LEWIS, MATTHEW QREaOHY. 



LEYDEN, LUCAS VAN. 



Mount Sinai' (18M), has h quit* reeoTered hii old richneu of colour, 

 though the Ust work U a man-el of executive akill. 



About the time that Mr. Lewis began to paint in water-colour* in 

 10 much more cold a manner than hie wout, he was applying himself 

 with great tiilig. oce to oil-painting, and he sent to the Royal Academy 

 exhibition of 1855 a picture under the title 'An Armenian Lady- 

 Cairo,' which more than rivalled in minute finish the works of the 

 pra-Kaphaelite painters, while it had none of their quaintnesa or want 

 of atmosphere. To the exhibition of 1SJ6 he contributed 'The 

 Greeting in the Desert, Egypt,' and a ' Street Scene in Cairo, near 

 the Babel Luk.' 



Mr. Lewis's remarkable technical (kill has not been attained with- 

 out diligent study of the great masters, s well as of nature. Some 

 sixty odd of his elaborate copies in water-colours of the great Italian 

 and Spanish painters were, with wise liberality, purchased by the 

 Scottish Academy for the instruction of the students; and the 

 Academy elected him an honorary member. In 1855 the Society of 

 Painters in Water-Colours elected Mr. Lewis their President, the 

 highest professional honour a water-colour painter can receive. 



LKWIS, MATTHEW GREGORY, a writer of novels, poems, and 

 dramatic pieces, was born at London on the 9th of July 1775. His 

 father was deputy secretary-at-war, and was connected with many 

 families of rank and wealth ; his mother was a daughter of Sir 

 Thomas Sewell, master of the roll*. Lewis studied at Christ church, 

 Oxford, and afterwards lived for some time in Germany ; there he 

 became acquainted with Gothe and his followers, and imbibed the 

 mysterious and tragic spirit of which his writings are full. Previous 

 to his residence in Germany, when only sixteen years old, he wrote a 

 successful comedy, called ' The East Indian.' The novel by which he 

 is chit fly known, ' The Monk,' was published in 1794, when he was in 

 his twentieth year. In the skilful employment of supernatural and 

 myi-terious agencies, and the display of horror?, it is perhaps unrivalled 

 in the English language. A considerable portion of its details are 

 devoted to the operations of the lustful passions on the character of a 

 man violent and unscrupulous in his nature, but under the restraint 

 of monastic vows. The young novelist drew the character broadly 

 and offensively ; and the singular lubricity of a performance, calcu- 

 lated by its genius and adaptation to the taste of novel readers to be 

 extensively circulated, excited much indignation. It is understood 

 that the Society for the Suppression of Vice applied to the attorney- 

 general to take legal steps against Lewis. These attacks only swelled 

 the author's fame. At that time it was rather favourable to the 

 success of a work of genius that its morality was not perfectly pure, 

 and Lewis bad the satisfaction of being a much courted and slightly 

 abhorred man. His character, as represented in his published letters, 

 is singularly at variance with that which might be derived from the 

 study of his works. He appears to have been good-hearted, simple, 

 affectionate, and not addicted to any vice. He bad a very difficult 

 part to maintain in his intercourse with his parents, his mother having, 

 on account of her levities, long been separated from her husband. 

 Although he could not vindicate her conduct, he gave her his kindest 

 sympathies. It is a singular circumstance in his life, that, after having 

 lived for some time on bad terms with his father, the latter dying in 

 a temper which precluded the son from any hope of succession, yet 

 left him, with slight exceptions, his whole fortune. This event made 

 Lewis a rich West India proprietor. He was very kind to his slaves, 

 and his occasional visits to his estates in Jamaica were welcomed as 

 occasions of public rejoicing both among his own slaves and those in 

 the neighbourhood of his estates. His poetical pieces, including 

 ' Alonzo the Brave,' ' Bill Jones,' Ac., are well known ; they are distin- 

 guished by the fluency of their versification, and the distinctness and 

 power with which they narrate horrible and tragical incidents. There 

 is however in all his writings a tone of barbarous and exaggerated 

 taste. In 1812 be introduced to the stage the drama of 'Timour the 

 Tartar,' which is said to have had much influence in creating the taste 

 for gorgeous pageants, from which the British stage has not yet 

 relieved itself. Lewis died at sea, on the 14th of May 1818, when on 

 the way home from a visit to bis Jamaica estates. His ' Residence in 

 the West Indies ' has been reprinted in Murray's ' Home and Colonial 

 Library.' (Life and Corrttpondence of Malttuw Oregon/ Lewii, 8vo, 

 London, 1839.) 



LBYBOURN, WILLIAM, a mathematician of the 17th century. 

 The date of his birth is unknown, but Dr. Hutton supposes his death 

 to have happened about the year 1690. He was originally a printer 

 in London, and published several of the works of Samuel Foster, the 

 Urtsbam professor of astronomy. Subsequently ho became an author 

 himself, and appears to have attained to considerable eminence as a 

 practical mathematician. Among his published works are 'Arith- 

 metic,' 1649; 'The Art of Numbering with Napier's Bones,' 1687; 

 'Complete Surveyor,' 1653; 'Geometrical Exercises,' 1669; 'Art of 

 Dialling,' 1687; ' Mathematical Recreations,' 1694 ; ' Panarithmalogia, 

 or Trader's Guide,' 1698; ' Cunus Mathematicus,' comprising Arith- 

 metic, Geometry, Cosmography, Astronomy, Navigation, and Trigo- 

 nometry, foL, 1K90. He also edited the works of Gunter. 



LKYUEN, JOHN, M.D., was bprn on the 8th of September 1775, 

 at Denbolm, a vilhge on the banks of the Teviot, in the parish of 

 Cavers and county of Roxburgh. His parents, who were engaged in 

 fuming, gave him as good an education aa their means allowed, After 



ing great progress in his studies, he was sent to Edinburgh in 1790, 

 the view of studying for the Church, lie was highly distin- 



maki 

 with 



guished at college by his diligence and attainment*, and made con- 

 siderable progress in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian, and acquired 

 also the French, Spanish, Italian and German, as well as the Greek 

 and Latin languages. In 1798 he was ordained as a minister in the 

 Presbyterian Church; but he never obtained any popularity as a 

 preacher, and finding that he was not likely to succeed in that pro- 

 fession, be applied himself to the study of medicine, and was appointed 

 in 1802 as assistant-surgeon iu the East India Company's service. 



In 1808 he arrived at Madrav, and immediately directed bis attention 

 to the study of the eastern languages. In addition to the Sanscrit, 

 Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani languages, he made himself master of 

 many of the languages spoken in the Deccan, and obtained an extensive 

 knowledge of the Malay and other kindred tongues. During his 

 residence in India he was promoted from the office of surgeon to the 

 professorship of Hindustani in Fort William College ; and shortly 

 afterwards to the office of judge of the Twenty-four Pargunnahs of 

 Calcutta. In 1809 he was appointed one of tho commissioners of the 

 Court of Requests in Calcutta ; and in the following year to the still 

 more profitable situation of Assay-Master at the Calcutta Mint. Ha 

 accompanied Lord Minto in the expedition against Java in 1811, and 

 died in that island on the 23th of August, in the thirty-sixth year of 

 his age. 



Leyden did not publish much upon the eastern languages, but what 

 he has written bears evidence to the extent of his knowledge. His 

 treatise ' On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese 

 Nations,' published in the tenth volume of the ' Asiatic Researches,' 

 contains an investigation of the origin and descent of the various 

 tribes that inhabit the Malay peninsula and islands, and a comparison 

 of their languages and customs; and his observations ' Cu the Uoshe- 

 niah Sect,' published in the eleventh volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' 

 gives an account of an heretical sect among the Afghans, which appears 

 to have arisen shortly before the accession of Akbar. His translation 

 of the ' Malay Annals ' was published after his death by hia friend Sir 

 Stamford Raffles ; and bis manuscripts contained many valuable trea- 

 tises ou the eastern languages, translations from Sanscrit, Arabic, and 

 Persian works, and several grammars of different languages, particu- 

 larly one of the Malay and another of the Prakrit. 



Leyden was an ardent admirer of poetry, and published many 

 poems at various times, which were collected and published after 

 his death by the Rev. James Morton, under the title of 'Poetical 

 Remains of the late Dr. John Leyden,' Loud., 1819. He also con- 

 tributed numerous pieces to Scott's 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish 

 Border,' he having accumulated in his youth an amazing store of the 

 ballad literature of his native country, and edited the ' Complaint of 

 Scotland,' an ancient political tract in the Scottish language, as well 

 as ' Scottish Descriptive Poems.' He waa the author of ' A Historical 

 and Philosophical Sketch of the Discoveries and Settlements of the 

 Europeans in Northern and Western Africa, at the close of the 

 eighteenth century ; ' of which an enlarged edition waa published by 

 Mr. H. Murray in 1818. 



(Morton, Memoirt of Dr. Leyden's Life, prefixed to the ' Poetical 

 Remains of the late Dr. J. Leyden,' and Essay on the Life of Leyden, 

 in 'Scott's Miscellaneous Works.' 



LEYDEN, LUCAS VAN, a very celebrated old Dutch painter and 

 engraver, was born at Leyden in 1494. He was first instructed in the 

 arts by Hugh Jacobze, his father; afterwards by Cornells Engel- 

 brochtsz ; and he distinguished himself even as a boy by bis engra- 

 vings, and was a famous painter as early as his twelfth year. He 

 painted in distemper a picture of St. Hubert, iu 1506, for a citizen 

 of Leyden of the name of Lokhorst, who was so astonished and 

 gratified at the excellence of the work, that he paid him twelve gold 

 pieces for it, one for each year of his age ; at that time doubtless a 

 very large sum for a picture. Some of Lucas's early engravings are 

 highly prized by print-collectors, and accounted among tho greatest 

 rarities of their class ; they owe their value however much more to 

 their time and the peculiar circumstances of their origin, than to any 

 intrinsic merit they may have. They are better as engravings than 

 as works of art. Vacari speaks highly of the prints of Luca d'Olluuda, 

 as he is called by the Italians. He excelled in aerial perspective, but 

 he was far surpassed by his two contemporaries, Albert Durer and 

 Marcautonio incorrectness of drawing by the latter, and iu execu- 

 tion and in drawing by the former. Albert Durer visited Lucas at 

 Antwerp in 1621, and he makes the following note in his journal : " I 

 was invited to dinner by master Lucas, who engraves in copper : he 

 is a little man, and is a native of Leyden." This visit was paid during 

 a journey which Lucas made through Zealand, Flanders, and Brabant 

 for the sake of becoming acquainted with and seeing the works of 

 their various painters. The entry above quoted from the pocket- 

 book of Albert Durer, fixes the date of this journey six years earlier 

 than the account of Van Mander, who says that Lucas made it when 

 he was about thirty-three years of age, which, according to his own 

 date of Lucas's birth, 1494, would be in 1527. 



Lucas, who was well to do in worldly matters, fitted up a small 

 vessel or sloop expressly for this journey ; and at Middelburg, where 

 he entertained tho painters of the place with a feast which cost him 

 sixty florins, he persuaded Jan de Mabuie to join him, and they 



