Flaw in Samuel Foote’s The Cozeners, but when George Colman took over the theatre he was given better parts and became its leading actor. In 1779 he was at Covent Garden, and played there or at the Haymarket until his death on the 31st of October 1790. Ascribed to him are The Last Legacy of John Edwin, 1780; Edwin’s Jests and Edwin’s Pills to Purge Melancholy.
His son, John Edwin (1768–1805), made a first appearance on the stage at the Haymarket as Hengo in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Bonduca in 1778, and from that time acted frequently with his father, and managed the private theatricals organized by his intimate friend Lord Barrymore at Wargrave, Berks. In 1791 he married Elizabeth Rebecca Richards, an actress already well known in juvenile parts, and played at the Haymarket and elsewhere thereafter with her. He died in Dublin on the 22nd of February 1805. His widow joined the Drury Lane company (then playing, on account of the fire of 1809, at the Lyceum), and took all the leading characters in the comedies of the day. She died on the 3rd of August 1854.
EDWY (Eadwig), “The Fair” (c. 940–959), king of the English, was the eldest son of King Edmund and Ælfgifu, and succeeded his uncle Eadred in 955, when he was little more than fifteen years old. He was crowned at Kingston by Archbishop Odo, and his troubles began at the coronation feast. He had retired to enjoy the company of the ladies Æthelgifu (perhaps his foster-mother) and her daughter Ælfgifu, whom the king intended to marry. The nobles resented the king’s withdrawal, and he was induced by Dunstan and Cynesige, bishop of Lichfield, to return to the feast. Edwy naturally resented this interference, and in 957 Dunstan was driven into exile. By the year 956 Ælfgifu had become the king’s wife, but in 958 Archbishop Odo of Canterbury secured their separation on the ground of their being too closely akin. Edwy, to judge from the disproportionately large numbers of charters issued during his reign, seems to have been weakly lavish in the granting of privileges, and soon the chief men of Mercia and Northumbria were disgusted by his partiality for Wessex. The result was that in the year 957 his brother, the Ætheling Edgar, was chosen as king by the Mercians and Northumbrians. It is probable that no actual conflict took place, and in 959, on Edwy’s death, Edgar acceded peaceably to the combined kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria.
Authorities.—Saxon Chronicle (ed. Earle and Plummer, Oxford), sub ann.; Memorials of St Dunstan (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series); William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series); Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, vol. ii. Nos. 932-1046; Florence of Worcester.
EECKHOUT, GERBRAND VAN DEN (1621–1674), Dutch painter, born at Amsterdam on the 19th of August 1621, entered early into the studio of Rembrandt. Though a companion pupil to F. Bol and Govaert Flinck, he was inferior to both in skill and in the extent of his practice; yet at an early period he assumed Rembrandt’s manner with such success that his pictures were confounded with those of his master; and, even in modern days, the “Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus,” in the Berlin museum, and the “Presentation in the Temple,” in the Dresden gallery, have been held to represent worthily the style of Rembrandt. As evidence of the fidelity of Eeckhout’s imitation we may cite his “Presentation in the Temple,” at Berlin, which is executed after Rembrandt’s print of 1630, and his “Tobit with the Angel,” at Brunswick, which is composed on the same background as Rembrandt’s “Philosopher in Thought.” Eeckhout not merely copies the subjects; he also takes the shapes, the figures, the Jewish dress and the pictorial effects of his master. It is difficult to form an exact judgment of Eeckhout’s qualities at the outset of his career. His earliest pieces are probably those in which he more faithfully reproduced Rembrandt’s peculiarities. Exclusively his is a tinge of green in shadows marring the harmony of the work, a certain gaudiness of jarring tints, uniform surface and a touch more quick than subtle. Besides the pictures already mentioned we should class amongst early productions on this account the “Woman taken in Adultery,” at Amsterdam; “Anna presenting her Son to the High Priest,” in the Louvre; the “Epiphany,” at Turin; and the “Circumcision,” at Cassel. Eeckhout matriculated early in the Gild of Amsterdam. A likeness of a lady at a dressing-table with a string of beads, at Vienna, bears the date of 1643, and proves that the master at this time possessed more imitative skill than genuine mastery over nature. As he grew older he succeeded best in portraits, a very fair example of which is that of the historian Dappers (1669), in the Städel collection. Eeckhout occasionally varied his style so as to recall in later years the “small masters” of the Dutch school. Waagen justly draws attention to his following of Terburg in “Gambling Soldiers,” at Stafford House, and a “Soldiers’ Merrymaking,” in the collection of the marquess of Bute. A “Sportsman with Hounds,” probably executed in 1670, now in the Vander Hoo gallery, and a “Group of Children with Goats” (1671), in the Hermitage, hardly exhibit a trace of the artist’s first education. Amongst the best of Eeckhout’s works “Christ in the Temple” (1662), at Munich, and the “Haman and Mordecai” of 1665, at Luton House, occupy a good place. Eeckhout died at Amsterdam on the 22nd of October 1674.
EEL. The common freshwater eel (Lat. anguilla; O. Eng. œl) belongs to a group of soft-rayed fishes distinguished by the presence of an opening to the air-bladder and the absence of the pelvic fins. With its nearest relatives it forms the family Muraenidae, all of which are of elongated cylindrical form. The peculiarities of the eel are the rudimentary scales buried in the skin, the well-developed pectoral fins, the rounded tail fin continuous with the dorsal and ventral fins. Only one other species of the family occurs in British waters, namely, the conger, which is usually much larger and lives in the sea. In the conger the eyes are larger than in the eel, and the upper jaw overlaps the lower, whereas in the eel the lower jaw projects beyond the upper. Both species are voracious and predatory, and feed on almost any animal food they can obtain, living or dead. The conger is especially fond of squid or other Cephalopods, while the eel greedily devours carrion. The common eel occurs in all the rivers and fresh waters of Europe, except those draining towards the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It also occurs on the Atlantic side of North America. The conger has a wider range, extending from the western and southern shores of Britain and Ireland to the East Indian Archipelago and Japan. It is common in the Mediterranean.
The ovaries of the eel resemble somewhat those of the salmon in structure, not forming closed sacs, as in the majority of Teleostei, but consisting of laminae exposed to the body cavity. The laminae in which the eggs are produced are very numerous, and are attached transversely by their inner edges to a membranous band running nearly the whole length of the body-cavity. The majority of the eels captured for market are females with the ovaries in an immature condition. The male eel was first discovered in 1873 by Syrski at Trieste, the testis being described by him as a lobed elongated organ, in the same relative position as the ovary in the female, surrounded by a smooth surface without laminae. He did not find ripe spermatozoa. He discovered the male by examining small specimens, all the larger being female. L. Jacoby, a later observer, found no males exceeding 19 in. in length, while the female may reach a length of 39 in. or more. Dr C. G. J. Petersen, in a paper published in 1896, states that in Denmark two kinds of eels are distinguished by the fishermen, namely, yellow eels and silver eels. The silver eels are further distinguished by the shape of the snout and the size of the eyes. The snout in front of the eyes is not flat, as in the yellow eels, but high and compressed, and therefore appears more pointed, while the eyes are much larger and directed outwards. In both kinds there are males and females, but Petersen shows that the yellow eels change into silver eels when they migrate to the sea. The sexual organs in the silver eels are more developed than in the yellow eels, and the former have almost or entirely ceased to take food. The male silver eels are from 1112 to 19 in. in length, the females from 1612 to about 39 in. It is evident, therefore, that if eels only spawn once, they do not all reach the same size when they become sexually mature. The male conger was first
