163 



MATTHIAS, EMPEROR. 



MAUPERTUIS, PIERRE-LOUIS. 



151 



his life near the ancient palace of the kings of England, where the 

 parliaments were usually held and the most important affairs trans- 

 acted, for he was a monk of the abbey of Westminster, the church of 

 the abbey beint; the usual place of interment of the kings and their 

 families, and still remains to show of what a splendid establishment 

 it formed a part Matthew's date is the reign of Edward II. His 

 history closes with the death of Edward I. ; little or nothing is known 

 of his personal history. 



He entitles his work * Flores Historiarum." He begins with the 

 creation of the world, and the first and least valuable half is taken up 

 with affairs of other countries and our own before the Conquest. Two 

 hundred and thirty-six pages in the Frankfurt edition contain the 

 history frum the Conquest to the death of Edward I. This portion 

 is very highly esteemed. Matthew of Westminster was published in 

 London in 1567, and again at Frankfurt in 1601, in the same volume 

 with Florence of Worcester, another writer of the same class, and a 

 continuation of Matthew to the year 1377, the year of the death of 

 Edward III. A translation of the 'Flowers of History,' by C. D. 

 Yonge, forms two volumes of Bonn's ' Antiquarian Library,' 1853. 



MATTHIAS, EMPEROR [HABSBURG, HOUSE OF.] 



MATTHISSON, FREDERICK, born at Hohendodeleben, near 

 Magdeburg, in 1761, was a posthumous child, and brought up by his 

 grandfather, a village pastor, until the age of fourteen, when he was 

 sent to the school at Klosterbergen, and afterwards to the University 

 of Halle, to study theology. His natural taste however led him to 

 apply himself more to philology and general literature. Instead 

 therefore of entering the church, he supported himself for some time 

 as a private tutor at Altona, Heidelberg, and Mannheim, after which 

 he resided for two years with his friend Bonstetten near the Lake of 

 Geneva. In 1791 he obtained the appointment of reader and travel- 

 ling companion to the reigning princess of Anhalt Dessau, and during 

 the next seven or eight years visited Italy, the Tyrol, and part of 

 Switzerland, relative to which countries his ' Briefe ' and his ' Erin- 

 neruugen ' furnish many interesting details, besides numerous sketches 

 and anecdotes of distinguished literary persons and others with whom 

 he became acquainted in the course of his tours. Although somewhat 

 deficient in regard to simplicity of style, those works exhibit him to 

 considerable advantage as a prose-writer ; but it was as a lyric poet 

 that he was the favourite of the German public, and will long con- 

 tinue to be admired for the happy delineation of external nature, and 

 the touching melancholy and charm of sentiment which characterise 

 his poems, besides their charms of style and versification. His 

 ' Elegy in the Ruins of an old Castle ' is hardly less popular than that 

 of Gray is with us, being one of those productions which are of them- 

 selves sufficient to give the writer a lasting reputation. Matthisson 

 also performed a good office for the poetical literature of his country 

 by bis ' Lyrische Anthologie,' a collection in twenty volumes, pub- 

 lished at Zurich, 1605-7, and containing select pieces and specimens 

 from 202 lyric poets, commencing with Weckherlin, Zingref, Opitz, 

 and other earlier poets, and terminating with Tiedge. These volumes 

 may be considered as a gallery where the specimens of the different 

 masters are arranged chronologically, and exhibit the characteristic 

 qualities of each. Matthisson died at Worlitz, near Dessau, March 12, 

 1831. 



MATY, MATTHEW, M.D., the son of Paul Henry Maty, a Protestant 

 clergyman, was born in 1718, at Moutfort, near Utrecht, and was origi- 

 nally intended for the Church ; but in consequence of some mortifica- 

 tions which his father received from the synod on account of particular 

 theological sentiments, his thoughts, when he grew up, were turned to 

 physic. He took a degree at Leyden, and in 1740 came to settle in 

 England, his father being determined to quit Holland for ever. His 

 earliest patron in England appears to have been Lord Chesterfield. In 

 1750 he began to publish, in French, an account of the productions 

 of the English press, which he printed at the Hague, under the name 

 of ' Journal Britannique ; ' a publication which Gibbon praised as 

 exhibiting a candid and pleasing view of the state of literature in 

 England for the space of six years, from January 1750 to December 

 1755. It answered its intention, and introduced l3r. Maty to the most 

 eminent literary persons of the country. In 1756, as soon as the 

 establishment of the British Museum was completed, he was appointed 

 one of the first under-librarians of that institution. In 1758 he became 

 a fellow, and in 1765, upon the resignation of Dr. Birch, was chosen 

 secretary of the Royal Society. In 1772, upon the death of Dr. Qowin 

 Kuigbt, Dr. Maty, by his majesty's appointment, became principal 

 librarian of the British Museum. He died of a lingering disorder, 

 August 2, 1776. His body being opened, the appearances which 

 presented themselves were considered so singular that they were 

 described before the Royal Society by Dr. Hunter, whose account of 

 them was inserted in vol. Ixvii. of the ' Philosophical Transactions.' 

 Dr. Maty was an early and active advocate for inoculation ; and when 

 a doubt was entertained that a person might have the smallpox, after 

 inoculation, a second time, he tried it upon himself, unknown to his 

 family. Besides various smaller pieces, he published: 1, 'Me'moire 

 sur la Vie et sur let Ecrits de II. Ab. de Moivre,' 12mo, Haye ; 2, 

 ' Authentic Memoirs of the Life of Richard Mead, M.D.,' 8vo, 

 London, 1755. At the time of hia death he had nearly finished 

 the 'Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield,' which were completed by 

 hi* son-in-law Mr. Justamoud, and prefixed to that nobleman's ' Miscel- 



laneous Works,' 2 vols. 4 to, 1777. Dr. Maty was Lord Chesterfield's 

 executor. 



MAUPERTUIS, PIERRE-LOUIS-MAREAU DE, was born at St. 

 Malo, 17th of July 1698. Upon quitting the army, in which he held 

 the rank of captain of dragoons, he applied himself assiduously to 

 the study of mathematics and astronomy, partly under the instruction 

 of M. Nicole. In 1723 he was admitted a member of the Royal 

 Academy of Paris, and in 1727 a member of the Royal Society of 

 London. At this time the error in the measurement of the arc of 

 the meridian conducted by Dominic and James Cassini had not been 

 detected. It is well known that the result of this survey waa 

 directly at variance with the conclusion to which Newton had arrived 

 relative to the figure of the earth : and although several of the 

 geometricians of the day were of opinion that the comparison of 

 degrees in latitudes so nearly contiguous (for the measured arc con- 

 sisted of two conterminous portions, the difference of the mean 

 latitudes of which was little more than 4) could not be considered 

 decisive, inasmuch as the errors incidental to the survey could not be 

 supposed to be confined within such narrow limits as the small 

 difference of length which the survey was employed to detect ; still 

 it afforded to others, who were interested in refuting the Newtonian 

 theory, plausible grounds for disputing the obkte figure of the earth, 

 to which that theory had led. To set the question at rest, Bouguer 

 and La Condamine were sent to Peru; and during their absence 

 Maupertuis, in company with Clairaut, Camus, Lemonnier, and 

 Outhier, were deputed by the Academy to measure an arc of the 

 meridian in Lapland. They were afterwards joined by the Swedish 

 astronomer Celsius, who brought with him from London instruments 

 made by Graham, of a very superior construction to any then in use. 

 The party reached the gulf of Bothnia in July, 1736, intending to fix 

 their trigonometrical stations upon the islands of the gulf; but upon 

 examination, they found the valley of the river Tornea more eligible 

 for the purpose, and, in December following, commenced measuring 

 a base of 7407 toises upon the frozen surface of that river. An 

 account of this survey was published by Maupertuis in 1738 : ' La 

 Figure de la Terre,' 8vo, Paris, 1738. The result was that the 

 difference of latitude of the extreme stations, namely, the town of 

 Tornea and the mountain Kittis, was 57' 29'6", and that the length of 

 the corresponding arc was 55,023 toises, from which it followed that 

 a degree of the meridian in 66 N. lat. exceeded a degree in the 

 latitude of Paris by 512 toises, and consequently tended to prove that 

 the earth's figure was that of an oblate spheroid. The survey was 

 repeated in the years 1801-2-3, by Svanberg, whose result differed from 

 that of Maupertuis by 226 toises. 



Maupertuis was one of the first among his countrymen who 

 defended the Newtonian theory against the attacks of Descartes, and 

 when his opinion was confirmed by the result of his survey, he became 

 an open and strenuous opposer of the Cartesian philosophy. When 

 Frederic II. was about to reorganise the academy of Berlin, he offered 

 the presidency to Maupertuis, who, tired of his stay in Paris, where, 

 says M. Delauibre, the reputation of many had a tendency to eclipse 

 hia own, eagerly assented to so honourable a proposition. But his 

 residence at the court of Prussia, which dates from 1745, seems to 

 have been chiefly occupied in cultivating the good graces of Frederic, 

 and he showed little interest as to tcientific research except such as 

 had reference to his survey in Sweden. His vanity on this point was 

 conspicuous. In the portrait which he had painted of himself he is 

 represented in the act of compressing the poles of the earth. He died 

 at Basel, 27th July, 1759, at the house of two of the sons of John 

 Bernoulli, with whom he had always been on terms of friendship. 

 His latter years were embittered by a dispute with Koenig, professor 

 of mathematics at the Hague and foreign associate of the academy of 

 Berlin, respecting a mechanical principle of considerable importance, 

 which Maupertuis appears to have been the first to promulgate, and 

 from which he deduced the laws of the reflection and refraction of 

 light, and those to which the collision of bodies are subjected, but of 

 which he was unable to give any general demonstration. This prin- 

 ciple, which he designated " the principle of least action," he enun- 

 ciated in terms identical with those employed at the present time 

 (see his 'Essai de Cosmologie/ Leyden, 1751, p. 70), although he 

 probably attached to them a somewhat different signification. Kcenig 

 endeavoured to show, first, that the same principle had been previously 

 advanced by Leibnitz ; secondly, that it was not true. The academy 

 of Berlin, to whose arbitration the dispute was referred, decided in 

 favour of Maupertuis, and ordered the name of Koenig to be erased 

 from their list of associates; but even this decision, added to the 

 support of the celebrated Euler, seemed inadequate to compensate 

 Maupertuis for the raillery of Voltaire, who, although totally incom- 

 petent to judge on the scientific merits of the ca>e, had taken the 

 part of Kcenig, and published his satirical piece, entitled ' Diatribe du 

 docteur Akakia, Mode, in du Pape,' wherein he was too successful in 

 turning into ridicule both Maupertuia and his "principle." Frederic, 

 who disliked Maupertuis, laughed at the satire, but ordered it to be 

 burnt by the common executioner, which led to Voltaire's asking and 

 obtaining permission to leave Berlin. ('Vie de Voltaire,' par Con- 

 do 

 given i 



' physical and 



>btaiuiug permission to leave Berlin. ( V 10 de V oltaire, par uou- 

 lorcet.) The following list of the published works of Maupertuis is 

 ;iven in Querard's ' Dictionnaire Bibliographique : ' 

 'Anecdotes' physical and moral, 12mo, no date. ' Nautical Astro- 



