own, more amusing to the spectators than all the rest of the performance. In due time Morton sent him to Oxford, where he heard the lectures of Linacer and Grocyn on the Greek and Latin languages. The epigrams and translations printed in his works evince his skill in both. After a regular course of rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, at Oxford, he removed to London, where he became a law student, first in New Inn, and afterwards in Lincoln’s Inn. He gained considerable reputation by reading public lectures on Saint Augustine, De Civitate Dei, at Saint Lawrence’s church in the Old Jewry. The most learned men in the city of London attended him; among the rest Grocyn, his lecturer in Greek at Oxford, and a writer against the doctrines of Wickliff. The object of More’s prolusions was not so much to discuss points in theology, as to explain the precepts of moral philosophy, and clear up difficulties in history. For more than three years after this he was Law-reader at Furnival’s Inn. He next removed to the Charter-House, where he lived in devotion and prayer; and it is stated that from the age of twenty he wore a hair-shirt next his skin. He remained there about four years, without taking the vows, although he performed all the spiritual exercises of the society, and had a strong inclination to enter the priesthood. But his spiritual adviser, Dr. Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, recommended him to adopt a different course. On a visit to a gentleman of Essex, by name Colt, he was introduced to his three daughters, and became attached to the second, who was the handsomest of the family. But he bethought him that it would be both a grief and a scandal to the eldest to see her younger sister married before her. He therefore reconsidered his passion, and from motives of pity prevailed with himself to be in love with the elder, or at all events to marry her. Erasmus says that she was young and uneducated, for which her husband liked her the better, as being more capable of conforming to his own model of a wife. He had her instructed in literature, and especially in music.

He continued his study of the law at Lincoln’s Inn, but resided in Bucklersbury after his marriage. His first wife lived about seven years. By her he had three daughters and one son; and we are informed by his son-in-law, Roper, that he brought them up with the most sedulous attention to their intellectual and moral improvement. It was a quaint exhortation of his, that they should take virtue and learning for their meat, and pleasure for their sauce.

In the latter part of King Henry the Seventh’s time, and at a very early age, More distinguished himself in parliament. The King had demanded a subsidy for the marriage of his eldest daughter, who was to be the Scottish Queen. The demand was not complied with. On being told that his purpose had been frustrated by the opposition of a beardless boy, Henry was greatly incensed, and determined on revenge. He knew that the actual offender, not possessing anything, could not lose anything; he therefore devised a groundless charge against the father, and confined him to the Tower till he had extorted a fine of £100 for his alleged offence. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, a privy councillor, insidiously undertook to reinstate young More in the King’s favour: but the Bishop’s Chaplain warned him not to listen to any such proposals; and gave a pithy reason for the advice, highly illustrative of Fox’s real character. “To serve the King’s purposes, my lord and master will not hesitate to consent to his own father’s death.” To avoid evil consequences, More determined to go abroad. With this view, he made himself master of the French language, and cultivated the liberal sciences, as astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music; he also made himself thoroughly acquainted with history: but in the mean time the King’s death rendered it safe to remain in England, and he abandoned all thoughts of foreign travel.

Notwithstanding his practice at the bar, and his lectures, which were quoted by Lord Coke as undisputed authority, he found leisure for the pursuits of philosophy and polite literature. In 1516 he wrote his Utopia, the only one of his works which has commanded much of public attention in after times. In general they were chiefly of a polemic kind, in defence of a cause which even his abilities could not make good. But in this extraordinary work he allowed his powerful mind fair play, and considered both mankind and religion with the freedom of a true philosopher. He represents Utopia as one of those countries lately discovered in America, and the account of it is feigned to be given by a Portuguese, who sailed in company with the first discoverer of that part of the world. Under the character of this Portuguese he delivers his own opinions. His History of Richard III. was never finished, but it is inserted in Kennet’s Complete History of England. Among his other eminent acquaintance, he was particularly attached to Erasmus. They had long corresponded before they were personally known to each other. Erasmus came to England for the purpose of seeing his friend; and it was contrived that they should meet at the Lord Mayor’s table before they were introduced to each other. At dinner they engaged in argument. Erasmus felt the keenness of his antagonist’s wit; and when hard pressed, exclaimed, “You are More, or nobody;” the reply was, “You are Erasmus, or the Devil.”

Before More entered definitively into the service of Henry VIII. his learning, wisdom, and experience were held in such high estimation, that he was twice sent on important commercial embassies. His discretion in those employments made the King desirous of securing him for the service of the court; and he commissioned Wolsey, then Lord Chancellor, to engage him. But so little inclined was he to involve himself in political intrigues, that the King’s wish was not at the time accomplished. Soon after, More was retained as counsel for the Pope, for the purpose of reclaiming the forfeiture of a ship. His argument was so learned, and his conduct in the cause so judicious and upright, that the ship was restored. The King upon this insisted on having him in his service; and, as the first step to preferment, made him Master of the Requests, a Knight and Privy Councillor.

In 1520 he was made Treasurer of the Exchequer: he then bought a house by the river-side at Chelsea, where he had settled with his family. He had at that time buried his first wife and was married to a second. He continued in the King’s service full twenty years, during which time his royal master conferred with him on various subjects, including astronomy, geometry, and divinity; and frequently consulted him on his private concerns. More’s pleasant temper and witty conversation made him such a favourite at the palace, as almost to estrange him from his own family; and under these circumstances his peculiar humour manifested itself; for he so restrained the natural bias of his freedom and mirth as to render himself a less amusing companion, and at length to be seldom sent for but on occasions of business.

A more important circumstance gave More much consequence with the King. The latter was preparing his answer to Luther, and Sir Thomas assisted him in the controversy. While this was going on, the King one day came to dine with him; and after dinner walked with him in the garden with his arm round his neck. After Henry’s departure, Mr. Roper, Sir Thomas’s son-in-law, remarked on the King’s familiarity, as exceeding even that used towards Cardinal Wolsey, with whom he had only once been seen to walk arm in arm. The answer of Sir Thomas was shrewd and almost prophetic. “I find his Grace my very good lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singularly favour me as any subject within this realm. However, Son Roper, I may tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof; for if my head would win him a castle in France it should not fail to go.”

In 1523 he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons, and displayed great intrepidity in the discharge of that office. Wolsey was afraid lest this parliament should refuse a great subsidy about to be demanded, and announced his intention of being present at the debate. He had previously expressed his indignation at the publicity given to the proceedings of the house, which he had compared to the gossip of an ale-house. Sir Thomas More therefore persuaded the members to admit not only the Cardinal, but all his pomp; his maces, poll-axes, crosses, hat, and great seal. The reason he assigned was, that should the like fault be imputed to them hereafter, they might be able to shift the blame on the shoulders of his Grace’s attendants. The proposal of the subsidy was met with the negative of profound silence; and the Speaker declared that “except every member could put into his one head all their several wits, he alone in so weighty a matter was unmeet to make his Grace answer.” After the parliament had broken up, Wolsey expressed his displeasure against the Speaker in his own gallery at Whitehall; but More, with his usual quiet humour, parried the attack by a ready compliment to the taste and splendour of the room in which they were conversing.

On the death of Sir Richard Wingfield, the King promoted Sir Thomas to the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. At this time the see of Rome became vacant, and Wolsey aspired to the Papacy; but Charles V. disappointed him, and procured the election of Cardinal Adrian. In revenge, Wolsey contrived to persuade Henry that Catharine was not his lawful wife, and endeavoured to turn his affections towards one of the French King’s sisters. The case was referred to More, who was assisted by the most learned of the Privy Council; and he managed, difficult as it must have been to do so, to extricate both himself and his colleagues from the dilemma. His conduct as ambassador at Cambray, where a treaty of peace was negotiated between the Emperor, France, and England, so confirmed the favour of his master towards him, that on the fall of the Cardinal he was made Lord Chancellor. The great seal was delivered to him on the 25th of October, 1530. This favour was the more extraordinary, as he was the first layman on whom it was bestowed: but it may reasonably be suspected that the private motive was to engage him in the approval of the meditated divorce. This he probably suspected, and entered on the office with a full knowledge of the danger to which it exposed him. He performed the duties of his function for nearly three years with exemplary diligence, great ability, and uncorrupted integrity. His resignation took place on the 16th May, 1533. His motive was supposed to be a regard to his own safety, as he was sensible that a confirmation of the divorce would be officially required from him, and he was too conscientious to comply with the mandate of power, against his own moral and legal convictions.

While Chancellor some of his injunctions were disapproved by the common law judges. He therefore invited them to dine with him in the council chamber, and proved to them by professional arguments that their complaints were unfounded. He then proposed that they should themselves mitigate the rigour of the law by their own conscientious discretion; in which case, he would grant no more injunctions. This they refused; and the consequence was, that he continued that practice in equity which has come down to the present day.

It was through the intervention of his friend the Duke of Norfolk that he procured his discharge from the laborious, and under the circumstances of the time, the dangerous eminence of the chancellorship, which he quitted in honourable poverty. After the payment of his debts he had not the value of one hundred pounds in gold and silver, nor more than twenty marks a year in land. On this occasion his love of a jest did not desert him. While Chancellor, as soon as the church service was over, one of his train used to go to his lady’s pew, and say, “Madam, my Lord is gone!” On the first holiday after his train had been dismissed, he performed that ceremony himself, and by saying at the end of the service, “Madam, my Lord is gone,” gave his wife the first intimation that he had surrendered the great seal.

He had resolved never again to engage in public business; but the divorce, and still more the subsequent marriage with Anne Boleyn, which nothing could induce him to favour, with the King’s alienation from the see of Rome, raised a storm over his head from which his voluntary seclusion at Chelsea, in study and devotion, could not shelter him. When tempting offers proved ineffectual to win him over to sanction Anne Boleyn’s coronation by his high legal authority, threats and terrors were resorted to: his firmness was not to be shaken, but his ruin was determined, and ultimately accomplished. In the next parliament he, and his friend Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were attainted of treason and misprision of treason for listening to the ravings of Elizabeth Barton, considered by the vulgar as the Holy Maid of Kent, and countenancing her treasonable practices. His innocence was so clearly established, that his name was erased from the bill; and it was supposed to have been introduced into it only for the purpose of shaking his resolution touching the divorce and marriage. But though he had escaped this snare his firmness occasioned him to be devoted as a victim. Anne Boleyn took pains to exasperate the King against him, and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in 1534, the oath required by it was tendered to him. The refusal to take it, which his principles compelled him to give, was expressed in discreet and qualified terms; he was nevertheless taken into the custody of the Abbot of Westminster, and upon a second refusal four days after was committed prisoner to the Tower of London.

Our limits will not allow us to detail many particulars of his life while in confinement, marked as it was by firmness, resignation, and cheerfulness, resulting from a conscience, however much mistaken, yet void of intentional offence. His reputation and credit were very great in the kingdom, and much was supposed to depend on his conduct at this critical juncture. Archbishop Cranmer, therefore, urged every argument that could be devised to persuade him to compliance, and promises were profusely made to him from the King; but neither argument nor promises could prevail. We will give the last of these attempts to shake his determination, in the words of his son-in-law, Mr. Roper:—

“Mr. Rich, pretending friendly talk with him, among other things of a set course, said this unto him: ‘Forasmuch as is well known, Master More, that you are a man both wise and well learned, as well in the laws of the realm as otherwise, I pray you, therefore, sir, let me be so bold as of good-will to put unto you this case. Admit there were, sir, an act of parliament that the realm should take me for King; would not you, Mr. More, take me for King?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ quoth Sir Thomas More, ‘that would I.’ ‘I put the case further,’ quoth Mr. Rich, ‘that there were an act of parliament that all the realm should take me for Pope; would not you then, Master More, take me for Pope?’ ‘For answer, sir,’ quoth Sir Thomas More, ‘to your first case the parliament may well, Master Rich, meddle with the state of temporal princes; but to make answer to your other case, I will put you this case. Suppose the parliament would make a law that God should not be God; would you then, Master Rich, say that God were not God?’ ‘No, sir,’ quoth he, ‘that would I not; sith no parliament may make any such law.’ ‘No more,’ quoth Sir Thomas More, ‘could the parliament make the King supreme head of the Church.’ Upon whose only report was Sir Thomas indicted of high treason on the statute to deny the King to be supreme head of the Church, into which indictment were put these heinous words, maliciously, traitorously, and diabolically.”

Sir Thomas More in his defence alleged many arguments to the discredit of Rich’s evidence, and in proof of the clearness of his own conscience; but all this was of no avail, and the jury found him guilty. When asked in the usual manner why judgment should not be passed against him, he argued against the indictment as grounded on an Act of Parliament repugnant to the laws of God and the Church, the government of which belonged to the see of Rome, and could not lawfully be assumed by any temporal prince. The Lord Chancellor, however, and the other Commissioners gave judgment against him.

He remained in the Tower a week after his sentence, and during that time he was uniformly firm and composed, and even his peculiar vein of cheerfulness remained unimpaired. It accompanied him even to the scaffold, on going up to which, he said to the Lieutenant of the Tower, “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” After his prayers were ended he turned to the executioner and said, with a cheerful countenance, “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short, take heed, therefore, thou strike not awry for thine own credit’s sake.” Then laying his head upon the block, he bid the executioner stay till he had removed his beard, saying, “My beard has never committed any treason;” and immediately the fatal blow was given. These witticisms have so repeatedly run the gauntlet through all the jest-books that it would hardly have been worth while to repeat them here, were it not for the purpose of introducing the comment of Mr. Addison on Sir Thomas’s behaviour on this solemn occasion. “What was only philosophy in this extraordinary man would be frenzy in one who does not resemble him as well in the cheerfulness of his temper as in the sanctity of his manners.”

He was executed on St. Thomas’s eve in the year 1555. The barbarous part of the sentence, so disgraceful to the Statute-book, was remitted. Lest serious-minded persons should suppose that his conduct on the scaffold was mere levity, it should be added that he addressed the people, desiring them to pray for him, and to bear witness that he was going to suffer death in and for the faith of the holy Catholic Church. The Emperor Charles V. said, on hearing of his execution, “Had we been master of such a servant, we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than such a worthy councillor.”

No one was more capable of appreciating the character of Sir Thomas More than Erasmus, who represents him as more pure and white than the whitest snow, with such wit as England never had before, and was never likely to have again. He also says, that in theological discussions the most eminent divines were not unfrequently worsted by him; but he adds a wish that he had never meddled with the subject. Sir Thomas More was peculiarly happy in extempore speaking, the result of a well-stored and ready memory, suggesting without delay whatever the occasion required. Thuanus also mentions him with much respect, as a man of strict integrity and profound learning.

His life has been written by his son-in-law, Roper, and is the principal source whence this narrative is taken. Erasmus has also been consulted, through whose epistolary works there is much information about his friend. There is also a life of him by Ferdinando Warner, LL.D., with a translation of his Utopia, in an octavo volume, published in 1758.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
LA PLACE.
From an original Picture by Nedeone,
in the possession of the Marchioness De la Place.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

LAPLACE.

Pierre Simon Laplace was born at Beaumont en Auge, a small town of Normandy, not far from Honfleur, in March, 1749. His father was a small farmer of sufficient substance to give him the benefit of a learned education, for we are told[^[4]] that the future philosopher gained his first distinctions in theology. It does not appear by what means his attention was turned to mathematical science, but he must have commenced that study when very young, as, on visiting Paris at the age of about eighteen, he attracted the notice of D’Alembert by his knowledge of the subject. He had previously taught mathematics in his native place; and, on visiting the metropolis, was furnished with letters of recommendation to several of the most distinguished men of the day. Finding, however, that D’Alembert took no notice of him on this account, he wrote that geometer a letter on the first principles of mechanics, which produced an immediate effect. D’Alembert sent for him the same day, and said, “You see, sir, how little I care for introductions, but you have no need of any. You have a better way of making yourself known, and you have a right to my assistance.” Through the recommendation of D’Alembert, Laplace was in a few days named Professor of Mathematics in the Military School of Paris. From this moment he applied himself to the one great object of his life. It was not till the year 1799 that he was called to assume a public character. Bonaparte, then First Consul, who was himself a tolerable mathematician, and always cultivated the friendship of men of science, made him Minister of the Interior; but very soon found his mistake in supposing that talents for philosophical investigation were necessarily accompanied by those of a statesman. He is reported to have expressed himself of Laplace in the following way:—“Géometre du premier rang, il ne tarda pas a se montrer administrateur plus que médiocre. Dés son premier travail, les consuls s’aperçurent qu’ils s’étoient trompés. Laplace ne saisissait aucune question sous son vrai point de vue. Il cherchait des subtilités partout, n’avait que des idées problématiques et portait aufin l’esprit des infiniments petits dans l’administration.” Bonaparte removed him accordingly to the Sénat Conservateur, of which he was successively Vice-President and Chancellor. The latter office he received in 1813, about which time he was created Count. In 1814 he voted for the deposition of Napoleon, for which he has been charged with ingratitude and meanness. This is yet a party question; and the present generation need not be hasty in forming a decision which posterity may see reason to reverse. After the first restoration Laplace received the title of Marquis, and did not appear at the Court of Napoleon during the hundred days. He continued his usual pursuits until the year 1827, when he was seized with the disorder which terminated his life on the 5th of May, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. His last words were, “Ce que nous connoissons est peu de chose; ce que nous ignorons est immense.” He has left a successor to his name and title, but none to his transcendent powers of investigation.

[4]. A scanty account in the Biographie des Contemporains, and the Eloge read to the Institute by M. Fourier, form our only materials for the personal life of Laplace.

The name of Laplace is spread to the utmost limits of civilization, as the successor, almost the equal, of Newton. No one, however, who is acquainted with the discoveries of the two, will think there is so much common ground for comparison as is generally supposed. Those of Laplace are all essentially mathematical: whatever could be done by analysis he was sure to achieve. The labours of Newton, on the other hand, show a sagacity in conjecturing which would almost lead us to think that he laid the mathematics on one side, and used some faculty of perception denied to other men, to deduce these results which he afterwards condescended to put into a geometrical form, for the information of more common minds. In the Principia of Newton, the mathematics are not the instruments of discovery but of demonstration; and, though that work contains much which is new in a mathematical point of view, its principal merit is of quite another character. The mind of Laplace was cast in a different mould; and this perhaps is fortunate for science, for while we may safely assert that Laplace would never have been Newton had he been placed in similar circumstances, there is also reason to doubt whether a second Newton would have been better qualified to follow that particular path which was so successfully traversed by Laplace. We shall proceed to give such an idea of the labours of the latter as our limits will allow.

The solution of every mechanical problem, in which the acting forces were known, as in the motions of the solar system, had been reduced by D’Alembert and Lagrange to such a state that the difficulties were only mathematical; that is, no farther advances could be made, except in pure analysis. We cannot expect the general reader to know what is meant by the words, solution of a Differential Equation; but he may be made aware that there is a process so called, which, if it could be successfully and exactly performed in all cases, would give the key to every motion of the solar system, and render the determination of its present, and the prediction of its future state, a matter of mathematical certainty. Unfortunately, in the present state of analysis, such precision is unattainable; and its place is supplied by slow and tedious approximations. These were begun by Newton, whose object being to establish the existence of universal gravitation, he was content to show that all the phenomena which might be expected to result, if that theory were true, did actually take place in the solar system. But here, owing to the comparatively imperfect state of mathematical analysis, he could do little more than indicate the cause of some of the principal irregularities of that system. His successors added considerably to the number of phenomena which were capable of explanation, and thereby increased the probability of the hypothesis. Lagrange, the great rival of Laplace, if we consider his discoveries, and his superior in the originality of his views, and the beauty of his analysis, added greatly to the fund; but it was reserved for the latter to complete the system, and, extending his views beyond the point to which Newton directed his attention, to show that there is no marked phenomenon yet observed by astronomers, regarding the relative motions of the planets or their satellites, but what must necessarily follow, if the law of gravitation be true. We shall select a few instances of the success of his analysis. The average motions of Jupiter and Saturn had been observed to vary; that of the former being accelerated, and of the latter retarded. This fact, which Euler had attempted in vain to explain, was linked by Laplace to the general law, and shown to follow from it. A somewhat similar acceleration in the moon’s mean motion was demonstrated, as we have observed more fully in the life of Halley, to arise from a small alteration in the form of the earth’s orbit, caused by the attraction of the planets. A remarkable law attending the motions of the satellites of Jupiter, viz.—that the mean motion of the first satellite, together with double that of the second, is always very nearly equal to three times that of the third—was so far connected with the general law, that if, in the original formation of the system, that relation had been nearly kept, the mutual attractions, instead of altering it, would tend to bring it nearer the truth. We can here do no more than mention the analysis of the phenomena of the tides, one of the most important and most brilliant of Laplace’s performances. Indeed there is no branch of Physical Astronomy, we might almost say of physics in general, which is not materially indebted to him. Superior to Euler in the power of conquering analytical difficulties, he is almost his equal in the universality of his labours.

The great work of Laplace is the ‘Mécanique Céleste,’ a collection of all that had been done by himself or others, concerning the theory of the universe. It is far above the reach even of the mathematical reader, unless he has given a degree of attention to the subject, which few, at least in our day, will exert. But Laplace was an elegant and clear-headed writer, as well as a profound analyst. He has left, we will not say for the common reader, but for those who possess the first elements of geometry, a compendium of the Mécanique Céleste, in the ‘Système du Monde.’ This work is free from mathematical details, and, were it his only production, would rank him high among French writers. We recommend it as the best exposition of the present state of our knowledge of the solar system.

But if it be said that Laplace was much indebted to the labours of Lagrange and others, for the methods which form the basis of the Mécanique Céleste, which is undoubtedly true, we have a splendid instance of what might have been expected from him under any circumstances, in the ‘Théorie des Probabilités.’ The field was here open, for though the leading principles of the science had been laid down, and many difficult problems solved, yet some method was still wanting by which sufficient approximation might be made to problems involving high numbers. In the theory of chances the great complexity of the operations required, soon renders the application of the clearest principles practically impossible; or, we should rather say, would have done so had it not been for the researches of Laplace. His work on this subject is, in our opinion, even superior to the Mécanique Céleste, as a proof of the genius of the author. The difficulties above described disappear under an analysis more refined and artificial than any other which has ever been used. The mathematician may or may not read the Mécanique Céleste, according to whether he would wish or not to turn his attention to physical astronomy; but the analyst must study the Théorie des Probabilités, before he can be said to know of what his art is capable. The philosophical part of his work, with its principal results, was collected by the author in the ‘Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités,’ in the same manner as those of the Mécanique Céleste were exhibited in the Système du Monde.

The mathematical style of Laplace is entirely destitute of the simplicity of that of Euler, or the exquisite symmetry and attention to the principles of notation, which distinguishes that of Lagrange. We may almost imagine that we see the first rough form in which his thoughts were committed to paper; and that, when by attention to a particular case, he had hit upon a wider method, which embraced that and others, he was content to leave the first nearly as it stood before the generalization opened upon him. His writings abound with parts in which the immediate train of investigation is dropped, either not to be resumed at all, or at a much later period of the subject. He seems, like the discoverer of a new channel, to have explored every inlet which came in his way, and the chart of his labours consequently shows the unfinished surveys on either side of the main track. This habit is no fault, but quite the reverse, in a work intended for finished mathematicians, to be the storehouse of all that could be useful in future operations: but it makes both the Mécanique Céleste and the Théorie des Probabilités present almost unconquerable difficulties to the student. These are increased by the very wide steps left to be filled up by the reader, which are numerous enough to justify us in saying, that what is left out in these writings would constitute a mass four times as great as that which is put in, and this exclusive of numerical calculations. When we add that those two works are contained in six quarto volumes, which hold more than two thousand five hundred pages, some notion may be formed of the extent of Laplace’s labours.

It will be perceived that this slight sketch is intended only for those who are not mathematicians. In conclusion, we may take the opportunity of expressing a hope, that at no distant period analytical knowledge will have become so general, and the public mind be so far informed upon the great theory first propounded by Newton, and reduced to demonstration by Lagrange and Laplace, that the evidence furnished by the two last shall possess equal weight with the authority of the first.

HANDEL.

George Frederic Handel, whom we will venture to call the greatest of musicians, considering the state in which he found his art, and the means at his command, was born at Halle, in the Duchy of Magdeburg, February 24, 1684. He was intended, almost from his cradle, for the profession of the civil law; but, at the early age of seven, he manifested so uncontrollable an inclination, and so decided a talent for the study of music, that his father, an eminent physician, wisely consented to change his destination, and suffered him to continue under the direction of a master those studies, which he had been secretly pursuing with no other guide than his own genius.

Friedrich Zachau, organist of the cathedral church of Halle, was the first and indeed the chief instructor of Handel. He discharged the duties of his office so well, that his pupil, when not nine years old, had become competent to officiate for his teacher, and had composed, it is said, many motets for the service of the church. A set of sonatas, written by him when only ten years old, was in the possession of George III., and probably forms part of the musical library of our present sovereign.

Engraved by J. Thomson.
HANDEL.
From a Picture in the Collection of
His Majesty at Windsor.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

In 1703 Handel went to Hamburg, where the opera was then flourishing under the direction of Reinhard Keiser, a master of deserved celebrity, but whose gaiety and expensive habits often compelled him to absent himself from the theatre. On one of these occasions Handel was appointed to fill his place as conductor. This preference of a junior roused the jealousy of a fellow-performer, named Mattheson, to such a degree that a rencontre took place between the rivals in the street: and Handel was saved from a sword-thrust, which probably would have taken fatal effect, only by the interposition of a music-score, which he carried buttoned up under his coat. Till this time he had occupied but a very subordinate situation in the orchestra, that of second ripieno violin; for from the period of his father’s death he had depended wholly on his own exertions, nobly determining not to diminish his mother’s rather straitened income by any demands on her for pecuniary assistance. But now an opportunity for making known his powers was arrived; for the continued absence of the conductor Keiser from his post induced the manager to employ Handel in setting to music a drama called Almeria. So great was the success of this piece, that it was performed thirty nights without interruption. The year following he composed Florinda; and soon after, Nerone, both of which were received in as favourable a manner as his first dramatic effort; but not one of these is to be found in the collection formed by George III., and they seem quite unknown to all writers on music, except by their titles.

The success of his operas at Hamburg produced a sum which enabled him to visit Italy. Florence was the first city in which he made any stay. He was there received in the kindest manner by the Grand Duke Giovanni Gaston de Medicis, and produced the opera of Rodrigo in 1709, for which he was presented with a hundred sequins, and a service of plate. Thence he proceeded to Venice, where he brought out Agrippina, which was received with acclamation, and performed twenty-seven nights successively. It seems that horns and other wind-instruments were in this opera first used in Italy as accompaniments to the voice. Here the charms of his music made an impression on the famous beauty and singer, Signora Vittoria, a lady particularly distinguished by the Grand Duke; but in this, as in every instance of a similar kind, Handel showed no disposition to avail himself of any partialities exhibited in his favour. His thoughts were nearly all absorbed by his art, and it is but just to conclude that he was also influenced by those sentiments of moral propriety which so distinctly marked his conduct through life. It is to be admitted, however, that he was too much inclined to indulge in the pleasures of the table.

On visiting Rome he was hospitably and kindly entertained by the Cardinal Ottoboni, a person of the most refined taste and princely magnificence. Besides his splendid collection of pictures and statues, he possessed a library of music of great extent, and kept in his service an excellent band of performers, which was under the direction of the celebrated Corelli. At one of the parties made by the Cardinal, Handel produced the overture to Il Trionfo del Tempo, which was attempted by the band so unsuccessfully, that the composer, in his hasty manner, snatched the violin from Corelli, and played the most difficult passages with his own hand. The Italian, who was all modesty and meekness, ingenuously confessed that he did not understand the kind of music; and, when Handel still appeared impatient, only said, “Ma, caro Sassone, questa musica è nel stilo Francese, di ch’io non m’intendo”—(“But, my dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand”). And so far Corelli was perfectly right; Handel’s overtures are formed after the model of Lully, though, it is hardly necessary to add, he improved what he imitated. This anecdote indicates the vast superiority in point of execution possessed by the moderns. A learner of two years’ standing would now play the violin part of any of Handel’s overtures at first sight, without a fault.

At Rome Handel composed his Trionfo del Tempo, the words of which were written for him by the Cardinal Pamphilii, and a kind of mystery, or oratorio, La Resurrezione. The former he afterwards brought out in London, with English words by Dr. Morell, under the title of the Triumph of Time and Truth. From Rome he went to Naples, where he was treated with every mark of distinction. But he now resolved, notwithstanding the many attempts made to keep him in Italy, to return to Germany; and in 1710 reached Hanover, where he found a generous patron in the Elector, who subsequently ascended the English throne as George I. Here he met the learned composer, Steffani, who, having arrived at a time of life when retirement becomes desirable, resigned his office of Maestro di Capella to the Elector, and Handel was appointed his successor, with a salary of 1500 crowns, upon condition that he would return to the court of Hanover at the termination of his travels.

Towards the end of 1710 Handel arrived in London. He was soon introduced at court, and honoured with marks of Queen Anne’s favour. Aaron Hill was then manager of the Italian opera, and immediately sketched a drama from Tasso’s Jerusalem, which Rossi worked into an opera under the name of Rinaldo, and Handel set to music. This was brought out in March, 1711; and it is stated in the preface that it was composed in a fortnight, a strong recommendation of a work to those who delight in the wonderful rather than in the excellent: but in fact there is nothing in this which could have put the composer to much expense either of time or thought. Handel undoubtedly wrote better operas than any of his contemporaries or predecessors; but he was controlled by the habits and taste of the day, and knew by experience that two or three good pieces were as much as the fashionable frequenters of the Italian theatre would listen to, in his time.

At the close of 1711 he returned to Hanover, but revisited London late in 1712; and shortly after was selected, not without many murmurs from English musicians, to compose a Te Deum and Jubilate on occasion of the peace of Utrecht. The Queen settled on him a pension of two hundred pounds as the reward of his labour,—and as he was solicited to write again for the Italian stage, he never thought of returning to his engagement at Hanover, till the accession of the Elector to the British throne reminded him of his neglect of his royal employer and patron. On the arrival of George I. in London, Handel wanted the courage to present himself at court; but his friend, Baron Kilmansegge, had the address to get him restored to royal favour. The pleasing Water-Music, performed during an excursion made up the river by the King, was the means by which the German baron brought about the reconciliation; and this was accompanied by an addition of two hundred pounds to the pension granted by Queen Anne.

From the year 1715 to 1720, Handel composed only three operas. The three first years of this period he passed at the Earl of Burlington’s, where he was constantly in the habit of meeting Pope, who, though devoid of any taste for music, always spoke and wrote in a flattering manner of the German composer. The other two years he devoted to the Duke of Chandos, Pope’s Timon; and at Cannons, the Duke’s seat, he produced many of his anthems, which must be classed among the finest of his works, together with the greater number of his hautbois concertos, sonatas, lessons, and organ fugues.

A project was now formed by several of the English nobility for erecting the Italian theatre into an Academy of Music, and Handel was chosen as manager, with a condition that he should supply a certain number of operas. In pursuance of this, he went to Dresden to engage singers, and brought back with him several of great celebrity, Senesino among the number. His first opera under the new system was Radamisto, the success of which was astonishing. But there were at that time two Italian composers in London, Bononcini and Attilio, who till then had been attached to the opera-house, and were not without powerful supporters. These persons did not passively notice the ascendancy of Handel, and the insignificance into which they were in danger of falling; they persuaded several weak and some factious people of noble rank to espouse their cause, and to oppose the German intruder, as they called the new manager. Hence arose those feuds to which Swift has given immortality by his well-known epigram; and hence may be traced Handel’s retirement from a scene of cabal, persecution, and loss. The final result of this, however, was fortunate, for it led to the production of his greatest works, his oratorios, which not only amply compensated him for all the injury which his fortune sustained in this contest, but raised him to a height of fame which he could never have gained by his Italian operas.

The two contending parties, wishing to appear reasonable, proposed something like terms of accommodation: these were, that an opera in three acts should be composed by the three rivals, one act by each, and that he who best succeeded should for ever after take the precedence. The drama chosen was Muzio Scevola, of which Bononcini set the first act, Handel the second, and Attilio the third. Handel’s “won the cause,” and Bononcini’s was pronounced the next in merit. But, strange to say, though each no doubt strained his ability to the utmost in this struggle, not a single piece in the whole opera is known in the present day, or is, perhaps, to be found, except in the libraries of curious collectors.

This victory left Handel master of the field for some years, and the academy prospered. During this period he brought out about fifteen of his best operas. But the genius of discord must always have a seat in the temple of harmony, and a dispute between the German manager and the Italian soprano, Senesino, renewed former quarrels, broke up the academy, materially damaged the fortune of the great composer, and was the cause of infinite vexation to him during much of his future life.

Dr. Arbuthnot, always a staunch friend of Handel, now became his champion, and his ridicule had more weight with the sensible portion of the public than the futile arguments, if they deserve the name, advanced by the noble supporters of Senesino. But fashion and prejudice were, as usual, too strong for reason: a rival opera-house was opened in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and after having composed several new operas, comprising some of his best, and having sacrificed nearly the whole of his property and injured his health, in a spirited attempt to support the cause of the lyric stage against the presumption of singers, and the folly of their abettors, Handel was at last compelled to terminate his ineffectual labours, and stop his ruinous expenses, by abandoning the contest and the Italian opera together.

The sacred musical drama, or oratorio, was ultimately destined to repair his all but ruined fortune, and to establish his fame beyond the reach of cavil, and for ever. Esther, the words of which it is said were the joint production of Pope and Arbuthnot, was composed for the Duke of Chandos in 1720. In 1732 it was performed ten nights at the Haymarket, or King’s Theatre. Deborah was produced in 1733, and in the same year Athalia was brought out at Oxford. These three oratorios were performed at Covent Garden, in the Lent of 1734. Acis and Galatea, and Alexander’s Feast, were brought out in 1735; Israel in Egypt, in 1738; L’Allegro ed il Penseroso, in 1739. Saul was produced at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1740. But up to this period his oratorios failed to reimburse him for the expenses incurred; and even the Messiah, that sublime and matchless work, was, as Dr. Burney, Sir John Hawkins, and Handel’s first biographer, Mr. Mainwaring, all agree in stating, not only ill attended, but ill received, when first given to the public, in the capital of the empire, in 1741.

Such miscarriages, and a severe fit of illness, the supposed consequence of them, determined him to try his oratorios in the sister kingdom, where he hoped to be out of the reach of prejudice, envy, and hostility. Dublin was at that time noted for the gaiety and splendour of its court, and the opulence and spirit of its principal inhabitants. Handel, therefore, judged wisely in appealing to such a people. Pope in his Dunciad alludes to this part of his history, introducing a poor phantom as representative of the Italian opera, who thus instructs Dullness:—

But soon, ah soon, rebellion will commence,

If Music meanly borrows aid from sense:

Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands,

Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands:

To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,

And Jove’s own thunders follow Mars’s drums.

Arrest him, empress, or you sleep no more.—

She heard—and drove him to th’ Hibernian shore.

“On his arrival in Dublin,” we are told by Dr. Burney, in his Commemoration of Handel, “he, with equal judgment and humanity, began by performing the Messiah for the benefit of the city prison. This act of generosity and benevolence met with universal approbation, as well as his music, which was admirably performed.” He remained in Ireland about nine months, where his finances began to mend, an earnest, as it were, of the more favourable reception which he experienced on returning to London in 1742. He then recommenced his oratorios at Covent Garden; Sampson was the first performed. And now fortune seemed to wait on all his undertakings; and he took the tide at the flood. His last oratorio became most popular, and the Messiah was now received with universal admiration and applause. Dr. Burney remarks, “From that time to the present, this great work has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan,” and, he might have added, healed the sick. Influenced by the most disinterested motives of humanity, Handel resolved to perform his Messiah annually for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital, and, under his own direction and that of his successors, it added to the funds of that charity alone the sum of £10,300. How much it has produced to other benevolent institutions, it is impossible to calculate; the amount must be enormous.

He continued his oratorios till almost the moment of his death, and derived considerable pecuniary advantage from them, though a considerable portion of the nobility persevered in their opposition to him. George II., however, was his steady patron, and constantly attended his performances, when they were abandoned by most of his court.

In the close of life, Handel had the misfortune to lose his sight, from an attack of gutta serena, in 1751. This evil for a time plunged him into deep despondency; but when the event was no longer doubtful, an earnest and sincere sense of religion enabled him to bear his affliction with fortitude, and he not only continued to perform, but even to compose. For this purpose, he employed as his amanuensis Mr. John Christian Smith, a good musician, who furnished materials for a life of his employer and friend, and succeeded him in the management of the oratorios. “To see him, however,” Dr. Burney feelingly observes, “led to the organ after this calamity, at upwards of seventy years of age, and then conducted towards the audience to make his accustomed obeisance, was a sight so truly afflicting to persons of sensibility, as greatly diminished their pleasure in hearing him perform.”

His last appearance in public was on the 6th of April, 1759. He died that day week, on Good-Friday, thus realizing a hope which he expressed a very few days before his decease, when aware that his last hours were approaching. He was buried in Westminster Abbey; the Dean, Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester, assisted by all the officers of the choir, performed the ceremony. A fine monument, executed by Roubiliac, is placed in Poet’s Corner, above the spot where his mortal remains are deposited; but a still more honourable tribute to his memory was paid in the year 1784, by the performances which took place under the roof which covers his dust. A century having then elapsed from the time of his birth, it was proposed that a Commemoration of Handel should take place. The management of it was intrusted to the directors of the ancient concert, and eight of the most distinguished members of the musical profession. The King, George III., zealously patronised the undertaking, and nearly all the upper classes of the kingdom seconded the royal views. A vocal and instrumental band of 525 persons was collected from all parts, for the purpose of performing in a manner never before even imagined, the choicest works of the master. The great aisle in Westminster Abbey was fitted up for the occasion, with boxes for the Royal Family, the Directors, the Bench of Bishops, and the Dean and Prebendaries of the Church; galleries were erected on each side, and a grand orchestra was built over the great west door, extending from within a few feet of the ground, to nearly half-way up the great window. There were four morning performances in the church: the tickets of admission were one guinea each; and the gross receipts (including an evening concert at the Pantheon) amounted to £12,736. The disbursements rather exceeded £6,000, and the profits were given to the Society for Decayed Musicians and the Westminster Hospital; £6,000 to the former, and £1,000 to the latter. Such was the success of this great enterprise, that similar performances, increasing each year in magnitude, took place annually till the period of the French Revolution, when the state of public affairs did not encourage their longer continuance.

As a composer, Handel was great in all styles—from the familiar and airy to the grand and sublime. His instinctive taste for melody, and the high value he set on it, are obvious in all his works; but he felt no less strongly the charms of harmony, in fulness and richness of which he far surpassed even the greatest musicians who preceded him. And had he been able to employ the variety of instruments now in use, some of which have been invented since his death, and to command that orchestral talent, which probably has had some share in stimulating the inventive faculty of modern composers, it is reasonable to suppose that the field of his conceptions would have expanded with the means at his command. Unrivalled in sublimity, he might then have anticipated the variety and brilliance of later masters.

Generally speaking, Handel set his words with deep feeling and strong sense. Now and then he certainly betrayed a wish to imitate by sounds what sounds are incapable of imitating; and occasionally attempted to express the meaning of an isolated word, without due reference to the context. And sometimes, though not often, his want of a complete knowledge of our language led him into errors of accentuation. But these defects, though great in little men, dwindle almost to nothing in this “giant of the art:” and every competent judge, who contemplates the grandeur, beauty, science, variety, and number of Handel’s productions, will feel for him that admiration which Haydn, and still more Mozart, was proud to avow, and be ready to exclaim in the words of Beethoven, “Handel is the unequalled master of all masters! Go, turn to him, and learn, with such scanty means, how to produce such effects!”

Engraved by H. Meyer.
PASCAL.
From the original Picture by Philippe de Champagne,
in the possession of M. Lenoir at Paris.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

PASCAL.

Blaise Pascal was born June 19, 1623, at Clermont, the capital of Auvergne, where his father, Stephen Pascal, held a high legal office. On the death of his wife in 1626, Stephen resigned his professional engagements, that he might devote himself entirely to the education of his family, which consisted only of Blaise, and of two daughters. With this view he removed to Paris.

The elder Pascal was a man of great moral worth, and of a highly cultivated mind. He was known as an active member of a small society of philosophers, to which the Academie Royale des Sciences, established in 1666, owed its origin. Though himself an ardent mathematician, he was in no haste to initiate his son in his own favourite pursuits; but having a notion, not very uncommon, that the cultivation of the exact sciences is unfriendly to a taste for general literature, he began with the study of languages; and notwithstanding many plain indications of the natural bent of his son’s genius, he forbad him to meddle, even in thought, with the mathematics. Nature was too strong for parental authority. The boy having extracted from his father some hints as to the subject matter of geometry, went to work by himself, drawing circles and lines, or, as he called them in his ignorance of the received nomenclature, rounds and bars, and investigating and proving the properties of his various figures, till, without help of a book or oral instruction of any kind, he had advanced as far as the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid. He had perceived that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right ones, and was searching for a satisfactory proof, when his father surprised him in his forbidden speculations. The figures drawn on the walls of his bed-chamber told the tale, and a few questions proved that his head had been employed as well as his fingers. He was at this time twelve years old. All attempts at restriction were now abandoned. A copy of Euclid’s Elements was put into his hands by his father himself, and Blaise became a confirmed geometrician. At sixteen he composed a treatise on the Conic Sections, which had sufficient merit to induce Descartes obstinately to attribute the authorship to the elder Pascal or Desargues.

Such was his progress in a study which was admitted only as the amusement of his idle hours. His labours under his father’s direction were given to the ancient classics.

Some years after this, the elder Pascal had occasion to employ his son in making calculations for him. To facilitate his labour, Blaise Pascal, then in his nineteenth year, invented his famous arithmetical machine, which is said to have fully answered its purpose. He sent this machine with a letter to Christina, the celebrated Queen of Sweden. The possibility of rendering such inventions generally useful has been stoutly disputed since the days of Pascal. This question will soon perhaps be set at rest, if it may not be considered as already answered, by the scientific labours of an accomplished mathematician of our own time and country.

It should be remarked that Pascal, whilst he regarded geometry as affording the highest exercise of the powers of the human mind, held in very low estimation the importance of its practical results. Hence his speculations were irregularly turned to various unconnected subjects, as his curiosity might happen to be excited by them. The late creation of a sound system of experimental philosophy by Galileo had roused an irresistible spirit of inquiry, which was every day exhibiting new marvels; but time was wanted to develope the valuable fruits of its discoveries, which have since connected the most abstruse speculations of the philosopher with the affairs of common life.

There is no doubt that his studious hours produced much that has been lost to the world; but many proofs remain of his persevering activity in the course which he had chosen. Amongst them may be mentioned his Arithmetical Triangle, with the treatises arising out of it, and his investigations of certain problems relating to the curve called by mathematicians the Cycloid, to which he turned his mind, towards the close of his life, to divert his thoughts in a season of severe suffering. For the solution of these problems, according to the fashion of the times, he publicly offered a prize, for which La Loubère and our own countryman Wallis contended. It was adjudged that neither had fulfilled the proposed conditions; and Pascal published his own solutions, which raised the admiration of the scientific world. The Arithmetical Triangle owed its existence to questions proposed to him by a friend respecting the calculation of probabilities in games of chance. Under this name is denoted a peculiar arrangement of numbers in certain proportions, from which the answers to various questions of chances, the involution of binomials, and other algebraical problems, may be readily obtained. This invention led him to inquire further into the theory of chances; and he may be considered as one of the founders of that branch of analysis, which has grown into such importance in the hands of La Place.

His fame as a man of science does not rest solely on his labours in geometry. As an experimentalist he has earned no vulgar celebrity. He was a young man when the interesting discoveries in pneumatics were working a grand revolution in natural philosophy. The experiments of Torricelli had proved, what his great master Galileo had conjectured, the weight and pressure of the air, and had given a rude shock to the old doctrine of the schools that “Nature abhors a vacuum;” but many still clung fondly to the old way, and when pressed with the fact that fluids rise in an exhausted tube to a certain height, and will rise no higher, though with a vacuum above them, still asserted that the fluids rose because Nature abhors a vacuum, but qualified their assertion with an admission that she had some moderation in her abhorrence. Having satisfied himself by his own experiments of the truth of Torricelli’s theory, Pascal with his usual sagacity devised the means of satisfying all who were capable of being convinced. He reasoned that if, according to the new theory, founded on the experiments made with mercury, the weight and general pressure of the air forced up the mercury in the tube, the height of the mercury would be in proportion to the height of the column of incumbent air; in other words, that the mercury would be lower at the top of a mountain than at the bottom of it: on the other hand, that if the old answer were the right one, no difference would appear from the change of situation. Accordingly, he directed the experiment to be made on the Puy de Dôme, a lofty mountain in Auvergne, and the height of the barometer at the top and bottom of the mountain being taken at the same moment, a difference of more than three inches was observed. This set the question at rest for ever. The particular notice which we have taken of this celebrated experiment, made in his twenty-fifth year, may be justified by the importance attached to it by no mean authority. Sir W. Herschell observes, in his Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, page 230, that “it tended perhaps more powerfully than any thing which had previously been done in science to confirm in the minds of men that disposition to experimental verification which had scarcely yet taken full and secure root.”

Whatever may be the value of the fruits of Pascal’s genius, it should be remembered that they were all produced within the space of a life which did not number forty years, and that he was so miserably the victim of disease that from the time of boyhood he never passed a day without pain.

His health had probably been impaired by his earlier exertions; but the intense mental labour expended on the arithmetical machine appears to have completely undermined his constitution, and to have laid the foundation of those acute bodily sufferings which cruelly afflicted him during the remainder of his life. His friends, with the hope of checking the evil, sought to withdraw him from his studies, and tempted him into various modes of relaxation. But the remedy was applied too late. The death of his father in 1651, and the retirement of his unmarried sister from the world to join the devout recluses of Port Royal-des-Champs, released him from all restraint. He sadly abused this liberty, until the frightful aggravation of his complaints obliged him to abandon altogether his scientific pursuits, and reluctantly to follow the advice of his physicians, to mix more freely in general society. He obtained some relief from medicine and change of habits; but, in 1654, an accident both made his recovery hopeless, and destroyed the relish which he had begun to feel for social life. He was in his carriage on the Pont de Neuilly, at a part of the bridge which was unprotected by a parapet, when two of the horses became unruly, and plunged into the Seine. The traces broke, and Pascal was thus saved from instant death. He considered that he had received a providential warning of the uncertainty of life, and retired finally from the world, to make more earnest preparation for eternity. This accident gave the last shock to his already shattered nerves, and to a certain extent disordered his imagination. The image of his late danger was continually before him, and at times he fancied himself on the brink of a precipice. The evil probably was increased by the rigid seclusion to which from this time he condemned himself, and by the austerities which he inflicted on his exhausted frame. His powerful intellect survived the wreck of his constitution, and he gave ample proof to the last that its vigour was unimpaired.

In his religious opinions he agreed with the Jansenists, and, without being formally enrolled in their society, was on terms of intimate friendship with those pious and learned members of the sect, who had established themselves in the wilds of Port Royal. His advocacy of their cause at a critical time was so important to his fame and to literature, that a few words may be allowed on the circumstances which occasioned it.

The Jansenists, though they earnestly deprecated the name of heretics, and were most fiercely opposed to the Huguenots and other Protestants, did in fact nearly approach in many points the reformed churches, and departed widely from the fashionable standard of orthodoxy in their own communion. They were in the first instance brought into collision with their great enemies the Jesuits by the opinions which they held on the subjects of grace and free-will. As the controversy proceeded, the points of difference between the contending parties became more marked and more numerous. The rigid system of morals taught and observed by the Jansenists, and the superior regard which they paid to personal holiness in comparison with ceremonial worship, appeared in advantageous contrast with the lax morality and formal religion of the Jesuits. Hence, though there was much that was repulsive in their discipline, and latterly, not a little that was exceptionable in their conduct, they could reckon in their ranks many of the most enlightened as well as the most pious Christians in France. It was natural that Pascal, who was early impressed with the deepest reverence for religion, should be attracted to a party which seemed at least to be in earnest, whilst others were asleep; and it is more a matter of regret than of surprise, that latterly, in his state of physical weakness and nervous excitement, he should have been partially warped from his sobriety by intercourse with men, whose Christian zeal was in too many instances disfigured by a visionary and enthusiastic spirit. The Papal Court at first dealt with them tenderly; for it was in truth no easy matter to condemn their founder Jansenius, without condemning its own great doctor the celebrated Augustin. But the vivacious doctors of the Sorbonne, on the publication of a letter by the Jansenist Arnauld, took fire, and by their eagerness kindled a flame that well nigh consumed their own church.

Whilst they were in deliberation on the misdoings of Arnauld, Pascal put forth under the name of Louis de Montalte the first of that series of letters to “a friend in the country”—à un provincial par un de ses amis—which, when afterwards collected, received by an absurd misnomer, the title of the Provincial Letters of Pascal. In these letters, after having exhibited in a light irresistibly ludicrous, the disputes of the Sorbonne, he proceeds with the same weapon of ridicule, all powerful in his hand, to hold forth to derision and contempt the profligate casuistry of the Jesuits. For much of his matter he was undoubtedly indebted to his Jansenist friends, and it is commonly said that he was taught by them to reproach unfairly the whole body of Jesuits, with the faults of some obscure writers of their order. These writers, however, were at least well known to the Jesuits, their writings had gone through numerous editions with approbation, and had infused some portion of their spirit into more modern and popular tracts. Moreover, the Society of Jesuits, constituted as it was, had ready means of relieving itself from the discredit of such infamous publications; yet amongst the many works, which by their help found a place in the index of prohibited books, Pascal might have looked in vain for the works of their own Escobar. However this may be, it is universally acknowledged, that the credit of the Jesuits sunk under the blow, that these letters are a splendid monument of the genius of Pascal, and that as a literary work they have placed him in the very first rank among the French classics.

It seems that he had formed a design, even in the height of his scientific ardour, of executing some great work for the benefit of religion. This design took a more definite shape after his retirement, and he communicated orally to his friends the sketch of a comprehensive work on the Evidences of Christianity, which his early death, together with his increasing bodily infirmities, prevented him from completing. Nothing was left but unconnected fragments, containing for the most part his thoughts on subjects apparently relating to his great design, hastily written on small scraps of paper, without order or arrangement of any kind. They were published in 1670, with some omissions, by his friends of Port Royal, and were afterwards given to the world entire, under the title of the Thoughts of Pascal. Many of the thoughts are such as we should expect from a man who with a mind distinguished for its originality, with an intimate knowledge of scripture, and lively piety, had meditated much and earnestly on the subject of religion. In a book so published, it is of course easy enough to find matter for censure and minute criticism; but most Christian writers have been content to bear testimony to its beauties and to borrow largely from its rich and varied stores. Among the editors of the Thoughts of Pascal are found Condorcet and Voltaire, who enriched their editions with a commentary. With what sort of spirit they entered on their work may be guessed from Voltaire’s well known advice to his brother philosopher. “Never be weary, my friend, of repeating that the brain of Pascal was turned after his accident on the Pont de Neuilly.” Condorcet was not the man to be weary in such an employment; but here he had to deal with stubborn facts. The brain of Pascal produced after the accident not only the Thoughts, but also the Provincial Letters, and the various treatises on the Cycloid, the last of which was written not long before his death.

He died August 19th, 1662, aged thirty-nine years and two months.

By those who knew him personally he is said to have been modest and reserved in his manners, but withal, ready to enliven conversation with that novelty of remark and variety of information which might be expected from his well stored and original mind. That spirit of raillery which should belong to the author of the Provincial Letters, showed itself also occasionally in his talk, but always with a cautious desire not to give needless pain or offence.

He seemed to have constantly before his eyes the privations and sufferings to which a large portion of the human race is exposed, and to receive almost with trembling, those indulgences which were denied to others. Thus, when curtailing his own comforts that he might perform more largely the duties of charity, he seemed only to be disencumbering himself of that which he could not safely retain.

As a philosopher, it is the great glory of Pascal, that he is numbered with that splendid phalanx, which in the seventeenth century, following the path opened by Galileo, assisted to overthrow the tyranny of the schools, and to break down the fences which for ages had obstructed the progress of real knowledge; men who were indeed benefactors to science, and who have also left behind them for general use an encouraging proof that the most inveterate prejudices, the most obstinate attachment to established errors, and hostility to improvement may be overcome by resolute perseverance, and a bold reliance on the final victory of truth. No one, however, will coldly measure the honour due to this extraordinary man by his actual contributions to the cause of science or literature. The genius of the child anticipated manhood: his more matured intellect could only show promises of surpassing glory when it escaped from the weak frame in which it was lodged.

For further information the reader is referred to the discourse on the life and works of Pascal, which first appeared in the complete edition of his works in 1779, and has since been published separately at Paris; to the Biographie Universelle; and to the life of Pascal, written by his sister, Madame Perier, which is prefixed to her edition of his Thoughts.

ERASMUS.

Desiderius Erasmus was born at Rotterdam on the 28th of October, 1467. The irregular lives of his parents are related by him in a letter to the secretary of Pope Julius II. It is sufficient to state here, that this great genius and restorer of letters was not born in wedlock. His unsophisticated name, as well as that of his father, was Gerard. This word in the Dutch language means amiable. According to the affectation of the period, he translated it into the Latin term, Desiderius, and superadded the Greek synonyme of Erasmus. Late in a life of vicissitude and turmoil, he found leisure from greater evils to lament that he had been so neglectful of grammatical accuracy as to call himself Erasmus, and not Erasmius.

In a passage of the life written by himself, he says that “in his early years he made but little progress in those unpleasant studies to which he was not born;” and this gave his countrymen a notion that as a boy he was slow of understanding. Hereon Bayle observes that those unpleasant studies cannot mean learning in general, for which of all men he was born; but that the expression might apply to music, as he was a chorister in the cathedral church of Utrecht. He was afterwards sent to one of the best schools in the Netherlands, where his talents at once shone forth, and were duly appreciated. His master was so well satisfied with his progress, and so thoroughly convinced of his great abilities, as to have foretold what the event confirmed, that he would prove the envy and wonder of all Germany.

Engraved by E. Scriven.
ERASMUS.
From the original Picture by G. Penn,
in his Majesty’s Collection at Windsor.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

At the age of fourteen Erasmus was removed from the school at Deventer in consequence of the plague, of which his mother died, and his father did not long survive her. With a view to possess themselves of his patrimony, his guardians sent him to three several convents in succession. At length, unable longer to sustain the conflict, he reluctantly entered among the regular canons at Stein, near Tergou, in 1486. Much condescension to his peculiar humour was shown in dispensing with established laws and customary ceremonies; but he was principally led to make his profession by the arts of his guardians and the dilapidation of his fortune. He describes monasteries, and his own in particular, as destitute of learning and sound religion. “They are places of impiety,” he says in his piece ‘De Contemptu Mundi,’ “where every thing is done to which a depraved inclination can lead, under the mask of religion; it is hardly possible for any one to keep himself pure and unspotted.” Julius Scaliger and his other enemies assert that he himself was deeply tainted by these impurities; but both himself and his friends deny the charge.

He escaped from the cloister in consequence of the accuracy with which he could speak and write Latin. This rare accomplishment introduced him to the Bishop of Cambray, with whom he lived till 1490. He then took pupils, among whom was the Lord Mountjoy, with several other noble Englishmen. He says of himself, that “he lived rather than studied” at Paris, where he had no books, and often wanted the common comforts of life. Bad lodgings and bad diet permanently impaired his constitution, which had been a very strong one. The plague drove him from the capital before he could profit as he wished by the instructions of the university in theology.

Some time after he left Paris, Erasmus came over to England, and resided in Oxford, where he contracted friendship with all of any note in literature. In a letter from London to a friend in Italy, he says, “What is it, you will say, which captivates you so much in England? It is that I have found a pleasant and salubrious air; I have met with humanity, politeness, and learning; learning not trite and superficial, but deep and accurate; true old Greek and Latin learning; and withal so much of it, that but for mere curiosity, I have no occasion to visit Italy. When Colet discourses, I seem to hear Plato himself. In Grocyn, I admire an universal compass of learning. Linacre’s acuteness, depth, and accuracy are not to be exceeded; nor did nature ever form any thing more elegant, exquisite, and accomplished than More.”

On leaving England, Erasmus had a fever at Orleans, which recurred every Lent for five years together. He tells us that Saint Genevieve interceded for his recovery; but not without the help of a good physician. At this time he was applying diligently to the study of Greek. He says, that if he could but get some money, he would first buy Greek books, and then clothes. His mode of acquiring the language was by making translations from Lucian, Plutarch, and other authors. Many of these translations appear in his works, and answered a double purpose; for while they familiarized him with the languages, the sentiments and the philosophy of the originals, they also furnished him with happy trains of thought and expression, when he dedicated his editions of the Fathers, or his own treatises, to his patrons.

We cannot follow him through his incessant journeys and change of places during the first years of the sixteenth century. His fame was spread over Europe, and his visits were solicited by popes, crowned heads, prelates, and nobles; but much as the great coveted his society, they suffered him to remain extremely poor. We learn from his ‘Enchiridion Militis Christiani,’ published in 1503, that he had discovered many errors in the Roman church, long before Luther appeared. His reception at Rome was most flattering: his company was courted both by the learned and by persons of the first rank and quality. After his visit to Italy, he returned to England, which he preferred to all other countries. On his arrival he took up his abode with his friend More, and within the space of a week wrote his ‘Encomium Moriæ,’ the Praise of Folly, for their mutual amusement. The general design is to show that there are fools in all stations; and more particularly to expose the court of Rome, with no great forbearance towards the Pope himself. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Chancellor of the University, and Head of Queen’s College, invited him to Cambridge, where he lived in the Lodge, was made Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity, and afterwards Greek Professor. But notwithstanding these academical honours and offices, he was still so poor as to apply with importunity to Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, for fifteen angels as the price of a dedication. “Erasmus’s Walk” in the grounds of Queen’s College still attests the honour conferred on the university by the temporary residence of this great reviver of classical learning.

On his return to the Low Countries, he was nominated by Charles of Austria to a vacant bishopric in Sicily; but the right of presentation happened to belong to the Pope. Erasmus laughed heartily at the prospect of this incongruous preferment; and said that as the Sicilians were merry fellows, they might possibly have liked such a bishop.

In the year 1516 he printed his edition, the first put forth in Greek, of the New Testament. We learn from his letters, that there was one college in Cambridge which would not suffer this work to be brought within its walls: but the public voice spoke a different language; for it went through three editions in less than twelve years. From 1516 to 1526 he was employed in publishing the works of Saint Jerome. Luther blamed him for his partiality to this father. He says, “I prefer Augustine to Jerome, as much as Erasmus prefers Jerome to Augustine.” As far as this was a controversy of taste and criticism, the restorer of letters was likely to have the better of the argument against the apostle of the Reformation.

The times were now become tempestuous. Erasmus was of a placid temper, and of a timid character. He endeavoured to reconcile the conflicting parties in the church; but with that infelicity commonly attendant on mediators, he drew on himself the anger of both. Churchmen complained that his censures of the monks, of their grimaces and superstitions, had paved the way for Luther. On the other hand, Erasmus offended the Lutherans, by protesting against identifying the cause of literature with that of the Reformation. He took every opportunity of declaring his adherence to the see of Rome. The monks, with whom he waged continual war, would have been better pleased had he openly gone over to the enemy: his caustic remarks would have galled them less proceeding from a Lutheran than from a Catholic. But his motives for continuing in the communion of the established church, are clearly indicated in the following passage: “Wherein could I have assisted Luther, if I had declared myself for him and shared his danger? Instead of one man, two would have perished. I cannot conceive what he means by writing with such a spirit: one thing I know too well, that he has brought great odium on the lovers of literature. He has given many wholesome doctrines and good counsels: but I wish he had not defeated the effect of them by his intolerable faults. But even if he had written in the most unexceptionable manner, I had no inclination to die for the sake of truth. Every man has not the courage necessary to make a martyr: I am afraid that, if I were put to the trial, I should imitate St. Peter.”

In 1522 he published the works of Saint Hilary. About the same time he published his Colloquies. In this work, among the strokes of satire, he laughed at indulgences, auricular confession, and eating fish on fast-days. The faculty of theology at Paris passed the following censure on the book: “The fasts and abstinences of the church are slighted, the suffrages of the holy virgin and of the saints are derided, virginity is set below matrimony, Christians are discouraged from becoming monks, and grammatical is preferred to theological erudition.” Pope Paul III. had little better to propose to the cardinals and prelates commissioned to consider about the reform of the church, than that young persons should not be permitted to read Erasmus’s Colloquies. Colineus took a hint from this prohibition: he reprinted them in 1527, and sold off an impression of twenty-four thousand.

In 1524 a rumour was spread abroad that Erasmus was going to write against Luther, which produced the following characteristic letter from the Great Reformer: “Grace and peace from the Lord Jesus. I shall not complain of you for having behaved yourself as a man alienated from us, for the sake of keeping fair with the Papists; nor was I much offended that in your printed books, to gain their favour or soften their fury, you censured us with too much acrimony. We saw that the Lord had not conferred on you the discernment, courage, and resolution to join with us in freely and openly opposing these monsters; therefore we did not expect from you what greatly surpasseth your strength and capacity. We have borne with your weakness, and honoured that portion of the gift of God which is in you.... I never wished that deserting your own province you should come over to our camp. You might indeed have favoured us not a little by your wit and eloquence: but as you have not the courage requisite, it is safer for you to serve the Lord in your own way. Only we feared that our adversaries should entice you to write against us, in which case necessity would have constrained us to oppose you to your face. I am concerned that the resentment of so many eminent persons of your party has been excited against you: this must have given you great uneasiness; for virtue like yours, mere human virtue, cannot raise a man above being affected by such trials. Our cause is in no peril, although even Erasmus should attack it with all his might: so far are we from dreading the keenest strokes of his wit. On the other hand, my dear Erasmus, if you duly reflect on your own weakness, you will abstain from those sharp, spiteful figures of rhetoric, and treat of subjects better suited to your powers.” Erasmus’s answer is not found in the collection of his letters; but he must have been touched to the quick.

In 1527 he published two dialogues: the first, on ‘The pronunciation of the Greek and Latin Languages;’ full of learning and curious research: the second, entitled ‘Ciceronianus.’ In this lively piece he ridicules those Italian pedants who banished every word or phrase unauthorized by Cicero. His satire, however, is not directed against Cicero’s style, but against the servility of mere imitation. In a subsequent preface to a new edition of the Tusculan Questions, he almost canonizes Cicero, both for his matter and expression. Julius Scaliger had launched more than one philippic against him for his treatment of the Ciceronians; but he considered this preface as a kind of penance for former blasphemies, and admitted it as an atonement to the shade of the great Roman. Erasmus had at this time fixed his residence at Bâsle. He was advancing in years, and complained in his letters of poverty and sickness. Pope Paul III., notwithstanding his Colloquies, professed high regard for him, and his friends thought that he was likely to obtain high preferment. Of this matter Erasmus writes thus: “The Pope had resolved to add some learned men to the college of Cardinals, and I was named to be one. But to my promotion it was objected, that my state of health would unfit me for that function, and that my income was not sufficient.”

In the summer of 1536 his state of exhaustion became alarming. His last letter is dated June 20, and subscribed thus: “Erasmus Rot. ægra manu.” He died July 12, in the 59th year of his age, and was buried in the cathedral of Bâsle. His friend Beatus Rhenanus describes his person and manners. He was low of stature, but not remarkably short, well-shaped, of a fair complexion, grey eyes, a cheerful countenance, a low voice, and an agreeable utterance. His memory was tenacious. He was a pleasant companion, a constant friend, generous and charitable. Erasmus had one peculiarity, humorously noticed by himself; namely, that he could not endure even the smell of fish. On this he observed, that though a good Catholic in other respects, he had a most heterodox and Lutheran stomach.

With many great and good qualities, Erasmus had obvious failings. Bayle has censured his irritability when attacked by adversaries; his editor, Le Clerc, condemns his lukewarmness and timidity in the business of the Reformation. Jortin defends him with zeal, and extenuates what he cannot defend. “Erasmus was fighting for his honour and his life; being accused of nothing less than heterodoxy, impiety, and blasphemy, by men whose forehead was a rock, and whose tongue was a razor. To be misrepresented as a pedant and a dunce is no great matter; for time and truth put folly to flight: to be accused of heresy by bigots, priests, politicians, and infidels, is a serious affair; as they know too well who have had the misfortune to feel the effects of it.” Dr. Jortin here speaks with bitter fellow-feeling for Erasmus, as he himself had been similarly attacked by the high church party of his day. He goes on to give his opinion, that even for his lukewarmness in promoting the Reformation, much may be said, and with truth. “Erasmus was not entirely free from the prejudices of education. He had some indistinct and confused notions about the authority of the Catholic Church, which made it not lawful to depart from her, corrupted as he believed her to be. He was also much shocked by the violent measures and personal quarrels of the Reformers. Though, as Protestants, we are more obliged to Luther, Melancthon, and others, than to him, yet we and all the nations in Europe are infinitely indebted to Erasmus for spending a long and laborious life in opposing ignorance and superstition, and in promoting literature and true piety.” To us his character appears to be strongly illustrated by his own declaration, “Had Luther written truly every thing that he wrote, his seditious liberty would nevertheless have much displeased me. I would rather even err in some matters, than contend for the truth with the world in such a tumult.” A zealous advocate of peace at all times, it is but just to believe that he sincerely dreaded the contests sure to rise from open schism in the church. And it was no unpardonable frailty, if this feeling were nourished by a temperament, which confessedly was not desirous of the palm of martyrdom.

It is impossible to give the contents of works occupying ten volumes in folio. They have been printed under the inspection of the learned Mr. Le Clerc. The biography of Erasmus is to be found at large in Bayle’s Dictionary, and the copious lives of Knight and Jortin.

From the bronze statue of Erasmus at Rotterdam.

Engraved by W. Holl.
TITIAN.
From the Picture of Titian & Aretin painted by Titian,
in his Majesty’s Collection at Windsor.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

TITIAN.

On looking back to the commencement of the sixteenth century, by far the most brilliant epoch of modern art, we cannot but marvel at the splendour and variety of talent concentrated within the brief space of half a century, or less. Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, all fellow-labourers, with many others inferior to these mighty masters, yet whose works are prized by kings and nobles as their most precious treasures—by what strange prodigality of natural gifts, or happy combination of circumstances was so rare an assemblage of genius produced in so short a time? The most obvious explanation is to be found in the princely patronage then afforded to the arts by princes and churchmen. By this none profited more largely or more justly than the great painter, whose life it is our task to relate.

Tiziano Vecelli was born of an honourable family at Capo del Cadore, a small town on the confines of Friuli, in 1480. He soon manifested the bent of his genius, and at the age of ten was consigned to the care of an uncle residing in Venice, who placed him under the tuition of Giovanni Bellini, then in the zenith of his fame. The style of Bellini though forcible is dry and hard, and little credit has been given to him for his pupil’s success. It is probable, however, that Titian imbibed in his school those habits of accurate imitation, which enabled him afterwards to unite boldness and truth, and to indulge in the most daring execution, without degenerating into mannerism. The elements of his future style he found first indicated by Lionardo da Vinci, and more developed in the works of Giorgione, who adopted the principles of Lionardo, but with increased power, amenity, and splendour. As soon as Titian became acquainted with this master’s paintings, he gave his whole attention to the study of them; and with such success, that the portrait of a noble Venetian named Barbarigo, which he painted at the age of eighteen, was mistaken for the work of Giorgione. From that time, during some years, these masters held an equal place in public esteem; but in 1507 a circumstance occurred which turned the balance in favour of Titian. They were engaged conjointly in the decoration of a public building, called the Fondaco de Tedeschi. Through some mistake that part of the work which Titian had executed, was understood by a party of connoisseurs to have been painted by Giorgione, whom they overwhelmed with congratulations on his extraordinary improvement. It may be told to his credit, that though he manifested some weakness in discontinuing his intercourse with Titian, he never spoke of him without amply acknowledging his merits.

Anxious to gain improvement from every possible source, Titian is said to have drawn the rudiments of his fine style of landscape painting from some German artists who came to Venice about the time of this rupture. He engaged them to reside in his house, and studied their mode of practice until he had mastered their principles. His talents were now exercised on several important works, and it is evident, from the picture of the Angel and Tobias, that he had already acquired an extraordinary breadth and grandeur of style. The Triumph of Faith, a singular composition, manifesting great powers of invention, amid much quaintness of character and costume, is known by a wood engraving published in 1508. A fresco of the Judgment of Solomon, for the Hall of Justice at Vicenza, was his next performance. After this he executed several subjects in the church of St. Anthony, at Padua, taken from the miracles attributed to that saint.

These avocations had withdrawn him from Venice. On his return, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, he was employed to finish a large picture left imperfect by Bellini, or, according to some authorities, by Giorgione, in the great Council Hall of Venice, representing the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on his knees before Pope Alexander III. at the entrance of St. Mark’s. The Senate were so well satisfied with his performance, that they appointed him to the office called La Senseria; the conditions of which were, that it should be held by the best painter in the city, with a salary of three hundred scudi, he engaging to paint the portrait of each Doge on his election, at the price of eight scudi. These portraits were hung in one of the public apartments of St. Mark. At the close of 1514 Titian was invited to Ferrara by the Duke Alphonso. For him he executed several splendid works; among them, portraits of the Duke, and of his wife, and that celebrated picture of Bacchus and Ariadne, now in our own National Gallery.

The first works executed by Titian after his return to Venice, prove that he had already accomplished that union of grand design with brilliant colouring, which was designated by Tintoret as the highest perfection of painting. His immense picture of the Assumption, formerly in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa, and now in the Academy of Venice, exhibits, in the opinion of some first-rate judges, various excellences, such as have never been combined in any single performance, but by Titian himself[^[5]]. The Virgin, whose figure relieves dark on the irradiated back-ground, seems to ascend amid a flood of glory. She is surrounded and sustained by angels of ineffable beauty, and the disciples below are personifications of apostolic grandeur. It will scarcely be credited that the Monks, for whom this picture was painted, objected to it on account of its apparent reality; but the voice of public admiration soon made them sensible of its merits, and they refused a large sum offered for it by the Imperial Ambassador. Such a report of this work was made to Leo X. by Cardinal Bembo, that Titian received an invitation to Rome from the Pontiff, with the offer of honourable appointments. A similar proposal from Francis I. of France, whose portrait he painted in 1515, he had already declined; but he yielded to the temptation of visiting Rome, being not less anxious to see the great works of contemporary genius, than the wonders of ancient art. He did not, however, carry his purpose into effect at this time, but remained at Venice; and thus secured to her the possession of those noble works, which, when they were produced, formed the brightest ornament of her power, and even now, when her other glories are set, confer upon her an imperishable distinction.

[5]. The writer has been informed by Canova that this was his own opinion, and that of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

To recompense in some degree his relinquishment of this invitation, Titian was employed by the Senate to paint the Battle of Cadore, fought between the Venetians and the Imperialists; a splendid production, which perished when the Ducal Palace was burnt. About this time was painted the fine altar-piece of the Pesari Family returning thanks to the Virgin for a victory over the Turks. This picture, as an example of simple grandeur, has been contrasted by Reynolds with the artificial splendour of Rubens; and Fuseli alludes to it as constituting the due medium between dry apposition and exuberant contrast. The sublime picture of S. Pietro Martire was painted in 1523. Of this it is difficult to speak in adequate terms, without the appearance of hyperbolical panegyric. The composition is well known by engravings; but these convey only a faint notion of the original, which unites the utmost magnificence of historical design, with the finest style of landscape-painting. The gorgeous hues of Titian’s colouring are attempered in this picture by an impressive solemnity. The scene of violence and blood, though expressed with energy, is free from contortion or extravagance; grandeur pervades the whole, and even the figure of the flying friar has a character of dignity rarely surpassed. Two pictures on the same subject, the one by Domenichino, in the Academy of Bologna, the other by Giorgione, in our National Gallery, if compared with that of Titian, convey a forcible impression of the difference between first-rate genius and the finest talents of a secondary order. The picture of Giorgione is, however, most Titianesque in colouring.

In 1526 the celebrated satirist Aretine, and Sansovino the sculptor, came to reside in Venice. With these distinguished men Titian contracted an intimacy, which was the source of great pleasure to him, and ceased only with their lives. When Charles V. visited Bologna in 1529, Titian was invited to that city, where he painted an equestrian portrait of the Emperor. Charles, not only an admirer but a judge of art, was astonished at a style of painting of which he had formed no previous conception; he remunerated the artist splendidly, and expressed his determination never to sit to any other master. On returning to Bologna in 1532, he summoned Titian again to his court, and engaged him in many important works, treating him on all occasions with extraordinary respect and regard. It is affirmed, that in riding through Bologna he kept upon the artist’s right hand, an act of courtesy which excited such displeasure among the courtiers that they ventured upon a remonstrance. The answer given by Charles is well known, and has been since ascribed to other monarchs: “I have many nobles in my empire, but only one Titian.” On leaving Bologna, Titian accompanied Frederic Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, home to his own state; where, besides painting portraits of the Duke and his brother the Cardinal, he ornamented an apartment of the palace contiguous to the rooms painted by Giulio Romano, with portraits of the twelve Cæsars, taking his authorities from medals and antique marbles.

In passing through Parma, on the way to Mantua, he first saw the works of Correggio, who had been engaged in painting the dome of the cathedral. So little was that great man’s genius appreciated, and such was the ignorance of his employers, that they had actually dismissed him as inadequate to the task he had undertaken; nor was he allowed to resume it, until the lavish admiration bestowed on his work by Titian, had taught them better how to estimate his talents.

On returning to Venice, Titian found that a strong party had been raised in favour of Pordenone. He expressed no slight indignation at the attempt to exalt that painter to an equality with himself. Pordenone, nevertheless, was an artist of considerable powers, although certainly not qualified to compete with such an antagonist. The number of pictures which Titian continued to execute, would far exceed our limits to enumerate, and is so great as to excite astonishment; more especially as there is little evidence in his works that he was much assisted by inferior hands. In 1543, when Pope Paul III. visited Bologna, Titian painted an admirable portrait of him, and received an invitation to Rome. But he was unable to accept it, having engagements with the Duke of Urbino, whose palace he accordingly enriched with portraits of Charles V., Francis I., the Duke Guidobaldo, the Popes Sixtus IV., Julius II., and Paul III., the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Solyman, Emperor of the Turks.

Truth, it appears, rather than embellishment, was sought for in the portraits of those days. Titian’s portrait of Paul III. is executed with uncompromising accuracy. The figure is diminutive and decrepit, but the eyes have a look of penetrating sagacity. His Holiness was greatly pleased with it; and, as a mark of his favour, made offer to the artist of a valuable situation in a public department; which Titian declined, upon finding that his emoluments were to be deducted from the income of those who already held possession of it. He obtained, however, the promise of a benefice for his son Pomponio. Aretine thought his friend illiberally treated by Paul, and did not scruple to publish his opinion on the subject.

In 1545, when the Venetian Senate was compelled by the public exigencies to lay a general tax on the city, Titian was the only person exempted from the impost,—a noble homage to genius, which attests at once the liberality and the wisdom of that government. In this year, Titian having completed his engagements with the Duke of Urbino, and being, through the Cardinal Farnese, again invited to Rome, determined on a visit to that city; and he set out, accompanied by his son Orazio, several pupils, and a considerable number of domestics. He was received at Urbino by the Duke Guidobaldo II., and splendidly entertained for some days. On his departure, the Duke accompanied him from Urbino to Pesaro, and from thence sent forward with him a suite of horses and servants, as far as the gates of Rome. Here he was greeted with corresponding honours, and lodged in the Belvedere Palace. Vasari was, at this time, in the employment of Cardinal Farnese, and had the gratification of attending the great artist about the city. Titian was now engaged to paint a whole length portrait of Paul III., with the Cardinal Farnese and Duke Ottavio in one group. This picture is at present in the Museo Borbonico; and is a fine example of that highest style of portrait painting, which is scarce less difficult, or less elevated as a branch of art, than historical composition. An “Ecce homo,” painted at the same time, does not appear to have excited that admiration which his works usually obtained. The taste of the Roman artists and connoisseurs had been formed on the severe examples of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Polidoro, and others; so that the style of Titian was tried by a new and conventional standard, to which it was not fairly amenable. It was insinuated that his chief excellence lay in portrait-painting. Vasari relates that, in company with Michael Angelo, he made a visit to Titian at the Belvedere, and found him employed on the celebrated picture of Danae. Michael Angelo bestowed high commendations on it; but, as they went away, remarked to Vasari on Titian’s inaccurate style of design, observing, that if he had received his elementary education in a better school, his works would have been inimitable. Nothing, perhaps, has tended more than this anecdote to give currency to a belief that Titian was an unskilful draughtsman; an opinion which, if tried by the test of his best works, is utterly erroneous. There is not perhaps extant on canvass a more exquisite representation of female beauty, even in point of design, than this figure of Danae; and, with due reverence to the high authority of Michael Angelo, it may be doubted whether his notion of correct design was not tinctured by the ideal grandeur of his own style; which, however magnificent in itself, and appropriate to the scale of the Sistine chapel, is by no means a just medium for the forms of actual nature, nor adapted to the representation of beauty. Michael Angelo however frequently returned to look at this Danae, and always with expressions of increased admiration.

After a residence of two years at Rome, Titian returned to Venice, taking Florence in his route. The first work on which he engaged after his return, was a picture of the Marquis del Vasto haranguing his troops. He likewise began some altar-pieces, but finished little, being summoned in 1550, by the Emperor Charles, to Vienna. The princes and ministers assembled at the Imperial Court were astonished at the confidence with which Titian was honoured by the Emperor, who gave him free access to his presence at all times, a privilege extended only to his most intimate friends. The large sums which the Emperor frequently sent him, were always accompanied with the courteous assurance that they were meant to testify the monarch’s sense of his merits, not in payment for his works, those being beyond all price. On one occasion, while the Emperor was sitting for his portrait, Titian dropt a pencil; the monarch picked it up, and presented it to him, saying, on Titian’s apologizing in some confusion, “Titian is worthy to be served by Cæsar.” The same jealous feeling which had been evinced towards him at Bologna, again manifested itself; but the artist, who amidst his loftier studies had not neglected the cultivation of worldly knowledge, found means to obviate envy, and to conciliate, by courtesy and presents, the good will of the whole court. It was at this time that Charles, sated with glory and feeling the advances of infirmity, began to meditate his retreat from the world. This intention, it is said, he imparted to Titian, with whom he delighted to confer concerning the arrangement of a large picture, which he then commissioned the artist to paint, and which he intended to be his companion in his retirement. The subject was an apotheosis, in which Charles and his family were to be represented as introduced by Religion into the presence of the Trinity. At Inspruck, whither he accompanied the Emperor, Titian painted a superb picture, in which Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and his Queen Anna Maria, are represented with the attributes of Jupiter and Juno, and round them are the seven princesses, their daughters. From each of these illustrious ladies, Titian received a jewel each time they sat to him. Here also he collected portraits for the apotheosis.

On the Emperor’s departure for Flanders, Titian returned to Venice; where, soon after his arrival, he offered to finish the works which were wanting in the great hall of the council. This offer was cordially accepted by the Senate; and he was empowered to select the artists whom he thought best qualified to be his coadjutors. He nominated Paul Veronese and Tintoret, nor did those great painters feel themselves humiliated in working under his directions. In 1553 the Emperor Charles returned to Spain, and being at Barcelona, nominated Titian a Count Palatine of the empire, with all the privileges, authority, and powers attached to that dignity. He also created him a Knight of the Golden Spur, and a noble of the empire, transmitting the dignity to his legitimate children and descendants. Crowned with these honours, and with faculties scarcely impaired, Titian had now reached his seventy-fifth year; and it would be difficult to select a man the evening of whose life has been more fortunate and happy. He still found in the practice of his art a source of undiminished pleasure; his works were sought by princes with emulous avidity; he was considered the chief ornament of the city in which he dwelt. He was surrounded by friends distinguished by their worth or talents; he had acquired wealth and honour sufficient to satisfy his utmost ambition; and he was secure of immortal fame!

But at this period, to most men one of secession from toil, Titian engaged in new undertakings with as much alacrity as if life were still beginning, and the race of fortune still to run. He enriched Serravalle, Braganza, Milan, and Brescia, with splendid works, besides painting a great number for the churches of Venice, for different noblemen, and for his friends. Philip II. of Spain showed no less anxiety to possess his works, than Charles, his father, had done: and nowhere perhaps, not even in Venice, are so many of his pictures to be found, as in the palaces of Madrid and the Escurial. When Rubens was in Spain, he copied Titian’s picture of Eve tempting Adam with the fatal fruit, nobly acknowledging that he had only made a Flemish translation of an elegant Italian poem. It is said by some of Titian’s biographers, that he himself made a visit to Spain; but this has been clearly disproved. The most important works which he executed for Philip II. are the pictures of the Martyrdom of St. Lorenzo, and the Last Supper. In the first, three different effects of light are admirably expressed; the fire which consumes the saint, the flame of a tripod placed before a pagan deity, and the glory of a descending angel. This picture is said to be equal to any of his earlier productions. The Last Supper betrays signs of a feebler execution, which is, however, atoned for by more than usual purity of design. Titian in this work partially imitated Lionardo da Vinci, but in the spirit of congenial feeling, not as a plagiarist. To this picture, which he began at the age of eighty, he devoted the labour of nearly seven years. For Mary of England, Philip II.’s consort, he painted four mythological subjects, Prometheus, Tityus, Sisiphus, and Tantalus, the figures as large as life, and conceived in the highest style of grandeur.

In 1570 died Sansovino the sculptor. Aretine had paid the debt of nature some years before, an event which sensibly affected Titian; and this second loss plunged him into such affliction, that his powers, it is said, from that time perceptibly gave way. We learn, however, from Ridolfi, that the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, which he saw when in good condition, was ably executed. Some visions from the Apocalypse, in the monastery of St. John, painted about the same time, exhibit vivid imagination and fine colouring.

Henry III. of France, being in Venice in 1574, paid Titian a visit, accompanied by a numerous train. The venerable artist, then in his ninety-fifth year, received the monarch with dignified respect; his fine person was scarcely touched by decrepitude, his manners were still noble and prepossessing. In a long conversation with the King, he adverted, with the complacency natural to an old man at the close of so splendid a career, to honours which he had received from the Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand. When Henry, in walking through the galleries, demanded the prices of some of the pictures, he begged his Majesty’s acceptance of them as a free gift. In the mean time the courtiers and attendants were entertained with a magnificence, which might have become the establishment of a great prince.

Titian had nearly attained his hundredth year, when the plague, which had been raging some time in Trent, made its appearance in Venice, and swept him off, together with a third part of the inhabitants, within three months. He was buried in the church of the Frari; but the consternation and disorders prevalent at such a period, prevented his receiving those funeral honours which would otherwise have attended him to the tomb.

In comparing Titian with the great artists of the Roman and Florentine schools, it has been usual to describe him as the painter of physical nature, while to those masters has been assigned the loftier and exclusive praise of depicting the mind and passions. The works on which Titian was most frequently employed, appertaining to public edifices and the pomp of courts, were certainly of a class in which splendid effect is the chief requisite; but can it be said that the painter of the Ascension of the Virgin, and the S. Pietro Martire, was unequal to cope with subjects of sublimity and pathos? May it not be asked with greater justice, on the evidence of those pictures, whether any artist has surpassed him in those qualities? Even in design, on which point his capacity has been especially arraigned, Titian knew how to seize the line of grandeur without swelling into exaggeration, and to unite truth with ideality. Of all painters he was most above the ostentation of art; like Nature herself, he worked with such consummate skill that we are sensible of the process only by its effect. Rubens, Tintoret, Paul Veronese, were proud of their execution; few painters are not,—but the track of Titian’s pencil is scarcely ever discernable. His chiaroscuro, or disposition of light and shade, is never artificially concentrated; it is natural, as that of a summer’s day. His colouring, glorious as it is, made up of vivid contrasts, and combining the last degree of richness and depth with freshness and vivacity, is yet so graduated to the modesty of nature, that a thought of the painter’s palette never disturbs the illusion. Were it required to point out, amidst the whole range of painting, one performance as a proof of what art is capable of accomplishing, it is surely from among the works of Titian that such an example would be selected.

There is scarcely any large collection in which the works of Titian are not to be found. The pictures of Actæon and Callisto in the possession of Lord F. L. Gower, and the four subjects in the National Gallery, are among the finest in this country. The Venus in the Dulwich Gallery must have been fine; but the glazing, a very essential part of Titian’s process, has flown.

Details of the life of Titian will be found in Vasari, Lanzi, Ridolfi, but more especially in Ticozzi, whose memoir is at once diffuse and perspicuous. There is a life of Titian, in English, by Northcote.

Titian and Francisco di Mosaico, from a picture by Titian.

Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff
LUTHER.
From the original Picture by Holbein
in his Majesty’s Collection at Windsor.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

LUTHER.

Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Saxony in the year 1483, on the 10th of November; and if in the histories of great men it is usual to note with accuracy the day of their nativity, that of Luther has a peculiar claim on the biographer, since it has been the especial object of horoscopical calculations, and has even occasioned some serious differences among very profound astrologers. Luther has been the subject of unqualified admiration and eulogy: he has been assailed by the most virulent calumnies; and, if any thing more were wanted to prove the personal consideration in which he was held by his contemporaries, it would be sufficient to add, that he has also been made a mask for their follies.

He was of humble origin. At an early age he entered with zeal into the Order of Augustinian Hermits, who were Monks and Mendicants. In the schools of the Nominalists he pursued with acuteness and success the science of sophistry. And he was presently raised to the theological chair at Wittemberg: so that his first prejudices were enlisted in the service of the worst portion of the Roman Catholic Church; his opening reason was subjected to the most dangerous perversion; and a sure and early path was opened to his professional ambition. Such was not the discipline which could prepare the mind for any independent exertion; such were not the circumstances from which an ordinary mind could have emerged into the clear atmosphere of truth. In dignity a Professor, in theology an Augustinian, in philosophy a Nominalist, by education a Mendicant Monk, Luther seemed destined to be a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church, and a patron of all its corruptions.

But he possessed a genius naturally vast and penetrating, a memory quick and tenacious, patience inexhaustible, and a fund of learning very considerable for that age: above all, he had an erect and daring spirit, fraught with magnanimity and grandeur, and loving nothing so well as truth; so that his understanding was ever prepared to expand with the occasion, and his principles to change or rise, according to the increase and elevation of his knowledge. Nature had endued him with an ardent soul, a powerful and capacious understanding; education had chilled the one and contracted the other; and when he came forth into the fields of controversy, he had many of those trammels still hanging about him, which patience, and a succession of exertions, and the excitement of dispute, at length enabled him for the most part to cast away.

In the year 1517, John Tetzel, a Dominican Monk, was preaching in Germany the indulgences of Pope Leo X.; that is, he was publicly selling to all purchasers remission of all sins, past, present, or future, however great their number, however enormous their nature. The expressions with which Tetzel recommended his treasure appear to have been marked with peculiar impudence and indecency. But the act had in itself nothing novel or uncommon: the sale of indulgences had long been recognized as the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, and even sometimes censured by its more pious, or more prudent members. But the crisis was at length arrived in which the iniquity could no longer be repeated with impunity. The cup was at length full; and the hand of Luther was destined to dash it to the ground. In the schools of Wittemberg the Professor publicly censured, in ninety-five propositions, not only the extortion of the Indulgence-mongers, but the co-operation of the Pope in seducing the people from the true faith, and calling them away from the only road to salvation.

This first act of Luther’s evangelical life has been hastily ascribed by at least three eminent writers of very different descriptions, (Bossuet, Hume, and Voltaire,) to the narrowest monastic motive, the jealousy of a rival order. It is asserted that the Augustinian Friars had usually been invested in Saxony with the profitable commission, and that it only became offensive to Luther when it was transferred to a Dominican. There is no ground for that assertion. The Dominicans had been for nearly three centuries the peculiar favourites of the Holy See, and objects of all its partialities; and it is particularly remarkable, that, after the middle of the fifteenth century, during a period scandalously fruitful in the abuse in question, we very rarely meet with the name of any Augustinian as employed in that service. Moreover, it is almost equally important to add, that none of the contemporary adversaries of Luther ever advanced the charge against him, even at the moment in which the controversy was carried on with the most unscrupulous rancour.

The matter in dispute between Luther and Tetzel went in the first instance no farther than this—whether the Pope had authority to remit the divine chastisements denounced against offenders in the present and in a future state—or whether his power only extended to such human punishments, as form a part of ecclesiastical discipline—for the latter prerogative was not yet contested by Luther. Nevertheless, his office and his talents drew very general attention to the controversy; the German people, harassed by the exactions, and disgusted with the insolence of the papal emissaries, declared themselves warmly in favour of the Reformer; while on the other hand, the supporters of the abuse were so violent and clamorous, that the sound of the altercation speedily disturbed the festivities of the Vatican.

Leo X., a luxurious, indolent, and secular, though literary pontiff, would have disregarded the broil, and left it, like so many others, to subside of itself, had not the Emperor Maximilian assured him of the dangerous impression it had already made on the German people. Accordingly he commanded Luther to appear at the approaching diet of Augsburg, and justify himself before the papal legate. At the same time he appointed the Cardinal Caietan, a Dominican and a professed enemy of Luther, to be arbiter of the dispute. They met in October, 1518; the legate was imperious; Luther was not submissive. He solicited reasons; he was answered only with authority. He left the city in haste, and appealed “to the Pope better informed,”—yet it was still to the Pope that he appealed, he still recognized his sovereign supremacy. But in the following month Leo published an edict, in which he claimed the power of delivering sinners from all punishments due to every sort of transgression; and thereupon Luther, despairing of any reasonable accommodation with the pontiff, published an appeal from the Pope to a General Council.

The Pope then saw the expediency of conciliatory measures, and accordingly despatched a layman, named Miltitz, as his legate, with a commission to compose the difference by private negotiations with Luther. Miltitz united great dexterity and penetration with a temper naturally moderate, and not inflamed by ecclesiastical prejudices. Luther was still in the outset of his career. His opinions had not yet made any great progress towards maturity; he had not fully ascertained the foundations on which his principles were built; he had not proved by any experience the firmness of his own character. He yielded—at least so far as to express his perfect submission to the commands of the Pope, to exhort his followers to persist in the same obedience, and to promise silence on the subject of indulgences, provided it were also imposed upon his adversaries.

It is far too much to say (as some have said) that had Luther’s concession been carried into effect, the Reformation would have been stifled in its birth. The principles of the Reformation were too firmly seated in reason and in truth, and too deeply ingrafted in the hearts of the German people, to remain long suppressed through the infirmity of any individual advocate. But its progress might have been somewhat retarded, had not the violence of its enemies afforded it seasonable aid. A doctor named Eckius, a zealous satellite of papacy, invited Luther to a public disputation in the castle of Pleissenburg. The subject on which they argued was the supremacy of the Roman pontiff; and it was a substantial triumph for the Reformer, and no trifling insult to papal despotism, that the appointed arbiters left the question undecided.

Eckius repaired to Rome, and appealed in person to the offended authority of the Vatican. His remonstrances were reiterated and inflamed by the furious zeal of the Dominicans, with Caietan at their head. And thus Pope Leo, whose calmer and more indifferent judgment would probably have led him to accept the submission of Luther, and thus put the question for the moment at rest, was urged into measures of at least unseasonable vigour. He published a bull on the 15th of June, 1520, in which he solemnly condemned forty-one heresies extracted from the writings of the Reformer, and condemned these to be publicly burnt. At the same time he summoned the author, on pain of excommunication, to confess and retract his pretended errors within the space of sixty days, and to throw himself upon the mercy of the Vatican.

Open to the influence of mildness and persuasion, the breast of Luther only swelled more boldly when he was assailed by menace and insult. He refused the act of humiliation required of him; more than that, he determined to anticipate the anathema suspended over him, by at once withdrawing himself from the communion of the church; and again, having come to that resolution, he fixed upon the manner best suited to give it efficacy and publicity. With this view, he caused a pile of wood to be erected without the walls of Wittemberg, and there, in the presence of a vast multitude of all ranks and orders, he committed the bull to the flames; and with it, the Decree, the Decretals, the Clementines, the Extravagants, the entire code of Romish jurisprudence. It is necessary to observe, that he had prefaced this measure by a renewal of his former appeal to a General Council; so that the extent of his resistance may be accurately defined: he continued a faithful member of the Catholic Church, but he rejected the despotism of the Pope, he refused obedience to an unlimited and usurped authority. The bull of excommunication immediately followed (January 6, 1521), but it fell without force; and any dangerous effect, which it might otherwise have produced, was obviated by the provident boldness of Luther.

Here was the origin of the Reformation. This was the irreparable breach, which gradually widened to absolute disruption. The Reformer was now compromised, by his conduct, by his principles, perhaps even by his passions. He had crossed the bounds which divided insubordination from rebellion, and his banners were openly unfurled, and his legions pressed forward on the march to Rome. Henceforward the champion of the Gospel entered with more than his former courage on the pursuit of truth; and having shaken off one of the greatest and earliest of the prejudices in which he had been educated, he proceeded with fearless independence to examine and dissipate the rest.

Charles V. succeeded Maximilian in the empire in the year 1519; and since Frederic of Saxony persisted in protecting the person of the Reformer, Leo X. became the more anxious to arouse the imperial indignation in defence of the injured majesty of the Church. In 1521 a diet was assembled at Worms, and Luther was summoned to plead his cause before it. A safe-conduct was granted him by the Emperor; and on the 17th of April he presented himself before the august aristocracy of Germany. This audience gave occasion to the most splendid scene in his history. His friends were yet few, and of no great influence; his enemies were numerous, and powerful, and eager for his destruction: the cause of truth, the hopes of religious regeneration, appeared to be placed at that moment in the discretion and constancy of one man. The faithful trembled. But Luther had then cast off the encumbrances of early fears and prepossessions, and was prepared to give a free course to his earnest and unyielding character. His manner and expressions abounded with respect and humility; but in the matter of his public apology he declined in no one particular from the fulness of his conviction. Of the numerous opinions which he had by this time adopted at variance with the injunctions of Rome, there was not one which in the hour of danger he consented to compromise. The most violent exertions were made by the papal party to effect his immediate ruin; and there were some who were not ashamed to counsel a direct violation of the imperial safe-conduct: it was designed to re-enact the crimes of Constance, after the interval of a century, on another theatre. But the infamous proposal was soon rejected; and it was on this occasion that Charles is recorded to have replied with princely indignation, that if honour were banished from every other residence, it ought to find refuge in the breasts of kings.

Luther was permitted to retire from the diet; but he had not proceeded far on his return when he was surprised by a number of armed men, and carried away into captivity. It was an act of friendly violence. A temporary concealment was thought necessary for his present security, and he was hastily conveyed to the solitary Castle of Wartenburg. In the mean time the assembly issued the declaration known in history as the “Edict of Worms,” in which the Reformer was denounced as an excommunicated schismatic and heretic; and all his friends and adherents, all who protected or conversed with him, were pursued by censures and penalties. The cause of papacy obtained a momentary, perhaps only a seeming triumph, for it was not followed by any substantial consequences; and while the anathematized Reformer lay in safety in his secret Patmos, as he used to call it, the Emperor withdrew to other parts of Europe to prosecute schemes and interests which then seemed far more important than the religious tenets of a German Monk.

While Luther was in retirement, his disciples at Wittemberg, under the guidance of Carlostadt, a man of learning and piety, proceeded to put into force some of the first principles of the Reformation. They would have restrained by compulsion the superstition of private masses, and torn away from the churches the proscribed images. Luther disapproved of the violence of these measures; or it may also be, as some impartial writers have insinuated, that he grudged to any other than himself the glory of achieving them. Accordingly, after an exile of ten months, he suddenly came forth from his place of refuge, and appeared at Wittemberg. Had he then confined his influence to the introduction of a more moderate policy among the reformers, many plausible arguments might have been urged in his favour. But he also appears, unhappily, to have been animated by a personal animosity against Carlostadt, which was displayed both then and afterwards in some acts not very far removed from persecution.

The marriage of Luther, and his marriage to a nun, was the event of his life which gave most triumph to his enemies, and perplexity to his friends. It was in perfect conformity with his masculine and daring mind, that having satisfied himself of the nullity of his monastic vows, he should take the boldest method of displaying to the world how utterly he rejected them. Others might have acted differently, and abstained, either from conscientious scruples, or, being satisfied in their own minds, from fear to give offence to their weaker brethren; and it would be presumptuous to condemn either course of action. It is proper to mention that this marriage did not take place till the year 1525, after Luther had long formally rejected many of the observances of the Roman Catholic Church; and that the nun whom he espoused had quitted her convent, and renounced her profession some time before.

The war of the peasants, and the fanaticism of Munster and his followers, presently afterwards desolated Germany; and the papal party did not lose that occasion to vilify the principles of the reformers, and identify the revolt from a spiritual despotism with general insurrection and massacre. It is therefore necessary here to observe, that the false enthusiasm of Munster was perhaps first detected and denounced by Luther; and that the pen of the latter was incessantly employed in deprecating every act of civil insubordination. He was the loudest in his condemnation of some acts of spoliation by laymen, who appropriated the monastic revenues; and at a subsequent period so far did he carry his principles, so averse was he, not only from the use of offensive violence, but even from the employment of force in the defence of his cause, that on some later occasions he exhorted the Elector of Saxony by no means to oppose the imperial edicts by arms, but rather to consign the persons and principles of the reformers to the protection of Providence. For he was inspired with a holy confidence that Christ would not desert his faithful followers; but rather find means to accomplish his work without the agitation of civil disorders, or the intervention of the sword. That confidence evinced the perfect earnestness of his professions, and his entire devotion to the truth of his principles. It also proved that he had given himself up to the cause in which he had engaged, and that he was elevated above the consideration of personal safety. This was no effeminate enthusiasm, no passionate aspiration after the glory of martyrdom! It was the working of the Spirit of God upon an ardent nature, impressed with the divine character of the mission with which it was intrusted, and assured, against all obstacles, of final and perfect success.

As this is not a history of the Reformation, but only a sketch of the life of an individual reformer, we shall at once proceed to an affair strongly, though not very favourably, illustrating his character. The subject of the Eucharist commanded, among the various doctrinal differences, perhaps the greatest attention; and in this matter Luther receded but a short space, and with unusual timidity, from the faith in which he had been educated. He admitted the real corporeal presence in the elements, and differed from the church only as to the manner of that presence. He rejected the actual and perfect change of substance, but supposed the flesh to subsist in, or with the bread, as fire subsists in red-hot iron. Consequently, he renounced the term transubstantiation, and substituted consubstantiation in its place. In the mean time, Zuinglius, the reformer of Zuric, had examined the same question with greater independence, and had reached the bolder conclusion, that the bread and wine are no more than external signs, intended to revive our recollections and animate our piety. This opinion was adopted by Carlostadt, Œcolampadius, and other fathers of the Reformation, and followed by the Swiss Protestants, and generally by the free cities of the Empire. Those who held it were called Sacramentarians. The opinion of Luther prevailed in Saxony, and in the more northern provinces of Germany.

The difference was important. It was felt to be so by the reformers themselves; and the Lutheran party expressed that sentiment with too little moderation. The Papists, or Papalins (Papalini), were alert in perceiving the division, in exciting the dissension, and in inflaming it, if possible, into absolute schism; and in this matter it must be admitted, that Luther himself was too much disposed by his intemperate vehemence to further their design. These discords were becoming dangerous; and in 1529, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, the most ardent among the protectors of the Reformation, assembled the leading doctors of either party to a public disputation at Marpurg. The particulars of this conference are singularly interesting to the theological reader; but it is here sufficient to mention, without entering into the doctrinal merits of the controversy, that whatever was imperious in assertion and overbearing in authority, and unyielding and unsparing in polemical altercation, proceeded from the mouth and party of Luther; that every approach to humility, and self-distrust, and mutual toleration, and common friendship, came from the side of Zuinglius and the Sacramentarians. And we are bound to add, that the same uncompromising spirit, which precluded Luther from all co-operation or fellowship with those whom he thought in error (it was the predominant spirit of the church which he had deserted) continued on future occasions to interrupt and even endanger the work of his own hands. But that very spirit was the vice of a character, which endured no moderation or concession in any matter wherein Christian truth was concerned, but which too hastily assumed its own infallibility in ascertaining that truth. Luther would have excommunicated the Sacramentarians; and he did not perceive how precisely his principle was the same with that of the church which had excommunicated himself.

Luther was not present at the celebrated Diet of Augsburg, held under the superintendence of Charles V. in 1530; but he was in constant correspondence with Melancthon during that fearful period, and in the reproofs which he cast on the temporizing, though perhaps necessary, negotiations of the latter, he at least exhibited his own uprightness and impetuosity. The ‘Confession’ of the Protestants, there published, was constructed on the basis of seventeen articles previously drawn up by Luther; and it was not without his counsels that the faith, permanently adopted by the church which bears his name, was finally digested and matured. From that crisis the history of the Reformation took more of a political, less of a religious character, and the name of Luther is therefore less prominent than in the earlier proceedings. But he still continued for sixteen years longer to exert his energies in the cause which was peculiarly his own, and to influence by his advice and authority the new ecclesiastical system.

He died in the year 1546, the same, as it singularly happened, in which the Council of Trent assembled, for the self-reformation and re-union of the Roman Catholic Church. But that attempt, even had it been made with judgment and sincerity, was then too late. During the twenty-nine years which composed the public life of Luther, the principles of the Gospel, having fallen upon hearts already prepared for their reception, were rooted beyond the possibility of extirpation; and when the great Reformer closed his eyes upon the scene of his earthly toils and glory, he might depart in the peaceful confidence that the objects of his mission were virtually accomplished, and the work of the Lord placed in security by the same heaven-directed hand which had raised it from the dust.

RODNEY.

This eminent officer was descended from a younger branch of an ancient family, long resident in the county of Somerset. His father lived at Walton upon Thames, where George Brydges Rodney, afterwards Lord Rodney, was born, February 19, 1718. He received the rudiments of his education at Harrow School, from which he was removed when only twelve years old, and sent to sea. He gained promotion rapidly, being made Lieutenant in February, 1739, and Captain in 1742. He was still farther fortunate in being almost constantly employed for several years. In the Eagle, of sixty guns, Captain Rodney bore a distinguished part in the action fought by Admiral Hawke with the French fleet, off Cape Finisterre, October 14, 1747. The year after he was sent out with the rank of Commodore, as Governor and Commander-in-Chief on the Newfoundland station, where he remained till October, 1752.

Returning to England, he took his seat in Parliament for the borough of Saltash, and was successively appointed to the Fougueux, of sixty-four guns, the Prince George, of ninety, and the Dublin, of seventy-four guns. In the last-named ship he served under Admiral Hawke in the expedition against Rochefort in 1757, which failed entirely, after great expense had been incurred, and great expectations raised; and he assisted at the capture of Louisburg by Admiral Boscawen in 1758. He was raised to the rank of Rear-Admiral, May 19, 1759, after twenty-eight years of active and almost uninterrupted service.

In July following he was ordered to take the command of a squadron destined to attack Havre, and destroy a number of flat-bottomed boats, prepared, it was supposed, to assist a meditated invasion of Great Britain. This service he effectually performed.

Engraved by E. Scriven.
LORD RODNEY.
From a Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds
in his Majesty’s Collection at S^t. James’s Palace.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

He was soon raised to a more important sphere of action, being named Commander-in-Chief at Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, in the autumn of 1761. No naval achievement of remarkable brilliance occurred during the short period of his holding this command: but the capture of the valuable islands of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Grenada, bears testimony to the efficiency of the fleet under his orders, and the good understanding between the land and sea forces employed in this service. He was recalled on the conclusion of peace in 1763. Eight years elapsed before he was again called into service; a period fruitful in marks of favour from the crown, though barren of professional laurels. He was created a Baronet soon after his return; he was raised by successive steps to the rank of Vice-Admiral of the Red; and he was appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital. This office he was required to resign on being again sent out to the West Indies as Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica in 1771. This was a period of profound peace: but the duties of peace are often more difficult, and require more moral courage for their discharge, than those of war. It is one of Rodney’s best claims to distinction, that he suffered none under his command, or within the sphere of his influence, to neglect their duties with impunity: and in the mode of carrying on naval affairs then practised in the West Indies, he found much ground for immediate interference, as well as for representation and remonstrance to his superiors at home. He earnestly desired to obtain the government of Jamaica; but on a vacancy occurring in 1773, another person was appointed; and he was recalled, and struck his flag at Portsmouth, September 4, 1774.

The next four years of Sir George Rodney’s life were much harassed by pecuniary embarrassment. The habits of a sailor’s life are proverbially unsuited to strict economy: and moving, when at home, in the most fashionable society of London, it is no wonder that his expenses outran his professional gains. He was compelled to retire to Paris, where he remained until the American war afforded a prospect of his being called into active service again. In May, 1778, he was promoted to the rank of Admiral of the White: but it was not till the autumn of 1779 that he was gratified by being re-appointed to the command on the Barbadoes station. He sailed from Plymouth December 29, to enter on the final and crowning scene of his glory.

At this time Spain and France were at war with England. The memorable siege of Gibraltar was in progress, and a Spanish fleet blockaded the Straits. The British navy was reduced unwarrantably low in point of disposable force; and was farther crippled by a spirit of disunion and jealousy among its officers, arising partly perhaps from the virulence of party politics, and partly from the misconduct of the Admiralty, which threatened even worse consequences than the mere want of physical force. By this spirit Sir George Rodney’s fleet was deeply tainted, to his great mortification and the great injury of the country. At first, however, every thing appeared to prosper. The fleet consisted of twenty-two sail of the line, and eight frigates. Before Rodney had been at sea ten days, he captured seven Spanish vessels of war, with a large convoy of provisions and stores; and on January 16, near Cape St. Vincent, afterwards made memorable by a more important action, he encountered a Spanish fleet commanded by Don Juan de Langara, of eleven ships of the line and two frigates. The superiority of the British force rendered victory certain. Five Spanish ships were taken, and two destroyed; and had not the action been in the night, and in tempestuous weather, probably every ship would have been captured. These at least are the reasons which Rodney gave in his despatches, for not having done more: in private letters he hints that he was ill-supported by his captains. Trifling as this success would have seemed in later times, it was then very acceptable to the country; and the Admiral received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. The scandalous feeling of jealousy of their commander, ill-will to the ministry, or whatever other modification of party spirit it was, which could prevent brave men (and such they were) from performing their duty to the utmost in the hour of battle, broke out again with more violence when Rodney next came within sight of the enemy. This was near Martinique, April 17, 1780, about a month after his arrival in the West Indies. The French fleet, commanded by the Comte de Guichen, was slightly superior in force. Rodney’s intention was to attack the enemy’s rear in close order and with his whole strength; but his captains disobeyed his orders, deranged his plan, and careless of the signals for close action, repeatedly made, kept for the most part at cautious distance from the enemy. His own ship, the Sandwich, engaged for an hour and a half a seventy-four and two eighty-gun ships, compelled them to bear away, and broke completely through the enemy’s line. Not more than five or six ships did their duty. Had all done it, the victory over De Grasse might have been anticipated, and the end of the war accelerated perhaps by two years. In his despatches Rodney censured the conduct of his captains; but the Admiralty thought proper to suppress the passage. In his private letters to Lady Rodney, he complains bitterly. One only of his captains was brought to trial, and he was broken. That ampler justice was not done on the delinquents, is to be explained by the difficulty of finding officers to form courts martial, where almost all were equally guilty. But this partial severity, with the vigorous measures which the Admiral took to recall others to their duty, produced due effect, and we hear no more of want of discipline, or reluctance to engage. For this action Rodney received the thanks of the House of Commons, with a pension for himself and his family of £2000 per annum.

Nothing of importance occurred during the rest of the spring; and De Guichen having returned to Europe, Rodney sailed to New York, to co-operate, during the rainy season in the West Indies, with the British forces engaged in the American war. In November he returned to his station. In the course of the autumn he had been chosen to represent Westminster without expense, and had received the Order of the Bath. The commencement of the following year was signalized by acts of more importance. The British ministry had been induced to declare war against Holland; and they sent out immediate instructions to Rodney, to attack the possessions of the states in the West Indies. St. Eustatius was selected for the first blow, and it surrendered without firing a shot. Small and barren, yet this island was of great importance for the support which it had long afforded to the French and Americans under colour of neutrality, and for the vast wealth which was captured in it. In the course of the spring, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, with the French island of St. Bartholomew, were also taken.

In the autumn, Rodney returned to Europe for the recovery of his health. He was received with distinguished favour by the King, and with enthusiasm by the people, and during his stay, was created Vice-Admiral of Great Britain, in the place of Lord Hawke, deceased. He returned in the middle of January, being invested with the command of the whole West Indies, not merely the Barbadoes station, as before. The situation of affairs at this time was very critical. The French fleet, commanded by the Comte de Grasse, consisted of thirty-three sail[^[6]] of the line, two fifty-gun ships and frigates, with a large body of troops, and a train of heavy cannon on board. A powerful Spanish fleet was also in the West Indies. It was intended to form a junction, and then with an overwhelming force of near fifty sail of the line, to proceed to Jamaica, conquer that important island, and one by one to reduce all the British colonies.

[6]. Or thirty-four, according to the official list found on board the Ville de Paris after the engagement.

The French quitted Fort Royal Bay, in Martinique, April 8, 1782. Intelligence was immediately brought to the British fleet at St. Lucia, which lost no time in following them. In a partial action on the 9th, two of the French ships were, disabled. A third was crippled by accident on the night of the 11th. Thus, on the morning of the 12th, the decisive day, the French line was reduced to thirty or thirty-one ships, and numerically the British fleet was stronger: but this difference was more than compensated by the greater weight of metal in the French broadside, which was calculated by Sir Charles Douglas to have exceeded the British by 4396 pounds. On that morning, about seven o’clock, Rodney bore down obliquely on the French line, and passed to leeward of it on the opposite tack. His own ship was the eighteenth from the van: and the seventeen leading ships having pushed on and taken their position each abreast of an enemy, Rodney, in the Formidable, broke through the line between the seventeenth and eighteenth ships, engaged the Ville de Paris, De Grasse’s flag-ship, and compelled her to strike. The battle was obstinately fought, and lasted till half-past six in the evening. The loss of the British in killed and wounded was severe, but disproportionately less than that of the French. Seven ships of the line and two frigates fell into the hands of the victors.

This battle ruined the power of the allied fleets in the West Indies, and materially contributed to the re-establishment of peace, which was concluded in January, 1783. Many other circumstances have combined to confer celebrity upon it. It restored to Britain the dominion of the ocean, after that dominion had been some time in abeyance; it proved the commencement of a long series of most brilliant victories, untarnished by any defeat on a large scale; and it was the first instance in which the manœuvre of breaking through the enemy’s line, and attacking him on both sides, had been practised. The question to whom the merit of this invention, which for many years rested with Lord Rodney, is due, has of late been much canvassed before the public. It has been claimed for Mr. Clerk, of Eldin, author of a treatise on Naval Tactics, and for Sir Charles Douglas, Captain of the Fleet, who served on board the Formidable, and is said to have suggested it, as a sudden thought, during the action. The claim of Mr. Clerk appears now to be generally disallowed. The evidence in favour of each of the other parties is strong and conflicting; and as we have not space to discuss it, we may be excused for not expressing any opinion upon it. The claims of Sir Charles Douglas have been advanced by his son, Sir Howard Douglas, in some recent publications: the opposite side of the question has been argued in the Quarterly Review, No. 83. It has also been repeatedly discussed in the United Service Magazine. It would appear, however, at all events, that as the final judgment and responsibility rested with the Admiral, so also should the chief honour of the measure: and it is certain that the gallant and generous officer for whom this claim has been advanced, rejected all praise which seemed to him in the least to derogate from the glory of his commanding officer.

A change of ministry had taken place in the spring; and one of the first acts of the Whigs, on coming into office, was to recall Rodney, who had always been opposed to them in politics. The officer appointed to succeed him had but just sailed, when news of his decisive and glorious victory arrived in England. The Admiralty sent an express, to endeavour to recall their unlucky step; but it was too late. Rodney landed at Bristol, and closed his career of service, September 21, 1782. He was received with enthusiasm, raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Rodney, and presented with an additional pension of £2000 per annum. From this time he lived chiefly in the country, and died May 23, 1792, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He was twice married, and left a numerous family to inherit his well-earned honours and rewards.

The life of Lord Rodney, published by General Mundy, is valuable, as containing much of his official and private correspondence. The former proves that his views as a Commander-in-Chief were enlarged, judicious, and patriotic; the latter is lively and affectionate, and shows him to have been most amiable in domestic life. Memoirs of his life and principal actions will be found in most works on naval history and biography.

Monument of Lord Rodney in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

LAGRANGE.

Joseph Louis Lagrange was born at Turin, January 25th, 1736. His great-grandfather was a Frenchman, who entered into the service of the then Duke of Savoy; and from this circumstance, as well as his subsequent settlement in France, and his always writing in their language, the French claim him as their countryman: an honour which the Italians are far from conceding to them.

Engraved by Rob^t. Hart.
LA GRANGE.
From a Bust in the Library of the
Institute of France.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

The father of Lagrange, luckily perhaps for the fame of his son, was ruined by some unfortunate speculation. The latter used to say, that had he possessed fortune, he should probably never have turned his attention to the science in which he excelled. He was placed at the College of Turin, and applied himself diligently and with enthusiasm to classical literature, showing no taste at first for mathematics. In about a year he began to attend to the geometry of the ancients. A memoir of Halley in the Philosophical Transactions, on the superiority of modern analysis, produced consequences of which the author little dreamed. Lagrange met with it, before his views upon the subject had settled: and immediately, being then only seventeen years old, applied himself to the study of the modern mathematics. Before this change in his studies, according to Delambre[^[7]], after it, according to others, but certainly while very young, he was elected professor at the Royal School of Artillery at Turin. We may best convey some notion of his early proficiency, by stating without detail, that at the age of twenty-three we find him—the founder of an Academy of Sciences at Turin, whose volumes yield in interest to none, and owe that interest principally to his productions,—a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, an honour obtained through the medium of Euler, who shortly after announced him to Frederic of Prussia as the fittest man in Europe to succeed himself,—and settling, finally, a most intricate question[^[8]] of mathematics, which had given rise to long discussions between Euler and D’Alembert, then perhaps the two first mathematicians in Europe. He had previously extended the method of Euler for the solution of what are called isoperimetrical problems, and laid the foundation for the Calculus of Variations, the most decided advance, in our opinion, which any one has made since the death of Newton.

[7]. Éloge de Lagrange, Mémoires de l’Institut. 1812.

[8]. The admissibility of discontinuous functions into the integrals of partial differential equations.

In 1764 he gained the prize proposed by the Academy of Sciences for an Essay on the Libration of the Moon; and in 1766, that for an Essay on the Theory of the Satellites of Jupiter. In the former of these we find him, for the first time, using the principle of virtual velocities, which had hitherto remained almost a barren truth, but which he afterwards made, in conjunction with the principle known after the name of D’Alembert, the foundation of the whole of mechanical science.

In 1766, Euler, intending to return to St. Petersburg, resigned the situation which he held at the Court of Berlin, that of director of the physico-mathematical class of the Academy of Sciences. Frederic offered this place to D’Alembert, who refused it for himself, but joined with Euler in recommending Lagrange. The King of Prussia acceded to their suggestion, and Lagrange was invited to establish himself at Berlin, with a salary equivalent to 6,000 francs.

Lagrange remained at Berlin till after the death of Frederic. He here married a lady who was related to him, and who came from Turin at his request. She died after a lingering illness of several years, marked by the most unceasing attention on the part of her husband, who abandoned his pursuits to devote himself entirely to her during her illness. Nevertheless the period of his sojourn at Berlin is perhaps the brightest of a life, most years of which, from the age of eighteen to that of seventy, were sufficient to ensure a lasting reputation. He here laid the foundation of his Theory of Functions, of his general method for determining the secular variations of the planetary orbits; and here he wrote his Mécanique Analytique.

At the death of Frederic, he found that science was no longer treated with the same respect at the Court of Berlin. He had found from the commencement of his stay there, that foreigners were looked upon with dislike, and his spirits had not recovered the loss of his wife. Many advantageous offers were made to him by different courts, and among the rest by that of France. Mirabeau, who was then at Berlin, first pointed out to the ministers of Louis XVI. the acquisition which was in their power. Lagrange removed to Paris in 1787, and remained there till his death.

He was then weary of his pursuits, and it is said that his Mécanique Analytique, which he had sent from Berlin to be printed in Paris, lay unopened by himself for more than two years after its publication in 1788. He employed himself in the study of ecclesiastical and other history, of medicine, botany, and metaphysics. When the discoveries of the chemists changed the theory and notation of their science, or rather created a science where none existed before, he threw himself upon the new study with avidity, and declared that they had made it easy; as easy as algebra.

In 1792, being then fifty-six years of age, he married Mlle. Lemonnier, daughter of the astronomer of that name, and daughter, grand-daughter, and niece of members of the Academy of Sciences. This lady well deserves honourable mention in every memoir of Lagrange, for the affectionate care which she took of his declining years.

When, after the subversion of the monarchy, a commission was appointed to examine into the system of weights and measures, Lagrange was placed at its head. In this post he continued, not being included in the purification, which three months after its formation, deprived the commission of the services of Laplace, Coulomb, Brisson, Borda, and Delambre. He took no part in politics, and appears to have given no offence to any party; hence, when the government of Robespierre commanded all foreigners to quit France, an exception was made in his favour by the committee of public safety. All his friends had advised him to retire from the country; and the fate of Lavoisier and Bailly was sufficient to show that scientific talents of the most useful character were no protection. He now regretted that he had not followed their advice, and even meditated returning to Berlin. He did not, however, put this scheme in execution; and as the Normal and Polytechnic Schools were successively founded, he was appointed to professorships in both. His Leçons, delivered to the former institution, appear in their published series, and among them we find the Leçons sur la Théorie des Fonctions, which has since appeared as a separate work.

It is almost needless to say, so well as the public know how science was encouraged under the Consulate and the Empire, that Lagrange received from Napoleon every possible respect and distinction. The titles of senator, count of the empire, grand cordon of the legion of honour, &c. were given to him. It is also gratifying to be able to add that his abstinence from political engagements has left his memory unstained by such imputations as, we know not how justly, rest upon that of Laplace. We might have omitted to state that he belonged to all the scientific academies of Europe; but that it is necessary, for the sake of the scientific reputation of this country, to correct an inadvertence into which the able author of the ‘Life of Lagrange,’ in the Biographie Universelle, appears to have fallen. He states that Lagrange was not a member of the Royal Society of London[^[9]]. The fact is, that he was elected in 1798, and his name continued on the list of foreign members all the remainder of his life.

[9]. Les principales sociétés savantes de L’Europe, celle de Londres exceptée, s’empressèrent de décorer de son nom la liste de leurs membres.

About the end of March, 1813, Lagrange was seized with a fever, which caused his death. He had previously been subject to fits of fainting, in the last of which he was found by Madame Lagrange, having fallen against the corner of a table. He preserved his senses to the last, and on the 8th of April conversed for more than two hours with M.M. Monge, Lacepède, and Chaptal, who were commissioned by the Emperor to carry him the grand cordon of the order of the Réunion. He then promised them, not thinking himself so near his end, full details of his early life. Unfortunately this promise remains unfulfilled, as he died on the 10th of April, in his seventy-eighth year. His father had died some years before him at the age of ninety-five, having had eleven children, all of whom, except the subject of this memoir, and one other, died young. Lagrange himself had no children. His private character, as all accounts agree in stating, was most exemplary. His manners were peculiarly mild, and though occasionally abstracted and absent, he was fond of society, particularly that of the young. In the earlier part of his life he was attacked in an unworthy manner by Fontaine, who at the same time boasted of some discovery which he attributed to himself. Lagrange replied with the urbanity which always accompanied his dealings with others, and while he overthrew the claim of his opponent, he repaid his incivility by the compliment of admitting that his talents were such as would have enabled him to attain the discovery, if it had not been previously made. Such moderation is rare, and as might be expected, it was accompanied by the utmost modesty in speaking of himself. In the latter half of his life, it would have been affectation in him to have denied his own powers, or spoken slightingly of his own discoveries; nor do we find that he ever did so. In giving opinions or explanations, he broke off the moment he found that his ideas were not as clear or his knowledge as definite, as he had thought when he begun; concluding abruptly with Je ne sais pas, Je ne sais pas. Among his studies, music found a place; but, though pleased with the art, he used to assert that he never heard more than three bars: the fourth found him wrapped in meditation, and by his own account, he solved very difficult problems in these circumstances. He would, therefore, as M. Delambre remarks, measure the beauty of a piece of music by the mathematical suggestions which he derived from it; and his arrangement of the great masters would be not a little curious.

He never would allow a portrait of himself to be taken. A very well executed bust, which is now in the Library of the Institute, was made from a sketch by a young Italian artist, sent by the Academy of Turin. From this bust our portrait is engraved.

Of the character of Lagrange as a philosopher, no description, in so few words, can be better than that of M. Laplace: “Among the discoverers who have most enlarged the bounds of our knowledge, Newton and Lagrange appear to me to have possessed in the highest degree that happy tact, which leads to the discovery of general principles, and which constitutes true genius for science. This tact, united with a rare degree of elegance in the manner of explaining the most abstract theories, is the characteristic of Lagrange.” This power of generalization distinguishes all that he has written, and the student of the Mécanique Analytique is amazed when he comes to a chapter headed “Equations Différentielles pour la solution de tous les problèmes de Dynamique,” which, on examination, he finds equally applicable, and equally applied, to the vibrations of a pendulum or the motion of a planet. On the exquisite symmetry of his notation and style, we need not enlarge: the mathematician either is acquainted with it, or should become so with all speed; and others will perhaps only smile at the notion of one set of algebraical symbols possessing more elegance or beauty than another.

The separate works of Lagrange are—1. Mécanique Analytique, the second edition of which he was engaged upon when he died; the first edition was published in 1788. 2. Théorie des Fonctions Analytiques, a system of Fluxions on purely algebraical principles; first edition, 1797; second edition, 1813. 3. Leçons sur le Calcul des Fonctions; first published separately in 1806. 4. Résolution des Equations numériques; three editions, in 1798, 1808, and 1826. To give only a list of his separate memoirs would double the length of this life: they will be found in the Miscellanea Taurinensia, tom. i.-v., and 1784–5; Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, 1765–1803; Recueils de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris, 1773–4, and tom. ix.; Mémoires des Savans Etrangers, tom. vii. and x.; Mémoires de l’Institut, 1808–9; Journal de l’École Polytechnique, tom. ii. cahiers 5, 6, tom. viii. cahier 15; Seánces des Écoles Normales; and Connoissance des Tems, 1814, 1817.

Engraved by Ja^s. Mollison.
VOLTAIRE.
From an original Picture by Largillière
in the collection of the Institute of France.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

VOLTAIRE.

François Marie Arouet, who is commonly known by his assumed name, De Voltaire, was born at Châtenay, near Sceaux, February 20, 1694. He soon distinguished himself as a child of extraordinary abilities. The Abbé de Châteauneuf, his godfather, took charge of the elements of his education, and laboured successfully to improve the talents of his ready pupil without much regard to his morals. At three years old the future champion of infidelity had learned by heart the Moisade, an irreligious poem of J. B. Rousseau. These lessons were not forgotten at college, where he passed rapidly through the usual courses of study, and alarmed his Jesuit preceptors by the undisguised licence of his opinions. About this time some of his first attempts at poetry obtained for him the notice of Ninon de l’Enclos; and when the Abbé de Châteauneuf, who had been the last in her long list of favourites, introduced him at her house, she was so pleased with the promising talents of the boy, that she left him by will a legacy of 2,000 francs to purchase books. The Ecole de Droit, where Arouet next studied, was much less suited to his disposition than the College of Louis le Grand. In vain his father urged him to undertake the drudgery of a profession: the Abbé was a more agreeable monitor, and under his auspices the young man sought with eagerness the best Parisian society. At the suppers of the Prince de Conti, he became acquainted with wits and poets, acquired the easy tone of familiar politeness, and distinguished himself by the delicacy of his flatteries, and the liveliness of his repartee. In 1713 he went to Holland as page to the French ambassador, the Marquis de Châteauneuf. This place had been solicited by his father in the hope of detaching him from dissipated habits. But little was gained by the step, for in a short time he was sent back to his family, in consequence of an intrigue with a M^lle. Du Noyer, whose mother, a Protestant refugee at the Hague, gained her living by scandal and libels, and on this occasion thought something might be got by complaining to the ambassador, and printing young Arouet’s love-letters. He was, however, not easily discouraged. He endeavoured to interest the Jesuits in his affairs, by representing M^lle. Du Noyer as a ready convert, whom it would be Catholic charity to snatch from the influence of an apostate mother. This manœuvre having failed, he sought a reconciliation with his father, who remained a long while implacable; but touched at last by his son’s entreaties to be permitted to see him once more, on condition of leaving the country immediately afterwards for America, he consented to receive him into favour. Arouet again attempted legal studies, but soon abandoned them in disgust. The Regency had now commenced; and among the numerous satires directed against the memory of Louis XIV., one was attributed to him. The report caused him a year’s imprisonment in the Bastille. Soon afterwards he changed the name of Arouet for that of Voltaire. “I have been unhappy,” he said, “so long as I bore the first: let us see if the other will bring better fortune.” It seemed indeed that it did so, for in 1718 the tragedy of Œdipe was represented, and established the reputation of its author. It had been principally composed in the Bastille, where he also laid the foundation of his Henriade, which occupied the time he could spare from amorous and political intrigue, until 1724. Desiring to publish it, he submitted the poem to some select friends, men of severe taste, who met at the house of the President de Maisons. They found so many faults that the author threw the manuscript into the fire. The President Hénault rescued it with difficulty, and said, “Young man, your haste has cost me a pair of best lace ruffles: why should your poem be better than its hero, who was full of faults, yet none of us like him the worse?” Surreptitious copies spread rapidly, and gained for the author much both of celebrity and envy. But it displeased two powerful classes: the priests were apprehensive of its religious, the courtiers of its political, tendency; insomuch that the publication was prohibited by government, and the young king refused to accept the dedication. Soon after this, Voltaire was sent again to the Bastille, in consequence of a quarrel with the Chevalier de Rohan: and on his liberation, he was banished to England. There he remained three years, perhaps the most important era of his life, for it gave an entirely new direction to his lively mind. Hitherto a wit, and a writer of agreeable verse, he became in England a philosopher. Returning to France in 1726, he brought with him an admiration of our manners, and a knowledge of our best writers, which visibly influenced his own compositions and those of his contemporaries. He now published several poetical and dramatic pieces with variable success; but he was more than once forced to quit Paris by the clamour and persecution of his enemies. After the failure of one of his plays, Fontenelle and some other literary associates seriously advised him to abandon the drama, as less suited to his talent than the light style of fugitive poetry in which he had uniformly succeeded. He answered them by writing Zaire, which was acted with great applause in 1732. He had already published his history of Charles XII.: that of Peter the Great was written much later in life. The Lettres Philosophiques, secretly printed at Rouen, and rapidly circulating, increased his popularity, and the zeal of his enemies. This work was burnt by the common hangman. About this time commenced that celebrated intimacy with Emilie Marquise du Châtelet, which for nearly twenty years stimulated and guided his genius. Love made him a mathematician. In the studious leisure of Cirey, under the auspices of “la sublime Emilie,” he plunged himself into the most abstract speculations, and acquired a new title to fame by publishing the Elements of Newton in 1738, and contending for a prize proposed by the Academy of Sciences. At the same time he produced in rapid succession Alzire, Mahomet, and Merope. His fame was now become European. Frederic of Prussia, Stanislaus, and other sovereigns honoured him, or were honoured by his correspondence. But the perpetual intrigues of his enemies at home deprived him of repose, and even at Cirey he was not always free from troubles and altercations. Upon the death of Madame du Châtelet, in 1749, he accepted the often urged invitation of Frederic, and took up his residence at the Court of Berlin. But the friendship of the king and the philosopher was not of long duration. A violent quarrel with the geometrician, Maupertuis, who was also living under the protection of Frederic, ended, after some ineffectual attempts at accommodation, in Voltaire’s departure from Frederic’s society and dominions (1753). He had just published his Siècle de Louis XIV., which was shortly followed by the Essai sur les Mœurs. After a few more wanderings, for the versatility of his talent seemed to require a corresponding variety of abode, Voltaire finally fixed himself at Ferney, near Geneva, in the sixty-fifth year of his eventful life, and began to enjoy at leisure his vast reputation. From all parts of Europe strangers undertook pilgrimages to this philosophic shrine. Sovereigns took pride in corresponding with the Patriarch, as he was called by the numerous sect of free-thinkers, and self-styled philosophers, who looked up to him as their teacher and leader. The Society of Philosophers at Paris, now employed in their great work, the Encyclopædia, which, from the moment of its ill-judged prohibition by the government had assumed the character of an antichristian manifesto, looked up to Voltaire as the acknowledged chief of their party. He furnished some of the most important articles in the work. His whole mind seemed now to be bent on one object, the subversion of the Christian religion. Innumerable miscellaneous compositions, different in form, and generally anonymous, indeed often disavowed, were marked by this pernicious tendency. “I am tired,” he is reported to have said, “of hearing it repeated that twelve men were sufficient to found Christianity: I will show the world that one is sufficient to destroy it!” Half a century has elapsed, and the event has not justified the truth of this boast: he mistook his own strength, as many other unbelievers have done. These impious extravagances were not, however, the only occupation of the twenty years which intervened between Voltaire’s establishment at Ferney and his death. In the defence of Sirven, Lally, Labarre, Calas, and others, who at several times were objects of unjust condemnation by the judicial tribunals, he exerted himself with a zeal as indefatigable as it was meritorious. Ferney, under his protection, grew to a considerable village, and the inhabitants learned to bless the liberalities of their patron. His mind continued to be embittered by literary quarrels, the most memorable being that with J. J. Rousseau, commemorated in his poem, entitled ‘Guerre Civile de Genève’ (1768). He hated this unfortunate exile, as a rival, as an enthusiast, and as a friend, comparatively speaking, to Christianity. Nor were these his only disquietudes. The publication of the infamous poem of La Pucelle, which he suffered in strict confidence to circulate among his intimate friends, and which was printed by the treachery of some of them, gave him much uneasiness. For its indecency and impiety he might not have cared: but all who had offended him, authors, courtiers, even the king and his mistress, were abused in it in the grossest manner, and Voltaire had no wish to provoke the arm of power. He had recourse to his usual process of disavowal, and as he could not deny the whole, he asserted that the offensive parts had been intercalated by his enemies. In other instances his zeal outran discretion, and affected his comforts by producing apprehension for his safety. Sometimes a panic terror of assassination took possession of him, and it needed all the gentleness and assiduities of his adopted daughter, Madame de Varicourt, to whom he was tenderly attached, to bring back his usual levity of mind. At length, in 1778, Voltaire yielding to the entreaties of his favourite niece, Madame Denis, came to Paris, where at the theatre he was greeted by a numerous assemblage in a manner resembling the crowning of an Athenian dramatic poet, more than any modern exhibition of popular favour. Borne back to his hotel amidst the acclamations of thousands, the aged man said feebly, “You are suffocating me with roses.” He did not indeed long survive this festival. Continued study, and the immoderate use of coffee, renewed a strangury to which he had been subject, and he died May 30, 1778. He was interred with the rites of Christian worship, a point concerning which he had shown some solicitude, in the Abbaye de Scellières. In 1791 his remains were removed by the Revolutionists, and deposited with great pomp in the Pantheon.

It is difficult within our contracted limits to give an accurate character of Voltaire. In versatility of powers, and in variety of knowledge, he stands unrivalled: but he might have earned a better and more lasting name, had he concentrated his talents and exertions on fewer subjects, and studied them more deeply. It has been truly and wittily observed that “he half knew every thing, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall; and he wrote of them all, and laughed at them all.” Of the feeling of veneration, either for God or man, he seems to have been incapable. He thought too highly of himself to look up to any thing. Capricious, passionate, and generally selfish, he was yet accessible to sudden impulses of generosity. He was an acute rather than a subtle thinker. Perhaps in the whole compass of his philosophical works there is not to be found one original opinion, or entirely new argument; but no man ever was endowed with so happy a facility for illustrating the thoughts of others, and imparting a lively clearness to the most abstruse speculations. He brought philosophy from the closet into the drawing-room. Eminently skilled to detect and satirize the faults and follies of mankind, his love of ridicule was too strong for his love of truth. He saw the ludicrous side of opinions in a moment, and often unfortunately could see nothing else. His alchymy was directed towards transmuting the imperfect metals into dross. All enthusiasm, eagerness of belief, magnifying of probabilities through the medium of excited feeling, all that makes a sect as well in its author as its followers, these things were simply foolish in his estimation. It is impossible to gather from his works any connected system of philosophy: they are full of contradictions; but the pervading principle which gives them some form of coherence is a rancorous aversion to Christianity. As a Deist believing in a God, “rémunérateur vengeur,” but proscribing all established worship, Voltaire occupies a middle position between Rousseau on the one hand, who, while he avowed scepticism as to the proofs, professed reverence for the characteristics of Revealed Religion, and Diderot on the other, with his fanatical crew of Atheists, who laughed not without reason at their Patriarch of Ferney, for imagining that he, whose life had been spent in trying to unsettle the religious opinions of mankind, could fix the point at which unbelief should stop. The dramatic poems of Voltaire retain their place among the first in their language, but his other poetical works have lost much of the reputation they once enjoyed. He paints with fidelity and vividness the broad lineaments of passion, and excels in that light, allusive style, which brings no image or sentiment into strong relief, and is therefore totally unlike the analytic and picturesque mode of delineation, to which in this country, and especially in this age, we are apt to limit the name and prerogatives of imagination. As a novelist, he has seldom been equalled in wit and profligacy. As an historian, he may be considered one of the first who authorized the modern philosophizing manner, treating history rather as a reservoir of facts for the illustration of moral science, than as a department of descriptive art. He is often inaccurate, and seldom profound, but always lively and interesting. On the whole, however the general reputation of Voltaire may rise or fall with the fluctuations of public opinion, he must continue to deserve admiration as

“The wonder of a learned age; the line

Which none could pass; the wittiest, clearest pen;

The voice most echoed by consenting men;

The soul, which answered best to all well said

By others, and which most requital made.”—Cleveland.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
RUBENS.
From the original Picture by himself,
in His Majesty’s Collection.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.

RUBENS.

The father of this great painter was a magistrate of Antwerp, who, during the desperate struggle of the Netherlands to shake off the dominion of Spain, retired from his own city to Cologne, to escape from the miseries of war. There, in the year 1577, Peter Paul Rubens was born. At an early age he gave indications of superior abilities, and his education was conducted with suitable care. The elder Rubens returned to Antwerp with his family, when that city passed again into the hands of Spain. It was the custom of that age to domesticate the sons of honourable families in the houses of the nobility, where they were instructed in all the accomplishments becoming a gentleman: and in conformity with it, young Rubens entered as a page into the service of the Countess of Lalain. The restraint and formality of this life ill suited his warm imagination and active mind: and on his father’s death, he obtained permission from his mother to commence his studies as a painter under Tobias Verhaecht, by whom he was taught the principles of landscape painting, and of architecture. But Rubens wished to become an historical painter, and he entered the school of Adam Van Oort, who was then eminent in that branch of art. This man possessed great talents, but they were degraded by a brutal temper and profligate habits, and Rubens soon left him in disgust. His next master was Otho Van Veen, or Venius, an artist in almost every respect the opposite of Van Oort, distinguished by scholastic acquirements as well as professional skill, of refined manners, and amiable disposition. Rubens was always accustomed to speak of him with great respect and affection, nor was it extraordinary that he should have conceived a cordial esteem for a man whose character bore so strong a resemblance to his own. From Venius, Rubens imbibed his fondness for allegory; which, though in many respects objectionable, certainly contributes to the magnificence of his style. In 1600, after having studied four years under this master, he visited Italy, bearing letters of recommendation from Albert, governor of the Netherlands, by whom he had already been employed, to Vincenzio Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. He was received by that prince with marked distinction, and appointed one of the gentlemen of his chamber. He remained at Mantua two years, during which time he executed several original pictures, and devoted himself attentively to the study of the works of Giulio Romano.

In passing through Venice, Rubens had been deeply impressed with the great works of art which he saw there. He had determined to revisit that city on the first opportunity, and at length obtained permission from his patron to do so. In the Venetian school his genius found its proper aliment; but it is perhaps to Paul Veronese that he is principally indebted. He looked at Titian, no doubt, with unqualified admiration; but Titian has on all occasions, a dignity and sedateness not congenial to the gay temperament of Rubens. In Paul Veronese he found all the elements of his subsequent style; gaiety, magnificence, fancy disdainful of restraint, brilliant colouring, and that masterly execution by which an almost endless variety of objects are blended into one harmonious whole. Three pictures painted for the church of the Jesuits immediately after his return to Mantua, attested how effectually he had prosecuted his studies at Venice. He then developed those powers which afterwards established his reputation, and secured to him a distinction which he still holds without a competitor, that of being the best imitator, and most formidable rival of the Venetian school.

Rome, with its exhaustless treasures of art, was still before him, and he was soon gratified with an opportunity of visiting that capital. The Duke of Mantua wished to obtain copies of some of the finest pictures there, and he engaged Rubens to make them, with the double motive of availing himself of his talents and facilitating his studies. This task was doubtless rendered light to Rubens, as well by gratitude towards his patron as by his own great facility of execution. In this respect Sir J. Reynolds considers him superior to all other painters; and says that he was “perhaps the greatest master in the mechanical part of his art, the best workman with his tools, that ever handled a pencil.” He executed for the Duke copies of several great works, which could scarcely be distinguished from the originals. Among his own compositions, painted while at Rome, the most conspicuous are three in the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, two of which, Christ bearing the Cross, and the Crucifixion, are considered to rank among his finest productions. There is also, in the Campidoglio, a picture painted by him at this time, of the finding of Romulus and Remus, a work of remarkable spirit and beauty.

Rubens, however, had formed his style at Venice, and was not induced by the contemplation of the great works at Rome to alter it in any essential particular. It is not thence to be inferred that he was insensible to the wonders which surrounded him at Rome; that he did not appreciate the epic sublimity of Michael Angelo, the pure intelligence of Raphael; his admiration of ancient sculpture is attested by his written precepts. Of the antique, certainly, no trace of imitation is to be found in his works; but perhaps the bold style of design, which he had adopted in opposition to the meagre taste of his German predecessors, was confirmed by the swelling outlines of Michael Angelo. If he imitated Raphael in any thing, it was in composition; and if in that great quality of art he has any superior, it is in Raphael alone.

The opinion which the Duke of Mantua had formed of Rubens’s general powers was now evinced in an extraordinary manner. Having occasion, in 1605, to send an envoy to Spain, he selected Rubens for the purpose, and directed him to return immediately from Rome to Mantua, in order to set out on his embassy. The young artist succeeded equally well as a diplomatist, and as a painter. He executed a portrait of the King, who honoured him with flattering marks of distinction, and he fully accomplished the object of his mission. Shortly after his return to Mantua he revisited Rome, where he contributed three pictures to the church of S. Maria in Vallicella. In these the imitation of Paul Veronese is particularly conspicuous. He next went to Genoa, where he executed several important works, and was regarded in that city with an interest and respect commensurate to his high reputation. In the midst of this splendid career, Rubens received intelligence that his mother, from whom he had been absent eight years, lay dangerously ill. He hastened to Antwerp, but she had expired before his arrival. The death of this affectionate parent afflicted him so severely, that he determined to quit a city fraught with painful associations, and to take up his future residence in Italy. But the Duke Albert, and the Infanta Isabella, being anxious to retain him in their own territory, he was induced to relinquish his intention, and finally settled at Antwerp.

There he continued to practise during several years, and enriched Europe, the Low Countries especially, with a surprising number of pictures almost uniform in excellence. His style, indeed, with all its admirable qualities, was one in which the delicacies of form and expression were never allowed to stand in the way of despatch. His mode of working was to make small sketches, slightly but distinctly; these were delivered to his scholars, who executed pictures from them on a larger scale, which they carried forward almost to the final stage, at which Rubens took them up himself. Thus his own labour was given only to invention and finishing, the only parts of the art in which the painter’s genius is essentially exercised. Wherever his works were dispersed, the demand for them increased, and fortune poured in on him in a golden flood. Rubens’s mode of living at Antwerp was the beau idéal of a painter’s existence. His house was embellished with such a collection of works of art, pictures, statues, busts, vases, and other objects of curiosity and elegance, as gave it the air of a princely museum. In the midst of these he pursued his labours, and it was his constant practice while painting to have read to him works of ancient or modern literature in various languages. It is a strong testimony to the variety of his powers, and the cultivation of his mind, that he was well skilled in seven different tongues. His splendid establishment comprehended a collection of wild beasts, which he kept as living models for those hunting pieces, and other representations of savage animals, which have never been surpassed. Such talents and such success could not fail of exciting envy; a cabal headed by Schut, Jansens, and Rombouts, endeavoured to detract from his reputation, and it is amusing to find him accused, among other deficiencies, of wanting invention! His great picture of the Descent from the Cross, painted for the Cathedral of Antwerp, and exhibited while the outcry against him was at its height, effectually allayed it. Snyders and Wildens were answered in a similar manner. They had insinuated that the chief credit of Rubens’s landscapes and animals was due to their assistance. Rubens painted several lion and tiger hunts, and other similar works, entirely with his own hand, which he did not permit to be seen until they were completed. In these works he even surpassed his former productions; they were executed with a truth power, and energy, which excited universal astonishment, and effectually put his adversaries to silence. Rubens condescended to give no other reply to his calumniators; and he showed his own goodness of heart, by finding employment for those among them whom he understood to be in want of it.

In 1628 he was commissioned by Mary de Medici, Queen of France, to adorn the gallery of the Luxembourg with a set of pictures, twenty-four in number, illustrative of the events of her life. Within three years he completed this magnificent series, in which allegory mingles with history, and the immense variety of actors, human and superhuman, with appropriate accompaniments, lays open a boundless field to the imagination of the artist. The largest of these pictures, which is the Coronation of Mary de Medici, combines with the gorgeous colouring proper to the subject, a correctness and chastity of design seldom attained by Rubens, and is consequently an example of that high excellence which might be expected from his style when divested of its imperfections. The gallery of the Luxembourg, as long as it possessed those ornaments, was considered one of the wonders of Europe. The pictures are now removed to the Louvre, and are seen perhaps with diminished effect, among the mass of miscellaneous works with which they are surrounded.