Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/341

Rh M I L M I L 323 It is one of the chief seats of glass-making in the State, and also manufactures cotton, iron pipes for water and gas, turbines, &c. The population was 7660 in 1880. MILMAN, HENRY HART (1791-1868), dean of St Paul s, was born February 10, 1791, and was the third son of Sir Francis Milman, physician to George III. He was educated at Eton and at Brasenose College, Oxford ; his university career was brilliant, and among other dis tinctions he gained the Newdigate prize with a poem on the Apollo Belvedere. In 1816 he was ordained, and was soon afterwards presented to the living of St Mary s, Reading. He had already made his appearance as a dramatic writer, his tragedy of Fazio, founded on a narra tive in the Annual Register for 1795, having been brought on the stage without his knowledge under the title of The Italian Wife. It was subsequently produced at Covent Garden, and obtained great success from the acting of Miss O Neill as Bianca. The merit of the play consists chiefly in the powerful situation ; the diction is florid and ornate. The same criticism, by the author s own confes sion, applies to his epic, Samor, the Lord of the Bright City (Gloucester), a poem written in early youth. The subject is taken from British legend, and Milman has failed to invest it with serious interest. He was more successful in his next attempts, where the subjects were well adapted to an imagination easily kindled by the historical or the moral picturesque. The death struggle of an expiring nation in the Fall of Jerusalem (1820), the conflict of new truth and old order, of religious enthusiasm and earthly affection, in the Martyr of Antioch (1822), are depicted with great eloquence and real insight into human nature. Milman s characters, however, are personified tendencies rather than personages, and in poetical style he was unable to free himself from the influence of Byron. Belshazzar (1822) is in general a pale copy of Byron s Sardanapalus, but contains some fine lyrics. Milman s lyrics, indeed, especially his hymns, have frequently a fine ring and sweep, though the thought is generally commonplace. His tragedy of Anne Boleyn (1826) is a poor performance. With the exception of admirable versions of the Sanskrit episode of Nala and Damayanti, and of the Agamemnon and Bacchx, this was Milman s last poetical work. He was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and in 1827 delivered the Bampton lectures, selecting as his subject the conduct and character of the apostles as an evidence of Christianity. In 1830 his History of the Jews appeared in the Family Library. The contracted limits of this series forbade any adequate treatment of the subject ; the work is nevertheless memorable as the first by an English clergyman which treated the Jews as an Oriental tribe, recognized sheikhs and emirs in the Old Testament, sifted and classified documentary evidence, and evaded or minimized the miraculous. Milman was violently attacked, especially by Dr Faussett and Bishop Mant, and the odium thus occasioned stopped the publication of the Family Library, and long impeded the preferment of the writer. In 1835, however, Sir Robert Peel made him rector of St Margaret s and canon of Westminster, and in 1849 he became dean of St Paul s. The unpopularity attaching to him had by this time nearly died away ; and now, generally revered and beloved, intimate with men of all pursuits, politics, and persuasions, counted among the chief ornaments of the most polished society of the metropolis, he occupied a singularly dignified and enviable position, which he constantly employed for the promotion of culture and enlightenment, and in particular for the relaxation of subscription to ecclesiastical formularies. His History of Christianity under the Empire had appeared in 1840, but had been as completely ignored as if, said Lord Melbourne, the clergy had taken a universal oath never to mention it to any one. Widely diffeient was the reception of the continuation, his great History of Latin Christianity to the death of Pope Nicholas V., which appeared in 18E5. He also edited Gibbon and Horace, and at his death in 1868 left behind him almost finished a delightful history of his own cathedral, which was completed and published by his son. Milman possessed a large share of the imagination which enters into and calls up the past, and of that which interprets actions and apprehends opinions by the power of sympathy. In creative imagination lie was deficient, a defect which alone prevented him from attaining the first rank as an historian. His pages are crowded with splendid names rather than with living personages ; the springs of action are disclosed with remarkable penetration, but the actor himself is rather heard than seen. There are, however, exceptions, such as his portrait of Sir Christopher Wren ; and he possessed a peculiar power of investing mere intellectual tendencies with personality and life. His parallel of Latin and Teutonic Christianity, for example, is a piece of finished historical character painting. His power of sympathy rendered him in effect, as his natural equity and benignity made him in intention, a model of historical candour, only chargeable, perhaps, with too much gentleness. It will be long ere his great woik is superseded ; but he will perhaps be remembered even longer as an embodiment of all the qualities which the higher ecclesiastical preferment can be supposed capable of encouraging or rewarding among the clergy of a great historical church. (R. G. ) MILO, one of the most famous athletes of Greece, whose name became proverbial for personal strength. He lived about the end of the 6th century B.C., was six times crowned at the Olympic games and six times at the Pythian for wrestling, and was famous throughout the civilized world for his feats of strength, such as carrying an ox on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia. In his native city of Crotona he was much honoured, and he commanded the army which defeated the people of Sybaris in 511 B.C. When Democedes, the physician of Darius, deserted the Persian service, he sent a boastful message to the king of Persia informing him of his marriage to the daughter of Milo. The traditional account of his death is often used to point a moral : he found a tree which some woodcutters had partially split with a Avedge, and attempted to rend it asunder; but the wedge fell out, and the tree closed on his hand, imprisoning him till wolves came and devoured him. MILO was the surname of T. Annius Papianus, one of the best-known of the partisan leaders and ruffians in the stormy times that preceded the dissolution of the lloman republic. His father was C. Papius Celsus, but he was adopted by his mother s father T. Annius Luscus. He joined the Pompeian party, and led the band of mercenaries and gladiators which was required to defend the cause and its chief supporters in the public streets. P. Clodius, the leader of the ruffians who professed the democratic cause, was his personal enemy, and their brawls in the streets and their mutual accusations in the law courts lasted for several years, beginning when Milo was tribune of the commons in 57 B.C. In 53 their quarrels came to a height when Milo was candidate for the consulship and Clodius for the praetorship ; and when the two leaders met by accident on the Appian Way at Bovillie, Clodius was murdered (January 20, 52 B.C.). This act of violence strengthened the hands of Pompey, who was nominated sole consul, and proposed several stringent laws to restore order in the city. Milo was impeached; his guilt was clear, and his enemies took every means of intimidating his supporters and his judges. Cicero was afraid to deliver the speech he had prepared Pro Milone, and the extant oration is an expanded form of the unspoken defence. Milo went into exile at Massilia, and his property was sold by auction. He joined the insurrection of M. Caelius in 48 B.C., and was soon slain near Thtirii in Lucania. His wife Fausta was daughter of the dictator Sulla. MILTIADES. See GKELTE, vol. xi. p. 99.