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 teacher of French. After about two years’ absence Verlaine was again in France. He acted as teacher in more than one school and even tried farming. The death of his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached, dissolved the ties that bound him to “respectable” society. During the rest of his life he lived in poverty, often in hospital, but always with the heedless and unconquerable cheerfulness of a child. After a long obscurity, famous only in the Latin Quarter, among the cafes where he spent so much of his days and nights, he enjoyed at last a European celebrity. In 1894 he paid another visit to England, this time as a distinguished poet, and lectured at London and Oxford. He died in Paris on the 8th of January 1896. His eighteen volumes of verse (among which may be further mentioned Jadis et naguère, 1884; Amour, 1888; Parallelèment, 1889; Bonheur, 1891) vary greatly in quality as in substance; they are all the sincere expression, almost the instantaneous notation, of himself, of his varying moods, sensual passion, the passion of the mystic, the delight of the sensitive artist in the fine shades of sensation. He brought into French verse a note of lyrical song, a delicacy in the evocation of sound and colour, which has seemed almost to create poetry over again, as it provides a language out of which rhetoric has been cleansed and a rhythm into which a new music has come with a new simplicity.

VERLAT, MICHEL MARIE CHARLES (1824–1890), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp on the 25th of November 1824. He was a pupil of Nicaise de Keyser, and studied at the Antwerp Academy. In 1842 appeared his first important picture, “Pippin the Short Killing a Lion.” About 1849 he went to Paris, where he worked under Ary Scheffer. In 1855 he won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle at Paris with his “Tiger Attacking a Herd of Buffaloes,” and in 1858 exhibited “Le Coup de collier” (now in the Antwerp Gallery) at the Paris Salon. In 1866 he was appointed director of the Academy at Weimar, where he painted some fine portraits, notably those of the grand-duchess of Saxony and of the musician Liszt. Soon after his return to Antwerp in 1875 he visited Palestine, and brought back a large number of interesting pictures, including “Vox Populi” (Antwerp Gallery), “The Tomb of Jesus,” and “The Flight into Egypt.” In 1885 he was appointed director of the Antwerp Academy. Other important works by Verlat are the panoramas of the battle of Waterloo and the treaty of San Stefano, “Christ between the Two Thieves,” “Defending the Flock” (Antwerp Gallery), “Oxen Ploughing in Palestine” (Antwerp Gallery), “Godfrey of Bouillon at the Siege of Jerusalem” (Brussels Gallery), and “Sheep-Dog Defending the Flock” (Brussels Gallery). He executed a series of original etchings, and published in 1879 a book on the Antwerp Academy. He died at Antwerp on the 23rd of October 1890.

VERMANDOIS, a French countship composed originally of the two burgraviates (châtellenies) of St Quentin (Aisne) and Peronne (Somme). Herbert I., the earliest of its hereditary counts, was descended in direct male line from the emperor Charlemagne, and was killed in 902 by an assassin in the pay of Baldwin II., count of Flanders. His son, Herbert II. (902–943), a man absolutely devoid of scruples, considerably increased the territorial power of the house of Vermandois, and kept the lawful king of France, the unlucky Charles the Simple, prisoner for six years. His successors, Albert I., Herbert III., Albert II., Otto and Herbert IV., were unimportant. In 1077 the last male of the first house of Vermandois, Herbert IV., received the countship of Valois in right of his wife. He died soon afterwards, leaving his inheritance to his daughter Adela. whose first husband was Hugh the Great, the brother of king Philip I. Hugh was one of the leaders of the first crusade, and died in 1102 at Tarsus in Cilicia. The eldest son of Hugh and Adela was count Raoul (Rudolph) I. (c. 1120–1152), who married Alix of Guyenne, sister of the queen, Eleanor, and had by her three children: Raoul (Rudolph) II., the Leper (count from 1152-67); Isabelle, who possessed from 1167 to 1183 the countships of Vermandois, Valois and Amiens conjointly with her husband, Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders; and Eleanor. By the terms of a treaty concluded in 1185 with the king, Philip Augustus, the count of Flanders kept the countship of Vermandois until his death, in 1191. At this date a new arrangement gave Eleanor (d. 1213) a life interest in the eastern part of Vermandois, together with the title of countess of St Quentin, and the king entered immediately into possession of Péronne and its dependencies.

VERMICELLI (plural of Ital. vermicello, little worm, Lat. vermicellus, diminutive of vermis, worm), the name of a kind of paste, made of the granular meal of certain hard wheats, and used as a food. It is made into worm-like threads, whence its name, and differs from macaroni only in being made solid and not in hollow tubes. “Spaghetti” (dim. of spago, a small cord) is a larger kind of vermicelli. In Italy these various pastes form a staple article of food. In other countries “vermicelli” is used in soups and puddings, &c.

VERMIGLI, PIETRO MARTIRE, generally known as (1500–1562), born at Florence on the 8th of May 1500, was son of Stefano Vermigli, a follower of Savonarola, by his first wife, Maria Fumantina. He owed his Christian names to a vow which his father, actuated by the death of several children in infancy, had made to dedicate any that survived to the Dominican saint, Peter Martyr, who lived in the 13th century. Educated in the Augustinian cloister at Fiesole, he was transferred in 1519 to the convent of St John of Verdara near Padua, where he graduated D.D. about 1527 and made the acquaintance of the future Cardinal Pole. From that year onwards he was employed as a public preacher at Brescia, Pisa, Venice and Rome; and in his intervals of leisure he mastered Greek and Hebrew. In 1530 he was elected abbot of the Augustinian monastery at Spoleto, and in 1533 prior of the convent of St Peter ad Aram at Naples. About this time he read Bucer’s commentaries on the Gospels and the Psalms and also Zwingli’s De vera et falsa religione; and his Biblical studies began to affect his views. He was accused of erroneous doctrine, and the Spanish viceroy of Naples prohibited his preaching. The prohibition was removed on appeal to Rome, but in 1541 Vermigli was transferred to Lucca, where he again fell under suspicion. Summoned to appear before a chapter of his order at Genoa, he fled in 1542 to Pisa and thence to another Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, at Florence. Ochino escaped to Geneva, and Vermigli to Zurich, thence to Basel, and finally to Strassburg, where, with Bucer’s support, he was appointed professor of theology and married his first wife, Catherine Dammartin of Metz.

Vermigli and Ochino were both invited to England by Cranmer in 1547, and given a pension of forty marks by the government. In 1548 Vermigli was appointed regius professor of divinity at Oxford, in succession to the notorious Dr Richard Smith, and was incorporated D.D. In 1549 he took part in a great disputation on the Eucharist. He had abandoned Luther’s doctrine of consubstantiation and adopted the doctrine of a Real Presence conditioned by the faith of the recipient. This was similar to the view now held by Cranmer and Ridley, but it is difficult to prove that Vermigli had any great influence in the modifications of the Book of Common Prayer made in 1552. He was consulted on the question, but his recommendations seem hardly distinguishable from those of Bucer, the