the Ottoman empire. He was afterwards employed by Sir Robert Ainslie, the English ambassador at the Porte, to collect medals for him. Subsequently he went with Mr. Sullivan as far as Bushire, and returned to Constantinople in 1782. The published narratives of his journeys are:-1, 'Lettere scritte dalla Sicilia e dalla Turchia à diversi amici in Toscana,' 7 vols. 12mo, translated into French at Paris in 1809; 2, 'Lettere Odeporiche,' 1785, translated into French under the title of 'Voyage dans la Grece Asiatique, à la Péninsule de Cyzique, à Brusse et à Nicée,' with a Flora of Mount Olympus, Paris, 1789; 3, Viaggio da Costantinopoli à Bucharest,' Rome, 1794; 4, Viaggio da Costantinopoli à Bassora e ritorno,' also translated into French; 5, 'Viaggi ed Opuscoli Diversi,' 8vo, Berlin, 1807 (this work contains the account of a journey made by the author in 1781 from Vienna to Rukschuk by the Danube, and thence by Varna to Constantinople; an account of the sect of the Yezidis, which was afterwards inserted by Sylvestre de Sacy in his Description du Pachalik de Bagdad;' a treatise on the 'murex' of the ancients, &c.); 6, Viaggio Curioso, Scientifico, Antiquario, per la Valachia, Transilvania, ed Ungheria sino à Vienna,' Florence, 1815; 7, 'Agricoltura Prodotti e Commercio della Sicilia,' of which only one volume was published at Florence, 1777.

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From Constantinople Sestini returned to Italy, where he published several of his works. He sailed again for the Levant in 1793, and went to Salonichi, where he became acquainted with Cousinéry, the French consul and antiquarian; he thence returned to Tuscany, and from Tuscany to Germany. He resided many years at Berlin, which he left after the battle of Jena. He then repaired to Paris, and in 1810 he returned to Florence, where he was appointed antiquarian to the Grand Duchess Elise, Napoleon's sister. After the restoration in 1814 he was appointed by the Grand Duke Ferdinand honorary professor in the University of Pisa. He afterwards repaired to Hungary, where he remained some time occupied in arranging the rich collection of medals of Count Wiczay at Hederwar, of which Father Caronni, a Barnabite and an antiquarian, who went over part of the same ground as Sestini, but was inferior to him in judgment and experience, had published an imperfect catalogue in 1812. The late Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II., appointed Sestini to the office of royal antiquarian; and after his death, which took place at Florence in 1832, he purchased bis valuable library and numerous manuscripts, among the rest his great work on numismatics, 'Sistema Numismatico,' 14 vols. fol. Among the published works of Sestini on his favourite science of numismatics, which he illustrated by means of geography, and vice versâ, the following deserve especial mention:-1, 'Classes generales Geographiæ Numismaticæ, seu Monetæ Urbium, Populorum, et Regum, ordine geographico et chronologico disposita secundum systema Eckelianum,' 4to, Leipzig, 1797, a work more complete than those of Eckel, Lipsius, and Pinkerton (in the first part Sestini gives a series of medals of more than 1000 cities, and of 240 sovereigns; and in the second is a list of cities to which Goltz and Ligorio have attributed apocryphal medals, and of many more to which medals have been erroneously distributed and misapplied); 2, 'Considerazioni sulla Confederazione degli Achei,' with plates of all the medals of the confederate cities; 3,Relazione su i Moderni Falsificatori,' in which he exposes the tricks of those who coin medals which they pass for ancient; 4, 'Descriptio Nummorum Veterum ex Museis Ainslie, Bellini, Bonducca, Borgia, Casoli, Cousinéry, Gradenigo, San Clemente, Von Schellersheim, Verità,' &c., fol., Leipzig, 1796; 5, 'Descrizione degli Stateri Antichi, illustrati colle Medaglie,' 4to, Florence, 1817; 6, 'Lettere Numismatiche,' 9 vols., published at different periods, and containing many valuable dissertations, such as upon Armenian coins, upon the era of the Arsacidæ, upon a rare set of medals of Ptolemy, son of Juba II., upon a medal of Aëropus III., king of Macedonia, &c. ; 7, 'Descrizione di alcune Medaglie Greche del Museo Fontana, 3 vols. 4to, Florence, 1822-29; 8, 'Descrizione di alcune Medaglie Greche del Museo del Barone di Chaudoir,' 4to, 1831; 9, Catalogus Nummorum Veterum Musei Arigoniani, dispositus secundum sistema geographicum,' fol.; 10, 'Descrizione delle Medaglio Greche e Romane del fú Benkowitz;' 11, 'Illustrazione d'un Vaso di Vetro con edifizi e leggende' (the vase was found at Populonia, near Piombino); 12, Dissertazione intorno al Virgilio di Aproniano, codice piezioso della Laurenziana' (this is an account of a manuscript copy of Virgil on parchment, which exists in the Laurentian or Medici library at Florence, written by a certain Apronianus, who is supposed to be Turcius Rufius Asterius Apronianus, who was consul A.D. 494); 13, ‘A Catalogue, with Illustrations, of the valuable Museum Hederwar in Hungary,' 3 vols.

Sestini ranks among the first numismatists of any age or country. He was in correspondence with the most learned of his contemporaries, and was intimate with Eckel, Neuman, Cardinal Borgia, Cousinéry, and others; and was a member of the academies of Paris, St. Petersburg, Munich, &c.

(Necrologia di Domenico Sestini, in the Antologia of Florence, July, 1832.) SETTLE, ELKANAH, is remembered, not for his literary merits, but for the extraordinary fact that he, a person of very small talents, was for a time the successful rival of one of the greatest poets of the nation. The particulars of his history, with specimens of his works, may be gathered from various parts of Scott's edition of the works of Dryden. Settle, born in 1648 at Dunstable, was entered a commoner

of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1666; but left the university without a degree, and came to London as a literary adventurer. He first rose into reputation in 1671 by the success of his tragedy of 'Cambyses;' and the profligate Rochester, desirous to humble Dryden, eagerly adopted the new dramatist as his instrument. Settle's next tragedy, The Empress of Morocco,' introduced by its unscrupulous patron, enjoyed the honour (never vouchsafed to Dryden, the laureate) of being first acted at Whitehall by the lords and ladies of the court: on being transferred to the theatre it was acted to full houses for a month successively; the printed copies of it were sold for double the usual price; and the author, intoxicated by his undeserved success, prefixed to it a vaunting preface, animadverting severely upon Dryden. Dryden, alarmed and jealous, assisted Shadwell and Crowne in writing scurrilous Notes and Observations' on the play, which the author answered in the same strain. Political differences embittered the quarrel thus begun. But poor Settle's fame was short-lived; and Dryden had little cause to fear him when he was so ill-advised as to advocate the cause of his Whig patrons by publishing, in answer to the 'Absalom and Achitophel,' a poem entitled 'Absalom Senior, or Achitophel Transposed.' Nevertheless, the new offence was thought worthy of punishment; and, under the name of Doeg, Elkanah became the victim of some of those contemptuous verses which Dryden contributed to the second part of 'Absalom and Achitophel.' Three of these stanzas, commemorating his smoothness of versification, his bombast, and his real poverty, both of thought and fancy, may be accepted as no unfair criticism on his works in general :

Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody;

Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And, in one word, heroically mad.

Down to this time Settle had been a trusted servant and pamphleteer of Shaftesbury and the other Whig leaders, and in November 1680 he superintended with much approbation the burning of the pope in effigy. Soon afterwards however he suddenly changed his party, recanting his political heresies in a narrative which he published in 1683. By this change he perhaps preserved for the time his place as poet-laureate for the city, and writer of verses for pageants and other civic festivities; but with the revolution his prospects were completely blighted. Although he retained his place as city-poet, he was reduced to great poverty. He had literally to suffer the fate satirically prophesied for him by Dryden, of writing plays for shows at Bartholomew fair in Smithfield; and in one of these he actually performed in person the part of the Dragon slaughtered by St. George, a fact which Pope has chronicled in the 'Dunciad.' At length, in his desolate old age, he was received into the Charter-House, and died there in 1724. He was the author of sixteen original plays that were printed, and of a good many occasional and political pieces both in verse and in prose. SEVAJEE, surnamed BOSLA, the founder of the Mahratta power in India, was born in May 1627 at Poonah, the 'jagheer,' or fief, of which was held by his father, Shabjee, under the kingdom of Ahmednuggur, and, after its dissolution, from the Beejapoor monarchy. His restless and ambitious character appears to have developed itself at a very early age, as in 1647 he had supplanted his father at Poonah, and in the following year possessed himself of all the Northern Concan. The Beejapoor government was then fully occupied in guarding against the aggressions of the Delhi Moguls; and Sevajee continued for several years to extend his power by progressive encroachments without coming to an open rupture, till his spoliations became so daring that in 1658 a large force was sent against him under Afzul Kahn, a leader of reputation. He succeeded however in assassinating the general at an interview; routed and dispersed his army; and maintained himself in the field till 1662, when a peace with Beejapoor left him in possession of his acquisitions. But he now came into collision with the formidable power of Auruugzebe, with whose armies in the Dekkan he was unable to cope; and though he succeeded by a sudden irruption (January, 1664) in surprising and sacking the distant emporium of Surat, from which he brought off an immense booty, he found it expedient in the following year to make his submission to the emperor, and, co-operating with the Mogul troops in their invasion of Beejapoor, did distinguished service in the campaign. He was disgusted however by the haughty reception which he met with at the court of Delhi; and having made his escape with difficulty from the capital, he re-occupied his former territories, which he greatly enlarged at the expense of the falling kingdoms of Beejapoor and Golconda, avoiding for some years to renew hostilities with the Moguls. This interval he employed in settling his dominions, and introducing a strict system of discipline into his army; and when the war with Aurungzebe broke out anew (1670), he not only ravaged the country with his light cavalry, and inflicted a second sack on Surat, but in 1672 for the first time engaged and defeated a regular Mogul force in a pitched battle. To this period is also assigned the commencement of the 'chout,' a sort of tribute, or blackmail, consisting of the fourth of the revenue, on the payment of which any province was exempted from devastation, and which long continued a principal source of Mahratta revenue.

He had for several years previous assumed the title of Raja, and the

royal prerogative of coining money; but in 1674 he was solemnly crowned at Rayghur, with all the pomp of the Mogul ceremonial, signalising his accession by an inroad in which he for the first time carried his arms north of the Nerbudda. His next exploit was in a different direction: having secured his rear by an alliance with Golconda, he boldly crossed the peninsula (1676) to the eastern coast, possessed himself of the strong forts of Vellore, Gingi, and Wandiwash, between Madras and Pondicherry, and overran great part of Mysore, to which he laid claim from his father Shabjee having held a jagheer there at the end of his life. From these conquests he was recalled (1678) by the invasion of Golconda by the Moguls; and though his plans were for a time disconcerted by the desertion of his son Sambajee to the enemy, he compelled Aurungzebe's viceroy of the Dekkan to retire from Golconda, and to raise the siege of Beejapoor, while he exacted from the latter state, as the price of his aid, the cession of all the country between the Toombuddra and the Kishna. His power was now predominant throughout Southern India, none of the shattered sovereignties of which were able to oppose any check to his progress; but his further schemes of aggrandisement were cut short by a sudden illness, of which he died, on the 5th of April 1680, aged nearly fifty-three. His son Sambajee (who had previously resumed his allegiance) succeeded him; but neither his abilities nor his fortune were equal to those of his father, and he was taken and put to death in 1689.

Sevajee (in the words of Mountstuart Elphinstone) "left a character which has never since been equalled or approached by any of his country men. The distracted state of the neighbouring countries presented openings by which an inferior leader might have profited; but it required a genius like his to avail himself, as he did, of the mistakes of Aurungzebe, by kindling a zeal for religion, and through that a national spirit among the Mahrattas. It was by these feelings that his government was upheld after it had passed into feeble hands, and was kept together, in spite of numerous internal disorders, until it had established its supremacy over the greater part of India."

SEVERUS, ALEXANDRI'NUS, a Greek rhetorician, who lived about A.D. 470. There are extant under his name six Narratives (Ainyýμata), and eight Ethopoeiæ ('Homolai). The six narratives are mentioned by Iriarte as being among the Greek manuscripts of the Escurial. The Ethopoeia are printed in Gale's 'Rhetores Selecti,' which were edited by J. F. Fischer, Leipzig, 1772.

An Ethopoeia, of which allocutio is the Latin equivalent, is defined by Priscian to be "an imitation of a speech (sermo) adapted to the character and to the supposed persons; as, for instance, what Andromache might have said on the death of Hector." The Ethopoeia of Severus contain, among others, the following subjects:-What Eschines might say on going into banishment upon Demosthenes furnishing him with means for his journey; what Menelaus might say upon Helen being carried away by Alexander; what a painter might say on having painted a girl and fallen in love with her. The frigid commonplaces of these short pieces are merely curious as specimens of the literature of the age to which they belong.

SEVERUS, CORNELIUS, an epic poet of the time of Augustus. Respecting the circumstances of his life nothing is known, except that he died very young. Quinctilian (x. 1, § 89) says that he was more a versifier than a poet, though he allows that, considering the early age at which he wrote, he showed very great talents. His poems were, 'Bellum Siculum,' the first book of which was, according to Quinctilian, of considerable merit. Which Sicilian war he described in this poem is not certain, but it is supposed that it was the war which Sextus Pompeius carried on after he had gained possession of Sicily. [POMPEIUS.] There is a poem still extant, called 'Etna,' which contains, in 640 hexameters, a description of Mount Etna, and an account of the causes of its eruptions. Now as Seneca ('Epist.' 79) calls Cornelius Severus the author of a poem Etna,' it has been supposed that this poem is the work of Severus. But the language in the extant poem, as well as several allusions to events which happened in the reigns of Claudius and Nero, place it beyond doubt that the extant poem is not the work of Severus. The description of Mount Etna to which Seneca alludes was probably only a part of the 'Bellum Siculum.' A second poem of Cornelius Severus contained a description of the death of Cicero, and a fragment of it, which proves the great talents of the young poet, has been preserved by Marcus Annalus Seneca. (Suasor.,' vii., p. 49.)

(Burmaun, Antholog. Lat., ii. 155; Wernsdorf, Poet. Lat. Minor., tom. iv., p. 33, &c., and p. 217, &c.)

SEVE'RUS, L. SEPTIMIUS, was a native of Leptis in Africa, where he was born, A.D. 146, of an equestrian family. It is impossible to give more than a rapid sketch of the life of this enterprising man. After his eighteenth year Severus came to Rome for his improvement, and received the rank of senator from M. Aurelius. He studied law in company with Papinian, who was a relation of his second wife, under Q. Cervidius Scævola; and he received from Aurelius the office of advocatus fisci, in which he was succeeded by Papinian. In his youth he was of licentious habits, and he had to defend himself against a charge of adultery, of which however he was acquitted before the proconsul Didius Julianus, whom he afterwards succeeded in the Empire. After filling the quæstorship and other public offices, he was appointed proconsul of Africa, his native country. Under Aurelius he

also filled the tribunate, an office of which he scrupulously discharged the duties. About this time he married his first wife, Marcia. After the death of Aurelius, he visited Athens; and when he became emperor, he showed the citizens that he had not forgotten certain slights put upon him during his residence there. Under Commodus he held the office of legatus of the Lugdunensis Provincia. On losing his wife, he looked out for another whose nativity was favourable to his ambitious views; for Severus appears to have been a believer in astrology. He heard of a woman in Syria whose destiny it was to marry a king, aud accordingly he solicited and obtained in marriage for his second wife Julia Domna, by whom he had children. Severus was at the head of the army in Germany when news came of the death of Commodus, which was followed by the short reign of Pertinax, and the accession of Didius Julianus, who purchased the imperial title. The army proclaimed Severus emperor, and the ambitious general promptly advanced upon Rome to secure his title. Julianus, after a fruitless attempt to stop the progress of Severus by declaring him a public enemy, and an equally unsuccessful attempt to get him assassinated, caused a senatus consultum to be passed for associating Severus with him in the empire. Julianus however was shortly afterwards murdered in his palace, and Severus entered Rome with his soldiers (A.D. 193), where he was acknowledged emperor. But Severus had a formidable rival in the East, where the legions had proclaimed Pescennius Niger. After arranging affairs at Rome, he set out to oppose Niger, whom he defeated near Cyzicus. The emperor banished the wife and children of Niger, and punished both individuals and cities that had favoured the cause of his rival. He also advanced still farther into the East, into the sandy plains of Mesopotamia, in order to secure the empire on that side and to punish the adherents of Niger. The Parthians and Adiabeni were reduced, and Severus was honoured with the titles of Arabicus, Adiabenicus, and Parthicus by the senate, who also offered him the honour of a triumph, which he refused on the ground that a triumph was not due to a victory gained in a civil war; and he also declined adopting the title of Parthicus from apprehension of provoking such formidable enemies as the Parthians.

On his road to Rome Severus heard of the revolt of Albinus in Gaul, and he directed his march to that province. After the war had been carried on for some time with various success, a great battle was fought at Trinurtium or Tinurtium, not far from Lyon, in which Albinus was defeated and lost his life. On this occasion Severus disgraced himself by that brutal ferocity which was so prominent a feature in his character. He ordered the head of Albinus to be cut off before he was quite dead, and he made his horse trample the body under his feet. Even the wife and children of Albinus, according to some accounts, were put to death, and their bodies thrown into the Rhone. Numerous partisans of Albinus were put to death, both men and women, whose property enriched the ærarium. Spartianus has filled a chapter with illustrious names, who were the victims of the emperor's cruelty, either immediately on the defeat of Albinus or shortly after.

The restless temper of the emperor led him again into the East. From Syria he marched against the Parthians, and took Ctesiphon, their capital, after a campaign in which the soldiers suffered greatly for want of proper provisions. From Parthia he returned to Syria, from which country he marched through Palestine to Alexandria in Egypt. He made many changes in the institutions of Judæa, and forbade under severe penalties the making of Jewish converts. Spartianus adds, that he made the same enactment with respect to the Christians, though we cannot certainly infer from the context that this took place at the same time with the enactment against Jewish converts. The allusion however appears to be to the edict promulgated in the time of Severus, which was followed by a persecution of the Christians. He gave the Alexandrines a kind of senate (jus buleutarum), and made many changes in their institutions. Severus returned to Rome A.D. 203. He declined the honour of a triumph which was offered to him, on account of his inability to stand in a chariot owing to the gout. But his victory was commemorated by the erection of a triumphal arch, which still remains and bears his name.

In the year 208, Severus, with his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, set out on their British campaign. The object was to reduce to obedience the Caledonians and other tribes in the northern part of the island, who disturbed the Roman dominion. Geta was left with an army in the command of South Britain, and the emperor undertook the campaign in the north with his son Caracalla. He made his way with great difficulty through a country covered with forests and without roads, and though the natives fled before him, the Roman army suffered greatly, and the loss of life, owing to privation of various kinds, was immense. Severus attempted to secure the limit of his conquests by constructing the great rampart, which is known by the name of the wall of Severus, across the neck of land that separates the æstuaries of the Clyde and the Forth.

The last days of Severus were embittered by the dissensions of his sons, and more particularly by the undutiful conduct of Caracalla, who is even accused of conspiring against the life of his father. He died at York (Eboracum) A.D. 211, in the eighteenth year of his reign, leaving only two children, Geta, and Caracalla, who is also called Antoninus Bassianus. His body, or, according to other accounts, the urn

plete is that of M. de Monmerque, Paris, 11 vols. 8vo, and 18 vols. 12mo, 1818, containing a text corrected and restored in very numerous passages, and including ninety-four letters not before published. The edition of M. Grouvelle, 8 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1806, is also one of the best, containing memoirs of Madame de Sévigné herself, her daughter, and other persons closely connected with her history, and other auxiliary pieces. Other complete editions, including one in 6 vols. 12mo, by Didot, have since been published. These collective editions contain many letters addressed to Madame de Sévigné by her correspondents.

SEWARD, ANNA, was born in 1747, of good parents, her father being the rector of Eyam in Derbyshire, prebendary of Salisbury, and canon residentiary of Lichfield. Mr. Seward was a writer of poems, which are printed in Dodsley's collection; and in 1750 he published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. He encouraged the poetical indications in his daughter with all the gratified pride of a parent. Pope, Young, and Prior were her favourite authors, and she excelled also in ornamental needlework-an accomplishment she carried into her poems, which bear the same relation to poetry as needlework does to art-ingenious, pretty, and trivial. She had the society of Dr. Darwin, Mr. Day, author of 'Sandford and Merton,' Mr. Edgeworth, and occasionally that of Dr. Johnson, whom she could not bear, and of whom she has written a good deal in a very ridiculous fashion. In 1782 she published her poetical novel of 'Louisa,' which met with great success, and rapidly exhausted three or four editions. In 1799 she published a collection of 'Sonnets,' intended to "restore the strict rules of the legitimate sonnet." They are now very little known. In 1804 she published her 'Life of Dr. Darwin,' written like all her other works, in an affected style; destitute of all requisites for biography; wanting in penetration and delineation of character; puerile in judgment and worse in criticism; nevertheless it contains some pleasant literary anecdotes, and is not without a certain sort of interest. In it she lays claim to the authorship of the first fifty lines in the Botanic Garden,' which she had written out of compliment to him, but of which he made no mention. She continued to pour forth little poems of questionable merit, but still maintained her popularity.

After a lingering illness, she expired March 25, 1809, bequeathing to Sir Walter Scott her literary performances, and particularly the works she had herself intended for the press; and to Mr. Constable, the publisher, her Letters.' Scott executed his trust by the publication in 1810 of her Poems,' and three volumes of literary correspondence, with a biographical preface. Mr. Constable also published her Letters' in six volumes. They afford materials for the study of her character, but they exhibit it in no pleasing light--vanity, bad taste, affectation, and pedantry being mostly prominent.

Posterity, from whose judgments there is no appeal, and with whom the factitious causes of popularity have no weight, has consigned her poems to oblivion, and there is no ground for protesting against this judgment. Nor indeed is there anything in her prose writings to render their preservation more desirable than that of her verse.

SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, a Greek philosopher and physician of celebrity, who flourished about A.D. 200. The particulars of his life are uncertain, and the only two indications on which we can rely are those given in his own works, that he was the pupil of Herodotus of Tarsus, and that he lived about the period before mentioned. Diogenes (ix., Timon') simply says, "Sextus, the Empiric, was the pupil of Herodotus of Tarsus: he wrote the ten books of Sceptica, and other excellent works." Equal uncertainty exists as to the place where he lived and taught, although, from the only existing evidence of value (namely, from a passage in his own work, Пuppάviai “Tπотνпwσeis, iii. 16), it appears that he taught philosophy and exercised his art, at least during one period of his life, in the same place as his master. But his very identity has been a matter of dispute. Suidas (Zéros) speaks of Sextus, a native of Libya, to whom he attributes a work entitled 'Sceptica,' in ten books; but he also attributes ten books of 'Sceptica' to Sextus of Charonea, whom he calls a follower of Pyrrho, though it is well known that this Sextus, the nephew of Plutarch, and one of the preceptors of M. Aurelius, was a Stoic. That the philosopher of Charonea and Sextus Empiricus are two different persons is clearly shown by Kuster, in a note in his edition of Suidas (in v. Zéros χαιρωνεύς).

His surname of Empiricus, prefixed to his works, and given him by Diogenes Laertius, intimates that he belonged to that school of medicine which styled itself the Empiric; and he himself confirms this in his treatise πρὸς τοὺς Μαθηματικοὺς ̓Ανι ῤῥητικοί, Adversus Mathematicos,' lib. i., 161.

His works are among the most valuable of those extant in ancient philosophy, and have been largely consulted by all subsequent historians. The 'Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes,' in three books, contains all the celebrated arguments of the ancient sceptics. The first book is a complete analysis of scepticism. He divides philosophers into dogmatists, academics, and sceptics, and then classifies the sceptics themselves. Next follows an exposition of the nature of scepticism, its method, endeavours, and aims; with a learned and precise account of all the celebrated terms in use amongst sceptics, such as èπéxw, 'I refrain from judging;' ovôèv dpl(w, I define nothing;' and others. This book is peculiarly valuable as an exposition, but is perhaps

inferior to the two succeeding books, which are directed against the dogmatists, where, after stating every subject of belief, he opposes each of them with a string of sceptical objections. Morals, religion, logic, nothing escapes his doubt; and this is done in a manner at once peculiar and subtle, and affords an interesting exposition of the insufficiency of human reason to settle those illimitable inquiries of

Fate, fore-knowledge, free-will absolute,"

which have ever formed the 'vexatæ quæstiones' of philosophers. The other work of Sextus Empiricus, which is entitled Adversus Mathematicos,' is only another form of the Pyrrhonic Institutes above mentioned. It is directed against all who admit the possibility of a science. This discussion, though conducted on very different principles, has been much in vogue amongst the German and French metaphy sicians, and indeed involves the whole philosophy of human knowledge. What science is, whether science be possible, whether science be positive or psychological, these are questions eternally renewed. M. Auguste Comte, in that vast system which he has elaborated in his 'Cours de Philosophie Positive,' denies altogether the possibility of a psychological science; while the Germans, on the other hand (led thereto by the fundamental principle common to them all, that the external universe receives its laws from the laws of the mind), contend that all science must necessarily be psychological. But Sextus Empiricus sweeps away both parties, and will admit no science whatever to be possible. The first book of his Adversus Mathematicos' undertakes to refute grammarians and historians; the second annihilates the rhetoricians; the third, the geometricians; the fourth, the arithmeticians; the fifth, the astrologers; and the sixth, the musicians.

6

There are five more books always added to the work, all directed against logicians, moralists, and physicians (puoikot, in the Greek sense); but to make them part of the same work as the first five books can only have arisen from the ignorance and carelessness of his first editors. They have no real connection with them, but may rather be regarded as a supplement to the second and third books of the Hypotyposes,' to which they belong in intention as well as spirit. The two works are indeed closely allied in spirit, and are only various forms of the same philosophy and the same purpose.

Such as they have come down to us, these two works form an encyclopædia of scepticism such as can be found nowhere else. They are, as M. Ancillon well observes, "a positive arsenal of every species of doubt methodically arranged, and from which the sceptics of suc ceeding times have armed themselves, choosing from his immense magazine the arms suitable to their minds or to the nature of their subjects."

The influence of Sextus Empiricus, except as an historian, has been very small. The Alexandrian philosophy and the Christian religion alike combined by their success to prevent his forming a sect of any consequence; and although modern sceptics have availed themselves of his arguments to prop up their own incredulity, yet there is a tendency in the human mind at variance with this barren philosophy, which no ingenuity, however subtle or plausible, has ever been able to

overcome.

There are few editions of Sextus, and none which can be called critical. The first translation of the Hypoty poses' was by Henry Stephens, 8vo, 1562. The first edition of the Greek text of both works was published at Paris, folio, 1621. This edition is accompanied with a Latin version. An edition of the Greek text, also with the Latin version, was published by J. A. Fabricius, Leipzig, folio, 1718. There is also an edition by Bekker.

SEYMOUR, EDWARD, FIRST DUKE OF SOMERSET. [EDWARD VI.] SEYMOUR, THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDLEY. [EDWARD VI.] SFORZA, JA'COPO ATTENDOLO, was born June 10, 1369, at Cotignola, in the province of Ravenna, Central Italy, of humble parents, but forsook in early youth the occupation of a labourer to enlist in one of those companies of adventurers which were then numerous about Italy, and which served for hire the highest bidder among the petty princes and republics of that age. Jacopo, having displayed great courage and perseverance, acquired a considerable reputation in that turbulent militia. After serving under several condottieri,' or leaders, he attached himself to Alberico da Barbiano, a captain superior to the rest both by birth and the loftiness of his views. Alberico belonged to the family of the lords of Cuneo, and aspired to the glory of delivering Italy from the foreign mercenaries and forming a national militia. Having collected a force of 12,000 men, all natives of Italy, he gave it the name of the Company of St. George. In the year 1376, Pope Gregory XI., who was residing at Avignon, sent an order to his legate in Italy to endeavour to restore the authority of the Papal see over the towns of the Romagna, which had revolted at the instigation of the Florentines. The cardinal took into his pay a body of foreign mercenaries called the Breton Company, commanded by John Hawkwood, whom the Italians called 'Acuto,' a valiant condottiero of those times. These troops having entered Faenza without opposition, began plundering the town, and killed many of the people. In the following year the Cardinal of Geneva was sent from France by the pope with another body of foreign mercenaries, chiefly cavalry, from Brittany and other parts of France; and having attacked Bologna without success, he wintered at Cesena.