from the previous method in vogue—tempera, or distemper. Common oil-painting, that is, mere painting with boiled oil, was known long before the time of the Van Eycks, and was commonly practised for decorative purposes both in Germany and in England. The Van Eyck method was varnish-painting, and they invented a good drying varnish. The invention arose from the cracking of a tempera picture which was placed in the sun to dry. To avoid the necessity of drying, Hubert mixed his colours with a drying varnish in the first instance, and then there was no occasion for varnishing or drying in the sun. The Van Eyck vehicle is elaborately discussed by Sir Charles Eastlake in his Materials for a History of Oil Painting. With respect to the spreading of this method, the story of Vasari is no doubt true in the main:—Antonello, a young painter of Messina, saw in the possession of Alfonso I. of Naples, that is, about 1442 (not before, as that was Alfonso's first year), a picture of the "Annunciation of the Virgin," by John Van Eyck, or Giovanni da Bruggia, as Vasari terms him, and he was so struck with the beauty of the impasto, that he made a journey to Flanders to learn the secret of the method in which it was painted. When he arrived in Bruges, however, John was dead; but he learned the method, and it must have been from the younger brother, Lambert, probably still residing in his sister-in-law's house, and who had, as related, that very year removed John's body from the outside to the inside of the church of St. Donatus. Thus Antonello acquired the Van Eyck method, and afterwards published it in Italy. (See Messina, Antonello da.) There are altogether about seventy works attributed to John van Eyck, but not half of them are authenticated.—(Carton, Les Trois Frères Van Eyck.) 1848.—R. N. W.
Margaret van Eyck led a very retired and quiet life. Content with the enjoyments which her artistic power of assisting her brothers procured, she declined marriage, and lived almost a recluse. She was given especially to miniature. Like her brother Hubert, she was a member of the brotherhood of Our Lady of Ghent, and obtained at her death, which occurred before 1432, a resting-place in the vaults of the Vyd family.—R. M.
EYNARD, J. G., born at Lyons, in 1775. The Eynards had a commercial establishment at Lyons. In 1793 they sided with the royalists, and on the success of the arms of the convention settled at Genoa. In 1801 Eynard made a good deal of money as agent for the king of Etruria, in negotiating a loan. In 1814 he attended the congress of Vienna as envoy from the Helvetic republic, and in 1818 represented the grand duke of Tuscany at Aix-la-Chapelle. At this time he was made conseiller d'étât and a noble of Tuscany. From this period he appears to have been occupied with plans for the restoration of Greece; and he moved about between Paris and London engaged in negotiations for that purpose with the governments of France, England, and Russia, and also with mercantile and banking establishments in the management of loans for that object. He published some tracts containing curious information on Greece.—J. A., D.
EYRE, Sir James, many years lord chief justice of the court of common pleas, was a member of a Wiltshire family. He was born in 1744, and was educated at Winchester and Oxford. Soon after being called to the bar, he became one of the four common pleaders of the city of London, and in 1762 was elected recorder of London, in which capacity he gave the corporation, distracted by political divisions, the benefit of the best counsel as a constitutional lawyer. On one occasion, during the great outcry of "Wilkes and liberty," he refused to be the mouthpiece of an address to the sovereign, which he considered as an insult to the royal dignity. He was brought into parliament by the influence of the duke of Bedford, but did not long hold a seat in the house of commons, being appointed in 1772 a baron of the exchequer. In 1787 he became chief baron, and in 1792, on the resignation of Lord Thurlow, he was appointed first commissioner of the great seal; and finally, on the removal of Lord Loughborough to the chancery bench in the following year, he succeeded him as chief justice of the common pleas. It was his lot to exercise his judicial functions in the state trials of Horne Tooke, and on other occasions of a like kind. His knowledge of law consisted in a firm grasp of legal principles, rather than in recollection of cases, and his application of principles was seldom erroneous. He died at Ruscombe, his seat in Berkshire, on the 6th of July, 1799.—E. W.
EYRIES, Jean Baptiste Benoit, born at Marseilles in 1767. After some years passed in journeying through various countries and studying their different languages, he founded with others the Geographical Society of Paris, of which he became the first president. Besides the translation of books of travel from the English, Russian, German, and Swedish writers of celebrity, he contributed several papers to the Annales des Voyages and other collections of a similar kind. The immense number of his works, which form altogether a complete history of geographical discovery and research to his own time, bear witness to his untiring zeal in the cause of science. He died in 1846.—J. F. C.
EYTELWEIN, Johann Albert, a German engineer, born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 31st December, 1764; died in 1848. He entered the artillery service at an early age, and in a few years gained the rank of lieutenant. The Prussian government gave him a seat in the council of public buildings. He was intrusted with the execution of important public works, such as the embanking of rivers and the construction of ports; and he was authorized to establish in Prussia a uniform system of weights and measures. He left a number of works connected with his profession.—J. S., G.
EZECHIEL of Alexandria, a Jew, who wrote in Greek a tragedy on the subject of the departure of Israel from Egypt, considerable portions of which have been preserved by Clemens of Alexandria and by Eusebius. It would appear from the Stromates of the former writer that he composed other tragedies, but these have been entirely lost. The date at which Ezechiel flourished, is uncertain. He is by some writers placed at the commencement of the third century b.c., and by others a century and a half later. The fragments of Ezechiel preserved in Eusebius have been frequently published.—J. S., G.
EZENGATSI, John (in Armenian, Hovan), the last of the fathers of the Armenian church, died in 1326. After a long period of wandering hither and thither, he retired to the monastery of St. Gregory the Illuminator, where he died. He wrote several books, the best of which is his continuation of the commentary of Nerses' Glaïetse on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Ezengatsi was renowned for his preaching.—R. M., A.
EZNIG or EZNAG, Goghpatsi, an Armenian divine, was born at Gogph in 397, and died in 478. Being a proficient in the Syriac and Greek tongues, he was sent to Edessa and Constantinople to collect and translate into Armenian the works of the christian fathers. He subsequently became bishop of Pacrevant. His book against the Pagans and Marcionites contains much valuable information, especially concerning the religion of the Persians. He left other works.—R. M., A.
EZZ-ED-DIN, the honorary title of an Arabian poet, born in 1181, who enjoyed great fame as an imam and a preacher, first at Damascus, and afterwards at Cairo. He left a poem on birds and flowers, in assigning intellectual sensibility to which the subtle character of his imagination finds ample scope. He also wrote on theology. He died in 1261.—J. S., G.
