Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/79

 BOCAGE

BOILEAU-DESPREAUX

(7 vols., 1839-42). Holding very advanced opinions in politics as well as religion, he took an active part in the 1848 Revolution, and was Vice-President of the revolutionary Parliament. He was shot by the victorious authorities, and a sum of 120,000 marks was publicly subscribed for his dependents. D. Nov. 9, 1848.

BOCAGE, Manoel Maria Barbosa, Por tuguese poet. B. Sep. 15, 1765. He served in the navy until 1790, and then turned to letters. Bocage is generally regarded as the greatest Portuguese poet since Camoens. On account of an open letter to Voltaire (Verdades Duras), in which he denied the immortality of the soul, he was imprisoned by the Inquisition in 1797, and he was later prosecuted for joining the Freemasons. T. Braga edited a collected edition of his poems in seven volumes (1876). D. Dec. 21, 1805.

BODICHON, Barbara Leigh Smith,

foundress of Girton College. B. Apr. 8, 1827. Linked through her father with Cobden and other distinguished politicians, Mme. Bodichon was equally intimate with advanced writers like George Eliot, D. G. Rossetti, and G. J. Holyoake. Several of her pamphlets were published by Holyoake, with whom she agreed. She is the model of George Eliot s Romola. In her early years she had founded The Englishivomaris Journal (which had been suggested by Holyoake), and throughout her life she was zealous for the education and emanci pation of her sex. &quot; She may justly be regarded as the foundress of Girton College &quot; (Diet. Nat. Biog.), of which she devised the plan, and for which she supplied large funds (over 11,000). D. June 11, 1891.

BODIN, Jean, French lawyer and philo sopher. B. 1530. Ed. Toulouse (law). After teaching law for some years at Toulouse, Bodin devoted himself to litera ture and law at Paris, and he became in time a valued legal counsellor of the King. His zeal for toleration his mother is 85

believed to have been a Jewess brought him under suspicion of heresy, and his works (especially a dialogue on religion, Heptaplomeres, which was not published in full until 1857) show that he was a Deist. He, however, professes a belief in witchcraft and astrology. His Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566) is one of the foundations of the philosophy of history in France. D. 1596.

BOERNER, Wilhelm, Austrian Ethicist and Monist. B. June 26, 1882. He was secretary of the Vienna Ethical Society (1902-13), and secretary of the Vienna Volks-Bildung Verein (League of Popular Education) (1906-1909). Boerner is an able and courageous champion of Ethical and Rationalist principles in Austria, and he has written several works. He is a member of the Goethe Verein, the Grill- pjxrzer Gesellschaft, the Moral Education League, etc.

BOILEAU-DESPREAUX, Nicolas,

French poet. B. Nov. 1, 1636. Ed. College de Beauvais. Boileau was destined for the Church in his youth and sent to the Sorbonne, but he abandoned theology and studied law. He was called to the bar in 1656, but never practised. His father left him a small fortune, and he devoted himself to poetry, chiefly, at first, in the form of satires on other poets. His master piece, L Art Poetique, was published in 1674 ; and in the same year he published his second greatest work, Le Lutrin, which is the model of Pope s Eape of the Lock. In 1677 he was appointed historiographer to the King. Under the influence of Bossuet and the clergy, who always regarded him as an enemy, he was long excluded from the Academy, though the world now recognizes that he was one of the greatest of French writers. The King forced the doors for him in 1684. The Jesuits persecuted him so fiercely that he was tempted in his later years to write an essay, Snr I amour de Dieu, on the strength of which modern Catholic writers some- 8G