Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/201

Rh ENCYCLOPAEDIA 191 knowledge, a subject on which many books have been pub lished, especially in Germany, as Schmid s Allgemeine Ency- klopddie und Metliodologie der Wissenschaften, Jena, 1810, 4to, 241 pages. In this sense the Novum Organ um of Bacon has often been called an encyclopaedia. But it is &quot;a grammar only of the sciences: a cyclopaedia is not a grammar, but a dictionary; and to confuse the meanings of grammar and dictionary is to lose the benefit of a dis tinction which it is fortunate that terms have been coined to convey &quot; (Quarterly Review, cxiii. 354). Fortunius Licetus, an Italian physician, entitled several of his disser tations oh Roman altars and other antiquities encyclopaedias (as, for instance, Encyclopaedia ad Aram mysticam Nonarii, Pataviae, 1631, 4to), because in composing them he borrowed the aid of all the sciences. The Encyclopaedia Moralis of Marcellinus de Pise, Paris, 1646, fol. 4 vols., is a series of sermons. Encyclopedia is often used to mean a book which is, or professes to be, a complete or very full collection or treatise relating to some particular subject, as Elaine s excellent work, The Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports, London, 1852, 8vo ; The Encyclopaedia of Wit, London, 1803, I2mo;-The Vocal Encyclopaedia, London, 1807, 16mo, a collection of songs, catches, &c. The word is more frequently used for an alphabetical dictionary treating fully of some science or subject, as Murray, Encyclopaedia of Geography, London, 1834, 8yo ; Lefebvre Laboulaye, En cyclopedic Technologique : Dictionnaire des Arts et Manu factures, Paris, 1845-47, 8vo. 2 vols. ; Holtzendorff, Encyclopadie der Rechtsinssenschaft, Leipzig, 1870, &c., 8vo. The most ancient encyclopaedia extant is Pliny s Natural History in 37 books (including the preface) and 2493 chapters, which may be thus described generally : book 1, preface ; book 2, cosmography, astronomy, and meteorology ; books 3 to 6, geography; books 7 to 11, zoology, including man, and the invention of the arts; books 12 to 19, botany ; books 20 to 32, medicines, vegetable and animal remedies, medical authors, and magic ; books 33 to 37, metals, fine arts, mineralogy, and mineral remedies. Pliny, who died 79 A.D., was not a naturalist, a physician, or an artist, and collected his work in his leisure intervals while engaged in public affairs. He says it contains 20,000 facts (too small a number by half, says Lemaire), collected from 2000 books by 100 authors. Hardouin has given a list of 464 authors quoted by him. His work was a very high authority in the Mi-idle Ages, and 43 editions of it were printed before 1536. Martianus Minajus Felix Capella, an African, wrote about 470 ; in mingled verse and prose, a sort of encyclopaedia, which is important from having been regarded in the Middle Ages as a model storehouse of learning, and used in the schools, where the scholars had to learn the verses by heart, as a text-book of high class education in the arts. It is sometimes entitled Satyra, or Satyricon, but is usually known as De Nuptiis Philologies et Mercurii, though this title is sometimes confined to the first two books, a rather confused allegory ending with the apotheosis of Philologia and the celebration of her marriage in the milky way, where Apollo presents to her the seven liberal arts, who, in the succeeding seven books, describe their respective branches of knowledge, namely, grammar, dialectics (divided into metaphysics and logic), rhetoric, geometry (geography, with some single geometrical propositions), arithmetic (chiefly the properties of numbers), astronomy, and music (includ ing poetry). The style is that of an African of the 5th century, full of grandiloquence, metaphors, and strange words. He seldom mentions his authorities, and sometimes quotes authors whom he does not at all seem to have read. His work was frequently copied in the Middle Ages by ignorant transcribers, and was eight times printed from 1490 to 1599. The best annotated edition is by Kopp, Frankfort, 1836, 4to, and the most convenient and the best text is that of Eyssenstadt, Lipsiao, 1866, 8vo. Isidore, bishop of Seville from 600 to 630, wrote Eti/molo- giarum libri XX. (often also entitled his Origines) at the request of his friend Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, who after Isidore s death divided the work into books, as it was left unfinished, and divided only into titles. The tenth book is an alphabet of 625 Latin words, not belonging to his other subjects, with their explanations as known to him, and often with their etymologies, frequently very absurd. The other books contain 448 chapters, and are : 1, grammar (Latin); 2, rhetoric and dialetics; 3, the four mathematical disciplines- arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy; 4, medicine; 5, laws and times (chronology), with a short chronicle ending in 627; 6, ecclesiastical books and offices; 7, God, angels, and the orders of the faithful; 8, the church and sects; 9, languages, society, and relationships; 11, man and portents; 12, animals, in eight classes, namely, pecoraet jumenta, beasts, small animals (including spiders, crickets, and ants), serpents, worms, fishes, birds, and small winged creatures, chieily insects; 13, the world and its parts; 14, the earth and its parts, containing chapters on Asia, Europe, and Libya, that is, Africa; 15, buildings, fields, and their measures; 16, stones (of which one is echo) and metals; 17, de rebus nisticis; 18, war and games; 19, ships, buildings, and garments; 20, provisions, domestic and rustic instruments. Isidore appears to have known Hebrew and Greek, and to have been familiar with the Latin classical poets, but he is a mere collector, and his derivations given all through the work are not unfrequently absurd, and, unless when very obvious, will not bear criticism. He seldom mentions his authorities except when he quotes the poets or historians. Yet his work was a great one for the time, and for many centuries was a much valued authority and a rich source of material for other works, and he had a high reputation for learning both in his own time and in subsequent ages. His Etymologies were often imitated, quoted, and copied. MSS. are very numerous: Antonio (whose editor, Bayer, saw nearly 40) says, &quot; plures passimque reperiuntur in bibliothecarum angulis.&quot; This work was printed nine times before 1529. Hrabanus Maurus, whose family name was Magnentius, was educated in the abbey of Fulda, ordained deacon in 802 (&quot;Annales Francorum&quot; in Bouquet, Historians de la France, v. 66), sent to the school of St Martin of Tours then directed by Alcuin, where he seems to have learned Greek, and is said by Trithemius to have been taught Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee by Theophilus an Ephesian. In his Commentaries on Joshua (lib. ii. c. 5), he speaks of having resided at Sidon. He returned to Fulda and taught the school there. He became abbot of Fulda in 822, resigned in April 842, was ordained archbishop of Mayence 26th July 847, and died 4th February 856. He compiled an encyclopaedia De wiiverso (also called in some MSS. De universali natura, De natura rerum, and De origine rerum) in 22 books and 325 chapters. It is chiefly a re-arrange ment of Isidore s Etymologies, omitting the first four books, half of the fifth, and the tenth (the seven liberal arts, law, medicine, and the alphabet of words), and copying the rest, beginning with the seventh book, verbally, though with great omissions, and adding (according to Hitter, Geschichte der Philosophic, vii. 1 93, from Alcuin, Augustine, or some other accessible source) the meanings given in the Bible to the subject matter of the chapter ; while things not mentioned in Scripture, especially such as belong to classi cal antiquity, are omitted, so that his work seems to be formed of two alternating parts. His arrangement of beginning with God and the angels long prevailed in methodical encyclopaedias. His last six books follow very closely the order of the last five of Isidore, from which they are taken. His omissions are characteristic of the dimi nished literary activity and ijiore contracted knowledge of his time. His work was presented to Louis the German,