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MEL fitted to adorn and delight the social circle. "In society," says Sir Henry Bulwer, "he was perhaps the most graceful and agreeable gentleman that the present generation can remember." Lord Melbourne was singularly disinterested and unselfish. A higher rank in the peerage and the garter were more than once pressed upon him by the sovereign and steadily declined. As his only son died unmarried in 1836, his brother, Lord Beauvale, formerly ambassador to Vienna, succeeded him in the peerage, but on his death in 1853 the title became extinct.—J. T.  MELCHTAL,, one of the assertors of Swiss liberty against the Emperor Albert I., was born in the canton of Unterwalden about the middle of the thirteenth century. From time immemorial the mountaineers of Schweitz and the neighbouring cantons had been subject to no other feudal superior but the emperor himself, a privilege which Frederic II., in 1240, confirmed. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Albert endeavoured, first by negotiation, then by force, to annex the cantons to his hereditary dominions. To provoke the Switzers into insurrection, he appointed two men of tyrannical and unscrupulous character—the one, Gessler, as governor; the other, Landenberg, as judge. They added insult to rapacity and oppression in their treatment of the cantons. An emissary from Landenberg appeared one day before Arnold's father, Henry of Melchtal, while he was ploughing, and bid him unyoke the oxen, which were wanted for the service of the judge. To the old man's remonstrances the messenger replied, "Peasants have no need of oxen to drag the plough; they may easily yoke themselves to it." Arnold instantly resented this insolence to his father by a blow which broke the man's fingers. The judge was quick to revenge an act of independence, and not being able to capture Arnold, who had fled to his relative, Walter Furst, he confiscated old Henry's property, and put out his eyes. This outrage contributed powerfully to the formation of the league of the three cantons, which overthrew the power of Austria in Switzerland. Furst, Stauffach, and Arnold, each accompanied by ten friends, met on the vigil of St. Martin, 1307, and solemnly swore to aid one another in the liberation of their country. The contest which ensued, and the triumph of the Swiss, form one of the brightest pages of history.—R. H.  MELDOLLA or MELDOLA,, Italian engraver. A large number of engravings, chiefly after the designs of Parmigiano and executed about 1540-70, bear the signature of A. M. or Andrea Meldolla. Formerly they were attributed to Andrea Schiavone, whose family name was Medola; but Zani, who investigated the subject very carefully, believed that he had proved the engraver A. Meldolla to be a different person from the painter A. Medola. Bartsch, Nagler, and other authorities adopted his view, and the point was pretty generally conceded. More recently, however, Harzen (Kunstblatt, 1853), and Passavant (Peintre-Gravure, 1860, i. 366), have sought to rehabilitate the old opinion, chiefly on the authority of a document dated 1563, discovered at Venice, but which in fact merely proves what was not denied, that Schiavone was called Medola ("Andreas Sclabonus dictus Medola"). Passavant himself points out the curious fact that the prints known to be by Schiavone are all etchings, whilst those which have the signature of Meldolla or the monogram A. M. are executed with the graver and dry point. As nothing is known of the engraver apart from the prints, it is difficult to arrive at a positive judgment. But the difference in the character of the prints, and the improbability that a painter like Schiavone would have engraved so many plates with the burin after another painter, seem to support the opinion that the painter and the engraver were two different persons. The most celebrated of Meldolla's prints is the Heliodorus of Raphael from a drawing by Parmigiano. Meldolla is by some thought to have engraved on pewter. There are very full lists of Meldolla's prints in Bartsch and in Stanley's edition of Bryan.—J. T—e.  MELEAGER, son of Eucrates, was a native of Gadara in Syria, whence he removed to Tyre, and ultimately to the island of Cos, where he died. He cultivated the Greek epigrammatic poetry. His style, though deficient in simplicity, is pleasing; but the licentious fancy which he freely indulged in his amatory pieces offends the purer moral taste of the present day. He is reckoned the first collector of an Anthologia, being generally supposed to have lived in the century preceding the christian era. His epigrams, to the number of about one hundred and thirty, were edited by Brunck at Leipsic in 1709.—W. B.  MELENDEZ VALDES,, a Spanish poet and jurist, born in 1754 of a noble family in Estremadura. In early life he formed an intimate friendship with Jovellanos, and acquired a familiarity with English literature; Newton, Locke, Pope, Young, and Thomson being his chosen authors. His first public effort, an essay "On the Happiness of a Country Life," was rewarded with a prize by the Spanish Academy, 1780. His ode "On the Glory of the Fine Arts," delivered at the triennial festival of the Academy of San Fernando, is considered his masterpiece. A drama, "The Marriage of Comacho," was less successful; and an epic, "The Fall of Lucifer," never found favour. His lyric poems, however, first published in 1785, entitle him to be called the regenerator of the national style. Melendez was professor of humanities at Madrid. In 1789 he became a local judge at Saragossa, and in 1797 fiscal of the supreme court of Madrid. On the fall of Jovellanos, August, 1798, he was compelled to leave Madrid, and resided at Salamanca until 1808. In that year he accepted a mission from the French usurper into the Asturias, which nearly cost him his life from the popular indignation. Subsequently he accepted the post of president of the board of public instruction under the French government. He was compelled to leave Spain with Joseph Bonaparte, and resided in France in obscurity until his death at Montpelier, 24th May, 1817. A revised edition of his works was published by the government in 1820, with a memoir by Quintana.—F. M. W.  MELETIUS, the author of the Meletian schism, was bishop of Lycopolis at the commencement of the fourth century. He was deposed by Peter of Alexandria; but whether because of his having sacrificed to the heathen gods, or of his too great severity towards those who had lapsed from the faith is not certainly known. To this sentence Meletius paid no regard, but ordained bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and formed a sect called "the church of the martyrs." By the council of Nice (325) he was deprived of the power of ordination, but was allowed to retain the title of bishop.—D. W. R.  MELI,, poet in the Sicilian dialect, born in Palermo, 4th March, 1740; died in the same city, 20th December, 1815. He practised medicine with some success, and professed chemistry in the university of Palermo; but it is as a poet that he is chiefly memorable. His rustic verses, reproducing nature under a lovely aspect, have ennobled his provincial vernacular; and again, the soft Sicilian tongue adds a grace to his verses. The first complete edition of his poems, 7 vols., with explanatory notes, appeared in Palermo in 1814; but in 1830 a posthumous edition, published in the same city, was augmented by an eighth volume, containing matter till then inedited, amongst which is an ode to Nelson. Casti, himself a poet, justly designates Giovanni Meli as, notwithstanding his provincial dialect, the poet of all nations, and the competent judge of all poets.—C. G. R.  MELISSUS, a philosopher commonly classed with the Eleatic school, flourished from about 440. He was prominent in the politics of his native state, and is said to have commanded in a sea-fight with the Athenians during the Samian revolt. Though locally separate from the school of Elea, he seems to have adopted its philosophy as a weapon of offence against the Ionic physiologists. This philosophy, in the dialectic of Zeno, takes the form of a merely negative logic. In the same form, but with far less fullness, it is presented by Melissus. Motion, according to him, is impossible, because there is no vacuum; change, because Being cannot pass into non-being. If Being is immovable, it is indivisible; if indivisible, it has no parts; if no parts, no body. The reports of the senses are untrue, for if true, they must correspond to Being; now Being is unchangeable, while our sensations vary from moment to moment. Of any positive doctrines of Melissus we find no trace. The abstraction of Being, which had been almost an object of reverence to the earlier Eleatics, and had been identified with thought by Parmenides, had become a mere abstraction to him.—G. <section end="408H" /> <section begin="408Zcontin" />MELITO, Bishop of Sardis, under Marcus Aurelius, lived in the second century. Nothing is known of his life except that sometime between the years 165 and 175 he presented an "Apology" to the emperor. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, in a letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, calls him Eunuchus, only, however, to indicate that he was devoted to a life of celibacy and austerity. Jerome tells us that "Tertullian in one of his books praises Melito's elegant and oratorical genius, and says that he was esteemed a prophet by many of our people." The titles of a considerable number of works by Melito are given by Eusebius and Jerome, but only the smallest fragments are now extant. <section end="408Zcontin" />