577 



SOCRATES. 



SOLANDER, DANIEL CHARLES. 



678 



thinking men who fell in his way, and hia business was best done bi 

 making them all think for themselves and work by themselves on 

 the idea of science which he had awakened in their minds. Th 

 Socratic impulse being once communicated, it would take a differen' 

 direction according to the character and natural bias of the subject on 

 which it operated, and though Socrates may be considered as the basis 

 of the whole superstructure, he can have no more claim to the whole 

 merit of the Platonic philosophy than he is entitled to be blamec 

 for the reckless inconsistencies of Alcibiades or the selfish policy o: 

 Xenophon. 



In person, Socrates was no less singular than ho was in manners anc 

 dress. He had large projecting eyes, a sunken nose turned up at the 

 end, with wide dilated nostrils, and a great unwieldy belly ; eo thai 

 his appearance was not unlike that of the Silens and Satyrs, whom he 

 also seemed to resemble in the severe mockery of his ironical language. 

 His dress was coarse and inelegant, and he seldom wore shoes. If we 

 add to this, that as he walked along the streets he strutted about in a 

 most haughty supercilious manner, staring to the right and left at 

 everyone he met, sometimes stopping suddenly in an absent fit and 

 remaining for a considerable time fixed to the spot, wo shall not 

 wonder at the selection which Aristophanes made of him as a fit and 

 proper subject for the caricature of comedy. 



SO'CRATES, the ecclesiastical historian, was born at Constanti- 

 nople towards the end of the 4th century. He was instructed in 

 grammar and rhetoric by Ammonius and Helladius, of Alexandria, 

 and afterwards followed the profession of scholastic or advocate, on 

 which account l;e is generally designated as Socrates the Scholastic. 

 He appears however to have abandoned this profession in order to 

 devote himself to the study of ecclesiastical history. He is generally 

 considered the most exact and judicious of the three continuators of 

 the history of Eusebius [EuSEBius] ; he is less florid in his style and 

 more careful iii his statements than Sozomeu [SOZOMEN] and less 

 credulous than Theodoret. [THEODORET.] He is likewise the earliest 

 writer of the three, and Sozomen is supposed to have borrowed some- 

 what largely from him. His history extends from the year 306 to 

 439 ; it has been abridged by Epiphanius the Scholastic in his ' Historia 

 Tripartita," and was published for the first time as a continuation of 

 Eusebius, by Robert Stephens, in fol., Paris, 1544. There is a good 

 French translation of it by the President Cousin. The history is 

 divided into seven books; the five last are chiefly composed on the 

 authority of Rufinus [RupiNUs], and on the relations he gathered from 

 eye-witnesses of many of the events he records. The two first had 

 also been composed on the same authority ; but on reading the 

 writings of St. Athanasius he found that Rufinus had omitted several 

 of the principal circumstances in the life of this celebrated father of 

 the church. [ATHANASIUS.] He therefore undertook the task of 

 writing them anew, and took occasion of inserting several valuable 

 documents and formularies of faith which throw much light on the 

 Arian hersey. 



Though the most exact of the continuators of Eusebius, he has 

 nevertheless allowed himself to fall into error on several important 

 points. For instance, he confounds the Emperor Maximianus with 

 Maximinus (b. 1, c. 1), a mistake the more surprising as he was a 

 native of Constantinople, and professes to relate the principal events 

 which took place in that city. " The carelessness of writers of that 

 age," says Gibbon, " leaves us in a singular perplexity " (' History of the 

 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire/ c. vii., note). He is mistaken 

 also respecting the number of bishops who refused to sign the creed 

 drawn up at the Council of Nice (b. 1, c. 8), as it appears clearly from 

 the acts of the council and the authority of St. Jerome, Theodoret, 

 and others, that there were only two, not five, dissentients, as 

 Socrates asserts. His statements respecting a law passed by the 

 Emperor Valentinian authorising bigamy (b. iv. c. 31) on the occasion 

 of his marriage with Justina, rests on no other known authority, and 

 bears the semblance of a fiction rather than a fact. His account of 

 church discipline has been severely criticised by Baronius, Fleury, and 

 other Roman Catholic writers ; but he has on this point been very 

 ably defended by Cousin in the preface of the translation to his 

 history. " His impartiality is so strikingly displayed," says Wadding- 

 ton, " as to make his orthodoxy questionable to Baronius, the celebrated 

 Roman Catholic historian ; but Valesius in his life has clearly shown 

 that there is no reason for such suspicion." We may mention another 

 principle which he has followed, which in the mind of Baronius may 

 have tended to confirm the notion of his heterodoxy that he is 

 invariably adverse to every form of persecution on account of religious 

 opinions 8wy/*ibv Se Keyca rb birtaffovv rapdrretv rovs r^ffv^a.^ovras : " and 

 I call it persecution to offer any description of molestation to those 

 who are quiet." (History of the Church, p. 104.) He is however 

 very generally suspected of a leaning in favour of the schism of the 

 Novatiaus, though he shows but little knowledge on the subject, and 

 confounds Novatian, who was a priest of Rome, with Novatian of 

 Africa. The date of his death is not ascertained. 



(Hist, de VEglise, traduite par Cousin, vol. ii., Paris, 1775 ; Fleury, 

 Hist. Ecdes., 1. xxvi. c. 49; Waddington, Hist, of the Church, London, 

 30 Moreri, Diet. Historique, art. Socrates.) 



1833 



SOEUR, LE, HUBERT. This excellent sculptor, a Frenchman by 

 birth, according to Walpole, was the pupil of the celebrated John of 

 Bologna. He came to England probably shortly before 1630, in 



BIOQ. DIV, VOL. V. 



which year he was then living in Bartholomew Close, and a sou of hia 

 was buried on the 29th of November of that year in Great St. 

 Bartholomew's. 



Le Soeur must have been a man of about fifty years of age in 1630, 

 for John of Bologna died in, 1608 in Florence at an advanced age, and 

 Le Soeur must have visited Florence therefore about the beginning 

 of the 17th century if he were his pupil. The connection with 

 John of Bologna, who was a native of Douay in Flanders, and his 

 subsequent connection with Rubens in England, seem to indicate 

 Flanders as the country of Le Soeur rather than France. Rubens ia 

 said to have designed the much-admired bronze or brass statue of 

 William Earl of Pembroke in the picture gallery of Oxford, which was 

 executed and cast by Le Soeur. William Earl of Pembroke was 

 Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1616 to 1630. 



In 1633 Le Soeur cast the well-known equestrian statue of Charles I. 

 at Charing Cross ; it was cast in a spot of ground near the church of 

 St. Paul, Covent Garden, but not being put up before the commence- 

 ment of the great civil war, it was sold by the Parliament to a brazier 

 of the name of John Rivet, living at the " dial near Holborn Conduit," 

 who had orders to break it into pieces. Rivet, instead of breaking it up, 

 buried it, and it remained concealed until the Restoration. It was 

 placed in its present situation at the expense of the crown, in the year 

 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds. 

 The statue is said by Walpole to have been made at the expense of the 

 family of Howard-Arundel, but it was really made for the Earl of 

 Portland, Lord Treasurer. There is a story about Le Soeur's destroy- 

 ing himself when, after the statue was set up, he found that he had 

 omitted the saddle-girth ; unfortunately for the truth of this story 

 however the saddle-girth is there, and further, Le Soeur can never 

 have seen the statue set up, as he must have died several years before 

 1678._ The figure is dignified and expressive, but the horse is heavy 

 and is generally deficient in modelling ; the hinder quarters are 

 especially void of character and motion. The pedestal was made by 

 Grinling Gibbous. Walpole speaks of a bust at Stourhead by Le 

 Soeur of Charles I. in bronze, with a helmet surmounted by a dragon, 

 a la Romaine, three feet high on a black pedestal. It is mentioned in 

 Vanderdoort's Catalogue of Charles I.'s Collection. Le Soeur executed 

 many other bronze or brass works in England, but they are now all 

 lost or destroyed. 



SOLANDER, DANIEL CHARLES, a celebrated naturalist, the 

 pupil of Linnaeus, and the friend of Sir Joseph Banks. He was born. 

 in Nordland, in Sweden, where his father was a minister, on the 28th 

 of February 1736. He studied at Upsal, under Linnaeus, and took his 

 degree of M.D. at that university. After this he made a tour ia 

 Russia, and on his return was recommended by Linnaeus to go to 

 England. For this purpose he embarked on board a vessel of war, 

 which was suddenly ordered to the Canary Isles, taking Solander far 

 away from his destination. He however made the most of it, for he 

 not only shared the prizes taken by the vessel on this cruise, but 

 made great accessions to his knowledge of natural history whilst at 

 ;he Canary Isles. Shortly after his arrival in England, which was in 

 October 1760, he was employed at the British Museum for the purpose 

 of drawing up a catalogue of the collections in that institution. Three 

 years afterwards he was appointed one of the assistants in the natural 

 listory department. In 1764 he was elected a fellow of the Royal 

 Society. In 1766 he published a catalogue of the fossils presented to 

 the British Museum by Mr. Brander. In 1768 Sir Joseph Banks pro- 

 posed to Dr. Solander that he should accompany him in a voyage 

 ound the world, in search of discoveries in natural history. To this 

 IB assented, and the trustees of the British Museum having promised a 

 continuance of his salary in his absence, the two naturalists started 

 with Captain Cook in his celebrated first voyage round the world. 

 During this voyage, Dr. Solander probably saved a large party from 

 destruction, in ascending the mountains at Tierra del Fuego, by ad- 

 vising them on no account to give way to sleep when they arrived at 

 he cold regions. He himself was the first affected amongst them, and 

 was with difficulty kept awake during their perilous excursion, which 

 was attended with the death of a negro and an English seaman, from 

 ihe effects of the cold. They returned from this voyage in 1771, 

 aden with treasures, which are still in the collection at the British 

 Museum. It does not appear that Solander received any remunera- 

 ion for his services in this expedition, unless it was from Sir Joseph 

 Banks, whose munificence knew no bounds when forwarding in any 

 manner the study of natural history. 



Sir Joseph Banks and Solander wished to accompany Cook on his 

 second voyage, but some misunderstanding having arisen with regard 

 to their accommodation in the vessel, they abandoned the project. 

 On his return from his voyage the University of Oxford conferred on 

 Solander the degree of Doctor of Common Laws. In 1773 he was 

 appointed under-librarian at the British Museum. He died in a fit of 

 apoplexy, in the year 1782. 



The following papers were published with his name during his life- 

 time : 1, An account of the furia wfernalis, and the disease which 

 it produces. It was published in Latin, at Upsal, and appears to have 

 been his inaugural dissertation ; 2, An account of Gardenia, a plant 

 belonging to the natural order Cinchonacese, in the fifty-second 

 volume of the ' Philosophical Transactions ;' 3, A botanical descrip- 

 tion of the plant producing the Cortex Winteranus or Magellanicus, 



