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the chapter devoted to Mapes in the Biographia Britannica Literaria, and in the preface to "The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes," printed by the Camden Society in 1841, Mr. Thomas Wright disputes the claim of Mapes to be considered the author of more than two of the many pieces of Latin verse now extant under his name. Mr. Wright, on the other hand, ascribes to him the composition of a large portion of the cycle of Norman-French romances of the Round Table, in the earliest form known. Mr. Wright has also edited for the Camden Society, with a preface, the "De Nugis Curialium distinctiones quinque," 1850—its first publication from the original manuscript in the Bodleian.—F. E.

MAR, John, eleventh earl of, was the well-known leader of the jacobite rebellion in 1715. He entered public life as a whig, but afterwards turned tory, then became once more a whig, and assisted in promoting the union between Scotland and England. Three years later, when the whigs were dismissed from office, Mar, without scruple or shame, went over to their opponents, and was made secretary of state and manager for Scotland. These frequent tergiversations rendered him notorious even among the loose-principled politicians of his own day, and gained him in his native country the nickname of "Bobbing John." On the accession of George I. Mar was ready once more to change sides, and addressed to that monarch a letter containing warm professions of ardent loyalty and devoted attachment. Notwithstanding this attempt to propitiate the new king. Mar was deprived of his office. Mortified at his disgrace he determined on vengeance, and hastening to the Highlands he raised the standard of the Stewarts at Braemar, on the 6th of September, 1715. He had a few days previously held a meeting of the principal jacobite peers and gentry of the north, and secured their support. Their adherents flocked in great numbers to his head-quarters, and soon nearly the whole country to the north of the Tay was in the hands of the insurgents. Mar, however, was totally unfit to head such an enterprise. Though possessed of great activity and address, he was fickle, vacillating, infirm of purpose, crooked in mind as in body, and entirely ignorant of the art of war. He wasted much precious time lingering in the Highlands; and when at length he made up his mind to descend into the Lowlands, the duke of Argyle encountered him at Sheriffmuir, a few miles to the north of Stirling, on the 13th of November; and though the result was a drawn battle, the advantages of the contest remained with the duke. The march of the insurgents into the low country was permanently arrested. Mar retreated to Perth; his army rapidly dwindled away; and though joined by the Chevalier in person, who created him a duke, he was at last fain to lead the remnant of his forces to Montrose, where Mar and the Chevalier embarked for France, leaving their deluded and indignant followers to shift for themselves, For some years the earl continued to be the sole favourite of the Chevalier, and possessed his unlimited confidence; but in 1719, having been arrested in Geneva, some overtures were made to him by Lord Stair, the British ambassador at Paris, to which Mar lent a ready ear. As a reward for his treachery to his master he was allowed a pension out of his forfeited possessions, and the estates, by a simulated sale, were preserved to the family. Mar still, however, professed to be a jacobite while revealing the secrets of James to the English government. But he had forfeited the confidence and esteem of both parties, and was now cordially detested by his former master. He died at Aix-la-Chapelle in May, 1752, regretted by no one.—J. T.

MARACCI. See Marracci.

MARAT, Jean Paul, a French revolutionist, painfully celebrated for his atrocities, was born at Boudry, Neufchatel, on the 24th May, 1744, of Calvinist parents. He studied medicine, which was his father's occupation, and published various scientific treatises. His quick, restless mind attempted many things with little success, or at least with success inadequate to his inordinate pride. In 1775 he published a treatise on "Man and the Mutual Influence of Soul and Body," at Amsterdam, in 3 vols. 12mo, a book which served Voltaire for an article in La Gazette Litteraire. Several treatises on fire, light, electricity, and the optics of Newton followed, all indicating a fearless opposition to the best authorities, unsupported by any profound knowledge. On the bursting out of the Revolution in 1789, he became a pamphleteer and journalist, and wrote in rapid succession pamphlets against Necker, a letter to the king, a plan of criminal legislation, the project of a constitution, and on the 12th of September, 1789, issued the first number of his paper, the Parisian Publicist, afterwards called L'ami du Peuple. This character of "friend of the people" he maintained to the last by his candour in giving voice to the bloodthirsty instincts of the sans-culottes. His outrageous demeanour at the local meetings in Paris, and the ferocious extravagancies of his journal, were at first despised and derided. But Marat's violence was useful as an instrument of agitation to more designing men. Danton protected him, and the convent where the club of Cordeliers assembled was his shelter against the emissaries of the law, who on two or three occasions attempted to arrest him. "Two hundred and sixty thousand aristocrat heads," he had calculated, must fall before the Revolution would come to good. "Give me," he said to Barbaroux, "two hundred Naples bravoes, armed each with a good dirk and a muff on his left arm by way of shield; with them I will traverse France and accomplish the Revolution." With such feelings Marat promoted the outrages and massacres of the 20th of June, the 10th of August, and of September, 1792. As a member of the commune, he signed the proclamation which prompted the massacres in the prisons. Being elected a member of the convention, he braved all the marks of disgust which his presence excited. To the Girondins he was specially repulsive. He was accused of having demanded a dictator; defended himself energetically, and was acquitted; and saw himself avenged by the fall of the Girondins on the 2nd of June, 1793. He was now at the summit of popularity and power, but disease was rapidly killing him, when he was assassinated by Charlotte Corday on the 13th of July.—(See Corday, Charlotte.)—R. H.

MARATTI, Carlo, the most celebrated of the later Roman painters of the eighteenth century, and sometimes called the last of the Romans, was born at Camurano in the march of Ancona, 15th May, 1625. He went early to Rome to a brother established there as a painter; and having spent a year under the tuition of his brother, he entered the school of Andrea Sacchi, and very soon distinguished himself above all the other scholars of that great painter. The career of Maratti was long and brilliant; he was really, as far as academical excellencies go, a painter of extraordinary accomplishments; but he was affected in his style, and in the higher sentimental qualities of his art his abilities were of the ordinary stamp only. The great number of his pictures of the Virgin, some of which are very graceful and delicate, procured him the name among his fellow-artists of "Carlo delle Madonne." After the death of Andrea Sacchi Maratti was the leader of the so-called Raphael or Roman school of taste, in contradistinction to the Florentine faction of Macchinisti under Pietro da Cortona and his followers; and after the death of Giro Ferri he was without a rival in Rome. He was the favourite of six successive popes—Clements IX. and X., Innocent XI., Alexander VIII., Innocent XII., and Clement XI. Innocent XI. appointed Carlo Maratti superintendent of the Vatican stanze an office confirmed by Innocent XII., who extended the painter's authority over all the pictures of the Vatican palace; and we are indebted greatly to Carlo Maratti for the preservation of the famous frescoes of Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican. He had restored the frescoes of Raphael in the Farnesina, and Pope Clement XI. gave him the commission to clear and restore the celebrated frescoes of Raphael in the Vatican stanze, an operation which Maratti successfully performed in 1702 and 1703; and the pope, to testify his satisfaction, granted him a pension, and created him a cavaliere of the order of the Abito di Cristo. Like his master Sacchi, Carlo Maratti had always been an enthusiastic admirer of the genius of Raphael. He himself painted little in fresco; his principal works are all oil pictures, among them many altar-pieces, of which the most celebrated is the large picture of the "Baptism of Christ," now in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at Rome, and which has been worked in mosaic for one of the altars of St. Peter's. He was an excellent portrait-painter, and also executed some good etchings; the National gallery has a good half-length portrait of Cardinal Cerri by him. He was the first perpetual president or principe of the Academy of St. Luke at Rome, where he died at the advanced age of eighty-eight on the 15th of December, 1713.—(Lioni, Ritratti di Alcuni celebri Pittori del Secolo xvii., &c., 4to, Rome, 1731.)—R. N. W.

MARBECK or MERBECK, John, for his name was spelt both ways, was born about the year 1523, and became a chorister