[1] See also J. v. Liebig, _Ann. Chem. Pharm._, 1837, 23, p. 39;
1839, 30, p. 129; E. Mitscherlich, _Pogg. Ann._, 1836, 31, p. 273;
1841, 53, p. 95; A.W. Williamson, _Phil. Mag._, 1850 (3), 37, p. 350.
ETHEREDGE [or ETHEREGE], SIR GEORGE (c. 1635-1691), English dramatist,
was born about the year 1635, and belonged to an Oxfordshire family. He
is said to have been educated at Cambridge, but Dennis assures us that
"to his certain knowledge he understood neither Greek nor Latin." He
travelled abroad early, and seems to have resided in France. It is
possible that he witnessed in Paris the performances of some of
Moliere's earliest comedies; and he seems, from an allusion in one of
his plays, to have been personally acquainted with Bussy Rabutin. On his
return to London he studied the law at one of the Inns of Court. His
tastes were those of a fine gentleman, and he indulged freely in
pleasure.
Sometime soon after the Restoration he composed his comedy of _The
Comical Revenge_ or _Love in a Tub_, which introduced him to Lord
Buckhurst, afterwards the earl of Dorset. This was brought out at the
Duke's theatre in 1664, and a few copies were printed in the same year.
It is partly in rhymed rhymned heroic verse, like the stilted tragedies
of the Howards and Killigrews, but it contains comic scenes that are
exceedingly bright and fresh. The sparring between Sir Frederick and the
Widow introduced a style of wit hitherto unknown upon the English stage.
The success of this play was very great, but Etheredge waited four years
before he repeated his experiment. Meanwhile he gained the highest
reputation as a poetical beau, and moved in the circle of Sir Charles
Sedley, Lord Rochester and the other noble wits of the day. In 1668 he
brought out _She would if she could_, a comedy in many respects
admirable, full of action, wit and spirit, although to the last degree
frivolous and immoral. But in this play Etheredge first shows himself a
new power in literature; he has nothing of the rudeness of his
predecessors or the grossness of his contemporaries. We move in an airy
and fantastic world, where flirtation is the only serious business of
life. At this time Etheredge was living a life no less frivolous and
unprincipled than those of his Courtals and Freemans. He formed an
alliance with the famous actress Mrs Elizabeth Barry; she bore him a
daughter, on whom he settled L6000, but who, unhappily, died in her
youth. His wealth and wit, the distinction and charm of his manners, won
Etheredge the general worship of society, and his temperament is best
known by the names his contemporaries gave him, of "gentle George" and
"easy Etheredge." Rochester upbraided him for inattention to literature;
and at last, after a silence of eight years, he came forward with one
more play, unfortunately his last. _The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling
Flutter_, indisputably the best comedy of intrigue written in England
before the days of Congreve, was acted and printed in 1676, and enjoyed
an unbounded success. Besides the merit of its plot and wit, it had the
personal charm of being supposed to satirize, or at least to paint,
persons well known in London. Sir Fopling Flutter was a portrait of Beau
Hewit, the reigning exquisite of the hour; in Dorimant the poet drew the
earl of Rochester, and in Medley a portrait of himself; while even the
drunken shoemaker was a real character, who made his fortune from being
thus brought into public notice. After this brilliant success Etheredge
retired from literature; his gallantries and his gambling in a few years
deprived him of his fortune, and he looked about for a rich match. He
was knighted before 1680, and gained the hand and the money of a rich
widow. He was sent by Charles II. on a mission to the Hague, and in
March 1685 was appointed resident minister in the imperial German court
at Regensburg. He was very uncomfortable in Germany, and after three and
a half years' residence left for Paris. He had collected a library at
Regensburg, some volumes of which are in the theological college there.
His MS. despatches are preserved in the British Museum, where they were
discovered and described by Mr Gosse in 1881; they add very largely to
our knowledge of Etheredge's career. He died in Paris, probably in 1691,
for Narcissus Luttrell notes in February 1692 that "Sir George Etherege,
the late King James' ambassador to Vienna, died lately in Paris."
Etheredge deserves to hold a more distinguished place in English
literature than has generally been allotted to him. In a dull and heavy
age, he inaugurated a period of genuine wit and sprightliness. He
invented the comedy of intrigue, and led the way for the masterpieces of
Congreve and Sheridan. Before his time the manner of Ben Jonson had
prevailed in comedy, and traditional "humours" and typical
eccentricities, instead of real characters, had crowded the comic stage.
Etheredge paints with a light, faint hand, but it is from nature, and
his portraits of fops and beaux are simply unexcelled. No one knows
better than he how to present a gay young gentleman, a Dorimant, "an
unconfinable rover after amorous adventures." His genius is as light as
thistle-down; he is frivolous, without force of conviction, without
principle; but his wit is very sparkling, and his style pure and
singularly picturesque. No one approaches Etheredge in delicate touches
of dress, furniture and scene; he makes the fine airs of London
gentlemen and ladies live before our eyes even more vividly than
Congreve does; but he has less insight and less energy than Congreve.
Had he been poor or ambitious, he might have been to England almost what
Moliere was to France, but he was a rich man living at his ease, and he
disdained to excel in literature. Etheredge was "a fair, slender,
genteel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking." His
contemporaries all agree in acknowledging that he was the soul of
affability and sprightly good-nature.
The life of Etheredge was first given in detail by Edmund Gosse in
_Seventeenth Century Studies_ (1883). His works were edited by A.W.
Verity, in 1888. (E. G.)
ETHERIDGE, JOHN WESLEY (1804-1866), English nonconformist divine, was
born near Newport, Isle of Wight, on the 24th of February 1804. He
received most of his early education from his father. Though he never
attended any university he acquired ultimately a thorough knowledge of
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, French and German. In 1824 he was placed
on the Wesleyan Methodist plan as a local preacher. In 1826 his offer to
enter the ministry was accepted, and after the usual probationary trial
he was received into full connexion at the conference of 1831. For two
years after this he remained at Brighton, and in 1833 he removed to
Cornwall, being stationed successively at the Truro and Falmouth
circuits. From Falmouth he removed to Darlaston, where in 1838 his
health gave way. For a good many years he was a supernumerary, and lived
for a while at Caen and Paris, where in the public libraries he found
great facilities for prosecuting his favourite Oriental studies. His
health having considerably improved, he became, in 1843, pastor of the
Methodist church at Boulogne. He returned to England in 1847, and was
appointed successively to the circuits of Islington, Bristol, Leeds,
Penzance, Penryn, Truro and St Austell in east Cornwall. Shortly after
his return to England he received the degree of Ph.D. from the
university of Heidelberg. He was a patient, modest, hard-working and
accurate scholar. He died at Camborne on the 24th of May 1866.
His principal works are _Horae Aramaicae_ (1843); _History, Liturgies
and Literature of the Syrian Churches_ (1847); _The Apostolic Acts and
Epistles, from the Peshito or Ancient Syriac_ (1849); _Jerusalem and
Tiberias, a Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the
Jews_ (1856); _The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel_ (1st
vol. in 1862, 2nd in 1865). See _Memoir_, by Rev. Thornley Smith
(1871).
ETHERIDGE, ROBERT (1819-1903), English geologist and palaeontologist,
was born at Ross, in Herefordshire, on the 3rd of December 1819. After
an ordinary school education in his native town, he obtained employment
in a business house in Bristol. There he devoted his spare time to
natural history pursuits, and in 1850 was appointed curator of the
museum attached to the Bristol Philosophical Institution. He also became
lecturer on botany in the Bristol medical school. In 1857, through the
influence of Sir Roderick I. Murchison, he was appointed to a post in
the Museum of Practical Geology in London, and eventually became
palaeontologist to the Geological Survey. In 1865 he assisted Prof.
Huxley in the preparation of a _Catalogue of Fossils in the Museum of
Practical Geology_. His chief work for many years was in naming the
fossils collected during the progress of the Geological Survey, and in
supplying the lists that were appended to numerous official memoirs. In
this way he acquired an exceptional knowledge of British fossils, and he
ultimately prepared an elaborate work entitled _Fossils of the British
Islands, Stratigraphically and Zoologically arranged_. Only the first
volume dealing with the Palaeozoic species was published (1888).
Etheridge also was author of several papers on the Rhaetic Beds, and of
an important essay on the Physical Structure of North Devon, and on the
Palaeontological Value of the Devonian Fossils (1867). He edited, and in
the main rewrote, the second part of a new edition of John Phillips'
Manual of Geology--entitled _Stratigraphical Geology and Palaeontology_
(1885). He was elected F.R.S. in 1871, and was president of the
Geological Society in 1881-1882. In 1881 Etheridge was transferred from
the Geological Survey to the geological department of the British
Museum, where he served as assistant keeper until 1891. He died at
Chelsea, London, on the 18th of December 1903.
Memoir by Dr Henry Woodward (with list of works and portrait) in
_Geological Magazine_, January 1904; also Memoir by H.B. Woodward
(with portrait) in _Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc._ x. 175.
ETHERS, in organic chemistry, compounds of the general formula R.O.R',
where R, R' = alkyl or aryl groups. They may be regarded as the
anhydrides of the alcohols, being formed by elimination of one molecule
of water from two molecules of the alcohols; those in which the two
hydrocarbon radicals are similar are known as _simple_ ethers, and those
in which they are dissimilar as _mixed_ ethers. They may be prepared by
the action of concentrated sulphuric acid on the alcohols, alkyl
sulphuric acids being first formed, which yield ethers on heating with
alcohols. The process may be made a continuous one by running a thin
stream of alcohol continually into the heated reaction mixture of
alcohol and sulphuric acid. Benzene sulphonic acid has been used in
place of sulphuric acid (F. Krafft, _Ber._, 1893, 26, p. 2829). A.W.
Williamson (_Ann._, 1851, 77, p. 38; 1852, 81, p. 77) prepared ether by
the action of sodium ethylate on ethyl iodide, and showed that all
ethers must possess the structural formula given above (see also _Brit.
Assoc. Reports_, 1850, p. 65). They may also be prepared by heating the
alkyl halides with silver oxide.
The ethers are neutral volatile liquids (the first member, methyl ether,
is a gas at ordinary temperature). Phosphorus pentachloride converts
them into alkyl chlorides, a similar decomposition taking place when
they are heated with the haloid acids. Nitric acid and chromic acid
oxidize them in such a mariner that they yield the same products as the
alcohols from which they are derived. With chlorine they yield
substitution products.
_Methyl ether_, (CH3)2O, was first prepared by J. B. Dumas and E.
Peligot (_Ann. chim. phys._, 1835, [2] 58, p. 19) by heating methyl
alcohol with sulphuric acid. It is best prepared by heating methyl
alcohol and sulphuric acid to 140 deg. C. and leading the evolved gas
into sulphuric acid. The sulphuric acid solution is then allowed to drop
slowly into an equal volume of water, when the methyl ether is liberated
(E. Erlenmeyer and A. Kriechbaumer, _Ber._, 1874, 7, p. 699). It is a
pleasant-smelling gas, which burns when ignited, and may be condensed to
a liquid which boils at 23.6 deg. C. It is somewhat soluble in water and
readily soluble in alcohol, and concentrated sulphuric acid. It combines
with hydrochloric acid gas to form a compound (CH3)2O.HCl (C. Friedel,
_Comptes rendus_, 1875, 81, p. 152). _Methyl ethyl ether_, CH3.O.C2H5,
is prepared from methyl iodide and sodium ethylate, or from ethyl iodide
and sodium methylate (A. W. Williamson, _Ann._, 1852, 81, p. 77). It is
a liquid which boils at 10.8 deg. C.
For diethyl ether see ETHER, and for methyl phenyl ether (anisole) and
ethyl phenyl ether (phenetole) see CARBOLIC ACID.
ETHICS, the name generally given to the science of moral philosophy. The
word "ethics" is derived from the Gr. [Greek: ethikos], that which
pertains to [Greek: ethos], character.
For convenience in reference, the arrangement followed in this article
may be explained at the outset:--
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I. DEFINITION AND SCOPE 809