FABRICIUS, George (1516-1571), poet, historian, and archaeologist, was born at Chemnitz in Upper Saxony, on the 24th April 1516. He completed his studies at Freiberg and Leipsic. Travelling into Italy with one of his pupils, he made an exhaustive study of the antiquities of Rome. The result was the second work named below, in which the correspondence between every discoverable relic of the old city and the references and descriptions which lay scattered throughout ancient literature was traced with the minutest detail. Even learned Germans suspected that the work was in reality an ancient performance. Having returned to Germany in 1553, he was appointed director of the college of Meissen, where he died on the 13th July 1571. In his sacred poems, which obtained for him considerable distinction, he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities.
The following list includes the principal works which he published, either as author or as editor :—(1) Terentii Afri Comoedioe sex cum castigatione duplid Joannis Rivii et G. Fabridi, Strasburg, 1548, 8vo; (2) Roma, sive Liber utilissimus de veteris Romce situ, regionibus, viis, templis, aliisque cedifidis, Basel, 1550, 8vo; (3) Virgilii Opera cum commentariis Servii et T. G. Donati, Basel, 1551, fol.; (4) Virgilii Opera a Fabrieio castigata, Leipsic, 1551, 1591, 8vo; (5) Poematum Sacrorum libri quindecim, Basel, 1560, 16mo; (6) Poematum veterum ccclesiasticorum opera Christiana et opcrurn reliquiae ac fragmenta, 1562, 4to; (7) De Re Poetica libri septem, 1566, 8vo; (8) Rerum Misnicarum libri septem, 1569, 4to; (9) Originum illustrissimoe stirpis Saxonicce libri septem, 1597, fol.; (10) Rerum Germanice magnoe et Saxonicce universce memorabilium volumina duo, Leipsic, 1609, fol. A life of George Fabricius was published in 1839, at Leipsic, by Professor C. G. Baumgarten Crusius. In 1845 the same biographer issued an edition of Fabricius’s Epistolce ad Wolf. Meuerum et alios ceqtiales, prefixed to which there is also a short sketch De Vita Ge. Fabricii et de gente Fabridorum.
FABRICIUS, Hieronymus (1537-1619), a celebrated Italian anatomist and surgeon, was surnamed Acquapendente from the episcopal city of that name, where he was born in 1537. At Padua, after a course of philosophy, he studied medicine under Fallopius, whose successor as teacher of anatomy and surgery he became in 1562. From the senators of Venice he received numerous honours, and an anatomical theatre was built by them for his accommodation. He died May 21, 1619.
The collective works of Fabricius were printed by Bohn under the title of Opera omnia Anatomica et Physiologica, Leipsic, 1687. The Leyden edition, published by Albinus in 1738, folio, is preferred to that of Bohn, as containing a life of the author and the prefaces of his treatises. See Anatomy, vol. i., p. 809, and Surgery.
FABRICIUS, Joannes Albertus (1668-1736), one of the most learned, laborious, and useful of bibliographers, was born at Leipsic, November 11, 1668. His father, Werner Fabricius, director of music in the church of St Paul at Leipsic, was the author of several works, particularly Delicice Harmonica?, published in 1657. Joannes Albertus himself commenced his studies under his father, who on his deathbed recommended him to the care of Valentine Alberti. He studied under Wenceslas Buhl and J. S. Herrichen, and afterwards at Quedlinburg under Samuel Schmidt It was in Schmidt’s library, as he afterwards said, that he found the two works, Barthuiss’s Adversaria and Morhoffs Polyhistor, which suggested to him the idea of his Bibliothecae, the kind of work for which he stands pre-eminent among scholars. Having returned to Leipsic in 1686, he was the same year admitted bachelor in philosophy; and in the beginning of 1688 he took the degree of master in the same faculty, shortly after which he published his first work, Scriptorum recentium decas, an attack on ten writers of the day, Thomasius among them. His Decas Decadum, sive plagiarorum et pseudonymorum centuria, published in the following year, is the only one of his works to which ho signs the name Faber. He then applied himself to the study of medicine, which, however, he relinquished for that of theology; and having gone to Hamburg in 1693, he proposed to travel abroad, when the unexpected tidings that the expense of his education had absorbed his whole patrimony, and even left him in debt to his trustee, forced him to abandon his project. He therefore remained at Hamburg, where J. F. Mayer employed him in the capacity of librarian. In 1696 he accompanied his patron to Sweden; and, on his return to Hamburg, not long afterwards, he competed for the chair of logic and philosophy. The suffrages being equally divided between Fabricius and Sebastian Edzardi, one of his opponents, the appointment was decided by lot in favour of Edzardi; but in 1699 Fabricius succeeded Vincent Placciu3 in the chair of rhetoric and ethics, after which he took the degree of doctor in theology at Kiel. In 1701 J. F. Mayer, who had established himself at Greifswald, caused the chair of theology in that city co be offered to Fabricius; but he refused it on account of his health. But in 1708 he accepted the professorship of theology, logic, and metaphysics, and was preparing to enter on his new office, when the senate of Hamburg induced him to remain, by adding to his professorship the office of rector of the school of St John, then held by his father-in-law Schultz. Schultz died in 1709, but Fabricius retained the rectorship two years longer. In 1719 the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel made him so advantageous an offer that he was on the point of accepting it; but this time also the magistrates, by a seasonable increase of salary, prevailed on him to remain with them. An attempt was subsequently made to draw him to Wittenberg; but he refused to listen to the proposals made to him, and remained at Hamburg, where he died April 30, 1736.
Niceron and Reimar give a list of 128 books by Fabricius, but very many of them were only works which he had edited. One of the most famed and laborious of his works is the Bibliotheca Latina, sive notitia auctorum veterum Latinorum quorumeunque scripta ad nos pervenerunt, Hamburg, 1697, 8vo, a work which was republished in an improved and amended form by J. A. Ernesti, Leipsic, 1773, in three vols. 8vo. The divisions of the compilation are—the writers to the age of Tiberius; thence to that of the Antonines; and thirdly, to the decay of the language; while a fourth gives fragments from old authors, and chapters on early Christian literature. His chef d'oeuvre is the Bibliotheca Grceca, sive notitia scriptorum veterum Graxorum quorumeunque monumenta integra aut fragmenta edita extant, turn plcrorumque e manuscript, ac deperditis, Hamburg, 1705-1728, in 14 vols. 4to, a work which has justly been denominated maximus antiques eruditionis thesaurus. It was rearranged by Harles, at Hamburg, in 1790. Its divisions are marked off by Homer, Plato, Christ, Constantine, and the capture of Constantinople in 1453, while a sixth section is devoted to canon law, jurisprudence, and medicine. Of his remaining works we may mention— Bibliotheca Antiquaria, sive introductio in notitiam scriptorum qui antiquitates Hebraicas, Grcecas, Romanos, et Christianas scriptis illustrarunt, 1713 and 1726, 4to; Centifolium Lutheranum, sive notitia litcraria scriptorum omnis generis de B. D. Luthero, 1728 and 1730, 8vo; as also Salutaris lux cvangclii toti orbi per divinam gratiam exoriens, sive notitia historico-chronologica, litteraria, ac geographica propagatorum per orbcm totum Christianorum Sacrorum, 1731, 4to; and Hydro-theology, in German, 1734, 4to. Among the principal works edited by Fabricius may be named Joannis Mabillonii iter Germanicum, et joannis Launoii de Scholis cclebribus a Carolo Magno et post Carolum Magnum in occidcnte instauratis liber, 1717, 8vo.
The details of the life of Fabricius are to be found in De Vita et Scriptis J. A. Fabricii Commentarius, by his son-in-law, H. S. Reimar, published at Hamburg, 1757. This is the work whence Niceron, Chauffepie, and other writers on the subject have borrowed their materials. Niceron’s work is entitled Mcmoires pour servir a I’histoire des hommes illustrcs dans la republique des lettres, avec un catalogue raisonne de leurs ouvrages, Paris, 1729-1745.
FABRICIUS, Johann Christian (1745-1808), one of the chief founders of scientific entomology, was born at Tondern in Schleswig, January 7, 1745. His father was a physician of enlightened views, who encouraged his son’s inclination to study the natural sciences, and, after educating him at Altona and Copenhagen, sent him to Upsala, where, attending the lectures of the great Linnaeus, his future destiny, as he himself says, appears to have been laid. Of his career, apart from entomology, it may be briefly recorded that he devoted his attention professionally to political economy, and, after lecturing on that subject in 1769, was appointed a few years later professor of natural history, economy, and finance at Kiel, in which capacity he wrote various works, chiefly referring to Denmark, and of no special interest. He also published a few other works on general and natural history, botany, and travel (of which the Heise nach Norwegen, 1779, deserves separate mention),— for, although his professional stipend was small, he extended his personal researches into every town in northern and central Europe where a natural history museum was to be found. In 1771 he married the daughter of Counsellor Ambrosius of Flensborg, by whom he had two sons and one daughter; and he died on 3d March 1808.
It is, however, purely as an entomologist that the memory of Fabricius survives, aided perhaps in this country by the fact that he visited Great Britain many times after 1767, exhibiting a marked partiality for English naturalists, amongst whom were Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Drury, Hunter, Francillon, Pennant, and Greville. Sir Joseph Banks’s specimens, indeed, formerly in the collection of the Linnean Society, and now separately treasured in the British Museum, still retain the labels written by Fabricius, and are often consulted by entomologists as evidence of his views. For many years his great scientific reputation rested upon the system of classification, which (it can scarcely be said in opposition to that of bis revered master Linnaeus) he founded upon the structure of the mouth-organs, instead of the wings. No scheme, however, based upon solitary characters suffices any longer for the comprehension of the vast number of forms now known to science; and, although the value of the cibarian organs is still fully recognized, the system exclusively founded on them has long since passed into disuse. But the name of Fabricius is indelibly stamped upon the science, as he had a keen eye for specific differences, and possessed the art of describing in a marvellously terse and accurate manner; and, from his being recognized as a master, added to the opportunities afforded during his many journeys to European capitals, great numbers of insects passed through his hands for description and arrangement according to his system, at a time when almost everything was new, owing to paucity of workers.
A complete list of his entomological publications (31) will be found in Hagen’s Bibliotheca Entomologies; the following are the chief:— Systema Entomologies, 1775; Genera Insectorum, 1776; Philosophia Entomologica, 1T13; Species insectorum, 1781; Man tissa Insectorum, 1787; Entomologia Systematica, 1792-1794, with a supplement, 1798; Systema Eleutheratorum (1801), Rhyn- gotorum (1803), Piezatorum (1804), and Antliatorum (1805). Full particulars of his life will be found, with a portrait, in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, vol. iv. (1845), pp. i.-xvi., where his autobiography is translated from the Danish by the Rev. F. W. Hope, then president of the society. There is also a good account by Professor Westwood, in the article “Insecta,” British Cyclopoedia, p. 881. Baron Walckenaer’s verbose life in the Biographic Universelle, like Latreille’s “Notice Biographique” in the Annales du MusAum d'Histoire Naturelie, ii. 393 (1808), contains important errors. L ,
