BARD BARETTI. 



421 



back into the fastnesses of Wales, Ireland, and Scot- 

 land, where the last echoes of their harps have long 

 since died away. Their early history is uncertain. 

 Diodorus (lib. v. 31.) tells us, that the Celts had 

 bards, who sang to musical instruments ; and Strabo 

 (lib. iv.) testifies that they were treated with respect 

 approaching to veneration. The passage of Tacitus 

 (Germ. 7.) is a doubtful reading. Heyne does not 

 venture to decide whether it is barditus, as some who 

 explain it to mean bard's song, maintain, or bartons, 

 which, according to Adelung, is the true reading, and 

 signifies merely war-cry. The first Welsh bards of 

 whom any thing is extant, are Taliesen, Aneurin,and 

 Llywarcli, of the 6th century; but their language is 

 imperfectly understood. From the days of these mo- 

 narchs of the bards, we have nothing further till the 

 middle of the 10th century, when the reputation of 

 the order was increased under the auspices of Howel 

 Dim. A code of laws was framed by that prince, 

 to regulate their duties and fix their privileges. They 

 were distributed into three classes, with a fixed al- 

 lowance ; degrees of rank were established, and 

 prize contests instituted. Their order was frequently 

 honoured by the admission of princes, among whom 

 was Llewellyn, last king of Wales. The Welsh, 

 kept in awe as they were by the Romans, harassed 

 by the Saxons, and eternally jealous of the attacks, 

 the encroachment, and the neighbourhood of aliens, 

 were, on this account, attached to their Celtic man- 

 ners. This situation and these circumstances inspired 

 them with a proud and obstinate determination to 

 maintain a national distinction, and preserve their 

 ancient usages, among which the bardic profession is 

 so eminent. Sensible of the influence of their tradi- 

 tional poetry in keeping alive the ideas of military 

 valour and of ancient glory among the people, Edward 

 I. is said to have collected all the Welsh bards, and 

 caused them to be hanged by martial law, as stirrers 

 up of sedition. On this incident is founded Gray's 

 well-known ode " The Bard." We, however, find 

 them existing at a much later period, but confining 

 themselves to the humble task of compiling private 

 genealogies. But little is known of the music and 

 measures of the bards : their prosody depended much 

 on alliteration : their instruments were the harp, the 

 pipe, and the crwth. Some attempts have lately been 

 made in Wales for the revival of bardism , and the Cam- 

 brian society was formed in 1818, for the preservation 

 of the remains of this ancient literature, and for the 

 encouragement of the national muse. ; The bardic 

 institution of the Irish bears a strong affinity to that 

 of the Welsh. The genealogical sonnets of the Irish 

 bards are still the chief foundations of the ancient 

 h istory of Ireland. Their songs are strongly marked 

 with the traces of Scaldic imagination, which still 

 appears among the " tale-tellers," a sort of poetical 

 historians, supposed to be the descendants of the 

 bards. There was, also, evidently a connexion of 

 the Welsh with Annorica. Hence, in the early 

 French romances, we often find the scene laid in 

 VY'ales ; and, on the other hand, many fictions have 

 passed from the Troubadours into the tales of the 

 Welsh. In the Highlands of Scotland, there are 

 considerable remains of many of the compositions of 

 their old bards still preserved. The most wonderful 

 of these are the poems of Ossian, collected and trans- 

 lated by Macpherson. Their genuineness has been 

 doubted ; but the report of a committee of the High- 

 land society, published in 1805, of which Mackenzie 

 was editor, proves, as they contend, that a part of 

 them is authentic, and that the greater portion of the 

 remainder was really obtained from traditionary 

 sources. " These poems," says Warton (History 

 of English Poetry, diss. 1.), " notwithstanding the 

 inference between the Gothic and the Celtic rituals, 



contain many visible \estiges of Scandinavian super- 

 stition. The allusions in the songs of Ossian to spi- 

 rits who preside over the different parts, and direct 

 the various operations of nature ; who send storms 

 over the deep, and rejoice in the shrieks of the ship- 

 wrecked mariner ; who call down lightning to blast 

 the forest or cleave the rock, and diffuse irresistible 

 pestilence among the people, beautifully conducted 

 and heightened under the skillful hand of a master 

 bard, entirely correspond witli the Runic system, and 

 breathe the spirit of its poetry." 



BARDSSANES the Gnostic ; a Syrian who lived, in the 

 latter half of the second century, in Edessa, and was a 

 favourite of the king Abgar Bar Maanu, is memor- 

 able for the peculiarity or his doctrines. He consi- 

 dered the evil in the world only as an accidental 

 reaction of matter, and all lite as the offspring of mnle 

 and female .^Eons. From God, the inscrutable Prin- 

 ciple of all substances, and from the consort of this 

 first Principle, proceeded Christ, the Son of the Liv- 

 ing, and a female Holy Ghost ; from these, the spirits 

 or created powers of the four elements ; thus forming 

 the holy eight, or the godlike fulness, whose visible 

 copies he found in the sun, the moon, and the stars, 

 and, therefore, attributed to these all the clianges of 

 nature, and of human destiny. The female Holy 

 Ghost, impregnated by the Son of the Living, was, 

 according to him, the Creator of the world. The 

 human soul, originally of the nature of the ^Eons, 

 was confined in the material body only as a punish- 

 ment of its fall, but not subjected to the dominion of 

 the stars. He considered Jesus, the -<Eon destined 

 for the salvation of souls, only a feigned man, and his 

 death only a feigned death, but his doctrine the sure 

 means to fill the soids of men with ardent desires for 

 their celestial home, and to lead them back to God, 

 to whom they go immediately after death, and without 

 a resurrection of the earthly body. B. propagated 

 this doctrine in Syrian hymns, and is the first writer 

 of hymns in this language. His son Harmonius 

 studied in Athens, and strove, also, by means of 

 hymns, to procure the reception of his doctrine. Yet 

 the Bardesanists did not formally separate themselves 

 from the orthodox Christian church. They main- 

 tained themselves until the 5th century. Valentinus 

 the Gnostic approached the nearest to B., without 

 being his follower. A fragment of the work of B. 

 upon destiny is preserved in the Greek language, by 

 Eusebius (Prcepar. Evangel, lib. 6, cap. 10). He 

 led an irreproachable life. Fragments of his Syrian 

 hymns, which display a rich and ardent fiuicy, are 

 to be found in those hymns which the Syrian patri- 

 arch Ephraim composed against his doctrine. 



BAREFOOTED FRIAUS ; monks who do not use shoes, 

 but merely sandals, or go entirely barefoot. In 

 several orders of mendicant friars, e. g., among the 

 Carmelites, Franciscans, Augustins, there are con- 

 gregations of barefooted monks and barefooted nuns, 

 but nowhere a separate order of this kind. 



BARETTI, Joseph, an Italian writer, was the son of 

 an architect of Turin, where he was born in the year 

 1716. He received a good education and some pa- 

 ternal property, which, according to his own confes- 

 sion, he soon gamed away. In 1748, he repaired to 

 England. In 1753, he published, in English, a De- 

 fence of the Poetry of Italy against the Censures of 

 M. Voltaire. About this time, he was introduced to 

 doctor Johnson, then engaged in the compilation of 

 his Dictionary, of which B. availed himself to compile 

 an Italian and English Dictionary, in 1760, much 

 more complete than any which had before appeared. 

 In this year he revisited his native country, and pub- 

 lished, at Venice, a journal under the title of Frusta 

 Literaria, which met with great success, but, owing 

 to the severity of its criticisms, subjected the author 



