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 held in 1905. Dr David Starr Jordan was the first president of the university in 1885–1891, when it was thoroughly reorganized and its curriculum put on the basis of major subjects and departments. The university’s biological station is on Winona Lake, Kosciusko county. Among the manufactures of Bloomington are furniture and wooden ware. There are valuable limestone quarries in the vicinity. The city was first settled about 1818.

 BLOOMSBURG, a town and the county-seat of Columbia county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Fishing Creek, 2 m. from its confluence with the Susquehanna, and about 40 m. S.W. of Wilkes-Barre. Pop. (1890) 4635; (1900) 6170 (213 foreign-born); (1910) 7413. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Philadelphia & Reading, and the Bloomsburg & Sullivan and the Susquehanna, Bloomsburg & Berwick railways (the last two only 30 m. and 39 m. long respectively); and is connected with Berwick, Catawissa and Danville by electric lines. The town is built on a bluff commanding extensive views. Among the manufactures of Bloomsburg are railway cars, carriages, silk and woollen goods, furniture, carpets, wire-drawing machines and gun carriages. Iron ore was formerly obtained from the neighbouring hills. The town is the seat of a state normal school, established as such in 1869. Bloomsburg was laid out as a town in 1802, became the county-seat in 1846, and was incorporated in 1870.

 BLOUNT, CHARLES (1654–1693), English author, was born at Upper Holloway on the 27th of April 1654. His father, Sir Henry Blount (1602–1682), was the author of a Voyage to the Levant, describing his own travels. He gave his son a careful education, and is said to have helped him in his Anima Mundi; or An Historical Narration of the Opinions of the Antients concerning Man’s Soul after his Life, according to unenlightened Nature (1679), which gave great offence by the sceptical views expressed in it. It was suppressed by order of the bishop of London, and even burnt by some over-zealous official, but a re-issue was permitted. Blount was an admirer of Hobbes, and published his “Last Sayings” (1679), a pamphlet consisting of extracts from ''The Leviathan. Great is Diana of the Ephesians, or the Original of Idolatry, together with the Political Institution of the Gentiles’ Sacrifices'' (1680) attracted severe criticism on the ground that in deprecating the evils of priestcraft Blount was attacking Christianity itself. His best-known book, The Two First Books of Philostratus concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus (1680), is said to have been prohibited in 1693, chiefly on account of the notes, which are stated by Bayle (note, s.v. Apollonius) to have been taken mainly from a MS. of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Blount contributed materially to the removal of the restrictions on the freedom of the press, with two pamphlets (1693) by “Philopatris,” mainly derived from Milton’s Areopagitica. He also laid a successful trap for the censor, Edmund Bohun. Under the name of “Junius Brutus” he wrote a pamphlet entitled “King William and Queen Mary Conquerors.” The title-page set forth the theory of the justice of title by conquest, which Blount knew to be agreeable to Bohun. It was duly licensed, but was ordered by the House of Commons to be burnt by the common hangman, as being diametrically opposed to the attitude of William’s government on the subject. These proceedings showed the futility of the censorship, and hastened its overthrow.

Blount had fallen in love with his deceased wife’s sister, and, in despair of overcoming her scruples as to the legality of such a marriage, shot himself in the head. He survived for some time, refusing help except from his sister-in-law. Alexander Pope asserted (Epilogue to the Satires, Note, i. 124) that he wounded himself in the arm, pretending to kill himself, and that the result was fatal contrary to his expectations. He died in August 1693.

Shortly before his death a collection of his pamphlets and private papers was printed with a preface by Charles Gildon, under the title of the Oracles of Reason. His Miscellaneous Works (1695) is a fuller edition by the same editor.

 BLOUNT (or ), EDWARD (b. 1565?), the printer, in conjunction with Isaac Jaggard, of Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, ''Histories and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies'' (1623), usually known as the first folio of Shakespeare. It was produced under the direction of John Heming (d. 1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627), both of whom had been Shakespeare’s colleagues at the Globe theatre, but as Blount combined the functions of printer and editor on other occasions, it is fair to conjecture that he to some extent edited the first folio. The Stationers’ Register states that he was the son of Ralph Blount or Blunt, merchant tailor of London, and apprenticed himself in 1578 for ten years to William Ponsonby, a stationer. He became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company in 1588. Among the most important of his publications are Giovanni Florio’s Italian-English dictionary and his translation of Montaigne, Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, and the Sixe Court Comedies of John Lyly. He himself translated Ars Aulica, or the Courtier’s Arte (1607) from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci, and Christian Policie (1632) from the Spanish of Juan de Santa Maria.

 BLOUNT, THOMAS (1618–1679), English antiquarian, was the son of one Myles Blount, of Orleton in Herefordshire. He was born at Bordesley, Worcestershire. Few details of his life are known. It appears that he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, but, being a zealous Roman Catholic, his religion interfered considerably with the practice of his profession. Retiring to his estate at Orleton, he devoted himself to the study of the law as an amateur, and also read widely in other branches of knowledge. He died at Orleton on the 26th of December 1679. His principal works are Glossographia; or, a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue (1656, reprinted in 1707), which went through several editions and remains most amusing and instructive reading; Nomolexicon: a law dictionary interpreting such difficult and obscure words and terms as are found either in our common or statute, ancient or modern lawes (1670; third edition, with additions by W. Nelson, 1717); and Fragmenta Antiquitatis: Ancient Tenures of land, and jocular customs of some mannors (1679; enlarged by J. Beckwith and republished, with additions by H. M. Beckwith, in 1815; again revised and enlarged by W. C. Hazlitt, 1874). Blount’s Boscobel (1651), giving an account of Charles II.’s preservation after Worcester, with the addition of the king’s own account dictated to Pepys, has been edited with a bibliography by C. G. Thomas (1894).

 BLOUNT, SIR THOMAS POPE (1649–1697), English author, eldest son of Sir Henry Blount and brother of (q.v.), was born at Upper Holloway on the 12th of September 1649. He succeeded to the estate of Tittenhanger on his mother’s death in 1678, and in the following year was created a baronet. He represented the borough of St Albans in the two last parliaments of Charles II. and was knight of the shire from the revolution till his death. He married Jane, daughter of Sir Henry Caesar, by whom he had five sons and nine daughters. He died at Tittenhanger on the 30th of June 1697. His Censura celebrorum authorum sive tractatus in quo varia virorum doctorum de clarissimis cujusque seculi scriptoribus judicia traduntur (1690) was originally compiled for Blount’s own use, and is a dictionary in chronological order of what various eminent writers have said about one another. This necessarily involved enormous labour in Blount’s time. It was published at Geneva in 1694 with all the quotations from modern languages translated into Latin, and again in 1710. His other works are A Natural History, containing many not common observations extracted out of the best modern writers (1693), De re poetica, or remarks upon Poetry, with Characters and Censures of the most considerable Poets (1694), and Essays on Several Occasions (1692). It is on this last work that his claims to be regarded as an original writer rest. The essays deal with the perversion of learning, a comparison between the ancients and the moderns (to the advantage of the latter), the education of children, and kindred topics. In the third edition (1697) he added an eighth essay, on religion, in which he deprecated the multiplication of ceremonies. He displays throughout a hatred of pedantry and convention, which makes his book still interesting. 