WOBO: Search for words and phrases in the texts here...

, a very extraordinary person, was a native of Amsterdam, where he was born in 1.522. It appears that early in life he travelled into Spain and Portugal, but the motives of his journey are not ascertained. He was a man of science; and, according to report, a good poet. The sister arts he at first considered as an amusement only; but at length was obliged to have recourse to engraving for his support, and though the different studies in which he employed his time prevented his application to this art from being so close as it ought to have been, yet marks of genius are discoverable in his works. They are slight, and hastily executed with the graver alone, in an open careless style, so as greatly to resemble drawings made with a pen. He was settled at Haerlem; and there pursuing his favourite studies in literature, he learned Latin, and was made secretary to that town, from whence he was several times employed as ambassador to the prince of Orange, to whom he addressed a famous manifesto, which that prince published in 1566. Had he stopped here, it had been well; but, directing his thoughts to matters which he did not understand, he brought forward an argument as dangerous as it was absurd. He maintained, that all religious communications were corrupted; and that without a supernatural mission, accompanied with miracles, no person hat! any right to administer in any religious office: he therefore pronounced that man to be unworthy the name of a Christian who would enter any place of public worship. This he not only advanced in words, but strove to shew the sincerity of his belief in it by practice; and for that reason would not communicate with either protestant or papist. His works were published in three volumes folio, 1630; and though he was several times imprisoned, and at last sentenced to banishment, yet he does not appear to Lave altered his sentiments. He died at Tergout in 1590, aged 68. It is to his honour as an artist, that he was the instructor of the justly-celebrated Henry Goltzius. Cuerenhert worked conjointly with the Galles and other artists, from the designs of Martin Hemskerk. The subjects are from the Old and New Testament, and consist chiefly of middling-sized plates lengthwise. He also engraved several subjects from Frank Floris.

It has been justly observed by the editors of the last edition of the Biog. Britannica, that sir Kenelm Digby seems to have obtained a reputation beyond his merit; yet his merit was great, and his personal character has been admirably drawn by lord Clarendon: “He was,” says that historian, “a person very eminent and notorious throughout the whole course of his life, from his cradle to his grave; of an ancient family and noble extraction; and inherited a fair and plentiful fortune, notwithstanding the attainder of his father. He was a man of a very extraordinary person and presence, which drew the eyes of all men upon him, which were more fixed by a wonderful graceful behaviour, a flowing courtesy and civility, and such a volubility of language, as surprised and delighted; and though in another man it might have appeared to have somewhat of affectation, it was marvellous graceful in. him, and seemed natural to his size, and mould of his person, to the gravity of his motion, and the tune of his voice and delivery. He had a fair reputation in arms, of which he gave an early testimony in his youth, in some encounters in Spain and Italy, and afterwards in an action in the Mediterranean sea, where he had the command of a squadron of ships of war set out at his own charge, under the king’s commission; with which, upon an injury received or apprehended from the Venetians, he encountered their whole fleet, killed many of their men, and sunk one of their galeasses; which in that drowsy and unactive time was looked upon with a general estimation, though the crown disavowed it. In a word, he had all the advantages that nature and art, and an excellent education could give him, which, with a great confidence and presentness of mind, buoyed him up against all those prejudices and disadvantages (as the attainder and execution of his father for a crime of the highest nature; his own marriage with a lady, though of an extraordinary beauty, of as extraordinary a fame; his changing and rechanging his religion; and some personal vices and licences in his life) which would have suppressed and sunk any other man, but never clouded or eclipsed him from appearing in the best places, and the best company, and with the best estimation and satisfaction.” We cati entertain no doubt, therefore, of the estimation in which he was held", and of the merit which deserved it; but on the other hand it is impossible to acquit him of excessive credulity, or of deliberate imposture. His sympathetic powder, and his belief, or his assertion of the power of transmuting metals, will not now bear examination, without affecting his character in one or other of these respects.

, a very extraordinary person, who from a thresher became a poet, and was afterwards advanced to the cure of a parish, was born about the beginning of the last century, and had originally no other teaching than what enabled him to read and write English: and, as arithmetic is generally joined with this degree of learning, he had a little share of that too. About his fourteenth year he was taken from school, and was afterwards successively engaged in the several lowest employments of a country life, which lasted so long, that he had almost forgot all the arithmetic he had learned at school. However, he read sometimes, and thought oftener: he had a certain longing after knowledge; and, when he reflected within himself on his want of education, he began to be particularly uneasy, that he should have forgot any thing of what he had learned, even at his little school. He thought of this so often, that, at last, he resolved to try his own strength; and, if possible, to recover his arithmetic again.

, an Italian poet of great temporary fame, was born at Mantua, whence he took his name, in 1448, and not in 1444, as Cardan and others have said; for Mantuan himself relates, in a short account of his own life, that he was born under the pontificate of Nicholas V. and Nicholas was only made pope in March 1447. He was of the illustrious family of the Spagnoli, being a natural son of Peter Spagnolo, as we learn from Paul Jovius, who was his countryman, and thirty-three years old when Mantuan died, and therefore must have known the fact. Mantuan too speaks frequently and highly, in his works, of his father Peter Spagnolo, to whom he ascribes the care of his education. In his youth, he applied himself ardently to books, and began early with Latin poetry, which he cultivated all his life; for it does not appear that he wrote any thing in Italian. He entered himself, we do not know exactly when, among the Carmelites, and came at length to be general of his order; which dignity, upon some disgust or other, he quitted in 1515, and devoted himself entirely to the pursuit of the belles-lettres. He did not enjoy his retirement long, for he died in March 1516, upwards of eighty years of age. The duke of Mantua, some years after, erected to his memory a marble statue crowned with laurel, and placed it next to that of Virgil; and even Erasmus went so far as to say that a time would come, when Baptist Mantuan would not be placed much below his illustrious countryman. In this opinion few critics will now join. If he had possessed the talents of Virgil, he had not his taste, and knew not how to regulate them. Yet allowance is to be made, when we consider that, in the age in which he lived, good taste had not yet emerged. Liiius Gyraldiis, in his “Dialogues upon the poets of his own times,” says, “that the verses which Mantuan wrote in his youth are very well; but that, his imagination afterwards growing colder, his latter productions have not the force or vigour of his earlier.” We may add, that Mantuan was more solicitous about the number than the goodness of his poems; yet, considering that he lived when letters were but just reviving, it must be owned, that he was a very extraordinary person. His poetical works were first printed, in a folio volume without a date, consisting of his eclogues, written chiefly in his youth seven pieces in honour of the virgins inscribed on the kalendar, beginning with the virgin Mary these he calls “Parthenissal.” “Parthenissa II.” &c. four books of Silvge, or poems on different subjects; elegies, epistles, and, in short, poems of every description. This was followed by an edition at Bologna, 1502, folio, and by another at Paris in 1513, with the commentaries of Murrho, Brant, and Ascensius, 3 vols. fol. but usually bound in ne. A more complete, but now more rare, edition of them was published at Antwerp, 1576, in four vols. 8vo, under this title, “J. Baptistae Mantuani, Carmelitae, theologi, philosophi, ppetae, & oratoris clarissimi, opera omnia, pluribus libris aucta & restituta.” The Commentaries of the Paris edition are omitted in this; but the editors have added, it does not appear on what account, the name of John, to Baptist Mantuan.

, the assumed name of a very extraordinary person, was undoubtedly a Frenchman born; he had his education partly in a free-school, taught by two Franciscan monks, and afterwards in a college of Jesuits in an archiepiscopal city; the name of which, as also of his birth-place and of his parents, remain yet inviolable secrets. Upon leaving the college, he was recommended as a tutor to a young gentleman, but soon fell into a mean rambling kind of life, that led him into many disappointments and misfortunes. The first pretence he took up with was that of being a sufferer for religion and he procured a certificate that he was of Irish extraction, had left the country for the sake of the Roman Catholic religion, and was going on a pilgrimage to Rome. Not being in a condition to purchase a pilgrim’s garb, he had observed, in a chapel dedicated to a miraculous saint, that such a one had been set up, as a monument of gratitude to some wandering pilgrim and he contrived to take both staff and cloak away at noon-day. “Being thus accoutred,” says he, “and furnished with a pass, I began, at all proper places, to beg my way in a fluent Latin accosting only clergymen, or persons of figure, by whom I could be understood: and found them mostly so generous and credulous, that I might easily have saved money, and put myself into a much better dress, before I had gone through a score or two of miles. But so powerful was my vanity and extravagance, that as soon as I had got what I thought a sufficient viaticum, I begged no more; but viewed every thing worth seeing, and then retired to some inn, where I spent my money as freely as I had obtained it.”