Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/341

MAN was born in 1755. He served with distinction as a volunteer in the republican army until the peace of Campo Formio, when he quitted the army and was admitted to the bar. In 1815 he was elected to the chamber of deputies, and strenuously opposed the recall of the Bourbons. He was again returned to the chamber in 1818. He was expelled in 1823 on account of his indignant denunciation of the Spanish war; but was elected again in 1824. He died in 1827.—J. T.  MANUEL,, nephew of Alfonso the Wise, and twice regent of the kingdom of Castille, born in 1282; died in 1347. He had two kings for his brothers-in-law and two others for his sons-in-law, and distinguished himself against the Moors. He is better known as the author of "Conde Lucanor," a collection of forty-nine tales, anecdotes, and apologues, which introduced an entirely new form of literary composition.—F. M. W.  MANUEL,, known as N. Manuel Deutsch, and by Italian writers called Emanuel Tedesco, a celebrated Swiss painter, engraver, and author, was born at Berne in 1484. He studied at Colmar, in the school of Martin Schöngauer, and about 1510 went to Venice in order to study under Titian, whose manner is traceable in all his subsequent works, but especially in the landscape portions. Returning to Berne, Manuel was about 1515 employed to paint a "Dance of Death," in a series of forty-six large frescoes on the wall of the Dominican cemetery. This great work is often compared to the more famous Holbein series; it differed from it in being a coarser and more humorous, but less thoughtful and dramatic conception. The wall on which it was painted was destroyed in 1560; but prints and copies of it exist. Manuel also painted in his own house a fresco of "Solomon worshipping Idols." This probably had a religio-political meaning, for Manuel was a zealous promoter of the Reformation in Switzerland, and employed alike pencil, pen, and personal influence in its furtherance. Several bitter caricatures directed by him against Romish practices and the misdoings of monks and nuns, are still extant. He also wrote numerous songs and short poems in the vernacular dialect, and a series of Shrove-tide moralities, "Fastnachtspiele," which are described as abounding in grim humour and sharp satire. Gradually Manuel seems to have abandoned his pencil. In 1522 he accompanied the Swiss contingent as quartermaster in the expedition of Francis I. against Milan, and was present at the battle of Bicocco and the storming of Novara. In 1523 he was chosen landvogt of Erlacht, and the rest of his life was spent in public duties. He died in 1531. His best pictures and drawings are in the museum at Basle, and in the public libraries and private collections of Berne. The wood-engravings which bear his monograph (a small dagger added to his initials) appear to have been mostly executed about 1518.—, son of Nicolaus, was also a wood-engraver.—J. T—e.  MANUTIUS. See.  * MANZONI,, Count, a poet and novelist, was born at Milan in 1784. He studied at Milan and at Pavia; and in his twenty-first year went to Paris, where his mother, a daughter of the celebrated Beccaria, had been resident for some years. The ideas of social philosophy derived through his mother were strengthened by the Parisian circle of ideologists into which he was introduced at Auteuil, where he formed friendships with Cabanis, Volney, Garat, Fauriel, and Madame Condorcet. In 1806 he published a poem in blank verse to the memory of Carlo Iombonati, a friend of his mother's. With Fauriel, who became his most intimate friend, he discussed the subject of a reform in poetical diction and manner, just as Wordsworth and Coleridge were then discussing a new poetical code in England. Returning to Milan, Manzoni, in 1808, married Henrietta Louisa Blondel, the daughter of a Genevese banker, and passed happy days with her at his seat at Brusuglio, near Milan, alternating his gardening and agricultural pursuits by occasional visits to his literary friends in Paris. His short mythological poem, "Urania," appeared in 1809, and has all the frigidity of the decayed so-called classical style. He contemplated an extensive poem on the "Foundation of Venice." But in the year 1810 his views of life and duty were greatly modified by his conversion from scepticism to the creed of the most devout catholicism. His wife had previously become a member of the Romish church. About this time the poet published his "Sacred Hymns," in which the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, &c., are made the subjects of noble verse full of devout fervour. He was not insensible to the literary influence of Göthe and Schlegel, and already in 1816 had commenced the tragedy of the "Count of Carmagnola," which was not published till 1820. The old traditions of dramatic writing are abandoned in this play, which at once placed Manzoni at the head of the school of Romantieisti, as opposed to the more conservative Classicisti. The boldness with which the author discarded the unities and the mythological fables which had enjoyed the favour of Italian poets so long, was warmly applauded in various parts of Europe. Göthe congratulated Manzoni on "having shaken off the old rules so successfully, and on marching with so sure a step in the new path, that it would be easy to found new rules on his example." The defects of this work, and of the "Adelchi," which followed in 1823, sprung from the author's theory that the closest adherence to historical fact, and the strictest possible avoidance of the fictitious element in dramatic writing, give the truest, most natural, and therefore most interesting development to the characters represented on the stage. This theory would amount to a truism if history were to give a complete picture of the personages with whom it is occupied. Such a picture, complete in all its parts, would demand dramatic powers in the historian, and would anticipate the very task which the playwright undertakes. The history of Carmagnola, the celebrated Venetian commander, was marked by many fine scenes, to which Manzoni has done ample justice. In "Adelchi," the principal figure after the hero and his father Desiderius is Charlemagne, the conqueror of these last kings of the Lombards. An analysis of the play appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for August, 1826. The poet's ode on the death of Napoleon I. in 1821, entitled "Il cinque Maggio" (the Fifth of May), has been extolled as the finest lyric poem of the century. In comparison with other efforts of the same kind on the same subject in France and England, it appears to many readers dull and heavy. It remained for Manzoni to add to his previous titles to fame, that of being the greatest Italian novelist of his time. In 1827, "I promessi Sposi" (the Betrothed), a Milanese story of the seventeenth century, obtained for him this triumph. The influence of Sir Walter Scott is traceable in this work. The incidents are well told; the characters carefully developed. The awful picture of famine and pestilence at Milan is not easily forgotten by the reader. Translated into most of the languages of Europe, "The Betrothed" has borne the name of Manzoni into regions where his other works remain unknown. In 1842 Manzoni added to an illustrated edition of his novel, "The Story of the Pillar of Infamy," in which he gives a striking picture of the atrocious executions, the consequence of superstition, during the plague of 1630. He applies the subject to Beccaria's theories on crimes and punishments. Except an occasional pamphlet, M. Manzoni has published nothing since his famous novel. Many years of domestic happiness and virtuous living have conducted him to an honoured old age, the latter part of which has been clouded with affliction. Living apart from the strife of politics, he has yet remained faithful to the liberal opinions of his early days; and in February, 1860, he was named senator of the kingdom of Sardinia, now the kingdom of Italy.—R. H.  MAPES or MAP,, a writer of the time of Henry II., was born probably about 1140, on the borders of Wales, according to appearance in Gloucestershire or Herefordshire, he studied at Paris, entered the church, and was for a time in the household of Thomas à Beckett. He secured the favour of Henry II., who made him one of his judges itinerant, employed him in various foreign missions, conferred on him several ecclesiastical preferments, and in 1197 advanced him to the dignity of archdeacon of Oxford. After this event all trace of him is lost, but he is supposed to have died about 1210. He was a friend of Geraldus Cambrensis, and a man of wit and reading. As a prose writer, he is best known by his "De Nugis Curialium," begun as a satire upon court-life, but into which as he proceeded he threw a quantity of curious matter, legendary, historical, and anecdotical. That Mapes wrote poetry appears from his own statement; and from the fourteenth century, MSS. ascribe to him the authorship of a collection of Latin rhymes, many of them directed against the corruptions of the Church of Rome, and which in his own lifetime were circulated as the productions of Golias or Goliardus, an imaginary ecclesiastic, whose name is synonymous with a loose liver. Some stanzas of one of these compositions—the "Confessio Goliæ"—extracted and adapted, form the celebrated toper's song, "Meum est propositum in tabernâ mori," on which the reputation of Mapes popularly rests. In 