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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montgomerie, Alexander

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​MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER (c. 1550–c. 1610), Scottish poet, was the second son of Hugh Montgomerie of Hessilhead, Ayrshire, and was born about the middle of the 16th century. He spent some part of his youth in Argyleshire and afterwards lived for a time at Compston Castle, in Galloway. He was in the service of the regent Morton; thereafter, on the regent’s demission of office in 1578, in that of the king, James VI. In 1583 the grant by the Crown of a pension of 500 marks was confirmed; and three years later he set out on a tour through France, Flanders and other countries. He appears to have got into trouble, to have been imprisoned abroad, and to have lost favour at the Scottish court, and (for a time) his pension. We have no record of his closing years.
Montgomerie’s chief poem is the Cherry and the Slae, first printed in 1597 (two impressions). It was frequently reprinted in the 17th and 18th centuries, and appeared twice in Latin guise in 1631, in Dempster’s Cerasum et sylvestre prunum, opus poematicum. It is included in the collected edition of Montgomerie’s Poems, by David Irving (1821), and by James Cranstoun, for the Scottish Text Society (1887). The text in the latter is a composite of 930 lines from the second impression of 1597 (u.s.) and 666 lines from the version in Allan Ramsay’s (q.v.) Ever Green (1724); but a better text, from a MS. in the Laing collection in the university of Edinburgh, has been prepared (1907) for the Scottish Text Society by Mr George Stevenson. The poem, written in the complicated alliterative fourteen-lined stanza, is a confused allegory—the confusion being due to the fact that sections of the poem were written at different times—on Youth’s choice between a richly laden cherry-tree on a high crag and a sloe “bush” at his feet. His other poems are: The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart (1629; 1st ed., 1621), which reproduces the literary habit of the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie; a series of 70 sonnets; a large number of miscellaneous poems, amatory and devotional; and The Mindes Melodie, Contayning certayne Psalmes of the Kinglie Prophete Dayvid, applyed to a new pleasant tune (Edinburgh, 1605). The formal value of Montgomerie’s verse was fittingly acknowledged by James VI. in his early critical essay Ane Schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie, where the author makes three quotations from Montgomerie’s poems, then in circulation in manuscript. Montgomerie had written a sonnet to his majesty, which is prefixed to the Essayes of a Prentise.
Montgomerie stands apart from the courtier-poets Ayton, Stirling, and others, who write in the literary English of the South. He carries on the Middle Scots tradition, and was not without influence in the vernacular revival, in Allan Ramsay and his successors. (G. G. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montgomery, Gabriel, Seigneur de Lorges, Comte de

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​MONTGOMERY, GABRIEL, SEIGNEUR DE LORGES, Comte de (c. 1530–1574), French soldier, became a lieutenant in the king of France’s Scottish guards, of which his father was captain, and engaged in police operations against the Protestants. Having inadvertently caused the death of King Henry II. in a tournament (June 30, 1559) he was disgraced and retired to his estates in Normandy. He studied theological questions and espoused the cause of the Reformers. In 1562 he allied himself with the prince of Condé, took Bourges, and defended Rouen from September to October 1562 against the royal army. In the third War of Religion he occupied Béarn and Bigorre (1569). Escaping from the massacre of St Bartholomew, he went to England and returned with a fleet for the relief of La Rochelle (1573), but soon had to withdraw to Cornwall. Returning to Normandy in 1574, he defended Domfront, which was being besieged by Marshal de Matignon, but was forced to capitulate on the 25th of May. He was sentenced to death by the parlement, and beheaded in Paris on the 26th of June 1574.
See L. Marlet, Le Comte de Montgomery (Paris, 1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montgomery

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​MONTGOMERY (Tre’ Faldwyn), a municipal and parliamentary borough, market town, and the county town of Montgomeryshire, Wales, situated on a wooded hill near the east bank of the Severn, 7 m. S. of Welshpool (Cambrian railway). Pop. (1901), 1034. The principal feature of the town is the ruined castle. Not far off are the traces of an extensive British fort, and, about a mile east, the line of Offa’s Dyke, forming the Shropshire boundary. The borough was incorporated by Henry III., when the castle was enlarged, and was the scene of frequent contests between that king and Llewelyn the Great. In the 14th century the castle was held by the Mortimers, from whom it passed to the Yorkists. The Crown gave it, in the 15th century, to the Herberts of Cherbury, one of whom, in 1644, surrendered it to the Parliamentarians, who dismantled it.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Montfort

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​MONTFORT, the name of a famous French family long seated at Montfort l’Amauri, near Paris, descended from a certain William, a descendant of the counts of Flanders, who flourished during the latter part of the 10th century, and who built a castle at Montfort l’Amauri. Until 1209, when Simon IV. took the title of count, William and his successors were known as barons de Montfort. This Simon IV. de Montfort (c. 1160–1218), a son of Simon III. (d. 1181), is chiefly known for the very active part which he took in the crusade against the Albigenses. Twice he went to Palestine as a crusader, and in 1209, answering the call of Pope Innocent III., he joined the host which marched against the enemies of the Church in Languedoc. He became vicomte of Béziers and of Carcassonne, and was soon the leader of the Crusaders. He took place after place, defeated Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, at Castelnaudary, and about a year later (September 1213) gained a victory over Raymond’s ally, Peter II., king of Aragon, under the walls of Muret. Simon then turned his attention to administering and organizing Languedoc. After a lively discussion in the Lateran Council of 1215, the pope, somewhat reluctantly, confirmed him in the possession of the greater part of the lands of the count of Toulouse, and after two more years of warfare he was killed whilst besieging the city of Toulouse on the 25th of June 1218. The count’s eldest son, Amauri de Montfort (1192–1241), was unable to hold his own, although Philip Augustus sent some troops to his assistance in 1222. He abandoned his interests in the south of France in favour of the new king Louis VIII., and in 1239 he went on crusade to the Holy Land, dying soon afterwards at Otranto. In 1230 Amauri was made constable of France. Simon IV. had a brother, Guy de Montfort (d. 1228), who shared his military exploits both in Asia and in Europe, and who was afterwards employed by Louis VIII. to negotiate with the pope at Rome. He was killed before Vareilles on the 31st of January 1228. In 1294 Yolande (d. 1322), the heiress of the Montforts, married Arthur II., duke of Brittany, and the county of Montfort became part of this duchy. Their son, John, count of Montfort, claimed Brittany in opposition to Charles, count of Blois, and at length secured the duchy. Except for one interval his descendants held it until it was united with the French crown at the end of the 15th century.
See A. Molinier, Catalogue des actes de Simon et d’Amaury de Montfort (1873); and C. Douais, La Soumission de la vicomté de Carcassonne par Simon de Montfort et la. croisade contre Raimond VI.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Leven

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​LEVEN, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 5577. It is situated on the Firth of Forth, at the mouth of the Leven, 53/4 m. E. by N. of Thornton Junction by the North British railway. The public buildings include the town hall, public hall and people’s institute, in the grounds of which the old town cross has been erected. The industries are numerous, comprising flax-spinning, brewing, linen-weaving, paper-making, seed-crushing and rope-making, besides salt-works, a foundry, saw-mill and brick-works. The wet dock is not much used, owing to the constant accumulation of sand. The golf-links extending for 2 m. to Lundin are among the best in Scotland. Two miles N.E. is Lundin Mill and Drumochie, usually called Lundin (pop. 570), at the mouth of Kiel Burn, with a station on the Links. The three famous standing stones are supposed to be either of “Druidical” origin or to mark the site of a battle with the Danes. In the vicinity are the remains of an old house of the Lundins, dating from the reign of David II. To the N.W. of Leven lies the parish of Kennoway (pop. 870). In Captain Seton’s house, which still stands in the village of Kennoway, Archbishop Sharp spent the night before his assassination (1679). One mile east of Lundin lies Largo (pop. of parish 2046), consisting of Upper Largo, or Kirkton of Largo, and Lower Largo. The public buildings include Simpson institute, with a public hall, library, reading-room, bowling-green and lawn-tennis court, and John Wood’s hospital, founded in 1659 for poor persons bearing his name. A statue of Alexander Selkirk, or Selcraig (1676–1721), the prototype of “Robinson Crusoe,” who was born here, was erected in 1886. Sir John Leslie (1766–1832), the natural philosopher, was also a native. Largo claims two famous sailors, Admiral Sir Philip Durham (1763–1845), commander-in-chief at Portsmouth from 1836 to 1839, and Sir Andrew Wood (d. 1515), the trusted servant of James III. and James IV., who sailed the “Great Michael,” the largest ship of its time. When he was past active service he had a canal cut from his house to the parish church, to which he was rowed every Sunday in an eight-oared barge. Largo House was granted to him by James III., and the tower of the original structure still exists. About 11/2 m. from the coast rises the height of Largo Law (948 ft.). Kellie Law lies some 51/2 m. to the east.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Levertin, Oscar Ivan

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​LEVERTIN, OSCAR IVAN (1862–1906), Swedish poet and man of letters, was born of Jewish parents at Norrköping on the 17th of July 1862. He received his doctorate in letters at Upsala in 1887, and was subsequently docent at Upsala, and later professor of literature at Stockholm. Enforced sojourns in southern Europe on account of health familiarized him with foreign languages. He began by being an extreme follower of the naturalist school, but on his return in 1890 from a two years’ residence in Davos he wrote, in collaboration with the poet C. G. Verner von Heidenstam (b. 1859), a novel, Pepitas bröllop (1890), which was a direct attack on naturalism. His later volumes of short stories, Rococonoveller and Sista noveller, are fine examples of modern Swedish fiction. The lyrical beauty of his poems, Legender och visor (1891), placed him at the head of the romantic reaction in Sweden. In his poems entitled Nya Dikter (1894) he drew his material partly from medieval sources, and a third ​volume of poetry in 1902 sustained his reputation. His last poetical work (1905) was Kung Salomo och Morolf, poems founded on an eastern legend. As a critic he first attracted attention by his books on the Gustavian age of Swedish letters: Teater och drama under Gustaf III. (1889), &c. He was an active collaborator in the review Ord och Bild. He died in 1906, at a time when he was engaged on his Linné, posthumously published, a fragment of a great work on Linnaeus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Leven, Loch

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​LEVEN, LOCH, a lake of Kinross-shire, Scotland. It has an oval shape, the longer axis running from N.W. to S.E., has a length of 32/3 m., and a breadth of 22/3 m. and is situated near the south and east boundaries of the shire. It lies at a height of 350 ft. above the sea. The mean depth is less than 15 ft., with a maximum of 83 ft., the lake being thus one of the shallowest in Scotland. Reclamation works carried on from 1826 to 1836 reduced its area by one quarter, but it still possesses a surface ​area of 51/2 sq. m. It drains the county and is itself drained by the Leven. It is famous for the Loch Leven trout (Salmo levenensis, considered by some a variety of S. trutta), which are remarkable for size and quality. The fishings are controlled by the Loch Leven Angling Association, which organizes competitions attracting anglers from far and near. The loch contains seven islands. Upon St Serf’s, the largest, which commemorates the patron saint of Fifeshire, are the ruins of the Priory of Portmoak—so named from St Moak, the first abbot—the oldest Culdee establishment in Scotland. Some time before 961 it was made over to the bishop of St Andrews, and shortly after 1144 a body of canons regular was established on it in connexion with the priory of canons regular founded in that year at St Andrews. The second largest island, Castle Island, possesses remains of even greater interest. The first stronghold is supposed to have been erected by Congal, son of Dongart, king of the Picts. The present castle dates from the 13th century and was occasionally used as a royal residence. It is said to have been in the hands of the English for a time, from whom it was delivered by Wallace. It successfully withstood Edward Baliol’s siege in 1335, and was granted by Robert II. to Sir William Douglas of Lugton. It became the prison at various periods of Robert II.; of Alexander Stuart, earl of Buchan, “the Wolf of Badenoch”; Archibald, earl of Douglas (1429); Patrick Graham, archbishop of St Andrews (who died, still in bondage, on St Serf’s Island in 1478), and of Mary, queen of Scots. The queen had visited it more than once before her detention, and had had a presence chamber built in it. Conveyed hither in June 1567 after her surrender at Carberry, she signed her abdication within its walls on the 4th of July and effected her escape on the 2nd of May 1568. The keys of the castle, which were thrown into the loch during her flight, were found and are preserved at Dalmahoy in Midlothian. Support of Mary’s cause had involved Thomas Percy, 7th earl of Northumberland (b. 1528). He too was lodged in the castle in 1569, and after three years’ imprisonment was handed over to the English, by whom he was beheaded at York in 1572. The proverb that “Those never got luck who came to Loch Leven” sums up the history of the castle. The causeway connecting the isle with the mainland was long submerged too deeply for use, but the reclamation operations already referred to almost brought it into view again.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Leven and Melville, Earls of

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​LEVEN AND MELVILLE, EARLS OF. The family of Melville which now holds these two earldoms is descended from Sir John Melville of Raith in Fifeshire. Sir John, who was a member of the reforming party in Scotland, was put to death for high treason on the 13th of December 1548; he left with other children a son Robert (1527–1621), who in 1616 was created a lord of parliament as Lord Melville of Monymaill. Before his elevation to the Scottish peerage Melville had been a stout partisan of Mary, queen of Scots, whom he represented at the English court, and he had filled several important offices in Scotland under her son James VI. The fourth holder of the lordship of Melville was George (c. 1634–1707), a son of John, the 3rd lord (d. 1643), and a descendant of Sir John Melville. Implicated in the Rye House plot against Charles II., George took refuge in the Netherlands in 1683, but he returned to England after the revolution of 1688 and was appointed secretary for Scotland by William III. in 1689, being created earl of Melville in the following year. He was made president of the Scottish privy council in 1696, but he was deprived of his office when Anne became queen in 1702, and he died on the 20th of May 1707. His son David, 2nd earl of Melville (1660–1728), fled to Holland with his father in 1683; after serving in the army of the elector of Brandenburg he accompanied William of Orange to England in 1688. At the head of a regiment raised by himself he fought for William at Killiecrankie and elsewhere, and as commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland he dealt promptly and effectively with the attempted Jacobite rising of 1708. In 1712, however, his office was taken from him and he died on the 6th of June 1728.
Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven (q.v.), was succeeded in his earldom by his grandson Alexander, who died without sons in July 1664. The younger Alexander’s two daughters were then in turn countesses of Leven in their own right; and after the death of the second of these two ladies in 1676 a dispute arose over the succession to the earldom between John Leslie, earl (afterwards duke) of Rothes, and David Melville, 2nd earl of Melville, mentioned above. In 1681, however, Rothes died, and Melville, who was a great-grandson of the 1st earl of Leven, assumed the title, calling himself earl of Leven and Melville after he succeeded his father as earl of Melville in May 1707. Since 1805 the family has borne the name of Leslie-Melville. In 1906 John David Leslie-Melville (b. 1886) became 12th earl of Leven and 11th earl of Melville.
See Sir W. Fraser, The Melvilles, Earls of Melville, and the Leslies, Earls of Leven (1890); and the Leven and Melville Papers, edited by the Hon. W. H. Leslie-Melville for the Bannatyne Club (1843).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Levi, Hermann

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​LEVI, HERMANN (1839–1900), German orchestral conductor, was born at Giessen on the 7th of November 1839, and was the son of a Jewish rabbi. He was educated at Giessen and Mannheim, and came under Vincenz Lachner’s notice. From 1855 to 1858 Levi studied at the Leipzig conservatorium, and after a series of travels which took him to Paris, he obtained his first post as music director at Saarbrücken, which post he exchanged for that at Mannheim in 1861. From 1862 to 1864 he was chief conductor of the German opera in Rotterdam, then till 1872 at Carlsruhe, when he went to Munich, a post he held until 1896, when ill-health compelled him to resign. Levi’s name is indissolubly connected with the increased public appreciation of Wagner’s music. He conducted the first performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882, and was connected with the musical life of that place during the remainder of his career. He visited London in 1895.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Levi, Leone

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​LEVI, LEONE (1821–1888), English jurist and statistician, was born of Jewish parents on the 6th of June 1821, at Ancona, Italy. After receiving an early training in a business house in his native town, he went to Liverpool in 1844, became naturalized, and changing his faith, joined the Presbyterian church. Perceiving the necessity, in view of the unsystematic condition of the English law on the subject, for the establishment of chambers and tribunals of commerce in England, he warmly advocated their institution in numerous pamphlets; and as a result of his labours the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, of which Levi was made secretary, was founded in 1849. In 1850 Levi published his Commercial Law of the World, being an exhaustive and comparative treatise upon the laws and codes of mercantile countries. Appointed in 1852 to the chair of commercial law in King’s College, London, he proved himself a highly competent and popular instructor, and his evening classes were a most successful innovation. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1859, and received from the university of Tübingen the degree of doctor of political science. His chief work—History of British Commerce and of the Economic Progress of the British Nation, 1763–1870, is perhaps a rather too partisan account of British economic development, being a eulogy upon the blessings of Free Trade, but its value as a work of reference cannot be gainsaid. Among his other works are: Work and Pay; Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes; International Law, with Materials for a Code. He died on the 7th of May 1888.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lever

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​LEVER (through O. Fr. leveour, levere, mod. levier, from Lat. levare, to lift, raise), a mechanical device for raising bodies; the “simple” lever consists of a rigid bar free to move about a fixed point, termed the fulcrum; one point of the rod is connected to the piece to be moved, and power is applied at another point (see Mechanics).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Silesian Wars

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SILESIAN WARS, the name given to the contests between Austria and Prussia for the possession of Silesia. The first (1740-1742) and second (1744-1745) wars formed a part of the great European struggle called the War of the Austrian Succession (q.v.), and the third war (1756-1762) similarly a part of the Seven Years' War (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sill, Edward Rowland

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​SILL, EDWARD ROWLAND (1841–1887), American poet and educationist, was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on the 29th of April 1841. He graduated at Yale in 1861, as class poet; engaged in business in California; entered the Harvard Divinity School in 1867, but soon left it for a position on the staff of the New York Evening Mail; and after teaching at Wadsworth and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (1868–1871), became principal of the Oakland High School, California. He was professor of English literature at the university of California in 1874–1882. His health was failing, and he returned to Cuyahoga Falls in 1883. He devoted himself to literary work, abundant and largely anonymous, until his death in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 27th of February 1887. Much of his poetry was contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine, and the Overland Monthly. Many of his graceful prose essays appeared in “The Contributors' Club,” and others appeared in the main body of the Atlantic. Among his works are a translation of Rau’s Mozart (1868); The Hermitage and Other Poems (1868); The Venus of Milo and Other Poems (1883), a farewell tribute to his California friends; Poems (1887); The Hermitage and Later Poems (1889); Hermione and Other Poems (1900); The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill (1900); Poems (1902). He was a modest and charming man, a graceful essayist, a sure critic. His contribution to American poetry is small but of fine quality. His best poems, such as The Venus of Milo, The Fool’s Prayer and Opportunity, gave him a high place among the minor poets of America, which might have been higher but for his early death. See A Memorial volume privately printed by his friends in 1887; and “Biographical Sketch” in The Poetical Works of Edward Rowland Sill (Boston, 1906), edited by William Belmont Parker with Mrs Sill’s assistance.