important extension was adopted in a se- folio. It was translated, imitated, and enlarged in English, and Dutch, and German, and even in Spanish; and Peter the Great is said to have ordered its translation into Slavonic. The original volume which was the father of so numerous a progeny was mainly a dictionary of the names of persons and places - a gazetteer and biographical dictionary in one; and it is important to remember, in estimating the merits of Moréri, that no such work as a general biographical dic tionary was at that time in existence. His was the first book in which a reader would find assembled sketches of the lives of Cæsar and Columbus, Ariosto and Calvin, Charles I. of England and Charles V. of Germany. cond edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica,' at the instance, it is said, of the then Duke of Buccleuch. Smellie, after opposing it in vain, refused to have anything further to do with the Encyclopædia;' and by declining to take a share in the property of it, which was offered him, unwittingly declined a fortune. His place was taken in the second edition by a Mr. James Tytler, whose co-operation is thought to have been of so little advantage to the credit of the work, that those who seek his biography will seek it in vain in the columns of the modern Encyclopædia Britannica.' He was, as we learn from Chambers's 'Eminent Scotsmen,' one of those drunken men of letters who were then as common as they have fortunately since been rare, and, lodging at a washerwoman's, it is said he had no other desk on which to write his articles than her inverted tub. But the second edition of the 'Britannica,' under whatever auspices, had a much more brilliant success than the first, and was soon followed by a still more suc cessful third. Its subsequent history was treated at length in an article in the seventieth volume of the Quarterly Review;' and a new edition has been lately completed, enriched, chiefly on the more popular subjects, with contributions by many distin guished writers. From the time of the second edition of this work, every cyclopædia of note in England or elsewhere has been a cyclopædia not solely of the arts and sciences, but of the whole wide circle of general learning and miscellaneous information. The great work of Moréri was projected when he was twenty-five, and produced when he was thirty. He died in 1680, at thirtyseven, worn out by the labour of preparing a second edition, in two volumes, of which he only lived to complete the first in print. The second was issued by other hands; the work was more successful than before; and in 1689 it had already reached a fifth edition at Paris, which was augmented by a third volume of supplement, by the Abbé de Saint-Ussan. The Preface to this supplement is remarkable in many points of view. The real use of this Dictionary,' says the writer, 'is to obtain at once on all sorts of subjects, of some degree of importance either in history or science, information which is not found elsewhere, or only to be found' after a tedious search, and in books which treat of matters at length; besides which it would be necessary to have at one's It would thus appear that the meaning, disposal libraries of great extent to search or rather the application, of the word cyclo- out what was wanted to be known. It has pædia has entirely changed. About a cen- now been endeavoured to complete the subtury ago, as we have seen, it denoted a dic-jects which were not treated at sufficient tionary of the arts and sciences exclusively; it now denotes a dictionary of universal information, of which the arts and sciences form but a part, and that not the most important one. Are we hence to conclude that the modern cyclopædia was unknown before this course of experiments was begun? If we were to do so, we should fall into error. The thing existed before, but under another name; and the class of work now prevalent is in reality of earlier origin than the class it appears to have superseded. An examination of some of the older books of reference will demonstrate this curious fact. The Historical Dictionary' of Louis Moréri was one of the most indispensable sets of books in a well-appointed library for about a century from the date of its first appearance at Lyons in 1673. It ran in the original French through two-and-twenty editions, the last of which was in ten volumes length in the first two volumes of M. Moréri, and to include in this Dictionary everything curious and worthy of remark. Many persons of learning and capacity to execute this great design have assisted in this labour. Some have composed articles on the subjects which they have made their principal study, and others have made abstracts from the principal authors, ancient and modern, French, Latin, Italian, &c. These abstracts are sometimes from a single author who has treated the subject profoundly, and often from several whose information has been combined in one article.' In place of a single author we find here in full operation the modern system of Editor and Contributors. The Preface also called the attention of the reader to the character and variety of the articles which the work contained. Not only, it was pointed out, did it embrace the names of illustrious personages of all kinds, ་ forming thus what has since been called that the term Encyclopædia was already in a Biographical Dictionary; the names of common use to describe a work of compreheathen god and goddesses, forming what hensive character; and it may be worth now constitutes a Mythological Dictionary; while to diverge for a moment to trace the the name of countries, towns, and places, word to its origin. It is well known that it now looked for in a Gazetteer but the is applied by Pliny and Quintilian-who names of dignitaries, such as Pope, Admiral, both treat it as a foreign word, inserting it Baron; of public bodies, such as Parliament in the original Greek in the midst of their and Sanhedrim; of parties in the State, such Latin-to denote the whole circle of instrucas Royalists, Agitators, the League; of tion or field of learning, but it was never remarkable buildings, such as Coliseum, employed by the ancients as the title of a Mausoleum; of remarkable books and docu- book. Pliny's own work, indeed, which ments, such as Genesis and the Augsburg embraces a survey of the whole knowledge Confession;' of remarkable objects and of his time, was named by himself' Historia actions, such as Crown, Cross, Mummies, Naturalis," The first use of Encyclopædia Duel, Bed of Justice, &c. &c. In glancing as a title is now generally, but erroneously, through the volume we come upon articles ascribed to the Arabs. It is said in the acon Antipodes, Artillery, Canal, Comedy, count of Encyclopædias, by Mr. Macvey Greek Fire, Enamel, Medals, Oriflamme, Napier, prefixed to the Britannica,' and Phosphorus, Banyan-tree, Comets, Meridian, also in many other similar notices, that an Stars, Zodiac, Printing, Architecture, Paint- Arabic treatise on the Sciences, by Alfarabi, ing, Sculpture. There are few of these sorts a great Oriental luminary of the tenth cenof articles,' the Preface remarks, 'in the first tury, is described by Casiri, in his catalogue two volumes, but it is easy to perceive that of the Arabic manuscripts in the Escurial, M. Moréri intended to comprise them in his published at Madrid in 1760, and that Casiri dictionary, or in a work that he designed to mentions that it is inscribed with the title add to it; for in the two first volumes we of Encyclopædia.' But a reference to the find' a number of articles of various kinds catalogue in question will show that this is which are enumerated, including Cardinal, a mistake, though a very pardonable one. Parliament, Cabal, Pleiades, Sagittarius,' &c. Casiri does, indeed, describe the book (at Moréri said in his Preface of 1673, that one vol. I. page 189) as 'Opus in primis erudiof his friends had told him that the work he tum ac perutile Encyclopædia inscriptum ;' was writing was an Encyclopædia of His- but in a note to the word 'Encyclopædia,' tory.' In the form to which it was brought he gives the original Arabic title, Ihsa-elby the supplement of 1689, it was already olum, 'Description of the Sciences,' which an Encyclopædia of something more. Ar- he had aimed at translating by the European ticles of the kind enumerated do not belong term. The work would appear to be of no to a modern Biographical Dictionary or Ga- great extent, for Casiri catalogues it as the zetteer: they are found in a modern Cyclo- third tract in a single manuscript volume; pædia,' and in no other work of alphabetical and he afterwards gives a list, taken from an arrangement, save, indeed, a Dictionary. Arabic bibliographer, of sixty works by AlThe value of these additions seems to have farabi, among which the 'Ihsa-el-olūm' is been at once recognised in the manner then not pointed out as of any particular bulk or usual in the instantaneous piracy of the importance. Another assertion which is curwork by the booksellers of Holland, at that rent with regard to the title is equally open time the great literary freebooters of Europe. to correction. The first person who conA new edition appeared under their auspices, ceived the idea of an encyclopædia or with the supplement incorporated with the universal dictionary,' we are told in Timoriginal stock, and numerous corrections, perley's Encyclopædia of Literary and additions, and alterations by the industrious Typographical Anecdote,' was Andrew Matscholar Le Clerc. For many years after-thew Acquaviva, Duke of Atri and Prince wards the cheap and excellent Dutch editions of Teramo, in the kingdom of Naples. He commanded an extensive sale, till the French was one of the greatest luminaries of the age retaliated by issuing new editions augmented in which he lived. He published a work with the spoils of the Dutch. The work was under this title in two volumes folio, which, so popular that it attracted a ' parasite,' and though scanty and defective, was sufficient the famous Critical Dictionary' of Bayle to give some hints for conducting a compilawas originally intended to form a running tion of that kind. He died in the year 1528.' criticism on a book so universally in request. Timperley probably copied this statement The statement taken from Moréri's Pre- verbatim, as was his practice, from some auface, that a friend had told him his work thor whose name he does not give; but the would be an Encyclopædia of History, shows statement is inadmissible as it stands. The sole authority for the existence of Acqua- raries complimented his diligence by pointviva's book appears to be an ambiguous sen- ing out that 'Sedulitas' was the anagram of tence of the careless and inaccurate Paulus Alstedius, their opinion of his judgment was Jovius, the contemporary of the author, who probably not heightened by his belief that adds to the assertion that no Prince of Italy the germs of all knowledge whatever are to surpassed Acquaviva in learning, the words be found in the Scriptures, and that the 'uti præclare constat ex eo libro nobili pari- Millennium would commence in the year ter ac erudito qui Encyclopædia inscribitur.' 1694. In the introduction to his 'CycloMazzuchelli, the most diligent of Italian pædia' he does not assert that his work is bibliographers, says in his 'Scrittori d'Italia,' the first of its kind; on the contrary, he that he had not been able to discover such a speaks of several authors as having preceded book; and Afflitto, who in his 'Scrittori di him with works of a character similar to his Napoli' has a very full notice of the whole own, and particularly mentions Fortius Rinfamily of Acquaviva, remarks that of this gelbergius and Matthew Martinius as the book apparently nothing remains to us but authors of Encyclopædias.' There is a the title.' Adelung thinks that the work work of Ringelbergius, of which there are really meant by Jovius is a volume by two editions, each in a moderate-sized duoAcquaviva, still extant, of Comments on decimo volume one, printed at Basil in Plutarch, in which we are told in the title 1541, bearing the title Lucubrationes vel that 'omnis divinæ et humanæ sapientiæ ar- potius absolutissima Kukλoлaideia;' the cana patefiunt.' The conjecture seems very other, printed at Lyons in 1556, bearing the likely to be a correct one. title Ringelbergii Opera,' without any menThe first extant work of magnitude which tion of Cyclopædia-the contents of both bereally bears the name we are tracing is the ing exactly the same. The volume consists 'Encyclopædia,' a century later than Acqua of a series of dissertations on grammar, diaviva, of John Henry Alsted, a Protestant lectics, rhetoric, &c.; and towards the end clergyman, who was born in 1588 at Her- there is a division called 'Chaos,' into which born, in Nassau, but migrated to Transyl- the author has thrown whatever he could vania, where he died in 1638. Alsted's find no fitter place for. The book is com'Encyclopædia' saw two editions in his own posed in a most ambitious vein, and in one time-the first in 1620, and the second in passage the author bursts out: 'I would 1630; dates which are given from his own rather be torn in a thousand pieces (and statement in the first case, and from the may I perish if I speak otherwise than I feel) book itself in the second, and which differ than give up the hope of reaching the very from those to be found in several works of summit of immortal fame.' Such were the some reputation. The second edition, the aspirations of an unhappy writer, who, if he entire product of his own pen, except where had really formed the first plan of a Cyclohe was guilty of plagiarism (to which Thoma- pædia, might possibly have attained the obsius asserts he was much addicted), runs, in ject of his ambition, but who, as it is, has two folio volumes, to two thousand four not even found a niche in the 'Biographie hundred and forty-four pages of very small Universelle.' The Martinius whom Alsted type in double columns of eighty lines to a mentions appears to have published an 'Idea page. This vast mass of matter is drawn brevis et methodica Encyclopædia seu up in a manner which peculiarly unfits it for Adumbratio Universitatis,' at Herborn, the consultation, and was evidently intended by native town of Alsted, in 1606, when Alsted its too-complacent author for continuous was eighteen years of age, and thus, in all reading, the divisions and subdivisions of probability, to have first inspired him with every subject being carried to an extreme the idea which he afterwards carried out. If, unusual even in that age of pedantry. Al- therefore, we put aside the obscure and dubisted seems, indeed, to have been particularly ous claim of Acquaviva, it would appear that adverse to alphabetical arrangement, except to Ringelbergius belongs the merit, whether in the case of an index. One of his other large or small, of having first used the word works is a Compendium Lexici Philoso- Kukλотaideia as the title of a book, and to phici,' published in 1626, and here—even in Alsted that of having first used it as the title a dictionary-he avoids in general giving the of a vast system of knowledge which did not words which he defines in the order of the differ in the principle of its arrangement from alphabet. He lays down as a definition at many compendiums of knowledge which exthe beginning of his Encyclopædia: En-isted before him. The plan of Alsted did cyclopædia est methodica comprehensio re- not in the slightest degree anticipate that of rum omnium in hac vitâ discendarum.' His Moréri to whom we now return. work had the honour of being reprinted in 1649 at Lyons; but though his contempo Only four years after Moréri's first edi tion, there appeared at Basil, in the Latin language, in two closely-printed folios pre- [pile whole libraries. In the portrait of him, senting an enormous mass of reading, the which is given in the first volume of his Dic'Lexicon Universale Historico-Geographico- tionary, he is depicted as surrounded with Chronologico-Poetico-Philologicum' of John scrolls bearing the titles of his writings; and Jacob Hofmann, a professor at the Univer- he is stated to have been the author of a sity of Basil. This was in 1677; and in hundred and eleven printed volumes, in va1683, before the appearance of any supple- rious languages, chiefly on matters of geograment to Moréri, Hofmann had produced a phy. He tells us that he had been engaged for supplement to his own Lexicon in two more more than thirty years in collecting in Italy, copious folios than the Lexicon itself. The France, and England the materials of this original and the supplement were incorpo- vast 'farrago,' a date which brings him close rated, with numerous additions by the author, to the date of Moréri, who commenced the in an edition issued by the ever-active Dutch compilation of his Dictionary in 1668. The booksellers in 1698; but, in this instance, 'Biblioteca Universale' was to consist of the author was in league with the Dutchmen, five-and-forty folio volumes; and Coronelli and his Swiss publishers commenced an ac- announced that even if Providence were to tion against him for having assisted the terminate his life before the completion of pirates. The Dutch edition of Hofmann con- his undertaking, he had taken measures to tinues to this day a valued book of reference. continue it beyond the grave. The mateIt is a striking proof of the declining for- rials,' says the Preface, 'are already arranged, tunes of the Latin language in the eighteenth and several learned persons provided with century, that, while the French Moréri ran instructions, who will have the power to enthrough its two-and-twenty editions, its Latin force from the printer the obligation he has competitor was never reprinted after 1698. contracted to continue the printing, and who The plan of Hofmann is markedly coincident will have every facility to carry out the with that of Moréri. The geographical no- plan.' The work had, however, advanced tices are particularly copious; though it is only to its seventh volume, when in 1718 said that Hofmann, in the course of a long Coronelli died, and after all his precautions, life, had never been out of Basil: the bio- his work died with him. It forms a monugraphical comprise a large array of the dead, ment to his memory on the shelves of great and even a few of the living, including the libraries, not unlike the broken shaft of a contemporary sovereigns Louis XIV and column that is now so common in the cemeCharles II. It might have been argued with teries. some plausibility that the same plan must have occurred simultaneously to the Frenchman and the Swiss, since the four years which elapsed between the first appearance of the two dictionaries seem altogether insuf ficient to the compilation, by one hand, of the mass of curious matter which fills the pages of the first edition of Hofmann; but, as in the six years which followed he undoubtedly added a still larger quantity to the original stock, the objection falls in his case to the ground. It is to Moréri, therefore, that we must award the undivided honour of having struck out a plan, which found so early an imitator, and which has never wanted imitators from that day to this. The intended five-and-forty folios of Coronelli were surpassed in actual achievement by the sixty-four of the 'Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon,' the most colossal of German compilations. The work was so enormous and so various, that it required to be edited by nine editors at once, who have the honour of being compared in the Preface to the Nine Muses. The names of all nine have been consigned to oblivion, while the work is generally quoted as 'Zedler's Lexicon,' from the name of the daring bookseller who projected, and who, in a certain sense, completed it. Commenced in 1732, the work was carried in about twenty years right through the alphabet; but it had unThe 'Lexicon Universale of Hofmann luckily been announced at the very beginwas soon followed by the commencement of ning, that a Supplement would be published, an 'Universal Library' in a modern language, and the Supplement stuck fast. Four folios and on a much more extensive scale. This carried it no farther than the letter C; and was the 'Biblioteca Universale, o sia Gran there, in 1754, with the sixty-eighth volume Dizionario Storico, Geografico, Antico, Mo- in all, the great Lexicon came to a standstill, derno, Naturale, Poetico, Cronologico, Gene- and remains with less hope of being resumed alogico, Matematico, Politico, Botanico, Med than the great Cathedral of Cologne. The ico, Chimico, Giuridico, Filosofico, Teo- title-page describes it as the great Complete logico, e Biblico,' of Fra Vincenzo Coronelli, Universal Lexicon of all Sciences and Arts of which the first volume appeared at Venice which have yet been discovered and imin 1701. Coronelli's was indeed a 'gigantic proved by human understanding and ingenius fit to grapple with' or even to com-genuity,' in which 'not only the geographical and political description of the globe, and all | work at one. Erasmus states in some part countries, cities, and ports, the lives of em- of his writings that he had the intention to perors, kings, learned men,' &c., are includ- compose one for the purpose of assisting ed; but also 'mythology, antiquities, numis- those who are beginning to read the poets. matics, philosophy, mathematics, theology, An anonymous writer, who calls himself the jurisprudence, and medicine.' This abridg- friend of Erasmus, published one about the ment of a title-page, which, if given at full year 1534.' Moréri has here, as was unlength, would occupy two or three pages of happily his custom, fallen into several errors, the Quarterly Review,' is sufficient to show and the book which he mentions as anonythat Zedler's gigantic undertaking was an mous is shown by Prosper Marchand to Encyclopædia in all but the title. Its execu- have been a work by Torrentinus, a learned tion is, as might be expected, very various. Dutchman, the first edition of which was The part of it which is most successful is the published with his name long before the genealogical and biographical, which contains date of 1534. But even Prosper Marchand, innumerable notices of families and persons whose article on Torrentinus, in his Critical who are found in no other general dictionary. Dictionary, is one of the most ingenious Its value in this respect has been largely re- pieces of literary research any where to be cognised of late years, and the long array of found, has fallen into oversights and errors substantial folios, which might once have which those who come a century after him been procured almost at the price of waste can easily correct by the aid of the more paper, are now treated with due respect in elaborate catalogues of the early literature booksellers' catalogues. of Europe which are now in existence. The That the works we have now been passing current ideas on the history of biographical in review, the Dictionaries of Moréri, Hof dictionaries abound in mistakes which it mann, Coronelli, and Zedler, are the real and would be neither useless nor uninteresting direct ancestors of the great Cyclopædias of to rectify; but the task is one which our our own day, is a proposition that can, we limits will not allow us to pursue. It may think, hardly be disputed. The Cyclopædia suffice to say that while separate gazetteers of Ephraim Chambers and the Cyclopædia or geographical dictionaries have existed of Charles Knight are works distinct in from the time of Stephanus Byzantinus, who character, but alike in name; the Cyclopæ- is assigned by the best critics to the fifth dia of Charles Knight and the Dictionary of Moréri are works distinct in name, but alike in character. Of the four divisions into which Knight's Cyclopædia is distributed, the geographical and biographical, occupying ten volumes out of twenty-two, have no representatives in Chambers, but are the very marrow of Moréri. In short, in the great work of the Frenchman were first assembled a number of branches of information which were afterwards put asunder and have now been united again, and the union is what bears in modern language the name of Cyclopædia, originally applied to one of its members. The century, the earliest exclusively biographical The honour, however, that has hitherto been generally ascribed to Morér's Dictionary is not that it was the first of cyclopædias, The Cyclopædia might be expected to but the first of historical, and therefore, by prosper in Germany, the land of erudition. implication, the first of biographical diction- The legitimate successor to the great work of aries. Moréri himself was so far from lay- Zedler is the great work of Ersch and Grüing claim to any invention in the matter, ber, the 'Encyclopädie aller Künste und Wisthat his own words are the strongest evidence senschaften,' commenced in 1818 and still against him. After stating in his Preface slowly advancing towards completion. As that several authors had laboured on such a in some gigantic tunnel, for the execution of work as his own, even before St. Isidore which three shafts are obliged to be sunk, and Suidas, but that their works have not operations were till lately carried on at once come down to us,' he goes on to say, 'per- in this cyclopædia from three different points haps the curious would wish to hear what of the alphabet. The first division, beginhas been the fate of historical dictionaries, ning of course at A, has now advanced in and who in the last age took the pains to 75 volumes to nearly the end of G; the |