MIRBEL, BRISSEAU, C.F. 



MITCHELL, SIR THOMAS. 



270 



he resigned his appointment, and visited Spain and Italy, chiefly for 

 the purpose of studying the languages and literature of those countries. 

 Ou his return to Lisbon he obtained an appointment at court, where 

 he was regarded with much esteem ; but was afterwards obliged to 

 retire to his country seat of Tapada, near Ponte de Lima, in the pro- 

 vince of Eutre Douro y Minho, in consequence of some unpleasant 

 afiair in which he involved himself. In this seclusion, so well suited 

 to bis melancholy turn of mind, he devoted the remainder of his days 

 to rural enjoyment, to his literary studies and occupations, and to 

 music, of which he is said to have been passionately fond. It was 

 also his good fortune to have for the companion of his retirement a 

 wife to whom ha was tenderly attached, although she was neither 

 very young nor very beautiful when he married her. In 1553 he had 

 the misfortune to lose his son, who was killed in Africa, and whose 

 death he has bewailed in an elegiac composition of a strong devotional 

 cast. His own death happened in 155S, and was an event that excited 

 general regret. 



Sa de Miranda has been styled the poet of reason and virtue, and it 

 has been said of him that he was a philosopher in poetry and a poet 

 in philosophy. Yet greatly as the literature of his country is indebted 

 to him (and he was the first to adopt the metres of Dante and Petrarch), 

 few of his productions are of a class to interest the moderu reader. 

 Except as specimens of language and versification, frigid eclogues and 

 detached thoughts in the form of sonnets not many of which are of 

 striking merit possess scanty attraction at present, for they have not 

 even historic value as portraying the manners and sentiments of their 

 own age. A considerable number of his compositions, and among 

 them some of his best, are written in Spanish, a fashion in which he 

 had afterwards many imitators, greatly to the prejudice of the native 

 literature. As a dramatist, again, ha not only imitated those of Italy, 

 Macchiavelli and Ariosto, but laid his scenes in that country, and 

 described Italian manners and characters. This however is of less 

 cou-equeuce, aa neither of his two pieces, 'Os Eetrangeiros ' and 'Os 

 Vilhalpaudo* ' (and he produced no others), shows much dramatic 

 skill in contrivance, or co:uic power iu execution. What is chiefly 

 remarkable in them is the freedom with which the dissolute morals of 

 the Italian clergy are delineated by one who was himself a rigorous 

 Roman Catholic. HU ' Cartaa,' or poetical epistles, aie of far greater 

 intrinsic value than any of his other productions, and are interesting 

 as records of the state of moraU and manners iu Portugal in the first 

 hulf of the 15th century. They also throw some light on the poet's 

 personal character, and show him to have been of a good disposition, 

 and a sincere writ-wisher to his countrymen. 



M1KBEL, BK1SSEAU, C.F., a French naturalist more especially 

 <li<uui!uished for his knowledge of botany. He was born on the 

 27th of March 1776. He was appointed professor of botany in Paris 

 in 1801, and one of his earliest published works was the lecture intro- 

 ductory to his course. The subject was the influence of the study of 

 natural history on the civilisation of man. He was associated with 

 others in the production of the volumes on the general and special 

 history of plants, in the series of works in continuation of the natural 

 hist >ry of Buffun. In this work, which extended to eighteen volumes, 

 the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth, were written by MirbeL In 

 1802 he published his treatise 'On Vegetable Physiology.' He was 

 also associated witli Lamarck in the publication of a great work on 

 the 'Natural History of Hants,' which was published iu 1303. He 

 subsequently, in answer to views put forth by Link, wrote an ' Expo- 

 sition of the Theory of Vegetable Organisation,' and also a defence of 

 this work iu 1803. In 1815 he published his ' Elements of Vegetable 

 Phyi >logy and Botany.' This work was published in three volumes, 

 and was an admirable exposition of the state of vegetable physiology 

 at the time it was published, and contained the result of numerous 

 observations on the structure, functions, and development of plants. 

 In 1835 he published a paper on the nature and origin of the bark on 

 dicotyledonous trees, in which he gave an admirable account of the 

 structure ot the bark in exogenous plants. After this he published his 

 celebrated paper on the ' Anatomy and Physiology of Marchantia Poiy- 

 iii.ii ]ina,' in which he not only described the general structure of the 

 plant, but the history of the development of its embryo. In hi; 

 general theoretical views aud numerous exact observations, Mirbel 

 exercised a great influence on the progress of the science of botany 

 during the first half of the 19th century. He died September 12, 1854. 



JtlltKVKLT, M. J. [MlEREVELT.] 



MITCHELL, THOMAS, was born on the 30th of May 1783, iu 

 London, and wag the son of a riding-master. At the age of seven ho 

 was admitted into Christ's Hospital, where he remained until 1802, 

 when he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, on one of the exhi- 

 bitions of the Hospital. In 1800 he took his degree of B.A., and the 

 distinguished manner in which lie acquitted himself at college 

 induced the governors of Christ's Hospital to present him with a 

 handsome silver cup. He did not however obtain a fellowship as he 

 had hoped, for no more than two persons educated at the same school 

 are allowed to boll fellowships in Pembroke College at the same time. 

 Thw regulation, which was then made and carried into effect for the 

 first time, deranged all Mitchell's schemes, who had determined to 

 devote himself to philological pursuits. A few years afterwards how- 

 ever his acquirements as a scholar procured kitn a fellowship at 

 Si mey Sussex College, Cambridge. Mitchell never married, and if he 



had taken holy orders he might have remained in the enjoyment of 

 that fellowship for life, and would have been spared the cares and 

 anxieties for a livelihood to which he was afterwards exposed. But 

 he never took orders from a fear of the great responsibilities of the 

 pastoral office, and consequently, after a limited number of years, he 

 was obliged by the statutes of the college to vacate his fellowship 

 He afterwards earned his livelihood by private tuition and by writing 

 for the press : he was eugaged for ten years as tutor in privata 

 families. In 1813 he commenced a aeries of essays for the ' Quarterly 

 Review' on Aristophanes and Athenian manners, and this led him to 

 translate some of the plays of Aristophanes into English verse : his 

 translation appeared in 2 voU Svo, 1820-22. His articles in the 

 'Quarterly Review' impressed the patrons of a vacant Greak chair in 

 one of the Scotch universities with so much respect for his classical 

 attainments, that they invited him to accept the situation ; but as he 

 would have had to syn the Confession of the Scotch Kirk, which was 

 to him an insurmountable obstacle, he declined the lucrative office,, 

 uotwithstanding his poverty. During the last twenty years of his life 

 Mitchell lived with .some of his relations iu the county of Oxford, and 

 occasionally superintended the publication of the Greek works which 

 were from time to time printed at the Clarendon press. During the 

 years 1834-38 he edited, in separate voluinss, five of the plays of 

 Aristophanes, with English notes; and in 1839 he began an edition 

 of Sophocles, likewise with English notes ; but after the first three 

 tragedies hal appeared, the publication was suspended iu 1842, 

 because English notes were thought objectionable ; and Mitchell now 

 had no other employment but what the Clarendon press might casually 

 offer. The almost entire cessation of literary income not only caused 

 him great pecuniary difficulties, but broke down his health and spirits. 

 His friends became alarmed about him, and made his condition known, 

 to Sir Kdbert Peel, who immediately placed at his disposal the sum 

 of 150/. from the royal bounty fund. In 1843 the publication of 

 Sophocles was resumed, and the remaining four plays were likewise 

 edited by Mitchell, though with briefer notes thau the preceding 

 three. Iu 1844 he undertook the publication of a minor edition of a 

 ' Pentalogia Aristophanica,' with short Latin notes, aud had nearly 

 completed his task when he died suddenly, on the 6th of May 1845, at 

 his house at Steeple Aston near Woodstock. His health had long 

 been in a weak state, but his death was unexpected. 



Tne works Mitchell edited and commented upon contain evidence 

 that he was a Greek scholar of considerable eminence ; but his notes 

 are often irrelevant, and tha text of his author is seized upon to 

 furnish opportunities of showing his strong political opinions : he had 

 a passionate antipathy to the Athenian democracy aud dem icratical 

 forms of government iu general. (' Claasic.il Museum,' vol. iii. p. 

 213, &c.) 



MITCHELL, SIR THOMAS LIVINGSTONE, KNIGHT, was born 

 in 1792, at the residence of his father, John Mitchell, Esq., of Craig- 

 end, in Stirlingshire, Scotland. The name of Livingstone was assumed 

 by the family on a marriage with the heiress of J. Livingstone, Esq., 

 of Halning, brother to Lord Viscount Kilsyth, who was attainted 

 in 1716. Thomas Livingstone Mitchell entered the British army in 

 Portugal iu 1S08, aud served on the staff till the termination of the 

 Peninsular War, when he had attained the rank of majar. In the 

 course of this service he had distinguished himself so much as to 

 attract the attention of the late Sir George Murray, upon whose 

 recommendation he was sent back to the Peninsula to make surveys 

 of the great battle-fields. The series of military maps which he con- 

 structed from these surveys are preserved in the Ordnance-office, aud 

 are unsurpassed for accuracy and skilful execution. A model which 

 he formed of the Lower Pyrenees is in the Museum of tha United 

 Service, Whitehall. He married in 1818 the daughter of Lieutenant- 

 General Blunt. 



In 1827 Major Mitchell published ' Outlines of a System of Survey- 

 ing for Geographical and Military Purposes,' Svo, London. In the same 

 year he received the appointment of deputy surveyor-general of New 

 South Wales under Mr. Uxley, whom he succeeded as surveyor- 

 general an office which he retained till his death. Besides performing 

 the ordinary duties of this important situation, he conducted four 

 expeditions into the interior, and was one of the most successful of 

 the explorers of the Australian contiuent. Three of these expeditious 

 were performed in the years 1831-32, 1835, and 1836. The first was 

 in search of an imaginary river called the Kindur, which a runaway 

 convict, who had resided among the aborigines, described as having 

 a north-west course, and entering the sea; and the result of the 

 journey was the discovery of the Peel River aud the Nammoy. The 

 second expedition was for the purpose of exploring the course of the 

 river Darling, and was continued in the third expedition, when the 

 Darling was traced to its junction with the river Murray. Australia 

 Felix was also discovered, aud the Glenel^ was explored to its entrance 

 into the sea. These journeys were attended with great danger from 

 the occasional hostility of the native tribes, and required continual 

 vigilance, combined with the steadiness and resolution of an experienced 

 leader. Major Mitchell published in 1 838 his account of these journey s, 

 under the title of ' Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern 

 Australia, with Descriptions of the recently-explored Region of 

 Australia Felix, aud of the present Colony of New South Wales,' 

 2 vola. Svo, London, illustrated with lithographic drawings and wood- 



