Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/370

BAE BAER or BAERIUS,, a German writer, born at Bremen on the 11th July, 1639; died 12th August, 1714. He was distinguished by a great facility in poetical composition, being accustomed, we are told, to recite poems extempore, in Latin or German indifferently. His principal published works consist of four poems on subjects of natural history, entitled respectively, "Arctophonia," "Phalainodia et Crocodilophonia," "Korakophonia," and "Ornithophonia." He also translated the Eclogues of Virgil into German.—W. S. D.  BAEREBISTE, king of the Dacians; a contemporary of Cæsar and Augustus. He attacked and rendered tributary Thrace, Macedonia, and a part of Pannonia, and, when on his way to subdue Illyria, was assassinated by some of the rebels, supposed to have been sent by Augustus.  BAERMANN,, a German miscellaneous writer and translator, was born at Hamburg, 19th May, 1785, and died 28th February, 1850. His dramas, novels, tales, &c., have no great merit, and his translations sensed no higher purpose than to fill the shelves of circulating libraries.—K. E.  BAERSDORP,, a Dutch physician, born at Baersdorp, a village in Zealand, about the beginning of the sixteenth century; he died at Bruges, on the 24th of November, 1565. He became first physician, counsellor, and chamberlain to Charles V. He left a work entitled "De Arthritidis Præservatione et Curatione," Frankfort, 1592, in 8vo; also "Methodus universæ artis medicæ formulis expressa ex Galeni traditionibus, qua scopi omnes curantibus necessarii demonstrantur, in quinque partes dissecta," Bruges, 1538.—E. L.  BAERT, , Baron de, a French geographical writer, born at Dunkerque in 1750; died at Paris in 1825. He opposed the regicides in the legislative assembly of 1792, repaired to America after the death of the king, and subsequently journeyed in Russia, Spain, and England. Baert is the author of a work which was frequently in the hands of Napoleon, "Tableau de la Grande Bretagne, de l'Irlande, et des possessions Anglaises dans les quatre parties du monde," 1800.—J. S., G.  BAEZA,, a Spanish preacher and theological writer, born at Ponferrada in Galicia; died in 1647. He published "Commentarii morales in Historiam Evangelicam."  BAFFA,, a Venetian poetess, who flourished in the year 1545. "This lady was so much distinguished," says Agostino della Chiesa, "for her great learning, that many persons came from far distant lands to visit her." She is the author of many sonnets and madrigals, which have been highly praised by Doni and Betussi for purity of language, and sweetness in versification. The Countess Luisa Bergalli, in her collection of the writings of the most illustrious poetesses of ancient and modern times, gives to Francesca a prominent place.—A. C. M.  BAFFI,, an Italian theologian, professor at Pavia in the latter half of the sixteenth century. He published a number of Latin orations. <section end="370H" /> <section begin="370I" />BAFFI,, born at Perugia in the sixteenth century. He practised medicine in his native city, and was elected a member of the academy Degl' Insensati. He is the author of a canzone on the birth of the royal prince of Tuscany, which was published at Venice in 1590. He also dedicated a small poem to Philip Alberti. Bonciario had a great opinion of Baffi's literary merit, and calls him "virum cultissimum et acerrimum." Giacobillo informs us that he left many poetical and historical opuscules, which, however, have not been published. The date of his death is uncertain: Giacobillo fixes it about 1612, whilst Oldoini says he died on the 16th of March, 1634.—A. C. M. <section end="370I" /> <section begin="370Zcontin" />BAFFIN,, a celebrated English pilot and navigator, is believed to have been born about the year 1584. Nothing is known of Baffin's early life, and it is chiefly in connection with the professional employment of his services in the field of arctic discovery that his name has descended to posterity. In 1612, Baffin accompanied Captain James Hall on the fourth voyage which that adventurer had undertaken towards the arctic shores of the New World; prompted partly by the hoped-for discovery of a north-west passage from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, and in part by the spirit of maritime enterprise which belonged to the age. At that time, the hopes of finding a passage to Cathay and the Indies, by way of the northern shores of the American continent—hopes which had stimulated the enterprise of Englishmen for more than half a century previously, and which have continued to exert their influence down to the present day—were in full activity. For the little that is known of this voyage, which is elsewhere referred to (see Captain ), we are indebted to Baffin, and it is remarkable for being the first on record in which is laid down a method, as practised by the narrator, for determining the longitude at sea by an observation of the heavenly bodies. The mode of observation which Baffin adopted proves him to have possessed a very considerable degree of knowledge in the theory as well as the practice of navigation. Baffin seems to have borne an active part in the maritime enterprise of his age, since we find him in the following year (1613), in command of one amongst six English ships which were engaged—along with those of other nations (French, Dutch, Spanish, and Biscayan)—in the fisheries within the sea lying between Greenland and Spitzbergen. And in 1614 he was again engaged, with Fotherby, in a voyage to the coasts of Spitzbergen, apparently undertaken in the expectation of finding a north-east passage to the Indies, by way of the arctic shores of Europe and Asia. But it is to the voyages he performed in the two succeeding years, 1615 and 1616, that the fame of Baffin is chiefly due. In both of these voyages he sailed in the capacity of pilot, Robert Bylot acting as master. Upon each occasion, the object sought was the same—the discovery of the north-west passage. A correct version of the voyage performed by Bylot and Baffin in 1615, derived from manuscript documents in the British Museum (including a chart of the voyage from Baffin's own draft), was first published in one of the volumes issued by the Hakluyt society—Narrative of Voyages towards the North-west, in search of a Passage to Cathay and India, 1496 to 1631; by Thomas Rundall, 1849. This narrative had been previously printed, in a mutilated form, by Purchas, who admits that he had been furnished by Baffin himself with various other documents illustrative of his voyages, including his journals and charts, which Purchas had omitted as "somewhat troublesome and costly to insert;" an omission which, in reference to the later of the two voyages now adverted to, long caused great injustice to be done to the memory of Baffin. This voyage of 1615 was performed, Baffin tells us, in "the good shipp called the Discouerare, beinge of the burthen of 55 tonn, or theare aboute." The course taken was through Hudson Strait, in a westerly direction, and the voyage was prosecuted as far as a short distance beyond Cape Comfort, on the shore of Southampton Island, lat. 65° 6´ N., long. 83° W. The voyage of the following year, 1616, was made in the same ship, and was under the command of the same officers. Upon this occasion, the Discovery—then employed on her fifth voyage in the search after a north-west passage—sailed from Gravesend on March 26, but was obliged by foul weather to put in, first at Dartmouth, and again at Plymouth, so that a final start was not made until April 19. Her crew, including the master and pilot, consisted in all of seventeen persons—one more in number than had been engaged in the voyage of the preceding year. Baffin pursued upon this occasion a more northerly course, and first sighted land in lat. 65° 20´, upon the west coast of Greenland. The instructions for the voyage, which had been drawn up with remarkable clearness and precision, directed him to keep along the coast of Greenland, up the channel which had been discovered by Davis thirty-one years previously, to as high a latitude as 80°—if the direction of the land would allow of his doing so—then to shape his course to the west and south as far as the parallel of 60°, and afterwards so to guide himself as "to fall in with the land of Yedzo (Jesso);" thence to "touch the north part of Japan," and subsequently, with all expedition, make his return home. Baffin failed, as all succeeding navigators, during the two and a half centuries which have since elapsed, have failed, in accomplishing so magnificent a project; but he sailed to a higher latitude, by several degrees, than had ever before been reached in that part of the world, and he was the first to delineate the coasts of that spacious arm of the Atlantic which is with justice known by his name—Baffin Bay. Upon the detailed narrative of the voyage, derived from Purchas, our limits forbid us to dwell; but we may note the fact that Baffin observed, in its course, the two openings which have been proved by the discoveries of recent years to afford the only practicable passages, in this direction, into the Polar Sea—namely, Sir James Lancaster's Sound, and Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, names which he bestowed in compliment to certain of his patrons in the undertaking. Through the former, Lancaster Sound, a passage was found by Parry, two centuries <section end="370Zcontin" />