Page:EB1911 - Volume 09.djvu/932

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EUPION—EURE-ET-LOIR

fluently and elegantly as he could himself. Nevertheless the trick wore out, with the taste that it had created, and by the close of the reign of James I. Euphuism had become a dead language.

Critics have not failed to insist, on the other hand, that a species of Euphuism existed before Euphues was thought of. It has been supposed that a translation of the familiar epistles, or, as they were called, the “Golden Letters,” of a Spanish monk, Antonio de Guevara, led Lyly to conceive the extraordinary style which bears the name of his hero. Between 1574 and 1578 Edward Hellowes (fl. 1550–1600) translated into a very extravagant English prose three of the works of Guevara. Earlier than this, in 1557, Sir Thomas North had published a version of the same Spanish writer’s Reloj de Principes (The Dial of Princes), a moral and philosophical romance which is not without a certain likeness in plan and language to Euphues. It is extremely difficult to know to what extent these translations, which were not strikingly unlike many other specimens of the ornamented English prose of their period, can be said to be responsible for the production of Euphuism. At all events no one can doubt that it was Lyly who concentrated the peculiarities of mannerism, and who gave to it the stamp of his own remarkable talent.

See Landmann, Der Euphuismus (1881); Arber’s edition of Euphues (1869); R. W. Bond’s Complete Works of Lyly (1902); Hallam, Jusserand, S. Lee, passim.  (E. G.) 


EUPION (Gr. εὖ, well, πίων, fat), a hydrocarbon of the paraffin series, probably a pentane, C5H12, discovered by K. Reichenbach in wood-tar. It is also formed in the destructive distillation of many substances, as wood, coal, caoutchouc, bones, resin and the fixed oils. It is a colourless highly volatile and inflammable liquid, having at 20° C. a specific gravity of 0.65.


EUPOLIS (c. 446–411 B.C.), Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, flourished in the time of the Peloponnesian War. Nothing whatever is known of his personal history. With regard to his death, he is said to have been thrown into the sea by Alcibiades, whom he had attacked in one of his plays, but it is more likely that he died fighting for his country. He is ranked by Horace (Sat. i. 4, 1), along with Cratinus and Aristophanes, as the greatest writer of his school. With a lively and fertile fancy Eupolis combined a sound practical judgment; he was reputed to equal Aristophanes in the elegance and purity of his diction, and Cratinus in his command of irony and sarcasm. Although he was at first on good terms with Aristophanes, their relations subsequently became strained, and they accused each other, in most virulent terms, of imitation and plagiarism. Of the 17 plays attributed to Eupolis, with which he obtained the first prize seven times, only fragments remain. Of these the best known were: the Kolakes, in which he pilloried the spendthrift Callias, who wasted his substance on sophists and parasites; Maricas, an attack on Hyperbolus, the successor of Cleon, under a fictitious name; the Baptae, against Alcibiades and his clubs, at which profligate foreign rites were practised. Other objects of his attack were Socrates and Cimon. The Demoi and Poleis were political, dealing with the desperate condition of the state and with the allied (or tributary) cities.

Fragments in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, i. (1880).


EUPOMPUS, the founder of the great school of painting which flourished in the 4th century at Sicyon in Greece. He was eclipsed by his successors, and is chiefly remembered for the advice which he is said to have given to Lysippus to follow nature rather than any master.


EURASIAN, a term originally confined to India, where for upwards of half a century it was used to denote children born of Hindu mothers and European (especially Portuguese) fathers. Following the geographical employment of the word Eurasia to describe the whole of the great land mass which is divided into the continents of Europe and Asia, Eurasian has come to be descriptive of any half-castes born of parents representing the races of the two continents. It has further an ethnological sense, A. H. Keane (Ethnology, 1896) proposing to find in the Eurasian Steppe the true home of the primitive Aryan groups. Joseph Deniker (Anthropology, 1900) makes a Eurasian group to include such peoples (Ugrians, Turko-Tatars, &c.) as are represented in both continents. Giuseppe Sergi, in his Mediterranean Race (London, 1901), uses Eurasiatic to denote that variety of man which “brought with it into Europe (from Asia in the later Neolithic period) flexional languages of Aryan or Indo-European type.”


EURE, a department of north-western France, formed in 1790 from a portion of the old province of Normandy, together with the countship of Évreux and part of Perche. Pop. (1906) 330,140. Area, 2330 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Seine Inférieure, W. by Calvados, S.W. by Orne, S. by Eure-et-Loir, and E. by Seine-et-Oise and Oise. The territory of Eure, which nowhere exceeds 800 ft. in altitude, is broken up by its rivers into well-wooded plateaus with a general inclination from south to north. Forests cover about one-fifth of the department. The Seine flows from S.E. to N.W. through the E. of the department, and after touching the frontier at two or three points forms near its mouth part of the northern boundary. All the rivers of the department flow into the Seine,—on the right bank the Andelle and the Epte, and on the left the Eure with its tributaries the Avre and the Iton, and the Risle with its tributary the Charentonne. The Eure, from which the department takes its name, rises in Orne, and flowing through Eure-et-Loir, falls into the Seine above Pont de l’Arche, after a course of 44 m. in the department. The Risle likewise rises in Orne, and flows generally northward to its mouth in the estuary of the Seine. The climate is mild, but moist and variable. The soil is for the most part clayey, resting on a bed of chalk, and is, in general, fertile and well tilled. The chief cereal cultivated is wheat; oats, colza, flax and beetroot are also grown. There is a wide extent of pasturage, on which are reared a considerable number of cattle and sheep, and especially those horses of pure Norman breed for which the department has long been celebrated. Fruit is very abundant, especially apples and pears, from which much cider and perry are made. The mineral products of Eure include freestone, marl, lime and brick-clay. The chief industries are the spinning of cotton and wool, and the weaving, dyeing and printing of fabrics of different kinds. Brewing, flour-milling, distilling, turnery, cotton-bleaching, cider-making, metal-founding, tanning, and the manufacture of glass, paper, iron ware, nails, pins, wind-instruments, bricks and sugar are also carried on. Coal and raw materials for its industries are the chief imports of Eure; its exports include cattle, poultry, eggs, butter, grain and manufactured goods. The department is served chiefly by the Western railway; the Seine, Eure and Risle provide 87 m. of navigable waterway. Eure is divided into the following arrondissements (containing 36 cantons, 700 communes):—Évreux, Louviers, Les Andelys, Bernay, and Pont-Audemer. Its capital is Évreux, which is the seat of a bishopric of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. The department belongs to the III. Army Corps and to the académie (educational division) of Caen. Its court of appeal is at Rouen.

Évreux, Les Andelys, Bernay, Louviers, Pont-Audemer, Verneuil, Vernon and Gisors are the principal towns of the department. At Gaillon there are remains of a celebrated château of the archbishops of Rouen (see Louviers). Pont de l’Arche has a fine Gothic church, with stained-glass windows of the 16th and 17th centuries; the church of Tillières-sur-Arvre is a graceful specimen of the Renaissance style. The churches of Conches (15th or 16th century) and of Rugles (13th, 15th and 16th centuries), and the château of Beaumesnil (16th century) are also of architectural interest.


EURE-ET-LOIR, an inland department of north-western France, formed in 1790 of portions of Orléanais and Normandy. Pop. (1906) 273,823. Area, 2293 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Eure, W. by Orne and Sarthe, S. by Loir-et-Cher, S. E. by Loiret, and E. by Seine-et-Oise. The Perche in the south-west and the Thimerais in the north-west are districts of hills and valleys, woods, lakes and streams. The region of the east and south is a level and uniform expanse, consisting for the most part of the riverless but fertile plain of Beauce, sometimes called