Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

LISZT, FRANZ (1811-1886), Hungarian pianist and composer, was born on the 22nd of October 1811, at Raiding, in Hungary. His appeal to musicians was made in a threefold capacity, and we have, therefore, to deal with Liszt the unrivalled pianoforte virtuoso (1830-1848); Liszt the conductor of the "music of the future" at Weimar, the teacher of Tausig, Bülow and a host of lesser pianists, the eloquent writer on music and musicians, the champion of Berlioz and Wagner (1848-1861); and Liszt the prolific composer, who for some five-and-thirty years continued to put forth pianoforte pieces, songs, symphonic orchestral pieces, cantatas, masses, psalms and oratorios (1847-1882). As virtuoso he held his own for the entire period during which he chose to appear in public; but the militant conductor and prophet of Wagner had a hard time of it, and the composer's place is still in dispute. Liszt's father, a clerk to the agent of the Esterhazy estates and an amateur musician of some attainment, was Hungarian by birth and ancestry, his mother an Austrian-German. The boy's gifts attracted the attention of certain Hungarian magnates, who furnished 600 gulden annually for some years to enable him to study music at Vienna and Paris. At Vienna he had lessons in pianoforte playing from Carl Czerny of "Velocity" fame, and from Salieri in harmony and analysis of scores. In his eleventh year he began to play in public there, and Beethoven came to his second concert in April 1823. During the three years following he played in Paris, the French provinces and Switzerland, and paid three visits to England. In Paris he had composition lessons from Paër, and a six months' course of lessons in counterpoint from Reicha. In the autumn of 1825 the handsome and fascinating _enfant gâté_ of the salons and ateliers--"La Neuvième Merveille du monde"--had the luck to get an operetta (_Don Sancho_) performed three times at the Académie Royale. The score was accidentally destroyed by fire, but a set of studies à la Czerny and Cramer, belonging to 1826 and published at Marseilles as 12 Études, op. i., is extant, and shows remarkable precocity. After the death of his father in 1828 young Liszt led the life of a teacher of the pianoforte in Paris, got through a good deal of miscellaneous reading, and felt the influence of the religious, literary and political aspirations of the time. He attended the meetings of the Saint-Simonists, lent an ear to the romantic mysticism of Père Enfantin and later to the teaching of Abbé Lamennais. He also played Beethoven and Weber in public--a very courageous thing in those days. The appearance of the violinist Paganini in Paris, 1831, marks the starting-point of the supreme eminence Liszt ultimately attained as a virtuoso. Paganini's marvellous technique inspired him to practise as no pianist had ever practised before. He tried to find equivalents for Paganini's effects, transcribed his violin caprices for the piano, and perfected his own technique to an extraordinary degree. After Paganini he received a fresh impulse from the playing and the compositions of Chopin, who arrived in 1831, and yet another impulse of equal force from a performance of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique, épisode de la vie d'un artiste," in 1832. Liszt transcribed this work, and its influence ultimately led him to the composition of his "Poèmes symphoniques" and other examples of orchestral programme-music.

From 1833 to 1848--when he gave up playing in public--he was greeted with frantic applause as the prince of pianists. Five years (1835-1840) were spent in Switzerland and Italy, in semi-retirement in the company of Madame la comtesse d'Agoult (George Sand's friend and would-be rival, known in literary circles as "Daniel Stern," by whom Liszt had three children, one of them afterwards Frau Cosima Wagner): these years were devoted to further study in playing and composition, and were interrupted only by occasional appearances at Geneva, Milan, Florence and Rome, and by annual visits to Paris, when a famous contest with Thalberg took place in 1837. The enthusiasm aroused by Liszt's playing and his personality--the two are inseparable--reached a climax at Vienna and Budapest in 1839-1840, when he received a patent of nobility from the emperor of Austria, and a sword of honour from the magnates of Hungary in the name of the nation. During the eight years following he was heard at all the principalcentres--including London, Leipzig, Berlin, Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Constantinople, Lisbon and Madrid. He gained much money, and gave large sums in charity. His munificence with regard to the Beethoven statue at Bonn made a great stir. The subscriptions having come in but sparsely, Liszt took the matter in hand, and the monument was completed at his expense, and unveiled at a musical festival conducted by Spohr and himself in 1845. In 1848 he settled at Weimar with Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein (d. 1887), and remained there till 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre, gave lessons to a number of pianists, wrote articles of permanent value on certain works of Berlioz and the early operas of Wagner, and produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly depends. His ambition to found a school of composers as well as a school of pianists met with complete success on the one hand and partial failure on the other. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance of _Lohengrin_ on the 28th of August 1850, before a special audience assembled from far and near. Among the works produced for the first time or rehearsed with a view to the furtherance of musical art were Wagner's _Tannhäuser_, _Der fliegende Holländer_, _Das Liebesmahl der Apostel_, and _Eine Faust Overtüre_, Berlioz's _Benvenuto Cellini_, the _Symphonie Fantastique_, _Harold en Italie_, _Roméo et Juliette_, _La Damnation de Faust_, and _L'Enfance du Christ_--the last two conducted by the composer--Schumann's _Genoveva_, _Paradise and the Peri_, the music to _Manfred_ and to _Faust_, Weber's _Euryanthe_, Schubert's _Alfonso und Estrella_, Raff's _König Alfred_, Cornelius's _Der Barbier von Baghdad_ and many more. It was Liszt's habit to recommend novelties to the public by explanatory articles or essays, which were written in French (some for the _Journal des débats_ and the _Gazette musicale_ of Paris) and translated for the journals of Weimar and Leipzig--thus his two masterpieces of sympathetic criticism, the essays _Lohengrin et Tannhäuser à Weimar_ and _Harold en Italie_, found many readers and proved very effective. They are now included, together with articles on Schumann and Schubert, and the elaborate and rather high-flown essays on Chopin and _Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie_ (the latter certainly, and the former probably, written in collaboration with Madame de Wittgenstein), in his _Gesammelte Schriften_ (6 vols., Leipzig). The compositions belonging to the period of his residence at Weimar comprise two pianoforte concertos, in E flat and in A, the "Todtentanz," the "Concerto pathétique" for two pianos, the solo sonata "An Robert Schumann," sundry "Études," fifteen "Rhapsodies Hongroises," twelve orchestral "Poèmes symphoniques," "Eine Faust Symphonie," and "Eine Symphonie zu Dante's 'Divina Commedia,'" the "13th Psalm" for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, the choruses to Herder's dramatic scenes "Prometheus," and the "Missa solennis" known as the "Graner Fest Messe." Liszt retired to Rome in 1861, and joined the Franciscan order in 1865.[1] From 1869 onwards Abbé Liszt divided his time between Rome and Weimar, where during the summer months he received pupils--gratis as formerly--and, from 1876 up to his death at Bayreuth on the 31st of July 1886, he also taught for several months every year at the Hungarian Conservatoire of Budapest.

About Liszt's pianoforte technique in general it may be said that it derives its efficiency from the teaching of Czerny, who brought up his pupil on Mozart, a little Bach and Beethoven, a good deal of Clementi and Hummel, and a good deal of his (Czerny's) own work. Classicism in the shape of solid, respectable Hummel on the one hand, and Carl Czerny, a trifle flippant, perhaps, and inclined to appeal to the gallery, on the other, these gave the musical parentage of young Liszt. Then appears the Parisian Incroyable and grand seigneur--"Monsieur Lits," as the Parisians called him. Later, we find him imitating Paganini and Chopin, and at the same time making a really passionate and deep study of Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Berlioz. Thus gradually was formed the master of style--whose command of the instrument was supreme, and who played like an inspired poet. Liszt's strange musical nature was long in maturing its fruits. At the pianoforte his achievements culminate in the two books of studies, twice rewritten, and finally published in 1852 as _Études d'exécution transcendante_, the _Études de concert_ and the _Paganini Studies_; the two concertos and the _Todtentanz_, the _Sonata in B minor_, the _Hungarian Rhapsodies_ and the fine transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies (the 9th for two pianofortes as well as solo), and of Berlioz's _Symphonie fantastique_, and the symphony, _Harold en Italie_. In his orchestral pieces of Liszt appears--next to Berlioz--as the most conspicuous and most thorough-going representative of programme music, i.e. instrumental music expressly contrived to illustrate in detail some poem or some succession of ideas or pictures. It was Liszt's aim to bring about a direct alliance or amalgamation of instrumental music with poetry. To effect this he made use of the means of musical expression for purposes of illustration, and relied on points of support outside the pale of music proper. There is always danger of failure when an attempt is thus made to connect instrumental music with conceptions not in themselves musical, for the order of the ideas that serve as a programme is apt to interfere with the order which the musical exposition naturally assumes--and the result in most cases is but an amalgam of irreconcilable materials. In pieces such as Liszt's "Poèmes symphoniques," _Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne_ (1848-1856), after a poem by Victor Hugo, and _Die Ideale_ (1853-1857), after a poem by Schiller, the hearer is bewildered by a series of startling orchestral effects which succeed one another apparently without rhyme or reason. The music does not conform to any sufficiently definite musical plan--it is hardly intelligible as music without reference to the programme. Liszt's masterpiece in orchestral music is the _Dante Symphony_ (1847-1855), the subject of which was particularly well suited to his temperament, and offered good chances for the display of his peculiar powers as a master of instrumental effect. By the side of it ranks the _Faust Symphony_ (1854-1857), in which the moods of Goethe's characters--Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles--are depicted in three instrumental movements, with a chorus of male voices, supplying a kind of comment, by way of close. The method of presentation in both symphonies is by means of representative themes (_Leitmotif_), and their combination and interaction. Incidents of the poem or the play are illustrated or alluded to as may be convenient, and the exigencies of musical form are not unfrequently disregarded for the sake of special effects. Of the twelve Poèmes symphoniques, _Orphée_ is the most consistent from a musical point of view, and is exquisitely scored. Melodious, effective, readily intelligible, with a dash of the commonplace, _Les Préludes_, _Tasso_, _Mazeppa_ and _Fest-Klänge_ bid for popularity. In these pieces, as in almost every production of his, in lieu of melody Liszt offers fragments of melody--touching and beautiful, it may be, or passionate, or tinged with triviality; in lieu of a rational distribution of centres of harmony in accordance with some definite plan, he presents clever combinations of chords and ingenious modulations from point to point; in lieu of musical logic and consistency of design, he is content with rhapsodical improvisation. The power of persistence seems wanting. The musical growth is spoilt, the development of the themes is stopped, or prevented, by some reference to extraneous ideas. Everywhere the programme stands in the way. In much of Liszt's vocal music, particularly in the songs and choral pieces written to German words, an annoying discrepancy is felt to exist between the true sound of the words and the musical accents. The music is generally emotional, the expression direct and passionate; there is no lack of melodic charm and originality, yet the total effect is frequently disappointing. In the choral numbers of the five masses, and in the oratorios _Die Heilige Elisabeth_ and _Christus_, the rarity of fugal polyphony acts as a drawback. Its almost complete absence in some of these works makes for monotony and produces a sense of dullness, which may not be inherent in all the details of the music, but is none the less distinctly present.

Omitting trifles and all publications that have been cancelled, the
following list of compositions may be taken as fairly comprehensive:--

_Pianoforte Pieces._--Études d'exécution transcendante; Études de
concert; Zwei Etuden, Waldesrauschen, Gnomentanz; Ab Irato; Paganini
Studies; Années de Pélerinage, 3 sets; Harmonies poétiques et
religieuses, 1-10; Consolations, 1-6; Ave Maria in E; Sonata in B
minor; Konzert-Solo in E minor; Scherzo und Marsch; Ballades, I. II.;
Polonaises, I. II.; Apparitions, 1-3; Berceuse; Valse impromptu;
Mazurka brillant; 3 Caprices Valses; Galop chromatique;
Mephisto-Walzer, I., II., III. and Polka; Zwei Legenden, "Die
Vogelpredigt," "Der heilige Franciscus auf den Wogen schreitend"; "Der
Weihnachtsbaum," 1-12; Sarabande und Chaconne ("Almira"); Elegies, I.,
II. and III.; La lugubre Gondola; Dem Andenken Petöfi's; Mosonyi's
Grabgeleit; Romance oubliée; Valses oubliées, 1-3; Liebesträume, 1-3
(originally songs); Hexameron; Rhapsodies Hongroises, 1-18.

_Pieces for Two Pianos._--Concerto pathétique (identical with the
Konzert-Solo in E minor); Dante symphony; Faust symphony; Poèmes
symphoniques, 1-12; Beethoven's 9th symphony.

_Pianoforte with Orchestra._--Concertos I. in E flat, II. in A;
Todtentanz; Fantasie ueber Motif aus Beethoven's "Ruinen von Athen";
Fantasie ueber Ungarische National Melodien; Schubert's Fantasia in C;
Weber's Polacca in E.

_Fantaisies de Concert for Piano Solo._--Don Juan; Norma; Sonnambula;
I Puritani; Lucia, I., II.; Lucrezia, I., II.; La Juive; Robert le
Diable; Les Huguenots; Le Prophète, 1-4. _Paraphrases_, Auber,
Tarantella di bravura (Masaniello); Verdi, Rigoletto, Ernani, Il
Trovatore; Mendelssohn, "Hochzeitsmarsch und Elfenreigen"; Gounod,
Valse de Faust, Les Adieux de Roméo et Juliette; Tschaikowsky,
Polonaise; Dargomiyski, Tarantelle; Cui, Tarantella; Saint-Saëns,
Danse macabre; Schubert, Soirées de Vienne, Valses caprices, 1-9.

_Transcriptions._--Beethoven's Nine Symphonies; Berlioz's "Symphonie
fantastique," "Harold en Italie"; Bénédiction et Serment (Benvenuto
Cellini); Danse des Sylphes (Damnation de Faust); Weber's overtures,
Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, Oberon, Jubilee; Beethoven's and Hummel's
Septets; Schubert's Divertissement à la Hongroise; Beethoven's
Concertos in C minor, G and E flat (orchestra for a second piano);
Wagner's Tannhäuser overture, march, romance, chorus of pilgrims;
Lohengrin, Festzug und Brautlied, Elsa's Brautgang, Elsa's Traum,
Lohengrin's Verweiss an Elsa; Fliegender Holländer, Spinnlied; Rienzi,
Gebet; Rheingold, Walhall; Meistersinger, "Am stillen Herd"; Tristan,
Isolde's Liebestod; Chopin's six Chants Polonais; Meyerbeer's
Schillermarsch; Bach's six organ Preludes and Fugues; Prelude and
Fugue in G minor; Beethoven, Adelaide; 6 miscellaneous and 6
Geistliche Lieder; Liederkreis; Rossini's Les Soirées musicales;
Schubert, 59 songs; Schumann, 13 songs; Mendelssohn, 8 songs; Robert
Franz, 13 songs.

_Organ Pieces._--Missa pro organo; Fantasia and Fugue, "Ad nos, ad
salutarem undam"; B-A-C-H Fugue; Variations on Bach's Basso continuo,
"Weinen, Klagen"; Bach's Introduction and Fugue, "Ich hatte viel
Bekümmerniss"; Bach's Choral Fugue, "Lob und Ehre"; Nicolai's
Kirchliche Festouvertüre, "Ein feste Burg"; Allegri's Miserere;
Mozart's Ave Verum; Arcadelt's Ave Maria; Lasso's Regina Coeli.

_Orchestral Pieces._--Eine Symphonie zu Dante's "Divina Commedia";
Eine Faust Symphonie; Poèmes symphoniques: 1. "Ce qu'on entend sur la
montagne"; 2. Tasso; 3. Les Préludes; 4. Orphée; 5. Prométhée; 6.
Mazeppa; 7. Fest-Klänge; 8. Héroïde funèbre; 9. Hungaria; 10. Hamlet;
11. Hunnenschlacht; 12. Die Ideale; Zwei Episoden aus Lenau's Faust:
I. Der nächtliche Zug, II. Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke; Marches,
Rakoczy, Goethe, Huldigung, "Vom Fels zum Meer" (for a military band);
Ungarischer, Heroischer and Sturmmarsch; Le Triomphe funèbre du Tasse;
"Von der Wiege bis zum Grab"; six Hungarian rhapsodies; four marches;
four songs, and Die Allmacht, by Schubert.

_Vocal Music._--Oratorios: "Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth,"
"Christus," "Stanislaus" (unfinished). Masses: Missa solennis for the
inauguration of the cathedral at Gran; Ungarische Krönungs-messe;
Missa choralis (with organ); Missa and Requiem for male voices (with
organ); Psalms, 13, 137, 23 and 18; 12 Kirchen-Chor-Gesänge (with
organ). Cantatas: Prometheus-chöre; "Beethoven Cantata"; "An die
Künstler"; Die Glocken des Strassburger Münsters; 12 Chöre für
Männergesang; Songs, 8 books; Scena, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher.

_Melodramatic Pieces for Declamation, with Pianoforte
Accompaniment._--Leonore (Bürger); Der traurige Mönch (Lenau); Des
todten Dichter's Liebe (Jokai); Der blinde Sänger (Tolstoy).

_Editions, Text and Variants._--Beethoven's Sonatas; Weber's
Concertstück and Sonatas; Schubert Fantasia, 4 Sonatas, Impromptus,
Valses and Moments musicaux.

See also L. Ramaun, _Fr. Liszt als Künstler und Mensch_ (1880-1894);
E. Dannreuther, _Oxford Hist. of Music_, vol. vi.(1905). (E. Da.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] It is understood that, in point of fact, the Princess
Wittgenstein was determined to marry Liszt; and as neither he nor her
family wished their connexion to take this form, Cardinal Hohenlohe
quietly had him ordained.--[ED. _E.B._].

LITANY. This word ([Greek: litaneia]), like [Greek: litê] (both from [Greek: litomai]), is used by Eusebius and Chrysostom, commonly in the plural, in a general sense, to denote a prayer or prayers of any sort, whether public or private; it is similarly employed in the law of Arcadius (_Cod. Theod._ xvi. tit. 5, leg. 30), which forbids heretics to hold assemblies in the city "ad litaniam faciendam." But some trace of a more technical meaning is found in the epistle (_Ep._ 63) of Basil to the church of Neocaesarea, in which he argues, against those who were objecting to certain innovations, that neither were "litanies" used in the time of Gregory Thaumaturgus. The nature of the recently introduced litanies, which must be assumed to have been practised at Neocaesarea in Basil's day, can only be conjectured; probably they had many points in common with the "rogationes," which, according to Sidonius Apollinaris, had been coming into occasional use in France about the beginning of the 5th century, especially when rain or fine weather was desired, and, so far as the three fast days before Ascension were concerned, were first fixed, for one particular district at least, by Mamertus or Mamercus of Vienne (A.D. c. 450). We gather that they were penitential and intercessory prayers offered by the community while going about in procession, fasting and clothed in sackcloth. In the following century the manner of making litanies was to some extent regulated for the entire Eastern empire by one of the _Novels_ of Justinian, which forbade their celebration without the presence of the bishops and clergy, and ordered that the crosses which were carried in procession should not be deposited elsewhere than in churches, nor be carried by any but duly appointed persons. The first synod of Orleans (A.D. 511) enjoins for all Gaul that the "litanies" before Ascension be celebrated for three days; on these days all menials are to be exempt from work, so that every one may be free to attend divine service. The diet is to be the same as in Quadragesima; clerks not observing these rogations are to be punished by the bishop. In A.D. 517 the synod of Gerunda provided for two sets of "litanies"; the first were to be observed for three days (from Thursday to Saturday) in the week after Pentecost with fasting, the second for three days from November 1. The second council of Vaison (529), consisting of twelve bishops, ordered the _Kyrie eleison_--now first introduced from the Eastern Church--to be sung at matins, mass and vespers.

A synod of Paris (573) ordered litanies to be held for three days at the beginning of Lent, and the fifth synod of Toledo (636) appointed litanies to be observed throughout the kingdom for three days from December 14. The first mention of the word litany in connexion with the Roman Church goes back to the pontificate of Pelagius I. (555), but implies that the thing was at that time already old. In 590 Gregory I., moved by the pestilence which had followed an inundation, ordered a "litania septiformis," sometimes called _litania major_, that is to say, a sevenfold procession of clergy, laity, monks, virgins, matrons, widows, poor and children. It must not be confused with the _litania septena_ used in church on Easter Even. He is said also to have appointed the processions or litanies of April 25 (St Mark's day), which seem to have come in the place of the ceremonies of the old Robigalia. In 747 the synod of Cloveshoe ordered the litanies or rogations to be gone about on April 25 "after the manner of the Roman Church," and on the three days before Ascension "after the manner of our ancestors." The latter are still known in the English Church as Rogation Days. Games, horse racing, junkettings were forbidden; and in the litanies the name of Augustine was to be inserted after that of Gregory. The reforming synod of Mainz in 813 ordered the major litany to be observed by all for three days in sackcloth and ashes, and barefoot. The sick only were exempted.

As regards the form of words prescribed for use in these "litanies" or "supplications," documentary evidence is defective. Sometimes it would appear that the "procession" or "litany" did nothing else but chant _Kyrie eleison_ without variation. There is no reason to doubt that from an early period the special written litanies of the various churches all showed the common features which are now regarded as essential to a litany, in as far as they consisted of (1) invocations, (2) deprecations, (3) intercessions, (4) supplications. But in details they must have varied immensely. The offices of the Roman Catholic Church at present recognize two litanies, the "Litaniae majores" and the "Litaniae breves," which differ from one another chiefly in respect of the fulness with which details are entered upon under the heads mentioned above. It is said that in the time of Charlemagne the angels Orihel, Raguhel, Tobihel were invoked, but the names were removed by Pope Zacharias as really belonging to demons. In some medieval litanies there were special invocations of S. Fides, S. Spes, S. Charitas. The litanies, as given in the Breviary, are at present appointed to be recited on bended knee, along with the penitential psalms, in all the six week-days of Lent when ordinary service is held. Without the psalms they are said on the feast of Saint Mark and on the three rogation days. A litany is chanted in procession before mass on Holy Saturday. The "litany" or "general supplication" of the Church of England, which is appointed "to be sung or said after morning prayer upon Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and at other times when it shall be commanded by the ordinary," closely follows the "Litaniae majores" of the Breviary, the invocations of saints being of course omitted. A similar German litany will be found in the works of Luther. In the Roman Church there are a number of special litanies peculiar to particular localities or orders, such as the "Litanies of Mary" or the "Litanies of the Sacred Name of Jesus."

There was originally a close connexion between the litany and the liturgy (q.v.). The ninefold _Kyrie eleison_ at the beginning of the Roman Mass is a relic of a longer litany of which a specimen may still be seen in the Stowe missal. In the Ambrosian liturgy, the threefold _Kyrie eleison_ or Lesser Litany occurs thrice, after the _Gloria in excelsis_, after the gospel and at the end of Mass; and on the first five Sundays in Lent a missal litany is placed before the _Oratio super populum_, and on the same five Sundays in the Mozarabic rite before the epistle. In Eastern liturgies litanies are a prominent feature, as in the case of the deacon's litany at the beginning of the _Missa fidelium_ in the Clementine liturgy, immediately before the _Anaphora_ in the Greek liturgy of St James, &c. (F. E. W.)

LITCHFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Litchfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., about 28 m. W. of Hartford, and including the borough of the same name. Pop. of the township (1890) 3304; (1900) 3214; (1910) 3005; of the borough (1890) 1058; (1900) 1120; (1910) 903. Area of the township, 48.6 sq. m. The borough is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. It is situated on elevated land, and is one of the most attractive of southern New England summer resorts. The principal elevation in the township is Mt. Prospect, at the base of which there is a vein of pyrrhotite, with small quantities of nickel and copper. On the southern border of the borough is Lake Bantam (about 900 acres, the largest lake in the state) whose falls, at its outlet, provide water power for factories of carriages and electrical appliances. Dairying is the most important industry, and in 1899 the county ranked first among the counties of the state in the value of its dairy products--$1,373,957, from 3465 farms, the value of the product for the entire state being $7,090,188.

The lands included in the township of Litchfield (originally called Bantam) were bought from the Indians in 1715-1716 for £15. the Indians reserving a certain part for hunting. The township was incorporated in 1719, was named Litchfield, after Lichfield in England, and was settled by immigrants from Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, Farmington and Lebanon (all within the state) in 1720-1721. In 1751 it became the county-seat of Litchfield county, and at the same time the borough of Litchfield (incorporated in 1879) was laid out. From 1776 to 1780 two depôts for military stores and a workshop for the Continental army were maintained, and the leaden statue of George III., erected in Bowling Green, New York City, in 1770, and torn down by citizens on the 9th of July 1776, was cut up and taken to Litchfield, where, in the house (still standing) of Oliver Wolcott it was melted into bullets for the American army by Wolcott's daughter and sister. Aaron Burr, whose only sister married Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), lived in Litchfield with Reeve in 1774-1775. In 1784 Reeve established here the Litchfield Law School, the first institution of its kind in America. In 1798 he associated with himself James Gould (1770-1838), who, after Reeve's retirement in 1820, continued the work, with the assistance of Jabez W. Huntington (1788-1847), until 1833. The school was never incorporated, it had no buildings, and the lectures were delivered in the law offices of its instructors, but among its 1000 or more students were many who afterwards became famous, including John C. Calhoun; Levi Woodbury (1789-1851), United States senator from New Hampshire in 1825-1831 and in 1841-1845, secretary of the navy in 1831-1834 and of the treasury in 1834-1841, and a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1845; John Y. Mason; John M. Clayton; and Henry Baldwin (1780-1844), a justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1830. In 1792 Mrs Sarah Pierce made one of the first efforts toward the higher education of women in the United States by opening in Litchfield her Female Seminary, which had an influential career of about forty years, and numbered among its alumnae Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs Marshall O. Roberts, Mrs Cyrus W. Field and Mrs Hugh McCulloch. Litchfield was the birthplace of Ethan Allen; of Henry Ward Beecher; of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel, _Poganuc People_, presents a picture of social conditions in Litchfield during her girlhood; of Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (1760-1833); of John Pierpont (1785-1866), the poet, preacher and lecturer; and of Charles Loring Brace, the philanthropist. It was also the home, during his last years, of Oliver Wolcott (1726-1797); of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge (1774-1835), an officer on the American side in the War of Independence and later (from 1801 to 1817) a Federalist member of Congress; and of Lyman Beecher, who was pastor of the First Congregational church of Litchfield from 1810 to 1826.

See Payne K. Kilbourne, _Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of
Litchfield, Connecticut_ (Hartford, Conn., 1859); George C. Boswell,
_The Litchfield Book of Days_ (Litchfield, 1900); and for an account
of the Litchfield Female Seminary, Emily N. Vanderpoel, _Chronicles of
a Pioneer School_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1903).

LITCHFIELD, a city of Montgomery county, Illinois, U.S.A., about 50 m. N. E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1900) 5918; (1910) 5971. Its principal importance is as a railway and manufacturing centre; it is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Illinois Central, the Wabash, and the Litchfield & Madison railways, and by electric lines connecting with St Louis and the neighbouring towns. In the vicinity are deposits of bituminous coal, fire-clay and moulding sand. There are various manufactures in the city. Litchfield was incorporated as a town in 1856, and was first chartered as a city in 1859.

LITCHI, or LEE-CHEE, the fruit of _Nephelium Litchi_, a small tree, native of southern China and one of the most important indigenous fruits. It is also cultivated in India. The tree bears large compound leaves with two to four pairs of leathery lanceolate pointed leaflets about 3 in. long, and panicles of small flowers without petals. The fruits are commonly roundish, about 1½ in. in diameter, with a thin, brittle, red shell which bears rough protuberances. In the fresh state they are filled with a sweet white pulp which envelops a large brown seed, but in the dried condition the pulp forms a blackish fleshy substance. The pulp is of the nature of an aril, that is, an additional seed-coat.

_Nephelium Longana_, the longan tree, also a native of southern China,
is cultivated in that country, in the Malay Peninsula, India and
Ceylon for its fruit, which is smaller than that of the litchi, being
half an inch to an inch in diameter with a nearly smooth
yellowish-brown brittle skin, and containing a pulpy aril resembling
that of the litchi in flavour. Another species, _N. lappaceum_, a tall
tree native of the Malay Peninsula, where it is known under the names
Rambutan or Rambosteen, is also cultivated for its pleasantly acid
pulpy aril. The fruit is oval, bright red in colour, about 2 in. long
and covered with long fleshy hairs.

_Nephelium_ belongs to the natural order Sapindaceae, and contains
about twenty-two species.

LITERATURE, a general term which, in default of precise definition, may stand for the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. Its various forms are the result of race peculiarities, or of diverse individual temperaments, or of political circumstances securing the predominance of one social class which is thus enabled to propagate its ideas and sentiments. In early stages of society, the classes which first attain a distinct literary utterance are priests who compile the chronicles of tribal religious development, or rhapsodes who celebrate the prowess of tribal chiefs. As man feels before he reasons, so poetry generally precedes prose. It embodies more poignantly the sentiment of unsophisticated man. Hence sacred books and war-songs are everywhere the earliest literary monuments, and both are essentially poetic compositions which have received a religious or quasi-religious sanction. The recitation of the Homeric poems at the Panathenaea corresponds to the recitation elsewhere of the sacred texts in the temple; the statement of Phemios (_Odyssey_, xxii. 347) that a god inspired his soul with all the varied ways of song expresses the ordinary belief of early historical times. Versicles of the sacred chronicles, or fragments of epic poems, were learned by heart and supplied a standard of popular literary taste. The public declamation of long chosen passages by priests, and still more by contending rhapsodes, served to evoke the latent sense of literary criticism; and, at a later stage, the critical spirit was still further stimulated by the performance of dramatic pieces written by competing poets. The epical record of the past was supplemented by the lyrical record of contemporary events, and as the Homeric poets had immortalized the siege of Troy, so Pindar commemorated Salamis. Prose of any permanent value would first show itself in the form of oratory, and the insertion of speeches by early historians indicates a connexion with rhetoric. The development of abstract reasoning would tend to deprive prose of its superfluous ornament and to provide a simpler and more accurate instrument.

No new _genre_ has been invented since the days of Plato. The evolution of literature is completed in Greece, and there its subdivisions may best be studied. Epic poetry is represented by the Homeric cycle, lyrical poetry by Tyrtaeus, dramatic poetry by Aeschylus, history by Herodotus, oratory by Pericles, philosophy by Plato, and criticism by Zoilus, the earliest of slashing reviewers; and in each department there is a long succession of illustrious names. Roughly speaking, all subsequent literature is imitative. Ennius transplanted Greek methods to Rome; his contemporary L. Fabius Pictor, the earliest Roman historian, wrote in Greek; and the later Roman poets from Lucretius to Horace abound in imitations of Greek originals. The official adoption of Christianity as the state religion changed the spirit of literature, which became more and more provincial after the downfall of the empire. Literature did not perish during the "dark ages" which extend from the sixth century to the beginning of the 11th, but it was subordinate to scholarship. The dissolution of Latin was not complete till about the middle of the 9th century, and the new varieties of Romance did not become ripe for literary purposes till a hundred years later. Meanwhile, not a single literary masterpiece was produced in western Europe for five centuries; by comparison only do Boëthius and Venantius Fortunatus seem to be luminous points in the prolonged night; the promise of a literary renaissance at the court of Charlemagne was unfulfilled, and the task of creating a new literature devolved upon the descendants of the barbarians who had destroyed the old. The Celtic and Teutonic races elaborated literary methods of their own; but the fact that the most popular form of Irish verse is adopted from Latin prosody is conclusive evidence that the influence of Roman--and therefore of Greek--models persisted in the literature of the outlying provinces which had attained political independence. The real service rendered to literature by the provincials lay in the introduction and diffusion of legends freighted with a burden of mystery which had disappeared with Pan, and these new valuable materials went to form the substance of the new poetry.

The home of modern European literature must be sought in France, which assimilated the best elements in Celtic and Teutonic literature. From the 11th to the 14th century, France was the centre of intellectual life in Europe, as Greece and Rome had been before, and as Italy was to be afterwards. The _chansons de geste_, inspired by the sense of patriotism and the yearning for religious unity, inculcate feudal and Catholic doctrine, and as society in the western world was universally committed to feudalism and Catholicism, these literary expressions of both theories were widely accepted and copied. The Germanic origin of the French epic is lost sight of, and imitators are attracted by the French execution, and by the creative power of the _chansons de geste_. Again, France takes the stories of the Arthurian court from Welsh texts or from the lips of Welsh settlers, rehandles the romantic element, and, through Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes, imparts to the whole a touch of personal artistry which is absent from the _chansons de geste_. The _matière de Bretagne_ goes forth to Italy, Germany and England--later to Portugal and Spain--bearing the imprint of the French genius. Thus France internationalizes local subjects, and first assumes a literary function which, with few interruptions, she has since discharged. She further gives to Europe models of allegory in the _Roman de la rose_, founds the school of modern history through Villehardouin, inaugurates the religious drama and the secular theatre. She never again dominated the literatures of Europe so absolutely.

The literary sceptre passed from France to Italy during the 14th century. Brunetto Latini, who wrote in French as well as in Italian, is the connecting link between the literatures of the two countries; but Italy owes its eminence not so much to a general diffusion of literary accomplishment as to the emergence of three great personalities. Dante, Boccacio and Petrarch created a new art of poetry and of prose. England yielded to the fascination in the person of Chaucer, Spain in the person of her chancellor López de Ayala, and France in the person of Charles d'Orléans, the son of an Italian mother. Petrarch, once ambassador in France, alleged that there were no poets out of Italy, and indeed there were no living poets to compare with him elsewhere. But in all countries he raised up rivals--Chaucer, Marot, Garcilaso de la Vega--as Sannazaro did a century and a half later. Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ captured the Portuguese Montemôr, whose pastoral novel the _Diana_, written in Spanish, inspired d'Urfé no less than Sidney, and, as d'Urfé's _Astrée_ is considered the starting-point of the modern French novel, the historical importance of the Italian original cannot be exaggerated. Spain never obtained any intellectual predominance corresponding to that exercised by France and Italy, or to her political authority during the 16th and 17th centuries. This may be attributed partly to her geographical position which lies off the main roads of Europe, and partly to the fact that her literature is essentially local. Cervantes, indeed, may be said to have influenced all subsequent writers of fiction, and the influence of Spanish literature is visible in the body of European picaresque tales; but, apart from Corneille and a few other dramatists who preceded Molière in France, and apart from the Restoration drama in England, the influence of the Spanish drama was relatively small. In some respects it was too original to be imitated with success. Much the same may be said of England as of Spain. Like Spain, she lies outside the sphere of continental influence; like Spain, she has innumerable great names in every province of literature, and, in both cases, to Europe at large these long remained names and nothing more; like Spain, she is prone to reproduce borrowed materials in shapes so transformed and rigid as to be unrecognizable and unadaptable. Moreover, the Reformation isolated England from literary commerce with the Latin races, and till the 18th century Germany was little more than a geographical expression. Even when Germany recovered her literary independence, Lessing first heard of Shakespeare through Voltaire. Neither Shakespeare nor Milton was read in France before the 18th century--the first translated by Ducis, the second by Dupré de Saint-Maur--and they were read with curiosity rather than with rapture. On the other hand, Boileau, Rapin and Le Bossu were regarded as oracles in England, and through them French literature produced the "correctness" of Queen Anne's reign. Horace Walpole is half a Frenchman, Hume imitates Montesquieu's cold lucidity, Gibbon adapts Bossuet's majestic periods to other purposes. On the other hand Voltaire takes ideas from Locke, but his form is always intensely personal and inimitably French. After the 16th century English literature, as a whole, is refractory to external influence. Waves of enthusiasm pass over England--for Rousseau, for Goethe--but leave no abiding trace on English literature. During the latter half of the 18th century France resumed something of her old literary supremacy; the literatures of Italy and Spain at this period are purely derivative, and French influence was extended still further on the continent as the result of the Romantic movement. Since that impulse was exhausted, literature everywhere has been in a state of flux: it is less national, and yet fails to be cosmopolitan. All writers of importance, and many of no importance, are translated into other European languages; the quick succession of diverse and violent impressions has confused the scheme of literature. Literature suffers likewise from the competition of the newspaper press, and as the press has multiplied it has grown less literary. The diversities of modern interests, the want of leisure for concentrated thought, suggest that literature may become once more the pleasure of a small caste. But the desire for the one just form which always inspires the literary artist visits most men sometimes, and it cannot be doubted that literature will continue to accommodate itself to new conditions. (J. F.-K.)

LITERNUM, an ancient town of Campania, Italy, on the low sandy coast between Cumae and the mouth of the Volturnus. It was probably once dependent on Cumae. In 194 B.C. it became a Roman colony. It is mainly famous as the residence of the elder Scipio, who withdrew from Rome and died here. His tomb and villa are described by Seneca. Augustus is said to have conducted here a colony of veterans,[1] but the place never had any great importance, and the lagoons behind it made it unhealthy, though the construction of the Via Domitiana through it must have made it a posting station. It ceased to exist in the 8th century. No remains are visible.

See J. Beloch, _Campanien_, ed. ii. (Breslau, 1890), 377.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Mommsen in C.I.L. x. 343 does not accept this statement, but an
inscription found in 1885 confirms it.

LITHGOW, WILLIAM (1582-? 1650), Scottish traveller and writer, was born and educated in Lanark. He was caught in a love-adventure, mutilated of his ears by the brothers of the lady (hence the sobriquet "Cut-lugged Willie"), and forced to leave Scotland. For nineteen years he travelled, mostly on foot, through Europe, the Levant, Egypt and northern Africa, covering, according to his estimate, over 36,000 m. The story of his adventures may be drawn from _The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and painfull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares_ (London, 1614; fuller edition, 1632, &c.); _A True and Experimentall Discourse upon the last siege of Breda_ (London, 1637); and a similar book giving an account of the siege of Newcastle and the battle of Marston Moor (Edinburgh, 1645). He is the author of a _Present Surveigh of London_ (London, 1643). He left six poems, written between 1618 and 1640 (reprinted by Maidment, Edinburgh, 1863). Of these "Scotland's Welcome to King Charles, 1633" has considerable antiquarian interest. His writing has no literary merit; but its excessively aureate style deserves notice.

The best account of Lithgow and his works is by F. Hindes Groome in
the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ The piece entitled _Scotland's Paraenesis to
King Charles II._ (1660), ascribed to him in the catalogue of the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, cannot, from internal evidence, be his.

LITHGOW, a town of Cook county, New South Wales, Australia, 96 m. W.N.W. of Sydney by rail. Pop. (1901) 5268. The town is situated at an altitude of 3000 ft., in a valley of the Blue Mountains. It has pottery and terra-cotta works, breweries, a tweed factory, iron-works, saw-mills, soap-works and brickfields. Coal, kerosene shale, iron ore and building stone are found in the district.

LITHIUM [symbol Li, atomic weight 7.00 (O = 16)], an alkali metal, discovered in 1817 by J. A. Arfvedson (_Ann. chim. phys._ 10, p. 82). It is only found in combination, and is a constituent of the minerals petalite, triphyline, spodumene and lepidolite or lithia mica. It occurs in small quantities in sea, river and spring water, and is also widely but very sparingly distributed throughout the vegetable kingdom. It may be obtained (in the form of its chloride) by fusing lepidolite with a mixture of barium carbonate and sulphate, and potassium sulphate (L. Troost, _Comptes rendus_, 1856, 43, p. 921). The fused mass separates into two layers, the upper of which contains a mixture of potassium and lithium sulphates; this is lixiviated with water and converted into the mixed chlorides by adding barium chloride, the solution evaporated and the lithium chloride extracted by a mixture of dry alcohol and ether. The metal may be obtained by heating dry lithium hydroxide with magnesium (H. N. Warren, _Chem. News_, 1896, 74, p. 6). L. Kahlenberg (_Jour. phys. Chem_., 3, p. 601) obtained it by electrolysing the chloride in pyridine solution, a carbon anode and an iron or platinum cathode being used. O. Ruff and O. Johannsen (_Zeit. elektrochem._, 1906, 55, p. 537) electrolyse a mixture of bromide and chloride which melts at 520°. It is a soft, silvery-white metal, which readily tarnishes on exposure. Its specific gravity is 0.59, and it melts at 180° C. It burns on ignition in air, and when strongly heated in an atmosphere of nitrogen it forms lithium nitride, Li3N. It decomposes water at ordinary temperature, liberating hydrogen and forming lithium hydroxide.

_Lithium hydride_, LiH, obtained by heating the metal in a current of
hydrogen at a red heat, or by heating the metal with ethylene to 700°
C. (M. Guntz, _Comptes rendus_, 1896, 122, p. 244; 123, p. 1273), is a
white solid which inflames when heated in chlorine. With alcohol it
forms lithium ethylate, LiOC2H5, with liberation of hydrogen. _Lithium
oxide_, Li2O, is obtained by burning the metal in oxygen, or by
ignition of the nitrate. It is a white powder which readily dissolves
in water to form the _hydroxide_, LiOH, which is also obtained by
boiling the carbonate with milk of lime. It forms a white caustic
mass, resembling sodium hydroxide in appearance. It absorbs carbon
dioxide, but is not deliquescent. _Lithium chloride_ LiCl, prepared by
heating the metal in chlorine, or by dissolving the oxide or carbonate
in hydrochloric acid, is exceedingly deliquescent, melts below a red
heat, and is very soluble in alcohol. _Lithium carbonate_, Li2CO3,
obtained as a white amorphous precipitate by adding sodium carbonate
to a solution of lithium chloride, is sparingly soluble in water.
_Lithium phosphate_, Li3PO4, obtained by the addition of sodium
phosphate to a soluble lithium salt in the presence of sodium
hydroxide, is almost insoluble in water. _Lithium ammonium_, LiNH3, is
obtained by passing ammonia gas over lithium, the product being heated
to 70° C. in order to expel any excess of ammonia. It turns brown-red
on exposure to air, and is inflammable. It is decomposed by water
evolving hydrogen, and when heated _in vacuo_ at 50°-60° C. it gives
lithium and ammonia. With ammonia solution it gives hydrogen and
_lithiamide_, LiNH2 (H. Moissan, _ibid._, 1898, 127, p. 685). _Lithium
carbide_, Li2C2, obtained by heating lithium carbonate and carbon in
the electric furnace, forms a transparent crystalline mass of specific
gravity 1.65, and is readily decomposed by cold water giving acetylene
(H. Moissan, _ibid._, 1896, 122, p. 362).

Lithium is detected by the faint yellow line of wave-length 6104, and
the bright red line of wave-length 6708, shown in its flame spectrum.
It may be distinguished from sodium and potassium by the sparing
solubility of its carbonate and phosphate. The atomic weight of
lithium was determined by J. S. Stas from the analysis of the
chloride, and also by conversion of the chloride into the nitrate, the
value obtained being 7.03 (O = 16).

The preparations of lithium used in medicine are: _Lithii Carbonis_,
dose 2 to 5 grs.; _Lithii Citras_, dose 5 to 10 grs.; and _Lithii
Citras effervescens_, a mixture of citric acid, lithium citrate,
tartaric acid and sodium bicarbonate, dose 60 to 120 grs. Lithium
salts render the urine alkaline and are in virtue of their action
diuretic. They are much prescribed for acute or chronic gout, and as a
solvent to uric acid calculi or gravel, but their action as a solvent
of uric acid has been certainly overrated, as it has been shown that
the addition of medicinal doses of lithium to the blood serum does not
increase the solubility of uric acid in it. In concentrated or large
doses lithium salts cause vomiting and diarrhoea, due to a
gastro-enteritis set up by their action. In medicinal use they should
therefore be always freely diluted.

LITHOGRAPHY (Gr. [Greek: lithos], a stone, and [Greek: graphein], to write), the process of drawing or laying down a design or transfer, on a specially prepared stone or other suitable surface, in such a way that impressions may be taken therefrom. The principle on which lithography is based is the antagonism of grease and water. A chemically pure surface having been secured on some substance that has an equal affinity for both grease and water, in a method hereafter to be described, the parts intended to print are covered with an unctuous composition and the rest of the surface is moistened, so that when a greasy roller is applied, the portion that is wet resists the grease and that in which an affinity for grease has been set up readily accepts it; and from the surface thus treated it will be seen that it is an easy thing to secure an impression on paper or other material by applying suitable pressure.

The inventor of lithography was Alois Senefelder (1771-1834); and it is remarkable what a grip he at once seemed to get of his invention, for whereas the invention of printing seems almost a matter of evolution, lithography seems to come upon the scene fully equipped for the battle of life, so that it would be a bold craftsman at the present day who would affirm that he knew more of the principles underlying his trade than Senefelder (q.v.) did within thirty years of its invention. Of course practice has led to dexterity, and the great volume of trade has induced many mechanical improvements and facilities, but the principles have not been taken any further, while some valuable methods have been allowed to fall into desuetude and would well repay some experimentally disposed person to revive.

Lithography may be divided into two main branches--that which is drawn with a greasy crayon (rather illogically called "chalk") on a grained stone, and that which is drawn in "ink" on a polished stone. Whatever may be thought in regard to the original work of the artists of various countries who have used lithography as a means of expression, there can be little doubt that in the former method the English professed lithographer has always held the pre-eminence, while French, German and American artists have surpassed them in the latter.

Chalk lithography subdivides itself into work in which the black predominates, although it may be supported by 5 or 6 shades of modified colour--this branch is known as "black and tint" work--and that in which the black is only used locally like any other colour. Frequently this latter class of work will require a dozen or more colours, while some of the finest examples have had some twenty to thirty stones employed in them. Work of this description is known as chromo-lithography. Each colour requires a separate stone, and work of the highest quality may want two or three blues with yellows, reds, greys and browns in proportion, if it is desired to secure a result that is an approximate rendering of the original painting or drawing. The question may perhaps be asked: "If the well-known three-colour process" (see PROCESS) "can give the full result of the artist's palette, why should it take so many more colours in lithography to secure the same result?" The answer is that the stone practically gives but three gradations--the solid, the half tint and the quarter tint, so that the combination of three very carefully prepared stones will give a very limited number of combinations, while a moderate estimate of the shades on a toned block would be six; so that a very simple mathematical problem will show the far greater number of combinations that the three blocks will give. Beyond this, the chromo-lithographer has to exercise very great powers of colour analysis; but the human mind is quite unable to settle offhand the exact proportion of red, blue and yellow necessary to produce some particular class say of grey, and this the camera with the aid of colour filters does with almost perfect precision.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, lithography has these strong points: (1) its utility for small editions on account of its, at present, smaller prime cost; (2) its suitability for subjects of large size; (3) its superiority for subjects with outlines, for in such cases the outline can be done in one colour, whereas to secure this effect by the admixture of the three colours requires marvellously good registration, the absence of which would produce a very large proportion of "waste" or faulty copies; (4) capacity for printing on almost any paper, whereas, at the time of writing, the tri-colour process is almost entirely limited to printing on coated papers that are very heavy and not very enduring.