Rome, one upon the life of Cicero, or upon his books "De Republica," and "A catalogue of the illustrious men of Rome." Many other pieces of his are cited by various authors; and the lives of Terence, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Lucan, have usually gone under his name, and been printed at the end of his works, though it is not absolutely certain that they are his. His "History of the Emperors" is a work of great value, as illustrative of the manners of the times, and the particular character of these sovereigns, but is not written strictly either in the historical or biographical form. It consists of a continued series of curious facts, related succinetly, without digressions or reflections. There is in it a character of sincerity, which shews very plainly, that the author feared and hoped for nothing, and that his pen was not directed by hatred or flattery. Suetonius, says Politian, "has given us evident proofs of his diligence, veracity, and freedom. There is no room for any suspicion of partiality in his books; nothing is advanced out of favour, or suppressed out of fear: the facts themselves have engrossed his whole attention, and he has consulted truth in the first place." Politian is also of opinion, that he forbore writing the lives of Nerva, Trajan, and Adrian, the emperors of his time, because he would not be tempted to disregard the love of truth. Some have blamed him for his descriptions of the horrid debaucheries of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, which Erasmus is willing to excuse on the score of his care and fidelity as an historian; but certainly such descriptions cannot be defended, because they cannot be necessary even to fidelity itself. A good English translation was published in 1796 by Dr. Alexander Thomson, in which he softened or suppressed Suetonius's indelicacies, without any injury to the general effect of the narrative. Suetonius speaks disrespectfully of the Christians, calling them "genus hominum superstitionis novæ & maleficæ, a sort of people of a new and mischievous superstition:" but Lardner has selected from him some important corroborations of the facts of gospel history.

Suetonius was first printed at Rome in 1470, fol. and was often reprinted in that century, with and without dates; since when, the best editions are : those of Stephanus, 1543, 8vo: "Cum notis & numismatibus a Carolo Patin," Basil, 1675, 4to: "Cum notis integris Isaaci Casauboni, Levini Torrentii, Joannis Georgii Grævii, & selectis alio

rum," Hage Comit. 1691, 4to.

66

"Cum notis variorum & And, "Cum notis.

Pitisci," L. Bat. 1692, 2 tom. 8vo. auctioribus Pitisci," Leovard. 1714. This last is by far the best; but there is another printed at the Hague in 1727, 4to; "In usum Delphini," Paris, 1684, 2 tom. 4to; "Cum notis Burmanni," 1736, in 2 vols. 4to; "Ernesti," Leipsic, 1748-75, 8vo. Oudendorp," Leyden, 1751, 2 vols. 8vo; and "Wolfius," Leipsic, 1802, 4 vols. 8vo.1 SUEUR (EUSTACHE LE), one of the best painters in his time which the French nation had produced, was born at Paris in 1617, and studied the principles of his art under Simon Vouet, whom he infinitely surpassed; and although he was never out of France, carried the art to a very high degree of perfection. His style was formed upon antiquity, and after the best Italian masters. He invented with ease, and his execution was always worthy of his designs. His attitudes are simple and noble, and his expression well adapted to the subject. His draperies are designed after the manner of Raphael's last works. Although he knew little of the local colours, or the chiaro scuro, he was so much master of the other parts of painting, that there was a great likelihood of his throwing off Vouet's manuer, entirely, had he lived longer. Immediately after Vouet's death, he perceived that his master had led him out of the way: and by considering the antiques that were in France, and the designs and prints of the best Italian masters, particularly Raphael, he contracted a more refined style and happier manner. Le Brun could not forbear being jealous of Le Sueur, who did not mean, however, to give any man pain; for he had great simplicity of manners, and much candour, and probity. He died at Paris April 30, 1655, at no more than thirty-eight years of age. The life of St. Bruno, in twenty pictures, originally preserved in the Chartreux, and which employed him for three years, have, as Mr. Fuseli informs us, been "lately consigned to the profane clutch of restoration in the attic of the Luxembourg, and are now little more than the faint traces of what they were when issuing from the band of their master. They have suffered martyrdom more than once. It is well that the nature of the subject permitted little more than fresco in the colouring at first, and that the great merit of their execution consisted in that

1 Gen, Dict.-Plinii Epist.-Vossius de Hist. Lat.-Saxii Onomast.

breadth of vehicle which monastic drapery demands, else we should have lost even the fragments that remain. The old man in the fore-ground, the head of St. Bruno, and some of the disputants in the back-ground of the Predication; the bishop and the condemned defunct in the fune ral; the apparition of St. Bruno himself in the camp; the female figure in the eleemosinary scene, and what has suffered least of all, the death of St, Bruno, contain the lenst disputable marks of the master's primitive touch. The subject of the whole, abstractly considered, is the personification of sanctity, and it has been represented in the series with a purity which seems to place the artist's heart on a level with that of his hero, The simplicity which tells that tale of resignation and innocence, despises all contrast of more varied composition, though not always with equal success. St. Bruno on his bed, visited by angels, building or viewing the plan for building his rocky retreat; the hunting-scene, and the apotheosis; might probably have admitted happier combinations, As, in the different retouchings, the faces have suffered most, the expression. must be estimated by those that escaped; and from what still remains, we may conclude that it was not inferior to the composition."1

SUGER, the abbé, a celebrated minister under Louis VII. was born at Touri in Beauce, in 1082, and being bred up at St. Denis with the young prince, afterwards Louis le Gros, became his principal guide and counsellor. On the death of Adam, abbot of St. Denis, in 1122, Suger obtained his place, and even in his abbey performed the duties of a minister. He reformed and improved not only his own society, as abbot, but all departments of the state as minister, and obtained so high a reputation, that after his death it was thought sufficient to write on his tomb, "Cy git l'abbé Suger." "Here lies the abbé Suger." He died at St. Denis, in 1152. His life has been written in 3 vols. 12mo, by a Dominican of the name of Gervaise, and some works which he wrote have been inserted by Du Chesne in his historical collections. *

SUICER (JOHN GASPARD), a learned German divine, was born at Zurich June 26, 1619; became professor there of the Greek and Hebrew languages; and died at Heidelberg Nov. 8, 1684, according to Saxius. He was the

1 Argenville, vol. IV.-Pilkington.

2 Moreri.-Dict. Hist.

compiler of a very useful work, called "Lexicon, sive Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus Patrum Græcorum:" the best edition of which is that of Amsterdam, 1728, 2 vols. fol. He had a son, HENRY Suicer, distinguished by some literary productions, who was a professor, first at Zurich, then at Heidelberg, and who died in 1705.1

SUIDAS, author of a celebrated Greek Lexicon, is a personage of whom we are unable to give many particulars. Who he was, or when he lived, are points of great uncertainty; no circumstances of his life having been recorded, either by himself or any other writer. Politian and some others have been of opinion that no such person ever existed; but that Suidas was a real person, appears, not only from his name being found in all the manuscripts of his Lexicon, but from his being often mentioned by Eustathius in his Commentary upon Homer. The learned have differed in the same manner concerning the age of Suidas; some, as Grotius, supposing him to have lived under Constantinus, the son of Leo, emperor of the East, who began to reign in the year 912; while others have brought him even lower than Eustathius, who is known to have lived in 1180. The learned Bentley thinks that as he has referred a point of chronology to the death of the emperor Zimisces, that is, to the year of Christ 975: we may infer that he wrote his Lexicon between that time and the death of the succeeding emperor, which was in 1025. This Lexicon is a compilation of matters from various authors, sometimes made with judgment and diligence, but often from bad copies; and he therefore sometimes gives his reader corrupt and spurious words, instead of those that are pure and genuine. He also mixes things of a different kind, and belonging to different authors, promiscuously; and some of his examples to illustrate the signification of words are very little to the purpose. His Lexicon, however, is a very useful book, and a storehouse of all sorts of erudition. Scholars by profession have all prized it highly; as exhibiting many excellent passages of ancient authors whose works are lost. It is to be ranked with the Bibliotheca of Photius and works of that kind. The "Etymologicon Magnum" has been ascribed to Suidas, but without sufficient authority, though it may have been composed in the same period with the Lexicon.

Moreri.-Dict. Hist.-Saxii Onomast.

Suidas's Lexicon was first published at Milan, 1499, in Greek only it has since been printed with a Latin version but the best edition, indeed the only good one, is that of Kuster, Gr. & Lat. Cambridge, 1705, 3 vols. folio. To this should be added Toup's valuable "Emendationes in Suidam," Oxon. 1790, 4 vols. 8vo. Mr. Taylor had begun an appendix to Suidas, four sheets only of which were printed off at the time of his death, April 4, 1766. It had the following title, "Appendix notarum in Suida Lexicon, ad paginas edit. Cantab. 1705, adcommodatarum ;* colligente, qui et suas etiam aliquammultas adjecit, Joanne Taylor." This, we believe, was never finished.'

SULLY (MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, duke of), one of the most able and honest ministers that France ever had, was descended from an ancient and illustrious house, and born in 1559 at Rosni, descended from a younger branch of the ancient counts of Flanders. His father was the baron de Rosni. He was bred in the opinions and doctrine of the reformed religion, and continued to the end of his life constant in the profession of it, which seems to have fitted him for the important services to which Providence had designed him. The queen of Navarre, after the death of her husband Antony de Bourbon, returned to Bearn, where she openly professed Calvinism. She sent for her son Henry from the court of France to Pau in 1556, and put him under a preceptor, who trained him up in the Protestant religion. She declared herself the protectress of the Protestants in 1566; and went to Rochelle, where she devoted her son to the defence of the Reformed religion. In that quality Henry, then prince of Bearn, was declared chief of the party; and followed the army from that time to the peace, which was signed at St. Germains, August 11, 1570. He then returned to Bearn, and made use of the quiet that was given him, to visit his estates and his government of Guyenne, after which he went and settled in Rochelle, with his mother.

The advantages granted to the Protestants by the peace. of St. Germains, raised a suspicion in the breasts of their leaders, that the court of France was acting treacherously, and that in reality nothing else was intended by the peace, than to prepare for the most dismal tragedy that ever was

Moreri. Saxii Onomast.-Berrington's Middle Ages.-Clarke's Bibliographical Dictionary.