429 



SEWARD, ANNA. 



HFORZA, JACOPO ATTENDOLO. 



430 



plete is that of M. de Monmerque, Paris, 11 vola. 8vo, and 13 vols. 

 12mo, 1818, containing a text corrected and restored in very numerous 

 passages, and including ninety-four letters not before published. The 

 edition of M. Grouvelle, 8 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1806, is also one of the 

 best, containing memoirs of Madame de Se'vigne' herself, her daughter, 

 and other persons closely connected with her history, and other 

 auxiliary pieces. Other complete editions, including one in 6 vols. 

 12ino, by Didot, have since been published. These collective editions 

 contain many letters addressed to Madame de Sdvigno by her corres- 

 pondents. 



SEWARD, ANNA, was born in 1747, of good parents, her father 

 being the rector of Eyam in Derbyshire, prebendary of Salisbury, and 

 canon residentiary of Lichfield. Mr. Seward was a writer of poems, 

 which are printed in Dodsley's collection ; and in 1750 he published 

 tin edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. He encouraged the poetical 

 indications in his daughter with all the gratified pride of a parent. 

 Pope, Young, and Prior were her favourite authors, and she excelled 

 also in ornamental needlework an accomplishment she carried into 

 her poems, which bear the same relation to poetry as needlework does 

 to art ingenious, pretty, and trivial. 



She had the society of Dr. Darwin, Mr. Day, author of ' Sandford 

 and Merton,' Mr. Eclgeworth, and occasionally that of Dr. Johnson, 

 whom she could not bear, and of whom she has written a good deal in 

 a very ridiculous fashion. In 1782 she published her poetical novel 

 of ' Louisa,' which met with great success, and rapidly exhausted three 

 or four editions. In 1799 she published a collection of 'Sonnets,' 

 intended to " restore the strict rules of the legitimate sonnet." They 

 are now very little known. In 1804 she published her 'Life of Dr. 

 Darwin,' written like all her other works, in an affected style ; destitute 

 of all requisites for biography ; wanting in penetration and deline- 

 ation of character; puerile in judgment and worse in criticism; 

 nevertheless it contains some pleasant literary anecdotes, and is not 

 without a certain sort of interest. In it she lays claim to the author- 

 ship of the first fifty lines in the ' Botanic Garden,' which she had 

 written out of compliment to him, but of which he made no mention. 

 She continued to pour forth little poems of questionable merit, but 

 still maintained her popularity. 



After a lingering illness, she expired in March, 1809, bequeathing 

 to Sir Walter Scott her literary performances, and particularly the 

 works she had herself intended for the press ; and to Mr. Constable, 

 the publisher, her ' Letter,?.' Scott executed his trust by the publi- 

 cation in 1810 of her 'Poems,' and three volumes of literary corres- 

 pondence, with a biographical preface. Mr. Constable also published 

 her ' Letters ' in six volumes. They afford materials for the study of 

 her character, but they exhibit it in no pleasing light vanity, bad 

 taste, affectation, and pedantry being mostly prominent. 



Posterity, from whose judgments there is no appeal, and with whom 

 the factitious causes of popularity have no weight, has consigned her 

 poems to oblivion, and there is no ground for protesting against this 

 judgment. Nor indeed is there anything in her prose writings to 

 render their preservation more desirable than that of her verse. 



SEXTTJS EMPI'RICUS, a Greek philosopher and physician of 

 celebrity, who nourished about A.D. 200. The particulars of his life 

 are uncertain, and the only two indications on which we can rely are 

 those given in his own works, that he was the pupil of Herodotus of 

 Tarsus, and that he lived about the period before mentioned. Dio- 

 genes (ix., ' Timon ') simply says, " Sextus, the Empiric, was the pupil 

 of Herodotus of Tarsus : he wrote the ten books of Sceptica, and other 

 excellent works." Equal uncertainty exists as to the place where he 

 lived and taught, although, from the only existing evidence of value 

 (namely, from a passage in his own work, flv^ptaviai 'YTroTvircixreis, iii. 

 16), it appears that he taught philosophy and exercised his art, at least 

 during one period of his life, in the same place as his master. But his 

 very identity has been a matter of dispute. Suidas (2e'|Tos) speaks of 

 Sextus, a native of Libya, to whom he attributes a work entitled 

 'Sceptica,' in ten books ; but he also attributes ten books of 'Sceptica' 

 to Sextus of Chseronea, whom he calls a follower of Pyrrho, though it 

 is well known that this Sextus, the nephew of Plutarch, and one of 

 the preceptors of M. Aurelius, was a Stoic. That the philosopher of 

 Chseronea and Sextus Empiricus are two different persons is clearly 

 shown by Kuster, in a note in his edition of Suidas (in v. Se'lros 



His surname of Empiricus, prefixed to his works, and given him by 

 Diogenes Laertius, intimates that he belonged to that school of 

 medicine which styled itself the Empiric ; and he himself confirms 

 this in his treatise irpbs TOI/S Maflrj/^cmKous 'Avi jSprjrutoi, ' Adversus 

 Mathematicos,' lib. i., 161. 



His works are among the most valuable of those extant in ancient 

 philosophy, and have been largely consulted by all subsequent 

 historians. The ' Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes,' in thi-ee books, contains 

 all the celebrated arguments of the ancient sceptics. The first book 

 is a complete analysis of scepticism. He divides philosophers into 

 dogmatists, academics, and sceptics, and then classifies the sceptics 

 themselves. Next follows an exposition of the nature of scepticism, 

 its method, endeavours, and aims ; with a learned and precise account 

 of all the celebrated terms in use amongst sceptics, such as <?T<=X', ' I 

 refrain from judging ;' ouSei/ 6pify, ' I define nothing ;' and others. 

 This book is peculiarly valuable as an exposition, but is perhaps 



inferior to the two succeeding books, which are directed against the 

 dogmatists, where, after stating every subject of belief, he opposes each 

 of them with a striug of sceptical objections. Morale, religion, logic, 

 nothing escapes his doubt; and this 19 done in a manner at once 

 peculiar and subtle, and affords an interesting exposition of the insuffi- 

 ciency of human reason to settle those illimitable inquiries of 



" Fate, fore-knowledge, free-will absolute," 



which have ever formed the ' vexatse qusestiones ' of philosophers. 



The other work of Sextua Empiricus, which is entitled ' Adversua 

 Mathematicos,' is only another form of the Pyrrhonic Institutes above 

 mentioned. It is directed against all who admit the possibility of a 

 science. This discussion, though conducted on very different principles, 

 has been much in vogue amongst the German and French metaphy- 

 sicians, and indeed involves the whole philosophy of human know- 

 ledge. What science is, whether science be possible, whether science 

 be positive or psychological, these are questions eternally renewed. 

 M. Auguste Comte, in that vast system which he has elaborated in his 

 ' Cours de Philosophic Positive,' denies altogether the possibility of a 

 psychological science ; while the Germans, on the other hand (led 

 thereto by the fundamental principle common to them all, that the 

 external universe receives its laws from the laws of the mind), contend 

 that all science must necessarily be psychological. But Sextus 

 Empiricus sweeps away both parties, and will admit no science 

 whatever to be possible. The first book of his 'Adversus Mathe- 

 maticos ' undertakes to refute grammarians and historians ; the second 

 annihilates the rhetoricians ; the third, the geometricians ; the fourth, 

 the arithmeticians ; the fifth, the astrologers ; and the sixth, the 

 musicians. 



There are five more books always added to the work, all directed 

 against logicians, moralists, and physicians (Qva-ticol, in the Greek 

 sense) ; but to make them part of the same work as the first five books 

 can only have arisen from the ignorance and carelessness of his first 

 editors. They have no real connection with them, but may rather be 

 regarded as a supplement to the second and third books of the ' Hypo- 

 typoses,' to which they belong in intention as well as spirit. The two 

 works are indeed closely allied in spirit, and are only various forms of 

 the same philosophy and the same purpose. 



Such as they have come down to us, these two works form an 

 encyclopaedia of scepticism such as can be found nowhere else. They 

 are, as M. Ancillon well observes, " a positive arsenal of every species 

 of doubt methodically arranged, and from which the sceptics of.suc- 

 ceeding times have armed themselves, choosing from his immense 

 magazine the arms suitable to their minds or to the nature of their 

 subjects." 



The influence of Sextus Empiricus, except as an historian, has been 

 very small. The Alexandrian philosophy and the Christian religion 

 alike combined by their success to prevent his forming a sect of any 

 consequence ; and although modern sceptics have availed themselves 

 of his arguments to prop up their own incredulity, yet there is a 

 tendency in the human mind at variance with this barren philosophy, 

 which no ingenuity, however subtle or plausible, has ever been able to 

 overcome. 



There are few editions of Sextus, and none which can be called 

 critical. The first translation of the ' Hypotyposes ' was by Henry 

 Stephens, 8vo, 1562. The first edition of the Greek text of both works 

 was published at Paris, folio, 1621. This edition is accompanied with 

 a Latin version. An edition of the Greek text, also with the Latin 

 version, was published by J. A. Fabricius, Leipzig, folio, 1718. There 

 is also an edition by Bekker. 



SEYMOUR, EDWARD, FIRST DUKE OF SOMERSET. [EDWARD VI.] 



SEYMOUR, THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDLET. [EDWARD VI.] 



SFORZA, JA'COPO ATTE'NDOLO, was born about the middle of 

 the 14th century, at Cotignola, a village near Faenza, of humble 

 parents, but forsook in early youth the occupation of a labourer to 

 enlist in one of those companies of adventurers which were then 

 numerous about Italy, and which served for hire the highest bidder 

 among, the petty princes and republics of that age. Jacopo, having 

 displayed great courage and perseverance, acquired a considerable 

 reputation in that turbulent militia. After serving under several 

 ' condottieri,' or leaders, he attached himself to Alberico da Barbiano, 

 a captain superior to the rest both by birth and the loftiness of his 

 views. Alberico belonged to the family of the lords of Cuneo, and 

 aspired to the glory of delivering Italy from the foreign mercenaries 

 and forming a national militia. Having collected a force of 12,000 

 men, all natives of Italy, he gave it the name of the Company of St. 

 George. In the year 1376, Pope Gregory XL, who was residing at 

 Avignon, sent an order to his legate in Italy to endeavour to restore 

 the authority of the Papal see over the towns of the Romagna, which 

 had revolted at the instigation of the Florentines. The cardinal took 

 into his pay a body of foreign mercenaries called the Breton Company, 

 commanded by John Hawkwood, whom the Italians called 'Acuto,' a 

 valiant condottiero of those times. These troops having entered 

 Faenza without opposition, began plundering the town, and killed 

 many of the people. In the following year the Cardinal of Geneva 

 was sent from France by the pope with another body of foreign 

 mercenaries, chiefly cavalry, from Brittany and other parts of France ; 

 and having attacked Bologna without success, he wintered at Cesena. 



