OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, Jacob

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​BROWN, JACOB (1775–1828), American soldier, was born of Quaker ancestry, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the 9th of May 1775. From 1796 to 1798 he was engaged in surveying public lands in Ohio; in 1798 he settled in New York City, and during the period (1798–1800) when war with France seemed imminent he acted as military secretary to Alexander Hamilton, then inspector-general of the United States army. Subsequently he purchased a large tract of land in Jefferson county, New York, where he founded the town of Brownville. There he served as county judge, and attained the rank (1810) of brigadier-general in the state militia. On the outbreak of the second war with Great Britain (1812) he was placed in command of the New York state frontier from Oswego to Lake St Francis (near Cornwall, Ontario) and repelled the British attacks on Ogdensburg (October 4, 1812) and Sackett’s Harbor (May 29, 1813). In July 1813 he was commissioned brigadier-general in the regular army, and in January 1814 he was promoted major-general and succeeded General James Wilkinson in command of the forces at Niagara. Early in the summer of 1814 he undertook offensive operations, and his forces occupied Fort Erie, and, on the 5th of July, at Chippawa, Ontario, defeated the British under General Phineas Riall (c. 1769–1851). On the 25th of July, with General Winfield Scott, he fought a hotly contested, but indecisive, battle with the British under General Gordon Drummond (1771–1854) at Lundy’s Lane, where he was twice wounded. After the war he remained in the army, of which he was the commanding general from March 1821 until his death at Washington, D.C., on the 24th of February 1828.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John (Scottish physician 1810-1882)

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​BROWN, JOHN (1810–1882), Scottish physician and author, son of John Brown (1784–1858), was born at Biggar, Scotland, on the 22nd of September 1810. He graduated as M.D. at the university of Edinburgh in 1833, and practised as a physician in that city. His reputation, however, is based on the two volumes of essays, Horae Subsecivae (i.e. “leisure hours”) (1858, 1861), John Leech and other Papers (1882), Rab and His Friends (1859), and Marjorie Fleming: a Sketch (1863). The first volume of Horae Subsecivae deals chiefly with the equipment and duties of a physician, the second with subjects outside his profession. He was emphatic in his belief that an author should publish nothing “unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say it aright.” Acting on this principle, he published little himself, and only after subjecting it to the severest criticism. His work is invariably characterized by humour and tenderness. He suffered during the latter years of his life from pronounced attacks of melancholy, and died on the 11th of May 1882.
See also E. T. M‘Laren, Dr John Brown and his Sister Isabella (4th ed., 1890); and Letters of Dr John Brown, edited by his son and D. W. Forrest, with biography by E. T. M‘Laren (1907).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John (British divine)

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​BROWN, JOHN (1715–1766), British divine and author, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland, on the 5th of November 1715. His father, a descendant of the Browns of Coalston, near Haddington, became vicar of Wigton in that year. Young Brown was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge; and after graduating at the head of the list of wranglers in 1735, he took holy orders, and was appointed minor canon and lecturer at Carlisle. In 1745 he distinguished himself in the defence of Carlisle as a volunteer, and in 1747 was appointed chaplain to Dr Osbaldiston, on his admission to the bishopric of Carlisle. His poem, entitled “Honour” (1743), was followed by the “Essay on Satire.” This gained for him the friendship of William Warburton, who introduced him to Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath. In 1751 Brown dedicated to Allen his Essay on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury, containing an able defence of the utilitarian philosophy, praised later by John Stuart Mill (Westminster Review, vol. xxix. p. 477). In 1756 he was promoted by the earl of Hardwicke to the living of Great Horkesley in Essex, and in the following year he took the degree of D.D. at Cambridge. He was the author of two plays, Barbarossa (1754) and Athelstane (1756); Garrick played in both, and the first was a success. The most popular of his works was the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (2 vols., 1757–1758), a bitter satire which pleased a public depressed by the ill-success in the conduct of the war, and ready to welcome an attack on luxury and kindred evils. Other works are the Additional Dialogue of the Dead between Pericles and Cosmo ... (1760), in vindication of Chatham’s policy; and the Dissertation on the Rise, Union and Power, &c., of Poetry and Music (1763). He was consulted in connexion with a scheme of education which Catherine II. of Russia desired to introduce into her dominions. A memorandum on the subject by Dr Brown led to an offer on her part to entertain him at St Petersburg as her adviser on the subject. He had bought a postchaise and various other things for the journey, when he was persuaded to relinquish the design on account of his gout. He had been subject to fits of melancholy, and, influenced perhaps by disappointment, he committed suicide on the 23rd of September 1766.
There is a detailed account of John Brown by Andrew Kippis in Biographia Britannica (1780), containing the text of the negotiations for his journey to Russia, and of a long letter in which he outlines the principles of the scheme he would have proposed. See also T. Davies, Memoirs of ... David Garrick (1780), chap. xix.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John (Scottish physician 1735-1788)

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​BROWN, JOHN (1735–1788), Scottish physician, was born in 1735 at Lintlaws or at Preston, Berwickshire. After attending the parish school at Duns, he went to Edinburgh and entered ​the divinity classes at the university, supporting himself by private tuition. In 1759 he seems to have discontinued his theological studies, and to have begun the study of medicine. He soon attracted the notice of William Cullen, who engaged him as private tutor to his family, and treated him in some respects as an assistant professor. In time, however, he quarrelled with Cullen, as with the professors of the university in general, and from about 1778 his public lectures contained vigorous attacks on all preceding systems of medicine and Cullen’s in particular. In 1780 he published his Elementa Medicinae, expounding his own, or as it was then called the Brunonian, theory of medicine, which for a time had a great vogue. In 1786 he set out for London in the vain hope of bettering his fortunes, and died there of apoplexy on the 17th of October 1788.
An edition of his works, with notice of his life by his son, William Cullen Brown, appeared in 1804.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcionio, Pietro

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​ALCIONIO, PIETRO, or Petrus Alcyonius (c. 1487–1527), Italian classical scholar, was born at Venice. After having studied Greek under Marcus Musurus of Candia, he was employed for some time by Aldus Manutius as a corrector of the press, and in 1522 was appointed professor of Greek at Florence through the influence of Giulio de’ Medici. When his patron became pope in 1523 under the title of Clement VII., Alcionio followed him to Rome and remained there until his death. Alcionio published at Venice, in 1521, a Latin translation of several of the works of Aristotle, which was shown by the Spanish scholar Sepulveda to be very incorrect. He wrote a dialogue entitled Medices Legatus, sive de Exilio (1522), in connexion with which he was charged with plagiarism by his personal enemy, Paulus Manutius. The accusation, which Tiraboschi has shown to be groundless, was that he had taken the finest passages in the work from Cicero’s lost treatise De Gloria, and had then destroyed the only existing copy of the original in order to escape detection. His contemporaries speak very unfavourably of Alcionio, and accuse him of haughtiness, uncouth manners, vanity and licentiousness.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcmaeon

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​ALCMAEON, of Argos, in Greek legend, was the son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. When his father set out with the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, which he knew would be fatal to him, he enjoined upon his sons to avenge his death by slaying Eriphyle and undertaking a second expedition against Thebes. After the destruction of Thebes by the Epigoni, Alcmaeon carried out his father’s injunctions by killing his mother, as a punishment for which he was driven mad and pursued by the Erinyes from place to place. On his arrival at Psophis in Arcadia, he was purified by its king Phegeus, whose daughter Arsinoe (or Alphesiboea) he married, making her a present of the fatal necklace and the peplus of Harmonia. But the land was cursed with barrenness, and the oracle declared that Alcmaeon would never find rest until he reached a spot on which the sun had never shone at the time he slew his mother. Such a spot he found at the mouth of the river Achelous, where an island had recently been formed by the alluvial deposit; here he settled and, forgetting his wife Arsinoe, married Callirrhoe, the daughter of the river-god. His new wife longed for the necklace and peplus, and Alcmaeon, returning to Psophis, obtained possession of them, on the pretence that he desired to dedicate them at Delphi. When the truth became known he was pursued and slain by Phegeus and his sons. After his death Alcmaeon was worshipped at Thebes; his tomb was at Psophis in a grove of cypresses. His story was the subject of an old epic and of several tragedies, but none of these has been preserved.
Homer, Odyssey xv. 248; Apollodorus iii. 7; Thucydides ii. 68, 102; Pausanias viii. 24, x. 10; Ovid, Metam. ix. 400 et seq.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcinous (king)

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​ALCINOUS (Alkinoös), in ancient Greek legend, king of the fabulous Phaeacians, in the island of Scheria, was the son of Nausithous and grandson of Poseidon. His reception and entertainment of Odysseus, who when cast by a storm on the shore of the island was relieved by the king’s daughter, Nausicaä, is described in the Odyssey (vi.-xiii.). The gardens and palace of Alcinous and the wonderful ships of the Phaeacian mariners were famous in antiquity. Scheria was identified in very early times with Corcyra, where Alcinous was reverenced as a hero. In the Argonautic legend, his abode was the island of Drepane (Apoll. Rhodius iv. 990).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcinous (philosopher)

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​ALCINOUS, the Platonic philosopher, lived probably in the time of the Caesars. He was the author of an Ἐπιτομὴ τῶν Πλάτωνος δογμάτων, an analysis of Plato’s philosophy according to later writers. It is rather in the manner of Aristotle, and freely attributes to Plato any ideas of other philosophers which appeared to contribute to the system. He produced in the end a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle with an admixture of Pythagorean or Oriental mysticism, and is closely allied to the Alexandrian school of thought. He recognized a god who is unknowable, and a series of beings (δαίμονες) who hold intercourse with men. He recognized also Ideas and Matter, and borrowed largely from Aristotle and the Stoics.
The Ἐπιτομή has been translated by Pierre Balbi (Rome, 1469) and by Marsilio Ficino; into French by J. I. Combes-Dounous (Paris, 1800), and into English by Thomas Stanley in his History of Philosophy. Editions: Heinsius (Leiden, 1630); Fischer (Leipzig, 1783); in Aldine Edition of Apuleius (Venice, 1521; Paris, 1532); Fell (Oxford, 1667). See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 249.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcmene

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​ALCMENE, in ancient Greek mythology, the daughter of Electryon, king of Mycenae, and wife of Amphitryon. She was the mother of Heracles by Zeus, who assumed the likeness of her husband during his absence, and of Iphicles by Amphitryon. She was regarded as the ancestress of the Heracleidae, and worshipped at Thebes and Athens.
See Winter, Alkmene und Amphitryon (1876).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcobaça

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​ALCOBAÇA, a town of Portugal, in the district of Leiria, formerly included in the province of Estremadura, on the Alcoa and Baça rivers, from which it derives its name. Pop. (1900) 2309. Alcobaça is chiefly interesting for its Cistercian convent, now partly converted into schools and barracks. The monastic buildings, which form a square 725 ft. in diameter, with a huge conical chimney rising above them, were founded in 1148 and completed in 1222. During the middle ages it rivalled the greatest European abbeys in size and wealth. It was supplied with water by an affluent of the Alcoa, which still flows through the kitchen; its abbot ranked with the highest Portuguese nobles, and, according to tradition, 999 monks continued the celebration of mass without intermission throughout the year. The convent was partly burned by the French in 1810, secularized in 1834 and afterwards gradually restored. Portions of the library, which comprised over 100,000 volumes, including many precious MSS., were saved in 1810, and are preserved in the public libraries of Lisbon and Braga. The monastic church (1222) is a good example of early Gothic, somewhat defaced by Moorish and other additions. It contains a fine cloister and the tombs of Peter I. (1357–1367) and his wife, Iñez de Castro.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcmaeonidae

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​ALCMAEONIDAE, a noble Athenian family, claiming descent from Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor, who emigrated from Pylos to Athens at the time of the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus. During the archonship of an Alcmaeonid Megacles (? 632 B.C.), Cylon, who had unsuccessfully attempted to make himself “tyrant,” was treacherously murdered with his followers. The curse or pollution thus incurred was frequently in later years raked up for political reasons; the Spartans even demanded that Pericles should be expelled as accursed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. All the members of the family went into banishment, and having returned in the time of Solon (594) were again expelled (538) by Peisistratus (q.v.). Their great wealth enabled them during their exile to enhance their reputation and secure the favour of the Delphian Apollo by rebuilding the temple after its destruction by fire in 548. Their importance is shown by the fact that Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, gave his daughter Agariste in marriage to the Alcmaeonid Megacles in preference to all the assembled suitors after the undignified behaviour of Hippocleides. Under the statesman Cleisthenes (q.v.), the issue of this union, the Alcmaeonids became supreme in Athens about 510 B.C. To them was generally attributed (though Herodotus disbelieves the story—see Greece, Ancient History, sect. “Authorities,” II.) the treacherous raising of the shield as a signal to the Persians at Marathon, but, whatever the truth of this may be, there can be little doubt that they were not the only one of the great Athenian families to make treasonable overtures to Persia. Pericles and Alcibiades were both connected with the Alcmaeonidae. Nothing is heard of them after the Peloponnesian war.
See Herodotus vi. 121-131.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcman

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​ALCMAN, or Alcmaeon (the former being the Doric form of the name), the founder of Doric lyric poetry, to whom was assigned the first place among the nine lyric poets of Greece in the Alexandrian canon, flourished in the latter half of the 7th century B.C. He was a Lydian of Sardis, who came as a slave to Sparta, where he lived in the family of Agesidas, by whom he was emancipated. His mastery of Greek shows that he must have come very early to Sparta, where, after the close of the Messenian wars, the people were able to bestow their attention upon the arts of peace. Alcman composed various kinds of poems in various metres; Parthenia (maidens’ songs), hymns, paeans, prosodia (processionals), and love-songs, of which he was considered the inventor. He was evidently fond of good living, and traces of Asiatic sensuousness seem out of place amidst Spartan simplicity. The fragments are scanty, the most considerable being part of a Parthenion found in 1855 on an Egyptian papyrus; some recently discovered hexameters are attributed to Alcman or Erinna (Oxyrhynchus papyri, i. 1898).
For general authorities see Alcaeus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alciphron

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​ALCIPHRON, Greek rhetorician, was probably a contemporary of Lucian (2nd century A.D.). He was the author of a collection of fictitious letters, of which 124 (118 complete and 6 fragments) have been published; they are written in the purest Attic dialect and are considered models of style. The scene is throughout at Athens; the imaginary writers are country people, fishermen, parasites and courtesans, who express their sentiments and opinions on familiar subjects in elegant language. The “courtesan” letters are especially valuable, the information contained in them being chiefly derived from the writers of the New Comedy, especially Menander.
Editions.—Editio princeps (44 letters), 1499; Bergler (1715); Seiler (1856); Hercher (1873); Schepers (1905). English translation by Monro and Beloe (1791).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcira

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​ALCIRA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia; on the left bank of the river Júcar, and on the Valencia-Alicante railway. Pop. (1900) 20,572. Alcira is a walled town, surrounded by palm, orange and mulberry groves, and by low-lying rice-swamps, which render its neighbourhood somewhat unhealthy. Silk, fruit and rice are its chief products. It is sometimes identified with the Roman Saetabicula. In the middle ages it was a prosperous Moorish trading-station.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carpenter, Lant

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​CARPENTER, LANT (1780–1840), English Unitarian minister, was born at Kidderminster on the 2nd of September 1780, the ​son of a carpet manufacturer. After some months at a non-conformist academy at Northampton, he proceeded to Glasgow University, and then joined the ministry. After a short time as assistant master at a Unitarian school near Birmingham, he was in 1802 appointed librarian at the Liverpool Athenaeum. In 1805 he became pastor of a church in Exeter, removing in 1817 to Bristol. At both Bristol and Exeter he was also engaged in school work, among his Bristol pupils being Harriet and James Martineau. Carpenter did much to broaden the spirit of English Unitarianism. The rite of baptism seemed to him a superstition, and he substituted for it a form of infant dedication. His health, undermined by his constant labours, broke down in 1839, and he was ordered to travel. He was drowned on the night of the 5th of April 1840, having been washed overboard from the steamer in which he was travelling from Leghorn to Marseilles.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carpenter, William Benjamin

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​CARPENTER, WILLIAM BENJAMIN (1813–1885), English physiologist and naturalist, was born at Exeter on the 29th of October 1813. He was the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter. He attended medical classes at University College, London, and then went to Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1839. The subject of his graduation thesis, “The Physiological Inferences to be Deduced from the Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated Animals,” indicates a line of research which had fruition in his Principles of General and Comparative Physiology. His work in comparative neurology was recognized in 1844 by his election to the Royal Society, which awarded him a Royal medal in 1861; and his appointment as Fullerian professor of physiology in the Royal Institution in 1845 enabled him to exhibit his powers as a teacher and lecturer, his gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation placing him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularization of science was in its infancy. His manifold labours as investigator, author, editor, demonstrator and lecturer knew no cessation through life; but in assessing the value of his work, prominence should be given to his researches in marine zoology, notably in the lower organisms, as Foraminifera and Crinoids. These researches gave an impetus to deep-sea exploration, an outcome of which was in 1868 the “Lightning,” and later the more famous “Challenger,” expedition. He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologists as to the organic nature of the so-called Eozoon Canadense, discovered in the Laurentian strata, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of its animal origin. He was an adept in the use of the microscope, and his popular treatise on The Microscope and its Revelations (1856) has stimulated a host of observers to the use of the “added sense” with which it has endowed man. In 1856 Carpenter became registrar of the university of London, and held the office for twenty-three years; on his resignation in 1879 he was made a C.B. in recognition of his services to education generally. Biologist as he was, Carpenter nevertheless made reservations as to the extension of the doctrine of evolution to man’s intellectual and spiritual nature. In his Principles of Mental Physiology he asserted both the freedom of the will and the existence of the “Ego,” and one of his last public engagements was the reading of a paper in support of miracles. He died in London, from injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of a spirit-lamp, on the 19th of November 1885.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carpathus

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​CARPATHUS (Ital. Scarpanto), an island about 30 m. south-west of Rhodes, in that part of the Mediterranean which was called, after it, the Carpathian Sea (Carpathium Mare). It was both in ancient and medieval times closely connected with Rhodes; it was held by noble families under Venetian suzerainty, notably the Cornari from 1306 to 1540, when it finally passed into the possession of the Turks. From its remote position Carpathus has preserved many peculiarities of dress, customs and dialect, the last resembling those of Rhodes and Cyprus.
See L. Ross, Reisen auf den gr. Inseln (Halle, 1840–1845); T. Bent, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vi. (1885), p. 235; R. M. Dawkins, Annual of British School at Athens, ix. and x.