CYCLOPEDIA, or ENCYCLOPEDIA, in modern usage a work professing to give information in regard to the whole circle of human knowledge, or in regard to everything included within some par ticular scientific or conventional division of it. The character of such works has of necessity varied from generation to generation, with changing conceptions of the scope and value of our knowledge and of the mutual relations of one de partment with another.
Though several of the ancient philoso phers of Greece, and notably Aristotle, carried their investigations into every de partment of inquiry within their intel lectual horizon, none of them seems to have compiled exactly what we now call a cyclopmdia. Speusippus, indeed, is credited with something of the sort; but his works exist only in fragments. The great Latin collections of Terentius Var go, dating from 30 B. C., and the so-called "Historia Naturalis" of the elder Pliny (23-79 A. D.) , may thus be considered as the first specimens of their class. The 5th century saw the production of a curious and oddly written cyclopdia by Martianus Capella; in the 7th, Isidorus Hispalensis compiled his "Originum seu Etymologiarum libri xx," which was afterward abridged and recast by Hra banus Maurus. Under the caliph of Bagdad, Alfarabius or Farabi, in the 10th century, wrote a work, "Ihsa Alulum"—remarkable for its grasp and completeness; but this has hitherto been left in manuscript (a fine copy is preserved in the Escurial). Vincent of Beauvais ( Vinccntius Bellovacensis) , who probably died in 1264, gathered together, under the patronage of Louis IX. of France, the entire knowledge of the Middle Ages in three comprehensive works—"Speculum Historiale," "Specu lum Naturale," and "Speculum Doctri nale," to which an unknown hand soon after added a "Speculum Morale." About the same time Brunetto Latini was en gaged on his "Livres dou Tresor" (printed in Italian in 1474, and in the original French in "Documents inedits" (1680). The "De proprietatibus rerum" of Bartholomeus de Glanville deserves mention as being of English origin and highly successful in its day.
Written about 1360, this became ex ceedingly popular in the translation (1398) by John Trevisa. In 1541 the name cyclopmdia is first used as the title of a book by Ringelberg of Basel, and in 1559 Paul Scalich styles his work "En cyclopaedia seu orbis Disciplinarum turn Sacrarum turn Profanarium." Among the numerous cyclowedias of the 17th century it is enough to mention Antonio Zara's (Venice, 1615), and Alsted's (7 vols, fol. Herborn, 1630), both in Latin; Moreri's "Grand Dictionnaire Historique" (Lyons, 1674), which reached a 20th edition in 1759; Hofmann's "Lexicon Universale" (2 vols., fol. Basel, 1677; 4 vols. fol. Leyd. 1698), which was the first attempt to bring the whole body of science and art under the lexicographic form; Thomas Corneille's "Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences" (2 vols. Paris, 1694) ; and the most famous of all, Bayle's "Dictionnaire Historique et Criti que" (4 vols. Rotterdam 1697), which was mainly designed as corrective and supplementary to Moreri.
It was in the course of the 17th cen tury that the cyclopedists began regularly to employ the vulgar tongues for their work, and to arrange their material al phabetically for convenience of consul tation. Of the vast "Bibliotheca Univer sale," planned by Coronelli to fill 45 folio volumes, only a small portion saw the light (Venice, 1701-1706). The series of great cycolpmdic works in modern English practically began by the anony mous "Universal, Historical, Geograph ical, Chronological, and Classical Dic tionary" (2 vols. 1703), and the "Lexicon Technicum" of Dr. John Harris (Lond. 1704). Ephraim Chambers followed in 1728 with his "Cyclopxdia, or an Uni versal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" (2 vols. fol.), which presents a distinct advance in the construction of such works, the author endeavoring to give to his alphabetically arranged materials something of the interest of a continuous discourse by a system of cross references.