and in a manner neutrals, they had neither good heart to go forward, nor good liking to stand still, nor good assurance to run away.

Hayward. The drum and trumpet, by their several sounds, serve for many kind of advertisements; and bells serve to proclaim a scarefire, and in some places water-breaches. Holder. A scarecrow set to frighten fools away. Dryden. Let wanton wives by death be scar'd: But, to my comfort, I'm prepar'd.

4

Prior.

One great reason why men's good purposes so of ten fail, is, that when they are devout, or scared, they then in the general resolve to live religiously. Calamy's Sermons. SCARF, n. s. & v. a. Fr. escharfe. Any SCARF'SKIN. thing that hangs loose upon the shoulders or dress: the epidermis.

The matrons flung their gloves,

Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs, Upon him as he passed. Shakspeare. Coriolanus. Will you wear the garland about your neck, or under your arm like a lieutenant's scarf?

SCARLET (see DYEING), in painting in water colors, minium mixed with a little vermilion produces a good scarlet; but if a flower in a print is to be painted a scarlet color, the lights as well as the shades should be covered with minium, and the shaded parts finished with carmine, which will produce an admirable scarlet.

SCARLET is a beautiful bright red color given to cloth, either by a preparation of kermes, or more completely by the American cochineal. Professor Beckmann, in the second volume of his History of Inventions, has drawn the following conclusions:-1. That scarlet, or the kermes dye, was known in the east in the earliest ages, before Moses, and was a discovery of the Phenicians in Palestine. 2. Tola was the ancient Phoenician name used by the Hebrews, and even by the Syrians; for it is employed by the Syrian translator, Isaiah, chap. i. ver. 18. Among the Jews, after their captivity, the Aramaan word zehorti was more common. 3. The Arabs received the name kermes, with the dye, from Armenia and Persia, where it was indigenous, and had been long known; and that name banished the old name in the east, as the name scarlet has in the west. About 1643 a Fleming named Kepler established the first dye-house for scarlet in England, at the village of Bow, near London; and on that account the color was called, at first, by the English, the Bow dye. In 1667 another king Charles II. with the promise of a large saFleming, named Brewer, invited to England by lary, brought this art to great perfection. There are three kinds of scarlet: one, called Venetian

scarlet, dyed with hermes; another, dyed with cochineal; and the third with gum lac. The first of these is chiefly used for tapestry, and is remarkably permanent.

SCARLET FEVER. See Medicine.

SCAR'MAGE, or For skirmish. Spen-
SGAR MOGE, n. s. S ser.

Another war, and other weapons, I
Such cruel game my scarmages disarms;

Do love, when Love does give his sweet alarms.
Spenser.

SCARPANTO, or Koje, the ancient Carpathos, an island in the Mediterranean, between Candia and Rhodes. It is for the most part rocky and mountainous, but contains several good harbours, iron mines, and quarries of marble. Long. 26° 50′ E., lat. 35° 44′ N.

SCARRON (Paul), a famous French burlesque writer, was the son of a counsellor in parliament.

and was born in Paris about the end of 1610, or beginning of 1611. His father marrying a second wife, he was compelled to assume the ecclesiastical habit. At the age of twenty-four he visited Italy, and after his return to Paris continued a life of reckless dissipation. But in 1638 while attending the carnival at Mens, of which place he was a canon, having dressed himself as a savage, his singular appearance ex cited the curiosity of the children of the town. They followed him in multitudes, and he was obliged to take shelter in a marsh, and this wet and cold situation produced a numbness which totally deprived him of the use of his limbs, which he never again recovered. He took up his residence in Paris, and the loss of his health was followed by the loss of his fortune, in a lawsuit with his step-mother; and mademoiselle de Hautefort, compassionating his misfortunes, procured for him an audience of the queen. The poet requested to have the title of valetudinarian to her majesty. The queen smiled, and Scarron considered the smile as the commission to his new office. Cardinal Mazarine gave him a pension of 500 crowns; but that minister having received disdainfully the dedication of his Typhon, the poet immediately wrote a Mazarinade, and the pension was withdrawn. He then attached himself to the prince of Condé, and celebrated his victories. He at length formed the extraordinary resolution of marrying, and was accordingly, in 1651, married to madame d'Aubigne (afterwards the celebrated madame de Maintenon), then only sixteen years of age. At that time,' says Voltaire, it was considered as a great acquisition for her to gain for a husband a man who was disfigured by nature, and very little enriched by fortune.' She restrained by her modesty his indecent buffooneries, and the literary men who had formerly resorted to his house again frequented it. But he lived with so little economy that his income was soon reduced to a small annuity, and what he styled his marquisate of Quinet, i. e. the profits of his publications, which were printed by one Quinet. Though Scarron wrote comedies, he had not patience to study the rules of dramatic poetry. It was the fashion of the times to pillage the Spanish writers. Scarron was acquainted with that language, and he found it easier to use materials already prepared, than to invent new subjects. The great suc

cess of his Jodelet Maitre was a great allurement

to him. The comedians who acted it requested more of his productions. They were written with little toil, and procured him large sums. Christina, queen of Sweden, when she visited Paris, was anxious to see Scarron. I permit you,' said she to Scarron, to fall in love with me. The queen of France has made you her valetudinarian, and I create you my Roland.' Scarron did not long enjoy that title; as he died on the 14th of October, 1660, aged fifty-one. His works have been collected and published by Bruzen de la Martiniere, in 10 vols. 12mo., 1737. These are, 1. The Eneid travestied, in eight books. 2. Typhon, or the Gigantomachia. 3. Many comedies; as Jodelet, or the Master Valet; Jodelet cuffed; Don Japhet d'Armenie; The Scholar of Salamanca. He also wrote other

pieces in verse. 4. His Comic Romance, in prose, merits attention. It is written with much humor and purity of style. 5. Spanish Novels translated into French. 6. A volume of Letters. 7. Poems; consisting of Songs, Epistles, Stanzas, Odes, and Epigrams. Scarron can raise a laugh on the most serious subjects; but his sallies are rather those of a buffoon than the effusions of ingenuity and taste. He is continually falling into the mean and the obscene.

SCATH, v. a. & n. s. 7 Sax. rceaðan, rcaSCATH'FUL, adj. San. To waste; damage; destroy: the damage or waste done: the adjective corresponding. Both the verb and noun are now obsolete.

The ear that budded fair is burnt and blasted, And all my hoped gain is turned to scath. Spenser. He bore a spiteful mind against king Edward, doing him all the scath that he could, and annoying his

territories.

Id.

They placed them in Rhodes, where daily doing great scath to the Turk, the great warrior Soliman, the island from them. with a mighty army, so overlaid them, that he won Knolles.

A bawbling vessel was he captain of, For shallow draught, and bulk unprizable, With which such scathful grapple did he make, That very envy, and the tongue of loss, Cried fame and honour on him. Shakspeare. Still preserved from danger, harm, and scath, By many a sea and many an unknown shore.

As when Heaven's fire

Fairfax.

Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare Stands on the blasted heath. Milton's Paradise Lost. SCATTER. v. a. Sax. rcareɲan; Belg. SCATTERINGLY, adv.schatteren. To throw

SCATTERLING, N. s. S loosely about; sprinkle; squander: the adverb corresponding: scatterling is a vagabond; one that has no home or settled habitation. An elegant word, says Johnson, but disused.

Samuel came not to Gilgal, and the people were scattered from Saul. 1 Sam. xiii. 8. A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment, scattereth away all evil with his eyes. Prov. xx. 8. Such losels and scatterlings cannot easily, by any ordinary officer, be gotten, when challenged for any such fact. Spenser.

would scatter in open air be made to go into a canal, it gives greater force to the sound.

Sound diffuseth itself in rounds; but if that which

Bacon.

upon the sea-coasts, set up some towns. The Spaniards have here and there scatteringly,

Adam by this from the cold sudden damp Recovering, and his scattered spirits returned.

Abbot.

Milton.

men for this work.

South. Baynard.

Fasting 's Nature's scavenger. Dick the scavenger, with equal grace, Flirts from his cart the mud in Walpole's face. Swift. SCAURUS (M. Æmilius), a Roman consul, who distinguished himself by his eloquence at the bar, as well as by his victories in Spain as a general. He was sent against Jugurtha, but was suspected of having been bribed by that monarch. lle, however, conquered the Ligurians, and, during his censorship, built the Milvian bridge at Rome, and paved the Emilian road. He wrote several books, particularly his own life, but none of them are extant.

SCAURUS (M. Æmilius), son of the preceding, is famous for having a erected a large and grand theatre at Rome, while he was ædile. It was so capacious that it would contain 30,000 spectators; it was supported by 360 columns of marble, and adorned with 3000 brazen statues.

SCEL'ERAT, n. s. Lat. sceleratus. A villain; a wicked wretch. A word introduced unnecessarily from the French by a Scottish

SCELERATUS, in Roman antiquity, the name given a street in Rome, formerly called Cyprius, from the horrible wickedness of Tullia, the wife of Tarquin II., who ordered her charioteer to drive her chariot over the body of her wounded father. See ROME. Also the name of a plain at Rome, near the Colline gate, so named from the Vestal Minucia being buried alive in it for adultery.

SCENE', n. s. Fr. scene; Lat. scana; Gr. SCENERY. Soknyn. The stage; a theatre of dramatic poetry: hence the general appearance of any action; a display; a series; part of a play the words are nearly synony

The progress of the sound, and the scenary of the bordering regions, are imitated from En. vii. on the sounding the horn of Alecto. To complete The scene of desolation, stretched around The grim guards stand.

"Tis well, if looked for at so late a day, In the last scene of such a senseless play, True wisdom will attend his feeble call, And grace his action ere the curtain fall.

Thomson.

Cowper.

SCENE, in its primary sense, denoted a place where dramatic pieces and other public shows were exhibited. The original scene for acting of plays was as simple as the representations themselves; it consisted only of a plain plot of ground proper for the occasion, which was in some degree shaded by the neighbouring trees, whose branches were made to meet together, and their vacancies supplied with boards, sticks, and the like; and, to complete the shelter, these were sometimes covered with skins, and sometimes with only the branches of other trees, newly cut down and full of leaves. Afterwards more artificial scenes, or scenical representations, were introduced, and paintings used instead of the objects themselves. Scenes were then of three sorts; tragic, comic, and satiric. The tragic scene represented stately magnificent edifices, with decorations of pillars, statues, and other things suitable to the palaces of kings. The comic exhibited private houses with balconies and windows, in imitation of common buildings; and the satiric was the representation of groves, mountains, dens, and other rural appearances; and these decorations either turned on pivots, or slid along grooves.

SCENE is also a part or division of a dramatic poem. Thus plays are divided into acts, and acts are subdivided into scenes. Whenever, therefore, a new actor appears, or an old one disappears, the action is changed into other hands; and therefore a new scene then com

of a mellow apple.

Good scents do purify the brain, Awake the fancy, and the wits refine.

Exulting, 'till he finds their nobler sense Their disproportioned speed does recompense; Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent.

Bacon.

Davis.

His duteous handmaid, through the air improved, With lavish hand diffuses scents ambrosial. Prior. A hunted hare treads back her mazes, crosses and confounds her former track, and uses all possible

methods to divert the scent.

The crystal waters round us fa'
The merry birds are lovers a',
The scented breezes round us blaw,

Watts.

Burns.

A' wandering w' me Davie. SCEPTICS, an ancient sect of philosophers, founded by Pyrrho, who, according to Laertius, had various other denominations. From their master they were called Pyrrhonians; from the distinguishing tenets or characteristic of their philosophy they derived the name of Aporetici, from arop, to doubt; from their hesitation they were called ephetici, from ETTEXEI, to stay or keep back; and lastly, they were called zetetici, or seekers, from their never getting beyond the search of truth. That the sceptical philosophy is absurd can admit of no dispute in the present age; and that many of the followers of Pyrrho carried it to the most ridiculous height is no less true. But we can not believe that he himself was so extravagantly sceptical as has sometimes been asserted, when we reflect on the particulars of his life, which are still preserved, and the respectful manner in which we find him mentioned by his contemporaries, and writers of the first name who flourished soon after him. The truth, as far as at this distance of time it can be discovered, seems to be, that he learned from Democritus to deny the real existence of all qualities in bodies, except those which are essential to primary atoms, and that he referred every thing else to the perceptions of the mind produced by external objects; in other words, to appearance and opinion. All knowledge of course appeared to him to depend on the fallacious report of the senses, and consequently to be uncertain; and in this notion he was confirmed by the general spirit of the Eleatic school in which he was educated. He was further confirmed in his scepticism by the subtilties of the Dialectic schools, in which he had been

overturn the cavils of sophistry by recurring to the doctrine of universal uncertainty, and thus breaking the knot which he could not unloose; for, being naturally and habitually inclined to consider immoveable tranquillity as the great end of all philosophy, he was easily led to despise the dissensions of the dogmatists, and to infer from their endless disputes the uncertainty of the questions on which they debated; controversy, as it has often happened to others, becoming also with respect to him the parent of scepticism. Pyrrho's doctrines, however new and extraordinary, were not totally disregarded. He was attended by several scholars, and succeeded by several followers, who preserved the memory of his tenets. The most eminent of his followers was Timon, in whom the public succession of professors in the Pyrrhonic school terminated. In the time of Cicero it was almost extinct, having suffered much from the jealousy of the dogmatists, and from a natural aversion in the human mind to acknowledge total ignorance, or to be left in absolute darkness. The disciples of Timon, however, still continued to profess scepticism, and their notions were embraced privately afterwards revived by Ptolemæus, a Cyrenian, at least by many others. The school itself was and was continued by Enesidemus, a contemporary of Cicero, who wrote a treatise on the principles of the Pyrrhonic philosophy, the heads of which are preserved by Photius. A system of philosophy thus founded on doubt, and clouded with uncertainty, could neither teach tenets of any importance, nor prescribe a certain rule of conduct; and accordingly we find that the followers of scepticism were guided entirely by chance. As they could form no certain judgment respecting good and evil, they accidentally learned the folly of eagerly pursuing any apparent good, or of avoiding any apparent evil; and their minds of course settled into a state of undisturbed tranquillity, the grand postulatum of their system. In the schools of the sceptics we find ten distinct topics of argument urged in support of the doctrine of uncertainty; with this precaution, however, that nothing could be positively asserted, either concerning their number or their force. These arguments chiefly respect objects of sense; they place all knowledge in appearance; and, as the same things appear very different to different people, it is impossible to say which appearance most truly expresses their real nature. They likewise say that our judgment is liable to uncertainty from the circumstance of frequent or rare occurrence, and that mankind are continually led into different conceptions concerning the same thing by custom, law, fabulous tales, and established opinions. On all these accounts they think every human judgment is liable to uncertainty; and concerning any thing they can only assert that it seems to be, not that it is what it seems. This doubtful reasoning, if reasoning it may be called, the sceptics extended to all the sciences in which they discovered nothing true, or which could be absolutely asserted. In all nature, in physics, morals, and theology, they found contradictory opinions, and inexplicable or incomprehensible

phenomena. In physics the appearances they thought might be deceitful; and, respecting the nature of God and the duties of morality, men were, in their opinion, equally ignorant and uncertain. But scepticism has not been confined to the ancients and to the followers of Pyrrho. Numerous sceptics have arisen in modern times, varying in their principles, manners, and character, as chance, prejudice,vanity,weakness, or indolence prompted them. The great object, however, which they seem to have had in view was to overturn, or at least to weaken, the evidence of analogy, experience, and testimony; some of them have even attempted to show that the axioms of geometry are uncertain, and its demonstrations inconclusive. Most of our readers must be well acquainted with the essays of Hume, and with the able confutations of them by doctors Reid, Campbell, Gregory, and Beattie, who have likewise exposed the weakness of the sceptical reasonings of Des Cartes, Malbranche, and other philosophers of great fame in the same school. SCEPTRE, n. s. I Fr. sceptre; Lat. scepSCEPTERED, adj. Štrum. The ensign of royalty borne in the hand: the adjective corresponding.

Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right, Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist.

Shakspeare. How, best of kings, do'st thou a sceptre bear! How, best of poets, do'st thou laurel wear! But two things rare the fates had in their store, And gave thee both, to shew they could no more.

plicity of the earlier ages of the world, the sceptres of kings were no other than long walking staves: and Ovid, in speaking of Jupiter, describes him as resting on his sceptre (Met. i. v. 178). The sceptre is an ensign of royalty of greater antiquity than the crown. The Greek tragic and other poets put sceptres in the hands of the most ancient kings they ever introduce. Justin observes that the sceptre, in its original, was an hasta, or spear. He adds, that, in the most remote antiquity, men adorned the hasta or sceptres as immortal gods; and that it was upon this account, that, even in his time, they still furnished the gods with sceptres.-Neptune's sceptre is his trident. In process of time, the king's sceptre became covered with ornaments in copper, ivory, gold, or silver, and also with symbolical figures. The sceptre borne by the Roman emperors, as on their medals, &c., is surmounted, when these princes are in the consular habit, with a globe topped by an eagle, Phocas is imagined to have been the first who added a cross to his sceptre; and his successors even substituted the former emblem for the latter, bearing ornamented crosses alone. Richard Cœur de Lion held in his right hand a golden sceptre surmounted by a cross, and, in his left, a golden baton, topped by the figure of a dove. Tarquin the Elder was the first who assumed the sceptre among the Romans. Le Gendre tells us, that, in the first race of the French kings, the sceptre was a golden rod, almost always of the same height with the king who bore it, and crooked at one end like a crozier. Frequently instead of a sceptre, kings are seen on medals with a palm in their hand.

SCHAAF (Charles), a learned German, born at Nuys, in the electorate of Cologn, in 1646. His father was major in the army of the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. He studied divinity at Duisbourg; and, having acquired the oriental languages, became professor in that university in 1677. In 1679 he was invited to Leyden in the same capacity, where he settled and died in 1729, of an apoplexy. He published several works on oriental learning; of which the principal is his Grammatica Chaldaiaca et Syriaca.

trandria order, and diœcia class of plants: CAL. SCHÆFFERA, in botany, a genus of the tequadripetalous: COR. quadripetalous, quinquepetalous, and often wanting; the fruit is a biloculaf berry with one seed. Of this there are two species:

1. S. completa, and S. latiflora, both natives of Jamaica; and growing in the lowlands near the sea.

SCHÆSBURG, a district of Transylvania, belonging to the Saxons, lying along the great Kockel. It contains 210 square miles, with about 20,000 inhabitants. Though hilly, it has no high mountains, and is divided into the Upper and Lower Circles, both of which have good pasturage and vines.

It is

SCHESBURG, or SEGESVAR, a town of Transylvania, situated near the Great Kockel. divided into the Upper and Lower Town. The former stands on a hill, nearly 250 feet in height, and is fortified; the latter is built on the plain, and open. The inhabitants are chiefly Lutherans.