are represented by straight lines on the map; and that the angles formed by those lines with each other on the map are the same with the angles which they make with each other on the sphere. These advantages are counterbalanced by the enormous exaggeration of the dimensions of areas near the poles, as compared with those of equal areas near the equator. The first edition of Mercator's Atlas appeared at Duisbourg in 1595, and was followed by many others.—W. J. M. R.
MERCIER, Louis Sebastien, a French writer of considerable verve, and a thinker of some originality, was born in Paris in June, 1740, and in the middle rank of society. He began his literary career at twenty, and before long, both as a critic and a dramatist, he announced himself a hardy innovator. He had the courage to denounce the artificiality of the classical French drama, to demand the return of the drama to life and nature, and he even proclaimed the superiority of prose to verse as a medium for the expression of the highest thought and feeling. Then, entering the arena of social and political reform, he published in 1770, "L'an 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais," a dream of the future, much of which was unexpectedly realized in the French revolution. The first of his books, however, which took hold of the public was his "Tableau de Paris," published anonymously in 1781, still worth reading as a picture of pre-revolutionary Paris and its social aspects from the point of view of an indignant and somewhat cynical observer. He completed it in Switzerland, and the last volume was published in the year preceding the great outbreak of 1789. With the Revolution, Mercier became a journalist; and finally siding with the Girondins, as one of whom he was elected to the convention, he shared in the proscription of his party, but escaped the guillotine. Under the directory he obtained a professorship, and displayed his old antagonism to the accepted and established, by absurd attacks on the Copernican system. In spite of this he was made a member of the Institute. Under the Empire he remained a republican; and continuing to write until the close of his life, died at Paris in 1814. Besides the "Tableau de Paris," already mentioned, he published in 1797-1800, the "Nouveau Paris," which contains very curious reminiscences of Paris during the Revolution. A list of his numerous writings will be found in Querard.—F. E.
MERCK, Johann Heinrich, a German man of letters and friend of Göthe, was born at Darmstadt on 2nd April, 1741, and in 1767 obtained an office under government in his native town. By his talents, his literary activity, and particularly his dialectic power and critical acumen, he became the centre of a circle of votaries and friends of literature, amongst whom Herder and Göthe occupied the first rank. It was Merck who instigated Göthe to literary production, and by his independent judgment exercised a paramount, and for a long time willingly acknowledged, influence over him. Latterly he became a prey to domestic misfortunes and to melancholy, and on the 27th June, 1791, committed suicide. Merck's own achievements in literature are comparatively slight; he translated Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Addison's Cato, &c., and was a contributor to the chief literary journals of his time.—(See Briefe an Merck, edited by Wagner, Darmstadt, 1835 and 1838; and Merck's Select Writings, edited by A. Stahr, Oldenburg, 1843.)—K. E.
MERCOEUR, Elisa, poetess, born at Nantes, 1809. Her talents, manifested at a very early age, procured her a wide reputation and considerable emolument; and in 1828 she proceeded to Paris, where she was immediately pensioned. The revolution of July, however, reduced her to write prose for a livelihood, and she died in melancholy circumstances in 1835.
MERCY, Claude Florimond, Count, an Austrian general, grandson of François, born in 1666; killed near Parma on the 29th June, 1734. In 1708 he was appointed field-marshal in the imperial service, and greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Belgrade. He was killed in an engagement with the French.—P. E. D.
MERCY, Francois, Baron de, a famous general of Lorraine, born about the end of the sixteenth century; died on the 4th August, 1645. He served at Colmar, Dôle, Dettingen, Freiburg, and Marienthal, and on several occasions inflicted severe losses on the French. He was killed at Nordlingen, leaving the reputation of being one of the first captains of the age.—P. E. D.
MEREDITH, Henry, traveller, born in 1782. He entered the service of the African Company, and after some time was sent to one of their settlements at Cape Apolonia, on the Gold Coast. His meritorious conduct procured him the command of the fort at Winnebah, which he made one of the most flourishing settlements of Northern Guinea. His death was melancholy. A sum of money had been stolen from the negroes by one of the garrison. They laid the crime to Meredith's charge, and tortured him with fire. Sir Hope Smith avenged his murder by destroying the town of Winnebah. Meredith has left us an "Account of the Gold Coast, with a brief history of the African Company," London, 1812.—W. J. P.
MERES, Francis, whose name survives mainly in connection with a few sentences on Shakspeare, was, according to Anthony Wood, "son of Thomas Meres, of Holland, Lincolnshire." There is no mention of him in the Messrs. Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses; but Farmer in the Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, where he acknowledges that Meres had been of frequent service to him, states that Meres took his B.A. degree at Pembroke hall, Cambridge, in 1587, became M.A. in 1591, rector of Wing in Rutlandshire about 1602, and died there in 1646, in the eighty-first year of his age. He was incorporated M.A. of Oxford in 1573, "being about this time," says Wood, "a minister and schoolmaster." In 1597 he published "God's Arithmetic," and in 1598 "Granado's Devotion," from the Spanish, both of them religious treatises, and completely forgotten. In 1597 had appeared Politcuphia, or Wit's Commonwealth, a collection of prose sentences from ancient writers, selected by John Bodenham (the compiler of England's Helicon), but put forth by "N. L.," the initials of Nicholas Lyng, its publisher. In the following year was published, as a continuation of this, a little volume entitled "Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, being the second part of Wit's Commonwealth, by Francis Meres, master of arts of both universities," London, 1598. It consists, like its predecessor volume, of short sentences from other authors; but at page 279 Meres inserts an original chapter of his own, entitled "A comparative discourse of our English poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian poets." Here occurs the often quoted reference to Shakspeare—one of the earliest of the kind, and valuable as proving the estimation in which he was then held:—"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines; so Shakspeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage;" and then follows a list of twelve of Shakspeare's plays, only some of them having at that time been printed, and which has proved a most important aid in fixing their chronology. There are a few other interesting references to contemporary Elizabethan writers, and in two subsequent chapters on "painters" and "musick," to English cultivators of the sister arts.—F. E.
MERIAN, John Bernard, a celebrated Swiss writer, was born in the canton of Basle in 1723, took the degree of doctor in philosophy at Basle at the age of seventeen, and in 1748, on the invitation of Maupertuis, settled at Berlin, where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1797 he succeeded Formey as perpetual secretary to the Academy. His philosophical dissertations in the Memoirs of the Academy are of some importance. He published a French translation of Claudian, and one of Hume's Essays. The influence which he exercised for nearly half a century upon Prussian literature, in virtue of his labours as a writer and as a member of the Academy, was as beneficial as it was long-continued. He died at Berlin in 1807.
MERIAN, Maria Sibylla, daughter of Matthew Merian the Elder, achieved a reputation greater than that of either her father or brother. She was born at Frankfort, April 12, 1647. Four years later her father died, and her mother remarried J. Murel, a flower and fruit painter, who carefully instructed his daughter-in-law in his own art, and afterwards placed her under the more famous A. Mignon. In 1665 she married J. A. Graff, a painter of Nuremberg, but retained her own name, by which she had already become widely known. Madame Merian devoted herself to the representation of fruit, flowers, and especially insects in their various stages of development and transformation; depicting them as objects of natural history with the minutest accuracy, and at the same time imparting to them an artistic finish and reality, such as had not been combined in scientific delineations. Her drawings soon became famous; and she herself received unusual marks of admiration and respect from the naturalists of her day. She settled with her husband in Amsterdam, but travelled for the sake of making drawings from living objects. Her principal journey was to Surinam,
