132 



AM ADIS AMAZON. 



though he luul never taken holy orders. Kugenius 

 exoommunicjHed him. On the death of his rival, 

 A. was persuaded 10 abdicate. He ilied at the age 

 of sixty-nine, in 1451. A. IX., Miruamcd the 

 Happy, on account of his virtue and i>iety. Being 

 owe asked by a courtier whether he kept hounds, 

 he i>ointed to a great number of poor people seated 

 at tables, eating and drinking, and replied, " These 

 are my hounds, with whom I go in chase of heaven." 

 He died in 17-1?, aged thirty-seven years. 



.A M AIMS ; a name very celebrated in the romances 

 of chivalry. 1. A. of Gaul, called, from the bear- 

 iniis on his shield, the knight of the lion, but in the 

 wilderness, Beltenebros; a son of king Perion of 

 France, and Eilesena, daughter of king Gavinter of 

 Bretagne. 2. A. of Greece, a greav-grandson of the 

 (iallic A., and son of Lisuarte and Onoleria, 

 daughter of the emperor of Trebisond. 3. A. of the 

 Star, a great-grandson of the Grecian A., son of 

 Agesilaus, king of Colchis, who was descended from 

 Alastraxerea, a natural child of the Grecian A., by 

 the queen /aliara of Caucasus. The mother of this 

 third A. was Diana, a natural child of Sidonia, queen 

 of Guindaga, by Florisel, the knight of the beautiful 

 shepherdess, a lawful son of the Grecian A. 4. A. 

 of Trebisond, descended from Roger of Greece, the 

 Much -beloved, a son of Florisel and Helen, prin- 

 cess of Apollonia. Tliis A. was a great-grandson of 

 Florisel, and son of Polixana and Liscaron, prince 

 of Cathay. The history of this hero, who was nearly 

 the same to Spain as Cliarlemagne with his twelve 

 peers to France, and king Arthur with his knights 

 of the round table to England, is continued through 

 nine generations; but the question concerning its 

 origin and mixture of truth with fable, is involved 

 in so much durkness, that it is even doubtful whether 

 it originated with the Spanish, the Portuguese, or 

 the French. In the Spanish original, this romance 

 is contained in thirteen books, ot which Cervantes, 

 in the well-known examination of the library of Don 

 Quixote, caused the four first to be preserved, be- 

 cause they were not only the first, but also the best 

 and only books of this kind which Spain had pro- 

 duced ; but the others were committed to the flames. 

 These four contain only the history of A. de Gaul. 

 Some say, that Vasco Lobeira, a Portuguese, who 

 lived at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was 

 their author ; some, that they were written by an 

 unknown Portuguese lady ; and others ascribe them 

 to the infante don Pedro, son of John I. of Portugal. 

 On the contrary, the count Tressan has endeavoured 

 to render it probable, that the honour of their author- 

 ship belongs to a French troubadour of the school 

 of Rusticien de Puice, the author of nearly all the 

 romances of the round table till the time of Philip 

 Augustus (11801223). We shall be ready to 

 acknowledge this, if it is established by a critical 

 comparison of the most ancient manuscripts. Gar- 

 cias Ordonnez de Moiitalbo, the corrector of the old 

 edition, is said to have been the author of the fifth 

 Iwok, which contains the history of Esplandian, the 

 eldest son of A. The sixth book, by Pelag. de 

 Ribera, contains the adventures of the knight Flo- 

 risando ; the seventh, those of an unknown Knight ; 

 and the eighth, by J. Diaz, contains the deeds oi 

 Lisuarte ; the ninth and tenth, those of Florisel, ol 

 A. of Greece, and of the knight Anaxante ; the 

 eleventh and twelfth, the adventures of Rogel and 

 Agesilaus ; and the thirteenth, those of Silvio de la 

 Suva. The Spanish original goes no farther. Next 

 follow the French translations, which liave been in- 

 creased to twenty-four books, since the translation of 

 Nicholas d'Herberay, lord of Essars, in 1540. The 

 books from the fourteenth to the seventeenth con- 

 tain the exploits of Spharamont and A. of the Star ; 



tlu>-e from the seventeenth to thr twenty-fourth, the 

 idseiiliires nf the remaining posterity oi' A. of Gaul, 

 including the deeds of \. of Trehisond. The sepa- 

 rate jijirts of this work, which are seldom found alto- 

 sjether, are of very various merit. The additions 

 lire by no means c<|\ial to the four first books. Then- 

 is not one of the new German modifications of tl<i> 

 romance, or, rather, this string of romances, which 

 dcscnes Ilie name. The New A. of \\ieland, a 

 licentious hook, has nothing in common with the old 

 i rpt its title and profusion of atlvciunres. A 

 late French poet, Creuzfc de Lesser, has undertaken 

 to liive the adventures of Arthur and lii> knight* ol 

 the round table, Cliarlemagne and his 1'aladm-, and 

 Amadis, in a new dress. His version of (lie first of 

 these contains twenty cantos. A second edition of 

 it appeared in 1812. His Amadis, containing, like- 

 wise, twenty cantos, appeared in 181 X 



AMALFI, a seaport town in Italy, situated in the 

 gulf of Salerno, about thirty miles south Irom Na- 

 ples. In the ninth century, it rose to great splen- 

 dour; assumed the form of a commonwealth; and, 

 for its zealous exertions against the Saracens, was 

 distinguished by the title of Defender of the Faith. 

 After enjoying its republican constitution and com- 

 mercial rank for 300 years, it fell into decline, and 

 now presents a sad contrast to its former grandeur. 



AMALGAM; a name applied to the combinations 

 of mercury with the other metals. See Mercury. 



AMALIA, Anna, duchess of Saxe-AN eimar, born 

 October 24, 1739, daughter of Charles, duke of 

 Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel, died in 1806. During the 

 latter half of the eighteenth century, this phi 

 was the centre of a court, which, in more than one 

 respect, resembled that of the duke of Fernira, 

 which was adorned by the presence of Tasso and 

 Ariosto. She gave to learned men the support 

 which they looked for in vain from the great princes 

 of Germany, while she afforded them a point of 

 union and an agreeable residence. She assembled 

 round her Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, and many of 

 the finest minds of Germany ; and governed with 

 wisdom after the death of her husband. 



AMALTH.BA ; the name of a goat in Crete, which 

 suckled Jupiter when his mother concealed him 

 there through fear of Saturn. From this goat came 

 the horn of plenty, which Jupiter gave to the 

 daughters of J\lelissus, who assisted Rhea, with the 

 power of obtaining from it every thing necessary for 

 their subsistence ; called cornu Amaltheeee (the same 

 as cornu copiee, the horn of plenty). According to 

 some, A. was the name of the nymph who watched 

 this goat. The Cumaean sybil also bore this name. 



AMARANTH ; a kind of flower which preserves its 

 bloom after it is plucked and dried. On this ac- 

 count, poets make it an emblem of immortality. 



AMATHUS ; formerly a city in Cyprus, renowned 

 for the worship of Venus, who is called, from this 

 place, Amathusia. 



AitATi ; a family of Cremona, who manufactured 

 violins, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 which, on account of their full tones, are yet held to 

 be the best in use, and have become very dear. 

 They are called Amati violins, and also Cremonus. 



AMAZON, AMAZONS, MARANON, ^r ORKU.A.VA ; 

 a river of South America, the largest in the world. 

 It is formed by a great number of sources which rise 

 in the Andes ; but the two head branches are the 

 Tunguragua and Ucayale, both rising in Peru, 

 the former from lake Lauricocha, in lat. 10 29' S., 

 the latter formed by the Apurimac and I3eni, the 

 head waters of which are between lat 60 and 18 S. 

 The general course of the river is N. of E.. and, 

 including its windings, is upwards of 4000 miles in 

 length. It flows into the Atlantic under the equa- 



