Front matter (continued 16)

Meanwhile the friendship with Browning had become the chief thing in Elizabeth Barrett's life. The correspondence, once begun, had not flagged. In the early summer they met. The allusion to his poetry in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" had doubtless put an edge to his already keen wish to know her. He became her frequent visitor and kept her room fragrant with flowers. He never lagged, whether in friendship or in love. We have the strange privilege, since the publication of the letters between the two, of following the whole course of this noble love-story from beginning to end, and day by day. Browning was six years younger than the woman he so passionately admired, and he at first believed her to be confined by some hopeless physical injury to her sofa. But of his own wish and resolution he never doubted. Her hesitation, in her regard for his liberty and strength, to burden him with an ailing wife, she has recorded in the Sonnets afterwards published under a slight disguise as Sonnets from the Portuguese. She refused him once "with all her will, but much against her heart," and yielded at last for his sake rather than her own. Her father's will was that his children should not marry, and, kind and affectionate father though he was, the prohibition took a violent form and struck terror into the hearts of the three dutiful and sensitive girls. Robert Browning's addresses were, therefore, kept secret, for fear of scenes of anger which the most fragile of the three could not face. Browning was reluctant to practise the deception; Elizabeth alone knew how impossible it was to avoid it. When she was persuaded to marry, it was she who insisted, in mental and physical terror, upon a secret wedding. Throughout the summer of 1846 her health improved, and on the 12th of September the two poets were married in St Marylebone parish church. Browning visited it on his subsequent journeys to England to give thanks for what had taken place at its altar. Elizabeth's two sisters had been permitted to know of the engagement, but not of the wedding, so that their father's anger might not fall on them too heavily. For a week Mrs Browning remained in her father's house. On the 19th of September she left it, taking her maid and her little dog, joined her husband, and crossed to the Continent. She never entered that home again, nor did her father ever forgive her. Her letters, written with tears to entreat his pardon, were never answered. They were all subsequently returned to her unopened. Among them was one she had written, in the prospect of danger, before the birth of her child. With her sisters her relations were, as before, most affectionate. Her brothers, one at least of whom disapproved of her action, held for a time aloof. All others were taken entirely by surprise. Mrs Jameson, who had been one of the few intimate visitors to Miss Barrett's room, had offered to take her to Italy that year, but met her instead on her way thither with a newly-married husband. The poets' journey was full of delight. Where she could not walk, up long staircases or across the waters of the stream at Vaucluse, Browning carried her. In October they reached Pisa, and there they wintered, Mrs Jameson keeping them company for a time lest ignorance of practical things should bring them, in their poverty, to trouble. She soon found that they were both admirable economists; not that they gave time and thought to husbandry, but that they knew how to enjoy life without luxuries. So they remained to the end, frugal and content with little.

For climate and cheapness they settled in Italy, choosing Florence in the spring of 1847, and remaining there, with the interruptions of a change to places in Italy such as Siena and Rome, and to Paris and England, until Mrs Browning's death. It was at Pisa that Robert Browning first saw the Sonnets from the Portuguese, poems which his wife had written in secret and had no thought of publishing. He, however, resolved to give them to the world. "I dared not," he said, "reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare's." The judgment, which the existence of Wordsworth's sonnets renders obviously absurd, may be pardoned. The sonnets were sent to Miss Mitford and published at Reading, as Sonnets by E.B.B., in 1847. In 1850 they were included, under their final title, in a new issue of poems. During the Pisan autumn appeared in Blackwood's Magazine seven poems by Mrs Browning which she had sent some time before, and the publication of which at that moment disturbed her as likely to hurt her father by an apparent reference to her own story. At Pisa also she wrote and sent to America a poem, "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim Point," which was published in Boston, in The Liberty Bell, in 1848, and separately in England in 1849. In the summer of 1847 the Brownings left their temporary dwelling in Florence and took the apartment in Casa Guidi, near the Pitti Palace, which was thenceforth their chief home. Early in their residence began that excited interest in Italian affairs which made so great a part of Mrs Browning's emotional life. The Florentines, under the government of the grand duke, were prosperous but disturbed by national aspirations. Mrs Browning, by degrees, wrote Casa Guidi Windows on their behalf and as an appeal to the always impulsive sympathies of England. In 1849 was born the Brownings' only child, their beloved son Robert Wiedemann Barrett. After this event Mrs Browning resumed her literary activities, preparing a new issue, with some additions, of her poems (1850). A poem on the death of a friend's child appeared in the Athenaeum (1849), and there the new volumes were warmly praised. Casa Guidi Windows followed in 1851. Visiting England in that year, the Brownings saw much of the Procters, and something of Florence Nightingale, Kingsley, Ruskin, Rogers, Patmore and Tennyson, and also of Carlyle, with whom they went to Paris, where they saw George Sand, and where they passed the December days of the coup d'état. Mrs Browning happened to take a political fancy to Napoleon III., whom she would probably have denounced if a tithe of his tyrannies had occurred in Italy, and the fancy became more emotional in after years.

A new edition of Mrs Browning's poems was called for in 1853, and at about this time, in Florence, she began to work on Aurora Leigh. She was still writing this poem when the Brownings were again in England, in 1855. Tennyson there read to them his newly-written Maud. After another interval in Paris they were in London again—Mrs Browning for the last time. She was with her dear cousin Kenyon during the last months of his life. In October 1856 the Brownings returned to their Florentine home, Mrs Browning leaving her completed Aurora Leigh for publication. The book had an immediate success; a second edition was required in a fortnight, a third a few months later. In the fourth edition (1859) several corrections were made. The review in Blackwood was written by W.E. Aytoun, that in the North British by Coventry Patmore.

In 1857 Mrs Browning addressed a petition, in the form of a letter, to the emperor Napoleon begging him to remit the sentence of exile upon Victor Hugo. We do not hear of any reply. In 1857 Mrs Browning's father died, unreconciled. Henrietta Barrett had married, like her sister, and like her was unforgiven. In 1858 occurred another visit to Paris, and another to Rome, where Hawthorne and his family were among the Brownings' friends. In 1859 came the Italian war in which Mrs Browning's hasty sympathies were hotly engaged. Her admiration of Italy's champion, Napoleon III., knew no bounds, and did not give way when, by the peace of Villafranca, Venice and Rome were left unannexed to the kingdom of Italy, and the French frontiers were "rectified" by the withdrawal from that kingdom of Savoy and Nice. That peace, however, was a bitter disappointment, and her fragile health suffered. At Siena and Florence this year the Brownings were very kind to Landor, old, solitary, and ill. Mrs Browning's poem, "A Tale of Villafranca", was published in the Athenaeum in September, and afterwards included in Poems before Congress (1860). Then followed another long visit to Rome, and there Mrs Browning prepared for the press this, her last volume. The little book was judged with some impatience, A Curse for a Nation being mistaken for a denunciation of England, whereas it was aimed at America and her slavery. The Athenaeum, amongst others, committed this error. The Saturday Review was hard on the volume, so was Blackwood; the Atlas and Daily News favourable. In July 1860 was published "A Musical Instrument" in the young Cornhill Magazine, edited by the author's friend W.M. Thackeray. The last blow she had to endure was the death of her sister Henrietta, in the same year.

On the 30th of June 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. Her husband, who tended her alone on the night of her decease, wrote to Miss Blagden: "Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer—the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's, and in a few minutes she died in my arms, her head on my cheek. ... There was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God." Her married life had been supremely happy. Something has been said of the difference between husband and wife in regard to "spiritualism", in which Mrs Browning had interest and faith, but no division ever interrupted their entirely perfect affection and happiness. Of her husband's love for her she wrote at the time of her marriage, "He preferred ... of free and deliberate choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me in any possible world." "I am still doubtful whether all the brightness can be meant for me. It is just as if the sun rose again at 7 o'clock P.M." "I take it for pure magic, this life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before." "I must say to you [Mrs Jameson] who saw the beginning with us, that this end of fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical 'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the more and more happiness." Browning buried his wife in Florence, under a tomb designed by their friend Frederick Leighton. On the wall of Casa Guidi is placed the inscription: "Qui scrisse e mori Elisabetta Barrett Browning, che in cuore di donna conciliava scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta, e face del suo verso aureo annello fra Italia e Inghilterra. Pone questa lapide Firenze grata 1861." In 1866 Robert Browning published a volume of selections from his wife's works.

The place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in English literature is high, if not upon the summits. She had an original genius, a fervent heart, and an intellect that was, if not great, exceedingly active. She seldom has composure or repose, but it is not true that her poetry is purely emotional. It is full of abundant, and even over-abundant, thoughts. It is intellectually restless. The impassioned peace of the greatest poetry, such as Wordsworth's, is not hers. Nor did she apparently seek to attain those heights. Her Greek training taught her little of the economy that such a poetic education is held to impose; she "dashed", not by reason of feminine weakness, but as it were to prove her possession of masculine strength. Her gentler work, as in the Sonnets from the Portuguese, is beyond praise. There is in her poetic personality a glory of righteousness, of spirituality, and of ardour that makes her name a splendid one in the history of an incomparable literature.

See the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to R.H. Horne, with Comments on Contemporaries, edited by S.R. Townshend Mayer (2 vols., 1877); The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from 1826 to 1844, edited with memoir by J.H. Ingram (1887); Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Eminent Women series), by J.H. Ingram, 1888); Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and the Brownings, by Anne Ritchie (1892); The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited with biographical additions by Frederick G. Kenyon (2 vols., 1897); The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (2 vols., 1899); La Vie et l'œuvre d'Elizabeth Browning, by Mdlle. Germaine-Marie Merlette (Paris, 1906)

(A. Me.)

BROWNING, OSCAR (1837- ), English writer, was born in London on the 17th of January 1837, the son of a merchant, William Shipton Browning. He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow and tutor, graduating fourth in the classical tripos of 1860. He was for fifteen years a master at Eton College, resuming residence in 1876 at Cambridge, where he became university lecturer in history. He soon became a prominent figure in college and university life, encouraging especially the study of political science and modern political history, the extension of university teaching and the movement for the training of teachers. He is well known to Dante students by his Dante; Life and Works (1891), and to the study of Italian history he has contributed Guelphs and Ghibellines (1903). His works on modern history include England and Napoleon in 1803 (1887), History of England (4 vols. 1890), Wars of the Nineteenth Century (1899), History of Europe 1814-1843 (1901), Napoleon, the first Phase (1905).

BROWNING, ROBERT (1812-1889), English poet, was born at Camberwell, London, on the 7th of May 1812. He was the son of Robert Browning (1781-1866), who for fifty years was employed in the Bank of England. Earlier Brownings had been settled in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and there is no ground for the statement that the family was partly of Jewish origin. The poet's mother was a daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who had settled in Dundee and married a Scottish wife. His parents had one other child, a daughter, Sarianna, born in 1814. They lived quietly in Camberwell. The elder Browning had a sufficient income and was indifferent to money-making. He had strong literary and artistic tastes. He was an ardent book collector, and so good a draughtsman that paternal authority alone had prevented him from adopting an artistic career. He had, like his son, a singular faculty for versifying, and helped the boy's early lessons by twisting the Latin grammar into grotesque rhymes. He lived, as his father had done, to be 84, with unbroken health. The younger Robert inherited, along with other characteristics, much of his father's vigour of constitution. From the mother, who had delicate health, he probably derived his excessive nervous irritability; and from her, too, came his passion for music. The family was united by the strongest mutual affection, and the parents erred, if anything, on the side of indulgence. Browning was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, but left it when fourteen, and had little other teaching. He had a French tutor for the next two years, and in his eighteenth year he attended some Greek lectures at the London University. At school he never won a prize, though it was more difficult to avoid than to win prizes. He was more conspicuous for the love of birds and beasts, which he always retained, than for any interest in his lessons. He rather despised his companions and made few friends. A precocious poetical capacity, however, showed itself in extra-scholastic ways. He made his schoolfellows act plays, partly written by himself. He had composed verses before he could write, and when twelve years old completed a volume of poems called Incondita. His parents tried unsuccessfully to find a publisher; but his verses were admired by Sarah Flower, afterwards Mrs Adams, a well-known hymn-writer of the day, and by W.J. Fox, both of whom became valuable friends. A copy made by Miss Flower was in existence in 1871, but afterwards destroyed by the author. Browning had the run of his father's library, and acquired a very unusual amount of miscellaneous reading. Quarles' Emblems was an especial favourite; and besides the Elizabethan dramatists and standard English books, he had read all the works of Voltaire. Byron was his first master in poetry, but about the age of fourteen he fell in accidentally with Shelley and Keats. For Shelley in particular he conceived an enthusiastic admiration which lasted for many years, though it was qualified in his later life.

The more aggressive side of Browning's character was as yet the most prominent; and a self-willed lad, conscious of a growing ability, found himself cramped in Camberwell circles. He rejected the ordinary careers. He declined the offer of a clerkship in the Bank of England; and his father, who had found the occupation uncongenial, not only approved the refusal but cordially accepted the son's decision to take poetry for his profession. For good or evil, Browning had been left very much to his own guidance, and if his intellectual training suffered in some directions, the liberty permitted the development of his marked originality. The parental yoke, however, was too light to provoke rebellion. Browning's mental growth led to no violent breach with the creeds of his childhood. His parents became Dissenters in middle life, but often attended Anglican services; and Browning, though he abandoned the dogmas, continued to sympathize with the spirit of their creed. He never took a keen interest in the politics of the day, but cordially accepted the general position of contemporary Liberalism. His worship of Shelley did not mean an acceptance of his master's hostile attitude towards Christianity, still less did he revolt against the moral discipline under which he had been educated. He frequented literary and artistic circles, and was passionately fond of the theatre; but he was entirely free from a coarse Bohemianism, and never went to bed, we are told, without kissing his mother. He lived with his parents until his marriage. His mother lived till 1849, and his father till 1866, and his affectionate relations to both remained unaltered. Browning's first published poem, Pauline, appeared anonymously in 1833. He always regarded it as crude, and destroyed all the copies of this edition that came within his reach. It was only to avoid unauthorized reprints that he consented with reluctance to republishing it in the collected works of 1868. The indication of genius was recognized by W.J. Fox, who hailed it in the Monthly Repository as marking the advent of a true poet. Pauline contains an enthusiastic invocation of Shelley, whose influence upon its style and conception is strongly marked. It is the only one of Browning's works which can be regarded as imitative. In the winter of 1833 he went to St Petersburg on a visit to the Russian consul-general, Mr Benckhausen. There he wrote the earliest of his dramatic lyrics, "Porphyria's Lover" and "Johannes Agricola." In the spring of 1834 he visited Italy for the first time, going to Venice and Asolo.

Browning's personality was fully revealed in his next considerable poems, Paracelsus (1835) and Sordello (1840). With Pauline, however, they form a group. In an essay (prefixed to the spurious Shelley letters of 1851), Browning describes Shelley's poetry "as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity." The phrase describes his own view of the true functions of a poet, and Browning, having accepted the vocation, was meditating the qualifications which should fit him for his task. The hero of Pauline is in a morbid state of mind which endangers his fidelity to his duty. Paracelsus and Sordello are studies in the psychology of genius, illustrating its besetting temptations. Paracelsus fails from intellectual pride, not balanced by love of his kind, and from excessive ambition, which leads him to seek success by unworthy means. Sordello is a poet distracted between the demands of a dreamy imagination and the desire to utter the thoughts of mankind. He finally gives up poetry for practical politics, and gets into perplexities only to be solved by his death. Pauline might in some indefinite degree reflect Browning's own feelings, but in the later poems he adopts his characteristic method of speaking in a quasi-dramatic mood. They are, as he gave notice, "poems, not dramas." The interest is not in the external events, but in the "development of a soul"; but they are observations of other men's souls, not direct revelations of his own. Paracelsus was based upon a study of the original narrative, and Sordello was a historical though a very indefinite person. The background of history is intentionally vague in both cases. There is one remarkable difference between them. The Paracelsus, though full of noble passages, is certainly diffuse. Browning heard that John Sterling had complained of its "verbosity," and tried to remedy this failing by the surgical expedient of cutting out the usual connecting words. Relative pronouns henceforth become scarce in his poetry, and the grammatical construction often a matter of conjecture. Words are forcibly jammed together instead of being articulately combined. To the ordinary reader many passages in his later work are both crabbed and obscure, but the "obscurity" never afterwards reached the pitch of Sordello. It is due to the vagueness with which the story is rather hinted than told, as well as to the subtlety and intricacy of the psychological expositions. The subtlety and vigour of the thought are indeed surprising, and may justify the frequent comparisons to Shakespeare; and it abounds in descriptive passages of genuine poetry.

Still, Browning seems to have been misled by a fallacy. It was quite legitimate to subordinate the external incidents to the psychological development in which he was really interested, but to secure the subordination by making the incidents barely intelligible was not a logical consequence. We should not understand Hamlet's psychological peculiarities the better if we had to infer his family troubles from indirect hints. Browning gave more time to Sordello than to any other work, and perhaps had become so familiar with the story which he professed to tell that he failed to make allowance for his readers' difficulties. In any case it was not surprising that the ordinary reader should be puzzled and repelled, and the general recognition of his genius long delayed, by his reputation for obscurity.

It might, however, be expected that he would make a more successful appeal to the public by purely dramatic work, in which he would have to limit his psychological speculation and to place his characters in plain situations. Paracelsus and Sordello show so great a power of reading character and appreciating subtler springs of conduct that its author clearly had one, at least, of the essential qualifications of a dramatist.

Before Sordello appeared Browning had tried his hand in this direction. He was encouraged by outward circumstances as well as by his natural bent. He was making friends and gaining some real appreciative admirers. John Forster had been greatly impressed by Paracelsus. Browning's love of the theatre had led to an introduction to Macready in the winter of 1835-1836; and Macready, who had been also impressed by Paracelsus, asked him for a play. Browning consented and wrote Strafford, which was produced at Covent Garden in May 1837, Macready taking the principal part. Later dramas were King Victor and King Charles, published in 1842; The Return of the Druses and A Blot on the 'Scutcheon (both in 1843), Colombe's Birthday (1844), Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (both in 1846), and the fragmentary In a Balcony (1853). Strafford succeeded fairly, though the defection of Vandenhoff, who took the part of Pym, stopped its run after the fifth performance. The Blot on the 'Scutcheon, produced by Macready as manager of Drury Lane on the 11th of February 1843, led to an unfortunate quarrel. Browning thought that Macready had felt unworthy jealousy of another actor, and had gratified his spite by an inadequate presentation of the play. He remonstrated indignantly and the friendship was broken off for years. Browning was disgusted by his experience of the annoyances of practical play-writing, though he was not altogether discouraged. The play had apparently such a moderate success as was possible under the conditions, and a similar modest result was attained by Colombe's Birthday, produced at Covent Garden on the 25th of April 1853. Browning, like other eminent writers of the day, failed to achieve the feat of attracting the British public by dramas of high literary aims, and soon gave up the attempt. It has been said by competent critics that some of the plays could be fitted for the stage by judicious adaptation. The Blot on the 'Scutcheon has a very clear and forcibly treated situation; and all the plays abound in passages of high poetic power. Like the poems, they deal with situations involving a moral probation of the characters, and often suggesting the ethical problems which always interested him. The speeches tend to become elaborate analyses of motive by the persons concerned, and try the patience of an average audience. For whatever reason, Browning, though he had given sufficient proofs of genius, had not found in these works the most appropriate mode of utterance.

The dramas, after Strafford, formed the greatest part of a series of pamphlets called Bells and Pomegranates, eight of which were issued from 1841 to 1846. The name, he explained, was intended to indicate an "alternation of poetry and thought." The first number contained the fanciful and characteristic Pippa Passes. The seventh, significantly named Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, contained some of his most striking shorter poems. In 1844 he contributed six poems, among which were "The Flight of the Duchess" and "The Bishop orders his Tomb at St Praxed's Church," to Hood's Magazine, in order to help Hood, then in his last illness. These poems take the special form in which Browning is unrivalled. He wrote very few lyrical poems of the ordinary kind purporting to give a direct expression of his own personal emotions. But, in the lyric which gives the essential sentiment of some impressive dramatic situation, he has rarely been approached. There is scarcely one of the poems published at this time which can be read without fixing itself at once in the memory as a forcible and pungent presentation of a characteristic mood. Their vigour and originality failed to overcome at once the presumption against the author of Sordello. Yet Browning was already known to and appreciated by such literary celebrities of the day as Talfourd, Leigh Hunt, Procter, Monckton Milnes, Carlyle and Landor. His fame began to spread among sympathetic readers. The Bells and Pomegranates attracted the rising school of "pre-Raphaelites," especially D.G. Rossetti, who guessed the authorship of the anonymous Pauline and made a transcript from the copy in the British Museum. But his audience was still select.

Another recognition of his genius was of incomparably more personal importance and vitally affected his history. In 1844 Miss Barrett (see Browning, Elizabeth Barrett) published a volume of poems containing "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," with a striking phrase about Browning's poems. He was naturally gratified, and her special friend and cousin, John Kenyon, encouraged him to write to her. She admitted him to a personal interview after a little diffidence, and a hearty appreciation of literary genius on both sides was speedily ripened into genuine and most devoted love. Miss Barrett was six years older than Browning and a confirmed invalid with shaken nerves. She was tenderly attached to an autocratic father who objected on principle to the marriage of his children. The correspondence of the lovers (published in 1899) shows not only their mutual devotion, but the chivalrous delicacy with which Browning behaved in a most trying situation. Miss Barrett was gradually encouraged to disobey the utterly unreasonable despotism. They made a clandestine marriage on the 12th of September 1846. The state of Miss Barrett's health suggested misgivings which made Browning's parents as well as his bride's disapprove of the match. She, however, appears to have become stronger for some time, though always fragile and incapable of much active exertion. She had already been recommended to pass a winter in Italy. Browning had made three previous tours there, and his impressions had been turned to account in Sordello and Pippa Passes, in The Englishman in Italy and Home Thoughts from Abroad. For the next fifteen years the Brownings lived mainly in Italy, making their headquarters at Florence in the Casa Guidi. A couple of winters were passed in Rome. In the summer of 1849 they were at Siena, where Browning was helpful to Landor, then in his last domestic troubles. They also visited England and twice spent some months in Paris. Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Browning, was born at Florence in 1849. Browning's literary activity during his marriage seems to have been comparatively small; Christmas Eve and Easter Day appeared in 1850, while the two volumes called Men and Women (1855), containing some of his best work, showed that his power was still growing. His position involved some sacrifice and imposed limitations upon his energies. Mrs Browning's health required a secluded life; and Browning, it is said, never dined out during his marriage, though he enjoyed society and made many and very warm friendships. Among their Florence friends were Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Isa Blagden, Charles Lever and others. The only breach of complete sympathy with his wife was due to his contempt for "spiritualists" and "mediums," in whom she fully believed. His portrait of Daniel Dunglas Home as "Sludge the Medium" only appeared after her death. This domestic happiness, however, remained essentially unbroken until she died on 29th June 1861. The whole love-story had revealed the singular nobility of his character, and, though crushed for a time by the blow, he bore it manfully. Browning determined to return to England and superintend his boy's education at home. He took a house at 19 Warwick Crescent, Paddington, and became gradually acclimatized in London. He resumed his work and published the Dramatis Personae in 1864. The publication was well enough received to mark the growing recognition of his genius, which was confirmed by The Ring and the Book, published in four volumes in the winter of 1868-1869. In 1867 the university of Oxford gave him the degree of M.A. "by diploma," and Balliol College elected him as an honorary fellow. In 1868 he declined a virtual offer of the rectorship of St Andrews. He repeated the refusal on a later occasion (1884) from a dislike to the delivery of a public address. The rising generation was now beginning to buy his books; and he shared the homage of thoughtful readers with Tennyson, though in general popularity he could not approach his friendly rival. The Ring and the Book has been generally accepted as Browning's masterpiece. It was based on a copy of the procès verbal of Guido Franceschini's case discovered by him at Florence.

The audacity of the scheme is surprising. To tell the story of a hideous murder twelve times over, to versify the arguments of counsel and the gossip of quidnuncs, and to insist upon every detail with the minuteness of a law report, could have occurred to no one else. The poem is so far at the opposite pole from Sordello. Vagueness of environment is replaced by a photographic distinctness, though the psychological interest is dominant in both. Particular phrases may be crabbed, but nothing can be more distinct and vivid in thought and conception. If some of those "dramatic monologues" of which the book is formed fail to be poetry at all, some of them—that of Pompilia the victim, her champion Caponsacchi, and the pope who gives judgment—are in Browning's highest mood, and are as impressive from the ethical as from the poetical point of view. Pompilia was no doubt in some respects an idealized portrait of Mrs Browning. Other pieces may be accepted as a background of commonplace to throw the heroic into the stronger relief. The Ring and the Book is as powerful as its method is unique.

Browning became gentler and more urbane as he grew older. His growing fame made him welcome in all cultivated circles, and he accepted the homage of his admirers with dignity and simplicity. He exerted himself to be agreeable in private society, though his nervousness made him invariably decline ever to make public speeches. He was an admirable talker, and took pains to talk his best. A strong memory supplied him with abundant anecdotes; and though occasionally pugnacious, he allowed a fair share of the conversation to his companions. Superficial observers sometimes fancied that the poet was too much sunk in the man of the world; but the appearance was due to his characteristic reluctance to lay bare his deeper feelings. When due occasion offered, the underlying tenderness of his affections was abundantly manifest. No one could show more delicate sympathy. He made many warm personal friendships in his later years, especially with women, to whom he could most easily confide his feelings. In the early years of this period he paid visits to country houses, but afterwards preferred to retire farther from the London atmosphere into secluded regions. He passed some holidays in remote French villages, Pornic, Le Croisic and St Aubyn, which have left traces in his poetry. Gold Hair is a legend of Pornic, and Hervé Riel was written at Le Croisic. At St Aubyn he had the society of Joseph Milsand, who had shown his warm appreciation of Browning's poetry by an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which in 1852 had led to a personal friendship lasting till Milsand's death in 1886. Browning sent to him the proof-sheets of all his later works for revision. In 1877 Browning was at La Saisiaz on the Salève, near Geneva, where an old friend, Miss Egerton Smith, was staying. She died suddenly almost in his presence. She had constantly accompanied him to concerts during his London life. After her death he almost ceased to care for music. The shock of her loss produced the singular poem called La Saisiaz, in which he argues the problem of personal immortality with a rather indefinite conclusion. In later years Browning returned to Italy, and passed several autumns at Venice. He never visited Florence after his wife's death there.

Browning's literary activity continued till almost the end of his life. He wrote constantly, though he composed more slowly. He considered twenty-five or thirty lines to be a good day's work. His later writings covered a very great variety of subjects, and were cast in many different forms. They show the old characteristics and often the old genius. Browning's marked peculiarity, the union of great speculative acuteness with intense poetical insight, involved difficulties which he did not always surmount. He does not seem to know whether he is writing poetry or when he is versifying logic; and when the speculative impulse gets the upper hand, his work suggests the doubt whether an imaginary dialogue in prose would not have been a more effective medium. He is analysing at length when he ought to be presenting a concrete type, while the necessities of verse complicate and obscure the reasoning. A curious example is the Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871), an alias for Louis Napoleon. The attempt to show how a questionable hero apologizes to himself recalls the very powerful "Bishop Blougram," and "Sludge, the medium," of earlier works, but becomes prolix and obscure. Fifine at the Fair (1872) is another curious speculation containing a defence of versatility in lovemaking by an imaginary Don Juan. Its occasionally cynical tone rather scandalized admirers, who scarcely made due allowance for its dramatic character. Browning's profound appreciation of high moral qualities is, however, always one main source of his power. In later years he became especially interested in stories of real life, which show character passing through some sharp ordeal. The Red Cotton Nightcap Country (1873), describing a strange tragedy which had recently taken place in France, and especially The Inn Album (1875), founded on an event in modern English society, are powerful applications of the methods already exemplified in The Ring and the Book. The Dramatic Idyls (1879 and 1880) are a collection of direct narratives, with less analytical disquisition, which surprised his readers by their sustained vigour. In the last volumes, Jocoseria (1883), Ferishtah's Fancies (1884), Parleying with Certain People (1887) and Asolando (1889), the old power is still apparent but the hand is beginning to fail. They contain discussions of metaphysical problems, such as the origin of evil, which are interesting as indications of his creed, but can scarcely be regarded as successful either poetically or philosophically.

Another group of poems showed Browning's interest in Greek literature. Balaustion's Adventure (1871) includes a "transcript from Euripides," a translation, that is, of part of the Alcestis. Aristophanes' Apology (1875) included another translation from the Heracles, and in 1877 he published a very literal translation of the Agamemnon. This, it seems, was meant to disprove the doctrine that Æschylus was a model of literary style. Browning shared his wife's admiration for Euripides, and takes a phrase from one of her poems as a motto for Balaustion's Adventure. In the Aristophanes' Apology this leads characteristically to a long exposition by Aristophanes of his unsatisfactory reasons for ridiculing Euripides. It recalls the apologies of "Blougram" and Louis Napoleon, and contains some interesting indications of his poetical theory. Browning was to many readers as much prophet as poet. His religious position is most explicitly, though still not very clearly, set forth in the Christmas Eve and Easter Day (1850). Like many eminent contemporaries, he combined a disbelief in orthodox dogma with a profound conviction of the importance to the religious instincts of the symbols incorporated in accepted creeds. Saul (1845), A Death in the Desert (1864), and similar poems, show his strong sympathy with the spirit of the old belief, though his argumentative works have a more or less sceptical turn. It was scarcely possible, if desirable, to be original on such topics. His admirers hold that he shows an affinity to German metaphysicians, though he had never read their works nor made any express study of metaphysical questions. His distinctive tendency is to be found rather in the doctrine of life and conduct which both suggests and is illustrated by his psychological analyses. A very characteristic thought emphatically set forth in the Rabbi Ben Ezra (1864) and the Grammarian's Funeral (1855) is that a man's value is to be measured, not by the work done, but by the character which has been moulded. He delights in exhibiting the high moral instinct which dares to override ordinary convictions, or which is content with discharge of obscure duties, or superior to vulgar ambition and capable of self-sacrifice, because founded upon pure love and sympathy for human suffering. Browning's limitations are characteristic of the poetry of strong ethical preoccupations. His strong idiosyncrasy, his sympathy with the heroic and hatred of the base, was hardly to be combined with the Shakespearian capacity for sympathizing with the most varied types of character. Though he deals with a great variety of motive with singularly keen analysis, he takes almost exclusively the moral point of view. That point of view, however, has its importance, and his morality is often embodied in poetry of surpassing force. Browning's love of the grotesque, sometimes even of the horrible, creates many most graphic and indelible portraits. The absence of an exquisite sense for the right word is compensated by the singular power of striking the most brilliant flashes out of obviously wrong words, and forcing comic rhymes to express the deepest and most serious thoughts. Though he professed to care little for motive as apart from human interest, his incidental touches of description are unsurpassably vivid.

The appreciation of Browning's genius became general in his later years, and zeal was perhaps a little heightened by the complacency of disciples able to penetrate a supposed mist of obscurity. The Browning Society, founded in 1881 by Dr F.J. Furnivall and Miss E.H. Hickey, was a product of this appreciation, and helped to extend the study of the poems. Browning accepted the homage in a simple and friendly way, though he avoided any action which would make him responsible for the publications. He received various honours: LL.D. degree from Cambridge in 1879, the D.C.L. from Oxford in 1882, and LL.D. from Edinburgh in 1884. He became foreign correspondent to the Royal Academy in 1886. His son, who had settled at Venice, married in 1887, and Browning moved to De Vere Gardens. In the autumn of 1889 he went with his sister to visit his son, and stayed on the way at Asolo, which he had first seen in 1838, when it supplied the scenery of Pippa Passes. He was charmed with the place, and proposed to buy a piece of ground and to build upon it a house to be called "Pippa's Tower"—in memory of his early heroine. While his proposal was under consideration he went to his son at Venice. His health had been breaking for some time, and a cold, aggravated by weakness of the heart, brought on a fatal attack. He died on the 12th of December 1889. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 31st December. It was suggested that his wife's body should be removed from Florence to be placed beside him; but their son rightly decided that her grave should not be disturbed.

Browning's personal characteristics are so strongly stamped upon all his works that it is difficult to assign his place in contemporary thought. He is unique and outside of all schools. His style is so peculiar that he is the easiest of all poets to parody and the most dangerous to imitate. In spite of his early Shelley worship he is in certain respects more closely related to Wordsworth. Both of them started by accepting the poet's mission as quasi-prophetical or ethical. In other respects they are diametrically contrasted. Wordsworth expounded his philosophy by writing a poetical autobiography. Browning adheres to the dramatic method of which Wordsworth was utterly incapable. He often protested against the supposition that he put himself into his books. Yet there is no writer whose books seem to readers to be clearer revelations of himself. Nothing, in fact, is more characteristic of a man than his judgments of other men, and Browning's are keen and unequivocal. The revolutionary impulse had died out, and Browning has little to say either of the political questions which had moved Shelley and Byron, or of the social problems which have lately become more prominent. He represents the thought of a quieter epoch. He was little interested, too, in the historical or "romantic" aspect of life. He takes his subjects from a great variety of scenes and places—from ancient Greece, medieval Italy and modern France and England; but the interest for him is not in the picturesque surroundings, but in the human being who is to be found in all periods. Like Balzac, whom he always greatly admired, he is interested in the eternal tragedy and comedy of life. His problem is always to show what are the really noble elements which are eternally valuable in spite of failure to achieve tangible results. He gives, so far, another version of Wordsworth's doctrine of the cultivation of the "moral being." The psychological acuteness and the subtle analysis of character are, indeed, peculiar to himself. Like Carlyle, with whom he had certain points of affinity, he protests, though rather by implication than direct denunciation, against the utilitarian or materialistic view of life, and finds the divine element in the instincts which guide and animate every noble character. When he is really inspired by sympathy for such emotions he can make his most grotesque fancies and his most far-fetched analyses subservient to poetry of the highest order. It can hardly be denied that his intellectual ingenuity often tempts him to deviate from his true function, and that his observations are not to be excused because they result from an excess, instead of a deficiency, of intellectual acuteness. But the variety of his interests—aesthetic, philosophical and ethical—is astonishing, and his successes are poems which stand out as unique and unsurpassable in the literature of his time.

The Life and Letters of Browning, by Mrs Sutherland Orr (1891), one of his most intimate friends in later years, and The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846, published by his son in 1899, are the main authorities. A collection of Browning's poems in 2 vols. appeared in 1849, another in 3 vols. in 1863, another in 6 vols. in 1868, and a revised edition in 16 vols. in 1888-1889; in 1896 Mr Augustine Birrell and Mr F.G. Kenyon edited a complete edition in 2 vols.; another two-volume edition was issued by Messrs Smith, Elder in 1900. Among commentaries on Browning's works, Mrs Sutherland Orr's Handbook to the Works of Browning was approved by the poet himself. See also the Browning Society's Papers; and Mr T.J. Wise's Materials for a Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning, included in the Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century (1895), by W. Robertson Nicoll and T.J. Wise; Mr. Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning: Personalia (1890), from notes supplied by Browning himself. Among biographical and critical authorities may be mentioned: J.T. Nettleship, Essays (1868); Arthur Symons, An Introduction to the Study of Browning (1886); Stopford Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning (1902); G.K. Chesterton, Browning (1908) in the "English Men of Letters" series.

(L. S.)

BROWN-SÉQUARD, CHARLES EDWARD (1817-1894), British physiologist and neurologist, was born at Port Louis, Mauritius, on the 8th of April 1817. His father was an American and his mother a Frenchwoman, but he himself always desired to be looked upon as a British subject, though in the restlessness of his life and the enthusiasm of his disposition, characteristics of his mother's nation were plainly visible. After graduating in medicine at Paris in 1846 he returned to Mauritius with the intention of practising there, but in 1852 he went to America. Subsequently he returned to Paris, and in 1859 he migrated to London, becoming physician to the national hospital for the paralysed and epileptic. There he stayed for about five years, expounding his views on the pathology of the nervous system in numerous lectures which attracted considerable attention. In 1864 he again crossed the Atlantic, and was appointed professor of physiology and neuro-pathology at Harvard. This position he relinquished in 1867, and in 1869 became professor at the École de Médecine in Paris, but in 1873 he again returned to America and began to practise in New York. Finally, he went back to Paris to succeed Claude Bernard in 1878 as professor of experimental medicine in the Collège de France, and he remained there till his death, which occurred on the 2nd of April 1894 at Sceaux. Brown-Séquard was a keen observer and experimentalist. He contributed largely to our knowledge of the blood and animal heat, as well as many facts of the highest importance on the nervous system. He was the first scientist to work out the physiology of the spinal cord, demonstrating that the decussation of the sensory fibres is in the cord itself. He also did valuable work on the internal secretion of organs, the results of which have been applied with the most satisfactory results in the treatment of myxoedema. Unfortunately in his extreme old age, he advocated the hypodermic injection of a fluid prepared from the testicles of sheep, as a means of prolonging human life. It was known, among scientists, derisively, as the Brown-Séquard Elixir. His researches, published in about 500 essays and papers, especially in the Archives de Physiologie, which he helped to found in 1868, cover a very wide range of physiological and pathological subjects.

BROWNSON, ORESTES AUGUSTUS (1803-1876), American theological, philosophical and sociological writer, was born in Stockbridge, Vermont, on the 16th of September 1803. Having spent some time in active religious, reformatory and political (Democratic) work in the interior of New York state, and at Walpole, New Hampshire, and Canton, Massachusetts, Brownson removed in 1839 to Chelsea, Mass. He at once began to take an independent part in the movements then agitating New England, which between 1830 and 1850 was stirred by discussions pertaining to Unitarianism, transcendentalism, spiritualism, abolitionism and various schemes for communistic living. He was one of the founders, in New York, of the short-lived Workingman's party in 1828, and established the Boston Quarterly Review, mainly written by himself, in 1838. This periodical was merged in the U.S. Democratic Review of New York in 1842. In religion he first became a Presbyterian (1822); was a Universalist minister from 1826 to 1831, editing for some time the chief journal of this church, the Gospel Advocate; was an independent preacher at Ithaca, N.Y., in 1831; became a Unitarian minister in 1832, and in 1836 organized in Boston the Society for Christian Union and Progress, of which he was the pastor for seven years. In 1844 he became a Roman Catholic and so remained, though the question of the orthodoxy of his writings was at one time submitted by the pope to Cardinal Franzelin, who recommended Brownson, to little purpose, to express his views with more moderation. In his philosophy Brownson was a more or less independent follower of Comte for a short time, and of Victor Cousin, who, in his Fragmens philosophiques, praised him; he may be said to have taught a modified intuitionalism. In his schemes for social reform he was at first a student of Robert Owen, until his later views led him to accept Roman Catholicism. His first quarterly was followed, in 1844, by Brownson's Quarterly Review (first published in Boston and after 1855 in New York), in which he expressed his opinions on many themes until its suspension in 1864, and after its revival for a brief period in 1873-1875. Of his numerous publications in book form, the chief during his lifetime were Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted (1840, autobiographical), in which he strongly favoured the Roman Catholic Church; and The American Republic: its Constitution, Tendencies and Destiny (1865), in which he based government on ethics, declaring the national existence to be a moral and even a theocratic entity, not depending for validity upon the sovereignty of the people. Brownson died in Detroit, Michigan, on the 17th of April 1876.

After his death, his son, Henry F. Brownson, collected and published his various political, religious, philosophical, scientific and literary writings, in twenty octavo volumes (Detroit, 1883-1887), of which a condensed summary appeared in a single volume, also prepared by his son, entitled Literary and Political Views (New York, 1893). The son also published a biography in three volumes (Detroit, 1898-1900).

His daughter, Sarah M. Brownson (1839-1876), who married in 1873 William J. Tenney, was the author of several novels, and wrote a Life of Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, Prince and Priest (1873).

BROWNSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Cameron county, Texas, U.S.A., situated near the S. extremity of the state, on the Rio Grande river about 22 m. above its mouth, and opposite Matamoras, Mexico. Pop. (1890) 6134; (1900) 6305, including 2462 foreign-born and 18 negroes; (1910) 10,517. It is served by the St Louis, Brownsville & Mexico, and the Rio Grande railways, being connected by the former with Houston and Galveston and by the latter with Point Isabel on the Gulf coast. Its chief importance lies in its being the commercial and distributing centre for a rich and extensive agricultural region in southern Texas and northern Mexico, and an important market for rice, sugar-cane, fruit, vegetables and live-stock. It has a United States custom house, the Cameron county court house, a Roman Catholic cathedral, St Joseph's College (Roman Catholic), and the Incarnate Word Academy (Roman Catholic). Before the Mexican War there was a small Mexican settlement on the site of Brownsville. In March 1846 General Zachary Taylor erected fortifications here, and upon his withdrawal to Point Isabel, left a small garrison in command of Major Jacob Brown. The fort was assaulted by General Arista and shelled by batteries from the Mexican shore, and at last on the 10th of May was relieved by General Taylor, who in advancing to its aid had won the battles of Palo Alto (8th of May) and Resaca de la Palma (9th of May). The fort, originally named Fort Taylor, was renamed Fort Brown, by order of General Taylor, in memory of Major Brown, who was mortally wounded during the bombardment. In 1859 Brownsville was captured by a band of Mexican raiders under Juan Nepomuceno Cortina. During the Civil War, until its temporary occupation by Federal forces in 1863, and subsequent effective blockade, it was an active centre of operations of Confederate blockade runners. At Palmetto Ranch, near the battlefield of Palo Alto, took place (13th of May 1865), more than a month after General Lee's surrender, the last engagement between Federal and Confederate troops in the Civil War. In Brownsville, on the night of the 13th of August 1906, certain persons unknown fired into houses and at citizens on the streets, killing one man and injuring two. Suspicion pointed to negro soldiers of Companies B, C and D of the 25th Infantry, stationed at Fort Brown, and as it appeared that the culprits were being shielded by their comrades by a "conspiracy of silence," President Roosevelt dismissed the 170 men of the three companies "without honor." Both in Congress and in the press a bitter attack was made on the president for his action. In 1907 the military reservation of Fort Brown was transferred to the Department of Agriculture. In March 1909 Congress provided for a commission of army officers to report as to the eligibility of members of the negro regiments for re-enlistment.

BRUAY, a town of northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, on the Lawe, 19 m. N.N.W. of Arras by road. Pop. (1906) 16,169. The town is situated in a rich coal-mining district. Brewing is also a leading industry.

BRUCE, the name of an old Scottish family of Norman descent, taken from Bruis between Cherbourg and Vallonges. Variations of the name are Braose, Breaux and Brus. The first Robert de Brus, a follower of William the Conqueror, was rewarded by the gift of many manors, chiefly in Yorkshire, of which Skelton was the principal. His son, the second Robert, received from David I., his comrade at the court of Henry I., a grant of the lordship of Annandale. The fourth Robert married Isabel, natural daughter of William the Lion, and their son, the fifth Robert, married Isabel, second daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon, niece of the same Scottish king. The most famous member of the family is the eighth Robert, "the Bruce," who became king of Scotland in 1306. (See Robert the Bruce.)

BRUCE, ALEXANDER BALMAIN (1831-1899), Scottish divine, was born at Aberargie near Perth on the 31st of January 1831. His father suffered for his adherence to the Free Church at the Disruption in 1843, and removed to Edinburgh, where the son was educated, showing exceptional ability from the first. His early religious doubts, awakened especially by Strauss's Life of Jesus, made him throughout life sympathetic with those who underwent a similar stress. After serving as assistant first at Ancrum, then at Lochwinnoch, he was called to Cardross in Dumbartonshire in 1859, and to Broughty Ferry in 1868. There he published his first considerable exegetical work, the Training of the Twelve. In 1874 he delivered his Cunningham Lectures, afterwards published as The Humiliation of Christ, and in the following year was appointed to the chair of Apologetics and New Testament exegesis at the Free Church College, Glasgow. This post he held for twenty-four years. He was one of the first British New Testament students whose work was received with consideration by German scholars of repute. The character and work of Christ were, he held, the ultimate proof and the best defence of Christianity; and his tendency was to concentrate attention somewhat narrowly on the historic Jesus. In The Kingdom of God (1889), which first encountered serious hostile criticism in his own communion, he accounted for some of the differences between the first and third evangelists on the principle of accommodation—maintaining that Luke had altered both the text and the spirit of his sources to suit the needs of those for whom he wrote. It was held that these admissions were not consistent with the views of inspiration professed by the Free Church. When the case was tried, the assembly held that the charge of heresy was based on a misunderstanding, but that "by want of due care in his mode of statement he had given some ground for the painful impressions which had existed."

Bruce rendered signal service to his own communion in connexion with its service of praise. He was convener of the committee which issued the Free Church hymn book, and he threw into this work the same energy and catholicity of mind which marked the rest of his activities. He died on the 7th of August 1899, and was buried at Broughty Ferry. His chief works, beside the above, are: The Chief End of Revelation (Lond., 1881); The Parabolic Teaching of Christ (Lond., 1882); F.C. Baur and his Theory of the Origin of Christianity and of the New Testament Writings in "Present Day Tracts" (Lond., 1885); Apologetics, or Christianity Defensively Stated (Edin., 1892); St Paul's Conception of Christianity (Lond., 1894); Expos. Gk. Test. (the Synoptic Gospels, Lond., 1897). With Open Face (Lond., 1896); The Epistle to the Hebrews (Edin., 1899); The Providential Order of the World, and the Moral Order of the World in Ancient and Modern Thought (Gifford Lectures, 1896-1897; Lond., 1897, 1899).

(D. Mn.)

BRUCE, JAMES (1730-1794), Scottish explorer in Africa, was born at Kinnaird House, Stirlingshire, on the 14th of December 1730. He was educated at Harrow and Edinburgh University, and began to study for the bar; but his marriage to the daughter of a wine merchant resulted in his entering that business. His wife died in October 1754, within nine months of marriage, and Bruce thereafter travelled in Portugal and Spain. The examination of oriental MSS. at the Escurial led him to the study of Arabic and Geez and determined his future career. In 1758 his father's death placed him in possession of the estate of Kinnaird. On the outbreak of war with Spain in 1762 he submitted to the British government a plan for an attack on Ferrol. His suggestion was not adopted, but it led to his selection by the 2nd earl of Halifax for the post of British consul at Algiers, with a commission to study the ancient ruins in that country, in which interest had been excited by the descriptions sent home by Thomas Shaw^[1] (1694-1751), consular chaplain at Algiers, 1719-1731. Having spent six months in Italy studying antiquities, Bruce reached Algiers in March 1763. The whole of his time was taken up with his consular duties at the piratical court of the dey, and he was kept without the assistance promised. But in August 1765, a successor in the consulate having arrived, Bruce began his exploration of the Roman ruins in Barbary. Having examined many ruins in eastern Algeria, he travelled by land from Tunis to Tripoli, and at Ptolemeta took passage for Candia; but was shipwrecked near Bengazi and had to swim ashore. He eventually reached Crete, and sailing thence to Sidon, travelled through Syria, visiting Palmyra and Baalbek. Throughout his journeyings in Barbary and the Levant, Bruce made careful drawings of the many ruins he examined. He also acquired a sufficient knowledge of medicine to enable him to pass in the East as a physician.

In June 1768 he arrived at Alexandria, having resolved to endeavour to discover the source of the Nile, which he believed to rise in Abyssinia. At Cairo he gained the support of the Mameluke ruler, Ali Bey; after visiting Thebes he crossed the desert to Kosseir, where he embarked in the dress of a Turkish sailor. He reached Jidda in May 1769, and after some stay in Arabia he recrossed the Red Sea and landed at Massawa, then in possession of the Turks, on the 19th of September. He reached Gondar, then the capital of Abyssinia, on the 14th of February 1770, where he was well received by the negus Tekla Haimanot II., by Ras Michael, the real ruler of the country, by the ras's wife, Ozoro Esther, and by the Abyssinians generally. His fine presence (he was 6 ft. 4 in. high), his knowledge of Geez, his excellence in sports, his courage, resource and self-esteem, all told in his favour among a people who were in general distrustful of all foreigners. He stayed in Abyssinia for two years, gaining knowledge which enabled him subsequently to present a perfect picture of Abyssinian life. On the 14th of November 1770 he reached the long-sought source of the Blue Nile. Though admitting that the White Nile was the larger stream, Bruce claimed that the Blue Nile was the Nile of the ancients and that he was thus the discoverer of its source. The claim, however, was not well founded (see Nile: Story of Exploration). Setting out from Gondar in December 1771, Bruce made his way, in spite of enormous difficulties, by Sennar to Nubia, being the first to trace the Blue Nile to its confluence with the White Nile. On the 29th of November 1772 he reached Assuan, presently returning to the desert to recover his journals and his baggage, which had been abandoned in consequence of the death of all his camels. Cairo was reached in January 1773, and in March Bruce arrived in France, where he was welcomed by Buffon and other savants. He came to London in 1774, but, offended by the incredulity with which his story was received, retired to his home at Kinnaird. It was not until 1790 that, urged by his friend Daines Barrington, he published his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768-73, in five octavo volumes, lavishly illustrated. The work was very popular, but was assailed by other travellers as being unworthy of credence. The manner in which the book was written—twelve years after Bruce's return from Africa and without reference to his journals—gave some handle to his critics, but the substantial accuracy of every statement concerning his Abyssinian travels has since been amply demonstrated. He died on the 27th of April 1794.

Bruce wrote an autobiography, part of which is printed in editions of his Travels, published in 1805 and 1813, accompanied by a biographical notice by the editor, Alexander Murray. The best edition of the Travels is the third (Edinburgh, 1813, 8 vols.). Of the abridgments the best is that of Major (afterwards Sir Francis) Head, the author of a well-informed Life of Bruce (London, 1830). The best account of Bruce's travels in Barbary is contained in Sir R. Lambert Playfair's Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce (London, 1877), in which a selection of his drawings was published for the first time. Several of Bruce's drawings were presented to George III. and are in the royal collection at Windsor.

BRUCE, MICHAEL (1746-1767), Scottish poet, was born at Kinnesswood in the parish of Portmoak, Kinross-shire, on the 27th of March 1746. His father, Alexander Bruce, was a weaver, and a man of exceptional ability. Michael was taught to read before he was four years old, and one of his favourite books was a copy of Sir David Lyndsay's works. He was early sent to school, but his attendance was often interrupted. He had frequently to herd cattle on the Lomond Hills in summer, and this early companionship with nature greatly influenced his poetic genius. He was a delicate child, and grew up contemplative, devotional and humorous, the pet of his family and his friends. His parents gave him an education superior to their position; he studied Latin and Greek, and at fifteen, when his school education was completed, a small legacy left to his mother, with some additions from kindly neighbours, provided means to send Michael to Edinburgh University, which he attended during the four winter sessions 1762-1765. In 1765 he taught during the summer months at Gairney Bridge, receiving about £11 a year in fees and free board in one or other of the homes of his pupils. He became a divinity student at Kinross of a Scottish sect known as the Burghers, and in the first summer (1766) of his divinity course accepted the charge of a new school at Forest Hill, near Clackmannan, where he led a melancholy life. Poverty, disease and want of companions depressed his spirits, but there he wrote "Lochleven," a poem inspired by the memories of his childhood. He had before been threatened with consumption, and now became seriously ill. During the winter he returned on foot to his father's house, where he wrote his last and finest poem, "Elegy written in Spring," and died on the 5th of July 1767.

As a poet his reputation has been spread, first, through sympathy for his early death; and secondly, through the alleged theft by John Logan (q.v.) of several of his poems. Logan, who had been a fellow-student of Bruce, obtained Bruce's MSS. from his father, shortly after the poet's death. For the letters, poems, &c., that he allowed to pass out of his hands, Alexander Bruce took no receipt, nor did he keep any list of the titles. Logan edited in 1770 Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce, in which the "Ode to the Cuckoo" appeared. In the preface he stated that "to make up a miscellany, some poems written by different authors are inserted." In a collection of his own poems in 1781, Logan printed the "Ode to the Cuckoo" as his own; of this the friends of Bruce were aware, but did not challenge its appropriation publicly. In a MS. Pious Memorials of Portmoak, drawn up by Bruce's friend, David Pearson, Bruce's authorship of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" is emphatically asserted. This book was in the possession of the Birrell family, and John Birrell, another friend of the poet, adds a testimony to the same effect. Pearson and Birrell also wrote to Dr Robert Anderson while he was publishing his British Poets, pointing out Bruce's claims. Their communications were used by Anderson in the "Life" prefixed to Logan's works in the British Poets (vol. ii. p. 1029). The volume of 1770 had struck Bruce's friends as being incomplete, and his father missed his son's "Gospel Sonnets," which are supposed by the partisans of Bruce against Logan to have been the hymns printed in the 1781 edition of Logan's poems. Logan tried to prevent by law the reprinting of Bruce's poems (see James Mackenzie's Life of Michael Bruce, 1905, chap. xii.), but the book was printed in 1782, 1784, 1796 and 1807. Dr William M^cKelvie revived Bruce's claims in Lochleven and Other Poems, by Michael Bruce, with a Life of the Author from Original Sources (1837). Logan's authorship rests on the publication of the poems under his own name, and his reputation as author during his lifetime. His failure to produce the "poem book" of Bruce entrusted to him, and the fact that no copy of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" in his handwriting was known to exist during Bruce's lifetime, make it difficult to relieve him of the charge of plagiarism. Prof. John Veitch, in The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry (1887, vol. ii. pp. 89-91), points out that the stanza known to be Logan's addition to this ode is out of keeping with the rest of the poem, and is in the manner of Logan's established compositions, in which there is nothing to suggest the direct simplicity of the little poem on the cuckoo.

Bibliography.—Additions to Poems on Several Occasions (1770) were made by Dr M^cKelvie in his 1837 edition. He gives (p. 97) a list of the poems not printed in Logan's selection, and of those that are lost. See the "Lives" of Bruce and of Logan in Anderson's British Poets (1795); an admirable paper on Bruce in The Mirror (No. 36, 1779), said to be by William Craig, one of the lords of session; The Poetical Works of Michael Bruce, with Life and Writings (1895), by William Stephen, who, like Dr A.B. Grosart in his edition (1865) of The Works of Michael Bruce, adopts M^cKelvie's view. A restatement of the case for Bruce's authorship, coupled with a rather violent attack on Logan, is to be found in the Life of Michael Bruce, Poet of Loch Leven, with Vindication of his Authorship of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" and other Poems, also Copies of Letters written by John Logan now first published (1905), by James Mackenzie.

BRUCH, MAX (1838- ), German musical composer, son of a city official and grandson of the famous Evangelical cleric, Dr Christian Bruch, was born at Cologne on the 6th of January 1838. From his mother (née Almenräder), a well-known musician of her time, he learnt the elements of music, but under Breidenstein he made his first serious effort at composition at the age of fourteen, by the production of a symphony. In 1853 Bruch gained the Mozart Stipendium of 400 gulden per annum for four years at Frankfort-on-Main, and for the following few years studied under Hiller, Reinecke and Breunung. Subsequently he lived from 1858 to 1861 as pianoforte teacher at Cologne, in which city his first opera (in one act), Scherz, List und Roche, was produced in 1858. On his father's death in 1861, Bruch began a tour of study at Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Munich, Dresden and Mannheim, where his opera Lorelei was brought out in 1863. At Mannheim he lived till 1864, and there he wrote some of his best-known works, including the beautiful Frithjof. After a further period of travel he became musical-director at Coblenz (1865-1867), Hofkapellmeister at Sondershausen (1867-1870), and lived in Berlin (1871-1873), where he wrote his Odysseus, his first violin concerto and two symphonies being composed at Sondershausen. After five years at Bonn (1873-1878), during which he made two visits to England, Bruch, in 1878, became conductor of the Stern Choral Union; and in 1880 of the Liverpool Philharmonic. In 1892 he was appointed director of the Berlin Hochschule. In 1893 he was given the honorary degree of Mus. Doc. by Cambridge University. Max Bruch has written in almost every conceivable musical form, invariably with straight-forward honest simplicity of design. He has a gift of refined melody beyond the common, his melodies being broad and suave and often exceptionally beautiful.

BRUCHSAL, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, prettily situated on the Saalbach, 14 m. N. from Karlsruhe, and an important junction on the main railway from Mannheim to Constance. Pop. (1900), including a small garrison, 13,555. There are an Evangelical and four Roman Catholic churches, among the latter that of St Peter, the burial-place of the bishops of Spires, whose princely residence (now used as a prison) lies in the vicinity. Bruchsal has a fine palace, with beautiful grounds attached, a town hall, a classical, a modern and a commercial school, and manufactures of machinery, paper, tobacco, soap and beer, and does a considerable trade in wine. Bruchsal (mentioned in 937 as Bruxolegum) was originally a royal villa (Königshof) belonging to the emperors and German kings. Given in 1002 to Otto, duke of Franconia, it was inherited by the cadet line of Spires, the head of which, the emperor Henry III., gave it to the see of Spires in 1095. From 1105 onward it became the summer residence of the bishops, who in 1190 bought the Vogtei (advocateship) from the counts of Calw, and the place rapidly developed into a town. It remained in the possession of the bishops till 1802, when by the treaty of Lunéville it was ceded, with other lands of the bishopric on the right bank of the Rhine, to Baden. The Peasants' War during the Reformation period first broke out in Bruchsal. In 1609 it was captured by the elector palatine, and in 1676 and 1698 it was burnt down by the French. In 1849 it was the scene of an engagement between the Prussians and the Baden revolutionists.

See Rössler,Geschichte der Stadt Bruchsal (2nd ed., Bruchsal, 1894).

BRUCINE, C₂₃H₂₆N₂O₄, an alkaloid isolated in 1819 by J. Pelletier and J.B. Caventou from "false Angustura bark." It crystallizes in prisms with four molecules of water; when anhydrous it melts at 178°. It is very similar to strychnine (q.v.), both chemically and physiologically.

BRUCITE, a mineral consisting of magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)₂, and crystallizing in the rhombohedral system. It was first described in 1814 as "native magnesia" from New Jersey by A. Bruce, an American mineralogist, after whom the species was named by F.S. Beudant in 1824; the same name had, however, been earlier applied to the mineral now known as chondrodite. Brucite is usually found as platy masses, sometimes of considerable size, which have a perfect cleavage parallel to the surface of the plates. It is white, sometimes with a tinge of grey, blue or green, varies from transparent to translucent, and on the cleavage surfaces has a pronounced pearly lustre. In general appearance and softness (H = 2½) it is thus not unlike gypsum or talc, but it may be readily distinguished from these by its optical character, being uniaxial with positive birefringence, whilst gypsum is biaxial and talc has negative birefringence. The specific gravity is 2.38-2.40. In the variety known as nemalite the structure is finely fibrous and the lustre silky: this variety contains 5 to 8% of ferrous oxide replacing magnesia, and has consequently a rather higher specific gravity, viz. 2.45. Another variety, manganbrucite, has the magnesia partly replaced by manganous oxide (14%), and thus forms a passage to the isomorphous mineral pyrochroite, Mn(OH)₂.

Brucite is generally associated with other magnesian minerals, such as magnesite and dolomite, and is commonly found in serpentine, or sometimes as small scales in phyllites and crystalline schists; it has also been observed in metamorphosed magnesian limestone, such as the rock known as predazzite from Predazzo in Tirol. The best crystals and foliated masses are from Texas in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and from Swinaness in Unst, one of the Shetland Isles. Nemalite is from Hoboken, New Jersey, and from Afghanistan. At all these localities the mineral forms veins in serpentine.

(L. J. S.)

BRÜCKENAU, a town and fashionable watering-place of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Sinn, 16 m. N.W. of Kissingen. The mineral springs, five in number, situated in the pleasant valley of the Sinn, 2 m. from the town, were a favourite resort of Louis I. of Bavaria. Pop. 1700.

BRUCKER, JOHANN JAKOB (1696-1770), German historian of philosophy, was born at Augsburg. He was destined for the church, and graduated at the university of Jena in 1718. He returned to Augsburg in 1720, but became parish minister of Kaufbeuren in 1723. In 1731 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and was invited to Augsburg as pastor and senior minister of the church of St Ulrich. His chief work, Historia Critica Philosophiae, appeared at Leipzig (5 vols., 1742-1744). Its success was such that a new edition was published in six volumes (1766-1767; English translation by W. Enfield, 1791). It is by this work alone that Brucker is now known. Its merit consists entirely in the ample collection of materials. He also wrote Tentamen Introductionis in Historiam Doctrinae de Ideis, afterwards completed and republished under the title of Historia Philosophicae Doctrinae de Ideis (Augsburg, 1723); Otium Vindelicum (1731); Kurze Fragen aus der philosophischen Historie (7 vols., Ulm, 1731-1736), a history of philosophy in question and answer, containing many details, especially in the department of literary history, which he omitted in his chief work; Pinacotheca Scriptorum nostra aetate literis illustrium, &c. (Augsburg, 1741-1755); Ehrentempel der deutschen Gelehrsamkeit (Augsburg, 1747-1749); Institutiones Historiae Philosophicae (Leipzig, 1747 and 1756; 3rd ed. with a continuation by F.G.B. Born (1743-1807) of Leipzig, in 1790); Miscellanea Historiae Philosophicae Literariae Criticae olim sparsim edita (Augsburg, 1748); Erste Anfangsgrunde der philosophischen Geschichte (Ulm, 1751). He superintended an edition of Luther's translation of the Old and New Testament, with a commentary extracted from the writings of the English theologians (Leipzig, 1758-1770, completed by W.A. Teller). He died at Augsburg in 1770.

BRÜCKMANN, FRANZ ERNST (1697-1753), German mineralogist, was born on the 27th of September 1697 at Marienthal near Helmstädt. Having qualified as a medical man in 1721, he practised at Brunswick and afterwards at Wolfenbüttel. His leisure time was given up to natural history, and especially to mineralogy and botany. He appears to have been the first to introduce the term oolithus to rocks that resemble in structure the roe of a fish; whence the terms oolite and oolitic. He died at Wolfenbüttel on the 21st of March 1753. He published Magnalia Dei in locis subterraneis (Brunswick, 1727), Historia naturalis curiosa lapidis (1727), and Thesaurus subterraneus Ducatus Brunsvigii (1728).

BRUCKNER, ANTON (1824-1896), Austrian musical composer, was born on the 4th of September 1824 at Ansfelden in upper Austria. He successfully competed for the organistship for Linz Cathedral in 1855. In 1867 he succeeded his former master of counterpoint, Sechter, as organist of the Hofkapelle in Vienna, and also became professor in the conservatorium. In 1875 he was appointed to a lectureship in the university. His most striking talent was shown in his extemporizations on the organ. His success in an organ competition at Nancy in 1869 led to his playing in Paris and London (six recitals at the Albert Hall, 1871). His permanent reputation, however, rests on his compositions, especially his nine symphonies. In these gigantic efforts the influence of Wagner is paramount in almost every feature of harmony and orchestration; and if sustained seriousness of purpose and style were all that was necessary to give coherence to works in which these influences are stultified by the rhythmic uniformities of an experienced improvisatore and the impressions of classical form as taught in schools, then Bruckner would certainly have been what the extreme Wagnerian party called him, the symphonic successor of Beethoven, or the Wagner of the symphony. But their lack of organization and proportion, to say nothing of humour, will always make their revival a somewhat severe task. No composer has ever been more consistent to lofty ideals, though few who have ever had an ideal have shown less adroitness in their methods of embodying it. The most poetic and admired feature of his style is a slow growth to a gigantic climax, slow enough and gigantic enough for any situation in Wagner's Nibelungen tetralogy. The symphonies in which these climaxes occur are in obviously unskilful classical form, with only an outward appearance of freedom; and the Great Pyramid would hardly be more out of place in an Oxford quadrangle than Bruckner's climaxes in his four-movement symphonies with their "second subjects" and recapitulations. Nor is it likely that Bruckner would have been much more successful in handling these gigantic things in their legitimate Wagnerian dramatic environment, for even in his last three symphonies he hardly ever frees himself from the trammels of square rhythm; and, as he accepts the classical sonata-forms without inquiry into their meaning or relevance, so he accepts the Wagnerian stage orchestra in its minutest details, without inquiry as to its relevance for the purposes and acoustics of the concert-room, and with the same lack of sense of relief that ruins the balance of his rhythmic periods. So unsophisticated a temperament may be not unpoetical, but it is eminently undramatic, as well as unsymphonic. Of Bruckner's choral works, which include three masses and several psalms and motets, the most famous is the Te Deum (1885?),^[1] which shows his characteristic power in massive effect. Bruckner wished this to be appended to the three complete movements of his 9th symphony, which his last illness (ending in his death at Vienna on the 11th of October 1896) prevented him from finishing. This 9th symphony is designed, with characteristic tactlessness and simplicity, to follow Beethoven's 9th symphony in every possible point which could challenge comparison; in key (D minor), opening (mysterious tremolo leading to tremendous unison tutti), contrasts (return in first movement) and choral finale. The three complete movements were first performed in Vienna in 1903, and have done more for Bruckner's fame than anything since the production in 1884 of his 7th symphony (of which the slow movement is an elegy on the death of Wagner). It is probable that the impression produced by this 9th symphony is the deeper as owing little or nothing to the musical politics which had gone far to prevent the 7th symphony from standing on its own unmistakable merits. It does not, however, seem likely that Bruckner's work will have much influence on musical progress; for the modern characteristics in which its strength lies are obviously better realized in other forms which have often been handled successfully by composers greatly Bruckner's inferiors both in invention and sincerity.

(D. F. T.)

BRUGES (Flemish Brugge, a name signifying the bridge or place of bridges), the capital of West Flanders, Belgium. Pop. (1904) 53,728. The city contains some of the finest monuments of the great period of the Flemish communes, while its medieval appearance is better preserved, as a whole, than in the case of any other Belgian city. The cathedral of St Sauveur and the church of Notre-Dame, both specimens of early Pointed Gothic, date from the 13th and 14th centuries. Both are full of interest, but the cathedral was much injured by fire in 1839. The interior, however, is finely proportioned and exhibits beautiful modern polychrome decorations, numerous pictures and interesting monumental brasses. The church of Notre-Dame contains a fine De Crayer (The Adoration of the Magi), Michelangelo's marble group of the Virgin and Child, and the fine monuments with gilded copper effigies of Charles the Bold and his daughter, Mary of Burgundy. The hospital of St Jean, where the sick have been cared for since the 12th century, contains the chief works of Memling, including the famous reliquary of St Ursula. The market-hall was built in 1561-1566 on the site of an older building, some portions of which were utilized in its successor. The belfry which rises in the centre of the façade dates from the end of the 13th century; it has long been famous for its chime of bells, but the civic fathers have caused modern airs to be substituted for the old hymn. The hôtel de ville, the Chapelle du Saint-Sang and the church of St Jacques are all of interest. The first is Gothic and was begun about 1376. The second is a chapel of two storeys, the lower dating from 1150, while the upper was rebuilt in the 15th century, and there is a rich Flamboyant entrance with a stairway (1533). St Jacques' church is a foundation of the 13th century, but has extensive additions of the close of the 15th and 17th centuries. The Palais de Justice, of the 18th century, on the site of the House of the Franc—the outside burghers of the Franc district admitted to the full privileges of citizenship—contains a fine carved chimney-piece (1530). The house is supposed to have formed part of the residence of the counts of Flanders. There are numerous other buildings of minor antiquarian interest; the fine museum contains a representative gallery of early Flemish paintings; and of the old fortifications three gates remain. The manufacture of lace now gives employment to at least 6000 persons in the town, and horticulture is carried on extensively in the suburbs. Commercial activity has been assisted by the new ship-canal to Zeebrugge, and by direct steamship service from Hull to Bruges. The steady growth of the population is evidence of increased prosperity. In 1880 the population was only 44,500, but it had risen in 1900 to 51,657 and in 1904 it was 53,728.

Bruges is said to have been a city in the 7th century, and the name Flanders was originally applied to it and not to the district. Baldwin II., count of Flanders, who married Elstrud, daughter of Alfred the Great, first fortified it, and made it his chief residence. Before the year 1180 Bruges was the recognized capital of Flanders, and the formality of proclaiming the new counts was always performed on the marché du vendredi, where the railway station is to-day. After 1180 the premier position was assumed by Ghent, but until access by sea was stopped by the silting up of the Zwyn, which was complete by the year 1490, Bruges was the equal in wealth and power of its neighbour. Proof of this is supplied by the marriage festivities in 1430, when Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, wedded Isabel of Portugal, and founded the famous order of the Golden Fleece out of compliment to the staple industry of Bruges. Bruges was at the height of its prosperity in the 14th century, when it was the northern counterpart of Venice and its Bourse regulated the rate of exchange in Europe.

(D. C. B.)

BRUGSCH, HEINRICH KARL (1827-1894), German Egyptologist, was the son of a Prussian cavalry officer, and was born in the barracks at Berlin, on the 18th of February 1827. He early manifested a great inclination to Egyptian studies, in which, though encouraged by Humboldt, he was almost entirely self-taught. After completing his university course and visiting foreign museums he was sent to Egypt by the Prussian government in 1853, and contracted an intimate friendship with Mariette. On his return he received an appointment in the Berlin museum. In 1860 he was sent to Persia on a special mission under Baron Minutoli, travelled over the country, and after Minutoli's death discharged the functions of ambassador. In 1864 he was consul at Cairo, in 1868 professor at Gõttingen, and in 1870 director of the school of Egyptology, founded at Cairo by the khedive. From this post he was unceremoniously dismissed in 1879 by the European controllers of the public revenues, determined to economize at all hazards; and French influence prevented his succeeding his friend Mariette at the Bulaq Museum in 1883. He afterwards resided principally in Germany until his death on the 9th of September 1894, but frequently visited Egypt, took part in another official mission to Persia, and organized an Egyptian exhibit at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876. He had been made a pasha by the khedive in 1881. He published his autobiography in 1894, concluding with a warm panegyric upon British rule in Egypt. Brugsch's services to Egyptology are most important, particularly in the decipherment of demotic and the making of a vast hieroglyphic-demotic dictionary (1867-1882).

See H. Brugsch, Mein Leben und mein Wandern, also art. Egypt, section Language and Writing.

BRÜHL, HEINRICH, Count von (1700-1763), German statesman at the court of Saxony, was born on the 13th of August 1700. He was the son of Johann Moritz von Brühl, a noble who held the office of Oberhofmarschall at the small court of Sachsen-Weissenfels. The father was ruined and compelled to part with his family estate, which passed into the hands of the prince. The son was first placed as page with the dowager duchess of Weissenfels, and was then received at her recommendation into the court of the elector of Saxony as Silberpage on the 16th of April 1719. He rapidly acquired the favour of the elector Frederick Augustus, surnamed the Strong, who had been elected to the throne of Poland in 1697. Brühl, who began as page and chamberlain, was largely employed in procuring money for his profuse master. He made himself useful in muzzling the Saxon states and was successively chief receiver of taxes and minister for the interior in 1731. He was at Warsaw when his master died in 1733, and he secured a hold on the confidence of the electoral prince, Frederick Augustus, who was at Dresden, by laying hands on the papers and jewels of the late ruler and bringing them promptly to his successor. During the whole of the thirty years of the reign of Frederick Augustus II. he was the real inspirer of his master and the practical chief of the Saxon court. He had for a time to put up with the presence of old servants of the electoral house, but after 1738 he was in effect sole minister. The title of prime minister was created for him in 1746, but he was not only a prime minister—he filled all the offices. His titles spread over several lines of print, and he drew the combined pay of the places besides securing huge grants of land. Brühl must therefore be held wholly responsible for the ruinous policy which destroyed the position of Saxony in Germany between 1733 and 1763; for the mistaken ambition which led Frederick Augustus II. to become a candidate for the throne of Poland; for the engagements into which he entered in order to secure the support of the emperor Charles VI.; for the shameless and ill-timed tergiversations of Saxony during the wars of the Austrian Succession; for the intrigues which entangled the electorate in the alliance against Frederick the Great, which led to the Seven Years' War; and for the waste and want of foresight which left the country utterly unprepared to resist the attack of the king of Prussia. He was not only without political or military capacity, but was so garrulous that he could not keep a secret. His indiscretion was repeatedly responsible for the king of Prussia's discoveries of the plans laid against him. Nothing could shake the confidence of his master, which survived the ignominious flight into Bohemia, into which he was trapped by Brühl at the time of the battle of Kesseldorf, and all the miseries of the Seven Years' War. The favourite abused the confidence of his master shamelessly. Not content with the 67,000 talers a month which he drew as salary for his innumerable offices, he was found when an inquiry was held in the next reign to have abstracted more than five million talers of public money for his private use. He left the work of the government offices to be done by his lackeys, whom he did not even supervise. His profusion was boundless. Twelve tailors, it is said, were continually employed in making clothes for him, and he wore a new suit every day. His library of 70,000 volumes was one of his forms of ostentation, and so was his gallery of pictures. He died on the 28th of October 1763, having survived his master only for a few weeks. The new elector, Frederick Christian, dismissed him from office and caused an inquiry to be held into his administration. His fortune was found to amount to a million and a half of talers, and was sequestered but afterwards restored to his family. In 1736 he had been made a count of the Empire and had married the countess Franziska von Kolowrat-Kradowska, a favourite of the wife of Frederick Augustus. Four sons and a daughter survived him.

His youngest son, Hans Moritz von Brühl (d. 1811), was before the Revolution of 1789 a colonel in the French service, and afterwards general inspector of roads in Brandenburg and Pomerania. By his wife Margarethe Schleierweber, the daughter of a French corporal, but renowned for her beauty and intellectual gifts, he was the father of Karl Friedrich Moritz Paul von Brühl (1772-1837), the friend of Goethe, who as intendant-general of the Prussian royal theatres was of some importance in the history of the development of the drama in Germany. In 1830 he was appointed intendant-general of the royal museums.

See J. G. H. von Justi, Leben und Charakter des Grafen von Brühl (Göttingen, 1760-1761).

BRÜHL, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 8 m. S.W. from Cologne on the main railway to Coblenz. Pop. (1900) 5000. Its pleasant situation at the foot of one of the spurs of the Eifel range and the beautiful grounds surrounding the royal palace render it a favourite resort of the inhabitants of Cologne. The palace, in Renaissance style, built in 1728 by Clement Augustus, elector of Cologne (1700-1761), was from 1809 until 1813 in the possession of the French marshal Davout, and in 1842 was restored by King Frederick William IV. of Prussia.

BRUMAIRE, the name of the second month in the republican calendar which was established in France by a decree of the National Convention on the 5th of October in the year II. (1793), completed with regard to nomenclature by Fabre d'Églantine, and promulgated in its new form on the 4th of Frimaire in the year II. (the 24th of November 1793). The month of Brumaire began on the day which corresponded, according to the year, to the 22nd or to the 23rd of October of the old calendar, and ended on the 20th or 21st of November, It was divided into "decades" like the other months of the republican calendar. Its name alludes to the fogs and mists frequent at that time of the year. The most important event in French history which took place during that month was the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII. (the 9th of November 1799), by which General Bonaparte overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it by the Consulate.

On the republican calendar, see G. Villain, "Le Calendrier républicain," in La Révolution française for 1884-1885.

BRUMATH, or Brumpt, a town of Germany, in the imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Zorn and the Strassburg-Avricourt railway. Pop. 5500. It has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, and occupies the site of the Roman Brocomagus. Its industries comprise tanning and saw-milling, and it has some trade in wine and tobacco and hops.

BRUMMAGEM (an old local form of "Birmingham"), a name first applied to a counterfeit coin made in the city of Birmingham, England, in the I7th century, and later to the plated and imitation articles made there; hence cheap, showy or tawdry. The name was particularly used of the supporters of the Exclusion Bill in 1680, with the meaning of "sham Protestant." Similarly the Tory opponents of the Bill were nicknamed "Anti-Birminghams" or "Brummagems."

BRUMMELL, GEORGE BRYAN (1778-1840), English man of fashion, known as "Beau Brummell," was born in London on the 7th of June 1778. His father was private secretary to Lord North from 1770 to 1782, and subsequently high sheriff of Berkshire; his grandfather was a shopkeeper in the parish of St James, who supplemented his income by letting lodgings to the aristocracy. From his early years George Brummell paid great attention to his dress. At Eton, where he was sent to school in 1790, and was extremely popular, he was known as Buck Brummell, and at Oxford, where he spent a brief period as an undergraduate of Oriel College, he preserved this reputation, and added to it that of a wit and good story-teller, while the fact that he was second for the Newdigate prize is evidence of his literary capacity. Before he was sixteen, however, he left Oxford, for London, where the prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), to whom he had been presented at Eton, and who had been told that Brummell was a highly amusing fellow, gave him a commission in his own regiment (1794). Brummell soon became intimate with his patron—indeed he was so constantly in the prince's company that he is reported not to have known his own regimental troop. In 1798, having then reached the rank of captain, he left the service, and next year succeeded to a fortune of about £30,000. Setting up a bachelor establishment in Mayfair, he became, thanks to the prince of Wales's friendship and his own good taste in dress, the recognized arbiter elegantiarum. His social success was instant and complete, his repartees were the talk of the town, and, if not accurately speaking a wit, he had a remarkable talent for presenting the most ordinary circumstances in an amusing light. Though he always dressed well, he was no mere fop—Lord Byron is credited with the remark that there was nothing remarkable about his dress save "a certain exquisite propriety." For a time Brummell's sway was undisputed. But eventually gambling and extravagance exhausted his fortune, while his tongue proved too sharp for his royal patron. They quarrelled, and though for a time Brummell continued to hold his place in society, his popularity began to decline. In 1816 he fled to Calais to avoid his creditors. Here he struggled on for fourteen years, receiving help from time to time from his friends in England, but always hopelessly in debt. In 1830 the interest of these friends secured him the post of British consul at Caen, to which a moderate salary was attached, but two years later the office was abolished. In 1835 Brummell's French creditors in Calais and Caen lost patience and he was imprisoned, but his friends once more came to the rescue, paid his debts and provided him with a small income. He had now lost all his interest in dress; his personal appearance was slovenly and dirty. In 1837, after two attacks of paralysis, shelter was found for him in the charitable asylum of Bon Sauveur, Caen, where he died on the 30th of March 1840.