375 



SCUDtiRI, GEORGE DE. 



SEBASTIAN, DOM. 



376 



Lips., 1825-26, entitled 'In Scribonium Largum Animadversionum 

 Ottonis Sperlingii Specimen.' 



SCUDE'RI, GEORGE DE, was born about 1601, at Havre in 

 Normandie, of which place his father was governor (lieutenant de roi). 

 Young Scude"ri was brought up by his father to the profession of arms, 

 but he quitted it about 1630 for that of a dramatist, in which he had 

 at first little success, and was very poor. But both his reputation and 

 circumstances gradually improved, and he was regarded by many as 

 equal to P. Corneille, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, till the 

 unusual success of ' The Cid' threw Scuddri in tothe shade, and caused 

 a feeling of envy, to which he gave vent in ' Observations sur le Cid,' 

 Paris, 1637 : these Observations were published anonymously, but the 

 author soon became known, and Corneille replied in a bitter epigram, 

 in which he described his late friend as a 'solemn fool.' Scuddri 

 however was favoured by Cardinal Richelieu, who was also offended to 

 find that Corneille had obtained a degree of patronage from the public 

 which rendered the great poet independent of the great minister. In 

 1641 or 1642 Scude"ri was appointed governor of Notre Dame de la 

 Garde, a small fort situated on a rock near Marseille, where he went to 

 reside, but soon returned to Paris, and it was humorously said of 

 him in 1656, that he had "shut up the fort, returned to Paris by the 

 coach, and for fifteen years had carried the key in his pocket." In 

 1650 he was elected a member of the Acaddmie Fran?aise. He died 

 at Paris, May 14, 1667. 



In the period from 1631 to 1644, Scude"ri produced sixteen plays 

 under the following titles : ' L' Amour Tyrannique,' ' Armenius,' 

 ' Orante,' ' Lygdamon,' ' Le Vassal Ge'ne'reux,' ' Le Trompeur Puni,' 

 'La Mort de Ce*sar,' 'L'Amant Liberal,' 'Didon,' 'Eudoxe,' 'Andro- 

 mire,' ' Axiane,' ' Le Fils Suppose*,' ' Le Prince DeguiseV ' L'lllustre 

 Eassa,' and ' La Come'die des Come"diens.' He also wrote ' Poesies 

 Diverses,' 4to, Paris, 1649, and 'Alaric, ou Rome Vaincue,' folio, 

 Paris, 1654, an heroic poem, which he undertook at the request of 

 Christina, queen of Sweden. He also wrote a few other works, but 

 they are not worth mentioning. 



Scude"ri is one of those who have left " a lasting tomb." His name is 

 familiar to us from the reputation which he once had, but both his 

 plays and poems are deservedly neglected, or are only looked into 

 from a motive of curiosity. He was a man of excessive vanity, and in 

 the prefaces to some of his plays boasts of his own merits in terms 

 which, indicate the most perfect self-satisfaction, which, taken in con- 

 nection with the patronage of Richelieu, may partly account for the 

 fame which he had iu his day, the mass of mankind, little capable of 

 judging for themselves, for the most part allowing a man to take that 

 station which he assumes, rather than placing him in that to which his 

 merits entitle him. 



BCUDfiBI, MADELINE DE, the sister of George de Scuderi, was 

 born in 1607. She is the authoress of several voluminous romances 

 which had an extraordinary reputation : ' Ibraham, ou 1'Illustre 

 Bassa/ 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1641 ; ' Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus,' 10 

 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1650; 'Cle"lie, Histoire Romaine,' 10 vols. 8vo, Paris, 

 1656; 'Almahide, ou 1'Esclave Reine,' 8 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1660. 

 ' L'lllustre Bassa,' ' Cyrus,' and some of the first volumes of ' Cle'lie,' 

 were published under the name of George de Scuderi, but after the 

 authoress became known her other works were published anony- 

 mously. Besides these grand romances, Mademoiselle de Scude"ri wrote 

 'Celinte,' 8vo, 1661 ; ' Femmes Illustres, ou Harangues Heroiques,' 

 12mo, 1665; 'Mathide d'Aguilar,' 8vo, 1669; 'La Promenade de 

 Versailles,' 8vo, 1669; 'Discours de la Gloire,' 12mo, 1671, which 

 obtained the prize of eloquence given by the Acade"mie Fran9aise ; 

 'Conversations sur divers Sujets,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1684 ; 'Conversations 

 Nouvelles,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1684 ; ' Conversations Morales,' 2 vols. 12mo, 

 1686; 'Nouvelles Conversations de la Morale,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1688 ; 

 ' Entretiens de Morale,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1692; 'Nouvelles Fables en 

 Vers,' 12mo, 1685; besides a great number of ' Vers de Socidte,' 

 addressed to her contemporaries. 



Mademoiselle de Scude'ri was a sort of queen of the Parisian Blue- 

 Stockings, the Pre'cieuses Ridicules' of the 17h century, and 

 she enjoyed this ' high and palmy state ' of honour till her death, 

 which did not occur till June 2, 1701, when she was in her ninety- 

 fourth year. The praises bestowed upon her were not confined to the 

 fashionable society of the Hdtel de Rambouillet, of which she waa the 

 acknowleged dictator, but eulogiums in no measured terms were 

 bestowed upon her by Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches, by 

 Mascaron,^ bishop of Tulle, by the Cardinal de Bouillon, and many 

 others. Christina of Sweden honoured her with her correspondence, 

 and gave her a pension. She had a pension also from Cardinal 

 Mazarin, which, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, was continued 

 and augmented by Louis XIV. 



Mademoiselle de Scuderi seems to have been indebted for her pre- 

 eminence of honour partly to the tact with which all her works were 

 adapted to the usages of the society in which she moved, many of the 

 frequenters of the H6tel d< Rambouillet being recognised in the heroes 

 and heroines of her romances, and partly to a factitious brilliancy of 

 conversation which consisted of ridiculous puerilities and a play of 

 imagination in the worst taste, all founded upon those conven- 

 tionalisms of politeness and gallantry which were current among the 

 fashionable society of that age. Love was the inexhaustible theme of 



11 these romances and conversations; the heroes of antiquity are 



transformed into French petit-maitres, and the heathen mythology 

 supplied its store of imagery and allusion to decorate the fashionable 

 manners and personages of the age of Louis XIV. It must be added, 

 however, that Mademoislle de Scude'ri appears to have been a woman 

 of amiable disposition, was greatly esteemed by her female associates, 

 and had several professed admirers among the gentlemen, though she 

 was very ugly. 



SCYLAX of Caryanda,a town of Caria near Halicarnassus, a mathe- 

 matician and musician, was the author of a ' Periplus of the parts 

 beyond the Columns of Hercules,' of the ' History of Heraclide?, king 

 of the Mylasseis,' of a ' Periodoa of the Earth,' and an ' Answer 

 (&.vriypcut>ty to the history of Polybius.' (Suid., 2icvA.a) If all these 

 works are rightly assigned to the same person, Scylax was at least not 

 earlier than the age of Polybius. But it seems probable that there 

 were two writers of the name. 



Herodotus (iv. 44) says that Darius, the son of Hystaspes, wishing 

 to know where the Indus entered the sea, sent various persons in 

 whom he had confidence, and among them Scylax of Caryanda, to 

 make the discovery. They set out from the city Caspatyrus and the 

 territory Pactuica, and sailed down the river to the east and the rising 

 of the sun. On reaching the sea they sailed westwards, and in the 

 thirtieth month arrived at the place whence the Phoenicians had set 

 out who were sent by the king of Egypt to circumnavigate Libya. 

 To this Scylax some writers attribute the extant work entitled 

 Tlepiir\ovs rrjs O'lKovpfinis, or the ' Periplus of the Inhabited World,' 

 which contains valuable information on the settlements of the Cartha- 

 ginians, on the towns and colonies of the Greeks, and other matters. 

 Consequently Scylax must, it is supposed, have lived about B.C. 500. 

 Niebuhr and other critics however assign the authorship of the 

 extant ' Periplus ' to the middle of the 4th century, B.C. Dodwell con- 

 siders the author of this ' Periplus ' to be a contemporary of Polybius, 

 and consequently he would belong to the 2nd century, B.C. The 

 ' Periplus ' was first published by Hoeschel, with other minor Greek 

 geographers, Augsburg, 8vo, 1600. It is also comprised in the first 

 volume of the ' Geographi Grseci Minores' of Hudson, which contains the 

 Dissertation of Dodwell. This dissertation, and that of Sainte-Croix, 

 in the 42nd volume of the ' Recueil de 1'Acadcmie des Inscriptions,' 

 appear to exhaust the subject of Scylax the geographer. The 

 ' Periplus' is also included in the first volume of the ' Geog. Grcecise 

 Minoris,' edited by Gail, 8vo, Paris, 1826 ; and by Klausen, with the 

 Fragment of Hecatseus, Berlin, 1831. 



SCYLITZES. [BYZANTINE HISTORIANS.] 



SCYMNUS of Chios, who was alive about B.C. 80, wrote a descrip- 

 tion of the earth (irepi-fiyTjcris) in Greek iambic verse, which he dedi- 

 cated to Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, probably the third of the name. 

 The first 741 verses are extant, and fragments of 236 other verses. 

 His description begins at Gades, and follows the left coast of the 

 Mediterranean as far as the entrance of the Pontus Euxinus, where 

 the last verse ends. Among the remaining verses there are about 90 

 on the coast of Asia. The work has no value as a poom, and very 

 little as a geographical description. Still it contains some curious 

 facts. It was first printed by Hoeschel with Scylax in 1600, but under 

 the name of Marcianus of Heraclea. It is also comprised in the 

 second volume of Hudson's ' Geographi Grseci Minores,' and in the 

 editions of that work by J. F. GaU, vol. ii., 8vo, 1828; and by Fabri- 

 cius, Berlin, 1846. Meineke however, in his edition of the poem 

 (' Scymni Chii Periegesis et Dionysii descriptio Grsecise,' 8vo, Berlin, 

 1846), has endeavoured to prove that the poem is not the work quoted 

 by ancient writers under the title of the 'Periegesis of Scymnus,' 

 which was written in prose, but an entirely different work by some 

 other and unknown author. 



SEBA, ALBERT, a native of East Friesland, was born on the 2nd 

 of May 1665. He at first followed the occupation of a druggist at 

 Amsterdam ; but afterwards, entering the service of the Dutch East 

 India Company, acquired great wealth. His early studies had given 

 him a taste for natural history, and he spent his large fortune in 

 forming a collection of the most interesting objects in the animal, 

 vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. In 1716 Peter the Great purchased 

 his museum, and removed it to St. Petersburg; but Seba immediately 

 set about forming another collection, which soon surpassed every other 

 in Europe. This was unfortunately dispersed after his death, which 

 took place on the 3rd of May 1 736. 



Seba wrote several papers on scientific subjects ; but his great work 

 was a description of his museum, published in Latin and French, in 

 4 vols. fol., between the years 1734 and 1765. Tho first volume only 

 was published during Seba's lifetime ; the last three were edited by 

 different persons after his death. The work is noted for the beauty 

 and accuracy of its engravings, which caused it for many years to be 

 regarded as the standard authority on subjects connected with natural 

 history. The bad arrangement of the subjects however, and the 

 inaccuracy of the descriptions, which resulted from Seba's want of 

 scientific knowledge, greatly diminish its value. 



SEBASTIAN, DOM, the posthumous sou of the Infante Dom Joam, 

 by Joanna, daughter of the emperor Charles V., was born at Lisbon, 

 July 20th, 1554. After the death of his grandfather, Joam III., in 

 1557, Sebastian, who was then only three years old, ascended the 

 throne of Portugal, the regency beiug vested in the widowed queen, 

 Catherine of Austria, in conformity with the will of the late king. 



