Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/74

 F E I F E J assessors, but never less than seven, called Freischuffen, or Freischoppen, in Latin scalini. These Freischoffen had the duty of bringing complaints before the courts, and of carry ing into execution the sentences which were pronounced. There were two distinct sorts of Fehmic courts, one which held its sittings openly, and another whose proceedings were conducted in secret. The open court, in one of its branches, exercised a jurisdiction in civil suits and over offences of a trifling description, in which cases it was unnecessary that either plaintiff or defendant should be a member of the Fehm. The other branch of the open court took cognisance of all crimes of an ordinary nature. The accuser was always one of the Freischoffen. The accused was cited by nailing the summons during night to the door of his house, or, if it was not known where he lived, by fixing four copies upon a post at cross roads near his supposed abode. If the accused appeared, the accuser stated the case, and the investigation proceeded by the examination of witnesses as in an ordinary court of law. The judgment was put into execution on the spot if that was possible. The secret court, from whose procedure the whole institution has acquired its evil character, was closed to all but the initiated ; any one not a member on being discovered was instantly put to death, and the members present were bound under the same penalty not to disclose what took place. Crimes of a serious nature, and especially those that were deemed unfit for ordinary judicial investigation such as heresy and witchcraft fell within its jurisdiction, as also did appeals by persons condemned in the open courts, and likewise the cases before those tribunals in which the accused had not appeared. The accused if a member could clear himself by his own oath, unless he had revealed the secrets of the Fehm. If he were one of the uninitiated it was necessary for him to bring forward witnesses to his innocence from among the initiated, whose number varied according to the number on the side of the accuser, but twenty-one in favour of innocence necessarily secured an acquittal. The only punishment which the secret court could inflict was deatb. If the accused appeared, the sentence was carried into execution at once ; if he did not appear, it was quickly made known to the whole body, and the Freinchoffe who was the first to meet the condemned was bound to put him to death. A knife with the cabalistic letters was left beside the corpse to show 7 that the deed was not a murder. See Wigand, Das Fchmgericht Wcstphalcns, 1825, and Usener, Die Frci mid Hcimlichcn Gerichte Wcstplialens, 1832 ; also Scott s Anm of Geierstein, introduction and chap. xx. (H. J. E. F. ) FEITAMA, SYBRAND (1694-1758), a Dutch author, was born at Amsterdam, December 10, 1694. He was origin ally intended for the ministry, but eventually adopted a commercial career. In middle life, having made a sufficient fortune, he retired from business, and dedicated his remaining years to literature, and to a circle of friends that included all the most eminent of his younger con temporaries. In 1733 he published his translation of Telemaque, to which he had given twenty years of revision. In 1735 appeared two volumes of his Stage Poems, original dramas for reading rather than acting. In 1743 was issued the first draft of his translation of the Ilenriade, in perfect ing which he spent nearly a quarter of a century. Three volumes of his Posthumous Poems appeared in 1764. He died at Amsterdam on the 3d of June 1758. The influ ence of Feitama over Dutch literature was very exten sive and very pernicious. Ho was a cold and rhetorical versifier, a learned trifler, and hopelessly wedded to the French tradition. His two great translations, which are indeed admirably performed from his own standpoint, have long outlived their immense popularity in the last century. FEITH, RHIJNVIS (1753-1824), a Dutch poet, was of aristocratic extraction, and was born at Zwolle, the capital of the province Overijssel, on the 7th of February 1753. It has been said with truth that his whole life was a model of social, personal, and literary good fortune ; there has never lived a poet who enjoyed more unbroken prosperity. This is the more noticeable, because of all the important writers of Holland he is the one whose works are most full of melancholy and despair. He was educated at the uni versities of Harderwijk and Leyden, and took his degree at the latter in 1770. In 1772 he settled at his birthplace, and married. In 1780, in his twenty-seventh year, he became bur gomaster of Zwolle, a post which he held for the remainder of his life. He built a luxurious villa, which he named Boschwijk, in the outskirts of the town, and here he lived in the greatest comfort. His first important production was Julia, in 1783, a novel written in emulation of Werther, and positively steeped in Weltschmerz and despair. This was followed in 1784 by the tragedy of Thirsa, the first of his dramatic poems. The next year was one of great mark in Feith s career : he published Ferdinand and Constantia, another Werther novel, and The Patriots, a tragedy. Both were very successful, and his poems were publicly crowned at Leyden. He was now the most popu lar poet in Holland, and this fact, combined with his burn ing patriotism, drew upon him the hatred of Bilderdijk. Other writers attacked his morbid melancholy, and in 1786 the critic Baron van Perponcher made a trenchant assault on him in a work on sentimentality. He was accordingly silent for some time, but in 1791 he printed a tragedy of Lady Johanna Gray ; and in 1792 there appeared a por tentous didactic poem, The Grave, in four cantos, which belongs to the most tearful school of churchyard poetry. In 1793 and in 1795 he produced his tragedies of Lies de Castro and Mucius Cordus, the first taken from an episode in the Lusiad, the second composed in honour of the Batavian republic. From 1796 to 1814 appeared five volumes of Odes and Miscellaneous Poems. In 1802 he published another didactic poem, Old Age, in six cantos, and in 1804 Poems for Public Worship. He died on the 6th of February 1824. The next year a statue of the poet, the w r ork of Gabriel, was erected in Zwolle, and an edition of his poetical works issued in thirteen volumes. As one of the most prominent members of the revival of Dutch letters, and as a fluent and careful verse-writer, Feith will always be honourably remembered. His own age accounted him one of the greatest of poets, but posterity has refused to endorse this judgment. His romantic inspiration was borrowed from Germany, and he did not hesitate to imitate Goethe, Wieland, and Novalis. It must be recollected, however, that these men were his immediate contemporaries, and that he showed great alacrity and acumen in perceiving the modern direction of their genius. FEJER, GYORGY (1766-1851), one of the most indefati gable Hungarian authors of the last generation, was born on the 23d April 1766, at Keszthely, in the county of Zala. After finishing his scholastic course at the gymnasium he went to Pesth, where he attended the philosophical lectures at the university. From 1785 to 1790 he studied theology at Pressburg, after which he was engaged for some time as a private family tutor. From 1802 to 1804 he taught dogmatic theology at Stuhlweissenburg, where he for many years officiated as priest; and in 1808 he obtained a theo logical professorship at Pesth university. Ten years later (1818) he became chief director of the educational circle of Raab, and in 1824 was appointed librarian to the university of Pesth. Fejer was the most prolific of Hungarian authors, his works, which are nearly all written either in Latin or Hungarian, exceeding 180 in number. They treat