POLISHING 



POLITICAL ECONOMY 



287 



Tpinistry, in which capacity he promulgated the 

 tatal ordonnances that cost Charles X. his throne. 

 He then attempted to flee, but was captured at 

 Granville on the 15th of August, was tried, and 

 condemned to imprisonment for life in the castle of 

 Ham, but was set at liberty by the amnesty of 

 1836. He took up his residence in England, but 

 died at St Germain, 2d March 1847. He was a 

 puzzle-headed man ; ' a mere idiot ' Guizot called 

 him to Bishop Wilberforce. His son, Prince 

 Armand (1817-90), was a leading monarchist. 



Polishing. See FRENCH POLISHING ; also 

 DIAMOND, GLASS, GRANITE, &c. 



Polishing Slate, a mineral composed chiefly 

 of silica, with a little alumina, lime, oxide of iron, 

 and water ; white, yellowish white, or yellow ; and 

 of specific gravity about half that of water. It is 

 used for polishing glass, marble, and metals. 



Politian. ANGELO POLIZIANO (Latinised 

 Politiantu) was born at Montepulciano in Tus- 

 cany, on the 14th July 1454. His real name was 

 Ambrogini, but, in accordance with a common 

 practice at the Renaissance, he early called himself 

 by the Latinised form of his native town, which 

 Italianised into Poliziano is the name by which he 

 i- known in his own country. His father, Bene- 

 detto Ambrogini, a jurist of some distinction, was 

 assassinated by certain of his fellow-citizens, and 

 left his widow and five children so scantily pro- 

 vided for that, even after Angelo the eldest had 

 given the most signal proofs of his genius, he was 

 on the point of being taken from his studies and 

 put to a trade. At the age of ten he was sent 

 to Florence, then under Lorenzo de' Medici, 

 the brilliant centre of the Italian Renaissance. 

 Here he had as his teachers the most famous 

 scholars of his time, the Greeks Argyropoulos and 

 Kallistos, and the Italians Landino and Ficino. 

 His progress in the ancient languages, the special 

 studies of the period, was extraordinary even in 

 that age of precocious talents. By his sixteenth 

 year he wrote epigrams in Latin and Greek that 

 excited the wonder of his teachers. At seventeen 

 he began the translation of the Iliad into Latin 

 hexameters, a work which it had l>een the ambition 

 of all the Italian humanists to achieve. The first 

 book had already been translated by another 

 scholar, and Politian at different peruxls carried 

 on the work to the end of the fifth. By his success 

 with the second book he became known as the 

 ' Homeric vouth,' and attracted the attention of 

 the great Lorenzo himself, who now stood his firm 

 friend and patron. Thus secure of a settled position 

 his life was thenceforward devoted to incessant 

 study, and he was soon recognised as the prince of 

 Italian scholars, and the most remarkable literary 

 genius of his time. At the age of thirty he became 

 professor of Greek and Latin in the university of 

 Florence, and the fame of his prelections drew 

 students from every part of Europe, among whom, 

 by reason of their own services to learning, Reuch- 

 lin, Grocyn, and Linacre may be specially mentioned. 

 I'ulit inn was also entrusted with the education of 

 Lorenzo's sons, Piero and Giovanni (afterwards 

 I*o X. ) ; but their mother Clarice, who had ex- 

 cellent reasons for donbting the great scholar's 

 fitness to be the director of her boys, insisted on 

 his being removed from their immediate superin- 

 tendence. In such occupation, varied by occa- 

 sional visits to other towns of Italy, Politian lived 

 at Fiesole in a villa assigned to him by Lorenzo, 

 whose familiar intercourse he daily enjoyed. The 

 death of that prince in 1492 was the most serious 

 trial of his life, and he mourned his death in a 

 Latin elegy, which has been described as unique 

 alike in form and feeling in modern Latin poetry. 

 Two years later he himself died during the tern- 



porary supremacy of Savonarola, whose religious 

 zeal was directed against every principle of that 

 pagan revival which it had been the life's work of 

 Lorenzo and Politian to forward. Politian's epi- 

 taph on his tomb in San Marco, at Florence, is so 

 entirely in the ironical and sceptical spirit of that 

 movement of which he was so brilliant a repre- 

 sentative that it fitly closes any account of him- 

 self. It is as follows : ' Politian lies in this grave, 

 the angel who had one head and, what is new, 

 three tongues." 



Politian has the double distinction of being both 

 a scholar of the first rank and a poet of high merit 

 alike in Latin and in his mother tongue. Of his 

 industry as a scholar his translations of classical 

 authors ( Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates, Galen, 

 Plato's Churmides, to mention a few of the long 

 series) are ample evidence, while his edition of the 

 Pandects of Justinian is regarded by modern 

 scholars as excellent even when tried by the latest 

 tests. His original works in Latin fill a thick and 

 closely-printed quarto, half of which is made up 

 of twelve books of letters, and the rest witli mis- 

 cellanies in prose and verse. Among Neo-Latin 

 poets Politian holds perhaps the first place, his 

 peculiar distinction being that, while he is not 

 careful of classical purity, he has charged his verse 

 with his own individual thought and feeling. In 

 Italian literature also he takes a high rank, both 

 in virtue of his own poetic production and as 

 having at a critical period given an impulse to the 

 cultivation of the Italian language. Before him 

 the Italian humanists regarded their native tongue 

 simply as a bastard Latin, which might serve the 

 needs of the people, but was l>eneath the attention 

 of scholars. The weight of Politian's name and 

 example moved them to think differently, and 

 thenceforward Italian was secure of a place among 

 the other modern literatures. Of his productions 

 in Italian his Orfeo deserves special mention as 

 having been the first secular drama in the language. 

 As to his personal character, Politian had in full 

 measure the two great blemishes of the scholars of 

 the Revival of Letters, and notably those of Italy. 

 He was addicted to the lowest forms of vice, and 

 he knew no bounds to his abuse of those who had 

 the ill-fortune to offend him. 



See Opera Ami. Pohtiani ( Florence, 1499) ; Le Stanze, 

 VOrfeo e le Rime di Messer Any. Ambroffini, illustrate 

 da Oiorui Carducci ( Florence, 1863 ). For accounts of 

 Politian, see lioscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici ; 3. A. 

 Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. ; Von Reuinont, 

 Lorenzo de 1 Medici ( vol. ii. Eng. trans. 1876 ). 



Political Economy is variously defined. 

 According to the definition most generally accepted 

 in England, it is the science which is concerned 

 with the production, distribution, and exchange 

 of wealth. In Professor Marshall's Principles of 

 Economics it is defined as ' a study of man's 

 actions in the ordinary business of life ; it inquires 

 how he gets his income, and how he spends it.' 

 The name ' Political Economy ' dates only from 

 1615, having been first used (in this special sense, 

 as distinguished from domestic economy and moral 

 economy and from political theory) by Montchr6- 

 tien de Vatteville in his Traiti de I'ficonomie 

 Politique. 



The science of political economy is a branch of 

 the study of man. Man is a creature with many 

 needs, which he seeks to satisfy by applying his 

 labour to the nature by which he is surrounded. 

 These needs are not a fixed quantity, but grow 

 and change With the development of society ; and 

 man's devices for their satisfaction receive a corre- 

 sponding development. In the growth of these 

 needs and of the devices to satisfy them we can 

 trace the economic development of the human 

 race. Political economy may be regarded as the 



