ductions. His Œuvres complètes were published in Paris in 1796; an edition of his Œuvres posthumes was brought out in Paris by François de Neufchâteau in 1807, and his Correspondance secrète was published in Paris by de Lescure in 1866.
See L. Perey (pseud. for Mlle. Luce Herpin), Un Petit-Neveu de Mazarin (Paris, 1890); La Fin du XVIIIᵉ siècle: le duc de Nivernais (Paris, 1891), by the same writer; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. xiii.); Dupin, Éloge du duc de Nivernais (1840); Abbé Blampignon, Le Duc de Nivemais, d’après sa correspondance inédite (1888).
NIXIE, or Nixy, a female water-sprite. The word is adapted from Ger. Nixe, the male water-sprite being Nix. The general term covering both the male and female is “nicker,” a kelpie. This also appears in Dutch nikker. The Old Teutonic nikus may be connected with the root which appears in Gr. νίζειν or νίπτειν, “to wash.”
NIXON, JOHN (1815–1899), English mining engineer and colliery proprietor, was born at Barlow, Durham, on the 10th of May 1815, the son of a farmer. He was educated at the village school, and at an academy in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he distinguished himself in mathematics. Leaving school at fourteen, he worked on his father’s farm for two years, and then apprenticed himself to Mr Joseph Gray, one of the leading mining engineers in the north of England, and agent to the second marquis of Bute; subsequently he obtained employment as “overman” at one of the Bute collieries in Durham. In 1839 an advertisement drew him to the South Wales coalfield, where he was engaged in mine-surveying, and whence he proceeded to France as engineer to a coal and iron company. Returning to England, he noticed while travelling on one of the Thames steamers that the Welsh coal in use gave off no smoke and was preferred to north country coal both on this ground and because of its greater power-producing efficiency. His experience in France now suggested to him that a profitable market for this coal might be established among the French iron-founders and manufacturers generally who had hitherto imported English north country coal. For some time he was unable to procure any of this special Welsh coal. Eventually, however, by expending all his small savings he secured a cargo, freighted a small craft, and sent it across to Nantes, where with some difficulty he persuaded the local manufacturers to try it on the understanding that he bore the expense of the experiments. These tests, carried out under Nixon’s personal directions, proved highly successful, and in due course the French government gave him a contract for Welsh coal for the French navy. Nixon’s visit to Nantes laid the foundations of the Welsh steam-coal trade, English manufacturers and shipowners imitating the example of their French rivals. At first Nixon only sold the coal on commission, but eventually acquired what appeared to him a prospective field for steam-coal in the Aberdare valley, and after seven years’ working at last struck a rich seam. This property is now known as Nixon’s Navigation Collieries. Nixon subsequently acquired or developed other South Wales steam collieries, which yielded him a considerable fortune. He was also the inventor of many mechanical improvements in colliery working. He died in London on the 3rd of June 1899.
See J. E. Vincent, John Nixon, Pioneer of the Steam Coal Trade in South Wales (London, 1900).
NIZAM, the hereditary title of the reigning prince of Hyderabad (q.v.) in India, derived from an Arabic word meaning order, or administration. The same word is found in Nazim, applied to the Nawab of Bengal, and in Nizamat, the old term for criminal jurisdiction. Nizam-ul-Mulk (＝“administrator of the kingdom”) was the title of Asaf Jah, the founder of the dynasty, a very able soldier and minister of the court of Aurangzeb, who was appointed governor of the Deccan in 1713, and established his independence before his death in 1748.
NIZĀMĪ (1141–1203). Nizām-uddīn Abū Mahommed Ilyās bin Yūsuf, Persian poet, was born 535 A.H. (1141 A.D.). His native place, or at any rate the abode of his father, was in the hills of Kum, but as he spent almost all his days in Ganja in Arrān (the present Elizavettpol) he is generally known as Nizāmī of Ganja or Ganjawī. The early death of his parents, which illustrated to him in the most forcible manner the unstableness of all human existence, threw a gloom over his whole life, and fostered in him that earnest piety and fervent love for solitude and meditation which have left numerous traces in his poetical writings, and served him throughout his literary career as a powerful antidote against the enticing favours of princely courts, for which he, unlike most of his contemporaries, never sacrificed a tittle of his self-esteem. The religious atmosphere of Ganja, besides, was most favourable to such a state of mind; the inhabitants, being zealous Sunnites, allowed nobody to dwell among them who did not come up to their standard of orthodoxy, and it is therefore not surprising to find that Nizāmī abandoned himself at an early age to a stern ascetic life, as full of intolerance to others as dry and unprofitable to himself. He was rescued at last from this monkish idleness by his inborn genius, which, not being able to give free vent to its poetical inspirations under the crushing weight of bigotry, claimed a greater share in the legitimate enjoyments of life and the appreciation of the beauties of nature, as well as a more enlightened faith of tolerance, benevolence, and liberality. The first poetical work in which Nizāmī embodied his thoughts on God and man, and all the experiences he had gained, was necessarily of a didactic character, and very appropriately styled Makhzanul Asrār, or “Storehouse of Mysteries,” as it bears the unmistakable stamp of Sufic speculations. It shows, moreover, a strong resemblance to Nasir Khosrau’s ethical poems and Sanā’ī’s Hadīkat-ulhakīkat, or “Garden of Truth.” The date of composition, which varies in the different copies from 552 to 582 A.H., must be fixed in 574 or 575 (1178–1179 A.D.). Although the Makhzan is mainly devoted to philosophic meditations, the propensity of Nizāmī’s genius to purely epic poetry, which was soon to assert itself in a more independent form, makes itself felt even here, all the twenty chapters being interspersed with short tales illustrative of the maxims set forth in each. His claim to the title of the foremost Persian romanticist he fully established only a year or two after the Makhzan by the publication of his first epic masterpiece Khosrau and Shīrīn, composed, according to the oldest copies, in 576 A.H. (1180 A.D.). As in all his following epopees the subject was taken from what pious Moslems call the time of “heathendom”–here, for instance, from the old Sassānian story of Shāh Khosrau Parwiz (Chosroes Parvez), his love affairs with the princess Shīrīn of Armenia, his jealousy against the architect Ferhād, for some time his successful rival, of whom he got rid at last by a very ingenious trick, and his final reconciliation and marriage with Shīrīn; and it is a noteworthy fact that the once so devout Nizāmī never chose a strictly Mahommedan legend for his works of fiction. Nothing could prove better the complete revolution in his views, not only on religion, but also on art. He felt, no doubt, that the object of epic poetry was not to teach moral lessons or doctrines of faith, but to depict the good and bad tendencies of the human mind, the struggles and passions of men; and indeed in the whole range of Persian literature only Firdusī and Fakhr-uddīn As‛ad Jorjānī, the author of the older epopee Wīs u. Rāmīn (about the middle of the 11th century), can compete with Nizāmī in the wonderful delineation of character and the brilliant painting of human affections, especially of the joys and sorrows of a loving and beloved heart.
Khosrau and Shīrīn was inscribed to the reigning atābeg of Azerbaijān, Abū Ja‛far Mahommed Pahlavān, and his brother Kizil Arslān, who, soon after his accession to the throne in 582 A.H., showed his gratitude to the poet by summoning him to his court, loading him with honours, and bestowing upon him the revenue of two villages, Hamd and Nijān. Nizāmī accepted the royal gift, but his resolve to keep aloof from a servile court-life was not shaken by it, and he forthwith returned to his quiet retreat. Meanwhile his genius had not been dormant, and two years after his reception at court, in 584 A.H. (1188 A.D.), he completed his Dīwān, or collection of kasīdas and ghazals (mostly of an ethical and parenetic character), which are said to have numbered 20,000 distichs, although the few copies which have come to us contain only a very small number of
