The fencing phraseology of Elizabethan times is highly picturesque, but with difficulty intelligible in the absence of practical demonstration. Without going into technical details it may be pointed out that the long Elizabethan rapier, however admirably balanced it might otherwise be, was still too heavy to admit of quick parries with the blade itself. Thrusts, as a rule, had to be avoided by body movements, by ducking, or by a vault aside (_incartata_), or beaten away with the left hand, the hand being protected with a gauntlet or armed with a dagger. In fact, one may say that the chief characteristic of Elizabethan sword-play was the concerted action of the left hand parrying while the right delivered the attack. Benvolio's description of Tybalt's fight is graphic:-- Entry: FENCING
LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON, BARON (1830-1896), English painter and sculptor, the son of a physician, was born at Scarborough on the 3rd of December 1830. His grandfather, Sir James Leighton, also a physician, was long resident at the court of St Petersburg. Frederick Leighton was taken abroad at a very early age. In 1840 he learnt drawing at Rome under Signor Meli. The family moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended classes at the Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfort, and in the winter of 1844 accompanied his family to Florence, where his future career as an artist was decided. There he studied under Bezzuoli and Segnolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and attended anatomy classes under Zanetti; but he soon returned to complete his general education at Frankfort, receiving no further direct instruction in art for five years. He went to Brussels in 1848, where he met Wiertz and Gallait, and painted some pictures, including "Cimabue finding Giotto," and a portrait of himself. In 1849 he studied for a few months in Paris, where he copied Titian and Correggio in the Louvre, and then returned to Frankfort, where he settled down to serious art work under Edward Steinle, whose pupil he declared he was "in the fullest sense of the term." Though his artistic training was mainly German, and his master belonged to the same school as Cornelius and Overbeck, he loved Italian art and Italy and the first picture by which he became known to the British public was "Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence," which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1855. At this time the works of the Pre-Raphaelites almost absorbed public interest in art--it was the year of Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," and the "Rescue," by Millais. Yet Leighton's picture, painted in quite a different style, created a sensation, and was purchased by Queen Victoria. Although, since his infancy, he had only visited England once (in 1851, when he came to see the Great Exhibition), he was not quite unknown in the cultured and artistic world of London, as he had made many friends during a residence in Rome of some two years or more after he left Frankfort in 1852. Amongst these were Giovanni Costa, Robert Browning, James Knowles, George Mason and Sir Edward Poynter, then a youth, whom he allowed to work in his studio. He also met Thackeray, who wrote from Rome to the young Millais: "Here is a versatile young dog, who will run you close for the presidentship one of these days." During these years he painted several Florentine subjects--"Tybalt and Romeo," "The Death of Brunelleschi," a cartoon of "The Pest in Florence according to Boccaccio," and "The Reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets." He now turned his attention to themes of classic legend, which at first he treated in a "Romantic spirit." His next picture, exhibited in 1856, was "The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the Power of his Art redeems his Wife from Hades." It was not a success, and he did not again exhibit till 1858, when he sent a little picture of "The Fisherman and the Syren" to the Royal Academy, and "Samson and Delilah" to the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. In 1858 he visited London and made the acquaintance of the leading Pre-Raphaelites--Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais. In the spring of 1859 he was at Capri, always a favourite resort of his, and made many studies from nature, including a very famous drawing of a lemon tree. It was not till 1860 that he settled in London, when he took up his quarters at 2 Orme Square, Bayswater, where he stayed till, in 1860, he moved to his celebrated house in Holland Park Road, with its Arab hall decorated with Damascus tiles. There he lived till his death. He now began to fulfil the promise of his "Cimabue," and by such pictures as "Paolo e Francesca," "The Star of Bethlehem," "Jezebel and Ahab taking Possession of Naboth's Vineyard," "Michael Angelo musing over his Dying Servant," "A Girl feeding Peacocks," and "The Odalisque," all exhibited in 1861-1863, rose rapidly to the head of his profession. The two latter pictures were marked by the rhythm of line and luxury of colour which are among the most constant attributes of his art, and may be regarded as his first dreams of Oriental beauty, with which he afterwards showed so great a sympathy. In 1864 he exhibited "Dante in Exile" (the greatest of his Italian pictures), "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Golden Hours." In the winter of the same year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. After this the main effort of his life was to realize visions of beauty suggested by classic myth and history. If we add to pictures of this class a few Scriptural subjects, a few Oriental dreams, one or two of tender sentiment like "Wedded" (one of the most popular of his pictures, and well known by not only an engraving, but a statuette modelled by an Italian sculptor), a number of studies of very various types of female beauty, "Teresina," "Biondina," "Bianca," "Moretta," &c., and an occasional portrait, we shall nearly exhaust the two classes into which Lord Leighton's work (as a painter) can be divided. Entry: LEIGHTON
DUEL (Ital. _duello_, Lat. _duellum_--old form of _bellum_--from _duo_, two), a prearranged encounter between two persons, with deadly weapons, in accordance with conventional rules, with the object of voiding a personal quarrel or of deciding a point of honour. The first recorded instance of the word occurs in Coryate's _Crudities_ (1611), but Shakespeare has _duello_ in this sense, and uses "duellist" of Tybalt in _Romeo and Juliet_. In its earlier meaning of a judicial combat we find the word latinized in the Statute of Wales (Edw. I., Act 12), "_Placita de terris in partibus istis non habent terminari per duellum_." Entry: DUEL
"With piercing steel he tilts at bold Mercutio's breast, Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point, And with a martial scorn, with one hand beats Cold death aside, and with the other Sends it back to Tybalt, whose dexterity Retorts it...." Entry: FENCING