His eloquence was so remarkable that he was known as “the Welsh Demosthenes.” His strength lay in his intense conviction of an intimate connexion between sin and punishment and in his power of dramatic presentation. As an ecclesiastic he was not so successful; he helped to compile his church’s Confession of Faith in 1823, and laid great stress on a clause which limited the scope of the atonement to the elect. He was a stout Tory in politics and had many friends among the Anglican clergy; he opposed the movement for Roman Catholic emancipation. Several of his sermons were published in Welsh.
ELIAS LEVITA (1469–1549), Jewish grammarian, was born
at Neustadt on the Aisch, a place in Bavaria lying between
Nuremberg and Würzburg. He preferred to call himself “Ashkenazi,”
the German, and bore also the nickname of “Bachur,”
the youth or student, which latter he gave as title to his Hebrew
grammar. Before the end of the 15th century he went to Italy,
which thenceforth remained his home. He lived first at Padua,
went in 1509, after the capture of this town by the army of the
League of Cambrai, to Venice, and finally in 1513 to Rome,
where he found a patron in the learned general of the Augustinian
Order, the future cardinal Egidio di Viterbo, whom he helped
in his study of the Kabbalah, while he himself was inspired by
him to literary work. The storming of Rome by the army of the
Constable de Bourbon in 1527 compelled Elias to go to Venice,
where he was employed as corrector in the printing-house of
Daniel Bomberg. In the years 1541 and 1542 he lived at Isny,
in Southern Württemberg, where he published several of his
writings in the printing-house of the learned pastor Paul Fagius.
The last years of his life he spent at Venice, continuously active
in spite of ill-health and the weakness of old age. His monument
in the graveyard of the Jewish community at Venice boasts of
him that “he illuminated the darkness of grammar and turned
it into light.” The importance of Levita rests both in his
numerous writings and in his personal activity. In the remarkable
period which saw the rise of the Reformation and gave
to the study of the Hebrew Bible and to its language an importance
in the history of the world, it was Levita who furthered in
an extraordinary manner the study of Hebrew in Christian
circles by his activity as a teacher and by his writings. To his
pupils especially belong Sebastian Minoter, who translated
Levita’s grammatical works into Latin, also George de Selve,
bishop of Lavaur, the French ambassador in Venice (1536),
who was instrumental in obtaining for Levita an invitation from
Francis I. to come to Paris, which invitation, however, Levita did
not accept. Levita’s writings on Hebrew grammar (Bachur,
a text-book, 1518; Harkaba, an explanation, alphabetically
arranged, of irregular word-forms; a Table of Paradigms;
Pirke Elijahu, a description—partly metrical—of phonetics, and
other chapters of the grammar, 1520; his earliest work, a Commentary
on Moses Kimḥi’s Hebrew Grammar, 1508) were by
reason of their methodical exposition, their clear articulation,
their avoidance of prolixity, especially suited as an introduction
to the study of the Hebrew language. Amongst Levita’s other
writings is the first dictionary of the Targumim (Meturgeman,
1541) and the first attempt at a lexicon in which much of the
treasure of late Hebrew language was explained (Tishbi, explanation
of 712 new Hebrew vocables, as a supplement to the dictionaries
of David Kimḥi and Nathan b. Yeḥiel, 1542). Scientifically
most valuable, and of original importance, are the works of Levita
on the Massora; his Concordance to the Massora (Sefer Zikhronot
completed in the second revision 1536), of which hitherto only a
small part has been published, and especially his most celebrated
book Massoreth Hamasoreth (1538), published with English
translation by Chr. D. Ginsburg, London, 1867. This was the
first attempt to give a systematic account of the contents and
history of the Massora. By his criticism of the Massora, and
especially by proving that the punctuation of the books of the
Hebrew Bible is of late origin, Levita exercised an epoch-making
influence. Of his other writings may be mentioned his running
commentary on David Kimḥi’s Grammar and Dictionary (in
the Bomberg editions 1545, 1546), his German translation of
the Psalms (1545) and the Baba-Buch (more properly Buovobuch,
a German recension of the Italian novel Historia di Buovo
d’ Antona, 1508).
Of the literature on Levita may be mentioned: Y. Levi, Elia Levita und seine Leistungen als Grammatiker (Breslau, 1888); W. Bacher, “E. Levita’s wissenschaftliche Leistungen” in Z. d. D. M. G. xliii. (1889), p. 206–272. (W. Ba.)
ELIE, a village and watering-place of Fifeshire, Scotland,
on the shore of the Firth of Forth. Pop. 687. It is 10 m. due
S. of St Andrews, but 20 m. distant by the North British railway,
which makes a great bend by following the coast. Though it
retains some old houses, and the parish church dates from 1639,
Elie is, as a whole, quite modern and is one of the most popular
resorts in the county on account of its fine golf links and excellent
bathing. The royal burgh of Earlsferry (pop. 317) is situated
in the parish of Elie, which it adjoins on the west. Its charter,
granted by Malcolm Canmore, having been burned, it was renewed
by James VI. The chief structure is the town hall,
which is modern but has an ancient steeple. The place derived
its name from its use by the earls of Fife as a ferry to the opposite
shore of Haddington, 8 m. distant. Macduff’s cave near Kincraig
Point is believed traditionally to have been that in which the
thane took refuge from Macbeth. Two and a half miles north is
Balcarres House, belonging to the earl of Crawford, where Lady
Anne Barnard (1750–1825) was born.
ÉLIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND LOUIS LÉONCE
(1798–1874), French geologist, was born at Canon,
in Calvados, on the 25th of September 1798. He was educated
at the Lycée Henri IV. where he took the first prize in mathematics
and physics; at the École Polytechnique, where he stood
first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the École des
Mines (1819–1822), where he began to show a decided preference
for the science with which his name is associated. In 1823 he
was selected along with Dufrénoy by Brochant de Villiers,
the professor of geology in the École des Mines, to accompany
him on a scientific tour to England and Scotland, in order to
inspect the mining and metallurgical establishments of the
country, and to study the principles on which Greenough’s
geological map of England (1820) had been prepared, with a view
to the construction of a similar map of France. In 1835 he was
appointed professor of geology at the École des Mines, in succession
to Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the
duties of the chair since 1827. He held the office of engineer-in-chief
of mines in France from 1833 until 1847, when he was
appointed inspector-general; and in 1861 he became vice-president
of the Conseil-Général des Mines and a grand officer of
the Legion of Honour. His growing scientific reputation secured
his election to the membership of the Academy of Berlin, of the
Academy of Sciences of France and of the Royal Society of
London. By a decree of the president he was made a senator of
France in 1852, and on the death of Arago (1853) he was chosen
perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Élie de Beaumont’s
name is widely known to geologists in connexion with his
theory of the origin of mountain ranges, first propounded in a
paper read to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, and afterwards
elaborated in his Notice sur le système des montagnes (3 vols.,
1852). According to his view, all mountain ranges parallel to
the same great circle of the earth are of strictly contemporaneous
origin, and between the great circles a relation of symmetry
exists in the form of a pentagonal réseau. An elaborate statement
and criticism of the theory was given in his anniversary address
to the Geological Society of London in 1853 by William Hopkins
(Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.). The theory has not found general
acceptance, but it proved of great value to geological science,
owing to the extensive additions to the knowledge of the structure
of mountain ranges which its author made in endeavouring to
find facts to support it. Probably, however, the best service
Élie de Beaumont rendered to science was in connexion with
the geological map of France, in the preparation of which he
had the leading share. During this period Élie de Beaumont
published many important memoirs on the geology of the country.
After his superannuation at the École des Mines he continued to
superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death,
