SCALDS SCALIGER. 



109 



was never lost. In Bologna, such works continued 

 to be made from ancient times, with glue prepared 

 from parchment, like that of the ancients. Guide's 

 scagliola is a complete imitation of marble. Anni- 

 bal Griffoni, his pupil, imitated small pictures, en- 

 gravings, and oil paintings, in scagliola. Giovanni 

 Gravignani, who represented the rarest sorts of mar- 

 ble intersected with figures, carried the art still 

 further. The true object of these works, however, 

 is the imitation of marble. There are some fine 

 specimens of scagliola in the gallery at Florence, by 

 Paolini. 



SCALDS, OR SKALDS, like the rhapsodists of 

 ancient Greece and the bards of the Celtic tribes, 

 were at once the poets and historians of the Scan- 

 dinavian race, the Icelanders, Danes, Norwegians. 

 They sang the praises of the gods, and celebrated 

 the exploits of the national heroes. (See Northern 

 Mythology, Edda, Saggas, and Scandinavian Litera- 

 ture.) The scalds were the companions and chroni- 

 clers of the chiefs, whom they accompanied to bat- 

 tle, and at whose court they resided in time of peace. 

 A sacred character was attached to them, and they 

 performed the office of ambassadors between hostile 

 tribes. They were often richly rewarded for their 

 songs, and even married the daughters of princes. 

 A regular succession of the order was perpetuated, 

 and a list of 230 of the most distinguished in the 

 three northern kingdoms, from the reign of Ragner 

 Lodbrok to that of Valdemar II., is still preserved 

 in the Icelandic language, among whom are several 

 crowned heads and distinguished warriors of the 

 heroic age. See Wheaton's History of the North- 

 men. 



SCALE; a mathematical instrument, containing 

 several lines, drawn on wood, brass, silver, &c., 

 and variously divided, according to the purposes it 

 is intended to serve ; whence it receives various de- 

 nominations, as the plain scale, diagonal scale, plot- 

 ting scale, Gunter's scale, ic. 



SCALE (from the Latin sca/a); the name given 

 at first to the arrangement made by Guido of the 

 six syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; also called ga- 

 mut. The word scale is likewise used to signify a 

 series of sounds, rising or falling from any given 

 pitch or tone, to the greatest practicable distance, 

 through such intermediate degrees as are determined 

 by the laws of music. See Tone. 



SCALIGER, JULIUS C/ESAR. The history of 

 this celebrated scholar is involved in some obscur- 

 ity, through his vanity. According to his own 

 story, he was descended from the celebrated house 

 of the Scaligers (Scalas), princes of Verona, and 

 was born at the castle of Riva, on lake Garda, 

 became a page of the emperor Maximilian, whom 

 he served in war and peace for seventeen years, 

 then received a pension from the duke of Ferrara, 

 studied at Bologna, commanded a squadron under 

 the French viceroy, applied himself to the study of 

 natural law, and in 1525, accompanied the bishop 

 of Agen to his diocese in France, where he settled. 

 This account found credit with some learned men, 

 among whom was De Thou, the friend and admirer 

 of his son Joseph ; but others, even in his own day, 

 as, for instance, Scioppius, ridiculed it, and treated 

 it as wholly or mainly fabulous. According to 

 Tiraboschi, Scaliger was the son of Benedetto Bor- 

 done, a Paduan, who carried on the trade of a mini- 

 ature painter in Venice, and received the name 

 della Scala either from the sign or the situation of 

 his shop. Scaliger resided in Venice or Padua till 

 his forty-second year, occupied with study and 



the practice of medicine, and published some 

 works under the name of Giulio Bordone. Either 

 some promise, or the hope of bettering his con- 

 dition, induced him to remove to Agen, where he 

 passed the rest of his days. In 1528, he appears 

 not to have formed any such design of giving him- 

 self out as a descendant of that princely family, for 

 he was then styled, in his act of naturalization, 

 Julius CfEsar della Scala di Bordone, doctor of me- 

 dicine, of Verona in Italy. He must, however, have 

 appeared with some distinction in Agen, as in 1530, 

 he married a young lady of a rich and noble family 

 there. It was from this period that he began to 

 assert his princely descent, without furnishing any 

 proof of the truth of his pretensions. But his name 

 acquired celebrity by his writings, which gave him 

 a high rank among the scholars of his age, although 

 his arrogance made many enemies. The boldness 

 and freedom of some of his works rendered his faith 

 suspected; but he died a good Catholic, Oct. 21, 

 1558, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Scali- 

 ger was certainly a man of uncommon abilities ; and 

 although he was one of the late-learned, yet few 

 men have surpassed him in erudition. He had a 

 powerful memory, and an active mind ; he thought 

 boldly, if not always logically. Of his physical 

 works we may mention his Exercitationum exoteri- 

 carum Liber quintus decimus de Subtilitate ad Car- 

 danum (Paris, 1557), Commentaries on the Work of 

 Hippocrates De Insomniis (1538), and a work upon 

 the treatises of Theophrastus and Aristotle on 

 Plants, and of the latter on Animals, with a trans- 

 lation. As a philologist he wrote two discourses 

 against the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, an excellent 

 work on the Latin language, De Causis Lingua 

 Latince Libri xviii. (Lyons, 1540; Geneva, 1580), 

 the first philosophical treatise on this subject. His 

 work De Arte poetica Libri vii. (Lyons, 1561 and 

 1581) gained him much reputation, but displays 

 more grammatical learning than poetical imagination 

 or critical spirit. Modern critics do not accord him 

 the same praise which Lipsius, Casaubon, Vossius, 

 &c., bestowed on him. 



SCALIGER, JOSEPH JUSTUS, son of the preced- 

 ing, was born at Agen in 1540. In the eleventh 

 year of his age he was sent to Bordeaux, where he 

 studied the Latin language for several years. The 

 plague obliged him to return to his father, who re- 

 quired him to compose a Latin discourse daily, by 

 which means he soon became thoroughly acquainted 

 with that language. After the death of his father, 

 he went, at the age of nineteen, to Paris, where he 

 devoted himself to the study of Greek. Shutting 

 himself up in his chamber, he read Homer and the 

 other Greek poets and prose writers with such in- 

 dustry, that in the course of two years he had read 

 them all. He next studied Hebrew and other Ori- 

 ental languages, and exercised himself in poetical 

 compositions in the classical languages, having al- 

 ready, in his sixteenth year, written a tragedy in 

 Latin. He then for some time led an unsettled 

 life, of which we have no particular account. His 

 conversion to Protestantism doubtless prevented 

 his advancement in France ; but, in 1593, he was 

 made professor of polite literature at Leyden, where 

 he died in 1609. He had the character of a scholar, 

 absorbed entirely in his books, and paying little 

 attention to the common affairs of life, so that he 

 never was rich ; yet he refused several presents of 

 money, sent him by distinguished men, out of res- 

 pect to his talents and learning. He was never 

 married. In regard to pride and arrogance, he was 



