grand-falconer. He used his influence for evil, and instigated Louis to allow the assassination of the Marechal d'Ancre. He then became chief favourite, and was made constable of France. His only military operations were against the protestants of the kingdom. He died of camp fever.—P. E. D.
LUZAN, Ignacio de, a Spanish poet and critic, was born in 1702, and spent eighteen years in Italy, enjoying the friendship of Maffei and Metastasio. Returning to Spain in 1733, he set himself to reform the literary taste of his countrymen on the classical model then prevalent in France, and wrote a work entitled "La Poetica," 1737, with a view "to bring Spanish poetry under the control of those rules which are observed among polished nations"—an object which to a great extent he achieved. He was secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris from 1747 to 1750, and died suddenly in 1754.—F. M. W.
LYALL, William Rowe, D.D., editor and author, born in London in February, 1788, was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, and entered the church, in which he obtained various distinguished preferments, and was when he died in February, 1857, dean of Canterbury. About 1815 he became editor of the British Critic. In 1820 at the instance of Dr. Howley, the late archbishop of Canterbury, and of Dr. Blomfield, afterwards bishop of London, he undertook the editorship of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, then in abeyance; and, says the memoir of him in the Gentleman's Magazine, "he laid the foundation of its success on a solid basis, and transferred its management to Dr. Smedley." Lyall published in 1840 his "Propædia Prophetica, on the use and design of the Old Testament," &c.—F. E.
LYCOPHRON, a native of Chalcis in Eubæa, a son of Socles, was a Greek poet and grammarian at the court of Plotemy Philadelphus. Lycophron flourished from 280 to 250 b.c., and is reported to have been killed by an arrow. He wrote several plays, but the only one which has come down to us is his "Cassandra," printed by Aldus in 1513, and translated by Lord Royston, Cambridge, 1806, 4to. The best edition of the original is that of Oxford, 1697, folio.—W. C. H.
LYCURGUS, the Spartan legislator. The life of this celebrated man is hopelessly surrounded with fable. According to Aristotle he lived 884 b.c.; but Xenophon places him upwards of two hundred years earlier. At a time when Sparta was distracted by the tyranny of its kings and the restlessness of the people, Polydectes, Lycurgus' brother, died, leaving his queen pregnant. After she had given birth to a son, Lycurgus proclaimed him king, and became the child's guardian. He afterwards left Sparta in order to silence the insinuations of his enemies charging him with ambitious designs, and travelled over many countries, Crete, Asia Minor, Egypt, Libya, Iberia, India, &c. Having returned to Sparta with great knowledge of laws, manners, philosophy, and human nature, he was intrusted with the task of rectifying the disorders of the state. In doing so he met with considerable opposition; but he had a powerful party on his side, who aided him in the work of reform. A new constitution, civil and military, was established; on which Lycurgus, having got a promise from the citizens not to change any of his laws, left Sparta and died in some unknown place. After his death he was worshipped as a god in a temple where sacrifices were yearly offered. It is difficult to determine the exact nature of the Spartan constitution, which is always assigned to Lycurgus as its founder. It had the aristocratical and democratic elements in different proportions; the latter however predominated. All authority was ultimately derived from the people. The popular assembly included all Spartans, of thirty years of age, of good character. Though the senate originated measures, they had always to be submitted to the assembled people, who either approved or rejected them. At the same time, the Spartans were a nation of soldiers; military life overpowered the more peaceful and beneficial occupations of the agriculturist and trader. Yet the Spartan wars were defensive, having for their object the maintenance of what was already acquired. There is little doubt that far too much has been ascribed to Lycurgus. Most of the regulations and laws he is said to have originated, were independent of him. The essential part of the Spartan constitution did not proceed from him; it was a gradual development. But that he improved the constitution, we cannot reasonably doubt. He was a judicious, wise, and patriotic counsellor, to whom his countrymen looked up with respect. He amended old laws, and exerted a permanent influence on the Spartan institutions.—S. D.
LYCURGUS, an Attic orator, was born at Athens about 396 b.c. He studied philosophy in the schools of Plato and Isocrates; and was three times manager of the public revenue; the duties of which office he discharged most faithfully. He exerted himself against Philip and Alexander; and when the latter demanded that the Athenians should deliver him up, the Macedonian was met by a refusal. It would appear that he was always intrusted with responsible public offices, in which he acted with disinterestedness, integrity, and justice. He died in the year 323 b.c., leaving three sons by Callisto his wife. Of his numerous orations only one is extant entire; there are but fragments of others. His style seems to have been inelegant; but the moral tendency of the orations is a fair reflection of the man. The best edition is Maetzner's, Berlin, 1836.—S. D.
LYDGATE, John, an old English poet, one of the immediate successors of Chaucer and Gower, was born probably about 1370, and, as he has recorded in his testament, at Lidgate, from which presumably he derived his name. He was a monk of the benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds; and it is also certain that he was ordained a subdeacon in 1389, a deacon in 1393, and a priest in 1397. After studying at Oxford, he repaired to the universities of Paris and Padua, and mastered French and Italian,—his favourite authors in which languages were Alain Chartier, Dante, and Boccaccio. He was a man of varied learning and accomplishments, and after his return to England opened in his monastery a "school of humanity" for the sons of the nobility. He died probably about 1460. Of his works, extremely numerous, there is a list of no fewer than two hundred and fifty-one in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica. "He was," says Warton, "not only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general." His chief works are his "Fall of Princes," his "Story of Thebes," and his "Troy-book"—the last a paraphrase of Guido di Colonna's Historia Trojana, as the first is of a French version of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum. Of his minor poems, a selection from which was edited in 1840 for the Percy Society, by Mr. J. O. Halliwell, one of the most curious is the "London Lyckpenny," a picture of metropolitan life in the first half of the fifteenth century. Lydgate is prolix, but clear. "An easy versifier," says Mr. Hallam, "he served to make poetry familiar to the many, and may sometimes please the few."—F. E.
LYDIAT, Thomas, an English clergyman, mathematician, and chronologer, was born at Okerton, near Banbury, in Oxfordshire, on the 27th of March, 1572, and died there on the 13th of April, 1646. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and appointed chronologer and geographer to Henry prince of Wales, son of James I. After the death of the prince he went for a short time to Dublin, whence he finally returned to his native place on being appointed rector of the parish. He suffered heavy losses through unfortunate literary undertakings; was fined and imprisoned for his attachment to Charles I.; and died in poverty. He carried on for some time an active controversy against Scaliger on some points of chronology.—W. J. M. R.
LYDUS (the Lydian) or LAURENTIUS, Joannes, was born at Philadelphia in Lydia in 490. At the age of twenty-one he went to Constantinople, where he studied philosophy, and for forty years was engaged in an official career. Of his works we possess the greater part of two treatises—"De Magistratibus Reipublicæ Romanæ," Paris, 1811; and "De Ostentis," Paris, 1823; and two analyses of another, "De Mensibus."—D. W. R.
LYE, Edward, an English clergyman of great celebrity as an Anglo-Saxon and Gothic scholar, and an antiquarian of a superior order, was the son of a schoolmaster at Totnes in Devonshire, where he was born in 1694. His early education was conducted by his father, who sent him to Hertford college, Oxford. Having taken orders, in 1719 he was nominated incumbent of Little Houghton, near Northampton. In this retreat he found time to prosecute without interruption his study of the Anglo-Saxon and other languages. Here also he prepared for publication the Etyniologicum Anglicanum of Francis Junius from the author's original manuscript preserved in the Bodleian library. To this work he added numerous observations of his own, and prefixed a grammar of the Anglo-Saxon language. By this publication Lye conferred an immense boon upon the learned world, who received it with much favour. In 1750 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and the earl of Northampton presented him to the living of Yardley Hastings, on which occasion he resigned his charge at Houghton. Benzelius, archbishop of Upsal, next stimulated him to publish an edition of the remains of the curious Gothic
