POMPEY-PONIATOWSKI. 35 35 fifty-nine years old at the time of his death, and has left a name highly celebrated among the greatest of antiquity. PONIATOWSKI, Joseph, nephew to Stanislaus, king of Poland, born in 1763, served with courage against the Russians, under Kosciusko, who gave him the command of a division, at the head of which he distinguished himself at the two sieges of Warsaw. After the surrender of the city, he went to Vienna, and, rejecting the offers of Catharine and Paul, lived in retirement, on his return to Poland, at his estates near Warsaw. The creation of the duchy of Warsaw rekindled the hopes of the Polish patriots, and Poniatowski accepted the place of minister of war in the new state. In 1809, he commanded the Polish army against the superior Austrian force, which was sent to occupy the duchy, compelled it to retire, rather by skilful manœuvres than by force of arms, and penetrated into Galicia. In the war of 1812, against Russia, he was again at the head of the Polish forces, and distinguished himself in all the principal affairs of this chequered campaign. the rest of his days, which terminated May the 8th, 1782. POMPEY (Cneius Pompeius), surnamed the Great (Magnus), born B. C. 107, was the son of a general officer, much hated, though able, for his severity and avarice. He first served under his father, who commanded an army against Cinna, in the neighbourhood of Rome during the Marian war, after which, he joined Sylla in Campania. The success of this leader procured him high renown and great influence, so that, after Sylla's death, he was chosen consul B. C. 70. His previous popularity being increased by many exploits of great splendour and advantage, his plan now was, under the appearance of a private individual, to maintain the first place in the state; and, from this time, he countenanced measures which, as a good citizen, he should have strongly opposed. Cæsar, while laying the foundations of his future greatness, was declared an enemy to his country by the senate, which, but too late for the activity of his rival, committed to Pompey the defence of the state. Pompey fled to Greece, where he collected a numerous army, but was total-After the battle of Leipsic, ly defeated near Pharsalus, in ⚫ Macedonia (B. C. 48). He fled to Egypt, but was treacherously murdered there, in the very act of landing. Pompey was during which Napoleon created him marshal of France, he was ordered (October 19th) to cover the retreat of the French army. The enemy were al ready in possession of the sub-came acquainted, at this early two period, with Ogilby's version urbs of Leipsic, and had thrown light troops over the Elster, when the prince arrived, with a few followers, at the river, the bridge over which had been blown up by the French. Poniatowski, already wounded, plunged, with his horse, into the stream, was found dead on the 24th, and buried with all the honours due to his rank and valour, in the cathedral at Cracow. Thorwaldsen has executed an equestrian statue of this hero, for the city of War-home, and privately instructed saw. Soon POFE, Alexander, a celebrated poet, was born May the 22d, 1688, in Lombard street, London, where his father, a linendraper, acquired a considerable fortune. Both his parents were Roman Catholics. after the birth of his son, who was of very delicate constitution, small, and much deformed, the father of Pope retired from business to a small house at Binfield, near Windsor Forest; and, on account of his attachment to the exiled king, not choosing to vest his property in the public securities, he lived frugally on the capital. The young poet was taught to read and write at home, and, at the age of eight, was placed under the care of a Catholic priest, named Taverner, from whom he learned the rudiments of Latin and Greek, Being fond of reading, he be by another priest; to this period is assigned his earliest printed poem, the Ode on Solitude." He subsequently appears to have been the director of his own studies, in which the cultivation of poetry occupied his chief attention. He particularly exercised himself in imitation and translation, of which his versions of the first book of the Thebais and of the Sappho to Phaon, made at the age of fourteen, afford a remarkable testimony. He was sixteen when he wrote his pastorals, which procured him the notice of several eminent persons. Ode for St Cecilia's Day,' Essay on Criticism,' were his next performances of note, and, in 1711, appeared his Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady. This was followed by the Rape of the Lock,' grounded on a trifling incident in fashionable life. His and In this production the poet displays admirable viva-ion through life. A sort of literary flirtation also commenced with the celebrated lady Mary Wortley Montagu, which, after much intercourse and correspondence, terminat city and the most polished wit, but its imaginative power is chiefly conspicuous in the exquisite machinery of the sylphs, wrought into it as an afterthought; for the poem first ap-ed in the bitterest enmity. In peared without it. He next published the 'Temple of Fame,' altered and modernized from 1727, he joined Swift in a publication of Miscellanies,' in which he inserted a treatise Chaucer, which was followed,Of the Bathos; or, Art of in 1713, by his Windsor Fo- Sinking,' illustrated by examrest,' commenced at sixteen. ples from the inferior poets of In the same year, he published the day. In 1728, he sent out proposals for a translation of the three first books of his the Iliad,' and was enabled, 'Dunciad,' a mock-heroic by the great success of his sub-poem, the object of which was scription, to take a handsome to overwhelm his antagonists house at Twickenham, to which he removed with his father and mother. About this time, he wrote his impassioned 'Epistle from Eloïsa to Abelard,' one of the most vivid and impressive of all amatory poems. In 1721, he undertook the editorship of Shakspeare's works -a task for which he was wholly unfit; and a severe castigation from Theobald laid the foundation of a lasting enmity between them. the assistance of Broome and Fenton, he also accomplished a translation of the Odyssey, the subscription to which brought him a considerable sum. In the mean time, he. had formed a friendship with Martha Blount, the daughter of a Catholic gentleman near Reading, who became his intimate confidante and compan With with ridicule. It is a finished example of diction and versification, but displays much irritability, illiberality, and injustice. Personal satire, to which he was first encouraged by bishop Atterbury, appears in most of his subsequent productions. Being particularly connected with the tory party, he had become intimate with lord Bolingbroke, to whose suggestion the world is indebted for the Essay on Man,' first published anonymously in 1733, and the next year completed, and avowed by the author. This work stands in the first class of ethical poems. It was followed by Imitations of Horace,' accompanied by a Prologue and Epilogue to the Satires,' and by Moral Epistles," which exhibit him as a satirist of the School of Boileau, with 38 POPE-PORDENONE. more spirit and poetry, and his intimates, the historian equal causticity. Curll, the bookseller, having published some letters written by Pope, the latter affected great anger; yet there is some evidence to countenance the notion that he contrived the plot himself, in order to form an excuse for the publication of a quarto volume of letters, in his own name, for which he took subscriptions. They are elegant and sprightly, although studied and artificial; but, as many characteristic epistles are given from those of his correspondents, the collection is interesting and valuable. In 1742, at the suggestion of Warburton, he added a fourth book to his Dunciad, intended to ridicule useless and frivolous studies, in which he attacked Colly Cibber, then poet laureate. Cibber retaliated by a pamphlet, which told some ludicrous stories of his antagonist, and so irritated the latter, that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he deposed Theobald, its original hero, and promoted Cibber in his place, who, although a great coxcomb, could scarcely be deemed a dunce. An oppressive asthma began now to indicate a commencing decline; and, in this state of debility, he was consoled by the affectionate attention of his friends, and particularly of lord Bolingbroke. When the last scene was approaching, he allowed one of Hooke, himself a Catholic, to send for a priest, not as essential, but becoming; and, soon after, quietly expired, May the 30th, 1744, at the age of fifty-six. He was interred at Twickenham, where a monument was erected to him by bishop Warburton, his legatee. Both the moral and poetical character of Pope has, within these last few years, been assailed and defended with peculiar animation. Vain and irascible, he seems to have been equally open to flattery and prone to resentment; but one of his greatest weaknesses was a disposition to artifice, in order to acquire reputation and applause, which is justly deemed indicative of littleness of mind. He was not, however, incapable of generous and elevated sentiments, and had always a dignified regard to his independence, which, in one to whom money, high connexions, and the superfluities of life, more especially the luxuries of the table, were by no means indifferent, is the more remarkable. As a poet, no English writer has carried further, correctness of versification, splendour of diction, and the truly poetical art of vivifying and adorning every subject that he treated. PORDENONE (so called from his birth place, his true name being Giovanni Antonio Lici nio), a painter of the Venetian | the son of a linen draper of school, and rival of Titian, was Wakefield, in Yorkshire, in the grammar-school of which town he received the rudiments of a classical education. He then became a member of University college, Oxford, and, in 1697, printed his 'Archæologia Græca,' or the Antiquities of Greece, in 2 vols., 8vo, which has gone through many editions, and is almost indispensable to the classical student. He was appointed archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1747. POTTER, Robert, born in 1721, graduated at Cambridge, was an admirable classical scholar, and distinguished himself by excellent translations of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, equally remarkable for the spirit and fidelity with which they are rendered. He died in 1804. born in 1484. He executed many great works for Mantua, Genoa, and Venice, and died at Ferrara, in 1540, and his death was attributed to poison. PORSON, Richard, professor of Greek in the university of Cambridge, was born, Dec. 25th, 1759, at East Ruston, in Norfolk, where his father was clerk of the parish, and to him he was indebted for the first rudiments of his education, and, in 1777, became a student of Trinity college, Cambridge, where he gained a prize medal; and, in 1781, was chosen to a fellowship, but relinquished it, from not choosing to take holy orders, on account of conscientious scruples in regard to the Thirty-nine Articles. He enjoyed the reputation of being one of the best Greek scholars and critics of the age in England, notwith-huisen, in 1625, settled at the standing which, he experienced little patronage-a circumstance partly attributable to his intemperate habits. Towards the latter part of his life, he was appointed librarian to the London institution, with a salary of 2001. a-year; and his death took place Sept. the 25th, 1808, at his apart ments, in the house then belonging to that establishment in the Old Jewry. POTTER, John, primate of all England, born in 1674, was POTTER, Paul, born at Enk Hague, and painted cattle and landscapes, but was particularly successful in the former; the latter being designed merely to afford an opportunity for exhibiting animals in different attitudes and circumstances. His colouring is uncommonly brilliant, and his pieces command a very high price. He died at the premature age of twenty-nine. POUSSIN, Nicholas, torn at Andelys, in Normandy, 1594, was descended from a noble |