more useful than classical accomplishments. After spending some time at Christ church, Oxford, he proceeded to Weimar, then the German Athens, and gained, comparatively a rare acquisition in those days, a knowledge of the German language, and of some sections of German literature. His first literary attempts were dramatic, but his earliest work of note was his novel, "The Monk," written when he was only nineteen, and in ten days, at the Hague, where he was residing as an attaché. It was published in 1795. Shamelessly voluptuous in its pictures of the influence of passion in a monk fettered by his religious vows, "The Monk "made a great sensation in England. The attorney-general was instructed by the Society for the Suppression of Vice to prosecute its author, who on the other hand, on returning to England, found himself a lion. In the dreary twilight between the death of Cowper and the rise of Scott and Byron, the author of "The Monk "was for a time a literary star. His ballads, such as "Alonzo the Brave," produced a great effect on young Walter Scott, the publication of whose version of Göthe's Goetz von Berlichingen was negotiated by their author, and who contributed to the Tales of Wonder, a miscellany original and translated, published by Lewis in 1801. Lewis afterwards enjoyed the intimacy of Lord Byron, and indeed from his bonhommie was a general favourite in society and with his literary contemporaries. "Tales of Terror," "Romantic Tales," "The Bravo," are others of Lewis' fictions. Among his dramatic performances are the "Castle Spectre," the comedy of the "East Indian," and "Timur the Tartar," played in 1811, and the precursor of a long series of gorgeous spectacles on the English stage. The death of his father left him the possession of a handsome fortune and of estates in Jamaica, which he visited towards the close of 1815, and again in 1817. His "Journal of a West Indian Proprietor," published after his death, and reprinted in Murray's Home and Colonial Library, is full of lively pictures of life and nature in Jamaica in the old slavery times, and paints its author in a very favourable light, the guardian of his slaves, of whom he had five hundred, and by whom he seems to have been worshipped. He died at sea on his second homeward voyage, on the 14th May, 1818. After the publication of "The Monk," Lewis succeeded for a short period Beckford, the author of Vathek, in the representation of Hindon, Wiltshire, but made no figure in the house of commons. A Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis was published in London in 1839.—F. E.
* LEWIS, Tayler, LL.D., a learned American professor, was born in 1802 in the state of New York. He abandoned the legal profession, for which he was intended, to pursue without interruption his studies in Greek language and literature. In 1837 he was appointed professor of Greek in Union college, New York. His two most remarkable productions are—"Plato against the Atheists," and "The Six Days of Creation." The former is a translation of the tenth book of the Dialogue on Laws, followed by dissertations on some of the main points of the Platonic philosophy and theology as compared with the holy scriptures. The latter work is an endeavour to explain the scriptural cosmology, by insisting on a distinction, attributed to the ancients, between the idea of time-worlds and space-worlds. Dr. Lewis has published other works, and contributed to the more learned American periodicals.—R. H.
LEWIS, William, physician and writer on chemistry. After obtaining his degree of bachelor of medicine he practised for many years at Kingston in Surrey, where he died in 1781. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, London, and member of the Royal Academy, Stockholm. His reputation as a chemist was such, that he was invited to read a course of lectures before the prince of Wales at Kew, as also before the duke and duchess of Gloucester at Kingston. He is the author of several works which have been translated into French.—W. B—d.
LEY or LEIGH, Sir James, Baronet, afterwards earl of Macclesfield, successively lord chief-justice of the king's bench, lord high-treasurer, and lord president of the council, was born about 1552, of a respectable family in Wiltshire. At seventeen he was sent to Brazennose college, Oxford, and afterwards went to the bar. Lord Campbell describes his prospects there as "hopeless," and himself as glad to accept what was then equivalent to exile, the chief-justiceship of Ireland. In this post he aided King James' new plan for colonizing Ulster, and was an honourable and impartial judge. Returning to England with a favourable report of the success of the royal schemes, he was knighted, and received the lucrative post of attorney of the court of wards. He was included in James' first batch of baronets, and in January, 1621, was appointed lord chief-justice of the king's bench. His marriage to a niece of the duke of Buckingham probably aided his advancement. Though not a peer, he acted as speaker of the house of lords during the impeachment of Bacon, and in that capacity pronounced the sentence on the great ex-chancellor. At the end of four years he was removed from the king's bench, appointed to the lucrative and dignified office of lord treasurer, and raised to the peerage as Lord Ley of Ley in Devonshire. After the accession of Charles I. he was created Earl of Macclesfield, and in 1628 removed from the treasurership to be "shelved" as lord president of the council. He died on the 14th March, 1629. He seems to have been a commonplace but honourable man. Milton has immortalized him, and thrown perhaps an imaginary halo round his death, in his sonnet to the Lady Margaret Ley:—
" Daughter to that good earl, once president
Of England's council and her treasury.
Who lived in both unstained with golden fee,
And left them both, more in himself content,
Till sad the breaking of that parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chæronea, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent."
Ley had a turn for history and antiquities. When in Ireland he collected and procured to be transcribed for publication, which did not take place, "The Annals of John Clynne," a friar minor of Kilkenny in the reign of Edward III.; the "Annals of the Priory of St. John of Kilkenny;" the "Annals of Multiferman, Rosse, and Clonmell." Some of his antiquarian tracts are printed in Hearne's Collection of Curious Discourses.—F. E.
LEY, John, an English controversial divine, born in 1583 at Warwick, and died at Sutton Coldfield in 1662. He studied at Oxford, and entered into orders, after which he was appointed incumbent of a poor living in Cheshire, where he also became prebendary and sub-dean. His principles led him to espouse the cause of the parliamentary party at the outbreak of the civil war. The great zeal and energy which distinguished him were rewarded by several appointments under the Commonwealth; but towards the close of his life he withdrew to Sutton Coldfield. Wood gives a list of his writings.—B. H. C.
LEYBOLD, Karl, a celebrated German painter, was born at Stuttgart, March 29, 1786. He was instructed in the rudiments of art by his father, Johann Friedrich Leybold, a clever miniature painter, engraver to the court, and professor of engraving in the Imperial Academy of Vienna—born at Stuttgart in 1755; died in 1838. Karl Leybold accompanied his father to Vienna in 1799, became a student in the Academy, and painted some classic subjects and landscapes. In 1807 he went to Rome, when he directed his attention chiefly to historical painting. Returning to Stuttgart, he acquired a high reputation for his portraits, and besides native dignitaries, numbered among his sitters the king and queen of Holland. He was appointed in 1829 professor in the Art Academy of Stuttgart, and in 1841 director of the gallery of paintings, which offices he held till his death, July 20, 1844. Karl Leybold executed numerous paintings and drawings of historical and mythological subjects, and some pieces of a humorous kind, as well as many portraits. He left unfinished a large oil painting of "Nymphs surrounding the Sleeping Bacchus."—J. T—e.
LEYBOURN, William, an English printer, publisher, and mathematician, flourished in the seventeenth century. He was the author of a course of mathematics and a treatise on arithmetic, of high reputation in their time.—W. J. M. R.
LEYDEN, John of. See Beccold.
LEYDEN, John, M.D., a Scottish poet and great oriental scholar, was the son of a shepherd, and was born in 1775 at the village of Denholm in Roxburghshire. His childhood was spent in a wild pastoral spot at the foot of Ruberslaw, about three miles from Denholm. His grandmother taught him to read, and at the age of ten he was sent to school at the hamlet of Kirklaw, about six or eight miles distant, where he learned writing, arithmetic, and the elements of Latin grammar. Mr. Duncan, Cameronian minister at Denholm, subsequently gave him instruction in Latin; but notwithstanding these aids, Leyden was almost entirely self-educated. His favourite books were the metrical histories of Wallace and Bruce, the poems of Sir David Lindsay, Paradise Lost, and the Arabian Nights Entertainments; and
