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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 ...
Great French "persifleur" and "Coryphaeus of Deism," born in Paris, son of a lawyer; trained to scoff at religion from his boyhood, and began his literary career as a satirist and in the production of lampoons which cost him twice over imprisonment in the Bastille, on his release from which he left France in 1726 and went to England, where he stayed three years, and got acquainted with the free-thinking class there; on his return to Paris he engaged in some profitable commercial speculations and published his "Charles XII.," which he had written in England, and retired to the chateau of Cirey, where he lived five years with Madame du Chatelet, engaged in study and diligent with his pen, with whom he left France and went to Poland, after her death paying his famous visit to Frederick the Great, with whom before three years were out he quarrelled, and from whom he was glad to escape, making his head-quarters eventually within the borders of France at Ferney, from which he now and again visited Paris, where on his last visit he was received with such raptures of adulation that he was quite overcome, and had to be conveyed home to die, giving up the ghost exactly two months after. He was a man of superlative adroitness of faculty and shiftiness, without aught that can be called great, but more than any other the incarnation of the spirit of his time; said the word which all were waiting to hear and who replied yea to it—a poor word indeed yet a potent, for it gave the death-blow to superstition, but left religion out in the cold. The general, the great offence Carlyle charges Voltaire with is, that "he intermeddled in religion without being himself in any measure religious; that he entered the Temple and continued there with a levity which, in any temple where men worship, can beseem no brother man; that, in a word, he ardently, and with long-continued effort, warred against Christianity, without understanding, beyond the mere superficies, what Christianity was" (1694-1778).
Industry:Language
Great Latin poet, born near Mantua, author in succession of the "Eclogues," the "Georgics," and the "Aeneid"; studied at Cremona and Milan, and at 16 was sent to Rome to study rhetoric and philosophy, lost a property he had in Cremona during the civil war, but recommended himself to Pollio, the governor, who introduced him to Augustus, and he went to settle in Rome; here, in 37 B.C., he published his "Eclogues," a collection of 10 pastorals, and gained the patronage of Maecenas, under whose favour he was able to retire to a villa at Naples, where in seven years he, in 30 B.C., produced the "Georgics," in four books, on the art of husbandry, after which he devoted himself to his great work the "Aeneid," or the story of Aeneas of Troy, an epic in 12 books, connecting the hero with the foundation of Rome, and especially with the Julian family, and which was finished in 19 B.C.; on his deathbed he expressed a wish that it should be burned, and left instructions to that effect in his will; he was one of the purest-minded poets perhaps that ever lived (70-19 B.C.).
Industry:Language
Great portrait-painter, born in Antwerp; studied under Rubens, whose favourite pupil he was; visited Italy, and devoted himself to the study of the great masters; on his return to Antwerp painted "Christ Crucified between Two Thieves"; came to England in 1632, and was patronized by Charles I.; was knighted, and made court painter; painted the royal family, the king, queen, and their two children, and during the next eight years executed portraits of all the court people; his portraits are very numerous, and the most celebrated are in England; died at Blackfriars, and was buried in St. Paul's (1599-1641).
Industry:Language
Greatest of Spanish painters, born at Seville, of Portuguese family; studied under Francisco Herrera, who taught him to teach himself, so that but for the hint he was a self-taught artist, and simply painted what he saw and as he saw it; portrait-painting was his forte, one of his earliest being a portrait of Olivarez, succeeded by one of Philip IV. of Spain, considered the most perfect extant, and by others of members of the royal family; specimens of his work are found in different countries, but the best are in Spain, in Madrid, and they include sacred subjects, genre, landscape, and animal paintings, as well as portraits (1599-1660).
Industry:Language
Greek historian; wrote a history of the Roman emperors from the time of Augustus to the year 410, and ascribed the decline of the empire to the decay of paganism (408-450).
Industry:Language
Greek philosopher of the Eleatic school, and who flourished in 500 B.C.; was the founder of the dialectic so successfully adopted by Socrates, which argues for a particular truth by demonstration of the absurdity that would follow from its denial, a process of argument known as the reductio ad absurdum.
Industry:Language
Hall of Odin, the heaven of the brave in the Norse mythology, especially such as gave evidence of their valour by dying in battle, the "base and slavish" being sent to the realm of Hela, the Death-Goddess.
Industry:Language
Historian and miscellaneous writer, born at Urbino; was a friend and correspondent of Erasmus; was sent to England by the Pope as deputy-collector of Peter's pence, and was there promoted to ecclesiastical preferments; wrote in Latin an able and painstaking history of England, bringing it down to the year 1538 (1470-1555).
Industry:Language
Historian, born in London, where he led a busy life as an attorney; devoted his leisure to historical studies, the first of which were "History of Anglo-Saxons" and "History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Death of Elizabeth," essays, etc. (1768-1847).
Industry:Language
