B A 8 



10 



It \ I 



Aiate cause of hi* incurring the cardinal's 

 was, as he tell* us in lii!- Meminrrs, hit neglecting to keep 

 an appointment t' dinner. On the day preceding tl.e 

 numonlilr Itay nf the Dujirt (la Jourm'-e del Dupo- 

 30th of November, 163u. Basnompierre met the cardinal 

 ie of the passages of the Louvre. Ho accosted him, 

 and Richelieu feigned to receive the courtesy a* a favour to 

 a ' poor disgraced minister.' HasKonipierre, in the fulness 

 of his benevolence, condescended to iinile hmi-rlf'iu clmo 

 with the cardinal, and the offer was accepted. It hn|<; 

 however, unfortunately that two noblemen, enemies uf the 

 cardinal, met Bassompierre in the course of the dm 

 debauched ' him to dine with them, and the ' poor disgraced 

 minister' was forgotten. 



On the -ir.l of February, 1631, Bassompierre was ar- 

 rested, by Richelieu's orders, and sent to the Bastille, 

 where he was confined for twelve yeans: thut is, till the 

 death of the cardinal. He tells us, that the day before he 

 was arrested he burned upwards of 6000 love-letters which 

 he hod received at different times from his female admirers 

 a pretty decisive proof of the reputation which induced 

 Madame de Montpensier, when recalling the brilliant vicious 

 of her youth, to designate him as ' cet illustre Bassompierre.' 

 (See the Preface to the translation of Uassompitrre '* 

 lith Embassy, ascribed mi personal knowledge by Mr. D Is- 

 raeli to the Right Hon. J. W. Croker.) 



He employed his time during his imprisonment in writing 

 his Mi'mtiites and reusing hi- Ambastadet ; but both are so 

 very dull and jejune, that we cannot help regarding him as 

 one of those men whose fame has been mainly owing to the 

 advantages of a good person and address. There is not a 

 single passage in all his writings which would lead us to 

 hide that he was 'the wittiest man of his time;' and 

 even those anecdotes and buns moti which arc attributed to 

 him in the French Ann, are not calculated to impress us 

 with a high notion of his mental accomplishments. 



Bassompierre died of apoplexy on the 12th of April, 1646, 

 three years after his liberation from prison. It is alleged 

 that he was offered the guardianship of the young monarch 

 Louis XIV., hut age, or, as Mr. Croker conjectures, the 

 wholesome discipline of the Bastille,' had cured him of al" 

 ambition as a courtier, and he declined the perilous honour 



(Memoires de Mareschal de Bassompierre, 4 tomes, Am- 

 sterdam, edition 1723; Bossompierre's Embassy ta Eng- 

 land, translated, with notes, London, 1819; Memoin of 

 Henry the Great of France, 2 vols. London, 1829 ; and the 

 works referred to in the text.) 



BASSOON, a musical instrument of the pneumatic kind 

 blown through a reed. It consists of four pieces, or tubes 

 of wood, bound together and pierced for ventages, of a brass 

 craned neck, in which the reed is inserted, and of severe 

 ke\s. The whole length of the tubes is 6J feet, but bj 

 doubling up, this is reduced to four. It may be considerci" 

 as a base oboe [see OUOK] ; and its compass is from B Ha 



below the base staff, I 



"ton flat in the 

 - treble staff. 



This instrument is used in every kind of music, for the 

 tidiness of its tone and extent of its scale render it invalu- 

 able to the composer. Handel seems to have been the firs 

 who gave importance to it, and in the air Thou didst blow 

 in the oratorio of Israel in Egypt, exhibited its qualities ii 

 so advantageous a manner, that it immediately afterwards 

 began to assume a rank ill the orchestra which has ever 

 since been increasing. 



The bassoon was invented as early as the year 1 539, three 

 years after Luscinius had published hisMusurgia. who con 

 sequent!/ does not mention the instrument. Mersenne 

 describes it and all its varieties ; but a long time elapsec 

 before it came into use. The word is derived from the 

 Italian baitone, which is now rarely used. The common 

 Italian term ufagott'i, a fagot, or bundle of sticks, b< c.ni-i 

 the- tubes of which the instrument is composed are bourn 

 together. The Italian vorA fagotto is always emploi - 

 musical scores. 



HAS SOON, DOUBLE, a bassoon of increased dimen 

 sion, the scale of which is on octave below that of the ordi- 

 nary bassoon. The double-bassoon was introduced at the 

 commemoration of Handel in 1784, but not found to n 

 the intended purpose, and. has now fallen into utter disuse 



be Serpent [see SSUMIMT] well supplying tire place which 

 t was in. MM to nil. 

 UASMiKAH. [Soe BASRA.] 



BASSUS, in entomology, a genus of the order Hymen- 

 optera, and family Hraronidtr. These are fnur-wi: 



-iih long and narrow bodies. They frequent the 

 lowers f uml.cilifcrouE plants. 



BAST. FREDERICK. JAMES, a scholar of consider- 

 able eminence, was born in the stnte of Hcsse-l)arui> 

 about the year 1772. He received his earliest in-iructi n 

 'mm his father at Bouxvillcr, but afterwards studied in the 

 I'mversity of Jena, under Professors Griesbach and St. 

 His first literary essay was a comment: ito's 



l/Hi/m.won, which wa- followed in 1 7'J6 by a specimen 

 intended new edition of the IxMtcrs of Armtanettu. II'- 

 lived at this time at Vienna, where he was in the suite of 

 M.de Jan, the resident from Hesse- Darmstadt ; and where, 

 in the Imperial Library, he had found a manuscript of 

 Aristomctus, which afforded most important readings for 

 improving the text of that author. 



The lundgrave of Hesse- Darmstadt afterwards made him 

 secretary of legation at tin: congress of Rndstadt : and 

 finally placed him in the same capacity with the Baron de 

 Pappenheim, his minister at I'aris. To mark his approba- 

 tion of Bast's literary studies, the landgrave also bestowed 

 upon him the reversion of the keepership of the I 

 Darmstadt, a post which he preferred to more brilliant 

 honours that he might have claimed, but which were less 

 suited to his literary taste. 



Bast, uniting the labours of philology with those of diplo- 

 macy, profited very much during his stay in Pnris by tin- 

 collation and copying of a considerable number of Greek 

 manuscripts. It was a most advantageous residence for 

 him, as the best classical treasures of the Vatican had at 

 that time been recently transported to France. 



Of the importance of his critical researches some estimate 

 may be formed from his Letire Critique d M. J. ]'. Ituiiw 

 node tur Antoninus Liberalts, Partheniu*, et Aritltnete, 

 8VO. Paris, 1805. This work, of rather more than 250 }< 

 was originally intended for insertion in Millm's Mtisu\in 

 Encyclapedique, and was on that account written in French. 

 bnt growing upon the author's hands, it became a book, 

 and stands in the first rank of treatises on verbal cril, 

 It was in a volume of the Vatican, No. 398 of the Greek 

 manuscripts, which had once belongs! to the electoral library 

 at Heidelberg, that he found the manuscripts of Antonimi- 

 Liberalis and 1'arthenius : and the same volume contained 

 seventeen other manuscripts, some of them ineditcd, of 

 each of which, in the Letter to M. Boissonade, Bast has 

 given a notice. 



Schajfer's edition of Gregorius of Corinth, anil some other 

 grammarians, published at Leip/iir, I 

 tains Bast's Notes on that author, with a PtlBOgfapUeal 



tation (accompanied by seven Plates of i 

 from Greek manuscripts), which is considered to 

 ter-pieee of erudition. The remarks 

 various kinds of connections and contractions which he met 

 with in the numerous M8S. which lip consulted, 

 extracted from the body of his works by John Hodgkin, the 

 editor of the Calligraphia ft I\e<-ilograptiia Grrcca, and 

 will shortly he published for the use of those who are en- 

 gaged in the labour of rending or collating Greek MSS. 



Bast died of ap.iplcxy at Paris, Nov. 15, 1811. His Notes 

 upon Arista'iictus were published in a variorum edition of 

 that author by his Una M. Jo. Fr. Boissonade. 8vo. I 

 tiao, 1822. (See the Jtiograjthie I 

 torn. Ivii. 8vo. Paris, ln:M, and the works above quoted.) 



BASTAN. [See BAZTAN.] 



BASTARD. The conjectures of etymologists on tlie 

 origin of this word are various and nn . Its root 



has been sought in several languages : tl- ~,ixon, 



German, Welsh, Icelandic, and Persian. For the grounds 

 on which the preten-ion- of all these languages are respec- 

 tuely supported, we refer the curious to the glossaries of 

 Ducange and Spehnan, the more recent one of Boucher, 

 on the title Bastard in Dodd and Gwillim'* 

 edition of Bacon's Abridgment, vol. i. p. 746. 



Among Knglioh writers it is applied to a child not born 

 in lawful wedlock: and as such he is technically d 

 g'hshed from a mu/irr ( fi/ius mulierafu*), who is the legi- 

 timate offspring of a mulierot married woman. 



Oi;i ancestor- MTV early adopted strict n.. lions on the 

 subject of legitimacy : and. when the prelates of the 13th 



