resume the duties of his office. In 1586 he was ordained minister of the united parishes of Abercromby, Pittenweem, Anstruther, and Kilrenny—three of which he soon disjoined and provided with ministers, at a great pecuniary loss to himself, retaining the charge of Kilrenny, the endowment of which he considerably augmented for the benefit of his successors. While Melville applied himself assiduously to the duties of his parish, he took a deep interest in the general welfare of the church. Although the king made zealous attempts to gain his support, and showed him many tokens of favour, Melville strenuously resisted the schemes of the court for the establishment of episcopacy. The offer of a bishopric, and threats of persecution, alike failed to shake his resolution. He was at length commanded, along with six other ministers, to repair to London in 1606, for the purpose of conferring with the king on the affairs of the church. Having thus treacherously ensnared his opponents into England, James peremptorily refused to allow Melville to return home; not even to visit his wife when on her deathbed. He was informed once and again, that if he would abandon his opposition to prelacy, his majesty would not only receive him into favour, but "advance him beyond any minister in Scotland;" but Melville was inflexible. He was allowed, however, to preach both at Newcastle and Berwick. At length leave was given him to return to Scotland, but it was now too late. He died at Berwick in 1614, after a few days' illness, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the eighth of his exile. Melville was a pious, amiable, and learned man, and though possessed of a mild temper and courteous manners, was distinguished by the energy of his character, and his inflexible adherence to principle, regardless alike of fear or favour. "He was one of the wisest directors of church affairs in his time," says Calderwood. His literary reputation mainly rests on his "Diary," which has been printed by the Bannatyne and the Wodrow societies. Its interesting narratives and simple graphic style, render it one of the most captivating volumes of its kind in the literature of our country. Melville was also the author of a catechism, a posthumous apology for the Church of Scotland, and of several poems which do not rise above mediocrity.—J. T.
MELVILLE, Robert, F.R.S., F.S.A., a Scotch officer, born at Monimail in Fifeshire in 1723, served with the army in Flanders from 1744 till the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. He mainly contributed to the taking of Martinico, the fall of which involved the surrender of the other French islands; and as a reward for his services was made brigadier-general and governor-in-chief of Martinico and the other captured possessions in the West Indies. In later life he devoted himself with distinguished success to antiquarian pursuits. He died in 1809.
MELZI D'ERIL or D'ELRIL, Francesco, of a noble Milanese family, and in Spain a grandee of the first class; created by Napoleon I. Duke of Lodi, and confirmed in that title and its revenues on the return of the Austrian dynasty; born in Milan, 6th March, 1753; died in the same city about the end of January, 1816. He was educated in the Milanese college of nobles, and at an early age filled posts in the municipality. Having in 1782 visited Spain on business connected with his title of grandee, he subsequently returned thither; travelled in Portugal; in England, where the prosperity and freedom of the nation made a deep impression on his mind; in Scotland and Ireland; finally, through France, regaining Italy. When the armies of the French republic conquered the Milanese, Melzi headed a deputation of the Lombard states sent to meet Bonaparte; aided in the establishment of the Cisalpine republic; sat as its representative in the congress of Rastadt; and when the republic of Italy took the place of the Cisalpine, Melzi was nominated vice-president. At a later period the elevation of Eugène Beauharnais to the viceroyalty of Italy probably disappointed Melzi's most cherished plans, and thenceforward no honour or emolument availed to reconcile him to the court. He stood aloof in moody silence, sometimes broken by sarcastic speech; and when the fall of Eugène followed the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, made his peace with Austria. Retaining his dukedom and resources, Melzi returned to the private sphere for which his literary tastes fitted him. He possessed a superb library, and published a splendid edition of Dé Marchi at an enormous outlay.—C. G. R.
MELZI, Gætano, Count, bibliographer, born in Milan, 1783; died of apoplexy in the same city, 10th September, 1852. He accumulated a library of above thirty thousand volumes, including rare editions of the fifteenth century; carried on an extensive correspondence with men eminent in the world of letters, or in the kindred world of material books; and spared no expense in amassing material for his dictionary. He has left—"Bibliografia dei Romanzi e Poemi Cavallereschi Italiani," a descriptive catalogue of editions, preceded by a modest preface; and "Dizionario di Opere Anonime e Pseudonime di Scrittori Italiani o come che sia aventi relazione all' Italia," of which the third volume was published posthumously.—C. G. R.
MEMLING, Jan or Hans, one of the most celebrated of the early Flemish painters, was established as a respectable and well-to-do citizen at Bruges in 1479; he lived in his own house at that time, and had a wife and three children. His wife died in or before 1487, and Memling himself was already dead in 1495. The ordinary statements, therefore, about his poverty and destitution, and his seeking shelter in the year 1477 in the hospital of St. John at Bruges, are open to great suspicion. Van Mander, who calls him Memmelinck, says he was a native of Bruges. He has, however, been claimed by the Germans for Constanz. Marcus Van Vaernewyck speaks of a Hans of Bruges in his Historic van Belgis, 1565; and Vasari also mentions an Ansse of the same city. These names, doubtless, indicate our painter, and every probability is in favour of his having been a native of Bruges. His works proclaim him to belong to the school of the Van Eycks. He was not the Juan Flamenco of Burgos, as that painter was still living in 1499, when Memling had been dead already four years. Among the principal works of this admirable painter are the small so-called "Châsse of St. Ursula," in the hospital of St. John at Bruges, on which the adventures of the saint with her eleven martyr virgins (XI. M.V.) are exquisitely painted in oil in several compartments; also the small "Adoration of the Magi," and the large altarpiece of the "Marriage of St. Catherine," both in the same establishment; the last, in which the figures are nearly life size, was painted in 1479. Bruges possesses many other pictures by Memling; and in the gallery at Munich there are nine attributed to him, which were formerly in the well known Boisserée collection. Of these pictures many are excellent; but one, "The Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin, and the Journey of the Three Kings from the East," is among the most remarkable productions of the fifteenth century. It contains about fifteen hundred small figures, and every object introduced is executed with the utmost care and attention to minutiæ; it is on the whole tasteful in its disposition, and the colouring is everywhere clear, and in parts brilliant. The figures vary in size from six inches to about one; the scene represents a vast landscape, and the dimensions of the picture are two feet eight inches high by six feet five inches wide. Memling was also an illuminator of books. The library of St. Mark, Venice, possesses a magnificent missal with decorations by him. Rathgeber, in his Annals of Flemish art, enumerates more than a hundred pictures attributed to this painter, but few of them are certainly by him. For the facts relating to Memling's circumstances in Bruges, see Weale's Catalogue du Musée de l'Académie de Bruges, 1861.—R. N. W.
MEMMI, Simone, a celebrated Italian illuminator and wall painter, the contemporary of Giotto, who now owes his reputation chiefly to Petrarch, who says in one of his letters—"I have known two excellent painters, Giotto, a citizen of Florence whose fame among the moderns is immense, and Simone of Siena." The correct name of this painter is Simone de Martino; Memmo, short for Guglielmo, William, was the name of his wife's father; his own father's name was Martino, and Simone was born at Siena about 1285. Of his works few now remain; there are still some wall paintings in the chapel Degli Spagnoli at Florence, painted in 1328, and others in the Campo Santo at Pisa; the last are engraved in the great work of Lasinio, Pitture del Campo Santo, &c. They are dry and meagre performances, utterly without taste in their forms. In 1336 he was invited to Avignon, the then residence of the popes. Here he became acquainted with Petrarch, and painted a portrait of his Laura; but this portrait cannot now be traced, though it may have been the original of the miniature in the Bibliotheca Laurentiana at Florence, of which Cicognara has published an outline in his Storia della Scultura, i. 42. He died at Avignon in 1344.—R. N. W.
MEMNON, the author of a history of Heracleia Pontica. Our knowledge of this work is derived from Photius, who had read from the ninth to the sixteenth book. This portion extended from the time of Clearchus the disciple of Plato to the death of Brithagonas, who was sent by the Heracleians as an ambassador to Julius Cæsar. The excerpta given by Photius were first pub-
