In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de Lonjumeau; a blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons, a plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons, varnished hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. France does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the English nobility, and raining down on the post-chaise of the bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the wrath of an aunt which brought him good luck. Old shoes and slippers do not, as yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall come to that.
MACKENZIE, SIR MORELL (1837-1892), British physician, son of Stephen Mackenzie, surgeon (d. 1851), was born at Leytonstone, Essex, on the 7th of July 1837. After going through the course at the London Hospital, and becoming M.R.C.S. in 1858, he studied abroad at Paris, Vienna and Pesth; and at Pesth he learnt the use of the newly-invented laryngoscope under J. N. Czermak. Returning to London in 1862, he worked at the London Hospital, and took his degree in medicine. In 1863 he won the Jacksonian prize at the Royal College of Surgeons for an essay on the "Pathology of the Larynx," and he then devoted himself to becoming a specialist in diseases of the throat. In 1863 the Throat Hospital in King Street, Golden Square, was founded, largely owing to his initiative, and by his work there and at the London Hospital (where he was one of the physicians from 1866 to 1873) Morell Mackenzie rapidly became recognized throughout Europe as a leading authority, and acquired an extensive practice. So great was his reputation that in May 1887, when the crown prince of Germany (afterwards the emperor Frederick III.) was attacked by the affection of the throat of which he ultimately died, Morell Mackenzie was specially summoned to attend him. The German physicians who had attended the prince since the beginning of March (Karl Gerhardt, and subsequently Tobold, E. von Bergmann, and others) had diagnosed his ailment on the 18th of May as cancer of the throat; but Morell Mackenzie insisted (basing his opinion on a microscopical examination by R. Virchow of a portion of the tissue) that the disease was not demonstrably cancerous, that an operation for the extirpation of the larynx (planned for the 21st of May) was unjustifiable, and that the growth might well be a benign one and therefore curable by other treatment. The question was one not only of personal but of political importance, since it was doubted whether any one suffering from an incapacitating disease like cancer could, according to the family law of the Hohenzollerns, occupy the German throne; and there was talk of a renunciation of the succession by the crown prince. It was freely hinted, moreover, that some of the doctors themselves were influenced by political considerations. At any rate, Morell Mackenzie's opinion was followed: the crown prince went to England, under his treatment, and was present at the Jubilee celebrations in June. Morell Mackenzie was knighted in September 1887 for his services, and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Hohenzollern Order. In November, however, the German doctors were again called into consultation, and it was ultimately admitted that the disease really was cancer; though Mackenzie, with very questionable judgment, more than hinted that it had become malignant since his first examination, in consequence of the irritating effect of the treatment by the German doctors. The crown prince (see FREDERICK III.) became emperor on the 9th of March 1888, and died on the 15th of June. During all this period a violent quarrel raged between Sir Morell Mackenzie and the German medical world. The German doctors published an account of the illness, to which Mackenzie replied by a work entitled _The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble_ (1888), the publication of which caused him to be censured by the Royal College of Surgeons. After this sensational episode in his career, the remainder of Sir Morell Mackenzie's life was uneventful, and he died somewhat suddenly in London, on the 3rd of February 1892. He published several books on laryngoscopy and diseases of the throat. Entry: MACKENZIE
The sayings and Johnsoniana have been reprinted in very many and various forms. Valuable work has been done in Johnsonian genealogy and topography by Aleyn Lyell Reade in his _Johnsonian Gleanings_, &c., and in the _Memorials of Old Staffordshire_ (ed. W. Beresford). The most excellent short Lives are those by F. Grant (Eng. Writers) and Sir Leslie Stephen (Eng. Men of Letters). Professor W. Raleigh's essay (Stephen Lecture), Lord Rosebery's estimate (1909), and Sir Leslie Stephen's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, with bibliography and list of portraits, should be consulted. Johnson's "Club" ("The Club") still exists, and has contained ever since his time a large proportion of the public celebrities of its day. A "Johnson Club," which has included many Johnson scholars and has published papers, was founded in 1885. Lichfield has taken an active part in the commemoration of Johnson since 1887, when Johnson's birthplace was secured as a municipal museum, and Lichfield was the chief scene of the Bicentenary Celebrations of September 1909 (fully described in A. M. Broadley's _Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale_, 1909), containing, together with new materials and portraits, an essay dealing with Macaulay's treatment of the Johnson-Thrale episodes by T. Seccombe). Statues both of Johnson and Boswell are in the market-place at Lichfield. A statue was erected in St Paul's in 1825, and there are commemorative tablets in Lichfield Cathedral, St Nicholas (Brighton), Uttoxeter, St Clement Danes (London), Gwaynynog and elsewhere. (T. Se.) Entry: BIBLIOGRAPHY
Quick observation and apt improvisation have always been distinctive features in the Italian character. Thus in the rural festivities of Italy there developed from a very early period in lively intermixture the elements of the dance, of jocular and abusive succession of song, speech and dialogue, and of an assumption of character such as may be witnessed in any ordinary dialogue carried on by southern Italians at the present day. Not less indigenous was the invariable accompaniment of the music of the flute (_tibia_). The occasions of these half obligatory, half impromptu festivities were religious celebrations, public or private--among the latter more especially weddings, which have in all ages been provocative of demonstrative mirth. The so-called _Fescennine_ verses (from Fescennium in southern Etruria, and very possibly connected with _fascinum_ = _phallos_), which were afterwards confined to weddings, and ultimately suggested an elaborate species of artistic poetry, never merged into actual dramatic performances. In the _saturae_, on the other hand--a name originally suggested by the goatskins of the shepherds, but from primitive times connected with the "fulness" of both performers and performance--there seems from the first to have been a dramatic element; they were probably comic songs or stories recited with gesticulation and the invariable flute accompaniment. Introduced into the city, these entertainments received a new impulse from the performances of the Etruscan players (_ludiones_) who had been brought into Rome when scenic games (_ludi scenici_) were introduced there in 364 B.C. for purposes of religious propitiation. These _(h)istriones_, as they were called at Rome (_istri_ had been their native name), who have had the privilege of transmitting their appellation to the entire _histrionic_ art and its professors, were at first only dancers and pantomimists in a city where their speech was exotic. But their performances encouraged and developed those of other players and mountebanks, so that after the establishment of the regular drama at Rome on the Greek model, the _saturae_ came to be performed as farcical after-pieces (_exodia_), until they gave way to other species. Among these the _mimi_ were at Rome probably coeval in their beginnings with the stage itself, where those who performed them were afterwards known under the same name, possibly in the place of an older appellation (_planipedes_, bare-footed, representatives of slaves and humble folk). These loose farces, after being probably at first performed independently, were then played as after-pieces, till in the imperial period, when they reasserted their predominance, they were again produced independently. At the close of the republican period the _mimus_ found its way into literature, through D. Laberius, C. Matius and Publilius Syrus, and was assimilated in both form and subjects to other varieties of the comic drama--preserving, however, as its distinctive feature, a preponderance of the mimic or gesticulatory element. Together with the _pantomimus_ (see below) the _mimus_ continued to prevail in the days of the Empire, having transferred its original grossness to its treatment of mythological subjects, with which it dealt in accordance with the demands of a "lubrique and adulterate age." As a matter of course, the _mimus_ freely borrowed from other species, among which, so far as they were of native Italian origin, the _Atellane fables_ (from Atella in Campania) call for special mention. Very probably of Oscan origin, they began with delineations of the life of small towns, in which dramatic and other satire has never ceased to find a favourite subject. The principal personages in these living sketches gradually assumed a fixed and conventional character, which they retained even when, after the final overthrow of Campanian independence (210), the _Atellanae_ had been transplanted to Rome. Here the heavy father or husband (_pappus_), the ass-eared glutton (_maccus_), the full-cheeked, voracious chatterbox (_bucco_), and the wily sharper (_dorsenus_) became accepted comic types, and, with others of a similar kind, were handed down, to reappear in the modern Italian drama. In these characters lay the essence of the _Atellanae_: their plots were extremely simple; the dialogue (perhaps interspersed with songs in the Saturnian metre) was left to the performers to improvise. In course of time these plays assumed a literary form, being elaborated as after-pieces by Lucius Pomponius of Bononia, Novius and other authors; but under the Empire they were gradually absorbed in the pantomimes. Entry: 8
BACCHANALIA, the Lat. name for the wild and mystic festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus). They were introduced into Rome from lower Italy by way of Etruria, and held in secret, attended by women only, on three days in the year in the grove of Simila (_Stimula_, _Semele_; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 503), near the Aventine hill. Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. The evil reputation of these festivals, at which the grossest debaucheries took place, and all kinds of crimes and political conspiracies were supposed to be planned, led in 186 B.C. to a decree of the senate--the so-called _Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus_, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria (1640), now at Vienna--by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout the whole of Italy, except in certain special cases, in which the senate reserved the right of allowing them, subject to certain restrictions. But, in spite of the severe punishment inflicted upon those who were found to be implicated in the criminal practices disclosed by state investigation, the Bacchanalia were not stamped out, at any rate in the south of Italy, for a very long time (Livy xxxix. 8-19, 41; xl. 19). Entry: BACCHANALIA
The _Hook-swinging Festival_ (_Churruk_ or _Churuck Puja_), one of the most notable celebrations in honour of the goddess Kali, has now been prohibited in British territory. Those who had vowed themselves to self-torture submitted to be swung in the air supported only by hooks passed through the muscles over the blade-bones. These hooks were hung from a long crossbeam, which see-sawed upon a huge upright pole. Hoisted into the air by men pulling down the other end of the see-saw beam, the victim was then whirled round in a circle. The torture usually lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. Entry: KALI
This naive temper of the middle ages is nowhere more conspicuously displayed than in the Feast of the Ass, which under various forms was celebrated in a large number of churches throughout the West. The ass had been introduced into the ritual of the church in the 9th century, representing either Balaam's ass, that which stood with the ox beside the manger at Bethlehem, that which carried the Holy Family into Egypt, or that on which Christ rode in triumph into Jerusalem. Often the ass was a mere incident in the Feast of Fools; but sometimes he was the occasion of a special festival, ridiculous enough to modern notions, but by no means intended in an irreverent spirit. The three most notable celebrations of the Feast of the Ass were at Rouen, Beauvais and Sens. At Rouen the feast was celebrated on Christmas Day, and was intended to represent the times before the coming of Christ. The service opened with a procession of Old Testament characters, prophets, patriarchs and kings, together with heathen prophets, including Virgil, the chief figure being Balaam on his ass. The ass was a hollow wooden effigy, within which a priest capered and uttered prophecies. The procession was followed, inside the church, by a curious combination of ritual office and mystery play, the text of which, according to the _Ordo processionis asinorum secundum Rothomagensem usum_, is given in Du Cange. Entry: FOOLS
For the service of the church a comprehensive book of liturgies and offices was provided by the "apostles." It dates from 1842 and is based on the Anglican, Roman and Greek liturgies. Lights, incense, vestments, holy water, chrism, and other adjuncts of worship are in constant use. The ceremonial in its completeness may be seen in the church in Gordon Square, London, and elsewhere. The daily worship consists of "matins" with "proposition" (or exposition) of the sacrament at 6 A.M., prayers at 9 A.M. and 3 P.M., and "vespers" with "proposition" at 5 P.M. On all Sundays and holy days there is a "solemn celebration of the eucharist" at the high altar; on Sundays this is at 10 A.M. On other days "low celebrations" are held in the side-chapels, which with the chancel in all churches correctly built after apostolic directions are separated or marked off from the nave by open screens with gates. The community has always laid great stress on symbolism, and in the eucharist, while rejecting both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, holds strongly to a real (mystical) presence. It emphasizes also the "phenomena" of Christian experience and deems miracle and mystery to be of the essence of a spirit-filled church. Entry: CATHOLIC
_The Works of Edward FitzGerald_ appeared in 1887. See also a chronological list of FitzGerald's works (Caxton Club, Chicago, 1899); notes for a bibliography by Col. W.F. Prideaux, in _Notes and Queries_ (9th series, vol. vi.), published separately in 1901; _Letters and Literary Remains_ (ed. W. Aldis Wright, 1902-1903); and the _Life of Edward FitzGerald_, by Thomas Wright (1904), which contains a bibliography (vol. ii. pp. 241-243) and a list of sources (vol. i. pp. xvi.-xvii.). The volume on FitzGerald in the "English Men of Letters" series is by A.C. Benson. The FitzGerald centenary was celebrated in March 1909. See the _Centenary Celebrations Souvenir_ (Ipswich, 1909) and _The Times_ for March 25, 1909. (E. G.) Entry: FITZGERALD
It is not easy to value the services of Marsilio Ficino at their proper worth. As a philosopher, he can advance no claim to originality, his laborious treatise on Platonic theology being little better than a mass of ill-digested erudition. As a scholar, he failed to recognize the distinctions between different periods of antiquity and various schools of thought. As an exponent of Plato he suffered from the fatal error of confounding Plato with the later Platonists. It is true that in this respect he did not differ widely from the mass of his contemporaries. Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano, almost alone among the scholars of that age, showed a true critical perception. For the rest, it was enough that an author should be ancient to secure their admiration. The whole of antiquity seemed precious in the eyes of its discoverers; and even a thinker so acute as Pico di Mirandola dreamed of the possibility of extracting the essence of philosophical truth by indiscriminate collation of the most divergent doctrines. Ficino was, moreover, a firm believer in planetary influences. He could not separate his philosophical from his astrological studies, and caught eagerly at any fragment of antiquity which seemed to support his cherished delusions. It may here be incidentally mentioned that this superstition brought him into trouble with the Roman Church. In 1489 he was accused of magic before Pope Innocent VIII., and had to secure the good offices of Francesco Soderini, Ermolao Barbaro, and the archbishop Rinaldo Orsini, in order to purge himself of a most perilous imputation. What Ficino achieved of really solid, was his translation. The value of that work cannot be denied; the impulse which it gave to Platonic studies in Italy, and through them to the formation of the new philosophy in Europe, is indisputable. Ficino differed from the majority of his contemporaries in this that, while he felt the influence of antiquity no less strongly than they did, he never lost his faith in Christianity, or contaminated his morals by contact with paganism. For him, as for Petrarch, St Augustine was the model of a Christian student. The cardinal point of his doctrine was the identity of religion and philosophy. He held that philosophy consists in the study of truth and wisdom, and that God alone is truth and wisdom,--so that philosophy is but religion, and true religion is genuine philosophy. Religion, indeed, is common to all men, but its pure form is that revealed through Christ; and the teaching of Christ is sufficient to a man in all circumstances of life. Yet it cannot be expected that every man should accept the faith without reasoning; and here Ficino found a place for Platonism. He maintained that the Platonic doctrine was providentially made to harmonize with Christianity, in order that by its means speculative intellects might be led to Christ. The transition from this point of view to an almost superstitious adoration of Plato was natural; and Ficino, we know, joined in the hymns and celebrations with which the Florentine Academy honoured their great master on the day of his birth and death. Those famous festivals in which Lorenzo de' Medici delighted had indeed a pagan tone appropriate to the sentiment of the Renaissance; nor were all the worshippers of the Athenian sage so true to Christianity as his devoted student. Entry: FICINO
_Feasts of the Jews_.--By Old Testament writers a festival or feast is generally called either [Hebrew: hag] (compare the Arabic Hadj), from [Hebrew: hagag] to rejoice, or [Hebrew: moed], from [Hebrew: yaad], to appoint. The words [Hebrew: shabat] and [Hebrew: mikra kodesh] are also occasionally used. In the Talmud the three principal feasts are called [Hebrew: regalim], after Exod. xxiii. 14. Of the Jewish feasts which are usually traced to a pre-Mosaic origin the most important and characteristic was the weekly Sabbath, but special importance was also attached from a very early date to the lunar periods. It is probable that other festivals also, of a seasonal character, were observed (see Exod. v. 1). In common with most others, the Mosaic system of annual feasts groups itself readily around the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. In Lev. xxiii., where the list is most fully given, they seem to be arranged with a conscious reference to the sacred number seven (compare Numb. xxviii.). Those belonging to the vernal equinox are three in number; a preparatory day, that of the Passover, leads up to the principal festival, that of unleavened bread, which again is followed by an after-feast, that of Pentecost (see PASSOVER, PENTECOST). Those of the autumnal equinox are four; a preparatory day on the new moon of the seventh month (the Feast of Trumpets) is followed by a great day of rest, the day of Atonement (which, however, was hardly a _festival_ in the stricter sense of the word), by the Feast of Tabernacles, and by a great concluding day (Lev. xxiii. 36; John vii. 37). If the feast of the Passover be excepted, it will be seen that all these celebrations or commemorations associate themselves more readily with natural than with historical events.[11] There was also a considerable number of post-Mosaic festivals, of which the principal were that of the Dedication (described in 1 Macc. iv. 52-59; comp. John x. 22) and that of Purim, the origin of which is given in the book of Esther (ix. 20 seq.). It has probably no connexion with the Persian festival Furdigán (see ESTHER).[12] Entry: FEASTS
FOOLS, FEAST OF (Lat. _festum stultorum_, _fatuorum_, _follorum_, Fr. _fête des fous_), the name for certain burlesque quasi-religious festivals which, during the middle ages, were the ecclesiastical counterpart of the secular revelries of the Lord of Misrule. The celebrations are directly traceable to the pagan Saturnalia of ancient Rome, which in spite of the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, and of the denunciation of bishops and ecclesiastical councils, continued to be celebrated by the people on the Kalends of January with all their old licence. The custom, indeed, so far from dying out, was adopted by the barbarian conquerors and spread among the Christian Goths in Spain, Franks in Gaul, Alemanni in Germany, and Anglo-Saxons in Britain. So late as the 11th century Bishop Burchard of Worms thought it necessary to fulminate against the excesses connected with it (_Decretum_, xix. c. 5, Migne, _Patrologia lat_. 140, p. 965). Then, just as it appears to have been sinking into oblivion among the people, the clergy themselves gave it the character of a specific religious festival. Certain days seem early to have been set apart as special festivals for different orders of the clergy: the feast of St Stephen (December 26) for the deacons, St John's day (December 27) for the priests, Holy Innocents' Day for the boys, and for the sub-deacons Circumcision, the Epiphany, or the 11th of January. The Feast of Holy Innocents became a regular festival of children, in which a boy, elected by his fellows of the choir school, functioned solemnly as bishop or archbishop, surrounded by the elder choir-boys as his clergy, while the canons and other clergy took the humbler seats. At first there is no evidence to prove that these celebrations were characterized by any specially indecorous behaviour; but in the 12th century such behaviour had become the rule. In 1180 Jean Beleth, of the diocese of Amiens, calls the festival of the sub-deacons _festum stultorum_ (Migne, _Patrol_. _lat_. 202, p. 79). The burlesque ritual which characterized the Feast of Fools throughout the middle ages was now at its height. A young sub-deacon was elected bishop, vested in the episcopal _insignia_ (except the mitre) and conducted by his fellows to the sanctuary. A mock mass was begun, during which the lections were read _cum farsia_, obscene songs were sung and dances performed, cakes and sausages eaten at the altar, and cards and dice played upon it. Entry: FOOLS
Garrick practically ceased to act in 1766, but he continued the management of Drury Lane, and in 1769 organized the Shakespeare celebrations at Stratford-on-Avon, an undertaking which ended in dismal failure, though he composed an "Ode upon dedicating a building and erecting a Statue to Shakespeare" on the occasion. (See, _inter alia, Garrick's Vagary, or England Run Mad; with particulars of the Stratford Jubilee_, 1769.) Of his best supporters on the stage, Mrs Cibber, with whom he had been reconciled, died in 1766, and Mrs (Kitty) Clive retired in 1769; but Garrick contrived to maintain the success of his theatre. He sold his share in the property in 1776 for £35,000, and took leave of the stage by playing a round of his favourite characters--Hamlet, Lear, Richard and Benedick, among Shakespearian parts; Lusignan in _Zara_, Aaron Hill's adaptation of Voltaire's _Zaire_; and Kitely in his own adaptation of Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_; Archer in Farquhar's _Beaux' Stratagem_; Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_; Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh's _Provoked Wife_; Leon in Fletcher's _Rule a Wife and have a Wife_. He ended the series, as Tate Wilkinson says, "in full glory" with "the youthful Don Felix" in Mrs Centlivre's _Wonder_ on the 10th of June 1776. He died in London on the 20th of January 1779. He was buried in Westminster Abbey at the foot of Shakespeare's statue with imposing solemnities. An elegy on his death was published by William Tasker, poet and physiognomist, in the same year. Entry: GARRICK