Chapter XXIV: Act 1895: , No. 20 of 1895) (10)

Several of Odo's tales, like Chaucer's story, can be ultimately traced to the History of Reynard the Fox. This great beast-epic has been referred by Grimm as far back as the 10th century, and is known to us in three forms, each with independent episodes, but all woven upon a common basis. The Latin form is probably the earliest, and the poems _Reinardus_ and _Ysengrinus_ date from the 10th or 11th century. Next come the German versions. The most ancient, that of a minnesinger Heinrich der Glichesaere (probably a Swabian), was analysed and edited by Grimm in 1840. The French poem of more than 30,000 lines, the _Roman du Renard_, belongs probably to the 13th century. In 1498 appeared _Reynke de Voss_, almost a literal version in Low Saxon of the Flemish poem of the 12th century, _Reinaert de Vos_. Hence the well-known version of Goethe into modern German hexameters was taken. The poem has been well named "an unholy world Bible." In it the Aesopian fable received a development which was in several respects quite original. We have here no short and unconnected stories. Materials, partly borrowed from older apologues, but in a much greater proportion new, are worked up into one long and systematic tale. The moral, so prominent in the fable proper, shrinks so far into the background, that the epic might be considered a work of pure fiction, an animal romance. The attempts to discover in it personal satire have signally failed; some critics deny even the design to represent human conduct at all; and we can scarcely get nearer to its signification than by regarding it as being, in a general way, what Carlyle has called "a parody of human life." It represents a contest maintained successfully, by selfish craft and audacity, against enemies of all sorts, in a half-barbarous and ill-organized society. With his weakest foes, like Chaunteclere the Cock, Reynard uses brute-force; over the weak who are protected, like Kiward the Hare and Belin the Ram, he is victorious by uniting violence with cunning; Bruin, the dull, strong, formidable Bear, is humbled by having greater power than his own enlisted against him; and the most dangerous of all the fox's enemies, Isengrim, the obstinate, greedy and implacable Wolf, after being baffled by repeated strokes of malicious ingenuity, forces Reynard to a single combat, but even thus is not a match for his dexterous adversary. The knavish fox has allies worthy of him in Grimbart the watchful badger, and in his own aunt Dame Rukenawe, the learned She-ape; and he plays at his pleasure on the simple credulity of the Lion-King, the image of an impotent feudal sovereign. The characters of these and other brutes are kept up with a rude kind of consistency, which gives them great liveliness; many of the incidents are devised with much force of humour; and the sly hits at the weak points of medieval polity and manners and religion are incessant and palpable.

It is needless to trace the fable, or illustrations borrowed from fables, that so frequently occur as incidental ornaments in the older literature of England and other countries. It has appeared in every modern nation of Europe, but has nowhere become very important, and has hardly ever exhibited much originality either of spirit or of manner. In English, Prior transplanted from France some of La Fontaine's ease of narration and artful artlessness, while Gay took as his model the _Contes_ rather than the _Fables_. Gay's fables are often political satires, but some, like the Fox on his Deathbed, have the true ring, and in the Hare with many Friends there is genuine pathos. To Dryden's spirited remodellings of old poems, romances and _fabliaux_, the name of fables, which he was pleased to give them, is quite inapplicable. In German, Hagedorn and Gellert, both famous in their day and the latter extolled by Goethe, are quite forgotten; and even Lessing's fables are read by few but schoolboys. In Spanish, Yriarte's fables on literary subjects are sprightly and graceful, but the critic is more than the fabulist. A spirited version of the best appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1839. Among Italians Pignotti is famous for versatility and command of rhythm, as amongst Russians is Kriloff for his keen satire on Russian society. He has been translated into English by Ralston.

France alone in modern times has attained any pre-eminence in the fable, and this distinction is almost entirely owing to one author. Marie de France in the 13th century, Gilles Corrozet, Guillaume Haudent and Guillaume Gueroult in the 16th, are now studied mainly as the precursors of La Fontaine, from whom he may have borrowed a stray hint or the outline of a story. The unique character of his work has given a new word to the French language: other writers of fables are called _fabulistes_, La Fontaine is named _le fablier_. He is a true poet; his verse is exquisitely modulated; his love of nature often reminds us of Virgil, as do his tenderness and pathos (see, for instance, The Two Pigeons and Death and the Woodcutter). He is full of sly fun and delicate humour; like Horace he satirizes without wounding, and "plays around the heart." Lastly, he is a keen observer of men. The whole society of the 17th century, its greatness and its foibles, its luxury and its squalor, from _Le grand monarque_ to the poor _manant_, from his majesty the lion to the courtier of an ape, is painted to the life. To borrow his own phrase, La Fontaine's fables are "une ample comedie a cent actes divers." Rousseau did his best to discredit the _Fables_ as immoral and corruptors of youth, but in spite of _Emile_ they are studied in every French school and are more familiar to most Frenchmen than their breviary. Among the successors of La Fontaine the most distinguished is Florian. He justly estimates his own merits in the pretty apologue that he prefixed to his _Fables_. He asks a sage whether a fabulist writing after La Fontaine would not be wise to consign his work to the flames. The sage replies by a question: "What would you say did some sweet, ingenuous Maid of Athens refuse to let herself be seen because there was once a Helen of Troy?"

The fables of Lessing represent the reaction against the French school of fabulists. "With La Fontaine himself," says Lessing, "I have no quarrel, but against the imitators of La Fontaine I enter my protest." His attention was first called to the fable by Gellert's popular work published in 1746. Gellert's fables were closely modelled after La Fontaine's, and were a vehicle for lively railings against the fair sex, and hits at contemporary follies. Lessing's early essays were in the same style, but his subsequent study of the history and theory of the fable led him to discard his former model as a perversion of later times, and the "Fabeln," published in 1759, are the outcome of his riper views. Lessing's fables, like all that he wrote, display his vigorous common sense. He has, it is true, little of La Fontaine's _curiosa felicitas_, his sly humour and lightness of touch; and Frenchmen would say that his criticism of La Fontaine is an illustration of the fable of the sour grapes. On the other hand, he has the rare power of looking at both sides of a moral problem; he holds a brief for the stupid and the feeble, the ass and the lamb; and in spite of his formal protest against poetical ornament, there is in not a few of his fables a vein of true poetry, as in the Sheep (ii. 13) and Jupiter and the Sheep (ii. 18). But the monograph which introduced the _Fabeln_ is of more inportance than the fables themselves. According to Lessing the ideal fable is that of Aesop. All the elaborations and refinements of later authors, from Phaedrus to La Fontaine, are perversions of this original. The fable is essentially a moral precept illustrated by a single example, and it is the lesson thus enforced which gives to the fable its unity and makes it a work of art. The illustration must be either an actual occurrence or represented as such, because a fictitious case invented _ad hoc_ can appeal but feebly to the reader's judgment. Lastly, the fable requires a story or connected chain of events. A single fact will not make a fable, but is only an emblem. We thus arrive at the following definition:--"A fable is a relation of a series of changes which together form a whole. The unity of the fable consists herein, that all the parts lead up to an end, the end for which the fable was invented being the moral precept."

We may notice in passing a problem in connexion with the fable which had long been debated, but never satisfactorily resolved till Lessing took it in hand--Why should animals have been almost universally chosen as the chief _dramatis personae_? The reason, according to Lessing, is that animals have distinct characters which are known and recognized by all. The fabulist who writes of Britannicus and Nero appeals to the few who know Roman history. The Wolf and the Lamb comes home to every one whether learned or simple. But, besides this, human sympathies obscure the moral judgment; hence it follows that the fable, unlike the drama and the epos, should abstain from all that is likely to arouse our prejudices or our passions. In this respect the Wolf and the Lamb of Aesop is a more perfect fable than the Rich Man and the Poor Man's Ewe Lamb of Nathan.

Lessing's analysis and definition of the fable, though he seems himself unconscious of the scope of his argument, is in truth its death-warrant. The beast-fable arose in a primitive age when men firmly believed that beasts could talk and reason, that any wolf they met might be a were-wolf, that a peacock might be a Pythagoras in disguise, and an ox or even a cat a being worthy of their worship. To this succeeded the second age of the fable, which belongs to the same stage of culture as the Hebrew proverbs and the gnomic poets of Greece. That honesty is the best policy, that death is common to all, seemed to the men of that day profound truths worthy to be embalmed in verse or set off by the aid of story or anecdote. Last comes an age of high literary culture which tolerates the trite morals and hackneyed tales for the sake of the exquisite setting, and is amused at the wit which introduces topics and characters of the day under the transparent veil of animal life. Such an artificial product can be nothing more than the fashion of a day, and must, like pastoral poetry, die a natural death. A serious moralist would hardly choose that form to inculcate, like Mandeville in his _Fable of the Bees_, a new doctrine in morals, for the moral of the fable must be such that he who runs may read. A true poet will not care to masquerade as a moral teacher, or show his wit by refurbishing some old-world maxim. Yet Taine in France, Lowell in America, and J.A. Froude in England have proved that the fable as one form of literature is not yet extinct, and is capable of new and unexpected developments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--_Pantschatantrum_, ed. Kosegarten (Bonn, 1848);
_Hitopadesa_, ed. Max Muller (1864); Silvestre de Sacy, _Calilah et
Dimna, ou Fables de Bidpai, en Arabe, precedees d'un memoire sur
l'origine de ce livre_ (Paris, 1816), translated by the Rev. Wyndham
Knatchbull (Oxford, 1819); Comparetti, _Ricerche intorno al Libro di
Sindebad_ (Milan, 1869); Max Muller, "Migration of Fables," _Chips
from a German Workshop_, vol. iv. (1875); Keller, _Untersuchungen uber
die Geschichte der griechischen Fabel_ (Leipzig, 1862); _Babrius_, ed.
W.G. Rutherford, with excursus on Greek fables (1883); L. Hervieux,
_Les Fabuiistes latins_ (1884); Jakob Grimm, _Reinhart Fuchs_ (Berlin,
1834); A.C.M. Robert, _Fables inedites des XII^e, XIII^e, et XIV^e
siecles_, &c. (Paris, 1825); Taine, _Essai sur les fables de La
Fontaine_ (1853); Saint-Marc Girardin, _La Fontaine et les fabulistes_
(Paris, 1867). (F. S.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] M. Minas professed to have discovered under the same
circumstances another collection of ninety-four fables by Babrius.
This second part was accepted by Sir G.C. Lewis, but J. Conington
conclusively proved it spurious, and probably a forgery. See BABRIUS.

FABLIAU. The entertaining tales in eight-syllable rhymed verse which form a marked section of French medieval literature are called _fabliaux_, the word being derived by Littre from _fablel_, a diminutive of _fable_. It is a mistake to suppose, as is frequently done, that every legend of the middle ages is a fabliau. In a poem of the 12th century a clear distinction is drawn between songs of chivalry, war or love, and _fabliaux_, which are recitals of laughter. A fabliau always related an event; it was usually brief, containing not more than 400 lines; it was neither sentimental, religious nor supernatural, but comic and gay. MM. de Montaiglon and Raynaud, who have closely investigated this class of literature, consider that about 150 fabliaux have come down to us more or less intact; a vast number have doubtless disappeared. It appears from a phrase in the writings of the trouvere, Henri d'Andeli, that the fabliau was not thought worthy of being copied out on parchment. The wonder, then, is that so many of these ephemeral compositions have been preserved. Arguments brought forward by M. Joseph Bedier, however, tend to show that we need not regret the disappearance of the majority of the fabliaux, as those which were copied into MSS. were those which were felt to be of the greatest intrinsic value. As early as the 8th century fabliaux must have existed, since the faithful are forbidden to take pleasure in these _fabulas inanes_ by the _Paenitentiale_ of Egbert. But it appears that all the early examples are lost.

In the opinion of the best scholars, the earliest surviving fabliau is that of _Richeut_, which dates from 1159. This is a rough and powerful study of the coarse life of the day, with little plot, but engaged with a realistic picture of manners. Such poems, but of a more strictly narrative nature, continued to be produced, mainly in the north and north-east of France, until the middle of the 14th century. Much speculation has been expended on the probable sources of the tales which the trouveres told. The Aryan theory, which saw in them the direct influence of India upon Europe, has now been generally abandoned. It does not seem probable that any ancient or exotic influences were brought to bear upon the French jongleurs, who simply invented or adapted stories of that universal kind which springs unsown from every untilled field of human society. More remarkable than the narratives themselves is the spirit in which they are told. This is full of the national humour and the national irony, the true _esprit gaulois_. A very large section of these popular poems deals satirically with the pretensions of the clergy. Such are the famous _Pretre aux mures_, the _Pretre qui dit la Passion_ and _Les Perdrix_. Some of these are innocently merry; others are singularly depraved and obscene. Another class of fabliaux is that which comprises jests against the professions; in this, the most prominent example is _Le Vilain Mire_, a satire on doctors, which curiously predicts the _Medecin malgre lui_ of Moliere. There are also tales whose purpose is rather voluptuous than witty, and whose aim is to excuse libertinage and render marriage ridiculous. Among these are prominent _Court Mantel_ and _Le Dit de Berenger_. Yet another class repeated, with a strain of irony or oddity, such familiar classical stories as those of Narcissus, and Pyramus and Thisbe. It is rarely that any elevation of tone raises these poems above a familiar and even playful level, but there are some that are almost idealistic. Among these the story of a sort of Sisyphus errant, _Le Chevalier de Barizel_, offers an ethical interest which lifts it in certain respects above all other surviving fabliaux. An instance of the pathetic fabliau is _Housse Partie_, a kind of primitive version of the story of King Lear.

In composing these pieces, of very varied character, the jongleurs have practised an art which was in many respects rudimentary, but sincere and simple. The student of language finds the rich vocabulary of the fabliaux much more attractive to him than the conventionality of the serious religious and amatory poems of the same age. The object of the writers was the immediate amusement of their audience; by reference to familiar things, they hoped to arouse a quick and genuine merriment. Hence their incorrectness and their negligence are balanced by a delightful ease and absence of pedantry, and in the fabliaux we get closer than elsewhere to the living diction of medieval France. It is true that if we extend too severe a judgment to these pieces, we may find ourselves obliged to condemn them altogether. An instructed French critic, vexed with their faults, has gone so far as to say that "the subjects of these tales are degrading, their inspiration nothing better than flat and cruel derision, their distinguishing features rascality, vulgarity and platitude of style." From one point of view, this condemnation of the fabliau is hardly too severe. But such scholars as Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer have not failed to emphasize other sides to the question. They have praised, in the general laxity of style and garrulity of the middle ages, the terseness of the jongleurs; in the period of false ornament, their fidelity to nature; in a time of general vagueness, the sharp and picturesque outlines of their art. One feature of the fabliaux, however, cannot be praised and yet must not be overlooked. In no other section of the world's literature is the scorn and hatred of women so prominent. It is difficult to account for the anti-feminine rage which pervades the fabliaux, and takes hideous shapes in such examples as _Le Valet aux deux femmes_, _Le Pecheur de Pont-sur-Seine_ and _Chicheface et Bigorne_. Probably this was a violent reaction against the extravagant cult of woman as expressed in the contemporary _lais_ as well as in the legends of saints. The exaggeration was not greater in the one case than in the other, and it is probable that the exaltation was made endurable to those who listened to the trouveres by the corresponding degradation. We must remember, too, that those who listened were not nobles or clerks, they were the common people. The fabliaux were _fabellae ignobilium_, little stories told to amuse persons of low degree, who were irritated by the moral pretensions of their superiors.

The names of about twenty of the authors of fabliaux have been preserved, although in most cases nothing is known of their personal history. The most famous poet of this class of writing is the man whose name, or more probably pseudonym, was Rutebeuf. He wrote _Frere Denyse_ and _Le Sacristain_, while to him is attributed the _Dit d'Aristote_, in the course of which Aristotle gives good advice to Alexander. Fabliaux, however, form but a small part of the work of Rutebeuf, who was a satirical poet of wide accomplishment and varied energy. Most of the jongleurs who wrote these merry and indecent tales in octosyllabic verse were persons of less distinction. Henri d'Andeli was an ecclesiastic, attached, it is supposed, to the cathedral of Rouen. Jean de Conde, who flourished in the court of Hainaut from 1310 to 1340, and who is the latest of the genuine writers of fabliaux, lived in comfort and security, but most of the professional jongleurs seem to have spent their years in a Bohemian existence, wandering among the clergy and the merchant class, alternately begging for money and food and reciting their mocking verses.

The principal authorities for the fabliaux are MM. Anatole de
Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, who published the text, in 6 vols.,
between 1872 and 1890. This edition corrected and supplemented the
very valuable labours of Meon (1808-1823) and Jubinal (1839-1842). The
works of Henri d'Andeli were edited by M.A. Heron in 1880, and those
of Rutebeuf were made the subject of an exhaustive monograph by M.
Leon Cledat in 1891. See also the editions of separate fabliaux by
Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, Ebeling, August Scheler and other modern
scholars. M. Joseph Bedier's _Les Fabliaux_ (1895) is a useful summary
of critical opinion on the entire subject. (E. G.)

FABRE, FERDINAND (1830-1898), French novelist, was born at Bedarieux, in Herault, a very picturesque district of the south of France, which he made completely his own in literature. He was the son of a local architect, who failed in business, and Ferdinand was brought up by his uncle, the Abbe Fulcran Fabre, at Camplong among the mulberry woods. Of his childhood and early youth he has given a charming account in _Ma Vocation_ (1889). He was destined to the priesthood, and was sent for that purpose to the seminary of St Pons de Thomieres, where, in 1848, he had, as he believed, an ecstatic vision of Christ, who warned him "It is not the will of God that thou shouldst be a priest." He had now to look about for a profession, and, after attempting medicine at Montpellier, was articled as a lawyer's clerk in Paris. In 1853 he published a volume of verses, _Feuilles de lierre_, broke down in health, and crept back, humble and apparently without ambition, to his old home at Bedarieux. After some eight or nine years of country life he reappeared in Paris, with the MS. of his earliest novel, _Les Courbezon_ (1862), in which he treated the subject which was to recur in almost all his books, the daily business of country priests in the Cevennes. This story enjoyed an immediate success with the literary class of readers; George Sand praised it, Sainte-Beuve hailed in its author "the strongest of the disciples of Balzac," and it was crowned by the French Academy. From this time forth Fabre settled down to the production of novels, of which at the time of his death he had published about twenty. Among these the most important were _Le Chevrier_ (1868), unique among his works as written in an experimental mixture of Cevenol patois and French of the 16th century; _L'Abbe Tigrane, candidat a la papaute_ (1873), by common consent the best of all Fabre's novels, a very powerful picture of unscrupulous priestly ambition; _Mon Oncle Celestin_ (1881), a study of the entirely single and tender-hearted country abbe; and _Lucifer_ (1884), a marvellous gallery of serious clerical portraits. In 1883 Fabre was appointed curator of the Mazarin Library, with rooms in the Institute, where, on 11th February 1898, he died after a brief attack of pneumonia. Ferdinand Fabre occupies in French literature a position somewhat analogous to that of Mr Thomas Hardy amongst English writers of fiction. He deals almost exclusively with the population of the mountain villages of Herault, and particularly with its priests. He loved most of all to treat of the celibate virtues, the strictly ecclesiastical passions, the enduring tension of the young soul drawn between the spiritual vocation and the physical demands of nature. Although never a priest, he preserved a comprehension of and a sympathy with the clerical character, and he always indignantly denied that he was hostile to the Church, although he stood just outside her borders. Fabre possessed a limited and a monotonous talent, but within his own field he was as original as he was wholesome and charming.

See also J. Lemaitre, _Les Contemporains_, vol. ii.; G. Pellissier,
_Etudes de litterature contemporaine_ (1898); E.W. Gosse, _French
Profiles_ (1905). (E. G.)

FABRE D'EGLANTINE, PHILIPPE FRANCOIS NAZAIRE (1750-1794), French dramatist and revolutionist, was born at Carcassonne on the 28th of July 1750. His real name was simple Fabre, the "d'Eglantine" being added in commemoration of his receiving the golden eglantine of Clemence Isaure from the academy of the floral games at Toulouse. After travelling through the provinces as an actor, he came to Paris, and produced an unsuccessful comedy entitled _Les Gens de lettres, ou le provincial a Paris_ (1787). A tragedy, _Augusta_, produced at the _Theatre Francais_, was also a failure. One only of his plays, _Philinte, ou la suite du Misanthrope_ (1790), still preserves its reputation. It professes to be a continuation of Moliere's _Misanthrope_, but the hero of the piece is of a different character from the nominal prototype--an impersonation, indeed, of pure and simple egotism. On its publication the play was introduced by a preface, in which the author mercilessly satirizes the _Optimiste_ of his rival J.F. Collin d'Harleville, whose _Chateaux en Espagne_ had gained the applause which Fabre's _Presomptueux_ (1789) had failed to win. The character of Philinte had much political significance. Alceste received the highest praise, and evidently represents the citizen patriot, while Philinte is a dangerous aristocrat in disguise. Fabre was president and secretary of the club of the Cordeliers, and belonged also to the Jacobin club. He was chosen by Danton as his private secretary, and sat in the National Convention. He voted for the king's death, supporting the _maximum_ and the law of the suspected, and he was a bitter enemy of the Girondins. After the death of Marat he published a _Portrait de l'Ami du Peuple_. On the abolition of the Gregorian calendar he sat on the committee entrusted with the formation of the republican substitute, and to him was due a large part of the new nomenclature, with its poetic _Prairial and Floreal_, its prosaic _Primidi_ and _Duodi_. The report which he made on the subject, on the 24th of October, has some scientific value. On the 12th of January 1794 he was arrested by order of the committee of public safety on a charge of malversation and forgery in connexion with the affairs of the Compagnie des Indes. Documents still existing prove that the charge was altogether groundless. During his trial Fabre showed the greatest calmness and sang his own well-known song of _Il pleut, il pleut, bergere, rentre tes blancs moutons_. He was guillotined on the 5th of April 1794. On his way to the scaffold he distributed his manuscript poems to the people.

A posthumous play, _Les Precepteurs_, steeped with the doctrines of Rousseau's _Emile_, was performed on the 17th of September 1794, and met with an enthusiastic reception. Among Fabre's other plays are the gay and successful _Convalescent de qualite_ (1791), and _L'Intrigue epistolaire_ (1791). In the latter play Fabre is supposed to have drawn a portrait of the painter Jean Baptiste Greuze.

The author's _Oeuvres melees et posthumes_ were published at Paris
1802, 2 vols. See Albert Maurin, _Galerie hist. de la Revolution
francaise_, tome 11; Jules Janin, _Hist. de la litt. dram._; Chenier,
_Tableau de la litt. francaise_; F.A. Aulard in the _Nouvelle Revue_
(July 1885).

FABRETTI, RAPHAEL (1618-1700), Italian antiquary, was born in 1618 at Urbino in Umbria. He studied law at Cagli and Urbino, where he took the degree of doctor at the age of eighteen. While in Rome he attracted the notice of Cardinal Lorenzo Imperiali, who employed him successively as treasurer and auditor of the papal legation in Spain, where he remained thirteen years. Meanwhile, his favourite classical and antiquarian studies were not neglected; and on his return journey he made important observations of the relics and monuments of Spain, France and Italy. At Rome he was appointed judge of appellation of the Capitol, which post he left to be auditor of the legation at Urbino. After three years he returned to Rome, on the invitation of Cardinal Carpegna, vicar of Innocent XI., and devoted himself to antiquarian research, examining with minute care the monuments and inscriptions of the Campagna. He always rode a horse which his friends nicknamed "Marco Polo," after the Venetian traveller. By Innocent XII. he was made keeper of the archives of the castle St Angelo, a charge which he retained till his death. He died at Rome on the 7th of January 1700. His collection of inscriptions and monuments was purchased by Cardinal Stoppani, and placed in the ducal palace at Urbino, where they may still be seen.

His work _De Aquis et Aquae-ductibus veteris Romae_ (1680), three dissertations on the topography of ancient Latium, is inserted in Graevius's _Thesaurus_, iv. (1677). His interpretation of certain passages in Livy and other classical authors involved him in a dispute with Gronovius, which bore a strong resemblance to that between Milton and Salmasius, Gronovius addressing Fabretti as _Faber Rusticus_, and the latter, in reply, speaking of _Grunnovius_ and his _titivilitia_. In this controversy Fabretti used the pseudonym Iasitheus, which he afterwards took as his pastoral name in the Academy of the Arcadians. His other works, _De Columna Trajani Syntagma_ (Rome, 1683), and _Inscriptionum Antiquarum Explicatio_ (Rome, 1699), throw much light on Roman antiquity. In the former is to be found his explication of a bas-relief, with inscriptions, now in the Capitol at Rome, representing the war and taking of Troy, known as the Iliac table. Letters and other shorter works of Fabretti are to be found in publications of the time, as the _Journal des Savants_.

See Crescimbeni, _Le Vite degli Arcadi illustri_; Fabroni, _Vitae
Italorum_, vi. 174; Niceron, iv. 372; J. Lamius, _Memorabilia Italorum
eruditione praestantium_ (Florence, 1742-1748).

FABRIANI, SEVERINO (1792-1849), Italian author and teacher, was born at Spilamberto, Italy, on the 7th of January 1792. Entering the Church, he took up educational work, but in consequence of complete loss of voice he resolved to devote himself to teaching deaf mutes, and founded a small school specially for them. This school the duke of Modena made into an institute, and by a special authority from the pope a teaching staff of nuns was appointed. Fabriani's method of instruction is summed up in his _Logical Letters on Italian Grammar_ (1847). He died on the 27th of April 1849.

FABRIANO, a town of the Marches, Italy, in the province of Ancona, from which it is 44 m. S.W. by rail, 1066 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town 9586, commune 22,996. It has been noted since the 13th century for its paper mills, which still produce the best paper in Italy. A school of painting arose here, one of the early masters of which is Allegretto Nuzi (1308-1385); and several of the churches contain works by him and other local masters. His pupil, Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1428), was a painter of considerably greater skill and wider knowledge; but there are no important works of his at Fabriano. The sacristy of S. Agostino also contains some good frescoes by Ottaviano Nelli of Gubbio. The municipal picture gallery contains a collection of pictures, and among them are some primitive frescoes, attributable to the 12th century, which still retain traces of Byzantine influence. The Archivio Comunale contains documents on watermarked paper of local manufacture going back to the 13th century. The Ponte dell' Acra, a bridge of the 15th century, is noticeable for the ingenuity and strength of its construction. The hospital of S. Maria Buon Gesu is a fine work of 1456, attributed to Rossellino.

See A. Zonghi, _Antiche Carte Fabrianesi_. (T. As.)

FABRICIUS, GAIUS LUSCINUS (i.e. "the one-eyed"), Roman general, was the first member of the Fabrician gens who settled in Rome. He migrated to Rome from Aletrium (Livy ix. 43), one of the Hernican towns which was allowed to retain its independence as a reward for not having revolted. In 285 he was one of the ambassadors sent to the Tarentines to dissuade them from making war on the Romans. In 282 (when consul) he defeated the Bruttians and Lucanians, who had besieged Thurii (Livy, _Epit._ 12). After the defeat of the Romans by Pyrrhus at Heraclea (280), Fabricius was sent to treat for the ransom and exchange of the prisoners. All attempts to bribe him were unsuccessful, and Pyrrhus is said to have been so impressed that he released the prisoners without ransom (Plutarch, _Pyrrhus_, 18). The story that Pyrrhus attempted to frighten Fabricius by the sight of an elephant is probably a fiction. In 278 Fabricius was elected consul for the second time, and was successful in negotiating terms of peace with Pyrrhus, who sailed away to Sicily. Fabricius afterwards gained a series of victories over the Samnites, the Lucanians and the Bruttians, and on his return to Rome received the honour of a triumph. Notwithstanding the offices he had filled he died poor, and provision had to be made for his daughter out of the funds of the state (Val. Max. iv. 4, 10). Fabricius was regarded by the Romans of later times as a model of ancient simplicity and incorruptible integrity.

FABRICIUS, GEORG (1516-1571), German poet, historian and archaeologist, was born at Chemnitz in upper Saxony on the 23rd of April 1516, and educated at Leipzig. Travelling in Italy with one of his pupils, he made an exhaustive study of the antiquities of Rome. He published the results in his _Roma_ (1550), in which the correspondence between every discoverable relic of the old city and the references to them in ancient literature was traced in detail. In 1546 he was appointed rector of the college of Meissen, where he died on the 17th of July 1571. In his sacred poems he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities.

Principal works: editions of Terence (1548) and Virgil (1551);
_Poematum sacrorum libri xxv._ (1560); _Poetarum veterum
ecclesiasticorum opera Christiana_ (1562); _De Re Poetica libri
septem_ (1565); _Rerum Misnicarum libri septem_ (1569); (posthumous)
_Originum illustrissimae stirpis Saxonicae libri septem_ (1597);
_Rerum Germaniae magnae et Saxoniae universae memorabilium
mirabiliumque volumina duo_ (1609). A life of Georg Fabricius was
published in 1839 by D.C.W. Baumgarten-Crusius, who in 1845 also
issued an edition of Fabricius's _Epistolae ad W. Meurerum et alios
aequales_, with a short sketch _De Vita Ge. Fabricii et de gente
Fabriciorum_; see also F. Wachter in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine
Encyclopadie_.

FABRICIUS, HIERONYMUS [FABRIZIO, GERONIMO] (1537-1619), Italian anatomist and embryologist, was surnamed Acquapendente from the episcopal city of that name, where he was born in 1537. At Padua, after a course of philosophy, he studied medicine under G. Fallopius, whose successor as teacher of anatomy and surgery he became in 1562. From the senators of Venice he received numerous honours, and an anatomical theatre was built by them for his accommodation. He died at Venice on the 21st of May 1619. His works include _De visione, voce et auditu_ (1600), _De formato foetu_ (1600), _De venarum ostiolis_ (1603), _De formatione ovi et pulli_ (1621). His collected works were published at Leipzig in 1687 as _Opera omnia Anatomica et Physiologica_, but the Leiden edition, published by Albinus in 1738, is preferred as containing a life of the author and the prefaces of his treatises. (See ANATOMY; EMBRYOLOGY.)

FABRICIUS, JOHANN ALBERT (1668-1736), German classical scholar and bibliographer, was born at Leipzig on the 11th of November 1668. His father, Werner Fabricius, director of music in the church of St Paul at Leipzig, was the author of several works, the most important being _Deliciae Harmonicae_ (1656). The son received his early education from his father, who on his death-bed recommended him to the care of the theologian Valentin Alberti. He studied under J.G. Herrichen, and afterwards at Quedlinburg under Samuel Schmid. It was in Schmid's library, as he afterwards said, that he found the two books, F. Barth's _Adversaria_ and D.G. Morhof's _Polyhistor Literarius_, which suggested to him the idea of his _Bibliothecae_, the works on which his great reputation was founded. Having returned to Leipzig in 1686, he published anonymously (two years later) his first work, _Scriptorum recentiorum decas_, an attack on ten writers of the day. His _Decas Decadum, sive plagiariorum et pseudonymorum centuria_ (1689) is the only one ot his works to which be signs the name Faber. He then applied himself to the study of medicine, which, however, he relinquished for that of theology; and having gone to Hamburg in 1693, he proposed to travel abroad, when the unexpected tidings that the expense of his education had absorbed his whole patrimony, and even left him in debt to his trustee, forced him to abandon his project. He therefore remained at Hamburg in the capacity of librarian to J.F. Mayer. In 1696 he accompanied his patron to Sweden; and on his return to Hamburg, not long afterwards, he became a candidate for the chair of logic and philosophy. The suffrages being equally divided between Fabricius and Sebastian Edzardus, one of his opponents, the appointment was decided by lot in favour of Edzardus; but in 1699 Fabricius succeeded Vincent Placcius in the chair of rhetoric and ethics, a post which he held till his death, refusing invitations to Greifswald, Kiel, Giessen and Wittenberg. He died at Hamburg on the 30th of April 1736.

Fabricius is credited with 128 books, but very many of them were only
books which he had edited. One of the most famed and laborious of
these is the _Bibliotheca Latina_ (1697, republished in an improved
and amended form by J.A. Ernesti, 1773). The divisions of the
compilation are--the writers to the age of Tiberius; thence to that of
the Antonines; and thirdly, to the decay of the language; a fourth
gives fragments from old authors, and chapters on early Christian
literature. A supplementary work was _Bibliotheca Latina mediae et
infimae Aetatis_ (1734-1736; supplementary volume by C. Schottgen,
1746; ed. Mansi, 1754). His _chef-d'oeuvre_, however, is the
_Bibliotheca Graeca_ (1705-1728, revised and continued by G.C. Harles,
1790-1812), a work which has justly been denominated _maximus antiquae
eruditionis thesaurus_. Its divisions are marked off by Homer, Plato,
Christ, Constantine, and the capture of Constantinople in 1453, while
a sixth section is devoted to canon law, jurisprudence and medicine.
Of his remaining works we may mention:--_Bibliotheca Antiquaria_, an
account of the writers whose works illustrated Hebrew, Greek, Roman
and Christian antiquities (1713); _Centifolium Lutheranum_, a Lutheran
bibliography (1728); _Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica_ (1718). His _Codex
Apocryphus_ (1703) is still considered indispensable as an authority
on apocryphal Christian literature.

The details of the life of Fabricius are to be found in _De Vita et
Scriptis J.A. Fabricii Commentarius_, by his son-in-law, H.S.
Reimarus, the well-known editor of Dio Cassius, published at Hamburg,
1737; see also C.F. Bahr in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine
Encyclopadie_, and J.E. Sandys, _Hist. Class. Schol._ iii. (1908).

FABRICIUS, JOHANN CHRISTIAN (1745-1808), Danish entomologist and economist, was born at Tondern in Schleswig on the 7th of January 1745. After studying at Altona and Copenhagen, he was sent to Upsala, where he attended the lectures of Linnaeus. He devoted his attention professionally to political economy, and, after lecturing on that subject in 1769, was appointed in 1775 professor of natural history, economy and finance at Kiel, in which capacity he wrote various works, chiefly referring to Denmark, and of no special interest. He also published a few other works on general and natural history, botany and travel (including _Reise nach Norwegen_, 1779), and, although his professional stipend was small, he extended his personal researches into every town in northern and central Europe where a natural history museum was to be found. It is as an entomologist that his memory survives, and for many years his great scientific reputation rested upon the system of classification which he founded upon the structure of the mouth-organs instead of the wings. He had a keen eye for specific differences, and possessed the art of terse and accurate description. He died on the 3rd of March 1808.

A complete list of his entomological publications (31) will be found
in Hagen's _Bibliotheca Entomologiae_; the following are the
chief:--_Systema Entomologiae_ (1775); _Genera Insectorum_ (1776);
_Philosophia Entomologica_ (1778); _Species insectorum_ (1781);
_Mantissa Insectorum_ (1787); _Entomologia Systematica_ (1792-1794),
with a supplement (1798); _Systema Eleutheratorum_ (1801),
_Rhyngotorum_ (1803), _Piezatorum_ (1804), and _Antliatorum_ (1805).
Full particulars of his life will be found, with a portrait, in the
_Transactions of the Entomological Society of London_ (1845), 4, pp.
i-xvi, where his autobiography is translated from the Danish.

FABRIZI, NICOLA (1804-1885), Italian patriot, was born at Modena on the 4th of April 1804. He took part in the Modena insurrection of 1831, and attempted to succour Ancona, but was arrested at sea and taken to Toulon, whence he proceeded to Marseilles. Afterwards he organized with Mazzini the ill-fated Savoy expedition. Taking refuge in Spain, he fought against the Carlists, and was decorated for valour on the battlefield (18th July 1837). At the end of the Carlist War he established a centre of conspiracy at Malta, endeavoured to dissuade Mazzini from the Bandiera enterprise, but aided Crispi in organizing the Sicilian revolution of 1848. With a company of volunteers he distinguished himself in the defence of Venice, afterwards proceeding to Rome, where he took part in the defence of San Pancrazio. Upon the fall of Rome he returned to Malta, accumulating arms and stores; which he conveyed to Sicily; after having, in 1859, worked with Crispi to prepare the Sicilian revolution of 1860. While Garibaldi was sailing from Genoa towards Marsala Fabrizi landed at Pizzolo, and, after severe fighting, joined Garibaldi at Palermo. Under the Garibaldian Dictatorship he was appointed governor of Messina and minister of war. Returning to Malta after the Neapolitan plebiscite, which he had vainly endeavoured to postpone, he was recalled to aid Cialdini in suppressing brigandage. While on his way to Sicily in 1862, to induce Garibaldi to give up the Aspromonte enterprise, he was arrested at Naples by Lamarmora. During the war of 1866 he became Garibaldi's chief of staff, and in 1867 fought at Mentana. In parliament he endeavoured to promote agreement between the chiefs of the Left, and from 1878 onwards worked to secure the return of Crispi to power, but died on the 31st of March 1885, two years before the realization of his object. His whole life was characterized by ardent patriotism and unimpeachable integrity. (H. W. S.)

FABROT, CHARLES ANNIBAL (1580-1659), French jurisconsult, was born at Aix in Provence on the 15th of September 1580. At an early age he made great progress in the ancient languages and in the civil and the canon law; and in 1602 he received the degree of doctor of law, and was made avocat to the parlement of Aix. In 1609 he obtained a professorship in the university of his native town. He is best known by his translation of the _Basilica_, which may be said to have formed the code of the Eastern empire till its destruction. This work was published at Paris in 1647 in 7 vols. fol., and obtained for its author a considerable pension from the chancellor, Pierre Seguier, to whom it was dedicated. Fabrot likewise rendered great service to the science of jurisprudence by his edition of Cujas, which comprised several treatises of that great jurist previously unpublished. He also edited the works of several Byzantine historians, and was besides the author of various antiquarian and legal treatises. He died at Paris on the 16th of January 1659.

FABYAN, ROBERT (d. 1513), English chronicler, belonged to an Essex family, members of which had been connected with trade in London. He was a member of the Drapers company, alderman of Farringdon Without, and served as sheriff in 1493-1494. In 1496 he was one of those appointed to make representations to the king on the new impositions on English cloth in Flanders. Next year he was one of the aldermen employed in keeping watch at the time of the Cornish rebellion. He resigned his aldermanry in 1502, on the pretext of poverty, apparently in order to avoid the expense of mayoralty. He had, however, acquired considerable wealth with his wife Elizabeth Pake, by whom he had a numerous family. He spent his latter years on his estate of Halstedys at Theydon Garnon in Essex. He died on the 28th of February 1513 (_Inquisitiones post mortem for London_, p. 29, edited by G.S. Fry, 1896); his will, dated the 11th of July 1511, was proved on the 12th of July 1513. Fabyan's Chronicle was first published by Richard Pynson in 1516 as _The new chronicles of England and of France_. In this edition it ends with the reign of Richard III., and this probably represents the work as Fabyan left it, though with the omission of an autobiographical note and some religious verses, which form the _Envoi_ of his history. The note and verses are first found in the second edition, printed by John Rastell in 1533 with continuations down to 1509. A third edition appeared in 1542, and a fourth in 1559 with additions to that year. The only modern edition is that of Sir Henry Ellis, 1811.

In the note above mentioned Fabyan himself says: "and here I make an ende of the vii. parte and hole werke, the vii. day of November in the yere of our Lord Jesu Christes Incarnacion M. vc. and iiij." This seems conclusive that in 1504 he did not contemplate any extension of his chronicles beyond 1485. The continuations printed by Rastell are certainly not Fabyan's work. But Stow in his _Collections_ (ap. _Survey of London_, ii. 305-306, ed. C.L. Kingsford) states that Fabyan wrote "a Chronicle of London, England and of France, beginning at the creation and endynge in the third year of Henry VIII., which both I have in written hand." In his _Survey of London_ (i. 191, 209, ii. 55, 116) Stow several times quotes Fabyan as his authority for statements which are not to be found in the printed continuations of Rastell. Some further evidence may be found in other notes of Stow's (ap. _Survey of London_, ii. 280, 283, 365-366), and in the citation by Hakluyt of an unprinted work of Fabyan as the authority for his note of Cabot's voyages. That Fabyan had continued his Chronicle to 1511 may be accepted as certain, but no trace of the manuscript can now be found.

It is only the seventh part of Fabyan's Chronicle, from the Norman Conquest onwards, that possesses any historical value. For his French history he followed chiefly the _Compendium super Francorum gestis_ of Robert Gaguin, printed at Paris in 1497. For English history his best source was the old _Chronicles of London_, from which he borrowed also the arrangement of his work in civic form. From 1440 to 1485 he follows, as a rule with great fidelity, the original of the London Chronicle in Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XVI. (printed in _Chronicles of London_, 1905, pp. 153-264).

Fabyan's own merits are little more than those of an industrious compiler, who strung together the accounts of his different authorities without any critical capacity. He says expressly that his work was "gaderyd without understandynge," and speaks of himself as "of cunnynge full destitute." Nevertheless he deserves the praise which he has received as an early worker, and for having made public information which through Hall and Holinshed has become the common property of later historians, and has only recently been otherwise accessible. Bale alleges that the first edition was burnt by order of Cardinal Wolsey because it reflected on the wealth of the clergy; this probably refers to his version of the Lollards Bill of 1410, which Fabyan extracted from one of the London Chronicles.

See further Ellis' _Introduction_; W. Busch, _England under the
Tudors_ (trans. A.M. Todd, 1895), i. 405-410; and C.L. Kingsford,
_Chronicles of London_, pp. xxvi-xxxii (1905). (C. L. K.)

FACADE, a French architectural term signifying the external face of a building, but more generally applied to the principal front.

FACCIOLATI, JACOPO (1682-1769), Italian philologist, was born at Torriglia, in the province of Padua, in 1682. He owed his admission to the seminary of Padua to Cardinal Barberigo, who had formed a high opinion of the boy's talents. As professor of logic, and regent of the schools, Facciolati was the ornament of the Paduan university during a period of forty-five years. He published improved editions of several philological works, such as the _Thesaurus Ciceronianus_ of Nizolius, and the polyglot vocabulary known under the name of Calepino. The latter work, in which he was assisted by his pupil Egidio Forcellini, he completed in four years--1715 to 1719. It was written in seven languages, and suggested to the editor the idea of his _opus magnum_, the _Tolius Latinitatis Lexicon_, which was ultimately published at Cardinal Priole's expense, 4 vols. fol., Padua, 1771 (revised ed. by de Vit, 1858-1887). In the compilation of this work the chief burden seems to have been borne by Facciolati's pupil Forcellini, to whom, however, the lexicographer allows a very scanty measure of justice. Perhaps the best testimony to the learning and industry of the compiler is the well-known observation that the whole body of Latinity, if it were to perish, might be restored from this lexicon. Facciolati's mastery of Latin style, as displayed in his epistles, has been very much admired for its purity and grace. In or about 1739 Facciolati undertook the continuation of Papadopoli's history of the university of Padua, carrying it on to his own day. Facciolati was known over all Europe as one of the most enlightened and zealous teachers of the time; and among the many flattering invitations which he received, but always declined, was one from the king of Portugal, to accept the directorship of a college at Lisbon for the young nobility. He died in 1769. His history of the university was published in 1757, under the name _Fasti Gymnasii Patavini_. In 1808 a volume containing nine of his Epistles, never before published, was issued at Padua.

See J.E. Sandys, _Hist. Class. Schol._ ii. (1908).

FACE (from Lat. _facies_, derived either from _facere_, to make, or from a root _fa-_, meaning "appear"; cf. Gr. [Greek: phainein]), a word whose various meanings of surface, front, expression of countenance, look or appearance, are adaptations of the application of the word to the external part of the front portion of the head, usually taken to extend from the top of the forehead to the point of the chin, and from ear to ear (see ANATOMY: _Superficial and Artistic_; and PHYSIOGNOMY).

FACTION (through the French, from Lat. factio, a company of persons combined for action, _facere_, to do; from the other French derivative _facon_ comes "fashion"), a term, used especially with an opprobrious meaning, for a body of partisans who put their party aims and interests above those of the state or public, and employ unscrupulous or questionable means; it is thus a common term of reciprocal abuse between parties. In the history of the Roman and Later Roman empires the factions (_factiones_) of the circus and hippodrome, at Rome and Constantinople, played a prominent part in politics. The _factiones_ were properly the four companies into which the charioteers were divided, and distinguished by the colours they wore. Originally at Rome there were only two, white (_albata_) and red (_russata_), when each race was open to two chariots only; on the increase to four, the green (_prasina_) and blue (_veneta_) were added. At Constantinople the last two absorbed the red and white factions.

For a brilliant description of the factions at Constantinople under
Justinian, and the part they played in the celebrated Nika riot in
January 532, see Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, ch. xl.; and J.B. Bury's
_Appendix_ 10 in vol. iv. of his edition (1898), for a discussion of
the relationship between the _factiones_ and the demes of
Constantinople.

FACTOR (from Lat. _facere_, to make or do), strictly "one who makes"; thus in ordinary parlance, anything which goes to the composition of anything else is termed one of its "factors," and in mathematics the term is used of those quantities which, when multiplied together, produce a given product. In a special sense, however--and that to which this article is devoted--"factor" is the name given to a mercantile agent (of the class known as "general agents") employed to buy or sell goods for a commission. When employed to sell, the possession of the goods is entrusted to him by his principal, and when employed to buy it is his duty to obtain possession of the goods and to consign them to his principal. In this he differs from a broker (q.v.), who has not such possession, and it is this distinguishing characteristic which gave rise in England to the series of statutes known as the Factors Acts. By these acts, consolidated and extended by the act of 1889, third parties buying or taking pledges from factors are protected as if the factor were in reality owner; but these enactments have in no way affected the contractual relations between the factor and his employer, and it will be convenient to define them before discussing the position of third parties as affected by the act.

I. FACTOR AND PRINCIPAL