381; 1882, 95, p. 1225; Bull. de la soc. chim., 1874, 21, p. 196;
1883, 39, p. 287); C. Marignac (Ann. Chim. phys., 1849 [3] 27, p. 226);
B. Brauner (Monats., 1882, 3, p. 13); W. Crookes (Proc. Roy. Soc.,
1886, 40, p. 502); Lecoq de Boisbaudran (Comptes rendus, 1886,
102, p. 1005); A. Bettendorf (Ann., 1892, 270, p. 376); M. Muthmann
(Ber., 1898, 31, p. 1718; 1900, 33, p. 42); G. Krüss (Zeit. f. anorg.
Chem., 1893, 3, p. 108).
ERCILLA Y ZÚNIGA, ALONSO DE (1533–1595), Spanish
soldier and poet, was born in Madrid on the 7th of August 1533.
In 1548 he was appointed page to the heir-apparent, afterwards
Philip II. In this capacity Ercilla visited Italy, Germany and
the Netherlands, and was present in 1554 at the marriage of his
master to Mary of England. Hearing that an expedition was
preparing to subdue the Araucanians of Chile, he joined the
adventurers. He distinguished himself in the ensuing campaign;
but, having quarrelled with a comrade, he was condemned to
death in 1558 by his general, Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza. The
sentence was commuted to imprisonment, but Ercilla was
speedily released and fought at the battle of Quipeo (14th of
December 1558). He returned to Spain in 1562, visited Italy,
France, Germany, Bohemia, and in 1570 married Maria de
Bazán, a lady distantly connected with the Santa Cruz family;
in 1571 he was made knight of the order of Santiago, and in
1578 he was employed by Philip II. on a mission to Saragossa.
He complained of living in poverty but left a modest fortune,
and was obviously disappointed at not being offered the post
of secretary of state. His principal work is La Araucana, a
poem based on the events of the wars in which he had been
engaged. It consists of three parts, of which the first, composed
in Chile and published in 1569, is a versified narrative adhering
strictly to historic fact; the second, published in 1578, is encumbered
with visions and other romantic machinery; and the
third, which appeared in 1589–1590, contains, in addition to
the subject proper, a variety of episodes mostly irrelevant.
This so-called epic lacks symmetry, and has been over-praised
by Cervantes and Voltaire; but it is written in excellent Spanish,
and is full of vivid rhetorical passages. An analysis of the poem
was given by Hayley in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1782).
A good biography precedes the Morceaux choisis (Paris, 1900) by Jean Ducamin.
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, the joint names of two French
writers whose collaboration made their work that of, so to speak,
one personality. Émile Erckmann (1822–1899) was born on
the 20th of May 1822 at Phalsbourg, and Louis Gratien Charles
Alexandre Chatrian (1826–1890) on the 18th of December
1826 at Soldatenthal, Lorraine. In 1847 they began to write
together, and continued doing so till 1889. Chatrian died in
1890 at Villemomble near Paris, and Erckmann at Lunéville in
1899. The list of their publications is a long one, ranging from
the Histoires et contes fantastiques (1849; reprinted from the
Démocrate du Rhin), L’Illustre Docteur Mathéus (1859), Madame
Thérèse (1863), L’Ami Fritz (1864), Histoire d’un conscrit de 1813
(1864), Waterloo (1865), Le Blocus (1867), Histoire d’un paysan
(4 vols., 1868–1870), L’Histoire du plébiscite (1872), to Le Grand-père
Lebigue (1880); besides dramas like Le Juif polonais (1869)
and Les Rantzau (1882). Without any special literary claim,
their stories are distinguished by simplicity and genuine descriptive
power, particularly in the battle scenes and in connexion
with Alsatian peasant life. They are marked by a genuine
democratic spirit, and by real patriotism, which developed after
1870 into hatred of the Germans. The authors attacked
militarism by depicting the horrors of war in the plainest terms.
See also J. Claretie, Erckmann-Chatrian (1883), in the series of “Célébrités contemporaines.”
ERDÉLYI, JÁNOS (1814–1868), Hungarian poet and author,
was born in 1814 at Kapos, in the county of Ungvár, and educated
at the Protestant college of Sárospatak. In 1833 he removed
to Pest, where he was, in 1839, elected member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. His literary fame was made by his collection
of Hungarian national poems and folk-tales, Magyar
Népköltési Gyüjtemény, Népdalok és Mondák (Pest, 1846–1847).
This work, published by the Kisfaludy Society, was supplemented
by a dissertation upon Hungarian national poetry, afterwards
partially translated into German by Stier (Berlin, 1851). Erdélyi
also compiled for the Kisfaludy Society an extensive collection
of Hungarian proverbs—Magyar Közmondások könyve (Pest,
1851),—and was for some time editor of the Szépirodalmi
Szemle (Review of Polite Literature). In 1848 he was appointed
director of the national theatre at Pest; but after 1849 he resided
at his native town. He died on the 23rd of January 1868. A
collection of folklore was published the year after his death,
entitled A Nép Koltészete népdalok, népmesék és közmondások
(Pest, 1869). This work contains 300 national songs, 19 folk-tales
and 7362 Hungarian proverbs.
ERDMANN, JOHANN EDUARD (1805–1892), German philosophical
writer, was born at Wolmar in Livonia on the 13th of
June 1805. He studied theology at Dorpat and afterwards at
Berlin, where he fell under the influence of Hegel. From 1829
to 1832 he was a minister of religion in his native town. Afterwards
he devoted himself to philosophy, and qualified in that
subject at Berlin in 1834. In 1836 he was professor-extraordinary
at Halle, became full professor in 1839, and died there on the
12th of June 1892. He published many philosophical text-books
and treatises, and a number of sermons; but his chief claim
to remembrance rests on his elaborate Grundriss der Geschichte
der Philosophie (2 vols., 1866), the 3rd edition of which has been
translated into English. Erdmann’s special merit is that he
does not rest content with being a mere summarizer of opinions,
but tries to exhibit the history of human thought as a continuous
and ever-developing effort to solve the great speculative problems
with which man has been confronted in all ages. His chief other
works were: Leib und Seele (1837), Grundriss der Psychologie
(1840), Grundriss der Logik und Metaphysik (1841), and Psychologische
Briefe (1851).
ERDMANN, OTTO LINNÉ (1804–1869), German chemist,
son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann (1774–1835), the physician who
introduced vaccination into Saxony, was born at Dresden on the
11th of April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-chirurgical
academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered
the university of Leipzig where in 1827 he became extraordinary
professor, and in 1830 ordinary professor of chemistry. This
office he held until his death, which happened at Leipzig on the
9th of October 1869. He was particularly successful as a teacher,
and the laboratory established at Leipzig under his direction
in 1843 was long regarded as a model institution. As an investigator
he is best known for his work on nickel and indigo and other
dye-stuffs. With R. F. Marchand (1813–1850) he also carried
out a number of determinations of atomic weights. In 1828,
in conjunction with A. F. G. Werther (1815–1869), he founded
the Journal für technische und ökonomische Chemie, which became
in 1834 the Journal für praktische Chemie. He was also the
author of Über das Nickel (1827), Lehrbuch der Chemie (1828),
Grundriss der Waarenkunde (1833), and Über das Studium der
Chemie (1861).
EREBUS, in Greek mythology, son (according to Hesiod,
Theog. 123) of Chaos, and father of Aether (upper air) and
Hemera (day) by his sister Nyx (night). The word, which
signifies darkness, is in Homer the gloomy subterranean region
through which the departed shades pass into Hades. The
entrance to it was in the extreme west, on the borders of Ocean,
in the mythical land of the Cimmerians. It is to be distinguished
from Tartarus, the place of punishment for the wicked.
ERECH (Uruk in the Babylonian inscriptions; Gr. Orchoë),
the Biblical name of an ancient city of Babylonia, situated E.
of the present bed of the Euphrates, on the line of the ancient Nil
canal, in a region of marshes, about 140 m. S.S.E. from Bagdad.
It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Babylonia,
and the site of a famous temple, called E-Anna, dedicated to the
worship of Nana, or Ishtar. Erech played a very important part
in the political history of the country from an early time,
exercising hegemony in Babylonia at a period before the time
of Sargon. Later it was prominent in the national struggles
of the Babylonians against Elam (2000 B.C. and earlier), in
which it suffered severely; recollections of these conflicts are
embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, as it has come down to us
