AUSONIUS, DECIMUS MAGNUS (c. 310-395), Roman poet and rhetorician, was born at Burdigala [Bordeaux]. He received an excellent education, especially in grammar and rhetoric, but confesses that his progress in Greek was unsatisfactory. Having completed his studies, he practised for some time as an advocate, but his inclination lay in the direction of teaching. He set up (in 334) a school of rhetoric in his native place, which was largely attended, his most famous pupil being Paulinus, afterwards bishop of Nola. After thirty years of this work, he was summoned by Valentinian to the imperial court, to undertake the education of Gratian, the heir-apparent. The prince always entertained the greatest regard for his tutor, and after his accession bestowed upon him the highest titles and honours, culminating in the consulship (379). After the murder of Gratian (383), Ausonius retired to his estates near Burdigala. He appears to have been a (not very enthusiastic) convert to Christianity. He died about 395.
His most important extant works are: in prose, Gratiarum Actio, an address of thanks to Gratian for his elevation to the consulship; Periochae, summaries of the books of the Iliad and Odyssey; and one or two epistolae; in verse, Epigrammata, including several free translations from the Greek Anthology; Ephemeris, the occupations of a day; Parentalia and Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium, on deceased relatives and literary friends; Epitaphia, chiefly on the Trojan heroes; Caesares, memorial verses on the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Elagabalus; Ordo Nobilium Urbium, short poems on famous cities; Ludus Septem Sapientum, speeches delivered by the Seven Sages of Greece; Idyllia, of which the best-known are the Mosella, a descriptive poem on the Moselle, and the infamous Cento Nuptialis. We may also mention Cupido Cruciatus, Cupid on the cross; Technopaegion, a literary trifle consisting of a collection of verses ending in monosyllables; Eclogarum Liber, on astronomical and astrological subjects; Epistolae, including letters to Paulinus and Symmachus; lastly, Praefatiunculae, three poetical epistles, one to the emperor Theodosius. Ausonius was rather a man of letters than a poet; his wide reading supplied him with material for a great variety of subjects, but his works exhibit no traces of a true poetic spirit; even his versification, though ingenious, is frequently defective.
There are no MSS. containing the whole of Ausonius’s works. Editio princeps, 1472; editions by Scaliger 1575, Souchay 1730, Schenkl 1883, Peiper 1886; cf. Mosella, Böcking 1845, de la Ville de Mirmont (critical edition with translation) 1889, and De Ausonii Mosella, 1892, Hosius 1894. See Deydou, Un Poète bordelais (1868); Everat, De Ausonii Operibus (1885); Jullian, Ausone et Bordeaux (1893); C. Verrier and R. de Courmont, Les Épigrammes d’Ausone (translation with bibliography, 1905); R. Pichon, Les Derviers Écrivains profanes (1907).
AUSSIG (Czech Oustí nad Labem), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 68 m. N. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 37,255, mostly German. It is situated in a mountainous district, at the confluence of the Biela and the Elbe, and, besides being an active river port, is an important junction of the northern Bohemian railways. Aussig has important industries in chemicals, textiles, glass and boat-building, and carries on an active trade in coal from the neighbouring mines, stone and stoneware, corn, fruit and wood. It was the birthplace of the painter, Raphael Mengs (1728-1779). Aussig is mentioned as a trading centre as early as 993. It was made a city by Ottokar II. in the latter part of the 13th century. In 1423 it was pledged by King Sigismund to the elector Frederick of Meissen, who occupied it with a Saxon garrison. In 1426 it was besieged by the Hussites, who on the 16th of June, though only 25,000 strong, defeated a German army of 70,000, which had been sent to its relief, with great slaughter. The town was stormed and sacked next day. After lying waste for three years, it was rebuilt in 1429. It suffered much during the Thirty Years’ and Seven Years’ Wars, and in 1830 it had only 1400 inhabitants. Not far from Aussig is the village of Kulm, where, on the 29th and 30th of August 1813, a battle took place between the French under Vandamme and an allied army of Austrians, Prussians and Russians. The French were defeated, and Vandamme surrendered with his army of 10,000 men.
AUSTEN, JANE (1775-1817), English novelist, was born on the 16th of December 1775 at the parsonage of Steventon, in Hampshire, a village of which her father, the Rev. George Austen, was rector. She was the youngest of seven children. Her mother was Cassandra Leigh, niece of Theophilus Leigh, a dry humorist, and for fifty years master of Balliol, Oxford. The life of no woman of genius could have been more uneventful than Miss Austen’s. She did not marry, and she never left home except on short visits, chiefly to Bath. Her first sixteen years were spent in the rectory at Steventon, where she began early to trifle with her pen, always jestingly, for family entertainment. In 1801 the Austens moved to Bath, where Mr Austen died in 1805, leaving only Mrs Austen, Jane and her sister Cassandra, to whom she was always deeply attached, to keep up the home; his sons were out in the world, the two in the navy, Francis William and Charles, subsequently rising to admiral’s rank. In 1805 the Austen ladies moved to Southampton, and in 1809 to Chawton, near Alton, in Hampshire, and there Jane Austen remained till 1817, the year of her death, which occurred at Winchester, on July 18th, as a memorial window in the cathedral testifies.
During her placid life Miss Austen never allowed her literary work to interfere with her domestic duties: sewing much and admirably, keeping house, writing many letters and reading aloud. Though, however, her days were quiet and her area circumscribed, she saw enough of middle-class provincial society to find a basis on which her dramatic and humorous faculties might build, and such was her power of searching observation and her sympathetic imagination that there are not in English fiction more faithful representations of the life she knew than we possess in her novels. She had no predecessors in this genre. Miss Austen’s “little bit (two inches wide) of ivory” on which she worked “with so fine a brush”—her own phrases—was her own invention.
Her best-known, if not her best work, Pride and Prejudice, was also her first. It was written between October 1796 and August 1797, although, such was the blindness of publishers, not issued until 1813, two years after Sense and Sensibility, which was written, on an old scenario called “Eleanor and Marianne,” in 1797 and 1798. Miss Austen’s inability to find a publisher for these stories, and for Northanger Abbey, written in 1798 (although it is true that she sold that MS. in 1803 for £10 to a Bath bookseller, only, however, to see it locked away in a safe for some years, to be gladly resold to her later), seems to have damped her ardour; for there is no evidence that between 1798 and 1809 she wrote anything but the fragment called “The Watsons,” after which year she began to revise her early work for the press. Her other three books belong to a later date—Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion being written between 1811 and 1816. The years of publication were Sense and Sensibility, 1811; Pride and Prejudice, 1813; Mansfield Park, 1814; and Emma, 1816—all in their author’s lifetime. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously in 1818. All were anonymous, agreeably to their author’s retiring disposition.