Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/539

Rh A L E- A L F 501 Je veux, s il cst possible, atteiudre la louague De celle. . . . Michael Dray ton, who was twenty-two years of age when Roiisard died, seemed to think that the Alexandrine might be as pleasing to English as it was to French ears, and in this metre he wrote a long poem in twenty-four books called the Polyolbion. The metre, however, failed to catch the English ear. Our principal measure is a line of ten syllables, and we use the Alexandrine only occasionally to give it variety and weight. In our ordinary heroic verse it is but rarely introduced; but in the favourite narrative metre, known as the Spenserian, it comes in regularly as the concluding line of each stanza. In English usage, moreover, it is to be observed that there is no fixed rule as to the position of the pause, though it is true that most commonly the pause occurs at the end of the sixth syllable. Spenser is very free in shifting the pause about; and though the later poets who have used this stanza are not so free, yet, with the exception of Shenstone and of Byron, they do not scruple to obliterate all pause between the sixth and seventh syllables. Thus Thomson (Castle of Indolence, i. 42) : &quot; And music lent new gladness to the morning air.&quot; The danger in the use of the Alexandrine is that, in attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of Pope &quot; A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.&quot; (E. S. D.) ALEXIS, an ancient comic poet, born about 394 B.C. at Thurii in Magna Graecia, the uncle and instructor of Menander. Plutarch says that he lived to the age of 106 years, and according to Suidas he wrote 245 plays, of which the titles of 113 are known. The fragments that have been preserved by Athenaeus and Stobaeus attest the wit and elegance of the author. The plays were frequently translated by the Latin comic writers. (See Meineke, Fragm. Com. Gra c. vol. i.) ALEXIUS I., the nephew of Isaac Comnenus, and the most distinguished member of the Comnenus family, was born in 1048, and died in 1118. In early life he signalised himself in the wars against the enemies of his country ; but the mean jealousies of the ministers of the emperor Nicephorus (surnamed Botaniates) drove him to take up arms against a sovereign whose cause he had thrice gallantly defended throne of Constantinople in 1081. His character has been too partially drawn by his favourite daughter, Anna Com- nena, who has, however, justly remarked that the disorders of the times were both the misfortune and glory of Alexius, and that he paid the penalty for the vices of his pre decessors. In his reign the Turks extended their conquests from Persia to the Hellespont; on the north the empire was assailed by hordes of barbarians from the Danube, and on the west by the Normans; while Europe pressed on Asia by way of Constantinople, in the excitement of the first crusade. Amid these disturbances Alexius managed the affairs of the state with a dexterous and courageous hand, though his policy was ascribed by the Latins to cowardice or treachery. He was politic enough to derive solid advantages from the romantic valour of the crusaders. Alexius outlived the love of his sub jects, and their patience was all but exhausted in the latter part of his long reign. The nobility were irritated by the extravagance of his relations; the people by his severity and exactions; and the clergy murmured at his appropria tion of the church funds to the defence of the state. ALFAXI, DOMEXICO, an Italian painter, born at Perugia towards the close of the fifteenth century. The precise date is uncertain, but he was a contemporary of Raphael, with whom he studied in the school of Perugino. The two artists lived on terms of intimate friendship, and the influence of the more distinguished of the two is so clearly traceable in the works of the other, that these have fre quently been attributed to Raphael. Towards the close of his life Alfani gradually changed his style, and approxi mated to that of the later Florentine school. The date of his death, according to some, was 1540, while others say he was alive in 1553. Pictures by Alfani may be seen in collections at Florence, and in several churches in Perugia. AL-FARABI, ABU NASR MUHAMMAD IBX TARKHAN, one of the earliest Arabian philosophers, flourished during the former half of the 10th century. Philosophy, among the Arabs, was originally an extension of the related sciences of astronomy and medicine, and the first philo sophers were physicians. The more eminent of them were court physicians, and to this they doubtless owed their protection against the jealous suspicions of the Maho metan sects. Al-Farabi is supposed (for the detailed accounts of his life are legendary) to have concerned him self more with the theory than the practice of medicine ; but he is known to have been a physician at the court of Seif-Eddaula, and died when it was at Damascus in 950. Unlike some of his successors, notably Avicenna, he was an ascetic, and his philosophy, which has a slight Platonic infusion, bears traces of the contrast. He was unsystematic, and the sketches and aphorisms of his which have come down to us (many of his treatises are still in MS.) only partially enable us to reconstruct his philosophy. In his opusculum De Scientiis he enumerates six orders of sciences : (1.) Language, by which he means little more than grammar. (2.) Logic, which he names as an art, conceives generally as a science, and confounds in its details with the corresponding art, with rhetoric, and with criticism. (3.) The mathematical sciences, embracing geometry, arithmetic, optics, the science of the stars, music, and the sciences of weights and of capacities (ingenici). Arithmetic is abstract and concrete ; geometry is active, passive, and speculative; and the science of the stars includes astronomy, astrology, the science of climates, and of dreams and auguries. (4.) The natural sciences, ten in number. (5.) Civil science, including judicial science and rhetoric. (6.) Divine science, or metaphysics. This hierarchy has striking approximations to the most modern classifications. Logic and mathematics, the most abstract sciences, are near the beginning, if not quite first ; what stands for social science follows the physical concrete sciences ; and the distinction between abstract and concrete, which Comte made one of the bases of his classification, and which has been more accurately discriminated by Spencer, is on the whole clearly seized. But art is throughout confounded with science ; supersti tions are mixed up with facts ; physical and mental phenomena are not always separated ; the subjective and the objective (learning and science) are confused, as they afterwards were by Bacon ; and there is no science of man man was not yet conceived, metaphysically, as an individual. This agrees with Al-Farabi s science of politics as expounded in another work, in which he follows his master, Aristotle, in denying the permanence of the individual soul, and anticipates the Averrhoistic doctrine of the unity of souls. For his metaphysics is Peripatetic, as Peripateticism was interpreted by the Neo-Platonist commentators on Aristotle. Starting with the distinction between the possible and the necessary, he assumes that there must be some supreme necessary existence which accounts for all actual existence. This supreme exist ence has infinite life, wisdom, power, beauty, goodness, &c., but it is an absolute unity, and is without distinguish able attributes. How does the world, with its infinite
 * i gainst powerful insurgent leaders; and he ascended the