Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/385

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Burnaby
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Burnaby

among the foremost London architects for a design for the foreign and war offices, the other two being Professor Cockerell and Mr. Fergussun, author of the well-known 'History of Architecture.' To his conduct in that capacity an appreciative tribute is paid by Sir Gilbert Scott in his 'Life.' Burn's personal character is thus described by his friend Professor Donaldson: 'He was frank and plain-spoken, occasionally even to roughness: no flatterer, prudent in counsel, and firm in his opinion when once formed. He vas a man of the highest honour, integrity, and independence.' Habitually reticent and desirous of avoiding criticism, to which he was sensitive, he has been wrongly accused of selfishness and jealousy. He was always ready to aid less successful professional brethren. He died at his residence, 6 Stratton Street, Piccadilly, on 15 Feb. 1870, and waa buried on 19 Feb. in Kensal Green cemetery.

[Builder, 1870 and 1882.]

BURNABY, ANDREW (1734?–1812), divine and traveller, was the eldest son of the Rev. Andrew Burnaby of Brampton Manor House, Huntingdonshire, by Hannah, daughter of George Beaumont of Darton, Yorkshire. His father was vicar of St. Margaret’s, Leicester, rector of Asfordby (where his eldest son was born), and a prebendary of Lincoln (16 Sept. 1737). Andrew was admitted into Westminster School in 1748, at the age of fourteen, and proceeded thence to Queens College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B.A. (1754) and M.A. (1767). In 1759 and 1760 Burnaby made an extended tour ‘through the middle settlements of North America,’ and afterwards (1775) published an account of his travels, with ‘Observations on the State of the Co1onies,’ which reached a second edition within a year of its first publication, and was reissued a third time in a much enlarged form in 1798. Burnaby's work indicates close observation, but he omits all reference to current politics. About 1762 Burnaby became chaplain to the British factory at Leghorn, and in the absence of Sir John Dick, the English consul, from 1764 discharged the functions of the consulate, with the title of proconsul. He resigned the st about 1767. During the five years of lift sojourn in Italy he explored all parts of the country, and in 1766 travelled in Corsica, and made the acquaintance of Paoli. He published in a very limited edition, dated 1804, an account of the tour, together with the letters that Paoli addressed to him between 1769 and 1802. In 1769, soon after his return from Leghorn, Burnaby was nominated to the vicarage of Greenwich, and in 1786 he was presented to the archdeaconry of Leicester, in the Lincoln diocese. He succeeded to large paternal estates in Huntingdunshire on his father’s death, about 1767; but Baggrave Hall, Leicestershire, the inheritance of his wife Anna, daughter of John Edwyn, whom he married 20 Feb. 1770, was his favourite place of residence. He died at Blackheath 9 March 1812, and his wife died ten days later. Arthur Collins describes him as ‘a person of address and affable behaviour’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. viii. 394). He had four sons and one daughter. The third son of his heir, Edwyn Andrew Burnaby, was the father of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby [q. v.] Burnaby was the author of many published sermons and charges. A collective edition was issued in 1805.

[Burke’s Landed Gentry, s.v. ‘Burnaby of Baggrave Hall;’ Nichols’s Lit. Anecd. ix. 675-80; Gent. Mag., 1812, pt, i. 301-2; Welch's Alumni Westmonast. p. 348.]

BURNABY, CHARLES (?) (fl. 1700–1703), is the author of four comedies. The dedications to the printed editions of two of his plays are to the Duke of Ormonde and Lord Lorne, with whom he appears to have been on terms of some intimacy, and his prefaces show him to have had a fair education and to have been a man about town. He is first mentioned as the author of three plays, and as a ‘gentleman of the Inner Temple,’ and of ‘a university education,’ by Giles Jacob in the ‘Poetical Register’ (1723). This information, with the addition of a fourth play, is given in the list of dramatic poets affixed to Whincop’s ‘Scanderbeg.’ The name of Charles Burnaby is to be found at neither university and at neither Temple. In the ‘Athenæ Oxonienses’ (ed. Bliss), iv. 482, mention is made of a William Burnaby, son of William Burnaby, who was born in London, became a commoner of Merton College, Oxford, in the beginning of 1691, spent two years there, and went to the Middle Temple. With another writer, unnamed, he is responsible for the first translation of the ‘Satyricon,' &c., of Petronius Arbiter, published in London, 1694, sm. 8vo, the year following the appearance in Rotterdam of the ‘Satyricon’ completed from the fictitious manuscript of Belgrade. As none of the plays attributed to Burnaby bears any name of author, it seems possible that they are the work of William Burnaby rather than of Charles. The plays assigned to Burnaby, all of them comedies, are four: 1. ‘The Reform'd Wife,’ 4to, 1700. 2. ‘The Ladies’ Visiting Day,’ 4to, 1701; reprinted with the addition of a new scene, 4to, 1708.