OPIE, AMELIA (1769–1853), English author, daughter of James Alderson, a physician in Norwich, and was born there on the 12th of November 1769. Miss Alderson had inherited radical principles and was an ardent admirer of Horne Tooke. She was intimate with the Kembles and with Mrs Siddons, with Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1798 she married John Opie, the painter. The nine years of her married life were very happy, although her husband did not share her love of society. He encouraged her to write, and in 1801 she produced a novel entitled Father and Daughter, which showed genuine fancy and pathos. She published a volume of graceful verse in 1802; Adeline Mowbray followed in 1804, Simple Tales in 1806, Temper in 1812, Tales of Real Life in 1813, Valentine’s Eve in 1816, Tales of the Heart in 1818, and Madeline in 1822. At length, in 1825, through the influence of Joseph John Gurney, she joined the Society of Friends, and beyond a volume entitled Detraction Displayed, and contributions to periodicals, she wrote nothing more. The rest of her life was spent in travelling and in the exercise of charity. Mrs Opie retained her vivacity to the last, dying at Norwich on the 22nd of December 1853.
A Life by Miss C. L. Brightwell was published in 1854.
OPIE, JOHN (1761–1807), English historical and portrait painter, was born at St Agnes near Truro in May 1761. He early showed a taste for drawing, besides having at the age of twelve mastered Euclid and opened an evening school for arithmetic and writing. Before long he won some local reputation by portrait-painting; and in 1780 he started for London, under
the patronage of Dr Wolcot (Peter Pindar). Opie was introduced
to the town as “The Cornish Wonder,” a self-taught genius.
The world of fashion, ever eager for a new sensation, was
attracted; the carriages of the wealthy blocked the street
in which the painter resided, and for a time he reaped a rich
harvest by his portraits. But soon the fickle tide of popularity
flowed past him, and the painter was left neglected. He now
applied himself with redoubled diligence to correcting the
defects which marred his art, meriting the praise of his rival
Northcote—“Other artists paint to live; Opie lives to paint.”
At the same time he sought to supplement his early education
by the study of Latin and French and of the best English classics,
and to polish the rudeness of his provincial manners by mixing
in cultivated and learned circles. In 1786 he exhibited his first
important historical subject, the “Assassination of James I.,” and
in the following year the “Murder of Rizzio,” a work whose merit
was recognized by the artist’s immediate election as associate
of the Academy, of which he became a full member in 1788. He
was employed on five subjects for Boydell’s “Shakespeare
Gallery”; and until his death, on the 9th of April 1807, his
practice alternated between portraiture and historical work.
His productions are distinguished by breadth of handling and
a certain rude vigour, individuality and freshness. They are
wanting in grace, elegance and poetic feeling. Opie is also
favourably known as a writer on art by his Life of Reynolds in
Wolcot’s edition of Pilkington, his Letter on the Cultivation
of the Fine Arts in England, in which he advocated the formation
of a national gallery, and his Lectures as professor of painting
to the Royal Academy, which were published in 1809, with a
memoir of the artist by his widow (see above).
OPINION (Lat. opinio, from opinari, to think), a term used loosely in ordinary speech for an idea or an explanation of facts which is regarded as being based on evidence which is good but not conclusive. In logic it is used as a translation of Gr. δόξα, which plays a prominent part in Greek philosophy as the opposite of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη or ἀλήθεια). The distinction is drawn by Parmenides, who contrasts the sphere of
truth or knowledge with that of opinion, which deals with mere appearance, error, not-being. So Plato places δόξα between αἴσθησι and διάνοια, as dealing with phenomena contrasted with non-being and being respectively. Thus Plato confines opinion to that which is subject to change. Aristotle, retaining the same idea, assigns to opinion (especially in the Ethics) the
sphere of things contingent, i.e. the future: hence opinion deals with that which is probable. More generally he uses popular opinion—that which is generally held to be true (δοκεῖν)—as the starting-point of an inquiry. In modern philosophy the term has been used for various conceptions all having much the same connotation. The absence of any universally acknowledged definition, especially such as would contrast “opinion” with “belief,” “faith” and the like, deprives it
of any status as a philosophic term.
OPITZ VON BOBERFELD, MARTIN (1597–1639), German
poet, was born at Bunzlau in Silesia on the 23rd of December 1597, the son of a prosperous citizen. He received his early education at the Gymnasium of his native town, of which his uncle was rector, and in 1617 attended the high school “Schönaichianum”—at Beuthen, where he made a special study of French, Dutch and Italian poetry. In 1618 he entered the university of Frankfort-on-Oder as a student of literae
humaniores, and in the same year published his first essay, Aristarchus, sive De contemptu linguae Teutonicae, a plea for the purification of the German language from foreign adulteration.
In 1619 he went to Heidelberg, where he became the leader
of the school of young poets which at that time made that
university town remarkable. Visiting Leiden in the following
year he sat at the feet of the famous Dutch lyric poet Daniel
Heinsius (1580–1655), whose Lobgesang Jesu Christi and
Lobgesang Bacchi he had already translated into alexandrines.
After being for a short year (1622) professor of philosophy at
the Gymnasium of Weissenburg (now Karlsburg) in Transylvania,
he led a wandering life in the service of various territorial
nobles. In 1624 he was appointed councilor to Duke George
Rudolf of Liegnitz and Brieg in Silesia, and in 1625, as reward
for a requiem poem composed on the death of Archduke Charles
of Austria, was crowned laureate by the emperor Ferdinand
II. who a few years later ennobled him under the title “von
Boberfeld.” He was elected a member of the Fruchtbringende
Gesellschaft in 1629, and in 1630 went to Paris, where he made
the acquaintance of Hugo Grotius. He settled in 1635 at
Danzig, where Ladislaus IV. of Poland made him his historiographer
and secretary. Here he died of the plague on the 20th
of August 1639.
Opitz was the head of the so-called First Silesian School of poets (see Germany:Literature), and was during his life regarded as the greatest German poet. Although he would not to-day be considered a poetical genius, he may justly claim to have been the “father of German poetry” in respect at least of its form; his Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (1624) put an end to the hybridism that had until then prevailed, and established rules for the “purity” of language, style, verse and rhyme. Opitz’s own poems are in accordance with the rigorous rules which he laid down. They are mostly a formal and sober elaboration of carefully considered themes, and contain little beauty and less feeling. To this didactic and descriptive category belong his best poems, Trost-Gedichte in Widerwärtigkeit des Krieges (written 1621, but not published till 1633); Zlatna, oder von Ruhe des Gemüts (1622); Lob des Feldlebens (1623); Vielgut, oder vom wahren Glück (1629), and Vesuvius (1633). These contain some vivid poetical descriptions, but are in the main treatises in poetical form. In 1624 Opitz published a collected edition of his poetry under the title Acht Bücher deutscher Poematum (though, owing to a mistake on the part of the printer, there are only five books); his Dafne (1627), to which Heinrich Schütz composed the music, is the earliest German opera. Besides numerous translations, Opitz edited (1639) Das Annolied, a Middle High German poem of the end of the 11th century, and thus preserved it from oblivion.
Collected editions of Opitz’s works appeared in 1625, 1629, 1637, 1641, 1690 and 1746. His Ausgewählte Dichtungen have been edited by J. Tittmann (1869) and by H. Oesterley (Kurschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. xxvii. 1889). There are modern reprints of the Buch von der deutschen Poeterey by W. Braune (2nd ed., 1882). and, together with Aristarchus, by G. Witkowski (1888), and also of the Teutsche Poemata, of 1624, by G. Witkowski (1902). See H. Palm, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur des 16ten und 17ten Jahrhunderts (1877); K. Borinski, Die Poetik der Renaissance (1886); R. Reckherrn, Opitz, Ronsard und Heinsius (1888). Bibliography by H. Oesterley in the Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen for 1885.
