HOOFT, PIETER CORNELISSEN (1581-1647), Dutch poet and historian, was born at Amsterdam on the 16th of March 1581. His father was one of the leading citizens of Holland, both in politics and in the patronage of letters, and for some time burgomaster of Amsterdam. As early as 1598 the young man was made a member of the chamber of rhetoric _In Liefde bloeiende_, and produced before that body his tragedy of _Achilles and Polyxena_, not printed until 1614. In June 1598 he left Holland and proceeded to Paris, where on the 10th of April 1599 he saw the body of Gabrielle d'Estrées lying in state. He went a few months later to Venice, Florence and Rome, and in 1600 to Naples. During his Italian sojourn he made a deep and fruitful study of the best literature of Italy. In July 1600 he sent home to the _In Liefde bloeiende_ a very fine letter in verse, expressing his aspirations for the development of Dutch poetry. He returned through Germany, and after an absence of three years and a half found himself in Amsterdam again on the 8th of May 1601. In 1602 he brought out his second tragedy, _Theseus and Ariadne_, printed at Amsterdam in 1614. In 1605 he completed his beautiful pastoral drama _Granida_, not published until 1615. He studied law and history at Leiden from 1606 to 1609, and in June of the latter year received from Prince Maurice of Orange the appointment of steward of Muiden, bailiff of Gooiland, and lord of Weesp, a joint office of great emolument. He occupied himself with repairing and adorning the decayed castle of Muiden, which was his residence during the remainder of his life. There he entertained the poet Vondel, the scholar Barlaeus,[1] Constantin Huygens, Vossius, Laurens Reael and others. Hooft had been a suitor for the hand of Anna Roemer Visscher, and after the death of Roemer Visscher both the sisters visited Muiden. Anna's sympathies were in time diverted to the school of Jacob Cats, but Marie Tesselschade maintained close ties with Hooft, who revised her translation of Tasso. In August 1610 he married Christina van Erp, an accomplished lady who died in 1623, and four years later he married Eleonora Hellemans. In 1612 Hooft produced his national tragedy of _Geeraerdt van Velzen_ (pr. 1613), a story of the reign of Count Floris V. In 1614 was performed at Coster's academy Hooft's comedy of _Ware-nar_, an adaptation of the _Aulularia_ of Plautus, first printed in 1617. In 1616 he wrote another tragedy, _Baeto, or the Origin of the Dutch_, not printed until 1626. It was in 1618 that he abandoned poetry for history, and in 1626 he published the first of his great prose works, the _History of Henry the Great_ (Henry IV. of France). His next production was his _Miseries of the Princes of the House of Medici_ (Amsterdam, 1638). In 1642 he published at Amsterdam a folio comprising the first twenty books of his _Dutch History_, embracing the period from 1555 to 1585, a magnificent performance, to the perfecting of which he had given fifteen years of labour. The seven concluding books were published posthumously in 1654. His idea of history was gained from Tacitus, whose works he translated. Hooft died on a visit to the Hague, whither he had gone to attend the funeral of Prince Frederick Henry, on the 21st of May 1647, and was buried in the New Church at Amsterdam. Entry: HOOFT
KAUFFMANN, [MARIA ANNA] ANGELICA (1741-1807), the once popular artist and Royal Academician, was born at Coire in the Grisons, on the 30th of October 1741. Her father, John Josef Kauffmann, was a poor man and mediocre painter, but apparently very successful in teaching his precocious daughter. She rapidly acquired several languages, read incessantly, and showed marked talents as a musician. Her greatest progress, however, was in painting; and in her twelfth year she had become a notability, with bishops and nobles for her sitters. In 1754 her father took her to Milan. Later visits to Italy of long duration appear to have succeeded this excursion; in 1763 she visited Rome, returning to it again in 1764. From Rome she passed to Bologna and Venice, being everywhere fêted and caressed, as much for her talents as for her personal charms. Writing from Rome in August 1764 to his friend Franke, Winckelmann refers to her exceptional popularity. She was then painting his picture, a half-length, of which she also made an etching. She spoke Italian as well as German, he says; and she also expressed herself with facility in French and English--one result of the last-named accomplishment being that she painted all the English visitors to the Eternal City. "She may be styled beautiful," he adds, "and in singing may vie with our best virtuosi." While at Venice, she was induced by Lady Wentworth, the wife of the English ambassador to accompany her to London, where she appeared in 1766. One of her first works was a portrait of Garrick, exhibited in the year of her arrival at "Mr Moreing's great room in Maiden Lane." The rank of Lady Wentworth opened society to her, and she was everywhere well received, the royal family especially showing her great favour. Entry: KAUFFMANN
The treaty of Campo Formio (17th Oct. 1797), by which Napoleon handed Venice over to the Austrians, gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in the _Letters of Jacopo Ortis_ (1798), a species of political _Werther_,--for the hero of Foscolo embodies the mental sufferings and suicide of an undeceived Italian patriot just as the hero of Goethe places before us the too delicate sensitiveness embittering and at last cutting short the life of a private German scholar. The story of Foscolo, like that of Goethe, had a groundwork of melancholy fact. Jacopo Ortis had been a real personage; he was a young student of Padua, and committed suicide there under circumstances akin to those described by Foscolo. At this period Foscolo's mind appears to have been only too familiar with the thought of suicide. Cato and the many classical examples of self-destruction scattered through the pages of Plutarch appealed to the imaginations of young Italian patriots as they had done in France to those of the heroes and heroines of the Gironde. In the case of Foscolo, as in that of Goethe, the effect produced on the writer's mind by the composition of the work seems to have been beneficial. He had seen the ideal of a great national future rudely shattered; but he did not despair of his country, and sought relief in now turning to gaze on the ideal of a great national poet. At Milan, whither he repaired after the fall of Venice, he was engaged in other literary pursuits besides the composition of _Ortis_. The friendship formed there with the great poet Parini was ever afterwards remembered with pride and gratitude. The friendship formed with another celebrated Milanese poet soon gave place to a feeling of bitter enmity. Still hoping that his country would be freed by Napoleon, he served as a volunteer in the French army, took part in the battle of the Trebbia and the siege of Genoa, was wounded and made prisoner. When released he returned to Milan, and there gave the last touches to his _Ortis_, published a translation of and commentary upon _Callimachus_, commenced a version of the _Iliad_, and began his translation of Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_. The result of a memorandum prepared for Lyons, where, along with other Italian delegates, he was to have laid before Napoleon the state of Italy, only proved that the views cherished by him for his country were too bold to be even submitted to the dictator of France. The year 1807 witnessed the appearance of his _Carme sui sepolcri_, of which the entire spirit and language may be described as a sublime effort to seek refuge in the past from the misery of the present and the darkness of the future. The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the masterpieces of Greek oratory, to fight again the battles of their country. The inaugural lecture on the origin and duty of literature, delivered by Foscolo in January 1809 when appointed to the chair of Italian eloquence at Pavia, was conceived in the same spirit. In this lecture Foscolo urged his young countrymen to study letters, not in obedience to academic traditions, but in their relation to individual and national life and growth. The sensation produced by this lecture had no slight share in provoking the decree of Napoleon by which the chair of national eloquence was abolished in all the Italian universities. Soon afterwards Foscolo's tragedy of _Ajax_ was represented but with little success at Milan, and its supposed allusions to Napoleon rendering the author an object of suspicion, he was forced to remove from Milan to Tuscany. The chief fruits of his stay in Florence are the tragedy of _Ricciarda_, the _Ode to the Graces_, left unfinished, and the completion of his version of the _Sentimental Journey_ (1813). His version of Sterne is an important feature in his personal history. When serving with the French he had been at the Boulogne camp, and had traversed much of the ground gone over by Yorick; and in his memoir of Didimo Cherico, to whom the version is ascribed, he throws much curious light on his own character. He returned to Milan in 1813, until the entry of the Austrians; thence he passed into Switzerland, where he wrote a fierce satire in Latin on his political and literary opponents; and finally he sought the shores of England at the close of 1816. Entry: FOSCOLO
The close of Bonaparte's victorious campaign against the Archduke Charles in 1797 enabled him to mature those designs respecting Venice which are detailed in the article NAPOLEON. On a far higher level was his conduct towards the Milanese. While the French directory saw in that province little more than a district which might be plundered and bargained for, Bonaparte, though by no means remiss in the exaction of gold and of artistic treasures, was laying the foundation of a friendly republic. During his sojourn at the castle of Montebello or Mombello, near Milan, he commissioned several of the leading men of northern Italy to draw up a project of constitution and list of reforms for that province. Meanwhile he took care to curb the excesses of the Italian Jacobins and to encourage the Moderates, who were favourable to the French connexion as promising a guarantee against Austrian domination and internal anarchy. He summed up his conduct in the letter of the 8th of May 1797 to the French directory, "I cool the hot heads here and warm the cool ones." The Transpadane Republic, or, as it was soon called, the Cisalpine Republic, began its organized life on the 9th of July 1797, with a brilliant festival at Milan. The constitution was modelled on that of the French directory, and, lest there should be a majority of clerical or Jacobinical deputies, the French Republic through its general, Bonaparte, nominated and appointed the first deputies and administrators of the new government. In the same month it was joined by the Cispadane Republic; and the terms of the treaty of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797), while fatal to the political life of Venice, awarded to this now considerable state the Venetian territories west of the river Adige. A month later, under the pretence of stilling the civil strifes in the Valtelline, Bonaparte absorbed that Swiss district in the Cisalpine Republic, which thus included all the lands between Como and Verona on the north, and Rimini on the south. Entry: D
Harvey himself and all his contemporaries were well aware of the novelty and importance of his theory. He says in the admirable letter to Dr Argent, president of the College of Physicians, which follows the dedication of his treatise to Charles I., that he should not have ventured to publish "a book which alone asserts that the blood pursues its course and flows back again by a new path, contrary to the received doctrine taught so many ages by innumerable learned and illustrious men," if he had not set forth his theory for more than nine years in his college lectures, gradually brought it to perfection, and convinced his colleagues by actual demonstrations of the truth of what he advanced. He anticipates opposition, and even obloquy or loss, from the novelty of his views. These anticipations, however, the event proved to have been groundless. If we are to credit Aubrey indeed, he found that after the publication of the _De motu_ "he fell mightily in his practice; 'twas believed by the vulgar that he was crackbrained, and all the physicians were against him." But the last assertion is demonstrably untrue; and if apothecaries and patients ever forsook him, they must soon have returned, for Harvey left a handsome fortune. By his own profession the book was received as it deserved. So novel a doctrine was not to be accepted without due inquiry, but his colleagues had heard his lectures and seen his demonstrations for years; they were already convinced of the truth of his theory, urged its publication, continued him in his lectureship, and paid him every honour in their power. In other countries the book was widely read and much canvassed. Few accepted the new theory; but no one dreamt of claiming the honour of it for himself, nor for several years did any one pretend that it could be found in the works of previous authors. The first attack on it was a feeble tract by one James Primerose, a pupil of Jean Riolan (_Exerc. et animadv. in libr. Harvei de motu cord. et sang._, 1630). Five years later Parisanus, an Italian physician, published his _Lapis Lydius de motu cord. et sang_. (Venice, 1635), a still more bulky and futile performance. Primerose's attacks were "imbellia pleraque" and "sine ictu"; that of Parisanus "in quamplurimis turpius," according to the contemporary judgment of Johann Vessling. Their dulness has protected them from further censure. Caspar Hoffmann, professor at Nuremberg, while admitting the truth of the lesser circulation in the full Harveian sense, denied the rest of the new doctrine. To him the English anatomist replied in a short letter, still extant, with great consideration yet with modest dignity, beseeching him to convince himself by actual inspection of the truth of the facts in question. He concludes: "I accept your censure in the candid and friendly spirit in which you say you wrote it; do you also the same to me, now that I have answered you in the same spirit." This letter is dated May 1636, and in that year Harvey passed through Nuremberg with the earl of Arundel, and visited Hoffmann. But he failed to convince him; "nec tamen valuit Harveius vel coram," writes P. M. Schlegel, who, however, afterwards succeeded in persuading the obstinate old Galenist to soften his opposition to the new doctrine, and thinks that his complete conversion might have been effected if he had but lived a little longer--"nec dubito quin concessisset tandem in nostra castra." While in Italy the following year Harvey visited his old university of Padua, and demonstrated his views to Professor Vessling. A few months later this excellent anatomist wrote him a courteous and sensible letter, with certain objections to the new theory. The answer to this has not been preserved, but it convinced his candid opponent, who admitted the truth of the circulation in a second letter (both were published in 1640), and afterwards told a friend, "Harveium nostrum si audis, agnosces coelestem sanguinis et spiritus ingressum ex arteriis per venas in dextrum cordis sinum." Meanwhile a greater convert, R. Descartes, in his _Discours sur la méthode_ (1637) had announced his adhesion to the new doctrine, and refers to "the English physician to whom belongs the honour of having first shown that the course of the blood in the body is nothing less than a kind of perpetual movement in a circle." J. Walaeus of Leyden, H. Regius of Utrecht and Schlegel of Hamburg successively adopted the new physiology. Of these professors, Regius was mauled by the pertinacious Primerose and mauled him in return (_Spongia qua eluuntur sordes quae Jac. Primirosius_, &c., and _Antidotum adv. Spongiam venenatam Henr. Regii_). Descartes afterwards repeated Harvey's vivisections, and, more convinced than ever, demolished Professor V. F. Plempius of Louvain, who had written on the other side. George Ent also published an _Apologia pro circulatione sanguinis_ in answer to Parisanus. Entry: HARVEY
The loftiest campanile in Italy is that of Cremona, 396 ft. high. Though built in the second half of the 13th century, and showing therefore Gothic influence in the pointed windows of the belfry and two storeys below, and the substitution of the pointed for the semicircular arch of the arcaded corbel string-courses, it follows the Lombard type in its general design, and the same is found in the campanile of S. Andrea, Mantua. In the 16th century an octagonal lantern in two strings crowned with a conical roof was added. Owing to defective foundations, some of the Italian campanili incline over considerably; of these leaning towers, those of the Garisendi and Asinelli palaces at Bologna form conspicuous objects in the town; the two more remarkable examples are the campanile of S. Martino at Este, of early Lombard type, and the leaning tower at Pisa, which was built by the citizens in 1174 to rival that of Venice. The Pisa tower is circular on plan, about 51 ft. in diameter and 172 ft. high. Not including the belfry storey, which is set back on the inner wall, it is divided into seven storeys all surrounded with an open gallery or arcade. (See ARCHITECTURE, Plate I. fig. 62.) Owing to the sinking of the piles on the south side, the inclination was already noticed when the tower was about 30 ft. high, and slight additions in the height of the masonry on that side were introduced to correct the level, but without result, so that the works were stopped for many years and taken up again in 1234 under the direction of William of Innsbruck; he also attempted to rectify the levels by increasing the height of the masonry on the south side. At a later period the belfry storey was added. The inclination now approaches 14 ft. out of the perpendicular. The outside is built entirely in white marble and is of admirable workmanship, but it is a question whether the equal subdivision of the several storeys is not rather monotonous. The campanili of the churches of S. Nicolas and S. Michele in Orticaia, both in Pisa, are also inclined to a slight extent. Entry: FIG
CAPISTRANO, GIOVANNI DI (1386-1456), Italian friar, theologian and inquisitor, was born in the little village of Capistrano in the Abruzzi, of a family which had come to Italy with the Angevins. He lived at first a wholly secular life, married, and became a successful magistrate; he took part in the continual struggles of the small Italian states in such a way as to compromise himself. During his captivity he was practically ruined and lost his young wife. He then in despair entered the Franciscan order and at once gave himself up to the most rigorous asceticism, violently defending the ideal of strict observance. He was charged with various missions by the popes Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V., in which he acquitted himself with implacable violence. As legate or inquisitor he persecuted the last Fraticelli of Ferrara, the Jesuati of Venice, the Jews of Sicily, Moldavia and Poland, and, above all, the Hussites of Germany, Hungary and Bohemia; his aim in the last case was to make conferences impossible between the representatives of Rome and the Bohemians, for every attempt at conciliation seemed to him to be conniving at heresy. Finally, after the taking of Constantinople, he succeeded in gathering troops together for a crusade against the Turks (1455), which at least helped to raise the siege of Belgrade, which was being blockaded by Mahommed II. He died shortly afterwards (October 23, 1456), and was canonized in 1690. Capistrano, in spite of this restless life, found time to work both in the lifetime of his master St Bernardino of Siena and after, at the reform of the order of the minor Franciscans, and to uphold both in his writings and his speeches the most advanced theories upon the papal supremacy as opposed to that of the councils. Entry: CAPISTRANO
The first phase of the campaign satisfactorily settled, Napoleon was free to turn his attention to the "arch-enemy" to whom he was now considerably superior in numbers (35,000 to 25,000). The day after the signature of the armistice of Cherasco he began preparing for a new advance and also for the rôle of arbiter of the destinies of Italy. Many whispers there were, even in his own army, as to the dangers of passing on without "revolutionizing" aristocratic Genoa and monarchical Piedmont, and of bringing Venice, the pope and the Italian princes into the field against the French. But Bonaparte, flushed with victory, and better informed than the malcontents of the real condition of Italy, never hesitated. His first object was to drive out Beaulieu, his second to push through Tirol, and his only serious restriction the chance that the armistice with Piedmont would not result in a definitive treaty. Beaulieu had fallen back into Lombardy, and now bordered the Po right and left of Valenza. To achieve further progress, Napoleon had first to cross that river, and the point and method of crossing was the immediate problem, a problem the more difficult as Napoleon had no bridge train and could only make use of such existing bridges as he could seize intact.[10] If he crossed above Valenza, he would be confronted by one river-line after another, on one of which at least Beaulieu would probably stand to fight. But quite apart from the immediate problem, Napoleon's intention was less to beat the Austrians than to dislodge them. He needed a foothold in Lombardy which would make him independent of, and even a menace to, Piedmont. If this were assured, he could for a few weeks entirely ignore his communications with France and strike out against Beaulieu, dethrone the king of Sardinia, or revolutionize Parma, Modena and the papal states according to circumstances. Entry: THE
BRAHAM, JOHN (c. 1774-1856), English vocalist, was born in London about 1774, of Jewish parentage, his real name being Abraham. His father and mother died when he was quite young. Having received lessons in singing from an Italian artist named Leoni, he made his first appearance in public at Covent Garden theatre on the 21st of April 1787, when he sang "The soldier tired of war's alarms" and "_Ma chère arrive_." On the breaking of his voice, he had to support himself by teaching the pianoforte. In a few years, however, he recovered his voice, which proved to be a tenor of exceptionally pure and rich quality. His second début was made in 1794 at the Bath concerts, to the conductor of which, Rauzzini, he was indebted for careful training extending over a period of more than two years. In 1796 he reappeared in London at Drury Lane in Storace's opera of _Mahmoud_. Such was his success that he obtained an engagement the next year to appear in the Italian opera house in Grétry's _Azor et Zémire_. He also sang in oratorios and was engaged for the Three Choir festival at Gloucester. With the view of perfecting himself in his art he set out for Italy in the autumn of 1797. On the way he gave some concerts at Paris, which proved so successful that he was induced to remain there for eight months. His career in Italy was one of continuous triumph; he appeared in all the principal opera-houses, singing in Milan, Genoa, Leghorn and Venice. His compass embraced about nineteen notes, his management of the falsetto being perfect. In 1801 he returned to his native country, and appeared once more at Covent Garden in the opera _Chains of the Heart_, by Mazzinghi and Reeve. So great was his popularity that an engagement he had made when abroad to return after a year to Vienna was renounced, and he remained henceforward in England. In 1824 he sang the part of Max in the English version of Weber's _Der Freischütz_, and he was the original Sir Huon in that composer's _Oberon_ in 1826. Braham made two unfortunate speculations on a large scale, one being the purchase of the Colosseum in the Regent's Park in 1831 for £40,000, and the other the erection of the St James's theatre at a cost of £26,000 in 1836. In 1838 he sang the part of William Tell at Drury Lane, and in 1839 the part of Don Giovanni. His last public appearance was at a concert in March 1852. He died on the 17th of February 1856. There is, perhaps, no other case upon record in which a singer of the first rank enjoyed the use of his voice so long; between Braham's first and last public appearances considerably more than sixty years intervened, during forty of which he held the undisputed supremacy alike in opera, oratorio and the concert-room. Braham was the composer of a number of vocal pieces, which being sung by himself had great temporary popularity, though they had little intrinsic merit, and are now deservedly forgotten. A partial exception must be made in favour of "The Death of Nelson," originally written in 1811 as a portion of the opera _The American_; this still keeps its place as a standard popular English song. Entry: BRAHAM