303 



VEGA, GEORGE. 



VEIT, PHILIPP. 



306 



a master of a family, and a priest ; his acquirements in Latin, Italian 

 and Portuguese ; and his reputation for erudition, become not only 

 improbable, but absolutely, and one may almost say physically im- 

 possible." Yet there can be no doubt that Lope was, even in prolific 

 Spain, the most prolific of writers. Montalvan tells us, that when 

 Lope was at Toledo ho wrote fifteen acts in fifteen days, making five 

 plays in a fortnight. He himself informs us in the eclogue to Claudio, 

 one of his last works, that he had written upwards of fifteen hundred 

 dramas, one hundred of which had been composed in aa many days : 



" Pucs mas do ciento en horas veinte quatro 

 Pasaron de las Musas al thcatro." 



In addition to the works mentioned in the course of this notice, 

 Lope wrote several epic poems, as 'La Jerusalem Conquistada;' 'La 

 Circe ; ' ' La Dragontea ' (on the Death of Sir Francis Drake ') ; 'La 

 Andromeda;' numerous pastorals; 'Los Pastores de Belen;' 'La 

 Dorothea,' &c. &c. ; a burlesque poem, entitled ' La Gatomachia ; ' 

 several epistles, and other short poems, which were collected and 

 printed at Madrid, 1776-79, 21 vols. 4to. But it is not on any oi 

 these productions that the reputation of Lope really rests : that was 

 founded on his dramas, in which he showed himself master of his art. 

 The number and merit of his plays, at a period when the Castilian 

 language was generally studied throughout Europe, directed the 

 attention of foreigners to the Spanish theatre, and probably induced 

 them, more than the works of any one writer, to form their compo- 

 sitions upon the model which Corneille and others afterwards refined. 

 His plays have always been popular in Spain. Even now, when the 

 introduction of the French dramatic school has considerably lessened 

 the taste for the old drama, ' La Moza de Cantaro,' ' La Noche 

 Toledana,' and others of Lope's plays are still acted on the Madrid 



Lord Holland has given, after Huerta, a list of all the dramas 

 attributed to Lope de Vega, which exist in print. There are 497 

 plays, and 21 ' Autos Sacramentales,' in all 518, to which number 

 may be added many which have been lost, and many more which, 

 though acted on the stage, were never printed, besides those which 

 are preserved in manuscript. 



VEGA, GEORGE, a German mathematician, and colonel in the 

 Austrian artillery, was born at Sagoritz in Carniola, in 1754. His 

 family name is said to have been Veha, but this he transformed into 

 Vega. His parents, though in reduced circumstances, gave him the 

 benefit of a good education, and sent him to prosecute his studies at 

 Laubach, where, under the tuition of Maffei, who was afterwards 

 bishop of Buntzlau in Bohemia, he made great progress in the mathe- 

 matics : for this prelate he entertained the highest esteem and grati- 

 tude, which, but two years before his death, he testified by dedicating 

 to him a second edition of his principal work. 



Vega commenced his military career by entering into a corps of 

 engineers, with which he served, first in Carniola, and afterwards in 

 Hungary : here his merit and his knowledge of the military sciences 

 soon procured for him the notice of the Emperor Joseph II., who 

 gave him the appointment of mathematical instructor in the imperial 

 artillery, with the rank of lieutenant in its second regiment. 



Though engaged in the duty of giving lessons, and in the compo- 

 sition of his works, he served with the Austrian army in Flanders at 

 the commencement of the wars arising from the French Revolution, 

 and distinguished himself on several occasions by his gallantry : he 

 was raised in i796 to the rank of major, and subsequently to that 

 of lieutenant-colonel ; and, with the dignity of a baron of the empire, 

 he was made Chevalier of the order of Maria Theresa. While thus 

 enjoying the prospect of attaining the highest military honours, he 

 was suddenly deprived of life, in the forty-eighth year of his age, by 

 the hand of an assassin. In 1802, while at Rusdorf, near Vienna, 

 having made an agreement with a miller of that place for the purchase 

 of a horse, he set out in company with the man, intending to proceed 

 to the stable where the horse was kept. On the way, while passing a 

 bridge, the colonel, who went first, was struck to the ground by a 

 blow on the head from behind, and before he could recover he was 

 despatched by repeated strokes:. his body, from which the murderer 

 took a watch, a purse of money, and a case of drawing instruments, 

 was then thrown into the Danube. Nine years afterwards a pro- 

 tractor, having on it the name of the unfortunate colonel, and which 

 was one of the instruments in the case, being found in the possession 

 of the miller, was the cause of detection. On being examined, the 

 man prevaricated, and having at length confessed his crime, he was 

 condemned and executed. 



Vega is known as a mathematician by several useful works : the 

 first of these is entitled ' Logarithmische-trigonometrische und andere 

 zum gebrauche der mathematik tafeln und formeln,' 8vo, Vienna, 1783. 

 Of the others, the principal are ' Vorlesungen liber die Mathematik,' 

 Vienna, 1786. This work contains treatises on arithmetic and algebra, 

 geometry, trigonometry and the infinitesimal calculus, mechanics, 

 hydrostatics and pneumatics ; and an edition was published at Vienna 

 in 1819. 'Thesaurus Logarithmorum completus ex arithmetica loga- 

 rithmica et ex trigonoinetria artificial! Adriani Vlacci collectus, etc.,' 

 Latin and German, Leipzig, 1794; 'Manuale logarithmico-trigonome- 

 tricum, matheseos studiosorum commodo in minorum Vlacci, Wolfii 

 aliarumque hujus generis tabularum logarithmico-trigouometricarum 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. VI. 



mendia passim quam plurimis scatentium, locum substitutum,' Leipzig, 

 1800. This is a second edition with additions. It is divided into 

 four parts : the first contains an explanation of the properties of loga- 

 rithms ; the second and third contain tables of the logarithms of 

 numbers, sines, tangents, &c. ; and the fourth is a treatise of plane 

 and spherical trigonometry. Besides the above works, Vega published 

 an introduction to chronology (Vienna, 1801); and in 1803 there was 

 published at the same place a tract on weights, measures, and coin, 

 which he had written. He was a member of several learned societies ; 

 among others, those of Gottingen, Erfurt, and Berlin. 



VEGE'TIUS, FLA' VIUS RENA'TUS, a Latin writer on the military 

 art, concerning whom nothing is known beyond what can be gathered 

 from his work itself. In the manuscripts the titles ' Vir Illustris,' 

 or ' Vir Illustris Comes,' are added to his name. He must have lived 

 and written about the year A.D. 385, in the reign of the emperor 

 Valentinian II., to whom the work is dedicated : it consists of five 

 books, and bears the title, 'Epitome Institutorum Rei Militaris.' 

 There are several expressions in the work which leave no doubt that 

 the author was a Christian. It is written in a plain and easy style, 

 and considering the late period to which it belongs, the language is 

 purer than might be expected. Vegetius himself appears to have had 

 a practical knowledge of the subject on which he wrote; but he 

 derived most of his materials from earlier writers, among whom he 

 mentions Cato Censorius, Cornelius Celsus, Frontinus, Paternus, and 

 the constitutions of Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian, concerning military 

 affairs. Considering the loss of earlier and better works on the 

 military regulations of the Romans, the work of Vegetius is a valuable 

 relic of antiquity; but it is to be regretted that the author did not 

 use sufficient discretion in keeping the different periods apart : for 

 he sometimes mixes indiscriminately institutions and regulations of 

 the early times with those existing in his own days. The first book 

 treats of the formation and training of soldiers; the second, of the 

 divisions and subdivisions of an army, and the arrangements of a 

 camp ; the third, of military discipline, the care to be taken of the 

 welfare of the soldiers, and of the drawing up of an army in battle 

 array : the fourth, of sieges, military engines, and of the mode of 

 attacking and defending fortified places ; and the fifth, on maritime 

 warfare. The first edition appeared without place or date, about the 

 year 1472. There is a good edition by P. Scriverius, with commen- 

 taries by G. Stewechius and F. Modius, Antwerp, 4to, 1607. It 

 contains also some other ancient works on military affairs. The best 

 edition is that of N. Schwebel (Bipont, 8vo, 1806), with notes by the 

 editor, and some of those of his predecessors. A German version of 

 Vegetius was printed as early as 1474, and one in French in 1488. 

 From the French version Caxton published in 1489 a translation by 

 desire of Henry VJI., 'The Fayt of Armes and Chyvalry from 

 Vegetius.' 



* VEIT, PHILIPP, was bora at Berlin on the 13th of February 

 1793. Having finished his preparatory studies in Dresden, and served 

 in the army of deliverance, he proceeded in 1815 to Rome, where he 

 joined with Cornelius, Overbeck, Schadow, and the other young German 

 painters who banded themselves together with the avowed purpose of 

 restoring German art to the religious purity and earnestness of 

 mediaeval times, and of whose proceedings and intentions we have 

 elsewhere spoken. [CORNELIUS; OVERBECK; SCHADOW; WILHELM; 

 SCHNORR.] The views on art which the young painters adopted were 

 those which had been enunciated by Frederick Schlegel, and which 

 Pbilipp Veit had to the fullest extent imbibed. Veit's mother, the 

 daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, had married Frederick Schlegel as her 

 second husband, and with him renounced the Protestant for the 

 Roman Catholic church, her son followed in their steps, and be- 

 came a devoted pupil of his step-father. More almost than any of 

 his colleagues in the art-movement Veit adopted the mystical and 

 symbolical method of treating religious subjects, and he did not, like 

 some of them, subsequently fall into a more realistic style. Of the 

 famous frescoes of the ' History of Joseph,' painted at the Villa Bar- 

 tholdy, Rome, by the associated artists, Veit executed the ' Seven 

 Years of Plenty' as a companion to Overbeck's 'Seven Years of 

 Dearth,' and its exuberant richness of treatment, fertility of invention, 

 and skilful composition and execution, won for it an amount of admi- 

 ration quite equal to that of its great rival. Subsequent works in- 

 cluding a scene from the Paradisi of Dante in the Massimi Villa, a 

 'Triumph of Religion,' &c. maintained his reputation, and he was 

 called to take the post of Director of the Stiidelsche Art Institute at 

 Frankfurt-am-Main. Here he produced a great number of important 

 works, and sustained the character of the Institute at a high point. His 

 most celebrated work is the large fresco at the Institute representing 

 ' Christianity bringing the Fine Arts to Germany,' with heroic-sized 

 figures on either side of Germaiiia and Italia. This is one of the most 

 ambitious pictures of the new school of German religious art, and 

 though possessing the coldness and ambiguitj of most symbolical 

 designs is admitted on all hands to display great mental power, beauty 

 of drawing and composition, and very considerable technical skill; 

 and as a whole to be grand and impressive in effect. Other works are 

 'The two Maries at the Sepulchre;' St. George,' in the church at 

 Beusheim, and many other scriptural, historical, and allegorical pieces, 

 and numerous portraits. Lithographic prints have been published 

 of the greater portion of his chief works. As has been seen, Veit is a 



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