applications were made to him by the nobility for similar instruments; but, finding it impossible to execute their orders, he sent for his brother Jean Baptiste to come to Paris and help him. Quitting the hotel de Villeroi, he founded his house in the Rue de Bourbon, in the Faubourg St. Germain—an establishment which the efforts of the two brothers eventually rendered one of the finest in Europe. Incessantly occupied with new inventions and improvements, the genius of Sebastian Erard embraced a vast variety of subjects. He invented the organized pianoforte with two key-boards, one for the piano and the other tor the organ. The success of this instrument was considerable. The queen commanded one to be made for her own use, and in the construction of it Erard introduced several novel contrivances, which, at that time, awakened much interest. The queen's voice was of limited compass, and almost every piece was too high for her. Erard rendered the key-board of his new instrument movable, so that by changing its position with relation to the strings, a composition might be played a semitone, whole tone, or even a minor-third lower or higher, without tasking the player's ability to transpose. It was on the organ part of this instrument that he also made the first attempt to produce a crescendo and diminuendo by the mere pressure of the finger on the key; and this he afterwards carried into effect, on a large scale, in the organ built for the king's chapel. Gretry, in his Essais sur la Musique, particularly pointed out this invention to the notice of professors and to the attention of government.
The Revolution now broke out in France, and Sebastian Erard determined on removing to England; not with any intention of finally abandoning his native country, to which, on the contrary, he always meant to return, but with a view of opening new channels for the sale of his instruments. In London, as in Paris, Erard filled his manufactory with instruments of his own invention. In 1794 he took out his patent for improvements in harps and pianofortes, and his instruments soon became fashionable. In 1796 he availed himself of the altered state of affairs in France to return to Paris, and at this period made his first horizontal grand pianos in the shape of harpsichords, after the English fashion. These instruments were the first of the kind, with escapements, that had been seen in Paris; they had the defect that formerly accompanied all similar instruments—a slowness of action in the levers and hammers. The Parisian pianoforte-players, accustomed to the easy touch of the small pianos without escapements, disliked the new invention; and it was for this reason, that, after much study and many experiments, Erard brought out, in 1808, another new species of piano of reduced dimensions, and so more suited to the general size of Parisian rooms, and the mechanism of which acted with greater freedom and ease. In 1808 Erard returned to London, and there crowned his reputation as a manufacturer of musical instruments, and still more as a professed master of mechanics, by the invention of the double-movement harp. The success of this new harp was immense; which induced Erard to neglect the manufacture of pianos in London, and confine himself to that of harps alone. Nevertheless, in all the patents he took out in England, improvements in the piano, which he meant to carry into effect in France, are mixed with those of the harp. At every exhibition his works received the prize; thrice he obtained the gold medal; and for one of his last exhibitions the cross of the legion of honour was decreed him; in short he received every honorary reward that could be bestowed on the talents of a first-rate manufacturer. The model of his grand pianoforte with double escapement was exhibited in 1823; the mechanism was most ingenious. The point to be achieved was to unite in the same instrument all the nice shades of touch which can be produced by the simple mechanism without escapement, and at the same time all the precision in the stroke of the hammer which is the effect of the escapement. Erard's constitution, robust as it originally was, could hardly endure his continued exertions. For many years he suffered by disease, and at length breathed his last at his country-house, La Muette, near Passey, on the 5th of August, 1831. His funeral was attended by some of the most distinguished artists in Paris.—E. F. R.
ERASISTRATUS, a physician of the fourth century b.c. He was the most distinguished disciple of Chrysippus, and soon acquired an immense reputation. He was patronized by Seleucus Nicanor, king of Syria, and by some of the Ptolemies. Erasistratus and Herophilus, his contemporary, may be regarded as the true founders of the science of anatomy, inasmuch as before their time no physician had ventured on dissecting the human body. The former examined minutely the brain and heart, and made some discoveries which, considering the state of science at the time, were of great importance. Like his master Chrysippus, he made use of simple remedies. His works have all perished, with the exception of a few fragments preserved in Galen and Cælius Aurelianus. He is said to have put a period to his advanced years by a dose of hemlock.—R. M., A.
ERASMUS, Desiderius, was born at Rotterdam on 28th October, 1467. His father Gerard was a native of Tergau (Gouda); and his mother Margaret was the daughter of a physician of Sivenbergen. His parents were never married. Gerard being destined to a monastic life by his brothers that they might share his patrimony, rebelled at first from love to Margaret, but in vain, and retired to Rome. On being falsely told that she was dead, he sullenly took the vows, and was soon surprised and mortified by the discovery that the object of his affections still lived. Erasmus appears to have been the second son of this inauspicious union, and was thus subjected to the taunt of illegitimacy. The youth was sent to school at Gouda when he was only four years of age, and his musical voice gained him a place among the choristers in the cathedral of Utrecht. At the age of nine he was removed—but still accompanied by his fond mother—to a school at Deventer, kept by a religious order, Alexander Hegius, pupil of Rudolph Agricola, being master, and one of his fellow-pupils being Adrianus Florentius, afterwards Pope Adrian VI. According to his own account, he went through a course of scholastic study in this place, and was also, as a young man of no little promise, plied hard to enter the monastic service. Here, when he was about thirteen, his mother died of the plague, and his father soon sank under the bereavement. His father leaving sufficient property for his support and education, put it under trust of three guardians, who at once proved themselves unjust and rapacious; for, in order to divide the spoil among them, they forced him into the convent of Bois-le-Duc (Herzgogenbusch) in Brabant. Here he spent, or, as himself records, lost three years of his life. The frigid mechanical life of the convent disgusted him, and corporeal flagellation tended to break his spirits and injure his health. Every means was tried to induce him to become a friar; but menace and bribe were alike in vain: the resistance of his quiet and firm nature could neither be cajoled nor terrified. At length he was taken to Gouda, then placed in the monastery of Sion near Delft, and finally at the monastery of Stein he was so wrought upon and won over, that he entered on his year of probation, and it was made as pleasant to him as his cunning inveiglers could contrive. But when the year expired he resisted further progress, pleading want of health and of inward vocation. His soul, however, was subdued and wearied out, and he passively took the vows of an Augustinian monk. As might be expected, an immediate recoil took place. His eyes were opened, but too late; and his morals did not escape the monastic contagion. He left the monastery in 1490, and entered, as a private secretary, the household of Henry de Bergis, bishop of Cambray, in whose company he hoped to visit Italy; but his hopes were not at this period realized. Two years afterwards he formally entered into holy orders—"the glory of the priesthood and the shame." Soon after he went to Paris, and joined the college of Montaigu; but his patron the bishop's promises were not kept, so that, thrown upon his own resources, his food and lodging were so bad that he confesses that he brought away little save an enfeebled constitution and plenty of vermin. Here he made the acquaintance of Hector Boece, the principal afterwards of King's college, Aberdeen, and the dawn of future celebrity began to break upon him. His wit and learning asserted their eminence among his contemporaries, and the generous aspiring youth drawn to the French capital from all the countries of Europe. Lord Mountjoy became one of his pupils, ever after cherished a warm friendship for his preceptor, and settled on him for life a pension of a hundred crowns. Driven from Paris by the plague in 1497, he spent some time with the marchioness of Vere, in the castle of Tornhoens, where he composed for her son his tract "De Arte conscribendi epistolas." He next journeyed to Orleans, and thence again to his native Holland, which he unfilially calls "Beer and Butterland."
Erasmus came first to England probably in 1498, where he formed an intimacy with Colet, "his singular friend," and with
