Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/558

BER powerful memory were a security for his success in whatever line of study he gave himself to. His faults and virtues of character alike made him shrink from dependence on the favour of the great. In 1563, however, we find him attached to the service of the Duke d'Arpajon. A few months after this arrangement was entered into, he leaves the duke's with a broken head—how got we are not told. He found shelter with another friend, but lingered and died of the effect of the injury. At the close of life he exhibited religious feeling. Passages of some beauty are quoted from his tragedy of "Agrippina." His comedy, "Le Pedant Joué," exhibited peasants speaking in their country patois, which had not before been hazarded on the French stage. The example thus given was followed by Moliére. Bergerac's "Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune" is said to have suggested Gulliver's Travels. There is some resemblance, as in all satires of this class, but nothing that detracts from the originality of Swift's immortal work. Passages in Voltaire's Micromegas, and Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds, are foreshadowed in Bergerac's book. Boileau mentions him with equivocal praise.—J. A., D.  BERGERET,, a French physician and botanist, was born at Morlas, in the Basses-Pyrenees, and died about 1814. He was professor of natural history, and published at Paris a work on the flora of the Pyrenees.—J. H. B.  BERGERET,, a French physician and botanist, was born at Lasseube, near Auch, on 25th Nov., 1751, and died at Paris, 28th March, 1813. He pursued his medical studies at Bourdeaux, and went to Paris in 1776 with the view of prosecuting natural history, and more particularly botany. He commenced a flora of the neighbourhood of Paris. From 1785 he became devoted to surgery, and seems to have given up natural history pursuits. He published a Universal Plant Nomenclature and remarks on Fungi.—J. H. B.  * BERGHAUS,, an eminent German geographer, was born at Cleves, 3d May, 1797, and educated at Münster. As early as 1811 he was employed as assistant-surveyor in the then French department of Lippe, and in 1815 followed the Prussian army into France as far as Brittany. From 1816 he took an active part in the trigonometrical survey of Prussia, till, in 1824, he was appointed professor at the Bauacademic at Berlin, and in 1838 director of the Geographische Kunstschule which he had originated at Potsdam. He has published a great number of atlases and maps, which are constructed with perfect skill, and have greatly contributed to place the geographical study on a truly scientific basis. We mention his atlases of the Low Countries in forty plates, edited by Weyland, of Africa and Asia; his maps of France, of Spain, and Portugal, &c. His physical atlas in ninety plates, an English edition of which has been published by K. Johnston, is a work of magnificent range and completeness. Berghaus' writings are not less numerous than his maps, but more popular than scientific. We quote his "Allgemeine Länder-und Völkerkunde;" "Grundriss der Geographie;" "Die Volker des Erdballs;" "Kritischer Wegweiser im Gebiete der Landkartenkunde." He edited such periodicals—as Hertha, Annalen der Erd Völker, &c.—K. E.  BERGIER,, born at Lorraine in 1718; died in 1790; became successively curé of a village in Franche-Comté, professor of theology, principal of the college of Besançon, canon of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and confessor to the king. He published several learned works, and a translation of Hesiod, which was much esteemed, but is best known for his opposition to Rousseau and his school. His works are neat and orderly, but in no way remarkable.—J. D. E.  BERGK,, born at Zeitz, in Prussia, in 1769; died at Leipzig in 1834; was author of a great number of miscellaneous works on law, philosophy, politics, and religion. In philosophy he was a Kantian.—J. D. E.  BERGK,, a prolific miscellaneous writer and translator, was born at Hainichen in Saxony in 1769, and died at Leipzig in 1834.—K. E.  * BERGK,, son of the above, a distinguished philologist, was born at Leipzig, 22d May, 1812. After having studied in his native town under G. Hermann, he was successively teacher at several gymnasia, and professor of philology at the universities of Marburg and Freiburg, until, in 1857, he was called in the same capacity to the university of Halle. His principal works are an edition of Anacreon, 1834; "Commentationes de Reliquiis Comœdiæ Attics," 1838; "Poetæ Lyrici Græci," 1843; "Beiträge zur Griechischen Monatskunde," 1845, &c. He is also the editor of the Zeitschrift für Alterthums Wissenschaft, since 1843.—K. E. <section end="558H" /> <section begin="558I" />BERGIUS or BERG,, a Swedish banker and botanist, was born at Stockholm in 1723, and died in that town in 1784. He was governor of the Stockholm bank, and employed his fortune in instituting a chair of horticulture, and in keeping up a botanic garden at Stockholm. The chair was first occupied by Olaus Swartz. He published a work on natural history; and several memoirs by him on pasture grasses, on lycopodon bovista, and on the radish, appear in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences of Stockholm.—J. H. B. <section end="558I" /> <section begin="558J" />BERGIUS,, a Swedish physician and botanist, brother of Benoit, lived at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and died in 1790. He was a pupil of Linnæus, and was professor of natural history at Stockholm. He published "Descriptions of the Plants of the Cape of Good Hope," "Vegetable Materia Medica," and several botanical articles in the Transactions of the Stockholm Academy.—J. H. B. <section end="558J" /> <section begin="558K" />BERGLER,, a learned hellenist, was born at Hermanstadt in Transylvania, towards the end of the seventeenth century. His origin was humble, but being a youth of genius, he left his native city for Leipzig, where he attracted the attention of Thomas Fritsch, who employed him to correct the press. He did not, however, remain long here, but went to Amsterdam, where he assisted Wetstein in the edition of Homer published by him. Bergler's unsettled habits of life set him again upon change, and we find him successively at Amsterdam, Hamburg, and other places, still occupied in literary labours. After having taken a part in Fabricius' work, the Bibliotheca Græca, he returned to Leipzig, where he became well known as a writer and scholastic reviewer. Amongst his many translations was that of Alexander Mavrocordato's work——which so pleased the author, who was then hospodar of Wallachia, that he appointed Bergler to an office in the household of his son. Bergler had now the opportunity of examining the valuable Greek manuscripts in the prince's library, of which he made great use. After the death of the hospodar, Bergler left Wallachia for Constantinople, where he taught for some years in a Greek school, and died in 1746. It has been alleged, but without sufficient authority, that he became a Mahomedan in the latter part of his life. He acquired the reputation of an exact and erudite critic, and a masterly Greek scholar.—J. F. W. <section end="558K" /> <section begin="558L" />BERGERON,, a native of Bethisey, lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century; a jurist, and a man of great learning in his profession. He appears to have been the first person who published synchronical tabular forms, exhibiting to the eye at one view the leading events of history. He also wrote a "History of the Royal House of Valois." Among his works is enumerated "L'Arbre universel de la Suite et liaison de tous les Arts et Sciences." He was one of the executors of Ramus, and assisted in the publication of his works.—J. A., D. <section end="558L" /> <section begin="558Mnop" />* BERGGREN,, clergyman of Skällvik in Ostgothland, known to the public by his travels in the East, was born 11th March, 1790, in the parish of Krokstad, in the Swedish province of Bohus-Län. In his childhood he fell into a wolf's den, where he remained several hours in company with a living wolf, when he was found and taken out uninjured. He studied at Upsala, and in 1819 was appointed chaplain to the embassy at Constantinople. In the following year he visited Syria, went up the Nile to Cairo and the pyramids, and so proceeded to the Holy Land. On his return to Constantinople in 1822, finding the terrible massacre of Scio had taken place, he obtained permission for his departure, and went to Paris and London, where he was in both places elected a member of the Asiatic Society, and at the close of 1824 reached his native land. During his residence in the East, he paid considerable attention to the modern Arabic, and compiled a lexicon in that language, the first part of which was published in St. Petersburg, whither he went for that purpose in the year 1825. The work, however, not succeeding, the publication was discontinued, and the manuscript placed in the university library of Upsala. On his return from St. Petersburg, he brought out his travels in Europe and the East ("Resor i Europa och Œsterlănderna," 3 vols., Stockholm, 1826-28.) He was offered the professorship of the Oriental languages at Lund, at Cherson, and at Charkow; also the directorship of the missionary society at Madagascar: but he declined all, and accepted instead the pastorate of Skällvik in 1830.—M. H. <section end="558Mnop" />