Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/374

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BAI
342
BAI

establish a seminary at Heidenheim, but his failure involved him in debt, and he sought refuge in Prussia. At Halle he published a number of characteristic tracts and treatises, such as the "Bible in Miniature." In the morning he read lectures on philosophy, and criticism on Juvenal and Tacitus; and in the evening he officiated as the jolly landlord of a tavern which he had fitted up in the neighbourhood, and in which, having dismissed his wife and children, he had made a concubine of his maid-servant. But some doings of a secret society over which he presided having oozed out, he was sent to the fortress of Magdeburg; and on being released, after a year's confinement, he died April 23, 1793. Bahrdt's life and labours were rationalism in caricature.—J. E.

BAI, Tommaso, a musician, was born at Crevalcuore, near Bologna, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and died at Rome, December 22, 1714. He was appointed master of the Sistine chapel, in which he had been for some time a singer, the year before his death. His "Miserere," the only one deemed worthy a place with that of Allegri, until the production of that by Baini, was first performed in 1712, and has since then been always given at the early morning service on Good Friday, save on two occasions, when pieces of other composers were substituted for it, which were both withdrawn in its favour. He wrote also some masses and motets.—G. A. M.

BAIARDO, Andrea. This poet's name is sometimes written Baiardi. He was a native of Parma, and held military rank in the service of the duke of Milan, and was the lord of the castle of Albari in the neighbourhood of Parma. He was married, and is described as being attached to his wife, though, in his poems, two mistresses are celebrated, one of whom he calls his Aurora, the other his Phœnix. He describes himself as a slave to the latter for twenty-five years. How far the loves of Italian poets are allegorical or physical, there is always some difficulty in discovering, and the wife of Baiardo may have had little or nothing to complain of, unless she was compelled to listen to her husband's verses. His principal poem is a romance in octave stanzas, in which the loves of Adriano and Narcissa are related. It was written at the request of Fenice, Baiardo's fair Phœnix. The poem, Quadrio tells us, has been, through mistake, referred in books of authority to Boiardo, the author of the Inamorato. A volume of lyrical poems of his was published at Milan in 1756, and others are said to be still unpublished, in the possession of his family. The precise dates of his birth and death are unknown; he was living in 1521.—J. A., D.

BAIARDO or BAIARDI, Ottavo Antonio, born about the year 1690. He was one of the first collaborators to that magnificent work "Le antichità di Ercolano esposte conqualche spiegazione." He left also some poetical compositions unedited. This antiquarian died about the year 1765.—A. C. M.

BAIDER, Simon, a German sculptor of the fifteenth century; executed in 1470 the bas-reliefs of the gates of the cathedral of Constanz, his native town, in the style of Syrlin, the Elder.—R. M.

BAIDHAR or BAISSAR, king of Egypt, lived at an uncertain epoch. He divided his kingdom among his four sons, Cabth, Ishmoum, Atrib, and Ssa.

BAIDHU-KHAN or BAIDU-OGUL, a Tartar or Mongolian king of the race of Djenghiskhan, died in 1294. In order to place him on the throne his partizans had put his predecessor to death; but Gazan, the governor of Khorazan, sent an army against him, and Baidhu, deserted even by his own relations, was defeated and put to death by Neuruz, general of Gazan, after a reign of only eight months.

BAIER, Johann Wilhelm, was born at Jena in 1675, and died at Altorf in 1729. His two principal works are entitled, "Disputatio de Behemoth et Leviathan, Elephante et Balæna," Altorf, 1708; and "Disputatio de Fossilibus Diluvii Universi Monumentis," Altorf, 1712.

BAIER, John James, a physician and naturalist, was born at Jena on 14th June, 1677, and died 14th July, 1735. He published a book on fossils and various botanical monographs and papers in the Nova Acta; also an account of the medicinal plants in the garden of the university of Altdorf.

BAIF, Jean Antoine de, a natural son of Lazare de Baif, Abbé de Grenetiere; born at Venice in 1532, while his father was ambassador there. Lazare was a man of considerable talents, and several works of his remain in Latin and French. He translated the Electra of Sophocles, and the Hecuba of Euripides into French verse; and he took anxious care of his son's education. Jean Dorat was then in the height of his reputation, which, for classical literature, was well deserved. In his own day he was called the French Pindar, and the office of "Poet-royal" was created for him. Scaliger says that Auratus—such was his name among the gods, a name fabricated from the French D'orat—composed 50,000 verses, Greek and Latin. Nobody of any high rank married that was not epithalamiumized—no heir to a kingdom or a title was born that was not welcomed into the world with song. Still, the schoolmaster was a good schoolmaster, and to him young De Baif was sent. It is not possible, within our limits, to give any sketch of the antecedent state of French poetry; but De Baif's fortune was cast on a day of change, and Dorat was not only his classical-instructor, but also the teacher of Ronsard, Belleau, and Du Bellay. "One saw," says Du Verdier, "a troop of poets rush from the school of Jean Dorat, as from the Trojan horse." Du Bellay was the leader of this host. The object of the classicists was to reform the French language and literature on the model of the Greek and Latin. Experiments were made in versification. Hexameters, pentameters, trimeters, made their appearance in France, with no better success than in Italy and England. Du Bellay's voice cheered on the reformers. "Frenchmen," said he, "adorn your temples with the classic spoils—pillage the Delphic temple—fear not the dumb Apollo—seize the Roman capitol—make it your own, like the Gauls of old—heed not the clamorous geese that would defend it." On rushed the "brigade," as they were first called. They soon assumed, or were given, another name, which still distinguishes them—"The Pleiades," or "Pleiad," as it was more often written. They were seven—Dorat, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Thyard, De Baif, Jodelle, and Belleau. Many of their poems are wholly free from the affectation of latinized and "aureate" words, but they commenced by corrupting their native language in this way, and thus provoked the satire of Rabelais (book ii., chap, vi.), who holds it as a decided point, "that we ought to speak the common language." De Baif thought to enrich the French language, and was proud of every donation from ordinary forms. His verses, formed in imitation of the classical metres, he called "Baifins." He formed an alphabet for himself, and an odd thing it was—ten vowels, nineteen consonants, eleven diphthongs, and three triphthongs. He set his own verses to music, and obtained a patent from Charles IX. for an academy of poetry and music. De Baif had concerts, which were attended by the kings, Charles IX. and Henry III. This was the first attempt to create a literary "society" in France. De Baif died at Paris, poor and neglected, in 1592. Of De Baif, Cardinal Perron said that he was "a very good man, but a very bad poet."—J. A., D.

BAIF, Lazare de, or BAFIUS, a French scholar and diplomatist, who died in 1547. He was a councillor under Francis I., and ambassador at Venice and in Germany. Besides translating from Sophocles and Euripides, he left treatises "De Re Vestiaria," "De Re Navali," and "De Re Vascularia." Died in 1547. Du Bellay says that he was the first to introduce from the Greek the words epigram, elegy, &c.—J. B.

BAIL, Charles Joseph, a French publicist, born at Bethune in 1777; died 20th February, 1827. He at first embraced the profession of arms, and took part in the campaign of Belgium in 1793. In 1817 he was charged with the administrative organization of the kingdom of Westphalia, and was appointed to the office of inspector of reviews, which he held until 1818. He subsequently engaged as a contributor to various works on history, political economy, &c. His works, published after his death, evince varied and profound erudition.—G. M.

BAILAY, Nathaniel, an English grammarian of the eighteenth century; author of a work, entitled "Dictionarium Britannicum, quo continentur Etymologiæ Verborum," 1736.

BAILDON, Joseph, a gentleman of the chapel royal during part of the reigns of George II. and George III., and organist of St. Luke's church. Old Street, London. He gained one of the first prizes given by the Catch Club in 1763, for a catch; and a second for his fine anacreontic glee, "When gay Bacchus fills my breast," in 1766. This is all the information we can gather concerning him.—E. F. R.

BAILEY, Jacob W., an American chemist and naturalist of the present century, died of consumption on 26th February, 1857. He was a proficient in chemistry, mineralogy, and botany, and especially devoted his attention to microscopic researches. He did much for microscopic geology, and his papers on fossil