authors, both Greek and Roman. Thenceforward he withdrew from active life and devoted himself to literature. He seems to have maintained to a certain degree an attitude of independence, if not of opposition, towards Augustus. He died in his villa at Tusculum, regretted and esteemed by all.

Pollio was a distinguished orator; his speeches showed ingenuity and care, but were marred by an affected archaism (Quintilian, Inst. x. 1, 113; Seneca, Ep. 100). He wrote tragedies also, which Virgil (Ecl. viii. 10) declared to be worthy of Sophocles, and a prose history of the civil wars of his time from the first triumvirate (60) down to the death of Cicero (43) or later. This history, in the composition of which Pollio received assistance from the grammarian Ateius Praetextatus, was used as an authority by Plutarch and Appian (Horace, Odes, ii. 1; Tacitus, Annals, iv. 34). As a literary critic Pollio was very severe. He censured Sallust (Suetonius, Gram. 10) and Cicero (Quintilian, Inst. xii. 1, 22) and professed to detect in Livy's style certain provincialisms of his native Padua (Quintilian, i. 5, 56, viii. 1, 3); he attacked the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, accusing their author of carelessness and credulity, if not of deliberate falsification (Suet. Caesar, 56). Pollio was the first Roman author who recited his writings to an audience of his friends, a practice which afterwards became common at Rome. The theory that Pollio was the author of the Bellum africanum, one of the supplements to Caesar's Commentarii, has met with little support. All his writings are lost except a few fragments of his speeches (H. Meyer, Orat. rom. frag., 1842), and three letters addressed to Cicero (Ad. Fam. x. 31-33).

See Plutarch, Caesar, Pompey; Vell. Pat. ii. 36, 63, 73, 76; Florus iv. 12, 11; Dio Cassius xlv. 10, xlviii. 15; Appian, Bell. civ.; V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit (1891), i.; P. Groebe, in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie (1896), ii. pt. 2: Teuffel-Schwaben, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), § 221; M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, pt. 2, p. 20 (2nd ed., 1899); Cicero, Letters, ed. Tyrrell and Purser, vi. introd. p. 80.

PÖLLNITZ, KARL LUDWIG, FREIHERR VON (1692-1775), German adventurer and writer, was born at Issum on the 25th of February 1692. His father, Wilhelm Ludwig von Pöllnitz (d. 1693), was in the military service of the elector of Brandenburg, and much of his son's youth was passed at the electoral court in Berlin. He was a man of restless and adventurous disposition, unscrupulous even for the age in which he lived, visited many of the European courts, and served as a soldier in Austria, Italy and Spain. Returning to Berlin in 1735 he obtained a position in the household of King Frederick William I. and afterwards in that of Frederick the Great, with whom he appears to have been a great favourite; and he died in Berlin on the 23rd of June 1775

Pöllnitz's Mémoires (Liége, 1734), which were translated into German (Frankfort, 1735), give interesting glimpses of his life and the people whom he met, but they are very untrustworthy. He also wrote Nouveaux mémoires (Amsterdam, 1737); État abrégé de la cour de Saxe sous le règne d'Auguste III. (Frankfort, 1734; Ger. trans., Breslau, 1736); and Mémoires pour servit à l'histoire des quatres derniers souverains de la maison de Brandenbourg, published by F. L. Brunn (Berlin, 1791; Ger. trans., Berlin, 1791). Perhaps his most popular works are La Saxe galante (Amsterdam, 1734), an account of the private life of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland; and Histoire secrète de la duchesse d'Hanovre, épouse de Georges I. (London, 1732). There is an English translation of the Mémoires (London, 1738-1739). See P. von Pöllnitz, Stammtafeln der Familie von Pollnitz (Berlin, 1894); and J. G. Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik, pt. iv. (Leipzig, 1870).

and had eight sons and ten daughters, his numerous descendants being prominent in many fields. The chief baron's eldest son, Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Bart. (1815-1888), became a master of the Supreme Court (1846) and queen's remembrancer (1874), his eldest son, Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Bart. (b. 1845), being the well-known jurist and legal historian, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Corpus professor of jurisprudence at Oxford (1883-1903), and the second son, Walter Herries Pollock (b. 1850), being a well-known author and editor of the Saturday Review from 1883 to 1894. The chief baron's third son, George Frederick Pollock (b. 1821), became a master of the Supreme remembrancer in 1886; among his sons were Dr W. Rivers Court in 1851, and succeeded his brother as queen's (king's) Pollock (1859-1909), Ernest Murry Pollock, K.C. (b. 1861), and the Rt. Rev. Bertram Pollock (b. 1863), bishop of Norwich, and previously head master of Wellington College from 1893 till 1910. The chief baron's fourth son, Sir Charles Edward Pollock (1823-1897), had a successful career at the bar and in 1873 became a judge, being the last survivor of the old barons of the exchequer; he was thrice married and had issue by each wife.

POLLOK, ROBERT (1798–1827), Scottish poet, son of a small farmer, was born at North Moorhouse, Renfrewshire, on the 19th of October 1798. He was trained as a cabinet-maker and afterwards worked on his father's farm, but, having prepared himself for the university, he took his degree at Glasgow, and studied for the ministry of the United Secession Church. He published Tales of the Covenanters while he was a divinity student, and planned and completed a strongly Calvinistic poem on the spiritual life and destiny of man. This was the Course of Time (1827), which passed through many editions and became a favourite in serious households in Scotland. It was written in blank verse, in ten books, in the poetic diction of the 18th century, but with abundance of enthusiasm, impassioned elevation of feeling and copious force of words and images. The poem at once became popular, but within six months of its publication, on the 18th of September 1827, its author died of consumption. POLLOKSHAWS, a police burgh and burgh of barony of Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the White Cart, now virtually a suburb of Glasgow, with which it is connected by electric tramway and the Glasgow & South-Western and Caledonian railways. Pop. (1901), 11,183. It is named from the shaws or woods (and is locally styled "the Shaws ") and the lands of Pollok, which have been held by the Maxwells since the 13th century. The family is now called Stirling-Maxwell, the estate and baronetcy having devolved in 1865 upon Sir William Stirling of Keir, who then assumed the surname of Maxwell. Pollok House adjoins the town on the west. The staple industries are cotton-spinning and weaving, silk-weaving, dyeing, bleaching, calico-printing and the manufacture of chenille and tapestry, besides paper mills, potteries and large engineering works. Pollokshaws was created a burgh of barony in 1813, and is governed by a council and provost. About 2 m. southwest is the thriving town of Thornliebank (pop. 2452), which owes its existence to the cotton-works established towards the end of the 18th century.

of £160,000 as was expected, but a poll-tax levied in 1641 resulted in a revenue of about £400,600. During the reign of

Charles II. money was obtained in this way on several occasions, although in 1676-1677 especially there was a good deal of resentment against the tax. For some years after 1688 polltaxes were a favourite means of raising money for the prosecution of the war with France. Sometimes a single payment was asked for the year; at other times quarterly payments were required. The poll-tax of 1697 included a weekly tax of one penny from all persons not receiving alms. In 1698 a quarterly poll-tax produced £321,397. Nothing was required from the poor, and those who were liable may be divided roughly into three classes. Persons worth less than £300 paid one shilling; those worth £300, including the gentry and the professional classes, paid twenty shillings; while tradesmen and shopkeepers paid ten shillings. Non-jurors were charged double these rates. Like previous poll-taxes, the tax of 1698 did not produce as much as was anticipated, and it was the last of its kind in England.

Many of the states of the United States of America raise money by levying poll-taxes, or, as they are usually called, capitation taxes, the payment of this tax being a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the suffrage.

See S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England (1888). vol. iii.; and W. Stubbs, Constitutional History (1896), vol. ii.

POLLUX, JULIUS, of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek grammarian and sophist of the 2nd century A.D. He taught at Athens, where, according to Philostratus (Vit. Soph.), he was appointed to the professorship of rhetoric by the emperor Commodus on account of his melodious voice. Suïdas gives a list of his rhetorical works, none of which has survived. Philostratus recognizes his natural abilities, but speaks of his rhetoric in very moderate terms. Pollux is probably the person attacked by Lucian in the Lexiphanes and Teacher of Rhetoricians. In the Teacher of Rhetoricians Lucian satirizes a worthless and ignorant person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery; the Lexiphanes, a satire upon the use of obscure and obsolete words, may conceivably have been directed against Pollux as the author of the Onomasticon. This work, which we still possess, is a Greek dictionary in ten books, each dedicated to Commodus, and arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. Though mainly a dictionary of synonyms and phrases, chiefly intended to furnish the reader with the Attic names for individual things, it supplies much rare and valuable information on many points of classical antiquity. It also contains numerous fragments of writers now lost. The chief authorities used were the lexicological works of Didymus, Tryphon, and Pamphilus; in the second book the extant treatise of Rufus of Ephesus On the Nomes of the Parts of the Human Body was specially consulted.

The chief editions of the Onomasticon are those of W. Dindorf (1824), with the notes of previous commentators, I. Bekker (1846), containing the Greek text only, and Bethe (1900). There are monographs on special portions of the vocabulary; by E. Rohde (on the theatrical terms, 1870), and F. von Stojentin (on constitutional antiquities, 1875).

POLLUX, or POLLUCITE, a rare mineral, consisting of hydrous cacsium and aluminium silicate, H2Cs,Al(SiO),. Caesium oxide (CO) is present to the extent of 30-36 %, the amount varying somewhat owing to partial replacement by other alkalis, chiefly sodium. The mineral crystallizes in the cubic system. It is colourless and transparent, and has a vitreous lustre. There is no distinct cleavage and the fracture is conchoidal. The hardness is 64 and the specific gravity 2.90. It occurs sparingly, together with the mineral "castor" (see PETALITE), in cavities in the granite of the island of Elba, and with beryl in pegmatite veins at Rumford and Hebron in Maine. POLO, GASPAR GIL (1530-1591), Spanish novelist and poet, was born at Valencia about 1530. He is often confused with Gil Polo, professor of Greek at Valencia University between 1566 and 1573; but this professor was not named Gaspar. He is also confused with his own son, Gaspar Gil Polo, the author of De origine el progressu juris romani (1615) and other legal treatises, who pleaded before the Cortes as late as 1626. A notary by profession, Polo was attached to the treasury

commission which visited Valencia in 1571, became coadjutor to the chief accountant in 1572, went on a special mission to Barcelona in 1580, and died there in 1591. Timoneda, in the Sarao de amor (1561), alludes to him as a poet of repute; but of his miscellaneous verses only two conventional, eulogistic sonnets and a song survive. Polo finds a place in the history of the novel as the author of La Diana enamorada, a continuation of Montemayor's Diana, and perhaps the most successful continuation ever written by another hand. Cervantes, punning on the writer's name, recommended that "the Diana enamorada should be guarded as carefully as though it were by Apollo himself "; the hyperbole is not wholly, nor even mainly, ironical. The book is one of the most agreeable of Spanish pastorals; interesting in incident, written in fluent prose, and embellished with melodious poems, it was constantly reprinted, was imitated by Cervantes in the Canto de Caliope, and was translated into English, French, German and Latin. The English version of Bartholomew Young, published in 1598 but current in manuscript fifteen years earlier, is said to have suggested the Felismena episode in the Two Gentlemen of Verona; the Latin version of formance of uncommon merit as well as a bibliographical curiosity. Caspar Barth, entitled Erotodidascalus (Hanover, 1625), is a per

POLO, MARCO (c. 1254-1324), the Venetian, greatest of medieval travellers. Venetian genealogies and traditions of uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebenico in Dalmatia, and before the end of the 11th century one Domenico Polo is found in the great council of the republic (1094). But the ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather. Andrea Polo of S. Felice was the father of three sons, Marco, Nicolo and Maffeo, of whom the second was the father of the subject of this article. They were presumably "noble," i.e. belonging to the families who had seats in the great council, and were enrolled in the Libro d' Oro; for we know that Marco the traveller is officially so styled (nobilis vir). The three brothers were engaged in commerce; the elder Marco, resident apparently in Constantinople and in the Crimea (especially at Sudak), suggests, by his celebrated will, a long business partnership with Nicolo and Maffeo.

About 1260, and even perhaps as early as 1250, we find Nicolo and Maffeo at Constantinople. Nicolo was married and had left his wife there. The two brothers went on a speculation to the Crimea, whence a succession of chances and openings carried them to the court of Barka Khan at Sarai, further north up to Bolghar (Kazan), and eventually across the steppes to Bokhara. Here they fell in with certain envoys who had been on a mission from the great Khan Kublai to his brother Hulagu in Persia, and by them were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay in their company. Under the heading CHINA the circumstances are noticed which in the last half of the 13th century and first half of the 14th threw Asia open to Western travellers to a degree unknown before and since-until the 19th century. Thus began the medieval period of intercourse between China and catholic Europe. Kublai, when the Polos reached his court, was either at Cambaluc (Khanbaligh, the Khan's city), i.e. Peking, which he had just rebuilt, or at his summer scat at Shangtu in the country north of the Great Wall: It was the first time that the khan, a man full of energy and intelligence, had fallen in with European gentlemen. He was delighted with the Venetian brothers, listened eagerly to all they had to tell of the Latin world, and decided to send them back as his envoys to the pope, with letters requesting the despatch of a large body of educated men to instruct his people in. Christianity and the liberal arts. With Kublai, as with his predecessors, religion was chiefly a political engine. Kublai, the first of his house to rise above the essential barbarism of the Mongols, had perhaps discerned that the Christian Church could afford the aid he desired in taming his countrymen. It was only when Rome had failed to meet his advance that he fell back upon Buddhism as his chief civilizing instrument.

The brothers arrived at Acre in April 1269. They learned that Clement IV. had died the year before, and no new pope had yet been chosen. So they took counsel with an eminent churchman, Tedaldo, archdeacon of Liége and papal legate for the

whole realm of Egypt, and, being advised by him to wait patiently, went home to Venice, where they found that Nicolo's wife was dead, but had left a son Marco, now fifteen. The papalinterregnum was the longest that had been known, at least since the dark ages. After the Polos had spent two years at home there was still no pope, and the brothers resolved on starting again for the East, taking young Marco with them. At Acre they again saw Tedaldo, and were furnished by him with letters to authenticate the causes that had hindered their mission. They had not yet left Lajazzo, Layas, or Ayas on the Cilician coast (then one of the chief points for the arrival and departure of the land trade of Asia), when they heard that Tedaldo had been elected pope. They hastened back to Acre, and at last were able to execute Kublai's mission, and to obtain a papal reply. But, instead of the hundred teachers asked for by the Great Khan, the new pope (styled Gregory X.) could supply but two Dominicans; and these lost heart and turned back, when they had barely taken the first step of their journey.

The second start from Acre must have taken place about November 1271; and from a consideration of the indications and succession of chapters in Polo's book, it would seem that the party proceeded from Lajazzo to Sivas and Tabriz, and thence by Yezd and Kirman down to Hormuz (Hurmuz) at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, with the purpose of going on to China by sea; but that, abandoning their naval plans (perhaps from fear of the flimsy vessels employed on this navigation from the Gulf eastwards), they returned northward through Persia. Traversing Kirman and Khorasan they went on to Balkh and Badakshan, in which last country young Marco recovered from illness. In a passage touching on the climate of the Badakshan hills, Marco breaks into an enthusiasm which he rarely betrays, but which is easily understood by those who have known what it is, with fever in the blood, to escape to the exhilarating mountain air and fragrant pine-groves. They then ascended the upper Oxus through Wakhan to the plateau of Pamir (a name first heard in Marco's book). These regions were hardly described again by any European traveller (save Benedict Goes) till the expedition in 1838 of Lieut. John Wood of the Indian navy, whose narrative abounds in incidental illustration of Marco Polo. Crossing the Pamir the travellers descended upon Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan (Khutan). These are regions which remained almost absolutely closed to our knowledge till after 1860, when the temporary overthrow of the Chinese power, and the enterprise of British, Russian and other explorers, again made them known.

From Khotan the Polos passed on to the vicinity of Lop-Nor, reached for the first time since Polo's journey by Prjevalsky in 1871. Thence the great desert of Gobi was crossed to Tangut, as the region at the extreme north-west of China, both within and without the Wall, was then called.

In his account of the Gobi, or desert of Lop, as he calls it, Polo gives some description of the terrors and superstitions of the waste, a description which strikingly reproduces that of the Chinese pilgrim Suan T'sang, in passing the same desert in the contrary direction six hundred years before.

and into northern Burma (Mien). Marco, during his stay at court, had observed the Khan's delight in hearing of strange countries, of their manners, marvels, and oddities, and had heard his frank expressions of disgust at the stupidity of envoys and commissioners who could tell of nothing but their official business. He took care to store his memory or his note-book with curious facts likely to interest Kublai, which, on his return to court, he related. This south-western journey led him through a country which till about 1860 was almost a terra incognita-though since the middle of the 19th century we have learned much regarding it through the journeys of Cooper, Garnier, Richthofen, Gill, Baber and others. In this region there existed and still exists in the deep valleys of the great rivers, and in the alpine regions which border them, a vast ethnological garden, as it were, of tribes of various origin, and in every stage of semi-civilization or barbarism; these afforded many strange products and eccentric traits to entertain Kublai. Marco rose rapidly in favour and was often employed on distant missions as well as in domestic administration; but we gather few details of his employment. He held for three years the government of the great city of Yangchow; on another occasion he seems to have visited Kangchow, the capital of Tangut, just within the Great Wall, and perhaps Karakorum on the north of the Gobi, the former residence of the Great Khans: again we find him in Ciampa, or southern Cochin-China; and perhaps, once more, on a separate mission to the southern states of India. We are not informed whether his father and uncle shared in such employments, though they are mentioned as having rendered material service to the Khan, in forwarding the capture of Siang-yang (on the Han river) during the war against southern China, by the construction of powerful artillery engines-a story, however, perplexed by chronological difficulties.

All the Polos were gathering wealth which they longed to carry back to their home, and after their exile they began to dread what might follow Kublai's death. The Khan, however, was deaf to suggestions of departure and the opportunity only came by chance.

Arghun, khan of Persia, the grandson of Kublai's brother Hulagu, lost in 1286 his favourite wife, called by Polo Balgana (i.c. Bulughan or " Sable "). Her dying injunction was that her place should be filled only by a lady of her own Mongol tribe. Ambassadors were despatched to the court of Peking to obtain such a bride. The message was courteously received, and the choice fell on the lady Cocacin (Kukachin), a maiden of seventeen. The overland road from Peking to Tabriz was then imperilled by war, so Arghun's envoys proposed to return by sea. Having made acquaintance with the Venetians, and eager to profit by their experience, especially by that of Marco, who had just returned from a mission to the Indies, they begged the Khan to send the Franks in their company. He consented with reluctance, but fitted out the party nobly for the voyage, charging them with friendly messages to the potentates of Christendom, including the pope, and the kings of France, Spain and England. They sailed from Zaiton or Amoy Harbour in Fukien (a town corresponding either to the modern Changchow or less probably to Tswanchow or Chinchew), then one of the chief Chinese havens for foreign trade, in the beginning of 1292. The voyage involved long detention on the coast of Sumatra, and in south India, and two years or more passed before they arrived in

suite perished by the way; but the three Venetians survived all perils, and so did the young lady, who had come to look on them with filial regard. Arghun Khan had died even before they quitted China; his brother reigned in his stead; and his son Ghazan succeeded to the lady's hand. The Polos went on (apparently by Tabriz, Trebizond, Constantinople and Negropont) to Venice, which they seem to have reached about the end of 1295.

The first biographer of Marco Polo was the famous geographical collector John Baptist Ramusio, who wrote more than two centuries after the traveller's death. Facts and dates