Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/816

Rh 792 P R P R and doctrines of different faiths, and declares his persua sion that nothing more can be known about God than that He is all-wise and all-powerful ; superstitious in his readiness to accept all kinds of marvels, omens, prophecies, apparitions, and to find in the sudden changes of human affairs the action of a spiteful fortune which delights to startle men and confound their schemes. Procopius has little philosophy in his history ; he is a vague and incon sistent thinker, and is strongest when he is describing events or facts, or drawing such direct inferences from them as strike an acute man of the world. The best edition of Procopius is that by Dindorf ill the Corpus Scriptorum Historian JJtjzantinse, 3 vols., Bonn, 1833-38. The bust criticisms and examinations of his writings are those bv W. S. Teuffel, in his Studien und Ckaraktcristiken zur Litera- turgeschichte, Leipsic, 1871 ; and F. Dahn, Prokopius von Cdsarea, Berlin, 1865. (J. BR.) PROCOPIUS. Two leaders of this name are mentioned in connexion with the wars of the HUSSITES (q.v.). I. ANDREAS PROCOPIUS, surnamed &quot; the Great &quot; or &quot; the Bald,&quot; was a native of Bohemia, born about 1380. He had travelled extensively in Europe, and had even visited Jerusalem before he received priestly orders. On the outbreak of the Hussite War he joined Zizka, and was chosen to succeed him after his death in 1425. From 1426 onwards he met with a succession of military suc cesses in Austria, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary which compelled various potentates to purchase peace, and dis posed even the council of Basel to a spirit of compromise. Procopius and his &quot; Taborites &quot; were, however, dissatisfied with the &quot;Compactata&quot; which the &quot;Calixtines&quot; accepted, and resolved to carry on the contest. He perished in the decisive battle fought near Bohmischbrod on May 30, 1434. II. Of PROCOPIUS surnamed &quot;the Little&quot; nothing is known save that he co-operated with Procopius &quot; the Great&quot; from 1427 onwards, and that he shared his fate. PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER (1787-1874), poet and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 21st November 1787. At an early age he was sent to a small boarding school near London, and thence in his thirteenth year to Harrow, where he had for contemporaries Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel. On leaving school he was placed in the office of a solicitor at Calne, Wiltshire, remaining there until about 1807, when he returned to pursue his legal studies in London. By the death of his father in 1816 he became possessed of a small property, and soon after entered into partnership with a solicitor; but in 1820 the partnership was dissolved, and during the temporary difficulties thus occasioned he supported himself in part by literary work under the pseudonym of Barry Cornwall. After his marriage in 1824 to Miss Skepper, a daughter of Mrs Basil Montague, he returned to his professional work as conveyancer, and was called to the bar in 1831. In the following year he was appointed metropolitan com missioner of lunacy an appointment annually renewed until his election to the permanent commission constituted by the Act of 1842. He resigned office in 1861. During the last years of his II. u a failure of speech led him to withdraw increasingly from society, and his death took place on October 4, 1874. The period of his poetic pro ductiveness had closed many years previously, the larger proportion of his verse having been composed between 1815, when he began to contribute to the Literary Gazette and 1823, or at latest 1832. His principal works in the verse form were Dramatic Scenes mid Other Poems (1819), A Sicilian Story (1820), Mimndola, a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macready, Charles Kcmble and Miss Foote in the leading parts (1821), The Flood of Thessaly (123), and English Songs (1832). He was also the author of W*w Poetica (1824), Lije of Edmund Kcan (1835), Essays and lales in Prose (1851), Charles Lamb; a Memoir (1866), and of memoirs of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare for editions of their works. A posthumous autobiographical fragment with notes of his literary friends, of whom he had a wide range from Bowles to Browning, was published in 1877. His genius cannot be said to have been entirely mimetic, but his works are full of subdued echoes. His songs have caught some notes from the Elizabethan and Cavalier lyrics, and blended them with others from the leading poets of his own time ; and his dramatic fragments show a similar infusion of the early Victorian spirit into pre-Restoration forms and cadences. The results are somewhat heterogeneous, and without the impress of a pervading and dominant personality to give them unity, but they abound in pleasant touches, with here and there the Hash of a higher, though casual, inspiration. His daughter, ADELAIDE ANNE PKOCTEK (1825-1 864), also attained some distinction as a poet, her principal works being her Legends and Lyrics, of which a first series, published in 1858, ran through nine editions in seven years, and a second series issued in 1860 met with a similar success. Her unambitious verses dealing with simple emotional themes in a simple manner have a charm which is scarcely explicable on the ground of high literary merit, but which is due rather to the fact that they are the cultured expression of an earnest and beneficent life. Latterly she became a convert to Roman Catholicism, and her philanthropic zeal appears to have hastened her death, which took place February 3, 1864. PROCTOR, the English form of the Latin procurator, denotes a person who acts for another, and so approaches very nearly in meaning to AGENT (q.v.). The word is used in three senses. (1) A particular kind of university official. (2) A representative of the clergy in convocation. A proctor represents either the chapter of a cathedral or the beneficed clergy of a diocese. In the province of Canter bury two proctors represent the clergy of each diocese ; in that of York there are two for each archdeaconry. In both alike each chapter is represented by one. (3) A practi tioner in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. A proctor is a qualified person licensed by the archbishop of Canter bury to undertake duties such as are performed in other courts by solicitors. The word in this sense is now only of historical interest. The effect of recent legislation is that all the business formerly confined to proctors may now be conducted by solicitors. The instrument by which a procurator or proctor is appointed is called a jwoxy, a term also applied to the representative himself. Proxies are still in use in bankruptcy and in some of the Vice- Admiralty Courts. Formerly peers could give their vote in parliament by proxy, but this right was discontinued by the standing order of March 31, 1868. A shareholder in a joint-stock company may vote by proxy. A proxy must, by the Stamp Act, 1870, bear a penny stamp. There are no proctors in the United States. In Scotland the original term procurator is used to denote a law agent who practises in an inferior court. A procurator has been, since the Law Agents Act, 1873, exactly in the same legal position as other law agents. The procurator-fiscal is a local officer charged with the prosecution of crimes. He is appointed by the sheriff. He also performs the duties of an English coroner by holding inquiries into the circum stances of suspicious deaths. PRODICUS of Ceos, whose birth is conjee turally assigned to 465-460 B.C., was a humanist of the first period of the Sophistical movement. He was still living in 399 B.C. Visiting Athens, in the first instance (it is said) as the accredited agent of his native island, he be came known in the intellectual capital as a good speaker and a successful teacher. Like Protagoras, he professed to train his pupils for domestic and civic affairs ; but it would appear that, while Protagoras s chief instruments of education were rhetoric and style, Prodicus made ethics prominent in his curriculum. As a moralist he seems to have been orthodox, neither impugning nor developing traditional notions. In his literary teaching he laid special stress upon distinctions in the use of words. The Platonic Socrates (as well as Aristophanes) speaks of Prodicus with a certain respect, earned perhaps by his simple though conventional morality ; but it is easy to see that Plato thought him affected and pedantic, and did not rank him either with Protagoras as a thinker or with Gorgias as