a celebrated lawgiver of Sparta, who established a constitution for his country which has ever been regarded as one of the most curious specimens of legislation that has been attempted to be imposed upon mankind; yet we have no certain information respecting Lycurgus, and even his very existence has been denied. It has been supposed by some that there were several of the same name, and, as in the case of Hercules, that the proceedings of all of them were ascribed to one individual. Believing in the existence of an individual of this name, we shall proceed to narrate those facts in his history respecting which writers are most fully agreed. He seems to have flourished about 884 B.C., if we follow the chronology of Eratosthenes, who placed him 108 years before the first Olympiad (Eratosth. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. i., p. 336, ed. Colon.) He was the son of Eunomus, King of Sparta, and was of the race of the Heraclidae. On the death of his father, Polydectes his brother succeeded, and reigned nine years, and on his death the general voice of the people called Lycurgus to the throne. As soon as it appeared that his brother's widow was pregnant, he declared that the kingdom must belong to her issue, provided it were male, and that he should consider himself only as regent till the result was known. The queen made a private offer to him that she would destroy the child if he would consent to marry her. Lycurgus, concealing the horror he felt for her wickedness, and wishing to prevent the execution of her intention, allowed her to imagine that he approved of her scheme. He prevailed on her to send the child to him as soon as it was born that he might see it destroyed, but, instead of acting as the queen had expected, he presented it to the people as their new-born king. Thus the reign of Lycurgus lasted only eight months. Though Lycurgus was much beloved by his fellow-citizens, still there were many who envied him, and more particularly the friends and relations of the queen-mother. He began to feel his position so uncomfortable, that he determined to leave his country till his nephew Charilaus should be of age. During his voluntary exile he visited the island of Crete, where he examined the forms of government established by Minos; he travelled through Asia Minor and Egypt, observing everywhere the peculiar laws of the country, and conversing with the most illustrious personages. It was during one of those journeys through the Ionian cities that he met with Homer's poems, and being charmed with the sound morality which pervaded them, no less than with the beauty of the poetry, he is said to have collected them into one volume, and to have transmitted the work to Sparta. After an absence of eighteen years, his countrymen prevailed on Lycurgus to return home, where he found the city a prey to anarchy, the authority of the magistrates disregarded, and everything tending to a dissolution of all the bonds of society. He had been so charmed with the form of government he had found established in Crete, that he resolved to introduce it into Sparta; but he did not succeed without much opposi- Lycus

of the most celebrated orators of Greece, was born at Athens about the year B.C. 400, and died about B.C. 323. He was son of Lycomorph, and grandson of Lycurgus, one or other of whom was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants, B.C. 404 (Phot. Cod. cclxviii., p. 1483). In his early years he studied philosophy under Plato, and the political constitution of his country under Isocrates. At what period he entered upon public life is nowhere recorded, but we find him, B.C. 343, appointed, along with Demosthenes, one of the ambassadors to counteract the proceedings of Philip in different parts of Greece (Demosth. Philipp. iii., p. 129). So much confidence had his fellow-citizens in his integrity, that he continued to preside over the collection of the public revenue for twelve or fifteen years. After the defeat of the Greeks at the battle of Cheronæa, B.C. 338, he brought Lysicles, the general of the Athenians on that occasion, to trial before the people, and procured his condemnation (Diodor. Sicul. xvi. 88). He restored the credit of comic exhibitions at the Lenian festival; and enacted honours for the three great tragic poets (Vita Decem Or., p. 841). Lycurgus was one of the orators demanded by Alexander after the destruction of Thebes, B.C. 335; but the Athenians refused to give him up (Plut. Demosth. c. 23; Arrian, Exp. i. 10). It would appear that Lycurgus died about the time of the exile of Demosthenes, B.C. 323, the year before that orator's death (Vita Decem Or., p. 842). There were fifteen orations of Lycurgus extant in the time of Plutarch and Photius, but only one has been preserved (against Leocrates), which was delivered B.C. 330. It is published by Hauptmann (Leips., 1751), by Schulze (Bruns., 1789), by Osann (Jena, 1821), and, along with other fragments, by Bekker (Magdeh., 1821). The best editions are those of Baiter and Sauppe (Turici, 8vo, 1834), and E. Mautzner (Berlin, 8vo, 1836).

Lydgate, John, an English poet, one of the immediate successors of Chaucer, assumed as his surname the name of his native place in Suffolk. The date of his birth is unknown; but it has been ascertained that he entered the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and was ordained a subdeacon in 1389, a deacon in 1393, and a priest in 1397. He had begun to write before the death of Chaucer in 1400; and, according to Warton, seems to have reached the acme of his fame in 1430. After a short attendance at the university of Oxford, he had travelled into France and Italy, and had acquired an intimacy with the language and literature of those countries. With his taste thus improved, he opened a school for the instruction of the sons of the nobility in the arts of composition, both prose and metrical. He died at some period before 1461.

To his excellence as a poet, and his proficiency in polite learning, Lydgate added a knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and theology. His genius was as many-sided as his erudition. With equal facility he delineates the London Lickepenny and the Lyffe of our Lady, the religious austerity of St Austin, and the heroic deeds of Guy of Warwick.

"If a disguising was intended," says Warton, "by the Company of Goldsmiths, a mask before his majesty at Eltham, a May-game for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming before the lord mayor, a procession of pageants from the creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for the coronation, Lydgate was consulted and gave the poetry." This ease in composition, however, was often purchased by a lameness in prosody, and a want of precision both in thought and expression. He has not the original invention and the vivid representation of his master Chaucer, whom he was so anxious to rival. Yet in many of his descriptions of scenery we find a melody of rhythm, and a sweetness of fancy, which entitle him to the name of an improver of English versification.

A complete catalogue of Lydgate's voluminous works is given in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica. His principal poems are three. The Fall of Princes, printed by Pynson in 1494, is a paraphrase of a French translation of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum. The princes are introduced dramatically to narrate their own misfortunes; and, accordingly, the poem was not insipidly styled in the first edition, The Tragedies gathered by John Bochas of all such Princes as fell from their estates since the Creation of Adam, &c. His Story of Thebes, first printed by Thynne in 1561, at the end of Chaucer's works, is an additional Canterbury tale, in which the classical story of the sons of Edipus is told with all the circumstances and machinery of romance. In a similar manner is the Trojan War treated in his Troye-Boke, printed in 1513 by command of Henry VIII. This poem is professedly a translation or paraphrase of the Historia Trojana of Guido de Colonna. The Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, edited by Halliwell, were published by the Percy Society, 1840.