are equally striking. There is nothing finer in Shelley or Wordsworth.
In 1832 Mickiewicz left Rome for Paris, where his life was for some time spent in poverty and unhappiness. He had married a Polish lady, Selina Szymanowska, who became insane. In 1840 he was appointed to the newly founded chair of Slavonic languages and literature in the Collège de France, a post which he was especially qualified to fill, as he was now the chief representative of Slavonic literature, Pushkin having died in 1837. He was, however, only destined to hold it for a little more than three years, his last lecture having been given on the 28th of May 1844. His mind had become more and more disordered under the influence of religious mysticism. He had fallen under the influence of a strange fanatic named Towianski. His lectures became a medley of religion and politics, and thus brought him under the censure of the Government. A selection of them has been published in four volumes. They contain some good sound criticism, but the philological part is very defective, for Mickiewicz was no scholar, and he is obviously only well acquainted with two of the literatures, viz. Polish and Russian, the latter only till the year 1830. A very sad picture of his declining days is given in the memoirs of Herzen. At a comparatively early period the unfortunate poet exhibited all the signs of premature old age; poverty, despair and domestic affliction had wrought their work upon him. In 1849 he founded a French newspaper, La Tribune des peuples, but it only existed a year. The restoration of the French Empire seemed to kindle his hopes afresh; his last composition is said to have been a Latin ode in honour of Napoleon III. On the outbreak of the Crimean War he was sent to Constantinople to assist in raising a regiment of Poles to take service against the Russians. He died suddenly there in 1855, and his body was removed to France and buried at Montmorency. In 1900 his remains were disinterred and buried in the cathedral of Cracow, the Santa Croce of Poland, where rest, besides many of the kings, the greatest of her worthies.
Mickiewicz is held to have been the greatest Slavonic poet, with the exception of Pushkin. Unfortunately in other parts of Europe he is but little known; he writes in a very difficult language, and one which it is not the fashion to learn. There were both pathos and irony in the expression used by a Polish lady to a foreigner, “Nous avons notre Mickiewicz à nous.” He is one of the best products of the so-called romantic school. The Poles had long groaned under the yoke of the classicists, and the country was full of legends and picturesque stories which only awaited the coming poet to put them into shape. Hence the great popularity among his countrymen of his ballads, each of them being connected with some national tradition. Besides Konrad Wallenrod and Pan Tadeusz, attention may be called to the poem Grazyna, which describes the adventures of a Lithuanian chieftainess against the Teutonic knights. It is said by Ostrowski to have inspired the brave Emilia Plater, who was the heroine of the rebellion of 1830, and after having fought in the ranks of the insurgents, found a grave in the forests of Lithuania. A fine vigorous Oriental piece is Farys. Very good too are the odes to Youth and to the historian Lelewel; the former did much to stimulate the efforts of the Poles to shake off their Russian conquerors. It is enough to say of Mickiewicz that he has obtained the proud position of the representative poet of his country; her customs, her superstitions, her history, her struggles are reflected in his works. It is the great voice of Poland appealing to the nations in her agony.
His son, Ladislas Mickiewicz, wrote Vie d’Adam Mickiewicz (Posen, 1890–1895, 4 vols.), also Adam Mickiewicz, sa vie et son œuvre (Paris, 1888). Translations into English (1881–1885) of Konrad Wallenrod and Pan Tadeusz were made by Miss Biggs. See also Œuvres poétiques de Mickiewicz, trans. by Christien Ostrowski (Paris, 1845). (W. R. M.)
MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS (1735–1788), Scottish poet,
son of the minister of Langholm, Dumfries-shire, was born on
the 28th of September 1735. He was educated at the Edinburgh
high school, and in his fifteenth year entered business as a
brewer. His father purchased the business, and on his death
William Mickle became the owner; but he neglected his affairs,
devoting his time to literature, and before long became bankrupt.
In 1763 he went to London, where in 1765 he published “a
poem in the manner of Spenser” called the Concubine (afterwards
Syr Martyn); was appointed corrector to the Clarendon
Press, and translated the Lusiad of Camoens into heroic couplets
(specimen published 1771, whole work, 1775). So great was the
repute of this translation that when Mickle—appointed secretary
to Commodore Johnstone—visited Lisbon in 1779, the king
of Portugal gave him a public reception. On his return to
London he was appointed one of the agents responsible for
the distribution of prize-money, and this employment, in addition
to the sums brought him by his translation of the Lusiad,
placed him in comfortable circumstances.
It has been suggested that the Scottish poem “There’s nae luck aboot the hoose” was Mickle’s. It is more likely, however, that Jean Adams was the author. Scott read and admired Mickle’s poems in his youth, and founded Kenilworth on his ballad of Cumnor Hall, which appeared in Thomas Evans’s Old Ballads . . . with some of Modern Date (1784).
MICMAC, a tribe of North American Indians of Algonquian stock. They formerly occupied all Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince Edward Islands, and portions of New Brunswick, Quebec and Newfoundland. They fought on the French side in the colonial wars. They are now civilized and almost all profess Catholicism. They number some 4000 in settled communities throughout their former territory.
There is an excellent account of the Micmac Indians in J. G. Millais’s Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways (1908).
MICON, a Greek painter of the middle of the fifth century B.C. He was closely associated with Polygnotus of Thasos, in conjunction with whom he adorned the Painted Stoa, at Athens, with paintings of the battle of Marathon and other battles. He also painted in the Anaceum at Athens.
MICROCLINE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the feldspar group (see Felspar). Like orthoclase it is a potash-feldspar with the formula KAlSi3O8, but differs from this in crystallizing in the anorthic system. The name (from Greek μικρός, small, and κλίνειν, to incline) was given by A. Breithaupt in 1830, and has reference to the fact that the angle (89° 30′) between the two perfect cleavages differs but little from a right angle: the species was, however, first definitely established by A. Des Cloizeaux in 1876. The crystals and cleavage masses are very like orthoclase in appearance, and the hardness (6) and specific gravity (2·56) are the same for the two minerals; there are, however, important differences in the twinning and in the optical characters. In addition to being twinned according to the same laws as orthoclase, microcline is repeatedly twinned according to the albite-law and the pericline-law, producing a very characteristic grating or cross-hatched structure which is especially prominent when thin sections of the mineral are examined in polarized light. This lamellar structure is often on a very minute scale, sometimes so minute as to be almost indistinguishable: it has therefore been suggested that orthoclase is really a microcline in which the twin-lamellae are ultra-microscopic. In a section parallel to the basal plane c (001) of a microcline crystal the lamellae do not extinguish optically parallel to the edge bc as in orthoclase, but at an angle of 15° 30′; further, the obtuse bisectrix of the optic axes in microcline is inclined to the normal of the plane b (010) at an angle of 15° 26′. Green microcline is distinctly pleochroic.
Microcline occurs, usually with orthoclase, as a constituent of pegmatites, granites and gneisses; it is rare in porphyries and is not known in volcanic rocks. A beautiful crystallized variety of a bright verdigris-green colour is known as amazon-stone (q.v.). Chesterlite is a variety occurring as crystals on dolomite in Chester county, Pennsylvania.
Closely allied to microcline is the anorthic soda-potash-feldspar known as anorthoclase or natron-microcline. Here sodium predominates over potassium and a little calcium is also often present, the formula being (Na, K) AlSi3O8. It resembles microcline in having a cleavage angle of very nearly 90° and in the cross-hatched
structure, the latter being usually very minute and giving rise to a mottled