Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/20

Rh 10 M E N M E N the government of Granada was entrusted not long after its surrender, and was born in that city about the year 1503. The marquis of Santillana, so prominent a figure at the court of John II. of Castile, was his great-grandfather. At an early age Mendoza, who had been destined for the church, was sent to Salamanca, where he studied with success, and also, some time between the years 1520 and 1525, produced his Lazarillo de Tormes, the work upon which his literary celebrity largely rests. Having persuaded his father to allow him to enter the army, he served with the Spanish troops of Charles V. in Italy, and also availed himself of opportunities as they arose to hear the lectures of famous professors at Bologna, Padua, and Rome. In 1538 he was taken into the diplomatic service of the emperor and sent as ambassador to Venice ; there he cultivated friendly relations with the Aldi, and energetically set about collecting a library, not only procuring copies of many old MSS. in the public library of the city, but also sending to Thessaly and Mount Athos for new ones ; it was from his collection that the complete text of Josephus was first printed. For some time he held the post of military governor of Siena ; and, after having been present in an official capacity in Trent at the beginning of the oecumenical council, he was in 1547 sent as special plenipotentiary to Rome, where he I continued to act for some years. In 1554, shortly before ; the abdication of Charles, he was recalled to Spain, and his official career came to an end. He was never a favourite with Philip II. ; and in consequence of a quarrel with a courtier, in which he had lost his temper badly, he was finally banished from court in 1568. The remaining years of his life, which were spent at Granada, he devoted partly to the study of Arabic, partly to poetical composition, and partly to the preparation of his history of the Moorish insurrection of 1568-70 (Guerra de Granada). He died at Madrid (which he had obtained leave to visit on some business errand) in April 1575. Mendoza s Lazarillo dc Tormes, though written during his college days, was not published until 1553, when it was printed anonymously at Antwerp. Next year it was reprinted at Burgos, but ultimately it was taken exception to by the Inquisition, and the Spanish editions of 1573 and subsequent years are accordingly con siderably abridged. It is a comparatively short fragment, written in vigorous and bright Castilian, and was the first example in modern literature of the &quot; novela picaresca&quot; of which Le Sage s Gil Bias now ranks as the most perfect specimen. The continuations, first by an anonymous author (1555) and afterwards by H. de Luna (1 620), are of very inferior interest. Of Mendoza as a poet all that need be said here is that he followed the modern Italian models quite as far as was compatible with a due regard to his Castilian individu ality. His history, though of no great bulk, is, like his novel, a work of remarkable literary execution. It relates indeed only to a comparatively brief episode in a chapter of events for which it is almost impossible to claim much general attention, and it is often needlessly erudite and sometimes provokingly obscure. But as a whole itis singularly well-informed, dignified, and picturesque ; &quot;the style is bold and abrupt, but true to the idiom of the language, and the current of thought is deep and strong, easily carrying the reader onward with its flood. Nothing in the old chronicling style of the earlier period is to be compared to it, and little in any subsequent period is equal to it for manliness, vigour, and truth &quot; (Ticknor). The first edition of the Guerra de Granada did not appear until 1610, but was even then incomplete ; the first perfect edition was that of 1730. The work has frequently been reprinted since. MENDOZA, IXIGO LOPEZ DE. See SANTILLANA. MENELAUS, king of Sparta, was the brother of AGAMEMNON (q.v.) and the husband of HELENA (q.v.). He was one of the heroes of the Trojan horse, and recovered his wife at the sack of the city. On the voyage home wards his fleet was scattered off Malea by a storm which drove him to Crete ; after seven years further wandering to Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and the country of the Erembi, he at last had an interview with Proteus and obtained a favourable wind which brought him home on the very day on which Orestes was holding the funeral feast over JSgisthus and Clytaemnestra. After a long and happy life in Lacedaemon, Menelaus, as the son- in-law of Zeus, did not die but was translated to Elysium. MENGS, ANTONY RAPHAEL (1728-1779), was the most celebrated representative of the eclectic school of painting in the 18th century, and played a great part in the early days of the classic revival. He was born in 1728 at Aussig in Bohemia, but his father, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he conducted his son to Rome. Mengs early showed that active intelligence and large capacity for laborious study which secured him the extraordinary distinction which he enjoyed through life. His appointment in 1749 as first painter to the elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III. of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting hall, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs again returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at St Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In England, the duke of Northumberland pos sesses a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, have altar-pieces by his hand. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian, and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of per fection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences, Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. His close intimacy with Winkelmann who constantly wrote at his dictation has greatly enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe s judgment of Mengs in Winkelmann und seine Jahrhundert ; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and utter poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism. See Opcrc di Antonio Eaffacllo Mengs, Parma, 1780 ; Werke, iibcrsetzt v. G. F. Prange, 1786 ; Zcitschrift fur bildende Kunst, 1880 ; Bianconi, Elocjio Storico di Mengs, Milan. 1780 ; Nagler s Kiinstlerlcxikon. MENHADEN, economically one of the most important fishes of the United States, known by a great number of local names, &quot;menhaden&quot; and &quot;mossbunker&quot; being those most generally in use. In systematic works it ap pears under the names of Clupea menhaden and Brevoor- tia tyrannus. It is allied to the European species of shad and pilchard, and, like the latter, approaches the coast in its wanderings in immense shoals, which are found throughout the year in some part of the littoral waters between Maine and Florida, the northern shoals retiring into deeper water or to more southern latitudes with the approach of cold weather. The average size of the menhaden is about 12 inches. Although it was long known as a palatable table- fish, and largely used, when salted, for export to the West Indies, and as bait for cod and mackerel, the menhaden fishery has been developed to its present importance only within the last twenty years. A large fleet of steamers and sailing vessels is engaged in it ; and a great number of large factories have sprung into existence to extract the oil, which is used for tanning and currying, and for adulterat ing other more expensive oils, and to manufacture the refuse into a very valuable guano. In the year 1877 2,426,589 gallons of oil and 55,444 tons of guano were produced.