LYONS LYSANDER. 



593 



abolished, and that of Ville-Affiranchie substituted I 

 for it. in IS 14, it was the theatre of several bloody 

 actions between the French and the allies. In 

 1834, serious political disturbances broke out at 

 Lyons, which, after continuing for two or three days, 

 were suppressed, with great severity, by military 

 force. 



LYONS, GULF OF (Gallicus Sinus) ; a bay of the 

 Mediterranean, on the south-eastern coast of France, 

 between lat. 42 20' and 43 35' N., and between 

 Ion. 3 and 6 20' E. The principal ports on 

 this gulf are Toulon, Marseilles, and Cette. It is 

 now called, by the French writers, Golfe du Lion, 

 the name being derived from the agitation of its 

 waters. See Lion, Gulf of. 



LYRE ; the most ancient stringed instrument 

 among the Egyptians and Greeks. The mythological 

 tradition of the origin of the Egyptian lyre, the more 

 ancient of the two, is curious. After an inundation 

 of the Nile, a tortoise was left ashore among other 

 animals ; after its death, its flesh decayed, and some 

 of the tendons were dried by the sun, so as to produce 

 a sound when touched by Hermes, as he was walking 

 on shore. He immediately made an instrument in 

 imitation of it, and thus invented the lyre. This 

 lyre, originally, had but three strings. The Greeks 

 ascribed the invention of the lyre to their Hermes 

 (Mercury), the son of Jupiter and Maia. (Paus. v.) 

 But the Greeks also say, that Hermes first used the 

 shell of a tortoise. According to others, Mercury 

 merely improved the invention of the Egyptian. 

 Diodorus tells us that Apollo felt so much repentance 

 for his cruelty towards Marsyas, that he tore the 

 strings from his cithern. The muses, after this, 

 invented a tone, and Orpheus, Linus, and Thamyras, 

 one each. These, being added to the three-stringed 

 Egyptian lyre, gave rise to the heptachord, or seven- 

 stringed lyre of the Greeks. The invention of the 

 instrument has also been ascribed to each of its chief 

 improvers. The Egyptian and Grecian lyres were, 

 at first, strung with the sinews of animals. The 

 number of the strings was at last increased to eleven. 

 It was played with the plectrum, or lyre-stick, of 

 ivory or polished wood, also with the fingers. The 

 lyre was called by different names lyra, phorminx, 

 chelys, barbitos, barbiton, cithara. The body of the 

 lyre was hollow, to increase the sound. Few objects 

 are so graceful in form, and susceptible of such 

 various application in the fine arts, as the lyre, which 

 is even yet used as a musical instrument. It is the 

 symbol of Apollo, yet other deities also bear the 

 lyre ; and mythology mentions many gods, who 

 distinguished themselves on this instrument. It was 

 played by educated Greeks in general ; and Themis- 

 tocles having once declined playing when requested, 

 he was considered a person without cultivation. 

 Apavirixii! (unmusical) signified an illiterate man. In 

 a work of Doni, entitled Lyra Barberina, the various 

 forms of the lyre are collected in two large volumes. 



Lyric was, originally, what belongs to the lyre; 

 it was applied to songs sung to the lyre, odes, &c., 

 and soon came to designate a species of poetry con- 

 tradistinguished from dramatic poetry, which was 

 accompanied by flutes. See Lyrics. 



LYRICS. Lyric poetry is that species of poetry 

 by which the poet directly expresses his emotions. 

 The predominance of feeling in lyric poetry is what 

 chiefly distinguishes it from dramatic poetry, in which 

 action and character, independent of the individual 

 emotion of the poet, predominate; and from epic 

 poetry, of which a series of actions and characters, 

 as contemplated and exhibited by the poet, is the 

 characteristic. No definite limit can be readily drawn 

 between such departments of the art. There may 

 be lyrical passages in an epic, or a drama, when 



opportunity is afforded to the poet to pour out his 

 own excited and exalted feeling ; but it is an 

 irregularity, and a dangerous one. Poets of mode- 

 rate talents, or little exp erience, are apt to burden 

 the reader with themselves, unable to follow up the 

 representation of life in a fonn riot individually their 

 own. Lyric poetry is more limited than thedrama(q.v.), 

 and the epic (q. v.) because feeling is limited to the 

 present ; but, on this account, it is more excited and 

 stirring. From the nature of lyric poetry, it has 

 flourished better at court than the dramatic and epic, 

 both of which, like history, require liberty, because 

 they must represent truly the character of man in 

 his manifold strivings, which cannot be done but 

 by viewing life impartially, and depicting it freely ; 

 whilst the lyric poet, in most of his highest efforts, 

 aims to express his adoration, be it of a hero, or his 

 mistress, or nature, or God ; and this tone coincides 

 very well with the adulation of courts. Hence, 

 when the drama and epic have gone down with the 

 decay of national independence and spirit, and genius, 

 debarred from action, lives only in contemplation, 

 lyric poetry continues, and not unfrequently even 

 flourishes, because man always feels ; admiration, 

 love, and hatred cannot die. Even the slave may 

 express in verse the accents of love or adulation ; 

 and religion, in all circumstances, is a never-failing 

 spring of elevated feeling. We must not suppose, 

 however, that every expression of feeling, in verse, 

 deserves the name of a lyrical poem, although the 

 mistake is a very common one, as the crowds of 

 unfledged aspirants to lyric honours testify. It is 

 necessary that the feeling represented should be 

 itself poetical, and not pnly worthy to be preserved, 

 but accompanied by a variety of ideas, beauty of 

 imagery, and an eloquent flow of language. One 

 distinct feeling should predominate, giving tone to 

 the whole: the feeling must be worthy of the subject 

 which caused it, corresponding to the same both in 

 degree and kind, and must be so exhibited as to give 

 a living picture of the poet's mind; while, at the 

 same time, what is merely individual and accidental 

 must be excluded, so that the poet shall be truly the 

 representative of his race, and awaken the sympathy 

 of all. But this requires genius of a high order. 

 From the nature of feeling results the limited range 

 of lyric poetry, and the variety of style and rhythm, 

 exhibited in almost numberless metres, the bold 

 associations of ideas, and the peculiar imagery be- 

 longing to this species of poetry. The tone of lyric 

 poetry is warmest if it expresses feeling called forth 

 by present circumstances. It is more composed 

 when it represents feelings which are past. The 

 hymns of the ancients, the ode in general, the song 

 and hymn, with which are connected several metrical 

 forms of the Italians and Spaniards (sonnets, canzoni, 

 &c.), belong to the former; the epigram, in the 

 Greek sense of the term, the elegy, &c., to the latter. 

 See the various articles, and Lyre. 



LYSANDER; a Spartan general, who terminated 

 the Peloponnesian war by the conquest of Athens, 

 B. C. 404. With the activity, and ambition, and 

 pemtration of Themistocles, he united the pliancy 

 and insinuating address of Alcibiades. He gained 

 more easily, and retained longer the favour of the 

 great and powerful, than Alcibiades did the hearts 

 of women and of the multitude. He sacrificed the 

 welfare of his country to his own ambition. He 

 used every means to elevate his friends and ruin his 

 enemies. Justice and truth to him were empty 

 words. He used to say, that if one cannot accom- 

 plish his purposes in a lion's skin, he must put on 

 the fox's. Force and fraud were his political instru- 

 ments. In the court of Cyrus the Younger, where 

 he resided a long time, he endured, without a mur 

 2 p 



