Part 7

BOHTLINGK, OTTO VON (1815-1004) German Sanskrit scholar, was born on the 30th of May (11th of June O.S.) 1815 at St Petersburg. Having studied (1833-1835) Oriental languages, particularly Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, at the university of St Petersburg, he continued his studies in Germany, first in Berlin and then (1839-1842) in Bonn. Returning to St Petersburg in 1842, he was attached to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and was elected an ordinary member of that society in 1855. In 1860 he was made "Russian state councillor," and later "privy councillor" with a title of nobility. In 1868 he settled at Jena, and in 1885 removed to Leipzig, where he resided until his death there on the 1st of April 1904. Bohtlingk was one of the most distinguished scholars of the 19th century, and his works are of pre-eminent value in the field of Indian and comparative philology. His first great work was an edition of Panini's _Acht Bucher grammatischer Regeln_ (Bonn, 1839-1840), which was in reality a criticism of Franz Bopp's philological methods. This book Bohtlingk again took up forty-seven years later, when he republished it with a complete translation under the title _Paninis Grammatik mit Ubersetzung_ (Leipzig, 1887). The earlier edition was followed by _Vopadevas Grammatik_ (St Petersburg, 1847); _Uber die Sprache der Jakuten_ (St Petersburg, 1851); _Indische Spruche_ (2nd ed. in 3 parts, St Petersburg, 1870-1873, to which an index was published by Blau, Leipzig, 1893); a critical examination and translation of _Chhandogya-upanishad (St Petersburg, 1889) and a translation of Brihadaranyaka-upanishad_ (St Petersburg, 1889). In addition to these he published several smaller treatises, notably one on the Sanskrit accents, _Uber den Accent im Sanskrit_ (1843). But his _magnum opus_ is his great Sanskrit dictionary, _Sanskrit-Worterbuch_ (7 vols., St Petersburg, 1853-1875; new ed. 7 vols., St Petersburg, 1879-1889), which with the assistance of his two friends, Rudolf Roth (1821-1895) and Albrecht Weber (b. 1825), was completed in twenty-three years.

BOHUN, the name of a family which plays an important part in English history during the 13th and 14th centuries; it was taken from a village situated in the Cotentin between Coutances and the estuary of the Vire. The Bohuns came into England at, or shortly after, the Norman Conquest; but their early history there is obscure. The founder of their greatness was Humphrey III., who in the latter years of Henry I., makes his appearance as a _dapifer_, or steward, in the royal household. He married the daughter of Milo of Gloucester, and played an ambiguous part in Stephen's reign, siding at first with the king and afterwards with the empress. Humphrey III. lived until 1187, but his history is uneventful. He remained loyal to Henry II. through all changes, and fought in 1173 at Farnham against the rebels of East Anglia. Outliving his eldest son, Humphrey IV., he was succeeded in the family estates by his grandson Henry. Henry was connected with the royal house of Scotland through his mother Margaret, a sister of William the Lion; an alliance which no doubt assisted him to obtain the earldom of Hereford from John (1199). The lands of the family lay chiefly on the Welsh Marches, and from this date the Bohuns take a foremost place among the Marcher barons. Henry de Bohun figures with the earls of Clare and Gloucester among the twenty-five barons who were elected by their fellows to enforce the terms of the Great Charter. In the subsequent civil war he fought on the side of Louis, and was captured at the battle of Lincoln (1217). He took the cross in the same year and died on his pilgrimage (June 1, 1220). Humphrey V., his son and heir, returned to the path of loyalty, and was permitted, some time before 1239, to inherit the earldom of Essex from his maternal uncle, William de Mandeville. But in 1258 this Humphrey fell away, like his father, from the royal to the baronial cause. He served as a nominee of the opposition on the committee of twenty-four which was appointed, in the Oxford parliament of that year, to reform the administration. It was only the alliance of Montfort with Llewelyn of North Wales that brought the earl of Hereford back to his allegiance. Humphrey V. headed the first secession of the Welsh Marchers from the party of the opposition (1263), and was amongst the captives whom the Montfortians took at Lewes. The earl's son and namesake was on the victorious side, and shared in the defeat of Evesham, which he did not long survive. Humphrey V. was, therefore, naturally selected as one of the twelve arbitrators to draw up the ban of Kenilworth (1266), by which the disinherited rebels were allowed to make their peace. Dying in 1275, he was succeeded by his grandson Humphrey VII. This Bohun lives in history as one of the recalcitrant barons of the year 1297, who extorted from Edward I. the _Confirmatio Cartarum_. The motives of the earl's defiance were not altogether disinterested. He had suffered twice from the chicanery of Edward's lawyers; in 1284 when a dispute between himself and the royal favourite, John Giffard, was decided in the latter's favour; and again in 1292 when he was punished with temporary imprisonment and sequestration for a technical, and apparently unwitting, contempt of the king's court. In company, therefore, with the earl of Norfolk he refused to render foreign service in Gascony, on the plea that they were only bound to serve with the king, who was himself bound for Flanders. Their attitude brought to a head the general discontent which Edward had excited by his arbitrary taxation; and Edward was obliged to make a surrender on all the subjects of complaint. At Falkirk (1298) Humphrey VII. redeemed his character for loyalty. His son, Humphrey VIII., who succeeded him in the same year, was allowed to marry one of the king's daughters, Eleanor, the widowed countess of Holland (1302). This close connexion with the royal house did not prevent him, as it did not prevent Earl Thomas of Lancaster, from joining the opposition to the feeble Edward II. In 1310 Humphrey VIII. figured among the Lords Ordainers; though, with more patriotism than some of his fellow-commissioners, he afterwards followed the king to Bannockburn. He was taken captive in the battle, but exchanged for the wife of Robert Bruce. Subsequently he returned to the cause of his order, and fell on the side of Earl Thomas at the field of Boroughbridge (1322). With him, as with his father, the politics of the Marches had been the main consideration; his final change of side was due to jealousy of the younger Despenser, whose lordship of Glamorgan was too great for the comfort of the Bohuns in Brecon. With the death of Humphrey VIII. the fortunes of the family enter on a more peaceful stage. Earl John (d. 1335) was inconspicuous; Humphrey IX. (d. 1361) merely distinguished himself as a captain in the Breton campaigns of the Hundred Years' War, winning the victories of Morlaix (1342) and La Roche Derrien (1347). His nephew and heir, Humphrey X., who inherited the earldom of Northampton from his father, was territorially the most important representative of the Bohuns. But the male line was extinguished by his death (1373). The three earldoms and the broad lands of the Bohuns were divided between two co-heiresses. Both married members of the royal house. The elder, Eleanor, was given in 1374 to Thomas of Woodstock, seventh son of Edward III.; the younger, Mary, to Henry, earl of Derby, son of John of Gaunt and afterwards Henry IV., in 1380 or 1381. From these two marriages sprang the houses of Lancaster and Stafford.

See J.E. Doyle's _Official Baronage of England_ (1886), the _Complete Peerage_ of G. E. C(okayne), (1867-1898); T.F. Tout's "Wales and the March during the Barons' War," in Owens College Historical Essays, pp. 87-136 (1902); J.E. Morris' _Welsh Wars of King Edward I._, chs. vi., viii. (1901). (H. W. C. D.)

BOIARDO, MATTEO MARIA, COUNT (1434-1404), Italian poet, who came of a noble and illustrious house established at Ferrara, but originally from Reggio, was born at Scandiano, one of the seignorial estates of his family, near Reggio di Modena, about the year 1434, according to Tiraboschi, or 1420 according to Mazzuchelli. At an early age he entered the university of Ferrara, where he acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin, and even of the Oriental languages, and was in due time admitted doctor in philosophy and in law. At the court of Ferrara, where he enjoyed the favour of Duke Borso d'Este and his successor Hercules, he was entrusted with several honourable employments, and in particular was named governor of Reggio, an appointment which he held in the year 1478. Three years afterwards he was elected captain of Modena, and reappointed governor of the town and citadel of Reggio, where he died in the year 1494, though in what month is uncertain.

Almost all Boiardo's works, and especially his great poem of the _Orlando Inamorato_, were composed for the amusement of Duke Hercules and his court, though not written within its precincts. His practice, it is said, was to retire to Scandiano or some other of his estates, and there to devote himself to composition; and Castelvetro, Vallisnieri, Mazzuchelli and Tiraboschi all unite in stating that he took care to insert in the descriptions of his poem those of the agreeable environs of his chateau, and that the greater part of the names of his heroes, as Mandricardo, Gradasse, Sacripant, Agramant and others, were merely the names of some of his peasants, which, from their uncouthness, appeared to him proper to be given to Saracen warriors. Be this as it may, the _Orlando Inamorato_ deserves to be considered as one of the most important poems in Italian literature, since it forms the first example of the romantic epic worthy to serve as a model, and, as such, undoubtedly produced Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_. Gravina and Mazzuchell have said, and succeeding writers have repeated on their authority, that Boiardo proposed to himself as his model the _Iliad_ of Homer; that Paris is besieged like the city of Troy; that Angelica holds the place of Helen; and that, in short, the one poem is a sort of reflex image of the other. In point of fact, however, the subject-matter of the poem is derived from the _Fabulous Chronicle_ of the pseudo-Turpin; though, with the exception of the names of Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver, and some other principal warriors, who necessarily figure as important characters in the various scenes, there is little resemblance between the detailed plot of the one and that of the other. The poem, which Boiardo did not live to finish, was printed at Scandiano the year after his death, under the superintendence of his son Count Camillo. The title of the book is without date; but a Latin letter from Antonia Caraffa di Reggio, prefixed to the poem, is dated the kalends of June 1495. A second edition, also without date, but which must have been printed before the year 1500, appeared at Venice; and the poem was twice reprinted there during the first twenty years of the 16th century. These editions are the more curious and valuable since they contain nothing but the text of the author, which is comprised in three books, divided into cantos, the third book being incomplete. But Niccolo degli Agostini, an indifferent poet, had the courage to continue the work commenced by Boiardo, adding to it three books, which were printed at Venice in 1526-1531, in 4to; and since that time no edition of the _Orlando_ has been printed without the continuation of Agostini, wretched as it unquestionably is. Boiardo's poem suffers from the incurable defect of a laboured and heavy style. His story is skilfully constructed, the characters are well drawn and sustained throughout; many of the incidents show a power and fertility of imagination not inferior to that of Ariosto, but the perfect workmanship indispensable for a great work of art is wanting. The poem in its original shape was not popular, and has been completely superseded by the _Rifacimento_ of Francesco Berni (q.v.).

The other works of Boiardo are--(1) _Il Timone_, a comedy, Scandiano, 1500, 4to; (2) _Sonnetti e Canzoni_, Reggio, 1499, 4to; (3) _Carmen Bucolicon_, Reggio, 1500, 4to; (4) _Cinque Capitoli in terza rima_, Venice, 1523 or 1533; (5) _Apulejo dell' Asino d'Oro_, Venice, 1516, 1518; (6) _Asino d'Oro de Luciano tradolto in volgare_, Venice, 1523, 8vo; (7) _Erodoto Alicarnasseo istorico, tradotto di Greco in Lingua Italiana_, Venice, 1533 and 1538, 8vo; (8) _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_.

See Panizzi's _Boiardo_ (9 vols., 1830-1831).

BOIE, HEINRICH CHRISTIAN (1744-1806), German author, was born at Meldorf in the then Danish province of Schleswig-Holstein on the 19th of July 1744. After studying law at Jena, he went in 1769 to Gottingen, where he became one of the leading spirits in the Gottingen "Dichterbund" or "Hain." Boie's poetical talent was not great, but his thorough knowledge of literature, his excellent taste and sound judgment, made him an ideal person to awake the poetical genius of others. Together with F.W. Gotter (q.v.) he founded in 1770 the Gottingen _Musenalmanach_, which he directed and edited until 1775, when, in conjunction with C.W. von Dohm (1751-1820), he brought out _Das deutsche Museum_, which became one of the best literary periodicals of the day. In 1776 Boie became secretary to the commander-in-chief at Hanover, and in 1781 was appointed administrator of the province of Suderditmarschen in Holstein. He died at Meldorf on the 3rd of March 1806.

See K. Weinhold, _Heinrich Christian Boie_ (Halle, 1868).

BOIELDIEU, FRANCOIS ADRIEN (1775-1834), French composer of comic opera, was born at Rouen on the 15th of December 1775. He received his first musical education from M. Broche, the cathedral organist, who appears to have treated him very harshly. He began composing songs and chamber music at a very early age-his first opera, _La Fille coupable_ (the libretto by his father), and his second opera, _Rosalie et Myrza_, being produced on the stage of Rouen in 1795. Not satisfied with his local success he went to Paris in 1795. His scores were submitted to Cherubini, Mehul and others, but met with little approbation. Grand opera was the order of the day. Boieldieu had to fall back on his talent as a pianoforte-player for a livelihood. Success came at last from an unexpected source. P.J. Garat, a fashionable singer of the period, admired Boieldleu's touch on the piano, and made him his accompanist. In the drawing-rooms of the Directoire Garat sang the charming songs and ballads with which the young composer supplied him. Thus Boieldieu's reputation gradually extended to wider circles. In 1796 _Les Deux lettres_ was produced, and in 1797 _La Famille suisse_ appeared for the first time on a Paris stage, and was well received. Several other operas followed in rapid succession, of which only _Le Calife de Bagdad_ (1800) has escaped oblivion. After the enormous success of this work, Boieldieu felt the want of a thorough musical training and took lessons from Cherubini, the influence of that great master being clearly discernible in the higher artistic finish of his pupil's later compositions. In 1802 Boieldieu, to escape the domestic troubles caused by his marriage with Clotilde Aug. Mafleuroy, a celebrated ballet-dancer of the Paris opera, took flight and went to Russia, where he was received with open arms by the emperor Alexander. During his prolonged stay at St Petersburg he composed a number of operas. He also set to music the choruses of Racine's _Athalie_, one of his few attempts at the tragic style of dramatic writing. In 1811 he returned to his own country, where the following year witnessed the production of one of his finest works, _Jean de Paris_, in which he depicted with much felicity the charming coquetry of the queen of Navarre, the chivalrous _verve_ of the king, the officious pedantry of the seneschal, and the amorous tenderness of the page. He succeeded Mehul as professor of composition at the Conservatoire in 1817. _Le Chapeau rouge_ was produced with great success in 1818. Boieldieu's second and greatest masterpiece was his _Dame blanche_ (1825). The libretto, written by Scribe, was partly suggested by Walter Scott's _Monastery_, and several original Scottish tunes cleverly introduced by the composer add to the melodious charm and local colour of the work. On the death of his wife in 1825, Boieldieu married a singer. His own death was due to a violent attack of pulmonary disease. He vainly tried to escape the rapid progress of the illness by travel in Italy and the south of France, but returned to Paris only to die on the 8th of October 1834.

Lives of Boieldieu have been written by Pougin (Paris, 1875), J.A. Refeuvaille (Rouen, 1836), Hequet (Paris, 1864), Emile Duval (Geneva, 1883). See also Adolphe Charles Adam, _Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien_.

BOIGNE, BENOIT DE, COUNT (1751-1830), the first of the French military adventurers in India, was born at Chambery in Savoy on the 8th of March 1751, being the son of a fur merchant. He joined the Irish Brigade in France in 1768, and subsequently he entered the Russian service and was captured by the Turks. Hearing of the wealth of India, he made his way to that country, and after serving for a short time in the East India Company, he resigned and joined Mahadji Sindhia in 1784 for the purpose of training his troops in the European methods of war. In the battles of Lalsot and Chaksana Boigne and his two battalions proved their worth by holding the field when the rest of the Mahratta army was defeated by the Rajputs. In the battle of Agra (1788) he restored the Mahratta fortunes, and made Mahadji Sindhia undisputed master of Hindostan. This success led to his being given the command of a brigade of ten battalions of infantry, with which he won the victories of Patan and Merta in 1790. In consequence Boigne was allowed to raise two further brigades of disciplined infantry, and made commander-in-chief of Sindhia's army. In the battle of Lakhairi (1793) he defeated Holkar's army. On the death of Mahadji Sindhia in 1794, Boigne could have made himself master of Hindostan had he wished it, but he remained loyal to Daulat Rao Sindhia. In 1795 his health began to fail, and he resigned his command, and in the following year returned to Europe with a fortune of L400,000. He lived in retirement during the lifetime of Napoleon, but was greatly honoured by Louis XVIII. He died on the 21st of June 1830.

See H. Compton, _European Military Adventurers of Hindustan_ (1892).

BOII (perhaps = "the terrible"), a Celtic people, whose original home was Gallia Transalpina. They were known to the Romans, at least by name, in the time of Plautus, as is shown by the contemptuous reference in the _Captivi_ (888). At an early date they split up into two main groups, one of which made its way into Italy, the other into Germany. Some, however, appear to have stayed behind, since, during the Second Punic War, Magalus, a Boian prince, offered to show Hannibal the way into Italy after he had crossed the Pyrenees (Livy xxi. 29). The first group of immigrants is said to have crossed the Pennine Alps (Great St Bernard) into the valley of the Po. Finding the district already occupied, they proceeded over the river, drove out the Etruscans and Umbrians, and established themselves as far as the Apennines in the modern Romagna. According to Cato (in Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 116) they comprised as many as 112 different tribes, and from the remains discovered in the tombs at Hallstatt, La Tene and other places, they appear to have been fairly civilized. Several wars took place between them and the Romans. In 283 they were defeated, together with the Etruscans, at the Vadimonian lake; in 224, after the battle of Telamon in Etruria, they were forced to submit. But they still cherished a hatred of the Romans, and during the Second Punic War (218), irritated by the foundation of the Roman colonies of Cremona and Placentia, they rendered valuable assistance to Hannibal. They continued the struggle against Rome from 201 to 191, when they were finally subdued by P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, and deprived of nearly half their territory. According to Strabo (v. p. 213) the Boii were driven back across the Alps and settled on the land of their kinsmen, the Taurisci, on the Danube, adjoining Vindelicia and Raetia. Most authorities, however, assume that there had been a settlement of the Boii on the Danube from very early times, in part of the modern Bohemia (anc. _Boiohemum_, "land of the Boii"). About 60 B.C. some of the Boii migrated to Noricum and Pannonia, when 32,000 of them joined the expedition of the Helvetians into Gaul, and shared their defeat near Bibracte (58). They were subsequently allowed by Caesar to settle in the territory of the Aedui between the Loire and the Allier. Their chief town was Gorgobina (site uncertain). Those who remained on the Danube were exterminated by the Dacian king, Boerebista, and the district they had occupied was afterwards called the "desert of the Boii" (Strabo vii. p. 292). In A.D. 69 a Boian named Mariccus stirred up a fanatical revolt, but was soon defeated and put to death. Some remnants of the Boii are mentioned as dwelling near Bordeaux; but Mommsen inclines to the opinion that the three groups (in Bordeaux, Bohemia and the Po districts) were not really scattered branches of one and the same stock, but that they are instances of a mere similarity of name.

The Boii, as we know them, belonged almost certainly to the Early Iron age. They probably used long iron swords for dealing cutting blows, and from the size of the handles they must have been a race of large men (cf. Polybius ii. 30). For their ethnological affinities and especially their possible connexion with the Homeric Achaeans see W. Ridgeway's _Early Age of Greece_ (vol. i., 1901).

See L. Contzen, _Die Wanderungen der Kelten_ (Leipzig, 1861); A. Desjardins, _Geographie historique de la Gaule romaine_, ii. (1876-1893); T.R. Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_ (1899), pp. 426-428; T. Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_, ii. (Eng. trans. 5 vols., 1894), p. 373 note; M. Ihm in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_, iii. pt. 1 (1897); A. Holder, _Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz_.

BOIL, in medicine, a progressive local inflammation of the skin, taking the form of a hard suppurating tumour, with a core of dead tissue, resulting from infection by a microbe, _Staphylococcus pyogenes_, and commonly occurring in young persons whose blood is disordered, or as a complication in certain diseases. Treatment proceeds on the lines of bringing the mischief out, assisting the evacuation of the boil by the lancet, and clearing the system. In the English Bible, and also in popular medical terminology, "boil" is used of various forms of ulcerous affection. The boils which were one of the plagues in Egypt were apparently the bubonic plague. The terms Aleppo boil (or button), Delhi boil, Oriental boil, Biskra button, &c., have been given to a tropical epidemic, characterized by ulcers on the face, due to a diplococcus parasite.