897 



ZACH, BARON VON. 



ZACH, BARON VON. 



693 



of Juan de Yriarte induced his nephews to try their fortunes in the 

 mother-country. 



BKBNARDO YRIARTE, the eldest, appears to have been born about 

 1734. He rose to be a member of the Council of State, and of the 

 Council of the Indies, and was created a knight of the order of 

 Charles III. He was a member of the Royal Academy of St. Ferdi- 

 nand, and nominated its patron by Charles IV. in March 1792. When 

 the French took possession of Spain in 1808, Bernardo Yriarte was 

 appointed a councillor of state by Joseph Bonaparte. On the return 

 of Ferdinand VII., Yriarte fled to France, and died at Bordeaux on the 

 llth of July 1814. 



DOMINGO YRIARTE, the second brother, was born in 1746, and 

 entered the diplomatic service at an early age. After a prolonged 

 residence, first at Vienna, and then at Paris, as secretary to the 

 embassy and charge" d'affaires, he was sent as minister plenipotentiary 

 to the king and republic of Poland. On the 22nd of July 1795 he 

 signed, along with Barthe'lemy, the peace concluded at Bale between 

 the king of Spain and the French republic. Returning thence to 

 Spain in bad health, he died at Girona on the 22nd of November 

 of the samo year, just after he had been appointed ambassador to 

 France. 



TOMAS YEIARTR, the youngest, but most distinguished of the 

 brothers, was born about 1750. Under the direction of his uncle 

 Juan he made rapid progress in the ancient and modern languages, 

 and was appointed chief archivist in the office of the principal secre- 

 tary of state. This appointment left him ample leisure for literary 

 pursuits, and the approbation \yhich his first essays met with procured 

 for him the editorship of the ' Madrid Mercury." This journal, which 

 was previously little more than a translation of the ' Hague Gazette,' 

 became in his hands a useful and amusing publication. 



In 1769 a new theatre was opened in Madrid ; and in the course of 

 that and the three succeeding years a number of translations from the 

 French drama by Yriarte were performed on its boards with consider- 

 able success. In 1778 an original comedy by Yriarte, ' El Sefiorito 

 mimado ' (The Spoiled Child), was favourably received by the Madrid 

 public. In 1779 a poem in five books, entitled ' La Musica,' appeared 

 from the pen of Yriarte ; it is upon this work and his fables that his 



reputation is most likely to rest. ' La Musica ' has run through five 

 editions, and has been translated into most European languages. In 

 1781 he was a competitor for the prize awarded to the best idyl by 

 the Spanish Academy, but the poem of Juan Melendez Valdez was 

 preferred. Yriarte vented his spleen in a severe criticism of his rival's 

 work in the ' Mercury.' ' Fabulas Literarias ' was published in 1782. 

 Of these fables Bouterweck remarks that their style ia pure, and their 

 versification elegant, and that they are characterised by. a graceful 

 naivetd that reminds the reader of Fontaine, but without conveying 

 any suspicion of imitation. In addition to these works Yriarte pub- 

 lished epistles in verse, sonnets, critical miscellanies, a translation in 

 verse of the first four books of the ' ^Eneid,' and of Horace's ' Art of 

 Poetry.' He published a collection of his works in 1782, and an 

 enlarged edition in 1787. His taste for French literature, or some 

 other cause, occasioned suspicions of his orthodoxy; in 1786 he was 

 subjected to an examination by the Inquisition, and his replies were 

 so little satisfactory that he was laid under a quasi arrest confined, 

 within the walls of the city. Ultimately he was allowed to do penance 

 privately, and was absolved. He did not long survive : he was at- 

 tacked by epilepsy, and died of an inflammatory attack in 1790 or 

 1791. 



A painter of the name of Yriarte, who was born in Biscay in 1635, 

 and who died at Seville in 1685, was considered the best landscape- 

 painter of his age. 



FRANCISCO DIECO DE AINSAY YRIARTE, a native of Huesca, published 

 in 1612, ' Translacion de las Reliquias de San Orencio, Obispo de Aux ; ' 

 and in 1619, ' Fundacion, Eccelencias, Grandezas, &c., de la antiquisima 

 Ciudad de Huesca.' Antonio mentions that he was master of the 

 grammar-school of Huesca, and died young, but without mentioning 

 the year of his death. 



(Noticia de la Vida y Literatura de Don Juan de Yriarte, prefixed 

 to the collection of his works published at Madrid in 1774 ; the Prefaces 

 to the Collected Works of Tornas de Yriarte, published at Madrid in 

 1787; Antonio, Bibliotheca de Hispania Nova ; Biographie Universelle. 

 Pignatelli published a eulogistic Narrative, and Joly a Notice of the 

 Life of Tomas de Yriarte, in the Repertoire de Littcrature, neither of 

 which we have seen.) 



VACH, FRANCIS XAVIER, BARON VON, an eminent astronomer, 

 " director of the Ducal Observatory at Seeberg, was born at Pesth 

 in Hungary, on the 14th of June 1754. He was a member of a noble 

 and distinguished family, and' was encouraged from his childhood in 

 an ardent pursuit after knowledge, which, aided by a strong constitu- 

 tion and great mental power, he continued to the day of his death. 

 The striking phenomenon of the transit of Venus over the disc of the 

 sun in 1769 a memorable event, which made more than one important 

 convert to the science of astronomy together with the appearance of 

 a comet in the same year, directed his attention towards that science 

 and the branches of knowledge most connected with it. Having com- 

 pleted his education, he was anxious to visit the various seats of learn- 

 ing and science in other countries, and, after travelling with this view 

 on the continent of Europe, he arrived in England, and was received 

 in a flattering manner by George O'Brien Wyndham, third Earl of 

 Egremont, and other distinguished persons. He continued to reside 

 here for several years, and it was thus that he became critically 

 acquainted with the language, literature, and state of science in this 

 country. He also acquired for our manners and institutions an 

 attachment which continued throughout his life. 



After his return to Germany, a permament employment being 

 desirable, Von Zach prevailed on the reigning Duke of Saxe-Gotha to 

 erect a substantial observatory for him in 1786 at Seeberg, where a 

 series of observations, a Catalogue of 381 Stars, a Catalogue of 1830 

 Zodiacal Stars, his Solar Tables, and those on Nutation and Aberra- 

 tion, to which we shall return, evinced an indefatigable observer and 

 able computer, and placed his name in the first rank of German astrono- 

 mers. He became secretary to an association of them for the purpose 

 of searching for a planet between Mars and Jupiter, which his own 

 hypothetical computations had mainly led them to form. When 

 the new planet Ceres was lost sight of (after its first discovery, quite 

 in accordance with his views, though not by a member of the asso- 

 ciation) he was so persuaded of its planetary rather than cometary 

 nature, that he persisted in searching for it, till his endeavours were 

 crowned with success, and he thereby laid the foundation for detecting 

 the three other small planets which were added to the system in the 

 early part of the century. This was accomplished while he was also 

 completing a map of Thuringia, from an actual survey, for the King 

 of Prussia. These labours however had not altogether absorbed his 

 active mind. Struck with the advantages of a correspondence which 

 might in some degree unite the astronomers and mathematicians of 

 all countries, he determined, in 1798, to edit an Ephemeris at Weimar, 

 which in a couple of years ripened into the well-known periodical 

 work entitled 'Monatliche Correspondenz.' This valuable journal 

 contained records of the progress of astronomy, derived from the 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. VI. 



extensive and laborious correspondence of the editor with the prin- 

 cipal astronomers of Europe, which he continued to maintain through- 

 out his long life, and contributed more than any other publication to 

 the great impulse given for many years to the cultivation of astrono- 

 mical science in -Germany. 



In the early part of the present century, before astronomers had 

 devised any general method having for its object to facilitate the 

 reduction of observations of the heavenly bodies, by combining 

 together in one homogeneous system of calculation, as far as was 

 practicable, the separate processes for determining the various inequali- 

 ties which affect their apparent positions, Von Zach took a useful 

 and honourable part in the production of tables designed to abbreviate 

 the toilsome calculations attendant on this operation of reduction. In 

 1807 he produced tables to facilitate the computation of aberration 

 and nutation. They were attached to a catalogue of 1830 zodiacal 

 stars ; but their application was confined to 494 of the principal stars 

 in the catalogue. This number however was equal to that in the only 

 two sets of tables for the purpose that were or had been produced by 

 other astronomers, those of the French in the ' Connoissance dea 

 Temps,' and those of Cagnoli, published at Modena simultaneously 

 with his own. In 1812 Von Zach gave an important extension to his 

 previous labours by the publication of similar tables adapted to a 

 catalogue of 1440 stars. But his tables were not distinguished from 

 those of his predecessors and contemporaries by supplying the omis- 

 sion, common to them all, of the solar nutation a defect which it was 

 reserved for the refinement of a subsequent period to remedy. 



In the year 1813 he removed to the south of France, and subse- 

 quently accompanied the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha into Italy, where he 

 made numerous celestial observations, and settled for some years in a 

 delightful villa in the eastern suburb of Genoa. Here his first care 

 was to raise a small observatory, and to re-commence publishing his 

 ' Correspondence,' which had been intermitted. In order that it 

 might be still more widely available than before, he now printed_it in 

 the French language, and gave considerable extension to its objects. 

 In its new form it embraced astronomy, geodesy and geography, 

 hydrography, and statistics ; and although conducted with the lively 

 discursive freedom characteristic of Von Zach, the discussions it 

 includes lead to many points of the most abstruse and transcendental 

 inquiry ; and, the editor being fully aware himself of the necessity of 

 explicit detail on such subjects, it had the merit of submitting ^the 

 whole type of mathematical analysis in every case of its application, 

 instead of abruptly giving mere conclusions the fault of so many 

 scientific journals. The astronomical and geodetical desiderata of 

 seamen and surveyors were also frou time to time carefully provided. ^ 



In 1814 Baron Von Zach published hia 'Attraction des Montagues, 



3M 



