Chapter 12

(R. Ad.; X.)

FICHTELGEBIRGE,a mountain group of Bavaria, forming the centre from which various mountain ranges proceed,—the Elstergebirge, linking it to the Erzgebirge, in a N.E., the Frankenwald in a N.W., and the Böhmerwald in a S.E. direction. The streams to which it gives rise flow towards the four cardinal points,—e.g.the Eger eastward and the Saale northward, both to the Elbe; the Weisser Main westward to the Rhine, and the Naab southward to the Danube. The chief points of the mass are the Schneeberg and the Ochsenkopf, the former having a height of 3448, and the latter of 3356 ft. The whole district is pretty thickly populated, and there is great abundance of wood, as well as of iron, vitriol, sulphur, copper, lead and many kinds of marble. The inhabitants are employed chiefly in the iron mines, at forges and blast furnaces, and in charcoal burning and the manufacture of blacking from firewood. Although surrounded by railways and crossed by the lines Nuremberg-Eger and Regensburg-Oberkotzau, the Fichtelgebirge, owing principally to its raw climate and bleakness, is not much visited by strangers, the only important points of interest being Alexandersbad (a delightfully situated watering-place) and the granite labyrinth of Luisenburg.

See A. Schmidt,Führer durch das Fichtelgebirge(1899); Daniel,Deutschland; and Meyer,Conversations-Lexikon(1904).

FICINO, MARSILIO(1433-1499), Italian philosopher and writer, was born at Figline, in the upper Arno valley, in the year 1433. His father, a physician of some eminence, settled in Florence, and attached himself to the person of Cosimo de’ Medici. Here the young Marsilio received his elementary education in grammar and Latin literature at the high school or studio pubblico. While still a boy, he showed promise of rare literary gifts, and distinguished himself by his facility in the acquisition of knowledge. Not only literature, but the physical sciences, as then taught, had a charm for him; and he is said to have made considerable progress in medicine under the tuition of his father. He was of a tranquil temperament, sensitive to music and poetry, and debarred by weak health from joining in the more active pleasures of his fellow-students. When he had attained the age of eighteen or nineteen years, Cosimo received him into his household, and determined to make use of his rare disposition for scholarship in the development of a long-cherished project. During the session of the council for the union of the Greek and Latin churches at Florence in 1439, Cosimo had made acquaintance with Gemistos Plethon, the Neo-Platonic sage of Mistra, whose discourses upon Plato and the Alexandrian mystics so fascinated the learned society of Florence that they named him the second Plato. It had been the dream of this man’s whole life to supersede both forms of Christianity by a semi-pagan theosophy deduced from the writings of the later Pythagoreans and Platonists. When, therefore, he perceived the impression he had made upon the first citizen of Florence, Gemistos suggested that the capital of modern culture would be a fit place for the resuscitation of the once so famous Academy of Athens. Cosimo took this hint. The second half of the 15th century was destined to be the age of academies in Italy, and the regnant passion for antiquity satisfied itself with any imitation, however grotesque, of Greek or Roman institutions. In order to found his new academy upon a firm basis Cosimo resolved not only to assemble men of letters for the purpose of Platonic disputation at certain regular intervals, but also to appoint a hierophant and official expositor of Platonic doctrine. He hoped by these means to give a certain stability to his projected institution, and to avoid the superficiality of mere enthusiasm. The plan was good; and with the rare instinct for character which distinguished him, he made choice of the right man for his purpose in the young Marsilio.

Before he had begun to learn Greek, Marsilio entered upon the task of studying and elucidating Plato. It is known that at this early period of his life, while he was yet a novice, he wrote voluminous treatises on the great philosopher, which he afterwards, however, gave to the flames. In the year 1459 John Argyropoulos was lecturing on the Greek language and literature at Florence, and Marsilio became his pupil. He was then about twenty-three years of age. Seven years later he felt himself a sufficiently ripe Greek scholar to begin the translation of Plato, by which his name is famous in the history of scholarship, and which is still the best translation of that author Italy can boast. The MSS. on which he worked were supplied by this patron Cosimo de’ Medici and by Amerigo Benci. While the translation was still in progress Ficino from time to time submitted its pages to the scholars, Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Demetrios Chalchondylas and others; and since these men were all members of the Platonic Academy, there can be no doubt that the discussions raised upon the text and Latin version greatly served to promote the purpose of Cosimo’sfoundation. At last the book appeared in 1482, the expenses of the press being defrayed by the noble Florentine, Filippo Valori. About the same time Marsilio completed and published his treatise on the Platonic doctrine of immortality (Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae), the work by which his claims to take rank as a philosopher must be estimated. This was shortly followed by the translation of Plotinus into Latin, and by a voluminous commentary, the former finished in 1486, the latter in 1491, and both published at the cost of Lorenzo de’ Medici just one month after his death. As a supplement to these labours in the field of Platonic and Alexandrian philosophy, Marsilio next devoted his energies to the translation of Dionysius the Areopagite, whose work on the celestial hierarchy, though recognized as spurious by the Neapolitan humanist, Lorenzo Valla, had supreme attraction for the mystic and uncritical intellect of Ficino.

It is not easy to value the services of Marsilio Ficino at their proper worth. As a philosopher, he can advance no claim to originality, his laborious treatise on Platonic theology being little better than a mass of ill-digested erudition. As a scholar, he failed to recognize the distinctions between different periods of antiquity and various schools of thought. As an exponent of Plato he suffered from the fatal error of confounding Plato with the later Platonists. It is true that in this respect he did not differ widely from the mass of his contemporaries. Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano, almost alone among the scholars of that age, showed a true critical perception. For the rest, it was enough that an author should be ancient to secure their admiration. The whole of antiquity seemed precious in the eyes of its discoverers; and even a thinker so acute as Pico di Mirandola dreamed of the possibility of extracting the essence of philosophical truth by indiscriminate collation of the most divergent doctrines. Ficino was, moreover, a firm believer in planetary influences. He could not separate his philosophical from his astrological studies, and caught eagerly at any fragment of antiquity which seemed to support his cherished delusions. It may here be incidentally mentioned that this superstition brought him into trouble with the Roman Church. In 1489 he was accused of magic before Pope Innocent VIII., and had to secure the good offices of Francesco Soderini, Ermolao Barbaro, and the archbishop Rinaldo Orsini, in order to purge himself of a most perilous imputation. What Ficino achieved of really solid, was his translation. The value of that work cannot be denied; the impulse which it gave to Platonic studies in Italy, and through them to the formation of the new philosophy in Europe, is indisputable. Ficino differed from the majority of his contemporaries in this that, while he felt the influence of antiquity no less strongly than they did, he never lost his faith in Christianity, or contaminated his morals by contact with paganism. For him, as for Petrarch, St Augustine was the model of a Christian student. The cardinal point of his doctrine was the identity of religion and philosophy. He held that philosophy consists in the study of truth and wisdom, and that God alone is truth and wisdom,—so that philosophy is but religion, and true religion is genuine philosophy. Religion, indeed, is common to all men, but its pure form is that revealed through Christ; and the teaching of Christ is sufficient to a man in all circumstances of life. Yet it cannot be expected that every man should accept the faith without reasoning; and here Ficino found a place for Platonism. He maintained that the Platonic doctrine was providentially made to harmonize with Christianity, in order that by its means speculative intellects might be led to Christ. The transition from this point of view to an almost superstitious adoration of Plato was natural; and Ficino, we know, joined in the hymns and celebrations with which the Florentine Academy honoured their great master on the day of his birth and death. Those famous festivals in which Lorenzo de’ Medici delighted had indeed a pagan tone appropriate to the sentiment of the Renaissance; nor were all the worshippers of the Athenian sage so true to Christianity as his devoted student.

Of Ficino’s personal life there is but little to be said. In order that he might have leisure for uninterrupted study, Cosimo de’ Medici gave him a house near S. Maria Nuova in Florence, and a little farm at Montevecchio, not far from the villa of Careggi. Ficino, like nearly all the scholars of that age in Italy, delighted in countrylife. At Montevecchio he lived contentedly among his books, in the neighbourhood of his two friends, Pico at Querceto, and Poliziano at Fiesole, cheering his solitude by playing on the lute, and corresponding with the most illustrious men of Italy. His letters, extending over the years 1474-1494, have been published, both separately and in his collected works. From these it may be gathered that nearly every living scholar of note was included in the list of his friends, and that the subjects which interested him were by no means confined to his Platonicstudies. As instances of his close intimacy with illustrious Florentine families, it may be mentioned that he held the young Francesco Guicciardini at the font, and that he helped to cast the horoscope of the Casa Strozzi in the Via Tornabuoni.

At the age of forty Ficino took orders, and was honoured with a canonry of S. Lorenzo. He was henceforth assiduous in the performance of his duties, preaching in his cure of Novoli, and also in the cathedral and the church of the Angeli at Florence. He used to say that no man was better than a good priest, and none worse than a bad one. His life corresponded in all points to his principles. It was the life of a sincere Christian and a real sage,—of one who found the best fruits of philosophy in the practice of the Christian virtues. A more amiable and a more harmless man never lived; and this was much in that age of discordant passions and lawless licence. In spite of his weak health, he was indefatigably industrious. His tastes were of the simplest; and while scholars like Filelfo were intent on extracting money from their patrons by flattery and threats, he remained so poor that he owed the publication of all his many works to private munificence. For his old patrons of the house of Medici Ficino always cherished sentiments of the liveliest gratitude. Cosimo he called his second father, saying that Ficino had given him life, but Cosimo new birth,—the one had devoted him to Galen, the other to the divine Plato,—the one was physician of the body, the other of the soul. With Lorenzo he lived on terms of familiar, affectionate, almost parental intimacy. He had seen the young prince grow up in the palace of the Via Larga, and had helped in the development of his rare intellect. In later years he did not shrink from uttering a word of warning and advice, when he thought that the master of the Florentine republic was too much inclined to yield to pleasure. A characteristic proof of his attachment to the house of Medici was furnished by a yearly custom which he practised at his farm at Montevecchio. He used to invite the contadini who had served Cosimo to a banquet on the day of Saints Cosimo and Damiano (the patron saints of the Medici), and entertained them with music and singing. This affection was amply returned. Cosimo employed almost the last hours of his life in listening to Ficino’s reading of a treatise on the highest good; while Lorenzo, in a poem on true happiness, described him as the mirror of the world, the nursling of sacred muses, the harmonizer of wisdom and beauty in complete accord. Ficino died at Florence in 1499.

Besides the works already noticed, Ficino composed a treatise on the Christian religion, which was first given to the world in 1476, a translation into Italian of Dante’sDe monarchia, a life of Plato, and numerous essays on ethical and semi-philosophical subjects. Vigour of reasoning and originality of view were not his characteristics as a writer; nor will the student who has raked these dust-heaps of miscellaneous learning and old-fashioned mysticism discover more than a few sentences of genuine enthusiasm and simple-hearted aspiration to repay his trouble and reward his patience. Only in familiar letters, prolegomena, and prefaces do we find the man Ficino, and learn to know his thoughts and sentiments unclouded by a mist of citations; these minor compositions have therefore a certain permanent value, and will continually be studied for the light they throw upon the learned circle gathered round Lorenzo in the golden age of humanism.

The student may be referred for further information to the following works:—Marsilii Ficini opera(Basileae, 1576);Marsilii Ficini vita, auctore Corsio (ed. Bandini, Pisa, 1771); Roscoe’sLife of Lorenzo de’ Medici; Pasquale Villari,La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola(Firenze, Le Monnier, 1859); Von Reumont,Lorenzo de’ Medici(Leipzig, 1874).

(J. A. S.)

FICKSBURG,a town of Orange Free State 110 m. by rail E. by N. of Bloemfontein. Pop. (1904) 1954, of whom 1021 were whites. The town is situated near the north bank of the Caledon river and is the capital of one of the finest agricultural and stock-raising regions of the province. It has direct railway communication with Natal and an extensive trade. In the neighbourhood are petroleum wells and a diamond mine. In the fossilized ooze of the Wonderkop, a table mountain of the adjacent Wittebergen, are quantities of petrified fish.

FICTIONS,or legal fictions, in law, the term used for false averments, the truth of which is not permitted to be called in question. English law as well as Roman law abounds in fictions. Sometimes they are merely the condensed expression of a rule of law,—e.g., the fiction of English law that husband and wife were one person, and the fiction of Roman law that the wife was the daughter of the husband. Sometimes they must be regarded as reasons invented in order to justify a rule of law according to an implied ethical standard. Of this sort seems to be the fiction or presumption that every one knows the law, which reconciles the rule that ignorance is no excuse for crime with the moral commonplace that it is unfair to punish a man for violating a law of whose existence he was unaware. Again, some fictions are deliberate falsehoods, adopted as true for the purpose of establishing a remedy not otherwise attainable. Of this sort are the numerous fictions of English law by which the different courts obtained jurisdiction in private business, removed inconvenient restrictions in the law relating to land, &c.

What to the scientific jurist is a stumbling-block is to the older writers on English law a beautiful device for reconciling the strict letter of the law with common sense and justice. Blackstone, in noticing the well-known fiction by which the court of king’s bench established its jurisdiction in common pleas (viz. that the defendant was in custody of the marshal of the court), says, “These fictions of law, though at first they may startle the student, he will find upon further consideration to be highly beneficial and useful; especially as this maxim is ever invariably observed, that no fiction shall extend to work an injury; its proper operation being to prevent a mischief or remedy an inconvenience that might result from the general rule of law. So true it is thatin fictione juris semper subsistit aequitas.” Austin, on the other hand, while correctly assigning as the cause of many fictions the desire to combine the necessary reform with some show of respect for the abrogated law, makes the following harsh criticism as to others:—“Why the plain meanings which I have now stated should be obscured by the fictions to which I have just adverted I cannot conjecture. A wish on the part of the authors of the fictions to render the law asuncognoscibleas may be is probably the cause which Mr Bentham would assign. I judge not, I confess, so uncharitably; I rather impute such fictions to the sheer imbecility (or, if you will, to the active and sportive fancies) of their grave and venerable authors, than to any deliberate design, good or evil.” Bentham, of course, saw in fictions the instrument by which the great object of his abhorrence,judiciary law, was produced. It was the means by which judges usurped the functions of legislators. “A fiction of law.” he says, “may be defined as a wilful falsehood, having for its object the stealing legislative powers by and for hands which could not or durst not openly claim it, and but for the delusion thus produced could not exercise it.” A partnership, he says, was formed between the kings and the judges against the interests of the people. “Monarchs found force, lawyers fraud; thus was the capital found” (Historical Preface to the second edition of the Fragment on Government).1

Sir H. Maine (Ancient Law) supplies the historical element which is always lacking in the explanations of Austin and Bentham. Fictions form one of the agencies by which, in progressive societies, positive law is brought into harmony with public opinion. The others are equity and statutes. Fictions in this sense include, not merely the obvious falsities of the English and Roman systems, but any assumption which conceals a change of law by retaining the old formula after the change has been made. It thus includes both the case law of the English and theResponsa Prudentumof the Romans. “At a particular stage of social progress they are invaluable expedients for overcoming the rigidity of law; and, indeed, without one of them, the fiction of adoption, which permits the family tie to be artificially created, it is difficult to understand how society would ever have escaped from its swaddling clothes, and taken its first steps towards civilization.”

The bolder remedial fictions of English law have been to a large extent removed by legislation, and one great obstacle to any reconstruction of the legal system has thus been partially removed. Where the real remedy stood in glaring contrast to the nominal rule, it has been openly ratified by statute. In ejectment cases the mysterious sham litigants have disappeared. The bond of entail can be broken without having recourse to the collusive proceedings of fine and recovery. Fictions have been almost entirely banished from the procedure of the courts. The action for damages on account of seduction, which is still nominally an action by the father for loss of his daughter’s services, is perhaps the only fictitious action now remaining.

Fictions which appear in the form of principles are not so easily dealt with by legislation. To expel them formally from the system would require the re-enactment of vast portions of law. A change in legal modes of speech and thought would be more effective. The legal mind instinctively seizes upon concrete aids to abstract reasoning. Many hard and revolting fictions must have begun their career as metaphors. In some cases the history of the change may still almost be traced. The conception that a man-of-war is a floating island, or that an ambassador’s house is beyond the territorial limits of the country in which he resides, was originally a figure of speech designed to set a rule of law in a striking light. It is then gravely accepted as true in fact, and other rules of law are deduced from it. Its beginning is to be compared with such phrases as “an Englishman’s house is his castle,” which have had no legal offshoots and still remain mere figures of speech.

Constitutional law is of course honeycombed with fictions. Here there is hardly ever anything like direct legislative change, and yet real change is incessant. The rules defining the sovereign power and fixing the authority of its various members are in most points the same as they were at the last revolution,—in many points they have been the same since the beginning of parliamentary government. But they have long ceased to be true in fact; and it would hardly be too much to say that the entire series of formal propositions called the constitution is merely a series of fictions. The legal attributes of the king, and even of the House of Lords, are fictions. If we could suppose that the effects of the Reform Acts had been brought about, not by legislation, but by the decisions of law courts and the practice of House of Commons committees—by such assumptions as that freeholder includes lease-holder and that ten means twenty—we should have in the legal constitution of the House of Commons the same kind of fictions that we find in the legal statement of the attributes of the crown and the House of Lords. Here, too, fictions have been largely resorted to for the purpose of supporting particulartheories,—popular or monarchical,—and such have flourished even more vigorously than purely legal fictions.

1In the same essay Bentham notices the comparative rarity of fictions in Scots law. As to fiction in particular, compared with the work done by it in English law, the use made of it by the Scottish lawyers is next to nothing. No need have they had of any such clumsy instrument. They have two others “of their own making, by which things of the same sort have been done with much less trouble.Nobile officiumgives them the creative power of legislation; this and the word desuetude together the annihilative.” And he notices aptly enough that, while the English lawyers declared that James II. had abdicated the throne (which everybody knew to be false), the Scottish lawyers boldly said he had forfeited it.

FIDDES, RICHARD(1671-1725), English divine and historian, was born at Hunmanby and educated at Oxford. He took orders, and obtained the living of Halsham in Holderness in 1696. Owing to ill-health he applied for leave to reside at Wickham, and in 1712 he removed to London on the plea of poverty, intending to pursue a literary career. In London he met Swift, who procured him a chaplaincy at Hull. He also became chaplain to the earl of Oxford. After losing the Hull chaplaincy through a change of ministry in 1714, he devoted himself to writing. His best book is aLife of Cardinal Wolsey(London, 1724), containing documents which are still valuable for reference; of his other writings thePrefatory Epistle containing some remarks to be published on Homer’s Iliad(London, 1714), was occasioned by Pope’s proposed translation of theIliad, and hisTheologia speculativa(London, 1718), earned him the degree of D.D. at Oxford. In his own day he had a considerable reputation as an author and man of learning.

FIDDLE(O. Eng.fithele,fidel, &c., Fr.vièle, viole,violon; M. H. Ger.videle, mod. Ger.Fiedel), a popular term for the violin, derived from the names of certain of its ancestors. The word fiddle antedates the appearance of the violin by several centuries, and in England did not always represent an instrument of the same type. The word has first been traced in 1205 in Layamon’sBrut(7002), “of harpe, of salteriun, of fithele and of coriun.” In Chaucer’s time the fiddle was evidently a well-known instrument:

“For him was lever have at his beddes hedA twenty bokes, clothed in black or red.Of Aristotle and his Philosophie,Than robes riche or fidel or sautrie.”(Prologue, v. 298.)

“For him was lever have at his beddes hed

A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red.

Of Aristotle and his Philosophie,

Than robes riche or fidel or sautrie.”

(Prologue, v. 298.)

The origin of the fiddle is of the greatest interest; it will be found inseparable from that of the violin both as regards the instruments and the etymology of the words; the remote common ancestor is theketharahof the Assyrians, the parent of the Greek cithara. The Romans are responsible for the word fiddle, having bestowed upon a kind of cithara—probably then in its first transition—the name offidiculae(more rarelyfidicula), a diminutive form offides. In Alain de Lille’sDe planctu naturaeagainst the wordlirastands as equivalentvioel, with the definition “Lira est quoddam genuē citharae vel fitola alioquin de reot. Hoc instrumentum est multum vulgare.” This is a marginal note in writing of the 13th century.1

Some of the transitions fromfidiculato fiddle are made evident in the accompanying table:

For the descent of the guitar-fiddle, the first bowed ancestor of the violin, through many transitions from the cithara, seeCithara,GuitarandGuitar-Fiddle.

In the minnesinger and troubadour fiddles, of which evidences abound during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, are to be observed the structural characteristics of the violin and its ancestors in the course of evolution. The principal of these are first of all the shallow sound-chest, composed of belly and back, almost flat, connected by ribs (also present in the cithara), with incurvations more or less pronounced, an arched bridge, a finger-board and strings (varying in number), vibrated by means of a bow. The central rose sound-holes of stringed instruments whose strings are plucked by fingers, or plectrum have given place to smaller lateral sound-holes placed on each side of the strings. It is in Germany,2where contemporary drawings of fiddles of the 13th and 14th centuries furnish an authoritative clue, and in France, that the development may best be followed. The German minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders was the prototype of the viols, whereas the guitar-fiddle produced the violin through the intermediary of the Italian bowedLyra.

The fiddle of the Carolingian epoch,—such, for instance, as that mentioned by Otfrid of Weissenburg3in hisHarmony of the Gospels(c.868),

“Sih thar ouch al ruaritThis organo fuaritLira joh fidula,” &c.,—

“Sih thar ouch al ruarit

This organo fuarit

Lira joh fidula,” &c.,—

was in all probability still an instrument whose strings were plucked by the fingers, a cithara in transition.

(K. S.)

1See C.E.H. de Coussemaker, Mémoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).2See the Manesse MSS. reproduced in part by F.H. von der Hagen,Heldenbilder(Leipzig and Berlin, 1855) andBildersaal. The fiddles are reproduced in J. Rühlmann’sGeschichte der Bogeninstrumente(Brunswick, 1882), plates.3See Schiller’sThesaurus antiq. Teut.vol. i. p. 379.

1See C.E.H. de Coussemaker, Mémoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).

2See the Manesse MSS. reproduced in part by F.H. von der Hagen,Heldenbilder(Leipzig and Berlin, 1855) andBildersaal. The fiddles are reproduced in J. Rühlmann’sGeschichte der Bogeninstrumente(Brunswick, 1882), plates.

3See Schiller’sThesaurus antiq. Teut.vol. i. p. 379.

FIDENAE,an ancient town of Latium, situated about 5 m. N. of Rome on the Via Salaria, which ran between it and the Tiber. It was for some while the frontier of the Roman territory and was often in the hands of Veii. It appears to have fallen under the Roman sway after the capture of this town, and is spoken of by classical authors as a place almost deserted in their time. It seems, however, to have had some importance as a post station. The site of thearxof the ancient town is probably to be sought on the hill on which lies the Villa Spada, though no traces of early buildings or defences are to be seen: pre-Roman tombs are to be found in the cliffs to the north. The later village lay at the foot of the hill on the eastern edge of the high-road, and itscuria, with a dedicatory inscription to M. Aurelius by theSenatus Fidenatium, was excavated in 1889. Remains of other buildings may also be seen.

See T. Ashby inPapers of the British School at Rome, iii. 17.

FIDUCIARY(Lat.fiduciaries, one in whom trust, fiducia, is reposed), of or belonging to a position of trust, especially of one who stands in a particular relationship of confidence to another. Such relationships are, in law, those of parent and child, guardian and ward, trustee andcestui que trust, legal adviser and client, spiritual adviser, doctor and patient, &c. In many of these the law has attached special obligations in the case of gifts made to the “fiduciary,” on whom is laid the onus of proving that no “undue influence” has been exercised. (SeeContract;Children, Law Relating to;Infant;Trust.)

FIEF,a feudal estate in land, land held from a superior (seeFeudalism). The word is the French form, which is represented in Medieval Latin asfeudumorfeodum, and in English as “fee” or “feu” (seeFee). The A. Fr.feoffer, to invest with a fief or fee, has given the English law terms “feoffee” and “feoffment” (q.v.).

FIELD, CYRUS WEST(1819-1892), American capitalist, projector of the first Atlantic cable, was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th of November 1819. He was a brother of David Dudley Field. At fifteen he became a clerk in the store of A.T. Stewart & Co., of New York, and stayed there three years; then worked for two years with his brother, Matthew Dickinson Field, in a paper-mill at Lee, Massachusetts; and in 1840 went into the paper business for himself at Westfield, Massachusetts, but almost immediately became a partner in E. Root & Co., wholesale paper dealers in New York City, who failed in the following year. Field soon afterwards formed with abrother-in-law the firm of Cyrus W. Field & Co., and in 1853 had accumulated $250,000, paid off the debts of the Root company and retired from active business, leaving his name and $100,000 with the concern. In the same year he travelled with Frederick E. Church, the artist, through South America. In 1854 he became interested, through his brother Matthew, a civil engineer, in the project of Frederick Newton Gisborne (1824-1892) for a telegraph across Newfoundland; and he was attracted by the idea of a trans-Atlantic telegraphic cable, as to which he consulted S.F.B. Morse and Matthew F. Maury, head of the National Observatory at Washington. With Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor (1806-1882), Marshall Owen Roberts (1814-1880) and Chandler White, he formed the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, which procured a more favourable charter than Gisborne’s, and had a capital of $1,500,000. Having secured all the practicable landing rights on the American side of the ocean, he and John W. Brett, who was now his principal colleague, approached Sir Charles Bright (q.v.) in London, and in December 1556 the Atlantic Telegraph Company was organized by them in Great Britain, a government grant being secured of £14,000 annually for government messages, to be reduced to £10,000 annually when the cable should pay a 6% yearly dividend; similar grants were made by the United States government. Unsuccessful attempts to lay the cable were made in August 1857 and in June 1858, but the complete cable was laid between the 7th of July and the 5th of August 1858; for a time messages were transmitted, but in October the cable became useless, owing to the failure of its electrical insulation. Field, however, did not abandon the enterprise, and finally in July 1866, after a futile attempt in the previous year, a cable was laid and brought successfully into use. From the Congress of the United States he received a gold medal and a vote of thanks, and he received many other honours both at home and abroad. In 1877 he bought a controlling interest in the New York Elevated Railroad Company, controlling the Third and Ninth Avenue lines, of which he was president in 1877-1880. He worked with Jay Gould for the completion of the Wabash railway, and at the time of his greatest stock activity boughtThe New York Evening ExpressandThe Mailand combined them asThe Mail and Express, which he controlled for six years. In 1879 Field suffered financially by Samuel J. Tilden’s heavy sales (during Field’s absence in Europe) of “Elevated” stock, which forced the price down from 200 to 164; but Field lost much more in the great “Manhattan squeeze” of the 24th of June 1887, when Jay Gould and Russell Sage, who had been supposed to be his backers in an attempt to bring the Elevated stock to 200, forsook him, and the price fell from 156½ to 114 in half an hour. Field died in New York on the 12th of July 1892.

See the biography by his daughter, Isabella (Field) Judson,Cyrus W. Field, His Life and Work(New York, 1896); H.M. Field,History of the Atlantic Telegraph(New York, 1866); and Charles Bright,The Story of the Atlantic Cable(New York, 1903).

FIELD, DAVID DUDLEY(1805-1894), American lawyer and law reformer, was born in Haddam, Connecticut, on the 13th of February 1805. He was the oldest of the four sons of the Rev. David Dudley Field (1781-1867), a well-known American clergyman and author. He graduated at Williams College in 1825, and settled in New York City, where he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1828, and rapidly won a high position in his profession. Becoming convinced that the common law in America, and particularly in New York state, needed radical changes in respect to the unification and simplification of its procedure, he visited Europe in 1836 and thoroughly investigated the courts, procedure and codes of England, France and other countries, and then applied himself to the task of bringing about in the United States a codification of the common law procedure. For more than forty years every moment that he could spare from his extensive practice was devoted to this end. He entered upon his great work by a systematic publication of pamphlets and articles in journals and magazines in behalf of his reform, but for some years he met with a discouraging lack of interest. He appeared personally before successive legislative committees, and in 1846 published a pamphlet, “The Reorganization of the Judiciary,” which had its influence in persuading the New York State Constitutional Convention of that year to report in favour of a codification of the laws. Finally in 1847 he was appointed as the head of a state commission to revise the practice and procedure. The first part of the commission’s work, consisting of a code of civil procedure, was reported and enacted in 1848, and by the 1st of January 1850 the complete code of civil and criminal procedure was completed, and was subsequently enacted by the legislature. The basis of the new system, which was almost entirely Field’s work, was the abolition of the existing distinction in forms of procedure between suits in law and equity requiring separate actions, and their unification and simplification in a single action. Eventually the civil code with some changes was adopted in twenty-four states, and the criminal code in eighteen, and the whole formed a basis of the reform in procedure in England and several of her colonies. In 1857 Field became chairman of a state commission for the reduction into a written and systematic code of the whole body of law of the state, excepting those portions already reported upon by the Commissioners of Practice and Pleadings. In this work he personally prepared almost the whole of the political and civil codes. The codification, which was completed in February 1865, was adopted only in small part by the state, but it has served as a model after which most of the law codes of the United States have been constructed. In 1866 he proposed to the British National Association for the Promotion of Social Science a revision and codification of the laws of all nations. For an international commission of lawyers he preparedDraft Outlines of an International Code(1872), the submission of which resulted in the organization of the international Association for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of Nations, of which he became president. In politics Field was originally an anti-slavery Democrat, and he supported Van Buren in the Free Soil campaign of 1848. He gave his support to the Republican party in 1856 and to the Lincoln administration throughout the Civil War. After 1876, however, he returned to the Democratic party, and from January to March 1877 served out in Congress the unexpired term of Smith Ely, elected mayor of New York City. During his brief Congressional career he delivered six speeches, all of which attracted attention, introduced a bill in regard to the presidential succession, and appeared before the Electoral Commission in Tilden’s interest. He died in New York City on the 13th of April 1894.

Part of his numerous pamphlets and addresses were collected in hisSpeeches, Arguments and Miscellaneous Papers(3 vols., 1884-1890). See also theLife of David Dudley Field(New York, 1898), by Rev. Henry Martyn Field.

FIELD, EUGENE(1850-1895), American poet, was born at St Louis, Missouri, on the 2nd of September 1850. He spent his boyhood in Vermont and Massachusetts; studied for short periods at Williams and Knox Colleges and the University of Missouri, but without taking a degree; and worked as a journalist on various papers, finally becoming connected with the ChicagoNews.A Little Book of Profitable Talesappeared in Chicago in 1889 and in New York the next year; but Field’s place in later American literature chiefly depends upon his poems of Christmas-time and childhood (of which “Little Boy Blue” and “A Dutch Lullaby” are most widely known), because of their union of obvious sentiment with fluent lyrical form. His principal collections of poems are:A Little Book of Western Verse(1889);A Second Book of Verse(1892);With Trumpet and Drum(1892); andLove Songs of Childhood(1894). Field died at Chicago on the 4th of November 1895.

His works were collected in ten volumes (1896), at New York. His proseLove-affairs of a Bibliomaniac(1896) contains a Memoir by his brother Roswell Martin Field (b. 1851). See also Slason Thompson,Eugene Field: a study in heredity and contradictions(2 vols., New York, 1901).

FIELD, FREDERICK(1801-1885), English divine and biblical scholar, was born in London and educated at Christ’s hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship in 1824. He took orders in 1828, and began a close study of patristic theology. Eventually he published an emended andannotated text of Chrysostom’sHomiliae in Matthaeum(Cambridge, 1839), and some years later he contributed to Pusey’sBibliotheca Patrum(Oxford, 1838-1870), a similarly treated text of Chrysostom’s homilies on Paul’s epistles. The scholarship displayed in both of these critical editions is of a very high order. In 1839 he had accepted the living of Great Saxham, in Suffolk, and in 1842 he was presented by his college to the rectory of Reepham in Norfolk. He resigned in 1863, and settled at Norwich, in order to devote his whole time to study. Twelve years later he completed theOrigenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt(Oxford, 1867-1875), now well known asField’s Hexapla, a text reconstructed from the extant fragments of Origen’s work of that name, together with materials drawn from theSyro-hexaplarversion and theSeptuagintof Holmes and Parsons (Oxford, 1798-1827). Field was appointed a member of the Old Testament revision company in 1870.

FIELD, HENRY MARTYN(1822-1907), American author and clergyman, brother of Cyrus Field, was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of April 1822; he graduated at Williams College in 1838, and was pastor of a Presbyterian church in St Louis, Missouri, from 1842 to 1847, and of a Congregational church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1850 to 1854. The interval between his two pastorates he spent in Europe. From 1854 to 1898 he was editor and for many years he was also sole proprietor ofThe Evangelist, a New York periodical devoted to the interests of the Presbyterian church. He spent the last years of his life in retirement at Stockbridge, Mass., where he died on the 26th of January 1907. He was the author of a series of books of travel, which achieved unusual popularity. His two volumes descriptive of a trip round the world in 1875-1876, entitledFrom the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn(1876) andFrom Egypt to Japan(1877), are almost classic in their way, and have passed through more than twenty editions. Among his other publications areThe Irish Confederates and the Rebellion of 1798(1850),The History of the Atlantic Telegraph(1866),Faith or Agnosticism? the Field-Ingersoll Discussion(1888),Old Spain and New Spain(1888), andLife of David Dudley Field(1898).

He is not to be confused with anotherHenry Martyn Field, the gynaecologist, who was born in 1837 at Brighton, Mass., and graduated at Harvard in 1859 and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City in 1862; he was professor of Materia Medica and therapeutics at Dartmouth from 1871 to 1887 and of therapeutics from 1887 to 1893.

FIELD, JOHN(1782-1837), English musical composer and pianist, was born at Dublin in 1782. He came of a musical family, his father being a violinist, and his grandfather the organist in one of the churches of Dublin. From the latter the boy received his first musical education. When a few years later the family settled in London, Field became the favourite pupil of the celebrated Clementi, whom he accompanied to Paris, and later, in 1802, on his great concert tour through France, Germany and Russia. Under the auspices of his master Field appeared in public in most of the great European capitals, especially in St Petersburg, and in that city he remained when Clementi returned to England. During his stay with the great pianist Field had to suffer many privations owing to Clementi’s all but unexampled parsimony; but when the latter left Russia his splendid connexion amongst the highest circles of the capital became Field’s inheritance. His marriage with a French lady of the name of Charpentier was anything but happy, and had soon to be dissolved. Field made frequent concert tours to the chief cities of Russia, and in 1820 settled permanently in Moscow. In 1831 he came to England for a short time, and for the next four years led a migratory life in France, Germany and Italy, exciting the admiration of amateurs wherever he appeared in public. In Naples he fell seriously ill, and lay several months in the hospital, till a Russian family discovered him and brought him back to Moscow. There he lingered for several years till his death on the 11th of January 1837. Field’s training and the cast of his genius were not of a kind to enable him to excel in the larger forms of instrumental music, and his seven concerti for the pianoforte are now forgotten. Neither do his quartets for strings and pianoforte hold their own by the side of those of the great masters. But his “nocturnes,” a form of music highly developed if not actually created by him, remain all but unrivalled for their tenderness and dreaminess of conception, combined with a continuous flow of beautiful melody. They were indeed Chopin’s models. Field’s execution on the pianoforte was nearly allied to the nature of his compositions, beauty and poetical charm of touch being one of the chief characteristics of his style. Moscheles, who heard Field in 1831, speaks of his “enchanting legato, his tenderness and elegance and his beautiful touch.”

FIELD, MARSHALL(1835-1906), American merchant, was born at Conway, Massachusetts, on the 18th of August 1835. Reared on a farm, he obtained a common school and academy education, and at the age of seventeen became a clerk in a dry goods store at Pittsfield, Mass. In 1856 he removed to Chicago, where he became a clerk in the large mercantile establishment of Cooley, Wadsworth & Company. In 1860 the firm was reorganized as Cooley, Farwell & Company, and he was admitted to a junior partnership. In 1865, with Potter Palmer (1826-1902) and Levi Z. Leiter (1834-1904), he organized the firm of Field, Palmer & Leiter, which subsequently became Field, Leiter & Company, and in 1881 on the retirement of Leiter became Marshall Field & Company. Under Field’s management the annual business of the firm increased from $12,000,000 in 1871 to more than $40,000,000 in 1895, when it ranked as one of the two or three largest mercantile establishments in the world. He died in New York city on the 16th of January 1906. He had married, for the second time, in the previous year. Field’s public benefactions were numerous; notable among them being his gift of land valued at $300,000 and of $100,000 in cash to the University of Chicago, an endowment fund of $1,000,000 to support the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago, and a bequest of $8,000,000 to this museum.

FIELD, NATHAN(1587-1633), English dramatist and actor, was baptized on the 17th of October 1587. His father, the rector of Cripplegate, was a Puritan divine, author of aGodly Exhortationdirected against play-acting, and his brother Theophilus became bishop of Hereford. Nat. Field early became one of the children of Queen Elizabeth’s chapel, and in that capacity he played leading parts in Ben Jonson’sCynthia’s Revels(in 1600), in thePoetaster(in 1601), and inEpicoene(in 1608), and the title rôle in Chapman’sBussy d’Ambois(in 1606). Ben Jonson was his dramatic model, and may have helped his career. The two plays of which he was author were probably both written before 1611. They are boisterous, but well-constructed comedies of contemporary London life; the earlier one,A Woman is a Weathercock(printed 1612), dealing with the inconstancy of woman, while the second,Amends for Ladies(printed 1618), was written with the intention, as the title indicates, of retracting the charge. From Henslowe’s papers it appears that Field collaborated with Robert Daborne and with Philip Massinger, one letter from all three authors being a joint appeal for money to free them from prison. In 1614 Field received £10 for playing before the king inBartholomew Fair, a play in which Jonson records his reputation as an actor in the words “which is your Burbadge now?... Your best actor, your Field?” He joined the King’s Players some time before 1619, and his name comes seventeenth on the list prefixed to the Shakespeare folio of 1623 of the “principal actors in all these plays.” He retired from the stage before 1625, and died on the 20th of February 1633. Field was part author with Massinger in theFatal Dowry(printed 1632), and he prefixed commendatory verses to Fletcher’sFaithful Shepherdess.

Back to Index Next