His brother, Louis Charles Armand Fouquet, known as the Chevalier de Belle-Isle (1693–1746), was also a soldier and a diplomatist. He served as a junior officer in the War of the Spanish Succession and as brigadier in the campaign of 1734 on the Rhine and Moselle, where he won the grade of maréchal de camp. He was employed under his brother in political missions in Bavaria and in Swabia in 1741–1742, became a lieutenant-general, fought in Bohemia, Bavaria and the Rhine countries in 1742–1743, and was arrested and sent to England with the marshal in 1744. On his release he was given a command in the Army of Piedmont. He fell a victim to his romantic bravery at the action of Exilles (Col de l’Assiette) on the 19th of July 1746.
See Jean de Maugre, Oraison funèbre du maréchal de Belleisle (Montmédy, 1762); R. P. de Neuville, Mémoires du maréchal duc de Belleisle (Paris, 1761); D. C. (Chevrier), La Vie politique et militaire du maréchal duc de Belleisle (London, 1760), and Testament politique du maréchal duc de Belleisle (Hague, 1762); Le Codicille et l’esprit ou commentaire des maximes du maréchal duc de Belleisle (Amsterdam, 1761); F. M. Chayert, Notice sur le maréchal de Belleisle (Metz, 1856); L. Leclerc, Éloge du maréchal de Belleisle (Metz, 1862); E. Michel, Éloge du maréchal de Belleisle (Paris, 1862); and Jobez, La France sous Louis XV (6 vols., Paris, 1868–1874).
BELLE ISLE, STRAIT OF, the more northern of the two channels connecting the Gulf of St Lawrence with the Atlantic Ocean. It separates northern Newfoundland from Labrador, and extends N.E. and S.W. for 35 m., with a breadth of 10 to 15 m. It derives its name from a precipitous granite island, 700 ft. in height, at its Atlantic entrance. On this lighthouses are maintained by the government of Canada and constant communication with the mainland is kept up by wireless telegraphy. The strait is in the most direct route from Europe to the St Lawrence, but is open only from June till the end of November, and even during this period navigation is often rendered dangerous by floating ice and fogs. Through it Jacques Cartier sailed in 1534. The southern or Cabot Strait, between Cape Ray in Newfoundland and Cape North in Cape Breton, was discovered later, and the expansion below Belle Isle was long known as La Grande Baie. Cabot Strait is open all the year, save for occasional inconvenience from drift ice.
BELLENDEN (Ballantyne or Bannatyne), JOHN (fl. 1533–1587), Scottish writer, was born about the end of the 15th century, in the south-east of Scotland, perhaps in East Lothian. He appears to have been educated, first at the university of St Andrews and then at that of Paris, where he took, the degree of doctor. From his own statement, in one of his poems, we learn that he had been in the service of James V. from the king’s earliest years, and that the post he held was clerk of accounts. At the request of James he undertook translations of Boece’s Historia Scotorum, which had appeared at Paris in 1527, and the first five books of Livy. As a reward for his versions, which he finished in 1533, he was appointed archdeacon of Moray and a canon of Ross. He was a strenuous opponent of the Reformation and was compelled to go into exile. He is said by some authorities to have died at Rome in 1550; by others to have been still living in 1587. His translation of Boece, entitled The History and Chronicles of Scotland, is a remarkable specimen of Scottish prose, distinguished by its freedom and vigour of expression. It was published in 1536; and was reprinted in 2 vols., edited by Maitland, in 1821. The translation of Livy was not printed till 1822 (also in 2 vols.). Two MSS. of the latter are extant, one, the older, in the Advocates’ library, Edinburgh (which was the basis of the normalized text of 1822), the other (c. 1550) in the possession of Mr Ogilvie Forbes of Boyndlie. An edition of the work was edited for the Scottish Text Society by Mr W. A. Craigie (2 vols. 1901, 1903). The second volume of this edition contains also a complete reprint of the portions of the holograph first draft which were discovered in the British Museum in 1902. Two poems by Bellenden—The Proheme to the Cosmographe and the Proheme of the History—appeared in the 1536 edition of the History of Scotland. Others, bearing his name in the well-known Bannatyne MS. collection, made by his namesake George Bannatyne (q.v.), may or may not be his. Sir David Lyndsay, in his prologue to the Papyngo, speaks vaguely of:
| “Ane cunnyng Clark quhilk wrythith craftelie Ane plant of poetis callit Ballendyne, Quhose ornat workis my wit can nocht defyne.” |
The chief sources of information regarding Belleriden’s life are the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, his own works and the ecclesiastical records.
BELLENDEN, WILLIAM, Scottish classical scholar. Hardly anything is known of him. He lived in the reign of James I. (VI. of Scotland), who appointed him magister libellorum supplicum or master of requests. King James is also said to have provided Bellenden with the means of living independently at Paris, where he became professor at the university, and advocate in the parliament. The date of his birth cannot be fixed, and it can only be said that he died later than 1625. The first of the works by which he is known was published anonymously in 1608, with the title Ciceronis Princeps, a laborious compilation of all Cicero’s remarks on the origin and principles of regal government, digested and systematically arranged. In 1612 there appeared a similar work, devoted to the consideration of consular authority and the Roman senate, Ciceronis Consul, Senator, Senatusque Romanus. His third work, De Statu Prisci Orbis, 1615, is a good outline of general history. All three works were combined in a single large volume, entitled De Statu Libri Tres, 1615, which was first brought into due notice by Dr Samuel Parr, who, in 1787, published an edition with a preface, famous for the elegance of its Latinity, in which he eulogized Burke, Fox and Lord North as the “three English luminaries.” The greatest of Bellenden’s works is the extensive treatise De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum, printed and published posthumously at Paris in 1633. The book is unfinished, and treats only of the first luminary, Cicero; the others intended were apparently Seneca and Pliny. It contains a most elaborate history of Rome and its institutions, drawn from Cicero, and thus forms a storehouse of all the historical notices contained in that voluminous author. It is said that nearly all the copies were lost on the passage to England. One of the few that survived was placed in the university library at Cambridge, and freely drawn upon by Conyers Middieton, the librarian, in his History of the Life of Cicero. Both Joseph Warton and Dr Parr accused Middleton of deliberate plagiarism, which was the more likely to have escaped detection owing to the small number of existing copies of Bellenden’s work.
BELLEROPHON, or Bellerophontes, in Greek legend, son of Glaucus or Poseidon, grandson of Sisyphus and local hero of Corinth. Having slain by accident the Corinthian hero Bellerus (or, according to others, his own brother) he fled to Tiryns, where his kinsman Proetus, king of Argos, received him hospitably and purged him of his guilt. But Anteia (or Stheneboea), wife of Proetus, became enamoured of Bellerophon, and, when he refused her advances, charged him with an attempt upon her virtue. Proetus thereupon sent him to Iobates, his wife’s father, king of Lycia, with a letter or sealed tablet, in which were instructions, apparently given by means of signs, to take the life of the bearer. Arriving in Lycia, he was received as a guest and entertained for nine days. On the tenth, being asked the object of his visit, he handed the letter to the king, whose first plan for complying with it was to send him to slay the Chimaera, a monster which was devastating the country. Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus (q.v.), kept up in the air out of the way of the Chimaera, but yet near enough to kill it with his spear, or, as he is at other times represented, with his sword or with a bow. He was next ordered out against the Solymi, a hostile tribe, and afterwards against the Amazons, from both of which expeditions he not only returned victorious, but also on his way back slew an ambush of chosen warriors whom Iobates had placed to intercept him. His divine origin was now proved; the king gave him his daughter in marriage; and the Lycians presented him with a large and fertile estate on which he lived (Apollodorus, ii. 3; Homer, Iliad, vi. 155). Bellerophon is said to have returned to Tiryns and avenged himself on Anteia: he persuaded her to fly with him on his winged horse, and then flung her into
