Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/218

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ARB
194
ARB

an anonymous work; and Lownes, to whom it was afterwards offered, declined to look at an unfinished one. Afterwards, she dictated a third volume to her brother, and on its completion, the last-named publisher gave her twenty pounds for the manuscript. "Evelina appeared in 1778, and after a little while it began to be the talk of the town. It was criticised favourably by the monthly reviewers; it passed into the hands of Burke, Reynolds, Johnson, and Mrs. Thrale, all of whom accorded to it the highest praise. Dr. Johnson, in particular, declared to Mrs. Thrale that there were passages in it worthy of the pen of Richardson. Miss Burney, in her diary, states that for some time after its publication, no one—with the exception of her sister and her two brothers—suspected her of the authorship, and that she heard it read and criticised at a friend's house, and enjoyed, in silence, the ignorance of her relatives, and their guesses and speculations as to who could have written it. It was not till six months afterwards that the secret was made known to her father. She passed at one step from obscurity to celebrity; wherever she went—to Tunbridge, to Bath, to Brighton—she was the observed of all observers. In 1782 "Cecilia," her second book, appeared, which, although wanting in freshness and comic breadth and spirit, when compared with her former production, exhibits deeper knowledge of life and character, and is written with greater purity and grace of style. The proof sheets were read by Dr. Johnson, and several passages bear the impress of his massive hand. Its success was ample and immediate, the reading public received it with acclamation, her publisher paid her two thousand pounds, and, by universal consent, it was placed among the classics of her country.

After the publication of "Cecilia," Miss Burney resided some time with Mrs. Delaney, a widow lady, who lived at Windsor. The king and queen were frequent visitors at her house, and on one occasion the authoress of "Evelina" was introduced to George III. She has described the interview at considerable length in her diary; the king asked many questions relative to the writing and publication of "Evelina," to which the flattered and somewhat excited authoress rendered the most coherent replies her agitation would permit. If the condescension of the king fascinated Miss Burney, Miss Burney's simplicity and natural manners seem to have pleased the king. In 1786 she was appointed one of the dressers or keepers of the robes to Queen Charlotte, with a yearly salary of £200, apartments in the palace, a footman, and a carriage for the use of herself and her colleague, Mrs. Schwellenberg, a hideous German virago and disciplinarian. During her attendance on royalty she was expected to lay aside her pen, which had already brought her fame, and, in other circumstances, would have brought her fortune. Her duties were so severe that her health began to fail; her friends were alarmed, and urgent representations were made to her father to have his daughter removed from court. Dr. Burney, prouder of his daughter as keeper of her majesty's robes, than as the first novelist of the day, was, for a while, unwilling to comply; till, finally, her state of health became a matter of such grave import, that he was forced to yield, and she returned home after an absence of five years. In 1793 she married a French refugee officer, the Count D'Arblay, and shortly after resumed her pen. In 1795 her tragedy of "Edwy and Elgiva" was brought out at Drury Lane, and was "laughed to Lethe" by the whole house. So complete and final was its failure that it was never printed. The next year she produced "Camilla, a Picture of Youth;" it was published by subscription, and realized above three thousand pounds. Its success, however, was not remarkable. In 1802 she accompanied her husband to France, and in 1812 returned to England, and purchased a handsome villa, called Camilla cottage. In 1814 she produced her last and dullest fiction, entitled "The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties;" it found few admirers, obtained little praise, and has long since sunk into oblivion. For the "Wanderer" she is said to have received the large sum of £1500. Four years afterwards, her husband died at Bath. The only other literary work which Madame D'Arblay lived to give to the world, was the "Memoirs of her Father," which appeared in three octavo volumes in 1832. The portentous diction of the book took the public by surprise. The style of her novels is graceful and flowing; in the "Memoirs," every sentence is lumbering and involved; there is no ease, no gaiety, no naturalness; and the whole reads like an elaborate caricature of Johnson and Gibbon. There are few worse-written books in the language. In 1837 the Rev. Alexander Charles Louis D'Arblay, her only son and the sole issue of her marriage, died. For two years before this melancholy event, Madame D'Arblay was in feeble health, and affected with a disease in the eyes, which rendered reading or writing almost an impossibility. Her death took place at Bath, on the 6th of January, 1840, in her eighty-eighth year. Her diary, edited by her niece, was completed in seven volumes, in 1846; though it contains a good deal of trivial matter, and is full of small gossip, it is eminently readable. All the writer's amusing egotism and self-admiration are reflected in its pages. In spite of length, it is an invaluable supplement to the history of that time; and, after "Evelina" and "Cecilia," will be the most enduring monument of its author's genius.—A. S.

ARBOGAST, a native of Ireland, who became bishop of Strasburg a.d. 674. After leaving his native land he settled in Alsace, where he built an oratory, living in privacy and "serving God diligently in fasting and prayer." From time to time he went forth amongst the people, "instructing them in the knowledge and fear of God, and in the true invocation of that omnipotent power by his son Christ, reprehending their idolatrous worship, and confuting their fanatical opinions." He attracted the notice of Dagobert II., who, upon the death of St. Arnaud, promoted Arbogast to the see of Strasburg, which he governed for five years. He died in 679, and was buried near the common place of execution, called St. Michael's Mount, at his own request, "in imitation of Christ, who suffered without the walls of Jerusalem, in the place of the wicked." Many years afterwards, a monastery dedicated to his name was built over his tomb. Some homilies and a commentary on St. Paul's epistles are attributed to him.—(Bruschius.)—J. F. W.

ARBOGAST, Louis-Frederic-Antoine, a distinguished French mathematician, successively member of the legislative assembly and of the national convention, and professor of mathematics at Strasburg:—born in Alsace in 1759; died at Strasburg in 1803. Arbogast's great scientific work is the "Calcul des Derivations;" a book of which it is not too much to say, that it is one of the most fertile and suggestive of any of the great analytical treatises belonging to this remarkably fertile period. There is no doubt that Arbogast anticipated many of the conclusions and methods of the "Calcul des Fonctions" of Lagrange. The largeness of his views, and the extreme generalizing of his expressions, give his work indeed an aspect of cumbrousness which does not really belong to it; nor will any one wonder at this, when informed that Taylor's theorem and many other of our highest formulæ, are only particular cases of the theorem of Arbogast. To this mathematician belongs the honour of having first used and widely illustrated that separation of the symbols of operation from symbols of quantity, which marks a new and signal era in modern Analysis.—J. P. N.

ARBOGASTES, a Gaul who served in the Roman armies, in the latter part of the fourth century. Left in Italy by Theodosius as minister to Valentinian II., he virtually exercised sovereign power, while Valentinian retained merely the name of emperor. He at length secretly murdered Valentinian, and raised Eugenius to the purple in his stead. In 394, Theodosius marching against Eugenius and Arbogastes, entirely defeated them. Eugenius was taken and put to death. Arbogastes escaped, but soon after committed suicide.—E. M.

ARBOGASTES, Saint, bishop of Strasburg from 669, till his death in 687.

ARBOREUS, Jean, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and author of ingenious commentaries on difficult passages of Scripture, was born at Laon, about the beginning of the 16th century.

ARBORIO DI GATTINARA, Mercurino, a celebrated legist and diplomatist, of Italian extraction, was born at Verceil in 1465. In 1507 he was appointed first president of the parliament of Burgundy. Deprived of this position in 1518, through the envy of the nobility, he retired to the court of the Emperor Maximilian, after whose death he repaired to Spain, where he was made chancellor to Charles. In this capacity he drew up the treaty of Cambray, and the concordat between Charles and Clement VII. In 1529 he was made a cardinal. The treaty he negotiated the same year at Bologna, for the defence of Italy, was thought a masterpiece of diplomacy. Died at Inchspruck in 1530.—E. M.

ARBORIO DI GATTINARA, Angelo-Antonio, a kinsman of the preceding, archbishop of Turin, and an eloquent pulpit orator, was born at Pavia in 1658, and died in 1743.

ARBORIO DI GATTINARA, Giovanni-Mercurino, a