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LUTHER, MARTIN. 



LYCURGUS. 



982 



volent purpose, and succeeded in restoring peace to that family. 

 W hile at Eisleben he preached four times, and also revised a plan of 

 regulations concerning the ecclesiastical discipline of that little state. 

 He had been for some time in a very precarious state of health : on the 

 l"th of February he felt very ill and weak, laid himself on a couch, 

 spoke of his approaching death, for which he appeared quite prepared, 

 and recommended his soul to Jesus. He grew worse in the evening. 

 Count Albrecht of Mansfeld and his counters and several medical men 

 attended him during his last hours. His old friend Dr. Jonas having 

 asked him : " Reverend father, do you die with a firm conviction of 

 the faith you have taught ?" Luther in a distinct voice replied "Yes," 

 and soon after breathed his last. His body was carried to Wittenberg, 

 where he was buried with great honours. Shortly before his death he 

 wrote several affectionate letters to his wife, who had remained at Wit- 

 tenberg with her children. He left her by his will a house which he 

 had purchased, as well as a small estate at Zeilsdoi f, charging her to pay 

 his debts, which amounted to 450 florins : and he left her also a few 

 valuable trinkets and other moveables, worth about 1000 florins. "I 

 leave," he wrote, " no ready cash or hidden treasure, as I have had no 

 other income but my salary and a few presents, and yet have managed 

 to keep an establishment and purchase property." 



Luther's works, which are multifarious and voluminous, partly in 

 Latin and partly in German, have been repeatedly published : a complete 

 edition was published at Erlangen in 26 vols. 12mo, 1826-33. Among 

 his works, those of most interest to the general reader are his ' Table 

 Talk' (" Tischreden "), his familiar letters, and his sermons. Luther 

 ranks high among German writers for the vigour of his style and the 

 development which he imparted to his vernacular language. Schroeck, 

 Melancthon, and others have written biographies of Luther, and 

 Michelet has extracted a kind of autobiography from numerous passages 

 of his works : ' Me'moires de Luther, Merits par lui-meme, traduits et 

 mU en ordre/ 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1835. In the character of Luther 

 there was no calculation, reserve, or hypocrisy. He was frank and 

 vehement, and often intemperate. But he was in earnest in his 

 vehemence; he really felt the importance of the topics he was discuss- 

 ing ; and whether be was right or wrong in his peculiar opinions, he 

 was a sincere and zealous believer in the Christian Kevelation. Luther 

 considered religion as the most important business of man, and because 

 he considered it as such, he wished to ascend to its very source 

 unalloyed by human authority. He contended for the right of every 

 man to consult the great book of the Christian law ; and although he 

 intuited upon his own interpretation of particular passages of the 

 Scriptures, the principles of free inquiry which he introduced led to 

 further results, and gradually established that liberty of conscience 

 which now exists in the Protestant states of Europe. But Luther 

 himself, whilst he appealed to the Scriptures against human authority, 

 did not for a moment admit of any doubts concerning the truth of 

 revelation. The question between Luther and his antagonists is there- 

 fore of material importance chiefly to Christians. To those who do 

 not believe in Christianity it may appear of little consequence what 

 Christians do believe, or how and whence they derive their belief; but 

 even in a social point of view it is of some importance to decide whether 

 large multitudei of men are to exercise their own judgment and be 

 able to give reasons why they believe certain doctrines, or whether 

 they are for ever to repeat, generation after generation, whatever they 

 have been taught in their youth, without exercising their reasoning 

 powers on the matter. 



Those who judge of Luther's disposition merely from his contro- 

 versial style and manner greatly mistake his character. He was a 

 warm-hearted German, kind and generous ; he abused and vilified his 

 antagonict* the more in proportion! as they were powerful, but he 

 could feel for the unhappy, and he even tendered some consolation to 

 hi* bitterest enemy Tetzel, when, forsaken by his employers, and 

 upbraided as the cause of all the mischief, he was in the agonies of 

 death and despair. 



Luther gave that impulse towards spiritual philosophy, that thirst 

 for information, that logical exercise of the mind, which have made 

 the Germans the most generally instructed and the most intellectual 

 people in Europe. Luther was convinced of the necessity of education 

 u auxiliary to religion and morality, and he pleaded unceasingly for 

 the education of the labouring classes, broadly telling princes and 

 rulers how dangerous as well as unjust it was to keep their subjects in 

 ignorance and degradation. He wa no courtly flatterer; he spoke in 

 favour of the poor, the humble, and the oppressed, and against the 

 high and mighty, even of his own party, who were guilty of cupidity 

 and oppression. Luther's doctrine was altogether in favour of civil 

 liberty, and in Germany it tended to support constitutional rights 

 against the encroachments of the imperial power. 



Luther's moral courage, his undaunted firmness, his strong convic- 

 tion, and the great revolution which he effected in society, place him 

 in the 6rst rank of historical characters. The form of the monk of 

 Wittenberg emerging from the receding gloom of the middle ages, 

 appears towering above the sovereigns and warriors, statesmen and 

 divine* of the 16th century, who were his contemporaries, his anta- 

 gonists, or his disciples. 



(J. Alb. Fabriciui, CentifoUum Lutheranum, 2 vols. 1728-30, gives a 

 list of all the authors who had then written concerning Luther and his 

 Hefonnation.) 



LUTI, BENEDETTO, Cavaliere, a celebrated Italian painter, was 

 born at Florence in 1666. He was the scholar of A. D. Gabbiani, and 

 he went about 1690 to Home, where he appears to have settled for the 

 remainder of his life. He died in 1724. 



Luti has been called by some the last of the Florentine masters. 

 His style is very attractive, but it is more distinguished for agreeable 

 than for great qualities. He painted iu fresco and in oil, and executed 

 also many pastel-drawings, a style much practised by the Florentine 

 masters of the 17th century. Luti's masterpiece is the large picture 

 of the ' Vest of San Ranieri,' in the cathedral of Pisa, and it is 

 reckoned the best picture in the church. Luti had always a great 

 respect for his master Gabbiani, and after he had finished this picture, 

 in 1712, he sent it to Florence to Gabbiani for his correction before it 

 was placed in its final destination. There are several good engravings 

 from Luti's works. 



LUTZELBURGER, or LEUTZELBURGER, HANS, called also 

 HANS FRANK, an early Swiss wood-engraver of Basel, about whom 

 very much has been written but very little is known. He lived in the 

 early part of the 16th century, and is supposed by some to have cut 

 the blocks of the celebrated ' Dance of Death,' attributed to Holbein. 

 This supposition however is founded solely on the facts of his being 

 contemporary with Holbein, and the circumstance of one of the cuts 

 being marked H. L. This is maintained by some writers and combated 

 by others, and especially by Rumohr in 1836, in a work entitled ' Hans 

 Holbein der Jiingere in seinem Verhiiltniss zutn Deutschen Forin- 

 schnittwesen ' ( Hans Holbein the Younger, in his relation to German 

 Wood-engraving '). There are many other celebrated old cuts, singly 

 and in sets, some from drawings by Holbein, which are attributed to 

 Liitzelburger, and which are described at length in the ' Kuustblatt,' 

 and in the works of Bartscb, Heller, Massmann, and other writers on 

 wood-engraving. 



LY'COPHRON, a native of Chalcis in Euboea, the son of Socles, 

 and adopted by the historian Lycus of Rhegium, was a distinguished 

 poet and grammarian at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, from 

 B.c.';280 to 250, where he formed one of the seven poets known by the 

 name of Pleias. He is said by Ovid to have been killed by an arrow. 

 ('Ibis,' 531.) 



Lycophron wrote a great number of tragedies, the titles of many of 

 which are preserved by Suidas ; but only one has come down to UB, 

 entitled ' Cassandra, or Alexandra.' This poem however cannot have 

 any claims to be called a drama : Cassandra is the only person intro- 

 duced as speaking, and she narrates to Priam the destruction of Troy, 

 and the subsequent adventures and misfortunes of the Grecian chiefs. 

 But in the course of her narration she gives an account of almost all 

 the leading events in Greek history, from the Argonautio expedition 

 to the time of Alexander the Great. The work is written in iambic 

 verse, and has no pretensions to any poetical merit ; the style is very 

 obscure, and the meaning of most passages very doubtful, which led 

 Statius to describe it as the ' Latebras Lycophronis atri.' (' Silv.,' v. 3, 

 157.) But from the quantity of mythological and historical informa- 

 tion which it contained, and perhaps from its very obscurity, it formed 

 a favourite study with the Greek grammarian!!, who wrote many com- 

 mentaries upon it, of which the most celebrated, by Tzetzes, who 

 lived in the 12th century of the Christian era, is still extant, and 

 affords no small assistance in making out the meaning of this difficult 

 poem. 



The 'Cassandra ' was printed for the first time at the Aldine press, 

 Venice, 1513. The best editions are by Potter, Oxf., 1697, 1702; by 

 Reichard, Leip., 1788 ; by Sebastian, Rome, 1804 ; and by Bachtnanu, 

 Leip., 1833. The commentary of Tzetzes has been published with 

 most of the editions of the ' Cassandra,' and has also appeared in a 

 separate form under the superintendence of C. G. Muller, Leip., 1812. 

 The ' Cassandra ' has been translated into English by Lord Royston. 



LYCURGUS, the lawgiver of Sparta, of whose birth and the period 

 of his existence the accounts are very discordant. By some even, his 

 reality has been doubted, but we think without sufficient reason. 

 Aristotle makes him a contemporary of the king Iphitus, who lived 

 B.C. 884. Xenophon places him 200 years earlier. He was certainly of 

 the royal family, but his name does not occur as king among the oldest 

 monuments of Grecian history. Herodotus calls him the guardian of 

 his nephew; Labotas, the Eurythenid. Simonides says he was the 

 brother of Eunomus the Proclid ; Dionysiua, that he was the uncle of 

 Kunomus ; and the more common account, that he was the son of 

 Eunomus, and guardian to his young nephew Charilaus, the son of 

 Polydectcs, brother of Lycurgus. It is certain that historically 

 nothing is known sufficiently to verify a single act attributed to 

 Lycurgus ; but as all ancient history concurs in attributing to him 

 the formation of the constitution under which Sparta so long con- 

 tinued to hold an eminent rank in Greece, even the fictions (if they 

 arc fictions) possess considerable interest. Lacouia, from its earliest 

 settlement by the Dorians, was governed by two kings. In the time 

 of Lycurgus the nation was rent by dissensions : the kings were aiming 

 to become despots ; the people anxious to establish a democracy. On 

 the death of Polydectea he left his queen pregnant, who proposed that 

 Lycurgus should marry her, mount the throne, and that ehe should 

 destroy her unborn offspring. Lycurgus temporised till a son was 

 born, whom he immediately caused to be proclaimed king ; and to 

 avoid any suspicion of a sinister ambition shortly after set out upon 



