BABRIUS. 



BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN. 



102 



electing him from among the ranks of the licentiates into the number 

 of the fellows. In 1831 he removed from Aldermanbury to Devon- 

 shire street, Portland -place, continuing however to visit as their phy- 

 sician a few of his attached friends aud patients. During the prevalence 

 of the fatal influenza in the spring of 1833 he zealously attended his 

 patients, till at last, from exposure to the evening air after being 

 present at a crowded scientific meeting, he was himself attacked by 

 that disease, and on the 29th of May expired at his house in Devonshire- 

 street, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. The general expression 

 of regret which followed the announcement of Dr. Babington's death 

 proved the estimation in which he was held for his personal character 

 ag well as for his professional attainments. As a scientific man, 

 although he attained no very distinguished rank, yet he without 

 ostentation greatly contributed during nearly half a century to the 

 promotion of many branches of physical as well as medical science, 

 :uid nave an impulse to the study of mineralogy and geology, the 

 beneficial effects of wliich will long be felt. 



(Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Sabington, M.D., <tc., 

 by his son-in-law, Richard Bright, M.D.) 



1IRIUS was the writer of a collection of .Esopian fables, which 

 he turned from prose into choliambics. The time at which he lived 

 is not known, but from the mention of him by Avianus in the preface 

 to his fables, and as some of the verses of Babrius are quoted by 

 Apollijnius in his 'Homeric Lexicon,' it is most probable that he 

 lived somewhat before the Augustau age. Some of his writings were 

 used by the transcribers and in the middle ages, as the foundation of 

 their prose versions of ..Esopian fables, and have thus been preserved. 

 A few have likewise been preserved in an entire form, and seveml 

 fragments art! cited in the ' Lexicon ' of Suidas. Collections of the 

 extant fables and fragments of this poet have been made by several 

 scholars. (Tyrwhitt, ' Dissertatio de Babrio ;' Schneider, 'Fabuhc 

 ^Esopia?,' Vratislav., 1812; Berger, 'Babrii Fabularum Choliambica- 

 rum, libri tres : ' Bishop Blomfield in the ' Mu-eutu Criticum,' voL i. ; 

 Mr. ISurges in the 'Classical Journal,' vols. xxv. and xxvi. ; ' Philo 

 logical Museum,' vol. i. pp. 'JSU-"04, which contains a detailed account 

 of the versification of Babrius, and an amended edition of his fables.) 

 The language of Babrius is extremely terse and elegant, and his style 

 of narration lively, pointed, and simple. Of late years a large addition 

 bag been made to our stock of the writings of Babrius by SI. Minoides 

 Minos, who among numerous manuscripts found by him in the con- 

 vents of Greece, alighted upon one which contained the choliambic 

 fables of Babrius. The monks of the convent of St. Lnura on Mount 

 Athos, where the manuscript was found, asked for the original a price 

 so exorbitant, that M. Minus, was content to take a copy of it, which 

 he brought to Paris in 1842. M. Villemain intrusted the office ol 

 editing the fables to M. J. F. Boissonade, and the work appeared 

 towards the end of 1841 in one octavo volume. The Greek fables 

 which were thus rescued are not however the complete collection 

 which Babrius made. Their number is 123; they are arranged in 

 alphabetical order, that is, according to the initial letters of the fables, 

 and the present collection does not go further down than the 

 letter 0. A considerable number of fables is therefore still wanting. 

 The collection is divided into two sections, the one extending from 

 the letter A to L, aud the other from M to O inclusive, and each 

 of them is preceded by a prooemium. Boissonade has added a critical 

 commentary and a Latin translation : the title is Ba0pluu MvOia/i 

 'Babrii Fabulae latnbicao CXX1II., nunc primum ediue. J. F. Bois- 

 sonade recensuit, Latine couvertit, anuotavit,' Paris, 1844, Svo. 

 (Ciauical Museum, part vi. p. 412, 4c.) 



BA'CCHIUS, sometimes incorrectly called Vacceia, is a Greek 

 writer on uiu.-ac. Hi.i work is entitled 11707017!) r(x"^s /iovmiajs, ' An 

 Introduction to the Art of Music,' in questions and answers. Bacchiug 

 follows in general the system of Arigtoxenus. His epoch is uncertain 

 Meibomius conjectured that he lived after PtolemEcus ; Fabricius has 

 tried to identify him with the Bacchius whom M. Aurelius Antoninus 

 mentions (' de Rebus suis,' i. 6) as his earliest teacher. The work o: 

 Bacchiug is contained in the collection of Meibomius 'Antiqujo 

 Musicii: Auctores Septem,' Amsterdam, 1652. 



BACCHY'LIDES, a Greek poet and a nephew of the elder Simonides 

 was a native of the island Ceos. He probably lived in the first half o 

 the 6th century before the Christian era, was a contemporary of Pindar 

 though younger than that celebrated poet ; and is said to have residec 

 in the court of Hiero, king of Sicily. His compositions were numerous 

 and very various, consisting of hymns, dithyrambic poems, odes in 

 celebration of the Pythian victors, amatory poems, &c., all of which 

 are now lost except a few small pieces, twenty in number. The I'm 

 ments of Bacchylides were published separately by C. F. Neui 

 'Bacchylidis Cei Fragmenta,' Berlin, 1822, Svo. They are translate^ 

 in Merivale's edition of Bland' s ' Anthology,' pp. 75-80. 



BA'CCIO DELLA PORTA. This distinguished painter was so 

 named from having resided near the gate of St. Peter's, at Florence 

 but he is more generally recognised by the name of Frate Bartolomeo 

 a Marco. He was a native of the district of Savignano, and born 

 in the ye..r ) li'i'J. He passed some years under the tuition of C'osimo 

 Roselli at Florence, but it was from the great father of modern art 

 Leonardo da Vinci, that he obtained the first idea of that effective 

 style of colour and chiar' oscuro by which his subsequent works, are 

 distinguished. He attempted to acquire fixed principles of form am 



deal character from ancient sculpture ; and, in company with his 

 riend, Mariotto Albertinelli, he drew and modelled from statues and 

 lassi-rilievi with indefatigable attention. He had acquired cousider- 

 ,ble proficiency in those studies when he made the acquaintance of 

 he celebrated Dominican, Savonarola, who exercised a considerable 

 nfluence over his mind, and induced him to destroy, on account of 

 heir nudity, a prodigious number of studies which he had made of 

 he human figure. Subsequently to this period Bartolomeo seldom 

 reated subjects which exhibited the naked form, but the knowledge 

 le had previously acquired of it is perceptible in the fine understand- 

 ng of the figure, which is visible through his draperies. His early 

 vorks were of small dimensions, aud distinguished by graceful com- 

 >osition and high finishing ; but it was in the fresco of the Laat 

 Fudgment, painted for the chapel of Sta. Maria Nuova, that the 

 grandeur of his style and the extent of his powers were first mani- 

 ested. Shortly after the completion of this piece, Bartolomeo being 

 at work in the convent of St. Mark, a forcible entry was made into 

 the monastery by the pope's officers for the purpose of seizing the 

 person of Savonarola ; a formidable resistance was made by the monks, 

 Dut the unhappy zealot w s borne away, and expiated his opinions at 

 the stake. This event affected Bartolomeo so strongly, that he deter- 

 mined on devoting himself to the cloister, aud in 1500 he took the 

 iabit of St. Dominic. In 1504 Raffaelle made a visit to Florence, and 

 an intimacy commenced between him and Bartolomeo, who commu- 

 nicated to his great contemporary his own principles of colouring, aud 

 received from him in return some instructions in perspective. Shortly 

 afterwards Bartolomeo went to Rome, where his mind, naturally 

 timid and sensitive, appears to have been so overwhelmed by the con- 

 templation of the great works of Michel Angelo aud Raffaelle, that 

 it was with difficulty he persuaded himself to make any practical 

 effort ; he painted however two single figures of St. Peter and St. 

 Paul, which were long preserved in the palace of the Quirinal. By 

 his visit to the Vatican he added a purer and more correct taste in 

 design to his own bold style of relief and powerful colouring, aud the 

 sublime figure of St. Mark (now in the gallery of Florence) was alone 

 a sufficient proof that he had no reason to shrink from any competi- 

 tion. The great vice of the Florentine school was an ostentatious 

 ri isplay of anatomy, which not unfrequently gave to their works, both 

 in painting and sculpture, an appearance little short of disgusting. 

 The fine feeling aud good sense of Bartolomeo led him to avoid this 

 error. The subjects in which Bartolomeo delighted were such as 

 most accorded with his strong religious feeling, and gentle temper 

 Saints, Evangelists, and Madonnas, with the Divine Infant, surrounded 

 by angelic'choirs. Bartolomeo died in the convent of St. Mark, in 

 1517, aged forty-eight. His works ara numerous in Italy, aud there 

 are some goo 1 specimens in the private galleries of England : but the 

 national collection is without any example of this great painter. 



BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN, whose name holds so conspicuous 

 a pla:e in the musical history of Germany, aud from the various 

 branches of whese family have sprung more organists and able con- 

 trapuntists than any one family ever produced, was born at Eisenach, 

 in the circle of Upper Saxony, in 16ao. He belonged to a family in 

 which the musical faculty .seems to have been very largely developed. 

 The founder was Veit Bach, a miller and baker at Presburg.in Hungary, 

 early in the 10th century, who, being obliged to quit hia country on 

 account of religious troubles, settled at a village near Saxe Gotha. In 

 the ' Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung' (1823), is a curious genealo- 

 gical tree of the Bach family John Sebastian appearing in the fifth 

 generation which shows that, down to the middle of last century, 

 there were fifty-eight male descendants from Veit, all of whom, 

 according to Forkel, were professors of music. 



When John Sebastian had not quite completed his tenth year, he 

 lost his father, musician to the court and town of Eisenach, and was 

 obliged 'o claim the protection of an elder brother, organist at Ordruff, 

 who gave him some instructions on the clavichord. His brother soou 

 dying, John Sebastian was again left destitute, when he accompanied 

 one of his schoolfellows to Luneburg, aud entered the choir of St. 

 Michael's as a soprano singer. There he for a while obtained a good 

 livelihood by his flue voice, but on its changing, he found himself 

 ouce more for some time without resource. In 1703 he became court 

 musician at Weimar ; but exchanged this place the year following for 

 that of organist to the new church at Arnstadt. His reputation now 

 began to spread, and in 1708, the reigning Duke of Weimar, offering 

 him the appointment of court organist, he accepted the Situation. 

 This afforded him an opportunity of communicating with and hearing 

 many of the great musicians of his day, and his studies continuing 

 unremitted, he became master of every branch of his science. In 

 1717 he was made director of the concerts, and in executing the 

 duties of this office, he had to compose sacred music for the service 

 of the duke's chapel. 



About this time M. Marchand, the celebrated French organist, 

 having visited Dresden, accepted a challenge for a musical contest 

 between himself and John Sebastian Bach ; but when the appointed day 

 arrived, and a large company had assembled, it was found that the 

 French musician had left Dresden that very day, without taking leave 

 of a single individual. The king desired that a present of 100 Louis 

 d'or should be sent to Bach, but they never came into his possession. 

 After this, Bach accepted the oflice of ' kapellmeister ' to the Priuco 



