he left only £100, wrote his life, Nollekens and his Times, 2 vols. 8vo, 1828; but, departing from the usual habit of biographers, he has chosen to exhibit the vulgarity, the avarice, and the thrift of the old man, rather than his genius or artistic talent. The book, however, has much curious gossip.—J. T—e.
NOMSZ, Jan, a prolific Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam in 1738, and died in reduced circumstances in 1803. He wrote tragedies and comedies; an epic poem on William I., the founder of Dutch liberty; epistles and satires; and some minor prose works of a miscellaneous character. He was also an able translator, and amongst other works rendered the fables of Lafontaine into Dutch.—K. E.
NONIUS, Louis, a celebrated medical writer of the seventeenth century, was a Spaniard by birth, his proper name being Nuñez, but resided at Antwerp, which then belonged to the Spanish Netherlands. His principal work, "Diæteticon, sive de re cibaria," is said to throw much light on various passages in the classical authors where gastronomic details are introduced. In 1620 he published a learned work on the coins of Greece, and of the first three Roman emperors. He also wrote "Hispania, seu de oppidis fluminibusque Hispaniæ," and several other works. His death has not been recorded.—T. A.
NONIUS, Marcellus, a Latin grammarian, of whose personal history little, if anything, is known. In the title of his only extant work he is called Tuburticensis, possibly from the town of Tubursicum in Africa. He is believed to have lived about the fifth century. His writings are chiefly valuable for the quotations t hey contain from early Roman authors.—D. M.
NONIUS or NONNIUS, Petrus, the Latinized name of Pedro Nuñez, a Portuguese physician and mathematician, who was born at Alcacer-do-Sal in 1492, and died in 1577. He was tutor to one of the royal princes of Portugal, cosmographer-royal, and professor of mathematics in the university of Coimbra. He wrote a treatise on "Navigation," and some other mathematical works, which were republished at Basle in a collected form in 1592. His name was long erroneously applied to the instrument for subdividing lines and arcs, properly called by the name of its inventor, the "Vernier." The invention of Nuñez, though ingenious, was inferior to, and different in principle from the vernier, by which it has long been superseded. It consisted in drawing on the face of a quadrant for measuring angles forty-five concentric arcs, one of which was divided into ninety equal parts or degrees, and the remainder into eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven, eighty-six, &c., successively, the last being divided into forty-six equal parts. When the index did not exactly cut one of the divisions of the arc of degrees, it passed through or near to one of the divisions of one or other of the other arcs; and by noting the place of that division the fractional parts of a degree were calculated.—W. J. M. R.
NONNUS, a Greek poet of Panopolis in Egypt, belonging to the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century. Nonnus, about whose life nothing is known, was a christian, though he wrote a heavy, lumbering, bombastic poem in forty-eight books, called Διονυσιακά, of which a good edition was published by Gräfe, Leipsic, 1819-26. Nonnus also wrote a paraphrase in hexameters of the gospel of John, a work not wholly devoid of merit, but turgid and prolix, and quite in contrast with the simple dignity and pathos of the inspired original. Various editions of the paraphrase—the earliest by Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1501—have been published at different times.—J. E.
NONNUS or NONUS, one of the minor Greek writers on medicine, was a physician of the tenth or eleventh century. Little is known of him beyond the fact that he dedicated his work "Enchiridion Medicum," or Medical Manual, to a Constantine Porphyrogenitus, whom Lambesius supposes to have been the seventh emperor of that name, the son of Lea, and who died in 959. Others believe him to have been the Constantine Porphyrogenitus who was the son of Constantine Ducas, who died in 1067. Nonus was a mere copyist, transcribing largely from the works of Ætius, Alexander and Paulus Ægineta. He never acknowledges the authors from whose writings he quotes. "Nonus," says Dr. Friend, "is so modest as to quote no author, which very well became one who had so little of his own." Some of the MSS. of his work which are extant bear the name of Theophanes as the author, without any mention of Nonus. There are two editions of his writings, one published in 1568, 8vo, Greek and Latin; the other edited by J. S. Bernard, in two vols., 8vo, Gotha and Amsterdam, 1794-95.—F. C. W.
NOODT, Gerhard, a distinguished Dutch writer on jurisprudence, was born at Nimeguen in 1647. He successively occupied the chair of law in the universities of Franeker, Utrecht, and Leyden, at which latter place he died, August 14th, 1725. In his three books, "De Fœnore et Usuris," he undertook to show that usury in itself is not contrary to divine law; and in his "De jure imperii et lege regia" he proves that religion cannot be subjected to worldly power or government. The best edition of his works appeared at Leyden, 1735, 2 vols.; some of them were translated into French.—K. E.
NOORT (not Oort), Adam van, was born at Antwerp in 1557, and learnt painting from his father Lambert van Noort. Adam was a man of great ability, but of irregular habits; his chief distinction is the fact of his having been the master of Rubens, who always had a high opinion of Van Noort's abilities. He was particularly good as a colourist. He was admitted a member of the Guild of St. Luke at Antwerp in 1587, and died there after a long, turbulent, and worthless life in 1641.—(Catalogue du Musée d'Anvers.)—R. N. W.
NORADIN. See Noureddin.
NORBERG, Matthias, a Swedish Orientalist, born in 1747, studied at Upsal, where he was professor of Greek and theology. In 1778 he investigated the oriental MSS. at Paris, where he translated a Syriac version of Second Kings. At Milan he copied the Codex Syriaco-Hexaplaris, of which he published a part in 1787. At Göttingen he published his "De Religione et lingua Sabæorum." In 1781 he was made Greek professor at Lund. He died in 1826.—B. H. C.
NORBERT (Saint), founder of the Premonstratensian order, was born at Santen in the duchy of Cleves, about the year 1092. Ambition led him to embrace an ecclesiastical career, his father being related to the emperor. But being one day, near Cologne, struck to the earth in a thunderstorm, the whole current of his ideas was changed; he abandoned the court, resigned his benefices, embraced a painful and ascetic life, and selling his entire patrimony, distributed the proceeds among the poor. This was in 1115. Having obtained from the pope permission to preach in France, he was welcomed into his diocese by Barthelemy, bishop of Laon, and with his approval founded at Prémontrè, in 1120, his new order, which was a reform of the Augustinian canons. His preaching and example soon drew many disciples around him, and within a hundred years from its foundation the order was propagated extensively in almost every country of Europe. In 1126 while passing through Spires, where the emperor was, Norbert was suddenly pitched upon to fill the archiepiscopal see of Magdeburg. After eight years of incessant labour, he died in 1134. He was not canonized till 1582.—T. A.
NORBERT, Pierre Parisot, was born at Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine in 1697. He became a capuchin monk, and was sent out to Pondicherry in 1736 as superintendent of the Indian missions. After his return he published a work entitled "Les Rits Malabares," which is in fact an abusive satire on the jesuit missionaries. After passing from one European country to another during many years, he obtained a brief of secularization in 1759, and settled near Commerci in Lorraine, where he died in 1769. His chief work, "Memoires sur les Missions des Indes Orientales," also bears hardly on the jesuits.—T. A.
NORBERG, Göran, was born at Stockholm in 1677. He studied for the church, and in 1703 was appointed an army chaplain. In the latter capacity he accompanied Charles XII. into Poland, Saxony, and Russia. Taken prisoner by the Russians at the battle of Pultowa in 1709, he remained in captivity till 1715, when he obtained his pardon; and returning home was nominated to the parish of St. Clara at Stockholm, where he spent the remainder of his life, dying in the year 1744. His "History of Charles XII." was written by command of Queen Ulrica Eleanora, and possesses much value as a statement of facts by an eye-witness, although the style is unattractive.—J. J.
NORDEN, Frederik Ludwig, a Danish traveller of note, was born at Glückstadt in the year 1708. From an early age he evinced a peculiar genius for drawing and mathematics, which procured him the patronage of King Christian VI. This monarch allowed him a travelling pension, and Norden went to Italy, where he spent several years. Being afterwards instructed to proceed to Egypt for the purpose of examining the remains of antiquity in that country, he sailed thither in the July of 1737; and having fulfilled the object of his mission returned to Europe in 1738. For his Egyptian researches he was rewarded by the
