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Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The ...
A famous novelist, who has been styled by Scott "the father of the English novel," born at Sharpham Park, Glastonbury, son of General Edmund Fielding and a cousin of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; was educated at Eton and at Leyden, where he graduated in 1728; led for some years a dissipated life in London, and achieved some celebrity by the production of a series of comedies and farces, now deservedly sunk into oblivion; in 1735 he married Miss Charlotte Cradock, and after a brief experiment as a theatre lessee studied law at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar; literature was, however, his main pursuit, and in 1742 he came to the front with "Joseph Andrews," a burlesque on Richardson's "Pamela," in which his powers as a novelist first showed themselves; in 1743 followed three volumes of "Miscellanies," including "Jonathan Wild"; after his wife's death he turned again to law, but in 1745 we find him once more engaged in literature as editor of the True Patriot and afterwards of the Jacobite's Journal; "Tom Jones," his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later "Amelia"; journalism and his duties as a justice of the peace occupied him till 1754, when ill-health forced him abroad to Lisbon, where he died and was buried. Fielding is a master of a fluent, virile, and attractive style; his stories move with an easy and natural vigour, and are brimful of humour and kindly satire, while his characters in their lifelike humanness, with all their foibles and frailties, are a marked contrast to the buckram and conventional figures of his contemporary Richardson; something of the laxity of his times, however, finds its way into his pages, and renders them not always palatable reading to present-day readers (1707-1754).
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A famous pastoral by Allan Ramsay, with some happy descriptive scenes and a pleasant delineation of manners, published in 1723.
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A famous Portuguese navigator, the discoverer of the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope, born at Sines, in Portugal, of good family; he seems to have won the favour of King Emmanuel at an early age, and already an experienced mariner, was in 1497 despatched on his celebrated voyage, in which he rounded the Cape; on that occasion he made his way to Calicut, in India, where he had to contend with the enmity of the natives, stirred against him by jealous Arabian merchants; in 1499 he returned to Lisbon, was received with great honor, and had conferred on him an array of high-sounding titles; three years later he was appointed to the command of an expedition to Calicut to avenge the massacre of a small Portuguese settlement founded there a year previous by Cabrat; in connection with this expedition he founded the colonies of Mozambique and Sofala, and after inflicting a cruel punishment upon the natives of Calicut, he returned to Lisbon in 1503; the following 20 years of his life were spent in retirement at Evora, but in 1524 he was appointed viceroy of Portuguese India, a position he held only for a short time, but sufficiently long to re-establish Portuguese power in India; he died at Cochin; the incidents of his famous first voyage round the Cape are celebrated in Camoens' memorable poem "The Lusiad" (1469-1525).
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A famous scholar and man of letters, born at Rotterdam; illegitimate son of one Gerhard; conceived a disgust for monkish life during six years' residence in a monastery at Steyn; wandered through Europe and amassed stores of learning at various universities; visited Oxford in 1489, and formed a lifelong friendship with Sir Thomas More; was for some years professor of Divinity and Greek at Cambridge; edited the first Greek Testament; settled finally at Basel, whence he exercised a remarkable influence over European thought by the wit and tone of his writings, notably the "Praise of Folly," the "Colloquia" and "Adagia"; he has been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation; is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched; aided the Reformation by his scholarship, though he kept aloof as a scholar from the popular movement of Luther (1467-1536).
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A famous Scotch lawyer, second son of the Earl of Buchan, born at Edinburgh; called to the bar and became Lord Advocate; a Whig in politics; brought about useful legal reforms; noted as a brilliant wit and orator (1746-1817).
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A famous Theban statesman and soldier, defeated Sparta in the great victory of Leuctra, and during his lifetime raised Thebes to a position of dominant power; was slain in the battle of Mantinea when again successfully engaging the Spartans; blameless in his private life as he was heroic in the field, he figures as the great hero of Theban history; born about the close of the 5th century B.C.
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A fanatical sect, followers of one Judas of Galilee, who fiercely resented the taxation of the Romans, and whose violence contributed to induce the latter to vow the extermination of the whole race.
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A favourite of Queen Elizabeth, born at Netherwood, Hereford; served in the Netherlands under Leicester, his stepfather; won the capricious fancy of Elizabeth; lost favour by marrying clandestinely the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but was restored, and led a life of varying fortune, filling various important offices, till his final quarrel with the Queen and execution (1567-1601).
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A feast in commemoration of the purification of the Temple and the rebuilding of the altar by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 B.C., after profanation of them by the Syrians: of the Passover, a festival in April on the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt, and which lasted eight days, the first and the last days of solemn religious assembly: of Pentecost, a feast celebrated on the fiftieth day after the second of the Passover, in commemoration of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai; both this feast and the Passover were celebrated in connection with harvest, what was presented in one in the form of a sheaf being in the other presented as a loaf of bread: of Purim, a feast in commemoration of the preservation of the Jews from the wholesale threatened massacre of the race in Persia at the instigation of Haman: of Tabernacles, a festival of eight days in memory of the wandering tentlife of the people in the wilderness, observed by the people dwelling in bowers made of branches erected on the streets or the roofs of the house; it was the Feast of Ingathering as well.
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