Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/710

 686 L I Q L I Q ing and learned acquaintance, and was engaged for more than a year as teacher in the university of Jena, a position which implied an outward conformity to the Lutheran Church. On his way back to Louvain, he stopped some time at Cologne, where he must again have comported himself as a Catholic. Here he married, but the union was without issue, and in other respects did not conduce to happiness, as we gather from various allusions scattered through Lipsius s letters. He returned to Louvain, but was soon driven by the civil war to take refuge in Antwerp, where he received, in 1579, a call to the newly founded university of Leyden, as professor of history. At Leyden, where he must have outwardly conformed to the Calvinistic creed and worship, Lipsius remained eleven years, years about which his Catholic biographer Le Mire has nothing to tell, but speaks of the period as an enforced temporary sojourn among the infidels, till the restoration of peace allowed him to return to his home in Brabant. Iu truth, this period of Lipsius s life was the period of his greatest productivity. It was now that he prepared his Seneca, and that he perfected, in successive editions, his Tacitus. To edit and comment on two authors of the first class, such as Tacitus and Seneca, in addition to the daily drudgery of teaching, might seem work enough for eleven years. But Lipsius s industry enabled him, over and above, to bring out, from the press of Plantin at Antwerp, a series of works of varied character and contents, some of pure scholarship, others collections from classical authors, and others again of more general interest. Of this latter class was a treatise on politics (Politicorum Libri Sex, 1589), in which he let it be seen that, though a public teacher in a country which professed toleration, he had not departed from the state maxims of Alva and Philip II. He lays it down that a Government should only suffer one religion to exist in its territory, and that dissent should be extirpated by fire and sword. This frank avowal of what were known to be his real sentiments might have easily had disagreeable consequences for the author, if he had not been sheltered from the attacks to which it exposed him by the prudence of the authorities of Leyden. Lipsius was prevailed upon to publish a declaration that his expression &quot; Ure,seca&quot; was not intended of material fire and sword, but was only a metaphor for &quot; vigorous treatment.&quot; The time at last arrived when Lipsius, who had always been somewhat ill at ease in his Calvinistic disguise, was to throw it off and return into the bosom of the church. In the spring of 1591 he left Leyden under pretext of taking the waters at Spa for the relief of a liver complaint. He went to Mainz, where he was reconciled to the church by the instrumentality of the Jesuit fathers. The event was one which deeply interested the Catholic world, and invitations poured in on Lipsius from the courts and universities of Italy, Austria, and Spain. But he preferred to remain in his own country, and after two years of unsettled residence at Lie&quot;ge, Spa, &c., settled at Louvain, as professor of Latin in the Collegium Buslidianum. He was not expected to teach, and his trifling stipend was eked out by the appointments of privy councillor and historiographer to the king of Spain. From this time till his death Lipsius continued to publish antiquarian collections and dissertations as before. But he was, in fact, lost to learning. His name and fame, arid his sententious and amusing style, were placed at the disposal of the Jesuits, and used by them to restore the credit of two local images of the Virgin, whose authentic miracles were retailed by Lipsius in two tracts, Dim Virgo HaUensis, and Dim Virgo Sichemensis. Joseph Hall, afterwards bishop of Norwich, was at Spa in the suite of Sir E. Bacon at the time of the appearance of Lipsius s brochures, and was like to have got into trouble by disput ing against them (Hall s Epistles, cent. i. ep. 5). Lipsius died at Louvain on the 23d of March 1606, at the age of fifty-eight. His Greek books and MSS. he left to the Jesuit college at Louvain ; the rest of his library, choice rather than extensive, to a nephew. His furred doctor s robe he ordered to be offered at the shrine of the Virgin at Hall. If, according to the fancy of some biographers, Scaliger, Casaubon, and Lipsius be erected into a literary triumvirate, Lipsius repre sents Lepidus. His knowledge of classical antiquity was extremely limited. He had but slight acquaintance with Gree-k ; &quot;pour sa provision &quot; only, said Scaliger. He is fond of adorning his letters with Greek phrases, his quotations betraying that he is a stranger in that country. In Latin literature the poets and Cicero lay out side his range ; he had no ear for metre, and no taste for poetical expression. Where he was strong was in the Latin historians and in Roman antiquities. His greatest work was his edition of Tacitus. This author he had so completely made his own that he could repeat the whole, and offered to be tested in any part of the text, with a poniard held to his breast, to be used against him if he should fail. His Tacitus first appeared in 1575, and was five times revised and corrected by the editor the last time in 1606, shortly before his death. His Seneca is dated Antwerp, 1605. His Opera Omnia were collected in 4 vols., Antwerp, 1637, of which the Wesel edition, 1675, is a verbal reprint in the same number of volumes, but in a smaller form. The first volume contains also Le Mire s Life of Lipsius, which had appeared separately in 1607. Both editions contain ten centuries of his epistles, to which additions have been made in Epistolarnm quse in Ccntiiriis non ex ant Decades XII., &c., Harderwijk, 1621 ; Burmann s Sylloyc, torn. i. ; Lcttrcsineditcs, ed. Del prat, Amst., 1858. On Lipsius s relations with Scaliger see Bernay s /. J. Scaliycr, note 40. A bibliographical list of his separate publications, forty-eight in number, may be found in Niceron, Memoircs, xxiv. p. 118. (M. P.) LIQUEURS are perfumed and sweetened spirits pre pared for drinking, and for use as a flavouring material in confectionery and cookery. The term liqueur is also applied to certain wines and spirits remarkable for their amount of bouquet, such as tokay and liqueur brandy, &c. Ordinary liqueurs consist of certain mixtures of pure spirit with essential oils and vegetable extracts, and with syrup of refined sugar. A certain number of such prepara tions have an established reputation ; but the methods by which these are compounded, and the precise proportions of the various ingredients they contain, are valuable trade secrets, scrupulously kept from public knowledge. The raw materials employed in the preparation of liqueurs are (1) a pure flavourless spirit, which must be free from fusel oil ; (2) various essential oils, on the purity and constant quality of which much of the success of the manufacture depends, or, in place of the oils, the aromatic substances from which they may be distilled ; (3) bitter aromatic vegetable substances, fruits, rinds, &c., or their alcoholic extracts called tinctures ; (4) fresh juicy fruits possessed of special flavour ; (5) refined sugar prepared in the form of a perfectly smooth colourless syrup ; (6) soft or distilled water ; and (7) tinctorial substances for those liqueurs in which a particular colour is demanded by fashion. The French, who excel in the preparation of liqueurs, grade their products according to their sweetness and alcoholic strength into cremes, huiles, or banmes, which have a thick oily consistency, and eaux, extraits, or elixirs, which, being less sweetened, are perfectly limpid. Liqueurs of British fabrication, generally of inferior quality, are frequently dealt in under the name of cordials. Bitters form a class of liqueurs by themselves, claiming to possess certain tonic properties and a medicinal value. Certain liqueurs, containing only a single flavouring ingredient, or having a prevailing flavour of a particular substance, are named after that body, as for example cremc de rose, vanille, the, cacao, anisette, and kiimmel, &c. On the other hand, the liqueurs which in general are most highly prized are compounded of very numerous aromatic prin ciples, and they are not considered fit for use till they have matured and mellowed for several years.