

K1CANDKR 



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under him in this terrible ooofliot: still, on foot, hit clothes pierced 

 ith balls, ho gallantly headed the impetuoui charge. In the dis- 

 astrous retreat which ensued, he wi among the last to leave the 

 field, and, at on the pUiui of Kuasia, he was the rear-guard of the 

 lut Imperial army. 



After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Key returned to Paris, 

 and remained there after the capitulation of that city to the allies, 

 cousiilering liima>lf it in raid safe by virtue of the twelfth article of the 

 convention for the capitulation, which was as follows : " lu like 

 manner shall be respected persons and private property, and in general 

 all individuals who are at prment in the capital, shall continue to enjoy 

 their rights and liberties, without being disquieted or subjected to any 

 enquiry, in regard to the functions which they occupy, or may have 

 occupied, or to their conduct or political opinions." (' Convention,' 

 July 3rd, 1315.) On the 24th of July however appeared a Royal 

 ordinance, in which, among several others, be found himself proscribed 

 as a traitor to his country. Foucbd and Talleyrand had furnished 

 Ney as well as Laoddoyere and most of the other persons in the 

 proscribed lists with passports ; and he now, to escape the danger, 

 endeavoured to leave France. He reached the frontiers in safety, when 

 he was led by some trifling circumstances to turn back, and he was 

 arrested on the 5th of August, at the chateau of Bessonis near Aurillne. 

 He was at first cited before a council of war, which, on his advocates 

 demurring to its power, Ncy being a peer of France, declared its 

 incompeteucy to tit in judgment on bin). His trial was then removed 

 to the Chamber of Peers by another Royal ordinance of the 12th <>t 

 November. His defence wag most ably conducted by bis eloquent 

 advocates, Berryer and Dupin, and ultimately was made to rest mainly 

 on the article of the capitulation above alluded to. The result huwcver 

 was that he was found guilty by one hundred and fifty-seven voices to 

 one, and condemned to death by a very large majority of the peers. 



Un the 7th of December 1815, the day after his condemnation, an 

 officer presented biuuelf to Ney to communicate to him the sentence, 

 which was to be carried into immediate execution. On hearing his 

 titles enumerated, he exclaimed, " Call me simply Michael Ney, now a 

 French soldier, and soon about to be a heap of dust." A spot in the 

 garden of the Luxembourg was selected for the execution ; he there 

 met bis fate at eight o'clock in the morning with calm courage. " lie 

 who bad fought five hundred battles for France not one against her 

 was thot as a traitor." (Napier, ' History of the Peninsular War,' 

 vol. a p. 406.) 



That Ney had been guilty of the greatest political crime which the 

 commander of an army could have committed, there can be no ques- 

 tion ; yet the feeling of regret and indignation is universal at the 

 execution of such a man ; and, as has often been remarked, the heroism 

 of his d< ath has in effect transferred the sense of shame and guilt from 

 him to his sovereign. But several French and borne English writers 

 have adopted the view of the 1 2th article of the convention put forth 

 by Nej's advocates at the trial, and have advanced the opinion that 

 Wellington and Blucher, who, on the part of the allies, approved and 

 ratified the convention, ought to have interfered and claimed for Ney 

 the benefit of that article. It is howev. r but fair to say that such is 

 hardly the conclusion to hich an impartial examination of the conven- 

 tion and the ciicumstinces of the case will lead. The convention was 

 not an amnesty, and never professed to be one ; nor in fact was it 

 understood to be one by either party when made. Neither Ney nor 

 his advocates thought ot urging that plea till the middle of his trial ; 

 and when bis wife went to the Duke of Wellington to request bin 

 intervention, the duke told her that the 12th article, of the convention 

 had no reference to the King of France, but was solely intended to 

 assure the inhabitants of Paris of protection against the fury of a 

 victorious army. It was in short simply a convention for the sur- 

 render of the city, and Wellington and Ulucher could have bad neither 

 authority nor power to grant amnesty or pardon for political offences 

 as between the sovereign and hi* subjects, and they never pretended 

 to have had any such power. That it would have been more politic 

 of Louis to have merely banished, if he did not pardon, the ino.-t 

 brilliant and devoted of French soldiers, there csn be little doubt ; 

 and none that a man of generous feelings would have done so. That 

 either W. llington or Blucher should have interfered very strenuously 

 to save him, however much it might be desired, was hardly to be 

 expecUd when their stern sense of military duty is considered. The 

 blame of hu death to us seems to rest solely, however heavily, on his 

 countrymen. 



MCANDKH, a j.hynioinn, poet, and grammarian, of whose life very 

 few particulars are found in ancient authors, and even those few are 

 doubtful and contradictor}-. Upon the whole it seams most probable 

 that his father's name was Daumccus (Kudocito, ' Viol., ap. Villois. 

 Anecd. lit.,' vol. L p. 808 ; and 'Auonymi Scriptoria, "Vita NIC."'); 

 that he lived about Ol. clxi. ii., B.C. 1:55, in the reign of Attalus III., 

 the last king of Pergamus, to whom he dedicated one of his poems 

 which is no longer extant (Suidu; Kmloc., 'Viol.;' 'Anon. Vita'); 

 that ha was a nativo of Claros (Nicandri, ' Thrriaca '), a small town 

 near Colophon, whence he is commonly called Colophoniua (Cic. ' Do 

 Oral.,' lib. L, cap. 16; Sui-lw, 'Anthol. Or.*), and that he succeeded 

 his father as bareditary priest of Apollo Clariiis (Eudoc, 'Viol.;' 

 'Anon. Vita.') lie appears to have been rather a voluminous writer, 

 aa the titles of more than twenty of his works have been preserved ; 



but of ull these we poaaets at present only two in a perfect state, with 

 a few fragments of some of the others. The ' Theriaca ' is a poem 

 consisting of nearly 1000 lines in hexameter verse, on the wounds 

 caused by different venomous animals, and the proper treatment of 

 each : it is characterised by Holler (' Biblioth. Botan.') as " longa, 

 incondita, et nullius fidei farrago." It contains however several 

 curious passages relating to natural history, of which the following 

 may serve aa a specimen. He mentions (v. 147, Ac.) a species of 

 serpent, called aty, which always assumes the colour of the ground 

 over which it crawls. (Compare Pliny, ' Hist. Nat,' lib. viii., cap. 35; 

 Aristotle, 'De Mirab. Auscult,' c. 178, and -Elian, 'De Nat. Auim.,' 

 1. xvi., c. 40.) He places (v. 183, Ac ) the venom of serpents in a 

 membrane surrounding the teeth, which is not very far from the 

 truth. He describes tbe ichneumon (v. 160, lie.) and the asp, and 

 the way in which the former fighta with the hitter and destroys its 

 eggs; all of which is described in very nearly the same terms by 

 Pliny ( Hist. Nat,' lib. viii., cap. 35, 36), and in a great measure con- 

 firmed by modern naturalists. (See Cuvier's notes on the above- 

 mentioned chapters of Pliny, in the French translation, 20 vols., 8vo, 

 Paris, l29-3u.) In speaking of the amphisbxna, he falls into tho 

 vulgar error of his day, and describes it as having two heads, (v. 372, 

 &c.) The same error is found in Pliny. (' Hist Nat., 'lib. viii., cap. 85.) 

 He divides scorpions into nine species, distinguishing them chiefly by 

 their colour (v. 769, Ac.), a mode of division probably taken from 

 Apollodorns (Pliny, 'Hist. Nat.,' lib. xi., cap. 30), and followed by 

 /Elian ('De Nat. Auim.,' lib. vi., cap. 20). He is the first persou who 

 describes the moths that nutter about a c.indle at night, and calls 

 them cpoAamu (v. 759, Ac.) He fives a fabulous account of the 

 basilisk (v. 396, Ac.), which is followed, as might be expected, by 

 Pliny (' Hist. Nat.,' 1. viii., cap. 33, and 1. xxix., o. 19), and by .Kliau 

 (' De Nat. Auim.,' lib. ii., cap. 7), though it should be observed that 

 the animal spoken of by them could not bu thu same that is called l.y 

 th..t name by modern naturalists, which is found only in America. 

 He declares the bite of the field-mouse to be poisonous (v. 815, &c.), 

 and that the animal dies it' it should fall into a wheel-rut ; both which 

 circumstances are repeated by Pliny (' lint. Nat.,' lib. viii., cap. S3) and 

 vEl.au (-De Nat. Auim.,' lib. it, cap. 87). He is one of the < 

 writers who mentions the fable of tbe salamander (v. 817, etc.). See 

 Pliny, ' Hist. Nat.,' lib. x., c. 86, and .Klim, 'De Nat. Aniiu.,' lib. ii., 

 c. 31. He says that wasps (v. 738, &c.) are generated by the putre- 

 faction of the carcass of a horse (comp. Pliny, ' Hist. Nat.,' lib. xvii., 

 cap. 18, and ^Kliau, ' De Nat Auim.,' lib. i., cap. 28), and bees by that 

 of an ox (eomp. y)ili:iu, ' De Nat. Auim.,' lib. ii., dip. 57). 



The ' Alexipharuiaca ' is a rather shorter poem, written in the same 

 metre, on poisons and their antidotes, and may be considered as a sort 

 of continuation of the ' Theriaca. Nailer's judgment on this work is 

 aa severe as ou the preceding. Ainony the poisons of thu animal king- 

 dom Nicander mentions (v. 115, Ac.) thu cautbaris of the Greeks, 

 which is not the LytUi Vaicaiuria, but the Mdot Chicorii ; the 

 buprestis (v. 335, Ac.), Carabta liucidon ; the blood of a bull (v. 312); 

 tlic coagulated milk in the stomach of niammiferous animals (v. 364, 

 Ac.); a species of tetraodon (v. 465, Ac.), Tetraodon Lagocephaltu ; the 

 leech (v. 495, Ac.), llinulo venenaia ; and a species of gecko iraAa^ii-Jpa 

 (v. 550, Ac.). Among the vegetable poisons we find the aconite (v. 12, 

 Ac.), ' Aconitum Lycoctonnm ; ' the coriander (v. 157, Ac.), which has 

 sometimes been fatal in Egypt; the hemlock (v. 186, Ac.), 'Conium; ' 

 the colchicum (v. 249, Ac.), iif^ntfov ; the Lotos dorychuium (\. 

 Ac.) ; the henbane (v. 415, Ac.), ' Hyoscyamus ; ' opium (v. 433, Ac.); 

 and tho different species of fungi (v. 621, Ac.), the growth of which 

 N icander attributes to fermentation. Of mini -ral poisons he mentions 

 only white lead, or carbonate of lead (v. 74, Ac.), and litharge, or 

 protoxide of lead (v. 6U7, Ac.). 



To counterbalance in some degree Halter's unfavourable oj'i.ii m 

 of Nicandtr's extant works, it ought in justice to be stated that his 

 knowledge of natural history appears to be at least equal to that of 

 other writers of his own or even of a later age, while on the subject 

 of poisons he was long considered a great authority : Qaleu several 

 times quotes him, and Dioscoridef, Actius, and Johannes Acttiariua 

 have borrowed from him largely. 



With respect to his merits as a poet, the most opposite opinions are 

 to be found both in ancient and modern writers. In the Greek antho- 

 logy Colophon is congratulated for being tbe birth-place of Homer 

 and Nicander (t iii., p. 270, e-p. 667, ed. Brunck.). Cicero ('De Ur.it.,' 

 lib, i., cap. 16), alluding to his ' Georgics ' (a poem not now extant), 

 praises the poetical manner in which he treats a subject of which ho 

 was entirely ignorant; while Plutarch ('De Aud. Poc'tis," cap. 2) says 

 the 'Tberinca' only escapes being prose because it is put into > 

 aud will not allow it to be called a poem, because there is in it " nothing 

 of fable or falsehood." This very point Julius Cicsar Scaligcr thinks 

 worthy of especial commendation, and soys, " Magna ei laun quod ue 

 quid iueptum aut iuepto dicat." (' Poetices,' lib. v., cap. 15.) He 

 goes on to praise the accuracy of his expressions and versification, and 

 declares that among all the Greek authors a more polished poet is 

 hardly to be found. M. Merian, on the other hand, in an essay 

 >>ntles Sciences influ-nt dans la PgO'iiu' (' Mdm. de 1'Acod. Hoy. 

 do Berlin/ I'an 1776, p. 4'j:j) mentions Nicander to show the antipathy 

 that exists between the language of poetry and the subject* of 

 which he treated. He calls him 'a grinder of antidotes, who sang of 



