BOSIO. BARON. 



150SSUET. JACQUES BENIQNE. 



>.' *, 5 ToU, Huu.no, 1786 ; and the work on the degree of the 

 Meridian above mentioned, ' De LitterariA Expeditione per Pontificam 

 Ditioneoi ad Dimetiendo* Duo* Heridiani Gradus,' 4c., Rome, 1755. 

 Thi work U much more esteemed than the French translation, Paris, 

 1770. as tba map siren in the latter i* incorrectly reduced. 



BOSIO, FRANCOIS JOSEPH, BARON, an eminent French sculptor, 

 was born at Monaco, March 19, 1769. He went at an early age to 

 France, where under Pajou he received hi professional education. He 

 acquired great celebrity under the empire, and was much patronised 

 by the Empress Josephine as well as by Bonaparte. For the emperor 

 be executed busts of himself, of Josephine, his sister Pauline, the 

 young King of Rome, Ac. For Josephine he executed a fine marble 

 statue ' 1' Amour lancant des traits.' The well known bassi-rilievi of 

 the column on the Place Vendome are the work of Bosio. The resto- 

 ration of the Bourbons did not interfere with HOMO'S course of pros- 

 perity. The restored dynasty found employment for bis chisel, and 

 Booio was equally ready to serve them. He was commissioned in 

 1817 to execute the equestrian statue of ' Louis XIV. triumphant ' for 

 the Place des Victoires. He also exhibited in the same year a marble 

 statue of the Due d'Enghien, and subsequently busts of Louis XVIII., 

 the Dauphin, and Charles X. Under Louis Philippe bis courtly chisel 

 produced one of his beet works, a bust of the Queen Marie Amelia. 

 During all this period be was much engaged in the execution of 

 various monuments, statues for public buildings, &c. Among the 

 more important of his classical and poetic works may be named his 

 ' I Amour SeViuisant 1'Innocence ; ' ' Hercule combattant Ach<?lous 

 metamorphose' en Serpent;' THistoire et Ics Arts consacrant lea 

 gloires de la France,' Ac. Bosio, despite the high position he occupied 

 during his prosperous career, is not likely to take permanent rank 

 among the great sculptors of France, Ho won a skilful workman, and 

 had much facility in designing, but his works evince little of the 

 higher order of inventive or imaginative power. Bosio was created a 

 baron by Charles X. ; he was also a member of the Institute, He died 

 July 29, 1845. 



BOSQUET, GENERAL, was born in 1810, at Pau, in the French 

 department of Baases-Pyrc'oces. In 1829 he entered the Polytechnic 

 School In 1833 he became a sub-lieutenant in the artillery; he passed 

 a year in garrison at Valence, in the department of Drome, and in 

 1835 went with bis regiment to Algeria. Here the value of his services 

 was soon appreciated, and his promotion was rapid.* In 1836 he 

 became lieutenant, in 183'J captain, in 1842 chcf-de-bataillon, in 1845 

 lieutenant-colonel, in 1848 colonel In 1848 he waa appointed general 

 of brigade by the republican government. In 1854 he waa promoted 

 by the Em|ror to the rank of general of division, and placed on the 

 sUff of the army of Marshal St. Arnaud. He accompanied the French 

 army to the Crimea, where he has greatly dintinguished himself. At 

 the battle of Balaclava, and more especially at the battle of Inkermann, 

 be rendered timely and valuable service to the British. He was 

 wounded when direct ing the Zouaves as they lushed to the assault of 

 the Malakoff, at the taking of Sebastopol. Ho is now general of the 

 first division of the French army. The French Kmperor has recently 

 announc- d, at a banquet, his having promoted General Bosquet to the 

 rank of Marshal of France. 



BOSSU, RENE DE, son of Jean deBoasu, Seigneur de Courbevoie, 

 a king's counsellor and an advocate in the court of Aides, was born at 

 Pant, March 16, 1631. He studied at Nanterre, was admitted as a 

 regular canon in the abbey of St-Genevieve in 1650, and took priest's 

 oH<rs in 1657. Twelve years of his life were occupied in teaching 

 philosophy and the belles-lettres ; the remainder were spent in the 

 solitude of his cloister, in which be died March 14, 1680. His first 

 work, Parallel* de la Philotophie de Descartes et d'Aristote,' Paris, 

 1674, was not very favourably received at the time of its appearance, 

 and it now altogether forgotten ; but his teoond, which was published 

 only a frw months afterwards. ' Traitd du Poeme Epique,' for a time 

 attracted considerable attention. The learned hypothesis of this 

 chimerical essay teaches that sn epic poeui is essentially an allegory ; 

 thus the writer, bi fore commencing his work, fixes upon some one 

 (res* moral text which he designs to illustrate, considers fable, 

 machinery, action, character, and all other accidents of poetry only as 

 so many modes subservient to his grand object Thus says Bossu, 

 Homer, who saw the Greeks constitutionally divided into a great num- 

 ber of independent states, which it was often necessary to unite against 

 common enemy, feigned in his Iliad ' the quarrel between Achilles 

 and Agamemnon as productive of evil, in order that he might illus- 

 trate the advantages of a confederacy. On the reconciliation of thorn 

 prince*, victory, which had been long delayed, is rapidly achieved. 

 Bat U the evil of disunion the only lesson taught by the ' Iliad '' 

 Boesu would persuade us that the design of the 'Odyssey' was to 

 how the national calamities resulting from a monarch's absence from 

 his own seat of government. Yet the Grecian chiefs could not have 

 captured Troy without their leaving for a time their own states. So 

 that Bom theory of the lesions of the ' Iliad ' and the 'Odyssey' 

 are in direct contradiction to each other, which, if they are by the 

 ame author, as is generally supposed, we can scarcely believe would 

 ** intended by the writer. A defence of Boileau against some attacks 

 L Sorlln, introduced Bossu advantageously to the friendship of 

 In the ninth volume of the Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inwrii" 

 taons, the AbW Vatrv twioo appears as the champion of some of his 



exploded notions, which are more soberly examined by the AbW 

 Batteux in the 39th volume of the same work ; and at a later season 

 incidentally by La Harpe. 



BOSSU KT, JACQUES BENIGNE, second son of a counsellor of 

 the parliament of Hetz, and descended from a respectable Burgundian 

 family for the most part engaged in the law, was born at Dijon, 

 September 27, 1627. He was placed by a maternal uncle, who was 

 president of the parliament of that city, in the college of the Jesuits, 

 where his laborious application to study soon obtained for him a nick- 

 name containing a punning allusion to his real name, ' Boesuetus 

 aratro.' At a fitting age (1642) he was removed to the college of 

 Navarre in Paris, where, after a ten years' course, he received the 

 degree of Doctor and the Order of Priesthood. He then retired to 

 perform the clerical duties of a canon in the cathedral of Mots, of 

 which church he afterwards became archdeacon and clean, and where 

 he distinguished himself by labouring arduously for the conver 

 the Huguenots. The neighbourhood of the capital led him to preach 

 frequently before Anne of Austria, who was so pleased by his pulpit 

 eloquence, that she nominated him to deliver the Advent Sermons at 

 court in the chapel of the Louvre in 1661, and the Lent Sermons iu 

 1662. The king was highly gratified by his discourses, and in 1669 

 presented him to the bishopric of Condom.' In the year after his 

 consecration he waa appointed to the important office of prec ; 

 the dauphin ; and finding his necessary attendance at court incom- 

 patible with the performance of his episcopal duties, he asked and 

 received permission to resign the see. The priory of Plesau-Grisnon, 

 which he received in compensation, produced about 3002. a year, 

 according to which revenue ho framed his establishment. On pro- 

 motion to the abbey of St,-Lucien-de-I5eauvai, a richer bone! 

 assigned all its surplus to charity, in no manner altering his personal 

 expenditure. The Due de Montausier was governor; the learned 

 Huet, afterwards bishop of Avranches, was sub-preceptor to the 

 young prince. The method in which his education was conducted by 

 these three most able men is fully exhibited in a letter written by 

 Bossuet to Pope Innocent XL Under the care of Huet appeared the 

 well-known edition of the Dolphin Classics, put forth ostensibly in 

 unim Serenutimi Principii. At the express wish of the king, Bossuet 

 studied anatomy, in order to afford his royal pupil some elementary 

 instructions in that science. For that purpose he attended the lectures 

 of Nicolas Steron, a Parisian professor, from which he compiled a short 

 manual of 32 octavo pages, which has shared the fate of most other 

 amateur treatises. For the use of the dauphin Bossuet composed also 

 his 'Discount tur VHistoire Uuiverselle,' which he published in 1681. 

 It consists of three parts, the first of which contains an abridgment 

 of universal history, from the Creation to the reign of Charlemagne ; 

 the second embraces the chief proofs of Christianity; and the thiid 

 attempts to unravel the causes of the rise and decline of nations. 

 Upon this work Voltaire founded his opinion of Bossuet' a pre-eminent 

 eloquence; and of the first part, which most readers would suppose to 

 be little more than a dry index, a later critic (Mr. Charles I'.ntl 

 declared that " it scarcely contains a sentence iu which there is not 

 some nouu or verb that conveys au image or suggests a sentiment of 

 the noblest kind." 



The chief rewor<l with which Louis compensated the services of 

 Bossuet in the education of the dauphin waa the bishopric of Meaux, 

 to which see he was consecrated in 1681. He filled also the high posts 

 of almoner to the dauphiness, principal of the college of Navarre, 

 warden of the Sorbonne, counsellor of state, and first almoner to the 

 Duchess of Burgundy. The bishop's time however was chiefly or 

 in his diocese, where ho devoted himself to the humble but useful task 

 of pastoral instruction. Among his posthumous works are three cate- 

 chisms, respectively, for beginners, for the instructed, and for tin- 

 well-instructed. He composed also a manual of prayer, and tm; 

 many of the church hymns. His health continued uniformly K" "'. 

 and allowed the performance of all ministerial duties till the last year 

 of his life, when ho suffered under the stone. During intervals of 

 ease he framed a commentary on the 22nd Psalm (the 21st of tho 

 Vulgate), many passages of which are equal in vigour to any of In 

 earlier compositions. On tho 12th of April 1704 be died at 

 having passed his 76th year. Soon after the death of Bossuet his 

 works were collected in 12 vols. 4to, to which three posthumous 

 writings were afterwards added. The Benedictines of St-Maur 

 undertook a complete collection of his works, which, we believe, is 

 still unfinished, after extending to 20 vols. 4to. 



BosKuet is esteemed by tho Roman Catholics us the most eminent 

 advocate of their creed ; but whatever might be the influence wliicli 

 his controversial writings exercised at the time of their appearance, it 

 is not upon these that his fame rests most securely at present To 

 give an exact catalogue of his works would far exceed our limits, and 

 we shall confine ourselves to his chief productions. He commenced 

 in 1655 with a ' Refutation du Catechisme de Paul Ferri,' a Huguenot 

 minister at Metz; we find him, not long afterwards, vehemently 

 engaged with Caffaro, a Theatine monk, in the reprobation of theatrical 

 entertainment*. Boursaut, a dramatic writer who enjoyed some con- 

 temporary reputation, was affected by scruples of conscience concern- 

 ing the subjects to which his talents had been directed, and was 

 relieved from his penitentiary burden by a letter which Father Caffaro 

 addressed to him, and which may be found (if it is now to be found 



