tio 



DELILLE, JACQUES. 



DELORME, PHILIBERT. 



616 



minister of the interior, but as yet inedited, like mauy other of his 

 treatises and memoirs. 6, ' Espressioni della particolar Riconoscenza 

 della Citta e Provincia di Teramo dovuta alia Memoria di Ferdi- 

 naiido I.,' inserted in the second volume of the 'Annali Civili del 

 Regno,' and being a recapitulation of all the improvements effected in 

 that province under the reign of the elder Ferdinand, chiefly at the 

 suggestion of Delfico. 



(Tipaldo, Bioyrafia degli Italiani Illustri ; Mozzetti, Degli Studii, 

 delle Opere, e ddle Virt& di Melchiorre Delfico, Teramo, 1835.) 



DELILLE, JACQUES, was born at Aigues-Perse, in Auvergne, 

 June 22, 1738, and educated at Paris at the College de Lisieux. 

 Poverty compelled him to accept the office of subordinate teacher at 

 the College de Beauvais; but he was soon raised to the rank of 

 professor of humanity in the college of Amiens. While holding this 

 office he commenced a translation of Virgil's Georgics. Ou his return 

 to Paris he was appointed professor at the College de la Marche. He 

 now began to be known as a poet, and several of his pieces attained 

 celebrity, particularly an epistle to M. Laurent. But it was the pub- 

 lication of his Georgics, a work to which he was urged by Racine, 

 that raised him to distinction. The public read this translation with 

 enthusiasm, and thought that the French language was capable of 

 npMwnting all the beauties of antiquity. Envy notwithstanding 

 appeared here and there ; and old forgotteu poets were dragged from 

 oblivion, that their works might be lauded at the expense of M. 

 Delille's reputation. In 1774 the author was elected a member of 

 the Academy, and soon after published his celebrated poem, ' Les 

 Janlins.' The popularity of this work does not seem to have been 

 equal to that of the Georgics. 



Delille accompanied M. de Choiseul Gouffier on his embassy to 

 Constantinople, and took the opportunity of visiting Athens. It was 

 on this tour that he composed his poem, ' L'Imagination.' On his 

 return to Paris ho became professor of Belles-lettres at the university 

 and of Latin poetry at the College de France. By the Comte d'Artois 

 he had been presented with the abbacy of A. S<Sverin, and thus 

 placed in affluent circumstances. He was unfortunate enough to 

 lose all his property by the Revolution. At the celebration of the 

 Fote de 1'Etre Supreme, which took place during the Reign of Terror, 

 Robespierre demanded of Delille an ode for the occasion. The poet, 

 finding refusal waa of no use, astonished Robespierre by writing a 

 dithyrambic poem on the immortality of the soul, wherein he warmly 

 supported that doctrine. The troubles of the capital induced him, in 

 1794, to leave Paris for St. Diez, and subsequently to retire to 

 Switzerland, where the government of Berne made him a citizen. 

 Here he finished his ' Hointnc dea Champs ' and ' Les Trois Regnes de 

 la Nature.' He afterwards visited London, where he translated 

 Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' In 1801 he returned to Paris, was treated 

 with marked attention by Bonaparte, but he declined to re-enter 

 the great world, and lived in modest retirement at the College of 

 France. The last two years of his life were spent at Xautcrre. He 

 died at Paris, universally regretted, on the 1st of May 1813. 



Delillo is one of those poets who will always be honoured by 

 , posterity ; he is regarded as a reformer of the language ; and he 

 wrote verse with an ease and elegance before unknown. Those who 

 feel pleasure in hearing the Alexandrine verse must bo pleased (as 

 far as structure goes) with the didactic poems of Delille. Nothing 

 dm be conceived more smooth and easy than the flowing of his lines : 

 and even when he writes in a measure more irregular, as in ' La Con 

 vernation,' the same correctness is so carefully attended to, that a 

 person of the slightest ear may read him aloud without once hesitating 

 as to the place where the caura lies. To say he was a poet of greal 

 imagination would be going too far; but he is entitled to higher 

 praise than that of a mere verse-maker. His images, as well as bis lines 

 are often exceedingly elegant. His ' Conversation ' is an amusiu; 

 poem ; it is a Theophrastus in verse, portraying the different sorts o 

 persons who figure in conversation. It has however the fault o 

 most works that treat of characteristics the persons who appear in 

 it are personified abstractions, instead of individuals as they appear in 

 nature. 



DELISLE, WILLIAM, a French geographer of great celebrity in 

 bis own day, was born at Paris in 1675. His inclination for th 

 pursuit in which he afterwards became so eminent, was displayed a 

 an early age, and he made considerable proficiency in the art of con 

 structing maps before he was nine years old. This taste was indued 

 and carefully cultivated by his father, who appears to have been als' 

 much devoted to geographical and astronomical pursuits. In 1(399 h 

 published a map of the world, which, with other maps and disserta 

 tions on geography, led to his election aa a member of the Academ 

 of Sciences in 1702 ; and soon afterwards he was appointed geographc 

 to the king, with a pension. Indeed several of his works wer 

 written for the use of his royal pupil, in the course of instruotio; 

 which he condescended to receive from Delisle. 



Delisle's celebrity was not only so great in his own country that n 

 work of history or travel waa considered complete without his maps 

 but it extended all over Europe. He had several flattering invitation 

 from the mouarchs of other countries to remove to their capitals 

 and Peter the Great paid him a personal visit at Pari*, to attempt t 

 induce him to go to Russia. All these offers he rejected, but he gav 

 Peter an excellent series of mapo of his immense dominions. Foiite 



elle, in his ' Eloge,' says that the geographer kuew their limits better 

 lan their owner did himself ; and it was probably the respect enter- 

 ained for him by the Czar that led to his brother Joseph being 

 ppointed to take charge of the observatory at St. Petersburg, with a 

 ery considerable salary. 



In 1726, Delisle died of apoplexy, aged fifty-one. The most 

 Unable of his writings may be seen in tho Memoirs of the French 

 Academy ; but any list of them is unnecessary here. 



DELISLE, JOSEPH NICOLAS, a younger brother of the pre- 

 eding geographer, was trained in the same school, and became very 

 minent in the same pursuits. He was born in 1688. 



His published labours commenced with an excellent observation of 

 le great total eclipse of the sun in 1706, when he was only eighteen 

 ears of age ; and in 1714 he wasadmitted a memberof the Academy, 

 n the section of astronomy. In 1724 he visited England, and at the 

 ecommendatiou of Newton and Halley, by both of whom he was 

 jreatly esteemed, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, on 

 he foreign list. In 1726, the year in which his brother died, he was 

 ppointed astronomer to the Czar Peter, a situation which he retained 

 wenty-one years, when he returned to Paris on account of his health. 

 le waa then appointed professor of astronomy in the Royal College 

 f France, which he held mauy years. Amongst his pupils were 

 jalanda and Messier. 



He died in 1763, at the age of eighty ; having published, besides his 

 History of Astronomy' (2 vols. 4to, 1738), no less than 44 papers 

 n the 'Memoirs of the Academy,' and several other dissertations 

 Isewhere. 



DELOLME, JOHN LOUIS, waa born at Geneva in 1740. Ho was 



an advocate in his native town, when the political dissension which 



iccurred there, and in which he took a part by the publication of his 



Examen de Trois Parts des Droita,' forced him to leave his country, 



and take refuge in England. Here, notwithstanding his literary 



activity, he passed some years in great indigence ; so that at length, 



.hough his pride long withheld him from seeking or receiving any 



uch assistance, he was forced to accept pecuniary aid about 1775 from 



i society for the relief of distressed authors. This however was 



only taken to enable him to return to his native land, and he died at 



village in Switzerland in 1806. 



Delolme's principal work was that on the ' Constitution of England,' 



hich was originally written in French, and published at Amsterdam 

 n 1771, but afterwards translated by himself into English, and pub- 

 ished in London in 1772. It was subsequently enlarged, and has been 

 requently reprinted. H is a shallow book, of little authority now, 

 >ut it was popular for awhile as being one of the first written by a 

 foreigner on the subject, explaining some of the peculiarities aud 

 excellences of the British constitution as compared with other 

 countries, and as accounting for the prosperity of the people and tho 

 strength of the country. His other works were ' Parallel between 

 ;he English Government and the former Government of Sweden,' 

 London, 1772 ; ' History of the Flagellants, or Memorials of Human 

 Superstition,' 1782 ; and ' Essays, containing Stricture? on the Union 

 of Scotland with England.' 



DELORME, PHILIBEHT, was born in 1518 at Lyon, where his 

 father was a builder or undertaker of public works, in extensive 

 practice. As he himself boasts, he was hardly fifteen when he had 

 upwards of three hundred workmen to receive their directions from 

 lu'm; which probably means that such directions were only transmitted 

 through him. In 1533 he was sent to Rome, where in a short time he 

 secured a protector in the Cardinal Santa Croce, who took him into 

 his household. The devoutneas which ho now affected far exceeded 

 his application to study, which did not extend to more than making 

 ordinary sketches. Yet if he did not profit much by diligence, he 

 made what was then considered an important discovery, namely, that 

 of the mode practised by the ancients for tracing the Ionic volute, as 

 described on a capital in Santa Maria Trastevere a discovery subse- 

 quently claimed for Palladio, although Delorme's prior right to it is 

 neither to be disputed nor suspected, because the other did not visit 

 Rome till 1549, nor begin to publish any of his writings till 1570, 

 whereas the first edition of Delorme's works appeared in 1567. 



On his return to his native city in 1536, Delorme, who brought back 

 with him a high character for religious strictness, was employed to 

 erect the portal of the church of St. Nizier, which, as far as it was 

 ever finished, gives no very favourable idea of his architectural talent. 

 The alterations of the Hotel Billau, In the same city, obtained for him 

 much more credit ; but nearly the whole of it was due to his brother 

 Jean. That work ompleted, he was soon afterwards summoned to 

 Paris by Catherine de' Medicis, to whom he had been recommended 

 by the Cardinal du Bellay, who had himself been charged by Santa 

 Croce (raised to the papal see in 1555 by the title of Marcellus II., 

 but who wore the tiara only three-and-twenty days) to promote the 

 advancement of his protege^ Catherine perceived in him other merits 

 than those of a mere artist, and rewarded them accordingly. Although 

 he was not in orders, having only received the tonsure when at Rome, 

 several church benefices were conferred upon him, and he was 

 appointed Aum6nier du Roi. No wonder therefore, when rewards of 

 that kind were showered upon him so unscrupulously, that he should 

 have obtained much of the most important and lucrative employment 

 in his own profession, without his qualifications being n:trrowly 



