FLEMING, SIR SANDFORD (1827- ), Canadian engineer and publicist, was born at Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on the 7th of January 1827, but emigrated to Canada in 1845. Great powers of work and thoroughness in detail brought him to the front, and he was from 1867 to 1880 chief engineer of the Dominion government. Under his control was constructed the Intercolonial railway, and much of the Canadian Pacific. After his retirement in 1880 he devoted himself to the study of Canadian and Imperial problems, such as the unification of time reckoning throughout the world, and the construction of a state-owned system of telegraphs throughout the British empire. After years of labour he saw the first link forged in the chain, in the opening in 1902 of the Pacific Cable between Canada and Australia. Though not a party man he strongly advocated Federation in 1864-1867, and in 1891 vehemently attacked the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. He took the deepest interest in education, and in 1880 became chancellor of Queen’s University, Kingston.
He published The Intercolonial: a History (Montreal and London, 1876); England and Canada (London, 1884); and numerous brochures and magazine articles on scientific, social and political subjects.
FLEMING, SIR THOMAS (1544-1613), English judge, was born at Newport, Isle of Wight, in April 1544, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1574. He represented Winchester in parliament from 1584 to 1601, when he was returned for Southampton. In 1594 he was appointed recorder of London, and in 1595 was chosen solicitor-general in preference to Bacon. This office he retained under James I. and was knighted in 1603. In 1604 he was created chief baron of the exchequer and presided over many important state trials. In 1607 he was promoted to the chief justiceship of the king’s bench, and was one of the judges at the trial of the post-nati in 1608, siding with the majority of the judges in declaring that persons born in Scotland after the accession of James I. were entitled to the privileges of natural-born subjects in England. He was praised by his contemporaries, more particularly Coke, for his “great judgments, integrity and discretion.” He died on the 7th of August 1613 at his seat, Stoneham Park, Hampshire.
See Foss, Lives of the Judges.
FLEMISH LITERATURE. The older Flemish writers are dealt with in the article on [Dutch Literature]; after the separation of Belgium, however, from the Netherlands in 1830 there was a great revival of Flemish literature. The immediate result of the revolution was a reaction against everything associated with Dutch, and a disposition to regard the French language as the speech of liberty and independence. The provisional government of 1830 suppressed the official use of the Flemish language, which was relegated to the rank of a patois. For some years before 1830 Jan Frans Willems[1] (1793-1846) had been advocating the claims of the Flemish language. He had done his best to allay the irritation between Holland and Belgium and to prevent a separation. As archivist of Antwerp he made use of his opportunities by writing a history of Flemish letters. After the revolution his Dutch sympathies had made it necessary for him to live in seclusion, but in 1835 he settled at Ghent, and devoted himself to the cultivation of Flemish. He edited old Flemish classics, Reinaert de Vos (1836), the rhyming Chronicles of Jan van Heelu and Jan le Clerc, &c., and gathered round him a band of Flemish enthusiasts, the chevalier Philipp Blommaert (1809-1871), Karel Lodewijk Ledeganck (1805-1847), Fr. Rens (1805-1874), F.A. Snellaert (1809-1872), Prudens van Duyse (1804-1859), and others. Blommaert, who was born at Ghent on the 27th of August 1809, founded in 1834 in his native town the Nederduitsche letteroefeningen, a review for the new writers, and it was speedily followed by other Flemish organs, and by literary societies for the promotion of Flemish. In 1851 a central organization for the Flemish propaganda was provided by a society, named after the father of the movement, the “Willemsfonds.” The Catholic Flemings founded in 1874 a rival “Davidsfonds,” called after the energetic J.B. David (1801-1866), professor at the university of Louvain, and the author of a Flemish history of Belgium (Vaderlandsche historie, Louvain, 1842-1866). As a result of this propaganda the Flemish language was placed on an equality with French in law, and in administration, in 1873 and 1878, and in the schools in 1883. Finally in 1886 a Flemish Academy was established by royal authority at Ghent, where a course in Flemish literature had been established as early as 1854.
The claims put forward by the Flemish school were justified by the appearance (1837) of In’t Wonderjaar 1566 (In the Wonderful year) of Hendrik Conscience (q.v.), who roused national enthusiasm by describing the heroic struggles of the Flemings against the Spaniards. Conscience was eventually to make his greatest successes in the description of contemporary Flemish life, but his historical romances and his popular history of Flanders helped to give a popular basis to a movement which had been started by professors and scholars.
The first poet of the new school was Ledeganck, the best known of whose poems are those on the “three sister cities” of Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp (Die drie zustersteden, vaderlandsche trilogie, Ghent, 1846), in which he makes an impassioned protest against the adoption of French ideas, manners and language, and the neglect of Flemish tradition. The book speedily took its place as a Flemish classic. Ledeganck, who was a magistrate, also translated the French code into Flemish. Jan Theodoor van Rijswijck (1811-1849), after serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1830, settled down as a clerk in Antwerp, and became one of the hottest champions of the Flemish movement. He wrote a series of political and satirical songs, admirably suited to his public. The romantic and sentimental poet, Jan van Beers (q.v.), was typically Flemish in his sincere and moral outlook on life. Prudens van Duyse, whose most ambitious work was the epic Artavelde (1859), is perhaps best remembered by a collection (1844) of poems for children. Peter Frans Van Kerckhoven (1818-1857), a native of Antwerp, wrote novels, poems, dramas, and a work on the Flemish revival (De Vlaemsche Beweging, 1847).
Antwerp produced a realistic novelist in Jan Lambrecht Damien Sleeckx (1818-1901). An inspector of schools by profession, he was an indefatigable journalist and literary critic. He was one of the founders in 1844 of the Vlaemsch België, the first daily paper in the Flemish interest. His works include a long list of plays, among them Jan Steen (1852), a comedy; Grétry, which gained a national prize in 1861; De Visschers van Blankenberg (1863); and the patriotic drama of Zannekin (1865). His talent as a novelist was diametrically opposed to the idealism of Conscience. He was precise, sober and concrete in his methods, relying for his effect on the accumulation of carefully observed detail. He was particularly successful in describing the life of the shipping quarter of his native town. Among his novels are: In’t Schipperskwartier (1856), Dirk Meyer (1860), Tybaerts en Kie (1867), Kunst en Liefde (“Art and Love,” 1870), and Vesalius in Spanje (1895). His complete works were collected in 17 vols. (1877-1884).