Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/532

Rh 512 E R A E R A auxiliary jurisdiction when the machinery of the courts of law was unable to procure the necessary evidence. &quot; The evils of this double system of judicature,&quot; says the reportof the late Judicature Commission, &quot;and theconfusion and conflict of jurisdiction to which it has led, have been long known and acknowledged.&quot; A partial attempt to meet the difficulty was made by several Acts of Parliament (passed after the reports of commissions appointed in 1850 and 1851), which enabled courts of law and equity both to exercise certain powers formerly peculiar to one or other of them. A more complete remedy was introduced by the Judicature Act, 1873, which consolidated the courts of law and equity, and ordered that law and equity should be ad ministered concurrently according to the rules contained in the 26th section of the Act. The 25th section lays down certain legal principles in accordance with the general inten tion, and also declares that &quot;generally in all matters not hereinbefore particularly mentioned, on which there is any conflict or variance between the rules of equity and the rules of the common law with reference to the same matter, the rules of equity shall prevail&quot; (E. R.) ERARD, SEBASTIEN (1752-1831), a manufacturer of musical instruments, distinguished especially for the im provements he made upon the harp and the pianoforte, was born at Strasburg on the 4th April 1752. While a boy he showed great aptitude for practical geometry and architectural drawing, and in the workshop of his father, who was an upholsterer, he found opportunity for the early exercise of his mechanical ingenuity. When he was six teen his father died, and he removed to Paris where he obtained employment with a harpsichord maker. Here his remarkable constructive skill, while it speedily excited the jealousy of his master and procured his dismissal, almost equally soon attracted the notice of musicians and musical instrument makers of eminence. Before he was twenty- five he set up in business for himself, his first workshop being a room in the hotel of the Duchesse de Villeroi, who gave him warm encouragement. Under her roof he con structed in 1780 his first pianoforte, which was also one of the first manufactured in France, the instruments used previous to that period in the houses of the Paris nobility having been imported from Germany and England. When heard in the salon of his patroness, it quickly secured for its maker such a reputation that he was soon overwhelmed with commissions. Finding assistance necessary, he sent for his brother, Jean Baptiste, in conjunction with whom he established in the Rue de Bourbon in the Faubourg St Germain a piano manufactory, which in a few years became one of the most celebrated in Europe. On the outbreak of the Revolution he proceeded to London, where he established a factory similar to that in Paris. Return ing to the French capital in 1796, he introduced soon afterwards grand pianofortes, made in the English fashion, with several improvements of his own. In 1808 he again visited London, where, two years later, he produced his first double-movement harp. He had previously made various improvements in the manufacture of harps, but the new instrument was an immense advance upon anything he had before produced, and obtained such a reputation that for some time he devoted himself exclusively to its manufac ture. It has been said that in the year following his invention he made harps to the value of 25,000. In 1812 he returned to Paris, and continued to devote him self with unwearied industry and unfailing ingenuity to the further perfecting of the two instruments with which his name is associated. It is needless to enumerate all his improvements, especially as the more important of them must be described in any account of the harp and piano respectively. In 1823 he crowned his work by producing his model grand pianoforte with the double escapement. The action of these instruments is admirably adapted to convey every gradation of the player s touch to the strings, and on this account they have been much used by pianists of eminence. Erard died at Passy, on the 5th August, 1831. ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS, was born at Rotterdam on the night of 27-8 October, and probably in the year 1466. The inscription on his statue, erected in his native place in 1622, names the year 1467 ; but the epitaph on his tombstone at Basel makes him 69 at the time of his death in July 1536, a reckoning which might be compatible with either year, 1466 or 1467. The latter year is ex cluded by Erasmus s own statements, which, though incon sistent, agree on the whole best with the year 1466 (see Ep. 51, append.) His father s Christian name was Gerhard, of which Erasmus is meant for a Greek, and Desiderius for a Latin, rendering. He had no proper surname, not having been born in wedlock. His father provided for his education as long as he lived, placing him first as chorister in the cathedral school of Utrecht, and afterwards removing him to Deventer, of which school the celebrated teacher Alexander Hegius was at that time master. But Erasmus was too young he left Deventer aefc. 13 to have come much under the instruction of the head-master. Both his father and his mother dying young, Erasmus was left to the care of three guardians, who endeavoured to force him into a convent. They sent him for three years to a conventual preparatory school at Bois-le- duc (Hertogenbosch), and afterwards so far overcame his resistance that he entered upon the novitiate in a house of the regular canons of St Augustine, at Stein, near Gouda. He made his profession here in 1486, set. 19 ; and was afterwards ordained priest by the bishop of Utrecht. Erasmus had no vocation for the devotional exercises of convent life, and was disgusted with the society of the monks, coarse, ignorant, and illiterate. His aspiration was to escape to some university where he might study. From the very first, the love of letters was the one ruling motive of his life. An unexpected chance brought him deliverance. Henri de Bergues, bishop of Cambray, took him to be his secretary. With the permission of the prior of Stein, and the consent of the general of the order and of- the ordinary, the bishop of Utrecht, Erasmus left the convent. After a short stay with his new patron the bishop of Cambray, and with funds sparingly supplied by him, Erasmus entered the college of Montaigu in the university of Paris. Of the revolting economy of this college in respect of food and lodging he has left a graphic account in the Colloquies (Icthyophagia) : &quot; I carried nothing away from it, &quot; he says, &quot; but a body infected with disease, and a plentiful supply of vermin.&quot; Rabelais, it will be remembered, has recorded a similar experience. To eke out his scanty means he took pupils. With one of these, Lord Mountjoy, he came to England in 1497. According to Anthony Wood, he spent three years, 1497 to 1499, in Oxford. Many of the biographers make him return to Paris in 1498 ; but the chronology of this part of Erasmus s life is confused. It is certain that he resided some time in Oxford, having a room in a small Augustinian house called St Mary s College, in New-inn-hall Lane, and either there or in London made the acquaintance of the few Englishmen who were distinguished for learning, Colet, Grocyn, Linacer, Latimer, Sixtinus. In 1499 he was again in Paris, then at Orleans, then at St Omer s in the Netherlands, and for the next five years he seems to have been continually on the move between France and Hol land, his longest sojourn being at Louvain. In these years he had a hard struggle with poverty, supporting himself partly by pupils, partly by dedications. He wrote and