Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/734

BOS thousand soldiers. After reconnoitering the Mauritius, and finding the landing-place impracticable for an attack, he proceeded to Fort St. David's. By order of a council of war held at this place he assumed the command of the army, and marched against the French at Pondicherry, the siege of which, after two months of suffering and privation rather than of action, was raised October 6. In 1749 he lost his own ship the Namur and two more, but was himself providentially cast on shore. On his return home in the following year, he found that his services in the east had been recognized by his being named rear-admiral of the white. In 1751 he was appointed one of the lords commissioners of the admiralty. In 1755, having been appointed vice-admiral of the blue, he sailed from Spithead with a powerful fleet to intercept the French North American squadron. On his return he brought with him as prizes two ships of 64 guns each, and fifteen hundred prisoners. After some unimportant services as commander of the squadron in the Bay, he was named admiral of the blue, and appointed to head an expedition to Cape Breton. The important fortress of Louisburgh, the islands of Cape Breton and St. John, fell into his hands in July, 1758. On his return he received the thanks of the house of commons. In 1759 he was appointed to the command of a squadron, consisting of fourteen sail of the line and two frigates, ordered to cruise in the Mediterranean. With this force, surprising the French fleet commanded by De la Clue, who thought to elude the vigilance of the British admiral by departing from the port of Toulon while Boscawen was refitting his squadron at Gibraltar, he captured three sail of the line, and burned two in Lagos Bay. His prisoners amounted to two thousand. Later in the same year he was in command of the squadron in the Bay of Biscay. The "Brave Boscawen," as he was usually called, died at his seat at Hatchland, near Guildford, in 1761.—J. S., G.  BOSCH,, a Flemish painter, born at Antwerp in 1675. He was taught by an unknown man named Thomas, whom he soon surpassed. The specialty of this Antwerpian was, like Poussin, the interior of saloons and rich renaissance saloons, filled with pictures, statues, and figures dressed in proper costume, but otherwise being mere doll furniture and characterless. Sometimes he would paint more for his own amusement a sculptor's or artist friend's studio, which were equally popular and in demand. His small portraits were so celebrated, that the duke of Marlborough (probably at somebody else's expense) sat to him on horseback—Peter Van Bloemen undertaking the horse, for Bosch would have made an ass of it. Bosch drew and coloured well, and his composition Bryan calls ingenious. Bosch died in 1715.—W. T.  BOSCH,, born at Deventer in 1746, and died in 1803. He published political and patriotic tracts, in prose and verse, 3 vols. octavo.—J. A., D.  BOSCHAERT,, a flower painter, whose reputation has faded like one of last year's roses. He was born at Antwerp in 1696. He was a scholar of Crepu's. He had a light airy touch, and shook his blossoms into a pretty enough confusion. He was frequently employed by his contemporaries.—W. T.  BOSCHI,, a Florentine painter, born in 1576, and a disciple of Passignani. At the early age of nineteen, so soon he blossomed, he executed a fresco of the life of St. Bonaventure, which astonished and puzzled everybody. An "Assumption," and "Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul," were good deeds of his. He died in 1642, after sixty years of painting, and having used canvass enough to serve a fleet.—W. T.  BOSCOLI,, a Florentine painter, who flourished about 1580. He was a pupil of Santo de Titi, and acquired some reputation for history and portraits. He engraved nineteen plates, and then some unknown artist engraved the coffin-plate for Andrea Boscoli.—W. T.  BOSCOVICH,, mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and poet; born at Ragusa in 1711, died in 1787. Boscovich was a member of the Society of Jesus; his life was spent in study, in ease and honour; he appears to have received any office that he might covet; he was respected and pensioned; nor did he ever experience coldness or reverse except at the hands of D'Alembert and the encyclopedists, who were by no means disposed to hold a jesuit in unmerited or inordinate esteem. But his deserts were too great and too obvious to be affected by any slight; nor has posterity vindicated the singular hostility of Condorcet and D'Alembert. Boscovich had the good fortune to point out, first of all, the importance of the solar spots as an index to the period of the sun's rotation; and amongst other services to science, he engaged with success in the earliest geodetical enterprise of merit, undertaken within the papal states. Not only was he a keen and intelligent supporter and expounder of the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation, but his enduring fame mainly rests on a daring extension of Newton's conception to the ultimate condition or constitution of Matter,—an extension which every subsequent and advancing step realized by physical speculation, has tended to elucidate and confirm. The theory alluded to, is laid down with greatest detail in the treatises, "De Continuitatis Lege," "Dissertationes de viribus viris," "Theoria philosophiæ naturalis reducta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium." In the main it is this—the ultimate elements of matter are indivisible points without extension, which are surrounded by spheres of force, alternating according to the distance from these points, up to a certain degree of remoteness: for instance, the sphere nearest to a point is one of repulsion, the intensity of which increases infinitely as the point is approached; beyond that distance, repulsion slides into attraction, and there is a sphere within which this influence exists and energizes; a sphere of repulsion again follows, and so on, until perceptible distances are reached, within which, in so far as at present known, attraction, or Newton's gravitation, alone prevails. The repulsive force in the neighbourhood of the point increasing ad infinitum, the quality of impenetrability is easily explained. If a body is so constituted that all its elements exist towards each other in the relation of attraction, the body will be compact or solid; if, on the other hand, its points or atoms are repellent, it must be gaseous; while if the distance between them is such that they neither attract nor repel, the body will be liquid. All ordinary phenomena are equally susceptible of explanation, on the ground of the conception of Boscovich: but it has a still larger amplitude, one that cannot be unwelcome to modern chemistry:—it shows the possibility of transformation, without change of composition. If, as explained above, the atoms of a body exist towards each other in the relation of attraction, the body is solid; but there are or may be many different degrees of distance equally compatible with such a relation, inasmuch as various spheres of attraction as well as repulsion may be supposed to exist. Change one sphere of attraction for another, and although the body continue solid, it will, to all intents and purposes, appear a new and distinct body, although no alteration of what is commonly called its chemical constitution, has been impressed upon it. Judging á priori, it seems far from unlikely that the relations between what (chemically speaking) are really simple and indecomposable elements, may receive elucidation from this idea of the accomplished jesuit.—Should Italy ever attain to peace and regain prosperity and repose, we shall expect, as one of the least of her achievements, a uniform and perfect edition of the works of Boscovich.—J. P. N.  BOSE,, a German physician and naturalist, was born at Leipzig on 30th April, 1723, and died there on 22d September, 1788. He distinguished himself in botany, and wrote treatises on the nodes of plants, the origin and direction of their roots, their secretions, and their circulation, besides several medical and surgical works.—J. H. B. <section end="734H" /> <section begin="734I" />BOSELLI,, a Bergamo painter (circa 1500). He was a sculptor as well.—W. T. <section end="734I" /> <section begin="734J" />BOSIO or BOSIUS,, an Italian historian, born either at Milan or at Chivas in Piedmont, lived in the second half of the sixteenth century. He was secretary and agent to the Maltese order, in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. <section end="734J" /> <section begin="734K" />BOSON, a monk of Normandy, abbot of the monastery of Bec, born at Montevilliers in 1065; died in 1136. Before being appointed to that abbacy he had been in England with Anselm, and had represented that prelate at the council of Clermont, 1095. <section end="734K" /> <section begin="734Zcontin" />BOSQUET,, Marshal of France, was born in 1810 at Pau, in the Pyrenees, and was educated at the college of that town. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1829, and in 1833 became a sub-lieutenant of artillery. In 1835 his regiment was ordered to Algeria, where he distinguished himself by his activity and enterprise. The following anecdote will show his military skill:—In an expedition undertaken by a small column of infantry, to which he was attached, with three or four guns, the little force was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of Arabs. The situation was critical, and the plan of operations was not calculated to meet and overcome such an unexpected danger. On receiving instructions from his commander as to <section end="734Zcontin" />