Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/516

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492 M A N M A N of sixteen. A kinsman, already married, took advantage, of her position, went through a mock ceremony of marriage, and deserted her basely three years afterwards. She was patronized for a short time by the duchess of Cleveland, and in 1696 made good a position among writers of established reputation by two plays, a comedy and a tragedy. The dialogue of the comedy, The Lost Lover, is extremely brilliant and witty, overflowing with high animal spirits ; in freedom of speech it goes almost beyond the most licentious male writers of comedy in that generation. The play was at once published. In the preface she thanks the town for not keeping her long in suspense : her comedy was damned with promptitude. A similar fate befel her tragedy, The Royal Mischief, though threat literary power was shown in it. The splendid energy of the characters, and the hyperbolical vigour of their language, may be compared with the undisciplined youth of the Elizabethan drama ; but it was not without reason that even contemporary critics complained of the " warmth " of certain passages. She pleaded in defence the example of Dryden ; but Dryden in his most indecent moments falls short of it. From 1696 Mrs Manley was a favourite member of witty and fashionable society ; she admits that .ihe never had any pretensions to beauty, but the charms of her eyes and her conversation made her very fascinating. She achieved her principal triumph as a writer by her Secret Memoirs of Several Persons of Quality, a scandalous chronicle "from the New Atalantis, an island in the Mediterranean," published in 1709. Henceforth she was known as " the author of Atalantis." The Atalantis had a political purpose. Mrs Manley was a warm Tory partisan, and she sought in this scandalous narrative to expose the private vices of the ministers whom Swift, Bolingbroke, and Harley combined to drive from office. There are many references to her in Swift s Journal to Stella. " She has very good principles for one of her sort, and a great deal of good sense and invention." Mrs Manley was in fact one of the most romantically public- spiritsd and disinterested politicians of that corrupt time, and next to Swift the most effective writer on the side of Harley and Bolingbroke. During the keen political campaign in 1711 she wrote several pamphlets, and many numbers of the Examiner, criticizing persons and policy with equal vivacity. After the accession of George, she wrote a tragedy Lucius (1717) a failure, and two so- called novels, Bath Intrigues, and A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter. The story in these novels is told in letters between the principal characters. MANLIUS is the name of a Roman gens, chiefly patrician, but, in later times at least, also containing plebeian families. The Roman historians represent them as intrepid, but stern even to cruelty. I. MARCUS MANLIUS CAPITOLINUS, a brave and distin guished soldier, was one of the garrison of the Capitol while besieged by the Gauls ; when they attempted to scale the rock by night, Manlius, aroused by the cackling of the sacred geese, rushed to the spot and threw down the fore most. Several years after, seeing a centurion led to prison tor debt, he freed him with his own money, and even sold his estate to relieve other poor debtors, while he accused the senate of embezzling public money. He was charged with aspiring to kingship, and condemned by the comitia, but not until the assembly had adjourned to a place without the walls, where they could no longer see the Capitol which he had saved. His house on the Capitol was razed, and the Manlii resolved that no patrician Manlius should henceforth bear the name of Marcus. II. TITUS MANLIUS IMPERIOSUS TORQUATUS went to the tribune Pomponius, who had brought his father to trial for overstepping the limits of his office, and threatened to kill him unless he desisted from the accusation (3G5 B.C.). Shortly after he slew a gigantic Gaul in single combat, and took from him a torques or neck-ornam nit, whence his surname is said to have been derived. When the Latins demanded an equal share in the government of the con federacy, Manlius vowed to kill with his own hand the first Latin he saw in the senate-house. The Latins and Campanians revolted, and Manlius, consul for the third time, marched into Campania and gained two great victories, near Vesuvius (where Decius his colleague devoted himself to gain the day), and at Trifanum. In this campaign Manlius executed his own son, who had killed an enemy in single combat, and thus disobeyed the express command of the consuls. Both these Manlii belong to a great extent to legend, much of which is probably clue to attempts to explain their surnames. III. TITUS MANLIUS TORQUATUS in his first consulship (235 B.C.) subjugated Sardinia, recently acquired from the Carthaginians ; he was consul again (224) during the Gallic war. In 216 he opposed the ransoming of the Romans taken prisoners at Cannae; and in 215 he was sent to Sardinia and defeated a Carthaginian attempt to regain possession of the island. IV. CN^US MANLIUS VULSO, consul in 189 B.C., re ceived Asia as his province. Starting from Ephesus in the spring, he marched into Pamphylia, levying enormous contributions. He then attacked the Celts of Galatia on the pretext that they had aided Antiochus. They took refuge in Mounts Olympus and Magaba, but the missiles of the Roman light troops won each position with great slaughter. In the winter, assisted by ten delegates sent from Rome, he settled the terms of peace with Antiochus. He returned to Rome in 187, and triumphed after much opposition. The discipline of his army was loose, and his soldiers brought into Rome many foreign luxuries. MANN, HORACE, one of the best-known of American educationists, was born at Franklin, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796, and died at Yellow Springs, Ohio, August 2, 1659. His childhood and youth were passed in great poverty. " It was the misfortune of his family that it belonged to the smallest district, had the poorest schoolhouse, and employed the cheapest teachers, in a town which was itself small and poor." His health was early injured by hard manual labour, which left him no time for recreation either in summer or winter. He lost his father at the age of thirteen. He was from his childhood an eager reader ; but his only means of gratifying this desire was a very small library in his native town. Up to the age of fifteen he had never been able to attend school for more than eight or ten weeks in any one year. He remained at home, working for his mother and the rest of the family, till the age of twenty. At that age he was taught the rudiments of Latin and Greek and a little English grammar by an itinerant schoolmaster, and entered the junior classes in Brown University in the year 1816. Symptoms of con sumption, poverty, the necessity of supporting himself while at college, and other circumstances interfered with his studies. He, however, graduated in 1819. In 1821 he entered the school of law at Litchfield, Connecticut, and was called to the bar in 1823. In 1827 he was elected to the State legislature of Massachusetts, and in 1833 he was returned to the upper house. He suggested and organized the State lunatic asylum of Worcester. In 1837 the legislature appointed a board of education to revise and re organize the common school system of the State; and Mann was appointed secretary. To give his whole time to the work, he gave up his profession and also his seat in tLe senate. He was secretary for twelve years. For these

twelve years he worked fifteen hours a day, held teachers