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 Tiflis. Pop. (1897) 5800. It is situated at an altitude of 2750 ft. in the Borzhom gorge, a narrow rift in the Little Caucasus mountains, and on the Kura. Its warm climate, its two hot springs (71°–82° Fahr.) and its beautiful parks make it a favourite summer resort, and give it its popular name of “the pearl of Caucasus.” The bottled mineral waters are very extensively exported.

 BOS, LAMBERT (1670–1717), Dutch scholar and critic, was born at Workum in Friesland, where his father was headmaster of the school. He went to the university of Franeker (suppressed by Napoleon in 1811), and was appointed professor of Greek there in 1704; after an uneventful life he died at Franeker in 1717. His most famous work, Ellipses Graecae (1702), was translated into English by John Seager (1830); and his Antiquitates Graecae (1714) passed through several editions. He also published Vetus Testamentum, Ex Versione lxx. Interpretum (1709); notes on Thomas Magister (1698); Exercitationes Philologicae (1700); Animadversiones ad Scriptores quosdam Graecos (1715); and two small treatises on Accents and Greek Syntax.

 BOSA, a seaport and episcopal see on the W. coast of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, 30 m. W. of Macomer by rail. Pop. (1901) 6846. The height above the town is crowned by a castle of the Malaspina family. The cathedral, founded in the 12th century, restored in the 15th, and rebuilt in 1806, is fine. There are some tanneries, and the fishing industry is important, but the coral production of Sicily has entirely destroyed that of Bosa since 1887. The district produces oil and wine. The present town of Bosa was founded in 1112 by the Malaspina, 1 m. from the site of the ancient town (Bosa or Calmedia), where a well-preserved church still exists. The old town is of Roman origin, but is only mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and as a station on the coast-road in the Itineraries (Corp. Inscr. Lat. x. 7939 seq.). One of the inscriptions preserved in the old cathedral records the erection of four silver statues, of Antoninus Pius, his wife Faustina and their two sons.

 BOSBOOM-TOUSSAINT, ANNA LOUISA GEERTRUIDA (1812–1886), Dutch novelist, was born at Alkmaar in north Holland on the 16th of September 1812. Her father, named Toussaint, a local chemist of Huguenot descent, gave her a fair education, and at an early period of her career she developed a taste for historical research, fostered, perhaps, by a forced indoor life, the result of weak health. In 1851 she married the Dutch painter, Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891), and thereafter was known as Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint. Her first romance, Almagro, appeared in 1837, followed by the Graaf van Devonshire (The Earl of Devonshire) in 1838; the Engelschen te Rome (The English at Rome) in 1840, and Het Huis Lauernesse (The House of Lauernesse) in 1841, an episode of the Reformation, translated into many European languages. These stories, mainly founded upon some of the most interesting epochs of Dutch history, betrayed a remarkable grasp of facts and situations, combined with an undoubted mastery over her mother tongue, though her style is sometimes involved, and not always faultless. Ten years (1840–1850) were mainly devoted to further studies, the result of which was revealed in 1851–1854, when her Leycester in Nederland (3 vols.), Vrouwen van het Leycestersche Tydperk (Women of Leicester’s Epoch, 3 vols.), and Gideon Florensz (3 vols.) appeared, a series dealing with Robert Dudley’s adventures in the Low Countries. After 1870 Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint abandoned historical romance for the modern society novel, but her Delftsche Wonderdokter (The Necromancer of Delft, 1871, 3 vols.) and Majoor Frans (1875, 3 vols.) did not command the success of her earlier works. Major Frank has been translated into English (1885). She died at the Hague on the 13th of April 1886. Her novels have been published there in a collected edition (1885–1888, 25 vols.).

 BOSC, LOUIS AUGUSTIN GUILLAUME (1759–1828), French naturalist, was born at Paris on the 29th of January 1759. He was educated at the college of Dijon, where he showed a taste for botany, and he followed up his studies in Paris at the Jardin des Plantes, where he made the acquaintance of Mme M. J. P. Roland. At the age of eighteen he obtained a government appointment, and he rose to be one of the chief officials in the postal department. Under the ministry of J. M. Roland in 1792 he also held the post of superintendent of prisons, but the violent outbreaks of 1793 drove him from office, and compelled him to take refuge in flight. For some months he lay concealed at Sainte-Radégonde, in the forest of Montmorency, barely subsisting on roots and vegetables. He was enabled to return to Paris on the fall of Robespierre, and under the title Appel à l’impartiale postérité par la citoyenne Roland published a manuscript Mme Roland had entrusted to him before her execution. Soon afterwards he set out for America, resolving to explore the natural riches of that country. The immense materials he gathered were never published in a complete form, but much went to enrich the works of B. G. E. de Lacépède, P. A. Latreille and others. After his return, on the establishment of the Directory, he was reinstated in his old office. Of this he was again deprived by the coup d’état of 1799, and for a time he was in great destitution; but by his copious contributions to scientific literature he contrived to support himself and to lay the foundations of a solid reputation. He was engaged on the new Dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle, and on the Encyclopédie méthodique, he edited the Dictionnaire raisonné et universel d’agriculture, and was one of the editors of the Annales de l’agriculture française. He was made inspector of the gardens at Versailles, and of the public nurseries belonging to the ministry of the interior. The last years of his life were devoted to an elaborate work on the vine, for which he had amassed an immense quantity of materials, but his death at Paris on the 10th of July 1828 prevented its completion.

 BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER, JUAN (1490?–1542), Spanish poet, was born about the close of the 15th century. He was a Catalan of patrician birth, and, after some years of military service, became tutor to the duke of Alva. His poems were published in 1543 at Barcelona by his widow. They are divided into sections which mark the stages of Boscán’s poetical evolution. The first book contains poems in the old Castilian metres, written in his youth, before 1526, in which year he became acquainted with the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, who urged him to adopt Italian measures, and this advice gave a new turn to Boscán’s activity. The remaining books contain a number of pieces in the Italian manner, the longest of these being Hero y Leander, a poem in blank verse, based on Musaeus. Boscán’s best effort, the Octava Rima, is a skilful imitation of Petrarch and Bembo. Boscán also published in 1534 an admirable translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. Italian measures had been introduced into Spanish literature by Santillana and Villalpando; it is Boscán’s distinction to have naturalized these forms definitively, and to have founded a poetic school.

 BOSCASTLE, a small seaport and watering-place in the Launceston parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 5 m. N. of Camelford station on the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (civil parish of Forrabury, 1901) 329. The village rises steeply above a very narrow cove on the north coast, sheltered, but difficult of access, vessels having to be warped into it by means of hawsers. A mound on a hill above the harbour marks the site of a Norman castle. The parish church of St Symphorian, Forrabury, also stands high, overlooking the Atlantic from Willapark Point. The tower is without bells, and the tradition that a ship bearing a peal hither was wrecked within sight of the harbour, and that the lost bells may still be heard to toll beneath the waves, has been made famous by a ballad of the Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker, vicar of Moorwinstow. The coast scenery near Boscastle is severely beautiful, with abrupt cliffs fully exposed to the sea, and broken only by a few picturesque inlets such as Crackington Cove and Pentargan Cove. Inland are bare moors, diversified by narrow dales.

 BOSCAWEN, EDWARD (1711–1761), British admiral, was born on the 19th of August 1711. He was the third son of Hugh,<section end="Boscawen, Edward" />