BELMEIS or BEAUMES, Richard de, bishop of London in the reign of Henry I., was advanced to the see through the interest of Roger Montgomery, earl of Shropshire, and consecrated July 26, 1108. He was sometimes called Rufus, to distinguish him from his nephew of the same age. He was appointed by the king, warden of the marches between England and Wales, and held the office three years, during which he resided at Shrewsbury. He was a most liberal benefactor to the cathedral of St. Paul, and founded a convent at St. Osith in Essex. Becoming paralysed, he intended to have resigned his bishopric, but was prevented by death. He expired January 16, 1127, and was buried at St. Osith.—T. J.
BELMEIS or BEAUMES, Richard de, nephew of the preceding, was bishop of London in the reign of King Stephen. He was consecrated at Canterbury in the presence of all the bishops of England, except Henry of Winchester, who, nevertheless, approved the choice. He died May 4, 1162, leaving behind him a reputation for singular eloquence. It is said that the latter part of his life was full of affliction, and that for several years he was unable to speak.—T. J.
BELMISSERO, Paul, an Italian physician and poet, lived in the first part of the sixteenth century. He dedicated several of his works to Francis I. and Pope Paul III., to the latter of whom he was physician. He published a collection of Latin poems, 1534, 4to.
* BELMONTET, Louis, born at Montauban in 1799. With the elevation of Napoleon III. to the imperial throne, the public hailed the laureate of the restored empire in the person of M. Belmontet, whose muse rose to the highest Pindaric flights in celebration of the new Augustan age. Letters were to attain a degree of lustre, under princely patronage, which would put to shame the drooping and sickly products of the unfriendly air of constitutional liberty. Unhappily for promises made under a factitious inspiration, the literary glory of the empire, so far as poetry is concerned, remains in the solo representative hands of Louis Belmontet. Whatever may be his own inherent worth, he enjoys the advantage of reigning alone. Like others whose minds have matured into an estimation of the value of absolutism, M. Belmontet sowed his political wild oats amongst the Carbonari; and became, in 1820, after having made his native town too hot to hold himself and his father, the prison director, together, compromised in an abortive attempt at insurrection in Paris. In 1827 the poet prophesied, in a Pindaric ode, the downfall of royalties; but, two years afterwards, so charmed the duchess of Berry by the courtly grace with which he presented the MS. of a tragedy, that she offered him a pension, which, it is only fair to say, he refused. Upon the advent of the Orleans dynasty, M. Belmontet sought out Queen Hortense, mother of Louis Napoleon, for the purpose of advising her to lay claim to the throne, which she refused; on which the poet turned his prophetic eye in another direction, and, for having promised France the blessings of a republic, was imprisoned; but, as the opposition journals raised a clamour, was soon set free, to propose as a toast at a public banquet, "the fall of kings who separate from the people." Louis Napoleon at length settled his Bonaparteism by standing godfather for his first-born in 1836, from which, except in the case of some flattering verses to the count de Paris, addressed to the care of his mother, the duchess of Orleans, he does not appear to have much wavered. The electors of Montauban rejected his offer to be their representative in the constitutional assembly of 1848; but his son's imperial godfather having stood sponsor for his candidature, he now sits in the corps legislatif for Castel-Sarrasin. The reporter's gallery being suppressed, no note has appeared of Belmontet's eloquence.—J. F. C.
BELOE, William, a learned English divine, born at Norwich in 1756. He received his classical education from the celebrated Dr. Parr, and afterwards graduated at Corpus Christi college, Cambridge. On his return to Norwich from the university. Dr. Parr, who was then master of the grammar school of that town, invited him to become his assistant. He was afterwards successively curate and vicar of Earlham, but the income from that living being insufficient for the wants of his family, he removed to London, and engaged in periodical writing, supporting with great zeal, during the heat of the American war, the views of the colonial party, and afterwards advocating with like warmth the cause of the first French revolutionists. His subsequent connection with the British Critic, a Review devoted to the advocacy of constitutional principles in politics, was by some attributed to mercenary motives, but the true ground of his alienation from the revolutionary party in France and their supporters in England, we may, without much charity, suppose to have been of a perfectly honourable character. In 1796 he was appointed rector of All Hallows, London Wall; in the following year collated to a stall in Lincoln cathedral, and in 1805 to one in St. Paul's. He was also assistant-librarian in the British Museum. Died in 1817. Of his numerous publications the following may be noticed—"Poems and Translations," 1788; "The History of Herodotus, from the Greek, with Notes," vols. 1791; "Translation of the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius," 1795; "Translation of the Arabian Nights, from the French;" "Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books," 6 vols., 1806-1812; "A Biographical Dictionary," in 15 vols., written conjointly with the Rev. W. Tooke.—J. S., G.
BELON, Peter, called in Latin Belonius, a French naturalist, was born at a hamlet in the French province of Mans about 1518, and died in 1564. He studied medicine at Paris; and, after taking the degree of doctor, he devoted himself particularly to natural history. He visited Germany with Valerius Cordus, a celebrated botanist, whose lectures he had attended at the university of Wittenberg. On his return he was made prisoner by the Spanish under the walls of Thionville, in the duchy of Luxemburg. He was afterwards freed from prison by a gentleman named Dehamme, who paid the price demanded for his ransom. He then returned to Paris and was patronised by the cardinal of Tournon, who permitted him to reside in the abbey of St. Germain. Here he had an opportunity of prosecuting his favourite science. He visited eastern countries at the expense of the cardinal, and spent the years from 1546 to 1549 in travelling. The places which he examined during his travels were Greece, Crete, Constantinople, Mount Athos, Thrace, Macedonia, Asia Minor, and various islands of the Ægean Sea. After visiting Rhodes, he proceeded to Alexandria and other parts of Egypt, then to Mount Sinai and Palestine, returning by Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Tarsus, and Anatolia, to Constantinople and Rome, where he met the cardinal de Tournon. During this journey Belon made large collections, and ascertained many important particulars relative to ruined cities. He published in Paris in 1553 his observations on the remarkable objects he had met with in his travels. He afterwards received a pension, and was allowed a handsome residence in the Bois de Boulogne, near which he was murdered by an unknown hand when returning from Paris one evening. Among his other works may be mentioned his histories of Fishes and of Birds, his account of "Coniferous Trees," and his "Remarks on Acclimatizing."—J. H. B.
BÉLOSTE, Augustin, a French surgeon, was born in Paris in 1654, and died at Turin on the 15th July, 1730. He was at first a surgeon in the French army, but subsequently became first surgeon to the mother of the king Victor Amadio of Sardinia. He published a work under the title of "Le Chirurgien de l'Hôpital et manière de guérir promptement les plaies," of which the first edition appeared at Paris in 1696, followed by others in various years up to 1715. In 1725 Béloste brought out a continuation of this work, the "Suite du Chirurgien de l'Hôpital," appended to which is an important treatise on the use of mercury, afterwards reprinted separately in 1738 and 1757. The entire work was translated into Italian by Sancassini, under the title of "Chirone in Campo," and published at Venice in 1729. Several of Béloste's letters also occur in the works of Sancassini, who speaks of him with praise. His great merit seems to have consisted in his appreciating and adopting the good methods recommended by the old surgeons, which had long been neglected, and even his mercurial pills, which his son endeavoured to convert into a secret remedy (pilules de Béloste), were described in the Pharmacopœia of Renou.—W. S. D.
BELOT, Madame Octavie, an authoress of some reputation, was born at Paris, March 3rd, 1719. Her maiden name was Guichard, and she married, in her 19th year, an avocat au parlement, who, on his death in 1757 left her in very straitened circumstances. She applied herself to writing, and produced several works of merit, as well as translations from the English. She contracted a second marriage with the president Durey de Meynières, whom she survived, and died in 1804.—J. F. W.
BELOW, James Frederick, a Swedish physician and naturalist, was born at Stockholm in 1669, and died in 1716. He was professor of medicine at Upsal and Lund. In 1705 he went
