122 



MASTER MASTODON. 



rank, in the army, ml had almost the same insignia 

 with him. He was also permitted to mount his 

 horse in the city. 



MASTER OF THE ORDNANCE; a great 

 officer, who has the chief command of the king's 

 ordnance and artillery. 



MASTKR OF THE ROLLS ; a patent officer for 

 life, who lias the custody of the rolls of parliament, 

 and patents which pass the great seal, and of the 

 records of chancery, &c. In the absence of the 

 chancellor, he sits as judge in the court of chancery ; 

 at other times, he hears causes in the rolls chapel, 

 and makes orders ; he has a writ of summons to par- 

 liament. 



MASTER-SING ERS. Between the slavery of the 

 Eastern castes, which bind men immutably to the 

 occupations of their fathers, and the perfect freedom 

 of pursuit with us in the West, stand, as it were, the 

 corporations of the middle ages. The lawlessness of 

 the times compelled men of the same occupation to 

 unite in societies for their mutual protection ; and, 

 being so united, their disgust at the wild disorder of 

 the period led them t(i subject themselves to rules 

 even of a minute and pedantic strictness. These 

 habits of constraint extended their influence beyond 

 the useful arts to the fine arts, and even to poetry 

 itself. In the thirteenth century, poetry was a fav- 

 ourite occupation at courts and among the knights ; 

 but, with the beginning of the fourteenth century, this 

 peaceable disposition ceased almost entirely, and 

 incessant feuds almost everywhere ensued. Indus- 

 try and the arts, however, grew up behind the walls 

 of the cities (q. v.), and the corporations of citizens 

 were established'. During the long evenings of win- 

 ter, the worthy burghers of the German cities assem- 

 bled to read the poems of the minstrels . Some of the 

 hearers were naturally led to try their own skill in 

 verse ; others followed ; and the spirit of the age 

 soon imbodied these votaries of the muse in corpora- 

 tions, or, at least, societies after the fashion of cor- 

 porations. Like the other corporations, they laid 

 claim to a very early origin. It is well settled that 

 the emperor Charles IV. gave them a charter and a 

 coat of arms. They generally called twelve poets, 

 mostly of the time of the war on the Wartburg (q. 

 v.) their masters ; hence their name master-singers. 

 They preferred, however, the more modest name of 

 friends of the master-song. They met at certain days, 

 and criticised each other^ productions, in which 

 external correctness seems to have appeared to 

 them the chief object ; few, indeed, had an idea of 

 the difference between poetical and prosaical ideas or 

 expressions. Their attempts in the lyric style were 

 limited to spiritual songs ; in the epic, to rhymed 

 versions of the scriptural narratives. They were 

 also fond of the didactic style. The rules by which 

 the members of the societies were to be guided, as to 

 the metre, &c., of their compositions, were written 

 on a table, and called Tabulatur, for the sake of 

 enforcing a strict observance of purity in language 

 and prosody : the chief faults to be avoided were col- 

 lected ;. they were thirty -two in number, and distin- 

 guished by particular names. He who invented a new 

 metre, invented also a new tune; the names of which 

 were the drollest, and sometimes the most senseless 

 imaginable. Besides their stated meetings, they 

 held public meetings, generally on Sundays, and fes- 

 tivals in the afternoon, in churches. In Nuremberg, 

 where the master-singers flourished particularly, such 

 meetings were opened with free-singing, in which 

 any body might sing, though not belonging to the 

 corporation. In tin's, the choice of the subjects was 

 left comparatively uncontrolled ; then followed the 

 chief singing, when only those who belonged to the 

 corporation were allowed to sing, and only on scrip- 



tural subjects. The judges were called Merker, 

 and sat behind a curtain. There were four: one 

 watched whether the song was according to the text 

 of the Bible, which lay open before him ; the second 

 whether the prosody was correct ; the third criti- 

 cised the rhymes ; the fourth, the tunes. Every 

 fault was marked, and he who had fewest received 

 the prize a chain with medals. Whoever had won 

 a chain was allowed to take apprentices, to have 

 many of whom was a great honour. Money was 

 never taken from apprentices. After the expiration 

 of his poetical apprenticeship, the young poet was 

 admitted to the corporation, and declared a master, 

 after having sung, for some time, with acceptation. 

 These strange societies originated towards the end 

 of the fourteenth century at Mentz, Strasbnrg, Augs- 

 burg, and lasted, in several free cities of the empire, 

 until the seventeenth, in Nuremberg to the eigh- 

 teenth century, where, probably, the renown of 

 Hans Sachs (q. v.), the famous shoemaker and poet, 

 kept them longer in existence. Some of the most 

 famous master-singers were Henry of Meissen, called 

 Frauenlob (that is, woman-praise), doctor of theology 

 at Mentz ; master Regenbogen (Rainbow), a smith ; 

 master Hadlaub and Muscablut. 



MASTIC ; a resinous substance obtained from 

 incisions made in the branches of the pistachio, len- 

 tiscus, a small tree, or rather shrub, growing in the 

 Levant and other countries bordering on the Medi- 

 terranean. This tree belongs to the natural family 

 terebinthaceaR. It attains the height of fifteen or 

 twenty feet ; the leaves are alternate and pinnate ; 

 the flowers are small, inconspicuous, disposed in 

 axillary racemes, and are succeeded by an ovoid 

 drupe, containing an osseous nut. It forms one of 

 the most important products of Scio, and has been 

 cultivated in this and some of the neighbouring isl- 

 ands from remote antiquity. Heat seems to exercise 

 a great influence on the resinous product. Mastic is 

 consumed in vast quantities throughout the Turkish 

 empire, and is there used as a masticatory by women 

 of all denominations, for the purpose of cleansing the 

 teeth and imparting an agreeable odour to the breath. 

 It was formerly in great repute as a medicine through- 

 out Europe, but at the present time is very little 

 used. 



MASTIFF (canis, fam. villalicus). This noble 

 variety of the canine race is distinguished by a large 

 head, dependent lips and ears, and the strength of 

 his form. Like most of the larger kinds of dogs, 

 although extremely vigilant over any thing com- 

 mitted to his charge, he is by no means savage ; he 

 will not abuse the power with which he is intrusted, 

 nor call it into action, unless provoked by injuries. 

 As early as the time of the Roman emperors, mas- 

 tiff's were held in high estimation at Rome, for their 

 strength and courage, especially those from Britain, 

 where an officer was appointed, for the purpose of 

 breeding them, and transmitting to the imperial city 

 such as he thought capable of sustaining the combats 

 in the amphitheatre. Manwood, in his work on the 

 forest-laws, says this variety of the dog derives its 

 name from the Saxon masc thefese, or thief-fright* 

 ener. See Dog. 



MASTODON ; an extinct genus of the order 

 pachydermata, or thick-skinned animals, often, but 

 improperly, confounded with the mammoth (q. v.) or 

 fossil elephant. It is found only in a fossil state, 

 several nearly entire skeletons having been dis- 

 covered in the United States. Single bones had 

 been early disinterred, but it was not until ISO/, 

 that a considerable portion of two skeletons was ob- 

 tained by Mr Peale, near Newburgh, New York, and 

 others have since been dug up in different parts of 

 the country. There is one with the missing parts 



