Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/869

Rh 833 Fwas the sixth letter ot the primitive Greek alphabet. It represented the sound of our W, i.e., a soft labial. But that sound was unpleasant to the Greek ear, and it began to fall out of use at an early time in all parts of Hellas ; it disappeared most completely in the Ionic and in the cognate Attic dialect; it survived longer in the ^Eolic and the Doric, and it is not improbable that the symbol F may have been written in these dialects after the sound it represented had perished. The grammarians in dealing with this extinct letter gave it the name &quot;digamma&quot; from the shape of the symbol, i.e., a gamma (F) with a second horizontal stroke, and they added the name &quot; JEolic&quot; from a mistaken impression that it lingered longer in that dialect than in the Doric. It was from the Doric of Cumce, as has been already said (see ALPHABET), that the Latins derived the symbols of their alphabet, and F with the others. But though the Latin language contained the sound w, it did not seem necessary to have a special symbol to distinguish it from the vowel u ; and F was used to express quite a different sound, one which the Greek did rot possess. This was probably the same sound which the letter still denotes with us the hard labio-dental (to which V is the corresponding soft sound) produced by pressing the upper teeth on the lower lip, and then letting the breath escape laterally or through the interstices of theteeth very much, as Quintilian says in his amusing description of the Latin sound (xii. 10, 29), which &quot; poene non humana voce, vel omnino non voce, potius inter discrhnina dentium efflanda est.&quot; It was qiiite distinct from ph a distinction which we have sacrificed ; ph was a p followed by a slight breath, not quite so strong as in &quot; upheave,&quot; but very similar ; and it expressed in Latin the sound of the Greek &amp;lt;j&amp;gt;. The Greeks found the Latin / a difficult sound much as the Germans find the English tli and we find Cicero laughing at a Greek witness because he could not pronounce the first letter of &quot; Fun- danius,&quot; which he doubtless called &quot; P-lmndanius.&quot; The emperor Claudius has the credit of endeavouring to improve the Roman system of spelling by filling up of some of the defects of the alphabet. Thus, he proposed to use an inverted F (J) to denote the corresponding soft consonant (V) which, as we have said above, had no special symbol in the Roman alphabet. Thus in inscriptions of his reign we find ilOilIMUS, IOJI, &c. But this improvement did not long survive its author. FABER, BASIL (1520-1576), a German schoolmaster and theologian, was born at Sorau in Lower Lusatia in 1520. After studying at the university of Wittenberg, which at that time was under the direction of Melanchthon, he chose the profession of a schoolmaster, and became rector of the school at Nordhausen, whence he went successively to Tennstiidt, Magdeburg, and Quedlinburg. His religious opinions led to his being removed from his office in the last-named place in 1570, but a short time afterwards he received and accepted an invitation to become master of the Raths-gymnasium at Erfurt, where he continued till his death in 1576. Faber was a strong Lutheran, and translated the first 25 chapters of Luther s commentary on Genesis, and in various other ways zealously endeavoured to promote the spread of Lutheran opinions. He w r as a contributor to the first four of the Magdeburg Centuries. He is, however, best known by his Thesaurus Eruditionis Scholastics, a work which for many years retained a high place in Germany as a scholastic manual. It was origin ally published in 1571, and the last edition, edited and improved by Leich, appeared in 1749. FABER, CECILIA BOHL VON (1797-1877), the great woman-novelist of Spain, better known by her masculine pseudonym of Fernan Caballero, was born at Merges, Canton de Vaud, in 1797, her parents being then on a tour through Switzerland. Her father, Johann Nikolas Bbhl von Faber, the son of a Hamburg merchant, had removed early in life to Cadiz, prospered in business, professed the Catholic faith, and married Dona Francisca de Larrea, a member of the Spanish aristocracy. Cecilia received a con siderable part of her education in Germany at Gbrslow near Schwerin, where her father had an estate ; and here, besides other accomplishments, including a complete mastery of German and Spanish, she acquired a competent knowledge of Latin, English, French, and Italian. In 1813 she returned to Cadiz, and in the following year became the wife of Captain Planells, whom she accompanied to America, where she seems to have spent some years of married life. Not long after the death of her first husband, she was married to the Marques de Arco Hermoso, and in virtue of her exalted station frequently attended the court of Madrid, where she was much admired for her beauty, vivacity, and wit. In 1837, having, by the death of the marquis (1835), been again left a widow, she gave her hand to Senor de Arrom, a member of the bar. This union appears to have been productive of little happiness, and when her husband accepted an appointment as Spanish consul abroad, she decided to remain alone in Seville. It is to the trials and disappointments that came upon her in the later years of her life that the world is indebted for the fascinating works of this distinguished writer, who seems to have been driven to authorship less by any imperious literary instinct than by the necessity she felt for some anodyne against sorrow. Rarely does it happen that literary genius such as she possessed lies dormant for so long a time, uuguessed by the world, hardly suspected even by its owner. As early as 1828, indeed, if not earlier, she had committed to writ ing, in the form of a novel, a tale of peasant life, which she had heard prosaically told under the olive trees at the village of Dos Hermanas, in the neighbourhood of Seville, but singularly enough, she had preferred to make use of the German language, and does not appear to have contemplated publication. Although Washington Irving, in the course of one of his visits to Spain, had seen and praised the manuscript, and had encouraged the writer to cultivate literature, and especially Spanish literature, as a serious pursuit, it was not till many years afterwards that this first effort, La Familia de Alvareda, was presented to the public ; nor was it till after her fiftieth year had been passed that she appeared as an author at all, and even then only under an assumed name. Her first, and in some respects her best, publication. La Gaviota (The Sea-Gull), was originally printed in short daily instalments in the pages of a Madrid newspaper in 1849. It met with high appreciation in the capital, and was accordingly followed at brief intervals by Elia, Clemencia, La Familia de Alvareda, Una en Otra, Simon Verde, and other Cuadros de costumbres pojmlares (pictures of popular life). Slowly but surely the works of the new writer found their way all over the peninsula, and gradually were translated into French and German, until within ten years she had achieved a European repu tation. A collected edition of her works in 13 volumes was issued from the royal printing press at Madrid in 1859, and about the same time she received an appoint ment as governess to the royal children. From 1 863 to 1868 she occupied rooms in the palace of the Alcazar,- VIII. 105