VOLUME IV SLICE I Bisharin to Bohea (continued 10)

BOCAGE, MANUEL MARIA BARBOSA DE (1765-1805), Portuguese poet, was a native of Setubal. His father had held important judicial and administrative appointments, and his mother, from whom he took his last surname, was the daughter of a Portuguese vice-admiral of French birth who had fought at the battle of Matapan. Bocage began to make verses in infancy, and being somewhat of a prodigy grew up to be flattered, self-conscious and unstable. At the age of fourteen, he suddenly left school and joined the 7th infantry regiment; but tiring of garrison life at Setubal after two years, he decided to enter the navy. He proceeded to the royal marine academy in Lisbon, but instead of studying he pursued love adventures, and for the next five years burnt incense on many altars, while his retentive memory and extraordinary talent for improvisation gained him a host of admirers and turned his head. The Brazilian modinhas, little rhymed poems sung to a guitar at family parties, were then in great vogue, and Bocage added to his fame by writing a number of these, by his skill in extemporizing verses on a given theme, and by allegorical idyllic pieces, the subjects of which are similar to those of Watteau’s and Boucher’s pictures. In 1786 he was appointed guardamarinha in the Indian navy, and he reached Goa by way of Brazil in October. There he came into an ignorant society full of petty intrigue, where his particular talents found no scope to display themselves; the glamour of the East left him unmoved and the climate brought on a serious illness. In these circumstances he compared the heroic traditions of Portugal in Asia, which had induced him to leave home, with the reality, and wrote his satirical sonnets on “The Decadence of the Portuguese Empire in Asia,” and those addressed to Affonso de Albuquerque and D. João de Castro. The irritation caused by these satires, together with rivalries in love affairs, made it advisable for him to leave Goa, and early in 1789 he obtained the post of lieutenant of the infantry company at Damaun; but he promptly deserted and made his way to Macao, where he arrived in July-August. According to a modern tradition much of the Lusiads had been written there, and Bocage probably travelled to China under the influence of Camoens, to whose life and misfortunes he loved to compare his own. Though he escaped the penalty of his desertion, he had no resources and lived on friends, whose help enabled him to return to Lisbon in the middle of the following year.

Once back in Portugal he found his old popularity, and resumed his vagabond existence. The age was one of reaction against the Pombaline reforms, and the famous intendant of police, Manique, in his determination to keep out French revolutionary and atheistic propaganda, forbade the importation of foreign classics and the discussion of all liberal ideas. Hence the only vehicle of expression left was satire, which Bocage employed with an unsparing hand. His poverty compelled him to eat and sleep with friends like the turbulent friar José Agostinho de Macedo (q.v.), and he soon fell under suspicion with Manique. He became a member of the New Arcadia, a literary society founded in 1790, under the name of Elmano Sadino, but left it three years later. Though including in its ranks most of the poets of the time, the New Arcadia produced little of real merit, and before long its adherents became enemies and descended to an angry warfare of words. But Bocage’s reputation among the general public and with foreign travellers grew year by year. Beckford, the author of Vathek, for instance, describes him as “a pale, limber, odd-looking young man, the queerest but perhaps the most original of God’s poetical creatures. This strange and versatile character may be said to possess the true wand of enchantment which at the will of its master either animates or petrifies.” In 1797 enemies of Bocage belonging to the New Arcadia delated him to Manique, who on the pretext afforded by some anti-religious verses, the Epistola á Marilia, and by his loose life, arrested him when he was about to flee the country and lodged him in the Limoeiro, where he spent his thirty-second birthday. His sufferings induced him to a speedy recantation, and after much importuning of friends, he obtained his transfer in November from the state prison to that of the Inquisition, then a mild tribunal, and shortly afterwards recovered his liberty. He returned to his bohemian life and subsisted by writing empty Elogios Dramaticos for the theatres, printing volumes of verses and translating the didactic poems of Delille, Castel and others, some second-rate French plays and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. These resources and the help of brother Freemasons just enabled him to exist, and a purifying influence came into his life in the shape of a real affection for the two beautiful daughters of D. Antonio Bersane Leite, which drew from him verses of true feeling mixed with regrets for the past. He would have married the younger lady, D. Anna Perpetua (Analia), but excesses had ruined his health. In 1801 his poetical rivalry with Macedo became more acute and personal, and ended by drawing from Bocage a stinging extempore poem, Pena de Talião, which remains a monument to his powers of invective. In 1804 the malady from which he suffered increased, and the approach of death inspired some beautiful sonnets, including one directed to D. Maria (Marcia), elder sister of Analia, who visited and consoled him. He became reconciled to his enemies, and breathed his last on the 21st of December 1805. His end recalled that of Camoens, for he expired in poverty on the eve of the French invasion, while the singer of the Lusiads just failed to see the occupation of Portugal by the duke of Alva’s army. The gulf that divides the life and achievements of these two poets is accounted for, less by difference of talent and temperament than by their environment, and it gives an accurate measure of the decline of Portugal in the two centuries that separate 1580 from 1805.

To Beckford, Bocage was “a powerful genius,” and Link was struck by his nervous expression, harmonious versification and the fire of his poetry. He employed every variety of lyric and made his mark in all. His roundels are good, his epigrams witty, his satires rigorous and searching, his odes often full of nobility, but his fame must rest on his sonnets, which almost rival those of Camoens in power, elevation of thought and tender melancholy, though they lack the latter’s scholarly refinement of phrasing. So dazzled were contemporary critics by his brilliant and inspired extemporizations that they ignored Bocage’s licentiousness, and overlooked the slightness of his creative output and the artificial character of most of his poetry. In 1871 a monument was erected to the poet in the chief square of Setubal, and the centenary of his death was kept there with much circumstance in 1905.

The best editions of his collected works are those of I.F. da Silva, with a biographical and literary study by Rebello da Silva, in 6 vols. (Lisbon, 1853), and of Dr Theophilo Braga, in 8 vols. (Oporto, 1875-1876). See also I.F. da Silva Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez, vol. vi. pp. 45-53, and vol. xvi. pp. 260-264; Dr T. Braga, Bocage, sua vida e epoca litteraria (Oporto, 1902). A striking portrait of Bocage by H.J. da Silva was engraved by Bartolozzi, who spent his last years in Lisbon.

(E. Pr.)

BOCAGE (from O. Fr. boscage, Late Lat. boscum, a wood), a French topographical term applied to several regions of France, the commonest characteristics of which are a granite formation and an undulating or hilly surface, consisting largely of heath or reclaimed land, and dotted with clumps of trees. The most important districts designated by the word are (1) the Bocage of Normandy, which comprises portions of the departments of Calvados, Manche and Orne; (2) the Bocage of Vendée, situated in the departments of Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Maine-et-Loire, and Loire-Inférieure.

BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI (1313-1375), Italian author, whose Decameron is one of the classics of literature, was born in 1313, as we know from a letter of Petrarch, in which that poet, who was born in 1304, calls himself the senior of his friend by nine years. The place of his birth is somewhat doubtful—Florence, Paris and Certaldo being all mentioned by various writers as his native city. Boccaccio undoubtedly calls himself a Florentine, but this may refer merely to the Florentine citizenship acquired by his grandfather. The claim of Paris has been supported by Baldelli and Tiraboschi, mainly on the ground that his mother was a lady of good family in that city, where she met Boccaccio’s father. There is a good deal in favour of Certaldo, a small town or castle in the valley of the Elsa, 20 m. from Florence, where the family had some property, and where the poet spent much of the latter part of his life. He always signed his name Boccaccio da Certaldo, and named that town as his birthplace in his own epitaph. Petrarch calls his friend Certaldese; and Filippo Villani, a contemporary, distinctly says that Boccaccio was born in Certaldo.

Boccaccio, an illegitimate son, as is put beyond dispute by the fact that a special licence had to be obtained when he desired to become a priest, was brought up with tender care by his father, who seems to have been a merchant of respectable rank. His elementary education he received from Giovanni da Strada, an esteemed teacher of grammar in Florence. But at an early age he was apprenticed to an eminent merchant, with whom he remained for six years, a time entirely lost to him, if we may believe his own statement. For from his tenderest years his soul was attached to that “alma poesis,” which, on his tombstone, he names as the task and study of his life. In one of his works he relates that, in his seventh year, before he had ever seen a book of poetry or learned the rules of metrical composition, he began to write verse in his childish fashion, and earned for himself amongst his friends the name of “the poet.” It is uncertain where Boccaccio passed these six years of bondage; most likely he followed his master to various centres of commerce in Italy and France. We know at least that he was in Naples and Paris for some time, and the youthful impressions received in the latter city, as well as the knowledge of the French language acquired there, were of considerable influence on his later career. Yielding at last to his son’s immutable aversion to commerce, the elder Boccaccio permitted him to adopt a course of study somewhat more congenial to the literary tastes of the young man. He was sent to a celebrated professor of canon law, at that time an important field of action both to the student and the practical jurist. According to some accounts—far from authentic, it is true—this professor was Cino da Pistoia, the friend of Dante, and himself a celebrated poet and scholar. But, whoever he may have been, Boccaccio’s master was unable to inspire his pupil with scientific ardour. “Again,” Boccaccio says, “I lost nearly six years. And so nauseous was this study to my mind, that neither the teaching of my master, nor the authority and command of my father, nor yet the exertions and reproof of my friends, could make me take to it, for my love of poetry was invincible.”

About 1333 Boccaccio settled for some years at Naples, apparently sent there by his father to resume his mercantile pursuits, the canon law being finally abandoned. The place, it must be confessed, was little adapted to lead to a practical view of life one in whose heart the love of poetry was firmly rooted. The court of King Robert of Anjou at Naples was frequented by many Italian and French men of letters, the great Petrarch amongst the number. At the latter’s public examination in the noble science of poetry by the king, previous to his receiving the laurel crown at Rome, Boccaccio was present,—without, however, making his personal acquaintance at this period. In the atmosphere of this gay court, enlivened and adorned by the wit of men and the beauty of women, Boccaccio lived for several years. We can imagine how the tedious duties of the market and the counting-house became more and more distasteful to his aspiring nature. We are told that, finding himself by chance on the supposed grave of Virgil, near Naples, Boccaccio on that sacred spot took the firm resolution of devoting himself for ever to poetry. But perhaps another event, which happened some time after, led quite as much as the first-mentioned occurrence to this decisive turning-point in his life. On Easter-eve, 1341, in the church of San Lorenzo, Boccaccio saw for the first time the natural daughter of King Robert, Maria, whom he immortalized as Fiammetta in the noblest creations of his muse. Boccaccio’s passion on seeing her was instantaneous, and (if we may accept as genuine the confessions contained in one of her lover’s works) was returned with equal ardour on the part of the lady. But not till after much delay did she yield to the amorous demands of the poet, in spite of her honour and her duty as the wife of another. All the information we have with regard to Maria or Fiammetta is derived from the works of Boccaccio himself, and owing to several apparently contradictory statements occurring in these works, the very existence of the lady has been doubted by commentators, who seem to forget that, surrounded by the chattering tongues of a court, and watched perhaps by a jealous husband, Boccaccio had all possible reason to give the appearance of fictitious incongruity to the effusions of his real passion. But there seems no more reason to call into question the main features of the story, or even the identity of the person, than there would be in the case of Petrarch’s Laura or of Dante’s Beatrice. It has been ingeniously pointed out by Baldelli, that the fact of her descent from King Robert being known only to Maria herself, and through her to Boccaccio, the latter was the more at liberty to refer to this circumstance,—the bold expression of the truth serving in this case to increase the mystery with which the poets of the middle ages loved, or were obliged, to surround the objects of their praise. From Boccaccio’s Ameto we learn that Maria’s mother was, like his own, a French lady, whose husband, according to Baldelli’s ingenious conjecture, was of the noble house of Aquino, and therefore of the same family with the celebrated Thomas Aquinas. Maria died, according to his account, long before her lover, who cherished her memory to the end of his life, as we see from a sonnet written shortly before his death.

The first work of Boccaccio, composed by him at Fiammetta’s command, was the prose tale, Filocopo, describing the romantic love and adventures of Florio and Biancafiore, a favourite subject with the knightly minstrels of France, Italy and Germany. The treatment of the story by Boccaccio is not remarkable for originality or beauty, and the narrative is encumbered by classical allusions and allegorical conceits. The style also cannot be held worthy of the future great master of Italian prose. Considering, however, that this prose was in its infancy, and that this was Boccaccio’s first attempt at remoulding the unwieldy material at his disposal, it would be unjust to deny that Filocopo is a highly interesting work, full of promise and all but articulate power. Another work, written about the same time by Fiammetta’s desire and dedicated to her, is the Teseide, an epic poem, and indeed the first heroic epic in the Italian language. The name is chosen somewhat inappropriately, as King Theseus plays a secondary part, and the interest of the story centres in the two noble knights, Palemone and Arcito, and their wooing of the beautiful Emelia. The Teseide is of particular interest to the student of poetry, because it exhibits the first example of the ottava rima, a metre which was adopted by Tasso and Ariosto, and in English by Byron in Don Juan. Another link between Boccaccio’s epic and English literature is formed by the fact of Chaucer having in the Knight’s Tale adopted its main features.

Boccaccio’s poetry has been severely criticized by his countrymen, and most severely by the author himself. On reading Petrarch’s sonnets, Boccaccio resolved in a fit of despair to burn his own attempts, and only the kindly encouragement of his great friend prevented the holocaust. Posterity has justly differed from the author’s sweeping self-criticism. It is true, that compared with Dante’s grandeur and passion, and with Petrarch’s absolute mastership of metre and language, Boccaccio’s poetry seems to be somewhat thrown into shade. His verse is occasionally slip-shod, and particularly his epic poetry lacks what in modern parlance is called poetic diction,—the quality, that is, which distinguishes the elevated pathos of the recorder of heroic deeds from the easy grace of the mere conteur. This latter feature, so charmingly displayed in Boccaccio’s prose, has to some extent proved fatal to his verse. At the same time, his narrative is always fluent and interesting, and his lyrical pieces, particularly the poetic interludes in the Decameron, abound with charming gallantry, and frequently rise to lyrical pathos.

About the year 1341 Boccaccio returned to Florence by command of his father, who in his old age desired the assistance and company of his son. Florence, at that time disturbed by civil feuds, and the silent gloom of his father’s house could not but appear in an unfavourable light to one accustomed to the gay life of the Neapolitan court. But more than all this, Boccaccio regretted the separation from his beloved Fiammetta. The thought of her at once embittered and consoled his loneliness. Three of his works owe their existence to this period. With all of them Fiammetta is connected; of one of them she alone is the subject. The first work, called Ameto, describes the civilizing influence of love, which subdues the ferocious manners of the savage with its gentle power. Fiammetta, although not the heroine of the story, is amongst the nymphs who with their tales of true love soften the mind of the huntsman. Ameto is written in prose alternating with verse, specimens of which form occur in old and middle Latin writings. It is more probable, however, that Boccaccio adopted it from that sweetest and purest blossom of medieval French literature, Aucassin et Nicolette, which dates from the 13th century, and was undoubtedly known to him. So pleased was Boccaccio with the idea embodied in the character of Ameto that he repeated its essential features in the Cimone of his Decameron (Day 5th, tale i.). The second work referred to is a poem in fifty chapters, called L’amorosa Visione. It describes a dream in which the poet, guided by a lady, sees the heroes and lovers of ancient and medieval times. Boccaccio evidently has tried to imitate the celebrated Trionfi of Petrarch, but without much success. There is little organic development in the poem, which reads like the catalogue raisonné of a picture gallery; but it is remarkable from another point of view. It is perhaps the most astounding instance in literature of ingenuity wasted on trifles; even Edgar Poe, had he known Boccaccio’s puzzle, must have confessed himself surpassed. For the whole of the Amorosa Visione is nothing but an acrostic on a gigantic scale. The poem is written, like the Divina Commedia, in terza rima, and the initial letters of all the triplets throughout the work compose three poems of considerable length, in the first of which the whole is dedicated to Boccaccio’s lady-love, this time under her real name of Maria. In addition to this, the initial letters of the first, third, fifth, seventh and ninth lines of the dedicatory poem form the name of Maria; so that here we have the acrostic in the second degree. No wonder that thus entrammelled the poet’s thought begins to flag and his language to halt. The third important work written by Boccaccio during his stay at Florence, or soon after his return to Naples, is called L’amorosa Fiammetta; and although written in prose, it contains more real poetry than the elaborate production just referred to. It purports to be Fiammetta’s complaint after her lover, following the call of filial duty, had deserted her. Bitterly she deplores her fate, and upbraids her lover with coldness and want of devotion. Jealous fears add to her torture, not altogether unfounded, if we believe the commentators’ assertion that the heroine of Ameto is in reality the beautiful Lucia, a Florentine lady loved by Boccaccio. Sadly Fiammetta recalls the moments of former bliss, the first meeting, the stolen embrace. Her narrative is indeed our chief source of information for the incidents of this strange love-story. It has been thought unlikely, and indeed impossible, that Boccaccio should thus have become the mouthpiece of a real lady’s real passion for himself; but there seems nothing incongruous in the supposition that after a happy reunion the poet should have heard with satisfaction, and surrounded with the halo of ideal art, the story of his lady’s sufferings. Moreover, the language is too full of individual intensity to make the conjecture of an entirely fictitious love affair intrinsically probable. L’amorosa Fiammetta is a monody of passion sustained even to the verge of dulness, but strikingly real, and therefore artistically valuable.

By the intercession of an influential friend, Boccaccio at last obtained (in 1344) his father’s permission to return to Naples, where in the meantime Giovanna, grand-daughter of King Robert, had succeeded to the crown. Being young and beautiful, fond of poetry and of the praise of poets, she received Boccaccio with all the distinction due to his literary fame. For many years she remained his faithful friend, and the poet returned her favour with grateful devotion. Even when the charge of having instigated, or at least connived at, the murder of her husband was but too clearly proved against her, Boccaccio was amongst the few who stood by her, and undertook the hopeless task of clearing her name from the dreadful stain. It was by her desire, no less than by that of Fiammetta, that he composed (between 1344 and 1350) most of the stories of his Decameron, which afterwards were collected and placed in the mouths of the Florentine ladies and gentlemen. During this time he also composed the Filostrato, a narrative poem, the chief interest of which, for the English reader, lies in its connexion with Chaucer. With a boldness pardonable only in men of genius, Chaucer adopted the main features of the plot, and literally translated parts of Boccaccio’s work, without so much as mentioning the name of his Italian source.

In 1350 Boccaccio returned to Florence, owing to the death of his father, who had made him guardian to his younger brother Jacopo. He was received with great distinction, and entered the service of the Republic, being at various times sent on important missions to the margrave of Brandenburg, and to the courts of several popes, both in Avignon and Rome. Boccaccio boasts of the friendly terms on which he had been with the great potentates of Europe, the emperor and pope amongst the number. But he was never a politician in the sense that Dante and Petrarch were. As a man of the world he enjoyed the society of the great, but his interest in the internal commotions of the Florentine state seems to have been very slight. Besides, he never liked Florence, and the expressions used by him regarding his fellow-citizens betray anything but patriotic prejudice. In a Latin eclogue he applies to them the term “Batrachos” (frogs), by which, he adds parenthetically—Ego intelligo Florentinorum morem; loquacissimi enim sumus, verum in rebus bellicis nihil valemus. The only important result of Boccaccio’s diplomatic career was his intimacy with Petrarch. The first acquaintance of these two great men dates from the year 1350, when Boccaccio, then just returned to Florence, did all in his power to make the great poet’s short stay in that city agreeable. When in the following year the Florentines were anxious to draw men of great reputation to their newly-founded university, it was again Boccaccio who insisted on the claims of Petrarch to the most distinguished position. He himself accepted the mission of inviting his friend to Florence, and of announcing to Petrarch at the same time that the forfeited estates of his family had been restored to him. In this manner an intimate friendship grew up between them to be parted only by death. Common interests and common literary pursuits were the natural basis of their friendship, and both occupy prominent positions in the early history of that great intellectual revival commonly called the Renaissance.

During the 14th century the study of ancient literature was at a low ebb in Italy. The interest of the lay world was engrossed by political struggles, and the treasures of classical history and poetry were at the mercy of monks, too lazy or too ignorant to use, or even to preserve them. Boccaccio himself told that, on asking to see the library of the celebrated monastery of Monte Cassino, he was shown into a dusty room without a door to it. Many of the valuable manuscripts were mutilated; and his guide told him that the monks were in the habit of tearing leaves from the codices to turn them into psalters for children, or amulets for women at the price of four or five soldi apiece. Boccaccio did all in his power to remove by word and example this barbarous indifference. He bought or copied with his own hand numerous valuable manuscripts, and an old writer remarks that if Boccaccio had been a professional copyist, the amount of his work might astonish us. His zealous endeavours for the revival of the all but forgotten Greek language in western Europe are well known. The most celebrated Italian scholars about the beginning of the 15th century were unable to read the Greek characters. Boccaccio deplored the ignorance of his age. He took lessons from Leone Pilato, a learned adventurer of the period, who had lived a long time in Thessaly and, although born in Calabria, pretended to be a Greek. By Boccaccio’s advice Leone Pilato was appointed professor of Greek language and literature in the university of Florence, a position which he held for several years, not without great and lasting benefit for the revival of classical learning. Boccaccio was justly proud of having been intimately connected with the foundation of the first chair of Greek in Italy. But he did not forget, in his admiration of classic literature, the great poets of his own country. He never tires in his praise of the sublime Dante, whose works he copied with his own hand. He conjures his friend Petrarch to study the great Florentine, and to defend himself against the charges of wilful ignorance and envy brought against him. A life of Dante, and the commentaries on the first sixteen cantos of the Inferno, bear witness to Boccaccio’s learning and enthusiasm.

In the chronological enumeration of our author’s writings we now come to his most important work, the Decameron, a collection of one hundred stories, published in their combined form in 1353, although mostly written at an earlier date. This work marks in a certain sense the rise of Italian prose. It is true that Dante’s Vita Nuova was written before, but its involved sentences, founded essentially on Latin constructions, cannot be compared with the infinite suppleness and precision of Boccaccio’s prose. The Cento Novelle Antiche, on the other hand, which also precedes the Decameron in date, can hardly be said to be written in artistic language according to definite rules of grammar and style. Boccaccio for the first time speaks a new idiom, flexible and tender, like the character of the nation, and capable of rendering all the shades of feeling, from the coarse laugh of cynicism to the sigh of hopeless love. It is by the name of “Father of Italian Prose” that Boccaccio ought to be chiefly remembered.

Like most progressive movements in art and literature, Boccaccio’s remoulding of Italian prose may be described as a “return to nature.” It is indeed the nature of the Italian people itself which has become articulate in the Decameron; here we find southern grace and elegance, together with that unveiled naïveté of impulse which is so striking and so amiable a quality of the Italian character. The undesirable complement of the last-mentioned feature, a coarseness and indecency of conception and expression hardly comprehensible to the northern mind, also appears in the Decameron, particularly where the life and conversation of the lower classes are the subject of the story. At the same time, these descriptions of low life are so admirable, and the character of popular parlance rendered with such humour, as often to make the frown of moral disgust give way to a smile.

It is not surprising that a style so concise and yet so pliable so typical and yet so individual, as that of Boccaccio was of enormous influence on the further progress of a prose in a manner created by it. This influence has indeed prevailed down to the present time, to an extent beneficial upon the whole, although frequently fatal to the development of individual writers. Novelists like Giovanni Fiorentino or Franco Sacchetti are completely under the sway of their great model; and Boccaccio’s influence may be discerned equally in the plastic fulness of Machiavelli and in the pointed satire of Aretino. Without touching upon the individual merits of Lasca, Bandello and other novelists of the cinque-cento, it may be asserted that none of them created a style independent of their great predecessor. One cannot indeed but acquiesce in the authoritative utterance of the Accademia della Crusca, which holds up the Decameron as the standard and model of Italian prose. Even the Della Cruscan writers themselves have been unable to deprive the language wholly of the fresh spontaneity of Boccaccio’s manner, which in modern literature we again admire in Manzoni’s Promessi sposi.

A detailed analysis of a work so well known as the Decameron would be unnecessary. The description of the plague of Florence preceding the stories is universally acknowledged to be a masterpiece of epic grandeur and vividness. It ranks with the paintings of similar calamities by Thucydides, Defoe and Manzoni. Like Defoe, Boccaccio had to draw largely on hearsay and his own imagination, it being almost certain that in 1348 he was at Naples, and therefore no eye-witness of the scenes he describes. The stories themselves, a hundred in number, range from the highest pathos to the coarsest licentiousness. A creation like the patient Griselda, which international literature owes to Boccaccio, ought to atone for much that is morally and artistically objectionable in the Decameron. It may be said on this head, that his age and his country were not only deeply immoral, but in addition exceedingly outspoken. Moreover, his sources were anything but pure. Most of his improper stories are either anecdotes from real life, or they are taken from the fabliaux of medieval French poets. On comparing the latter class of stories (about one-fifth of the whole Decameron) with their French originals, one finds that Boccaccio has never added to, but has sometimes toned down the revolting ingredients. Notwithstanding this, it cannot be denied that the artistic value of the Decameron is greatly impaired by descriptions and expressions, the intentional licentiousness of which is but imperfectly veiled by an attempt at humour.

Boccaccio has been accused of plagiarism, particularly by French critics, who correctly state that the subjects of many stories in the Decameron are borrowed from their literature. A similar objection might be raised against Chaucer, Shakespeare, Goethe (in Faust), and indeed most of the master minds of all nations. Power of invention is not the only nor even the chief criterion of a great poet. He takes his subjects indiscriminately from his own fancy, or from the consciousness of his and other nations. Stories float about in the air, known to all yet realized by few; the poet gathers their disjecta membra into an organic whole, and this he inspires and calls into life with the breath of his genius. It is in this sense that Boccaccio is the creator of those innumerable beautiful types and stories, which have since become household words amongst civilized nations. No author can equal him in these contributions to the store of international literature. There are indeed few great poets who have not in some way become indebted to the inexhaustible treasure of Boccaccio’s creativeness. One of the greatest masterpieces of German literature, Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, contains a story from Boccaccio (Decameron, Day 1st, tale iii.), and the list of English poets who have drawn from the same source comprises, among many others, the names of Chaucer, Lydgate, Dryden, Keats and Tennyson.

For ten years Boccaccio continued to reside in Florence, leaving the city only occasionally on diplomatic missions or on visits to his friends. His fame in the meantime began to spread far and wide, and his Decameron, in particular, was devoured by the fashionable ladies and gentlemen of the age. About 1360 he seems to have retired from the turbulent scenes of Florence to his native Certaldo, the secluded charms of which he describes with rapture. In the following year took place that strange turning-point in Boccaccio’s career which is generally described as his conversion. It seems that a Carthusian monk came to him while at Certaldo charged with a posthumous message from another monk of the same order, to the effect that if Boccaccio did not at once abandon his godless ways in life and literature his death would ensue after a short time. It is also mentioned that the revelation to the friar on his deathbed of a secret known only to Boccaccio gave additional import to this alarming information. Boccaccio’s impressionable nature was deeply moved. His life had been far from virtuous; in his writings he had frequently sinned against the rules of morality, and worse still, he had attacked with bitter satire the institutions and servants of holy mother church. Terrified by the approach of immediate death, he resolved to sell his library, abandon literature, and devote the remainder of his life to penance and religious exercise. To this effect he wrote to Petrarch. We possess the poet’s answer; it is a masterpiece of writing, and what is more, a proof of tenderest friendship. The message of the monk Petrarch is evidently inclined to treat simply as pious fraud, without, however, actually committing himself to that opinion. “No monk is required to tell thee of the shortness and precariousness of human life. Of the advice received accept what is good; abandon worldly cares, conquer thy passions, and reform thy soul and life of degraded habits. But do not give up the studies which are the true food of a healthy mind.” Boccaccio seems to have acted on this valuable advice. His later works, although written in Latin and scientific in character, are by no means of a religious kind. It seems, however, that his entering the church in 1362 is connected with the events just related.

In 1363 Boccaccio went on a visit to Naples to the seneschal Acciajuoli (the same Florentine who had in 1344 persuaded the elder Boccaccio to permit his son’s return to Naples), who commissioned him to write the story of his deeds of valour. On his arrival, however, the poet was treated with shameful neglect, and revenged himself by denying the possibility of relating any valorous deeds for want of their existence. This declaration, it must be confessed, came somewhat late, but it was provoked by a silly attack on the poet himself by one of the seneschal’s indiscreet friends.

During the next ten years Boccaccio led an unsettled life, residing chiefly at Florence or Certaldo, but frequently leaving his home on visits to Petrarch and other friends, and on various diplomatic errands in the service of the Republic. He seems to have been poor, having spent large sums in the purchase of books, but his independent spirit rejected the numerous splendid offers of hospitality made to him by friends and admirers. During this period he wrote four important Latin works—De Genealogia Deorum libri XV., a compendium of mythological knowledge full of deep learning; De Montium, Silvarum, Lacuum, et Marium nominibus liber, a treatise on ancient geography; and two historical books—De Casibus Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium libri IX., interesting to the English reader as the original of John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes; and De Claris Mulieribus. To the list of his works ought to be added Il Ninfale Fiesolano, a beautiful love-story in verse, and Il Corbaccio ossia Il Laberinto d’Amore, a coarse satire on a Florentine widow who had jilted the poet, written about 1355, not to mention many eclogues in Latin and miscellaneous Rime in Italian (the latter collected by his biographer Count Baldelli in 1802).

In 1373 we find Boccaccio again settled at Certaldo. Here he was attacked by a terrible disease which brought him to the verge of death, and from the consequences of which he never quite recovered. But sickness could not subdue his intellectual vigour. When the Florentines established a chair for the explanation of the Divina Commedia in their university, and offered it to Boccaccio, the senescent poet at once undertook the arduous duty. He delivered his first lecture on the 23rd of October 1373. The commentary on part of the Inferno, already alluded to, bears witness of his unabated power of intellect. In 1374 the news of the loss of his dearest friend Petrarch reached Boccaccio, and from this blow he may be said to have never recovered. Almost his dying efforts were devoted to the memory of his friend; urgently he entreated Petrarch’s son-in-law to arrange the publication of the deceased poet’s Latin epic Africa, a work of which the author had been far more proud than of his immortal sonnets to Laura.

In his last will Boccaccio left his library to his father confessor, and after his decease to the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence. His small property he bequeathed to his brother Jacopo. His own natural children had died before him. He himself died on the 21st of December 1375 at Certaldo, and was buried in the church of SS. Jacopo e Filippo of that town. On his tombstone was engraved the epitaph composed by himself shortly before his death. It is calm and dignified, worthy indeed of a great life with a great purpose. These are the lines:—

“Hac sub mole jacent cineres ac ossa Joannis; Mens sedet ante Deum, meritis ornata laborum Mortalis vitae. Genitor Boccaccius illi; Patria Certaldum; studium fuit alma poesis.”

A complete edition of Boccaccio’s Italian writings, in 17 vols., was published by Moutier (Florence, 1834). The life of Boccaccio has been written by Tiraboschi, Mazzuchelli, Count Baldelli (Vita di Boccaccio, Florence, 1806), and others. In English the best biography is Edward Hutton (1909.) The first printed edition of the Decameron is without date, place or printer’s name; but it is believed to belong to the year 1469 or 1470, and to have been printed at Florence. Besides this, Baldelli mentions eleven editions during the 15th century. The entire number of editions by far exceeds a hundred. A curious expurgated edition, authorized by the pope, appeared at Florence, 1573. Here, however, the grossest indecencies remain, the chief alteration being the change of the improper personages from priests and monks into laymen. The best old edition is that of Florence, 1527. Of modern reprints, that by Forfoni (Florence, 1857) deserves mention. Manni has written a Storia del Decamerone (1742), and a German scholar, M. Landau, who published (Vienna, 1869) a valuable investigation of the sources of the Decameron, subsequently brought out in 1877 a general study of Boccaccio’s life and works. An interesting English translation of the Decameron appeared in 1624, under the title The Model of Mirth, Wit, Eloquence and Conversation.

(F. H.)

BOCCALINI, TRAJANO (1556-1613), Italian satirist, was born at Loretto in 1556. The son of an architect, he himself adopted that profession, and it appears that he commenced late in life to apply to literary pursuits. Pursuing his studies at Rome, he had the honour of teaching Bentivoglio, and acquired the friendship of the cardinals Gaetano and Borghesi, as well as of other distinguished personages. By their influence he obtained various posts, and was even appointed by Gregory XIII. governor of Benevento in the states of the church. Here, however, he seems to have acted imprudently, and he was soon recalled to Rome, where he shortly afterwards composed his most important work, the Ragguagli di Parnaso, in which Apollo is represented as receiving the complaints of all who present themselves, and distributing justice according to the merits of each particular case. The book is full of light and fantastic satire on the actions and writings of his eminent contemporaries, and some of its happier hits are among the hackneyed felicities of literature. To escape, it is said, from the hostility of those whom his shafts had wounded, he returned to Venice, and there, according to the register in the parochial church of Sta Maria Formosa, died of colic, accompanied with fever, on the 16th of November 1613. It was asserted, indeed, by contemporary writers that he had been beaten to death with sand-bags by a band of Spanish bravadoes, but the story seems without foundation. At the same time, it is evident from the Pietra del Paragone, which appeared after his death in 1615, that whatever the feelings of the Spaniards towards him, he cherished against them feelings of the bitterest hostility. The only government, indeed, which is exempt from his attacks is that of Venice, a city for which he seems to have had a special affection.

The Ragguagli, first printed in 1612, has frequently been republished. The Pietra has been translated into French, German, English and Latin; the English translator was Henry, earl of Monmouth, his version being entitled The Politicke Touchstone (London, 1674). Another posthumous publication of Boccalini was his Commentarii sopra Cornelia Tacito (Geneva, 1669). Many of his manuscripts are preserved still unprinted.

BOCCHERINI, LUIGI (1743-1805), Italian composer, son of an Italian bass-player, was born at Lucca, and studied at Rome, where he became a fine ’cellist, and soon began to compose. He returned to Lucca, where for some years he was prominent as a player, and there he produced two oratorios and an opera. He toured in Europe, and in 1768 was received in Paris by Gossec and his circle with great enthusiasm, his instrumental pieces being highly applauded; and from 1769 to 1785 he held the post of “composer and virtuoso” to the king of Spain’s brother, the infante Luis, at Madrid. He afterwards became “chamber-composer” to King Frederick William II. of Prussia, till 1797, when he returned to Spain. He died at Madrid on the 28th of May 1805.

As an admirer of Haydn, and a voluminous writer of instrumental music, chiefly for the violoncello, Boccherini represents the effect of the rapid progress of a new art on a mind too refined to be led into crudeness, too inventive and receptive to neglect any of the new artistic resources within its cognizance, and too superficial to grasp their real meaning. His mastery of the violoncello, and his advanced sense of beauty in instrumental tone-colour, must have made even his earlier works seem to contemporaries at least as novel and mature as any of those experiments at which Haydn, with eight years more of age and experience, was labouring in the development of the true new forms. Most of Boccherini’s technical resources proved useless to Haydn, and resemblances occur only in Haydn’s earliest works (e.g. most of the slow movements of the quartets in op. 3 and in some as late as op. 17); whichever derived the characteristics of such movements from the other, the advantage is decidedly with Boccherini. But the progress of music did not lie in the production of novel beauties of instrumental tone in a style in which polyphonic organization was either deliberately abandoned or replaced by a pleasing illusion, while the form in its larger aspects was a mere inorganic amplification of the old suite-forms, which presupposed a genuine polyphonic organization as the vitalizing principle of their otherwise purely decorative nature. The true tendency of the new sonata forms was to make instrumental music dramatic in its variety and contrasts, instead of merely decorative. Haydn from the outset buried himself with the handling of new rhythmic proportions; and if it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the surprising beauty of colour in such a specimen of Boccherini’s 125 string-quintets as that in E major (containing the popular minuet) is perhaps more modern and certainly safer in performance than any special effect Haydn ever achieved, it is nevertheless true that even this beauty fails to justify the length and monotony of the work. Where Haydn uses any fraction of the resources of such a style, the ultimate effect is in proportion to a purpose of which Boccherini, with all his genuine admiration of his elder brother in art, could form no conception. Boccherini’s works are, however, still indispensable for violoncellists, both in their education and their concert repertories; and his position in musical history is assured as that of the most original and, next to Tartini, perhaps the greatest writer of music for stringed instruments in the late Italian amplifications of the older quasi-polyphonic sonata or suite-form that survived into the beginning of the 19th century in the works of Nardini. Boccherini may safely be regarded as its last real master. He was wittily characterized by the contemporary violinist Puppo as “the wife of Haydn”; which is very true, if man and woman are two different species; but not as true as e.g. the equally common saying that “Schubert is the wife of Beethoven,” and still less true than that “Vittoria is the wife of Palestrina.”

His life, with a Catalogue raisonné, was published by L. Picquot (1851).

(D. F. T.)

BOCCHUS, king of Mauretania (about 110 B.C.), and father-in-law of Jugurtha. In 108 he vacillated between Jugurtha and the Romans, and joined Jugurtha only on his promising him the third part of his kingdom. The two kings were twice defeated. Bocchus again made overtures to the Romans, and after an interview with Sulla, who was Marius’s quaestor at that time, sent ambassadors to Rome. At Rome the hope of an alliance was encouraged, but on condition that Bocchus showed himself deserving of it. After further negotiations with Sulla, he finally agreed to send a message to Jugurtha requesting his presence. Jugurtha fell into the trap and was given up to Sulla. Bocchus concluded a treaty with the Romans, and a portion of Numidia was added to his kingdom. Further to conciliate the Romans and especially Sulla, he sent to the Capitol a group of Victories guarding a device in gold showing Bocchus handing over Jugurtha to Sulla.

See Jugurtha; also Sallust, Jugurtha, 80-120; Plutarch, Marius, 8-32, Sulla, 3; A.H.J. Greenidge, History of Rome (London, 1904).

His son, Bocchus, was king of Mauretania, jointly with a younger brother Bogud. As enemies of the senatorial party, their title was recognized by Caesar (49 B.C.). During the African war they invaded Numidia and conquered Cirta, the capital of the kingdom of Juba, who was thus obliged to abandon the idea of joining Metellus Scipio against Caesar. At the end of the war, Caesar bestowed upon Bocchus part of the territory of Massinissa, Juba’s ally, which was recovered after Caesar’s murder by Massinissa’s son Arabion. Dio Cassius says that Bocchus sent his sons to support Sextus Pompeius in Spain, while Bogud fought on the side of Caesar, and there is no doubt that after Caesar’s death Bocchus supported Octavian, and Bogud Antony. During Bogud’s absence in Spain, his brother seized the whole of Numidia, and was confirmed sole ruler by Octavian. After his death in 33, Numidia was made a Roman province.

Bell. Afric. 25; Dio Cassius xli. 42, xliii. 36, xlviii. 45; Appian, Bell. Civ. ii. 96, iv. 54.

BOCHART, SAMUEL (1599-1667), French scholar, was born at Rouen on the 30th of May 1599. He was for many years a pastor of a Protestant church at Caen, and became tutor to Wentworth Dillon, earl of Roscommon. In 1646 he published his Phaleg and Chanaan (Caen, 1646 and 1651), the two parts of his Geographia Sacra. His Hierozoicon, which treats of the animals of Scripture, was printed in London (2 vols., 1663). In 1652 Christina of Sweden invited him to Stockholm, where he studied the Arabian manuscripts in the queen’s possession. He was accompanied by Pierre Daniel Huet, afterwards bishop of Avranches. On his return to Caen he was received into the academy of that city. Bochart was a man of profound erudition; he possessed a thorough knowledge of the principal Oriental languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic and Arabic; and at an advanced age he wished to learn Ethiopic. He was so absorbed in his favourite study, that he saw Phoenician and nothing but Phoenician in everything, even in Celtic words, and hence the number of chimerical etymologies which swarm in his works. He died at Caen on the 16th of May 1667.

A complete edition of his works was published at Leiden, under the title of Sam. Bochart Opera Omnia (1675, 2 vols. folio; 4th ed., 3 vols., 1712). An Essay on the Life and Writings of Samuel Bochart, by W.R. Whittingham, appeared in 1829.

BOCHOLT, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, near the frontier of Holland, 12 m. by rail north of Wesel. It is a seat of the cotton industry. Pop. (1900) 21,278.

BOCHUM, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, 11 m. by rail west from Dortmund. Pop. (1905) 118,000. It is a centre of the iron and steel industries, producing principally cast steel, cast iron, iron pipes, wire and wire ropes, and lamps, with tin and zinc works, coal-mining, factories for carpets, calcium carbide and paper-roofing, brickworks and breweries. The Bochumer Verein für Bergbau (mining) und Gusstahl Fabrication (steel manufacture) is one of the principal trusts in this industry, founded in 1854. There are a mining and a metallurgical school.

BÖCKH, PHILIPP AUGUST (1785-1867), German classical scholar and antiquarian, was born in Karlsruhe on the 24th of November 1785. He was sent to the gymnasium of his native place, and remained there until he left for the university of Halle (1803), where he devoted himself to the study of theology. F.A. Wolf was then creating there an enthusiasm for classical studies; Böckh fell under the spell, passed from theology to philology, and became the greatest of all Wolf’s scholars. In 1807 he established himself as privat-docent in the university of Heidelberg and was shortly afterwards appointed a professor extraordinarius, becoming professor two years later. In 1811 he removed to the new Berlin University, having been appointed professor of eloquence and classical literature. He remained there till his death on the 3rd of August 1867. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin in 1814, and for a long time acted as its secretary. Many of the speeches contained in his Kleine Schriften were delivered in this latter capacity.

Böckh worked out the ideas of Wolf in regard to philology, and illustrated them by his practice. Discarding the old notion that philology consisted in a minute acquaintance with words and the exercise of the critical art, he regarded it as the entire knowledge of antiquity, historical and philosophical. He divides philology into five parts: first, an inquiry into public acts, with a knowledge of times and places, into civil institutions, and also into law; second, an inquiry into private affairs; third, an exhibition of the religions and arts of the ancient nations; fourth, a history of all their moral and physical speculations and beliefs, and of their literatures; and fifth, a complete explanation of the language. These ideas in regard to philology Böckh set forth in a Latin oration delivered in 1822 (Gesammelte kleine Schriften, i.). In his speech at the opening of the congress of German philologists in 1850, he defined philology as the historical construction of the entire life—therefore, of all forms of culture and all the productions of a people in its practical and spiritual tendencies. He allows that such a work is too great for any one man; but the very infinity of subjects is the stimulus to the pursuit of truth, and men strive because they have not attained (ib. ii.). An account of Böckh’s division of philology will be found in Freund’s Wie studirt man Philologie?

From 1806 till his death Böckh’s literary activity was unceasing. His principal works were the following:—(1) An edition of Pindar, the first volume of which (1811) contains the text of the Epinician odes; a treatise, De Metris Pindari, in three books; and Notae Criticae: the second (1819) contains the Scholia; and part ii. of volume ii. (1821) contains a Latin translation, a commentary, the fragments and indices. It is still the most complete edition of Pindar that we have. But it was especially the treatise on the metres which placed Böckh in the first rank of scholars. This treatise forms an epoch in the treatment of the subject. In it the author threw aside all attempts to determine the Greek metres by mere subjective standards, pointing out at the same time the close connexion between the music and the poetry of the Greeks. He investigated minutely the nature of Greek music as far as it can be ascertained, as well as all the details regarding Greek musical instruments; and he explained the statements of the ancient Greek writers on rhythm. In this manner he laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of Greek metres. (2) Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 1817 (2nd ed. 1851, with a supplementary volume Urkunden über das Seewesen des attischen Staats; 3rd ed. by Fränkel, 1886), translated into English by Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1828) under the title of The Public Economy of Athens. In it he investigated a subject of peculiar difficulty with profound learning. He amassed information from the whole range of Greek literature, carefully appraised the value of the information given, and shows throughout every portion of it rare critical ability and insight. A work of a similar kind was his Metrologische Untersuchungen über Gewichte, Münzfüsse, und Masse des Alterthums (1838). (3) Böckh’s third great work arose out of his second. In regard to the taxes and revenue of the Athenian state he derived a great deal of his most trustworthy information from inscriptions, many of which are given in his book. It was natural, therefore, that when the Berlin Academy of Sciences projected the plan of a Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, Böckh should be chosen as the principal editor. This great work (1828-1877) is in four volumes, the third and fourth volumes being edited by J. Franz, E. Curtius, A. Kirchhoff and H. Röhl.

Böckh’s activity was continually digressing into widely different fields. He gained for himself a foremost position amongst the investigators of ancient chronology, and his name occupies a place by the side of those of Ideler and Mommsen. His principal works on this subject were: Zur Geschichte der Mondcyclen der Hellenen (1855); Epigraphisch-chronologische Studien (1856); Über die vierjährigen Sonnenkreise der Alten (1863), and several papers which he published in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy. Böckh also occupied himself with philosophy. One of his earliest papers was on the Platonic doctrine of the world, De Platonica corporis mundani fabrica (1809), followed by De Platonico Systemate Caelestium globorum et de vera Indole Astronomiae Philolaice (1810), to which may be added Manetho und die Hundsternperiode (1845). In opposition to Otto Gruppe (1804-1876), he denied that Plato affirmed the diurnal rotation of the earth (Untersuchungen über das kosmische System des Platon, 1852), and when in opposition to him Grote published his opinions on the subject (Plato and the Rotation of the Earth) Böckh was ready with his reply. Another of his earlier papers, and one frequently referred to, was Commentatio Academica de simultate quae Platoni cum Xenophonte intercessisse fertur (1811). Other philosophical writings were Commentatio in Platonis qui vulgo fertur Minoem (1806), and Philolaos’ des Pythagoreers Lehren nebst den Bruchstücken (1819), in which he endeavoured to show the genuineness of the fragments.

Besides his edition of Pindar, Böckh published an edition of the Antigone of Sophocles (1843) with a poetical translation and essays. An early and important work on the Greek tragedians is his Graecae Tragoediae Principum ... num ea quae supersunt et genuina omnia sint et forma primitiva servata (1808).

The smaller writings of Böckh began to be collected in his lifetime. Three of the volumes were published before his death, and four after (Gesammelte kleine Schriften, 1858-1874). The first two consist of orations delivered in the university or academy of Berlin, or on public occasions. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth contain his contributions to the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, and the seventh contains his critiques. Böckh’s lectures, delivered from 1809-1865, were published by Bratuschek under the title of Encyclopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften (2nd ed, Klussmann, 1886). His philological and scientific theories are set forth in Elze, Über Philologie als System (1845), and Reichhardt, Die Gliederung der Philologie entwickelt (1846). His correspondence with Ottfried Müller appeared at Leipzig in 1883. See Sachse, Erinnerungen an August Böckh (1868); Stark, in the Verhandlungen der Würzburger Philologensammlung (1868); Max Hoffmann, August Böckh (1901); and S. Reiter, in Neue Jahrbucher für das klassische Altertum (1902), p. 436.

BÖCKLIN, ARNOLD (1827-1901), Swiss painter, was born at Basel on the 16th of October 1827. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. In 1846 he began his studies at the Düsseldorf academy under Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, and sent him to Antwerp and Brussels, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris, worked at the Louvre, and painted several landscapes; his “Landscape and Ruin” reveals at the same time a strong feeling for nature and a dramatic conception of scenery. After serving his time in the army he set out for Rome in March 1850, and the sight of the Eternal City was a fresh stimulus to his mind. So, too, was the influence of Italian nature and that of the dead pagan world. At Rome he married (June 20, 1853) Angela Rosa Lorenza Pascucci. In 1856 he returned to Munich, and remained there four years. He then exhibited the “Great Park,” one of his earliest works, in which he treated ancient mythology with the stamp of individuality, which was the basis of his reputation. Of this period, too, are his “Nymph and Satyr,” “Heroic Landscape” (Diana Hunting), both of 1858, and “Sappho” (1859). These works, which were much discussed, together with Lenbach’s recommendation, gained him his appointment as professor at the Weimar academy. He held the office for two years, painting the “Venus and Love,” a “Portrait of Lenbach,” and a “Saint Catherine.” He was again at Rome from 1862 to 1866, and there gave his fancy and his taste for violent colour free play in his “Portrait of Mme Böcklin,” now in the Basel gallery, in “An Anchorite in the Wilderness” (1863); a “Roman Tavern,” and “Villa on the Sea-shore” (1864); this last, one of his best pictures. He returned to Basel in 1866 to finish his frescoes in the gallery, and to paint, besides several portraits, “The Magdalene with Christ” (1868); “Anacreon’s Muse” (1869); and “A Castle and Warriors” (1871). His “Portrait of Myself,” with Death playing a violin (1873), was painted after his return again to Munich, where he exhibited his famous “Battle of the Centaurs” (in the Basel gallery); “Landscape with Moorish Horsemen” (in the Lucerne gallery); and “A Farm” (1875). From 1876 to 1885 Böcklin was working at Florence, and painted a “Pietà,” “Ulysses and Calypso,” “Prometheus,” and the “Sacred Grove.” From 1886 to 1892 he settled at Zürich. Of this period are the “Naiads at Play,” “A Sea Idyll,” and “War.” After 1892 Böcklin resided at San Domenico, near Florence. An exhibition of his collected works was held at Basel from the 20th of September to the 24th of October 1897. He died on the 16th of January 1901.

His life has been written by Henri Mendelssohn. See also F. Hermann, Gazette des Beaux Arts (Paris, 1893); Max Lehrs, Arnold Böcklin, Ein Leitfaden zum Verständniss seiner Kunst (Munich, 1897); W. Ritter, Arnold Böcklin (Gand, 1895); Katalog der Böcklin Jubiläums Ausstellung (Basel, 1897).

(H. Fr.)

BOCLAND, Bockland or Bookland (from A.S. boc, book), an original mode of tenure of land, also called charter-land or deed-land. Bocland was folk-land granted to individuals in private ownership by a document (charter or book) in writing, with the signatures of the king and witenagemot; at first it was rarely, if ever, held by laymen, except for religious purposes. Bocland to a certain extent resembled full ownership in the modern sense, in that the owner could grant it in his lifetime, in the same manner as he had received it, by boc or book, and also dispose of it by will. (See also Folkland.)

BOCSKAY, STEPHEN [István] (1557-1606), prince of Transylvania, the most eminent member of the ancient Bocskay family, son of György Bocskay and Krisztina Sulyok, was born at Kolozsvár, Hungary. As the chief councillor of Prince Zsigmond Báthory, he advised his sovereign to contract an alliance with the emperor instead of holding to the Turk, and rendered important diplomatic services on frequent missions to Prague and Vienna. The enmity towards him of the later Báthory princes of Transylvania, who confiscated his estates, drove him to seek protection at the imperial court (1599); but the attempts of the emperor Rudolph II. to deprive Hungary of her constitution and the Protestants of their religious liberties speedily alienated Bocskay, especially after the terrible outrages inflicted on the Transylvanians by the imperial generals Basta and Belgiojoso from 1602 to 1604. Bocskay, to save the independence of Transylvania, assisted the Turks; and in 1605, as a reward for his part in driving Basta out of Transylvania, the Hungarian diet, assembled at Modgyes, elected him prince (1605), on which occasion the Ottoman sultan sent a special embassy to congratulate him and a splendid jewelled crown made in Persia. Bocskay refused the royal dignity, but made skilful use of the Turkish alliance. To save the Austrian provinces of Hungary, the archduke Matthias, setting aside his semi-lunatic imperial brother Rudolph, thereupon entered into negotiations with Bocskay, and ultimately the peace of Vienna was concluded (June 23, 1606), which guaranteed all the constitutional and religious rights and privileges of the Hungarians both in Transylvania and imperial Hungary. Bocskay, at the same time, was acknowledged as prince of Transylvania by the Austrian court, and the right of the Transylvanians to elect their own independent princes in future was officially recognized. The fortress of Tokaj and the counties of Bereg, Szatmár and Ugocsa were at the same time ceded to Bocskay, with reversion to Austria if he should die childless. Simultaneously, at Zsitvatorok, a peace, confirmatory of the peace of Vienna, was concluded with the Turks. Bocskay survived this signal and unprecedented triumph only a few months. He is said to have been poisoned (December 29, 1606) by his chancellor, Mihály Kátay, who was hacked to bits by Bocskay’s adherents in the market-place of Kassa.

See Political Correspondence of Stephen Bocskay (Hung.), edited by Károly Szábo (Budapest, 1882); Jenö Thury, Stephen Bocskay’s Rebellion (Hung.), Budapest, 1899.

(R. N. B.)

BODE, JOHANN ELERT (1747-1826), German astronomer, was born at Hamburg on the 19th of January 1747. Devoted to astronomy from his earliest years, he eagerly observed the heavens at a garret window with a telescope made by himself, and at nineteen began his career with the publication of a short work on the solar eclipse of the 5th of August 1766. This was followed by an elementary treatise on astronomy entitled Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels (1768, 10th ed. 1844), the success of which led to his being summoned to Berlin in 1772 for the purpose of computing ephemerides on an improved plan. There resulted the foundation by him, in 1774, of the well-known Astronomisches Jahrbuch, 51 yearly volumes of which he compiled and issued. He became director of the Berlin observatory in 1786, withdrew from official life in 1825, and died at Berlin on the 23rd of November 1826. His works were highly effective in diffusing throughout Germany a taste for astronomy. Besides those already mentioned he wrote:— Sammlung astronomischer Tafeln (3 vols., 1776); Erläuterung der Sternkunde (1776, 3rd ed. 1808); Uranographia (1801), a collection of 20 star-maps accompanied by a catalogue of 17,240 stars and nebulae. In one of his numerous incidental essays he propounded, in 1776, a theory of the solar constitution similar to that developed in 1795 by Sir William Herschel. He gave currency, moreover, to the empirical rule known as “Bode’s Law,” which was actually announced by Johann Daniel Titius of Wittenberg in 1772. It is expressed by the statement that the proportionate distances of the several planets from the sun may be represented by adding 4 to each term of the series; 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, &c. The irregularity will be noticed of the first term, which should be 1½ instead of 0. (See Solar System.)

See J.F. Encke, Berlin Abhandlungen (1827), p. xi.; H.C. Schumacher. Astr. Nach. v. 255, 367 (1827); Poggendorff, Biog. literarisches Handwörterbuch; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, iii. 1.

BODEL, JEHAN (died c. 1210), French trouvère, was born at Arras in the second half of the 12th century. Very little is known of his life, but in 1205 he was about to start for the crusade when he was attacked by leprosy. In a touching poem called Le Congé (pr. by Méon in Recueil de fabliaux et contes, vol. i.), he bade farewell to his friends and patrons, and begged for a nomination to a leper hospital. He wrote Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, one of the earliest miracle plays preserved in French (printed in Monmerqué and Michel’s Théâtre français du moyen âge, 1839, and for the Soc. des bibliophiles français, 1831); the Chanson des Saisnes (ed. F. Michel 1839), four pastourelles (printed in K. Bartsch’s Altfranz. Romanzen und Pastourellen, Leipzig, 1870); and probably, the eight fabliaux attributed to an unknown Jean Bedel. The legend of Saint Nicholas had already formed the subject of the Latin Ludus Sancti Nicholai of Hilarius. Bodel placed the scene partly on a field of battle in Africa, where the crusaders perish in a hopeless struggle, and partly in a tavern. The piece, loosely connected by the miracle of Saint Nicholas narrated in the prologue, ends with a wholesale conversion of the African king and his subjects. The dialogue in the tavern scenes is written in thieves’ slang, and is very obscure. The Chanson des Saisnes, Bodel’s authorship of which has been called in question, is a chanson de geste belonging to the period of decadence, and is really a roman d’aventures based on earlier legends belonging to the Charlemagne cycle. It relates the wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons under Guiteclin de Sassoigne (Witikind or Widukind), with the second revolt of the Saxons and their final submission and conversion. Jehan Bodel makes no allusion to Ogier the Dane and many other personages of the Charlemagne cycle, but he mentions the defeat of Roland at Roncevaux. The romance is based on historical fact, but is overlaid with romantic detail. It really embraces three distinct legends—those of the wars against the Saxons, of Charlemagne’s rebellious barons, and of Baudouim and Sebille. The earlier French poems on the subject are lost, but the substance of them is preserved in the Scandinavian versions of the Charlemagne cycle (supposed to have been derived from English sources) known as the Karlamagnussaga (ed. Unger, Christiania, 1860) and Keiser Karl Magnus Krönike (Romantisk Digtnung, ed. C.J. Brandt, Copenhagen, 1877).

See also the article on Jehan Bodel by Paulin Paris in Hist. litt, de la France, xx. pp. 605-638; Gaston Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (1865); Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (revised edition, vol. iii. pp. 650-684), where there is a full analysis of the Chanson des Saisnes and a bibliography; H. Meyer, in Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus ... der romanischen Philologie (Marburg, 1883), pp. 1-76, where its relation to the rest of the Charlemagne cycle is discussed.

BODENBACH (Czech Podmokly), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 83 m. N.N.E. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 10,782, almost exclusively German. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe opposite Tetschen, and is an important railway junction, containing also an Austrian and a Saxon custom-house. Bodenbach, which in the middle of the 19th century had only a few hundred inhabitants, has become a very important industrial centre. Its principal manufactures include cotton and woollen goods, earthenware and crockery, chemicals, chicory, chocolate, sweetmeats and preserves, and beer. It has also a very active transit trade.

BODENSTEDT, FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON (1819-1892), German author, was born at Peine, in Hanover, on the 22nd of April 1819. He studied in Göttingen, Munich and Berlin. His career was determined by his engagement in 1841 as tutor in the family of Prince Gallitzin at Moscow, where he gained a thorough knowledge of Russian. This led to his appointment in 1844 as the head of a public school at Tiflis, in Transcaucasia. He took the opportunity of his proximity to Persia to study Persian literature, and in 1851 published a volume of original poetry in oriental guise under the fanciful title, Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (English trans. by E. d’Esterre, 1880). The success of this work can only be compared with that of Edward FitzGerald’s Omar Khayyam, produced in somewhat similar circumstances, but differed from it in being immediate. It has gone through 160 editions in Germany, and has been translated into almost all literary languages. Nor is this celebrity undeserved, for although Bodenstedt does not attain the poetical elevation of FitzGerald, his view of life is wider, more cheerful and more sane, while the execution is a model of grace. On his return from the East, Bodenstedt engaged for a while in journalism, married the daughter of a Hessian officer (Matilde, the Edlitam of his poems), and was in 1854 appointed professor of Slavonic at Munich. The rich stores of knowledge which Bodenstedt brought back from the East were turned to account in two important books, Die Völker des Kaukasus und ihre Freiheits-Kämpfe gegen die Russen (1848), and Tausend und ein Tag im Orient (1850). For some time Bodenstedt continued to devote himself to Slavonic subjects, producing translations of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgweniev, and of the poets of the Ukraines, and writing a tragedy on the false Demetrius, and an epic, Ada die Lesghierin, on a Circassian theme. Finding, probably, this vein exhausted, he exchanged his professorship in 1858 for one of Early English literature, and published (1858-1860) a valuable work on the English dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare, with copious translations. In 1862 he produced a standard translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and between 1866 and 1872 published a complete version of the plays, with the help of many coadjutors. In 1867 he undertook the direction of the court theatre at Meiningen, and was ennobled by the duke. After 1873 he lived successively at Altona, Berlin and Wiesbaden, where he died on the 19th of April 1892. His later works consist of an autobiography (1888), successful translations from Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, and lyrics and dramas which added little to his reputation.

An edition of his collected works in 12 vols. was published at Berlin (1866-1869), and his Erzahlungen und Romane at Jena (1871-1872). For further biographical details, see Bodenstedt’s Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (2 vols., Berlin, 1888-1890); and G. Schenck, Friedrich von Bodenstedt. Ein Dichterleben in seinen Briefen (Berlin, 1893).

BODHI VAMSA, a prose poem in elaborate Sanskritized Pali, composed by Upatissa in the reign of Mahinda IV. of Ceylon about A.D. 980. It is an adaptation of a previously existing work in Sinhalese on the same subject, and describes the bringing of a branch of the celebrated Bo or Bodhi tree (i.e. Wisdom Tree, under which the Buddha had attained wisdom) to Ceylon in the 3rd century B.C. The Bodhi Vamsa quotes verses from the Mahavamsa, but draws a great deal of its material from other sources; and it has occasionally preserved details of the older tradition not found in any other sources known to us.

Edition in Pali for the Pali Text Society by S. Arthur Strong (London, 1891).

BODICHON, BARBARA LEIGH SMITH (1827-1891), English educationalist, was born at Watlington, Norfolk, on the 8th of April 1827, the daughter of Benjamin Smith (1783-1860), long M.P. for Norwich. She early showed a force of character and catholicity of sympathy that later won her a prominent place among philanthropists and social workers. In 1857 she married an eminent French physician, Dr Eugene Bodichon, and, although wintering many years in Algiers, continued to lead the movements she had initiated in behalf of Englishwomen. In 1869 she published her Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women, which had a useful effect in helping forward the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act. In 1866, co-operating with Miss Emily Davies, she matured a scheme for the extension of university education to women, and the first small experiment at Hitchin developed into Girton College, to which Mme Bodichon gave liberally of her time and money. With all her public interests she found time for society and her favourite art of painting. She studied under William H. Hunt, and her water-colours, exhibited at the Salon, the Academy and elsewhere, showed great originality and talent, and were admired by Corot and Daubigny. Her London salon included many of the literary and artistic celebrities of her day; she was George Eliot’s most intimate friend, and, according to her, the first to recognize the authorship of Adam Bede. Her personal appearance is said to be described in that of Romola. Mme Bodichon died at Robertsbridge, Sussex, on the 11th of June 1891.

BODIN, JEAN (1530-1596), French political philosopher, was born at Angers in 1530. Having studied law at Toulouse and lectured there on jurisprudence, he settled in Paris as an advocate, but soon applied himself to literature. In 1555 he published his first work, a translation of Oppian’s Cynegeticon into Latin verse, with a commentary. The celebrated scholar, Turnebus, complained that some of his emendations had been appropriated without acknowledgment. In 1588, in refutation of the views of the seigneur de Malestroit, comptroller of the mint, who maintained that there had been no rise of prices in France during the three preceding centuries, he published his Responsio ad Paradoxa Malestretti (Réponse aux paradoxes de M. Malestroit), which the first time explained in a nearly satisfactory manner the revolution of prices which took place in the 16th century. Bodin showed a more rational appreciation than many of his contemporaries of the causes of this revolution, and the relation of the variations in money to the market values of wares in general as well as to the wages of labour. He saw that the amount of money in circulation did not constitute the wealth of the community, and that the prohibition of the export of the precious metals was rendered inoperative by the necessities of trade. This tract, the Discours sur les causes de l’extèrme cherté qui èst aujourdhuy en France (1574), and the disquisition on public revenues in the sixth book of the République, entitle Bodin to a distinguished position among the earlier economists.

His learning, genial disposition, and conversational powers won him the favor of Henry III. and of his brother, the duc d’Alençon; and he was appointed king’s attorney at Laon in 1576. In this year he married, performed his most brilliant service to his country, and completed his greatest literary work. Elected by the tiers état of Vermandois to represent it in the states-general of Blois, he contended with skill and boldness in extremely difficult circumstances for freedom of conscience, justice and peace. The nobility and clergy favoured the League, and urged the king to force his subjects to profess the Catholic religion. When Bodin found he could not prevent this resolution being carried, he contrived to get inserted in the petition drawn up by the states the clause “without war,” which practically rendered nugatory all its other clauses. While he thus resisted the clergy and nobility he successfully opposed the demand of the king to be allowed to alienate the public lands and royal demesnes, although the chief deputies had been won over to assent. This lost him the favour of the king, who wanted money on any terms. In 1581 he acted as secretary to the duc d’Alençon when that prince came over to England to seek the hand of Queen Elizabeth. Here he had the pleasure of finding that the République was studied at London and Cambridge, although in a barbarous Latin translation. This determined him to translate his work into Latin himself (1586). The latter part of Bodin’s life was spent at Laon, which he is said to have persuaded to declare for the League in 1589, and for Henry IV. five years afterwards. He died of the plague in 1596, and was buried in the church of the Carmelites.

With all his breadth and liberality of mind Bodin was a credulous believer in witchcraft, the virtues of numbers and the power of the stars, and in 1580 he published the Démonomanie des sorciers, a work which shows that he was not exempt from the prejudices of the age. Himself regarded by most of his contemporaries as a sceptic, and by some as an atheist, he denounced all who dared to disbelieve in sorcery, and urged the burning of witches and wizards. It might, perhaps, have gone hard with him if his counsel had been strictly followed, as he confessed to have had from his thirty-seventh year a friendly demon, who, if properly invoked, touched his right ear when he purposed doing what was wrong, and his left when he meditated doing good.

His chief work, the Six livres de la République (Paris, 1576), which passed through several editions in his lifetime, that of 1583 having as an appendix L’Apologie de René Herpin (Bodin himself), was the first modern attempt to construct an elaborate system of political science. It is perhaps the most important work of its kind between Aristotle and modern writers. Though he was much indebted to Aristotle he used the material to advantage, adding much from his own experience and historical knowledge. In harmony with the conditions of his age, he approved of absolute governments, though at the same time they must, he thought, be controlled by constitutional laws. He entered into an elaborate defence of individual property against Plato and More, rather perhaps because the scheme of his work required the treatment of that theme than because it was practically urgent in his day, when the excesses of the Anabaptists had produced a strong feeling against communistic doctrines. He was under the general influence of the mercantilist views, and approved of energetic governmental interference in industrial matters, of high taxes on foreign manufactures and low duties on raw materials and articles of food, and attached great importance to a dense population. But he was not a blind follower of the system; he wished for unlimited freedom of trade in many cases; and he was in advance of his more eminent contemporary Montaigne in perceiving that the gain of one nation is not necessarily the loss of another. To the public finances, which he called “the sinews of the state,” he devoted much attention, and insisted on the duties of the government in respect to the right adjustment of taxation. In general he deserves the praise of steadily keeping in view the higher aims and interests of society in connexion with the regulation and development of its material life.

Among his other works are Oratio de instituenda in republica juventate (1559); Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566); Universale Naturae Theatrum (1596, French trans. by Fougerolles, 1597), and the Colloquium Heptaplomeres de abditis rerum sublimium arcanis, written in 1588, published first by Guhrauer (1841), and in a complete form by L. Noack (1857). The last is a philosophy of naturalism in the form of a conversation between seven learned men—a Jew, a Mahommedan, a Lutheran, a Zwinglian, a Roman Catholic, an Epicurean and a Theist. The conclusion to which they are represented as coming is that they will live together in charity and toleration, and cease from further disputation as to religion. It is curious that Leibnitz, who originally regarded the Colloquium as the work of a professed enemy of Christianity, subsequently described it as a most valuable production (cf. M. Carrière, Weltanschauung, p. 317).

See H. Baudrillart, J. Bodin et son temps (Paris, 1853); Ad. Franck, Réformateurs et publicistes de l’Europe (Paris, 1864); N. Planchenault, Études sur Jean Bodin (Angers, 1858); E. de Barthélemy, Étude sur J. Bodin (Paris, 1876); for the political philosophy of Bodin, see P. Janet, Hist. de la science polit. (3rd ed., Paris, 1887); Hancke, B. Studien über d. Begriff d. Souveränität (Breslau, 1894), A. Bardoux. Les Légistes et leur influence sur la soc. française; Fournol, Bodin prédécesseur de Montesquieu (Paris, 1896); for his political economy, J.K. Ingram, Hist. of Pol. Econ. (London, 1888); for his ethical teaching, A. Desjardins, Les Moralistes français du seizième siècle, ch. v.; and for his historical views, R. Flint’s Philosophy of History in Europe (ed. 1893), pp. 190 foll.

BODKIN (Early Eng. boydekin, a dagger, a word of unknown origin, possibly connected with the Gaelic biodag, a short sword), a small, needle-like instrument of steel or bone with a flattened knob at one end, used in needlework. It has one or more slits or eyes, through which cord, tape or ribbon can be passed, for threading through a hem or series of loops. The word is also used of a small piercing instrument for making holes in cloth, &c.

BODLE or Boddle (said to be from Bothwell, the name of a mint-master), a Scottish copper coin worth about one-sixth of an English penny, first issued under Charles II. It survives in the phrase “not to care a bodle.”

BODLEY, GEORGE FREDERICK (1827-1907), English architect, was the youngest son of a physician at Brighton, his elder brother, the Rev. W.H. Bodley, becoming a well-known Roman Catholic preacher and a professor at Oscott. He was articled to the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott, under whose influence he became imbued with the spirit of the Gothic revival, and he gradually became known as the chief exponent of 14th-century English Gothic, and the leading ecclesiastical architect in England. One of his first churches was St Michael and All Angels, Brighton (1855), and among his principal erections may be mentioned All Saints, Cambridge; Eton Mission church, Hackney Wick; Clumber church; Eccleston church; Hoar Cross church; St Augustine’s, Pendlebury; Holy Trinity, Kensington; Chapel Allerton, Leeds; St Faith’s, Brentford; Queen’s College chapel, Cambridge; Marlborough College chapel; and Burton church. His domestic work included the London School Board offices, the new buildings at Magdalen, Oxford, and Hewell Grange (for Lord Windsor). From 1872 he had for twenty years the partnership of Mr T. Garner, who worked with him. He also designed (with his pupil James Vaughan) the cathedral at Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and cathedrals at San Francisco and in Tasmania; and when Mr Gilbert Scott’s design for his new Liverpool cathedral was successful in the competition he collaborated with the young architect in preparing for its erection. Bodley began contributing to the Royal Academy in 1854, and in 1881 was elected A.R.A., becoming R.A. in 1902. In addition to being a most learned master of architecture, he was a beautiful draughtsman, and a connoisseur in art; he published a volume of poems in 1899; and he was a designer of wall-papers and chintzes for Watts & Co., of Baker Street, London; in early life he had been in close alliance with the Pre-Raphaelites, and he did a great deal, like William Morris, to improve public taste in domestic decoration and furniture. He died on the 21st of October 1907, at Water Eaton, Oxford.

BODLEY, SIR THOMAS (1545-1613), English diplomatist and scholar, founder of the Bodleian library, Oxford, was born at Exeter on the 2nd of March 1545. During the reign of Queen Mary, his father, John Bodley, being obliged to leave the kingdom on account of his Protestant principles, went to live at Geneva. In that university, in which Calvin and Beza were then teaching divinity, young Bodley studied for a short time. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned with his father to England, and soon after entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1563 he took his B.A. degree, and was admitted a fellow of Merton College. In 1565 he read a Greek lecture in hall, took his M.A. degree the year after, and read natural philosophy in the public schools. In 1569 he was proctor, and for some time after was deputy public orator. Quitting Oxford in 1576, he made the tour of Europe; shortly after his return he became gentleman-usher to Queen Elizabeth; and in 1587, apparently, he married Ann Ball, a widow lady of considerable fortune, the daughter of a Mr Carew of Bristol. In 1584 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth, and represented St German’s in 1586. In 1585 Bodley was entrusted with a mission to form a league between Frederick II. of Denmark and certain German princes to assist Henry of Navarre. He was next despatched on a secret mission to France; and in 1588 he was sent to the Hague as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the Netherlands that the power of Spain had to be fought. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen’s ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly begged that he might be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but finding his preferment obstructed by the jarring interests of Burleigh and Essex, he retired from public life. He was knighted on the 18th of April 1604. He is, however, remembered specially as the founder of the Bodleian at Oxford, practically the earliest public library in Europe (see Libraries). He determined, he said, “to take his farewell of state employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford.” In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. Bodley not only used his private fortune in his undertaking, but induced many of his friends to make valuable gifts of books. In 1611 he began its permanent endowment, and at his death in London on the 28th of January 1613, the greater part of his fortune was left to it. He was buried in the choir of Merton College chapel where a monument of black and white marble was erected to him.

Sir Thomas wrote his own life to the year 1609, which, with the first draft of the statutes drawn up for the library, and his letters to the librarian, Thomas James, was published by Thomas Hearne, under the title of Reliquiae Bodleianae, or Authentic Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley (London, 1703, 8vo).

BODMER, JOHANN JAKOB (1698-1783), Swiss-German author, was born at Greifensee, near Zürich, on the 19th of July 1698. After first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters. In 1725 he was appointed professor of Helvetian history in Zürich, a chair which he held for half a century, and in 1735 became a member of the “Grosser Rat.” He published (1721-1723), in conjunction with J.J. Breitinger (1701-1774) and several others, Die Discourse der Mahlern, a weekly journal after the model of the Spectator. Through his prose translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1732) and his successful endeavours to make a knowledge of English literature accessible to Germany, he aroused the hostile criticism of Gottsched (q.v.) and his school, a struggle which ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter. His most important writings are the treatises Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie (1740) and Kritische Betrachtungen über die poetischen Gemälde der Dichter (1741), in which he pleaded for the freedom of the imagination from the restriction imposed upon it by French pseudo-classicism. Bodmer’s epics Die Sündfluth (1751) and Noah (1751) are weak imitations of Klopstock’s Messias, and his plays are entirely deficient in dramatic qualities. He did valuable service to German literature by his editions of the Minnesingers and part of the Nibelungenlied. He died at Zürich on the 2nd of January 1783.

See T.W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848); J. Crüger, J.C. Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger (Stuttgart, 1884); F. Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing (Leipzig, 1888); Denkschrift zu Bodmers 200. Geburtstag (Zürich, 1900).

BODMIN, a market town and municipal borough in the Bodmin parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, the county town, 30½ m. W.N.W. of Plymouth, on branches of the Great Western and London & South-Western railways. Pop. (1901) 5353. It lies between two hills in a short valley opening westward upon that of the Camel, at the southern extremity of the high open Bodmin Moor. The large church of St Petrock, mainly Perpendicular, has earlier portions, and a late Norman font. East of it there is a ruined Decorated chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury, with a crypt. A tower of Tudor date, in the cemetery, marks the site of a chapel of the gild of the Holy Rood. Part of the buildings of a Franciscan friary, founded c. 1240, are incorporated in the market-house, and the gateway remains in an altered form. At Bodmin are a prison, with civil and naval departments, the county gaol and asylum, the headquarters of the constabulary, and those of the duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Cattle, sheep and horse fairs are held, and there is a considerable agricultural trade. The borough is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors. Area, 2797 acres.

Traces of Roman occupation have been found in the western part of the parish, belonging to the first century A.D. Possibly tin-mining was carried on here at that period. The grant of a charter by King Edred to the prior and canons of Bodmin (Bomine, Bodman, Bodmyn) in respect of lands in Devonshire appears in an inspeximus of 1252. To its ecclesiastical associations it owed its importance at the time of the Domesday survey, when St Petrock held the manor of Bodmin, wherein were sixty-eight houses and one market. To successive priors, as mesne lords, it also owed its earliest municipal privileges. King John’s charter to the prior and convent, dated the 17th of July 1199, contained a clause (subsequently cancelled by Richard II.) by which burgesses were exempt from being impleaded, touching any tenements in their demesne, except before the king and his chief justice. Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, confirmed to the burgesses their gild merchant, Edward I. the pesage of tin, and Edward II. a market for tin and wool. Queen Elizabeth in 1563 constituted the town a free borough and the burgesses a body corporate, granting at the same time two fairs and a Saturday market. There are still held also three other fairs whose origin is uncertain. An amended charter granted in 1594 remained in force until 1789, when the corporation became extinct owing to the diminution of the burgesses. By virtue of a new charter of incorporation granted in 1798 and remodelled by the act of 1835, the corporation now consists of a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors. The first members for Bodmin were summoned in 1295. Retaining both its members in 1832, losing one in 1868 and the other in 1885, it has now become merged in the south-eastern division of the county. From 1715 to 1837 the assizes were generally held alternately at Launceston and Bodmin; since 1837 they have been held at Bodmin only. A court of probate has also been held at Bodmin since 1773. A festival known as “Bodmin Riding” was formerly celebrated here on the Sunday and Monday following St Thomas’s day (July 7). It is thought by some to have been instituted in 1177 to celebrate the recovery of the bones of St Petrock.

See Victoria County History, Cornwall; John Maclean, Parochial and Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor, Cornwall (3 vols., 1873-1879).

BODÖ, a seaport on the north-western coast of Norway, in Nordland amt (county), lat. 67° 17′ N. Pop. (1900) 4827. The rock-bound harbour admits large vessels, and there is a brisk trade in fish and eider-down. The neighbouring country has many scenic attractions. Sixty miles inland (E.) rises the great massif of Sulitelma on the Swedish frontier, with its copper mines, broad snow-fields and glaciers. The fjords of the district include the imposing Beierenfjord, the Saltenfjord, and the Skjerstadfjord, at the narrow mouths of which, between islands, a remarkable cataract (Saltström) is formed at the turn of the tide. On this fjord is Skjerstad, a large scattered village.

BODONI, GIAMBATTISTA (1740-1813), Italian printer, was born in 1740 at Saluzzo in Piedmont, where his father owned a printing establishment. While yet a boy he began to engrave on wood. He at length went to Rome, and there became a compositor for the press of the Propaganda. He made himself acquainted with the Oriental languages, and thus was enabled to render essential service to the Propaganda press, by restoring and accurately distributing the types of several Oriental alphabets which had fallen into disorder. The infante Don Ferdinand, afterwards duke of Parma, having established, about 1760, a printing-house on the model of those in Paris, Madrid and Turin, Bodoni was placed at the head of this establishment, which he soon rendered the first of the kind in Europe. The beauty of his typography, &c., leaves nothing further to be desired; but the intrinsic value of his editions is seldom equal to their outward splendour. His Homer, however, is a truly magnificent work; and, indeed, his Greek letters are faultless imitations of the best Greek manuscript. His editions of the Greek, Latin, Italian and French classics are all highly prized for their typographical elegance, and some of them are not less remarkable for their accuracy. Bodoni died at Padua in 1813. In 1818 a magnificent work appeared in two volumes quarto, entitled Manuale Tipografico, containing specimens of the vast collection of types which had belonged to him.

See De Lama, Vita del Cavaliere Giambattista Bodoni (1816).

BODY-SNATCHING, the secret disinterring of dead bodies in churchyards in order to sell them for the purpose of dissection. Those who practised body-snatching were frequently called resurrectionists or resurrection-men. Previous to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832 (see Anatomy: History), no licence was required in Great Britain for opening an anatomical school, and there was no provision for supplying subjects to students for anatomical purposes. Therefore, though body-snatching was a misdemeanour at common law, punishable with fine and imprisonment, it was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection. Body-snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for the relatives and friends of a deceased person to watch the grave for some time after burial, lest it should be violated. Iron coffins, too, were frequently used for burial, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars called mortsafes, well-preserved examples of which may still be seen in Greyfriars’ churchyard, Edinburgh.