Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/39

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

F A R F A R 29 Yorkshire, the seat of Lord Strafford, and gave himself iq entirely to literature. lu IG54 he completed translation of two of the comedies of the Spanish poet Antonio d Mendoza, which were published after his death, in 1G71 under the title of Querer per solo querer : to Love only Jo Loves Sake, and Fiestas de Aranjuez. But the great labou of his retirement was the translation of the national epic o the Portuguese poet Camoens, This version of the Lusia was printed in folio in 1G55, with very fine engravings. ] is in ottava rima, and there is prefixed to it a translation o the long Latin poem entitled Furor Pdroniensis, whicl forms an episode in the Satyricon. Moreover, in 1G5S Fanshawe published a Latin version of the Faith fit Shepherdess of Fletcher, and a letter dedicating th imprinted translations of Mendoza s plays to the queen o Sweden. In February 1659 he broke through his bail and joined Charles II. at Breda ; he was enthusiastically received and loaded with promises. But when the Restora tion was complete he did not, to his great disappointment find himself made secretary of state. In 1G61 he repre sented the university of Cambridge in parliament, and wa presently sent out to Portugal as envoy extraordinary ; In was shortly after appointed ambassador to the same court and negotiated the marriage between Charles II. and the Infanta. At the end of the year he returned to England only to be sent out as ambassador to Lisbon again in 1GG2 In 1G63 he was recalled to be sworn one of his majesty s privy council. In the beginning of 1G44 he was sent af ambassador to Philip IV. of Spain, and arrived at Cadiz ir February of that year, to receive such an ovation as no English envoy had ever before enjoyed. Duriu_ the whole of 1GG5 he was engaged in very delicate diplomatic relations between England, Portugal, anc Spain ; and in January 1GG6 he travelled to Lisbon in the endeavour to bring about a peace between the last-men tioned powers. But he had scarcely returned to Madrk" when he was somewhat peremptorily recalled to England, It is not known whether this affected his health, but at all events he fell ill at Madrid, and died there, after a short illness, on the 26th of June 16G6. His widow, Lady Fanshawe, drew up a charming memoir of her husband, which was first printed in 1829. To this circumstance and to his public position we owe the fact that of no poet of his age do we possess more copious materials for biography than of Fanshawe. He was a very tall courtly man, with short curling brown hair, and fine eyes, As an original poet we have very little means of judging his merit : a fine "Ode upon occasion of his Majesty s Proclamation in 1G30 ; " and some rough, but richly-coloured sonnets, are the best of his own verses which have come down to us. But as a translator he is one of the illustrious figures in our litera ture, whether Italian, Latin, Portuguese, or Spanish attracts his versatile muse. His Pastor Fido and his Lnsiad have never been surpassed by later scholars. As a verse-writer his chief fault is ruggedness ; his active life gave him but scant opportunity for revision. His letters were edited in 1724 and since, but no collected edition of his works has ever been issued. FARADAY, MICHAEL, chemist, electrician, and philo sopher, was born at Newington, Surrey, 22d September 1791, and died at Hampton Court, 25th August 1SG7, His parents had migrated from Yorkshire to London, where his father worked as a blacksmith. Faraday himself became apprenticed to Mr Pdebau, a bookbinder. The letters written to his friend Benjamin Abbott at this time give a lucid account of his aims in life, and of his methods of self-culture, when his mind was beginning to turn to the experimental study of nature. In 1812 Mr Dance, a customer of his master, took him to hear four lectures by Sir Humphry Davy. Faraday took notes of these lectures, and afterwards wrote them out in a fuller form. Under the encouragement of Mr Dance, he wrote to Sir H. Davy, enclosing these notes. " The reply was immediate, kind, and favourable." He continued to work as a journeyman bookbinder till 1st March 1813, when, at the recommenda tion of Sir H. Davy, he was appointed assistant in the labo ratory of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He was appointed director of the laboratory 7th February 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the Institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures. He thus remained in the Institution for 54 years. He accompanied Sir II. Davy in a tour through France, Italy, Switzerland, Tyrol, Geneva, tc., from October 13, 1813, to April 23, 1815. Faraday s earliest chemical work was in the paths opened by Davy, to whom he acted as assistant. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlo rides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by Dalton, the physical importance of which has been more fully brought to light by Graham and Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases ; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarization of light when the glass was placed in the magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured with some success to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popidar exposition. See his work on Chemicdl Manipulation. But Faraday s chemical work, however important in itself, was soon completely overshadowed by his electrical discoveries. The first experiment which he has recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence, seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sul phate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812). Henceforward, whatever other subjects might from time to time claim his attention, it was from among electrical phenomena that he selected those problems to which he applied the full force of his mind, and which he kept per sistently in view, even when year after year his attempts to solve them had been baffled. His first notable discovery was the production of the con tinuous rotation of magnets and of wires conducting the electric current round each other. _ The consequences de- ducible from the great discovery of Orated (21st July 1820) were still in 1821 apprehended in a somewhat confused manner even by the foremost men of science. Dr "Wollaston indeed had formed the expectation that he could make the conducting wire rotate on its own axis, and in April 1821 he came with Sir II. Davy to the laboratory of the Royal Institution to make an experiment. Faraday was not thero at the time, but coming in afterwards he heard the conversa tion on the expected rotation of the wire. In July, August, and September of that year Faraday, at he request of Mr Phillips, the editor of the Annals of Philo sophy, wrote for that journal an historical sketch of electro- magnetism, and he repeated almost all the experiments he described. This led him in the beginning of September to discover the method of producing the continuous rotation of .he wire round the magnet, and of the magnet round the vire. He did not succeed in making the wire or the magnet revolve on its own axis. This first success of ? araday in electromagnetic research became the occa- ion of the most painful, though unfounded, imputations against his honour. Into these we shall not enter, re-