LITCH FIELD LITERARY HISTORY. 



487 



re poor, all ought not to be condemned. See Li- 



LITCHFIELD. See Lichfield. 



LIT DE JUSTICE was formerly a solemn proceed- 

 ing- in France, in which the king, with the princes 

 of the blood royal, the peers, and the officers of the 

 crown, state and court, proceeded to the parliament, 

 and there, sitting upon the throne (which in the old 

 French language, was called lit, because it consisted 

 of an under cushion, a cushion for the back, and two 

 under the elbows), caused those commands and orders, 

 which the parliament did not approve, to be register- 

 ed in his presence. The parliament had the right of 

 remonstrating, in behalf of the nation, against the 

 royal commands and edicts. If the king, however, 

 did not choose to recede from his measures, he first 

 issued a written command (lettres de jussion) to the 

 parliament ; and if this was not obeyed, he held the 

 iit de justice. The parliament was then, indeed, 

 obliged to submit, but it afterwards commonly made 

 a protest against the proceeding. Louis XV. held 

 such a lit de justice, in 1763, in order to introduce 

 certain imposts, but, on account of the firm resistance 

 of the parliaments, he was finally obliged to yield. 

 The last lits de justice were held by Louis XVI., in 

 1787 and 1788. 



LITERARY HISTORY is the science whose ob- 

 ject is to represent the development or the succes- 

 sive changes of human civilization, as far as these are 

 manifested in writings, as the object of political 

 history is to show the same, manifested in the vari- 

 ous political establishments and changes. In a more 

 limited sense, literary history treats of learned writ- 

 ings, their contents, fate, modifications, translations, 

 &c. (which is bibliography, q. v.), of the lives and 

 characters of their authors, the circumstances under 

 which they wrote, &c. (which constitutes literary 

 biography). The latter has also been called external 

 literary history, the former internal literary history, 

 because it aims to show, in a connected view, the 

 development of sciences. From its nature, it is 

 obvious that literary history could not fairly begin 

 until mankind had acquired extensive knowledge of 

 what has been done and written, which required the 

 preparatory study of centuries, as well as a civilized 

 intercourse among the various nations. This science 

 is, indeed, of comparatively recent date, and we have 

 by no means, even yet, a general literary history. 

 What we have is mostly confined to Europe; at least, 

 we are yet too little acquainted with many parts and 

 periods of the literary history of the East, which has 

 several times given an impulse to the western world, 

 to authorize us to call what has hitherto been done a 

 general literary history. The branch which relates 

 to Greece and Rome must remain of surpassing im- 

 portance. The ancients did not treat literary his- 

 tory as a distinct department of history. The 

 literature of the G reeks, and, though not in the same 

 degree, that of the Romans, were so intimately con- 

 nected with their religion and politics, that a separa- 

 tion of literary from general history could not easily 

 take place ; besides, the materials were not suffi- 

 cient to claim a separate consideration. Hence the 

 classics contain only scattered notices and detached 

 materials for a literary history, partly in biographies 

 of poets, philosophers, orators, grammarians, &c.; 

 partly in criticisms and extracts from their writings. 

 Such notices we find in the works of M. Terentius 

 Varro, Cicero, Pliny, Quinctilian, Aulus Gellius, 

 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Pausanias, Athenseus, 

 and the biographers Plutarch, Suetonius, Diogenes 

 Laertius, &c. Suidas and Photius likewise contri- 

 bute names and titles. The middle ages contributed 

 only detached facts to the history of their literature, 

 partly in chronicles, partly in the confidential com- 



munications of poets and other authors, respecting 

 their own lives. The first rude attempt at a com- 

 pilation of general literary notices, yet without 

 systematical order, was made by Polydore Virgil o 

 Urbino in his work De Inventoribus Rerum, which 

 first appeared in print in 1499. The true father of 

 literary history is the famous Conrad Gesner, whose 

 Bibliotheca Universalis contains stores of knowledge 

 not yet exhausted. In his twenty-fifth year, he began 

 to execute his grand plan of a general work on litera- 

 ture, and, in three years, his materials were so far 

 prepared, that they could be arranged for printing. 

 According to his plan, the work was to be divided 

 into three parts an alphabetical dictionary of 

 authors, a general systematic view of literature, 

 which even cites single dissertations and passages, 

 and an alphabetical index of matters and subjects 

 treated. (See Ebert's Bibliog. Lex., article Gesner). 

 The first edition of the first division appeared in 

 1545.* Peter Lambeck gave instruction in literary 

 history at the gymnasium of Hamburg, 1656, on the 

 plan of Gesner and Virgil, and published, in 1659, 

 outlines, as a text-book for his lectures, the title of 

 which is Prodromus Histories Literarice. Daniel 

 George Morhofs Polyhistor Literarins, Philosophi 

 cus et Fractious, the first edition of which appearec 

 in 1683, contributed to promote the study of literary 

 history. Since the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, literary history has been a favourite study of 

 the learned, and has been taught in the universities, 

 and in higher schools, at least in Germany. To 

 these, lectures we owe several Introductions, G ene- 

 ral Views, and Systems of literary history. We 

 mention, in chronological succession, Burkhard Got- 

 thelf Struvius, professor at Jena ; Matthew Lobe- 

 tanz, professor at Greifswald , N. H. Gundling, pro- 

 fessor in Halle ; Gottlieb Stoll, professor in Jena : 

 G. G. Zeltner, professor in Altorf ; C. C. Neufeld, 

 professor in Konigsberg ; F. G. Bierling, professor 

 in Rinteln ; and others. Reimmann must also be 

 mentioned on account of his Introduction to Historia 

 Liter aria (1708), and his Idea Systematis Antiquitatis 

 Literarite. Still more important was Chr. Aug. 

 Heumann's Conspectus Republics Literaria, a work 

 much superior to any that had preceded it, in ar- 

 rangement, acute criticism, and richness of mate- 

 rials. John Andrew Fabricius's Sketch of a General 

 History of Literature (1752) is a comprehensive 

 work, and unites the synthetic and analytic method. 

 A. Y. Goguet was the first to introduce a more 

 philosophical treatment of literary history; and the 



* Lord Bacon, in bis Advancement of Learning (De Aug. 

 Sci. ii. 5), seems to have been the first (1605) to have traced 

 out the objects and extent of a general literary history 

 (Hi-storia IMerarum, Historia Literaria}. " History," says 

 he, " is natural, civil, ecclesiastical and literary ; whereof 

 the first I allow to be extant, the fourth I note as deficient. 

 For no man hath propounded to himself the general state 

 of learning to be described and represented from age to age, 

 as many have done the works of nature, and the state civil 

 and ecclesiastical, without which the history of the world 

 seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with big 

 eye out, that part being wanting which doth show the spirit 

 and life of the person : and yet I am not ignorant that ia 

 divers particular science?, as of the jurisconsults, the ma- 

 thematicians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are 

 set down some small memorials of the schools, authors and 

 books ; and so likewise some barren relations touching the 

 inventions of arts or usages. But a just story of learning, 

 containing the antiquities and originals of knowledges, and 

 their sects, their inventions, their traditions, their divers 

 administrations and managings, their flourishings, their op- 

 position*, decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the 

 causes and occasions of them, and all other events concern- 

 ing learning, throughout the ages of the world, I may truly 

 affirm to be wanting. The use and end of which work I 

 do not EO much design for curiosity or satisfaction of th-inu 

 that are lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more seriou* 

 and grave purpose, which is, that it will make learned men 

 wise in the use and administration of learning." 



