municipal de la ciutat de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1892). The spread of the revolutionary movement is traced by M. Gil Maestre, in his El Anarquismo en España, y el especial de Barcelona (Madrid, 1897), and in his La Criminalidad en Barcelona (Barcelona, 1886).
BARCELONA, a town and port of Venezuela, capital of the state of Bermudez, on the Neveri river, 3 m. from its mouth and 12 m. by rail from the port of Guanta, which has superseded the incommodious river port in the trade of this district. Pop. (est. 1904) 13,000. Built on the border of a low plain and having a mean annual temperature of 82° F., the town has the reputation of being unhealthy. There are salt works and important coal deposits in its vicinity, the latter at Naricual and Capiricual, 12 m. distant by rail. Though the adjacent country is fertile, its prosperity has greatly declined, and the exports of coffee, sugar, cacao and forest products are much less important than formerly. The town dates from 1637, when it was located at the foot of the Cerro Santo and was called Nueva Barcelona; it reached a state of much prosperity and commercial importance before the end of the century. The War of Independence, however, and the chronic political disorders that followed nearly ruined its industries and trade.
BARCELONNETTE, a town in the department of Basses-Alpes, in the S.E. of France. Pop. (1906) 2075. It is built at a height of 3717 ft. on the right bank of the Ubaye river, on which it is the most important place. It is situated in a wide and very fertile valley, and is surrounded by many villas, built by natives who have made their fortune in Mexico, and are locally known as les Américains. The town itself is mainly composed of a long street (flanked by two others), which is really the road from Grenoble to Cuneo over the Col de l'Argentière (6545 ft.). The only remarkable buildings in the town are a striking clock-tower of the 15th century (the remains of a Franciscan convent) and the Musée Chabrand, which contains a very complete collection of birds, both European and extra-European.
Refounded in 1231 by Raymond Bérenger IV., count of Provence (he was of the family of the counts of Barcelona, whence the name of the town he rebuilt), Barcelonnette passed to Savoy in 1388 (formal cession in 1419), and in 1713 by the treaty of Utrecht was ceded to France in exchange for the valleys of Exilles, Fénestrelles, and Château Dauphin (Casteldelfino). It was the birth-place of J. A. Manuel (1775–1827), the well-known Liberal orator at the time of the Restoration of 1815, after whom the principal square of the town is named.
See F. Arnaud, Barcelonnette et ses environs (Guide du C. A. F.) (1898), and La Vallée de Barcelonnette (1900). (W. A. B. C.)
BARCLAY, ALEXANDER (c. 1476–1552), British poet, was born about 1476. His nationality is matter of dispute, but William Bulleyn, who was a native of Ely, and probably knew him when he was in the monastery there, asserts that he was born “beyonde the cold river of Twede”; moreover, the spelling of his name and the occasional Scottish words in his vocabulary point to a northern origin. His early life was spent at Croydon, but it is not certain whether he was educated at Oxford or Cambridge. It may be presumed that he took his degree, as he uses the title of “Syr” in his translation of Sallust, and in his will he is called doctor of divinity. From the numerous incidental references in his works, and from his knowledge of European literature, it may be inferred that he spent some time abroad. Thomas Cornish, suffragan bishop in the diocese of Bath and Wells, and provost of Oriel College, Oxford, from 1493 to 1507, appointed him chaplain of the college of St Mary Ottery, Devonshire. Here he translated Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, and even introduced his neighbours into the satire:—
| “For if one can flatter, and beare a Hauke on his fist, He shall be parson of Honington or Cist.” |
The death of his patron in 1513 apparently put an end to his connexion with the west, and he became a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Ely. In this retreat he probably wrote his eclogues, but in 1520 “Maistre Barkleye, the Blacke Monke and Poete” was desired to devise “histoires and convenient raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house withal” at the meeting between Henry VIII. and Francis I. at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He at length became a Franciscan monk of Canterbury. It is presumed that he conformed with the change of religion, for he retained under Edward VI. the livings of Great Baddow, Essex, and of Wokey, Somerset, which he had received in 1546, and was presented in 1552 by the dean and chapter of Canterbury to the rectory of All Hallows, Lombard Street, London. He died shortly after this last preferment at Croydon, Surrey, where he was buried on the 10th of June 1552. All the evidence in Barclay’s own work goes to prove that he was sincere in his reproof of contemporary follies and vice, and the gross accusations which John Bale[1] brings against his moral character may be put down to his hatred of Barclay’s cloth.
The Ship of Fools was as popular in its English dress as it had been in Germany. It was the starting-point of a new satirical literature. In itself a product of the medieval conception of the fool who figured so largely in the Shrovetide and other pageants, it differs entirely from the general allegorical satires of the preceding centuries. The figures are no longer abstractions; they are concrete examples of the folly of the bibliophile who collects books but learns nothing from them, of the evil judge who takes bribes to favour the guilty, of the old fool whom time merely strengthens in his folly, of those who are eager to follow the fashions, of the priests who spend their time in church telling “gestes” of Robin Hood and so forth. The spirit of the book reflects the general transition between allegory and narrative, morality and drama. The Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brant was essentially German in conception and treatment, but his hundred and thirteen types of fools possessed, nevertheless, universal interest. It was in reality sins and vices, however, rather than follies that came under his censure, and this didactic temper was reflected in Barclay. The book appeared in 1494 with woodcuts said to have been devised and perhaps partly executed by Brant himself. In these illustrations, which gave an impulse to the production of “enblems” and were copied in the English version, there appears a humour quite absent from the text. In the Latin elegiacs of the Stultifera Navis (1497) of Jacob Locher the book was read throughout Europe. Barclay’s The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde was first printed by Richard Pynson in 1509. He says he translated “oute of Laten, Frenche, and Doche,” but he seems to have been most familiar with the Latin version. He used a good deal of freedom in his translation, “sometyme addynge, sometyme detractinge and takinge away suche thinges as semeth me necessary and superflue.” The fools are given a local colour, and Barclay appears as the unsparing satirist of the social evils of his time. At the end of nearly every section he adds an envoi of his own to drive home the moral more surely. The poem is written in the ordinary Chaucerian stanza, and in language which is more modern than the common literary English of his day.
Certayne Ecloges of Alexander Barclay, Priest, written in his youth, were probably printed as early as 1513, although the earliest extant edition is that in John Cawood’s reprint (1570) of the Ship of Fools. They form, with the exception of Henryson’s Robin and Makyn, the earliest examples of the English pastoral. The first three eclogues, in the form of dialogues between Coridon and Cornix, were borrowed from the Miseriae Curialium of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.), and contain an eulogy of John Alcock, bishop of Ely, the founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. The fourth is based on Mantuan’s eclogue, De consuetudine divitum erga poetas, with large additions. It contains the “Descrypcion of the towre of Virtue and Honour,” an elegy on Sir Edward Howard, lord high admiral of England, who perished in the attack on the French fleet in the harbour of Brest in 1513. The fifth, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, also without date, is entitled the “Fyfte Eglog of Alexandre Barclay of the Cytezen and the uplondyshman” and is also based on Mantuan. Two shepherds, Amintas and Faustus, discuss the familiar theme of the respective merits of town and country life, and relate a quaint fable of the origin of the different classes of society. Barclay’s pastorals contain many pictures of rustic life as he knew it. He describes for instance the Sunday games in the village, football, and the struggle for food at great feasts;
- ↑ Script. Ill. Maj. Brit. (1557, Cent. ix. No. 66).
