Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/733

BOS  imitator of Claude and Gaspar Poussin. Borzone etched some plates from his own pictures; i.e. a portrait of Giustiniani, St. Peter delivered from prison, Prometheus devoured by the vulture, children playing, and a set of devout subjects.—W. T.  BOS,. See.  BOS,, a Dutch sea painter, born at Hoorn in 1634. His pictures of storms, and calms, and brown sails furled and set, are highly finished and of a pleasant colour. He died in his prime, or, as he was a sea-painter, shall we say—"went down?" in 1666.—W. T.  BOS,, a Dutch philologist, born in Friesland in 1670; died in 1717. He gave himself up exclusively to the study of the Greek language, in which he made rapid progress, and succeeded Nicolas Blancard in the chair of Greek literature at Franeker. He is known chiefly by his work on Greek ellipses.  BOS,, born at Bois-le-Duc in 1450. He painted enamel-finished flowers and fruits alive with bees and flies; also some insect-sized portraits. His snowdrops were perfect. Died in 1507.—W. T.  BOS or BOSCHE,, an eccentric Dutch painter and engraver, born at Bois-le-Duc about 1470. Stunned by the sight of some of Raphael's pictures at the Escurial, and certain of never equalling them. Bos determined to throw the reins on the neck of his own crotchety and errant genius, and go whither it took him. Therefore, after painting the "Flight into Egypt," and "Christ bearing his Cross," for some Bois-le-Duc churches, he plunged into the jungle of his own odd fancy, followed by an army of glaring spectres, goblin devils, and conglomerate bird and beast monsters. He designed incantation scenes, witches' meetings, Judas attempting to escape with the ancient patriarchs liberated by Christ from hell, and hung by devils (from the beam out of his own eye) in the air. He loved to depict St. Anthony almost got the better of by devils, and St. Christopher fording through night rivers with the child Christ. His stiff gothic engravings are now scarce. He represents Christ girt by the eternal circles of light and glory. Seven of these are the capital sins, seven the sacraments. In one great allegorical picture, Bos is, indeed grotesquely sublime. He has mounted the carnal pleasures on a great chariot, which is dragged hellward by seven monsters, intended to represent the seven deadly sins; a lying blatant demon, disguised as Fame, precedes it with a herald's trumpet; a tumultuous rabble of monsters hurry after; and last of all comes Death, the mower of men, with his scythe wide as the world, shouting from a ghastly label the words of Isaiah—"Omnis caro fœnum." Sometimes Bos's morbid imagination revels in terrible visions of martyrs torn by lions, or men lying murdered in wildernesses—the howling crowd of purgatory's lowest den—suicides rejoicing in death and self-inflicted torture. Although ranked in Germany and Spain as a man of singular virtue. Bos may be called "the first morbid painter"—the king of the Hell Breughel and Fuseli school. Of his strained, sickly, and extravagant fancies Kugler writes, vol. i, p. 96, "They are complete dreams, to the colouring of which, however, he imparts a remarkable glow." There is a representation of hell by him in the Berlin museum, in which the poor souls are tormented by horrible serpent-like monsters. It is a true laboratory of hell. With all its frantic horrors one cannot but feel astonished at the invention displayed by the artist in the creation of these fabulous creatures—of humour, indeed, there is scarcely a trace. Like many of his contemporaries, Bos appears to have spent the greatest part of his life in Spain, where his pictures were much sought and imitated. It is asserted from tradition, that some of his pictures of infernal horrors placed in Basle, in which Philip II. of Spain died, received the last looks of the tyrant. Kugler goes on to say, that a great many of Bos's works were or are in Spain.—W. T.  BOSC,, a French engraver, known in England about 1712. He quarrelled with Dorigny about Raphael's cartoons, and illustrated Picart's religious ceremonies and Marlborough's battles. His drawing was bad, and his manner coarse and lumpish.—W. T.  BOSC,, a celebrated French naturalist, was born at Paris on 29th January, 1759, and died 10th July, 1828. He prosecuted his classical studies at the college of Dijon, and devoted himself early to the study of botany under Durande. He subsequently went to Paris, and became connected with the administration of the post-office, and afterwards with that of the prisons. At the time of the French revolution he had to flee from Paris, and was long in concealment, subjected to great hardships and privations. After the death of Robespierre he returned to Paris. Some time afterwards he went to America, and spent two years in making natural history collections. On his return he placed the collections of animals and plants at the disposal of various naturalists, and thus contributed much to the advancement of science. He became administrator of prisons and hospitals, but he does not appear to have been able to make a livelihood, for in 1799 he was in great destitution. He then commenced a series of literary works, which have procured for him a high reputation. He published a dictionary of natural history, and one of agriculture, besides a complete theoretical and practical course of agriculture. He was one of the editors of the Annals of French Agriculture, and he was one of the editors of the last volumes of the Encyclopédie Méthodique. He became Connected with various societies which had for their object the advancement of agriculture and horticulture, and he contributed papers to their Transactions. He published works on the culture of the vine, on the oaks of France, on the culture of trees, and the management of fruits. He made various excursions to different parts of France, as well as to Italy, in the prosecution of his natural history studies.—J. H. B. <section end="733H" /> <section begin="733I" />BOSC,, a French protestant divine, famous as a preacher, born at Bayeux in 1623; died at Rotterdam in 1692. On the subject of one of Louis XIV.'s edicts against the Calvinists, he had a long interview with the king, at the conclusion of which Louis is said to have exclaimed to his courtiers, "I have just been listening to the finest speaker in my kingdom."—J. S., G. <section end="733I" /> <section begin="733J" />BOSC D'ANTIC,, a learned Frenchman, born at Pierre-Ségade in Languedoc, in 1726; died in 1784. Author of a memoir on the manufacture of glass, that was crowned in 1760 by the Academy of Sciences at Paris. His works, in 2 vols. 12mo, are full of curious details connected with mineralogy, glass, and fictile manufacture. <section end="733J" /> <section begin="733K" />BOSCAN,, a patrician of Barcelona, born towards the latter end of the fourteenth century, and well known as a poet in the language of Castile. Having become acquainted in 1524 with Navagiero, the Venetian ambassador to Charles V., he was induced by him to imitate in Spanish the sonnets, and other forms of verse used by good Italian authors. Boscan set himself to work, and having submitted a specimen of his composition to Garcilaso, he was encouraged by that celebrated writer to persevere in the new path opened to the Castilian Parnassus, and thus he became the founder of a new school. He was, for a short time, intrusted with the education of the duke of Alva, but he preferred retirement and study to the courtly honours he might have obtained under so powerful a patron. His knowledge of Greek and Latin transpires all through his works, his style and language always appearing robed in classic attire. He is the author of several good translations, such as of Euripides' tragedies and the Courtier of Balthasar Castiglione. His tale on the basis of the Hero and Leander of Musæus, written in blank verse after the example of Bernardo Tasso, contains many gentle and sweet passages, which even now can be read with pleasure. Nothing certain is known about his birth and death; but his widow having published his works in 1543, he may have died in that year.—A. C. M. <section end="733K" /> <section begin="733Zcontin" />BOSCAWEN,, admiral, second son of Hugh, Viscount Falmouth, born in 1711. His first command was that of the Shoreham 20 guns, with which in 1740 he highly distinguished himself under Admiral Vernon at the taking of Porto Bello. In the following year he took a prominent part in the siege of Carthagena, and after the attack of Bochachica, in which Lord Aubrey Beauclerk was killed, succeeded that gallant officer as commander of the Prince Frederic of 70 guns. In 1744, while in command of the Dreadnought of 60 guns, he took the Medea, a French man-of-war of 26 guns, commanded by M. Hoquart, an officer whom, strange to say, Boscawen on two subsequent occasions encountered and made prisoner. In 1746, being then captain of the Namur, 74 guns, he chased into Admiral Anson's fleet a French ship-of-war, the Mercury, 58 guns. The following year he distinguished himself in an engagement with the French fleet off Cape Finisterre, and was wounded in the shoulder by a musket ball. Having been named rear-admiral of the blue, and appointed commander-in-chief of an expedition to the East Indies, he set sail from St. Helen's, November 4, with six ships of the line, five frigates, and two <section end="733Zcontin" />