Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/242

Rh 228 M I C M I C such an Arabist as Reiske; and, though for many years the most famous teacher of Semitic languages in Europe, he had little of the higher philological faculty, and neither his grammatical nor his critical work, highly praised as it then was, has left a permanent mark, with the exception perhaps of his text-critical studies on the Peshito. 1 His tastes were all for realia history, antiquities, especially geography and natural science ; in his autobiography he half regrets that he did not choose the medical profession. Here he found a field hardly touched since Bochart, in whose foot steps he followed in the Spicilegium geographies, Hebrxorum exterss post Bochartum (1769-80). To his impulse we owe the famous Eastern expedition of Von Haven, Forskal, and Niebuhr. He prepared the instructions for their journey, and drew up a series of questions and elucidations to guide their researches, which place in strong relief his compre hensive grasp of all that was then known of the East, and j the keen delight in the knowledge of tangible and natural ! things, paired with a sober and patient judgment, which was his chief intellectual characteristic. The best part of ! this knowledge was turned to the profit of Biblical study ; j in his exegetical writings, for example, one of the main j features is what was then the novelty of illustrations from Eastern travel. In spite of his doctrinal writings which at the time made no little noise, so that his Compendium of Dogmatic (1760) was confiscated in Sweden, and the knighthood of the North Star was afterwards given him in reparation it was the natural side of the Bible that really attracted him, and no man did more to introduce the modern method of studying Hebrew antiquity as an integral part of ancient Eastern life. The permanent influence of his works indeed has not been great, and many of them are now hardly readable ; for, with all his historic tastes and learning, he had no large historic conceptions, and, what is closely akin to this defect, was singularly deficient in imagination and poetic sympathy. But the vivacity of his mind, his manysidedness, his singularly attractive though discursive method of lecturing, and above all his power of feeling and inspiring interest in every kind of fact, was a potent stimulus much needed in the Germany of that age, and did not soon die. Different as the three men are, there is a true historic nexus between the three great Gottingen Orientalists, Michaelis, Eichhorn, and Ewald. The personal character of Michaelis can he read between the lines of his autobiography with the aid of the other materials collected by the editor Hassen camp (/. D. Michaelis Lebcnsbeschrcibung, &c., 1793). To understand the secret of his enormous influence, it is not enough to read his books, now for the most part dull enough to us ; we must see the upright vivacious laborious man, with a good deal of worldly prudence and a good deal of temper, much absorbed in his manifold academic activities in the university and Royal Society of Gottingen, yet ever full of interest in the larger world, and of shrewd judgments and lively talk, with a strong sense of his rights and dignity, yet with a good and warm heart ; shining especially in the lecture-room, where he dealt forth knowledge with discursive hand from a full store, displaying the methods as well as the results of his all-sided research, not without a touch of the vanity of the polyhistor, and loving to leave the chair under a storm of applause at a parting bon-mot which he acknowledged at the door j in a backward glance of triumph. The same volume contains a | full list of his works. Besides those already mentioned it is suffi- j dent to refer to his New Testament Introduction (the first edition, 1750, preceded the Cull development of his powers, and is a very different book from the later editions), his reprint of Lowth s Pr&lcctiones with important additions (1758-62), his German ! translation of the Bible with notes (1773-92), his Orientalischc : und Exeijctischc Bibliothek (1775-85), and Ncue 0. and E. Bib. - C17S6-91), his MosaiscJics Recht (1770-71), and his edition of ; Castle s Lexicon Syriacum (1787-88). His Littcrarischcr Brief- wcchscl (1794-96) contains much that is interesting for the history of learning in his time. (W. 11. S.) formed with the officers, that procured him the Paris MS. from which lie edited Abulfeda s description of Egypt. 1 Curx -in Actus Apostolorum Syriaco?, 1755. MICHAUD, JOSEPH (1767-1839), French historian and publicist, was born of an old family on June 19, 1767, at Albens, Savoy, was educated at Bourg-en-Bresse, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyons, where the events of 1789 first called into activity the dislike to revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the rest of his life. In 1791 he went to Paris, where, not without danger, he took part in editing several royalist journals. In 1794 he started La Quotidienne, for his con nexion with which he was arrested after the 13th of Vende miaire; he succeeded in escaping his captors, but was sentenced to death par contumace by the military council. Having resumed the editorship of his newspaper on the establishment of the Directory, he was again proscribed on the 18th of Fructidor, but at the close of two years returned to Paris when the consulate had superseded the Directory. His Bourbon sympathies led to a brief imprisonment in 1800, and on his release he for the time abandoned journalism, and began to write or edit books. Along with his brother and two colleagues he published in 1806 a Biographic moderne, ou dictionnaire des homines qui se sont fait un nom en Europe dej)uis 1789, the earliest work of its kind; in 1808 the first volume of his Histoire des Croisades appeared, and in 1811 he originated the Biographie Universe-lie. In 1814 he resumed the editor ship of the Quotidienne, and in the same year was elected Academician. In 1815 his brochure entitled Histoire des quinze Semaines ou le dernier regne de Bonaparte met with extraordinary success, passing through twenty-seven editions within a very short time. His political services were now rewarded with the cross of an officer in the Legion of Honour and the modest post of king s reader, of which last he was deprived in 1827 for having opposed Peyronnet s &quot; Loi d Amour &quot; against the freedom of the press. In 1830-31 he travelled in Syria and Egypt for the purpose of collecting additional materials for the Histoire des Croisades ; his correspondence with a fellow explorer, Poujoulat, consisting practically of discussions and eluci dations of various important points in that work, was afterwards published (Correspondance d Orient, 7 vols., 1832-35). The BiUiotheque des Croisades, in four volumes more, contained the &quot; pieces justificatives &quot; of the Histoire. Michaud died on September 30, 1839, at Passy, where his home had been since 1832. His Histoire des Croisades was published in its final form in six volumes in 1841 under the editorship of his friend Poujoulat (9th ed., with appendix, by Huillard-Breholles, 1856). Michaud along with Poujoulat also edited and in part wrote Nouvelle Collection des Memoires pour servir a I Histoire de France, 32 vols., 1836-44. See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, vol. vii. MICHAUX, ANDRE (1746-1802), a French botanist, best known for his works on the flora of North America and as a botanical traveller. In 1779 he spent some time botanizing in England, and in 1780 he explored Auvergne, the Pyrenees, and the north of Spain. In 1782 lie was sent by the French Government on a botanical mission to Persia. His journey began unfavourably, as he was robbed by / rabs of all his equipments except his books ; but he gained influential support in Persia, having cured the shah of a dangerous illness. After two years he returned to France with a fine herbarium, and also intro duced numerous Eastern plants into the botanic gardens of France. In 1785 he was sent by the French Govern ment to North America, and travelled through Canada, Nova Scotia, and the United States as far west as the Mississippi. The outbreak of the French Revolution deprived him of means to continue his work in America, and in 1796 he returned to France. He was shipwrecked, and lost most of his collections on the voyage. In 1800