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and a rope-making machine said to be better than any even yet in use. He investigated the composition of explosives and the application of steam power; he perceived that boats could be made to go by steam, and designed both steam-cannon and cannon to be loaded at the breech. He made innumerable designs for engines of war, and plans of tunnels and canals for traffic. A few of his practical inventions were carried out in his time, but both of these and of his speculative researches the vast majority, lying buried in unpublished MSS., remained after his death unknown or forgotten. The discoveries which he had made wholesale were left to be rediscovered piecemeal by the men of narrower genius who came after him.
So much for the intellectual side of Leonardo's character and career. As a moral being we are less able to discern what he was like. The man who carried in his brain so many images of subtle beauty, as well as half the hidden science of the future, must have lived spiritually, in the main, alone. Of things communicable he was at the same time, as we have said, communicative a genial companion, a generous and loyal friend, ready and eloquent of discourse, and impressing all with whom he was brought in contact by the power and the charm of genius. We see him living on terms of constant affection with his father, tending the last hours of his mother, and in disputes with his brothers not the aggressor but the sufferer from aggression. We see him open-handed in giving, not grasping in getting – "poor," he says, "is the man of many wants"; not prone to resentment – "the best shield against injustice is to double the cloak of long suffering; zealous in labour above all men – "as a day well spent gives joyful sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death." With these instincts and maxims, his moral experience is not likely to have been deeply troubled. In matters of religion he seems to have had some share of the philosophical scepticism of a later age. In matters of the heart, if any consoling or any disturbing passion played a part in his life, we do not know it; we know only of affectionate relations with friends and pupils, of public and private regard mixed in the days of his youth with dazzled admiration, and in those of his age with something of reverential awe.
Of the presence and aspect of this illustrious man we have, as has been said, no record belonging to the earlier period of his life except that of the written descriptions which celebrate his beauty. The portraits which we possess represent him in after years, as he may have appeared during his second residence at Milan, when the character of sage and archimage had fully imprinted itself on his countenance. The features are grand, clear, and deeply lined, the mouth firmly set and almost stern, the eyes strong and intent beneath their bushy eyebrows, the hair long and white, descending and commingling with a majestic beard. The most authentic sheet which thus represents him is a drawing nearly in full face, unquestionably by his own hand, at Turin. Other studies, but none of such high quality as this, represent the same features in profile. On both the full-face and the profile drawings many painted portraits have been founded, some of them done by nearly contemporary hands; but none can with safety be attributed to the master himself.
The materials for a definitive life of Leonardo are at present wanting. They
may be expected to be in great part supplied by the promised publication of Dr
J. P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. In the meantime the
results of recent investigation may be best gathered from the same writer's biography of the painter (London, 1880), supplemented by his "Leonardo-Studien"
in Lützow's Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1880, 1881; and by Ivan Lermolieff (Sig. Giov. Morelli) in his Werke Italienischen Meister in München, Dresden, u. Berlin, 1880, p. 107 sq. See also Karl Woermann in Woltmann and Woermann, Geschichte der Malerei, vol. ii. p. 541 sq. On several matters of fact the authorities above named must be regarded as superseding all earlier biographies. The principal of these, taking them in the chronological order of their composition, are as follows: P. Jovius, "Vita Leonardi Vincii," printed in Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. italiana, t. vii., 1718-19; "Breve vita di Leonardo da Vinci, scritta da un Anonimo di 1500," printed by G. Milanesi in the Archivio Storico Ital., 1872, p. 222 sq.; Vasari in his celebrated Lives; and Lomazzo in his Trattato dell' arte della pittura (1584), and Idea del tempio della pittura (2d ed., 1590). From this time no contribution of importance was added until the work of Amoretti, which has formed the foundation of all later researches (C. Amoretti, Memorie Storiche sulla vita, &c., di Lionardo da Vinci, 2d ed., Milan, 1804). The other chief contributions of new material have been contained in Fumagalli, Scuola di Leonardo da Vinci, 1811; Gave, Carteggio d' Artisti, 1839, vol. i., pp. 223, 224; the Lemonnier edition of Vasari, 1851, vol. vii. p. 11 sq.; the new edition of the same by G. Milanesi, vol. iv. p. 17 sq.; G. L. Calvi, Notizie dei professori di belle arti, &c., Milan, 1869; and Gust. Uzielli, Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci, Florence, 1872. The best general handlings of the subject, antecedent to those mentioned at the beginning of our list, have been, in France, by Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de Léonard de Vinci, 2d ed., Paris, 1876; and Charles Clément, Raphael, Leonardo de Vinci, et Michelange, 4th ed., Paris, 1879; in Germany, by G. F. Waagen, Kleine Schriften, Stuttgart, 1875; W. Lübke, Gesch. der Ital. Malerei, vol. ii.; and C. Brun in Dohme's Kunst u. Künstler, vol. iii., No. 61; in England, Mrs Heaton, Life of Leonardo da Vinci, London, 1874. With regard to the scientific attainments and achievements of Leonardo, the authorities are J. B. Venturi, Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de Léonard de Vinci, Paris, 1797; Marx, Ueber M. A. Torre u. Leonardo da Vinci, Göttingen, 1848; Libri, Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, vol. ii.; Lombardini, Dell' origine et del Progresso della Scienza idraulica, Milan, 1872; G. Mongeri, G. Govi, and C. Boito, Saggio delle opere de Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1872 (a summary of the conclusions of these writers is given in an essay by C. E. Black in Mrs Heaton's biography); and lastly, H. Grothe, Lionardo da Vinci als Ingenieur u. Philosoph, Berlin, 1874.
The celebrated Treatise on Painting, which has hitherto been the only published portion of Leonardo's writings, consists of brief didactic chapters, or more properly paragraphs, of practical direction or critical remark on all the branches and all the conditions of a painter's practice. The original MS. draft of Leonardo has been lost, though a great number of notes for it are scattered through the various extant volumes of his MSS. The work has been printed in two different forms; one of these is an abridged version consisting of 365 sections; the first edition of it was published in Paris in 1551, the last, translated into English by J. F. Rigaud, in London, 1877. The other is a more extended version, in 912 sections, divided into eight books; this was printed in 1817 by Greg. Manzi at Rome, from a 17th century MS. which he had discovered in the Vatican Library; a German translation from the same MS. has been edited by G. H. Ludwig in Eitelberger's series of Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte. On the history of the book in general see Max Jordan, Das Malerbuch des Leonardo da Vinci, Leipsic, 1873.
The MSS., writings, sketches, and memoranda of Leonardo have undergone many vicissitudes since they were bequeathed in the mass by their author to his friend and famulus Francesco Melzi. Within fifty years of Leonardo's death the son of their inheritor had allowed them to pass out of his hands, and they were in the possession partly of the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, and partly in that of Dr Guido Mazenta. By 1637 a considerable portion of them were again reunited in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. During the domination of the French under Bonaparte, these treasures were brought to France, and the greater part of them were not reclaimed. Milan, indeed, possesses that immense composite volume of Leonardo's MSS. which is perhaps the most valuable of them all, and is called from its bulk the Codice Atlantico. Fourteen volumes more are in the library of the Institute at Paris. A number of others are dispersed in various English collections – the most important in the Royal Library at Windsor, some at the British Museum and South Kensington, and others in the private collections of Holkham Hall and Ashburnham House. The well-known sonnet, beginning "Chi non può quel che vuol, quel die può voglia," which has been quoted since the 16th century as of Leonardo's writing, has recently been proved to have been written fifty years before his time (see G. Uzielli in the journal Il Buonarroti, 1875). (S. C.)
LEONIDAS ("Son of the Lion") was a very common
Greek name. The most famous person who bore it was a
king of Sparta, seventeenth of the Agid line. He had been
king for one year when Xerxes invaded Greece, 480 B.C.
The congress of the Greek states bent on resistance, which
met at the isthmus of Corinth, sent Leonidas with a force
of at least 8000 men to hold the narrow pass of Thermopylæ
against the Persians (see GREECE). When the Persians,
through the treacherous aid of Ephialtes, had turned the
pass, Leonidas dismissed all his army except the 300
Spartan citizens, 700 Thespians, and the Theban contin
gent, which was suspected of treachery. Every man of the
Lacedæmonians and Thespians died on the field, while the
Thebans laid down their arms. A monument was erected
on the spot where the Greeks made their final struggle.
It was a lion, and we may compare with it the lion set up
by the Thebans on the battlefield of Chæronea to com
memorate the sacred band who were all slain there 338
B.C. There is no foundation for the common story that
Leonidas had only three hundred men with him at
Thermopylæ.
There were also two Greek poets named Leonidas. The elder was born at Tarentum, and lived in the time of Pyrrhus; he spent a wandering life of poverty. There remain over a hundred of his epigrams, chiefly inscriptions on works of art, or dedicatory offerings, which are among the best of their kind, showing much ingenuity of thought and cleverness of expression. The other was born at Alexandria, and came to live in Rome, where he obtained great reputation in the time of Nero. His epigrams are destitute of merit. The only ingenuity displayed in them
