by Scribe; and both were subjected to countless changes in fact, the story of L’Africaine was more than once entirely rewritten.
Meanwhile Meyerbeer accepted the appointment of kapellmeister to the king of Prussia, and spent some years at Berlin where he produced Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, a German opera, in which Jenny Lind made her first appearance in Prussia. Here also he composed, in 1846, the overture to his brother Michael’s drama, Struensee. But his chief care at this period was bestowed upon the worthy presentation of the works of others. He began by producing his dead friend Weber’s Euryanthe, with scrupulous attention to the composer’s original idea. With equal unselfishness he procured the acceptance of Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer, the first two operas of Richard Wagner, who, then languishing in poverty and exile, would, but for him, have found it impossible to obtain a hearing in Berlin. With Jenny Lind as prima donna and Meyerbeer as conductor, the opera flourished brilliantly in the Prussian capital; but the anxieties materially shortened the composer’s life.
Meyerbeer produced Le Prophète at Paris in 1849. In 1854 he brought out L’Étoile du nord at the Opéra Comique, and in 1859 Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Dinorah). His last great work, L’Africaine, was in active preparation at the Académie when, on the 23rd of April 1863, he was seized with a sudden illness, and died on the 2nd of May. L’Africaine was produced with pious attention to the composer’s minutest wishes, on the 28th of April 1865.
Meyerbeer’s genius was criticized by contemporaries with widely different results. Mendelssohn thought his style exaggerated; Fetis thought him one of the most original geniuses of the age; Wagner ungratefully calls him “a miserable music-maker,” and “a Jewish banker to whom it occurred to compose operas.” The reality of his talent has been recognized throughout all Europe; and his name will live so long as intensity of passion and power of dramatic treatment are regarded as indispensable characteristics of dramatic music. But his work shows that these qualities, with the aid of an experienced stage-writer, may be entirely independent of genuine musical insight.
MEYNELL, ALICE CHRISTIANA (1850–), English poet and essayist, was the daughter of T. J. Thompson. Her early life was spent chiefly in Italy, and she was educated by her father. Her first volume of verse, Preludes (1875), illustrated by her sister Elizabeth, afterwards Lady Butler, attracted little public notice, but the delicacy and beauty of the poems and especially of the sonnet “Renunciation,” were warmly praised by Ruskin. She married in 1877 the well-known Roman Catholic journalist and author Wilfrid Meynell, who became proprietor and editor of the Weekly Register. Under W. E. Henley’s editorship she wrote regularly in prose for the National Observer, and also later for the Pall Mall Gazette, the Saturday Review, &c. Her Poems (1893), including much of the earlier volume of Preludes, brought her at last more definitely before the public; and this was followed in 1901 by another slender book of delicate verse, Later Poems. Mrs Meynell also showed herself a fine critic of poetry by her admirable selection, The Flower of the Mind (1897), an anthology of English verse. She edited the Selected Poems (1894) of T. G. Hake, the Poetry of Pathos and Delight (1896) of her intimate friend Coventry Patmore, and the selections from Patmore in the “Muses' Library.” Her prose essays, remarkable for fineness of culture and peculiar restraint of style, appeared in successive volumes as The Rhythm of Life (1893), The Colour of Life and other Essays (1896), The Children (1897), and The Spirit of Place (1898). Later books are London Impressions (1898) and The Work of John S. Sargent (1903).
See W. Archer, Poets of the Younger Generation (1902).
MEYR, MELCHOIR (1810–1871), German poet, novelist and
philosopher, was born at Ehringen on the 28th of June 1810, and
died at Munich on the 22nd of April 1871. He read law and
philosophy at Heidelberg and Munich. His greatest success was
the Erzählungen aus dem Ries (4th ed. Leipzig, 1892), remarkable
as an accurate and sympathetic picture of rural life and
character. He wrote also tragedies (Herzog Albrecht, 1851; Karl
der Kühne, 1862), novels (Vier Deutsche, 1861; Ewige Liebe, 1864), and, in later life, philosophical works with a strong religious tendency. Among these were Emilie (philosophical dialogues, 1863), Die Religion des Geistes (1871), Die Fortdauer nach dem Tode (1869), Die Religion und ihre jetzt gebotene Fortbildung (1871), and Gedanken über Kunst, Religion und Philosophie (1874). In these works he, attempted to develop a Deistic system of philosophy. He was the author of an anonymous work entitled Gespräche mit einem Grobian (1866).
See Melchior Meyr. Biographisches, Briefe und Gedichte, edited by Graf Bothmer and M. Carrière (Leipzig, 1874).
MEYRIFAB, a small semi-nomad tribe of Africans of Semitic stock, settled on the east bank of the Nile near Berber. Contrary to Arab custom, it is said they never marry slaves.
MÉZERAY, FRANÇOIS EUDES DE (1610–1683), French
historian, was born at Rye near Argentan, where his father was a
surgeon. He had two brothers, one of whom, Jean Eudes, was
the founder of the order of the Eudists. François studied at the
university of Caen, and completed his education at the college
of Ste Barbe at Paris. His Histoire de France depuis Faramond
jusqu’ à Louis le Juste (3 vols., 1643–1651), is a fairly accurate
summary of French and Latin chronicles. Mézeray was
appointed historiographer of France, and in 1649, on the death of Vincent Voiture, was admitted to the Académie Française. His Abrégé chronologique (3 vols., 1667–1668) went through fifteen editions between 1668 and 1717; but he did not hesitate in this work to attack the financiers, with the result that his salary as historiographer was diminished by Colbert. Mézeray succeeded Conrart as permanent secretary to the Académie Française (1675), and died at Paris on the 10th of July 1683. He translated Grotius’s Traité de la religion chrétienne (1640), and a Histoire des Turcs depuis 1612 jusqu’en 1649 (1650), which is an addition to a continuation of Chalcondyles.
See Daniel de Larroque, Vie de François Eudes de Mézeray (1720); vol. xiii. of Causeries du lundi by Sainte-Beuve, and Levavasseur’s Notice sur les trois frères: Jean Eudes, François Eudes, et Charles Eudes (1855).
MÉZIÈRES, PHILIPPE DE (c. 1327–1405), French soldier and author, was born at the château of Mézières in Picardy. He belonged to the poorer nobility, and first served under Lucchino Visconti in Lombardy, but within a year he entered the service of Andrew, king of Naples, who was assassinated in September 1345. In the autumn of that year he set out for the East in the French army. After the battle of Smyrna in 1346 he was made a knight, and when the French army was disbanded he made his way to Jerusalem. He realized the advantage which the discipline of the Saracens gave them over the disorderly armies of the West, and conceived the idea of a new order of knighthood, but his efforts proved fruitless. The first sketch of the order was drawn up by him in his Nova religio passionis (1367–1368; revised and enlarged in 1386 and 1396). From Jerusalem he found his way in 1347 to Cyprus to the court of Hugo IV., where he found a kindred enthusiast in the king’s son, Peter of Lusignan, then count of Tripoli; but he soon left Cyprus, and had resumed his career as a soldier of fortune when the accession of Peter to the throne of Cyprus (Nov. 1358) and his recognition as king of Jerusalem induced Mézières to return to the island, probably in 1360, when he became chancellor. He came under the influence of the pious legate Peter Thomas (d. 1366), whose friend and biographer he was to be, and Thomas, who became patriarch
of Constantinople in 1364, was one of the chief promoters of the crusade of 1365. In 1362 Peter of Cyprus, with the legate and Mézières, visited the princes of western Europe in quest of support for a new crusade, and when the king returned to the east he left Mézières and Thomas to represent his case at Avignon and in the cities of northern Italy. They preached the crusade throughout Germany, and later Mézières accompanied Peter to Alexandria. After the capture of this city he received the government of a third part of it and a promise for the creation of his order, but the Crusaders, satisfied by the immense booty, refused to continue the campaign. In June 1366 Mézières was
