assistance. Alone, half naked, and without money, he was sauntering about the crowded streets of Naples, when his attention was attracted by a playhouse bill. A thought struck him of trying his chance at playwriting, and he introduced himself for this object to the manager of the company, of the name of Bianchi, offering to write a play with considerable novelty in it. Bianchi accepted the offer, he took Avelloni into his house, and provided for his most pressing wants, and Avelloni in the course of a fortnight wrote a play in five acts, entitled "Giulio Assassino," in which he introduced as one of the characters his late acquaintance the philosophizing robber of Fondi. The play, being acted, proved extremely successful, and was repeated for twenty evenings to crowded houses. During one of the performances, a livery servant inquired for the author, and, having found Avelloni, requested him to follow him to a box where sat two elderly ladies, who lavished praises upon the young dramatist, and addressed him by the title of their nephew. Avelloni, half intoxicated with his stage success, and still sore at his first reception by his relatives, received these advances with coldness, took his leave, and never sought his aunts afterwards. He wrote several more plays for Bianchi, which also proved successful. He then assumed the costume of an Abbé, which was the usual dress of literary men, and being of a diminutive size, he was nicknamed "Il Poetino," or the little poet. The Prince of Sangro, who belonged to one of the principal families of Naples, had a fancy to appear as a dramatic writer, but had little ability for the task. He sought Avelloni, showed him several shapeless outlines of plays which he had sketched, and requested him to fill up the blanks, or, in other words, to write the plays. Avelloni wrote for him about forty plays, which were brought on the stage under the name of the prince, and which had a considerable run for a time. For every play which he wrote, the prince gave Avelloni eight Neapolitan ducats (above thirty shillings) and a ham, the product of his country estates. Having left the prince, Avelloni wrote for several managers; he afterwards went to Rome with the actor and manager Tommaso Grandi, who introduced on the stage of the theatre Capranica the so-called “Commedia Urbana," or regular drama. Avelloni married an actress, by whom he had many children, who all died at an early age. After the death of his wife, he became joint-manager with another actress, but derived no profit from the concern. He appeared on the stage as an actor, but finding that he was not calculated for acting, he resumed his profession of dramatic writer, and wrote plays in various towns of Italy for the well-known dramatic companies of De Marini, Fabbrichesi, Vestris, and Blanes. Tired at last of working hard for little emo

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lument, he became a private teacher, and spent many years in that capacity in several respectable families. He spent nine of his later years at Rome, in the house of his friend Jacopo Ferretti, himself a poet. At seventy years of age he married the widow of the prompter Pieri, who had been left destitute at the death of her husband, and whom he cherished till his death. Avelloni died at Rome in 1837, at eighty-one years of age. His friend Ferretti wrote a biographical notice of him in the "Album," published at Rome, in 1840.

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Avelloni's first plays, which had the most success, were of the sentimental style, called by some "the lachrymose style," which was then prevalent on the stages of Germany, France, and Italy, and of which Kotzebue's dramas, Goethe's "Werther,” which was also dramatised, and Schiller's Robbers," are well known specimens. In Italy, whose stage has generally imitated the stage of other countries ever since the Roman times, Greppi, Gualzetti, Federici, and Avelloni were the champions of the sentimental drama, and they were very successful on the stage. Even to this day people are attracted by performances like that of the well known drama "Adelaide and Comminges," in which disappointed lovers turn monks, or by others in which spirited youths maddened by jealousy and revenge become highway robbers, like the characters of Avelloni. Avelloni was not equally successful in the higher or regular comedy, his characters being deficient in dignity. His dialogues are generally easy and natural, but the incidents are often strained, and he sins against probability and truth. He wrote very fast, both from disposition and imperious circumstances, and he seldom corrected his MSS., as is proved by his autographs. His facility and carelessness were so great that he has been known to have been unable after a year or two to recognise some of his own productions. He wrote several allegorical dramas, in which he was successful: the best of them are his

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“Lucerna di Epitteto" (the "Lantern of Epictetus"); “Le Vertigini del Secolo" (the "Follies or Vagaries of the Age"), "Il Sogno d'Aristo," &c. Some of these are still performed on the stage. He wrote about six hundred plays, some in verse and others in prose, most of which are inserted in the various collections of dramas which have been published in Italy of late years. (Tipaldo, Biografia degli Italiani illustri del Secolo XVIII. e de' Contemporanei; Salfi, Saggio Storico critico della Commedia Italiana.) A. V.

AVEMANN, WOLFF, a painter of Nürnberg, of the beginning of the seventeenth century, who distinguished himself, according to Doppelmayr, for his pictures of the interiors of churches, and other architectural views, after the manner of H. Steenwyck.

He left Nürnberg about the year 1620, and went into Hesse, where he died shortly after his arrival in consequence of a sword wound which he received. (Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den Nürnbergischen Künstlern, &c.) R. N. W. AVEMPACE, called also Aven Pace, Aben Pace, and Aven Pas, the corrupt forms of the name Ibn Bájeh, which first began to be written Aben, and then, from the similarity of the sound of the letters b and v among the Spaniards, was pronounced Aven. The complete name (or series of names) of Avempace was Abu Bekr Mohammed Ibn Yahya Ibnu-s-sayegh (the son of the goldsmith), but he is better known under the surname of Ibn Bájeh. He was one of the most celebrated philosophers of his time, so as to be preferred by Abu-l-hasan 'Ali to Avicenna, Al-ghazzúlí, or any other writer except Al-faárábí; very little, however, is known of the events of his life, nor have we now the means of judging satisfactorily how far he deserved his great contemporary reputation. Some writers say that he was born at Cordova in Andalusia, but others consider him to have been a native of Saragossa in Aragon; which latter opinion appears to be the more probable, as he belonged to the race of the Tojibites, a noble and powerful family who settled in Spain soon after the conquest, and one of whom, Al-mundhir Ibn Yahya At-tojibí, made himself master of Saragossa. (Gayangos, Notes to Al-makkari's Mohamm. Dynast. in Spain, voi. i. p. 462, and vol. ii. p. 441.) The exact year of his birth is unknown. He practised as a physician at Seville in Andalusia till A.H. 512 (A.D. 1119), then travelled in search of knowledge, and went to Fez, to the court of Yahya Ibn Tashefin, whose vizir he became. Here he died and was buried, A.H. 533 (A.D. 1138-9), or, according to others, A.H. 525 (A.D. 1130-1), poisoned, as was said, by the other physicians of the court, whose envy and hatred he had in some way excited against himself. The story of his having been imprisoned at Cordova by the father of Averroes on the charge of heresy, which is told by Leo Africanus, and has been repeated by several modern writers, hardly deserves to be believed on his sole authority. He is said to have died very young, but, if the above dates be correct, he cannot have been much less than five and forty at the time of his death. He was tutor to Abú-l-hasan 'Ali Ibn 'Abdi-l-'azíz Ibnu-l-imám, of Granada, who lived on terms of great intimacy with him, and was one of his chief admirers, and who, after his death, published a work consisting of a collection of his sayings. Avempace was also one of the tutors to the celebrated Averroës, a fact which is hardly reconcilable with the age of twenty-three, at which his death is sometimes said to have taken place. His works were very numerous, twenty-five

being enumerated in his Life by Ibn Abí Ossaybi'ah, translated by Gayangos, and inserted in the Appendix to his translation of Al-makkarí. Some of these are commentaries on different works of Aristotle and Galen; others are treatises on various philosophical and metaphysical subjects; and others appear from their titles to have been merely short pamphlets. Several of them are still in MS. in different libraries in Europe; and, besides those mentioned by Ibn Abí Ossaybi'ah, Casiri states that there are in the Escurial Library five treatises in one volume written by Avempace, and finished at Seville on the fourth of Shawwal, A.H. 512 (Jan. 18, A.D. 1119). None of these (as far as the writer is aware) have been published either in the original Arabic or in a translation; but a Latin version appears to have been well known in the middle ages, and is quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas (Cont. Gent. lib. iii. cap. 41) and other scholastic theologians.

Avempace was a learned and accomplished man; he is said to have been not only one of the most eminent physicians that ever lived, but also an excellent musician, well versed in literature, an astronomer, mathematician, geometrician, philosopher, and metaphysician. He was a great admirer of Aristotle, to whose system he was, like most of the principal Arabian philosophers, exclusively devoted, and whose writings he both thoroughly understood and explained with peculiar clearness and beauty of expression. He knew the Korán by heart, but is said to have entertained very free opinions respecting its divine authority, and also on several other points of faith. "Respecting metaphysics," says Ibn Abí Ossaybi'ah, "if truth be told, Ibn Bájeh did not establish any new doctrine, nor is there anything remarkable in his writings, if we except a few loose observations in that Epistle of his entitled Alwada' (or 'Fare thee well'), and in his essay On Human Reason,' besides a few separate hints in two more of his philosophical tracts. Yet these are exceedingly vigorous, and go very far to prove his proficiency in that illustrious science (metaphysics) which is the complement and the end of every other science. It was to his constant application to the above studies that Ibn Bájeh owed all his attainments, and his superiority in all the other branches of knowledge. But what will appear almost incredible is that Ibn Bájeh should have strained every nerve to become possessed of those sciences which had been known and cultivated before him, and in which the paths of invention were entirely closed to him, and that he should have fallen short in his endeavours to ameliorate that science which is the complement of every science, and an object of desire to all those endowed with a brilliant disposition, or to whom God im

all the details of the scheme, he proceeded immediately to Etienne l'Alemant, sieur de Vouzai, intendant of the Cardinal de Lorraine, and disclosed to him the particulars of the conspiracy in the presence of Milet, the secretary to the Duke de Guise. Avenelles was a Protestant, and this betrayal of the secrets of his party has been very generally censured as an act of gross treachery. De Thou, on the other hand, defends him as a man of worth and learning, who was influenced not by sordid motives, but by the conscientious conviction that all plots and conspiracies against a legally constituted government are morally wrong. It cannot be denied, however, that disinterested as his motives may have been, he did not refuse the reward of his disclosures, viz. the sum of twelve thousand francs, and a judicial post in one of the cities of Lorraine. The time of his death is not recorded. (De Thou, Histoire Universelle, edit. 1740, ii. 763-775; Satyre Menippée, edit. 1709, ii. 268, &c.)

J. W. J.

AVENPACE. [AVEMPACE.] AVENTINUS, JOHANNES, the author of the "Annales Bojorum," was born at Abensberg, in Bavaria, in 1466. His real family name was Thürmaier or Thürnmaier; accordingly he is called in an epigram by his friend Leonard von Eckh, “Thurnioma- | rus," and also "Johannes Aventinus Duromarus;" but Aventinus called himself after the Latinized name of his native place Abensberg, although he well knew that the Romans called that town “Abusina" and not " Aventinium." His father kept an inn, but must have been possessed of good property, as he gave his son a liberal education. He sent him to the Universities of Ingolstadt and Paris. Having finished his philosophical and classical studies he returned to Germany, and in 1503 he taught eloquence and poetry in Vienna. In 1507 he went to Poland, gave public instruction in Greek grammar at Cracow, and perfected himself in mathematics. He returned soon after, and in 1509 he expounded at the University of Ingolstadt Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis" and the "Rhetorica ad Herennium," with so much success that his name reached the ducal court at Munich. He was invited to Munich, in 1512, to instruct Ludwig and Ernest, the two younger sons of Duke Albert the Wise, who had died in 1508, and whose place was occupied by his eldest son Wilhelm IV. Aventinus gained the good-will of the duke and the affection of his pupils, with the younger of whom, Ernest, he travelled through the south of Germany and the whole of Italy during 1515 and 1516, and thus he had an opportunity of making himself personally acquainted with the great scholars of Italy. On his return, in 1517, he began to prepare materials for the history of his native country, in which undertaking he was chiefly assisted by

the duke and his pupils, who not only opened to him all the archives, but, in order to free him from all pecuniary cares, gave him a pension, and the means of travelling and consulting the public records of the various German states. Aventinus devoted himself entirely to his great work. He rarely left his study, saw his friends seldom, and allowed himself little rest even during the greater part of the night. In 1522, after six years' labour, his " Annales Bojorum" were in substance completed, but he employed the next ten years in enlarging and improving, and in translating them from Latin into German. In 1529, he was carried by force from the house of his sister in Abensberg, and put in prison, for reasons unknown, according to some of his biographers; but according to others, on a suspicion of heresy, and especially for his attachment to the Reformation. However, at the intercession of his patron, the Duke, he was set at liberty; but it seems that the high-minded scholar could not brook such an insult. From that time he fell into a state of melancholy. He tried, at last, to arouse himself from his grief by marrying, an extraordinary step at his time of life, for he was then sixty-four years of age. His melancholy was not cured by marriage, for his wife was of a quarrelsome temper. In 1533 he was called to Ingolstadt as tutor to the sons of a Bavarian counsellor. Upon this he went to Ratisbon in order to fetch his wife; but being taken ill he died in that town in 1534. He had two children, a boy, who died before him, and a girl, who survived him.

The "Annales Bojorum," by which he gained so great a reputation, and which procured for him from Leibnitz the honourable title of the "Father of Bavarian Historiography," had a strange fate. They were dedicated to the Duke Wilhelm IV. and his two brothers, but these patrons withheld the work from the public. Their successor Albert V. permitted Hieronymus Ziegler, professor of poetry at the University of Ingolstadt, to publish it. The "Annales Bojorum" appeared in 1554. But the same reason which might have induced the princely patrons to stop the publication, led Ziegler to omit in his edition all those passages which were directed against the popes, several ecclesiastical persons, and the Romish Church. Ziegler states in his preface that these omissions excited the curiosity of the Lutherans, who exerted themselves to procure a complete copy. This was accomplished by Nicholaus Cisner in his edition under the title "Joannis Aventini Annalium Bojorum Lib. vii., ex autenticis manuscriptis codicibus recogniti, restituti, aucti diligentia Nicolai Cisneri," Basil, 1580, fol., 1615; Frankfort, 1627; and by H. N. Grundling, Leipzig, 1710.

Four different editions of the German translation are mentioned: 1. the oldest under the title Chronica von Ursprung und