and other learned collections. His "Physiological Essay on the Thymus Gland" obtained the Astley Cooper prize of £300 in 1845. In 1850 he published a comprehensive work, entitled "General Pathology as conducive to the establishment of rational principles for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Disease." His "Lectures on Clinical Surgery" appeared 1850-52; and his "Reports on the Sanitary State of the People of England" have been published annually since 1855, and still continue to appear.—R. H.
SIMON MACCABEUS. See Maccabees.
SIMON, Richard, one of the ablest critics and theologians of the seventeenth century, was born at Dieppe, 13th May, 1638. Having completed his studies in his native place, he entered the congregation of the Oratory, and lectured on philosophy at the college of Juilly. From this place he went to Paris, where he studied theology and the oriental languages, and made a catalogue of oriental MSS. in the Oratory of Rue St. Honoré. Returning to Juilly in 1668, he resumed his lectures on philosophy. In 1679 he left the congregation of the Oratory, and went to Belleville as priest. In 1682 he removed to Dieppe, whence he repaired to Paris for literary purposes. His death look place at Dieppe, April, 1712. Richard Simon was a very learned critic and scholar. He did much to open up a new course of investigation in biblical subjects. His spirit was free, acute, bold, and his learning profound. With great talents for sacred criticism, he treated with masterly skill the department to which his best thoughts were directed. Biblical criticism owes much to him. He weakened the authority of ecclesiastical tradition respecting the origin, integrity, and interpretation of Holy Scripture. In fact he was a kind of protestant in the Romish church, but his honest freedom and far-seeing sagacity raised suspicions against him. Like other men who are before their day, he was attacked and persecuted. He loved controversy, and did not always show a conciliatory spirit. Hence he had many enemies, both in his own church and among protestants. It is not surprising that he burnt his MSS. before his death, through fear of the jesuits. His principal works are—"Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament," 1678, which was suppressed because of its supposed dangerous contents (a Latin translation of it was published at Amsterdam, 1681); "Histoire critique du Nouveau Testament," 1689; "Disquisitiones criticæ de variis per diversa loca et tempora Bibliorum editionibus," 1684; "Histoire de l'origine et du progres des revenues ecclesiastiques," 1684, published under the name of Jerome a Costa; "Fides ecclesiæ Orientalis," 1671, &c, &c.—S. D.
SIMON, Thomas, an eminent medallist, was born about 1612. He appears to have been of French descent, though a native of Yorkshire. In 1633 he became pupil and assistant to Nicholas Briot, engraver to the mint; and when Briot left England on the troubles between Charles I. and the parliament, Simon was appointed his successor. Simon's first important work was a new broad seal for the admiralty in 1636; and in 1643 he engraved a new great seal of England. Simon cut the great seals, commemoration medals, and coins during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and that of Richard Cromwell At the Restoration he was deprived of his place as engraver to the mint, notwithstanding he produced a now famous "crown trial-piece," in order to show that he was not inferior to the French engraver who displaced him. Simon retained, however, the post of engraver of the royal seals till his death, which occurred in June of the plague year, 1665. Thomas Simon was on the whole the ablest engraver of the national seals, medals, and coins we have ever had; and his works are not only admirable as works of art, but also as historical memorials. He always represented faithfully the protector or the sovereign as he then was; not as is the foolish custom of recent engravers of the mint, who give an idealized portrait, worthless as a likeness and misleading as a memorial. It is worthy of note that at a recent sale a copy of Simon's "crown trial-piece" sold for the surprising sum of £275. Besides the dies executed for the government, Simon engraved several private medals of eminent persons; a great seal for the Royal Society, &c. A quarto volume of "Engravings and descriptions of the Medals, Coins, Great Seals, &c., of T. Simon" was published by Vertue in 1753.—J. T—e.
SIMONETTA, Giovanni, a Sicilian of the fifteenth century. His history of Francesco Sforza, written in Latin, has been reprinted by Muratori in his well-known collection.
SIMONIDES, the lyric poet, was born at Ceos, a small island in the Ægean, about 556 b.c. He early settled at Athens, then, as afterwards, one of the great centres of attraction for learned men, and enjoyed the favour and patronage of its ruler Hipparchus. From hence, after some years, he removed to Thessaly, where he sang the praises and profited by the liberality of the noble families of the Scopadæ and Aleuadæ. At the time of the Persian invasion, Simonides returned to Athens, and celebrated in various poems the triumphs of the war. He also composed some of his finest elegies in honour of the dead who fell in defence of their country. With some of the most famous men of his time, Miltiades, Pausanias, Themistocles, he lived on terms of intimacy. Removing subsequently to the court of Hiero at Syracuse, he continued there until his death, at an advanced age, 467 b.c. Though generally popular, Simonides showed a strong spirit of rivalry towards many contemporary writers, among others the celebrated Pindar. He was also very fond of money, and disposed to proportion his praises of the great to the munificence of their rewards for his song. Those fragments of his odes and elegies which still survive are sufficient to confirm the unanimous judgment of antiquity, that he was among the very first lyrical poets of Greece. Inferior in power to Sappho and Alcæus, he was unrivalled for sweetness and pathetic grace. Not without reason has an illustrious poet of our own expressed a vain desire for
" One simple, tender-hearted scroll
Of pure Simonides."
This writer must be carefully distinguished from Simonides of Amorgos, his predecessor, of whom "also some fragments are extant. One of the most interesting, from a satire on women, is discussed by Addison in the Spectator.—G.
SIMPLICIUS, Bishop of Rome, was a native of Tibur. He was elevated in 467, and died 483. Little is known about him except that he was engaged in controversies with the Eastern patriarchs, and made various regulations concerning the discipline of the Roman clergy.—S. D.
SIMPLICIUS, one of the latest philosophers of the Neoplatonic school, and a commentator on the works of Aristotle, was a native of Cilicia. He flourished during the first half of the sixth century, and studied at Athens under Ammonius Hermeas and Damascius. When the rising power of Christianity exposed the heathen philosophers to severe persecutions, and the Athenian schools were closed (529) by the edict of the Emperor Justinian, Simplicius sought refuge, with six philosophic friends, at the court of Kosroes, king of Persia. A few years afterwards, their safety being guaranteed by a treaty between Kosroes and Justinian, the exiled philosophers returned to Greece; but of the subsequent fortunes of Simplicius no account has been handed down to us. Of his writings on Aristotle, there are extant his commentary on the Categories, on the Physica Auscultatio, the De Cælo, and the De Anima. "These commentaries," says Brandis, "may without hesitation be regarded as the richest in their contents, of any that have come down to us bearing on the explanation of Aristotle. But for them we should be without the most important fragments of the writings of the Eleatics, of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and others, which were at that day already very scarce, as well as without many extracts from the lost books of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Eudemus."—(Art. "Simplicius" in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog. and Mythol.) Extracts from Simplicius are to be found in Brandis' Scholia in Aristotelem, pp. 468-518. A complete edition of his commentaries on the Physica Auscultatio and the De Cælo has been long promised by Cobet and Karsten, but has not yet made its appearance.—J. F. F.
SIMPSON or SIMSON, Edward, born at Tottenham in 1578, was educated at Westminster school under Camden, and at Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow, He had a church in Cambridge, and was afterwards rector of Eastling and prebend of Corringham. He wrote a universal history, which he brought down as far as a.d. 71, and many other works. His death took place in 1651.—D. W. R.
* SIMPSON, Sir George, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company's territories, was born in Ross-shire, Scotland, in 1796. At an early age he was sent out to America, where a fierce contest was then raging between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-west Company of Canada. He succeeded in reconciling the contending parties, and inducing them to coalesce. Mr. Simpson was rewarded by the appointment of resident governor of one of the divisions of the country, and subsequently
