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 Contemplatio de vita S. Francisci, a book of devotions. Nicolaus was above all a commentator. His exegesis, which was dominated by his polemics against the Jews, is characterized by a fidelity to the literal sense, the comparison with the Hebrew text, the direct use of Jewish commentators, a very independent attitude towards traditional interpretations, and a remarkable historical and critical sense. In all this he resembled Roger Bacon. His works, especially the Postilla litteralis, were very popular in the 14th and 15th centuries, but produced few imitators.

NICOLAY, the name of a French family of Vivarais which came rapidly into legal prominence at the end of the 15th century. Jean Nicolay (d. 1527), son of a bailli of Bourg Saint-Andéol, became councillor at the parlement of Toulouse and afterwards at the Grand Council, chancellor of the kingdom of Naples, Maître des Requêtes, and, finally, first president of the Chambre des Comptes of Paris (1506). This last post was filled continuously up to the Revolution by his descendants. Antoine Chrétien de Nicolay (1712–1777) became marshal of France in 1775. His brother, Aymar Chrétien François Michel (1721–1769), bishop of Verdun, was first almoner of Marie Josephe of Saxony, wife of the dauphin Louis (d. 1765), and her influential counsellor.

NICOLE, PIERRE (1625–1695), one of the most distinguished of the French Jansenists, was the son of a provincial barrister, and was born at Chartres. Sent to Paris in 1642 to study theology, he soon entered into relations with the Jansenist community at (q.v.) through his aunt, Marie des Anges Suireau, who was for a short time abbess of the convent. Some scruple of conscience forbade him to proceed to the priesthood, and he remained throughout life a “clerk in minor orders,” although a profound theological scholar. For some years he was a master in the “little school” for boys established at Port Royal, and had the honour of teaching Greek to young Jean Racine, the future poet. But his chief duty was to act, in collaboration with Antoine Arnauld, as general editor of the controversial literature put forth by the Jansenists. He had a large share in collecting the materials for Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656); in 1658 he translated the Letters into Latin, under the pseudonym of Nicholas Wendrock. In 1664 he himself began a series of letters, Les Imaginaires, intended to show that the heretical opinions commonly ascribed to the Jansenists really existed only in the imagination of the Jesuits. His letters being violently attacked by Desmaretz de Saint-Sorlin, an erratic minor poet who professed great devotion to the Jesuits, Nicole replied to him in another series of letters, Les Visionnaires (1666). In the course of these he observed that poets and dramatists were no better than “public poisoners.” This remark stung Racine to the quick; he turned not only on his old master, but on all Port Royal, in a scathing reply, which—as Boileau told him—did more honour to his head than to his heart. About the same time Nicole became involved in a controversy about transubstantiation with the Huguenot Claude; out of this grew a massive work, La Perpétuité de la foi de l’église catholique touchant l’eucharistie (1669), the joint effort of Nicole and Antoine Arnauld. But Nicole’s most popular production was his Essais de morale, a series of short discussions on practical Christianity. The first volume was published in 1671, and was followed at irregular intervals by others; altogether the series numbers fourteen volumes. In 1679, on the renewal of the persecution of the Jansenists, Nicole was forced to fly to Belgium in company with Arnauld. But the two soon parted. Nicole was elderly and in poor health; the life of a fugitive was not to his taste, and he complained that he wanted rest. “Rest,” answered Arnauld, “when you have eternity to rest in!” In 1683 Nicole made a rather ambiguous peace with the authorities, and was allowed to come back to Paris. There he continued his literary labours up to the last; he was writing a refutation of the new heresy of the Quietists, when death overtook him on the 16th of November 1695.

NICOLL, ROBERT (1814–1837), Scottish poet, was born on the 7th of January, 1814, at the farm of Little Tullybeltane, in the parish of Auchtergaven, Perthshire. When Robert was five years old his father was reduced to poverty. He became a day-labourer, and was only able to give his son a very slight education. At sixteen the boy was apprenticed to a grocer and wine-merchant at Perth. In 1833 he began to contribute to Johnstone’s Magazine (afterwards Tait’s Magazine), and in the next year his apprenticeship was cancelled. He visited Edinburgh, and was kindly received there, but obtained no employment. He opened a circulating library at Dundee, but in 1836 he became editor of the Leeds Times. He held pronounced Radical opinions, and overtaxed his slender physical resources in electioneering work for Sir William Molesworth in the summer of 1837. He was obliged to resign his editorship, and died at the house of his friend William Tait, at Trinity, near Edinburgh, on the 7th of December 1837, in his twenty-fourth year. He had published a volume of Poems in 1835; and in 1844 appeared a further volume, Poems and Lyrics, with an anonymous memoir of the author by Mrs C. I. Johnstone. The best of his lyrics are those written in the Scottish dialect. They are simple in feeling and expression, genuine folk-songs.

NICOLL, SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1851–), Scottish Nonconformist divine and man of letters, was born at Auchindoir, Aberdeenshire, on the 10th of October 1851, the son of a Free Church minister. He graduated M.A. at Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church College there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown. Three years later he moved to Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of the Expositor. In 1886 he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist organ which obtained great influence over opinion in the free churches. Robertson Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper, to which he was himself a considerable contributor, the papers signed “Claudius Clear” being among those from his hand. He also founded and edited the Bookman (1891, &c.), and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton. Among his other enterprises were The Expositor’s Bible and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor’s Greek Testament (1897, &c.), and a series of Contemporary Writers (1894, &c.), and of Literary Lives (1904, &c.). He wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. The knighthood bestowed on him among the birthday honours in 1909 was an apt recognition of his long and able devotion to the “journeyman work” of literature.

 NICOLLS, RICHARD (1624–1672), American colonial governor, was born probably at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England, in 1624. He commanded a royalist troop of horse during the Civil War, and on the defeat of the king went into exile. Soon after the Restoration he became groom of the bedchamber to the duke of