The Bach family perhaps presents the finest example of mental heredity. It began in 1550, and passed through eight generations, the last known member being Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, Kapellmeister to the Queen of Prussia, who died in 1845. During two centuries this family produced a crowd of musicians of high rank. The founder of the family was Veit Bach, a Presburg baker, who amused himself with singing and playing. He had two sons who were followed by an uninterrupted succession of musicians who inundated Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia during two centuries. They were all organists or church singers. When they became too numerous to live together and had to disperse, they agreed to reunite on a fixed day once a year. This custom was preserved up to the middle of the eighteenth century, and sometimes one hundred and twenty persons of the name of Bach met at the same spot. Fétis counts among them twenty-nine musicians of eminence.[255] Among musicians may be named the Adams, the Coustons, the Sangallos; among painters, the Van der Weldes, the Coypels, the Van Eycks, the Murillos, the Veroneses, the Bellinis, the Caraccis, the Correggios, the Mieris, the Bassanos, the Tintorettos, the Caliaris, the Vanloos, the Teniers, the Vernets, and especially the Titians who produced a race of painters, as shown in the following genealogy taken from Ribot’s excellent book:-- Tiziano Vecellio. X ------------------------------------------ X X | | +------------+ | | | | | X | | | | | -----------------+ X | Francesco | | | TIZIANO -+---------------+--- --+--------- ----------- | | Mario X | Fabricio Cesare | | | | | +-----------+ | | | | | | Pomponio Orazio | | Tizianello Tomaso. Among poets may be noted Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides and uncle of Æschylus who again had sons and nephews who were poets; Manzoni, the nephew of Beccaria; Lucan, the nephew of Seneca; Tasso, the son of Bernardo; Ariosto, with a brother and nephew poets; Aristophanes, with two sons who wrote comedies; Corneille, Racine, Sophocles, Coleridge, who had sons and nephews who were poets; the Dumas, father and son; the brothers Joseph and André Chenier, Alphonse and Ernest Daudet.