was the general opinion in Germany at the time when Ayrenhoff began his career, and he was so strongly biased by his notion, that even after a better taste had been diffused by Lessing and others, he continued obstinately to defend his ground, both by argument and example, so that in the end he stood alone among his contemporaries. His tragedies, therefore, are stiff and conventional, though the dialogue is always animated. The characters are on the whole well drawn, and the action always excites a considerable degree of interest. The versification is very faulty, and the language antiquated and awkward. Ayrenhoff, like most Viennese poets, is much more successful in comedy, especially the burlesque, than in tragedy, and some of his comic productions, such as "Der Postzug" and "Die grosse Batterie," were for many years performed with great applause on all the stages in Germany. All his dramas, however, have now fallen into oblivion, and are remarkable only as specimens of the mistaken notions of the drama which the Germans had for more than a century, until they were exposed and refuted by Lessing. All the works of Ayrenhoff were published in the following collections:-1. "Dramatische Unterhaltungen eines Kaiserl. Königl. Officiers," Vienna, 1776, 8vo., contains five dramas and some essays on the drama. 2. "Sämmtliche Werke," Vienna and Leipzig, 1789, 4 vols. 8vo. 3. "Sämmtliche Werke," Vienna, 1803, 6 vols. 8vo., contains all the tragedies, comedies, minor poems, essays, tales, &c. that had till then appeared. A much improved collection, under the same title as the preceding one, which also contains an autobiography of Ayrenhoff, appeared at Vienna, 1816, 6 vols. 8vo. Separate editions of his minor poems and tragedies were published at Vienna in 1816 and 1817. (Ayrenhoff's autobiography, entitled Schreiben an J. F. von Retzer über einige seiner Militärischen und Literarischen Begebenheiten, Vienna, 1810; Jördens, Lexicon Deutscher Dichter und Prosaisten, vol. i. p. 68, &c., vol. v. p. 725, &c.; Wolff, Encyclopädie der Deutschen Nationalliteratur, vol. i. p. 105.) L. S. AYRER, a name of some German artists, apparently of Nürnberg, of whom, however, little or nothing is known. Heller mentions JACOB AYRER, a designer, who lived towards the close of the sixteenth century, but he does not specify any of his works. There are three portraits said to be engraved by CHRISTIAN VICTOR AYRER, dated 1665 and 1667. And there was a MICHAEL AYRER, silk-embroiderer to the electoral court of Dresden, who died there in 1582, aged 43. JUSTINA AYRER, a miniature - painter, was born at Danzig in 1704. There are also some genre pieces by her. She died about 1790. (Heller, Monogrammen Lexicon; Brulliot, Dictionnaire des Monogrammes, &c.; Nagler, Neues Allgemeines KünstlerLexicon.) R. N. W. AYRER, GEORG HEINRICH, was born on the 15th of March, 1702, in Meiningen, where his father was court-confectioner and "Silberdiener,' or yeoman of the Silver Chamber. In the year 1721 he was a student at Jena, and he afterwards attended in the capacity of tutor two young noblemen at the universities of Leipzig and Strassburg, and in their travels through Germany, Holland, and France. In 1736 he received from the university of Göttingen a doctor's degree, and was made extraordinary professor of law and assessor of the faculty of law there. In the following year he was made ordinary professor. George II. as Elector of Hanover, raised him, in 1743, to the dignity of counsellor, and, in 1768, appointed him privycounsellor of justice. In 1769 he was president of the Historical Institute. He died on the 23rd of April, 1774. The list of Ayrer's works, amounting to a hundred and four, fills more than two pages of Adelung's Supplement to Jöcher. A considerable proportion of them are small tracts on temporary or local subjects; sixteen of the most important of his minor works were published after the author's death, in 2 vols. 8vo., with the title " Georg. Henr. Ayreri, Opuscula varii argumenti, edidit et præfatus est Ioannes Henricus Iungius Academiæ Georgia Augustæ secretarius, 1786." This work is ornamented with a portrait of the author. It contains the earliest tract which he is supposed to have written," De Cambialis instituti vestigiis apud Romanos Diatribe," first printed in 1735, in the form of a letter to a Danish nobleman, a fellowstudent, who in an inaugural thesis, "De Fœderibus Commerciorum," had suggested this subject to Ayrer. It is a very short essay, treating, as its title intimates, on the information which may be derived from the Latin classic writers and the ancient jurists regarding the manner in which the Romans conducted the pecuniary department of their commerce. It was inserted by Heineccius in his Elementa juris Cambialis" (1748). Two tracts in the Opuscula will be of some interest to the English reader. The one a eulogium on the statesmanship and courage of George II., with the title "Oratio Prima de Georgio Augusto, M. B. Rege Augustissimo heroe in toga et sago æque magno sub auspicium suscepti Anno 1744 Magistratus Academici habita." The other is a congratulatory oration on the occasion of the victory of Culloden and the suppression of the insurrection of 1745, with the title "Oratio Secunda de Gulielmo Augusto Serenissimo Cumbria Duce, Rebellium Scotiæ Domitore Patrisque et Patriæ Defensore felicissimo." This tract is interesting as exhibiting the light in which the question of the Hanoverian succession was viewed in Germany. The constitutional principles involved in the ques- | tion of the succession are suppressed, or rather perverted, for it will naturally be imagined that the principle of fixing the succession to a crown by the vote of a legislative assembly, however favourable it had been to the Brunswick family in England, would be far from being a palatable doctrine among the German princes. Accordingly Ayrer revives the old story of the warming pan and the fictitious birth of James II.'s son. He maintains that the Pretender was an impostor like Simnel and Warbeck, cites the Hanoverian line as representing legitimacy, and arrays in their favour all the divine-right doctrines of the civilians and their denunciations of the crime of rebellion. In his brief narrative of the expedition of Charles Edward, and the campaign of the Duke of Cumberland, Ayrer is pretty accurate, except in one particular-he represents the duke to have acted with humanity after the battle of Culloden. Ayrer's Latinity has been praised by his contemporaries. Of the difficulties he encountered in endeavouring to adapt the nomenclature of British politics to classic forms the following sentence may be taken as a specimen :"Quantumvis enim speciosa sint argumenta, quæ pro veritate agniti statim a Rege partus in medium adferebant fraudis participes, et quæ deinde inter oppositas sibi invicem factiones, sub diversis Torrysiorum et Whigum, Episcopalium et Presbyterianorum, superioris et inferioris ecclesiæ nominibus notas, diu satis acriter in utramque partem disputata sunt; de falsitate tamen," &c. Among the Opuscula there is a tract on the advantage of having ample indexes to the sources of the civil law, prepared as a Preface to the Lexicon Juridicum of Walther. Ayrer's works are always richly indexed, and he seems to have fully appreciated the importance of improving this means of giving access to the contents of extensive works. Another collection of Ayrer's tracts, chiefly on branches of the civil and canon law, was published in a small volume in 1752, with the title "Georgii Henrici Ayreri, &c. Opusculorum Minorum varii argumenti, &c. Sylloge nova." Among several works which he wrote on the local laws of Germany, one is in support of an edict of Frederick the Great of Prussia abolishing the system of special dispensations for marriages which were prohibited by the canon law and removing the prohibition: the title is "Commentatio juris ecclesias tici de Jure dispensandi circa Connubia Jure divino non diserte prohibita ad Edictum Regium Prutenicum." He published, in 1761, an antiquarian inquiry as to the birthplace and history of Hermann, or Arminius, the German liberator, with the title "Hermannus Officione an Gente Billingus?" (König, Lehrbuch der Allgemeinen juristischen Literatur; Ersch and Gruber, Allgemeine Encyclopädie; Adelung, Supplement to Jöcher, | Allgemeines Gelehrten - Lexicon; Works referred to.) J. H. B. AYRER, JACOB, a dramatic poet of Germany, who lived towards the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was consequently a younger contemporary of the famous shoemaker and poet Hans Sachs, next to whom he was the most productive dramatist of that period. Of his life we know little beyond the fact that he was a doctor of law, and practised as a notary and advocate at Nürnberg. Some believe that he was a native of that city, while others state that he went thither as a poor boy, and did not obtain the citizenship till 1594. Tieck has inferred with great probability, from some allusions in his work, that he lived till about 1618. Ayrer wrote his dramas, for his own amusement, in the leisure time which his professional occupations left him, and some of his productions were published in 1585, or perhaps even earlier, or were, at least, circulated in manuscript. But all his scattered poems were collected after his death, and printed under the title "Opus Theatricum, dreissig ausbündige schöne Komedien und Tragedien von allerhand denkwürdigen Römischen Historien, &c. samt noch andern sechs und dreissig schönen lustigen und kurtzweiligen Fastnacht oder Possenspielen, durch weyland den erbarn und wohlgelährten Herrn Jacobum Ayrer, Notarium publicum," &c. Nürnberg, 1618, fol., containing 1262 pages, in double columns. This volume, which is extremely scarce, contains, as the editor remarks, most of the serious and merry things which Ayrer composed during his leisure hours, and they are sufficient to give us a notion of his character. He took the subjects of his dramas from history, popular traditions, and legends; and Plautus, Livy, the Heldenbuch, Frischlin, Boccaccio, old chronicles and popular story-books are the sources which he used, and which are generally indicated in a prologue, which, as well as the epilogue, is spoken by a character whom the poet calls Ehrenhold. His dramas, sixty-six in number, are little more than stories in the form of a dialogue, without unity of action or of time. The first in the collection, for example, which is entitled "Von Erbauung der Stadt Rom," begins long before the birth of Romulus, and terminates with his death; and everything that occurred during that period, and was thought fit for scenic representation and for dialogue, is strung together, without any concern about plan or systematic connection. Serious and jocose scenes are mixed up together, as though the poet wished to relieve the one by the other. Nearly every drama has its buffoon, generally in the person of a servant, who, by puns and coarse jokes, endeavours to raise laughter even in the most serious and tragic scenes. Action can by Massey and Watt, the principal was " A Tutor to Penmanship, or the Writing-Master," in two parts, engraved by Sturt upon forty-eight oblong folio plates, some of which are dated 1695, though the address to the reader, prefixed to the second part, bears date January 16, 1697-8. Besides this address, which is by Ayres, and which contains a brief history of the art of writing, there is a second by Sturt, containing notices of several other works executed conjointly by himself and Ayres, and remarks on the difficulties attending the imitation of penmanship by the graver. Massey says that this work also had a portrait of Ayres, but there is none in the copy formerly belonging to George III. Ayres also published an octavo volume entitled, according to Massey, "Arithmetic made Easy, for the use and benefit of Tradesmen," of which the first edition appears to have been printed about 1693 or 1694, and which may be presumed to have been very popular, as a twelfth edition was issued in cise time is rather uncertain. Massey conceives it to have been in the reign of Anne, and before the year 1709, in which year he is mentioned as deceased by a pupil named Rayner, in his preface to a copy-book; and Chalmers, without referring to any authority for the date, places it about 1705. (Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters, part ii. pp. 12-19; Sturt, Address prefixed to the second part of Ayres's Tutor to Penmanship; Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica; Chalmers, Biographical Dictionary.) scarcely be spoken of in Ayrer's plays. | same character, the titles of which are given The dialogue is natural, though sometimes wearisome, as the most insignificant occurrences are related with great prolixity. All his productions, as well as those of Hans Sachs and other contemporaries, show the influence which the English drama of the time exercised upon the German stage, which was then in its infancy; for about the beginning of the seventeenth century English dramas were frequently acted in Germany by strolling English actors; and, however imperfect their acting may have been, they gave a great impulse to the German dramatists, who often took their subjects from the English, or laid the scenes in England. Notwithstanding his defects, Ayrer was a man of great dramatic power, which is more particularly displayed in his comedies and carnival-plays, some of which are perfect in construction, and show an inexhaustible imagination and abundance of comic humour. His language is powerful and energetic, and far superior in flow and purity to that of his immediate predecessors. His merri-1714. Ayres died suddenly, but at what prement sometimes leads him beyond the bounds of modesty or decency; but this is a characteristic of the age rather than of the individual poet. A comic prose work, which was published in Ayrer's lifetime, bears the title Historischer Processus juris, in welchem sich Lucifer über Jesum auf das allerhefftigste beklaget, darinnen ein ganzer ordentlicher Process von anfang der Citation bis auff das Endurtheil inclusive in erster und anderer Instanz, &c., durch Jacob Ayrern, beider Rechten Doctorem und Advocatum in Nürenberg," Frankfort, 1601, fol. It contains all the documents relative to an imaginary suit which the devil institutes against Jesus for having destroyed hell. This work, which is extremely scarce, is full of excellent humour. (Tieck, Deutsches Theater, vol. i., where five of Ayrer's plays are reprinted; Wolff, Encyclopädie der Deutschen Nationalliteratur, vol. i. p. 106, &c.) L. S. AYRES, JOHN, who is variously styled Major Ayres and Colonel Ayres, was an eminent English penman at the close of the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth century. He was of very humble origin, and he appears to have served for some time in the capacity of footman to Sir William Ashurst, a London merchant, who had him taught writing and arithmetic. Making good use of these advantages, Ayres subsequently established a school in St. Paul's Churchyard, by which he is said to have earned near eight hundred pounds per annum. The earliest publication by him, of which Massey, who gives a minute account of his works, could find any notice, was the "Accomplished Clerk," a series of specimens of penmanship, engraved by John Sturt, and published in 1683, and again in 1700, with a portrait of Ayres. Of his other works of the J. T. S. AYRES, PHILIP, who is styled "gentleman" upon the title-pages of his works, was an English writer of the latter half of the seventeenth century, of whose personal history we find no particulars. The works which bear his name are as follow:-1. "The Fortunate Fool; written in Spanish, by Don Alonzo Geronimo de Salas Barbadillo, of Madrid," and translated into English by Ayres, according to the dedication, for amusement and practice in the Spanish language. This, as well as all the other works in this list, was published in London, and it forms a small pocket volume, dated 1670. 2. "The Count of Gabalis; or, the Extravagant Mysteries of the Cabalists, exposed in five pleasant discourses on the Secret Sciences." This piece of raillery, which forms a kind of philosophical romance, was translated by Ayres, who added a few pages of animadversions at the end, from the French of the Abbé Pierre Villiers, 16mo. 1680. 3. "Emblems of Love," a very curious little volume, "dedicated to the Ladys," consisting of forty-four poetical emblems, many of them far more singular than beautiful, each repeated in four languages, Latin, English, Italian, and French, and each illustrated with a pictorial design. | terculus, Florus, Eutropius, Cæsar, Suetonius, Justin, and Terence, with German notes. (Ersch and Gruber, Allgemeine Encyclopädie; Jöcher, Allgem. Gelehrten-Lexicon, and Adelung's Supplement; and particularly F. W. Strieder, Hessische Gelehrten Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 199, 214, for a complete list of Ayrmann's writings, chronologically ar A. H. AYRTON, EDMUND, Mus. Doc., a truly orthodox composer of English cathedral music, was the son of an active and upright magistrate of the borough of Ripon, and there born in 1734. He was educated, together with Bishop Porteous, at the grammar-school of that town, with a view to his entering into orders, and under the hope of his succeeding to the joint livings of Nidd and Stainley, in the liberty of Ripon, which had been held by two at least of his forefathers; but his strongly marked predilection for music-which most probably was generated by his daily access to a chamber organ that had been nearly one hundred and fifty years in his family, together with his constant attendance at the choir service of the minster— induced his father to prepare him for another profession, though somewhat analogous, as he pursued it, to that for which he was at first designed, and to place him under the instruction of Dr. Nares, then organist of York Cathedral, with whom he commenced an intimacy which ripened into a friendship that death alone terminated. The whole of the work is engraved upon Ayrmann was descended from a very respectable family, his grandfather, Georg Ayrmann, having been raised to the rank of nobility by the Emperor Ferdinand II., in 1623. Christoph Friedrich originally studied theology, but he gave it up for the study of jurisprudence. He had during his whole life to struggle with adversities, which were increased by hypochondriasis, to which he was constantly subject. He possessed extensive and accurate knowledge in history and literature, but particularly the history of Hesse. He wrote numerous tracts, containing suggestions for the composition of large historical works, some of which he himself began, but he did not finish anything, and, according to his biographers, he was prevented from printing the great mass of his valuable writings, in consequence of the little interest which the public took in the subjects. Under the name of Germanicus Sincerus he edited Velleius Pa At an early age he was elected organist, auditor, and rector-chori of the collegiate church of Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, where he remained some years, and married a lady of good family, by whom he had fifteen children, of whom only one son and three daughters are now living (1844). In 1764 he quitted that place, on receiving the appointment of "gentleman of the chapelroyal." He was shortly after installed as a vicar-choral of St. Paul's Cathedral, and afterwards became one of the lay-clerks of Westminster Abbey. In 1780 he was promoted by Bishop Lowth to the office of "master of the children of his majesty's chapels," on the resignation of his friend and master, Dr. Nares. Having now become the successor of such eminent musicians as Blow, Croft, and Nares, he deemed it right to follow their example by proving his claim to academical honours. Accordingly, in 1784, the university of Cambridge created him Doctor in Music: some time after which he was admitted ad eundem by the university of Oxford. His exercise was a grand anthem, "Begin unto my God with timbrels," having full orchestral accompaniments, a composition which attracted so much notice, and was so highly approved by the best musical critics, that it was ordered to be performed, with a numerous band, in St. Paul's Cathedral, before the civic authorities, the judges, &c., on the 29th of July, 1784, the day of General Thanksgiving for the termination of the American Revolutionary War. The work, which exhibits all those traits that are the distinctive marks of a learned musician, was immediately published in score. When the far-famed commemoration of Handel took place in Westminster Abbey, in 1784, Dr. Ayrton was nominated by the king as one of the "assistant-directors," which situation he continued to fill at all the subsequent performances in that venerable structure till the French Revolution, at which agitating period the public mind being too much excited, and the great dignitaries of both church and state too much occupied, to attend to such tranquil enjoyments, the festivals, till then annual, were discontinued. In 1805 he relinquished the mastership of the children of the chapel, having been al- | lowed during many previous years to execute the duties of his other offices by deputy. He died in 1808, and his remains were deposited in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, near those of his wife and several of his children. Dr. Ayrton was an excellent musician of the good old English ecclesiastical school, a fact to which his productions performed at the Chapel-Royal bear indubitable evidence. Among these, and which demand particular notice, are, a complete and elaborate Morning and Evening Service in c; another equally complete, but shorter, in E flat; two verse anthems," I will sing a New Song," and "Give the King thy Judgments;" and two full anthems with verses,-“ Thy righteousness, O God, is very high," and "Bow down thine ear, O Lord;" all of which evince the pen of a master, while they are equally pleasing to the learned and unlearned in the art. But the fugues which constitute the greater portion of the last two will ever bear testimony to the scientific skill, the true knowledge of effect, considered in relation to the church, and the taste and good sense of the composer. (From materials furnished by Dr. Ayrton's family.) E. T. AYSCOUGH, ANNE. [ASKEW, ANNE.] AYSCOUGH, FRANCIS, appears to have been so completely overlooked by biographical writers, that we have been unable to find any connected statement of facts concerning him, although the "London Magazine" for October, 1766, contains a highly eulogistic notice of his character, in which it is observed that he might have been called, with propriety, in the early part of his life, the child of good fortune. From a pamphlet published in 1730, the title of which will be found at the close of this article, it appears that he was admitted of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on the 28th of March, 1717. He took the degree of A.M. in 1723; he subsequently took, successively, deacon's and priest's orders, and on the 16th of January, 1727, he was admitted scholar or probationer fellow VOL. IV. | of his college. On the expiration of his second year of probation, he became a candidate for an actual fellowship. On the day for considering the claim, January 15, 1729-30, the president and a majority of the fellows voted against his admission, but without assigning any reason. Ayscough hereupon appealed to the Bishop of Winchester, the visitor of the college, who wrote to the president on the subject. The college requested time to prepare a statement of the case, but, in consequence of a further communication from the bishop, two fellows waited upon him to assert the right of their body to judge and decide upon the claims of candidates for fellowships without being responsible to the visitor. At length, however, the Bishop cited the president and fellows to appear before him on the 24th of March; but, considering the case an important one, they resolved to appear by their syndic, appointed under the college seal. It was agreed that the point to be argued should be, whether, by the statutes, the visitor had any jurisdiction over the fellows in the matter in question, a point which the bishop determined in his own favour, declaring also his opinion in Ayscough's favour on the merits of the case. A few days afterwards, he sent an injunction commanding the college to admit him, and requiring those fellows who had excluded him to defray the costs of both parties. Ayscough was admitted accordingly, and he took the degree of D.D. in 1735. In 1736, when he published a "Sermon preached before the Honourable the House of Commons, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on Friday, January the 30th, 1735-6, being the anniversary of the Martyrdom of King Charles I.," Dr. Ayscough was still a fellow of Corpus Christi, and chaplain to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. In 1752 he preached a sermon on Rev. iii. 17, at the triennial visitation of the Bishop of Lincoln at Hemel Hempstead, which was published in 1753; and in 1755 he published "A Discourse on Self-Murder," upon Job xiv. 14, which was preached at South Audley Chapel; and on the titles of both of these he is styled rector of North Church, Hertfordshire. Dr. Ayscough held the office of preceptor to George III. before his accession to the throne, and to his brother Edward, Duke of York. It is supposed that he was recommended to the Prince of Wales, their father, by George, Lord Lyttelton, to whom he is said to have been tutor while at Oxford, and whose sister he married. Probably through his connection with the royal family, Dr. Ayscough at length received the appointment of Dean of Bristol. He probably died shortly before the publication of the article above alluded to in the "London Magazine." He left a son [AYSCOUGH, George EDWARD]. (Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iii. 180, viii. 433, ix. 531; The Proceedings of Corpus Christi 2 B |