Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/666

BLO was born at Antwerp in 1672, and was wiled to Rome by the success of his seniors. In Italy he confined himself to conversation pieces and portrait. His colouring was generally raw, glaring, feeble, and untrue.—W. T.  BLOM,, a Swedish physician and botanist, was born at Kafswik in Smoland on 1st March, 1737, and died 4th April, 1815. He was destined for the church, but he gave a preference to medicine and natural history, the latter of which he studied under Linnæus. He made many excursions in Sweden for the advance of natural science. His thesis was on quassia. He is said to have introduced vaccination into Sweden. His published works are—"An Account of various remedies used in Diseases," and on "The Insects of Sweden;" besides many memoirs in the Transactions of societies.—J. H. B.  BLOM,, a Swedish writer and councillor of justice, born in 1762. His collected writings were published in 1827.  BLOME,, a learned German, born at Hamburg about 1620; died in 1672. Author of "Diss. de Navigatione Solomonis in Ophir," and other dissertations.  BLOME,, an English historical writer of the latter half of the seventeenth century, author of a nobiliary of the British islands, and of a work entitled "The Present State of his Majesty's Isles and Territories in America," 1678.  BLOMFIELD,, an eminent prelate of the church of England, was born at Bury St. Edmund's, May 29, 1786, where his father kept a school, in which he received the rudiments of his education. At eight years old he was entered at the grammar school of his native town, of which the Rev. Michael Thomas Becher, fellow of King's college, Cambridge, was head master, under whose able tuition he continued ten years, and laid the groundwork of that solid scholarship which secured to him early academical distinctions, and enabled him to acquire subsequently high rank in the learned world. In October, 1804, he left the grammar school for Trinity college, Cambridge, where, in the next year he was elected scholar of his college, and also gained Sir William Browne's medal for the Latin ode on the death of the duke of Enghien. The year after he gained the same prize for the Greek ode on the death of Nelson, and the Craven scholarship. In 1808 he took his B.A. degree as third wrangler and first chancellor's medallist; and in 1809 he was elected fellow of his college. He was member's prizeman in 1812. His subsequent degrees were M.A. in 1811, B.D. in 1818, and D.D., per literas regias, in 1820. He was ordained deacon 1809, priest 1810—both by Mansel, bishop of Bristol—and served the curacy of Chesterford in the diocese of London. In October, 1810, he was presented by the earl, now marquis of Bristol, to the rectory of Quarrington, Lincolnshire. In December of the next year Earl Spencer presented him to the rectory of Dunton, which he held for five years. He was presented, July, 1817, to the vicarage and rectory of Great and Little Chesterford, where he had begun his clerical life. In 1813, Dr. Howley, bishop of London, appointed him his domestic chaplain; and in May, 1820, presented him to the richest living in his gift—the rectory of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, London. In 1821 he was appointed archdeacon of Colchester; in 1824 he was consecrated bishop of Chester; and in 1828 translated to the see of London, over which he presided until some months before his death, which took place, August 5, 1857, at the palace, Fulham, Middlesex, in his 72d year.

It is impossible within the limits of this sketch to convey an adequate idea of his incessant, strenuous activity, and diversified undertakings and occupations while bishop of London. His unsurpassed exertions, however, reacting upon his excitable temperament brought on him an attack of illness in 1836, of an inflammatory nature, from the effects of which, it is believed, that he never entirely recovered. In 1842 he delivered and published what is generally called his "celebrated charge" to his clergy, in which he pronounced upon the questions which had for some years divided the church. That charge produced a violent commotion, whose effects upon himself were manifested during the succeeding year in his impaired digestion and nervous debility. In the year 1854 he was seized with hemiplagia; but intimations of his liability to paralysis had appeared as early as 1847, when on a visit to the queen at Osborne, notwithstanding that his foot seemed only to slip, and that the sight of one eye was supposed to have suffered from the concussion only he then received. In 1854, however, he went to consult a celebrated oculist in Germany, made a tour up the Rhine, visited Switzerland, and returned improved in sight and general health. On October 22, 1854, he was seized with a more severe attack of paralysis. After some months, and partly through his own solicitation and that of the invalided bishop of Durham, Dr. Maltby, an act was passed (in the fourth session of Parliament, 19 and 20 Vict.) enabling them both, in consequence of illness and infirmity, to resign their bishoprics, and acceding to Dr. Blomfield's request for himself of a retiring pension of £6000 per annum and Fulham palace as a residence. It has been asserted by an authority which cannot be questioned, that after his retirement into private life, there were no sentiments flowing more frequently from his lips than those which expressed the conviction of his own inadequate fulfilment of his public duties; while the enjoyment of his mental faculties was preserved to him nearly to the close of his existence, and his last act of consciousness was an act of prayer. His stature, when in the prime of life, was above the middle height, and his personal appearance was strongly expressive of the scholar and the man of business. The aspect of his brow and head impressed a sense of his perceptivity and mental power on even the most cursory beholder, and was considered by phrenologists as affording a splendid verification of their science. His manner seemed to strangers to be abrupt, and his demeanour haughty; but those who knew him best believe that his heart was kind, and his disposition cheerful, though occasionally beclouded in private by physical causes. He entertained the social circle with the fund of his anecdotes, the stores of his reading, and the versatility of his wit. He was a very early riser; and, by skilful management, found time for an amazing multitude of most efficient labours, and even for literary pursuits. As a debater in parliament, whenever his official position required him to share in its discussions, he was vigorous and lucid. As a preacher, he combined the clearest statements of doctrinal truth, with the most forcible and persuasive inferences from them of practical obligation. He retained, indeed, the large revenues of his see, whose net annual value was recently returned by himself at £16,513, even after other prelates had consented to a limitation of theirs; but he distributed out of his abundance with an unsparing hand to church-building, the funds of schools, and the relief of the poorer clergy; and chiefly by life insurance provided for his six sons and five daughters. His "infirmities," of which, in his first charge to the clergy of London, he professed himself, with a falling tear, to be "deeply conscious," were perhaps mainly attributable to his constitution of body, and the peculiar and increasing difficulties of the course he had to steer, from the time he became bishop of London until his resignation. As might reasonably be expected, he left the world divided into two opposite parties in their opinions of his principles and conduct; and, as the Times (August 7, 1857) remarked, when noticing his death, "The day may yet be far distant when the boundary line will be finally adjusted between the opposite classes of those who indiscriminately admire him on the one hand, and criticise him unkindly on the other." Whoever would see an ample and accurate chronicle of his labours should read Dr. Biber's work entitled Bishop Blomfield and his Times, London, 1857. The following is a classification of Dr. Blomfield's works as an author, derived from a list of them corrected by his own hand, and inserted in the Clerical Journal Directory, page 48. In addition to the odes already mentioned, "Æschyli Prometheus," 8vo, 1810, seventh edition, 1840; "Sept. a Thebas, Persæ," 8vo, 1814, fifth edition, 1840; "Choephoræ," 8vo, 1824, third edition, 1834; "Callimachi quæ supersunt;" "Sophronis Fragmenta," in the Classical Journal; "Sapphonis Fragmenta," in the Museum Criticum; "Alcæi Fragmenta," do.; "Æschyli Agamemnon," fifth edition, 1839; the articles on Socrates, and the chorus in ancient tragedy, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana; anonymous contributions in Aikin's Athenæum, in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, the Museum Criticum, Classical Museum; Sermons, single and in volumes. Lectures, Pamphlets, Pastoral and other Letters, Speeches; "Dissertation on the Traditional Knowledge of a promised Redeemer, which subsisted before the Advent of our Saviour;" "Manual of Private and Family Prayers," &c.—J. F. D.  * BLOMMAERT,, a Flemish litterateur, born about 1809. He has made himself known by the publication of old Flemish poems, of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and by a translation of the Nibelungen Lied, in iambic verse. His principal work is a history of the Belgians. 