gave occasion for Pope's sneer about being 'followed by a nun' (Dunciad, iv. 327). A nun confined against her will, in a convent at Milan, fell in love with and 'escaped to him.' The lady afterwards went to Rome, where, according to Horace Walpole, she 'pleaded her cause and was acquitted there, and married Breval;' but she is not noticed in the account which Breval published of his travels, under the title of 'Remarks on several Parts of Europe,' two vols. (vol. i. 1723, vol. ii. 1728, reprinted 1726; two additional in 1738), though we have a somewhat elaborate description of Milan, and an account of 'a Milanese Lady of great Beauty, who bequeathed her Skeleton to the Publick as a memento mori.' The cause of Pope's quarrel with Breval is to be sought elsewhere. The well-known poet Gay, with the help of Pope and Arbuthnot, produced the farce entitled 'Three Hours after Marriage,' which was deservedly damned. At this time (1717) Breval, who was writing a good deal for Curll, wrote for him, under the pseudonym of 'Joseph Gay,' a farce called the 'Confederates,' in which 'the late famous comedy' and its three authors were unsparingly ridiculed. Pope is described in the prologue as one
On whom Dame Nature nothing good bestowed:
In Form a Monkey; but for spite a Toad,
and he is represented (scene 1) as saying, 'And from My Self my own Thersites drew,' and then Thersites is explained as 'A Character in Homer, of an Ill-natur'd, Deform'd Villain.' In the same year Breval published, under similar auspices, Pope's 'Miscellany.' The second part consisted of five brief coarse and worthless poems, in one of which especially, called the 'Court Ballad,' Pope is mercilessly ridiculed. Revenge for these was taken in the 'Dunciad,' and Breval's name occurs twice in the second book (1728).
In the notes (1729) affixed to the first passage Pope says that some account must be given of Breval owing to his obscurity, and declares that Curll put 'Joseph Gay' on such pamphlets that they might pass for Mr. Gay's (viz. John Gay's). In 1742, when Breval had been dead four years, the fourth book of the 'Dunciad' was published. In line 272 a 'lac'd Governor from France' is introduced with his pupil, and their adventures abroad are narrated at some length (273-336). Pope, though, as he states, giving him no particular name, chiefly had Breval in his mind when he wrote the lines (Horace Walpole, Notes to Pope, p. 101, contributed by Sir W. Fraser, 1876).
After the publication of his 'Travels' Breval was probably again engaged as travelling governor to young gentlemen of position. In the account of Paris given in the second volume of the second issue of his 'Remarks' he says that he has collected the information 'in ten several tours thither' (p. 262). In the latter period of his life he wrote 'The Harlot's Progress,' an illustrated poem in six cantos, suggested by Hogarth's well-known prints, and said by Ambrose Philips, in a prefatory letter, to be 'a true Key and lively Explanation of the Painter's Hieroglyphicks' (1732); 'The History of the most Illustrious House of Nassau, with regard to that branch of it more particularly that came into the succession of Orange' (1734); 'The Rape of Helen, a mock opera' (acted at Covent Garden), (1737). Shortly after the publication of this last piece Breval died at Paris, January 1738.
[Welch's Alumni Westmon. (1852); Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vols. i. and viii. (1812 and 1814); Monk's Life of Bentley (1830); London Magazine, vii. 49; some information as to the family is given in a (not quite correct) manuscript note on the title-page of one of the copies of the House of Nassau in the British Museum, and also in the manuscript letters of his father to Lord Hatton and J. Ellis in the Addit. MS. (1854-75) (List in Index, p. 460).]
BREVINT or BREVIN, DANIEL, D.D. (1616–1695), dean of Lincoln, polemical and devotional writer, was born in the parish of St. John's in the island of Jersey, of which his father was the minister, and baptised in the parish church 11 May 1616. He proceeded to the protestant university of Saumur on the Loire, and studied logic and philosophy with great success, and took there the degree of M.A. in 1624. In 1636 three fellowships were founded by Charles I at Oxford, at the colleges of Exeter, Pembroke, and Jesus, at the instance of Archbishop Laud, for scholars from Guernsey and Jersey (Heylyn, Life of Laud, p. 336; Laud, Works, Anglo-Cath. Lib., vol. v. part i. p. 140), and Brevint was appointed in 1637 to that at Jesus, on the recommendation of the ministers and chief inhabitants of his native island (Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 534). On becoming resident at Oxford he requested the confirmation of his foreign degree. This was opposed by Laud, 'things being at Saumur as they were reported.' Writing to the vice-chancellor, on 19 May and 3 Nov. 1637, he expresses his satisfaction at hearing that 'the Guernsey [Jersey] man is so well a deserver in Jesus College,' but wishes 'that he should be made to know the difference of a master of art at Oxford and Saumur,' and 'the ill consequences' which might follow if his degree were confirmed, and begs the vice-chancellor to 'persuade the young man to stay, and then give him his degree with as much honour as
