Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/204

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
ELM—ELM

194 ENCYCLOP M D I A ark); 19, optics; 20, music. IV. Practical philosophy, 4 books: 21 ethics; 22, economics (on relationships); 23, politics, with flori- lejrium politicuin, 119 pages of extracts from historians, philo sophers, and orators; 2-1, scholastics (on education, with a flori- le^iumof 25 pages). V. The three superior faculties: 25, theo logy; 26, jurisprudence; 27, medicine (ending with the rules of the Salernian school). VI. Mechanical arts in general: book 28, mathematical mechanical arts; book 29, agriculture, gardening, care of animals, baking, brewing, preparing medicines, metallurgy (with mining); book 30, physical mechanical arts printing, dial ling, &c. Under ptedutica (games) is Vida s Latin poem on chess, and one by Leuschner on the ludus Lorzius. VII. Farragines disciplinarum, 5 books: 31, mnemonics; 32, history; 33, chrono logy; 34, architecture; 35, quodlibetica, miscellaneous arts, as magic, cabbala, alchemy, magnetism, &c., with others apparently distinguished and named by himself, as, paradoxologia, the art of explaining paradoxes; dipnosophistica, the art of philosophizing while feasting; cyclognomica, the art of conversing well de quovis scibili; tabacologia, the nature, use, and abuse of tobacco, &c., in all 35 articles in this book. Alsted s encyclopaedia was received with very great applause, and was highly valued. Lami (Entretlens, 1684, p. 188) thought it almost the only encyclopaedia which did not deserve to be despised. Alsted s learning was very various, and his reading was very extensive and diversified. He gives few references, and Thomasius charges him with plagiarism, as he often copies literally without any acknow ledgment. He wrote not long before the appearance of encyclopaedias in modern languages superseded his own and other Latin books, and but a short time before the alphabetical arrangement began to prevail over the metho dical. His book was reprinted, Lugduni, 1 G49, fol. 4 vols., 2608 pages. Jean de Magnon, historiographer to the king of France, undertook to write an encyclopaedia in French heroic verse, which was to fill ten volumes of 20,000 lines each, and to render libraries merely a useless ornament. But he did not live to finish it, as he was killed at night by robbers on the Pont Neuf in Paris, in April 1662. The part he left was printed as La Science nniverselle, Paris, 1663, fol., 348 pages, 10 books containing about 11,000 lines. They begin with the nature of God, and end with the history of the fall of man. His verses, say Chaudon and Delandine, are perhaps the most nerveless, incorrect, obscure, and flat in French poetry ; yet the author had been the friend of Moliere, and had acted with him in comedy. Louis Moreri (born 25th March 1G43 at Bargemont, in the diocese of Frejus, died 10th July 1680 at Paris) wrote a dictionary of history, genealogy, and biography, Le grand dictionnaire kistorique, ou le melange curieux de I histoire sacree et profane, Lyons, 1674, fol. He began a second edition on a larger scale, published at Lyons in 1681, in two volumes folio; the sixth edition was edited by Jean le Clerc, Amsterdam, 1691, fol. 4 vols,; the twentieth and last edition, Paris, 1759, fol. 10 vols. More ri s dictionary, still very useful, was of very great value and importance, though not the first of the kind. It superseded the very inferior compilation of Juigne- Broissinere, Dictionnaire Theologique, Ilistorique, Poetique, Cosmographique, et Chronologique, Paris, 1644, 4to Rouen, 1668, &c., a translation, with additions, of the Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, et Poeticum 01 Charles Estienne, published in 1553, 4to, and often after wards. As such a work was much wanted, Juigne s book went through twelve editions in less than thirty years notwithstanding its want of criticism, errors, anachronisms defects, and inferior style. Johann Jacob Hofmann, born llth September 1635 died 10th March 1706, son of a schoolmaster at Basel which he is said never to have left, and where he was pro fessor of Greek and History, wrote Lexicon Universal Historico - Geographico - Chronologico - Poetico - Philologicum Basilese, 1677, fol. 2 vols., 1823 pages, a dictionary of listory, biography, geography, genealogies of princely r amilies, chronology, mythology, and philology. At the nd is Nomenclator MtoyAa>TTos, an index of names of places, people, etc., in many languages, carefully collected, and explained in Latin, filling 110 pages ; with an index of subjects not forming separate articles, occupying 34 pages. Tn 1683 he published a continuation in 2 vols. fol., 2293 pages, containing, besides additions to the subjects given in his lexicon, the history of animals, plants, stones, metals, elements, stars, and especially of man and his affairs, arts, honours, laws, magic, music, rites, and a vast number of other subjects. In 1698 he published a second edition, Lugduni Batavorum, fol. 4 vols., 3742 pages, incorporating the continuation with additions. From the great extent of his plan, many articles, especially in history, are super ficial and faulty. Etienne Chauvin was born at Nismes 18th April 1640. He fled to Rotterdam on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and in 1688 supplied Bayle s place in his lectures on philosophy. In 1695 he was invited by the elector of Brandenburg to go as professor of philosophy to Berlin, where he became the representative of the Cartesian philosophy, and died 6th April 1725. He wrote Lexicon Rationale, give Thesaurus Philosopkicus Online Alphabetico digestus, Rotterdami,.1692, fol., 746 pages and 30 plates. An im proved and enlarged edition was printed as Lexicon philo- sophicum, secimdis curis, Leovardiae, 1713, large folio, 725 pages, and 30 plates. This great work may be considered as a dictionary of the Cartesian philosophy, and was very much used by Brucker and other earlier historians of philo sophy. It is written in a very dry and scholastic style, and seldom names authorities. The great dictionary of French, begun by the French Academy 7th February 1639, excluded all words especially belonging to science and the arts. But the success of the rival dictionary of Furetiere, which, as its title page, as well as that of the Essais published in 1684, conspicuously announced, professed to give " les termes de toutes les Sciences et des Arts," induced Thomas Corneille, a member of the Academy, to compile Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences, which the Academy published with the first edition of their dictionary, Paris, 1694, folio, as a supplement in two volumes containing 1236 pages. It was reprinted at Amsterdam, 1696, fol. 2 vols., and at Paris in 1720, and again in 1732, revised by Fontenelle. A long series of dictionaries of arts and sciences have followed Corneille in placing in their titles the arts before the sciences, which he probably did merely in order to differ from Furetiere. Corneille professed to quote no author whom he had not consulted; to take plants from Dioscorides and Matthiolus, medicine from Ettmuller, chemistry from a MS. of Perrault, and architecture, painting, and sculpture from Felibien ; and to give an abridged history of animals, birds, and fishes, and an account of all religious and military orders and their statutes, heresiarchs and heresies, and dignities and charges ancient and modern. Pierre Bayle (born 18th November 1647, died 28th December 1706) wrote a very important and valuable work, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, Rotterdam, 1C97, fol. 2 vols. His design was to make a dictionary of the errors and omissions of Moreri and others, but he* was much embarrassed by the numerous editions and supplements of Moreri. A second edition with an additional volume appeared at Amsterdam in 1702, fol. 3 vols. The fourth edition, Rotterdam, 1720, fol. 4 vols., was much enlarged from his manuscripts, and was edited by Prosper Marchand. It contains 3132 pages besides tables, &c. The ninth edition was published at Basel, 1741, fol. 10 vols. It was

translated into English from the second edition, London,