His later life was almost wholly uneventful, and for the most part, as has been said, spent in retirement. His reputation, however, is perfectly secure. It may, and probably will, rest only on his small volume of poems, though it will not be lessened, as far as qualified literary criticism is concerned, should the reader proceed to the rest of the work. The whole of his non-dramatic verse does not amount to 5000 lines; it may be a good deal less. But the range of subject is comparatively wide, and extraordinary felicity of execution, not merely in language, but in thought, is evident throughout. Vigny, as may be seen in the speech of Nature referred to above, had the secret-very uncommon with French poets-of attaining solemnity without grandiosity, by means of an almost classical precision and gravity of form. The defect of volubility, of never leaving off, which mars to some extent his great contemporary Hugo, is never present in him, and he is equally free from the looseness and disorders of form which are sometimes blemishes in Musset, and from the effeminacy of Lamartine, while once more his nobility of thought and plentifulness of matter save him from the reproach which has been thought to rest on the technically perfect work of Théophile Gautier. The dramatic work is, perhaps, less likely to interest English than French readers, the local colour of Chatterton being entirely false, the sentiment conventional in the extreme, and the real pathos of the story exchanged for a commonplace devotion on the poet's part to his host's wife. In the same way, the finest passages of Othello simply disappear in Vigny's version. In his remaining works the defect of skill in managing the plot and characters of prose fiction, which has been noticed in Cing-Mars, reappears, together (in the case of the Journal d'un pocte and elsewhere) with signs of the fastidious and slightly affected temper which was Vigny's chief fault as a man. In his poems proper none of these faults appears, and he is seen wholly at his best. It should be said that of his posthumous work not a little had previously appeared piecemeal in the Revue des deux mondes, to which he was an occasional contributor. The prettiest of the complete editions of his works (of which there are several)is to be found in what is called the Petite bibliothèque Charpentier. For many years the critical attention paid to him was not great. Recently there has been a revival of interest as shown by monographs: M. Paléologue's "Alfred de Vigny "in the Grands écrivains français (1891); L. Dorison's Alfred de Vigny, poète-philosophe (1892) and Un symbole social (1894); G. Asse's Alfred de Vigny et les éditions originales de sa poésie (1895); E. Dupuy's La Jeunesse des Romantiques (1905); and E. Lauvrière's Alfred de Vigny (Paris, 1910). But in most of these rather excessive attention has been paid to the " philosophy" of a pessimistic kind which succeeded Vigny's early Christian Romanticism. This, though not unnoteworthy, is separable from his real poetical quality, and concentration on it rather obscures the latter, which is of the rarest kind. It should be added that an interesting sidelight has been thrown on Vigny by the publication (1905) of his Fragments inédits sur P. et T. Corneille. (G. SA.)

VIGO, a seaport and naval station of north-western Spain, in the province of Pontevedra; on Vigo Bay (Ria de Vigo) and on a branch of the railway from Tuy to Corunna. Pop. (1900) 23,259. Vigo Bay, one of the finest of the Galician fjords, extends inland for 19 m., and is sheltered by low mountains and by the islands (Islas de Cies, ancient Insulae Siccae) at its mouth. The town is built on the south-eastern shore, and occupies a hilly site dominated by two obsolete forts. The older streets are steep, narrow and tortuous, but there is also a large modern quarter. Vigo owes its importance to its deep and spacious harbour, and to its fisheries. It is a port of call for many lines trading between Western Europe and South America. Shipbuilding is carried on, and large quantitics of sardines are canned for export. In 1909, 2041 ships of 2,710,691 tons (1,153,564 being British) entered at Vigo; the imports in that year, including tin and tinplate, coal, machinery, cement, sulphate of copper and foodstuffs, were

Vigo was attacked by Sir Francis Drake in 1585 and 1589. In 1702 a combined British and Dutch fleet under Sir George Rooke and the duke of Ormonde destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet in the bay, and captured treasure to the value of about £1,000,000; numerous attempts have been made to recover the larger quantity of treasure which was supposed, on doubtful evidence, to have been sunk during the battle. In 1719 Vigo was captured by the British under Viscount Cobham.

VIJAYANAGAR, or BIJANAGAR ("the city of victory"), an ancient Hindu kingdom and ruined city of southern India. The kingdom lasted from about 1336 to 1565, forming during all that period a bulwark against Mahommedan invasion from the north. Its foundation, and even great part of its history, is obscure; but its power and wealth are attested by more than one European traveller, and also by the character of the existing ruins. At the beginning of the 14th century Mahommedan raiders had effectually destroyed every Hindu principality throughout southern India, but did not attempt to occupy the country permanently. In this state of desolation Hindu nationality rose again under two brothers, named Harihara and Bukka, of whom little more can be said than that they were Kanarese by race. Hence their kingdom was afterwards known as the Carnatic. At its widest extent, it stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea, from Masulipatam to Goa; and every Hindu prince in the south acknowledged its supremacy. The site of the capital was chosen, with strategic skill, on the right bank of the river Tungabhadra, which here runs through a rocky gorge. Within thirty years the Hindu Rayas of Vijayanagar were able to hold their own against the Bahmani sultans, who had now established their independence of Delhi in the Deccan proper. Warfare with the Mahommedans across the border in the Raichur doab was carried on almost unceasingly, and with varying result. Two, or possibly three, different dynastics are believed to have occupied the throne of Vijayanagar as time went on; and its final downfall may be ascribed to the domestic dissensions thus produced. This occurred in 1565, when the confederate sultans of Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Golconda, who had divided amongst themselves the Bahmani dominions, overwhelmed the Vijayanagar army in the plain of Talikota, and sacked the defenceless city. The Raya fled south to Penukonda, and later to Chandragiri, where one of his descendants granted to the English the site of Fort St George or Madras. The city has ever since remained a wilderness of immense ruins, which are now conserved by the British government.

See R. Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (1900); and B. S. Row, History of Vijayanagar (Madras, 1906).

VIKING. The word Viking," in the sense in which it is used to-day, is derived from the Icelandic (Old Norse) Viking (m.), signifying simply a sea-rover or pirate. There is also in Icelandic the allied word víking (f.), a predatory voyage. As a loan-word viking occurs in A.S. poetry (vicing or wicing), e.g. in Widsith, Byrnoth, Exodus. During the Saga Age (900-1050), in the beginning of Norse literature, vikingr is not as a rule used to designate any class of men. Almost every young Icelander of sufficient means and position, and a very large number of young Norsemen, made one or more viking expeditions. We read of such a one that he went "a-viking" (fara i viking, vera i viking, or very often fara, &c., vestan i viking). The procedure was almost a recognized part of education, and was analogous to the grand tour made by our great-grandfathers in the 18th century. But the use of vikingr in a more generic sense is still to be found in the Saga Age. If the designation of this or that personage as mikill vikingr or rauða víkingr (red viking) be not reckoned an instance of such use, we have it at all events in the name of a small quasi-nationality, the Jómsvíkingar, settled at Jómsborg on the Baltic (in modern Pomerania),

This brief sketch may be taken as the prototype of viking invasion of any region of western Christendom which was the object of their continuous attacks. Of such regions we may distinguish five. Almost simultaneously with the attacks on Ireland came others, probably also from Norway, on the western regions (coasts and islands) of Scotland. Plunderings of Iona are mentioned in A.D. 802, 806. In the course of a generation almost all the monastic communities in western Scotland had been destroyed. But details of these viking plunderings are wanting. On the continent there were three distinct regions of attack. First the mouth of the Scheldt. There the Danes very early settled on the island of Walcheren, which had in fact been given by the emperor Louis the Pious in fief to a Danish fugitive king, Harald by name, who sought the help of Louis, and adopted Christianity. After the partition of the territory of Charlemagne's empire among the sons of Louis the Pious, Walcheren and the Scheldt-mouth fell within the possessions of the emperor Lothair, and in the region subsequently distinguished as Lotharingia. From this centre, the Scheldt, the viking raids extended on either side; sometimes eastward as far as the Rhine, and so into Germany proper, the territory assigned to Louis the German; at other times westward to the Somme, and thus into the territory of Charles the Bald, the future kingdom of France. In the event, toward the end of the 9th century all Frisia between Walcheren and the German Ocean seems to have become the permanent possession of the invaders. In like fashion was it with the next district, that of the Seine, only that here no important island served the pirates for their first arsenal and winter quarters. The serious attacks of the pirates in any part of the empire distant from their own lands begin about the time of the battle of Fontenoy between Louis' sons (A.D. 841). The first wintering of the vikings in the Seine territory (A.D. 850) was in "Givoldi fossa," the tomb of one Givoldus, not far from the mouth of the river, but no longer exactly determinable. Their first attack on Paris was in A.D. 845: a much more important but unsuccessful one took place in A.D. 885-87, unsuccessful that is so far as the city itself was concerned; but the invaders received an indemnity for raising the siege and leave to pass beyond Paris into Burgundy. The settlement of Danes under Rollo or Rolf on the lower Seine, i.e. in Normandy, dates from the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte, A.D. 912 (or 911).

The third region is the mouth of the Loire. Here the island point d'appui was Noirmoutier, an island with an abbey at the Loire mouth. The northmen wintered there in A.D. 843. No region was more often ravaged than that of the lower Loire, so rich in abbeys-St Martin of Tours, Marmoutiers, St Benedict, &c. But the country ceded to the vikings under Hasting at the Loire mouth was insignificant and not in permanent occupation.

Near the end of the 9th century, however, the plundering expeditions which emanated from these three sources became so incessant and so widespread that we can signalize no part of west France as free from them, at the same time that the vikings wrought immense mischief in the Rhine country and in Burgundy. The defences of west France seem quite to have broken down, as did the Irish when Turgesius took "Con's half," or when in A.D. 853 Olaf the White became over-king of Ireland. Unfortunately at this point our best authority ceases; and we cannot well explain the changes which brought about the Christianization of the Normans and their settlement in Normandy as vassals, though recalcitrant ones, of the West Frankish kings.

For the viking attacks in the 5th (or 6th) territory, our own country, the course of events is much clearer. As a part of English history it is, however, sufficiently known, and the briefest summary thereof must suffice. That will show how in its general features it follows the normal course. The first appearance of the vikings in England we saw was in A.D. 789. The first serious attacks do not begin till 838. The island of Sheppey, however, was attacked in 835, and in the following year the vikings entrenched themselves there. The first wintering

of the pirates in England was on the contiguous island of Thanet in A.D. 850. The breakdown of the English defences in all parts of the country save Wessex dates from 868: in Wessex that occurs in 877-88. But the position is suddenly recovered by Alfred in 878, by the battle of Aethandune, as suddenly though not so unaccountably as it was later in West Francia. As Rollo was to do in 912, the Danish leader Guthorm received baptism, taking the name of Aethelstan, and settled in his assigned territory, East Anglia, according to the terms of the peace of Wedmore. But the forces which Alfred defeated at Aethandune represented but half of the viking army in England at the time. The other half under Halfdan (Ragnar Lodbrog's son ?) had never troubled itself about Wessex, but had taken firm possession in Northumbria.

The six territories which we have signalized-Ireland, Western Scotland, England, the three in West Francia which merge into each other by the end of the 9th century-do not comprise the whole field of viking raids or attempted invasion. For farther still to the east they twice sailed up the Elbe (A.D. 851, 880) and burnt Hamburg. Southwards they plundered far up the Garonne, and in the north of Spain; and one fleet of them sailed all round Spain, plundering, but attempting in vain to establish themselves in this Arab caliphate. They plundered on the opposite African coast, and at last got as far as the mouth of the Rhone, and thence to Luna in Italy.

What we found in the case of the Irish raids, that at first they are quite anonymous, but that presently the names of the captains of the expeditions emerge, is likewise the case in all other lands. In Ireland, besides the important and successful Turgesius, we read of a Saxulf who carly met his death, as well as of Ivar (Ingvar), famous also in England and called the son of Ragnar Lodbrog, and of Oisla, Ivar's comrade; finally (the vikings in Ireland being mostly of Norse descent) of the wellknown Olaf the White, who became king of all the Scandinavian settlements in Ireland. In France, Oscar is one of the earliest and most successful of the invaders. Later the name of Ragnar (probably Ragnar Lodbrog) appears, along with Weland, Hasting and one of the sons of Ragnar, Björn. Farther to the east we meet the names of Rurik, Godfred and Siegfried. In the eastern region the viking leaders seem to have been closely connected with one of the Danish royal families, the kings of Jutland. The practical though short-lived conquest of England begins under Ivar, Ubbe and Halfdan, reputed sons of Ragnar, and is completed by the last of the three in conjunction with the Guthorm above mentioned. This is, of course, what we should expect, that larger acquaintance gives to the Christian chroniclers more knowledge of their enemy. Precisely the same process in a converse sense develops the casual raids of early times into a scheme of conquest. For at the outset the Christian world was wholly strange to these northmen. We have, it has been said, hardly any means of viewing these raids from the other side. But one small point of light is so suggestive that it may be cited here. The mythical saga of Ragnar Lodbrog is undoubtedly concerned with the Viking Age, though it is impossible now to identify most of the expeditions attributed to this northern hero, stories of conquest in Sweden, in Finland, in Russia and in England, which belong to quite a different age from this one. In the Christian chronicles the name of Ragnar is associated with an attack on Paris in A.D. 845, when the adventurers were (through the interposition of St Germain, say the Christians) suddenly enveloped in darkness-in a thick fog?-and fell before the arms of the defenders. In Saxo Grammaticus's account of Ragnar Lodbrog, this event seems to be reflected in the story of an expedition of Ragnar's to Bjarmaland or Perm in Russia. For Bjarmaland, though it gained a local habitation, is also in Norse tradition a wholly mythical and mythological place, more or less identical with the underworld (Niflhel, mist-hell). So it appears in the history given by Saxo Grammaticus of the voyage to Bjarmaland of one "Gorm the old." It "looks like a vaporous cloud" and is full of tricks and illusions of sense. We see then that in virtue of some quite historical misfortune to the viking invaders

connected with a mist and with a great sickness which invaded the army, the place they have come to (in reality Paris) is in Scandinavian tradition identified with the mythic Bjarmaland; and later, in the history of Saxo Grammaticus, it is identified with the geographical Bjarmaland or Perm. (Saxo Grammat., Hist. Dan. p. 452, Gylfaginning (Edda Snorra); Acta SS. 18th May and 11th Oct.; Steenstrup, Normannerne, i. p. 97 seq.; Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, pp. 162, 260.) No example could better than this bring home to us the strangeness of the Christian world to the first adventurers from the north, nor better explain the process of familiarity which gradually extended the sphere of their ambition. The expedition which we have made mention of took place almost in the middle of the 9th century, and exactly fifty years after the effective opening of the Viking Age. But after this date events developed rapidly. It was fourteen years later (in A.D. 859) that Ragnar's son Björn Ironside and Hasting made their great expedition round Spain to the Mediterranean. In 865 or 866 came to England what we know as the Army, or the Great Army, whose first attacks were in the north of England. Five kings are mentioned in connexion with this veritable invasion of England, and many earls. Their course was not unchequered; but it was only in Wessex that they met with any effective resistance, and the victory of Ashdown (871) put no end to their advance; for, as we know, Alfred himself had at last to wander a fugitive in the fastnesses of Selwood Forest. Much was retrieved by the victory of Aethandune; yet even after the peace of Wedmore as large a part of the land lay under the power of the Danes as of the English.

national movement. We know that at the same time that some Scandinavian folk were harrying all the western lands, others were founding Garðaríki (Russia) in the cast; others were pressing still farther south till they came in contact with the eastern empire in Constantinople, which the northern folk knew as Mikillgarðr (Mikklegard); so that when Hasting and Björn had sailed to Luna in the gulf of Genoa the northern folk had almost put a girdle round the Christian world. There is every evidence that the vikings were not a mere lawless folkthat is, in their internal relations-but that a system of laws existed among them which was generally respected. The nearest approach to it now preserved is probably the code of laws attributed to the mythic king Frodi (the Wise) and preserved in the pages of Saxo Grammaticus. It contains provisions for the partition of booty, punishments for theft, desertion and treachery. But some of the clauses securing a comparative liberty for women appear less characteristic of the Viking Age (cf. Alexander Bugge, Vikingerne, vol. i. p. 49). Women, indeed, did not take part in their first expeditions. In the constitution of the Jómborg state and again in that of the eastern Vaerings (a Scandinavian body in the service of the East Roman Empire) we see a constitution which looks like the foretaste of that of the Templars or the Teutonic Knights. Steenstrup thinks the code cited by Saxo may be identical with the laws which Rollo promulgated for his Norman subjects. In any case, they fall more near the viking period than any other northern table of laws. A certain republicanism was professed by these adventurers. "We have no king," one body answered to some Frankish delegates. We do read frequently of kings in the accounts of their hosts; but their power may not have extended beyond the leadership of the expedition; they may have been kings ad hoc. On the other hand, the whole character of northern tradition (Teutonic and Scandinavian tradition alike) forbids us to suppose that any would be elected to that office who was not of noble or princely blood. They were not entirely unlettered; for the use of runes dates back considerably earlier than the Viking Age. But these were used almost exclusively for lapidary inscriptions. What we can alone. describe as a literature, first the early Eddic verse, next the habit of narrating sagas: these things the Norsemen learned probably from their Celtic subjects, partly in Ireland, partly in the western islands of Scotland; and they first developed the new literature on the soil of Iceland. Nevertheless, some of the Eddic songs do seem to give the very form and pressure of the viking period.1 In certain material possessions-those, in fact, belonging to their trade, which was war and naval adventure-these viking folk were ahead of the Christian nations: in shipbuilding, for example. There is certainly a historical connexion between the ships which the tribes on the Baltic possessed in the days of Tacitus and the viking ships (Keary, The Vikings in Western Europe, pp. 108-9): a fact which would lead us to believe that the art of shipbuilding had been better preserved there than elsewhere in northern Europe. Merchant vessels must of course have plied between England and France or Frisia. But it is certain that even Charlemagne possessed no adequate navy, though a late chronicler tells us how he thought of building one. His descendants never carried out his designs. Nor was any English king before Alfred stirred up to undertake the same task. And yet the Romans, when threatened by the Carthaginian power, built in one year a fleet capable of holding its own against the, till then, greatest maritime nation in the world. The viking ships had a character apart. They may have owed their origin to the Roman galleys: they did without doubt owe their sails to them. Equally certain it is that this special type of shipbuilding was developed in the Baltic, if not before

It is from this time that we discern two distinct tendencies in the viking people. While one section is ready to settle down and receive territory at the hands of the Christian rulers, with or without homage, another section still adheres to a life of mere adventure and of plunder. A large portion of the Great Army refused to be bound by the peace of Wedmore, made some further attempts on England which were frustrated by Alfred's powerful new-built fleet, and then sailed to the continent and spread devastation far and wide. We see them under command of two Danish "kings," Godfred and Siegfried, first in the country of the Rhine-mouth or the Lower Scheldt; afterwards dividing their forces and, while some devastate far into Germany, others extend their ravages on every side in northern France down to the Loire. The whole of these vast countries, Northern Francia, with part of Burgundy, and the Rhineland, seem to lie as much at their mercy as England had done before Aethandune, or Ireland before the death of Turgesius. But in every country alike the wave of viking conquest now begins to recede. The settlement of Normandy was the only permanent outcome of the Viking Age in France. In England under Edward the Elder and Aethelflaed, Mercia recovered a great portion of what had been ceded to the Danes. In Ireland a great expulsion of the invaders took place in the beginning of the 10th century. Eventually the Norsemen in Ireland contented themselves with a small number of colonies, strictly confined in territory around certain seaports which they themselves had created: Dublin, Waterford and Wexford; though as the whole of Ireland was divided into petty kingdoms, it might easily happen that the Norse king in Ireland rose to the position-not much more than nominal-of over-king (Ard-Ri) for the whole land.

1 More especially the beautiful series contained in book iii. of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, and ascribed by the editors of that collection to one poet-"the Helgi Poet." Here vikings are mentioned by name-e.g.:"Varð ára ymr, ok iarna glymr: Brast rönd við rönd; rero víkingar:"

2" Sail