Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/713

BON time chancellor of the university of Upsal. He has written various works on theology, physics, and science. Among them is a "Monograph on Fraxinus excelsior."—J. H. B.  BONDI,, born of a respectable family at Mezzano, a village in the duchy of Parma, in 1742. At the age of eighteen, having completed his studies, he entered the order of the jesuits, and studied belles-lettres under the celebrated Berlendis. He was afterwards sent to Padua as professor of Italian literature in the college belonging to that company, and there he won the reputation of being an elegant poet and an accomplished orator. His order being suppressed, Bondi wrote an ode on that subject, which is still considered a very fine composition. His poverty compelled him to accept the position of tutor in a nobleman's family, until Count Zinardi of Mantua appointed him his librarian. His fame having reached the ears of Archduke Maximilian of Austria, and the Duchess Beatrice d'Este, he was appointed their librarian, in which capacity he went to Brunn, and finally to Vienna, where he was highly esteemed by the imperial family. Bondi has been often compared with Metastasio, but certainly he does not possess that versatility of genius and that easy versification which are so peculiar to the great dramatic writer, although his language is undoubtedly more correct, and his style more refined and elevated. His translation of the Æneid comes next in merit to that of Annibal Caro, and by some is even preferred; but his Georgics and Bucolics are scarcely worth any notice. His translation in blank verse of Ovid's Metamorphoses has been often reprinted; and he has left many original compositions, such as sonnets, epigrams, odes, and idyls. His funeral oration for Leopold II. is considered by Lorenzi, his biographer, a masterpiece of eloquence. He died at Vienna in 1821.—A. C. M.  BONDI,, died at Dresden in 1816. He left a learned work, "Or Esther" (the Light of Esther), on the foreign words to be met with in the Talmud, the Targumim (the Chaldee paraphrases), and the Midrashim (the homiletic expositions of scripture) of the Jews, with a valuable introduction.—T. T.  BONDIOLI,, an Italian physician, born in Corfu in the year 1765. He studied at Padua, and before he had completed his course, he had already presented three memoirs to the academy, "On the use of Friction in Medicine;" "On Electricity as a Remedy in certain Maladies;" and "On Sound," with a new theory founded on the structure of the brain. He took his degree on the 1st July, 1781, and then practised medicine, first in Venice, and afterwards in Constantinople, to which city he accompanied the Venetian ambassador. On his return from the East, Bondioli visited Paris, and afterwards became attached to the army of Italy, until in 1803 he was appointed professor of materia medica in the university of Bologna, to which he added in 1806 that of clinical medicine at Padua. He died at Bologna in 1808.—W. S. D.  BONDT,, a Dutch naturalist of the eighteenth century, has written works on the value of botanical labour, and on the bark of Geoffrya Surinamensis. These works were published at Leyden and Amsterdam from 1788 to 1794.—J. H. B.  BONDT,, a Dutch litterateur and philologist, born at Voorburg in 1732; died in 1792. Author of a "History of the United Provinces," Utrecht, 1756; a very careful edition of the Lectiones Variæ; of Vincent Contarini, ibid., 1754.—J. G.  BONE,, the first and foremost of the English enamellists, was born at Truro, 1755. The fact of his being a Cornish man led a mind with a natural tendency to design, to a sort of mineral art, such as the men of Limoges since practised. Elsewhere he might have grown up merely a miniature painter; here, surrounded by china and clay, he began to think of porcelain, and, unable to become a more ambitious artist, entered into the employment of a manufacturer of china at Plymouth; and from the sea-washed town removed to Bristol, acquiring there a reputation for his delicate skill in drawing landscapes and groups, guelder roses and ripe apples, lilac bloom and snowdrops, and all those pleasant floral chains and garlandings that ring round our ewers or trim our fruit plates, and delight us by their brilliant durability. He also studied the chemistry of his art, and learned to bake these brittle treasures and render them imperishable by heat, turning the destroyer fire into the preserver of art. In 1778 he removed to the larger field of London, and began to paint ladies' lockets, patch-boxes, and water-colour miniatures. But amidst all these mere bread-and-cheese labours to keep the caitiff wolf from the door, he did not neglect his new art of enamelling, but arrived at softer, deeper, and more lustrous colours, and at more certain and reliable firing. In 1796 he began to get famous; his very first picture, enamelled after the Sleeping Girl of Reynolds, was a great success, and his portrait of the earl of Eglinton was purchased by the prince of Wales. But while these efforts were rewarded, his real masterpieces remained neglected and unsold. These were a brilliant set of enamels of the great poets, warriors, and statesmen, from Queen Elizabeth to Charles I.—taken and reduced from often unique pictures lent from royal and noble galleries. There was the pure brave Sidney; the unhappy platonic Spenser; the demigod Shakspeare; the chivalrous Raleigh; the noble gemini Beaumont and Fletcher; "rare Ben Jonson;" the quarrelsome Inigo Jones. All these treasures the guarded fire of Bone's studio had rendered enchanted, and all but imperishable. The soul's caskets of these men could not be lost to us, as those of Homer and David and Mahomet had been. This great collection, valued at ten thousand pounds, the niggard nation would not buy even at four thousand (they had been better to it than crown jewels); and at the artist's death in 1834 they were scattered over England, realizing the poor sum of two thousand guineas—(will the Finlayes' collection be dispersed and regretted in the same way?) Bone was admitted to the empty honour of membership in the Royal Academy, where merit is not always very rapturously received; and he was chosen enamel painter to George IV., a monarch whose idea of painting was drawn chiefly from the colouring applied to the cheeks of brazen and infamous women, with heads of wood and hearts of stone. He filled the same position to George III. and William IV. He died in 1831. His first success was an enamel portrait of his wife, exhibited in 1780, with an original picture of a Muse and a Cupid. The Elizabethan collection consisted of eighty-five portraits.—W. T.  BONELLI,, an Italian Franciscan, born at Cavalese, near Trento, in 1704; author of some polemical publications, and of a work, interesting for its notices of historical matters connected with his native district, entitled "Dissertazione intorno alia santita e martyrio del B. Adalpreto o Albreto, vescovo di Trento," 1755.—J. S., G. <section end="713H" /> <section begin="713I" />BONELLI,, an Italian zoologist of the present century, born at Cuneo in Piedmont in the year 1784. His taste for natural history was early developed, and when only twenty he had already formed an extensive collection of the mammalia, birds, and insects of Sardinia. In 1809, when only twenty-five, he replaced Professor Giorno in the Academy of Sciences of Turin, and was appointed professor of natural history in the university of that city. To these offices he added that of director of the museum, and retained this honourable position until his death, which took place at Turin on the 19th November, 1830. Of his writings, which are not numerous, the most important are his "Specimen Faunas Subalpinæ," published in 1807, and his "Observations Entomologiques sur le genre carabus," which appeared in 1809 in the Memoirs of the Academy of Turin.—W. S. D. <section end="713I" /> <section begin="713J" />BONELLI,, an Italian physician and botanist, lived during the second half of the eighteenth century. He was professor of medicine at Rome, and cultivated botany more particularly. His works are—"Hortus Romanus juxta systema Tournefortianum paulo strictius distributus," 1772-1784; and a "Treatise on Castor Oil."—J. H. B. <section end="713J" /> <section begin="713K" />BONER,, a German poet of the fourteenth century, was a Dominican friar at Berne. He is the author of a collection of fables entitled "Der Edelstein," which was first published at Bamberg, 1461. Of this edition only one copy is known to exist (in the library of Wolfenbüttel). The best editions are by Eschenburg, Berlin, 1810, and by G. F. Benecke, Berlin, 1816.—K. E. <section end="713K" /> <section begin="713Zcontin" />BONFADIO,, born at Gazzano, a small village in the diocese of Brescia, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He studied first at Verona, then at Padua. His ambitious views brought him to Rome, where he became private secretary to Cardinal Merinos, then archbishop of Bari. At the death of his patron, which happened in 1535, Bonfadio was obliged to accept the offers of Cardinal Ghinucci, who appointed him his secretary; but finding his new master's temper and disposition quite incompatible with his own, he quitted Rome and travelled through Italy, visiting Naples, Florence, Ferrara, and Padua, in which <section end="713Zcontin" />