OPIE 



OPITZ 



611 



bright light e.g. a good gas-burner on a level 

 with his eye by the side of his head. The observer 

 sits opposite him, and placing the mirror close to 

 his own eye, and about 18 inches from the eye to 

 be examined, rellects the light upon the latter, 

 while he looks at it through the hole. The pupil 

 in a healthy eye appears of a bright red or orange 

 instead of its usual deep black. In short-sighted 

 and long sighted eyes, but not in normal ones, the 

 vessels of the retina, the entrance of the optic 

 nerve, &c. can be more or less distinctly seen, and 

 by their movements the deviation from the normal 

 refraction can roughly be estimated. Opacities in 

 the lens (Cataract, q.v. ) or vitreous humour appear 

 black, and are discovered by this method more 

 certainly and easily than by any other. The details 

 of the retina, choroid, &c. (or fumtus) can be seen 

 in two different ways. In the indirect met/tod the 

 observer, seated as above described, holds the 2J- 

 inch convex lens al>out 3 inches from the eye under 

 examination, between it and his own, when a clear 

 real image of part of the fundus, inverted and 

 magnified about four diameters, appeal's in the 

 red light of the pupil. In the direct method the 

 observing eye must be placed as close to the 

 observed as the intervention of the mirror will 

 allow, when a virtual image of a smaller part of the 

 fundus is seen, but erect and magnitied aoout four- 

 teen diameters. The fundus appears of an orange 

 or red colour, varying much in different individuals ; 

 the blood-vessels of the retina are seen as darker 

 red lines coursing over it. The entrance of the 

 optic nerve, commonly called the dine, from which 

 these vessels diverge, appears as a round area of 

 a much paler colour. The ophthalmoscope has 

 revolutionised this department of medicine, as most 

 of the deeper affections of the eye, particularly of 

 the optic nerve, choroid, and retina, were before 

 only recognisable after the eyeball was removed 

 from the body. Some of these affections have, 

 moreover, important relations to general diseases 

 e.g. Bright s disease, diabetes, syphilis, diseases 

 of the brain and spinal cord and general medicine 

 has benefited accordingly. The ophthalmoscope 

 has also much facilitated the discovery and correc- 

 tion of errors of refraction (short- and long-sighted- 

 ness, Astigmatism, q.v. ; and see under EYE). 



Opie, JOHN-, R.A., was born at the village of 

 St Agnes, 7 miles from Truro, Cornwall, in May 

 1701. His father, a master-carpenter, wished him 

 to follow the same trade, but his bias for art 

 was strong ; and his attempts at portrait-painting 

 secured the friendly help of I>r Wolcot ( ' Peter 

 Pindar'). In 1780 he WAS taken to London by 

 Dr Wolcot, and immediately came to be acknow- 

 ledged by the fashionable world as the ' Cornish 

 Wonder. This tide of good-fortune soon ebbed, 

 J>iit not before Opie had realised a moderate com- 

 petency. The loss of popular favour, however, 

 only served to bring out Opie's manly independ- 

 ence anil strong love of art, anil he calmly entered 

 on that department of painting which was then 

 regarded as the only style of high art, namely, 

 historical or scriptural subjects, executed on a 

 large scale. His pencil was employed by Boydell 

 in his well-meant and magnificent scheme to elevate 

 British art ; he also painted a numl>er of works 

 in the illustration of Howyer's English History, 

 Macklin's Poets and Biblical Gallery, and other 

 similar undertakings. His pictures of the 'Murder 

 of James I. of Scotland,' ' The Slaughter of Rizzio,' 

 'Jephtha's Vow,' 'Presentation in the Temple,' 

 'Arthur and Hubert," ISelisarius.'and 'Juliet in the 

 Garden ' are hi most noted works. Opie was 

 elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 

 178H, and Academician in the following year. He 

 wrote the 'Life of Reynolds' in Dr Wolcot's 

 edition of Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, and 



An Inquiry into the Requisite Cultivation of the Fine 

 Arts in Britain ; and delivered lectures on Art at 

 the Royal Institution. Opie was twice married. 

 He obtained a divorce from his first wife ; his 

 second was the novelist. He died April 9, 1807, 

 and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's, near 

 the grave of Reynolds. AMELIA OPIE, daughter 

 of a Norwich physician, Dr Alderson, was born 

 in 1769, and while very young wrote songs and 

 tragedies, and was acquainted with Godwin, 

 Mrs Inchbald, Mrs Siddons, and much of the 

 literary society of the time. She was married to 

 Opie in 1798. In 1801 her first novel, Father and 

 Daughter, appeared ; the following year, a volume 

 of poems. Adeline Mowbray and Simple Tales 

 were her next works. On her husband's death 

 she returned to Norwich, and published his lectures 

 with a memoir prefixed. She wrote also Temper, 

 Tales of Real Life, Valentine's Ere, Talcs of the 

 Heart, and Madeline. Having been long acquainted 

 with the Gurneys, Mrs Opie became a Quaker in 

 1825, anil afterwards published Illustrations in 

 Lying, Detraction Displayed, and articles in period- 

 icals, but no more novels. She died at Norwich, 

 2d Decemlier 1853. See her Memoirs by Miss 

 Brightwell ( 1854), and Miss Thackeray's Book of 



Opitz. MARTIN, German poet, born on 23d 

 December 1597, at Bunzlau on the Bober, in 

 Silesia, who for a century or more after his death 

 was extravagantly praised as the ' Swan of Bober,' 

 the ' Swan of Silesia,' the ' Father and Regenerator 

 of German poetry.' This inflated reputation he 

 had earned by toadying to the princes of Germany,. 

 by writing adulatory poems in their honour, by 

 praising third and fourth rate poetasters, who 

 recompensed him in kind. Although himself a* 

 Protestant, he worked and wrote for one Count) 

 Hannibal von Dohna, a cruel persecutor of the 

 Protestants ; but then Count Dohna helped him to 

 get (1628) from the emperor a patent of nbility, 

 and Ferdinand II. had with his imperial hand 

 previously (1625) crowned him with the laurel 

 crown of the poet recognitions of his talent that 

 Opitz valued above all tilings. He was summoned 

 (1622) by Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, 

 to fill the chair of Philosophy and Polite Literature 

 at Weissenburg ; but at the year's end was so home- 

 sick, so wearied of the rude, martial people, and so 

 famished through lack of the kind words of his 

 friends, that he returned to Germany. Then he 

 curried favour successively with the Duke of Lieg- 

 nitz (1624), Count von Dohna (1626), and King 

 Ladislaus IV. of Poland (1634), who made him his 

 secretary and historiographer of Poland. But fate 

 was against him : in 1620 he had fled from Heidel- 

 berg to Holland to escape war and the plague j now 

 in Danzig, where he was living, he caught the 

 plague from a beggar, to whom he gave a coin in 

 the street, and died 20th August 1639. The poems 

 Opitz wrote are like his ordering of his life, cal- 

 culated : they owe their origin to the under- 

 standing, have no imagination, and little feeling, 

 and are cold, formal, pedantic. The fact is, Opitz, 

 originally a schoolmaster, schoolmastered poetry 

 into lifeless imitation of pseudo-classic models. 

 Poetry must, he propounded, in his most original 

 work. Buck von aer tetitsc/ien Poeterei ( 1624 ; new 

 ed. 1876), teach and instruct as well as please. 

 Hence his favourite pieces are purely didactic 

 Trostgedicht in Widerwitrtigkeit des Kriegs, Zlatna, 

 oder von der liufie des Gemuths, Vielgut oder vom 

 wahren Gluck, Vesuvius, and others such as the 

 ' good boy ' writes who wishes to please a pedantic 

 master. Vet Opitz is entitled to the credit of 

 having championed the use of his mother-tongue 

 as against Latin, and of having actually used it. 

 He also insisted upon the difference between the 



