Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" Volume 4, Part 4 (part 2 of 4)
Rivers.--Of the rivers of Burma the Irrawaddy is the most important. It rises possibly beyond the confines of Burma in the unexplored regions, where India, Tibet and China meet, and seems to be formed by the junction of a number of considerable streams of no great length. Two rivers, the Mali and the N'mai, meeting about latitude 25° 45' some 150 m. north of Bhamo, contribute chiefly to its volume, and during the dry weather it is navigable for steamers up to their confluence. Up to Bhamo, a distance of 900 m. from the sea, it is navigable throughout the year, and its chief tributary in Burma, the Chindwin, is also navigable for steamers for 300 m. from its junction with the Irrawaddy at Pakôkku. The Chindwin, called in its upper reaches the Tanai, rises in the hills south-west of Thama, and flows due north till it enters the south-east corner of the Hukawng valley, where it turns north-west and continues in that direction cutting the valley into two almost equal parts until it reaches its north-west range, when it turns almost due south and takes the name of the Chindwin. It is a swift clear river, fed in its upper reaches by numerous mountain streams. The Mogaung river, rising in the watershed which divides the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin drainages, flows south and south-east for 180 m. before it joins the Irrawaddy, and is navigable for steamers as far as Kamaing for about four months in the year. South of Thayetmyo, where arms of the Arakan Yomas approach the river and almost meet that spur of the Pegu Yomas which formed till 1886 the [v.04 p.0839] northern boundary of British Burma, the valley of the Irrawaddy opens out again, and at Yegin Mingyi near Myanaung the influence of the tide is first felt, and the delta may be said to begin. The so-called rivers of the delta, the Ngawun, Pyamalaw, Panmawaddy, Pyinzalu and Pantanaw, are simply the larger mouths of the Irrawaddy, and the whole country towards the sea is a close network of creeks where there are few or no roads and boats take the place of carts for every purpose. There is, however, one true river of some size, the Hlaing, which rises near Prome, flows southwards and meets the Pegu river and the Pazundaung creek near Rangoon, and thus forms the estuary which is known as the Rangoon river and constitutes the harbour of Rangoon. East of the Rangoon river and still within the deltaic area, though cut off from the main delta by the southern end of the Pegu Yomas, lies the mouth of the Sittang. This river, rising in the Sham-Karen hills, flows first due north and then southward through the Kyauksè, Yamèthin and Toungoo districts, its line being followed by the Mandalay-Rangoon railway as far south as Nyaunglèbin in the Pegu district. At Toungoo it is narrow, but below Shwegyin it widens, and at Sittang it is half a mile broad. It flows into the Gulf of Martaban, and near its mouth its course is constantly changing owing to erosion and corresponding accretions. The second river in the province in point of size is the Salween, a huge river, believed from the volume of its waters to rise in the Tibetan mountains to the north of Lhasa. It is in all probability actually longer than the Irrawaddy, but it is not to be compared to that river in importance. It is, in fact, walled in on either side, with banks varying in British territory from 3000 to 6000 ft. high and at present unnavigable owing to serious rapids in Lower Burma and at one or two places in the Shan States, but quite open to traffic for considerable reaches in its middle course. The Gyaing and the Attaran rivers meet the Salween at its mouth, and the three rivers form the harbour of Moulmein, the second seaport of Burma.
Lakes.--The largest lake in the province is Indawgyi in the Myitkyina district. It has an area of nearly 100 sq. m. and is surrounded on three sides by ranges of hills, but is open to the north where it has an outlet in the Indaw river. In the highlands of the Shan hills there are the Inle lakes near Yawnghwe, and in the Katha district also there is another Indaw which covers some 60 sq. m. Other lakes are the Paunglin lake in Minbu district, the Inma lake in Prome, the Tu and Duya in Henzada, the Shahkègyi and the Inyègyi in Bassein, the sacred lake at Ye in Tenasserim, and the Nagamauk, Panzemyaung and Walonbyan in Arakan. The Meiktila lake covers an area of some 5 sq. m., but it is to some extent at least an artificial reservoir. In the heart of the delta numerous large lakes or marshes abounding in fish are formed by the overflow of the Irrawaddy river during the rainy season, but these either assume very diminutive proportions or disappear altogether in the dry season.
Climate.--The climate of the delta is cooler and more temperate than in Upper Burma, and this is shown in the fairer complexion and stouter physique of the people of the lower province as compared with the inhabitants of the drier and hotter upper districts as far as Bhamo, where there is a great infusion of other types of the Tibeto-Burman family. North of the apex of the delta and the boundary between the deltaic and inland tracts, the rainfall gradually lessens as far as Minbu, where what was formerly called the rainless zone commences and extends as far as Katha. The rainfall in the coast districts varies from about 200 in. in the Arakan and Tenasserim divisions to an average of 90 in Rangoon and the adjoining portion of the Irrawaddy delta. In the extreme north of Upper Burma the rainfall is rather less than in the country adjoining Rangoon, and in the dry zone the annual average falls as low as 20 and 30 in.
The temperature varies almost as much as the rainfall. It is highest in the central zone, the mean of the maximum readings in such districts as Magwe, Myingyan, Kyauksè, Mandalay and Shwebo in the month of May being close on 100° F., while in the littoral and sub-montane districts it is nearly ten degrees less. The mean of the minimum readings in December in the central zone districts is a few degrees under 60° F. and in the littoral districts a few degrees over that figure. In the hilly district of Mogôk (Ruby Mines) the December mean minimum is 36.8° and the mean maximum 79°. The climate of the Chin and Kachin hills and also of the Shan States is temperate. In the shade and off the ground the thermometer rarely rises above 80° F. or falls below 25° F. In the hot season and in the sun as much as 150° F. is registered, and on the grass in the cold weather ten degrees of frost are not uncommon. Snow is seldom seen either in the Chin or Shan hills, but there are snow-clad ranges in the extreme north of the Kachin country. In the narrow valleys of the Shan hills, and especially in the Salween valley, the shade maximum reaches 100° F. regularly for several weeks in April. The rainfall in the hills varies very considerably, but seems to range from about 60 in. in the broader valleys to about 300 in. on the higher forest-clad ranges.
Geology.--Geologically, British Burma consists of two divisions, an eastern and a western. The dividing line runs from the mouth of the Sittang river along the railway to Mandalay, and thence continues northward, with the same general direction but curving slightly towards the east. West of this line the rocks are chiefly Tertiary and Quaternary; east of it they are mostly Palaeozoic or gneissic. In the western mountain ranges the beds are thrown into a series of folds which form a gentle curve running from south to north with its convexity facing westward. There is an axial zone of Cretaceous and Lower Eocene, and this is flanked on each side by the Upper Eocene and the Miocene, while the valley of the Irrawaddy is occupied chiefly by the Pliocene. Along the southern part of the Arakan coast the sea spreads over the western Miocene zone. The Cretaceous beds have not yet been separated from the overlying Eocene, and the identification of the system rests on the discovery of a single Cenomanian ammonite. The Eocene beds are marine and contain nummulites. The Miocene beds are also marine and are characterized by an abundant molluscan fauna. The Pliocene, on the other hand, is of freshwater origin, and contains silicified wood and numerous remains of Mammalia. Flint chips, which appear to have been fashioned by hand, are said to have been found in the Miocene beds, but to prove the existence of man at so early a period would require stronger evidence than has yet been brought forward.
The older rocks of eastern Burma are very imperfectly known. Gneiss and granite occur; Ordovician fossils have been found in the Upper Shan States, and Carboniferous fossils in Tenasserim and near Moulmein. Volcanic rocks are not common in any part of Burma, but about 50 m. north-north-east of Yenangyaung the extinct volcano of Popa rises to a height of 3000 ft. above the surrounding Pliocene plain. Intrusions of a serpentine-like rock break through the Miocene strata north of Bhamo, and similar intrusions occur in the western ranges. Whether the mud "volcanoes" of the Irrawaddy valley have any connexion with volcanic activity may be doubted. The petroleum of Burma occurs in the Miocene beds, one of the best-known fields being that of Yenangyaung. Coal is found in the Tertiary deposits in the valley of the Irrawaddy and in Tenasserim. Tin is abundant in Tenasserim, and lead and silver have been worked extensively in the Shan States. The famous ruby mines of Upper Burma are in metamorphic rock, while the jadeite of the Bhamo neighbourhood is associated with the Tertiary intrusions of serpentine-like rock already noticed.[1]
Population.--The total population of Burma in 1901 was 10,490,624 as against 7,722,053 in 1891; but a considerable portion of this large increase was due to the inclusion of the Shan States and the Chin hills in the census area. Even in Burma proper, however, there was an increase during the decade of 1,530,822, or 19.8%. The density of population per square mile is 44 as compared with 167 for the whole of India and 552 for the Bengal Delta. England and Wales have a population more than twelve times as dense as that of Burma, so there is still room for expansion. The chief races of Burma are Burmese (6,508,682), Arakanese (405,143), Karens (717,859), Shans (787,087), Chins (179,292), Kachins (64,405) and Talaings (321,898); but these totals do not include the Shan States and Chin hills. The Burmese in person have the Mongoloid characteristics common to the Indo-Chinese races, the Tibetans and tribes of the Eastern Himalaya. They may be generally described as of a stout, active, well-proportioned form; of a brown but never of an intensely dark complexion, with black, coarse, lank and abundant hair, and a little more beard than is possessed by the Siamese. Owing to their gay and lively disposition the Burmese have been called "the Irish of the East," and like the Irish they are somewhat inclined to laziness. Since the advent of the British power, the immigration of Hindus with a lower standard of comfort and of Chinamen with a keener business instinct has threatened the economic independence of the Burmese in their own country. As compared with the Hindu, the Burmese wear silk instead of cotton, and eat rice instead of the cheaper grains; they are of an altogether freer and less servile, but also of a less practical character. The Burmese women have a keener business instinct than the men, and serve in some degree to redress the balance. The Burmese children are adored by their parents, and are said to be the happiest and merriest children in the world.
Language and Literature.--The Burmese are supposed by modern philologists to have come, as joint members of a vast Indo-Chinese immigration swarm, from western China to the head waters of the Irrawaddy and then separated, some to people Tibet and Assam, the others to press southwards into the [v.04 p.0840] plains of Burma. The indigenous tongues of Burma are divided into the following groups:--
A. Indo-Chinese (1) Tibet-Burman (a) The Burmese group. family sub-family (b) The Kachin group. (c) The Kuki-Chin group.
(2) Siamese-Chinese (d) The Tai group. sub-family (e) The Karen group.
(3) Môn-Annam (f) The Upper Middle sub-family Mekong or Wa Palaung group. (g) The North Cambodian group. B. Malay family (h) The Selung language.
Burmese, which was spoken by 7,006,495 people in the province in 1901, is a monosyllabic language, with, according to some authorities, three different tones; so that any given syllable may have three entirely different meanings only distinguishable by the intonation when spoken, or by accents or diacritical marks when written. There are, however, very many weighty authorities who deny the existence of tones in the language. The Burmese alphabet is borrowed from the Aryan Sanskrit through the P[=a]li of Upper India. The language is written from left to right in what appears to be an unbroken line. Thus Burma possesses two kinds of literature, P[=a]li and Burmese. The P[=a]li is by far the more ancient, including as it does the Buddhist scriptures that originally found their way to Burma from Ceylon and southern India. The Burmese literature is for the most part metrical, and consists of religious romances, chronological histories and songs. The Maha Yazawin or "Royal Chronicle," forms the great historical work of Burma. This is an authorized history, in which everything unflattering to the Burmese monarchs was rigidly suppressed. After the Second Burmese War no record was ever made in the Yazawin that Pegu had been torn away from Burma by the British. The folk songs are the truest and most interesting national literature. The Burmese are fond of stage-plays in which great licence of language is permitted, and great liberty to "gag" is left to the wit or intelligence of the actors.
Government.--The province as a division of the Indian empire is administered by a lieutenant-governor, first appointed 1st May 1897, with a legislative council of nine members, five of whom are officials. There are, besides, a chief secretary, revenue secretary, secretary and two under-secretaries, a public works department secretary with two assistants. The revenue administration of the province is superintended by a financial commissioner, assisted by two secretaries, and a director of land records and agriculture, with a land records departmental staff. There is a chief court for the province with a chief justice and three justices, established in May 1900. Other purely judicial officers are the judicial commissioner for Upper Burma, and the civil judges of Mandalay and Moulmein. There are four commissioners of revenue and circuit, and nineteen deputy commissioners in Lower Burma, and four commissioners and seventeen deputy commissioners in Upper Burma. There are two superintendents of the Shan States, one for the northern and one for the southern Shan States, and an assistant superintendent in the latter; a superintendent of the Arakan hill tracts and of the Chin hills, and a Chinese political adviser taken from the Chinese consular service. The police are under the control of an inspector-general, with deputy inspector-general for civil and military police, and for supply and clothing. The education department is under a director of public instruction, and there are three circles--eastern, western and Upper Burma, each under an inspector of schools.
The Burma forests are divided into three circles each under a conservator, with twenty-one deputy conservators. There are also a deputy postmaster-general, chief superintendent and four superintendents of telegraphs, a chief collector of customs, three collectors and four port officers, and an inspector-general of jails. At the principal towns benches of honorary magistrates, exercising powers of various degrees, have been constituted. There are forty-one municipal towns, fourteen of which are in Upper Burma. The commissioners of division are ex officio sessions judges in their several divisions, and also have civil powers, and powers as revenue officers. They are responsible to the lieutenant-governor, each in his own division, for the working of every department of the public service, except the military department, and the branches of the administration directly under the control of the supreme government. The deputy commissioners perform the functions of district magistrates, district judges, collectors and registrars, besides the miscellaneous duties which fall to the principal district officer as representative of government. Subordinate to the deputy commissioners are assistant commissioners, extra-assistant commissioners and myoôks, who are invested with various magisterial, civil and revenue powers, and hold charge of the townships, as the units of regular civil and revenue jurisdiction are called, and the sub-divisions of districts, into which most of these townships are grouped. Among the salaried staff of officials, the townships officers are the ultimate representatives of government who come into most direct contact with the people. Finally, there are the village headmen, assisted in Upper Burma by elders, variously designated according to old custom. Similarly in the towns, there are headmen of wards and elders of blocks. In Upper Burma these headmen have always been revenue collectors. The system under which in towns headmen of wards and elders of blocks are appointed is of comparatively recent origin, and is modelled on the village system.
The Shan States were declared to be a part of British India by notification in 1886. The Shan States Act of 1888 vests the civil, [Sidenote: The Shan States.] criminal and revenue administration in the chief of the state, subject to the restrictions specified in the sanad or patent granted to him. The law to be administered in each state is the customary law of the state, so far as it is in accordance with the justice, equity and good conscience, and not opposed to the spirit of the law in the rest of British India. The superintendents exercise general control over the administration of criminal justice, and have power to call for cases, and to exercise wide revisionary powers. Criminal jurisdiction in cases in which either the complainant or the defendant is a European, or American, or a government servant, or a British subject not a native of a Shan State, is withdrawn from the chiefs and vested in the superintendents and assistant superintendents. Neither the superintendents nor the assistant superintendents have power to try civil suits, whether the parties are Shans or not. In the Myelat division of the southern Shan States, however, the criminal law is practically the same as the in force in Upper Burma, and the ngwegunhmus, or petty chiefs, have been appointed magistrates of the second class. The chiefs of the Shan States are of three classes:--(1) sawbwas; (2) myosas; (3) ngwegunhmus. The last are found only in the Myelat, or border country between the southern Shan States and Burma. There are fifteen sawbwas, sixteen myosas and thirteen ngwegunhmus in the Shan States proper. Two sawbwas are under the supervision of the commissioner of the Mandalay division, and two under the commissioner of the Sagaing division. The states vary enormously in size, from the 12,000 sq. m. of the Trans-Salween State of Kêng Tung, to the 3.95 sq. m. of Nam Hkôm in the Myelat. The latter contained only 41 houses with 210 inhabitants in 1897 and has since been merged in the adjoining state. There are five states, all sawbwaships, under the supervision of the superintendent of the northern Shan States, besides an indeterminate number of Wa States and communities of other races beyond the Salween river. The superintendent of the southern Shan States supervises thirty-nine, of which ten are sawbwaships. The headquarters of the northern Shan States are at Lashio, of the southern Shan States at Taung-gyi.
The states included in eastern and western Karen-ni are not part of British India, and are not subject to any of the laws in force in the Shan States, but they are under the supervision of the superintendent of the southern Shan States.
The northern portion of the Karen hills is at present dealt with on the principle of political as distinguished from administrative control. The tribes are not interfered with as long as they keep the peace. What is specifically known as the Kachin hills, the country taken under administration in the Bhamo and Myitkyina districts, is divided into forty tracts. Beyond these tracts there are many Kachins in Katha, Möng-Mit, and the northern Shan States, but though they are often the preponderating, they are not the exclusive population. The country within the forty tracts may be considered the Kachin hills proper, and it lies between 23° 30' and 26° 30' N. lat. and 96° and 98° E. long. Within this area the petty chiefs have appointment orders, the people are disarmed, and the rate of tribute per household is fixed in each case. Government is regulated by the [v.04 p.0841] Kachin hills regulation. Since 1894 the country has been practically undisturbed, and large numbers of Kachins are enlisted, and ready to enlist in the military police, and seem likely to form as good troops as the Gurkhas of Nepal.
The Chin hills were not declared an integral part of Burma until 1895, but they now form a scheduled district. The chiefs, however, are allowed to administer their own affairs, as far as may be, in accordance with their own customs, subject to the supervision of the superintendent of the Chin hills.
Religion.--Buddhists make up more than 88.6%; Mussulmans 3.28; spirit-worshippers 3.85; Hindus 2.76, and Christians 1.42 of the total population of the province. The large nominal proportion of Buddhists is deceptive. The Burmese are really as devoted to demonolatry as the hill-tribes who are labelled plain spirit-worshippers. The actual figures of the various religions, according to the census of 1901, are as follows:--
Buddhists 9,184,121 Spirit-worshippers 399,390 Hindus 285,484 Mussulmans 339,446 Christians 147,525 Sikhs 6,596 Jews 685 Parsees 245 Others 28
The chief religious principle of the Burmese is to acquire merit for their next incarnation by good works done in this life. The bestowal of alms, offerings of rice to priests, the founding of a monastery, erection of pagodas, with which the country is crowded, the building of a bridge or rest-house for the convenience of travellers are all works of religious merit, prompted, not by love of one's fellow-creatures, but simply and solely for one's own future advantage.
An analysis shows that not quite two in every thousand Burmese profess Christianity, and there are about the same number of Mahommedans among them. It is admitted by the missionaries themselves that Christianity has progressed very slowly among the Burmese in comparison with the rapid progress made amongst the Karens. It is amongst the Sgaw Karens that the greatest progress in Christianity has been made, and the number of spirit-worshippers among them is very much smaller. The number of Burmese Christians is considerably increased by the inclusion among them of the Christian descendants of the Portuguese settlers of Syriam deported to the old Burmese Tabayin, a village now included in the Ye-u subdivision of Shwebo. These Christians returned themselves as Burmese. The forms of Christianity which make most converts in Burma are the Baptist and Roman Catholic faiths. Of recent years many conversions to Christianity have been made by the American Baptist missionaries amongst the Lahu or Muhsö hill tribesmen.
Education.--Compared with other Indian provinces, and even with some of the countries of Europe, Burma takes a very high place in the returns of those able to both read and write. Taking the sexes apart, though women fall far behind men in the matter of education, still women are better educated in Burma than in the rest of India. The average number of each sex in Burma per thousand is:--literates, male 378; female, 45; illiterates, male, 622; female, 955. The number of literates per thousand in Bengal is:--male, 104; female, 5. The proportion was greatly reduced in the 1901 census by the inclusion of the Shan States and the Chin hills, which mostly consist of illiterates.
The fact that in Upper Burma the proportion of literates is nearly as high as, and the proportion of those under instruction even higher than, that of the corresponding classes in Lower Burma, is a clear proof that in primary education, at least, the credit for the superiority of the Burman over the native of India is due to indigenous schools. In almost every village in the province there is a monastery, where the most regular occupation of one or more of the resident pongyis, or Buddhist monks, is the instruction free of charge of the children of the village. The standard of instruction, however, is very low, consisting only of reading and writing, though this is gradually being improved in very many monasteries. The absence of all prejudice in favour of the seclusion of women also is one of the main reasons why in this province the proportion who can read and write is higher than in any other part of India, Cochin alone excepted. It was not till 1890 that the education department took action in Upper Burma. It was then ascertained that there were 684 public schools with 14,133 pupils, and 1664 private schools with 8685 pupils. It is worthy of remark that of these schools 29 were Mahommedan, and that there were 176 schools for girls in which upwards of 2000 pupils were taught. There are three circles--Eastern, Central and Upper Burma. For the special supervision and encouragement of indigenous primary education in monastic and in lay schools, each circle of inspection is divided into sub-circles corresponding with one or more of the civil districts, and each sub-circle is placed under a deputy-inspector or a sub-inspector of schools. There are nine standards of instruction, and the classes in schools correspond with these standards. In Upper Burma all educational grants are paid from imperial funds; there is no cess as in Lower Burma. Grants-in-aid are given according to results. There is only one college, at Rangoon, which is affiliated to the Calcutta University. There are missionary schools amongst the Chins, Kachins and Shans, and a school for the sons of Shan chiefs at Taung-gyi in the southern Shan States. A Patamabyan examination for marks in the P[=a]li language was first instituted in 1896 and is held annually.
Finance.--The gross revenue of Lower Burma from all sources in 1871-1872 was Rs.1,36,34,520, of which Rs.1,21,70,530 was from imperial taxation, Rs.3,73,200 from provincial services, and Rs.10,90,790 from local funds. The land revenue of the province was Rs.34,45,230. In Burma the cultivators themselves continue to hold the land from government, and the extent of their holdings averages about five acres. The land tax is supplemented by a poll tax on the male population from 18 to 60 years of age, with the exception of immigrants during the first five years of their residence, religious teachers, schoolmasters, government servants and those unable to obtain their own livelihood. In 1890-1891 the revenue of Lower Burma has risen to Rs.2,08,38,872 from imperial taxation, Rs.1,55,51,897 for provincial services, and Rs.12,14,596 from incorporated local funds. The expenditure on the administration of Lower Burma in 1870-1871 was Rs.49,70,020. In 1890-1891 it was Rs.1,58,48,041. In Upper Burma the chief source of revenue is the thathameda, a tithe or income tax which was instituted by King Mindon, and was adopted by the British very much as they found it. For the purpose of the assessment every district and town is classified according to its general wealth and prosperity. As a rule the basis of calculation was 100 rupees from every ten houses, with a 10% deduction for those exempted by custom. When the total amount payable by the village was thus determined, the village itself settled the amount to be paid by each individual householder. This was done by thamadis, assessors, usually appointed by the villagers themselves. Other important sources of revenue are the rents from state lands, forests, and miscellaneous items such as fishery, revenue and irrigation taxes. In 1886-1887, the year after the annexation, the amount collected in Upper Burma from all sources was twenty-two lakhs of rupees. In the following year it had risen to fifty lakhs. Much of Upper Burma, however, remained disturbed until 1890. The figures for 1890-1891, therefore, show the first really regular collection. The amount then collected was Rs.87,47,020.
The total revenue of Burma in the year ending March 31, 1900 was Rs.7,04,36,240 and in 1905, Rs.9,65,62,298. The total expenditure in the same years respectively was Rs.4,30,81,000 and Rs.5,66,60,047. The principal items of revenue in the budget are the land revenue, railways, customs, forests and excise.
Defence.--Burma is garrisoned by a division of the Indian army, consisting of two brigades, under a lieutenant-general. Of the native regiments seven battalions are Burma regiments specially raised for permanent service in Burma by transformation from military police. These regiments, consisting of Gurkhas, Sikhs and Pathans, are distributed throughout the Shan States and the northern part of Burma. In addition to these there are about 13,500 civil police and 15,000 military police. The military police are in reality a regular military force with only two European officers in command of each battalion; and they are recruited entirely from among the warlike races of northern India. A small battalion of Karens enlisted as sappers and miners proved a failure and had to be disbanded. Experiments have also been made with the Kachin hillmen and with the Shans; but the Burmese character is so averse to discipline and control in petty matters that it is impossible to get really suitable men to enlist even in the civil police. The volunteer forces consist of the Rangoon Port Defence Volunteers, comprising artillery, naval, and engineer corps, the Moulmein artillery, the Moulmein, Rangoon, Railway and Upper Burma rifles.
Minerals and Mining.--In its three chief mineral products, earth-oil, coal and gold, Burma offers a fair field for enterprise and nothing more. Without yielding fortunes for speculators, like South Africa or Australia, it returns a fair percentage upon genuine hard work. Coal is found in the Thayetmyo, Upper Chindwin and Shwebo districts, and in the Shan States; it also occurs in Mergui, but the deposits which have been so far discovered have been either of inferior quality or too far from their market to be worked to advantage. The tin mines in Lower Burma are worked by natives, but a company at one time worked mines in the Maliwun township of Mergui by European methods. The chief mines and minerals are in Upper Burma. The jade mines of Upper Burma are now practically the only source of supply of that mineral, which is in great demand over all China. The mines are situated beyond Kamaing, north of Mogaung in the Myitkyina district. The miners are all Kachins, and the right to collect the jade duty of 33-1/3 is farmed out by government to a lessee, who has hitherto always been a Chinaman. The amount obtained has varied considerably. In 1887-1888 the rent was Rs.50,000. This dwindled to Rs.36,000 in 1892-1893, but the system was then adopted of letting for a term of three years and a higher rent was obtained. The value varies enormously according to colour, which should be a particular shade of dark green. Semi-transparency, brilliancy and hardness are, however, also essentials. The old river mines produced the best quality. The quarry mines on the top of the hill near Tawmaw produce enormous quantities, but the quality is not so good.
The most important ruby-bearing area is the Mogôk stone tract, in the hills about 60 m. east of the Irrawaddy and 90 m. north-north-west of Mandalay. The right to mine for rubies by European methods and to levy royalties from persons working by native methods was leased to the Burma Ruby Mines Company, Limited, in 1889, and the lease was renewed in 1896 for 14 years at a rent of Rs.3,15,000 a year plus a share of the profits. The rent was [v.04 p.0842] reduced permanently in 1898 to Rs.2,00,000 a year, but the share of the profits taken by government was increased from 20 to 30%. There are other ruby mines at Nanyaseik in the Myitkyina district and at Sagyin in the Mandalay district, where the mining is by native methods under licence-fees of Rs.5 and Rs.10 a month. They are, however, only moderately successful. Gold is found in most of the rivers in Upper Burma, but the gold-washing industry is for the most part spasmodic in the intervals of agriculture. There is a gold mine at Kyaukpazat in the Mawnaing circle of the Kathra district, where the quartz is crushed by machinery and treated by chemical processes. Work was begun in 1895, and the yield of gold in that year was 274 oz., which increased to 893 oz. in 1896-1897. This, however, proved to be merely a pocket, and the mine is now shut down. Dredging for gold, however, seems likely to prove very profitable and gold dust is found in practically every river in the hills.
The principal seats of the petroleum industry are Yenangyaung in the Magwe, and Yenangyat in the Pakôkku districts. The wells have been worked for a little over a century by the natives of the country. The Burma Oil Company since 1889 has worked by drilled wells on the American or cable system, and the amount produced is yearly becoming more and more important.
Amber is extracted by Kachins in the Hukawng valley beyond the administrative border, but the quality of the fossil resin is not very good. The amount exported varies considerably. Tourmaline or rubellite is found on the borders of the Ruby Mines district and in the Shan State of Möng Löng. Steatite is extracted from the Arakan hill quarries. Salt is manufactured at various places in Upper Burma, notably in the lower Chindwin, Sagaing, Shwebo, Myingyan and Yamethin districts, as well as at Mawhkio in the Shan State of Thibaw. Iron is found in many parts of the hills, and is worked by inhabitants of the country. A good deal is extracted and manufactured into native implements at Pang Lông in the L[=e]gya (Laihka) Shan State. Lead is extracted by a Chinese lessee from the mines at Bawzaing (Maw-s[=o]n) in the Myelat, southern Shan States. The ore is rich in silver as well as in lead.
Agriculture.--The cultivation of the land is by far the most important industry in Burma. Only 9.4% of the people were classed as urban in the census of 1901, and a considerable proportion of this number were natives of India and not Burmese. Nearly two-thirds of the total population are directly or indirectly engaged in agriculture and kindred occupations. Throughout most of the villages in the rural tracts men, women and children all take part in the agricultural operations, although in riverine villages whole families often support themselves from the sale of petty commodities and eatables. The food of the people consists as a rule of boiled rice with salted fresh or dried fish, salt, sessamum-oil, chillies, onions, turmeric, boiled vegetables, and occasionally meat of some sort from elephant flesh down to smaller animals, fowls and almost everything except snakes, by way of condiment.
The staple crop of the province in both Upper and Lower Burma is rice. In Lower Burma it is overwhelmingly the largest crop; in Upper Burma it is grown wherever practicable. Throughout the whole of the moister parts of the province the agricultural season is the wet period of the south-west monsoon, lasting from the middle of May until November. In some parts of Lower Burma and in the dry districts of Upper Burma a hot season crop is also grown with the assistance of irrigation during the spring months. Oxen are used for ploughing the higher lands with light soil, and the heavier and stronger buffaloes for ploughing wet tracts and marshy lands. As rice has to be transplanted as well as sown and irrigated, it needs a considerable amount of labour expended on it; and the Burman has the reputation of being a somewhat indolent cultivator. The Karens and Shans who settle in the plains expend much more care in ploughing and weeding their crops. Other crops which are grown in the province, especially in Upper Burma, comprise maize, tilseed, sugar-cane, cotton, tobacco, wheat, millet, other food grains including pulse, condiments and spices, tea, barley, sago, linseed and other oil-seeds, various fibres, indigo and other dye crops, besides orchards and garden produce. At the time of the British annexation of Burma there were some old irrigation systems in the Kyauksè and Minbu districts, which had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and these have now been renewed and extended. In addition to this the Mandalay Canal, 40 m. in length, with fourteen distributaries was opened in 1902; the Shwebo canal, 27 m. long, was opened in 1906, and a beginning had been made of two branches 29 and 20 m. in length, and of the Môn canal, begun in 1904, 53 m. in length. In all upwards of 300,000 acres are subject to irrigation under these schemes. On the whole the people of Burma are prosperous and contented. Taxes and land revenue are light; markets for the disposal of produce are constant and prices good; while fresh land is still available in most districts. Compared with the congested districts in the other provinces of India, with the exception of Assam, the lot of the Burman is decidedly enviable.
Forests.---The forests of Burma are the finest in British India and one of the chief assets of the wealth of the country; it is from Burma that the world draws its main supply of teak for shipbuilding, and indeed it was the demand for teak that largely led to the annexation of Burma. At the close of the First Burmese War in 1826 Tenasserim was annexed because it was supposed to contain large supplies of this valuable timber; and it was trouble with a British forest company that directly led to the Third Burmese War of 1885. Since the introduction of iron ships teak has supplanted oak, because it contains an essential oil which preserves iron and steel, instead of corroding them like the tannic acid contained in oak. The forests of Burma, therefore, are now strictly preserved by the government, and there is a regular forest department for the conservation and cutting of timber, the planting of young trees for future generations, the prevention of forest fires, and for generally supervising their treatment by the natives. In the reserves the trees of commercial value can only be cut under a licence returning a revenue to the state, while unreserved trees can be cut by the natives for home consumption. There are naturally very many trees in these forests besides the teak. In Lower Burma alone the enumeration of the trees made by Sulpiz Kurz in his Forest Flora of British Burma (1877) includes some 1500 species, and the unknown species of Upper Burma and the Shan States would probably increase this total very considerably. In addition to teak, which provides the bulk of the revenue, the most valuable woods are sha or cutch, india rubber, pyingado, or ironwood for railway sleepers, and padauk. Outside these reserves enormous tracts of forest and jungle still remain for clearance and cultivation, reservation being mostly confined to forest land unsuitable for crops. In 1870-1871 the state reserved forests covered only 133 sq.m., in all the Rangoon division. The total receipts from the forests then amounted to Rs.7,72,400. In 1889-1890 the total area of reserved forests in Lower Burma was 5574 sq.m., and the gross revenue was Rs.31,34,720, and the expenditure was Rs.13,31,930. The work of the forest department did not begin in Upper Burma till 1891. At the end of 1892 the reserved forests in Upper Burma amounted to 1059 sq.m. On 30th June 1896 the reserved area amounted to 5438 sq.m. At the close of 1899 the area of the reserved forests in the whole province amounted to 15,669 sq.m., and in 1903-1904 to 20,038 sq.m. with a revenue of Rs.85,19,404 and expenditure amounting to Rs.35,00,311. In 1905-1906 there were 20,545 sq.m. of reserved forest, and it is probable that when the work of reservation is complete there will be 25,000 sq.m. of preserves or 12% of the total area.
Fisheries.--Fisheries and fish-curing exist both along the sea-coast of Burma and in inland tracts, and afforded employment to 126,651 persons in 1907. The chief seat of the industry is in the Thongwa and Bassein districts, where the income from the leased fisheries on individual streams sometimes amounts to between £6000 and £7000 a year. Net fisheries, worked by licence-holders in the principal rivers and along the sea-shore, are not nearly so profitable as the closed fisheries--called In--which are from time to time sold by auction for fixed periods of years. Salted fish forms, along with boiled rice, one of the chief articles of food among the Burmese; and as the price of salted fish is gradually rising along with the prosperity and purchasing power of the population, this industry is on a very sound basis. There are in addition some pearling grounds in the Mergui Archipelago, which have a very recent history; they were practically unknown before 1890; in the early 'nineties they were worked by Australian adventurers, most of whom have since departed; and now they are leased in blocks to a syndicate of Chinamen, who grant sub-leases to individual adventurers at the rate of £25 a pump for the pearling year. The chief harvest is of mother of pearl, which suffices to pay the working expenses; and there is over and above the chance of finding a pearl of price. Some pearls worth £1000 and upwards have recently been discovered.
Manufactures and Art.--The staple industry of Burma is agriculture, but many cultivators are also artisans in the by-season. In addition to rice-growing and the felling and extraction of timber, and the fisheries, the chief occupations are rice-husking, silk-weaving and dyeing. The introduction of cheap cottons and silk fabrics has dealt a blow to hand-weaving, while aniline dyes are driving out the native vegetable product; but both industries still linger in the rural tracts. The best silk-weavers are to be found at Amarapura. There large numbers of people follow this occupation as their sole means of livelihood, whereas silk and cotton weaving throughout the province generally is carried on by girls and women while unoccupied by other domestic duties. The Burmese are fond of bright colours, and pink and yellow harmonize well with their dark olive complexion, but even here the influence of western civilization is being felt, and in the towns the tendency now is towards maroon, brown, olive and dark green for the women's skirts. The total number of persons engaged in the production of textile fabrics in Burma according to the census of 1901 was 419,007. The chief dye-product of Burma is cutch, a brown dye obtained from the wood [v.04 p.0843] of the sha tree. Cutch-boiling forms the chief means of livelihood of a large number of the poorer classes in the Prome and Thayetmyo districts of Lower Burma, and a subsidiary means of subsistence elsewhere. Cheroot making and smoking is universal among both sexes. The chief arts of Burma are wood-carving and silver work. The floral wood-carving is remarkable for its freedom and spontaneity. The carving is done in teak wood when it is meant for fixtures, but teak has a coarse grain, and otherwise yamane clogwood, said to be a species of gmelina, is preferred. The tools employed are chisel, gouge and mallet. The design is traced on the wood with charcoal, gouged out in the rough, and finished with sharp fine tools, using the mallet for every stroke. The great bulk of the silver work is in the form of bowls of different sizes, in shape something like the lower half of a barrel, only more convex, of betel boxes, cups and small boxes for lime. Both in the wood-carving and silver work the Burmese character displays itself, giving boldness, breadth and freedom of design, but a general want of careful finish. Unfortunately the national art is losing its distinctive type through contact with western civilization.
Commerce.--The chief articles of export from Burma are rice and timber. In 1805 the quantity of rice exported in the foreign and coastal trade amounted to 1,419,173 tons valued at Rs.9,77,66,132, and in 1905 the figures were 2,187,764 tons, value Rs.15,67,28,288. England takes by far the greatest share of Burma's rice, though large quantities are also consumed in Germany, while France, Italy, Belgium and Holland also consume a considerable amount. The regular course of trade is apt to be deflected by famines in India or Japan. In 1900 over one million tons of rice were shipped to India during the famine there. The rice-mills, almost all situated at the various seaports, secure the harvest from the cultivator through middlemen. The value of teak exported in 1895 was Rs.1,34,64,303, and in 1905, Rs.1,31,03,401. Subordinate products for exports include cutch dye, caoutchouc or india-rubber, cotton, petroleum and jade. By far the largest of the imports are cotton, silk and woollen piece-goods, while subordinate imports include hardware, gunny bags, sugar, tobacco and liquors.
The following table shows the progressive value of the trade of Burma since 1871-1872:--
+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ | Year. | Imports. | Exports. | Total. | +-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+ | | Rs. | Rs. | Rs. | | 1871-1872 | 3,15,79,860 | 3,78,02,170 | 6,93,82,030 | | 1881-1882 | 6,38,49,840 | 8,05,71,410 | 14,44,21,250 | | 1801-1892 | 10,50,06,247 | 12,67,21,878 | 23,17,28,125 | | 1901-1902 | 12,78,46,636 | 18,74,47,200 | 31,52,93,836 | | 1904-1905 | 17,06,20,796 | 23,94,69,114 | 41,00,89,910 | +-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
Internal Communications.--In 1871-1872 there were 814 m. of road in Lower Burma, but the chief means of internal communication was by water. Steamers plied on the Irrawaddy as far as Thayetmyo. The vessels of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company now ply to Bassein and to all points on the Irrawaddy as far north as Bhamo, and in the dry weather to Myitkyina, and also on the Chindwin as far north as Kindat, and to Homalin during the rains. The Arakan Flotilla Company has also helped to open up the Arakan division. The length of roads has not greatly increased in Lower Burma, but there has been a great deal of road construction in Upper Burma. At the end of the year 1904-1905 there were in the whole province 7486 m. of road, 1516 m. of which were metalled and 3170 unmetalled, with 2799 m. of other tracks. But the chief advance in communications has been in railway construction. The first railway from Rangoon to Prome, 161 m., was opened in 1877, and that from Rangoon to Toungoo, 166 m., was opened in 1884. Since the annexation of Upper Burma this has been extended to Mandalay, and the Mu Valley railway has been constructed from Sagaing to Myitkyina, a distance of 752 m. from Rangoon. The Mandalay-Lashio railway has been completed, and trains run from Mandalay to Lashio, a distance of 178 m. The Sagaing-Mônywa-Alôn branch and the Meiktila-Myingyan branch were opened to traffic during 1900. In 1902 a railway from Henzada to Bassein was formed and a connecting link with the Prome line from Henzada to Letpadan was opened in 1903. Railways were also constructed from Pegu to Martaban, 121 m. in length, and from Henzada to Kyang-in, 66 m. in length; and construction was contemplated of a railway from Thazi towards Taung-gyi, the headquarters of the southern Shan States. The total length of lines open in 1904-1905 was 1340 m., but railway communication in Burma is still very incomplete. Five of the eight commissionerships and Lashio, the capital of the northern Shan States, have communication with each other by railway, but Taung-gyi and the southern Shan States can still only be reached by a hill-road through difficult country for cart traffic, and the headquarters of three commissionerships, Moulmein, Akyab and Minbu, have no railway communication with Rangoon. Arakan is in the worst position of all, for it is connected with Burma by neither railway nor river, nor even by a metalled road, and the only way to reach Akyab from Rangoon is once a week by sea.
Law.--The British government has administered the law in Burma on principles identical with those which have been adopted elsewhere in the British dominions in India. That portion of the law which is usually described as Anglo-Indian law (see INDIAN LAW) is generally applicable to Burma, though there are certain districts inhabited by tribes in a backward state of civilization which are excepted from its operation. Acts of the British parliament relating to India generally would be applicable to Burma, whether passed before or after its annexation, these acts being considered applicable to all the dominions of the crown in India. As regards the acts of the governor-general in council passed for India generally--they, too, were from the first applicable to Lower Burma; and they have all been declared applicable to Upper Burma also by the Burma Laws Act of 1898. That portion of the English law which has been introduced into India without legislation, and all the rules of law resting upon the authority of the courts, are made applicable to Burma by the same act. But consistently with the practice which has always prevailed in India, there is a large field of law in Burma which the British government has not attempted to disturb. It is expressly directed by the act of 1898 above referred to, that in regard to succession, inheritance, marriage, caste or any religious usage or institution, the law to be administered in Burma is (a) the Buddhist law in cases where the parties are Buddhists, (b) the Mahommedan law in cases where the parties are Mahommedans, (c) the Hindu law in cases where the parties are Hindus, except so far as the same may have been modified by the legislature. The reservation thus made in favour of the native laws is precisely analogous to the similar reservation made in India (see INDIAN LAW, where the Hindu law and the Mahommedan Law are described). The Buddhist law is contained in certain sacred books called Dhammathats. The laws themselves are derived from one of the collections which Hindus attribute to Manu, but in some respects they now widely differ from the ancient Hindu law so far as it is known to us. There is no certainty as to the date or method of their introduction. The whole of the law administered now in Burma rests ultimately upon statutory authority; and all the Indian acts relating to Burma, whether of the governor-general or the lieutenant-governor of Burma in council, will be found in the Burma Code (Calcutta, 1899), and in the supplements to that volume which are published from time to time at Rangoon. There is no complete translation of the Dhammathats, but a good many of them have been translated. An account of these translations will be found in The Principles of Buddhist Law by Chan Toon (Rangoon, 1894), which is the first attempt to present those principles in something approaching to a systematic form.
History.--It is probable that Burma is the Chryse Regio of Ptolemy, a name parallel in meaning to Sonaparanta, the classic P[=a]li title assigned to the country round the capital in Burmese documents. The royal history traces the lineage of the kings to the ancient Buddhist monarchs of India. This no doubt is fabulous, but it is hard to say how early communication with Gangetic India began. From the 11th to the 13th century the old Burman empire was at the height of its power, and to this period belong the splendid remains of architecture at Pagan. The city and the dynasty were destroyed by a Chinese (or rather Mongol) invasion (1284 A.D.) in the reign of Kublai Khan. After that the empire fell to a low ebb, and Central Burma was often subject to Shan dynasties. In the early part of the 16th century the Burmese princes of Toungoo, in the north-east of Pegu, began to rise to power, and established a dynasty which at one time held possession of Pegu, Ava and Arakan. They made their capital at Pegu, and to this dynasty belong the gorgeous [v.04 p.0844] descriptions of some of the travellers of the 16th century. Their wars exhausted the country, and before the end of the century it was in the greatest decay. A new dynasty arose in Ava, which subdued Pegu, and maintained their supremacy throughout the 17th and during the first forty years of the 18th century. The Peguans or Talaings then revolted, and having taken the capital Ava, and made the king prisoner, reduced the whole country to submission. Alompra, left by the conqueror in charge of the village of Môtshobo, planned the deliverance of his country. He attacked the Peguans at first with small detachments; but when his forces increased, he suddenly advanced, and took possession of the capital in the autumn of 1753.
In 1754 the Peguans sent an armament of war-boats against Ava, but they were totally defeated by Alompra; while in the districts of Prome, Donubyu, &c., the Burmans revolted, and expelled all the Pegu garrisons in their towns. In 1754 Prome was besieged by the king of Pegu, who was again defeated by Alompra, and the war was transferred from the upper provinces to the mouths of the navigable rivers, and the numerous creeks and canals which intersect the lower country. In 1755 the yuva raja, the king of Pegu's brother, was equally unsuccessful, after which the Peguans were driven from Bassein and the adjacent country, and were forced to withdraw to the fortress of Syriam, distant 12 m. from Rangoon. Here they enjoyed a brief repose, Alompra being called away to quell an insurrection of his own subjects, and to repel an invasion of the Siamese; but returning victorious, he laid siege to the fortress of Syriam and took it by surprise. In these wars the French sided with the Peguans, the English with the Burmans. Dupleix, the governor of Pondicherry, had sent two ships to the aid of the former; but the master of the first was decoyed up the river by Alompra, where he was massacred along with his whole crew. The other escaped to Pondicherry. Alompra was now master of all the navigable rivers; and the Peguans, shut out from foreign aid, were finally subdued. In 1757 the conqueror laid siege to the city of Pegu, which capitulated, on condition that their own king should govern the country, but that he should do homage for his kingdom, and should also surrender his daughter to the victorious monarch. Alompra never contemplated the fulfilment of the condition; and having obtained possession of the town, abandoned it to the fury of his soldiers. In the following year the Peguans vainly endeavoured to throw off the yoke. Alompra afterwards reduced the town and district of Tavoy, and finally undertook the conquest of the Siamese. His army advanced to Mergui and Tenasserim, both of which towns were taken; and he was besieging the capital of Siam when he was taken ill. He immediately ordered his army to retreat, in hopes of reaching his capital alive; but he expired on the way, in 1760, in the fiftieth year of his age, after he had reigned eight years. In the previous year he had massacred the English of the establishment of Negrais, whom he suspected of assisting the Peguans. He was succeeded by his eldest son Noungdaugyi, whose reign was disturbed by the rebellion of his brother Sin-byu-shin, and afterwards by one of his father's generals. He died in little more than three years, leaving one son in his infancy; and on his decease the throne was seized by his brother Sin-byu-shin. The new king was intent, like his predecessors, on the conquest of the adjacent states, and accordingly made war in 1765 on the Manipur kingdom, and also on the Siamese, with partial success. In the following year he defeated the Siamese, and, after a long blockade, obtained possession of their capital. But while the Burmans were extending their conquests in this quarter, they were invaded by a Chinese army of 50,000 men from the province of Yunnan. This army was hemmed in by the skill of the Burmans; and, being reduced by the want of provisions, it was afterwards attacked and totally destroyed, with the exception of 2500 men, who were sent in fetters to work in the Burmese capital at their several trades. In the meantime the Siamese revolted, and while the Burman army was marching against them, the Peguan soldiers who had been incorporated in it rose against their companions, and commencing an indiscriminate massacre, pursued the Burman army to the gates of Rangoon, which they besieged, but were unable to capture. In 1774 Sin-byu-shin was engaged in reducing the marauding tribes. He took the district and fort of Martaban from the revolted Peguans; and in the following year he sailed down the Irrawaddy with an army of 50,000 men, and, arriving at Rangoon, put to death the aged monarch of Pegu, along with many of his nobles, who had shared with him in the offence of rebellion. He died in 1776, after a reign of twelve years, during which he had extended the Burmese dominions on every side. He was succeeded by his son, a youth of eighteen, called Singumin (Chenguza of Symes), who proved himself a bloodthirsty despot, and was put to death by his uncle, Bodawpaya or Mentaragyi, in 1781, who ascended the vacant throne. In 1783 the new king effected the conquest of Arakan. In the same year he removed his residence from Ava, which, with brief interruptions, had been the capital for four centuries, to the new city of Amarapura, "the City of the Immortals."
The Siamese who had revolted in 1771 were never afterwards subdued by the Burmans; but the latter retained their dominion over the sea-coast as far as Mergui. In the year 1785 they attacked the island of Junkseylon with a fleet of boats and an army, but were ultimately driven back with loss; and a second attempt by the Burman monarch, who in 1786 invaded Siam with an army of 30,000 men, was attended with no better success. In 1793 peace was concluded between these two powers, the Siamese yielding to the Burmans the entire possession of the coast of Tenasserim on the Indian Ocean, and the two important seaports of Mergui and Tavoy.
In 1795 the Burmese were involved in a dispute with the British in India, in consequence of their troops, to the amount of 5000 men, entering the district of Chittagong in pursuit of three robbers who had fled from justice across the frontier. Explanations being made and terms of accommodation offered by General Erskine, the commanding officer, the Burmese commander retired from the British territories, when the fugitives were restored, and all differences for the time amicably arranged.
But it was evident that the gradual extension of the British and Burmese territories would in time bring the two powers into close contact along a more extended line of frontier, and in all probability lead to a war between them. It happened, accordingly, that the Burmese, carrying their arms into Assam and Manipur, penetrated to the British border near Sylhet, on the north-east frontier of Bengal, beyond which were the possessions of the chiefs of Cachar, under the protection of the British government. The Burmese leaders, arrested in their career of conquest, were impatient to measure their strength with their new neighbours. It appears from the evidence of Europeans who resided in Ava, that they were entirely unacquainted with the discipline and resources of the Europeans. They imagined that, like other nations, they would fall before their superior tactics and valour; and their cupidity was inflamed by the prospect of marching to Calcutta and plundering the country. At length their chiefs ventured on the open violation of the British territories. They attacked a party of sepoys within the frontier, and seized and carried off British subjects, while at all points their troops, moving in large bodies, assumed the most menacing positions. In the south encroachments were made upon the British frontier of Chittagong. The island of Shahpura, at the mouth of the Naaf river, had been occupied by a small guard of British troops. These were attacked on the 23rd of September 1823 by the Burmese, and driven from their post with the loss of several lives; and to the repeated demands of the British for redress no answer was returned. Other outrages ensued; and at length, on March 5th, 1824, war was declared by the British government. The military operations, which will be found described under BURMESE WARS, ended in the treaty of Yandaboo on the 24th of February 1826, which conceded the British terms and enabled their army to be withdrawn.
For some years the relations of peace continued undisturbed. Probably the feeling of amity on the part of the Burmese government was not very strong; but so long as the prince by whom the treaty was concluded continued in power, no attempt was [v.04 p.0845] made to depart from its main stipulations. That monarch, Ba-ggi-daw, however, was obliged in 1837 to yield the throne to a usurper who appeared in the person of his brother, Tharrawaddi (Tharawadi). The latter, at an early period, manifested not only that hatred of British connexion which was almost universal at the Burmese court, but also the extremest contempt. For several years it had become apparent that the period was approaching when war between the British and the Burmese governments would again become inevitable. The British resident, Major Burney, who had been appointed in 1830, finding his presence at Ava agreeable neither to the king nor to himself, removed in 1837 to Rangoon, and shortly afterwards retired from the country. Ultimately it became necessary to forego even the pretence of maintaining relations of friendship, and the British functionary at that time, Captain Macleod, was withdrawn in 1840 altogether from a country where his continuance would have been but a mockery. The state of sullen dislike which followed was after a while succeeded by more active evidences of hostility. Acts of violence were committed on British ships and British seamen. Remonstrance was consequently made by the British government, and its envoys were supported by a small naval force. The officers on whom devolved the duty of representing the wrongs of their fellow-countrymen and demanding redress, proceeded to Rangoon, the governor of which place had been a chief actor in the outrages complained of; but so far were they from meeting with any signs of regret, that they were treated with indignity and contempt, and compelled to retire without accomplishing anything beyond blockading the ports. A series of negotiations followed; nothing was demanded of the Burmese beyond a very moderate compensation for the injuries inflicted on the masters of two British vessels, an apology for the insults offered by the governor of Rangoon to the representatives of the British government, and the re-establishment of at least the appearance of friendly relations by the reception of a British agent by the Burmese government. But the obduracy of King Pagan, who had succeeded his father in 1846, led to the refusal alike of atonement for past wrongs, of any expression of regret for the display of gratuitous insolence, and of any indication of a desire to maintain friendship for the future. Another Burmese war was the result, the first shot being fired in January 1852. As in the former, though success was varying, the British finally triumphed, and the chief towns in the lower part of the Burmese kingdom fell to them in succession. The city of Pegu, the capital of that portion which, after having been captured, had again passed into the hands of the enemy, was recaptured and retained, and the whole province of Pegu was, by proclamation of the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, declared to be annexed to the British dominions on the 20th of December 1852. No treaty was obtained or insisted upon,--the British government being content with the tacit acquiescence of the king of Burma without such documents; but its resolution was declared, that any active demonstration of hostility by him would be followed by retribution.
About the same time a revolution broke out which resulted in King Pagan's dethronement. His tyrannical and barbarous conduct had made him obnoxious at home as well as abroad, and indeed many of his actions recall the worst passages of the history of the later Roman emperors. The Mindôn prince, who had become apprehensive for his own safety, made him prisoner in February 1853, and was himself crowned king of Burma towards the end of the year. The new monarch, known as King Mindôn, showed himself sufficiently arrogant in his dealings with the European powers, but was wise enough to keep free from any approach towards hostility. The loss of Pegu was long a matter of bitter regret, and he absolutely refused to acknowledge it by a formal treaty. In the beginning of 1855 he sent a mission of compliment to Lord Dalhousie, the governor-general; and in the summer of the same year Major (afterwards Sir Arthur) Phayre, de facto governor of the new province of Pegu, was appointed envoy to the Burmese court. He was accompanied by Captain (afterwards Sir Henry) Yule as secretary, and Mr Oldham as geologist, and his mission added largely to our knowledge of the state of the country; but in its main object of obtaining a treaty it was unsuccessful. It was not till 1862 that the king at length yielded, and his relations with Britain were placed on a definite diplomatic basis.
In that year the province of British Burma, the present Lower Burma, was formed, with Sir Arthur Phayre as chief commissioner. In 1867 a treaty was concluded at Mandalay providing for the free intercourse of trade and the establishment of regular diplomatic relations. King Mindôn died in 1878, and was succeeded by his son King Thibaw. Early in 1879 he excited much horror by executing a number of the members of the Burmese royal family, and relations became much strained. The British resident was withdrawn in October 1879. The government of the country rapidly became bad. Control over many of the outlying districts was lost, and the elements of disorder on the British frontier were a standing menace to the peace of the country. The Burmese court, in contravention of the express terms of the treaty of 1869, created monopolies to the detriment of the trade of both England and Burma; and while the Indian government was unrepresented at Mandalay, representatives of Italy and France were welcomed, and two separate embassies were sent to Europe for the purpose of contracting new and, if possible, close alliances with sundry European powers. Matters were brought to a crisis towards the close of 1885, when the Burmese government imposed a fine of £230,000 on the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, and refused to comply with a suggestion of the Indian government that the cause of complaint should be investigated by an impartial arbitrator. An ultimatum was therefore despatched on the 22nd of October 1885. On the 9th of November a reply was received in Rangoon amounting to an unconditional refusal. The king on the 7th of November issued a proclamation calling upon his subjects to drive the British into the sea. On the 14th of November 1885 the British field force crossed the frontier, and advanced to Mandalay without incurring any serious resistance (see BURMESE WARS). It reached Ava on the 26th of November, and an envoy from the king signified his submission. On the 28th of November the British occupied Mandalay, and next day King Thibaw was sent down the river to Rangoon, whence he was afterwards transferred to Ratnagiri on the Bombay coast. Upper Burma was formally annexed on the 1st of January 1886, and the work of restoring the country to order and introducing settled government commenced. This was a more serious task than the overthrow of the Burmese government, and occupied four years. This was in part due to the character of the country, which was characterized as one vast military obstacle, and in part to the disorganization which had been steadily growing during the six years of King Thibaw's reign. By the close of 1889 all the larger bands of marauders were broken up, and since 1890 the country has enjoyed greater freedom from violent crime than the province formerly known as British Burma. By the Upper Burma Village Regulations and the Lower Burma Village Act, the villagers themselves were made responsible for maintaining order in every village, and the system has worked with the greatest success. During the decade 1891-1901 the population increased by 19.8% and cultivation by 53%. With good harvests and good markets the standard of living in Burma has much improved. Large areas of cultivable waste have been brought under cultivation, and the general result has been a contented people. The boundary with Siam was demarcated in 1893, and that with China was completed in 1900.
AUTHORITIES.--Official: Col. Horace Spearman, British Burma Gazetteer (2 vols., Rangoon, 1879); Sir J. George Scott, Upper Burma Gazetteer (5 vols., Rangoon, 1900-1901). Non-official: Right Rev. Bishop Bigandet, Life or Legend of Gautama (3rd ed., London, 1881); G.W. Bird, Wanderings in Burma (London, 1897); E.D. Cuming, In the Shadow of the Pagoda (London, 1893), With the Jungle Folk (Condon, 1897); Max and Bertha Ferrars, Burma (London, 1900); H. Fielding, The Soul of a People (Buddhism in Burma) (London, 1898), Thibaw's Queen (London, 1899), A People at School (1906); Capt. C.J. Forbes, F.S., Burma (London, 1878), Comparative Grammar of the Languages of Farther India (London, 1881), Legendary History of Burma and Arakan (Rangoon, 1882); J. Gordon, Burma and its Inhabitants (London, 1876); Mrs E. Hart, [v.04 p.0846] Picturesque Burma (London, 1897); Gen. R. Macmahon, Far Cathay and Farther India (London, 1892); Rev. F. Mason, D.D., Burma (Rangoon, 1860); E.H. Parker, Burma (Rangoon, 1892); Sir Arthur Phayre, History of Burma (London, 1883); G.C. Rigby, History of the Operations in Northern Arakan and the Yawdwin Chin Hills (Rangoon, 1897), Sir J. George Scott, Burma, As it is, As it was, and As it will be (London, 1886); Shway Yoe, The Burman, His Life and Notions (2nd ed., London, 1896); D.M. Smeaton, The Karens of Burma (London, 1887); Sir Henry Yule, A Mission to Ava (London, 1858); J. Nisbet, Burma under British Rule and Before (London, 1901); V.D. Scott O'Connor, The Silken East (London, 1904); Talbot Kelly, Burma (London, 1905); an exhaustive account of the administration is contained in Dr Alleyne Ireland's The Province of Burma, Report prepared on behalf of the university of Chicago (Boston, U.S.A., 2 vols., 1907).
(J. G. SC.)
[1] See also, for geology, W. Theobald, "On the Geology of Pegu," Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. x. pt. ii. (1874); F. Noetling, "The Development and Subdivision of the Tertiary System in Burma," Rec. Geol. Sun. India, vol. xxviii. (1895), pp. 59-86, pl. ii.; F. Noetling, "The Occurrence of Petroleum in Burma, and its Technical Exploitation," Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxvii. pt. ii. (1898).
BURMANN, PIETER (1668-1741), Dutch classical scholar, known as "the Elder," to distinguish him from his nephew, was born at Utrecht. At the age of thirteen he entered the university where he studied under Graevius and Gronovius. He devoted himself particularly to the study of the classical languages, and became unusually proficient in Latin composition. As he was intended for the legal profession, he spent some years in attendance on the law classes. For about a year he studied at Leiden, paying special attention to philosophy and Greek. On his return to Utrecht he took the degree of doctor of laws (March 1688), and after travelling through Switzerland and part of Germany, settled down to the practice of law, without, however, abandoning his classical studies. In December 1691 he was appointed receiver of the tithes which were originally paid to the bishop of Utrecht, and five years later was nominated to the professorship of eloquence and history. To this chair was soon added that of Greek and politics. In 1714 he paid a short visit to Paris and ransacked the libraries. In the following year he was appointed successor to the celebrated Perizonius, who had held the chair of history, Greek language and eloquence at Leiden. He was subsequently appointed professor of history for the United Provinces and chief librarian. His numerous editorial and critical works spread his fame as a scholar throughout Europe, and engaged him in many of the stormy disputes which were then so common among men of letters. Burmann was rather a compiler than a critic; his commentaries show immense learning and accuracy, but are wanting in taste and judgment. He died on the 31st of March 1741.
Burmann edited the following classical authors:--Phaedrus (1698); Horace (1699); Valerius Flaccus (1702); Petronius Arbiter (1709); Velleius Paterculus (1719); Quintilian (1720); Justin (1722); Ovid (1727); Poetae Latini minores (1731); Suetonius (1736); Lucan (1740). He also published an edition of Buchanan's works, continued Graevius's great work, Thesaurus Antiquitatum et Historiarum Italiae, and wrote a treatise De Vectigalibus populi Romani (1694) and a short manual of Roman antiquities, Antiquitatum Romanarum Brevis Descriptio (1711). His Sylloge epistolarum a viris illustribus scriptarum (1725) is of importance for the history of learned men. The list of his works occupies five pages in Saxe's Onomasticon. His poems and orations were published after his death. There is an account of his life in the Gentleman's Magazine for April (1742) by Dr Samuel Johnson.
BURMANN, PIETER (1714-1778), called by himself "the Younger" (Secundus), Dutch philologist, nephew of the above, was born at Amsterdam on the 13th of October 1714. He was brought up by his uncle in Leiden, and afterwards studied law and philology under C.A. Duker and Arnold von Drakenborch at Utrecht. In 1735 he was appointed professor of eloquence and history at Franeker, with which the chair of poetry was combined in 1741. In the following year he left Franeker for Amsterdam to become professor of history and philology at the Athenaeum. He was subsequently professor of poetry (1744), general librarian (1752), and inspector of the gymnasium (1753). In 1777 he retired, and died on the 24th of June 1778 at Sandhorst, near Amsterdam. He resembled his more famous uncle in the manner and direction of his studies, and in his violent disposition, which involved him in quarrels with contemporaries, notably Saxe and Klotz. He was a man of extensive learning, and had a great talent for Latin poetry. His most valuable works are: Anthologia Veterum Latinorum Epigrammatum et Poematum (1759-1773); Aristophanis Comoediae Novem (1760); Rhetorica ad Herennium (1761). He completed the editions of Virgil (1746) and Claudian (1760), which had been left unfinished by his uncle, and commenced an edition of Propertius, one of his best works, which was only half printed at the time of his death. It was completed by L. van Santen and published in 1780.
BURMESE WARS. Three wars were fought between Burma and the British during the 19th century (see BURMA: History), which resulted in the gradual extinction of Burmese independence.
First Burmese War, 1823-26.--On the 23rd of September 1823 an armed party of Burmese attacked a British guard on Shapura, an island close to the Chittagong side, killing and wounding six of the guard. Two Burmese armies, one from Manipur and another from Assam, also entered Cachar, which was under British protection, in January 1824. War with Burma was formally declared on the 5th of March 1824. On the 17th of May a Burmese force invaded Chittagong and drove a mixed sepoy and police detachment from its position at Ramu, but did not follow up its success. The British rulers in India, however, had resolved to carry the war into the enemy's country; an armament, under Commodore Charles Grant and Sir Archibald Campbell, entered the Rangoon river, and anchored off the town on the 10th of May 1824. After a feeble resistance the place, then little more than a large stockaded village, was surrendered, and the troops were landed. The place was entirely deserted by its inhabitants, the provisions were carried off or destroyed, and the invading force took possession of a complete solitude. On the 28th of May Sir A. Campbell ordered an attack on some of the nearest posts, which were all carried after a steadily weakening defence. Another attack was made on the 10th of June on the stockades at the village of Kemmendine. Some of these were battered by artillery from the war vessels in the river, and the shot and shells had such effect on the Burmese that they evacuated them, after a very unequal resistance. It soon, however, became apparent that the expedition had been undertaken with very imperfect knowledge of the country, and without adequate provision. The devastation of the country, which was part of the defensive system of the Burmese, was carried out with unrelenting rigour, and the invaders were soon reduced to great difficulties. The health of the men declined, and their ranks were fearfully thinned. The monarch of Ava sent large reinforcements to his dispirited and beaten army; and early in June an attack was commenced on the British line, but proved unsuccessful. On the 8th the British assaulted. The enemy were beaten at all points; and their strongest stockaded works, battered to pieces by a powerful artillery, were in general abandoned. With the exception of an attack by the prince of Tharrawaddy in the end of August, the enemy allowed the British to remain unmolested during the months of July and August. This interval was employed by Sir A. Campbell in subduing the Burmese provinces of Tavoy and Mergui, and the whole coast of Tenasserim. This was an important conquest, as the country was salubrious and afforded convalescent stations to the sick, who were now so numerous in the British army that there were scarcely 3000 soldiers fit for duty. An expedition was about this time sent against the old Portuguese fort and factory of Syriam, at the mouth of the Pegu river, which was taken; and in October the province of Martaban was reduced under the authority of the British.
The rainy season terminated about the end of October; and the court of Ava, alarmed by the discomfiture of its armies, recalled the veteran legions which were employed in Arakan, under their renowned leader Maha Bandula. Bandula hastened by forced marches to the defence of his country; and by the end of November an army of 60,000 men had surrounded the British position at Rangoon and Kemmendine, for the defence of which Sir Archibald Campbell had only 5000 efficient troops. The enemy in great force made repeated attacks on Kemmendine without success, and on the 7th of December Bandula was defeated in a counter attack made by Sir A. Campbell. The fugitives retired to a strong position on the river, which they again entrenched; and here they were attacked by the British on the 15th, and driven in complete confusion from the field.
Sir Archibald Campbell now resolved to advance on Prome, [v.04 p.0847] about 100 m. higher up the Irrawaddy river. He moved with his force on the 13th of February 1825 in two divisions, one proceeding by land, and the other, under General Willoughby Cotton, destined for the reduction of Danubyu, being embarked on the flotilla. Taking the command of the land force, he continued his advance till the 11th of March, when intelligence reached him of the failure of the attack upon Danubyu. He instantly commenced a retrograde march; on the 27th he effected a junction with General Cotton's force, and on the 2nd of April entered the entrenchments at Danubyu without resistance, Bandula having been killed by the explosion of a bomb. The English general entered Prome on the 25th, and remained there during the rainy season. On the 17th of September an armistice was concluded for one month. In the course of the summer General Joseph Morrison had conquered the province of Arakan; in the north the Burmese were expelled from Assam; and the British had made some progress in Cachar, though their advance was finally impeded by the thick forests and jungle.
The armistice having expired on the 3rd of November, the army of Ava, amounting to 60,000 men, advanced in three divisions against the British position at Prome, which was defended by 3000 Europeans and 2000 native troops. But the British still triumphed, and after several actions, in which the Burmese were the assailants and were partially successful, Sir A. Campbell, on the 1st of December, attacked the different divisions of their army, and successively drove them from all their positions, and dispersed them in every direction. The Burmese retired on Malun, along the course of the Irrawaddy, where they occupied, with 10,000 or 12,000 men, a series of strongly fortified heights and a formidable stockade. On the 26th they sent a flag of truce to the British camp; and negotiations having commenced, peace was proposed to them on the following conditions:--(1) The cession of Arakan, together with the provinces of Mergui, Tavoy and Ye; (2) the renunciation by the Burmese sovereign of all claims upon Assam and the contiguous petty states; (3) the Company to be paid a crore of rupees as an indemnification for the expenses of the war; (4) residents from each court to be allowed, with an escort of fifty men; while it was also stipulated that British ships should no longer be obliged to unship their rudders and land their guns as formerly in the Burmese ports. This treaty was agreed to and signed, but the ratification of the king was still wanting; and it was soon apparent that the Burmese had no intention to sign it, but were preparing to renew the contest. On the 19th of January, accordingly, Sir A. Campbell attacked and carried the enemy's position at Malun. Another offer of peace was here made by the Burmese, but it was found to be insincere; and the fugitive army made at the ancient city of Pagan a final stand in defence of the capital. They were attacked and overthrown on the 9th of February 1826; and the invading force being now within four days' march of Ava, Dr Price, an American missionary, who with other Europeans had been thrown into prison when the war commenced, was sent to the British camp with the treaty (known as the treaty of Yandaboo) ratified, the prisoners of war released, and an instalment of 25 lakhs of rupees. The war was thus brought to a successful termination, and the British army evacuated the country.
Second Burmese War, 1852.--On the 15th of March 1852 Lord Dalhousie sent an ultimatum to King Pagan, announcing that hostile operations would be commenced if all his demands were not agreed to by the ist of April. Meanwhile a force consisting of 8100 troops had been despatched to Rangoon under the command of General H.T. Godwin, C.B., while Commodore Lambert commanded the naval contingent. No reply being given to this letter, the first blow of the Second Burmese War was struck by the British on the 5th of April 1852, when Martaban was taken. Rangoon town was occupied on the 12th, and the Shwe Dagôn pagoda on the 14th, after heavy fighting, when the Burmese army retired northwards. Bassein was seized on the 19th of May, and Pegu was taken on the 3rd of June, after some sharp fighting round the Shwe-maw-daw pagoda. During the rainy season the approval of the East India Company's court of directors and of the British government was obtained to the annexation of the lower portion of the Irrawaddy Valley, including Prome. Lord Dalhousie visited Rangoon in July and August, and discussed the whole situation with the civil, military and naval authorities. In consequence General Godwin occupied Prome on the 9th of October after but slight resistance. Early in December Lord Dalhousie informed King Pagan that the province of Pegu would henceforth form part of the British dominions, and that if his troops resisted the measure his whole kingdom would be destroyed. The proclamation of annexation was issued on the 20th of January 1853, and thus the Second Burmese War was brought to an end without any treaty being signed.
Third Burmese War, 1885-86.--The imposition of an impossible fine on the Bombay-Burma Trading Company, coupled with the threat of confiscation of all their rights and property in case of non-payment, led to the British ultimatum of the 22nd of October 1885; and by the 9th of November a practical refusal of the terms having been received at Rangoon, the occupation of Mandalay and the dethronement of King Thibaw were determined upon. At this time, beyond the fact that the country was one of dense jungle, and therefore most unfavourable for military operations, little was known of the interior of Upper Burma; but British steamers had for years been running on the great river highway of the Irrawaddy, from Rangoon to Mandalay, and it was obvious that the quickest and most satisfactory method of carrying out the British campaign was an advance by water direct on the capital. Fortunately a large number of light-draught river steamers and barges (or "flats"), belonging to the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, were available at Rangoon, and the local knowledge of the company's officers of the difficult river navigation was at the disposal of the government. Major-General, afterwards Sir, H.N.D. Prendergast, V.C., K.C.B., R.E., was placed in command of the expedition. As was only to be expected in an enterprise of this description, the navy as well as the army was called in requisition; and as usual the services rendered by the seamen and guns were most important. The total effective of the force was 9034 fighting men, 2810 native followers and 67 guns, and for river service, 24 machine guns. The river fleet which conveyed the troops and stores was composed of a total of no less than 55 steamers, barges, launches, &c.
Thayetmyo was the British post on the river nearest to the frontier, and here, by 14th November, five days after Thibaw's answer had been received, practically the whole expedition was assembled. On the same day General Prendergast received instructions to commence operations. The Burmese king and his country were taken completely by surprise by the unexampled rapidity of the advance. There had been no time for them to collect and organize the stubborn resistance of which the river and its defences were capable. They had not even been able to block the river by sinking steamers, &c., across it, for, on the very day of the receipt of orders to advance, the armed steamers, the "Irrawaddy" and "Kathleen," engaged the nearest Burmese batteries, and brought out from under their guns the king's steamer and some barges which were lying in readiness for this very purpose. On the 16th the batteries themselves on both banks were taken by a land attack, the enemy being evidently unprepared and making no resistance. On the 17th of November, however, at Minhla, on the right bank of the river, the Burmans in considerable force held successively a barricade, a pagoda and the redoubt of Minhla. The attack was pressed home by a brigade of native infantry on shore, covered by a bombardment from the river, and the enemy were defeated with a loss of 170 killed and 276 prisoners, besides many more drowned in the attempt to escape by the river. The advance was continued next day and the following days, the naval brigade and heavy artillery leading and silencing in succession the enemy's river defences at Nyaungu, Pakôkku and Myingyan. On the 26th of November, when the flotilla was approaching the ancient capital of Ava, envoys from King Thibaw met General Prendergast with offers of surrender; and on the 27th, when the ships [v.04 p.0848] were lying off that city and ready to commence hostilities, the order of the king to his troops to lay down their arms was received. There were three strong forts here, full at that moment with thousands of armed Burmans, and though a large number of these filed past and laid down their arms by the king's command, still many more were allowed to disperse with their weapons; and these, in the time that followed, broke up into dacoit or guerrilla bands, which became the scourge of the country and prolonged the war for years. Meanwhile, however, the surrender of the king of Burma was complete; and on the 28th of November, in less than a fortnight from the declaration of war, Mandalay had fallen, and the king himself was a prisoner, while every strong fort and town on the river, and all the king's ordnance (1861 pieces), and thousands of rifles, muskets and arms had been taken. Much valuable and curious "loot" and property was found in the palace and city of Mandalay, which, when sold, realized about 9 lakhs of rupees (£60,000).
From Mandalay, General Prendergast seized Bhamo on the 28th of December. This was a very important move, as it forestalled the Chinese, who were preparing to claim the place. But unfortunately, although the king was dethroned and deported, and the capital and the whole of the river in the hands of the British, the bands of armed soldiery, unaccustomed to conditions other than those of anarchy, rapine and murder, took advantage of the impenetrable cover of their jungles to continue a desultory armed resistance. Reinforcements had to be poured into the country, and it was in this phase of the campaign, lasting several years, that the most difficult and most arduous work fell to the lot of the troops. It was in this jungle warfare that the losses from battle, sickness and privation steadily mounted up; and the troops, both British and native, proved once again their fortitude and courage.
Various expeditions followed one another in rapid succession, penetrating to the remotest corners of the land, and bringing peace and protection to the inhabitants, who, it must be mentioned, suffered at least as much from the dacoits as did the troops. The final, and now completely successful, pacification of the country, under the direction of Sir Frederick (afterwards Earl) Roberts, was only brought about by an extensive system of small protective posts scattered all over the country, and small lightly equipped columns moving out to disperse the enemy whenever a gathering came to a head, or a pretended prince or king appeared.
No account of the Third Burmese War would be complete without a reference to the first, and perhaps for this reason most notable, land advance into the enemy's country. This was carried out in November 1885 from Toungoo, the British frontier post in the east of the country, by a small column of all arms under Colonel W.P. Dicken, 3rd Madras Light Infantry, the first objective being Ningyan. The operations were completely successful, in spite of a good deal of scattered resistance, and the force afterwards moved forward to Yamethin and Hlaingdet. As inland operations developed, the want of mounted troops was badly felt, and several regiments of cavalry were brought over from India, while mounted infantry was raised locally. It was found that without these most useful arms it was generally impossible to follow up and punish the active enemy.
BURN, RICHARD (1700-1785), English legal writer, was born at Winton, Westmorland, in 1709. Educated at Queen's College, Oxford, he entered the Church, and in 1736 became vicar of Orton in Westmorland. He was a justice of the peace for the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, and devoted himself to the study of law. He was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle in 1765, an office which he held till his death at Orton on the 12th of November 1785. Burn's Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, first published in 1755, was for many years the standard authority on the law relating to justices of the peace. It has passed through innumerable editions. His Ecclesiastical Law (1760), a work of much research, was the foundation upon which were built many modern commentaries on ecclesiastical law. The best edition is that by R. Phillimore (4 vols., 1842). Burn also wrote Digest of the Militia Laws (1760), and A New Law Dictionary (2 vols., 1792).
BURNABY, FREDERICK GUSTAVUS (1842-1885), English traveller and soldier, was born on the 3rd of March 1842, at Bedford, the son of a clergyman. Educated at Harrow and in Germany, he entered the Royal Horse Guards in 1859. Finding no chance for active service, his spirit of adventure sought outlets in balloon-ascents and in travels through Spain and Russia. In the summer of 1874 he accompanied the Carlist forces as correspondent of The Times, but before the end of the war he was transferred to Africa to report on Gordon's expedition to the Sudan. This took Burnaby as far as Khartum. Returning to England in March 1875, he matured his plans for a journey on horseback to Khiva through Russian Asia, which had just been closed to travellers. His accomplishment of this task, in the winter of 1875-1876, described in his book A Ride to Khiva, brought him immediate fame. His next leave of absence was spent in another adventurous journey on horseback, through Asia Minor, from Scutari to Erzerum, with the object of observing the Russian frontier, an account of which he afterwards published. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, Burnaby (who soon afterwards became lieut.-colonel) acted as travelling agent to the Stafford House (Red Cross) Committee, but had to return to England before the campaign was over. At this point began his active interest in politics, and in 1880 he unsuccessfully contested a seat at Birmingham in the Tory-Democrat interest. In 1882 he crossed the Channel in a balloon. Having been disappointed in his hope of seeing active service in the Egyptian campaign of 1882, he participated in the Suakin campaign of 1884 without official leave, and was wounded at El Teb when acting as an intelligence officer under General Valentine Baker. This did not deter him from a similar course when a fresh expedition started up the Nile. He was given a post by Lord Wolseley, and met his death in the hand-to-hand fighting of the battle of Abu Klea (17th January 1885).
BURNAND, SIR FRANCIS COWLEY (1836- ), English humorist, was born in London on the 29th of November 1836. His father was a London stockbroker, of French-Swiss origin; his mother Emma Cowley, a direct descendant of Hannah Cowley (1743-1809), the English poet and dramatist. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and originally studied first for the Anglican, then for the Roman Catholic Church; but eventually took to the law and was called to the bar. From his earliest days, however, the stage had attracted him--he founded the Amateur Dramatic Club at Cambridge,--and finally he abandoned the church and the law, first for the stage and subsequently for dramatic authorship. His first great dramatic success was made with the burlesque Black-Eyed Susan, and he wrote a large number of other burlesques, comedies and farces. One of his early burlesques came under the favourable notice of Mark Lemon, then editor of Punch, and Burnand, who was already writing for the comic paper Fun, became in 1862 a regular contributor to Punch. In 1880 he was appointed editor of Punch, and only retired from that position in 1906. In 1902 he was knighted. His literary reputation as a humorist depends, apart from his long association with Punch, on his well-known book Happy Thoughts, originally published in Punch in 1863-1864 and frequently reprinted.
See Recollections and Reminiscences, by Sir F.C. Burnand (London, 1904).
BURNE-JONES, SIR EDWARD BURNE, Bart. (1833-1898), English painter and designer, was born on the 28th of August 1833 at Birmingham. His father was a Welsh descent, and the idealism of his nature and art has been attributed to this Celtic strain. An only son, he was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and destined for the Church. He retained through life an interest in classical studies, but it was the mythology of the classics which fascinated him. He went into residence as a scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, in January 1853. On the same day William Morris entered the same college, having also the intention of taking orders. The two were thrown together, and grew close friends. Their similar tastes and enthusiasms were [v.04 p.0849] mutually stimulated. Burne-Jones resumed his early love of drawing and designing. With Morris he read Modern Painters and the Morte d'Arthur. He studied the Italian pictures in the University galleries, and Dürer's engravings; but his keenest enthusiasm was kindled by the sight of two works by a living man, Rossetti. One of these was a woodcut in Allingham's poems, "The Maids of Elfinmere"; the other was the water-colour "Dante drawing an Angel," then belonging to Mr Coombe, of the Clarendon Press, and now in the University collection. Having found his true vocation, Burne-Jones, like his friend Morris, determined to relinquish his thoughts of the Church and to become an artist. Rossetti, although not yet seen by him, was his chosen master; and early in 1856 he had the happiness, in London, of meeting him. At Easter he left college without taking a degree. This was his own decision, not due (as often stated) to Rossetti's persuasion; but on settling in London, where Morris soon joined him at 17 Red Lion Square, he began to work under Rossetti's friendly instruction and encouraging guidance.
As Burne-Jones once said, he "found himself at five-and-twenty what he ought to have been at fifteen." He had had no regular training as a draughtsman, and lacked the confidence of science. But his extraordinary faculty of invention as a designer was already ripening; his mind, rich in knowledge of classical story and medieval romance, teemed with pictorial subjects; and he set himself to complete his equipment by resolute labour, witnessed by innumerable drawings. The works of this first period are all more or less tinged by the influence of Rossetti; but they are already differentiated from the elder master's style by their more facile though less intensely felt elaboration of imaginative detail. Many are pen-and-ink drawings on vellum, exquisitely finished, of which the "Waxen Image" is one of the earliest and best examples; it is dated 1856. Although subject, medium and manner derive from Rossetti's inspiration, it is not the hand of a pupil merely, but of a potential master. This was recognized by Rossetti himself, who before long avowed that he had nothing more to teach him. Burne-Jones's first sketch in oils dates from this same year, 1856; and during 1857 he made for Bradfield College the first of what was to be an immense series of cartoons for stained glass. In 1858 he decorated a cabinet with the "Prioress's Tale" from Chaucer, his first direct illustration of the work of a poet whom he especially loved and who inspired him with endless subjects. Thus early, therefore, we see the artist busy in all the various fields in which he was to labour.
In the autumn of 1857 Burne-Jones joined in Rossetti's ill-fated scheme to decorate theh walls of the Oxford Union. None of the painters had mastered the technique of fresco, and their pictures had begun to peel from the walls before they were completed. In 1859 Burne-Jones made his first journey to Italy. He saw Florence, Pisa, Siena, Venice and other places, and appears to have found the gentle and romantic Sienese more attractive than any other school. Rossetti's influence still persisted; and its impress is visible, more strongly perhaps than ever before, in the two water-colours "Sidonia von Bork" and "Clara von Bork," painted in 1860. These little masterpieces have a directness of execution rare with the artist. In powerful characterization, combined with a decorative motive, they rival Rossetti at his best. In June of this year Burne-Jones was married to Miss Georgiana Macdonald, two of whose sisters were the wives of Sir E. Poynter and Mr J.L. Kipling, and they settled in Bloomsbury. Five years later he moved to Kensington Square, and shortly afterwards to the Grange, Fulham, an old house with a garden, where he resided till his death. In 1862 the artist and his wife accompanied Ruskin to Italy, visiting Milan and Venice.
In 1864 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and exhibited, among other works, "The Merciful Knight," the first picture which fully revealed his ripened personality as an artist. The next six years saw a series of fine water-colours at the same gallery; but in 1870, owing to a misunderstanding, Burne-Jones resigned his membership of the society. He was re-elected in 1886. During the next seven years, 1870-1877, only two works of the painter's were exhibited. These were two water-colours, shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1873, one of them being the beautiful "Love among the Ruins," destroyed twenty years later by a cleaner who supposed it to be an oil painting, but afterwards reproduced in oils by the painter. This silent period was, however, one of unremitting production. Hitherto Burne-Jones had worked almost entirely in water-colours. He now began a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand. The "Briar Rose" series, "Laus Veneris," the "Golden Stairs," the "Pygmalion" series, and "The Mirror of Venus" are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition came, with the opening of the first exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, when the "Days of Creation," the "Beguiling of Merlin," and the "Mirror of Venus" were all shown. Burne-Jones followed up the signal success of these pictures with "Laus Veneris," the "Chant d'Amour," "Pan and Psyche," and other works, exhibited in 1878. Most of these pictures are painted in gay and brilliant colours. A change is noticeable next year, 1879, in the "Annunciation" and in the four pictures called "Pygmalion and the Image"; the former of these, one of the simplest and most perfect of the artist's works, is subdued and sober; in the latter a scheme of soft and delicate tints was attempted, not with entire success. A similar temperance of colours marks the "Golden Stairs," first exhibited in 1880. In 1884, following the almost sombre "Wheel of Fortune" of the preceding year, appeared "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," in which Burne-Jones once more indulged his love of gorgeous colour, refined by the period of self-restraint. This masterpiece is now in the National collection. He next turned to two important sets of pictures, "The Briar Rose" and "The Story of Perseus," though these were not completed for some years to come. In 1886, having been elected A.R.A. the previous year, he exhibited (for the only time) at the Royal Academy "The Depths of the Sea," a mermaid carrying down with her a youth whom she has unconsciously drowned in the impetuosity of her love. This picture adds to the habitual haunting charm a tragic irony of conception and a felicity of execution which give it a place apart among Burne-Jones's works. He resigned his Associateship in 1893. One of the "Perseus" series was exhibited in 1887, two more in 1888, with "The Brazen Tower," inspired by the same legend. In 1890 the four pictures of "The Briar Rose" were exhibited by themselves, and won the widest admiration. The huge tempera picture, "The Star of Bethlehem," painted for the corporation of Birmingham, was exhibited in 1891. A long illness for some time checked the painter's activity, which, when resumed, was much occupied with decorative schemes. An exhibition of his work was held at the New Gallery in the winter of 1892-1893. To this period belong several of his comparatively few portraits. In 1894 Burne-Jones was made a baronet. Ill-health again interrupted the progress of his works, chief among which was the vast "Arthur in Avalon." In 1898 he had an attack of influenza, and had apparently recovered, when he was again taken suddenly ill, and died on the 17th of June. In the following winter a second exhibition of his works was held at the New Gallery, and an exhibition of his drawings (including some of the charmingly humorous sketches made for children) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club.
His son and successor in the baronetcy, Sir Philip Burne-Jones (b. 1861), also became well known as an artist. The only daughter, Margaret, married Mr J.W. Mackail.
Burne-Jones's influence has been exercised far less in painting than in the wide field of decorative design. Here it has been enormous. His first designs for stained glass, 1857-1861, were made for Messrs Powell, but after 1861 he worked exclusively for Morris & Co. Windows executed from his cartoons are to be found all over England; others exist in churches abroad. For the American Church in Rome he designed a number of mosaics. Reliefs in metal, tiles, gesso-work, decorations for [v.04 p.0850] pianos and organs, and cartoons for tapestry represent his manifold activity. In all works, however, which were only designed and not carried out by him, a decided loss of delicacy is to be noted. The colouring of the tapestries (of which the "Adoration of the Magi" at Exeter College is the best-known) is more brilliant than successful. The range and fertility of Burne-Jones as a decorative inventor can be perhaps most conveniently studied in the sketch-book, 1885-1895, which he bequeathed to the British Museum. The artist's influence on book-illustration must also be recorded. In early years he made a few drawings on wood for Dalziel's Bible and for Good Words; but his later work for the Kelmscott Press, founded by Morris in 1891, is that by which he is best remembered. Besides several illustrations to other Kelmscott books, he made eighty-seven designs for the Chaucer of 1897.
Burne-Jones's aim in art is best given in some of his own words, written to a friend: "I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be--in a light better than any light that ever shone--in a land no one can define or remember, only desire--and the forms divinely beautiful--and then I wake up, with the waking of Brynhild." No artist was ever more true to his aim. Ideals resolutely pursued are apt to provoke the resentment of the world, and Burne-Jones encountered, endured and conquered an extraordinary amount of, angry criticism. In so far as this was directed against the lack of realism in his pictures, it was beside the point. The earth, the sky, the rocks, the trees, the men and women of Burne-Jones are not those of this world; but they are themselves a world, consistent with itself, and having therefore its own reality. Charged with the beauty and with the strangeness of dreams, it has nothing of a dream's incoherence. Yet it is a dreamer always whose nature penetrates these works, a nature out of sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones's men and women are dreamers too. It was this which, more than anything else, estranged him from the age into which he was born. But he had an inbred "revolt from fact" which would have estranged him from the actualities of any age. That criticism seems to be more justified which has found in him a lack of such victorious energy and mastery over his materials as would have enabled him to carry out his conceptions in their original intensity. Representing the same kind of tendency as distinguished his French contemporary, Puvis de Chavannes, he was far less in the main current of art, and his position suffers accordingly. Often compared with Botticelli, he had nothing of the fire and vehemence of the Florentine. Yet, if aloof from strenuous action, Burne-Jones was singularly strenuous in production. His industry was inexhaustible, and needed to be, if it was to keep pace with the constant pressure of his ideas. Invention, a very rare excellence, was his pre-eminent gift. Whatever faults his paintings may have, they have always the fundamental virtue of design; they are always pictures. His fame might rest on his purely decorative work. But his designs were informed with a mind of romantic temper, apt in the discovery of beautiful subjects, and impassioned with a delight in pure and variegated colour. These splendid gifts were directed in a critical and fortunate moment by the genius of Rossetti. Hence a career which shows little waste or misdirection of power, and, granted the aim proposed, a rare level of real success.
AUTHORITIES.--In 1904 was published Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, by his widow, two volumes of extreme interest and charm. The Work of Burne-Jones, a collection of ninety-one photogravures, appeared in 1900.
See also Catalogue to Burlington Club Exhibition of Drawings by Burne-Jones, with Introduction by Cosmo Monkhouse (1899); Sir E. Burne-Jones: a Record and a Review, by Malcolm Belt (1898); Sir E. Burne-Jones, his Life and Work, by Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady) (1894); The Life of William Morris, by J.W. Mackail (1899).
(L. B.)
BURNELL, ARTHUR COKE (1840-1882), English Sanskrit scholar, was born at St Briavels, Gloucestershire, in 1840. His father was an official of the East India Company, and in 1860 he himself went out to Madras as a member of the Indian civil service. Here he utilized every available opportunity to acquire or copy Sanskrit manuscripts. In 1870 he presented his collection of 350 MSS. to the India library. In 1874 he published a Handbook of South Indian Palaeography, characterized by Max Müller as "indispensable to every student of Indian literature," and in 1880 issued for the Madras government his greatest work, the Classified Index to the Sanskrit MSS. in the Palace at Tanjore. He was also the author of a large number of translations from, and commentaries on, various other Sanskrit manuscripts, being particularly successful in grouping and elucidating the essential principles of Hindu law. In addition to his exhaustive acquaintance with Sanskrit, and the southern India vernaculars, he had some knowledge of Tibetan, Arabic, Kawi, Javanese and Coptic. Burnell originated with Sir Henry Yule the well-known dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases, Hobson-Jobson. His constitution, never strong, broke down prematurely through the combined influence of overwork and the Madras climate, and he died at West Stratton, Hampshire, on the 12th of October 1882. A further collection of Sanskrit manuscripts was purchased from his heirs by the India library after his death.
BURNELL, ROBERT (d. 1292), English bishop and chancellor, was born at Acton Burnell in Shropshire, and began his public life probably as a clerk in the royal chancery. He was soon in the service of Edward, the eldest son of King Henry III., and was constantly in attendance on the prince, whose complete confidence he appears to have enjoyed. Having received some ecclesiastical preferments, he acted as one of the regents of the kingdom from the death of Henry III. in November 1272 until August 1274, when the new king, Edward I., returned from Palestine and made him his chancellor. In 1275 Burnell was elected bishop of Bath and Wells, and three years later Edward repeated the attempt which he had made in 1270 to secure the archbishopric of Canterbury for his favourite. The bishop's second failure to obtain this dignity was due, doubtless, to his irregular and unclerical manner of life, a fact which also accounts, in part at least, for the hostility which existed between his victorious rival, Archbishop Peckham, and himself. As the chief adviser of Edward I. during the earlier part of his reign, and moreover as a trained and able lawyer, the bishop took a prominent part in the legislative acts of the "English Justinian," whose activity in this direction coincides practically with Burnell's tenure of the office of chancellor. The bishop also influenced the king's policy with regard to France, Scotland and Wales; was frequently employed on business of the highest moment; and was the royal mouthpiece on several important occasions. In 1283 a council, or, as it is sometimes called, a parliament, met in his house at Acton Burnell, and he was responsible for the settlement of the court of chancery in London. In spite of his numerous engagements, Burnell found time to aggrandize his bishopric, to provide liberally for his nephews and other kinsmen, and to pursue his cherished but futile aim of founding a great family. Licentious and avaricious, he amassed great wealth; and when he died on the 25th of October 1292 he left numerous estates in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Kent, Surrey and elsewhere. He was, however, genial and kind-hearted, a great lawyer and a faithful minister.
See R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (London, 1854-1860); and E. Foss, The Judges of England, vol. iii. (London, 1848-1864).
BURNES, SIR ALEXANDER (1805-1841), British traveller and explorer, was born at Montrose, Scotland, in 1805. While serving in India, in the army of the East India Company, which he had joined in his seventeenth year, he made himself acquainted with Hindustani and Persian, and thus obtained an appointment as interpreter at Surat in 1822. Transferred to Cutch in 1826 as assistant to the political agent, he turned his attention more particularly to the history and geography of north-western India and the adjacent countries, at that time very imperfectly known. His proposal in 1829 to undertake a journey of exploration through the valley of the Indus was not carried out owing to political apprehensions; but in 1831 he was sent to Lahore with a present of horses from King William IV. to Maharaja Ranjit Singh and took advantage of the opportunity for extensive investigations. In the following years his travels were extended through Afghanistan across the Hindu Kush to [v.04 p.0851] Bokhara and Persia. The narrative which he published on his visit to England in 1834 added immensely to contemporary knowledge of the countries traversed, and was one of the most popular books of the time. The first edition brought the author the sum of £800, and his services were recognized not only by the Royal Geographical Society of London, but also by that of Paris. Soon after his return to India in 1835 he was appointed to the court of Sind to secure a treaty for the navigation of the Indus; and in 1836 he undertook a political mission to Dost Mahommed at Kabul. He advised Lord Auckland to support Dost Mahommed on the throne of Kabul, but the viceroy preferred to follow the opinion of Sir William Macnaghten and reinstated Shah Shuja, thus leading up to the disasters of the first Afghan War. On the restoration of Shah Shuja in 1839, he became regular political agent at Kabul, and remained there till his assassination in 1841 (on the 2nd of November), during the heat of an insurrection. The calmness with which he continued at his post, long after the imminence of his danger was apparent, gives an heroic colouring to the close of an honourable and devoted life. It came to light in 1861 that some of Burnes' despatches from Kabul in 1839 had been altered, so as to convey opinions opposite to his, but Lord Palmerston refused after such a lapse of time to grant the inquiry demanded in the House of Commons. A narrative of his later labours was published in 1842 under the title of Cabool.
See Sir J.W. Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers (1889).
BURNET, GILBERT (1643-1715), English bishop and historian, was born in Edinburgh on the 18th of September 1643, of an ancient and distinguished Scottish house. He was the youngest son of Robert Burnet (1592-1661), who at the Restoration became a lord of session with the title of Lord Crimond. Robert Burnet had refused to sign the Scottish Covenant, although the document was drawn up by his brother-in-law, Archibald Johnstone, Lord Warristoun. He therefore found it necessary to retire from his profession, and twice went into exile. He disapproved of the rising of the Scots, but was none the less a severe critic of the government of Charles I. and of the action of the Scottish bishops. This moderate attitude he impressed on his son Gilbert, whose early education he directed. The boy entered Marischal College at the age of nine, and five years later graduated M.A. He then spent a year in the study of feudal and civil law before he resolved to devote himself to theology. He became a probationer for the Scottish ministry in 1661 just before episcopal government was re-established in Scotland. His decision to accept episcopal orders led to difficulties with his family, especially with his mother, who held rigid Presbyterian views. From this time dates his friendship with Robert Leighton (1611-1684), who greatly influenced his religious opinions. Leighton had, during a stay in the Spanish Netherlands, assimilated something of the ascetic and pietistic spirit of Jansenism, and was devoted to the interests of peace in the church. Burnet wisely refused to accept a benefice in the disturbed state of church affairs, but he wrote an audacious letter to Archbishop Sharp asking him to take measures to restore peace. Sharp sent for Burnet, and dismissed his advice without apparent resentment. He had already made valuable acquaintances in Edinburgh, and he now visited London, Oxford and Cambridge, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh in 1663, when he sought to secure a reprieve for his uncle Warristoun, he proceeded to travel in France and Holland. At Cambridge he was strongly influenced by the philosophical views of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who proposed an unusual degree of toleration within the boundaries of the church and the limitations imposed by its liturgy and episcopal government; and his intercourse in Holland with foreign divines of different Protestant sects further encouraged his tendency to latitudinarianism.
When he returned to England in 1664 he established intimate relations with Sir Robert Moray and with John Maitland, earl and afterwards first duke of Lauderdale, both of whom at that time advocated a tolerant policy towards the Scottish covenanters. Burnet became a member of the Royal Society, of which Moray was the first president. On his father's death he had been offered a living by a relative, Sir Alexander Burnet, and in 1663 the living of Saltoun, East Lothian, had been kept open for him by one of his father's friends. He was not formally inducted at Saltoun until June 1665, although he had served there since October 1664. For the next five years he devoted himself to his parish, where he won the respect of all parties. In 1666 he alienated the Scottish bishops by a bold memorial (printed in vol. ii. of the Miscellanies of the Scottish Historical Society), in which he pointed out that they were departing from the custom of the primitive church by their excessive pretensions, and yet his attitude was far too moderate to please the Presbyterians. In 1669 he resigned his parish to become professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow, and in the same year he published an exposition of his ecclesiastical views in his Modest and Free Conference between a Conformist and a Nonconformist (by "a lover of peace"). He was Leighton's right hand in the efforts at a compromise between the episcopal and the presbyterian principle. Meanwhile he had begun to differ from Lauderdale, whose policy after the failure of the scheme of "Accommodation" moved in the direction of absolutism and repression, and during Lauderdale's visit to Scotland in 1672 the divergence rapidly developed into opposition. He warily refused the offer of a Scottish bishopric, and published in 1673 his four "conferences," entitled Vindication of the Authority, Constitution and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland, in which he insisted on the duty of passive obedience. It was partly through the influence of Anne (d. 1716), duchess of Hamilton in her own right, that he had been appointed at Glasgow, and he made common cause with the Hamiltons against Lauderdale. The duchess had made over to him the papers of her father and uncle, from which he compiled the Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of James and William, dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald. In which an Account is given of the Rise and Progress of the Civil Wars of Scotland ... together with many letters ... written by King Charles I. (London, 1677; Univ. Press, Oxford, 1852), a book which was published as the second volume of a History of the Church of Scotland, Spottiswoode's History forming the first. This work established his reputation as an historian. Meanwhile he had clandestinely married in 1671 a cousin of Lauderdale, Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy, 6th earl of Cassilis, a lady who had already taken an active part in affairs in Scotland, and was eighteen years older than Burnet. The marriage was kept secret for three years, and Burnet renounced all claim to his wife's fortune.
Lauderdale's ascendancy in Scotland and the failure of the attempts at compromise in Scottish church affairs eventually led Burnet to settle in England. He was favourably received by Charles II. in 1673, when he went up to London to arrange for the publication of the Hamilton Memoirs, and he was treated with confidence by the duke of York. On his return to Scotland Lauderdale refused to receive him, and denounced him to Charles II. as one of the chief centres of Scottish discontent. Burnet found it wiser to retire to England on the plea of fulfilling his duties as royal chaplain. Once in London he resigned his professorship (September 1674) at Glasgow; but, although James remained his friend, Charles struck him off the roll of court chaplains in 1674, and it was in opposition to court influence that he was made chaplain to the Rolls Chapel by the master, Sir Harbottle Grimston, and appointed lecturer at St Clement's. He was summoned in April 1675 before a committee of the House of Commons to give evidence against Lauderdale, and disclosed, without reluctance according to his enemies, confidences which had passed between him and the minister. He himself confesses in his autobiography that "it was a great error in me to appear in this matter," and his conduct cost him the patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had written some eighteen polemics against encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church. At the suggestion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, he began his History of the Reformation in England, based on original documents. [v.04 p.0852] In the necessary research he received some pecuniary help from Robert Boyle, but he was hindered in the preparation of the first part (1679) through being refused access to the Cotton library, possibly by the influence of Lauderdale. For this volume he received the thanks of parliament, and the second and third volumes appeared in 1681 and 1715. In this work he undertook to refute the statements of Nicholas Sanders, whose De Origine et progressu schismatis Anglicani libri tres (Cologne, 1585) was still, in the French translation of Maucroix, the commonly accepted account of the English reformation. Burnet's contradictions of Sanders must not, however, be accepted without independent investigation. At the time of the Popish Plot in 1678 he displayed some moderation, refusing to believe the charges made against the duke of York, though he chose this time to publish some anti-Roman pamphlets. He tried, at some risk to himself, to save the life of one of the victims, William Staly, and visited William Howard, Viscount Stafford, in the Tower. To the Exclusion Bill he opposed a suggestion of compromise, and it is said that Charles offered him the bishopric of Chichester, "if he would come entirely into his interests." Burnet's reconciliation with the court was short-lived. In January 1680 he addressed to the king a long letter on the subject of his sins; he was known to have received the dangerous confidence of Wilmot, earl of Rochester, in his last illness; and he was even suspected, unjustly, in 1683, of having composed the paper drawn up on the eve of death by William Russell, Lord Russell, whom he attended to the scaffold. On the 5th of November 1684 he preached, at the express wish of his patron Grimston, and against his own desire, the usual anti-Catholic sermon. He was consequently deprived of his appointments by order of the court, and on the accession of James II. retired to Paris. He had already begun the writing of his memoirs, which were to develop into the History of His Own Time.
Burnet now travelled in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, finally settling in Holland at the Hague, where he won from the princess of Orange a confidence which proved enduring. He rendered a signal service to William by inducing the princess to offer to leave the whole political power in her husband's hands in the event of their succession to the English crown. A prosecution against him for high treason was now set on foot both in England and in Scotland, and he took the precaution of naturalizing himself as a Dutch subject. Lady Margaret Burnet was dying when he left England, and n Holland he married a Dutch heiress of Scottish descent, Mary Scott. He returned to England with William and Mary, and drew up the English text of their declaration. His earlier views on the doctrine of non-resistance had been sensibly modified by what he saw in France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes and by the course of affairs at home, and in 1688 he published an Inquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supreme Authority in defence of the revolution. He was consecrated to the see of Salisbury on the 31st of March 1689 by a commission of bishops to whom Archbishop Sancroft had delegated his authority, declining personally to perform the office. In his pastoral letter to his clergy urging them to take the oath of allegiance, Burnet grounded the claim of William and Mary on the right of conquest, a view which gave such offence that the pamphlet was burnt by the common hangman three years later. As bishop he proved an excellent administrator, and gave the closest attention to his pastoral duties. He discouraged plurality of livings, and consequent non-residence, established a school of divinity as Salisbury, and spent much time himself in preparing candidates for confirmation, and in the examination of those who wished to enter the priesthood. Four discourses delivered to the clergy of his diocese were printed in 1694. During Queen Mary's lifetime ecclesiastical patronage passed through her hands, but after her death William III. appointed an ecclesiastical commission on which Burnet was a prominent member, for the disposal of vacant benefices. In 1696 and 1697 he presented memorials to the king suggesting that the first-fruits and tenths raised by the clergy should be devoted to the augmentation of the poorer livings, and though his suggestions were not immediately accepted, they were carried into effect under Queen Anne by the provision known as Queen Anne's Bounty. His second wife died of smallpox in 1698, and in 1700 Burnet married again, his third wife being Elizabeth (1661-1709), widow of Robert Berkeley and daughter of Sir Richard Blake, a rich and charitable woman, known by her Method of Devotion, posthumously published in 1710. In 1699 he was appointed tutor to the royal duke of Gloucester, son of the Princess Anne, an appointment which he accepted somewhat against his will. His influence at court had declined after the death of Queen Mary; William resented his often officious advice, placed little confidence in his discretion, and soon after his accession is even said to have described him as ein rechter Tartuffe. Burnet made a weighty speech against the bill (1702-1703) directed against the practice of occasional conformity, and was a consistent exponent of Broad Church principles. He devoted five years' labour to his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699; ed. J.R. Page, 1837), which was severely criticized by the High Church clergy. But his hopes for a comprehensive scheme which might include nonconformists in the English Church were necessarily destroyed on the accession of Queen Anne. He died on the 17th of March 1715, and was buried in the parish of St James's, Clerkenwell.
Burnet directed in his will that his most important work, the History of His Own Time, should appear six years after his death. It was published (2 vols., 1724-1734) by his sons, Gilbert and Thomas, and then not without omissions. It was attacked in 1724 by John Cockburn in A Specimen of some free and impartial Remarks. Burnet's book naturally aroused much opposition, and there were persistent rumours that the MS. had been unduly tampered with. He has been freely charged with gross misrepresentation, an accusation to which he laid himself open, for instance, in the account of the birth of James, the Old Pretender. His later intimacy with the Marlboroughs made him very lenient where the duke was concerned. The greatest value of his work naturally lies in his account of transactions of which he had personal knowledge, notably in his relation of the church history of Scotland, of the Popish Plot, of the proceedings at the Hague previous to the expedition of William and Mary, and of the personal relations between the joint sovereigns.
Of his children by his second wife, William (d. 1729) became a colonial governor in America; Gilbert (d. 1726) became prebendary of Salisbury in 1715, and chaplain to George I. in 1718; and Sir Thomas (1694-1753), his literary executor and biographer, became in 1741 judge in the court of common pleas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The chief authorities for Bishop Burnet's life are the autobiography "Rough Draft of my own Life" (ed. H.C. Foxcroft, Oxford, 1902, in the Supplement to Burnet's History), the Life by Sir Thomas Burnet in the History of His Own Time (Oxford, 1823, vol. vi.), and the History itself. A rather severe but detailed and useful criticism is given in L. v. Ranke's History of England (Eng. ed., Oxford, 1875), vol. vi. pp. 45-101. Burnet's letters to his friend, George Savile, marquess of Halifax, were published by the Royal Historical Society (Camden Miscellany, vol. xi.). The History of His Own Time (2 vols. fol., 1724-1734) ran through many editions before it was reprinted at the Clarendon Press (6 vols., 1823, and supplementary volume, 1833) with the suppressed passages of the first volume and notes by the earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, with the remarks of Swift. This edition, under the direction of M.J. Routh, was enlarged in a second Oxford edition of 1833. A new edition, based on this, but making use of the Bodleian MS., which differs very considerably from the printed version, was edited by Osmund Airy (Oxford, 1897, &c.). In 1902 (Clarendon Press, Oxford) Miss H.C. Foxcroft edited A Supplement to Burnet's History of His Own Time, to which is prefixed an account of the relation between the different versions of the History--the Bodleian MS., the fragmentary Harleian MS. in the British Museum and Sir Thomas Burnet's edition; the book contains the remaining fragments of Burnet's original memoirs, his autobiography, his letters to Admiral Herbert and his private meditations. The chief differences between Burnet's original draft as represented by the Bodleian MS. and the printed history consist in a more lenient view generally of individuals, a modification of the censure levelled at the Anglican clergy, changes obviously dictated by a general variation in his point of view, and a more cautious account of personal matters such as his early relations with Lauderdale. He also cut out much minor detail, and information relating to himself and to members of his family. His [v.04 p.0853] History of the Reformation of the Church of England was edited (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 7 vols., 1865) by N. Pocock.
Besides the works mentioned above may be noticed: Some Passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester (Lond., 1680; facsimile reprint, with introduction by Lord Ronald Gower, 1875); The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt., sometime Lord Chief-Justice of his Majesties Court of Kings Bench (Lond., 1682), which is included in C. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography (vol. vi., 1818); The History of the Rights of Princes in disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands (Lond., 1682, 8vo); The Life of William Bedell, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland (1685), containing the correspondence between Bedell and James Waddesdon of the Holy Inquisition on the subject of the Roman obedience; Reflections on Mr Varillas's "History of the Revolutions that have happened in Europe in matters of Religion," and more particularly on his Ninth Book, that relates to England (Amst., 1686), appended to the account of his travels entitled Some Letters, which was originally published at Rotterdam (1686); A Discourse of the Pastoral Care (1692, 14th ed., 1821); An Essay on the Memory of the late Queen (1695); A Collection of various Tracts and Discourses written in the Years 1677 to 1704 (3 vols., 1704); and A Collection of Speeches, Prefaces, Letters, with a Description of Geneva and Holland (1713). Of his shorter religious and polemical works a catalogue is given in vol. vi. of the Clarendon Press edition of his History, and in Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. The following translations deserve to be mentioned:--Utopia, written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England: translated into English (1685); A Relation of the Death of the Primitive Persecutors, written originally in Latin, by L.C.F. Lactantius: Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D.D., to which he hath made a large preface concerning Persecution (Amst., 1687).
See also A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (1907), by T.E.S. Clarke and H.C. Foxcroft, with an introduction by C.H. Firth, which contains a chronological list of Burnet's published works. Of Burnet's personal character there are well-known descriptions in chapter vii. of Macaulay's History of England, and in W.E.H. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 80 seq.
BURNET, THOMAS (1635-1715), English divine, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635. He was educated at Northallerton, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 1657 he was made fellow of Christ's, and in 1667 senior proctor of the university. By the interest of James, duke of Ormonde, he was chosen master of the Charterhouse in 1685, and took the degree of D.D. As master he made a noble stand against the illegal attempts to admit Andrew Popham as a pensioner of the house, strenuously opposing an order of the 26th of December 1686, addressed by James II. to the governors dispensing with the statutes for the occasion.
Burnet published his famous Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth,[1] at London in 1681. This work, containing a fanciful theory of the earth's structure,[2] attracted much attention, and he was afterwards encouraged to issue an English translation, which was printed in folio, 1684-1689. Addison commended the author in a Latin ode, but his theory was attacked by John Keill, William Whiston and Erasmus Warren, to all of whom he returned answers. His reputation obtained for him an introduction at court by Archbishop Tillotson, whom he succeeded as clerk of the closet to King William. But he suddenly marred his prospects by the publication, in 1692, of a work entitled Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus, in which he treated the Mosaic account of the fall of man as an allegory. This excited a great clamour against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at court. Of this book an English translation was published in 1729. Burnet published several other minor works before his death, which took place at the Charterhouse on the 27th September 1715. Two posthumous works appeared several years after his death--De Fide et Officiis Christianorum (1723), and De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus (1723); in which he maintained the doctrine of a middle state, the millennium, and the limited duration of future punishment. A Life of Dr Burnet, by Heathcote, appeared in 1759.
[1] "Which," says Samuel Johnson, "the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety" (Lives of English Poets, vol. i. p. 303).
[2] Burnet held that at the deluge the earth was crushed like an egg, the internal waters rushing out, and the fragments of shell becoming the mountains.
BURNET, known botanically as Poterium, a member of the rose family. The plants are perennial herbs with pinnate leaves and small flowers arranged in dense long-stalked heads. Great burnet (Poterium officinale) is found in damp meadows; salad burnet (P. Sanguisorba) is a smaller plant with much smaller flower-heads growing in dry pastures.
BURNETT, FRANCES ELIZA HODGSON (1849- ), Anglo-American novelist, whose maiden name was Hodgson, was born in Manchester, England, on the 24th of November 1849; she went to America with her parents, who settled in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1865. Miss Hodgson soon began to write stories for magazines. In 1873 she married Dr L.M. Burnett of Washington, whom she afterwards (1898) divorced. Her reputation as a novelist was made by her remarkable tale of Lancashire life, That Lass o' Lowrie's (1877), and a number of other volumes followed, of which the best were Through one Administration (1883) and A Lady of Quality (1896). In 1886 she attained a new popularity by her charming story of Little Lord Fauntleroy, and this led to other stories of child-life. Little Lord Fauntleroy was dramatized (see COPYRIGHT for the legal questions involved) and had a great success on the stage; and other dramas by her were also produced. In 1900 she married a second time, her husband being Mr Stephen Townesend, a surgeon, who (as Will Dennis) had taken to the stage and had collaborated with her in some of her plays.
BURNEY, CHARLES (1726-1814), English musical historian, was born at Shrewsbury on the 12th of April 1726. He received his earlier education at the free school of that city, and was afterwards sent to the public school at Chester. His first music master was Edmund Baker, organist of Chester cathedral, and a pupil of Dr John Blow. Returning to Shrewsbury when about fifteen years old, he continued his musical studies for three years under his half-brother, James Burney, organist of St Mary's church, and was then sent to London as a pupil of the celebrated Dr Arne, with whom he remained three years. Burney wrote some music for Thomson's Alfred, which was produced at Drury Lane theatre on the 30th of March 1745. In 1749 he was appointed organist of St Dionis-Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, with a salary of £30 a year; and he was also engaged to take the harpsichord in the "New Concerts" then recently established at the King's Arms, Cornhill. In that year he married Miss Esther Sleepe, who died in 1761; in 1769 he married Mrs Stephen Allen of Lynn. Being threatened with a pulmonary affection he went in 1751 to Lynn in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an annual salary of £100, and there he resided for the next nine years. During that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of music. His Ode for St Cecilia's Day was performed at Ranelagh Gardens in 1759; and in 1760 he returned to London in good health and with a young family; the eldest child, a girl of eight years of age, surprised the public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. The concertos for the harpsichord which Burney published soon after his return to London were regarded with much admiration. In 1766 he produced, at Drury Lane, a free English version and adaptation of J.J. Rousseau's operetta Le Devin du village, under the title of The Cunning Man. The university of Oxford conferred upon him, on the 23rd of June 1769, the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Music, on which occasion he presided at the performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. In 1769 he published An Essay towards a History of Comets.
Amidst his various professional avocations, Burney never lost sight of his favorite object--his History of Music--and therefore resolved to travel abroad for the purpose of collecting materials that could not be found in Great Britain. Accordingly, he left London in June 1770, furnished with numerous letters of introduction, and proceeded to Paris, and thence to Geneva, Turin, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. The results of his observations he published in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771). Dr Johnson [v.04 p.0854] thought so well of this work that, alluding to his own Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, he said, "I had that clever dog Burney's Musical Tour in my eye." In July 1772 Burney again visited the continent, to collect further materials, and, after his return to London, published his tour under the title of The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces (1773). In 1773 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1776 appeared the first volume (in 4to) of his long-projected History of Music. In 1782 Burney published his second volume; and in 1789 the third and fourth. Though severely criticized by Forkel in Germany and by the Spanish ex-Jesuit, Requeno, who, in his Italian work Saggi sul Ristabilimento dell' Arte Armonica de' Greci e Romani Cantori (Parma, 1798), attacks Burney's account of the ancient Greek music, and calls him lo scompigliato Burney, the History of Music was generally recognized as possessing great merit. The least satisfactory volume is the fourth, the treatment of Handel and Bach being quite inadequate. Burney's first tour was translated into German by Ebeling, and printed at Hamburg in 1772; and his second tour, translated into German by Bode, was published at Hamburg in 1773. A Dutch translation of his second tour, with notes by J.W. Lustig, organist at Groningen, was published there in 1786. The Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients, in the first volume of Burney's History, was translated into German by J.J. Eschenburg, and printed at Leipzig, 1781. Burney derived much aid from the first two volumes of Padre Martini's very learned Storia della Musica (Bologna, 1757-1770). One cannot but admire his persevering industry, and his sacrifices of time, money and personal comfort, in collecting and preparing materials for his History, and few will be disposed to condemn severely errors and oversights in a work of such extent and difficulty.
In 1774 he had written A Plan for a Music School. In 1779 he wrote for the Royal Society an account of the infant Crotch, whose remarkable musical talent excited so much attention at that time. In 1784 he published, with an Italian title-page, the music annually performed in the pope's chapel at Rome during Passion Week. In 1785 he published, for the benefit of the Musical Fund, an account of the first commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey in the preceding year, with an excellent life of Handel. In 1796 he published Memoirs and Letters of Metastasio. Towards the close of his life Burney was paid £1000 for contributing to Rees's Cyclopaedia all the musical articles not belonging to the department of natural philosophy and mathematics. In 1783, through the treasury influence of his friend Edmund Burke, he was appointed organist to the chapel of Chelsea Hospital, and he moved his residence from St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, to live in the hospital for the remainder of his life. He was made a member of the Institute of France, and nominated a correspondent in the class of the fine arts, in the year 1810. From 1806 until his death he enjoyed a pension of £300 granted by Fox. He died at Chelsea College on the 12th of April 1814, and was interred in the burying-ground of the college. A tablet was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
Burney's portrait was painted by Reynolds, and his bust was cut by Nollekens in 1805. He had a wide circle of acquaintance among the distinguished artists and literary men of his day. At one time he thought of writing a life of his friend Dr Samuel Johnson, but he retired before the crowd of biographers who rushed into that field. His character in private as well as in public life appears to have been very amiable and exemplary. Dr Burney's eldest son, James, was a distinguished officer in the royal navy, who died a rear-admiral in 1821; his second son was the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757-1817), a well-known classical scholar, whose splendid collection of rare books, and MSS. was ultimately bought by the nation for the British Museum; and his second daughter was Frances (Madame D'Arblay, q.v.).
The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay contain many minute and interesting particulars of her father's public and private life, and of his friends and contemporaries. A life of Burney by Madame D'Arblay appeared in 1832.
Besides the operatic music above mentioned, Burney's known compositions consist of:--(1) Six Sonatas for the harpsichord; (2) Two Sonatas for the harp or piano, with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; (3) Sonatas for two violins and a bass: two sets; (4) Six Lessons for the harpsichord; (5) Six Duets for two German flutes; (6) Three Concertos for the harpsichord; (7) Six concert pieces with an introduction and fugue for the organ; (8) Six Concertos for the violin, &c., in eight parts; (9) Two Sonatas for pianoforte, violin and violoncello; (10) A Cantata, &c.; (11) Anthems, &c.; (12) XII. Canzonetti a due voci in Canone, poesia dell' Abate Metastasio.
BURNHAM BEECHES, a wooded tract of 375 acres in Buckinghamshire, England, acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the beauty of the Beeches ina letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the township of Burnham are slight Early English remains of an abbey founded in 1265. Burnham is an urban district with a population (1901) of 3245.
BURNHAM-ON-CROUCH, an urban district in the southeastern parliamentary division of Essex, England, 43 m. E. by N. from London on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2919. The church of St Mary is principally late Perpendicular, a good example; it has Decorated portions and a Norman font. There are extensive oyster beds in the Crouch estuary. Burnham lies 6 m. from the North Sea; below it the Crouch is joined on the south side by the Roch, which branches into numerous creeks, and, together with the main estuary, forms Foulness, Wallasea, Potton and other low, flat islands, embanked and protected from incursions of the sea. Burnham is in some repute as a watering-place, and is a favourite yachting station. There is considerable trade in corn and coal, and boat-building is carried on.
BURNING TO DEATH. As a legal punishment for various crimes burning alive was formerly very wide-spread. It was common among the Romans, being given in the XII. Tables as the special penalty for arson. Under the Gothic codes adulterers were so punished, and throughout the middle ages it was the civil penalty for certain heinous crimes, e.g. poisoning, heresy, witchcraft, arson, bestiality and sodomy, and so continued in some cases, nominally at least, till the beginning of the 19th century. In England, under the common law, women condemned for high treason or petty treason (murder of husband, murder of master or mistress, certain offences against the coin, &c.) were burned, this being considered more "decent" than hanging and exposure on a gibbet. In practice the convict was strangled before being burnt. The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the punishment being abolished in 1790.
Burning was not included among the penalties for heresy under the Roman imperial codes; but the burning of heretics by orthodox mobs had long been sanctioned by custom before the edicts of the emperor Frederick II. (1222, 1223) made it the civil-law punishment for heresy. His example was followed in France by Louis IX. in the Establishments of 1270. In England, where the civil law was never recognized, the common law took no cognizance of ecclesiastical offences, and the church courts had no power to condemn to death. There were, indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries isolated instances of the burning of heretics. William of Newburgh describes the burning of certain foreign sectaries in 1169, and early in the 13th century a deacon was burnt by order of the council of Oxford (Foxe ii. 374; cf. Bracton, de Corona, ii. 300), but by what legal sanction is not obvious. The right of the crown to issue writs de haeretico comburendo, claimed for it by later jurists, was based on that issued by Henry IV. in 1400 for the burning of William Sawtre; but Sir James Stephen (Hist. Crim. Law) points out that this was issued "with the assent of the lords temporal," which seems to prove that the crown had no right under the common law to issue such writs. The burning of heretics was actually made legal in England by the statute de haeretico comburendo (1400), passed ten days after the issue of the above writ. This was repealed in 1533, but the Six Articles Act of 1539 revived burning as a penalty [v.04 p.0855] for denying transubstantiation. Under Queen Mary the acts of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived; they were finally abolished in 1558 on the accession of Elizabeth. Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., however, burned heretics (illegally as it would appear) under their supposed right of issuing writs for this purpose. The last heretics burnt in England were two Arians, Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Wightman at Lichfield, both in 1610. As for witches, countless numbers were burned in most European countries, though not in England, where they were hanged. In Scotland in Charles II.'s day the law still was that witches were to be "worried at the stake and then burnt"; and a witch was burnt at Dornoch so late as 1708.
BURNLEY, a market town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, at the junction of the rivers Brun and Calder, 213 m. N.N.W. of London and 29 m. N. of Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Pop. (1891) 87,016; (1901) 97,043. The church of St Peter dates from the 14th century, but is largely modernized; among a series of memorials of the Towneley family is one to Charles Towneley (d. 1805), who collected the series of antique marbles, terra-cottas, bronzes, coins and gems which are named after him and preserved in the British Museum. In 1902 Towneley Hall and Park were acquired by the corporation, the mansion being adapted to use as a museum and art gallery, and in 1903 a summer exhibition was held here. There are a large number of modern churches and chapels, a handsome town-hall, market hall, museum and art gallery, school of science, municipal technical school, various benevolent institutions, and pleasant public parks and recreation grounds. The principal industries are cotton-weaving, worsted-making, iron-founding, coal-mining, quarrying, brick-burning and the making of sanitary wares. It has been suggested that Burnley may coincide with Brunanburh, the battlefield on which the Saxons conquered the Dano-Celtic force in 937. During the cotton famine consequent upon the American war of 1861-65 it suffered severely, and the operatives were employed on relief works embracing an extensive system of improvements. The parliamentary borough (1867), which returns one member, falls within the Clitheroe division of the county. The county borough was created in 1888. The town was incorporated in 1861. The corporation consists of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors. By act of parliament in 1890 Burnley was created a suffragan bishopric of the diocese of Manchester. Area of the municipal borough, 4005 acres.
BURNOUF, EUGÈNE (1801-1852), French orientalist, was born in Paris on the 8th of April 1801. His father, Prof. Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844), was a classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827-1833). Eugene Burnouf published in 1826 an Essai sur le Pâli ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following year Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pâli. The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Zend manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil du Perron. By his labours a knowledge of the Zend language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the Vendidad Sade, part of one of the books bearing the name of Zoroaster, to be lithographed with the utmost care from the Zend MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829-1843. From 1833 to 1835 he published his Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses; he also published the Sanskrit text and French translation of the Bhâgavata Purâna ou histoire poétique de Krichna in three folio volumes (1840-1847). His last works were Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien (1844), and a translation of Le lotus de la bonne loi (1852). Burnouf died on the 28th of May 1852. He had been for twenty years a member of the Académie des Inscriptions and professor of Sanskrit in the Collège de France.
See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to the second edition (1876) of the Introd. à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien; also Naudet, "Notice historique sur M.M. Burnouf, père et fils," in Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, xx. A list of his valuable contributions to the Journal asiatique, and of his MS. writings, is given in the appendix to the Choix de lettres d'Eugène Burnouf (1891).
BURNOUS (from the Arab. burnus), a long cloak of coarse woollen stuff with a hood, usually white in colour, worn by the Arabs and Berbers throughout North Africa.
BURNS, SIR GEORGE, Bart. (1795-1890), English shipowner, was born in Glasgow on the 10th of December 1795, the son of the Rev. John Burns. In partnership with a brother, James, he began as a Glasgow general merchant about 1818, and in 1824 in conjunction with a Liverpool partner, Hugh Matthie, started a line of small sailing ships which ran between Glasgow and Liverpool. As business increased the vessels were also sailed to Belfast, and steamers afterwards replaced the sailing ships. In 1830 a partnership was entered into with the McIvers of Liverpool, in which George Burns devoted himself specially to the management of the ships. In 1838 with Samuel Cunard, Robert Napier and other capitalists, the partners (McIver and Burns) started the "Cunard" Atlantic line of steamships. They secured the British government's contract for the carrying of the mails to North America. The sailings were begun with four steamers of about 1000 tons each, which made the passage in 15 days at some 8½ knots per hour. George Burns retired from the Glasgow management of the line in 1860. He was made a baronet in 1889, but died on the 2nd of June 1890 at Castle Wemyss, where he had spent the latter years of his life.
John Burns (1829-1901), his eldest son, who succeeded him in the baronetcy, and became head of the Cunard Company, was created a peer, under the title of Baron Inverclyde, in 1897; he was the first to suggest to the government the use of merchant vessels for war purposes. George Arbuthnot Burns (1861-1905) succeeded his father in the peerage, as 2nd baron Inverclyde, and became chairman of the Cunard Company in 1902. He conducted the negotiations which resulted in the refusal of the Cunard Company to enter the shipping combination, the International Mercantile Marine Company, formed by Messrs J.P. Morgan & Co., and took a leading part in the application of turbine engines to ocean liners.
BURNS, JOHN (1858- ), English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten years old, when he was sent to work in Price's candle factory. He worked for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. He continued his education at the night-schools, and read extensively, especially the works of Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Paine and Cobbett. He ascribed his conversion to the principles of socialism to his sense of the insufficiency of the arguments advanced against it by J.S. Mill, but he had learnt socialistic doctrine from a French fellow-workman, Victor Delahaye, who had witnessed the Commune. After working at his trade in various parts of England, and on board ship, he went for a year to the West African coast at the mouth of the Niger as a foreman engineer. His earnings from this undertaking were expended on a six months' tour in France, Germany and Austria for the study of political and economic conditions. He had early begun the practice of outdoor speaking, and his exceptional physical strength and strong voice were invaluable qualifications for a popular agitator. In 1878 he was arrested and locked up for the night for addressing an open-air demonstration on Clapham Common. Two years later he married Charlotte Gale, the daughter of a Battersea shipwright. He was again arrested in 1886 for his share in the West End riots when the windows of the Carlton and other London clubs were broken, but cleared himself at the Old Bailey of the charge of inciting the mob to violence. In November of the next year, however, he was again arrested for resisting the police in their attempt to break up the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and was condemned to six weeks' imprisonment. A speech delivered by him at the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1884 had attracted considerable attention, and in that year he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation, which put him forward [v.04 p.0856] unsuccessfully in the next year as parliamentary candidate for West Nottingham. His connexion with the Social Democratic Federation was short-lived; but he was an active member of the executive of the Amalgamated Engineers' trade union, and was connected with the trades union congresses until 1895, when, through his influence, a resolution excluding all except wage labourers was passed. He was still working at his trade in Hoe's printing machine works when he became a Progressive member of the first London County Council, being supported by an allowance of £2 a week subscribed by his constituents, the Battersea working men. He introduced in 1892 a motion that all contracts for the County Council should be paid at trade union rates and carried out under trade union conditions, and devoted his efforts in general to a war against monopolies, except those of the state or the municipality. In the same year (1889) in which he became a member of the County Council, he acted with Mr Ben Tillett as the chief leader and organizer of the London dock strike. He entered the House of Commons as member for Battersea in 1892, and was re-elected in 1895, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr Asquith's cabinet.
BURNS, ROBERT (1759-1796), Scottish poet, was born on the 25th of January 1759 in a cottage about 2 m. from Ayr. He was the eldest son of a small farmer, William Burness, of Kincardineshire stock, who wrought hard, practised integrity, wished to bring up his children in the fear of God, but had to fight all his days against the winds and tides of adversity. "The poet," said Thomas Carlyle, "was fortunate in his father--a man of thoughtful intense character, as the best of our peasants are, valuing knowledge, possessing some and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless: a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank in society, and worth descending far in society to seek. ... Had he been ever so little richer, the whole might have issued otherwise. But poverty sunk the whole family even below the reach of our cheap school system, and Burns remained a hard-worked plough-boy."
Through a series of migrations from one unfortunate farm to another; from Alloway (where he was taught to read) to Mt. Oliphant, and then (1777) to Lochlea in Tarbolton (where he learnt the rudiments of geometry), the poet remained in the same condition of straitened circumstances. At the age of thirteen he thrashed the corn with his own hands, at fifteen he was the principal labourer. The family kept no servant, and for several years butchers' meat was a thing unknown in the house. "This kind of life," he writes, "the cheerless gloom of a hermit and the unceasing toil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year." His naturally robust frame was overtasked, and his nervous constitution received a fatal strain. His shoulders were bowed, he became liable to headaches, palpitations and fits of depressing melancholy. From these hard tasks and his fiery temperament, craving in vain for sympathy in a frigid air, grew the strong temptations on which Burns was largely wrecked,--the thirst for stimulants and the revolt against restraint which soon made headway and passed all bars. In the earlier portions of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming shapes of ill he bated no jot of heart or hope. He was cheered by vague stirrings of ambition, which he pathetically compares to the "blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." Sent to school at Kirkoswald, he became, for his scant leisure, a great reader--eating at meal-times with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other,--and carrying a few small volumes in his pocket to study in spare moments in the fields. "The collection of songs" he tells us, "was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, sublime or fustian." He lingered over the ballads in his cold room by night; by day, whilst whistling at the plough, he invented new forms and was inspired by fresh ideas, "gathering round him the memories and the traditions of his country till they became a mantle and a crown." It was among the furrows of his father's fields that he was inspired with the perpetually quoted wish--
"That I for poor auld Scotland's sake Some useful plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least."
An equally striking illustration of the same feeling is to be found in his summer Sunday's ramble to the Leglen wood,--the fabled haunt of Wallace,--which the poet confesses to have visited "with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did the shrine of Loretto." In another reference to the same period he refers to the intense susceptibility to the homeliest aspects of Nature which throughout characterized his genius. "Scarcely any object gave me more--I do not know if I should call it pleasure--but something which exalts and enraptures me--than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter day and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. I listened to the birds, and frequently turned out of my path lest I should disturb their little songs or frighten them to another station." Auroral visions were gilding his horizon as he walked in glory, if not in joy, "behind his plough upon the mountain sides."; but the swarm of his many-coloured fancies was again made grey by the atra cura of unsuccessful toils.
Burns had written his first verses of note, "Behind yon hills where Stinchar (afterwards Lugar) flows," when in 1781 he went to Irvine to learn the trade of a flax-dresser. "It was," he says, "an unlucky affair. As we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, the shop took fire and burned to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, without a sixpence." His own heart, too, had unfortunately taken fire. He was poring over mathematics till, in his own phraseology,--still affected in its prose by the classical pedantries caught from Pope by Ramsay,--"the sun entered Virgo, when a charming fillette, who lived next door, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the scene of my studies." We need not detail the story, nor the incessant repetitions of it, which marked and sometimes marred his career. The poet was jilted, went through the usual despairs, and resorted to the not unusual sources of consolation. He had found that he was "no enemy to social life," and his mates had discovered that he was the best of boon companions in the lyric feasts, where his eloquence shed a lustre over wild ways of life, and where he was beginning to be distinguished as a champion of the New Lights and a satirist of the Calvinism whose waters he found like those of Marah.
In Robert's 25th year his father died, full of sorrows and apprehensions for the gifted son who wrote for his tomb in Alloway kirkyard, the fine epitaph ending with the characteristic line--
"For even his failings leaned to virtue's side."
For some time longer the poet, with his brother Gilbert, lingered at Lochlea, reading agricultural books, miscalculating crops, attending markets, and in a mood of reformation resolving, "in spite of the world, the flesh and the devil, to be a wise man." Affairs, however, went no better with the family; and in 1784 they migrated to Mossgiel, where he lived and wrought, during four years, for a return scarce equal to the wage of the commonest labourer in our day. Meanwhile he had become intimate with his future wife, Jean Armour; but the father, a master mason, discountenanced the match, and the girl being disposed to "sigh as a lover," as a daughter to obey, Burns, in 1786, gave up his suit, resolved to seek refuge in exile, and having accepted a situation as book-keeper to a slave estate in Jamaica, had taken his passage in a ship for the West Indies. His old associations seemed to be breaking up, men and fortune scowled, and "hungry ruin had him in the wind," when he wrote the lines ending--
[v.04 p.0857]
"Adieu, my native banks of Ayr,"
and addressed to the most famous of the loves, in which he was as prolific as Catullus or Tibullus, the proposal--
"Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary."
He was withheld from his project and, happily or unhappily, the current of his life was turned by the success of his first volume, which was published at Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among others "The Twa Dogs,"--a graphic idealization of Aesop,--"The Author's Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream," "Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a genius so marvellous and so varied took his audience by storm. "The country murmured of him from sea to sea." "With his poems," says Robert Heron, "old and young, grave and gay, learned and ignorant, were alike transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, and I can well remember how even plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages they earned the most hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they might but procure the works of Burns." This first edition only brought the author £20 direct return, but it introduced him to the literati of Edinburgh, whither he was invited, and where he was welcomed, feasted, admired and patronized. He appeared as a portent among the scholars of the northern capital and its university, and manifested, according to Mr Lockhart, "in the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was where he was entitled to be, hardly deigning to flatter them by exhibiting a symptom of being flattered."
Sir Walter Scott bears a similar testimony to the dignified simplicity and almost exaggerated independence of the poet, during this annus mirabilis of his success. "As for Burns, Virgilium vidi tantum, I was a lad of fifteen when he came to Edinburgh, but had sense enough to be interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him. I saw him one day with several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened.... I remember ... his shedding tears over a print representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the least intrusive forwardness. I thought his acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited; and having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson he talked of them with too much humility as his models. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, but the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling." Laudatur et alget. Burns went from those meetings, where he had been posing professors (no hard task), and turning the heads of duchesses, to share a bed in the garret of a writer's apprentice,--they paid together 3s. a week for the room. It was in the house of Mr Carfrae, Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket, "first scale stair on the left hand in going down, first door in the stair." During Burns's life it was reserved for William Pitt to recognize his place as a great poet; the more cautious critics of the North were satisfied to endorse him as a rustic prodigy, and brought upon themselves a share of his satire. Some of the friendships contracted during this period--as for Lord Glencairn and Mrs Dunlop--are among the most pleasing and permanent in literature; for genuine kindness was never wasted on one who, whatever his faults, has never been accused of ingratitude. But in the bard's city life there was an unnatural element. He stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is dancing minuets with hob-nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of the Poems came out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author £400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of poetic material--one through the border towns into England as far as Newcastle, returning by Dumfries to Mauchline, and another a grand tour through the East Highlands, as far as Inverness, returning by Edinburgh, and so home to Ayrshire.
In 1788 Burns took a new farm at Ellisland on the Nith, settled there, married, lost his little money, and wrote, among other pieces, "Auld Lang Syne" and "Tam o' Shanter." In 1789 he obtained, through the good office of Mr Graham of Fintry, an appointment as excise-officer of the district, worth £50 per annum. In 1791 he removed to a similar post at Dumfries worth £70. In the course of the following year he was asked to contribute to George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin: the poetry by Robert Burns. To this work he contributed about one hundred songs, the best of which are now ringing in the ear of every Scotsman from New Zealand to San Francisco. For these, original and adapted, he received a shawl for his wife, a picture by David Allan representing the "Cottar's Saturday Night," and £5! The poet wrote an indignant letter and never afterwards composed for money. Unfortunately the "Rock of Independence" to which he had proudly retired was but a castle of air, over which the meteors of French political enthusiasm cast a lurid gleam. In the last years of his life, exiled from polite society on account of his revolutionary opinions, he became sourer in temper and plunged more deeply into the dissipations of the lower ranks, among whom he found his only companionship and sole, though shallow, sympathy.
Burns began to feel himself prematurely old. Walking with a friend who proposed to him to join a county ball, he shook his head, saying "that's all over now," and adding a verse of Lady Grizel Baillie's ballad--
"O were we young as we ance hae been, We sud hae been galloping down on yon green, And linking it ower the lily-white lea, But were na my heart light I wad dee."
His hand shook; his pulse and appetite failed; his spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In April 1796 he wrote--"I fear it will be some time before I tune my lyre again. By Babel's streams I have sat and wept. I have only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day and say with poor Fergusson--
"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heaven Life to the comfortless and wretched given."
On the 4th of July he was seen to be dying. On the 12th he wrote to his cousin for the loan of £10 to save him from passing his last days in jail. On the 21st he was no more. On the 25th, when his last son came into the world, he was buried with local honours, the volunteers of the company to which he belonged firing three volleys over his grave.
It has been said that "Lowland Scotland as a distinct nationality came in with two warriors and went out with two bards. It came in with William Wallace and Robert Bruce and went out with Robert Burns and Walter Scott. The first two made the history, the last two told the story and sung the song." But what in the minstrel's lay was mainly a requiem was in the people's poet also a prophecy. The position of Burns in the progress of British literature may be shortly defined; he was a link between two eras, like Chaucer, the last of the old and the first of the new--the inheritor of the traditions and the music of the past, in some respects the herald of the future.
The volumes of our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the best [v.04 p.0858] inspirations of which have passed into them. But in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet's epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half-sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. He is the pupil of Ramsay, but he leaves his master, to make a social protest and to lead a literary revolt. The Gentle Shepherd, still largely a court pastoral, in which "a man's a man" if born a gentleman, may be contrasted with "The Jolly Beggars"--the one is like a minuet of the ladies of Versailles on the sward of the Swiss village near the Trianon, the other like the march of the maenads with Theroigne de Mericourt. Ramsay adds to the rough tunes and words of the ballads the refinement of the wits who in the "Easy" and "Johnstone" clubs talked over their cups of Prior and Pope, Addison and Gay. Burns inspires them with a fervour that thrills the most wooden of his race. We may clench the contrast by a representative example. This is from Ramsay's version of perhaps the best-known of Scottish songs,--
"Methinks around us on each bough A thousand Cupids play; Whilst through the groves I walk with you, Each object makes me gay. Since your return--the sun and moon With brighter beams do shine, Streams murmur soft notes while they run As they did lang syne."
Compare the verses in Burns--
"We twa hae run about the braes And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered mony a weary foot Sin auld lang syne. We twa hae paidl'd in the burn, Frae morning sun till dine: But seas between us braid hae roar'd Sin auld lang syne."
Burns as a poet of the inanimate world doubtless derived hints from Thomson of The Seasons, but in his power of tuning its manifestation to the moods of the mind he is more properly ranked as a forerunner of Wordsworth. He never follows the fashions of his century, except in his failures--in his efforts at set panegyric or fine letter-writing. His highest work knows nothing of "Damon" or "Musidora." He leaves the atmosphere of drawing-rooms for the ingle or the ale-house or the mountain breeze.
The affectations of his style are insignificant and rare. His prevailing characteristic is an absolute sincerity. A love for the lower forms of social life was his besetting sin; Nature was his healing power. Burns compares himself to an Aeolian harp, strung to every wind of heaven. His genius flows over all living and lifeless things with a sympathy that finds nothing mean or insignificant. An uprooted daisy becomes in his pages an enduring emblem of the fate of artless maid and simple bard. He disturbs a mouse's nest and finds in the "tim'rous beastie" a fellow-mortal doomed like himself to "thole the winter's sleety dribble," and draws his oft-repeated moral. He walks abroad and, in a verse that glints with the light of its own rising sun before the fierce sarcasm of "The Holy Fair," describes the melodies of a "simmer Sunday morn." He loiters by Afton Water and "murmurs by the running brook a music sweeter than its own." He stands by a roofless tower, where "the howlet mourns in her dewy bower," and "sets the wild echoes flying," and adds to a perfect picture of the scene his famous vision of "Libertie." In a single stanza he concentrates the sentiment of many Night Thoughts--
"The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave, And Time is setting wi' me, O."
For other examples of the same graphic power we may refer to the course of his stream--
"Whiles ow'r a linn the burnie plays As through the glen it wimpled," &c.,
or to "The Birks of Aberfeldy" or the "spate" in the dialogue of "The Brigs of Ayr." The poet is as much at home in the presence of this flood as by his "trottin' burn's meander." Familiar with all the seasons he represents the phases of a northern winter with a frequency characteristic of his clime and of his fortunes; her tempests became anthems in his verse, and the sounding woods "raise his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of the wind"; full of pity for the shelterless poor, the "ourie cattle," the "silly sheep," and the "helpless birds," he yet reflects that the bitter blast is not "so unkind as man's ingratitude." This constant tendency to ascend above the fair or wild features of outward things, or to penetrate beneath them, to make them symbols, to endow them with a voice to speak for humanity, distinguishes Burns as a descriptive poet from the rest of his countrymen. As a painter he is rivalled by Dunbar and James I., more rarely by Thomson and Ramsay. The "lilt" of Tannahill's finest verse is even more charming. But these writers rest in their art; their main care is for their own genius. The same is true in a minor degree of some of his great English successors. Keats has a palette of richer colours, but he seldom condescends to "human nature's daily food." Shelley floats in a thin air to stars and mountain tops, and vanishes from our gaze like his skylark. Byron, in the midst of his revolutionary fervour, never forgets that he himself belongs to the "caste of Vere de Vere." Wordsworth's placid affection and magnanimity stretch beyond mankind, and, as in "Hart-leap-well" and the "Cuckoo," extend to bird and beast; he moralizes grandly on the vicissitudes of common life, but he does not enter into, because by right of superior virtue he places himself above them. "From the Lyrical Ballads," it has been said, "it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry or are given in marriage." We revere the monitor who, consciously good and great, gives us the dry light of truth, but we love the bard, nostrae deliciae, who is all fire--fire from heaven and Ayrshire earth mingling in the outburst of passion and of power, which is his poetry and the inheritance of his race. He had certainly neither culture nor philosophy enough to have written the "Ode on the Recollections of Childhood," but to appreciate that ode requires an education. The sympathies of Burns, as broad as Wordsworth's, are more intense; in turning his pages we feel ourselves more decidedly in the presence of one who joys with those who rejoice and mourns with those who mourn. He is never shallow, ever plain, and the expression of his feeling is so terse that it is always memorable. Of the people he speaks more directly for the people than any of our more considerable poets. Chaucer has a perfect hold of the homeliest phases of life, but he wants the lyric element, and the charm of his language has largely faded from untutored ears. Shakespeare, indeed, has at once a loftier vision and a wider grasp; for he sings of "Thebes and Pelops line," of Agincourt and Philippi, as of Falstaff, and Snug the joiner, and the "meanest flower that blows." But not even Shakespeare has put more thought into poetry which the most prosaic must appreciate than Burns has done. The latter moves in a narrower sphere and wants the strictly dramatic faculty, but its place is partly supplied by the vividness of his narrative. His realization of incident and character is manifested in the sketches in which the manners and prevailing fancies of his countrymen are immortalized in connexion with local scenery. Among those almost every variety of disposition finds its favourite. The quiet households of the kingdom have received a sort of apotheosis in the "Cottar's Saturday Night." It has been objected that the subject does not afford scope for the more daring forms of the author's genius; but had he written no other poem, this heartful rendering of a good week's close in a God-fearing home, sincerely devout, and yet relieved from all suspicion of sermonizing by its humorous touches, would have secured a permanent place in literature. It transcends Thomson and Beattie at their best, and will smell sweet like the actions of the just for generations to come.
Lovers of rustic festivity may hold that the poet's greatest performance is his narrative of "Halloween," which for easy vigour, fulness of rollicking life, blended truth and fancy, is unsurpassed in its kind. Campbell, Wilson, Hazlitt, Montgomery, Burns himself, and the majority of his critics, have [v.04 p.0859] recorded their preference for "Tam o' Shanter," where the weird superstitious element that has played so great a part in the imaginative work of this part of our island is brought more prominently forward. Few passages of description are finer than that of the roaring Doon and Alloway Kirk glimmering through the groaning trees; but the unique excellence of the piece consists in its variety, and a perfectly original combination of the terrible and the ludicrous. Like Goethe's Walpurgis Nacht, brought into closer contact with real life, it stretches from the drunken humours of Christopher Sly to a world of fantasies almost as brilliant as those of the Midsummer Night's Dream, half solemnized by the severer atmosphere of a sterner clime. The contrast between the lines "Kings may be blest," &c., and those which follow, beginning "But pleasures are like poppies spread," is typical of the perpetual antithesis of the author's thought and life, in which, at the back of every revelry, he sees the shadow of a warning hand, and reads on the wall the writing, Omnia mutantur. With equal or greater confidence other judges have pronounced Burns's masterpiece to be "The Jolly Beggars." Certainly no other single production so illustrates his power of exalting what is insignificant, glorifying what is mean, and elevating the lowest details by the force of his genius. "The form of the piece," says Carlyle, "is a mere cantata, the theme the half-drunken snatches of a joyous band of vagabonds, while the grey leaves are floating on the gusts of the wind in the autumn of the year. But the whole is compacted, refined and poured forth in one flood of liquid harmony. It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in clear photography. The blanket of the night is drawn aside; in full ruddy gleaming light these rough tatterdemalions are seen at their boisterous revel wringing from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer." Over the whole is flung a half-humorous, half-savage satire--aimed, like a two-edged sword, at the laws and the law-breakers, in the acme of which the graceless crew are raised above the level of ordinary gipsies, footpads and rogues, and are made to sit "on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind," and to launch their Titan thunders of rebellion against the world.
"A fig for those by law protected; Liberty's a glorious feast; Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest."
A similar mixture of drollery and defiance appears in the justly celebrated "Address to the Deil," which, mainly whimsical, is relieved by touches oan in the conception of such a being straying in lonely places and loitering among trees, or in the familiarity with which the poet lectures so awful a personage,"--we may add, than in the inimitable outbreak at the close--
"O would you tak a thought an' men'."
Carlyle, in reference to this passage, cannot resist the suggestion of a parallel from Sterne. "He is the father of curses and lies, said Dr Slop, and is cursed and damned already. I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby."
Burns fared ill at the hands of those who were not sorry for it, and who repeated with glib complacency every terrible belief of the system in which they had been trained. The most scathing of his Satires, under which head fall many of his minor and frequent passages in his major pieces, are directed against the false pride of birth, and what he conceived to be the false pretences of religion. The apologue of "Death and Dr Hornbook," "The Ordination," the song "No churchman am I for to rail and to write," the "Address to the Unco Guid," "Holy Willie," and above all "The Holy Fair," with its savage caricature of an ignorant ranter of the time called Moodie, and others of like stamp, not unnaturally provoked offence. As regards the poet's attitude towards some phases of Calvinism prevalent during his life, it has to be remarked that from the days of Dunbar there has been a degree of antagonism between Scottish verse and the more rigid forms of Scottish theology.
It must be admitted that in protesting against hypocrisy he has occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes of his career he responds to the cottar's summons, "Let us worship God."
"An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended"
is the moral of all his verse, which treats seriously of religious matters. His prayers in rhyme give him a high place among secular Psalmists.
Like Chaucer, Burns was a great moralist, though a rough one. In the moments of his most intense revolt against conventional prejudice and sanctimonious affectation, he is faithful to the great laws which underlie change, loyal in his veneration for the cardinal virtues--Truth, Justice and Charity,--and consistent in the warnings, to which his experience gives an unhappy force, against transgressions of Temperance. In the "Epistle to a Young Friend," the shrewdest advice is blended with exhortations appealing to the highest motive, that which transcends the calculation of consequences, and bids us walk in the straight path from the feeling of personal honour, and "for the glorious privilege of being independent." Burns, like Dante, "loved well because he hated, hated wickedness that hinders loving," and this feeling, as in the lines--"Dweller in yon dungeon dark," sometimes breaks bounds; but his calmer moods are better represented by the well-known passages in the "Epistle to Davie," in which he preaches acquiescence in our lot, and a cheerful acceptance of our duties in the sphere where we are placed. This philosophie douce, never better sung by Horace, is the prevailing refrain of our author's Songs. On these there are few words to add to the acclaim of a century. They have passed into the air we breathe; they are so real that they seem things rather than words, or, nearer still, living beings. They have taken all hearts, because they are the breath of his own; not polished cadences, but utterances as direct as laughter or tears. Since Sappho loved and sang, there has been no such national lyrist as Burns. Fine ballads, mostly anonymous, existed in Scotland previous to his time; and shortly before a few authors had produced a few songs equal to some of his best. Such are Alexander Ross's "Wooed and Married," Lowe's "Mary's Dream," "Auld Robin Gray," "The Land o' the Leal" and the two versions of "The Flowers o' the Forest." From these and many of the older pieces in Ramsay's collection, Burns admits to have derived copious suggestions and impulses. He fed on the past literature of his country as Chaucer on the old fields of English thought, and--
"Still the elements o' sang, In formless jumble, right and wrang, Went floating in his brain."
But he gave more than he received; he brought forth an hundredfold; he summed up the stray material of the past, and added so much of his own that one of the most conspicuous features of his lyrical genius is its variety in new paths. Between the first of war songs, composed in a storm on a moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to Ariel. There is the vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans "red-wat-shod," the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown burns, the roar of the wind through pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the thunder on the hill--all Scotland is in his verse. Let who will make her laws, Burns has made the songs, which her emigrants recall "by the long wash of Australasian seas," in which maidens are wooed, by which mothers lull their infants, which return "through open casements unto dying ears"--they are the links, the watchwords, the masonic symbols of the Scots race.
(J. N.) [v.04 p.0860]
The greater part of Burns's verse was posthumously published, and, as he himself took no care to collect the scattered pieces of occasional verse, different editors have from time to time printed, as his, verses that must be regarded as spurious. Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert Burns (Kilmarnock, 1786), was followed by an enlarged edition printed in Edinburgh in the next year. Other editions of this book were printed--in London (1787), an enlarged edition at Edinburgh (2 vols., 1793) and a reprint of this in 1794. Of a 1790 edition mentioned by Robert Chambers no traces can be found. Poems by Burns appeared originally in The Caledonian Mercury, The Edinburgh Evening Courant, The Edinburgh Herald, The Edinburgh Advertiser; the London papers, Stuart's Star and Evening Advertiser (subsequently known as The Morning Star), The Morning Chronicle; and in the Edinburgh Magazine and The Scots Magazine. Many poems, most of which had first appeared elsewhere, were printed in a series of penny chap-books, Poetry Original and Select (Brash and Reid, Glasgow), and some appeared separately as broadsides. A series of tracts issued by Stewart and Meikle (Glasgow, 1796-1799) includes some Burns's numbers, The Jolly Beggars, Holy Willie's Prayer and other poems making their first appearance in this way. The seven numbers of this publication were reissued in January 1800 as The Poetical Miscellany. This was followed by Thomas Stewart's Poems ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow, 1801). Burns's songs appeared chiefly in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (6 vols., 1787-1803), which he appears after the first volume to have virtually edited, though the two last volumes were published only after his death; and in George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs (6 vols., 1793-1841). Only five of the songs done for Thomson appeared during the poet's lifetime, and Thomson's text cannot be regarded with confidence. The Hastie MSS. in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 22,307) include 162 songs, many of them in Burns's handwriting; and the Dalhousie MS., at Brechin Castle, contains Burns's correspondence with Thomson. For a full account of the songs see James C. Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns now first printed with the Melodies for which they were written (2 vols., 1903).
The items in Mr W. Craibe Angus's Printed Works of Robert Burns (1899) number nine hundred and thirty. Only the more important collected editions can be here noticed. Dr Currie was the anonymous editor of the Works of Robert Burns; with an Account of his Life, and a Criticism on his Writings ... (Liverpool, 1800). This was undertaken for the benefit of Burns's family at the desire of his friends, Alexander Cunningham and John Syme. A second and amended edition appeared in 1801, and was followed by others, but Currie's text is neither accurate nor complete. Additional matter appeared in Reliques of Robert Burns ... by R.H. Cromek (London, 1808). In The Works of Robert Burns, With his Life by Allan Cunningham (8 vols., London, 1834) there are many additions and much biographical material. The Works of Robert Burns, edited by James Hogg and William Motherwell (5 vols., 1834-1836, Glasgow and Edinburgh), contains a life of the poet by Hogg, and some useful notes by Motherwell attempting to trace the sources of Burns's songs. The Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda was edited by W.C. M^cLehose (Edinburgh, 1843). An improved text of the poems was provided in the second "Aldine Edition" of the Poetical Works (3 vols., 1839), for which Sir H. Nicolas, the editor, made use of many original MSS. In the Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers (Edinburgh, 4 vols., 1851-1852; library edition, 1856-1857; new edition, revised by William Wallace, 1896), the poet's works are given in chronological order, interwoven with letters and biography. The text was bowdlerized by Chambers, but the book contained much new and valuable information. Other well-known editions are those of George Gilfillan (2 vols., 1864); of Alexander Smith (Golden Treasury Series, London, 2 vols., 1865); of P. Hately Waddell (Glasgow, 1867); one published by Messrs Blackie & Son, with Dr Currie's memoir and an essay by Prof. Wilson (1843-1844); of W. Scott Douglas (the Kilmarnock edition, 1876, and the "library" edition, 1877-1879), and of Andrew Lang, assisted by W.A. Craigie (London, 1896). The complete correspondence between Burns and Mrs Dunlop was printed in 1898.
A critical edition of the Poetry of Robert Burns, which may be regarded as definitive, and is provided with full notes and variant readings, was prepared by W.E. Henley and T.F. Henderson (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1896-1897; reprinted, 1901), and is generally known as the "Centenary Burns." In vol. iii. the extent of Burns's indebtedness to Scottish folk-song and his methods of adaptation are minutely discussed; vol. iv. contains an essay on "Robert Burns. Life, Genius, Achievement," by W.E. Henley.
The chief original authority for Burns's life is his own letters. The principal "lives" are to be found in the editions just mentioned. His biography has also been written by J. Gibson Lockhart (Life of Burns, Edinburgh, 1828); for the "English Men of Letters" series in 1879 by Prof. J. Campbell Shairp; and by Sir Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. viii., 1886). Among the more important essays on Burns are those by Thomas Carlyle (Edinburgh Review, December 1828); by John Nichol, the writer of the above article (W. Scott Douglas's edition of Burns); by R.L. Stevenson (Familiar Studies of Men and Books); by Auguste Angellier (Robert Burns. La vie et les oeuvres, 2 vols., Paris, 1893); by Lord Rosebery (Robert Burns: Two Addresses in Edinburgh, 1896); by J. Logie Robertson (in In Scottish Fields, Edin., 1890, and Furth in Field, Edin., 1894); and T.F. Henderson (Robert Burns, 1904). There is a selected bibliography in chronological order in W.A. Craigie's Primer of Burns (1896).
BURNS AND SCALDS. A burn is the effect of dry heat applied to some part of the human body, a scald being the result of moist heat. Clinically there is no distinction between the two, and their classification and treatment are identical. In Dupuytren's classification, now most generally accepted, burns are divided into six classes according to the severest part of the lesion. Burns of the first degree are characterized by severe pain, redness of the skin, a certain amount of swelling that soon passes, and later exfoliation of the skin. Burns of the second degree show vesicles (small blisters) scattered over the inflamed area, and containing a clear, yellowish fluid. Beneath the vesicle the highly sensitive papillae of the skin are exposed. Burns of this degree leave no scar, but often produce a permanent discoloration. In burns of the third degree, there is a partial destruction of the true skin, leaving sloughs of a yellowish or black colour. The pain is at first intense, but passes off on about the second day to return again at the end of a week, when the sloughs separate, exposing the sensitive nerve filaments of the underlying skin. This results in a slightly depressed cicatrix, which happily, however, shows but slight tendency to contraction. Burns of the fourth degree, which follow the prolonged application of any form of intense heat, involve the total destruction of the true skin. The pain is much less severe than in the preceding class, since the nerve endings have been totally destroyed. The results, however, are far more serious, and the healing process takes place only very slowly on account of the destruction of the skin glands. As a result, deep puckered scars are formed, which show great tendency to contract, and where these are situated on face, neck or joints the resulting deformity and loss of function may be extremely serious. In burns of the fifth degree the underlying muscles are more or less destroyed, and in those of the sixth the bones are also charred. Examples of the last two classes are mainly provided by epileptics who fall into a fire during a fit.
The clinical history of a severe burn can be divided into three periods. The first period lasts from 36 to 48 hours, during which time the patient lies in a condition of profound shock, and consequently feels little or no pain. If death results from shock, coma first supervenes, which deepens steadily until the end comes. The second period begins when the effects of shock pass, and continues until the slough separates, this usually taking from seven to fourteen days. Considerable fever is present, and the tendency to every kind of complication is very great. Bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy, meningitis, intestinal catarrh, and even ulceration of the duodenum, have all been recorded. Hence both nursing and medical attendance must be very close during this time. It is probable that these complications are all the result of septic infection and absorption, and since the modern antiseptic treatment of burns they have become much less common. The third period is prolonged until recovery takes place. Death may result from septic absorption, or from the wound becoming infected with some organism, as tetanus, erysipelas, &c. The prognosis depends chiefly on the extent of skin involved, death almost invariably resulting when one-third of the total area of the body is affected, however superficially. Of secondary but still grave importance is the position of the burn, that over a serous cavity making the future more doubtful than one on a limb. Also it must be remembered that children very easily succumb to shock.
In treating a patient the condition of shock must be attended to first, since from it arises the primary danger. The sufferer must be wrapped immediately in hot blankets, and brandy given by the mouth or in an enema, while ether can be injected hypodermically. If the pulse is very bad a saline infusion must be administered. The clothes can then be removed and the burnt surfaces thoroughly cleansed with a very mild antiseptic, a weak solution of lysol acting very well. If there are blisters these must be opened and the contained effusion allowed to [v.04 p.0861] escape. Some surgeons leave them at this stage, but others prefer to remove the raised epithelium. When thoroughly cleansed, the wound is irrigated with sterilized saline solution and a dressing subsequently applied. For the more superficial lesions by far the best results are obtained from the application of gauze soaked in picric acid solution and lightly wrung out, being covered with a large antiseptic wool pad and kept in position by a bandage. Picric acid 1½ drams, absolute alcohol 3 oz., and distilled water 40 oz., make a good lotion. All being well, this need only be changed about twice a week. The various kinds of oil once so greatly advocated in treating burns are now largely abandoned since they have no antiseptic properties. The deeper burns can only be attended to by a surgeon, whose aim will be first to bring septic absorption to a minimum, and later to hasten the healing process. Skin grafting has great value after extensive burns, not because it hastens healing, which it probably does not do, but because it has a marked influence in lessening cicatricial contraction. When a limb is hopelessly charred, amputation is the only course.
BURNSIDE, AMBROSE EVERETT (1824-1881), American soldier, was born at Liberty, Indiana, on the 23rd of May 1824, of Scottish pedigree, his American ancestors settling first in South Carolina, and next in the north-west wilderness, where his parents lived in a rude log cabin. He was appointed to the United States military academy through casual favour, and graduated in 1847, when war with Mexico was nearly over. In 1853 he resigned his commission, and from 1853 to 1858 was engaged in the manufacture of firearms at Bristol, R.I. In 1856 he invented a breech-loading rifle. He was employed by the Illinois Central railroad until the Civil War broke out. Then he took command of a Rhode Island regiment of three months militia, on the summons of Governor Sprague, took part in the relief of the national capital, and commanded a brigade in the first battle of Bull Run. On the 6th of August 1861 he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, and placed in charge of the expeditionary force which sailed in January 1862 under sealed orders for the North Carolina coast. The victories of Roanoke Island, Newbern and Fort Macon (February--April) were the chief incidents of a campaign which was favourably contrasted by the people with the work of the main army on the Atlantic coast. He was promoted major-general U.S.V. soon afterwards, and early in July, with his North Carolina troops (IX. army corps), he was transferred to the Virginian theatre of war. Part of his forces fought in the last battles of Pope's campaign in Virginia, and Burnside himself was engaged in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. At the latter he was in command of McClellan's left wing, but the want of vigour in his attack was unfavourably criticized. His patriotic spirit, modesty and amiable manners, made him highly popular, and upon McClellan's final removal (Nov. 7) from the Army of the Potomac, President Lincoln chose him as successor. The choice was unfortunate. Much as he was liked, no one had ever looked upon him as the equal of McClellan, and it was only with the greatest reluctance that he himself accepted the responsibility, which he had on two previous occasions declined. He sustained a crushing defeat at the battle of Fredericksburg (13 Dec. 1862), and (Jan. 27) gave way to Gen. Hooker, after a tenure of less than three months. Transferred to Cincinnati in March 1863, he caused the arrest and court-martial of Clement L. Vallandigham, lately an opposition member of Congress, for an alleged disloyal speech, and later in the year his measures for the suppression of press criticism aroused much opposition; he helped to crush Morgan's Ohio raid in July; then, moving to relieve the loyalists in East Tennessee, in September entered Knoxville, to which the Confederate general James Longstreet unsuccessfully laid siege. In 1864 Burnside led his old IX. corps under Grant in the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns. After bearing his part well in the many bloody battles of that time, he was overtaken once more by disaster. The failure of the "Burnside mine" at Petersburg brought about his resignation. A year later he left the service, and in 1866 he became governor of Rhode Island, serving for three terms (1866-1869). From 1875 till his death he was a Republican member of the United States Congress. He was present with the German headquarters at the siege of Paris in 1870-71. He died at Bristol, Rhode Island, on the 13th of September 1881.
See B.P. Poore, Life and Public Services of Ambrose E. Burnside (Providence, 1882); A. Woodbury, Major-General Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps (Providence, 1867).
BURNTISLAND, a royal, municipal and police burgh of Fife, Scotland, on the shore of the Firth of Forth, 5¾ m. S.W. of Kirkcaldy by the North British railway. Pop. (1891) 4993; (1901) 4846. It is protected from the north wind by the Binn (632 ft.), and in consequence of its excellent situation, its links and sandy beach, it enjoys considerable repute as a summer resort. The chief industries are distilling, fisheries, shipbuilding and shipping, especially the export of coal and iron. Until the opening of the Forth bridge, its commodious harbour was the northern station of the ferry across the firth from Granton, 5 m. south. The parish church, dating from 1594, is a plain structure, with a squat tower rising in two tiers from the centre of the roof. The public buildings include two hospitals, a town-hall, music hall, library and reading room and science institute. On the rocks forming the western end of the harbour stands Rossend Castle, where the amorous French poet Chastelard repeated the insult to Queen Mary which led to his execution. In 1667 it was ineffectually bombarded by the Dutch. The burgh was originally called Parva Kinghorn and later Wester Kinghorn. The origin and meaning of the present name of the town have always been a matter of conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, it unites in returning one member to parliament.
BURR, AARON (1756-1836), American political leader, was born at Newark, New Jersey, on the 6th of February 1756. His father, the Rev. Aaron Burr (1715-1757), was the second president (1748-1757) of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University; his mother was the daughter of Jonathan Edwards, the well-known Calvinist theologian. The son graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1772, and two years later began the study of law in the celebrated law school conducted by his brother-in-law, Tappan Reeve, at Litchfield, Connecticut. Soon after the outbreak of the War of Independence, in 1775, he joined Washington's army in Cambridge, Mass. He accompanied Arnold's expedition into Canada in 1775, and on arriving before Quebec he disguised himself as a Catholic priest and made a dangerous journey of 120 m. through the British lines to notify Montgomery, at Montreal, of Arnold's arrival. He served for a time on the staffs of Washington and Putnam in 1776-77, and by his vigilance in the retreat from Long Island he saved an entire brigade from capture. On becoming lieutenant-colonel in July 1777, he assumed the command of a regiment, and during the winter at Valley Forge guarded the "Gulf," a pass commanding the approach to the camp, and necessarily the first point that would be attacked. In the engagement at Monmouth, on the 28th of June 1778, he commanded one of the brigades in Lord Stirling's division. In January 1779 Burr was assigned to the command of the "lines" of Westchester county, a region between the British post at Kingsbridge and that of the Americans about 15 m. to the north. In this district there was much turbulence and plundering by the lawless elements of both Whigs and Tories and by bands of ill-disciplined soldiers from both armies. Burr established a thorough patrol system, rigorously enforced martial law, and quickly restored order.
He resigned from the army in March 1779, on account of ill-health, renewed the study of law, was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1782, and began to practise in New York city after its evacuation by the British in the following year. In 1782 he married Theodosia Prevost (d. 1794), the widow of a British army officer who had died in the West Indies during the War of Independence. They had one child, a daughter, Theodosia, born in 1783, who became widely known for her beauty and accomplishments, married Joseph Alston of South Carolina [v.04 p.0862] in 1801, and was lost at sea in 1813. Burr was a member of the state assembly (1784-1785), attorney-general of the state (1789-1791), United States senator (1791-1797), and again a member of the assembly (1798-1799 and 1800-1801). As national parties became clearly defined, he associated himself with the Democratic-Republicans. Although he was not the founder of Tammany Hall, he began the construction of the political machine upon which the power of that organization is based. In the election of 1800 he was placed on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket with Thomas Jefferson, and each received the same number of electoral votes. It was well understood that the party intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice-president, but owing to a defect (later remedied) in the Constitution the responsibility for the final choice was thrown upon the House of Representatives. The attempts of a powerful faction among the Federalists to secure the election of Burr failed, partly because of the opposition of Alexander Hamilton and partly, it would seem, because Burr himself would make no efforts to obtain votes in his own favour. On Jefferson's election, Burr of course became vice-president. His fair and judicial manner as president of the Senate, recognized even by his bitterest enemies, helped to foster traditions in regard to that position quite different from those which have become associated with the speakership of the House of Representatives.
Hamilton had opposed Burr's aspirations for the vice-presidency in 1792, and had exerted influence through Washington to prevent his appointment as brigadier-general in 1798, at the time of the threatened war between the United States and France. It was also in a measure his efforts which led to Burr's lack of success in the New York gubernatorial campaign of 1804; moreover the two had long been rivals at the bar. Smarting under defeat and angered by Hamilton's criticisms, Burr sent the challenge which resulted in the famous duel at Weehawken, N.J., on the 11th of July 1804, and the death of Hamilton (q.v.) on the following day. After the expiration of his term as vice-president (March 4, 1805), broken in fortune and virtually an exile from New York, where, as in New Jersey, he had been indicted for murder after the duel with Hamilton, Burr visited the South-west and became involved in the so-called conspiracy which has so puzzled the students of that period. The traditional view that he planned a separation of the West from the Union is now discredited. Apart from the question of political morality he could not, as a shrewd politician, have failed to see that the people of that section were too loyal to sanction such a scheme. The objects of his treasonable correspondence with Merry and Yrujo, the British and Spanish ministers at Washington, were, it would seem, to secure money and to conceal his real designs, which were probably to overthrow Spanish power in the Southwest, and perhaps to found an imperial dynasty in Mexico. He was arrested in 1807 on the charge of treason, was brought to trial before the United States circuit court at Richmond, Virginia, Chief-Justice Marshall presiding, and he was acquitted, in spite of the fact that the political influence of the national administration was thrown against him. Immediately afterward he was tried on a charge of misdemeanour, and on a technicality was again acquitted. He lived abroad from 1808 to 1812, passing most of his time in England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden and France; trying to secure aid in the prosecution of his filibustering schemes but meeting with numerous rebuffs, being ordered out of England and Napoleon refusing to receive him. In 1812 he returned to New York and spent the remainder of his life in the practice of law. Burr was unscrupulous, insincere and notoriously immoral, but he was pleasing in his manners, generous to a fault, and was intensely devoted to his wife and daughter. In 1833 he married Eliza B. Jumel (1769-1865), a rich New York widow; the two soon separated, however, owing to Burr's having lost much of her fortune in speculation. He died at Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York, on the 14th of September 1836.
The standard biography is James Parton's The Life and Times of Aaron Burr (first edition, 1857; enlarged edition, 2 vols., Boston and New York, 1898). W.F. McCaleb's The Aaron Burr Conspiracy (New York, 1903) is a scholarly defence of the West and incidentally of Burr against the charge of treason, and is the best account of the subject; see also I. Jenkinson, Aaron Burr (Richmond, Ind., 1902). For the traditional view of Burr's conspiracy, see Henry Adams's History of the United States, vol. iii. (New York, 1890).
BURRIANA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Castellón de la Plana; on the estuary of the river Séco, which flows into the Mediterranean Sea. Pop. (1900) 12,962. The harbour of Burriana on the open sea is annually visited by about three hundred small coasting-vessels. Its exports consist chiefly of oranges grown in the surrounding fertile plain, which is irrigated with water from the river Mijares, on the north, and also produces large quantities of grain, oil, wine and melons. Burriana is connected by a light railway with the neighbouring towns of Onda (6595), Almazóra (7070), Villarreal (16,068) and Castellón de la Plana (29,904). Its nearest station on the Barcelona-Valencia coast railway is Villarreal.
BURRITT, ELIHU (1810-1879), American philanthropist, known as "the learned blacksmith," was born in New Britain, Conn., on the 8th of December 1810. His father (a farmer and shoemaker), and his grandfather, both of the same name, had served in the Revolutionary army. An elder brother, Elijah, who afterwards published The Geography of the Heavens and other text-books, went out into the world while Elihu was still a boy, and after editing a paper in Georgia came back to New Britain and started a school. Elihu, however, had to pick up what knowledge he could get from books at home, where his father's long illness, ending in death, made his services necessary. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and he made this his trade both there and at Worcester, Mass., where he removed in 1837. He had a passion for reading; from the village library he borrowed book after book, which he studied at his forge or in his spare hours; and he managed to find time for attending his brother's school for a while, and even for pursuing his search for culture among the advantages to be found at New Haven. He mastered Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and German, and by the age of thirty could read nearly fifty languages. His extraordinary aptitude gradually made him famous. He took to lecturing, and then to an ardent crusade on behalf of universal peace and human brotherhood, which made him travel persistently to various parts of the United States and Europe. In 1848 he organized the Brussels congress of Friends of Peace, which was followed by annual congresses in Paris, Frankfort, London, Manchester and Edinburgh. He wrote and published voluminously, leaflets, pamphlets and volumes, and started the Christian Citizen at Worcester to advocate his humanitarian views. Cheap trans-oceanic postage was an ideal for which he agitated wherever he went. His vigorous philanthropy keeps the name of Elihu Burritt green in the history of the peace movement, apart from the fame of his learning. His countrymen, at universities such as Yale and elsewhere, delighted to do him honour; and he was U.S. consul at Birmingham from 1865 to 1870. He returned to America and died at New Britain on the 9th of March 1879.
See Life, by Charles Northend, in the memorial volume (1879); and an article by Ellen Strong Bartlett in the New England Magazine (June, 1897).
BURROUGHS, GEORGE (c. 1650-1692), American congregational pastor, graduated at Harvard in 1670, and became the minister of Salem Village (now Danvers) in 1680, a charge which he held till 1683. He lived at Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) until the Indians destroyed it in 1690, when he removed to Wells. In May 1692 during the witchcraft delusion, on the accusation of some personal enemies in his former congregation who had sued him for debt, Burroughs was arrested and charged, among other offences, with "extraordinary Lifting and such feats of strength as could not be done without Diabolicall Assistance." Though the jury found no witch-marks on his body he was convicted and executed on Gallows Hill, Salem, on the 19th of August, the only minister who suffered this extreme fate.
[v.04 p.0863] BURROUGHS, JOHN (1837- ), American poet and writer on natural history, was born in Roxbury, Delaware county, New York, on the 3rd of April 1837. In his earlier years he engaged in various pursuits, teaching, journalism, farming and fruit-raising, and for nine years was a clerk in the treasury department at Washington. After publishing in 1867 a volume of Notes on Walt Whitman as poet and person (a subject to which he returned in 1896 with his Whitman: a Study), he began in 1871, with Wake-Robin, a series of books on birds, flowers and rural scenes which has made him the successor of Thoreau as a popular essayist en the plants and animals environing human life. His later writings showed a more philosophic mood and a greater disposition towards literary or meditative allusion than their predecessors, but the general theme and method remained the same. His chief books, in addition to Wake-Robin, are Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Signs and Seasons (1886), and Ways of Nature (1905); these are in prose, but he wrote much also in verse, a volume of poems, Bird and Bough, being published in 1906. Winter Sunshine (1875) and Fresh Fields (1884) are sketches of travel in England and France.
A biographical sketch of Burroughs is prefixed to his Year in the Fields (new ed., 1901). A complete uniform edition of his works was issued in 1895, &c. (Riverside edition, Cambridge, Mass.).
BURSAR (Med. Lat. bursarius), literally a keeper of the bursa or purse. The word is now chiefly used of the official, usually one of the fellows, who administers the finances of a college at a university, or of the treasurer of a school or other institution. The term is also applied to the holder of "a bursary," an exhibition at Scottish schools or universities, and also in England a scholarship or exhibition enabling a pupil of an elementary school to continue his education at a secondary school. The term "burse" (Lat. bursa, Gr. [Greek: borsa], bag of skin) is particularly used of the embroidered purse which is one of the insignia of office of the lord high chancellor of England, and of the pouch which in the Roman Church contains the "corporal" in the service of the Mass. The "bursa" is a square case opening at one side only and covered and lined with silk or linen; one side should be of the colour of the vestments of the day.
BURSCHENSCHAFT, an association of students at the German universities. It was formed as a result of the German national sentiment awakened by the War of Liberation, its object being to foster patriotism and Christian conduct, as opposed to the particularism and low moral standard of the old Landsmannschaften. It originated at Jena, under the patronage of the grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, and rapidly spread, the Allgemeine deutsche Burschenschaft being established in 1818. The loud political idealism of the Burschen excited the fears of the reactionary powers, which culminated after the murder of Kotzebue (q.v.) by Karl Sand in 1819, a crime inspired by a secret society among the Burschen known as the Blacks (Schwarzen). The repressive policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees (q.v.) was therefore directed mainly against the Burschenschaft, which none the less survived to take part in the revolutions of 1830. After the émeute at Frankfort in 1833, the association was again suppressed, but it lived on until, in 1848, all laws against it were abrogated. The Burschenschaften are now purely social and non-political societies. The Reformburschenschaften, formed since 1883 on the principle of excluding duelling, are united in the Allgemeiner deutscher Burschenbund.
BURSIAN, CONRAD (1830-1883), German philologist and archaeologist, was born at Mutzschen in Saxony, on the 14th of November 1830. On the removal of his parents to Leipzig, he received his early education at the Thomas school, and entered the university in 1847. Here he studied under Moritz Haupt and Otto Jahn until 1851, spent six months in Berlin (chiefly to attend Böckh's lectures), and completed his university studies at Leipzig (1852). The next three years were devoted to travelling in Belgium, France, Italy and Greece. In 1856 he became a Privat-docent, and in 1858 extraordinary professor at Leipzig; in 1861 professor of philology and archaeology at Tübingen; in 1864 professor of classical antiquities at Zurich; in 1869 at Jena, where he was also director of the archaeological museum; in 1874 at Munich, where he remained until his death on the 21st of September 1883. His most important works are: Geographie von Griechenland (1862-1872); Beiträge zur Geschichte der klassischen Studien im Mittelalter (1873); Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); editions of Julius Firmicus Maternus' De Errore Profanarum Religionum (1856) and of Seneca's Suasoriae (1857). The article on Greek Art in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopaedia is by him. Probably the work in connexion with which he is best known is the Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1873, &c.), of which he was the founder and editor; from 1879 a Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde was published by way of supplement, an obituary notice of Bursian, with a complete list of his writings, being in the volume for 1884.
BURSLEM, a market town of Staffordshire, England, in the Potteries district, 150 m. N.W. from London, on the North Staffordshire railway and the Grand Trunk Canal. Pop. (1891) 31,999; (1901) 38,766. In the 17th century the town was already famous for its manufacture of pottery. Here Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730, his family having practised the manufacture in this locality for several generations, while he himself began work independently at the Ivy House pottery in 1759. He is commemorated by the Wedgwood Institute, founded in 1863. It comprises a school of art, free library, museum, picture-gallery and the free school founded in 1794. The exterior is richly and peculiarly ornamented, to show the progress of fictile art. The neighbouring towns of Stoke, Hanley and Longton are connected with Burslem by tramways. Burslem is mentioned in Domesday. Previously to 1885 it formed part of the parliamentary borough of Stoke, but it is now included in that of Hanley. It was included in the municipal borough of Stoke-on-Trent under an act of 1908.
BURTON, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM (1816-1900), British painter and art connoisseur, the third son of Samuel Burton of Mungret, Co. Limerick, was born in Ireland in 1816. He was educated in Dublin, where his artistic studies were carried on with marked success under the direction of Mr Brocas, an able teacher, who foretold for the lad a distinguished career. That this estimate was not exaggerated was proved by Burton's immediate success in his profession. He was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy at the age of twenty-one and an academician two years later; and in 1842 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. A visit to Germany and Bavaria in 1851 was the first of a long series of wanderings in various parts of Europe, which gave him a profound and intimate knowledge of the works of the Old Masters, and prepared him admirably for the duties that he undertook in 1874 when he was appointed director of the British National Gallery in succession to Sir W. Boxall, R.A. During the twenty years that he held this post he was responsible for many important purchases, among them Leonardo da Vinci's "Virgin of the Rocks," Raphael's "Ansidei Madonna," Holbein's "Ambassadors," Van Dyck's equestrian portrait of Charles I., and the "Admiral Pulido Pareja," by Velasquez; and he added largely to the noted series of Early Italian pictures in the gallery. The number of acquisitions made to the collection during his period of office amounts to not fewer than 500. His own painting, most of which was in water-colour, had more attraction for experts than for the general public. He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1855, and a full member in the following year. He resigned in 1870, and was re-elected as an honorary member in 1886. A knighthood was conferred on him in 1884, and the degree of LL.D. of Dublin in 1889. In his youth he had strong sympathy with the "Young Ireland Party," and was a close associate with some of its members. He died in Kensington on the 16th of March 1900.
BURTON, JOHN HILL (1809-1881), Scottish historical writer, the son of an officer in the army, was born at Aberdeen on the 22nd of August 1809. After studying at the university of his native city, he removed to Edinburgh, where he qualified for [v.04 p.0864] the Scottish bar and practised as an advocate; but his progress was slow, and he eked out his narrow means by miscellaneous literary work. His Manual of the Law of Scotland (1839) brought him into notice; he joined Sir John Bowring in editing the works of Jeremy Bentham, and for a short time was editor of the Scotsman, which he committed to the cause of free trade. In 1846 he achieved high reputation by his Life of David Hume, based upon extensive and unused MS. material. In 1847 he wrote his biographies of Simon, Lord Lovat, and of Duncan Forbes, and in 1849 prepared for Chambers's Series manuals of political and social economy and of emigration. In the same year he lost his wife, whom he had married in 1844, and never again mixed freely with society, though in 1855 he married again. He devoted himself mainly to literature, contributing largely to the Scotsman and Blackwood, writing Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland (1852), Treatise on the Law of Bankruptcy in Scotland (1853), and publishing in the latter year the first volume of his History of Scotland, which was completed in 1870. A new and improved edition of the work appeared in 1873. Some of the more important of his contributions to Blackwood were embodied in two delightful volumes, The Book Hunter (1862) and The Scot Abroad (1864). He had in 1854 been appointed secretary to the prison board, an office which gave him entire pecuniary independence, and the duties of which he discharged most assiduously, notwithstanding his literary pursuits and the pressure of another important task assigned to him after the completion of his history, the editorship of the National Scottish Registers. Two volumes were published under his supervision. His last work, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne (1880), is very inferior to his History of Scotland. He died on the 10th of August 1881. Burton was pre-eminently a jurist and economist, and may be said to have been guided by accident into the path which led him to celebrity. It was his great good fortune to find abundant unused material for his Life of Hume, and to be the first to introduce the principles of historical research into the history of Scotland. All previous attempts had been far below the modern standard in these particulars, and Burton's history will always be memorable as marking an epoch. His chief defects as a historian are want of imagination and an undignified familiarity of style, which, however, at least preserves his history from the dulness by which lack of imagination is usually accompanied. His dryness is associated with a fund of dry humour exceedingly effective in its proper place, as in The Book Hunter. As a man he was loyal, affectionate, philanthropic and entirely estimable.
A memoir of Hill Burton by his wife was prefaced to an edition of The Book Hunter, which like his other works was published at Edinburgh (1882).
(R. G.)
BURTON, SIR RICHARD FRANCIS (1821-1890), British consul, explorer and Orientalist, was born at Barham House, Hertfordshire, on the 19th of March 1821. He came of the Westmorland Burtons of Shap, but his grandfather, the Rev. Edward Burton, settled in Ireland as rector of Tuam, and his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, of the 36th Regiment, was an Irishman by birth and character. His mother was descended from the MacGregors, and he was proud of a remote drop of Bourbon blood piously believed to be derived from a morganatic union of the Grand Monarque. There were even those, including some of the Romany themselves, who saw gipsy written in his peculiar eyes as in his character, wild and resentful, essentially vagabond, intolerant of convention and restraint. His irregular education strengthened the inherited bias. A childhood spent in France and Italy, under scarcely any control, fostered the love of untrammelled wandering and a marvellous fluency in continental vernaculars. Such an education so little prepared him for academic proprieties, that when he entered Trinity College, Oxford, in October 1840, a criticism of his military moustache by a fellow-undergraduate was resented by a challenge to a duel, and Burton in various ways distinguished himself by such eccentric behaviour that rustication inevitably ensued. Nor was he much more in his element as a subaltern in the 18th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry, which he joined at Baroda in October 1842. Discipline of any sort he abhorred, and the one recommendation of the East India Company's service in his eyes was that it offered opportunities for studying Oriental life and languages. He had begun Arabic without a master at Oxford, and worked in London at Hindustani under Forbes before he went out; in India he laboured indefatigably at the vernaculars, and his reward was an astonishingly rapid proficiency in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindustani, as well as Persian and Arabic. His appointment as an assistant in the Sind survey enabled him to mix with the people, and he frequently passed as a native in the bazaars and deceived his own munshi, to say nothing of his colonel and messmates. His wanderings in Sind were the apprenticeship for the pilgrimage to Mecca, and his seven years in India laid the foundations of his unparalleled familiarity with Eastern life and customs, especially among the lower classes. Besides government reports and contributions to the Asiatic Society, his Indian period produced four books, published after his return home: Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley (1851), Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (1851), Goa and the Blue Mountains (1851), and Falconry in the Valley of the Indus (1852). None of these achieved popularity, but the account of Sind is remarkably vivid and faithful.
The pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853 made Burton famous. He had planned it whilst mixing disguised among the Muslims of Sind, and had laboriously prepared for the ordeal by study and practice. No doubt the primary motive was the love of adventure, which was his strongest passion; but along with the wanderer's restlessness marched the zest of exploration, and whilst wandering was in any case a necessity of his existence, he preferred to roam in untrodden ways where mere adventure might be dignified by geographical service. There was a "huge white blot" on the maps of central Arabia where no European had ever been, and Burton's scheme, approved by the Royal Geographical Society, was to extend his pilgrimage to this "empty abode," and remove a discreditable blank from the map. War among the tribes curtailed the design, and his journey went no farther than Medina and Mecca. The exploit of accompanying the Muslim hajj to the holy cities was not unique, nor so dangerous as has been imagined. Several Europeans have accomplished it before and since Burton's visit without serious mishap. Passing himself off as an Indian Pathan covered any peculiarities or defects of speech. The pilgrimage, however, demands an intimate proficiency in a complicated ritual, and a familiarity with the minutiae of Eastern manners and etiquette; and in the case of a stumble, presence of mind and cool courage may be called into request. There are legends that Burton had to defend his life by taking others'; but he carried no arms, and confessed, rather shamefastly, that he had never killed anybody at any time. The actual journey was less remarkable than the book in which it was recorded, The Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah (1855). Its vivid descriptions, pungent style, and intensely personal "note" distinguish it from books of its class; its insight into Semitic modes of thought and its picture of Arab manners give it the value of an historical document; its grim humour, keen observation and reckless insobriety of opinion, expressed in peculiar, uncouth but vigorous language make it a curiosity of literature.
Burton's next journey was more hazardous than the pilgrimage, but created no parallel sensation. In 1854 the Indian government accepted his proposal to explore the interior of the Somali country, which formed a subject of official anxiety in its relation to the Red Sea trade. He was assisted by Capt. J.H. Speke and two other young officers, but accomplished the most difficult part of the enterprise alone. This was the journey to Harrar, the Somali capital, which no white man had entered. Burton vanished into the desert, and was not heard of for four months. When he reappeared he had not only been to Harrar, but had talked with the king, stayed ten days there in deadly peril, and ridden back across the desert, almost without food and water, running the gauntlet of the Somali spears all the way. Undeterred by this experience he set out again, but was checked [v.04 p.0865] by a skirmish with the tribes, in which one of his young officers was killed, Captain Speke was wounded in eleven places, and Burton himself had a javelin thrust through his jaws. His First Footsteps in East Africa (1856), describing these adventures, is one of his most exciting and most characteristic books, full of learning, observation and humour.
After serving on the staff of Beatson's Bashi-bazouks at the Dardanelles, but never getting to the front in the Crimea, Burton returned to Africa in 1856. The foreign office, moved by the Royal Geographical Society, commissioned him to search for the sources of the Nile, and, again accompanied by Speke, he explored the lake regions of equatorial Africa. They discovered Lake Tanganyika in February 1858, and Speke, pushing on during Burton's illness and acting on indications supplied by him, lighted upon Victoria Nyanza. The separate discovery led to a bitter dispute, but Burton's expedition, with its discovery of the two lakes, was the incentive to the later explorations of Speke and Grant, Baker, Livingstone and Stanley; and his report in volume xxxiii. of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, and his Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa (1860), are the true parents of the multitudinous literature of "darkest Africa." Burton was the first Englishman to enter Mecca, the first to explore Somaliland, the first to discover the great lakes of Central Africa. His East African pioneering coincides with areas which have since become peculiarly interesting to the British Empire; and three years later he was exploring on the opposite side of Africa, at Dahomey, Benin and the Gold Coast, regions which have also entered among the imperial "questions" of the day. Before middle age Burton had compressed into his life, as Lord Derby said, "more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence of half a dozen ordinary men." The City of the Saints (1861) was the fruit of a flying visit to the United States in 1860.
Since 1849 his connexion with the Indian army had been practically severed; in 1861 he definitely entered the service of the foreign office as consul at Fernando Po, whence he was shifted successively to Santos in Brazil (1865), Damascus (1869), and Trieste (1871), holding the last post till his death on the 20th of October 1890. Each of these posts produced its corresponding books: Fernando Po led to the publishing of Wanderings in West Africa (1863), Abeokuta and the Cameroons (1863), A Mission to Gelele, king of Dahomé (1864), and Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (1865). The Highlands of the Brazil (1869) was the result of four years' residence and travelling; and Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay (1870) relate to a journey across South America to Peru. Damascus suggested Unexplored Syria (1872), and might have led to much better work, since no consulate in either hemisphere was more congenial to Burton's taste and linguistic studies; but he mismanaged his opportunities, got into trouble with the foreign office, and was removed to Trieste, where his Oriental prepossessions and prejudices could do no harm, but where, unfortunately, his Oriental learning was thrown away. He did not, however, abandon his Eastern studies or his Eastern travels. Various fresh journeys or revisitings of familiar scenes are recorded in his later books, such as Zanzibar (1872), Ultima Thule (1875), Etruscan Bologna (1876), Sind Revisited (1877), The Land of Midian (1879) and To the Gold Coast for Gold (1883). None of these had more than a passing interest. Burton had not the charm of style or imagination which gives immortality to a book of travel. He wrote too fast, and took too little pains about the form. His blunt, disconnected sentences and ill-constructed chapters were full of information and learning, and contained not a few thrusts for the benefit of government or other people, but they were not "readable." There was something ponderous about his very humour, and his criticism was personal and savage. By far the most celebrated of all his books is the translation of the "Arabian Nights" (The Thousand Nights and a Night, 16 vols., privately printed, 1885-1888), which occupied the greater part of his leisure at Trieste. As a monument of his Arabic learning and his encyclopaedic knowledge of Eastern life this translation was his greatest achievement. It is open to criticism in many ways; it is not so exact in scholarship, nor so faithful to its avowed text, as might be expected from his reputation; but it reveals a profound acquaintance with the vocabulary and customs of the Muslims, with their classical idiom as well as their vulgarest "Billingsgate," with their philosophy and modes of thought as well as their most secret and most disgusting habits. Burton's "anthropological notes," embracing a wide field of pornography, apart from questions of taste, abound in valuable observations based upon long study of the manners and the writings of the Arabs. The translation itself is often marked by extraordinary resource and felicity in the exact reproduction of the sense of the original; Burton's vocabulary was marvellously extensive, and he had a genius for hitting upon the right word; but his fancy for archaic words and phrases, his habit of coining words, and the harsh and rugged style he affected, detract from the literary quality of the work without in any degree enhancing its fidelity. With grave defects, but sometimes brilliant merits, the translation holds a mirror to its author. He was, as has been well said, an Elizabethan born out of time; in the days of Drake his very faults might have counted to his credit. Of his other works, Vikram and the Vampire, Hindu Tales (1870), and a history of his favourite arm, The Book of the Sword, vol. i. (1884), unfinished, may be mentioned. His translation of The Lusiads of Camoens (1880) was followed (1881) by a sketch of the poet's life. Burton had a fellow-feeling for the poet adventurer, and his translation is an extraordinarily happy reproduction of its original. A manuscript translation of the "Scented Garden," from the Arabic, was burnt by his widow, acting in what she believed to be the interests of her husband's reputation. Burton married Isabel Arundell in 1861, and owed much to her courage, sympathy and passionate devotion. Her romantic and exaggerated biography of her husband, with all its faults, is one of the most pathetic monuments which the unselfish love of a woman has ever raised to the memory of her hero. Another monument is the Arab tent of stone and marble which she built for his tomb at Mortlake.
Besides Lady Burton's Life of Sir Richard F. Burton (2 vols., 1893, 2nd edition, condensed, edited, with a preface, by W.H. Wilkins, 1898), there are A Sketch of the Career of R.F. Burton, by A.B. Richards, Andrew Wilson, and St Clair Baddeley (1886); The True Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, by his niece, G.M. Stisted (1896); and a brief sketch by the present writer prefixed to Bohn's edition of the Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah (1898), from which some sentences have here been by permission reproduced. In 1906 appeared the Life of Sir Richard Burton, by Thomas Wright of Olney, in two volumes, an industrious and rather critical work, interesting in particular for the doubts it casts on Burton's originality as an Arabic translator, and emphasizing his indebtedness to Payne's translation (1881) of the Arabian Nights.
(S. L.-P.)
BURTON, ROBERT (1577-1640), English writer, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, son of a country gentleman, Ralph Burton, was born at Lindley in Leicestershire on the 8th of February 1576-7. He was educated at the free school of Sutton Coldfield and at Nuneaton grammar school; became in 1593 a commoner of Brasenose College, and in 1599 was elected student at Christ Church, where he continued to reside for the rest of his life. The dean and chapter of Christ Church appointed him, in November 1616, vicar of St Thomas in the west suburbs, and about 1630 his patron, Lord Berkeley, presented him to the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire. He held the two livings "with much ado to his dying day" (says Antony à Wood, the Oxford historian, somewhat mysteriously); and he was buried in the north aisle of Christ Church cathedral, where his elder brother William Burton, author of a History of Leicestershire, raised to his memory a monument, with his bust in colour. The epitaph that he had written for himself was carved beneath the bust: Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia. Some years before his death he had predicted, by the calculation of his nativity, that the approach of his climacteric year (sixty-three) would prove fatal; and the prediction came true, for he died on the 25th of January 1639-40 (some gossips surmising that he had "sent up his soul to heaven through a noose about his neck" to avoid the chagrin of seeing his calculations falsified). His [v.04 p.0866] portrait in Brasenose College shows the face of a scholar, shrewd, contemplative, humorous.
A Latin comedy, Philosophaster, originally written by Robert Burton in 1606 and acted at Christ Church in 1617, was long supposed to be lost; but in 1862 it was printed for the Roxburghe Club from a manuscript belonging to the Rev. W.E. Buckley, who edited it with elaborate care and appended a collection of the academical exercises that Burton had contributed to various Oxford miscellanies ("Natalia," "Parentalia," &c.). Philosophaster is a vivacious exposure of charlatanism. Desiderius, duke of Osuna, invites learned men from all parts of Europe to repair to the university which he has re-established; and a crowd of shifty adventurers avail themselves of the invitation. There are points of resemblance to Philosophaster in Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Tomkis's Albumazar, but in the prologue Burton is careful to state that his was the earlier play. (Another manuscript of Philosophaster, a presentation copy to William Burton from the author, has since been found in the library of Lord Mostyn.)
In 1621 was issued at Oxford the first edition, a quarto, of The Anatomy of Melancholy ... by Democritus Junior. Later editions, in folio, were published in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651, 1652, 1660, 1676. Burton was for ever engaged in revising his treatise. In the third edition (where first appeared the engraved emblematical title-page by C. Le Blond) he declared that he would make no further alterations. But the fourth edition again bore marks of revision; the fifth differed from the fourth; and the sixth edition was posthumously printed from a copy containing his latest corrections.
Not the least interesting part of the Anatomy is the long preface, "Democritus to the Reader," in which Burton sets out his reasons for writing the treatise and for assuming the name of Democritus Junior. He had been elected a student of "the most flourishing college of Europe" and he designed to show his gratitude by writing something that should be worthy of that noble society. He had read much; he was neither rich nor poor; living in studious seclusion, he had been a critically observant spectator of the world's affairs. The philosopher Democritus, who was by nature very melancholy, "averse from company in his latter days and much given to solitariness," spent his closing years in the suburbs of Abdera. There Hippocrates once found him studying in his garden, the subject of his study being the causes and cure of "this atra bilis or melancholy." Burton would not compare himself with so famous a philosopher, but he aimed at carrying out the design which Democritus had planned and Hippocrates had commended. It is stated that he actually set himself to reproduce the old philosopher's reputed eccentricities of conduct. When he was attacked by a fit of melancholy he would go to the bridge foot at Oxford and shake his sides with laughter to hear the bargemen swearing at one another, just as Democritus used to walk down to the haven at Abdera and pick matter for mirth out of the humours of waterside life.
Burton anticipates the objections of captious critics. He allows that he has "collected this cento out of divers authors" and has borrowed from innumerable books, but he claims that "the composition and method is ours only, and shows a scholar." It had been his original intention to write in Latin, but no publisher would take the risk of issuing in Latin so voluminous a treatise. He humorously apologizes for faults of style on the ground that he had to work single-handed (unlike Origen who was allowed by Ambrosius six or seven amanuenses) and digest his notes as best he might. If any object to his choice of subject, urging that he would be better employed in writing on divinity, his defence is that far too many commentaries, expositions, sermons, &c., are already in existence. Besides, divinity and medicine are closely allied; and, melancholy being both a spiritual and bodily infirmity, the divine and the physician must unite to cure it.
The preface is followed by a tabular synopsis of the First Partition with its several Sections, Members and Subsections. After various preliminary digressions Burton sets himself to define what Melancholy is and what are its species and kinds. Then he discusses the Causes, supernatural and natural, of the disorder, and afterwards proceeds to set down the Symptoms (which cannot be briefly summarized, "for the Tower of Babel never yielded such confusion of tongues as the Chaos of Melancholy doth of Symptoms"). The Second Partition is devoted to the Cure of Melancholy. As it is of great importance that we should live in good air, a chapter deals with "Air Rectified. With a Digression of the Air." Burton never travelled, but the study of cosmography had been his constant delight; and over sea and land, north, east, west, south--in this enchanting chapter--he sends his vagrant fancy flying. In the disquisition on "Exercise rectified of body and mind" he dwells gleefully on the pleasures of country life, and on the content that scholars find in the pursuit of their favourite studies. Love-Melancholy is the subject of the first Three Sections of the Third Partition, and many are the merry tales with which these pages are seasoned. The Fourth (and concluding) Section treats, in graver mood, of Religious Melancholy; and to the "Cure of Despair" he devotes his deepest meditations.
The Anatomy, widely read in the 17th century, for a time lapsed into obscurity, though even "the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of George I. were not a little beholden to Robert Burton" (Archbishop Herring). Dr Johnson deeply admired the work; and Sterne laid it heavily under contribution. But the noble and impassioned devotion of Charles Lamb has been the most powerful help towards keeping alive the memory of the "fantastic great old man." Burton's odd turns and quirks of expression, his whimsical and affectate fancies, his kindly sarcasm, his far-fetched conceits, his deep-lying pathos, descended by inheritance of genius to Lamb. The enthusiasm of Burton's admirers will not be chilled by the disparagement of unsympathetic critics (Macaulay and Hallam among them) who have consulted his pages in vain; but through good and evil report he will remain, their well-loved companion to the end.
The best of the modern editions of Burton was published in 1896, 3 vols. 8vo (Bell and Sons), under the editorship of A.R. Shilleto, who identified a large number of the classical quotations and many passages from post-classical authors. Prof. Bensley, of the university of Adelaide, has since contributed to the ninth and tenth series of Notes and Queries many valuable notes on the Anatomy. Dr Aldis Wright has long been engaged on the preparation of a definitive edition.
(A. H. B.)
BURTON, WILLIAM EVANS (1804-1860), English actor and playwright, born in London in September 1804, was the son of William George Burton (1774-1825), a printer and author of Research into the religions of the Eastern nations as illustrative of the scriptures (1805). He was educated for the Church, but, having entered his father's business, his success as an amateur actor led him to go upon the stage. After several years in the provinces, he made his first London appearance in 1831. In 1834 he went to America, where he appeared in Philadelphia as Dr Ollapod in The Poor Gentleman. He took a prominent place, both as actor and manager, in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, the theatre which he leased in New York being renamed Burton's theatre. He had much popular success as Captain Cuttle in John Brougham's dramatization of Dombey and Son, and in other low comedy parts in plays from Dickens's novels. Burton was the author of a large number of plays, one of which, Ellen Wareham (1833), was produced simultaneously at five London theatres. In Philadelphia he established the Gentleman's Magazine, of which Edgar Allan Poe was for some time the editor. He was himself the editor of the Cambridge Quarterly and the Souvenir, and the author of several books, including a Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humour (1857). He collected a library of over 100,000 volumes, especially rich in Shakespeariana, which was dispersed after his death at New York City on the 9th of February 1860.
BURTON-UPON-TRENT, a market town and municipal and county borough in the Burton parliamentary division of Staffordshire and the Southern parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England; lying mainly upon the left bank of the Trent, in Staffordshire. Pop. (1891) 46,047; (1901) 50,386. It is 127 m [v.04 p.0867] north-west from London by the London & North-Western and the Midland railways, and is also served by the Great Northern and North Staffordshire railways. The Trent is navigable from a point near the town downward. The neighbouring country is pleasant enough, particularly along the river, but the town itself is purely industrial, and contains no pre-eminent buildings. The church of St Mary and St Modwen is classic in style, of the 18th century, but embodies some remains of an ancient Gothic building. Of a Benedictine abbey dedicated to the same saints there remain a gatehouse and lodge, and a fine doorway. The former abbot's house at Seyney Park is a half-timbered building of the 15th century. The free grammar school was founded in 1525. A fine bridge over the Trent, and the municipal buildings, were provided by Lord Burton. There are pleasant recreation grounds on the Derbyshire side of the river.
Burton is the seat of an enormous brewing trade, representing nearly one-tenth of the total amount of this trade in the United Kingdom. It is divided between some twenty firms. The premises of Bass's brewery extend over 500 acres, while Allsopp's stand next; upwards of 5000 hands are employed in all, and many miles of railways owned by the firms cross the streets in all directions on the level, and connect with the lines of the railway companies. The superiority which is claimed for Burton ales is attributed to the use of well-water impregnated with sulphate of lime derived from the gypseous deposits of the district. Burton is governed by a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 4202 acres.
Burton-upon-Trent (Burhton) is first mentioned towards the close of the 9th century, when St Modwen, an Irish virgin, is said to have established a convent on the Isle of Andressey opposite Burton. In 1002 Wulfric, earl of Mercia, founded here a Benedictine abbey, and by charter of 1004 granted to it the town with other large endowments. Burton was evidently a mesne borough under the abbot, who held the court of the manor and received the profits of the borough according to the charter of Henry I. granting sac and soc and other privileges and right in the town. Later charters were given by Henry II., by John in 1204 (who also granted an annual fair of three days' duration, 29th of October, at the feast of St Modwen, and a weekly market on Thursday), by Henry III. in 1227, by Henry VII. in 1488 (Henry VII. granted a fair at the feast of St Luke, 18th of October), and by Henry VIII. in 1509. At the dissolution Henry VIII. founded on the site of the abbey a collegiate church dissolved before 1545, when its lands, with all the privileges formerly vested in the abbot, were conferred on Sir William Paget, ancestor of the marquess of Anglesey, now holder of the manor. In 1878 it was incorporated under a mayor, 8 aldermen, 24 councillors. Burton was the scene of several engagements in the Civil War, when its large trade in clothing and alabaster was practically ruined. Although the abbey ale was mentioned as early as 1295, the brewing industry is comparatively of recent development, having begun about 1708. Forty years later it had a market at St Petersburg and the Baltic ports, and in 1796 there were nine brewing firms in the town.
See William Molyneux, History of Burton-on-Trent (1869); Victoria County History, Staffordshire.
BURU (Buro, Dutch Boeroe or Boeloe), an island of the Dutch East Indies, one of the Molucca Islands belonging to the residency of Amboyna, between 3° 4' and 3° 50' S. and 125° 58' and 127° 15' E. Its extreme measurements are 87 m. by 50 m., and its area is 3400 sq. m. Its surface is for the most part mountainous, though the seaboard district is frequently alluvial and marshy from the deposits of the numerous rivers. Of these the largest, the Kajeli, discharging eastward, is in part navigable. The greatest elevations occur in the west, where the mountain Tomahu reaches 8530 ft. In the middle of the western part of the island lies the large lake of Wakolo, at an altitude of 2200 ft., with a circumference of 37 m. and a depth of about 100 ft. It has been considered a crater lake; but this is not the case. It is situated at the junction of the sandstone and slate, where the water, having worn away the former, has accumulated on the latter. The lake has no affluents and only one outlet, the Wai Nibe to the north. The chief geological formations of Buru are crystalline slate near the north coast, and more to the south Mesozoic sandstone and chalk, deposits of rare occurrence in the archipelago. By far the larger part of the country is covered with natural forest and prairie land, but such portions as have been brought into cultivation are highly fertile. Coffee, rice and a variety of fruits, such as the lemon, orange, banana, pine-apple and coco-nut are readily grown, as well as sago, red-pepper, tobacco and cotton. The only important exports, however, are cajeput oil, a sudorific distilled from the leaves of the Melaleuca Cajuputi or white-wood tree; and timber. The native flora is rich, and teak, ebony and canari trees are especially abundant; the fauna, which is similarly varied, includes the babirusa, which occurs in this island only of the Moluccas. The population is about 15,000. The villages on the sea-coast are inhabited by a Malayan population, and the northern and western portions of the island are occupied by a light-coloured Malay folk akin to the natives of the eastern Celebes. In the interior is found a peculiar race which is held by some to be Papuan. They are described, however, as singularly un-Papuan in physique, being only 5 ft. 2 in. in average height, of a yellow-brown colour, of feeble build, and without the characteristic frizzly hair and prominent nose of the true Papuan. They are completely pagan, live in scattered hamlets, and have come very little in contact with any civilization. Among the maritime population a small number of Chinese, Arabs and other races are also found. The island is divided by the Dutch into two districts. The chief settlement is Kajeli on the east coast. A number of Mahommedan natives here are descended from tribes compelled in 1657 to gather together from the different parts of the island, while all the clove-trees were exterminated in an attempt by the Dutch to centralize the clove trade. Before the arrival of the Dutch the islanders were under the dominion of the sultan of Ternate; and it was their rebellion against him that gave the Europeans the opportunity of effecting their subjugation.
BURUJIRD, a province of Persia, bounded W. by Luristan, N. by Nehavend and Malayir, E. by Irak and S. by Isfahan. It is divided into the following administrative divisions:--(1) town of Burujird with villages in immediate neighbourhood; (2) Silakhor (upper and lower); (3) Japalak (with Sarlek and Burbarud); (4) nomad Bakhtiari. It has a population of about 250,000 or 300,000, and pays a yearly revenue of about £16,000. It is very fertile and produces much wheat, barley, rice and opium. With improved means of transport, which would allow the growers to export, the produce of cereals could easily be trebled. The province is sometimes joined with that of Luristan.
The town Burujird, the capital of the province, is situated in the fertile Silakhor plain on the river Tah[=i]j, a tributary of the Dizful river (Ab i Diz), 70 m. by road from Hamadan and 212 m. from Isfahan, in 33° 55' N. and 48° 55' E., and at an elevation of 5315 ft. Pop. about 25,000. It manufactures various cotton stuffs (coarse prints, carpet covers) and felts (principally hats and caps for Lurs and Bakhtiaris). It has post and telegraph offices.
BURY, JOHN BAGNELL (1861- ), British historian, was born on the 16th of October 1861, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1885. A fine Greek scholar, he edited Pindar's Nemean and Isthmian Odes; but he devoted himself chiefly to the study of history, and was chosen professor of modern history at Dublin in 1893, becoming regius professor of Greek in 1898. He resigned both positions in 1902, when he was elected regius professor of modern history in the university of Cambridge. His historical work was mainly concerned with the later Roman empire, and his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, with a masterly introduction and valuable notes (1896-1900), is the standard text of this history. He also wrote a History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (1900); History of the Later Roman Empire, 395-800 (1889); History of the Roman Empire 27 B.C.-180 A.D. (1893); Life of St Patrick and his Place in History (1905), &c. He was elected a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Durham.
BURY, a market-town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, on the river Irwell, [v.04 p.0868] 195 m. N.W. by W. from London, and 10½ N. by W. from Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and the Manchester & Bolton canal. Pop. (1891) 57,212; (1901) 58,029. The church of St Mary is of early foundation, but was rebuilt in 1876. Besides numerous other places of worship, there are a handsome town hall, athenaeum and museum, art gallery and public library, various assembly rooms, and several recreation grounds. Kay's free grammar school was founded in 1726; there are also municipal technical schools. The cotton manufacture is the principal industry; there are also calico printing, dyeing and bleaching works, machinery and iron works, woollen manufactures, and coal mines and quarries in the vicinity. Sir Robert Peel was born at Chamber Hall in the neighbourhood, and his father did much for the prosperity of the town by the establishment of extensive print-works. A monument to the statesman stands in the market-place. The parliamentary borough returns one member (since 1832). The county borough was created in 1888. The corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 5836 acres.
Bury, of which the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon burhg, birig or byrig (town, castle or fortified place), was the site of a Saxon station, and an old English castle stood in Castle Croft close to the town. It was a member of the Honour of Clitheroe and a fee of the royal manor of Tottington, which soon after the Conquest was held by the Lacys. The local family of Bury held lands here during the 13th century, and at least for a short time the manor itself, but before 1347 it passed by marriage to the Pilkingtons of Pilkington, with whom it remained till 1485, when on the attainder of Sir Thomas Pilkington it was granted to the first earl of Derby, whose descendants have since held it. Under a grant made by Edward IV. to Sir Thomas Pilkington, fairs are still held on March 5, May 3, and September 18, and a market was formerly held under the same grant on Thursday, which has, however, been long replaced by a customary market on Saturday. The woollen trade was established here through the agency of Flemish immigrants in Edward III.'s reign, and in Elizabeth's time this industry was of such importance that an aulneger was appointed to measure and stamp the woollen cloth. But although the woollen manufacture is still carried on, the cotton trade has been gradually superseding it since the early part of the 18th century. The family of the Kays, the inventors, belonged to this place, and Robert Peel's print-works were established here in 1770. The cognate trades of bleaching, dyeing and machine-making have been long carried on. A court-leet and view of frank pledge used to be held half-yearly at Easter and Michaelmas, and a court-baron in May. Until 1846 three constables were chosen annually at the court-leet to govern the place, but in that year the inhabitants obtained authority from parliament to appoint twenty-seven commissioners to undertake the local government. A charter of incorporation was granted in 1876. The well-known Bury Cooperative Society was established in 1856. There was a church here at the time of the Domesday Survey, and the earliest mention of a rector is found in the year 1331-1332. One-half of the town is glebe belonging to the rectory.
BURY ST EDMUNDS, a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough of Suffolk, England, on the Lark, an affluent of the Great Ouse; 87 m. N.E. by N. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 16,255. It is pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a fertile and richly cultivated district. The tower or church-gate, one of the finest specimens of early Norman architecture in England, and the western gate, a beautiful structure of rich Decorated work, together with ruined walls of considerable extent, are all that remains of the great abbey. St Mary's church, with a beautifully carved roof, was erected in the earlier part of the 15th century, and contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, queen of Louis XII. of France. St James's church is also a fine Perpendicular building, with a modern chancel, and without a tower. All these splendid structures, fronting one of the main streets in succession, form, even without the abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind them lie picturesque gardens which contain the ruins, the plan of which is difficult to trace, though the outlines of some portions, as the chapter-house, have been made clear by excavation. There is a handsome Roman Catholic church of St Edmund. The so-called Moyses Hall (perhaps a Jew's House, of which there is a parallel example at Lincoln) retains transitional Norman work. The free grammar school, founded by Edward VI., has two scholarships at Cambridge, and six exhibitions to each university, and occupies modern buildings. The Church Schools Company has a school. There are large agricultural implement works, and the agricultural trade is important, cattle and corn markets being held. In the vicinity is Ickworth, the seat of the marquess of Bristol, a great mansion of the end of the 18th century. The parliamentary borough, which returns one member, is coextensive with the municipal borough. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2947 acres.
Bury St Edmunds (Beodricesworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed by some to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes about 870, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund's Bury. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on its site. In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made the abbot lord of the franchise. By various grants from the abbots, the town gradually attained the rank of a borough. Henry III. in 1235 granted to the abbot two annual fairs, one in December (which still survives), the other the great St Matthew's fair, which was abolished by the Fairs Act of 1871. Another fair was granted by Henry IV. in 1405. Elizabeth in 1562 confirmed the charters which former kings had granted to the abbots, and James I. in 1606 granted a charter of incorporation with an annual fair in Easter week and a market. Further charters were granted by him in 1608 and 1614, and by Charles II. in 1668 and 1684. The reversion of the fairs and two markets on Wednesday and Saturday were granted by James I. in fee farm to the corporation. Parliaments were held here in 1272, 1296 and 1446, but the borough was not represented until 1608, when James I. conferred the privilege of sending two members. The Redistribution Act 1885 reduced the representation to one. There was formerly a large woollen trade.
See Richard Yates, Hist. and Antiqs. of the Abbey of St Edmund's Bury (2nd ed., 1843); H.R. Barker, History of Bury St Edmunds.
BUSBECQ, OGIER GHISLAIN DE [AUGERIUS GISLENIUS] (1522-1592), Flemish writer and traveller, was born at Comines, and educated at the university of Louvain and elsewhere. Having served the emperor Charles V. and his son, Philip II. of Spain, he entered the service of the emperor Ferdinand I., who sent him as ambassador to the sultan Suleiman I. the Magnificent. He returned to Vienna in 1562 to become tutor to the sons of Maximilian II., afterwards emperor, subsequently taking the position of master of the household of Elizabeth, widow of Charles IX., king of France, and daughter of Maximilian. Busbecq was an excellent scholar, a graceful writer and a clever diplomatist. He collected valuable manuscripts, rare coins and curious inscriptions, and introduced various plants into Germany. He died at the castle of Maillot near Rouen on the 28th of October 1592. Busbecq wrote Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum (Antwerp, 1581), a work showing considerable insight into Turkish politics. This was published in Paris in 1589 as A.G. Busbequii legationis Turcicae epistolae iv., and has been translated into several languages. He was a frequent visitor to France, and wrote Epistolae ad Rudolphum II. Imperatorem e Gallia scriptae (Louvain, 1630), an interesting account of affairs at the French court. His works were published [v.04 p.0869] at Leiden in 1633 and at Basel in 1740. An English translation of the Itinera was published in 1744.
See C.T. Forster and F.H.B. Daniel, Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (London, 1881); Viertel, Busbecks Erlebnisse in der Turkei (Gottingen, 1902).
BUSBY, RICHARD (1606-1695), English clergyman, and head master of Westminster school, was born at Lutton in Lincolnshire in 1606. He was educated at the school which he afterwards superintended for so long a period, and first signalized himself by gaining a king's scholarship. From Westminster Busby proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1628. In his thirty-third year he had already become renowned for the obstinate zeal with which he supported the falling dynasty of the Stuarts, and was rewarded for his services with the prebend and rectory of Cudworth, with the chapel of Knowle annexed, in Somersetshire. Next year he became head master of Westminster, where his reputation as a teacher soon became great. He himself once boasted that sixteen of the bishops who then occupied the bench had been birched with his "little rod". No school in England has on the whole produced so many eminent men as Westminster did under the régime of Busby. Among the more illustrious of his pupils may be mentioned South, Dryden, Locke, Prior and Bishop Atterbury. He wrote and edited many works for the use of his scholars. His original treatises (the best of which are his Greek and Latin grammars), as well as those which he edited, have, however, long since fallen into disuse. Busby died in 1695, in his ninetieth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his effigy is still to be seen.
BUSBY, the English name for a military head-dress of fur. Possibly the original sense of a "busby wig" came from association with Dr Busby of Westminster; but it is also derived from "buzz", in the phrase "buzz wig". In its first Hungarian form the military busby was a cylindrical fur cap, having a "bag" of coloured cloth hanging from the top; the end of this bag was attached to the right shoulder as a defence against sword-cuts. In Great Britain "busbies" are of two kinds: (a) the hussar busby, cylindrical in shape, with a bag; this is worn by hussars and the Royal Horse Artillery; (b) the rifle busby, a folding cap of astrachan, in shape somewhat resembling a "Glengarry" but taller. Both have straight plumes in the front of the headdress. The word "busby" is also used colloquially to denote the tall bear-and-raccoon-skin "caps" worn by foot-guards and fusiliers, and the full dress feather bonnet of Highland infantry. Cylindrical busbies were formerly worn by the artillery engineers and rifles, but these are now obsolete in the regular army, though still worn by some territorial and colonial troops of these arms.
BUSCH, JULIUS HERMANN MORITZ (1821-1899), German publicist, was born at Dresden on the 13th of February 1821. He entered the university of Leipzig in 1841 as a student of theology, but graduated as doctor philosophiae, and from 1847 devoted himself entirely to journalism and literature. In 1851 he went to America, but soon returned disillusioned to Germany, and published an account of his travels. During the next years he travelled extensively in the East and wrote books on Egypt, Greece and Palestine. From 1856 he was employed at Leipzig on the Grenzboten, one of the most influential German periodicals, which, under the editorship of Gustav Freytag, had become the organ of the Nationalist party. In 1864 he became closely connected with the Augustenburg party in Schleswig-Holstein, but after 1866 he transferred his services to the Prussian government, and was employed in a semi-official capacity in the newly conquered province of Hanover. From 1870 onwards he was one of Bismarck's press agents, and was at the chancellor's side in this capacity during the whole of the campaign of 1870-71. In 1878 he published the first of his works on Bismarck--a book entitled Bismarck und seine Leute, während des Krieges mit Frankreich, in which, under the form of extracts from his diary, he gave an account of the chancellor's life during the war. The vividness of the descriptions and the cleverness with which the conversations were reported ensured a success, and the work was translated into several languages. This was followed in 1885 by another book, Unser Reichskanzler, chiefly dealing with the work in the foreign office in Berlin. Immediately after Bismarck's death Busch published the chancellor's famous petition to the emperor William II. dated the 18th of March 1890, requesting to be relieved of office. This was followed by a pamphlet Bismarck und sein Werk; and in 1898 in London and in English, by the famous memoirs entitled Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History (German by Grunow, under title Tagebuchblätter), in which were reprinted the whole of the earlier works, but which contains in addition a considerable amount of new matter, passages from the earlier works which had been omitted because of the attacks they contained on people in high position, records of later conversations, and some important letters and documents which had been entrusted to him by Bismarck. Many passages were of such a nature that it could not be safely published in Germany; but in 1899 a far better and more complete German edition was published at Leipzig in three volumes and consisting of three sections. Busch died at Leipzig on the 16th of November 1899.
See Ernst Goetz, in Biog. Jahrbuch (1900).
BUSCH, WILHELM (1832-1908), German caricaturist, was born at Wiedensahl in Hanover. After studying at the academies of Düsseldorf, Antwerp and Munich, he joined in 1859 the staff of Fliegende Blätter, the leading German comic paper, and was, together with Oberländer, the founder of modern German caricature. His humorous drawings and caricatures are remarkable for the extreme simplicity and expressiveness of his pen-and-ink line, which record with a few rapid scrawls the most complicated contortions of the body and the most transitory movement. His humorous illustrated poems, such as Max und Moritz, Der heilige Antonius von Padua, Die Fromme Helene, Hans Huckebein and Die Erlebnisse Knopps des Junggesellen, play, in the German nursery, the same part that Edward Lear's nonsense verses do in England. The types created by him have become household words in his country. He invented the series of comic sketches illustrating a story in scenes without words, which have inspired Caran d'Ache and other leading caricaturists.
BÜSCHING, ANTON FRIEDRICH (1724-1793), German theologian and geographer, was born at Stadthagen in Schaumburg-Lippe, on the 27th of September 1724. In 1748 he was appointed tutor in the family of the count de Lynars, who was then going as ambassador to St Petersburg. On this journey he resolved to devote his life to the improvement of geographical science. Leaving the count's family, he went to reside at Copenhagen, and devoted himself entirely to this new pursuit. In 1752 he published his Description of the Counties of Schleswig and Holstein. In 1754 he removed to Göttingen, where in 1757 he was appointed professor of philosophy; but in 1761 he accepted an invitation to the German congregation at St Petersburg. There he organized a school which, under him, soon became one of the most flourishing in the north of Europe, but a disagreement with Marshal Münich led him, in spite of the empress's offers of high advancement, to return to central Europe in 1765. He first went to live at Altona; but next year he was called to superintend the famous "Greyfriars Gymnasium" (Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster), which had been formed at Berlin by Frederick the Great. He died of dropsy on the 28th of May 1793, having by writing and example given a new impulse to education throughout Prussia. While at Göttingen he married the poetess, Christiana Dilthey.
Büsching's works (on geography, history, education and religion) amount to more than a hundred. The first class comprehends those upon which his fame chiefly rests; for although he did not possess the genius of D'Anville, he may be regarded as the creator of modern Statistical Geography. His magnum opus is the Erdebeschreibung, in seven parts, of which the first four, comprehending Europe, were published in 1754-1761, and have been translated into several languages (e.g. into English with a preface by Murdoch, in six volumes, London, 1762). In 1768 the fifth part was published, being the first volume upon Asia, containing Asiatic Turkey and Arabia. It displays an immense extent of research, and is generally considered as his [v.04 p.0870] masterpiece. Büsching was also the editor of a valuable collection entitled Magazin für d. neue Historie und Geographie (23 vols. 4to, 1767-1793); also of Wochentl. Nachrichten von neuen Landkarten (Berlin, 1773-1787). His works on education enjoyed great repute. In biography he wrote a number of articles for the above-mentioned Magazin, and a valuable collection of Beiträge zur Lebensgeschichte merkwürdiger Personen (6 vols., 1783-1789), including an elaborate life of Frederick the Great.
BUSENBAUM (or BUSEMBAUM), HERMANN (1600-1668), Jesuit theologian, was born at Nottelen in Westphalia. He attained fame as a master of casuistry, and out of his lectures to students at Cologne grew his celebrated book Medulla theologiae moralis, facili ac perspicua methodo resolvens casus conscientiae (1645). The manual obtained a wide popularity and passed through over two hundred editions before 1776. Pierre Lacroix added considerably to its bulk, and editions in two folio volumes appeared in both Germany (1710-1714) and France (1729). In these sections on murder and especially on regicide were much amplified, and in connexion with Damien's attempt on the life of Louis XV. the book was severely handled by the parlement of Paris. At Toulouse in 1757, though the offending sections were repudiated by the heads of the Jesuit colleges, the Medulla was publicly burned, and the episode undoubtedly led the way to the duc de Choiseul's attack on the society. Busenbaum also wrote a book on the ascetic life, Lilium inter spinas. He became rector of the Jesuit college at Hildesheim and then at Münster, where he died on the 31st of January 1668, being at the time father-confessor to Bishop Bernard of Galen.
BUSH. (1) (A word common to many European languages, meaning "a wood", cf. the Ger. Busch, Fr. bois, Ital. bosco and the med. Lat. boscus), a shrub or group of shrubs, especially of those plants whose branches grow low and thick. Collectively "the bush" is used in British colonies, particularly in Australasia and South Africa, for the tract of country covered with brushwood not yet cleared for cultivation. From the custom of hanging a bush as a sign outside a tavern comes the proverb "Good wine needs no bush." (2) (From a Teutonic word meaning "a box", cf. the Ger. Rad-büchse, a wheel box, and the termination of "blunderbuss" and "arquebus"; the derivation from the Fr. bouche, a mouth, is not correct), a lining frequently inserted in the bearings of machinery. When a shaft and the bearing in which it rotates are made of the same metal, the two surfaces are in certain cases apt to "seize" and abrade each other. To prevent this, bushes of some dissimilar metal are employed; thus a shaft of mild steel or wrought iron may be made to run in hard cast steel, cast iron, bronze or Babbitt metal. The last, having a low melting point, may be cast about the shaft for which it is to form a bearing.
BUSHBUCK (Boschbok,) the South African name of a medium-sized red antelope (q.v.), marked with white lines and spots, belonging to a local race of a widely spread species, Tragelaphus scriptus. The males alone have rather small, spirally twisted horns. There are several allied species, sometimes known as harnessed antelopes, which are of a larger size. Some of these such as the situtunga (T. spekei) have the hoofs elongated for walking on swampy ground, and hence have been separated as Limnotragus.
BUSHEL (from the O. Fr. boissiel, cf. med. L. bustellus, busellus, a little box), a dry measure of capacity, containing 8 gallons or 4 pecks. It has been in use for measuring corn, potatoes, &c., from a very early date; the value varying locally and with the article measured. The "imperial bushel", legally established in Great Britain in 1826, contains 2218.192 cub.in., or 80 lb of distilled water, determined at 62° F., with the barometer at 30 in. Previously, the standard bushel used was known as the "Winchester bushel", so named from the standard being kept in the town hall at Winchester; it contained 2150.42 cub. in. This standard is the basis of the bushel used in the United States and Canada; but other "bushels" for use in connexion with certain commodities have been legalized in different states.
BUSHIDO (Japanese for "military-knight-ways"), the unwritten code of laws governing the lives of the nobles of Japan, equivalent to the European chivalry. Its maxims have been orally handed down, together with a vast accumulation of traditional etiquette, the result of centuries of feudalism. Its inception is associated with the uprise of feudal institutions under Yoritomo, the first of the Shoguns, late in the 12th century, but bushido in an undeveloped form existed before then. The samurai or nobles of Japan entertained the highest respect for truth. "A bushi has no second word" was one of their mottoes. And their sense of honour was so high as to dictate suicide where it was offended.
See Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1905); also JAPAN: Army.
BUSHIRE, or BANDER BUSHIRE, a town of Persia, on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, in 28° 59' N., 50° 49' E. The name is pronounced Boosheer, and not Bew-shire, or Bus-hire; modern Persians write it Bushehr and, yet more incorrectly, Abushehr, and translate it as "father of the city," but it is most probably a contraction of Bokht-ardashir, the name given to the place by the first Sassanian monarch in the 3rd century. In a similar way Riv-ardashir, a few miles south of Bushire, has become Rishire (Reesheer). In the first half of the 18th century, when Bushire was an unimportant fishing village, it was selected by Nadir Shah as the southern port of Persia and dockyard of the navy which he aspired to create in the Persian Gulf, and the British commercial factory of the East India Company, established at Gombrun, the modern Bander Abbasi, was transferred to it in 1759. At the beginning of the 19th century it had a population of 6000 to 8000, and it is now the most important port in the Persian Gulf, with a population of about 25,000. It used to be under the government of Fars, but is (since about 1892) the seat of the governor of the Persian Gulf ports, who is responsible to the central government, and has under his jurisdiction the principal ports of the Gulf and their dependencies. The town, which is of a triangular form, occupies the northern extremity of a peninsula 11 m. long and 4 broad, and is encircled by the sea on all sides except the south. It is fortified on the land side by a wall with 12 round towers. The houses being mostly built of a white conglomerate stone of shells and coral which forms the peninsula, gives the city when viewed from a distance a clean and handsome appearance, but on closer inspection the streets are found to be very narrow, irregular, ill-paved and filthy. Almost the only decent buildings are the governor's palace, the British residency and the houses of some well-to-do merchants. The sea immediately east of the town has a considerable depth, but its navigation is impeded by sand-banks and a bar north and west of the town, which can be passed only by vessels drawing not more than 9 ft. of water, except at spring tides, when there is a rise of from 8 to 10 ft. Vessels drawing more than 9 ft. must anchor in the roads miles away to the west. The climate is very hot in the summer months and unhealthy. The water is very bad, and that fit for drinking requires to be brought from wells distant 1½ to 3 m. from the city wall.
Bushire carries on a considerable trade, particularly with India, Java and Arabia. Its principal imports are cotton and woollen goods, yarn, metals, sugar, coffee, tea, spices, cashmere shawls, &c., and its principal exports opium, wool, carpets, horses, grain, dyes and gums, tobacco, rosewater, &c. The importance of Bushire has much increased since about 1862. It is now not only the headquarters of the English naval squadron in the Persian Gulf, and the land terminus of the Indo-European telegraph, but it also forms the chief station in the Gulf of the British Indian Steam Navigation Company, which runs its vessels weekly between Bombay and Basra. Consulates of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Turkey and several European mercantile houses are established at Bushire, and [v.04 p.0871] notwithstanding the drawbacks of bad roads to the interior, insufficient and precarious means of transport, and want of security, the annual value of the Bushire trade since 1890 averaged about £1,500,000 (one-third being for exports, two-thirds for imports), and over two-thirds of this was British. Of the 278,000 tons of shipping which entered the port in 1905, 244,000 were British.
During the war with Persia (1856-57) Bushire surrendered to a British force and remained in British occupation for some months. At Rishire, some miles south of Bushire and near the summer quarters of the British resident and the British telegraph buildings, there are extensive ruins among which bricks with cuneiform inscriptions have been found, showing that the place was a very old Elamite settlement.
(A. H.-S.)
BUSHMEN, or BOSJESMANS, a people of South Africa, so named by the British and Dutch colonists of the Cape. They often call themselves Saan [Sing. Sá], but this appears to be the Hottentot name. If they have a national name it is Khuai, probably "small man," the title of one group. This Khuai has, however, been translated as the Bushman word for tablier égyptien (see below), adopted as the racial name because that malformation is one of their physical characteristics. The Kaffirs call them Abatwa, the Bechuana Masarwa (Maseroa). There is little reason to doubt that they constitute the aboriginal element of the population of South Africa, and indications of their former presence have been found as far north at least as the Nyasa and Tanganyika basins. "It would seem," writes Sir H.H. Johnston (British Central Africa, p. 52), "as if the earliest known race of man inhabiting what is now British Central Africa was akin to the Bushman-Hottentot type of negro. Rounded stones with a hole through the centre, similar to those which are used by the Bushmen in the south for weighting their digging-sticks (the graaf stock of the Boers), have been found at the south end of Lake Tanganyika." The dirty yellow colour of the Bushmen, their slightly slanting eyes and prominent cheek-bones had induced early anthropologists to dwell on their resemblance to the Mongolian races. This similarity has been now recognized as quite superficial. More recently a connexion has been traced between the Bushmen and the Pygmy peoples inhabiting the forests of Central Africa. Though the matter cannot be regarded as definitely settled, the latest researches rather tend to discredit this view. In fact it would appear that the two peoples have little in common save diminutive proportions and a nomadic and predatory form of existence. Owing to the discovery of steatopygous figurines in Egyptian graves, a theory has been advanced that the Egyptians of the early dynasties were of the same primitive pygmy negroid stock as the Bushmen. But this is highly speculative. The physical characteristics of Egyptian skulls have nothing of the Bushman in them. Of the primitive pygmy negroid stock the Hottentots (q.v.), once considered the parent family, are now regarded as an offshoot of mixed Bantu-Bushman blood from the main Bushman race.
It seems probable that the Bushmen must be regarded as having extended considerably to the north of the area occupied by them within the memory of white men. Evidence has been produced of the presence of a belated Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the district between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. They were probably driven south by the Bantu tribes, who eventually outflanked them and confined them to the less fertile tracts of country. Before the arrival of Europeans in South Africa the Bushman race appears to have been, what it so essentially is to-day, a nomadic race living in widely scattered groups. The area in which the Bushmen are now found sporadically may be defined as extending from the inner ranges of the mountains of Cape Colony, through the central Kalahari desert to near Lake Ngami, and thence north-westward to the districts about the Ovambo river north of Damaraland. In short, they have been driven by European and Kaffir encroachments into the most barren regions of South Africa. A few remain in the more inaccessible parts of the Drakensberg range about the sources of the Vaal. Only in one or two districts are they found in large numbers, chiefly in Great Bushman Land towards the Orange river. A regularly planned and wholesale destruction of the Bushmen on the borders of Cape Colony in the earlier years of European occupation reduced their numbers to a great extent; but this cruel hunting of the Bushmen has ceased. In retaliation the Bushmen were long the scourge of the farms on the outer borders of the colony, making raids on the cattle and driving them off in large numbers. On the western side of the deserts they are generally at enmity with the Koranna Hottentots, but on the eastern border of the Kalahari they have to some extent fraternized with the earliest Bechuana migrants. Their language, which exists in several dialects, has in common with Hottentot, but to a greater degree, the peculiar sounds known as "clicks." The Hottentot language is more agglutinative, the Bushman more monosyllabic; the former recognizes a gender in names, the latter does not; the Hottentots form the plural by a suffix, the Bushmen by repetition of the name; the former count up to twenty, the latter can only number two, all above that being "many." F.C.Selous records that Koranna Hottentots were able to converse fluently with the Bushmen of Bechuanaland.
The most striking feature of the Bushman's physique is shortness of stature. Gustav Fritsch in 1863-1866 found the average height of six grown men to be 4 ft. 9 in. Earlier, but less trustworthy, measurements make them still shorter. Among 150 measured by Sir John Barrow during the first British occupation of Cape Colony the tallest man was 4 ft. 9 in., the tallest woman 4 ft. 4 in. The Bushmen living in Bechuanaland measured by Selous in the last quarter of the 19th century were, however, found to be of nearly average height. Few persons were below 5 ft.; 5 ft. 4 in. was common, and individuals of even 6 ft. were not unknown. No great difference in height appears to exist between men and women. Fritsch's average from five Bushman women was one-sixth of an inch more than for the men. The Bushmen, as already stated, are of a dirty yellow colour, and of generally unattractive countenance. The skull is long and low, the cheek-bones large and prominent. The eyes are deeply set and crafty in expression. The nose is small and depressed, the mouth wide with moderately everted lips, and the jaws project. The teeth are not like badly cut ivory, as in Bantu, but regular and of a mother-of-pearl appearance. In general build the Bushman is slim and lean almost to emaciation. Even the children show little of the round outlines of youth. The amount of fat under the skin in both sexes is remarkably small; hence the skin is as dry as leather and falls into strong folds around the stomach and at the joints. The fetor of the skin, so characteristic of the negro, is not found in the Bushman. The hair is weak in growth, in age it becomes grey, but baldness is rare. Bushmen have little body-hair and that of a weak stubbly nature, and none of the fine down usual on most skins. On the face there is usually only a scanty moustache. A hollowed back and protruding stomach are frequent characteristics of their figure, but many of them are well proportioned, all being active and capable of enduring great privations and fatigue. Considerable steatopygy often exists among the women, who share with the Hottentot women the extraordinary prolongation of the nymphae which is often called "the Hottentot apron" or tablier. Northward the Bushmen appear to improve both in general condition and in stature, probably owing to a tinge of Bantu blood. The Bushman's clothing is scanty: a triangular piece of skin, passed between the legs and fastened round the waist with a string, is often all that is worn. Many men, however, and nearly all the women, wear the kaross, a kind of pelisse of skins sewn together, which is used at night as a wrap. The bodies of both sexes are smeared with a native ointment, buchu, which, aided by accretions of dust and dirt, soon forms a coating like a rind. Men and women often wear sandals of hide or plaited bast. They are fond of ornament, and decorate the arms, neck and legs with beads, iron or copper rings, teeth, hoofs, horns and shells, while they stick feathers or hares' tails in the hair. The women sometimes stain their faces with red pigment. They carry tobacco in goats' horns or in the shell of a land tortoise, while boxes of ointment [v.04 p.0872] or amulets are hung round neck or waist. A jackal's tail mounted on a stick serves the double purpose of fan and handkerchief. For dwellings in the plains they have low huts formed of reed mats, or occupy a hole in the earth; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by hanging mats on the windward side. Of household utensils they have none, except ostrich eggs, in which they carry water, and occasionally rough pots. For cooking his food the Bushman needs nothing but fire, which he obtains by rubbing hard and soft wood together.
Bushmen do not possess cattle, and have no domestic animals except a few half-wild dogs, nor have they the smallest rudiments of agriculture. Living by hunting, they are thoroughly acquainted with the habits and movements of every kind of wild animal, following the antelope herds in their migrations. Their weapon is a bow made of a stout bough bent into a sharp curve. It is strung with twisted sinew. The arrow, which is neatly made of a reed, the thickness of a finger, is bound with thread to prevent splitting, and notched at the end for the string. At the point is a head of bone, or stone with a quill barb; iron arrow-blades obtained from the Bantu are also found. The arrow is usually 2 to 3 ft. long. The distance at which the Bushman can be sure of hitting is not great, about twenty paces. The arrows are always coated with a gummy poisonous compound which kills even the largest animal in a few hours. The preparation is something of a mystery, but its main ingredients appear to be the milky juice of the Amaryllis toxicaria, which is abundant in South Africa, or of the Euphorbia arborescens, generally mixed with the venom of snakes or of a large black spider of the genus Mygale; or the entrails of a very deadly caterpillar, called N'gwa or 'Kaa, are used alone. One authority states that the Bushmen of the western Kalahari use the juice of a chrysalis which they scrape out of the ground. From their use of these poisons the Bushmen are held in great dread by the neighbouring races. They carry, too, a club some 20 in. long with a knob as big as a man's fist. Assegais and knives are rare. No Bushman tribe south of Lake Ngami is said to carry spears. A rude implement, called by the Boers graaf stock or digging stick, consisting of a sharpened spike of hard wood over which a stone, ground to a circular form and perforated, is passed and secured by a wedge, forms part of the Bushman equipment. This is used by the women for uprooting the succulent tuberous roots of the several species of creeping plants of the desert, and in digging pitfalls. These perforated stones have a special interest in indicating the former extension of the Bushmen, since they are found, as has been said, far beyond the area now occupied by them. The Bushmen are famous as hunters, and actually run down many kinds of game. Living a life of periodical starvation, they spend days at a time in search of food, upon which when found they feed so gluttonously that it is said five of them will eat a whole zebra in a few hours. They eat practically anything. The meat is but half cooked, and game is often not completely drawn. The Bushman eats raw such insects as lice and ants, the eggs of the latter being regarded as a great delicacy. In hard times they eat lizards, snakes, frogs, worms and caterpillars. Honey they relish, and for vegetables devour bulbs and roots. Like the Hottentot, the Bushman is a great smoker.
The disposition of the Bushman has been much maligned; the cruelty which has been attributed to him is the natural result of equal brutalities practiced upon him by the other natives and the early European settlers. He is a passionate lover of freedom, and, like many other primitive people, lives only for the moment. Unlike the Hottentot he has never willingly become a slave, and will fight to the last for his personal liberty. He has been described as the "anarchist of South Africa." Still, when he becomes a servant, he is usually trustworthy. His courage is remarkable, and Fritsch was told by residents who were well qualified to speak that supported by a dozen Bushmen they would not be afraid of a hundred Kaffirs. The terror inspired by the Bushmen has indeed had an effect in the deforestation of parts of Cape Colony, for the colonists, to guard against stealthy attacks, cut down all the bush far round their holdings. Mission-work among the Bushmen has been singularly unsuccessful. But in spite of his savage nature, the Bushman is intelligent. He is quick-witted, and has the gift of imitating extraordinarily well the cries of bird and beast. He is musical, too, and makes a rough instrument out of a gourd and one or more strings. He is fond of dancing; besides the ordinary dances are the special dances at certain stages of the moon, &c. One of the most interesting facts about the Bushman is his possession of a remarkable delight in graphic illustration; the rocks of the mountains of Cape Colony and of the Drakensberg and the walls of caves anciently inhabited by them have many examples of Bushman drawings of men, women, children and animals characteristically sketched. Their designs are partly painted on rock, with four colours, white, black, red and yellow ochre, partly engraved in soft sandstone, partly chiselled in hard stone. Rings, crosses and other signs drawn in blue pigment on some of the rocks, and believed to be one or two centuries old, have given rise to the erroneous speculation that these may be remains of a hieroglyphic writing. A discovery of drawings of men and women with antelope heads was made in the recesses of the Drakensberg in 1873 (J.M. Orpen in Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). A few years later Selous discovered similar rock-paintings in Mashonaland and Manicaland.
Little is known of the family life of the Bushmen. Marriage is a matter merely of offer and acceptance ratified by a feast. Among some tribes the youth must prove himself an expert hunter. Nothing is known of the laws of inheritance. The avoidance of parents-in-law, so marked among Kaffirs, is found among Bushmen. Murder, adultery, rape and robbery are offences against their code of morals. As among other African tribes the social position of the women is low. They are beasts of burden, carrying the children and the family property on the journeys, and doing all the work at the halting-place. It is their duty also to keep the encampment supplied with water, no matter how far it has to be carried. The Bushman mother is devoted to her children, who, though suckled for a long time, yet are fed within the first few days after birth upon chewed roots and meat, and taught to chew tobacco at a very early age. The child's head is often protected from the sun by a plaited shade of ostrich feathers. There is practically no tribal organization. Individual families at times join together and appoint a chief, but the arrangement is never more than temporary. The Bushmen have no concrete idea of a God, but believe in evil spirits and supernatural interference with man's life. All Bushmen carry amulets, and there are indications of totemism in their refusal to eat certain foods. Thus one group will not eat goat's flesh, though the animal is the commonest in their district. Others reverence antelopes or even the caterpillar N'gwa. The Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones. The corpse's head is anointed, then it is smoke-dried and laid in the grave at full length, stones or earth being piled on it. There is a Bushman belief that the sun will rise later if the dead are not buried with their faces to the east. Weapons and other Bushman treasures are buried with the dead, and the hut materials are burnt in the grave.
The Bushmen have many animal myths, and a rich store of beast legends. The most prominent of the animal mythological figures is that of the mantis, around which a great cycle of myths has been formed. He and his wife have many names. Their adopted daughter is the porcupine. In the family history an ichneumon, an elephant, a monkey and an eland all figure. The Bushmen have also solar and lunar myths, and observe and name the stars. Canopus alone has five names. Some of the constellations have figurative names. Thus they call Orion's Belt "three she-tortoises hanging on a stick," and Castor and [v.04 p.0873] Pollux "the cow-elands." The planets, too, have their names and myths, and some idea of the astonishing wealth of this Bushman folklore and oral literature may be formed from the fact that the materials collected by Bleek and preserved in Sir George Grey's library at Cape Town form eighty-four stout MS. volumes of 3600 pages. They comprise myths, fables, legends and even poetry, with tales about the sun and moon, the stars, the crocodile and other animals; legends of peoples who dwelt in the land before the Bushmen arrived from the north; songs, charms, and even prayers, or at least incantations; histories, adventures of men and animals; tribal customs, traditions, superstitions and genealogies. A most curious feature in Bushman folklore is the occurrence of the speeches of various animals, into which the relater of the legend introduces particular "clicks," supposed to be characteristic of the animals in whose mouths they are placed.
See G.W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa (London, 1905); Mark Hutchinson, "Bushman Drawings," in Jour. Anthrop. Instit., 1882, p. 464; Sir H.H. Johnston, Jour. Anthrop. Inst., 1883, p. 463; Dr H. Welcker, Archiv f. Anthrop. xvi.; G. Bertin, "The Bushmen and their Language," Jour. R. Asial. Soc. xviii. part i.; Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Südafrikas (Breslau, 1872); W.H.I. Bleek, Bushman Folklore (1875); J.L.P. Erasmus, The Wild Bushman, MS. note (1899); F.C. Selous, African Nature Notes and Reminiscences (1908), chap. xx.; S. Passarge, Die Buschmanner der Kalahari (Berlin, 1907).
BUSHNELL, HORACE (1802-1876), American theologian, was born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 14th of April 1802. He graduated at Yale in 1827, was associate editor of the New York Journal of Commerce in 1828-1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he at first took up the study of law, but in 1831 he entered the theological department of Yale College, and in 1833 was ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Conn., where he remained until 1859, when on account of long-continued ill-health he resigned his pastorate. Thereafter he had no settled charge, but, until his death at Hartford on the 17th of February 1876, he occasionally preached and was diligently employed as an author. While in California in 1856, for the restoration of his health, he took an active interest in the organization, at Oakland, of the college of California (chartered in 1855 and merged in the university of California in 1869), the presidency of which he declined. As a preacher, Dr Bushnell was a man of remarkable power. Not a dramatic orator, he was in high degree original, thoughtful and impressive in the pulpit. His theological position may be said to have been one of qualified revolt against the Calvinistic orthodoxy of his day. He criticized prevailing conceptions of the Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and the relations of the natural and the supernatural. Above all, he broke with the prevalent view which regarded theology as essentially intellectual in its appeal and demonstrable by processes of exact logical deduction. To his thinking its proper basis is to be found in the feelings and intuitions of man's spiritual nature. He had a vast influence upon theology in America, an influence not so much, possibly, in the direction of the modification of specific doctrines as in "the impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought." Dr Munger's estimate may be accepted, with reservations, as the true one: "He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought. He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led the movement in New England, and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against him." Four of his books were of particular importance: Christian Nurture (1847), in which he virtually opposed revivalism and "effectively turned the current of Christian thought toward the young"; Nature and the Supernatural (1858), in which he discussed miracles and endeavoured to "lift the natural into the supernatural" by emphasizing the super-naturalness of man; The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866), in which he contended for what has come to be known as the "moral view" of the atonement in distinction from the "governmental" and the "penal" or "satisfaction" theories; and God in Christ (1849) (with an introductory "Dissertation on Language as related to Thought"), in which he expressed, it was charged, heretical views as to the Trinity, holding, among other things, that the Godhead is "instrumentally three--three simply as related to our finite apprehension, and the communication of God's incommunicable nature." Attempts, indeed, were made to bring him to trial, but they were unsuccessful, and in 1852 his church unanimously withdrew from the local "consociation," thus removing any possibility of further action against him. To his critics Bushnell formally replied by writing Christ in Theology (1851), in which he employs the important argument that spiritual facts can be expressed only in approximate and poetical language, and concludes that an adequate dogmatic theology cannot exist. That he did not deny the divinity of Christ he proved in The Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible Classification with Men (1861). He also published Sermons for the New Life (1858); Christ and his Salvation (1864); Work and Play (1864); Moral Uses of Dark Things (1868); Women's Suffrage, the Reform against Nature (1869); Sermons on Living Subjects (1872); and Forgiveness and Law (1874). Dr Bushnell was greatly interested in the civic interests of Hartford, and was the chief agent in procuring the establishment of the public park named in his honour by that city.
An edition of his works, in eleven volumes, appeared in 1876-1881; and a further volume, gathered from his unpublished papers, as The Spirit in Man: Sermons and Selections, in 1903. New editions of his Nature and the Supernatural, Sermons for the New Life, and Work and Play, were published the same year. A full bibliography, by Henry Barrett Learned, is appended to his Spirit in Man. Consult Mrs M.B. Cheneys Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell (New York, 1880; new edition, 1903), and Dr Theodore T. Mungers Horace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian (Boston, 1899); also a series of papers in the Minutes of the General Association of Connecticut (Bushnell Centenary) (Hartford, 1902).
(W. WR.)
B[=U][S.][=I]R[=I] [Ab[=u] 'Abdall[=a]h Muhammad ibn Sa'[=i]d ul-B[=u][s.][=i]r[=i]] (1211-1294), Arabian poet, lived in Egypt, where he wrote under the patronage of Ibn Hinna, the vizier. His poems seem to have been wholly on religious subjects. The most famous of these is the so-called "Poem of the Mantle." It is entirely in praise of Mahomet, who cured the poet of paralysis by appearing to him in a dream and wrapping him in a mantle. The poem has little literary value, being an imitation of Ka'b ibn Zuhair's poem in praise of Mahomet, but its history has been unique (cf. I. Goldziher in Revue de l'histoire des religions, vol. xxxi. pp. 304 ff.). Even in the poet's lifetime it was regarded as sacred. Up to the present time its verses are used as amulets; it is employed in the lamentations for the dead; it has been frequently edited and made the basis for other poems, and new poems have been made by interpolating four or six lines after each line of the original. It has been published with English translation by Faizullabhai (Bombay, 1893), with French translation by R. Basset (Paris, 1894), with German translation by C.A. Ralfs (Vienna, 1860), and in other languages elsewhere.
For long list of commentaries, &c., cf. C. Brockelmann's Gesch. der Arab. Litteratur (Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 264-267.
(G. W. T.)
BUSIRIS, in a Greek legend preserved in a fragment of Pherecydes, an Egyptian king, son of Poseidon and Lyssianassa. After Egypt has been afflicted for nine years with famine, Phrasius, a seer of Cyprus, arrived in Egypt and announced that the cessation of the famine would not take place until a foreigner was yearly sacrificed to Zeus or Jupiter. Busiris commenced by sacrificing the prophet, and continued the custom by offering a foreigner on the altar of the god. It is here that Busiris enters into the circle of the myths and parerga of Heracles, who had arrived in Egypt from Libya, and was seized and bound ready to be killed and offered at the altar of Zeus in Memphis. Heracles burst the bonds which bound him, and, seizing his club, slew Busiris with his son Amphidamas and his herald Chalbes. [v.04 p.0874] This exploit is often represented on vase paintings from the 6th century B.C. and onwards, the Egyptian monarch and his companions being represented as negroes, and the legend is referred to by Herodotus and later writers. Although some of the Greek writers made Busiris an Egyptian king and a successor of Menes, about the sixtieth of the series, and the builder of Thebes, those better informed by the Egyptians rejected him altogether. Various esoterical explanations were given of the myth, and the name not found as a king was recognized as that of the tomb of Osiris. Busiris is here probably an earlier and less accurate Graecism than Osiris for the name of the Egyptian god Usiri, like Bubastis, Buto, for the goddesses Ubasti and Uto. Busiris, Bubastis, Buto, more strictly represent Pusiri, Pubasti, Puto, cities sacred to these divinities. All three were situated in the Delta, and would be amongst the first known to the Greeks. All shrines of Osiris were called P-usiri, but the principal city of the name was in the centre of the Delta, capital of the 9th (Busirite) nome of Lower Egypt; another one near Memphis (now Abusir) may have helped the formation of the legend in that quarter. The name Busiris in this legend may have been caught up merely at random by the early Greeks, or they may have vaguely connected their legend with the Egyptian myth of the slaying of Osiris (as king of Egypt) by his mighty brother Seth, who was in certain aspects a patron of foreigners. Phrasius, Chalbes and Epaphus (for the grandfather of Busiris) are all explicable as Graecized Egyptian names, but other names in the legend are purely Greek. The sacrifice of foreign prisoners before a god, a regular scene on temple walls, is perhaps only symbolical, at any rate for the later days of Egyptian history, but foreign intruders must often have suffered rude treatment at the hands of the Egyptians, in spite of the generally mild character of the latter.
See H. v. Gartringen, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, for the evidence from the side of classical archaeology.
(F. LL. G.)
BUSK, GEORGE (1807-1886), British surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist, son of Robert Busk, merchant of St Petersburg, was born in that city on the 12th of August 1807. He studied surgery in London, at both St Thomas's and St Bartholomew's hospitals, and was an excellent operator. He was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Greenwich hospital in 1832, and served as naval surgeon first in the Grampus, and afterwards for many years in the Dreadnought; during this period he made important observations on cholera and on scurvy. In 1855 he retired from service and settled in London, where he devoted himself mainly to the study of zoology and palaeontology. As early as 1842 he had assisted in editing the Microscopical Journal; and later he edited the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science (1853-1868) and the Natural History Review (1861-1865). From 1856 to 1859 he was Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons, and he became president of the college in 1871. He was elected F.R.S. in 1850, and was an active member of the Linnean, Geological and other societies, and president of the Anthropological Institute (1873-1874); he received the Royal Society's Royal medal and the Geological Society's Wollaston and Lyell medals. Early in life he became the leading authority on the Polyzoa; and later the vertebrate remains from caverns and river-deposits occupied his attention. He was a patient and cautious investigator, full of knowledge, and unaffectedly simple in character. He died in London on the 10th of August 1886.
BUSKEN-HUET, CONRAD (1826-1886), Dutch literary critic, was born at the Hague on the 28th of December 1826. He was trained for the Church, and, after studying at Geneva and Lausanne, was appointed pastor of the Walloon chapel in Haarlem in 1851. In 1863 conscientious scruples obliged him to resign his charge, and Busken-Huet, after attempting journalism, went out to Java in 1868 as the editor of a newspaper. Before this time, however, he had begun his career as a polemical man of letters, although it was not until 1872 that he was made famous by the first series of his Literary Fantasies, a title under which he gradually gathered in successive volumes all that was most durable in his work as a critic. His one novel, Lidewijde, was written under strong French influences. Returning from the East Indies, Busken-Huet settled for the remainder of his life in Paris, where he died in April 1886. For the last quarter of a century he had been the acknowledged dictator in all questions of Dutch literary taste. Perfectly honest, desirous to be sympathetic, widely read, and devoid of all sectarian obstinacy, Busken-Huet introduced into Holland the light and air of Europe. He made it his business to break down the narrow prejudices and the still narrower self-satisfaction of his countrymen, without endangering his influence by a mere effusion of paradox. He was a brilliant writer, who would have been admired in any language, but whose appearance in a literature so stiff and dead as that of Holland in the 'fifties was dazzling enough to produce a sort of awe and stupefaction. The posthumous correspondence of Busken-Huet has been published, and adds to our impression of the vitality and versatility of his mind.
(E. G.)
BUSKIN (a word of uncertain origin, existing in many European languages, as Fr. brousequin, Ital. borzacchino, Dutch brozeken, and Span, borceguí), a half-boot or high shoe strapped under the ankle, and protecting the shins; especially the thick-soled boot or cothurnus in the ancient Athenian tragedy, used to increase the stature of the actors, as opposed to the soccus, "sock," the light shoe of comedy. The term is thus often used figuratively of a tragic style.
BUSLAEV, FEDOR IVANOVICH (1818-1898), Russian author and philologist, was born on the 13th of April 1818 at Kerensk, where his father was secretary of the district tribunal. He was educated at Penza and Moscow University. At the end of his academical course, 1838, he accompanied the family of Count S.G. Strogonov on a tour through Italy, Germany and France, occupying himself principally with the study of classical antiquities. On his return he was appointed assistant professor of Russian literature at the university of Moscow. A study of Jacob Grimm's great dictionary had already directed the attention of the young professor to the historical development of the Russian language, and the fruit of his studies was the book On the Teaching of the National Language (Moscow, 1844 and 1867), which even now has its value. In 1848 he produced his work On the Influence of Christianity on the Slavonic Language, which, though subsequently superseded by Franz von Miklosich's Christliche Terminologie, is still one of the most striking dissertations on the development of the Slavonic languages. In this work Buslaev proves that long before the age of Cyril and Methodius the Slavonic languages had been subject to Christian influences. In 1855 he published Palaeographical and Philological Materials for the History of the Slavonic Alphabets, and in 1858 Essay towards an Historical Grammar of the Russian Tongue, which, despite some trivial defects, is still a standard work, abounding with rich material for students, carefully collected from an immense quantity of ancient records and monuments. In close connexion with this work in his Historical Chrestomathy of the Church-Slavonic and Old Russian Tongues (Moscow, 1861). Buslaev also interested himself in Russian popular poetry and old Russian art, and the result of his labours is enshrined in Historical Sketches of Russian Popular Literature and Art (St Petersburg, 1861), a very valuable collection of articles and monographs, in which the author shows himself a worthy and faithful disciple of Grimm. His Popular Poetry (St Petersburg, 1887) is a valuable supplement to the Sketches. In 1881 he was appointed professor of Russian literature at Moscow, and three years later published his Annotated Apocalypse with an atlas of 400 plates, illustrative of ancient Russian art.
See S.D. Sheremetev, Memoir of F.I. Buslaev (Moscow, 1899).
(R. N. B.)
BUSS, FRANCES MARY (1827-1894), English schoolmistress, was born in London in 1827, the daughter of the painter-etcher R.W. Buss, one of the original illustrators of Pickwick. She was educated at a school in Camden Town, and continued there as a teacher, but soon joined her mother in keeping a school in Kentish Town. In 1848 she was one of the original attendants at lectures at the new Queen's College for Ladies. In 1830 her [v.04 p.0875] school was moved to Camden Street, and under its new name of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies it rapidly increased in numbers and reputation. In 1864 Miss Buss gave evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission, and in its report her school was singled out for exceptional commendation. Indeed, under her influence, what was then pioneer work of the highest importance had been done to put the education of girls on a proper intellectual footing. Shortly afterwards the Brewers' Company and the Clothworkers' Company provided funds by which the existing North London Collegiate School was rehoused and a Camden School for Girls founded, and both were endowed under a new scheme, Miss Buss continuing to be principal of the former. She and Miss Beale of Cheltenham became famous as the chief leaders in this branch of the reformed educational movement; she played an active part in promoting the success of the Girls' Public Day School Company, encouraging the connexion of the girls' schools with the university standard by examinations, working for the establishment of women's colleges, and improving the training of teachers; and her energetic personality was a potent force among her pupils and colleagues. She died in London on the 24th of December 1894.
BUSSA, a town in the British protectorate of Northern Nigeria, on the west bank of the Niger, in 10° 9' N., 4° 40' E. It is situated just above the rapids which mark the limit of navigability of the Niger by steamer from the sea. Here in 1806 Mungo Park, in his second expedition to trace the course of the Niger, was attacked by the inhabitants, and drowned while endeavouring to escape. During 1894-1898 its possession was disputed by Great Britain and France, the last-named country acknowledging by the convention of June 1898 the British claim, which carried with it the control of the lower Niger. It is now the capital of northern Borgu (see NIGERIA, and BORGU).
BUSSACO (or BUSACO), SERRA DE, a mountain range on the frontiers of the Aveiro, Coimbra, and Vizeu districts of Portugal, formerly included in the province of Beira. The highest point in the range is the Ponta de Bussaco (1795 ft.), which commands a magnificent view over the Serra da Estrella, the Mondego valley and the Atlantic Ocean. Luso (pop. 1661), a village celebrated for its hot mineral springs, is the nearest railway station, on the Guarda-Figueira da Foz line, which skirts the northern slopes of the Serra. Towards the close of the 19th century the Serra de Bussaco became one of the regular halting-places for foreign, and especially for British, tourists, on the overland route between Lisbon and Oporto. Its hotel, built in the Manoellian style--a blend of Moorish and Gothic--encloses the buildings of a secularized Carmelite monastery, founded in 1268. The convent woods, now a royal domain, have long been famous for their cypress, plane, evergreen oak, cork and other forest trees, many of which have stood for centuries and attained an immense size. A bull of Pope Gregory XV. (1623), anathematizing trespassers and forbidding women to approach, is inscribed on a tablet at the main entrance; another bull, of Urban VIII. (1643), threatens with excommunication any person harming the trees. In 1873 a monument was erected, on the southern slopes of the Serra, to commemorate the battle of Bussaco, in which the French, under Marshal Masséna, were defeated by the British and Portuguese, under Lord Wellington, on the 27th of September 1810.
BUSSY, ROGER DE RABUTIN, COMTE DE (1618-1693), commonly known as BUSSY-RABUTIN, French memoir-writer, was born on the 13th of April 1618 at Epiry, near Autun. He represented a family of distinction in Burgundy (see SÉVIGNÉ, MADAME DE), and his father, Léonor de Rabutin, was lieutenant-general of the province of Nivernais. Roger was the third son, but by the death of his elder brothers became the representative of the family. He entered the army when he was only sixteen and fought through several campaigns, succeeding his father in the office of mestre de camp. He tells us himself that his two ambitions were to become "honnête homme" and to distinguish himself in arms, but the luck was against him. In 1641 he was sent to the Bastille by Richelieu for some months as a punishment for neglect of his duties in his pursuit of gallantry. In 1643 he married a cousin, Gabrielle de Toulongeon, and for a short time he left the army. But in 1645 he succeeded to his father's position in the Nivernais, and served under Condé in Catalonia. His wife died in 1646, and he became more notorious than ever by an attempt to abduct Madame de Miramion, a rich widow. This affair was with some difficulty settled by a considerable payment on Bussy's part, and he afterwards married Louise de Rouville. When Condé joined the party of the Fronde, Bussy joined him, but a fancied slight on the part of the prince finally decided him for the royal side. He fought with some distinction both in the civil war and on foreign service, and buying the commission of mestre de camp in 1655, he went to serve under Turenne in Flanders. He served there for several campaigns and distinguished himself at the battle of the Dunes and elsewhere; but he did not get on well with his general, and his quarrelsome disposition, his overweening vanity and his habit of composing libellous chansons made him eventually the enemy of most persons of position both in the army and at court. In the year 1659 he fell into disgrace for having taken part in an orgy at Roissy near Paris during Holy Week, which caused great scandal. Bussy was ordered to retire to his estates, and beguiled his enforced leisure by composing, for the amusement of his mistress, Madame de Montglas, his famous Histoire amoureuse des Gaules. This book, a series of sketches of the intrigues of the chief ladies of the court, witty enough, but still more ill-natured, circulated freely in manuscript, and had numerous spurious sequels. It was said that Bussy had not spared the reputation of Madame, and the king, angry at the report, was not appeased when Bussy sent him a copy of the book to disprove the scandal. He was sent to the Bastille on the 17th of April 1665, where he remained for more than a year, and he was only liberated on condition of retiring to his estates, where he lived in exile for seventeen years. Bussy felt the disgrace keenly, but still bitterer was the enforced close of his military career. In 1682 he was allowed to revisit the court, but the coldness of his reception there made his provincial exile seem preferable, and he returned to Burgundy, where he died on the 9th of April 1693.
The Histoire amoureuse is in its most striking passages adapted from Petronius, and, except in a few portraits, its attractions are chiefly those of the scandalous chronicle. But his Mémoires, published after his death, are extremely lively and characteristic, and have all the charm of a historical romance of the adventurous type. His voluminous correspondence yields in variety and interest to few collections of the kind, except that of Madame de Sévigné, who indeed is represented in it to a great extent, and whose letters first appeared in it. The literary and historical student, therefore, owes Bussy some thanks.
The best edition of the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules is that of Paul Boiteau in the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne (3 vols., Paris, 1856-1859). The Mémoires (2 vols., 1857) and Correspondance (6 vols., 1858-1859) were edited by Ludovic Lalanne. Bussy wrote other things, of which the most important, his Genealogy of the Rabutin Family, remained in MS. till 1867, while his Considérations sur la guerre was first published in Dresden in 1746. He also wrote, for the use of his children, a series of biographies, in which his own life serves a moral purpose.
BUSTARD (corrupted from the Lat. Avis tarda, though the application of the epithet[1] is not easily understood), the largest British land-fowl, and the Otis tarda of Linnaeus, which formerly frequented the champaign parts of Great Britain from East Lothian to Dorsetshire, but of which the native race is now extirpated. Its existence in the northern locality just named rests upon Sir Robert Sibbald's authority (circa 1684), and though Hector Boethius (1526) unmistakably described it as an inhabitant of the Merse, no later writer than the former has adduced any evidence in favour of its Scottish domicile. The last examples of the native race were probably two killed in 1838 near Swaffham, in Norfolk, a district in which for some years previously a few hen-birds of the species, the remnant of a plentiful stock, had maintained their existence, though no cock-bird had latterly been known to bear them company. In Suffolk, where the neighbourhood of Icklingham formed its chief haunt, an [v.04 p.0876] end came to the race in 1832; on the wolds of Yorkshire about 1826, or perhaps a little later; and on those of Lincolnshire about the same time. Of Wiltshire, George Montagu, author of an Ornithological Dictionary, writing in 1813, says that none had been seen in their favourite haunts on Salisbury Plain for the last two or three years. In Dorsetshire there is no evidence of an indigenous example having occurred since that date, nor in Hampshire nor Sussex since the opening of the 19th century. From other English counties, as Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire, it disappeared without note being taken of the event, and the direct cause or causes of its extermination can only be inferred from what, on testimony cited by Henry Stevenson (Birds of Norfolk, ii. pp. 1-42), is known to have led to the same result in Norfolk and Suffolk. In the latter the extension of plantations rendered the country unfitted for a bird whose shy nature could not brook the growth of covert that might shelter a foe, and in the former the introduction of improved agricultural implements, notably the corn-drill and the horse-hoe, led to the discovery and generally the destruction of every nest, for the bird's chosen breeding-place was in wide fields--"brecks," as they are locally called--of winter-corn. Since the extirpation of the native race the bustard is known to Great Britain only by occasional wanderers, straying most likely from the open country of Champagne or Saxony, and occurring in one part or another of the United Kingdom some two or three times every three or four years, and chiefly in midwinter.
An adult male will measure nearly 4 ft. from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, and its wings have an expanse of 8 ft. or more,--its weight varying (possibly through age) from 22 to 32 lb. This last was that of one which was recorded by the younger Naumann, the best biographer of the bird (Vögel Deutschlands, vii. p. 12), who, however, stated in 1834 that he was assured of the former existence of examples which had attained the weight of 35 or 38 lb. The female is considerably smaller. Compared with most other birds frequenting open places, the bustard has disproportionately short legs, yet the bulk of its body renders it a conspicuous and stately object, and when on the wing, to which it readily takes, its flight is powerful and sustained. The bill is of moderate length, but, owing to the exceedingly flat head of the bird, appears longer than it really is. The neck, especially of the male in the breeding-season, is thick, and the tail, in the same sex at that time of year, is generally carried in an upright position, being, however, in the paroxysms of courtship turned forwards, while the head and neck are simultaneously reverted along the back, the wings are lowered, and their shorter feathers erected. In this posture, which has been admirably portrayed by Joseph Wolf (Zool. Sketches, pl. 45), the bird presents a very strange appearance, for the tail, head and neck are almost buried amid the upstanding feathers before named, and the breast is protruded to a remarkable extent. The bustard is of a pale grey on the neck and white beneath, but the back is beautifully barred with russet and black, while in the male a band of deep tawny-brown--in some examples approaching a claret-colour--descends from either shoulder and forms a broad gorget on the breast. The secondaries and greater wing-coverts are white, contrasting vividly, as the bird flies, with the black primaries. Both sexes have the ear-coverts somewhat elongated--whence doubtless is derived the name Otis (Gr. [Greek: ôtis])--and the male is adorned with a tuft of long, white, bristly plumes, springing from each side of the base of the mandible. The food of the bustard consists of almost any of the plants natural to the open country it loves, but in winter it will readily forage on those which are grown by man, and especially coleseed and similar green crops. To this vegetable diet much animal matter is added when occasion offers, and from an earthworm to a field-mouse little that lives and moves seems to come amiss to its appetite.
Though not many birds have had more written about them than the bustard, much is unsettled with regard to its economy. A moot point, which will most likely always remain undecided, is whether the British race was migratory or not, though that such is the habit of the species in most parts of the European continent is beyond dispute. Equally uncertain as yet is the question whether it is polygamous or not--the evidence being perhaps in favour of its having that nature. But one of the most singular properties of the bird is the presence in some of the fully-grown males of a pouch or gular sac, opening under the tongue. This extraordinary feature, first discovered by James Douglas, a Scottish physician, and made known by Eleazar Albin in 1740, though its existence was hinted by Sir Thomas Browne sixty years before, if not by the emperor Frederick II, has been found wanting in examples that, from the exhibition of all the outward marks of virility, were believed to be thoroughly mature; and as to its function and mode of development judgment had best be suspended, with the understanding that the old supposition of its serving as a receptacle whence the bird might supply itself or its companions with water in dry places must be deemed to be wholly untenable. The structure of this pouch--the existence of which in some examples has been well established--is, however, variable; and though there is reason to believe that in one form or another it is more or less common to several exotic species of the family Otididae, it would seem to be as inconstant in its occurrence as in its capacity. As might be expected, this remarkable feature has attracted a good deal of attention (Journ. für Ornith., 1861, p. 153; Ibis, 1862, p. 107; 1865, p. 143; Proc. Zool. Soc., 1865, p. 747; 1868, p. 741; 1869, p. 140; 1874, p. 471), and the later researches of A.H. Garrod show that in an example of the Australian bustard (Otis australis) examined by him there was, instead of a pouch or sac, simply a highly dilated oesophagus--the distension of which, at the bird's will, produced much the same appearance and effect as that of the undoubted sac found at times in the O. tarda.
The distribution of the bustards is confined to the Old World--the bird so called in the fur-countries of North America, and thus giving its name to a lake, river and cape, being the Canada goose (Bernicla canadensis). In the Palaearctic region we have the O. tarda already mentioned, extending from Spain to Mesopotamia at least, and from Scania to Morocco, as well as a smaller species, O. tetrax, which often occurs as a straggler in, but was never an inhabitant of, the British Islands. Two species, known indifferently by the name of houbara (derived from the Arabic), frequent the more southern portions of the region, and one of them, O. macqueeni, though having the more eastern range and reaching India, has several times occurred in north-western Europe, and once even in England. In the east of Siberia the place of O. tarda is taken by the nearly-allied, but apparently distinct, O. dybovskii, which would seem to occur also in northern China. Africa is the chief stronghold of the family, nearly a score of well-marked species being peculiar to that continent, all of which have been by later systematists separated from the genus Otis. India, too, has three peculiar species, the smaller of which are there known as floricans, and, like some of their African and one of their European cousins, are remarkable for the ornamental plumage they assume at the breeding-season. Neither in Madagascar nor in the Malay Archipelago is there any form of this family, but Australia possesses one large species already named. From Xenophon's days (Anab. i. 5) to our own the flesh of bustards has been esteemed as of the highest flavour. The bustard has long been protected by the game-laws in Great Britain, but, as will have been seen, to little purpose. A few attempts have been made to reinstate it as a denizen of this country, but none on any scale that would ensure success. Many of the older authors considered the bustards allied to the ostrich, a most mistaken view, their affinity pointing apparently towards the cranes in one direction and the plovers in another.
(A. N.)
[1] It may be open to doubt whether tarda is here an adjective. Several of the medieval naturalists used it as a substantive.
BUSTO ARSIZIO, a town of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Milan, 21 m. N.W. by rail from the town of Milan. Pop. (1901) 19,673. It contains a fine domed church, S. Maria di Piazza, built in 1517 after the designs of Bramante: the picture over the high altar is one of Gaudenzio Ferrari's best works. The church of S. Giovanni Battista is a good baroque edifice of 1617; by it stands a fine 13th-century campanile. Busto Arsizio is an active manufacturing town, the cotton factories being [v.04 p.0877] especially important. It is a railway junction for Novara and Seregno.
BUTADES, of Sicyon, wrongly called DIBUTADES, the first Greek modeller in clay. The story is that his daughter, smitten with love for a youth at Corinth where they lived, drew upon the wall the outline of his shadow, and that upon this outline her father modelled a face of the youth in clay, and baked the model along with the clay tiles which it was his trade to make. This model was preserved in Corinth till Mummius sacked that town. This incident led Butades to ornament the ends of roof-tiles with human faces, a practice which is attested by numerous existing examples. He is also said to have invented a mixture of clay and ruddle, or to have introduced the use of a special kind of red clay (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 12[43]). The period at which he flourished is unknown, but has been put at about 600 B.C.
BUTCHER, one who slaughters animals, and dresses and prepares the carcass for purposes of food. The word also is applied to one who combines this trade with that of selling the meat, and to one who only sells the meat. The O.Fr. bochier or bouchier, modern boucher, from which "butcher" is derived, meant originally a killer of goats and a seller of goats' flesh, from the O.Fr. boc, a he-goat; cf. Ital. beccaio, from becco, a goat.
BUTE, JOHN STUART, 3RD EARL OF (1713-1792), English prime minister, son of James, 2nd earl, and of Lady Jane Campbell, daughter of the 1st duke of Argyll, was born on the 25th of May 1713; he was educated at Eton and succeeded to the earldom (in the peerage of Scotland; created for his grandfather Sir James Stuart in 1703) on his father's death in 1723. He was elected a representative peer for Scotland in 1737 but not in the following parliaments, and appears not to have spoken in debate. In 1738 he was made a knight of the Thistle, and for several years lived in retirement in Bute, engaged in agricultural and botanical pursuits. From the quiet obscurity for which his talents and character entirely fitted him Bute was forced by a mere accident. He had resided in England since the rebellion of 1745, and in 1747, a downpour of rain having prevented the departure of Frederick, prince of Wales, from the Egham races, Bute was summoned to his tent to make up a whist party; he immediately gained the favour of the prince and princess, became the leading personage at their court, and in 1750 was appointed by Frederick a lord of his bedchamber. After the latter's death in 1751 his influence in the household increased. To his close intimacy with the princess a guilty character was commonly assigned by contemporary opinion, and their relations formed the subject of numerous popular lampoons, but the scandal was never founded on anything but conjecture and the malice of faction. With the young prince, the future king, Bute's intimacy was equally marked; he became his constant companion and confidant, and used his influence to inspire him with animosity against the Whigs and with the high notions of the sovereign's powers and duties found in Bolingbroke's Patriot King and Blackstone's Commentaries. In 1775 he took part in the negotiations between Leicester House and Pitt, directed against the duke of Newcastle, and in 1757 in the conferences between the two ministers which led to their taking office together. In 1756, by the special desire of the young prince, he was appointed groom of the stole at Leicester House, in spite of the king's pronounced aversion to him.
On the accession of George III. in 1760, Bute became at once a person of power and importance. He was appointed a privy councillor, groom of the stole and first gentleman of the bedchamber, and though merely an irresponsible confidant, without a seat in parliament or in the cabinet, he was in reality prime minister, and the only person trusted with the king's wishes and confidence. George III. and Bute immediately proceeded to accomplish their long-projected plans, the conclusion of the peace with France, the break-up of the Whig monopoly of power, and the supremacy of the monarchy over parliament and parties. Their policy was carried out with consummate skill and caution. Great care was shown not to alienate the Whig leaders in a body, which would have raised up under Pitt's leadership a formidable party of resistance, but advantage was taken of disagreements between the ministers concerning the war, of personal jealousies, and of the strong reluctance of the old statesmen who had served the crown for generations to identify themselves with active opposition to the king's wishes. They were all discarded singly, and isolated, after violent disagreements, from the rest of the ministers. On the 25th of March 1761 Bute succeeded Lord Holderness as secretary of state for the northern department, and Pitt resigned in October on the refusal of the government to declare war against Spain.
On the 3rd of November Bute appeared in his new capacity as prime minister in the House of Lords, where he had not been seen for twenty years. Though he had succeeded in disarming all organized opposition in parliament, the hostility displayed against him in the nation, arising from his Scottish nationality, his character as favourite, his peace policy and the resignation of the popular hero Pitt, was overwhelming. He was the object of numerous attacks and lampoons. He dared not show himself in the streets without the protection of prize-fighters, while the jack-boot (a pun upon his name) and the petticoat, by which the princess was represented, were continually being burnt by the mob or hanged upon the gallows. On the 9th of November, while proceeding to the Guildhall, he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the populace, who smashed his coach, and he was treated with studied coldness at the banquet. In January 1762 Bute was compelled to declare war against Spain, though now without the advantages which the earlier decision urged by Pitt could have secured, and he supported the war, but with no zeal and no definite aim beyond the obtaining of a peace at any price and as soon as possible. In May he succeeded the duke of Newcastle as first lord of the treasury, and he was created K.G. after resigning the order of the Thistle. In his blind eagerness for peace he conducted on his own responsibility secret negotiations for peace with France through Viri, the Sardinian minister, and the preliminary treaty was signed on the 3rd of November at Fontainebleau. The king of Prussia had some reason to complain of the sudden desertion of his ally, but there is no evidence whatever to substantiate his accusation that Bute had endeavoured to divert the tsar later from his alliance with Prussia, or that he had treacherously in his negotiations with Vienna held out to that court hopes of territorial compensation in Silesia as the price of the abandonment of France; while the charge brought against Bute in 1765 of having taken bribes to conclude the peace, subsequently after investigation pronounced frivolous by parliament, may safely be ignored. A parliamentary majority was now secured for the minister's policy by bribery and threats, and with the aid of Henry Fox, who deserted his party to become leader of the Commons. The definitive peace of Paris was signed on the 10th of February 1763, and a wholesale proscription of the Whigs was begun, the most insignificant adherents of the fallen party, including widows, menial servants and schoolboys, incurring the minister's mean vengeance. Later, Bute roused further hostility by his cider tax, an ill-advised measure producing only £75,000 a year, imposing special burdens upon the farmers and landed interest in the cider counties, and extremely unpopular because extending the detested system of taxation by excise, regarded as an infringement of the popular liberties. At length, unable to contend any longer against the general and inveterate animosity displayed against him, fearing for the consequences to the monarchy, alarmed at the virulent attacks of the North Briton, and suffering from ill-health, Bute resigned office on the 8th of April. "Fifty pounds a year," he declared, "and bread and water were luxury compared with what I suffer." He had, however, before retiring achieved the objects for which he had been entrusted with power.
He still for a short time retained influence with the king, and intended to employ George Grenville (whom he recommended as his successor) as his agent; but the latter insisted on possessing the king's whole confidence, and on the failure of Bute in August 1763 to procure his dismissal and to substitute a ministry led by Pitt and the duke of Bedford, Grenville demanded and obtained Bute's withdrawal from the court. He resigned accordingly the office of privy purse, and took leave of George III. [v.04 p.0878] on the 28th of September. He still corresponded with the king, and returned again to London next year, but in May 1765, after the duke of Cumberland's failure to form an administration, Grenville exacted the promise from the king, which appears to have been kept faithfully, that Bute should have no share and should give no advice whatever in public business, and obtained the dismissal of Bute's brother from his post of lord privy seal in Scotland. Bute continued to visit the princess of Wales, but on the king's arrival always retired by a back staircase.
The remainder of Bute's life has little public interest. He spoke against the government on the American question in February 1766, and in March against the repeal of the Stamp Act. In 1768 and 1774 he was again elected a representative peer for Scotland, but took no further part in politics, and in 1778 refused to have anything to do with the abortive attempt to effect an alliance between himself and Chatham. He travelled in Italy, complained of the malice of his opponents and of the ingratitude of the king, and determined "to retire from the world before it retires from me." He died on the 10th of March 1792 and was buried at Rothesay in Bute.
Though one of the worst of ministers, Bute was by no means the worst of men or the despicable and detestable person represented by the popular imagination. His abilities were inconsiderable, his character weak, and he was qualified neither for the ordinary administration, of public business nor for the higher sphere of statesmanship, and was entirely destitute of that experience which sometimes fills the place of natural aptitude. His short administration was one of the most disgraceful and incompetent in English history, originating in an accident, supported only by the will of the sovereign, by gross corruption and intimidation, the precursor of the disintegration of political life and of a whole series of national disasters. Yet Bute had good principles and intentions, was inspired by feelings of sincere affection and loyalty for his sovereign, and his character remains untarnished by the grosser accusations raised by faction. In the circle of his family and intimate friends, away from the great world in which he made so poor a figure, he was greatly esteemed. Samuel Johnson, Lord Mansfield, Lady Hervey, Bishop Warburton join in his praise. For the former, a strong opponent of his administration, he procured a pension of £300 a year. He was exceptionally well read, with a refined taste for books and art, and purchased the famous Thomason Tracts now in the British Museum. He was learned in the science of botany, and formed a magnificent collection and a botanic garden at Luton Hoo, where Robert Adam built for him a splendid residence. He engraved privately about 1785 at enormous expense Botanical Tables containing the Different Familys of British Plants, while The Tabular Distribution of British Plants (1787) is also attributed to him. Bute filled the offices of ranger of Richmond Forest, governor of the Charterhouse, chancellor of Marischal College, Aberdeen (1761), trustee of the British Museum (1765), president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1780) and commissioner of Chelsea hospital.
By his marriage with Mary, daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu of Wortley, Yorkshire, who in 1761 was created Baroness Mount Stuart of Wortley, and through whom he became possessed of the enormous Wortley property, he had, besides six daughters, five sons, the eldest of whom, John, Lord Cardiff (1744-1814), succeeded him as 4th earl and was created a marquess in 1796. John, Lord Mount Stuart (1767-1794), the son and heir of the 1st marquess, died before his father, and consequently in 1814 the Bute titles and estates came to his son John (1793-1848) as 2nd marquess. The latter was succeeded by his only son John Patrick (1847-1900), whose son John (b. 1881) inherited the title in 1900.
BUTE, the most important, though not the largest, of the islands constituting the county of the same name, in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland, about 18 m. S.W. of Greenock and 40 m., by water, from Glasgow. It is bounded on the N. and W. by the lovely Kyles of Bute, the narrow winding strait which separates it from Argyllshire, on the E. by the Firth of Clyde, and on the S. and S.W. by the Sound of Bute, about 6 m. wide, which divides it from Arran. Its area is about 49 sq. m., or 31,161 acres. It lies in a N.W. to S.E. direction, and its greatest length from Buttock Point on the Kyles to Garroch Head on the Firth of Clyde is 15½ m. Owing to indentations its width varies from 1-1/3 m. to 4½ m. There are piers at Kilchattan, Craigmore, Port Bannatyne and Rothesay, but Rothesay is practically the harbour for the whole island. Here there is regular communication by railway steamers from Craigendoran, Prince's Pier (Greenock), Gourock and Wemyss Bay, and by frequent vessels from the Broomielaw Bridge in Glasgow and other points on the Clyde. Pop. (1891) 11,735; (1901) 12,162.
The principal hills are in the north, where the chief are Kames Hill (911 ft.) and Kilbride Hill (836 ft.). The streams are mostly burns, and there are six lochs. Loch Fad, about 1 m. S. of Rothesay, 2½ m. long by 1/3 m. wide, was the source of the power used in the Rothesay cotton-spinning mill, which was the first establishment of the kind erected in Scotland. In 1827 on its western shore Edmund Kean built a cottage afterwards occupied by Sheridan Knowles. It now belongs to the marquess of Bute. From Loch Ascog, fully 1 m. long, Rothesay derives its water supply. The other lakes are Loch Quien, Loch Greenan, Dhu Loch and Loch Bull. Glen More in the north and Glen Callum in the south are the only glens of any size. The climate is mild and healthful, fuchsias and other plants flowering even in winter, and neither snow nor frost being of long continuance, and less rain falling than in many parts of the western coast. Some two-thirds of the area, mostly in the centre and south, are arable, yielding excellent crops of potatoes for the Glasgow market, oats and turnips; the rest consists of hill pastures and plantations. The fisheries are of considerable value. There is no lack of sandstone, slate and whinstone. Some coal exists, but it is of inferior quality and doubtful quantity. At Kilchattan a superior clay for bricks and tiles is found, and grey granite susceptible of high polish.
The island is divided geologically into two areas by a fault running from Rothesay Bay in a south-south-west direction by Loch Fad to Scalpsie Bay, which, throughout its course, coincides with a well-marked depression. The tract lying to the north-west of this dislocation is composed of the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Highlands. The Dunoon phyllites form a narrow belt about a mile and a half broad crossing the island between Kames Bay and Etterick Bay, while the area to the north is occupied by grits and schists which may be the western prolongations of the Beinn Bheula group. Near Rothesay and along the hill slopes west of Loch Fad there are parallel strips of grits and phyllites. That part of the island lying to the east of this dislocation consists chiefly of Upper Old Red Sandstone strata, dipping generally in a westerly or south-westerly direction. At the extreme south end, between Kilchattan and Garroch Head, these conglomerates and sandstones are overlaid by a thick cornstone or dolomitic limestone marking the upper limit of the formation, which is surmounted by the cement-stones and contemporaneous lavas of Lower Carboniferous age. The bedded volcanic rocks which form a series of ridges trending north-west comprise porphyritic basalts, andesite, and, near Port Luchdach, brownish trachyte. Near the base of the volcanic series intrusive igneous rocks of Carboniferous age appear in the form of sills and bosses, as, for instance, the oval mass of olivine-basalt on Suidhe Hill. Remnants of raised beaches are conspicuous in Bute. One of the well-known localities for arctic shelly clays occurs at Kilchattan brick-works, where the dark red clay rests on tough boulder-clay and may be regarded as of late glacial age.
As to the origin of the name of Bute, there is some doubt. It has been held to come from both (Irish for "a cell"), in allusion to the cell which St Brendan erected in the island in the 6th century; others contend that it is derived from the British words ey budh (Gaelic, ey bhiod), "the island of corn" (i.e. food), in reference to its fertility, notable in contrast with the barrenness of the Western Isles and Highlands. Bute was probably first colonized by the vanguard of Scots who came over from Ireland, and at intervals the Norsemen also secured a footing for longer or shorter periods. In those days the Butemen were also called Brandanes, after the Saint. Attesting the antiquity of the island, "Druidical" monuments, barrows, cairns and cists are numerous, as well as the remains of ancient chapels. In virtue of a charter granted by James IV. in 1506, the numerous small proprietors took the title of "baron," which became hereditary in their families. Now the title is practically extinct, the lands conferring it having with very few exceptions passed [v.04 p.0879] by purchase into the possession of the marquess of Bute, the proprietor of nearly the whole island. His seat, Mount Stuart, about 4½ m. from Rothesay by the shore road, is finely situated on the eastern coast. Port Bannatyne (pop. 1165), 2 m. north by west of Rothesay, is a flourishing watering-place, named after Lord Bannatyne (1743-1833), a judge of the court of session, one of the founders of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1784. Near to it is Kames Castle, where John Sterling, famous for Carlyle's biography, was born in 1806. Kilchattan, in the south-east of the island, is a favourite summer resort. Another object of interest is St Blane's Chapel, picturesquely situated about ½ m. from Dunagoil Bay. Off the western shore of Bute, ¾ m. from St Ninian's Point, lies the island of Inchmarnock, 2 m. in length and about ¾ m. in width.
See J. Wilson, Account of Rothesay and Bute (Rothesay, 1848); and J.K. Hewison, History of Bute (1894-1895).
BUTE, or BUTESHIRE, an insular county in the S.W. of Scotland, consisting of the islands of Bute, from which the county takes its name, Inchmarnock, Great Cumbrae, Little Cumbrae, Arran, Holy Island and Pladda, all lying in the Firth of Clyde, between Ayrshire on the E. and Argyllshire on the W. and N. The area of the county is 140,307 acres, or rather more than 219 sq. m. Pop. (1891) 18,404; (1901) 18,787 (or 86 to the sq. m.). In 1901 the number of persons who spoke Gaelic alone was 20, of those speaking Gaelic and English 2764. Before the Reform Bill of 1832, Buteshire, alternately with Caithness-shire, sent one member to parliament--Rothesay at the same time sharing a representative with Ayr, Campbeltown, Inveraray and Irvine. Rothesay was then merged in the county, which since then has had a member to itself. Buteshire and Renfrewshire form one sheriffdom, with a sheriff-substitute resident in Rothesay who also sits periodically at Brodick and Millport. The circuit courts are held at Inveraray. The county is under school-board jurisdiction, and there is a secondary school at Rothesay. The county council subsidizes technical education in agriculture at Glasgow and Kilmarnock. The staple crops are oats and potatoes, and cattle, sheep and horses are reared. Seed-growing is an extensive industry, and the fisheries are considerable. The Rothesay fishery district includes all the creeks in Buteshire and a few in Argyll and Dumbarton shires, the Cumbraes being grouped with the Greenock district. The herring fishery begins in June, and white fishing is followed at one or other point all the year round. During the season many of the fishermen are employed on the Clyde yachts, Rothesay being a prominent yachting centre. The exports comprise agricultural produce and fish, trade being actively carried on between the county ports of Rothesay, Millport, Brodick and Lamlash and the mainland ports of Glasgow, Greenock, Gourock, Ardrossan and Wemyss Bay, with all of which there is regular steamer communication throughout the year.
BUTHROTUM. (1) An ancient seaport of Illyria, corresponding with the modern Butrinto (q.v.). (2) A town in Attica, mentioned by Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. iv. 37).
BUTLER, the name of a family famous in the history of Ireland. The great house of the Butlers, alone among the families of the conquerors, rivalled the Geraldines, their neighbours, kinsfolk and mortal foes. Theobald Walter, their ancestor, was not among the first of the invaders. He was the grandson of one Hervey Walter who, in the time of Henry I., held Witheton or Weeton in Amounderness, a small fee of the honour of Lancaster, the manor of Newton in Suffolk, and certain lands in Norfolk. In the great inquest of Lancaster lands that followed a writ of 1212, this Hervey, named as the father of Hervey Walter, is said to have given lands in his fee of Weeton to Orm, son of Magnus, with his daughter Alice in marriage. Hervey Walter, son of this Hervey, advanced his family by matching with Maude, daughter of Theobald de Valognes, lord of Parham, whose sister Bertha was wife of Ranulf de Glanville, the great justiciar, "the eye of the king." When Ranulf had founded the Austin Canons priory of Butley, Hervey Walter, his wife's brother-in-law, gave to the house lands in Wingfield for the soul's health of himself and his wife Maude, of Ranulf de Glanville and Bertha his wife, the charter, still preserved in the Harleian collection, being witnessed by Hervey's younger sons, Hubert Walter, Roger and Hamon. Another son, Bartholomew, witnessed a charter of his brother Hubert, 1190-1193. That these nephews of the justiciar profited early by their kinship is seen in Hubert Walter's foundation charter of the abbey of West Dereham, wherein he speaks of "dominus Ranulphus de Glanvilla et domina Bertha uxor eius, qui nos nutrierunt." Hubert, indeed, becoming one of his uncle's clerks, was so much in his confidence that Gervase of Canterbury speaks of the two as ruling the kingdom together. King Richard, whom he accompanied to the Holy Land, made him bishop of Salisbury and (1193) archbishop of Canterbury. "Wary of counsel, subtle of wit," he was the champion of Canterbury and of England, and the news of his death drew the cry from King John that "now, for the first time, am I king in truth."
Between these two great statesmen Theobald Walter, the eldest brother of the archbishop, rose and flourished. Theobald is found in the Liber Niger (c. 1166) as holding Amounderness by the service of one knight. In 1185 he went over sea to Waterford with John the king's son, the freight of the harness sent after him being charged in the Pipe Roll. Clad in that harness he led the men of Cork when Dermot MacCarthy, prince of Desmond, was put to the sword, John rewarding his services with lands in Limerick and with the important fief of Arklow in the vale of Avoca, where he made his Irish seat and founded an abbey. Returning to England he accompanied his uncle Randulf to France, both witnessing a charter delivered by the king at Chinon when near to death. Soon afterwards, Theobald Walter was given by John that hereditary office of butler to the lord of Ireland, which makes a surname for his descendants, styling himself pincerna when he attests John's charter to Dublin on the 15th of May 1192. J. Horace Round has pointed out that he also took a fresh seal, the inscription of which calls him Theobald Walter, Butler of Ireland, and henceforward he is sometimes surnamed Butler (le Botiller). When John went abroad in 1192, Theobald was given the charge of Lancaster castle, but in 1194 he was forced to surrender to his brother Hubert, who summoned it in King Richard's name. Making his peace through Hubert's influence, he was sheriff of Lancashire for King Richard, who regranted to him all Amounderness. His fortunes turned with the king's death. The new sovereign, treating his surrender of the castle as treachery, took the shrievalty from him, disseised him of Amounderness and sold his cantreds of Limerick land to William de Braose. But the great archbishop soon found means to bring his brother back to favour, and on the 2nd of January 1201-2 Amounderness, by writ of the king, is to be restored to Theobald Walter, dilecto et fideli nostra, Within a year or two Theobald left England to end his days upon his Arklow fief, busying himself with religious foundations at Wotheney in Limerick, at Arklow and at Nenagh. At Wotheney he is said to have been buried shortly before the 12th of February 1205-6, when an entry in the Close Roll is concerned with his widow. This widow, Maude, daughter of Robert le Vavasor of Denton, was given up to her father, who, buying the right of marrying her at a price of 1200 marks and two palfreys, gave her to Fulk fitz-Warine. Theobald, the son and heir of Theobald and Maude, a child of six years old, was likewise taken into the keeping of his grandfather Robert, but letters from the king, dated the 2nd of March 1205-6, told Robert, "as he loved his body," to surrender the heir at once to Gilbert fitz-Reinfrid, the baron of Kendal.
Adding to its possessions by marriages the house advanced itself among the nobility of Ireland. On the 1st of September 1315, its chief, Edmund Walter alias Edmund the Butler, for services against the Scottish raiders and Ulster rebels, had a charter of the castle and manors of Carrick, Macgriffyn and Roscrea to hold to him and his heirs sub nomine et honore comitis de Karryk. This charter, however, while apparently creating an earldom, failed, as Mr Round has explained, to make his issue earls of Carrick. But James, the son and heir of Edmund, having married in 1327 Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of Humfrey, [v.04 p.0880] earl of Hereford and Essex, high constable of England, by a daughter of Edward I., was created an Irish earl on the 2nd of November 1328, with the title of Ormonde.
From the early years of the 14th century the Ormonde earls, generation by generation, were called to the chief government of Ireland as lords-keeper, lords-lieutenant, deputies or lords-justices, and unlike their hereditary enemies the Geraldines they kept a tradition of loyalty to the English crown and to English custom. Their history is full of warring with the native Irish, and as the sun stood still upon Gibeon, even so, we are told, it rested over the red bog of Athy while James the White Earl was staying the wild O'Mores. More than one of the earls of Ormonde had the name of a scholar, while of the 6th earl, master of every European tongue and ambassador to many courts, Edward IV. is said to have declared that were good breeding and liberal qualities lost to the world they might be found again in John, earl of Ormonde. The earls were often absent from Ireland on errands of war or peace. James, the 5th earl, had the English earldom of Wiltshire given him in 1449 for his Lancastrian zeal. He fought at St Albans in 1455, casting his harness into a ditch as he fled the field, and he led a wing at Wakefield. His stall plate as a knight of the Garter is still in St George's chapel. Defeated with the earl of Pembroke at Mortimer's Cross and taken prisoner after Towton, his fate is uncertain, but rumour said that he was beheaded at Newcastle, and a letter addressed to John Paston about May 1461 sends tidings that "the Erle of Wylchir is hed is sette on London Brigge."
To his time belongs a document illustrating a curious tradition of the Butlers. His petition to parliament when he was conveying Buckinghamshire lands to the hospital of St Thomas of Acres in London, recites that he does so "in worship of that glorious martyr St Thomas, sometime archbishop of Canterbury, of whose blood the said earl of Wiltshire, his father and many of his ancestors are lineally descended." But the pedigrees in which genealogists have sought to make this descent definite will not bear investigation. The Wiltshire earldom died with him and the Irish earldom was for a time forfeited, his two brothers, John and Thomas, sharing his attainder. John was restored in blood by Edward IV.; and Thomas, the 7th earl, summoned to the English parliament in 1495 as Lord Rochford, a title taken from a Bohun manor in Essex, saw the statute of attainder annulled by Henry VII.'s first parliament. He died without male issue in 1515. Of his two daughters and co-heirs Anne was married to Sir James St. Leger, and Margaret to Sir William Boleyn of Blickling, by whom she was mother of Sir James and Sir Thomas Boleyn. The latter, the father of Anne Boleyn, was created earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde in 1529.
In Ireland the heir male of the Ormonde earls, Sir Piers Butler--"red Piers"--assumed the earldom of Ormonde in 1515 and seized upon the Irish estates. Being a good ally against the rebel Irish, the government temporized with his claim. He was an Irishman born, allied to the wild Irish chieftains by his mother, a daughter of the MacMorrogh Kavanagh; the earldom had been long in the male line; all Irish sentiment was against the feudal custom which would take it out of the family, and the two co-heirs were widows of English knights. In 1522, styled "Sir Piers Butler pretending himself to be earl of Ormonde," he was made chief governor of Ireland as lord deputy, and on the 23rd of February 1527/8, following an agreement with the co-heirs of the 7th earl, whereby the earldom of Ormonde was declared to be at the king's disposal, he was created earl of Ossory. But the Irish estates, declared forfeit to the crown in 1536 under the Act of Absentees, were granted to him as "earl of Ossory and Ormonde." Although the Boleyn earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire was still alive, there can be no doubt that Piers Butler had a patent of the Ormonde earldom about the 22nd of February 1537/8, from which date his successors must reckon their peerage. His son and heir, James the Lame, who had been created Viscount Thurles on the 2nd of January 1535/6, obtained an act of parliament in 1543/4 which, confirming the grant to his father of the earldom, gave him the old "pre-eminence" of the ancient earldom of 1328.
Earl James was poisoned at a supper in Ely House in 1546, and Thomas the Black Earl, his son and heir, was brought up at the English court, professing the reformed religion. His sympathies were with the Irish, although he stood staunchly for law and order, and for the great part of his life he was wrestling with rebellion. His lands having been harried by hit hereditary enemies the Desmond Geraldines, Elizabeth gave him his revenge by appointing him in 1580 military governor of Munster, with a commission to "banish and vanquish these cankered Desmonds," then in open rebellion. In three months, by his own account, he had put to the sword 46 captains, 800 notorious traitors and 4000 others, and, after four years' fighting, Gerald, earl of Desmond, a price on his head, was taken and killed. Dying in 1614 without lawful issue, Thomas was succeeded by his nephew Walter of Kilcash, who had fought beside him against the Burkes and O'Mores. But Sir Robert Preston, afterwards created earl of Desmond, claimed a great part of the Ormonde lands in right of his wife, the Black Earl's daughter and heir. In spite of the loyal services of Earl Walter, King James supported the claimant, and the earl, refusing to submit to a royal award, was thrown into gaol, where he lay for eight years in great poverty, his rents being cut off. Although liberated in 1625 he was not acknowledged heir to his uncle's estates until 1630. His son, Viscount Thurles, being drowned on a passage to England, a grandson succeeded him.
This grandson, James Butler, is perhaps the most famous of the long line of Ormondes. By his marriage with his cousin Elizabeth Preston, the Ormonde titles were once more united with all the Ormonde estates. A loyal soldier and statesman, he commanded for the king in Ireland, where he was between the two fires of Catholic rebels and Protestant parliamentarians. In Ireland he stayed long enough to proclaim Charles II. in 1649, but defeated at Rathmines, his garrisons broken by Cromwell, he quitted the country at the end of 1650. At the Restoration he was appointed lord-lieutenant, his estates having been restored to him with the addition of the county palatine of Tipperary, taken by James I. from his grandfather. In 1632 he had been created a marquess. The English earldom of Brecknock was added in 1660 and an Irish dukedom of Ormonde in the following year. In 1682 he had a patent for an English dukedom with the same title. Buckingham's intrigues deprived him for seven years of his lord-lieutenancy, and a desperate attempt was made upon his life in 1670, when a company of ruffians dragged him from his coach in St James's Street and sought to hurry him to the gallows at Tyburn. His son's threat that, if harm befell his father he would pistol Buckingham, even if he were behind the king's chair, may have saved him from assassination. At the accession of James II. he was once more taken from active employment, and "Barzillai, crowned with honour and with years" died at his Dorsetshire house in 1688. He had seen his great-great-uncle the Black Earl, who was born in 1532, and a great-grandson was playing beside him a few hours before his death. His brave son Ossory, "the eldest hope with every grace adorned," died eight years before him, and he was succeeded by a grandson James, the second duke of Ormonde, who, a recognized leader of the London Jacobites, was attainted in 1715, his honours and estates being forfeited. The duke lived thirty years in exile, chiefly at Avignon, and died in the rebellion year of 1745 without surviving issue. His younger brother Charles, whom King William had created Lord Butler of Weston in the English peerage and earl of Arran in the Irish, was allowed to purchase the Ormonde estates. On the earl's death without issue in 1758 the estates were enjoyed by a sister, passing in 1760, by settlement of the earl of Arran, to John Butler of Kilcash, descendant of a younger brother of the first duke. John dying six years later was succeeded by Walter Butler, a first cousin, whose son John, heir-male of the line of Ormonde, became earl of Ormonde and Ossory and Viscount Thurles in 1791, the Irish parliament reversing the attainder of 1715. Walter, son and heir of the restored earl, was given an English peerage as Lord Butler of Llanthony (1801) and an Irish marquessate of Ormonde (1816), titles that died with him. This Lord Ormonde in 1810 [v.04 p.0881] sold to the crown for the great sum of £216,000 his ancestral right to the prisage of wines in Ireland. For his brother and heir, created Lord Ormonde of Llahthony at the coronation of George IV., the Irish marquessate was revived in 1825 and descended in the direct line.
The earls of Carrick (Ireland 1748), Viscounts Ikerrin (Ireland 1629), claim descent from a brother of the first Ormonde earl, while the viscounts Mountgarret (Ireland 1550) spring from a younger son of Piers, the Red Earl of Ossory. The barony of Caher (Ireland 1543), created for Sir Thomas Butler of Chaier or Caher-down-Eske, a descendant in an illegitimate branch of the Butlers, fell into abeyance among heirs general on the death of the 2nd baron in 1560. It was again created, after the surrender of their rights by the heirs general, in 1583 for Sir Theobald Butler (d. 1596), and became extinct in 1858 on the death of Richard Butler, 13th baron and 2nd viscount Caher, and second earl of Glengall. Buttler von Clonebough, genannt Haimhausen, count of the Holy Roman Empire, descends from the 3rd earl of Ormonde, the imperial title having been revived in 1681 in memory of the services of a kinsman, Walter, Count Butler (d. 1634), the dragoon officer who carried out the murder of Wallenstein.
See Lancashire Inquests, 1205-1307; Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, xlviii.; Chronicles of Matthew Paris, Roger of Hoveden, Giraldus Cambrensis, &c.; Dictionary of National Biography; G.E.C.'s Complete Peerage; Carte's Ormonde papers; Paston Letters; Rolls of parliament; fine rolls, liberate rolls, pipe rolls, &c.
(O. BA.)
BUTLER, ALBAN (1710-1773), English Roman Catholic priest and hagiologist, was born in Northampton on the 24th of October 1710. He was educated at the English college, Douai, where on his ordination to the priesthood he held successively the chairs of philosophy and divinity. He laboured for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, held several positions as tutor to young Roman Catholic noblemen, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at St Omer, where he remained till his death on the 15th of May 1773. Butler's great work, The Lives of the Saints, the result of thirty years' study (4 vols., London, 1756-1759), has passed through many editions and translations (best edition, including valuable notes, Dublin, 12 vols. 1779-1780). It is a popular and compendious reproduction of the Acta Sanctorum, exhibiting great industry and research, and is in all respects the best work of its kind in English literature.
See An Account of the Life of A.B. by C.B., i.e. by his nephew Charles Butler (London, 1799); and Joseph Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, vol. i.
BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1818-1893), American lawyer, soldier and politician, was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on the 5th of November 1818. He graduated at Waterville (now Colby) College in 1838, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts, and early attained distinction as a lawyer, particularly in criminal cases. Entering politics as a Democrat, he first attracted general attention by his violent campaign in Lowell in advocacy of the passage of a law establishing a ten-hour day for labourers; he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in 1859, and was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions from 1848 to 1860. In that of 1860 at Charleston he advocated the nomination of Jefferson Davis and opposed Stephen A. Douglas, and in the ensuing campaign he supported Breckinridge.
After the Baltimore riot at the opening of the Civil War, Butler, as a brigadier-general in the state militia, was sent by Governor John A. Andrew, with a force of Massachusetts troops, to reopen communication between the Union states and the Federal capital. By his energetic and careful work Butler achieved his purpose without fighting, and he was soon afterwards made major-general, U.S.V. Whilst in command at Fortress Monroe, he declined to return to their owners fugitive slaves who had come within his lines, on the ground that, as labourers for fortifications, &c., they were contraband of war, thus originating the phrase "contraband" as applied to the negroes. In the conduct of tactical operations Butler was almost uniformly unsuccessful, and his first action at Big Bethel, Va., was a humiliating defeat for the National arms. Later in 1861 he commanded an expeditionary force, which, in conjunction with the navy, took Forts Hatteras and Clark, N.C. In 1862 he commanded the force which occupied New Orleans. In the administration of that city he showed great firmness and severity. New Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler régime. Many of his acts, however, gave great offence, particularly the seizure of $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul, and an order, issued after some provocation, on May 15th, that if any woman should "insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal in December 1862. On the 1st of June he had executed one W.B. Mumford, who had torn down a United States flag placed by Farragut on the United States mint; and for this execution he was denounced (Dec. 1862) by President Davis as "a felon deserving capital punishment," who if captured should be reserved for execution. In the campaign of 1864 he was placed at the head of the Army of the James, which he commanded creditably in several battles. But his mismanagement of the expedition against Fort Fisher, N.C., led to his recall by General Grant in December.
He was a Republican representative in Congress from 1867 to 1879, except in 1875-1877. In Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in Reconstruction legislation, and was one of the managers selected by the House to conduct the impeachment, before the Senate, of President Johnson, opening the case and taking the most prominent part in it on his side; he exercised a marked influence over President Grant and was regarded as his spokesman in the House, and he was one of the foremost advocates of the payment in "greenbacks" of the government bonds. In 1871 he was a defeated candidate for governor of Massachusetts, and also in 1879 when he ran on the Democratic and Greenback tickets, but in 1882 he was elected by the Democrats who got no other state offices. In 1883 he was defeated on renomination. As presidential nominee of the Greenback and Anti-Monopolist parties, he polled 175,370 votes in 1884, when he had bitterly opposed the nomination by the Democratic party of Grover Cleveland, to defeat whom he tried to "throw" his own votes in Massachusetts and New York to the Republican candidate. His professional income as a lawyer was estimated at $100,000 per annum shortly before his death at Washington, D.C., on the 11th of January 1893. He was an able but erratic administrator and soldier, and a brilliant lawyer. As a politician he excited bitter opposition, and was charged, apparently with justice, with corruption and venality in conniving at and sharing the profits of illicit trade with the Confederates carried on by his brother at New Orleans and by his brother-in-law in the department of Virginia and North Carolina, while General Butler was in command.
See James Parton, Butler in New Orleans (New York, 1863), which, however, deals inadequately with the charges brought against Butler; and The Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General B.F. Butler: Butler's Book (New York, 1893), to be used with caution as regards facts.
BUTLER, CHARLES (1750-1832), British lawyer and miscellaneous writer, was born in London on the 14th of August 1750. He was educated at Douai, and in 1775 entered at Lincoln's Inn. He had considerable practice as a conveyancer, and after the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was called to the bar. In 1832 he took silk, and was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. He died on the 2nd of June in the same year. His literary activity was enormous, and the number of his published works comprises about fifty volumes. The most important of them are the Reminiscences (1821-1827); Horae Biblicae (1797), which has passed through several editions; Horae Juridicae Subsecivae (1804); Book of the Roman Catholic Church (1825), which was directed against Southey and excited [v.04 p.0882] some controversy; lives of Erasmus, Grotius, Bossuet, Fénelon. He also edited and completed the Lives of the Saints of his uncle, Alban Butler, Fearne's Essay on Contingent Remainders and Hargrave's edition of Coke upon Littleton's Laws of England (1775).
A complete list of Butler's works is contained in Joseph Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, vol. i. pp. 357-364.
BUTLER, GEORGE (1774-1853), English schoolmaster and divine, was born in London and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he afterwards became fellow, in the capacity first of mathematical lecturer, and afterwards of classical tutor. He was elected a public examiner of the university in 1804, and in the following year was one of the select preachers. As head master of Harrow (1805-1829) his all-round knowledge, his tact and his skill as an athlete rendered his administration successful and popular. On his retirement he settled down at Gayton, Northamptonshire, a living which had been presented to him by his college in 1814. In 1836 he became chancellor of the diocese of Peterborough, and in 1842 was appointed dean of Peterborough. His few publications include some notes of Harrow, entitled Harrow, a Selection of Lists of the School between 1770 and 1828 (Peterborough, 1849).
His eldest son, GEORGE BUTLER (1819-1890), was principal of Liverpool College (1866-1882) and canon of Winchester. In 1852 he married Josephine Elizabeth, daughter of John Grey of Dilston. She died on the 30th of December 1906 (see her Autobiography, 1909). Mrs Josephine Butler, as she was commonly called afterwards, was a woman of intense moral and spiritual force, who devoted herself to rescue work, and specially to resisting the "state regulation of vice" whether by the C.D. Acts in India or by any system analogous to that of the continent in England.
His youngest son, the Rev. Dr HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, became one of the best-known scholars of his day. Born in 1833, and educated at Harrow and Trinity, Cambridge, he was senior classic in 1855 and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1859 he became head master of Harrow, as his father had been, and only resigned on being made dean of Gloucester in 1885. In 1886 he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge. His publications include various volumes of sermons, but his reputation rests on his wide scholarship, his remarkable gifts as a public speaker, and his great practical influence both as a headmaster and at Cambridge. He married first (1861), Georgina Elliot, and secondly (1888) Agneta Frances Ramsay (who in 1887 was senior classic at Cambridge), and had five sons and two daughters.
BUTLER, JOSEPH (1692-1752), English divine and philosopher, bishop of Durham, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, on the 18th of May 1692. His father, a linen-draper of that town, was a Presbyterian, and it was his wish that young Butler should be educated for the ministry in that church. The boy was placed under the care of the Rev. Philip Barton, master of the grammar school at Wantage, and remained there for some years. He was then sent to Samuel Jones's dissenting academy at Gloucester, and afterwards at Tewkesbury, where his most intimate friend was Thomas Seeker, who became archbishop of Canterbury.
While at this academy Butler became dissatisfied with the principles of Presbyterianism, and after much deliberation resolved to join the Church of England. About the same time he began to study with care Samuel Clarke's celebrated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which had been published as the Boyle Lectures a few years previously. With great modesty and secrecy Butler, then in his twenty-second year, wrote to the author propounding certain difficulties with regard to the proofs of the unity and omnipresence of the Divine Being. Clarke answered his unknown opponent with a gravity and care that showed his high opinion of the metaphysical acuteness displayed in the objections, and published the correspondence in later editions of the Demonstration. Butler acknowledged that Clarke's reply satisfied him on one of the points, and he subsequently gave his adhesion to the other. In one of his letters we already find the germ of his famous dictum that "probability is the guide of life."
In March 1715 he entered at Oriel College, Oxford, but for some time found it uncongenial and thought of migrating to Cambridge. But he made a close friend in one of the resident fellows, Edward Talbot, son of William Talbot, then bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of Salisbury and Durham. In 1718 he took his degree, was ordained deacon and priest, and on the recommendation of Talbot and Clarke was nominated preacher at the chapel of the Rolls, where he continued till 1726. It was here that he preached his famous Fifteen Sermons (1726), including the well-known discourses on human nature. In 1721 he had been given a prebend at Salisbury by Bishop Talbot, who on his translation to Durham gave Butler the living of Houghton-le-Skerne in that county, and in 1725 presented him to the wealthy rectory of Stanhope. In 1726 he resigned his preachership at the Rolls.
For ten years Butler remained in perfect seclusion at Stanhope. He was only remembered in the neighbourhood as a man much loved and respected, who used to ride a black pony very fast, and whose known benevolence was much practised upon by beggars. Archbishop Blackburne, when asked by Queen Caroline whether he was still alive, answered, "He is not dead, madam, but buried." In 1733 he was made chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, elder brother of his dead friend Edward, and in 1736 prebendary of Rochester. In the same year he was appointed clerk of the closet to the queen, and had to take part in the metaphysical conversation parties which she loved to gather round her. He met Berkeley frequently, but in his writings does not refer to him. In 1736 also appeared his great work, The Analogy of Religion.
In 1737 Queen Caroline died; on her deathbed she recommended Butler to the favour of her husband. George seemed to think his obligation sufficiently discharged by appointing Butler in 1738 to the bishopric of Bristol, the poorest see in the kingdom. The severe but dignified letter to Walpole, in which Butler accepted the preferment, showed that the slight was felt and resented. Two years later, however, the bishop was presented to the rich deanery of St Paul's, and in 1746 was made clerk of the closet to the king. In 1747 the primacy was offered to Butler, who, it is said, declined it, on the ground that "it was too late for him to try to support a falling church." The story has not the best authority, and though the desponding tone of some of Butler's writings may give it colour, it is not in harmony with the rest of his life, for in 1750 he accepted the see of Durham, vacant by the death of Edward Chandler. His charge to the clergy of the diocese, the only charge of his known to us, is a weighty and valuable address on the importance of external forms in religion. This, together with the fact that over the altar of his private chapel at Bristol he had a cross of white marble, gave rise to an absurd rumour that the bishop had too great a leaning towards Romanism. At Durham he was very charitable, and expended large sums in building and decorating his church and residence. His private expenses were exceedingly small. Shortly after his translation his constitution began to break up, and he died on the 16th of June 1752, at Bath, whither he had removed for his health. He was buried in the cathedral of Bristol, and over his grave a monument was erected in 1834, with an epitaph by Southey. According to his express orders, all his MSS. were burned after his death. Bishop Butler was never married. His personal appearance has been sketched in a few lines by Hutchinson:--"He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal."
Butler was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. In his view not only the religious life of the nation, but (what he regarded as synonymous) the church itself, was in an almost hopeless state of decay, as we see from his first and only charge to the diocese of Durham and [v.04 p.0883] from many passages in the Analogy. And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice, in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind that commended itself to Butler, whose type of mind was opposed to everything that savoured of enthusiasm. He even asked John Wesley, in 1739, to desist from preaching in his diocese of Bristol, and in a memorable interview with the great preacher remarked that any claim to the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit was "a horrid thing, a very horrid thing, sir." Yet Butler was keenly interested in those very miners of Kingswood among whom Wesley preached, and left £500 towards building a church for them. It is a great mistake to suppose that because he took no great part in politics he had no interest in the practical questions of his time, or that he was so immersed in metaphysics as to live in the clouds. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him. The Analogy was written to counteract the practical mischief which he considered wrought by deists and other freethinkers, and the Sermons lay a good deal of stress on everyday Christian duties. His style has frequently been blamed for its obscurity and difficulty, but this is due to two causes: his habit of compressing his arguments into narrow compass, and of always writing with the opposite side of the case in view, so that it has been said of the Analogy that it raises more doubts than it solves. One is also often tempted away from the main course of the argument by the care and precision with which Butler formulates small points of detail.
His great work, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Course and Constitution of Nature, cannot be adequately appreciated unless taken in connexion with the circumstances of the period at which it appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical speculation (see DEISM), which in the apprehension of many good men seemed likely to sweep away the restraints of religion and make way for a general reign of licence. Butler did not enter the lists in the ordinary way. Most of the literature evoked by the controversy on either side was devoted to rebutting the attack of some individual opponent. Thus it was Bentley versus Collins, Sherlock versus Woolston, Law versus Tindal. The Analogy, on the contrary, did not directly refer to the deists at all, and yet it worked more havoc with their position than all the other books put together, and remains practically the one surviving landmark of the whole dispute. Its central motive is to prove that all the objections raised against revealed or supernatural religion apply with equal force to the whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation, and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable conclusion that there is one Author of both. Without altogether eschewing Samuel Clarke's a priori system, Butler relies mainly on the inductive method, not professing to give an absolute demonstration so much as a probable proof. And everything is brought into closest relation with "that which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our hopes and fears which are of any consideration; I mean a Future Life."
Butler is a typical instance of the English philosophical mind. He will admit no speculative theory of things. To him the universe is no realization of intelligence, which is to be deciphered by human thought; it is a constitution or system, made up of individual facts, through which we thread our way slowly and inductively. Complete knowledge is impossible; nay, what we call knowledge of any part of the system is inherently imperfect. "We cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part without knowing the whole." So far as experience goes, "to us probability is the very guide of life." Reason is certainly to be accepted; it is pur natural light, and the only faculty whereby we can judge of things. But it gives no completed system of knowledge and in matters of fact affords only probable conclusions. In this emphatic declaration, that knowledge of the course of nature is merely probable, Butler is at one with Hume, who was a most diligent student of the bishop's works. What can come nearer Hume's celebrated maxim--"Anything may be the cause of anything else," than Butler's conclusion, "so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other"?
It is this strong grasp or the imperfect character of our knowledge of nature and of the grounds for its limitation that makes Butler so formidable an opponent to his deistical contemporaries. He will permit no anticipations of nature, no a priori construction of experience. "The constitution of nature is as it is," and no system of abstract principles can be allowed to take its place. He is willing with Hume to take the course of experience as the basis of his reasoning, seeing that it is common ground for himself and his antagonists. In one essential respect, however, he goes beyond Hume. The course of nature is for him an unmeaning expression unless it be referred to some author; and he therefore makes extensive use of the teleological method. This position is assumed throughout the treatise, and as against the deists with justice, for their whole argument rested upon the presupposition of the existence of God, the perfect Ruler of the world.
The premises, then, with which Butler starts are the existence of God, the known course of nature, and the necessary limitation of our knowledge. What does he wish to prove? It is not his intention to prove God's perfect moral government over the world or the truth of religion. His work is in no sense a philosophy of religion. His purpose is entirely defensive; he wishes to answer objections that have been brought against religion, and to examine certain difficulties that have been alleged as insuperable. And this is to be effected in the first place by showing that from the obscurities and inexplicabilities we meet with in nature we may reasonably expect to find similar difficulties in the scheme of religion. If difficulties be found in the course and constitution of nature, whose author is admitted to be God, surely the existence of similar difficulties in the plan of religion can be no valid objection against its truth and divine origin. That this is at least in great part Butler's object is plain from the slightest inspection of his work. It has seemed to many to be an unsatisfactory mode of arguing and but a poor defence of religion; and so much the author is willing to allow. But in the general course of his argument a somewhat wider issue appears. He seeks to show not only that the difficulties in the systems of natural and revealed religion have counterparts in nature, but also that the facts of nature, far from being adverse to the principles of religion, are a distinct ground for inferring their probable truth. He endeavours to show that the balance of probability is entirely in favour of the scheme of religion, that this probability is the natural conclusion from an inspection of nature, and that, as religion is a matter of practice, we are bound to adopt the course of action which is even probably the right one. If, we may imagine him saying, the precepts of religion are entirely analogous in their partial obscurity and apparent difficulty to the ordinary course of nature disclosed to us by experience, then it is credible that these precepts are true; not only can no objections be drawn against them from experience, but the balance of probability is in their favour. This mode of reasoning from what is known of nature to the probable truth of what is contained in religion is the celebrated method of analogy.
Although Butler's work is peculiarly one of those which ought not to be exhibited in outline, for its strength lies in the organic completeness with which the details are wrought into the whole argument, yet a summary of his results will throw more light on the method than any description can.
Keeping clearly in view his premises--the existence of God and the limited nature of knowledge--Butler begins by inquiring into the fundamental pre-requisite of all natural religion--the immortality of the soul. Evidently the stress of the whole question is here. Were man not immortal, religion would be of little value. Now, Butler does not attempt to prove the truth of the doctrine; that proof comes from another quarter. The only questions he asks are--Does experience forbid us to admit immortality as a possibility? Does experience furnish any probable reason for inferring that immortality is a fact? To the first of these a negative, to the second an affirmative answer is returned. All the analogies of our life here lead us to conclude that we shall continue to live after death; and neither from experience nor from the reason of the thing can any argument against the possibility of this be drawn. Immortality, then, is not unreasonable; it is probable. If, he continues, we are to live after death, it is of importance for us to consider on what our future state may depend; for we may be either happy or miserable. Now, whatever speculation may say as to God's purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are not distributed indiscriminately. Therefore no argument can be brought from experience against the possibility of our future happiness and misery likewise depending upon conduct. The whole analogy of nature is in favour of such a dispensation; it is therefore reasonable or probable. Further, we are not only under a government in which actions considered simply as such are rewarded and punished, but it is known from experience that virtue and vice are followed by their natural consequents--happiness and misery. And though the distribution of these rewards is not perfect, all hindrances are plainly temporary or accidental. It may therefore be concluded that the balance of probability is in favour of God's government in general being a moral scheme, where virtue and vice are respectively rewarded and punished. It need not be objected to the justice of [v.04 p.0884] this arrangement that men are sorely tempted, and may very easily be brought to neglect that on which their future welfare depends, for the very same holds good in nature. Experience shows man to be in a state of trial so far as regards the present; it cannot, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that we are in a similar state as regards the future. Finally, it can surely never be advanced as an argument against the truth of religion that there are many things in it which we do not comprehend, when experience exhibits to us such a copious stock of incomprehensibilities in the ordinary course and constitution of nature.
It cannot have escaped observation, that in the foregoing course of argument the conclusion is invariably from experience of the present order of things to the reasonableness or probability of some other system--of a future state. The inference in all cases passes beyond the field of experience; that it does so may be and has been advanced as a conclusive objection against it. See for example a passage in Hume, Works (ed. 1854), iv. 161-162, cf. p. 160, which says, in short, that no argument from experience can ever carry us beyond experience itself. However well grounded this reasoning may be, it altogether misses the point at which Butler aimed, and is indeed a misconception of the nature of analogical argument. Butler never attempts to prove that a future life regulated according to the requirements of ethical law is a reality; he only desires to show that the conception of such a life is not irreconcilable with what we know of the course of nature, and that consequently it is not unreasonable to suppose that there is such a life. Hume readily grants this much, though he hints at a formidable difficulty which the plan of the Analogy prevented Butler from facing, the proof of the existence of God. Butler seems willing to rest satisfied with his opponents' admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a demonstrative proof of God's existence.
If, however, his premises be granted, and the narrow issue kept in view, the argument may be admitted as perfectly satisfactory. From what we know of the present order of things, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there will be a future state of rewards and punishments, distributed according to ethical law. When the argument from analogy seems to go beyond this, a peculiar difficulty starts up. Let it be granted that our happiness and misery in this life depend upon our conduct--are, in fact, the rewards and punishments attached by God to certain modes of action, the natural conclusion from analogy would seem to be that our future happiness or the reverse will probably depend upon our actions in the future state. Butler, on the other hand, seeks to show that analogy leads us to believe that our future state will depend upon our present conduct. His argument, that the punishment of an imprudent act often follows after a long interval may be admitted, but does not advance a single step towards the conclusion that imprudent acts will be punished hereafter. So, too, with the attempt to show that from the analogy of the present life we may not unreasonably infer that virtue and vice will receive their respective rewards and punishments hereafter; it may be admitted that virtuous and vicious acts are naturally looked upon as objects of reward or punishment, and treated accordingly, but we may refuse to allow the argument to go further, and to infer a perfect distribution of justice dependent upon our conduct here. Butler could strengthen his argument only by bringing forward prominently the absolute requirements of the ethical consciousness, in which case he would have approximated to Kant's position with regard to this very problem. That he did not do so is, perhaps, due to his strong desire to use only such premises as his adversaries the deists were willing to allow.
As against the deists, however, he may be allowed to have made out his point, that the substantial doctrines of natural religion are not opposed to reason and experience, and may be looked upon as credible. The positive proof of them is to be found in revealed religion, which has disclosed to us not only these truths, but also a further scheme not discoverable by the natural light. Here, again, Butler joins issue with his opponents. Revealed religion had been declared to be nothing but a republication of the truths of natural religion (Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation), and all revelation had been objected to as impossible. To show that such objections are invalid, and that a revelation is at least not impossible, Butler makes use mainly of his doctrine of human ignorance. Revelation had been rejected because it lay altogether beyond the sphere of reason and could not therefore be grasped by human intelligence. But the same is true of nature; there are in the ordinary course of things inexplicabilities; indeed we may be said with truth to know nothing, for there is no medium between perfect and completed comprehension of the whole system of things, which we manifestly have not, and mere faith grounded on probability. Is it unreasonable to suppose that in a revealed system there should be the same superiority to our intelligence? If we cannot explain or foretell by reason what the exact course of events in nature will be, is it to be expected that we can do so with regard to the wider scheme of God's revealed providence? Is it not probable that there will be many things not explicable by us? From our experience of the course of nature it would appear that no argument can be brought against the possibility of a revelation. Further, though it is the province of reason to test this revealed system, and though it be granted that, should it contain anything immoral, it must be rejected, yet a careful examination of the particulars will show that there is no incomprehensibility or difficulty in them which has not a counterpart in nature. The whole scheme of revealed principles is, therefore, not unreasonable, and the analogy of nature and natural religion would lead us to infer its truth. If, finally, it be asked, how a system professing to be revealed can substantiate its claim, the answer is, by means of the historical evidences, such as miracles and fulfilment of prophecy.
It would be unfair to Butler's argument to demand from it answers to problems which had not in his time arisen, and to which, even if they had then existed, the plan of his work would not have extended. Yet it is at least important to ask how far, and in what sense, the Analogy can be regarded as a positive and valuable contribution to theology. What that work has done is to prove to the consistent deist that no objections can be drawn from reason or experience against natural or revealed religion, and, consequently, that the things objected to are not incredible and may be proved by external evidence. But the deism of the 17th century is a phase of thought that has no living reality now, and the whole aspect of the religious problem has been completely changed. To a generation that has been moulded by the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, by the historical criticism of modern theology, and by all that has been done in the field of comparative religion, the argument of the Analogy cannot but appear to lie quite outside the field of controversy. To Butler the Christian religion, and by that he meant the orthodox Church of England system, was a moral scheme revealed by a special act of the divine providence, the truth of which was to be judged by the ordinary canons of evidence. The whole stood or fell on historical grounds. A speculative construction of religion was abhorrent to him, a thing of which he seems to have thought the human mind naturally incapable. The religious consciousness does not receive from him the slightest consideration. The Analogy, in fact, has and can have but little influence on the present state of theology; it was not a book for all time, but was limited to the problems of the period at which it appeared.
Throughout the whole of the Analogy it is manifest that the interest which lay closest to Butler's heart was the ethical. His whole cast of thinking was practical. The moral nature of man, his conduct in life, is that on account of which alone an inquiry into religion is of importance. The systematic account of this moral nature is to be found in the famous Sermons preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, especially in the first three. In these sermons Butler has made substantial contributions to ethical science, and it may be said with confidence, that in their own department nothing superior in value appeared during the long interval between Aristotle and Kant. To both of these great thinkers he has certain analogies. He resembles the first in his method of investigating the end which human nature is intended to realize; he reminds of the other by the consistency with which he upholds the absolute supremacy of moral law.
In his ethics, as in his theology, Butler had constantly in view a certain class of adversaries, consisting partly of the philosophic few, partly of the fashionably educated many, who all participated in one common mode of thinking. The keynote of this tendency had been struck by Hobbes, in whose philosophy man was regarded as a mere selfish sensitive machine, moved solely by pleasures and pains. Cudworth and Clarke had tried to place ethics on a nobler footing, but their speculations were too abstract for Butler and not sufficiently "applicable to the several particular relations and circumstances of life."
His inquiry is based on teleological principles. "Every work, both of nature and art, is a system; and as every particular thing both natural and artificial is for some use or purpose out of or beyond itself, one may add to what has been already brought into the idea of a system its conduciveness to this one or more ends." Ultimately this view of nature, as the sphere of the realization of final causes, rests on a theological basis; but Butler does not introduce prominently into his ethics the specifically theological groundwork, and may be thought willing to ground his principle on experience. The ethical question then is, as with Aristotle, what is the [Greek: telos] of man? The answer to this question is to be obtained by an analysis of the facts of human nature, whence, Butler thinks, "it will as fully appear that this our nature, i.e. constitution, is adapted to virtue, as from the idea of a watch it appears that its nature, i.e. constitution or system, is adapted to measure time." Such analysis had been already attempted by Hobbes, and the result he came to was that man naturally is adapted only for a life of selfishness,--his end is the procuring of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. A closer examination, however, shows that this at least is false. The truth of the counter propositions, that man is [Greek: phusei politikos], that the full development of his being is impossible apart from society, becomes manifest on examination of the facts. For while self-love plays a most important part in the human economy, there is no less evidently a natural principle of benevolence. Moreover, among the particular [v.04 p.0885] passions, appetites and desires there are some whose tendency is as clearly towards the general good as that of others is towards the satisfaction of the self. Finally, that principle in man which reflects upon actions and the springs of actions, unmistakably sets the stamp of its approbation upon conduct that tends towards the general good. It is clear, therefore, that from this point of view the sum of practical morals might be given in Butler's own words--"that mankind is a community, that we all stand in a relation to each other, that there is a public end and interest of society, which each particular is obliged to promote." But deeper questions remain.
The threefold division into passions and affections, self-love and benevolence, and conscience, is Butler's celebrated analysis of human nature as found in his first sermon. But by regarding benevolence less as a definite desire for the general good as such than as kind affection for particular individuals, he practically eliminates it as a regulative principle and reduces the authorities in the polity of the soul to two--conscience and self-love.
But the idea of human nature is not completely expressed by saying that it consists of reason and the several passions. "Whoever thinks it worth while to consider this matter thoroughly should begin by stating to himself exactly the idea of a system, economy or constitution of any particular nature; and he will, I suppose, find that it is one or a whole, made up of several parts, but yet that the several parts, even considered as a whole, do not complete the idea, unless in the notion of a whole you include the relations and respects which these parts have to each other." This fruitful conception of man's ethical nature as an organic unity Butler owes directly to Shaftesbury and indirectly to Aristotle; it is the strength and clearness with which he has grasped it that gives peculiar value to his system.
The special relation among the parts of our nature to which Butler alludes is the subordination of the particular passions to the universal principle of reflection or conscience. This relation is the peculiarity, the cross, of man; and when it is said that virtue consists in following nature, we mean that it consists in pursuing the course of conduct dictated by this superior faculty. Man's function is not fulfilled by obeying the passions, or even cool self-love, but by obeying conscience. That conscience has a natural supremacy, that it is superior in kind, is evident from the part it plays in the moral constitution. We judge a man to have acted wrongly, i.e. unnaturally, when he allows the gratification of a passion to injure his happiness, i.e. when he acts in accordance with passion and against self-love. It would be impossible to pass this judgment if self-love were not regarded as superior in kind to the passions, and this superiority results from the fact that it is the peculiar province of self-love to take a view of the several passions and decide as to their relative importance. But there is in man a faculty which takes into consideration all the springs of action, including self-love, and passes judgment upon them, approving some and condemning others. From its very nature this faculty is supreme in authority, if not in power; it reflects upon all the other active powers, and pronounces absolutely upon their moral quality. Superintendency and authority are constituent parts of its very idea. We are under obligation to obey the law revealed in the judgments of this faculty, for it is the law of our nature. And to this a religious sanction may be added, for "consciousness of a rule or guide of action, in creatures capable of considering it as given them by their Maker, not only raises immediately a sense of duty, but also a sense of security in following it, and a sense of danger in deviating from it." Virtue then consists in following the true law of our nature, that is, conscience. Butler, however, is by no means very explicit in his analysis of the functions to be ascribed to conscience. He calls it the Principle of Reflection, the Reflex Principle of Approbation, and assigns to it as its province the motives or propensions to action. It takes a view of these, approves or disapproves, impels to or restrains from action. But at times he uses language that almost compels one to attribute to him the popular view of conscience as passing its judgments with unerring certainty on individual acts. Indeed his theory is weakest exactly at the point where the real difficulty begins. We get from him no satisfactory answer to the inquiry, What course of action is approved by conscience? Every one, he seems to think, knows what virtue is, and a philosophy of ethics is complete if it can be shown that such a course of action harmonizes with human nature. When pressed still further, he points to justice, veracity and the common good as comprehensive ethical ends. His whole view of the moral government led him to look upon human nature and virtue as connected by a sort of pre-established harmony. His ethical principle has in it no possibility of development into a system of actual duties; it has no content. Even on the formal side it is a little difficult to see what part conscience plays. It seems merely to set the stamp of its approbation on certain courses of action to which we are led by the various passions and affections; it has in itself no originating power. How or why it approves of some and not of others is left unexplained. Butler's moral theory, like those of his English contemporaries and successors, is defective from not perceiving that the notion of duty can have real significance only when connected with the will or practical reason, and that only in reason which wills itself have we a principle capable of development into an ethical system. It has received very small consideration at the hands of German historians of ethics.
AUTHORITIES.--See T. Bartlett, Memoirs of Butler (1839). The standard edition of Butler's works is that in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1844). Editions of the Analogy are very numerous; that by Bishop William Fitzgerald (1849) contains a valuable Life and Notes. W. Whewell published an edition of the Three Sermons, with Introduction. Modern editions of the Works are those by W.E. Gladstone (2 vols. with a 3rd vol. of Studies Subsidiary, 1896), and J.H. Bernard, (2 vols. in the English Theological Library, 1900). For the history of the religious works contemporary with the Analogy, see Lechler, Gesch. d. Engl. Deismus; M. Pattison, in Essays and Reviews; W. Hunt, Religious Thought in England, vols., ii. and iii.; L. Stephen, English Thought in the 18th Century; J.H. Overton and F. Relton, The English Church from the Accession of George I. to the End of the 18th Century.
(R. AD.; A. J. G.)
BUTLER, NICHOLAS MURRAY (1862- ), American educator, was born at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 2nd of April 1862. He graduated at Columbia College in 1882, was a graduate fellow in philosophy there from 1882 to 1884, when he took the degree of Ph.D., and then studied for a year in Paris and Berlin. He was an assistant in philosophy at Columbia in 1885-1886, tutor in 1886-1889, adjunct professor of philosophy, ethics and psychology in 1889-1890, becoming full professor in 1890, and dean of the faculty of philosophy in 1890-1902. From 1887 until 1891 he was the first president of the New York college for the training of teachers (later the Teachers' College of Columbia University), which he had personally planned and organized. In 1891 he founded and afterwards edited the Educational Review, an influential educational magazine. He soon came to be looked upon as one of the foremost authorities on educational matters in America, and in 1894 was elected president of the National Educational Association. He was also a member of the New Jersey state board of education from 1887 to 1895, and was president of the Paterson (N.J.) board of education in 1892-1893. In 1901 he succeeded Seth Low as president of Columbia University. Besides editing several series of books, including "The Great Educators" and "The Teachers' Professional Library," he published The Meaning of Education (1898), a collection of essays; and two series of addresses, True and False Democracy (1907), and The American as he is (1908).
BUTLER (or BOTELER), SAMUEL (1612-1680), English poet, author of Hudibras, son of Samuel Butler, a small farmer, was baptized at Strensham, Worcestershire, on the 8th of February 1612. He was educated at the King's school, Worcester, under Henry Bright, the record of whose zeal as a teacher is preserved by Fuller (Worthies, Worcestershire). After leaving school he served a Mr Jeffereys of Earl's Croome, Worcestershire, in the capacity of justice's clerk, and is supposed to have thus gained his knowledge of law and law terms. He also employed himself at Earl's Croome in general study, and particularly in painting, which he is said to have thought of adopting as a profession. It is probable, however, that art has not lost by his change of mind, for, according to one of his editors, in 1774 his pictures "served to stop windows and save the tax; indeed they were not fit for much else." He was then recommended to Elizabeth, countess of Kent. At her home at Wrest, Bedfordshire, he had access to a good library, and there too he met Selden, who sometimes employed him as his secretary. But his third sojourn, with Sir Samuel Luke at Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, was not only apparently the longest, but also much the most important in its effects on his career and works. We are nowhere informed in what capacity Butler served Sir Samuel Luke, or how he came to reside in the house of a noted Puritan and Parliament man. In the family of this "valiant Mamaluke," who, whether he was or was not the original of Hudibras, was certainly a rigid Presbyterian, "a colonel in the army of the Parliament, scoutmaster-general for Bedfordshire and governor of Newport Pagnell," Butler must have had the most abundant opportunities of studying from the life those who were to be the victims of his satire; he is supposed to have taken some hints for his caricature from Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey, Devonshire. But we know nothing positive of him until the Restoration, when he was appointed secretary to Richard Vaughan, 2nd earl of Carbery, lord president of the principality of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle, an office which he held from January 1661 [v.04 p.0886] to January 1662. About this time he married a rich lady, variously described as a Miss Herbert and as a widow named Morgan. His wife's fortune was afterwards, however, lost.
Early in 1663 Hudibras: The First Part: written in the Time of the Late Wars, was published, but this, the first genuine edition, had been preceded in 1662 by an unauthorized one. On the 26th of December Pepys bought it, and though neither then nor afterwards could he see the wit of "so silly an abuse of the Presbyter knight going to the wars," he repeatedly testifies to its extraordinary popularity. A spurious second part appeared within the year. This determined the poet to bring out the second part (licensed on the 7th of November 1663, printed 1664), which if possible exceeded the first in popularity. From this time till 1678, the date of the publication of the third part, we hear nothing certain of Butler. On the publication of Hudibras he was sent for by Lord Chancellor Hyde (Clarendon), says Aubrey, and received many promises, none of which was fulfilled. He is said to have received a gift of £300 from Charles II., and to have been secretary to George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, when the latter was chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Most of his biographers, in their eagerness to prove the ill-treatment which Butler is supposed to have received, disbelieve both these stories, perhaps without sufficient reason. Butler's satire on Buckingham in his Characters (Remains, 1759) shows such an intimate knowledge that it is probable the second story is true. Two years after the publication of the third part of Hudibras he died, on the 25th of September 1680, and was buried by his friend Longueville, a bencher of the Middle Temple, in the churchyard of St Paul's, Covent Garden. He was, we are told, "of a leonine-coloured hair, sanguine, choleric, middle-sized, strong." A portrait by Lely at Oxford and others elsewhere represent him as somewhat hard-featured.
Of the neglect of Butler by the court something must be said. It must be remembered that the complaints on the subject supposed to have been uttered by the poet all occur in the spurious posthumous works, that men of letters have been at all times but too prone to complain of lack of patronage, that Butler's actual service was rendered when the day was already won, and that the pathetic stories of the poet starving and dying in want are contradicted by the best authority--Charles Longueville, son of the poet's friend--who asserted that Butler, though often disappointed, was never reduced to anything like want or beggary and did not die in any person's debt. But the most significant notes on the subject are Aubrey's,[1] that "he might have had preferments at first, but would not accept any but very good, so at last he had none at all, and died in want"; and the memorandum of the same author, that "satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, &c., consequently make to themselves many enemies and few friends, and this was his manner and case."
Three monuments have been erected to the poet's memory--the first in Westminster Abbey in 1721, by John Barber, mayor of London, who is spitefully referred to by Pope for daring to connect his name with Butler's. In 1786 a tablet was placed in St Paul's, Covent Garden, by residents of the parish. This was destroyed in 1845. Later, another was set up at Strensham by John Taylor of that place. Perhaps the happiest epitaph on him is one by John Dennis, which calls Butler "a whole species of poets in one."
Hudibras itself, though probably quoted as often as ever, has dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than read. In reading it, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend clearly and to bear constantly in mind the purpose of the author in writing it. This purpose is evidently not artistic but polemic, to show in the most unmistakable characters the vileness and folly of the anti-royalist party. Anything like a regular plot--the absence of which has often been deplored or excused--would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but a mistake, as likely to divert the attention and perhaps even enlist some sympathy for the heroes. Anything like regular character-drawing would have been equally unnecessary and dangerous--for to represent anything but monsters, some alleviating strokes must have been introduced. The problem, therefore, was to produce characters just sufficiently unlike lay-figures to excite and maintain a moderate interest, and to set them in motion by dint of a few incidents not absolutely unconnected,--meanwhile to subject the principles and manners of which these characters were the incarnation to ceaseless satire and raillery. The triumphant solution of the problem is undeniable, when it has once been enunciated and understood. Upon a canvas thus prepared and outlined, Butler has embroidered a collection of flowers of wit, which only the utmost fertility or imagination could devise, and the utmost patience of industry elaborate. In the union of these two qualities he is certainly without a parallel, and their combination has produced a work which is unique. The poem is of considerable length, extending to more than ten thousand verses, yet Hazlitt hardly exaggerates when he says that "half the lines are got by heart"; indeed a diligent student of later English literature has read great part of Hudibras though he may never have opened its pages. The tableaux or situations, though few and simple in construction, are ludicrous enough. The knight and squire setting forth on their journey; the routing of the bear-baiters; the disastrous renewal of the contest; Hudibras and Ralph in the stocks; the lady's release and conditional acceptance of the unlucky knight; the latter's deliberations on the means of eluding his vow; the Skimmington; the visit to Sidrophel, the astrologer; the attempt to cajole the lady, with its woeful consequences; the consultation with the lawyer, and the immortal pair of letters to which this gives rise, complete the argument of the whole poem. But the story is as nothing; throughout we have little really kept before us but the sordid vices of the sectaries, their hypocrisy, their churlish ungraciousness, their greed of money and authority, their fast and loose morality, their inordinate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been questioned. The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed as to be the very voice of mocking laughter, the astounding similes and disparates, the rhymes which seem to chuckle and to sneer of themselves, the wonderful learning with which the abuse of learning is rebuked, the subtlety with which subtle casuistry is set at nought can never be missed. Keys like those of L'Estrange are therefore of little use. It signifies nothing whether Hudibras was Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire or Sir Henry Rosewell of Devonshire, still less whether Ralph's name in the flesh was Robinson or Pendle, least of all that Orsin was perhaps Mr Gosling, or Trulla possibly Miss Spencer. Butler was probably as little indebted to mere copying for his characters as for his ideas and style. These latter are in the highest degree original. The first notion of the book, and only the first notion, Butler undoubtedly received from Don Quixote. His obligations to the Satyre Ménippée have been noticed by Voltaire, and though English writers have sometimes ignored or questioned them, are not to be doubted. The art, perhaps the most terrible of all the weapons of satire, of making characters without any great violation of probability represent themselves in the most atrocious and despicable light, was never perhaps possessed in perfection except by Pithou and his colleagues and by Butler. Against these great merits some defects must certainly be set. As a whole, the poem is no doubt tedious, if only on account of the very blaze of wit, which at length almost wearies us by its ceaseless demands on our attention. It should, however, be remembered that it was originally issued in parts, and therefore, it may be supposed, intended to be read in parts, for there can be little doubt that the second part was written before the first was published. A more real defect, but one which Butler shares with all his contemporaries, is the tendency to delineate humours instead of characters, and to draw from the outside rather than from within.
Attempts have been made to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras to earlier writers, especially in Cleveland's satires and in the Musarum Deliciae of Sir John Mennis (Pepys's Minnes) and Dr James Smith (1605-1667). But if it had few [v.04 p.0887] ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of twenty-seven direct imitations of Hudibras in the course of a century may be found in the Aldine edition (1893). Complete translations of considerable excellence have been made into French (London, 1757 and 1819) by John Townley (1697-1782), a member of the Irish Brigade; and into German by D.W. Soltau (Riga, 1787); specimens of both may be found in R. Bell's edition. Voltaire tried his hand at a compressed version, but not with happy results.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Butler's works published during his life include, besides Hudibras: To the Memory of the most renowned Du Vall: A Pindaric Ode (1671); and a prose pamphlet against the Puritans, Two Letters, one from J. Audland ... to W. Prynne, the other Prynne's Answer (1672). In 1715-1717 three volumes, entitled Posthumous Works in Prose and Verse ... with a key to Hudibras by Sir Roger l'Estrange ... were published with great success. Most of the contents, however, are generally rejected as spurious. The poet's papers, now in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 32,625-6), remained in the hands of his friend William Longueville, and after his death were left untouched until 1759, when Robert Thyer, keeper of the public library at Manchester, edited two volumes of verse and prose under the title of Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr Samuel Butler. This collection contained The Elephant in the Moon, a satire on the Royal Society; a series of sketches in prose, Characters; and some satirical poems and prose pamphlets. Another edition, Poetical Remains, was issued by Thyer in 1827. In 1726 Hogarth executed some illustrations to Hudibras, which are among his earliest but not, perhaps, happiest productions. In 1744 Dr Zachary Grey published an edition of Hudibras, with copious and learned annotations; and an additional volume of Critical and Historical and Explanatory Notes in 1752. Grey's has formed the basis of all subsequent editions.
Other pieces published separately and ascribed to Butler are: A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus, or London's Confession but not repentance ... (1643), represented in vol. iv. of Somers's tracts; Mola Asinarum, on the unreasonable and insupportable burthen now pressed ... upon this groaning nation ... (1659), included in his posthumous works, which is supposed to have been written by John Prynne, though Wood ascribes it to Butler; The Acts and monuments of our late parliament ... (1659, printed 1710), of which a continuation appeared in 1659; a "character" of Charles I. (1671); A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore ... (1671); A Congratulatory poem ... to Sir Joseph Sheldon ... (1675); The Geneva Ballad, or the occasional conformist display'd (1674); The Secret history of the Calves head club, compleat ... (4th edition, 1707); The Morning's Salutation, or a friendly conference between a puritan preacher and a family of his flock ... (reprinted, Dublin, 1714). Two tracts of his appear in Somers's Tracts, vol. vii.; he contributed to Ovid's Epistles translated by several hands (1680); and works by him are included in Miscellaneous works, written by ... George Duke of Buckingham ... also State Poems ... (by various hands) (1704); and in The Grove ... (1721), a poetic miscellany, is a "Satyr against Marriage," not found in his works.
The life of Butler was written by an anonymous author, said by William Oldys to be Sir James Astrey, and prefixed to the edition of 1704. The writer professes to supplement and correct the notice given by Anthony à Wood in Athenae Oxonienses. Dr Threadneedle Russel Nash, a Worcestershire antiquarian, supplied some additional facts in an edition of 1793. See the Aldine edition of the Poetical Works of Samuel Butler (1893), edited by Reginald Brimley Johnson, with complete bibliographical information. There is a good reprint of Hudibras (edited by Mr A.R. Waller, 1905) in the Cambridge Classics.
[1] Letters written by Eminent Persons ... and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey, Esq. (2 vols., 1813).
BUTLER, SAMUEL (1774-1839), English classical scholar and schoolmaster, and bishop of Lichfield, was born at Kenilworth on the 30th of January 1774. He was educated at Rugby, and in 1792 went to St John's College, Cambridge. Butler's classical career was a brilliant one. He obtained three of Sir William Browne's medals, for the Latin (1792) and Greek (1793, 1794) odes, the medal for the Greek ode in 1792 being won by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1793 Butler was elected to the Craven scholarship, amongst the competitors being John Keate, afterwards headmaster of Eton, and Coleridge. In 1796 he was fourth senior op time and senior chancellor's classical medallist. In 1797 and 1798 he obtained the members' prize for Latin essay. He took the degree of B.A. in 1796, M.A. 1799, and D.D. 1811. In 1797 he was elected a fellow of St John's, and in 1798 became headmaster of Shrewsbury school. In 1802 he was presented to the living of Kenilworth, in 1807 to a prebendal stall in Lichfield cathedral, and in 1822 to the archdeaconry of Derby; all these appointments he held with his headmastership, but in 1836 he was promoted to the bishopric of Lichfield (and Coventry, which was separated from his diocese in the same year). He died on the 4th of December 1839. It is in connexion with Shrewsbury school that Butler will be chiefly remembered. During his headmastership its reputation greatly increased, and in the standard of its scholarship it stood as high as any other public school in England. His edition of Aeschylus, with the text and notes of Stanley, appeared 1809-1816, and was somewhat severely criticized in the Edinburgh Review, but Butler was prevented by his elevation to the episcopate from, revising it. He also wrote a Sketch of Modern and Ancient Geography (1813, frequently reprinted) for use in schools, and brought out atlases of ancient and modern geography. His large library included a fine collection of Aldine editions and Greek and Latin MSS.; the Aldines were sold by auction, the MSS. purchased by the British Museum.
Butler's life has been written by his grandson, Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon (Life and Letters of Dr Samuel Butler, 1896); see also Baker's History of St John's College, Cambridge (ed. J.E.B. Mayor, 1869); Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. (ed. 1908), vol. iii. p. 398.
BUTLER, SAMUEL (1835-1902), English author, son of the Rev. Thomas Butler, and grandson of the foregoing, was born at Langar, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, on the 4th of December 1835. He was educated at Shrewsbury school, and at St John's College, Cambridge. He took a high place in the classical tripos of 1858, and was intended for the Church. His opinions, however, prevented his carrying out this intention, and he sailed to New Zealand in the autumn of 1859. He owned a sheep run in the Upper Rangitata district of the province of Canterbury, and in less than five years was able to return home with a moderate competence, most of which was afterwards lost in unlucky investments. The Rangitata district supplied the setting for his romance of Erewhon, or Over the Range (1872), satirizing the Darwinian theory and conventional religion. Erewhon had a sequel thirty years later (1901) in Erewhon Revisited, in which the narrator of the earlier romance, who had escaped from Erewhon in a balloon, finds himself, on revisiting the country after a considerable interval, the object of a topsy-turvy cult, to which he gave the name of "Sunchildism." In 1873 he had published a book of similar tendency, The Fair Haven, which purported to be a "work in defence of the miraculous element in our Lord's ministry upon earth" by a fictitious J.P. Owen, of whom he wrote a memoir. Butler was a man of great versatility, who pursued his investigations in classical scholarship, in Shakespearian criticism, biology and art with equal independence and originality. On his return from New Zealand he had established himself at Clifford's Inn, and studied painting, exhibiting regularly in the Academy between 1868 and 1876. But with the publication of Life and Habit (1877) he began to recognize literature as his life work. The book was followed by three others, attacking Darwinism--Evolution Old and New, or the Theories of Buffon, Dr Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck as compared with that of Mr C. Darwin (1879); Unconscious Memory (1880), a comparison between the theory of Dr E. Hering and the Philosophy of the Unconscious of Dr E. von Hartmann; and Luck or Cunning (1886). He had a thorough knowledge of northern Italy and its art. In Ex Voto (1888) he introduced many English readers to the art of Tabachetti and Gaudenzio Ferrari at Varallo. He learnt nearly the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart, and translated both poems (1898 and 1900) into colloquial English prose. In his Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) he propounded two theories: that the poem was the work of a woman, who drew her own portrait in Nausicaa; and that it was written at Trapani, in Sicily, a proposition which he supported by elaborate investigations on the spot. In another book on the Shakespeare Sonnets (1899) he aimed at destroying the explanations of the orthodox commentators.
Butler was also a musician, or, as he called himself, a Handelian, and in imitation of the style of Handel he wrote in collaboration with H. Festing Jones a secular oratorio, Narcissus (1888), and had completed his share of another, Ulysses, at the time of his death on the 18th of June 1902. His other works include: Life and Letters (1896) of Dr Samuel Butler, his [v.04 p.0888] grandfather, headmaster of Shrewsbury school and afterwards bishop of Lichfield; Alps and Sanctuaries (1881); and two posthumous works edited by R.A. Streatfeild, The Way of All Flesh (1903), a novel; and Essays on Life, Art and Science (1904).
See Samuel Butler, Records and Memorials (1903), by R.A. Streatfeild, a collection printed for private circulation, the most important article included being one by H. Festing Jones originally published in The Eagle (Cambridge, December 1902).
BUTLER, WILLIAM ARCHER (1814-1848), Irish historian of philosophy, was born at Annerville, near Clonmel in Ireland, probably in 1814. His father was a Protestant, his mother a Roman Catholic, and he was brought up as a Catholic. As a boy he was imaginative and poetical, and some of his early verses were remarkable. While yet at Clonmel school he became a Protestant. Later he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a brilliant career. He specially devoted himself to literature and metaphysics, and was noted for the beauty of his style. In 1834 he gained the ethical moderatorship, newly instituted by Provost Lloyd, and continued in residence at college. In 1837 he decided to enter the Church, and in the same year he was elected to the professorship of moral philosophy, specially founded for him through Lloyd's exertions. About the same time he was presented to the prebend of Clondahorky, Donegal, and resided there when not called by his professorial duties to Dublin. In 1842 he was promoted to the rectory of Raymochy. He died on the 5th of July 1848. His Sermons (2 vols., 1849) were remarkably brilliant and forceful. The Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, edited by W. Hepworth Thompson (2 vols., 1856; 2nd ed., 1 vol. 1875), take a high place among the few British works on the history of philosophy. The introductory lectures, and those on the early Greek thinkers, though they evidence wide reading, do not show the complete mastery that is found in Schwegler or Zeller; but the lectures on Plato are of considerable value. Among his other writings were papers in the Dublin University Magazine (1834-1837); and "Letters on Development" (in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, 1845), a reply to Newman's famous Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
See Memoir of W.A. Butler, prefixed by Rev. J. Woodward to first series of Sermons.
BUTLER, SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS (1838- ), British soldier, entered the army as an ensign in 1858, becoming captain in 1872 and major in 1874. He took part with distinction in the Red River expedition (1870-71) and the Ashanti operations of 1873-74 under Wolseley, and received the C.B. in 1874. He served with the same general in the Zulu War (brevet lieut.-colonel), the campaign of Tel-el-Kebir, after which he was made an aide-de-camp to the queen, and the Sudan 1884-85, being employed as colonel on the staff 1885, and brigadier-general 1885-1886. In the latter year he was made a K.C.B. He was colonel on the staff in Egypt 1890-1892, and brigadier-general there until 1892, when he was promoted major-general and stationed at Aldershot, after which he commanded the southeastern district. In 1898 he succeeded General Goodenough as commander-in-chief in South Africa, with the local rank of lieutenant-general. For a short period (Dec. 1898-Feb. 1899), during the absence of Sir Alfred Milner in England, he acted as high commissioner, and as such and subsequently in his military capacity he expressed views on the subject of the probabilities of war which were not approved by the home government; he was consequently ordered home to command the western district, and held this post until 1905. He also held the Aldershot command for a brief period in 1900-1901. Sir William Butler was promoted lieutenant-general in 1900. He had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872) and other works, and he was the biographer (1899) of Sir George Colley. He married in 1877 Miss Elizabeth Thompson, an accomplished painter of battle-scenes, notably "The Roll Call" (1874), "Quatre Bras" (1875), "Rorke's Drift" (1881), "The Camel Corps" (1891), and "The Dawn of Waterloo" (1895).
BUTLER, a borough and the county-seat of Butler county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Conoquenessing Creek, about 30 m. N. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 8734; (1900) 10,853, of whom 928 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,728. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg, and the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways, and is connected with Pittsburg by two electric lines. It is built on a small hill about 1010 ft. above sea-level, and commands extensive views of the surrounding valley. The Butler County hospital (1899) is located here. A fair is held in Butler annually. Oil, natural gas, clay, coal and iron abound in the vicinity, and the borough has various manufactures, including lumber, railway cars (especially of steel), paint, silk, bricks, plate-glass, bottles and oil-well tools. The value of the city's factory products increased from $1,403,026 in 1900 to $6,832,007 in 1905, or 386.9%, this being much the greatest rate of increase shown by any city in the state having in 1900 a population of 8000 or more. Butler was selected as the site for the county-seat of the newly-formed county in 1802, was laid out in 1803, and was incorporated in the same year. The county and the borough were named in honour of General Richard Butler, a soldier in the War of Independence and leader of the right wing of General St Clair's army, which was sent against the Indians in 1791 and on the 4th of November was defeated, Butler being killed in the engagement.
BUTLER (through the O. Fr. bouteillier, from the Late Lat. buticularius, buticula, a bottle), a domestic servant who superintends the wine-cellar and acts as the chief male servant of a household; among his other duties are the conduct of the service of the table and the custody of the plate. The butler of a royal household was an official of high rank, whose duties, though primarily connected with the supply of wine for the royal table, varied in the different courts in which the office appears. In England, as superintendent of the importation of wine, a duty was payable to him (see BUTLERAGE AND PRISAGE); the butlership of Ireland, Pincerna Hiberniae, was given by John, king of England, to Theobald Walter, who added the name of Butler to his own; it then became the surname of his descendants, the earls, dukes and marquesses of Ormonde (see BUTLER, family, above).
BUTLERAGE AND PRISAGE. In England there was an ancient right of the crown to purveyance or pre-emption, i.e. the right of buying up provisions and other necessities for the royal household, at a valuation, even without the consent of the owner. Out of this right originated probably that of taking customs, in return for the protection and maintenance of the ports and harbours. One such customs due was that of "prisage," the right of taking one tun of wine from every ship importing from ten to twenty tuns, and two tuns from every ship importing more than twenty tuns. This right of prisage was commuted, by a charter of Edward I. (1302), into a duty of two shillings on every tun imported by merchant strangers, and termed "butlerage," because paid to the king's butler. Butlerage ceased to be levied in 1809, by the Customs Consolidation Act of that year.
BUTO, the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy·t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BUSIRIS). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, a large and important site, but as yet yielding no inscriptions. This western Buto was the capital of the kingdom of Northern Egypt in prehistoric times before the two kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of Lower Egypt and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the south she sometimes is given the form of a vulture; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus stem, which latter spells her name; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; this may be accounted for partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her having brought up Horus in a floating island, resembling the story of Leto and Apollo on Delos. Perhaps the two myths influenced each other. Herodotus describes the temple and other sacred [v.04 p.0889] places of (the western) Buto, and refers to its festival, and to its oracle, which must have been important though nothing definite is known about it. It is strange that a city whose leading in the most ancient times was fully recognized throughout Egyptian history does not appear in the early lists of nome-capitals. Like Thebes, however (which lay in the 4th nome of Upper Egypt, its early capital being Hermonthis), it eventually became, at a very late date, the capital of a nome, in this case called Phtheneto, "the land of (the goddess) Buto." The second Buto (hierogl. 'Im·t) was capital from early times of the 19th nome of Lower Egypt.
See Herodotus ii. 155; Zeitschr. f. ägyptische Sprache (1871), I; K. Sethe in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, s.v. "Buto"; D.G. Hogarth, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxiv. I; W.M.F. Petrie, Ehnasya, p. 36; Nebesheh and Defenneh.
(F. LL. G.)
BUTRINTO, a seaport and fortified town of southern Albania, Turkey, in the vilayet of Iannina; directly opposite the island of Corfu (Corcyra), and on a small stream which issues from Lake Vatzindro or Vivari, into the Bay of Butrinto, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea. Pop.(1900) about 2000. The town, which is situated about 2 m. inland, has a small harbour, and was formerly the seat of an Orthodox bishop. In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the ancient Buthrotum, from which the modern town derives its name. The ruins consist of a Roman wall, about a mile in circumference, and some remains of both later and Hellenic work. The legendary founder of the city was Helenus, son of Priam, and Virgil (Aen. iii. 291 sq.) tells how Helenus here established a new Trojan kingdom. Hence the names New Troy and New Pergamum, applied to Buthrotum, and those of Xanthus and Simoïs, given to two small streams in the neighbourhood. In the 1st century B.C. Buthrotum became a Roman colony, and derived some importance from its position near Corcyra, and on the main highway between Dyrrachium and Ambracia. Under the Empire, however, it was overshadowed by the development of Dyrrachium and Apollonia. The modern city belonged to the Venetians from the 14th century until 1797. It was then seized by the French, who in 1799 had to yield to the Russians and Turks.
BUTT, ISAAC (1813-1879), Irish lawyer and Nationalist leader, was born at Glenfin, Donegal, in 1813, his father being the Episcopalian rector of Stranorlar. Having won high honours at Trinity, Dublin, he was appointed professor of political economy in 1836. In 1838 he was called to the bar, and not only soon obtained a good practice, but became known as a politician on the Protestant Conservative side, and an opponent of O'Connell. In 1844 he was made a Q.C. He figured in nearly all the important Irish law cases for many years, and was engaged in the defence of Smith O'Brien in 1848, and of the Fenians between 1865 and 1869. In 1852 he was returned to parliament by Youghal as a Liberal-Conservative, and retained this seat till 1865; but his views gradually became more liberal, and he drifted away from his earlier opinions. His career in parliament was marred by his irregular habits, which resulted in pecuniary embarrassment, and between 1865 and 1870 he returned again to his work at the law courts. The result, however, of the disestablishment of the Irish Church was to drive Butt and other Irish Protestants into union with the Nationalists, who had always repudiated the English connexion; and on 19th May 1870, at a large meeting in Dublin, Butt inaugurated the Home Rule movement in a speech demanding an Irish parliament for local affairs. On this platform he was elected in 1871 for Limerick, and found himself at the head of an Irish Home Rule party of fifty-seven members. But it was an ill-assorted union, and Butt soon found that he had little or no control over his more aggressive followers. He had no liking for violent methods or for "obstruction" in parliament; and his leadership gradually became a nullity. His false position undoubtedly assisted in breaking down his health, and he died in Dublin on the 5th of May 1879.
BUTT. (1) (From the Fr. botte, boute; Med. Lat. butta, a wine vessel), a cask for ale or wine, with a capacity of about two hogsheads. (2) (A word common in Teutonic languages, meaning short, or a stump), the thick end of anything, as of a fishing-rod, a gun, a whip, also the stump of a tree. (3) (From the Fr. but, a goal or mark, and butte, a target, a rising piece of ground, &c.), a mark for shooting, as in archery, or, in its modern use, a mound or bank in front of which are placed the targets in artillery or musketry practice. This is sometimes called a "stop-butt," its purpose being to secure the ground behind the targets from stray shots. The word is used figuratively of a person or object at which derision or abuse are levelled.
BUTTE, the largest city of Montana, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Silver Bow county. It is situated in the valley of Deer Lodge river, near its head, at an altitude of about 5700 ft. Pop. (1880) 3363; (1890) 10,723; (1900) 30,470, of whom 10,210 were foreign-born, including 2474 Irish, 1518 English-Canadians, and 1505 English; (1910 census) 39,165. It is served by the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound, the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific, and the Oregon Short Line railways. Popularly the name "Butte" is applied to an area which embraces the city, Centerville, Walkerville, East Butte, South Butte and Williamsburg. These together form one large and more or less compact city. Butte lies in the centre of the greatest copper-mining district in the world; the surrounding hills are honey-combed with mines, and some mines are in the very heart of the city itself. The best known of the copper mines is the Anaconda. The annual output of copper from the Butte district almost equals that from all the rest of the country together; the annual value of copper, gold and silver aggregates more than $60,000,000. Although mining and its allied industries of quartz crushing and smelting dominate all other industries in the place, there are also foundries and machine shops, iron-works, tile factories, breweries and extensive planing mills. Electricity, used in the mines particularly, is brought to Butte from Cañon Ferry, 75 m. to the N.; from the plant, also on the Missouri river, of the Helena Power Transmission Company, which has a great steel dam 85 ft. high and 630 ft. long across the river, and a 6000-h.p. substation in Butte; and from the plant of the Madison River Power Company, on Madison river 7½ m. S.E. of Norris, whence power is also transmitted to Bozeman and Belgrade, Gallatin county, to Ruby, Madison county, and to the Greene-Campbell mine near Whitehall, Jefferson county. In 1910 Butte had only one large smelter, and the smoke nuisance was thus abated. The city is the seat of the Montana School of Mines (1900), and has a state industrial school, a high school and a public library (rebuilt in 1906 after a fire) with more than 32,000 volumes. The city hall, Federal building and Silver Bow county court house are among the principal buildings. Butte was first settled as a placer mining camp in 1864. It was platted in 1866; its population in 1870 was only 241, and for many years its growth was slow. Prosperity came, however, with the introduction of quartz mining in 1875, and in 1879 a city charter was granted. In the decade from 1890 to 1900 Butte's increase in population was 184.2%.
BUTTE (O. Fr. butte, a hillock or rising ground), a word used in the western states of North America for a flat-topped hill surrounded by a steep escarpment from which a slope descends to the plain. It is sometimes used for "an elevation higher than a hill but not high enough for a mountain." The butte capped by a horizontal platform of hard rock is characteristic of the arid plateau region of the west of North America.
BUTTER (Lat. butyrum, Gr. [Greek: bouturon], apparently connected with [Greek: bous], cow, and [Greek: turos], cheese, but, according to the New English Dictionary, perhaps of Scythian origin), the fatty portion of the milk of mammalian animals. The milk of all mammals contains such fatty constituents, and butter from the milk of goats, sheep and other animals has been and may be used; but that yielded by cow's milk is the most savoury, and it alone really constitutes the butter of commerce. The milk of the various breeds of cattle varies widely in the proportion of fatty matter it contains; its richness in this respect being greatly influenced by season, nature of food, state of the animals' health and other considerations. Usually the cream is skimmed off the surface of the milk for making butter, but by some the churning is performed on the milk itself without waiting for the [v.04 p.0890] separation of the cream. The operation of churning causes the rupture of the oil sacs, and by the coalescence of the fat so liberated butter is formed. Details regarding churning and the preparation of butter generally will be found under DAIRY AND DAIRY FARMING.
BUTTERCUP, a name applied to several species of the genus Ranunculus (q.v.), characterized by their deeply-cut leaves and yellow, broadly cup-shaped flowers. Ranunculus acris and R. bulbosus are erect, hairy meadow plants, the latter having the stem swollen at the base, and distinguished also by the furrowed flower-stalks and the often smaller flowers with reflexed, not spreading, sepals. R. repens, common on waste ground, produces long runners by means of which it rapidly covers the ground. The plants are native in the north temperate to arctic zones of the Old World, and have been introduced in America.
BUTTERFIELD, DANIEL (1831-1901), American soldier, was born in Utica, New York. He graduated at Union College in 1849, and when the Civil War broke out he became colonel of the 12th New York militia regiment. On the 14th of May 1861 he was transferred to the regular army as a lieutenant-colonel, and in September he was made a brigadier-general U.S.V. He served in Virginia in 1861 and in the Peninsular campaign of 1862, and was wounded at Games' Mill. He took part in the campaign of second Bull Run (August 1862), and in November became major-general U.S.V. and in July 1863 colonel U.S.A. At Fredericksburg he commanded the V. corps, in which he had served since its formation. After General Hooker succeeded Burnside, Butterfield was appointed chief of staff, Army of the Potomac, and in this capacity he served in the Chancellorsville and Gettysburg campaigns. Not being on good terms with General Meade he left the staff, and was soon afterwards sent as chief of staff to Hooker, with the XI. and XII. corps (later combined as the XX.) to Tennessee, and took part in the battle of Chattanooga (1863), and the Atlanta campaign of the following year, when he commanded a division of the XX. corps. His services were recognized by the brevets of brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army. He resigned in 1870, and for the rest of his life was engaged in civil and commercial pursuits. In 1862 he wrote a manual of Camp and Outpost Duty (New York, 1862). General Butterfield died at Cold Spring, N.Y., on the 17th of July 1901.
A Biographical Memorial, by his widow, was published in 1904.
BUTTERFIELD, WILLIAM (1814-1900), English architect, was born in London, and educated for his profession at Worcester, where he laid the foundations of his knowledge of Gothic architecture. He settled in London and became prominent in connexion with the Cambridge Camden Society, and its work in the improvement of church furniture and art. His first important building was St Augustine's, Canterbury (1845), and his reputation was made by All Saints', Margaret Street, London (1859), followed by St Alban's, Holborn (1863), the new part of Merton College, Oxford (1864), Keble College, Oxford (1875), and many houses and ecclesiastical buildings. He also did much work as a restorer, which has been adversely criticized. He was a keen churchman and intimately associated with the English church revival. He had somewhat original views as to colour in architecture, which led to rather garish results, his view being that any combination of the natural colours of the materials was permissible. His private life was retiring, and he died unmarried on the 23rd of February 1900.
BUTTERFLY AND MOTH (the former from "butter" and "fly," an old term of uncertain origin, possibly from the nature of the excrement, or the yellow colour of some particular species; the latter akin to O. Eng. mod, an earth-worm), the common English names applied respectively to the two groups of insects forming the scientific order Lepidoptera (q.v.).
BUTTER-NUT, the product of Caryocar nuciferum, a native of tropical South America. The large nuts, known also as saowari or suwarow nuts, are the hard stone of the fruit and contain an oily nutritious seed. The genus Caryocar contains ten species, in tropical South America, some of which form large trees affording a very durable wood, useful for shipbuilding.
BUTTERWORT, the popular name of a small insectivorous plant, Pinguicula vulgaris, which grows in wet, boggy land. It is a herb with a rosette of fleshy, oblong leaves, 1 to 3 in. long, appressed to the ground, of a pale colour and with a sticky surface. Small insects settle on the leaves and are caught in the viscid excretion. This, like the excretion of the sundew and other insectivorous plants, contains a digestive ferment (or enzyme) which renders the nitrogenous substances of the body of the insect soluble, and capable of absorption by the leaf. In this way the plant obtains nitrogenous food by means of its leaves. The leaves bear two sets of glands, the larger borne on usually unicellular pedicels, the smaller almost sessile (fig. B). When a fly is captured, the viscid excretion becomes strongly acid and the naturally incurved margins of the leaf curve still further inwards, rendering contact between the insect and the leaf-surface more complete. The plant is widely distributed in the north temperate zone, extending into the arctic zone.
BUTTERY (from O. Fr. boterie, Late Lat. botaria, a place where liquor is stored, from butta, a cask), a place for storing wine; later, with a confusion with "butter," a pantry or storeroom for food; especially, at colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the place where food other than meat, especially bread and butter, ale and wines, &c., are kept.
BUTTMANN, PHILIPP KARL (1764-1829), German philologist, was born at Frankfort-On-Main in 1764. He was educated in his native town and at the university of Göttingen. In 1789 he obtained an appointment in the library at Berlin, and for some years he edited Speners Journal. In 1796 he became professor at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin, a post which he held for twelve years. In 1806 he was admitted to the Academy of Sciences, and in 1811 was made secretary of the Historico-Philological Section. He died in 1829. Buttmann's writings gave a great impetus to the scientific study of the Greek language. His Griechische Grammatik (1792) went through many editions, and was translated into English. His Lexilogus, a valuable study on some words of difficulty occurring principally in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, was published in 1818-1825, and was translated into English. Buttmann's other works were Ausführliche griechische Sprachlehre (2 vols., 1819-1827); Mythologus, a collection of essays (1828-1829); and editions of some classical authors, the most important being Demosthenes in Midiam (1823) and the continuation of Spalding's Quintilian.
[v.04 p.0891] BUTTON (Fr. bouton, O. Fr. boton, apparently from the same root as bouter, to push), a small piece of metal or other material which, pushed through a loop or button-hole, serves as a catch between different parts of a garment, &c. The word is also used of other objects which have a projecting knob-like character, e.g. button-mushrooms, the button of an electric bell-push, or the guard at the tip of a fencing foil; or which resemble a button in size and shape, as the button of metal obtained in assaying operations. At first buttons were apparently used for purposes of ornamentation; in Piers Plowman (1377) mention is made of a knife with "botones ouergylte," and in Lord Berner's translation of Froissart's Chronicles (1525) of a book covered with crimson velvet with "ten botons of syluer and gylte." While this use has continued, especially in connexion with women's dress, they began to be employed as fastenings at least as early as the 15th century. As a term of comparison for something trivial or worthless, the word is found in the 14th century. Buttons of distinctive colour or pattern, or bearing a portrait or motto, are often worn, especially in the United States, as a decoration, or sign of membership of a society or of adherence to a political party; among the most honoured of such buttons are those worn by members of the military order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, organized in 1865 by officers who had fought in the Civil War. Chinese officials wear a button or knob on their hats as a mark of rank, the grade being denoted by its colour and material (see MANDARIN).
Many varieties of buttons are used on clothing, but they may be divided into two main classes according to the arrangement by which they are attached to the garment; in one class they are provided with a shank which may consist of a metal loop or of a tuft of cloth or similar material, while in the other they are pierced with holes through which are passed threads. To these two classes roughly correspond two broad differences in the method of manufacture, according as the buttons are composite and made up of two or more pieces, or are simply shaped disks of a single material; some composite buttons, however, are provided with holes, and simple metal buttons sometimes have metal shanks soldered or riveted on them. From an early period buttons of the former kind were made by needlework with the aid of a mould or former, but about 1807 B. Sanders, a Dane who had been ruined by the bombardment of Copenhagen, introduced an improved method of manufacturing them at Birmingham. His buttons were formed of two disks of metal locked together by having their edges turned back on each other and enclosing a filling of cloth or pasteboard; and by methods of this kind, carried out by elaborate automatic machinery, buttons are readily produced, presenting faces of silk, mohair, brocade or other material required to harmonize with the fabric on which they are used. Sanders's buttons at first had metal shanks, but about 1825 his son invented flexible shanks of canvas or other substance through which the needle could pass freely in any direction. The mechanical manufacture of covered buttons was started in the United States in 1827 by Samuel Williston, of Easthampton, Mass., who in 1834 joined forces with Joel and Josiah Hayden, of Haydenville.
The number of materials that have been used for making buttons is very large--metals such as brass and iron for the cheaper kinds, and for more expensive ones, gold and silver, sometimes ornamented with jewels, filigree work, &c.; ivory, horn, bone and mother-of-pearl or other nacreous products of shell-fish; vegetable ivory and wood; glass, porcelain, paper, celluloid and artificial compositions; and even the casein of milk, and blood. Brass buttons were made at Birmingham in 1689, and in the following century the metal button industry underwent considerable development in that city. Matthew Boulton the elder, about 1745, introduced great improvements in the processes of manufacture, and when his son started the Soho works in 1767 one of the departments was devoted to the production of steel buttons with facets, some of which sold for 140 guineas a gross. Gilt buttons also came into fashion about the same period. In this "Augustan age" of the Birmingham button industry, when there was a large export trade, the profits of manufacturers who worked on only a modest scale amounted to £3000 and £4000 a year, and workmen earned from £2 to £4 a week. At one time the buttons had each to be fashioned separately by skilled artisans, but gradually the cost of production was lessened by the adoption of mechanical processes, and instead of being turned out singly and engraved or otherwise ornamented by hand, they came to be stamped out in dies which at once shape them and impress them with the desired pattern. Ivory buttons are among the oldest of all. Horn buttons were made at Birmingham at least by 1777; towards the middle of the igth century Emile Bassot invented a widely-used process for producing them from the hoofs of cattle, which were softened by boiling. Pearl buttons are made from pearl oyster shells obtained from various parts of the world, and after being cut out by tubular drills are shaped and polished by machinery. Buttons of vegetable ivory can be readily dyed. Glass buttons are especially made in Bohemia, as also are those of porcelain, which were invented about 1840 by an Englishman, R. Prosser of Birmingham. In the United States few buttons were made until the beginning of the 19th century, when the manufacture of metal buttons was started at Waterbury, Conn., which is now the centre of that industry. In 1812 Aaron Benedict began to make ivory and horn buttons at the same place. Buttons of vegetable ivory, now one of the most important branches of the American button industry, were first made at Leeds, Mass., in 1859 by an Englishman, A.W. Critchlow, and in 1875 commercial success was attained in the production of composition buttons at Springfield, Mass. Pearl buttons were made on a small scale in 1855, but their manufacture received an enormous impetus in the last decade of the 19th century, when J.F. Boepple began, at Muscatine, Iowa, to utilize the unio or "niggerhead" shells found along the Mississippi. By 1905 the annual output of these "fresh-water pearl" buttons had reached 11,405,723 gross, worth $3,359,167, or 36.6% of the total value of the buttons produced in the United States. In the same year the mother-of-pearl buttons ("ocean pearl buttons") numbered 1,737,830 gross, worth $1,511,107, and the two kinds together constituted 44% of the number, and 53.9% of the value, of the button manufactures of the United States. (See U.S.A. Census Reports, 1900, Manufactures, part iii. pp. 315-327.)
BUTTRESS (from the O. Fr. bouteret, that which bears a thrust, from bouter, to push, cf. Eng. "butt" and "abutment"), masonry projecting from a wall, provided to give additional strength to the same, and also to resist the thrust of the roof or wall, especially when concentrated at any one point. In Roman architecture the plans of the building, where the vaults were of considerable span and the thrust therefore very great, were so arranged as to provide cross-walls, dividing the aisles, as in the case of the Basilica of Maxentius, and, in the Thermae of Rome, the subdivisions of the less important halls, so that there were no visible buttresses. In the baths of Diocletian, however, these cross-walls rose to the height of the great vaulted hall, the tepidarium, and their upper portions were decorated with niches and pilasters. In a palace at Shuka in Syria, attributed to the end of the 2nd century A.D., where, in consequence of the absence of timber, it was necessary to cover over the building with slabs of stones, these latter were carried on arches thrown across the great hall, and this necessitated two precautions, viz. the provision of an abutment inside the building, and of buttresses outside, the earliest example in which the feature was frankly accepted. In Byzantine work there were no external buttresses, the plans being arranged to include them in cross-walls or interior abutments. The buttresses of the early Romanesque churches were only pilaster strips employed to break up the wall surface and decorate the exterior. At a slightly later period a greater depth was given to the lower portion of the buttresses, which was then capped with a deep sloping weathering. The introduction of ribbed vaulting, extended to the nave in the 12th century, and the concentration of thrusts on definite points of the structure, rendered the buttress an absolute necessity, and from the first this would seem to have been recognized, and the architectural treatment already given to the Romanesque buttress received [v.04 p.0892] a remarkable development. The buttresses of the early English period have considerable projection with two or three sets-off sloped at an acute angle dividing the stages and crowned by triangular heads; and slender columns ("buttress shafts") are used at the angle. In later work pinnacles and niches are usually employed to decorate the summits of the buttresses, and in the still later Perpendicular work the vertical faces are all richly decorated with panelling.
BUTYL ALCOHOLS, C_4H_9OH. Four isomeric alcohols of this formula are known; two of these are primary, one secondary, and one tertiary (see ALCOHOLS). Normal butyl alcohol, CH_3·(CH_2)_2·CH_2OH, is a colourless liquid, boiling at 116.8°, and formed by reducing normal butyl aldehyde with sodium, or by a peculiar fermentation of glycerin, brought about by a schizomycete. Isobutyl alcohol, (CH_3)_2CH·CH_2OH, the butyl alcohol of fermentation, is a primary alcohol derived from isobutane. It may be prepared by the general methods, and occurs in fusel oil, especially in potato spirit. It is a liquid, smelling like fusel oil and boiling at 108.4° C. Methyl ethyl carbinol, CH_3·C_2H_5·CHOH, is the secondary alcohol derived from n-butane. It is a strongly smelling liquid, boiling at 99°. Trimethyl carbinol or tertiary butyl alcohol, (CH_3)_3·COH, is the simplest tertiary alcohol, and was obtained by A. Butlerow in 1864 by acting with zinc methyl on acetyl chloride (see ALCOHOLS). It forms rhombic prisms or plates which melt at 25° and boil at 83°, and has a spiritous smell, resembling that of camphor.
BUTYRIC ACID, C_4H_8O_2. Two acids are known corresponding to this formula, normal butyric acid, CH_3·CH_2·CH_2·COOH, and isobutyric acid, (CH_3)_2·CH·COOH. Normal butyric acid or fermentation butyric acid is found in butter, as an hexyl ester in the oil of Heracleum giganteum and as an octyl ester in parsnip (Pastinaca sativa); it has also been noticed in the fluids of the flesh and in perspiration. It may be prepared by the hydrolysis of ethyl acetoacetate, or by passing carbon monoxide over a mixture of sodium acetate and sodium ethylate at 205° C. (A. Geuther, Ann., 1880, 202, p.306), C_2H_5ONa + CH_3COONa + CO = H·CO_2Na + CH_3·CH_2·CH_2·COONa. It is ordinarily prepared by the fermentation of sugar or starch, brought about by the addition of putrefying cheese, calcium carbonate being added to neutralize the acids formed in the process. A. Fitz (Ber., 1878, 11 p. 52) found that the butyric fermentation of starch is aided by the direct addition of Bacillus subtilis. The acid is an oily liquid of unpleasant smell, and solidifies at -19° C.; it boils at 162.3° C., and has a specific gravity of 0.9746 (0° C.). It is easily soluble in water and alcohol, and is thrown out of its aqueous solution by the addition of calcium chloride. Potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid oxidize it to carbon dioxide and acetic acid, while alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes it to carbon dioxide. The calcium salt, Ca(C_4H_7O_2)_2·H_2O, is less soluble in hot water than in cold.
Isobutyric acid is found in the free state in carobs (Ceratonia siliqua) and in the root of Arnica dulcis, and as an ethyl ester in croton oil. It may be artificially prepared by the hydrolysis of isopropylcyanide with alkalies, by the oxidation of isopropyl alcohol with potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid (I. Pierre and E. Puchot, Ann. de chim. et de phys., 1873, [4] 28, p. 366), or by the action of sodium amalgam on methacrylic acid, CH_2·C(CH_3)·COOH. It is a liquid of somewhat unpleasant smell, boiling at 155.5° C. Its specific gravity is 0.9697 (0°). Heated with chromic acid solution to 140° C., it gives carbon dioxide and acetone. Alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes it to [alpha]-oxyisobutyric acid, (CH_3)_2·C(OH)·COOH, whilst concentrated nitric acid converts it into dinitroisopropane. Its salts are more soluble in water than those of the normal acid.
BUXAR, or BAXAR, a town of India, in the district of Shahabad, Bengal, on the south bank of the Ganges, and on the East Indian railway. Pop. (1901) 13,945. There is a dismantled fort of small size which was important from its commanding the Ganges. A celebrated victory was gained here on the 23rd of October 1764 by the British forces under Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro, over the united armies of Shuja-ud-Dowlah and Kasim Ali Khan. The action raged from 9 o'clock till noon, when the enemy gave way. Pursuit was, however, frustrated by Shuja-ud-Dowlah sacrificing a part of his army to the safety of the remainder. A bridge of boats had been constructed over a stream about 2 m. distant from the field of battle, and this the enemy destroyed before their rear had passed over. Through this act 2000 troops were drowned, or otherwise lost; but destructive as was this proceeding, it was, said Major Munro, "the best piece of generalship Shuja-ud-Dowlah showed that day, because if I had crossed the rivulet with the army, I should either have taken or drowned his whole army in the Karamnasa, and come up with his treasure and jewels, and Kasim Ali Khan's jewels, which I was informed amounted to between two and three millions."
BUXTON, JEDEDIAH (1707-1772), English arithmetician, was born on the 20th of March 1707 at Elmton, near Chesterfield, in Derbyshire. Although his father was schoolmaster of the parish, and his grandfather had been the vicar, his education had been so neglected that he could not write; and his knowledge, except of numbers, was extremely limited. How he came first to know the relative proportions of numbers, and their progressive denominations, he did not remember; but on such matters his attention was so constantly riveted, that he frequently took no cognizance of external objects, and when he did, it was only with reference to their numbers. He measured the whole lordship of Elmton, consisting of some thousand acres, simply by striding over it, and gave the area not only in acres, roods and perches, but even in square inches. After this, he reduced them into square hairs'-breadths, reckoning forty-eight to each side of the inch. His memory was so great, that in resolving a question he could leave off and resume the operation again at the same point after the lapse of a week, or even of several months. His perpetual application to figures prevented the smallest acquisition of any other knowledge. His wonderful faculty was tested in 1754 by the Royal Society of London, who acknowledged their satisfaction by presenting him with a handsome gratuity. During his visit to the metropolis he was taken to see the tragedy of Richard III. performed at Drury Lane theatre, but his whole mind was given to the counting of the words uttered by David Garrick. Similarly, he set himself to count the steps of the dancers; and he declared that the innumerable sounds produced by the musical instruments had perplexed him beyond measure. He died in 1772.
A memoir appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for June 1754, to which, probably through the medium of a Mr Holliday, of Haughton Hall, Nottinghamshire, Buxton had contributed several letters. In this memoir, his age is given as forty-nine, which points to his birth in 1705; the date adopted above is on the authority of Lysons' Magna Britannia (Derbyshire).
BUXTON, SIR THOMAS FOWELL (1786-1845), English philanthropist, was born in Essex on the 1st of April 1786, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where, in spite of his early education having been neglected, hard work made him one of the first men of his time, with a high reputation as a speaker. In 1807 he married Hannah Gurney, sister of the celebrated Elizabeth Fry. As his means were not sufficient to support his family, he entered in 1808 the brewery of Truman, Hanbury & Company, of which his uncles, the Hanburys, were partners. He devoted himself to business with characteristic energy, became a partner in 1811, and soon had the whole concern in his hands. In 1816 he brought himself into notice by his speech on behalf of the Spitalfields weavers, and in 1818 he published his able Inquiry into Prison Discipline. The same year he was elected M.P. for Weymouth, a borough for which he continued to sit till 1837. In the House of Commons he had a high reputation as an able and straightforward speaker, devoted to philanthropic schemes. Of these plans the most important was that for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Buxton devoted his life to this object, and through defeat and opposition, despite the attacks of enemies and the remonstrances of faint-hearted friends, he remained true to it. Not till 1833 was he successful, and even then only partially, for he was compelled to admit into the bill some clauses against which his better judgment had decided. In 1837 he ceased to [v.04 p.0893] sit in the House of Commons. He travelled on the continent in 1839 to recruit his health, which had given way, and took the opportunity of inspecting foreign prisons. He was made a baronet in 1840, and then devoted himself to a plan for ameliorating the condition of the African natives. The failure of the Niger expedition of 1841 was a blow from which he never recovered. He died on the 19th of February 1845.
See Memoir and Correspondence of Sir T.F. Buxton (1848), by his third son, Charles Buxton (1823-1871), a well-known philanthropist and member of parliament.
BUXTON, a market town and fashionable health-resort in the High Peak parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, on the London & North-Western and Midland railways, 36 m. N.W. by N. of Derby. Pop. of urban district (1901) 10,181. It occupies a high position, lying between 1000 and 1150 ft. above sea-level, in an open hollow, surrounded at a distance by hills of considerable elevation, except on the south-east side, where the Wye, which rises about half a mile away, makes its exit. The old town (High Buxton) stands a little above the new, and consists of one wide street, and a considerable market-place with an old cross. The new town is the richer portion. The Crescent is a fine range of buildings in the Doric style, erected by the duke of Devonshire in 1779-1788. It contains hotels, a ballroom, a bank, a library and other establishments, and the surrounding open grounds are laid out in terraces and gardens. The Old Hall hotel at the west end of the Crescent stands on the site of the mansion built in 1572 by the earl of Shrewsbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which was the residence of Mary queen of Scots when she visited the town. The mineral waters of Buxton, which have neither taste nor smell, are among the most noted in England, and are particularly efficacious in cases of rheumatism and gout. There are numerous public and private baths, the most important of which are those in the establishment at the eastern end of the Crescent. The springs supply hot and cold water at a very short distance from each other, flowing at the rate of 60 gallons a minute. The former possesses a uniform temperature of 82° Fahr., and the principal substances in solution are bicarbonate of calcium, bicarbonate of magnesium, chloride of sodium, chloride of magnesium and silica acid. There is also a chalybeate spring known as St Anne's well, situated at the S.W. corner of the Crescent, the water of which when mixed with that of the other springs proves purgative. The Devonshire hospital, formerly known as the Bath Charity, is a benevolent institution, supported by voluntary subscriptions. Every year some thousands of poor patients are treated free of cost; and the hospital was enlarged for their accommodation, a dome being added which is of greater circumference than any other in Europe. In 1894 the duke of Devonshire erected a handsome pump-room at St Anne's well. The Buxton season extends from June to October, and during that period the town is visited by thousands, but it is also popular as a winter resort. The Buxton Gardens are beautifully laid out, with ornamental waters, a fine opera-house, pavilion and concert hall, theatre and reading rooms. Electric lighting has been introduced, and there is an excellent golf course. The Cavendish Terrace forms a fine promenade, and the neighbourhood of the town is rich in objects of interest. Of these the chief are Poole's Hole, a vast stalactite cave, about half a mile distant; Diamond Hill, which owes its name to the quartz crystals which are not uncommon in its rocks; and Chee Tor, a remarkable cliff, on the banks of the Wye, 300 ft. high. Ornaments are manufactured by the inhabitants from alabaster and spar; and excellent lime is burned at the quarries near Poole's Hole. Buxton is an important centre for horse-breeding, and a large horse-fair is held annually. Although the annual rainfall, owing to the situation of the town towards the western flank of the Pennine Hills, is about 49 in., the air is particularly dry owing to the high situation and the rapidity with which waters drain off through the limestone. The climate is bracing and healthy.
The waters were known and used by the Romans, but to a limited extent, and no remains of their baths survive. Roman roads connected the place with Derby, Brough in Edale and Manchester. Buxton (Bawdestanes, Bue-stanes), formed into a civil parish from Bakewell in 1895, has thus claims to be considered one of the oldest English spas. It was probably the "Bectune" mentioned in Domesday. After the departure of the Romans the baths seem to have been long neglected, but were again frequented in the 16th century, when the chapel of St Anne was hung round with the crutches of those who were supposed to owe their cure to her healing powers; these interesting relics were destroyed at the Reformation. The baths were visited at least four times by Mary queen of Scots, when a prisoner in charge of George, earl of Shrewsbury, other famous Elizabethan visitors being Lord Burleigh, the earl of Essex, and Robert, earl of Leicester. At the close of the 18th century the duke of Devonshire, lord of the manor (whose ancestor Sir Ralph de Gernons was lord of Bakewell in 1251), spent large sums of money on improvements in the town. In 1781 he began to build the famous Crescent, and since that time Buxton has steadily increased in favour as an inland watering-place. In 1813 a weekly market on Saturday and four annual fairs were granted. These were bought by the local authorities from the duke of Devonshire in 1864.
See Gough's edition of Camden's Britannia; Stephen Glover, History of the County of Derby (Derby, 1829); W. Bemrose, Guide to Buxton (London, 1869).
BUXTORF, or BUXTORFF, JOHANNES (1564-1629), German Hebrew and Rabbinic scholar, was born at Kamen in Westphalia on the 25th of December 1564. The original form of the name was Bockstrop, or Boxtrop, from which was derived the family crest, which bore the figure of a goat (Ger. Bock, he-goat). After the death of his father, who was minister of Kamen, Buxtorf studied at Marburg and the newly-founded university of Herborn, at the latter of which C. Olevian (1536-1587) and J.P. Piscator (1546-1625) had been appointed professors of theology. At a later date Piscator received the assistance of Buxtorf in the preparation of his Latin translation of the Old Testament, published at Herborn in 1602-1603. From Herborn Buxtorf went to Heidelberg, and thence to Basel, attracted by the reputation of J.J. Grynaeus and J.G. Hospinian (1515-1575). After a short residence at Basel he studied successively under H.B. Bullinger (1504-1575) at Zürich and Th. Beza at Geneva. On his return to Basel, Grynaeus, desirous that the services of so promising a scholar should be secured to the university, procured him a situation as tutor in the family of Leo Curio, son of Coelius Secundus Curio, well-known for his sufferings on account of the Reformed faith. At the instance of Grynaeus, Buxtorf undertook the duties of the Hebrew chair in the university, and discharged them for two years with such ability that at the end of that time he was unanimously appointed to the vacant office. From this date (1591) to his death in 1629 he remained in Basel, and devoted himself with remarkable zeal to the study of Hebrew and rabbinic literature. He received into his house many learned Jews, that he might discuss his difficulties with them, and he was frequently consulted by Jews themselves on matters relating to their ceremonial law. He seems to have well deserved the title which was conferred upon him of "Master of the Rabbins." His partiality for Jewish society brought him, indeed, on one occasion into trouble with the authorities of the city, the laws against the Jews being very strict. Nevertheless, on the whole, his relations with the city of Basel were friendly. He remained firmly attached to the university which first recognized his merits, and declined two invitations from Leiden and Saumur successively. His correspondence with the most distinguished scholars of the day was very extensive; the library of the university of Basel contains a rich collection of letters, which are valuable for a literary history of the time.
WORKS.--Manuale Hebraicum et Chaldaicum (1602; 7th ed., 1658); Synagoga Judaica (1603 in German; afterwards translated into Latin in an enlarged form), a valuable repertory of information regarding the opinions and ceremonies of the Jews; Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum cum brevi Lexico Rabbinico Philosophico (1607; reprinted at Glasgow, 1824); his great Rabbinical Bible, Biblic Hebraica cum Paraphr. Chald. et Commentariis Rabbinorum (2 vols., 1618; 4 vols., 1618-1619), containing, in addition to the Hebrew [v.04 p.0894] text, the Aramaic Paraphrases of Targums, punctuated after the analogy of the Aramaic passages in Ezra and Daniel (a proceeding which has been condemned by Richard Simon and others), and the Commentaries of the more celebrated Rabbis, with various other treatises; Tiberias, sive Commentarius Masoreticus (1620; quarto edition, improved and enlarged by J. Buxtorf the younger, 1665), so named from the great school of Jewish criticism which had its seat in the town of Tiberias. It was in this work that Buxtorf controverted the views of Elias Levita regarding the late origin of the Hebrew vowel points, a subject which gave rise to the controversy between Louis Cappel and his son Johannes Buxtorf (q.v.). Buxtorf did not live to complete the two works on which his reputation chiefly rests, viz. his great Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum, and the Concordantiae Bibliorum Hebraicorum, both of which were edited by his son. They are monuments of untiring labour and industry. The lexicon was republished at Leipzig in 1869 with some additions by Bernard Fischer, and the concordance was assumed by Julius Fürst as the basis of his great Hebrew concordance, which appeared in 1840.
For additional information regarding his writings see Athenae Rauricae, pp. 444-448; articles in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie, and Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk.; J.P. Niceron's Mémoires, vol. xxxi. pp. 206-215; J.M. Schroeckh's Kirchengeschichte, vol. v. (Post-Reformation period), pp. 72 seq. (Leipzig, 1806); G.W. Meyer's Geschichte der Schrift-Erklärung, vol. iii. (Göttingen, 1804); and E. Kautsch, Johannes Buxtorf der Ältere (1879).
BUXTORF, or BUXTORFF, JOHANNES (1599-1664), son of the preceding, was born at Basel on the 13th of August 1599, and when still a boy attained considerable proficiency in the classical languages. Entering the university at the age of twelve, he was only sixteen when he obtained his master's degree. He now gave himself up to theological and especially to Semitic studies, concentrating later on rabbinical Hebrew, and reading while yet a young man both the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Gemaras. These studies he further developed by visits to Heidelberg, Dort (where he made the acquaintance of many of the delegates to the synod of 1619) and Geneva, and in all these places acquired a great reputation. In 1622 he published at Basel a Lexicon Chaldaicum et Syriacum, as a companion work to his father's great Rabbinical Bible. He declined the chair of logic at Lausanne, and in 1624 was appointed general deacon of the church at Basel. On the death of his father in 1629, he was unanimously designated his successor in the Hebrew professorship. From this date until his death in 1664 he remained at Basel, declining two offers which were made to him from Groningen and Leiden, to accept the Hebrew chair in these two celebrated schools. In 1647 the governing body of the university founded, specially for him, a third theological professorship, that of "Commonplaces and Controversies," which Buxtorf held for seven years along with the Hebrew chair. When, however, the professorship of the Old Testament became vacant in 1654 by the death of Theodor Zwinger, Buxtorf resigned the chair of theology and accepted that of the Old Testament instead. He was four times married, his three first wives dying shortly after marriage and the fourth predeceasing her husband by seven years. His children died young, with the exception of two boys, the younger of whom, Jakob (1645-1704), became his father's colleague, and then his successor, in the chair of Hebrew. The same distinction fell to the lot of his nephew Johann (1663-1732).
A considerable portion of Buxtorf's public life was spent in controversy regarding disputed points in biblical criticism, in reference to which he had to defend his father's views. The attitude of the Reformed churches at that time, as opposed to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine inspiration. The Massoretic text of the Old Testament, therefore, as compared either with that of the recently discovered Samaritan Pentateuch, or the Septuagint or of the Vulgate, alone contained the true words of the sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews, had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (q.v.) was the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury which it would do the Protestant cause, but Cappel sent his MS. to Thomas Erpenius of Leiden, the most learned orientalist of his day, by whom it was published in 1624, under the title Arcanum Punctationis revelatum, but without the author's name. The elder Buxtorf, though he lived five years after the publication of the work, made no public reply to it, and it was not until 1648 that Buxtorf junior published his Tractatus de punctorum origine, antiquitate, et authoritate, oppositus Arcano punctationis revelato Ludovici Cappelli. He tried to prove by copious citations from the rabbinical writers, and by arguments of various kinds, that the points, if not so ancient as the time of Moses, were at least as old as that of Ezra, and thus possessed the authority of divine inspiration. Unfortunately he allowed himself to employ contemptuous epithets towards Cappel, such as "innovator" and "visionary." Cappel speedily prepared a second edition of his work, in which, besides replying to the arguments of his opponent, and fortifying his position with new ones, he retorted his contumelious epithets with interest. Owing to various causes, however, this second edition did not see the light until 1685, when it was published at Amsterdam in the edition of his collected works. Besides this controversy, Buxtorf engaged in three others with the same antagonist, on the subject of the integrity of the Massoretic text of the Old Testament, on the antiquity of the present Hebrew characters, and on the Lord's Supper. In the two former Buxtorf supported the untenable position that the text of the Old Testament had been transmitted to us without any errors or alteration, and that the present square or so-called Chaldee characters were coeval with the original composition of the various books. These views were triumphantly refuted by his great opponent in his Critica Sacra, and in his Diatriba veris et antiquis Ebraicorum literis.
Besides the works already mentioned in the course of this article, Buxtorf edited the great Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum, on which his father had spent the labour of twenty years, and to the completion of which he himself gave ten years of additional study; and the great Hebrew Concordance, which his father had little more than begun. In addition to these, he published new editions of many of his father's works, as well as others of his own, complete lists of which may be seen in the Athenae Rauricae and other works enumerated at the close of the preceding article.
BUYING IN, on the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which he fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the buyer may give instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required. The official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he requires it, and whoever sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it immediately. The original seller has to pay the difference between the two prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract price. A similar practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up his securities.
BUYS BALLOT'S LAW, in meteorology, the name given to a law which may be expressed as follows:--"Stand with your back to the wind; the low-pressure area will be on your left-hand." This rule, the truth of which was first recognized by the American meteorologists J.H. Coffin and W. Ferrel, is a direct consequence of Ferrel's Law (q.v.). It is approximately true in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the angle between barometric gradient and wind is not a right angle in low latitudes. The law takes its name from C.H.D. Buys Ballot, a Dutch meteorologist, who published it in the Comptes rendus, November 1857.
BUZEU, the capital of the department of Buzeu, Rumania, situated near the right bank of the river Buzeu, between the Carpathian Mountains and the fertile lowlands of south Moldavia and east Walachia. Pop. (1900) 21,561. Buzeu is important as a market for petroleum, timber and grain. It is the meeting [v.04 p.0895] place of railroads from Râmnicu Sarat, Braila and Ploesci. Amber is found by the riverside, and there are cloth-mills in the city. Buzeu is the seat of a bishop, whose cathedral was erected in 1640 by Prince Matthias Bassarab of Walachia, on the site of an older church. In the neighbourhood there are many monasteries. Buzeu was formerly called Napuca or Buzograd.
BUZOT, FRANÇOIS NICOLAS LÉONARD (1760-1794), French revolutionist, was born at Evreux on the 1st of March 1760. He studied law, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was an advocate in his native town. In 1789 he was elected deputy to the states-general, and there became known for his advanced opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the clergy, and the right of all citizens to carry arms. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Buzot returned to Evreux, where he was named president of the criminal tribunal. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the Convention, and took his place among the Girondists. He demanded the formation of a national guard from the departments to defend the Convention against the populace of Paris. His proposal was carried, but never put into force; and the Parisians were extremely bitter against him and the Girondists. In the trial of Louis XVI., Buzot voted for death, but with appeal to the people and postponement of sentence. He had a decree of death passed against the émigrés who did not return to France, and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. Proscribed with the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793, he succeeded in escaping, and took refuge in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a federalist insurrection against the Convention, which was speedily suppressed. Buzot was outlawed, and fled to the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, and committed suicide in the woods of St Émilion on the 18th of June 1794. He was an intelligent and honest man, although he seems to have profited by the sale of the possessions of the clergy, but he had a stubborn, unyielding temperament, was incapable of making concessions, and was dominated by Madame Roland, who imparted to him her hatred of Danton and the Montagnards.
See Mémoires de Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot, published by C.A. Daubon (Paris, 1866). For the history of the federalist movement in Normandy, see L. Boivin Champeaux, Notices pour servir à, l'histoire de la Révolution dans le département de l'Eure (Evreux and Paris, 1884).
BUZZARD, a word derived from the Lat. Buteo, through the Fr. Busard, and used in a general sense for a large group of diurnal birds-of-prey, which contains, among many others, the species usually known as the common buzzard (Buteo vulgaris, Leach), though the English epithet is nowadays hardly applicable. The name buzzard, however, belongs quite as rightfully to the birds called in books "harriers," which form a distinct subfamily of Falconidae under the title Circinae, and by it one species, the moor-buzzard (Circus aeruginosus), is still known in such places as it inhabits. "Puttock" is also another name used in some parts of England, but perhaps is rather a synonym of the kite (Milvus ictinus). Though ornithological writers are almost unanimous in distinguishing the buzzards as a group from the eagles, the grounds usually assigned for their separation are but slight, and the diagnostic character that can be best trusted is probably that in the former the bill is decurved from the base, while in the latter it is for about a third of its length straight. The head, too, in buzzards is short and round, while in the eagles it is elongated. In a general way buzzards are smaller than eagles, though there are several exceptions to this statement, and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if not all of the buzzards, about which anything of the kind is with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, while the eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The buzzards are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of flight, so that in the old days of falconry they were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence in common English to call a man "a buzzard" is to denounce him as stupid. Their food consists of small mammals, young birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects--particularly beetles--and thus they never could have been very injurious to the game-preserver, if indeed they were not really his friends, though they have fallen under his ban; but at the present day they are so scarce that in England their effect, whatever it may be, is inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the whole world with the exception of the Australian region, and have been split into many genera by systematists. In the British Islands are two species, one resident (the B. vulgaris already mentioned), and now almost confined to a few wooded districts; the other the rough-legged buzzard (Archibuteo lagopus), an irregular winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in large bands from the north of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being feathered down to the toes. The honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus), a summer-visitor from the south, and breeding, or attempting to breed, yearly in the New Forest, does not come into the subfamily Buteoninae, but is probably the type of a distinct group, Perninae, of which there are other examples in Africa and Asia. In America the name "buzzard" is popularly given to the turkey-buzzard or turkey-vulture (Cathartes Aura).
(A. N.)
BYELAYA TSERKOV (i.e. White Church), a town of Russia, in the government of Kiev, 32 m. S.S.W. of Vasilkov, on the main road from Kiev to the Crimea, in 49° 47' N. lat. and 30° 7' E. long. Pop. (1860) 12,075; (1897) 20,705. First mentioned in 1155, Byelaya Tserkov was destroyed during the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. In 1550 a castle was built here by the prince of Kiev, and various privileges were bestowed upon the inhabitants. From 1651 the town was subject alternately to Poland and to independent hetmans (Cossack chiefs). In 1793 it was united to Russia. There is a trade in beer, cattle and grain, sold at eleven annual fairs, three of which last for ten days each.
BYELEV, a town of Russia, in the government of Tula, and 67 m. S.W. from the city of that name on the left bank of the Oka, in 53° 48' N. lat., and 36° 9' E. long. Pop. (1860) 8063; (1897) 9567. It is first mentioned in 1147. It belonged to Lithuania in the end of the 14th century; and in 1468 it was raised to the rank of a principality, dependent on that country. In the end of the 15th century this principality began to attach itself to the grand-duchy of Moscow; and by Ivan III. it was ultimately united to Russia. It suffered greatly from the Tatars in 1507, 1512, 1530, 1536 and 1544. In 1826 the empress Elizabeth died here on her way from Taganrog to St Petersburg. A public library was founded in 1858 in memory of the poet Zhukovsky, who was born (1782) in a neighbouring village. The industries comprise tallow-boiling, oil-manufacture, tanning, sugar-refining and distilling. There is a trade in grain, hemp oil, cattle and tallow. A fair is held from the 28th of August to the 10th of September every year.
BYELGOROD (i.e. White Town), a town of Russia, in the government of Kursk, 100 m. S.S.E. by rail from the city of that name, in 50° 46' N. lat. and 36° 37' E. long., clustering on a chalk hill on the right bank of the Donets. Pop. (1860) 11,722; (1897) 21,850. In the 17th century it suffered repeatedly from Tatar incursions, against which there was built (from 1633 to 1740) an earthen wall, with twelve forts, extending upwards of 200 m. from the Vorskla to the Don, and called the Byelgorod line. In 1666 an archiepiscopal see was established in the town. There are two cathedral churches, both built in the 16th century, as well as a theological seminary. Candles, leather, soap, lime and bricks are manufactured, and a trade is carried on in grain, cattle, wool, honey, wax and tallow. There are three annual fairs, on the 10th Friday after Easter, the 29th of June and the 15th of August respectively.
BYELOSTOK (Polish, Bialystok), a town of West Russia, in the government of and 53 m. by rail S.W. of the city of Grodno, on the main railway line from Moscow to Warsaw, at its junction with the Kiev-Grayevo (Prussian frontier) line. Founded in 1320, it became part of Prussia after the third partition of Poland, but was annexed to Russia in 1807, after the peace of Tilsit. Its development dates from 1845, when woollen-mills were built. Since that time it has grown very rapidly, its population being 13,787 in 1857; 56,629 in 1889; and 65,781 in 1901, three-fourths Jews. Its woollen, silk and felt hat factories give occupation to several thousand workers.
[v.04 p.0896] BYEZHETSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Tver, and 70 m. N.N.E. of the city of that name, on the right bank of the Mologa, in 57° 46' N. lat. and 36° 43' E. long. Pop. (1860) 5423; (1897) 9090. It is mentioned in the chronicles of 1137. On the fall of Novgorod, to which it had belonged, it was incorporated (1479) with the grand-duchy of Moscow. The town is famous for its scythes and shearing hooks, but makes also axes, nails and other hardware, and trades in grain, linen, hemp and flax.
BY-LAW, or BYE-LAW (by- being used in the sense of subordinate or secondary, cf. by-path), a regulation made by councils, boards, corporations and companies, usually under statutory power, for the preservation of order and good government within some place or jurisdiction. When made under authority of a statute, by-laws must generally, before they come into operation, be submitted to some confirming authority for sanction and approval; when approved, they are as binding as enacted laws. By-laws must be reasonable in themselves; they must not be retrospective nor contrary to the general law of the land. By various statutes powers are given to borough, county and district councils, to make by-laws for various purposes; corporate bodies, also, are empowered by their charters to make by-laws which are binding on their members. Such by-laws must be in harmony with the objects of the society and must not infringe or limit the powers and duties of its officers.
BYLES, MATHER (1706-1788), American clergyman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 26th of March 1706, descended, on his mother's side, from John Cotton and Richard Mather. He graduated at Harvard in 1725, and in 1733 became pastor of the Hollis Street church (Congregational), Boston. He held a high rank among the clergy of the province and was noted for his scholarly sermons and his ready wit. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he was outspoken in his advocacy of the royal cause, and after the British evacuation of Boston his connexion with his church was dissolved. He remained in Boston, however, and subsequently (1777) was arrested, tried and sentenced to deportation. This sentence was later changed to imprisonment in his own house. He was soon released, but never resumed his pastorate. He died in Boston on the 5th of July 1788. Besides many sermons he published A Poem on the Death of George I. (1727) and Miscellaneous Poems (1744).
His son, MATHER BYLES (1735-1814), graduated at Harvard in 1751, and was a Congregational clergyman at New London, Connecticut, until 1768, when he entered the Established Church, and became rector of Christ church, Boston. Sympathizing with the royal cause, he settled, after the War of Independence, in St Johns, New Brunswick, where he was rector of a church until his death.
BYNG, JOHN (1704-1757), British admiral, was the fourth son of George Byng, Lord Torrington, and entered the navy in 1718. The powerful influence of his father accounts for his rapid rise in the service. He received his first appointment as lieutenant in 1723, and became captain in 1727. His career presents nothing of note till after his promotion as rear-admiral in 1745, and as vice-admiral in 1747. He served on the most comfortable stations, and avoided the more arduous work of the navy. On the approach of the Seven Years' War the island of Minorca was threatened by an attack from Toulon and was actually invaded in 1756. Byng, who was then serving in the Channel with the rank of admiral, which he attained in 1755, was ordered to the Mediterranean to relieve the garrison of Fort St Philip, which was still holding out. The squadron was not very well manned, and Byng was in particular much aggrieved because his marines were landed to make room for the soldiers who were to reinforce the garrison, and he feared that if he met a French squadron after he had lost them he would be dangerously undermanned. His correspondence shows clearly that he left prepared for failure, that he did not believe that the garrison could hold out against the French force landed, and that he was already resolved to come back from Minorca if he found that the task presented any great difficulty. He wrote home to that effect to the ministry from Gibraltar. The governor of the fortress refused to spare any of his soldiers to increase the relief for Minorca, and Byng sailed on the 8th of May. On the 19th he was off Minorca, and endeavoured to open communications with the fort. Before he could land any of the soldiers, the French squadron appeared. A battle was fought on the following day. Byng, who had gained the weather gauge, bore down on the French fleet of M. de la Galissonière at an angle, so that his leading ships came into action unsupported by the rest of his line. The French cut the leading ships up, and then slipped away. When the flag captain pointed out to Byng that by standing out of his line he could bring the centre of the enemy to closer action, he declined on the ground that Thomas Mathews had been condemned for so doing. The French, who were equal in number to the English, got away undamaged. After remaining near Minorca for four days without making any further attempt to communicate with the fort or sighting the French, Byng sailed away to Gibraltar leaving Fort St Philip to its fate. The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in the country. Byng was brought home, tried by court-martial, condemned to death, and shot on the 14th of March 1757 at Portsmouth. The severity of the penalty, aided by a not unjust suspicion that the ministry sought to cover themselves by throwing all the blame on the admiral, led in after time to a reaction in favour of Byng. It became a commonplace to say that he was put to death for an error of judgment. The court had indeed acquitted him of personal cowardice or of disaffection, and only condemned him for not having done his utmost. But it must be remembered that in consequence of many scandals which had taken place in the previous war the Articles of War had been deliberately revised so as to leave no punishment save death for the officer of any rank who did not do his utmost against the enemy either in battle or pursuit. That Byng had not done all he could is undeniable, and he therefore fell under the law. Neither must it be forgotten that in the previous war in 1745 an unhappy young lieutenant, Baker Phillips by name, whose captain had brought his ship into action unprepared, and who, when his superior was killed, surrendered the ship when she could no longer be defended, was shot by sentence of a court-martial. This savage punishment was approved by the higher officers of the navy, who showed great lenity to men of their own rank. The contrast had angered the country, and the Articles of War had been amended precisely in order that there might be one law for all.
The facts of Byng's life are fairly set out in Charnock's Biogr. Nav. vol. iv. pp. 145 to 179. The number of contemporary pamphlets about his case is very great, but they are of no historical value, except as illustrating the state of public opinion.
(D. H.)
BYNKERSHOEK, CORNELIUS VAN (1673-1743), Dutch jurist, was born at Middleburg in Zeeland. In the prosecution of his legal studies, and while holding the offices first of member and afterwards of president of the supreme court, he found the common law of his country so defective as to be nearly useless for practical purposes. This abuse he resolved to reform, and took as the basis of a new system the principles of the ancient Roman law. His works are very voluminous. The most important of them are De foro legatorum (1702); Observationes Juris Romani (1710), of which a continuation in four books appeared in 1733; the treatise De Dominio Maris (1721); and the Quaestiones Juris Publici (1737). Complete editions of his works were published after his death; one in folio at Geneva in 1761, and another in two volumes folio at Leiden in 1766.
BYRD, WILLIAM (1543-1623), English musical composer, was probably a member of one of the numerous Lincolnshire families of the name who were to be found at Lincoln, Spalding, Pinchbeck, Moulton and Epworth in the 16th century. According to Wood, he was "bred up to musick under Thomas Tallis." He was appointed organist of Lincoln cathedral about 1563, and on the 14th of September 1568 was married at St Margaret in the Close to Ellen or Julian Birley. On the 22nd of February 1569 he was sworn in as a member of the Chapel Royal, but he does not seem to have left Lincoln immediately. In the Chapel Royal he shared with Tallis the honorary post of organist, and on the 22nd [v.04 p.0897] of January 1575 the two composers obtained a licence for twenty-one years from Elizabeth to print music and music-paper, a monopoly which does not seem to have been at all remunerative. In 1575 Byrd and Tallis published a collection of Latin motets for five and six voices, printed by Thomas Vautrollier. In 1578 Byrd and his family were living at Harlington, Middlesex. As early as 1581 his name occurs among lists of recusants, and though he retained his post in the Chapel Royal he was throughout his life a Catholic. About 1579 he set a three-part song in Thomas Legge's Latin play Ricardus Tertius. In 1588 he published _Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, _and in the same year contributed two madrigals to Nicolas Yonge's Musica Transalpina. In 1589 appeared Songs of Sundrie Natures, a second edition of which was issued in 1610. In the same year he published Liber Primus Sacrarum Cantionum, a second series of which was brought out in 1591. In 1590 two madrigals by Byrd were included in Thomas Watson's First Sett of Italian Madrigalls Englished; one of these seems to have been sung before Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Lord Hertford at Elvetham in 1591. In April 1592 Byrd was still living at Harlington, but about 1593 he became possessed of the remainder of a lease of Stondon Place, Essex, a farm of some 200 acres, belonging to William Shelley, who was shortly afterwards convicted of high treason. The property was sequestrated, and on the 15th of July 1595 Byrd obtained a crown lease of it for the lives of his eldest son Christopher and his daughters Elizabeth and Rachel. On the death of Shelley his son bought back his estates (in 1604), whereupon his widow attempted to oust Byrd from Stondon Place, on the ground that it formed part of her jointure. Byrd was upheld in his possession of the property by James I. (Calendar of State Papers, Dom. Series, James I. add. series, vol. xxxvi.), but Mrs Shelley persevered in her suit, apparently until her death in 1609. In the following year the matter was settled for a time by Byrd's buying Stondon Place in the names of John and Thomas Petre, part of the property being charged with a payment to Byrd of £20 for his life, with remainder to his second son Thomas. Throughout this long suit Byrd, though in possession of property which had been confiscated from a recusant and actually taking part as a member of the Chapel Royal at the coronation of James I., had been excommunicated since 1598, while from 1605 until 1612, and possibly later, he was regularly presented before the archidiaconal court of Essex as a Catholic. In 1603 Easte published a work (no copies of which are known to exist) entitled Medulla Musicke. Sucked out of the sappe of two [of] the most famous Musitians that ever were in this land, namely Master Wylliam Byrd ... and Master Alphonso Ferabosco ... either of whom having made 40tie severall waies (without contention), showing most rare and intricate skill in 2 partes in one upon the playne song Miserere. In 1607 appeared two books of Gradualia, a second edition of which was issued in 1610. In the following year he published Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets; some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the Words. Probably in the same year was issued Parthenia, a collection of virginal music, in which Byrd was associated with Bull and Orlando Gibbons. The last work to which he contributed was Sir Thomas Leighton's Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowfull Soule (1614). His death took place on the 4th of July 1623. It is recorded in the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal as that of a "father of musicke." His will, dated the 15th of November 1622, shows that he remained a Catholic until the end of his life, and he expresses a desire that he may die at Stondon and be buried near his wife. From the same document it seems that his latter years had been embittered by a dispute with his eldest son, but that the matter was settled by an agreement with his daughter-in-law Catherine, to whom he left his property at Stondon, charged with the payment of £20 to his second son Thomas and £10 to his daughter Rachel, with remainder to his grandson Thomas and his second son of the same name. In 1635 the estate again came before the court of chancery, on the ground that the annuities had not been paid. The property seems about 1637 to have been let to one John Leigh, and in 1651 was held by a member of the Petre family. The committee for compounding with delinquents at that date allowed Thomas Byrd the annuity of £20 bequeathed by his father. Byrd's arms, as entered in the Visitation of Essex of 1634 ex sigillo were three stags' heads cabossed, a canton ermine. His children were (1) Christopher, who married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Moore of Bamborough, and had a son, Thomas, living at Stondon in 1634; (2) Thomas; (3) Elizabeth, who married successively John Jackson and--Burdett; (4) Rachel, married (1)--Hook, by whom she had two children, William and Catherine, married to Michael Walton; in 1634 Rachel Hook had married (2) Edward Biggs; (5) Mary, married (1) Henry Hawksworth, by whom she had four sons, William, Henry, George and John; (2) Thomas Falconbridge. Anne Byrd, who is mentioned in the proceedings Shelley v. Byrd (Exchequer Decrees, 7 James I., series ii. vol. vii. fol. 294 and 328), was probably a fourth daughter who died young.
Besides the works already mentioned Byrd was the composer of three masses, for three, four and five voices respectively, which seem to have been published with some privacy about 1588. There exists a second edition (also undated) of the four-part mass; all three have recently appeared in modern editions, and increase Byrd's claim to rank as the greatest English composer of his age. In addition to his published works, a large amount still remains in MS., comprising nearly every kind of composition. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book contains a long series of interesting pieces for the virginal, and more still remains unpublished in Lady Neville's Virginal Book and other contemporary collections. His industry was enormous, and though his work is unequal and the licences he allowed can hardly be defended on strict grounds, his Latin church music and his instrumental compositions entitle him to high rank among his contemporaries. As a madrigalist he was inferior to Morley, Wilbye and Gibbons, though even in this branch of his art he often displays great charm and individuality.
(W. B. S.*)
BYROM, JOHN (1692-1763), English poet, writer of hymns and inventor of a system of shorthand, was born at Kersal Cell, near Manchester, on the 29th of February 1692, the younger son of a prosperous merchant. He was educated at Merchant Taylors school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1714. His first poem, "Colin to Phoebe," a pastoral, appeared in the Spectator, No. 603. The heroine is said to have been Dr Bentley's daughter, Joanna, the mother of Richard Cumberland, the dramatist. After leaving the university Byrom went abroad, ostensibly to study medicine, but he never practised and possibly his errand was really political, for he was an adherent of the Pretender. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1724. On his return to London he married his cousin in 1721, and to support himself taught a new method of shorthand of his own invention, till he succeeded (1740) to his father's estate on the death of his elder brother. His diary gives interesting portraits and letters of the many great men of his time whom he knew intimately. He died on the 26th of September 1763. A collection of his poems was published in 1773, and he is included in Alexander Chalmers's English Poets. His system of shorthand was not published until after his death, when it was printed as The Universal English Shorthand; or the way of writing English in the most easy, concise, regular and beautiful manner, applicable to any other language, but particularly adjusted to our own (Manchester, 1767).
The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, related by Richard Parkinson, D.D., was published by the Chetham Society (1854-1857).
BYRON, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 6TH BARON (1788-1824), English poet, was born in London at 16 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on the 22nd of January 1788. The Byrons were of Norman stock, but the founder of the family was Sir John Byron, who entered into possession of the priory and lands of Newstead in the county of Nottingham in 1540. From him it descended (but with a bar-sinister) to a great-grandson, John (1st Baron) Byron (q.v.), a Cavalier general, who was raised to the peerage in 1643. The first Lord Byron died childless, and was succeeded by his brother Richard, the great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson, and was [v.04 p.0898] succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the Hon. John Byron (q.v.) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son, Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Conyers in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta Byron (1783-1851), the poet's half-sister, who, in 1807, married her first cousin, Colonel George Leigh. His second marriage to Catherine Gordon (b. 1765) of Gight in Aberdeenshire took place at Bath on the 13th of May 1785. He is said to have squandered the fortunes of both wives. It is certain that Gight was sold to pay his debts (1786), and that the sole provision for his wife was a settlement of £3000. It was an unhappy marriage. There was an attempt at living together in France, and, when this failed, Mrs Byron returned to Scotland. On her way thither she gave birth to a son, christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, who was descended from Sir William Gordon of Gight, grandson of James I. of Scotland. After a while her husband rejoined her, but went back to France and died at Valenciennes on the 2nd of August 1791. His wife was not a bad woman, but she was not a good mother. Vain and capricious, passionate and self-indulgent, she mismanaged her son from his infancy, now provoking him by her foolish fondness, and now exciting his contempt by her paroxysms of impotent rage. She neither looked nor spoke like a gentlewoman; but in the conduct of her affairs she was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided debt, and when relief came (a civil list pension of £300 a year) she spent most of it upon her son. Fairly well educated, she was not without a taste for books, and her letters are sensible and to the point. But the violence of her temper was abnormal. Her father committed suicide, and it is possible that she inherited a tendency to mental derangement. If Byron owed anything to his parents it was a plea for pardon.
The poet's first years were spent in lodgings at Aberdeen. From 1794 to 1798 he attended the grammar school, "threading all classes" till he reached the fourth. It was a good beginning, a solid foundation, enabling him from the first to keep a hand over his talents and to turn them to a set purpose. He was lame from his birth. His right leg and foot, possibly both feet, were contracted by infantile paralysis, and, to strengthen his muscles, his mother sent him in the summers of 1796, 1797 to a farm house on Deeside. He walked with difficulty, but he wandered at will, soothed and inspired by the grandeur of the scenery. To his Scottish upbringing he owed his love of mountains, his love and knowledge of the Bible, and too much Calvinism for faith or unfaith in Christianity. The death of his great-uncle (May 19, 1798) placed him in possession of the title and estates. Early in the autumn Mrs Byron travelled south with her son and his nurse, and for a time made her home at Newstead Abbey. Byron was old enough to know what had befallen him. "It was a change from a shabby Scotch flat to a palace," a half-ruined palace, indeed, but his very own. It was a proud moment, but in a few weeks he was once more in lodgings. The shrunken leg did not improve, and acting on bad advice his mother entrusted him to the care of a quack named Lavender, truss-maker to the general hospital at Nottingham. His nurse who was in charge of him maltreated him, and the quack tortured him to no purpose. At his own request he read Virgil and Cicero with a tutor.
In August 1799 he was sent to a preparatory school at Dulwich. The master, Dr Glennie, perceived that the boy liked reading for its own sake and gave him the free run of his library. He read a set of the British Poets from beginning to end more than once. This, too, was an initiation and a preparation. He remained at Dulwich till April 1801, when, on his mother's intervention, he was sent to Harrow. His school days, 1801-1805, were fruitful in two respects. He learned enough Latin and Greek to make him a classic, if not a classical scholar, and he made friends with his equals and superiors. He learned something of his own worth and of the worth of others. "My school-friendships," he says, "were with me passions." Two of his closest friends died young, and from Lord Clare, whom he loved best of all, he was separated by chance and circumstance. He was an odd mixture, now lying dreaming on his favourite tombstone in the churchyard, now the ring-leader in whatever mischief was afoot. He was a "record" swimmer, and, in spite of his lameness, enough of a cricketer to play for his school at Lord's, and yet he found time to read and master standard works of history and biography, and to acquire more general knowledge than boys and masters put together.
In the midsummer of 1803, when he was in his sixteenth year, he fell in love, once for all, with his distant relative, Mary Anne Chaworth, a "minor heiress" of the hall and park of Annesley which marches with Newstead. Two years his senior, she was already engaged to a neighbouring squire. There were meetings half-way between Newstead and Annesley, of which she thought little and he only too much. What was sport to the girl was death to the boy, and when at length he realized the "hopelessness of his attachment," he was "thrown out," as he said, "alone, on a wide, wide sea." She is the subject of at least five of his early poems, including the pathetic stanzas, "Hills of Annesley," and there are allusions to his love story in Childe Harold (c. i s.v.), and in "The Dream" (1816).
Byron went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1805. Cambridge did him no good. "The place is the devil," he said, and according to his own showing he did homage to the genius loci. But whatever he did or failed to do, he made friends who were worthy of his choice. Among them were the scholar-dandy Scrope Berdmore Davies, Francis Hodgson, who died provost of Eton, and, best friend of all, John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton). And there was another friend, a chorister named Edleston, a "humble youth" for whom he formed a romantic attachment. He died whilst Byron was still abroad (May 1811), but not unwept nor unsung, if, as there is little doubt, the mysterious Thyrza poems of 1811, 1812 refer to his death. During the vacation of 1806, and in 1807 which was one "long vacation," he took to his pen, and wrote, printed and published most of his "Juvenile Poems." His first venture was a thin quarto of sixty-six pages, printed by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. The "advertisement" is dated the 23rd of December 1806, but before that date he had begun to prepare a second collection for the press. One poem ("To Mary") contained at least one stanza which was frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders that the entire issue should be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807 an expurgated collection entitled Poems on Various Occasions was ready for private distribution. Encouraged by two critics, Henry Mackenzie and Lord Woodhouselee, he determined to recast this second issue and publish it under his own name. Hours of Idleness, "by George Gordon Lord Byron, a minor," was published in June 1807. The fourth and last issue of Juvenilia, entitled Poems, Original and Translated, was published in March 1808.
Hours of Idleness enjoyed a brief triumph. The Critical and other reviews were "very indulgent," but the Edinburgh Review for January 1808 contained an article, not, as Byron believed, by Jeffrey, but by Brougham, which put, or tried to put, the author and "his poesy" to open shame. The sole result was that it supplied fresh material and a new title for some rhyming couplets on "British Bards" which he had begun to write. A satire on Jeffrey, the editor, and Lord Holland, the patron of the Edinburgh Review, was slipped into the middle of "British Bards," and the poem rechristened English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (published the 1st of March 1809).
In April 1808, whilst he was still "a minor," Byron entered upon his inheritance. Hitherto the less ruinous portions of the abbey had been occupied by a tenant, Lord Grey de Ruthven. The banqueting hall, the grand drawing-room, and other parts of the monastic building were uninhabitable, but by incurring fresh debts, two sets of apartments were refurnished for Byron and for his mother. Dismantled and ruinous, it was still a splendid inheritance. In line with the front of the abbey is the west front of the priory church, with its hollow arch, once a "mighty window," its vacant niches, its delicate Gothic mouldings. The abbey buildings enclose a grassy quadrangle [v.04 p.0899] overlooked by two-storeyed cloisters. On the eastern side are the state apartments occupied by kings and queens not as guests, but by feudal right. In the park, which is part of Sherwood Forest, there is a chain of lakes--the largest, the north-west, Byron's "lucid lake." A waterfall or "cascade" issues from the lake, in full view of the room where Byron slept. The possession of this lordly and historic domain was an inspiration in itself. It was an ideal home for one who was to be hailed as the spirit or genius of romance.
On the 13th of March 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. He had determined, as soon as he was of age, to travel in the East, but before he sought "another zone" he invited Hobhouse and three others to a house-warming. One of the party, C.S. Matthews, describes a day at Newstead. Host and guests lay in bed till one. "The afternoon was passed in various diversions, fencing, single-stick ... riding, cricket, sailing on the lake." They dined at eight, and after the cloth was removed handed round "a human skull filled with Burgundy." After dinner they "buffooned about the house" in a set of monkish dresses. They went to bed some time between one and three in the morning. Moore thinks that the picture of these festivities is "pregnant in character," and argues that there were limits to the misbehaviour of the "wassailers." The story, as told in Childe Harold (c. I. s. v.-ix.), need not be taken too seriously. Byron was angry because Lord De La Warr did not wish him goodbye, and visited his displeasure on friends and "lemans" alike. May and June were devoted to the preparation of an enlarged edition of his satire. At length, accompanied by Hobhouse and a small staff of retainers, he set out on his travels. He sailed from Falmouth on the 2nd of July and reached Lisbon on the 7th of July 1809. The first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage contain a record of the principal events of his first year of absence.
The first canto describes Lisbon, Cintra, the ride through Portugal and Spain to Seville and thence to Cadiz. He is moved by the grandeur of the scenery, but laments the helplessness of the people and their impending fate. Talavera was fought and won whilst he was in Spain, but he is convinced that the "Scourge of the World" will prevail, and that Britain, "the fond ally," will display her blundering heroism in vain. Being against the government, he is against the war. History has falsified his politics, but his descriptions of places and scenes, of "Morena's dusky height," of Cadiz and the bull-fight, retain their freshness and their warmth.
Byron sailed from Gibraltar on the 16th of August, and spent a month at Malta making love to Mrs Spencer Smith (the "Fair Florence" of c. II. s. xxix.-xxxiii.). He anchored off Prevesa on the 28th of September. The second canto records a journey on horseback through Albania, then almost a terra incognita, as far as Tepeleni, where he was entertained by Ali Pacha (October 20th), a yachting tour along the shores of the Ambracian Gulf (November 8-23), a journey by land from Larnaki to Athens (December 15-25), and excursions in Attica, Sunium and Marathon (January 13-25, 1810).
Of the tour in Asia Minor, a visit to Ephesus (March 15, 1810), an excursion in the Troad (April 13), and the famous swim across the Hellespont (May 3), the record is to be sought elsewhere. The stanzas on Constantinople (lxxvii.-lxxxii.), where Byron and Hobhouse stayed for two months, though written at the time and on the spot, were not included in the poem till 1814. They are, probably, part of a projected third canto. On the 14th of July Hobhouse set sail for England and Byron returned to Athens.
Of Byron's second year of residence in the East little is known beyond the bare facts that he was travelling in the Morea during August and September, that early in October he was at Patras, having just recovered from a severe attack of malarial fever, and that by the 14th of November he had returned to Athens and taken up his quarters at the Franciscan convent. Of his movements during the next five months there is no record, but of his studies and pursuits there is substantial evidence. He learnt Romaic, he compiled the notes to the second canto of Childe Harold. He wrote (March 12) Hints from Horace (published 1831), an imitation or loose translation of the Epistola ad Pisones (Art of Poetry), and (March 17) The Curse of Minerva (published 1815), a skit on Lord Elgin's deportation of the metopes and frieze of the Parthenon.
He left Athens in April, passed some weeks at Malta, and landed at Portsmouth (c. July 20). Arrived in London his first step was to consult his literary adviser, R.C. Dallas, with regard to the publication of Hints from Horace. Of Childe Harold he said nothing, but after some hesitation produced the MS. from a "small trunk," and, presenting him with the copyright, commissioned Dallas to offer it to a publisher. Rejected by Miller of Albemarle Street, who published for Lord Elgin, it was finally accepted by Murray of Fleet Street, who undertook to share the profits of an edition with Dallas.
Meanwhile Mrs Byron died suddenly from a stroke of apoplexy. Byron set off at once for Newstead, but did not find his mother alive. He had but little affection for her while she lived, but her death touched him to the quick. "I had but one friend," he exclaimed, "and she is gone." Another loss awaited him. Whilst his mother lay dead in his house, he heard that his friend Matthews had been drowned in the Cam. Edleston and Wingfield had died in May, but the news had reached him on landing. There were troubles on every side. On the 11th of October he wrote the "Epistle to a Friend" ("Oh, banish care," &c.) and the lines "To Thyrza," which, with other elegies, were appended to the second edition of Childe Harold (April 17, 1812). It was this cry of desolation, this open profession of melancholy, which at first excited the interest of contemporaries, and has since been decried as morbid and unreal. No one who has read his letters can doubt the sincerity of his grief, but it is no less true that he measured and appraised its literary significance. He could and did turn it to account.
Towards the close of the year he made friends with Moore. Some lines in English Bards, &c. (ii. 466-467), taunting Moore with fighting a duel with Jeffrey with "leadless pistol" had led to a challenge, and it was not till Byron returned to England that explanations ensued, and that the challenge was withdrawn. As a poet Byron outgrew Moore, giving back more than he had received, but the friendship which sprang up between them still serves Byron in good stead. Moore's Life of Byron (1830) is no doubt a picture of the man at his best, but it is a genuine likeness. At the end of October Byron moved to London and took up his quarters at 8 St James's Street. On the 27th of February 1812 he made his first speech in the House of Lords on a bill which made the wilful destruction of certain newly invented stocking-frames a capital offence, speaking in defence of the riotous "hands" who feared that their numbers would be diminished by improved machinery. It was a brilliant speech and won the praise of Burdett and Lord Holland. He made two other speeches during the same session, but thenceforth pride or laziness kept him silent. Childe Harold (4to) was published on Tuesday, the 10th of March 1812. "The effect," says Moore, "was ... electric, his fame ... seemed to spring, like the palace of a fairy king, in a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on the 5th of December 1812. Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. Society, which in spite of his rank had neglected him, was now at his feet. But he could not keep what he had won. It was not only "villainous company," as he put it, which was to prove his "spoil," but the opportunity for intrigue. The excitement and absorption of one reigning passion after another destroyed his peace of mind and put him out of conceit with himself. His first affair of any moment was with Lady Caroline Lamb the wife of William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, a delicate, golden-haired sprite, who threw herself in his way, and afterwards, when she was shaken off, involved him in her own disgrace. To her succeeded Lady Oxford, who was double his own age, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, the "Ginevra" of his sonnets, the "Medora" of The Corsair.
His "way of life" was inconsistent with an official career, but there was no slackening of his poetical energies. In February 1813 he published The Waltz (anonymously), he wrote and [v.04 p.0900] published The Giaour (published June 5, 1813) and The Bride of Abydos (published November 29, 1813), and he wrote The Corsair (published February 1, 1814). The Turkish Tales were even more popular than Childe Harold. Murray sold 10,000 copies of The Corsair on the day of publication. Byron was at pains to make his accessories correct. He prided himself on the accuracy of his "costume." He was under no delusion as to the ethical or artistic value of these experiments on "public patience."
In the summer of 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime, and afterwards made public property by Mrs Beecher Stowe (Macmillan's Magazine, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and sincerity of his love for his "one relative,"--that her well-being was more to him than his own. Byron passed the "seasons" of 1813, 1814 in London. His manner of life we know from his journals. Socially he was on the crest of the wave. He was a welcome guest at the great Whig houses, at Lady Melbourne's, at Lady Jersey's, at Holland House. Sheridan and Moore, Rogers and Campbell, were his intimates and companions. He was a member of the Alfred, of Watier's, of the Cocoa Tree, and half a dozen clubs besides. After the publication of The Corsair he had promised an interval of silence, but the abdication of Napoleon evoked "An Ode," &c., in his dishonour (April 16); Lara, a Tale, an informal sequel to The Corsair, was published anonymously on August 6, 1814.
Newstead had been put up for sale, but pending the completion of the contract was still in his possession. During his last visit but one, whilst his sister was his guest, he became engaged to Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke (b. May 17, 1792; d. May 16, 1860), the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, Bart., and the Hon. Judith (born Noel), daughter of Lord Wentworth. She was an heiress, and in succession to a peerage in her own right (becoming Baroness Wentworth in 1856). She was a pretty girl of "a perfect figure," highly educated, a mathematician, and, by courtesy, a poetess. She had rejected Byron's first offer, but, believing that her cruelty had broken his heart and that he was an altered man, she was now determined on marriage. High-principled, but self-willed and opinionated, she believed that she held her future in her own hands. On her side there was ambition touched with fancy--on his, a wish to be married and some hope perhaps of finding an escape from himself. The marriage took place at Seaham in Durham on the 2nd of January 1815. Bride and bridegroom spent three months in paying visits, and at the end of March settled at 13 Piccadilly Terrace, London.
Byron was a member of the committee of management of Drury Lane theatre, and devoted much of his time to his professional duties. He wrote but little poetry. Hebrew Melodies (published April 1815), begun at Seaham in October 1814, were finished and given to the musical composer, Isaac Nathan, for publication. The Siege of Corinth and Parisina (published February 7, 1816) were got ready for the press. On the 10th of December Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter christened Augusta Ada. To judge from his letters, for the first weeks or months of his marriage things went smoothly. His wife's impression was that Byron "had avowedly begun his revenge from the first." It is certain that before the child was born his conduct was so harsh, so violent, and so eccentric, that she believed, or tried to persuade herself, that he was mad.
On the 15th of January 1816 Lady Byron left London for her father's house, claimed his protection, and after some hesitation and consultation with her legal advisers demanded a separation from her husband. It is a matter of common knowledge that in 1869 Mrs Beecher Stowe affirmed that Lady Byron expressly told her that Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister, Mrs Leigh; also that in 1905 the second Lord Lovelace (Lord Byron's grandson) printed a work entitled Astarte which was designed to uphold and to prove the truth of this charge. It is a fact that neither Lady Byron nor her advisers supported their demand by this or any other charge of misconduct, but it is also a fact that Lord Byron yielded to the demand reluctantly, under pressure and for large pecuniary considerations. It is a fact that Lady Byron's letters to Mrs Leigh before and after the separation are inconsistent with a knowledge or suspicion of guilt on the part of her sister-in-law, but it is also a fact (see Astarte, pp. 142-145) that she signed a document (dated March 14, 1816) to the effect that any renewal of intercourse did not involve and must not be construed as a withdrawal of the charge. It cannot be doubted that Lady Byron's conviction that her husband's relations with his half-sister before his marriage had been of an immoral character was a factor in her demand for a separation, but whether there were other and what issues, and whether Lady Byron's conviction was founded on fact, are questions which have not been finally answered. Lady Byron's charge, as reported by Mrs Beecher Stowe and upheld by the 2nd earl of Lovelace, is "non-proven." Mr Robert Edgcome, in Byron: the Last Phase (1909), insists that Mary Chaworth was the real object of Byron's passion, and that Mrs Leigh was only shielding her.
The separation of Lord and Lady Byron was the talk of the town. Two poems entitled "Fare Thee Well" and "A Sketch," which Byron had written and printed for private circulation, were published by The Champion on Sunday, April 14. The other London papers one by one followed suit. The poems, more especially "A Sketch," were provocative of criticism. There was a balance of opinion, but politics turned the scale. Byron had recently published some pro-Gallican stanzas, "On the 'Star of the Legion of Honour,'" in the Examiner (April 7), and it was felt by many that private dishonour was the outcome of public disloyalty. The Whigs defended Byron as best they could, but his own world, with one or two exceptions, ostracized him. The "excommunicating voice of society," as Moore put it, was loud and insistent. The articles of separation were signed on or about the 18th of April, and on Sunday, the 25th of April, Byron sailed from Dover for Ostend. The "Lines on Churchill's Grave" were written whilst he was waiting for a favourable wind. His route lay through the Low Countries, and by the Rhine to Switzerland. On his way he halted at Brussels and visited the field of Waterloo. He reached Geneva on the 25th of May, where he met by appointment at Dejean's Hôtel d'Angleterre, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Clare (or "Claire") Clairmont. The meeting was probably at the instance of Claire, who had recently become, and aspired to remain, Byron's mistress. On the 10th of June Byron moved to the Villa Diodati on the southern shore of the lake. Shelley and his party had already settled at an adjoining villa, the Campagne Montalègre. The friends were constantly together. On the 23rd of June Byron and Shelley started for a yachting tour round the lake. They visited the castle of Chillon on the 26th of June, and, being detained by weather at the Hôtel de l'Ancre, Ouchy, Byron finished (June 27-29) the third canto of Childe Harold (published November 18), and began the Prisoner of Chillon (published December 5, 1816). These and other poems of July-September 1816, e.g. "The Dream" and the first two acts of Manfred (published June 16, 1817), betray the influence of Shelley, and through him of Wordsworth, both in thought and style. Byron knew that Wordsworth had power, but was against his theories, and resented his criticism of Pope and Dryden. Shelley was a believer and a disciple, and converted Byron to the Wordsworthian creed. Moreover he was an inspiration in himself. Intimacy with Shelley left Byron a greater poet than he was before. Byron passed the summer at the Villa Diodati, where he also wrote the Monody on the Death of Sheridan, published September 9, 1816. The second half of September was spent and devoted to "an excursion in the mountains." His journal (September 18-29), which was written for and sent to Mrs Leigh, is a great prose poem, the source of the word pictures of Alpine scenery in Manfred. His old friend Hobhouse was with him and he enjoyed himself, but at the close he confesses that he could not lose his "own wretched identity" in the "majesty and the power and the glory" of nature. Remorse was scotched, not [v.04 p.0901] killed. On the 6th of October Byron and Hobhouse started via Milan and Verona for Venice, which was reached early in November. For the next three years Byron lived in or near Venice--at first, 1816-1817, in apartments in the Frezzeria, and after January 1818 in the central block of the Mocenigo palace. Venice appealed both to his higher and his lower nature. He set himself to study her history, to understand her constitution, to learn her language. The sights and scenes with which Shakespeare and Otway, Schiller's Ghostseer, and Madame de Staël's Corinne had made him familiar, were before his eyes, not dreams but realities. He would "repeople" her with her own past, and "stamp her image" on the creations of his pen. But he had no one to live for but himself, and that self he gave over to a reprobate mind. He planned and pursued a life of deliberate profligacy. Of two of his amours we learn enough or too much from his letters to Murray and to Moore--the first with his landlord's wife, Marianna Segati, the second with Margarita Cogni (the "Fornarina"), a Venetian of the lower class, who amused him with her savagery and her wit. But, if Shelley may be trusted, there was a limit to his candour. There is abundant humour, but there is an economy of detail in his pornographic chronicle. He could not touch pitch without being defiled. But to do him justice he was never idle. He kept his brains at work, and for this reason, perhaps, he seems for a time to have recovered his spirits and sinned with a good courage. His song of carnival, "So we'll go no more a-roving," is a hymn of triumph. About the middle of April he set out for Rome. His first halt was at Ferrara, which inspired the "Lament of Tasso" (published July 17, 1817). He passed through Florence, where he saw "the Venus" (of Medici) in the Uffizi Gallery, by reedy Thrasymene and Term's "matchless cataract" to "Rome the Wonderful." At Rome, with Hobhouse as companion and guide, he stayed three weeks. He returned to Venice on the 28th of May, but shortly removed to a villa at Mira on the Brenta, some 7 m. inland. A month later (June 26) when memory had selected and reduced to order the first impressions of his tour, he began to work them up into a fourth canto of Childe Harold. A first draft of 126 stanzas was finished by the 29th of July; the 60 additional stanzas which made up the canto as it stands were written up to material suggested by or supplied by Hobhouse, "who put his researches" at Byron's disposal and wrote the learned and elaborate notes which are appended to the poem. Among the books which Murray sent out to Venice was a copy of Hookham Frere's Whistlecraft. Byron took the hint and produced Beppo, a Venetian Story (published anonymously on the 28th of February 1818). He attributes his choice of the mock heroic ottava-rima to Frere's example, but he was certainly familiar with Casti's Novelle, and, according to Stendhal, with the poetry of Buratti. The success of Beppo and a growing sense that "the excellent manner of Whistlecraft" was the manner for him, led him to study Frere's masters and models, Berni and Pulci. An accident had led to a great discovery.
The fourth canto of Childe Harold was published on the 28th of April 1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In September he began Don Juan. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9) that his new poem is to be in the style of Beppo, and is "meant to be a little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (August 12, 1819), he says that he neither has nor had a plan--but that "he had or has materials." By materials he means books, such as Dalzell's Shipwrecks and Disasters by Sea, or de Castelnau's Histoire de la nouvelle Russie, &c., which might be regarded as poetry in the rough. The dedication to Robert Southey (not published till 1833) is a prologue to the play. The "Lakers" had given samples of their poetry, their politics and their morals, and now it was his turn to speak and to speak out. He too would write "An Excursion." He doubted that Don Juan might be "too free for these modest days." It was too free for the public, for his publisher, even for his mistress; and the "building up of the drama," as Shelley puts it, was a slow and gradual process. Cantos I., II. were published (4to) on the 15th of July 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., finished in November 1820, were not published till the 8th of August 1821. Cantos VI.-XVI., written between June 1822 and March 1823, were published at intervals between the 15th of July 1823 and the 26th of March 1824. Canto XVII. was begun in May 1823, but was never finished. A fragment of fourteen stanzas, found in his room at Missolonghi, was first published in 1903.
He did not put all his materials into Don Juan. "Mazeppa, a tale of the Russian Ukraine," based on a passage in Voltaire's Charles XII., was finished by the 30th of September 1818 and published with "An Ode" (on Venice) on the 28th of June 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in Venice, and formed a connexion with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli. She was young and beautiful, well-read and accomplished. Married at sixteen to a man nearly four times her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged constancy. Her volume of Recollections (Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie, 1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she sent for Byron, and on the 10th of June he arrived at Ravenna and took rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the "Prophecy of Dante" (published April 21, 1821). According to the preface the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in terza rima; but it had a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was revolutionary. In the fourth canto of Childe Harold, already translated into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her betrayal of Venice, and knowing that his word had weight he appeals to the country of his adoption to strike a blow for freedom--to "unite." It is difficult to realize the force or extent of Byron's influence on continental opinion. His own countrymen admired his poetry, but abhorred and laughed at his politics. Abroad he was the prophet and champion of liberty. His hatred of tyranny--his defence of the oppressed--was a word spoken in season when there were few to speak but many to listen. It brought consolation and encouragement, and it was not spoken in vain. It must, however, be borne in mind that Byron was more of a king-hater than a people-lover. He was against the oppressors, but he disliked and despised the oppressed. He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, and if he espoused a popular cause it was de haut en bas. His connexion with the Gambas brought him into touch with the revolutionary movement, and thenceforth he was under the espionage of the Austrian embassy at Rome. He was suspected and "shadowed," but he was left alone.
Early in September Byron returned to La Mira, bringing the countess with him. A month later he was surprised by a visit from Moore, who was on his way to Rome. Byron installed Moore in the Mocenigo palace and visited him daily. Before the final parting (October 11) Byron placed in Moore's hands the MS. of his Life and Adventures brought down to the close of 1816. Moore, as Byron suggested, pledged the MS. to Murray for 2000 guineas, to be Moore's property if redeemed in Byron's lifetime, but if not, to be forfeit to Murray at Byron's death. On the 17th of May 1824, with Murray's assent and goodwill, the MS. was burned in the drawing-room of 50 Albemarle Street. Neither Murray nor Moore lost their money. The Longmans lent Moore a sufficient sum to repay Murray, and were themselves repaid out of the receipts of Moore's Life of Byron. Byron told Moore that the memoranda were not "confessions," that they were "the truth but not the whole truth." This, no doubt, was the truth, and the whole truth. Whatever they may or may [v.04 p.0902] not have contained, they did not explain the cause or causes of the separation from his wife.[1]
At the close of 1819 Byron finally left Venice and settled at Ravenna in his own apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. His relations with the countess were put on a regular footing, and he was received in society as her cavaliere servente. At Ravenna his literary activity was greater than ever. His translation of the first canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore (published in the Liberal, No. IV., July 30, 1832), a laborious and scholarly achievement, was the work of the first two months of the year. From April to July he was at work on the composition of Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, a tragedy in five acts (published April 21, 1821). The plot turns on an episode in Venetian history known as La Congiura, the alliance between the doge and the populace to overthrow the state. Byron spared no pains in preparing his materials. In so far as he is unhistorical, he errs in company with Sanudo and early Venetian chronicles. Moved by the example of Alfieri he strove to reform the British drama by "a severer approach to the rules." He would read his countrymen a "moral lesson" on the dramatic propriety of observing the three unities. It was an heroic attempt to reassert classical ideals in a romantic age, but it was "a week too late"; Byron's "regular dramas" are admirably conceived and finely worded, but they are cold and lifeless.
Eighteen additional sheets of the Memoirs and a fifth canto of Don Juan were the pastime of the autumn, and in January 1821 Byron began to work on his second "historical drama," Sardanapalus. But politics intervened, and little progress was made. He had been elected capo of the "Americani," a branch of the Carbonari, and his time was taken up with buying and storing arms and ammunition, and consultations with leading conspirators. "The poetry of politics" and poetry on paper did not go together. Meanwhile he would try his hand on prose. A controversy had arisen between Bowles and Campbell with regard to the merits of Pope. Byron rushed into the fray. To avenge and exalt Pope, to decry the "Lakers," and to lay down his own canons of art, Byron addressed two letters to **** ****** (i.e. John Murray), entitled "Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope." The first was published in 1821, the second in 1835.
The revolution in Italy came to nothing, and by the 28th of May, Byron had finished his work on Sardanapalus. The Two Foscari, a third historical drama, was begun on the 12th of June and finished on the 9th of July. On the same day he began Cain, a Mystery. Cain was an attempt to dramatize the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in its detachment. Cain was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. Cain was published in the same volume with the Two Foscari and Sardanapalus, December 19, 1821. The "Blues," a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August. It was first published in The Liberal, No. III., April 26, 1823, When Cain was finished Byron turned from grave to gay, from serious to humorous theology. Southey had thought fit to eulogize George III. in hexameter verse. He called his funeral ode a "Vision of Judgment." In the preface there was an obvious reference to Byron. The "Satanic School" of poetry was attributed to "men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations." Byron's revenge was complete. In his "Vision of Judgment" (published in The Liberal, No. I., October 15, 1822) the tables are turned. The laureate is brought before the hosts of heaven and rejected by devils and angels alike. In October Byron wrote Heaven and Earth, a Mystery (The Liberal, No. II., January 1, 1823), a lyrical drama based on the legend of the "Watchers," or fallen angels of the Book of Enoch. The countess and her family had been expelled from Ravenna in July, but Byron still lingered on in his apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. At length (October 28) he set out for Pisa. On the road he met his old friend, Lord Clare, and spent a few minutes in his company. Rogers, whom he met at Bologna, was his fellow-traveller as far as Florence. At Pisa he rejoined the countess, who had taken on his behalf the Villa Lanfranchi on the Arno. At Ravenna Byron had lived amongst Italians. At Pisa he was surrounded by a knot of his own countrymen, friends and acquaintances of the Shelleys. Among them were E.J. Trelawny, Thomas Medwin, author of the well-known Conversations of Lord Byron (1824), and Edward Elliker Williams. His first work at Pisa was to dramatize Miss Lee's Kruitzner, or the German's Tale. He had written a first act in 1815, but as the MS. was mislaid he made a fresh adaptation of the story which he rechristened Werner, or the Inheritance. It was finished on the 20th of January and published on the 23rd of November 1822. Werner is in parts Kruitzner cut up into loose blank verse, but it contains lines and passages of great and original merit. Alone of Byron's plays it took hold of the stage. Macready's "Werner" was a famous impersonation.
In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron. Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822. She was in her sixth year, an interesting and attractive child, and he had hoped that her companionship would have atoned for his enforced separation from Ada. She is buried in a nameless grave at the entrance of Harrow church. Soon after the death of Allegra, Byron wrote the last of his eight plays, The Deformed Transformed (published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824). The "sources" are Goethe's Faust, The Three Brothers, a novel by Joshua Pickersgill, and various chronicles of the sack of Rome in 1527. The theme or motif is the interaction of personality and individuality. Remonstrances on the part of publisher and critic induced him to turn journalist. The control of a newspaper or periodical would enable him to publish what and as he pleased. With this object in view he entered into a kind of literary partnership with Leigh Hunt, and undertook to transport him, his wife and six children to Pisa, and to lodge them in the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this arrangement was The Liberal--Verse and Prose from the South. Four numbers were issued between October 1822 and June 1823. The Liberal did not succeed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure. Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828) was Hunt's revenge for the slights and indignities which he suffered in Byron's service. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat, the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the 1st of July. On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his companions were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the "burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that "all of Shelley was consumed but the heart." Whilst the fire was burning Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot sun and the violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which weakened his constitution and shortened his life.
The Austrian government would not allow the Gambas or the countess Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on the last day of September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay," and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and though his still unpublished poems were at the service of The Liberal, he did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903] was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering Don Juan (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of The Liberal, he meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of Childe Harold. There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said, "stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had completed The Island; or Christian and his Comrades (published June 26, 1823). The sources are Bligh's Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, and Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. Satire and tale are a reversion to his earlier method. The execution of The Island is hurried and unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.
When The Island was finished, Byron went on with Don Juan. Early in March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and after some hesitation on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece." His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and to purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On the 23rd of July the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn and anchored off Cephalonia on the 3rd of August. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba, Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or seven servants. The next four months were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour of Argostoli and afterwards at Metaxata. The object of this delay was to ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks were split up into parties, not to say factions, and there were several leaders. It was a question to which leader he would attach himself. At length a message reached him which inspired him with confidence. He received a summons from Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, a man of birth and education, urging him to come at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a request from the legislative body "to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the organization of western Greece." Byron felt that he could act with a "clear conscience" in putting himself at the disposal of a man whom he regarded as the authorized leader and champion of the Greeks. He sailed from Argostoli on the 29th of December 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at Missolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. He met with a royal reception. Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier's grave." During his three months' residence at Missolonghi he accomplished little and he endured much. He advanced large sums of money for the payment of the troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision of medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served as a link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and the "prince" Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but he never got the chance. A revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of his Suliote guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto, an exploit which he had reserved for his own leadership. He was beset with difficulties, but at length events began to move. On the 18th of March he received an invitation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend a conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the government to appoint him "governor-general of the enfranchised parts of Greece." He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself to the immediate acceptance of office. But to Salona he never came. "Roads and rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably postponed.
His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that his life was in danger. On the 15th of February he was struck down by an epileptic fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill the troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest, and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his death. For the first week of April the weather confined him to the house, but on the 9th a letter from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him to ride out with Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to the skin he insisted on dismounting and returning in an open boat to the quay in front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and violent rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the olive groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last time. Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting made recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian, "Forward--forward--courage! follow my example--don't be afraid!" and that he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died at six o'clock in the evening of the 19th of April 1824, aged thirty-six years and three months. The Greeks were heartbroken. Mavrocordato gave orders that thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired at daylight and decreed a general mourning of twenty-one days. His body was embalmed and lay in state. On the 25th of May his remains, all but the heart, which is buried at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally laid beneath the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on the 16th of July 1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in Westminster Abbey, and there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in Poets' Corner.
The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the subsequent barons were descended. The poet's daughter Ada (d. 1852) predeceased her mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs. She was the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (q.v.). On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by the 1st earl's second wife.