He did not, however, follow the fortunes of Napoleon in his adversity, for during the Hundred Days he accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent. On the final overthrow of the empire, Bourrienne accepted office under Louis XVIII. He was elected a deputy in 1815, and retained his seat till 1830. The revolution of that year, and the consequent loss of his fortune, impaired his reason, and he spent the two last years of his life in a lunatic asylum at Caen. The "Memoirs of Bourrienne," written by himself, and published in 1829-1831 in 10 vols., contain many interesting particulars respecting the private life of Napoleon, and have had a wide circulation in this country as well as in France, though the accuracy of many of the author's statements has been called in question by the partisans of Bonaparte. The mistakes of the "Memoirs" were exposed in a work, entitled "Bourrienne et ses erreurs volontairs et involontairs," Paris, 1830, 2 vols. 8vo. Bourrienne was also the author of a drama, entitled "The Unknown," and of some political pamphlets.—J. T.
BOURRIT, Marc Théodore, a Swiss naturalist, was born at Geneva in 1739, and died at a country house in the vicinity of that city on the 7th October, 1819. He was early distinguished as a painter in enamel; but feeling an irresistible desire to explore the Alps, he obtained a place as chorister in the cathedral of Geneva, and afterwards divided his time between the duties of this position and numerous excursions in all parts of the mountains. In 1774 he published his "Description des glaciers de Savoie," which was dedicated to Victor-Amadeo, king of Sardinia. In 1781, having visited Paris, and been presented by Buffon to Louis XVI., he dedicated his "Description des Alpes Pennines et Rhétiennes" to that king, for which he was rewarded by a pension. In 1783 and 1785 Bourrit and Saussure attempted in vain to reach the summit of Mont Blanc, in which they only succeeded in 1787. On the breaking out of the French revolution Bourrit of course lost his pension. He is described as having exhibited much kindness to the royalist emigrants who passed through Geneva. For this he was rewarded, on the restoration of the Bourbons, by the continuance of his pension by Louis XVIII. The writings of Bourrit consist almost entirely of descriptions of the Alps and their glaciers. Of the second work mentioned above a new and greatly enlarged edition was published in 1787 in three volumes octavo.—W. S. D.
BOURRU, Edme Claude, a French physician, librarian and lecturer on pharmacy to the faculty of Paris, and latterly vice-president of the Academy of Medicine, born at Paris in 1737; died in 1823. He published, besides a number of translations from the English, "Des Moyens les plus propres à eteindre les maladies venériénnes;" and "Eloge funèbre de Guillotin."
BOURSAULT, Edme, born at Musei-l'Evèque in Burgundy in 1638, and died in 1701. He came to Paris in 1651, and at this time he could only speak the patois of his native district. He, however, wrote a tract which flattered and pleased Louis XIV., and he would have been appointed tutor to the dauphin if he had known any Latin. As it was, he was given a pension for conducting a gazette, written in humorous verse. This went on very well till he began, to satirize the Franciscans and the capuchins, and found how dangerous it was to quiz the clergy. He was silenced, the gazette was suppressed, his pension withdrawn, and our poor hero threatened with the Bastile. He was author of several successful theatrical pieces, of some romances, and of fables, which the French critics hesitate to dispraise, but in a tone of courtesy say have not the naïvete of La Fontaine or the precision of Phædrus.—J. A., D.
BOURSIER, Laurent-François, born in 1679, died in 1749, was a doctor of the Sorbonne, and, as one of the chiefs of the Jansenist party, took an active part in the religious controversies of the time.—J. D. E.
BOURSIER, Louise Bourgeois, a French matron who attended Mary of Medicis, wife of Henry IV., in her accouchments, and published "Recit veritable de la naissance de messeigneurs et dames les enfants de France," 1625. Her "Observations sur la Sterilité" were translated into Latin, German, and Dutch.
BOUSSINGAULT, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph-Dieudonné, an acute and enterprising physicist and chemist, born in Paris in 1802. Boussingault had the advantage of a residence of several years in the equatorial parts of America, whither he had proceeded under the auspices of an English mining company. Many of the grander telluric phenomena being especially manifested in those regions, he was enabled to survey them with unusual care; and he has given us accordingly, excellent notices and ingenious speculations on the causes of earthquakes, on matter ejected by volcanoes, &c. We farther owe him important contributions to meteorology, some of which consist of observations, others are speculative, and a few practical, such as his method of determining the mean temperature. As a chemist he wrought along with Dumas. His papers determine accurately the proportions of the constituent elements of our atmosphere; and he has written much that is valuable on the relations between the organic and inorganic worlds—a subject of which, his favourite one, rural economy, forms a minor although an essential part. See the Annales de Chimie and the Comptes Rendus, passim.—J. P. N.
BOUSYRY, Cheref-Eddin-Abou-Abdallah-Mohamed, an Arabian poet, born in Upper Egypt in 1211; died in 1294 or 1296. He composed several poems in honour of Mahomet, of which the most celebrated is entitled "Bordah." Manuscript copies of this poem are preserved in the libraries of Paris, Ley den, and Oxford.
BOUTARD, François, a French litterateur, born at Troyes in 1664; died in 1729. Horace was the model he set up for himself in his Latin verses; and he flattered himself that he resembled the Latin poet not only in his writings, but in his stature, face, and personal appearance. But whatever may have been the degree of personal or intellectual similarity between him and the Venusian bard, it is certain that Bossuet was the Mæcenas to whom he owed his elevation.—J. G.
BOUTATS, Frederick, a Flemish engraver, born at Antwerp about 1620. He produced great portraits of Oliver Cromwell and Christina of Sweden. Gaspar, his younger brother, worked for the booksellers, and produced some antipapal massacres of St. Bartholomew. Gerard was another brother, and Philibert, Frederick's son, also followed the old trade.—W. T.
BOUTERWEK, Friedrich, author of an elaborate "History of Poetry and Eloquence from the close of the thirteenth century," was born at Okr, near Goslar, in Lower Saxony, April 15, 1766. In early life he devoted himself almost entirely to the reading of poetry and works of imagination; and it was not until he had passed through a course of study at the Carolinum in Brunswick, that his mind took a direction towards more solid and serious pursuits. He first turned his attention to jurisprudence, but in the second year of his academic career he relinquished that study, at the suggestion of some friends, who recommended him to cultivate his taste for poetry and poetical composition. He now wrote some poems, and a romance entitled "Graf Donemar." The latter was published at Göttingen in 1791. He had already quitted Göttingen, but neither in Hanover nor in Berlin, whither he went with a recommendation from Gleim, did he meet with the success which he anticipated. Returning to his old place of residence, and having become convinced of the misdirection of his efforts up to this time, he turned his thoughts to philosophy and the historic study of literature—subjects which he prosecuted thenceforward with untiring zeal. His active mind led him to take an interest in all questions of a philosophic cast, and he became an enthusiastic disciple of Kant, on whose system he lectured at Göttingen in 1791. In 1802 he was appointed ordinary professor of philosophy in the university of that city, and four years later obtained the title of court counsellor. Bouterwek's philosophical speculations may be said to have commenced with Kant, and ended with Jacobi. His work, entitled "Ideen zu einen allgemeinen apodiktik," was superseded by his "Lehrbuch der Philosophischen Wissenschaften," and his "Religion der Vernunft." These works, together with his "Asthetik," raised against him a host of formidable adversaries. The work, however, by which he is best known is his "Geschichte des neueren Poesie und Beredsamkrit," or Literary History of Poetry and Eloquence from the close of the thirteenth century, in which he takes a historical and critical survey of the literature of the principal nations of Europe. The work consists of twelve volumes, published at Göttingen at different times. The first volume appeared in 1805, and the last, which contains an elaborate index to the whole, in 1819. Sismondi, in his Litterature du Midi de l'Europe, implicitly adopts the opinions of Bouterwek on Spanish and Portuguese literature; and, indeed, on that subject he says little of importance that is not borrowed directly from the German critic. Bouterwek's work, as a whole, is marked by great perspicuity and precision, and a most indefatigable zeal
