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JAC
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Jülich, Jacobi was enabled by the emoluments of this office and by his large private fortune to mingle with the patrician classes, and to be the protector of literary men. After having been fruitfully energetic in many different relations, he was in 1779 summoned to Munich to undertake duties of a more weighty kind than those with which he had previously been intrusted. Not long after he was bowed down by the death of his beloved and accomplished wife. He had already acquired a name as a philosopher, though he had shown no eagerness for renown. Lessing had called his attention to Spinoza, of whom he himself was a disciple. Mendelssohn, who was more inclined to call Leibnitz master, published in a work called Morning Horn's, a refutation of pantheism, in which he was pleased to include Spinozism. This led to Jacobi's letters to Mendelssohn on the doctrine of Spinoza. In a year or two "David Hume on Faith, or idealism and realism," followed. Kant had meanwhile been slowly commencing a vast philosophical revolution, by warring alike with dogmatism and with scepticism. But toward Kantianism and all the systems which succeeded it Jacobi took a polemical attitude, though more from an invincible conviction than from an aggressive humour. He cannot be said to have had any system of his own, or if he had, it can only be defined as emotional intuition, tempered by the maxims of universal reason. The advance of the French in 1794 drove Jacobi to seek refuge in the extreme north of Germany, where, with the exception of a visit to Paris in 1801, he remained till 1804. In this year he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, which had just been created. He was appointed president of this academy in 1807, with a salary of five thousand florins. A few years before he had lost the bulk of his fortune by the failure of his brother-in-law. In 1799 he had addressed a controversial epistle to Fichte, and in 1811 his work on "Divine Things and their Revelation" involved him in a bitter controversy with Schelling, who was as superior to him as a combatant, as he himself had been to Mendelssohn. Jacobi resigned his post as president of the academy in 1813, but was allowed to retain the salary. This might be just enough in itself, or it might be an atonement for wrong which the government had, at the suggestion of envious courtiers, formerly inflicted on Jacobi for proposing, as administrator, financial reforms. Jacobi fell into a sort of disgrace, accompanied by diminished remuneration for his services. Our philosopher had a charming country seat—Pempelfort, near Düsseldorff. It was here that he received his friends; it was here that his ideas ripened. Manifold and for manifold causes was his grudge against the French revolution; but perhaps he hated it most for tearing him away from delightful Pempelfort. Jacobi was engaged in preparing a complete edition of his works when he died on the 10th March, 1819. He has the rare merit for a German author of not being voluminous. Six volumes comprise his productions, which though popular in form, have not succeeded in achieving popularity, Two of the chief are his philosophical romances, "Allwill" and "Woldemar." With indubitable excellences both as a writer and as a thinker, Jacobi was perhaps neither sufficiently perfect as the first, nor sufficiently profound and original as the second, to gain enduring empire. His position as a philosopher was exceptional, eccentric, but not daringly erratic. He could neither arouse by startling paradoxes, nor subdue by the revelation of eternal truths. As to the rest, he was scarcely any more a philosopher than Lessing, Hamann, or Herder, to all of whom philosophy was a weapon, and not a field. His pages are elevating, without being suggestive; yet for the sake of the elevation, it were well that his books were better known in England. It cannot be without interest to form an acquaintance with one who—sentimentalist like Rousseau—was also poet, mystic, sage, and in addition a man of the noblest character; nor can it but be salutary to appeal to that intuition of the individual of which Jacobi was one of the most eloquent preachers and most earnest representatives.—W. M—l.

JACOBI, Johann Georg, brother of Friedrich Heinrich, a German lyric poet, was born at Düsseldorf , 2nd December, 1740. He studied theology at Göttingen and Helmstädt, and soon after was appointed to the chair of philosophy and eloquence at Halle. Here he formed a friendship with Gleim, by whose intercession he obtained a prebend at Halberstadt in 1769. In 1784 he was called to Freiburg in the Breisgau as professor of belles-lettres, the duties of which office he discharged till his death, January 4, 1814. His poems, modelled after those of his friend Gleim, want manliness of thought and expression. His journal. Iris, was highly instrumental in improving the literary taste of Germany. His miscellaneous works, however, are of no importance. Collected works, with Life by Ittner, 8 vols., Zurich, 1807-22.—K. E.

JACOBI, Karl Gustaf Jacob, one of the greatest of mathematicians, was born at Potsdam on the 10th of December, 1804, and died at Berlin on the 18th of February, 1851. He first became known generally in the scientific world by a work which at once raised his reputation as a mathematician to the highest eminence, "Fundamenta nova Theoriæ Functionum Ellipticarum," published at Königsberg in 1829. The more important of his other writings consist of a series of papers, published in Crelle's Journal from 1826 till the year of his death. They relate to various branches of the higher mathematics, and especially to the properties of definite integrals. A mere catalogue of the titles of those papers alone would fill nearly two pages of this book; so that it is impossible within our limits to give any detailed account of them. One, however, may be specially mentioned, on account of its great importance, "A new Theorem in Analytical Mechanics," which first appeared in 1845 or 1846.—W. J. M. R.

JACOBŒUS, Oliger, was born in 1650 at Aarhus in Jutland, and was educated at Copenhagen. After extensive travel on the continent he returned to Denmark in 1679, and was appointed professor of physics and philosophy. His erudition was recognized and rewarded by the court; Christian V. charging him with the care and arrangement of the very valuable royal collection of curiosities, and Frederick IV. constituting him a counsellor in his court of justice. His latter years were embittered by the death of a beloved wife, and he died in 1701. He left numerous works.—W. J. P.

JACOBS, Christian Friedrich Wilhelm, an eminent German humanist, translator and writer for the young, was born at Gotha, 6th October, 1764, and devoted himself to the study of theology and philology at Jena and Göttingen. Soon after he obtained a mastership at the gymnasium of his native town, whence in 1807 he was translated to Munich as professor in the lyceum, and member of the recently-founded Royal Academy. Vexed by the ill-will of the Roman catholic party, Jacobs was happy to be recalled to Gotha in the capacity of principal librarian and keeper of the collection of coins. From this office he retired in 1842, and died on the 30th March, 1847. Jacobs was a man of the noblest and purest character, and a scholar of vast learning, refined taste, and indefatigable industry. His numerous editions and commentaries of Greek authors, particularly his great edition of the Anthologia Græca, will always command the esteem of classical scholars; whilst his translations (the Anthology, Demosthenes, Cicero, &c.) greatly contributed to spread the knowledge of, and the taste for, classical antiquity. His miscellaneous writings, 8 vols., contain his treatises, lectures, speeches, and an autobiography. It is not a little remarkable that so learned a philologist should have distinguished himself also as a writer of moral tales. Yet such is the case; for his writings for the young, 3 vols.; his "Erzählungen," 7 vols.; his "Schule für Frauen," 7 vols., &c., must be considered as an important addition to German literature.—K. E.

JACOBSON, Johann Karl Gottfried, a German author, born at Elbingen in 1726. He studied at Leipsic, and afterwards served in the Saxon army. At Berlin he frequented the workshops and manufactories, and between 1773 and 1776 published a "Description of the Cloth Manufactories of Germany." After the campaign of 1778, he quitted the army and began his "Technological Dictionary." In 1784 he was appointed inspector of the royal manufactories in the kingdom of Prussia. He died in 1789.—P. E. D.

JACOMB, Thomas, a nonconformist divine, born in Leicestershire in 1622, and died in 1687. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and obtained the living of St. Martin, Ludgate, from which he was ejected in 1662, and was then taken into the family of the countess of Exeter. He was one of the continuators of Poole's Annotations, and wrote a "Treatise of Holy Dedication," London, 1688; also eighteen sermons on Romans vii. 1-4, which are highly commended.—G. BL.

JACOPO da Bologna, or Jacopo D'Avanzi, was one of the first masters of the earlier school of painting of Bologna. He lived in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and was