Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/665

 L I L L I L 643 ultimately framed to himself that method which he ever afterwards followed.&quot; He then began to issue his pro phetical almanacs and other works, and it is a curious illustration of the state of intelligence even among educated people at the time that trash of this kind really seems to have met with serious attention from some of the most prominent members of the Long Parliament. If we may believe himself, Lilly lived on friendly and almost intimate terms with Bulstrode Whitlock, Lenthall the speaker, Sir Philip Stapleton, Elias Ashmole, and others. Even Selden seems to have given him some countenance, and probably the chief difference between him and the mass of the com munity at the time was that, while others believed in the general truth of astrology, he ventured to specify the future events to which its calculations pointed. Even from his own account of himself, however, it is evident that he did not trust implicitly to the indications given by the aspects of the heavens, but like more vulgar fortune-tellers kept his eyes and ears open for any information which might make his predictions safe. It appears that he had corre spondents both at home and in foreign parts to keep him conversant with the probable current of affairs. He was evidently a proficient in all the unscrupulous cunning, adroitness, and plausibility which go to make up the successful quack and impostor, and not a few of his exploits indicate rather the quality of a clever police detective than of a profound astrologer. After the Restoration he very quickly fell into disrepute. His sympathy with the parliament, which his predictions had generally shown, was not calculated to bring him into royal favour, and the frivolous and sceptical character of the age could scarcely be expected to fall in with transcendentalism either in the shape of sense or nonsense. He came under the lash of Butler, who, making allowance for some satiric exaggeration, has given in th.3 character of Sidrophel a probably not very incorrect picture of the man; and, having by this time amassed a tolerable fortune, he bought a small estate at Hersham in Surrey, to which he retired, and where he diverted the exercise of his peculiar talents to the practice of medicine. He died in 1681, in the eightieth year of his age. Lilly s life of himself, published after his death, is still worth looking into as a remarkable record of credulity and successful imposture. Superstition dies hard ; and it is a curious evidence of the inveteracy of popular delusions that so lately as 1852 a prominent London publisher put forth a new edition of Lilly s Introduction to Astrology, &quot;with numerous emendations adapted to the improved state of the science.&quot; LILY, Lilium, the typical genus of Liliaceee, embraces nearly fifty species, all confined to the northern hemisphere, about fifteen being natives of Japan and China, six of the mountains of India, eight of south Europe, five of the east and nine of the west coasts of North America. The earliest in cultivation were described in 1597 by Gerard (Herbal!, p. 146), who figures eight kinds of European (true) lilies, viz., L. album (L. candidum, L.), and a variety, L. bizantinum, two umbellate forms of the type L. bulbtfcrum, Park., named L. aureum and L. cruentum lati folium, and three with pendulous flowers, apparently forms of the martagon lily. Parkinson, in his Paradisus (1629), described five varieties of martagon, six of umbellate kinds two white ones, and L. pomponium, L. chalcedoni- cum, L. carniolicum, and L. pyrenaicum together with one American, L. canadense, which had been introduced in 1629. For the ancient and mediaeval history of the lily, see M. de Cannart d Hamale s Monographic historique et litteraire des Lis (Malines, 1870). Since that period many new species have been added. The latest authorities for description and classification of the genus are J. G. Baker (&quot; Revision of the Genera and Species of Tulipese,&quot; Journ. of Linn. Soc., xiv. p. 211, 1874) and J. H. Elwes (Monograph of the Genus Lilium, 1877-78), who first tested all the species under cultivation, and has published every one beautifully figured by AY. H. Fitch, and some hybrids. i With respect to the production of these latter, the genus is remarkable for its power of resisting the influence of foreign pollen, for the seedlings of any species, when crossed, generally resemble that which bears them. For the hardier kinds in cultivation, reference may be had to Hemsley s Handbook of Hardy Trees, &c., p. 501. The structure of a lily is of simple type, consisting of two whorls, of three free parts each, six free stamens, and a consolidated pistil of three carpels, ripening into a three valved capsule containing many winged seeds. In form, the flower assumes three types : trumpet-shaped, with a more or less elongated tube, e.g., L. longiflorum and L. candidum ; an open form with spreading perianth leaves, e.g., L. auratum ; or assuming a pendulous habit, with the lips strongly reflexed, e.g., the martagon type. All have scaly bulbs, which in three west American species, as L. Humboldti, are remarkable for being somewhat interme diate between a bulb and a creeping rhizome. L. bulbiferum and its allies produce aerial reproductive bulbils in the axils of the leaves. The bulbs of several species are eaten, such as of L. avenaceum in Kamchatka, of L. Martagon by the Cossacks, and of L. tigrinum, the &quot; tiger lily,&quot; in China and Japan. Medicinal uses were ascribed to the species, but none appear to have any marked properties in this respect. See HORTICULTURE, vol. xii. p. 257. The white lily, L. candidum, the slpiov of the Greeks, was one of the commonest garden flowers of antiquity, appearing in the poets from Homer downwards side by side with the rose and the violet. According to Helm, roses and lilies entered Greece from the east by way of Phrygia, Thrace, and Macedonia (KuUwrpflanzen und Haus- thiere, 3d ed., p. 217). The word elpiov itself, from which lilium is derived by assimilation of consonants, appears to be Eraniau (Ibid., p. 527), and according to ancient etymologists (Lagarde, Ges. Abh., p. 227) the town of Susa was connected with the Persian name of the lily stisan (Gr. a-ovcrov, Heb. shdshan). Mythologically the white lily, Rosa Junonis, was fabled to have sprung from the milk of Hera. As the plant of purity it was contrasted with the rose of Aphrodite. The word Kpivov, on the other hand, included red and purple lilies, Pliu. , II. N., xxi. 5(11,12), the red lily being best known in Syria and Judaea (Phaselis). This perhaps is the &quot; red lily of Constan tinople&quot; of Gerarde, L. chalccdonicum, L. The lily of the Old Testament (shoshan) may be conjectured to be a red lily from the simile in Cant. v. 13, unless the allusion is to the fragrance rather than the colour of the lips, in which case the white lily must be thought of. The lilies of the field,&quot; Matt. vi. 28, are Kplva, and the comparison of their beauty with royal robes suggests their identification with the red Syrian lily of Pliny. Lilies, however, are not a conspicuous feature in the flora of Palestine, and the red anemone (Anemone coronaria), with which all the hill-sides of Galilee are dotted in the spring, is perhaps more likely to have sug gested the figure. For the lily in the pharmacopoeia of the ancients see Adams s Paul. JEginetn, iii. 196. It was used in unguents and against the bites of snakes, &c. In the Middle Ages the flower continued to be common, and was taken as the symbol of heavenly purity. The three golden lilies of France are said to have been originally three lance-heads. LILYE, WILLIAM (c. 14CG 1 523), one of the introducers of a knowledge of the Greek language into England, was born at Odiham, in or about the year 1466. He entered the university of Oxford in 1484, became a demy of Magdalen in 1486, and after taking his first degree in arts went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return he put in at Rhodes, which was still occupied by the Knights, under whose protection many Greeks had taken refuge after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Here he laid the foundation of a knowledge of the Greek language. We next hear of him in Italy, following the lectures of John Sulpitius and Pomponius Lsetus at Rome. From this he passed on to Yenice, from which place he writes to his friend and patron Thomas Starkey, that &quot; he is assiduously attending the lectures of Egnatius in Latin, but that he finds no one in Yenice who can assist him in the study of Greek. He reads, however, Greek by himself, and has