Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Basso-relievo" to "Bedfordshire" (part 3)

Soon after the publication of Vivian Grey, Disraeli, who is said by Froude to have been “overtaken by a singular disorder,” marked by fits of giddiness (“once he fell into a trance, and did not recover for a week”), went with the Austens on a long summer tour in France, Switzerland and Italy. Returning to a quiet life at Bradenham—an old manor-house near High Wycombe, which his father had taken—Disraeli put law in abeyance and resumed novel-writing. His weakest book, and two or three other productions, brief, but in every literary sense the finest of his works, were written in the next two or three years. But for Ixion in Heaven, The Infernal Marriage, and Popanilla, Disraeli could not be placed among the greater writers of his kind; yet none of his imaginative books have been so little read as these. The mysterious malady continued, and Disraeli set out with William Meredith, who was to have married Sarah Disraeli, for a tour in southern Europe and the nearer East. He saw Cadiz, Seville, Granada, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Thebes; played the corsair with James Clay on a yacht voyage from Malta to Corfu; visited the terrible Reschid, then with a Turkish army in the Albanian capital; landed in Cyprus, and left it with an expectation in his singularly prescient mind that the island would one day be English. These travels must have profited him greatly, and we have our share of the advantage; not so much, however, in The Wondrous Tale of Alroy or Tancred, or the “Revolutionary Epic” which he was inspired to write on “the windy plains of Troy,” but in the letters he sent home to his sister. These letters, written with the utmost freedom and fullness to the one whose affection and intellect he trusted more than any, are of the greatest value for interpreting the writer. Together with other letters also published some time after Disraeli’s death, they tell more of him than anything that can be found in print elsewhere. They show, for example, that his extraordinary exuberances were unforced, leaping by natural impulse from an overcharged source. They also show that his Oriental fopperies were not so much “purposed affectation” as Froude and others have surmised. That they were so in great part is confessed again and again in these letters, but confessed in such a way as to reveal that they were permitted for his own enjoyment of them as much as planned. The “purposed affectation” sprang from an unaffected delight in gauds of attire, gauds of fancy and expression. It was not only to startle and impress the world that he paraded his eccentricities of splendour. His family also had to be impressed by them. It was to his sober father that he wrote, at the age of twenty-six: “I like a sailor’s life much, though it spoils the toilette.” It is in a letter from Gibraltar to the same hand that we read of his two canes—“a morning and an evening cane”—changed as the gun fires. And the same correspondent must be told that “Ralph’s handkerchief which he brought me from Paris is the most successful thing I ever wore.”

When Disraeli returned to England in 1831, all thought of the law was abandoned. The pen of romance was again taken up—the poet’s also and the politician’s. In the next five years he wrote Contarini Fleming, the Revolutionary Epick, Alroy, Henrietta Temple, What is He? (a pamphlet expository of his opinions), the Runnymede Letters, a Vindication of the British Constitution, and other matter of less note. The epic, begun in great hope and confidence, was ended in less, though its author was to the last unwilling that it should be forgotten. The novels revived the success he had with Vivian Grey, and restored him to his place among the brilliancies and powers of the time. The political writing, too, much of it in a garish, extravagant style, exercised his deeper ambitions, and stands as witness to the working of original thought and foresight. Both qualities are conspicuous in What is He? and the Vindication, of which it has been truly said that in these pages he “struck the keynote to the explanations he afterwards consistently offered of all his apparent inconsistencies.” Here an interpretation of Tory principles as capable of running with the democratic idea, and as called upon to do so, is ingeniously attempted. The aristocratic principle of government having been destroyed by the Reform Bill, and the House of Lords being practically “abrogated” by that measure, it became necessary that Toryism should start from the democratic basis, from which it had never been alien. The filched liberties of the crown and the people should be restored, and the nation redeemed from the oligarchies which had stolen from both. When at the beginning of all this writing Disraeli entered the political arena as candidate for High Wycombe (1832), he was nominated by a Tory and seconded by a Radical—in vain; and vain were two subsequent attempts in the autumn of 1832 and in 1834. In the first he was recommended to the electors by Daniel O’Connell and the Radical Hume. In his last candidature at Wycombe he stood on more independent ground, commending himself by a series of speeches which fully displayed his quality, though the prescience which gemmed them with more than one prophetic passage was veiled from his contemporaries. Among Disraeli’s great acquaintances were many—Lyndhurst at their head—whose expectations of his future were confirmed by the Wycombe speeches. He was “thought of” for various boroughs, Marylebone among the number, but his democratic Toryism seems to have stood in his way in some places and his inborn dislike of Radicalism in others. It was an impracticable situation—no getting on from it; and so, at Lyndhurst’s persuasion, as he afterwards acknowledged, he determined to side with the Tories. Accordingly, when in the spring of 1835 a vacancy occurred at Taunton, Disraeli contested the seat in the Tory interest with Carlton Club support. Here again he failed, but with enhanced reputation as a fighting politician and with other consequences good for notoriety. It was at Taunton that Disraeli fell upon O’Connell, rather ungratefully; whereupon the Liberator was roused to retort on his assailant vehemently as “a liar,” and humorously as a probable descendant of the impenitent thief. And then followed the challenge which, when O’Connell declined it, was fastened on his son Morgan, and the interruption of the duel by seizure of Mr Disraeli in his bed, and his famous appearance in the Marylebone police court. He declared himself very well satisfied with this episode, but nothing in it can really have pleased him, not even the noise it made.

Here the first period of Disraeli’s public life came to an end, a period of preliminaries and flourishes, and of what he himself called sowing his political wild oats. It was a more mature Disraeli who in the general election of 1837 was returned for Maidstone as the colleague of his providential friend Mr Wyndham Lewis. Though the fortunes of the Tory party were fast reviving under Peel’s guidance, the victory was denied him on this occasion; but, for once, the return of the Whigs to power was no great disappointment for the junior member for Maidstone. To gain a footing in the House of Commons was all that his confident spirit ever asked, and Froude vouches for it that he succeeded only just in time to avert financial ruin. His electioneering ventures, the friendly backing of bills, and his own expense in keeping up appearances, had loaded him with debt. Yet (mark his worldly wisdom) “he had never entangled his friends in his financial dealings. He had gone frankly to the professional money-lenders, who made advances to him in a speculation on his success”: they were to get their money back with large interest or lose it altogether. Such conditions were themselves incitement enough to a prompt redemption of the promise of parliamentary distinction, even without the restless spurring of ambition. And Disraeli had another promise to redeem: that which he uttered when he told O’Connell that they would meet again at Philippi. Therefore when, three weeks after the session began, a debate on Irish election petitions gave him opportunity, Disraeli attempted that first House of Commons speech which imagination still dwells upon as something wondrous strange. That he should not have known better, even by hearsay, than to address the House of Commons in fantastic phrase from the mouth of a fantastic figure is indeed remarkable, but not that he retained self-confidence enough to tell the unwitting crew who laughed him down that a time would come when they would hear him. It was one of the least memorable of his prophecies. The speech was a humiliating but not an oppressive failure. In about a week afterwards he spoke again, which shows how little damage he felt, while the good sense, brevity, and blameless manner of the speech (on a copyright bill) announced that he could learn. And for some time thereafter he affected no importance in the House, though not as withdrawing from attention.

Meanwhile, consciously and unconsciously, as is the way with men of genius, his mind was working upon problems of government, the magnitude, the relations and the natural developments of which he was more sensible of than any known politician of his time. “Sensible of,” we say, to mark the difference between one sort of understanding and another which comes of labour and pains alone. Disraeli studied too, no doubt, reading and inquiring and applying set thought, but such means were insufficient to put into his mind all that he found there. It seems that opinions may be formed of inquiry and study alone, which are then constructive; but where intuitive perception or the perceptive imagination is a robust possession, the fruits of research become assimilative—the food of a divining faculty which needs more or less of it according to the power of divination. The better judgment in all affairs derives from this quality, which has some very covetable advantages for its possessor. His judgments may be held with greater confidence, which is an intellectual advantage; and, standing in his mind not so much an edifice as a natural growth, they cannot be so readily abandoned at the call of ease or self-interest. They may be denied assertion or even outraged for a purpose, but they cannot be got rid of,—which is a moral advantage. Disraeli’s mind and its judgments were of this character. Its greatest gift was not the romantic imagination which he possessed abundantly and employed overmuch, but the perceptive, interpretative, judicial or divining imagination, without which there can be no great man of affairs. Breadth of view, insight, foresight, are more familiar but less adequate descriptions of a faculty which Disraeli had in such force that it took command of him from first to last. Although he knew and acted on the principle that “a statesman is a practical character,” whose business is to “serve the country according to its present necessities,” he was unable to confine his vision to the nearer consequences of whatever policy, or course of action, or group of conditions it rested on. Without effort, and even without intention probably, it looked beyond first consequences to the farther or the final outcome; and to complete the operation, the faculty which detected the remoter consequences did not allow them to remain in obscurity, but brought them out as actualities no less than the first and perhaps far more important than the first. Moreover, it did not allow him to keep silence where the remoter consequences were of that character, and ought to be provided for betimes. Of course silence was always possible. These renderings to foresight might be denied assertion either for the sake of present ease (and Disraeli’s prescience of much of his country’s later troubles only made him laughed at) or in deference to hopes of personal advancement. But the same divining imagination which showed him these things also showed him the near time when it would be too late to speak of them, and when not to have spoken would leave him irredeemably in the common herd of hand-to-mouth politicians. Therefore he spoke.

Remembrance of these characteristics—remembrance, too, that his mind, which was neither English nor European, worked in absolute detachment—should accompany the traveller through all the turns and incidents of Disraeli’s long career. They are sometimes puzzling, often speculative; yet nearly all that is obscure in them becomes clear, much apparent contradiction disappears, when read by these persistent unvarying lights. The command which his idiosyncrasies had upon him is shown, for example, by reproachful speeches on the treatment of Ireland, and by a startling harangue on behalf of the Chartists, at a time when such irregularities could but damage him, a new man, where he hoped for influence and office. At about the same time his political genius directed him to open a resolute critical campaign against the Conservatism of the party he proposed to thrive in, and he could but obey. This he did in writing Coningsby, a novel of the day and for the day, but commended to us of a later generation not only by the undimmed truth of its character-portraits, but by qualities of insight and foresight which we who have seen the proof of them can measure as his contemporaries could not. Sybil, which was written in the following year (1845), is still more remarkable for the faculties celebrated in the preceding paragraph. When Sybil was written a long historic day was ending in England, a new era beginning; and no eyes saw so clearly as Disraeli’s the death of the old day, the birth of the new, or what and how great their differences would be. In Coningsby the political conditions of the country were illustrated and discussed from the constitutional point of view, and by light of the theory that for generations before the passing of the Reform Bill the authority of the crown and the liberties of the people had been absorbed and extinguished in an oligarchic system of government, itself become fossilized and soulless. In Sybil were exhibited the social relations of rich and poor (the “two nations”) under this régime, and under changes in which, while the peasantry were neglected by a shoddy aristocracy ignorant of its duties, factory life and a purblind gospel of political economy imbruted the rest of the population. These views were enforced by a startling yet strictly accurate representation of the state of things in the factory districts at that time. Taken from the life by Disraeli himself, accompanied by one or two members of the Young England party of which he was the head, it was the first of its kind; and the facts as there displayed, and Disraeli’s interpretation of them—a marvel of perceptive and prophetic criticism—opened eyes, roused consciences, and led direct to many reforms.

These two books, the Vindication, published in 1835, and his speeches up to this time and a little beyond, are quite enough to show what Disraeli’s Tory democracy meant, how truly national was its aim, and how exclusive of partisanship for the “landed interest”; though he did believe the stability and prosperity of the agricultural class a national interest of the first order, not on economic grounds alone or even chiefly. And if Disraeli, possessed by these views, became aggressively insubordinate some time before Peel’s proclaimed conversion to Free Trade, we can account for it on reasonable and even creditable grounds. Spite, resentment at being passed over when Peel formed the 1841 government, is one explanation of these outbreaks, and a letter to Peel, lately published, is proof to many minds that Disraeli’s denial to Peel’s face in 1846 that he had ever solicited office was daringly mendacious. The letter certainly reads like solicitation in the customary half-veiled form. All that can be said in doubt is that since the ’41 government came into existence on the 6th of September, and the letter was written on the 5th, its interpretation as complaint of being publicly neglected, as a craving for some mark of recognition, is possible. More than possible it is if Disraeli knew on the 5th (as he very well might from his friend Lyndhurst, Peel’s lord chancellor) that the appointments were then complete. The pecuniary need of office, if that comes into the question, had been lightened, if not extinguished, two years before by his marriage with Mrs Wyndham Lewis. Mrs Lewis—a lady fifteen years his senior—brought him a considerable fortune which, however, was but for her life. She lived to a great age, and would gladly have lived longer, in any of the afflictions that time brings on, to continue her mere money-worth to her “Dizzy.” Her devotion to him, and his devotion to her, is the whole known story of their private life; and we may believe that nothing ever gratified him more than offering her a coronet from Mr Disraeli.

Disraeli made Peel’s acquaintance early in his career and showed that he was proud of it. In his Life of Lord George Bentinck he writes of Peel fairly and even generously. But they were essentially antipathetic persons; and it is clear that the great minister and complete Briton took no pains to understand the dazzling young Jew of whom Lyndhurst thought so much, and wished to have little to do with him. Such men make such feelings evident; and there is no reason for thinking that when, after 1841, Disraeli charged at Peel in obedience to his principles, he gave himself pain. It was not long after it had settled in office that Peel’s government, the creature of an anxious Conservative reaction, began to be suspected of drifting toward Manchester. That it was forced in that direction we should say rather, looking back, for it was a time of dire distress, especially in the manufacturing districts of the north; so that in his second session Peel had to provide some relief by revising the corn laws and reducing import dues generally. His measures were supported by Disraeli, who understood that Protection must bend to the menacing poverty of the time, though unprepared for total abolition of the corn tax and strongly of opinion that it was not for Peel to abolish it. In the next session (1843) he and his Young England party took up a definitely independent rôle, which became more sharply critical to the end. Disraeli’s first strong vote of hostility was on a coercion bill for perishing and rebellious Ireland. It was repeated with greater emphasis in the session of 1844, also in a condition-of-Ireland debate; and from that time forth, as if foreseeing Peel’s course and its effect on the country party, Disraeli kept up the attack. Meanwhile bad harvests deepened the country’s distress, Ireland was approached by famine, the Anti-Corn-Law League became menacingly powerful, and Peel showed signs of yielding to free trade. Disraeli’s opportunity was soon to come now; and in 1845, seeing it on the way, he launched the brilliantly destructive series of speeches which, though they could not prevent the abolition of the corn-laws, abolished the minister who ended them. These speeches appeal more to admiration than to sympathy, even where the limitations of Disraeli’s protectionist beliefs are understood and where his perception of the later consequences of free trade is most cordially acknowledged. That he remained satisfied with them himself is doubtful, unless for their foresight, their tremendous effect as instruments of punishment, and as they swept him to so much distinction. Within three years, on the death of Lord George Bentinck, there was none to dispute with him the leadership of the Conservative party in the House of Commons.

In the parliament of 1841 he was member for Shrewsbury. In 1847 he was returned for Buckinghamshire, and never again had occasion to change his constituency. Up to this time his old debts still embarrassed him, but now his private and political fortunes changed together. Froude reports that he “received a large sum from a private hand for his Life of Lord George Bentinck” (published in 1852), “while a Conservative millionaire took upon himself the debts to the usurers; the 3% with which he was content being exchanged for the 10% under which Disraeli had been staggering.” In 1848 his father Isaac D’Israeli died, leaving to his son Benjamin nearly the whole of his estate. This went to the purchase of Hughenden Manor—not, of course, a great property, but with so much of the pleasant and picturesque, of the dignified also, as quite to explain what it was to the affectionate fancy of its lord. About this time, too (1851), his acquaintance was sought by an old Mrs Brydges Willyams—born a Spanish Jewess and then the widow of a long-deceased Cornish squire—who in her distant home at Torquay had conceived a restless admiration for Benjamin Disraeli. She wrote to him again and again, pressing for an appointment to consult on an important matter of business: would meet him at the fountain of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Her importunity succeeded, and the very small, oddly-dressed, strange-mannered old lady whom Disraeli met at the fountain became his adoring friend to the end of her life. Gratitude for her devotion brought him and his wife in constant intimacy with her. There were many visits to Torquay; he gratified her with gossiping letters about the great people with whom and the great affairs with which the man who did so much honour to her race was connected, that being the inspiration of her regard for him. She died in 1863, leaving him all her fortune, which was considerable; and, as she wished, was buried at Hughenden, close to the grave where Disraeli was to lie.

It is agreed that the first three years of Disraeli’s leadership in Opposition were skilfully employed in reconstructing the shattered Tory party. In doing this he made it sufficiently clear that there could be no sudden return to Protectionist principles. At the same time, however, he insisted (as he did from first to last) on the enormous importance to the country, to the character of its people no less than to its material welfare, of agricultural contentment and prosperity; and he also obtained a more general recognition of the fact that “the land” had borne fiscal burdens under the old régime which were unfair and unendurable under the new. So far he did well; and when in 1852 he took office as chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Derby’s first administration, the prospect was a smiling one for a man who, striving against difficulties and prejudices almost too formidable for imagination in these days, had attained to a place where he could fancy them all giving way. That, however, they were not. New difficulties were to arise and old prejudices to revive in full force. His first budget was a quaint failure, and was thrown out by a coalition of Liberals and Peelites which he believed was formed against Mr Disraeli more than against the chancellor of the exchequer. It was on this occasion that he exclaimed, “England does not love coalitions.” After a reign of ten months he was again in Opposition, and remained so for seven years. Of the Crimean War he had a better judgment than those whose weakness led them into it, and he could tell them the whole truth of the affair in twenty words: “You are going to war with an opponent who does not want to fight, and whom you are unwilling to encounter.” Neither were they prepared; and the scandals and political disturbances that ensued revealed him as a party leader who could act on such occasions with a dignity, moderation and sagacity that served his country well, maintained the honour of party government and cost his friends nothing. The mismanagement of the war broke down the Aberdeen government in 1855, and then Disraeli had the mortification of seeing a fortunate chance of return to office lost by the timidity and distrust of his chief, Lord Derby—the distrust too clearly including the under-valuation of Disraeli himself. Lord Derby wanted Lord Palmerston’s help, Mr Gladstone’s, Mr Sidney Herbert’s. This arrangement could not be made; Lord Derby therefore gave up the attempt to form a ministry and Lord Palmerston came in. The next chance was taken in less favouring times. The government in which Disraeli was again financial minister lasted for less than eighteen months (1858-1859), and then ensued another seven years in the cold and yet colder shade of Opposition. Both of these seven-year outings were bad, but the second by far the worse. Parliamentary reform had become a burning question and an embarrassing one for the Tory party. An enormous increase of business, consequent upon the use of steam machinery and free-trade openings to commerce, filled the land with prosperity, and discredited all statesmanship but that which steered by the star over Manchester. Mr Gladstone’s budgets, made possible by this prosperity, were so many triumphs for Liberalism. Foreign questions arose which strongly excited English feeling—the arrangements of peace with Russia, Italian struggles for freedom, an American quarrel, the “Arrow” affair and the Chinese war, the affair of the French colonels and the Conspiracy Bill; and as they arose Palmerston gathered into his own sails (except on the last occasion) every wind of popular favour. Amid all this the Tory fortunes sank rapidly, becoming nearly hopeless when Lord Palmerston, without appreciable loss of confidence on his own side, persuaded many Tories in and out of parliament that Conservatism would suffer little while he was in power. Yet there was great despondency, of course, in the Conservative ranks; with despondency discontent; with discontent rancour. The prejudice against Disraeli as Jew, the revolt at his theatricalisms, the distrust of him as “mystery man,” which up to this time had never died out even among men who were his nearest colleagues, were now more openly indulged. Out of doors he had a “bad press,” in parliament he had some steady, enthusiastic friends, but more that were cold. Sometimes he was seen on the front Opposition bench for hours quite alone. Little conspiracies were got up to displace him, and might have succeeded but for an unconquerable dread of the weapon that destroyed Peel. In this state of things he patiently held his ground, working for his party more carefully than it knew, and never seizing upon false or discrediting advantages. But it was an extremely bad time for Benjamin Disraeli.

Though Lord Palmerston stumbled over his Foreign Conspiracy Bill in 1858, his popularity was little damaged, and it was in no hopeful spirit that the Tories took office again in that year. They were perilously weak in the House of Commons, and affairs abroad, in which they had small practice and no prestige, were alarming. Yet the new administration did very well till, after resettling the government of India, and recovering from a blunder committed by their Indian secretary, Lord Ellenborough, they must needs launch a Reform Bill to put that dangerous question out of controversial politics. The well-intended but fantastic measure brought in for the purpose was rejected. The country was appealed to, with good but insufficient results; and at the first meeting of the new parliament the Tories were turned out on a no-confidence vote moved by Lord Hartington. Foreign affairs supplied the motive: failure to preserve the peace of Europe at the time of the Italian war of independence. It is said that the foreign office had then in print a series of despatches which would have answered its accusers had they been presented when the debate began, as for some unexplained reason they were not. Lord Palmerston now returned to Downing Street, and while he lived Disraeli and his colleagues had to satisfy themselves with what was meant for useful criticism, though with small hope that it was so for their own service. A Polish insurrection, the Schleswig-Holstein question, a commercial treaty with France, the Civil War in America, gave Disraeli occasions for speech that was always forcible and often wiser than all could see at the time. He never doubted that England should be strictly neutral in the American quarrel when there was a strong feeling in favour of the South. All the while he would have gladly welcomed any just means of taking an animated course, for these were dull, dark days for the Conservatives as a parliamentary party. Yet, unperceived, Conservatism was advancing. It was much more than a joke that Palmerston sheltered Conservative principles under the Liberal flag. The warmth of his popularity, to which Radical applause contributed nothing in his later days, created an atmosphere entirely favourable to the quiet growth of Conservatism. He died in 1865. Earl Russell succeeded him as prime minister, Mr Gladstone as leader of the House of Commons. The party most pleased with the change was the Radical; the party best served was Disraeli’s. Another Reform Bill, memorable for driving certain good Liberals into a Cave of Aduilam, broke up the new government in a few months; Disraeli contributing to the result by the delivery of opinions not new to him and of lasting worth, though presently to be subordinated to arguments of an inferior order and much less characteristic. “At this rate,” he said in 1866, “you will have a parliament that will entirely lose its command over the executive, and it will meet with less consideration and possess less influence.” Look for declining statesmanship, inferior aptitude, genius dying off. “Instead of these you will have a horde of selfish and obscure mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief, and that mischief devised and regulated by the raging demagogue of the hour.” The Reform legislation which promised these results in 1866 was thrown out. Lord Derby’s third administration was then formed in the summer of the same year, and for the third time there was a Tory government on sufferance. Its followers were still a minority in the House of Commons; an angry Reform agitation was going on; an ingenious resolution founded on the demand for an enlarged franchise serviceable to Liberals might extinguish the new government almost immediately; and it is pretty evident that the Tory leaders took office meaning to seek a cure for this desperate weakness by wholesale extension of the suffrage. Their excuses and calculations are well known, but when all is said, Lord Derby’s statement of its character, “a leap in the dark,” and of its intention, “dishing the Whigs,” cannot be bettered. Whether Lord Derby or Mr Disraeli originated this resolve has been much discussed, and it remains an unsettled question. It is known that Disraeli’s private secretary, Mr Ralph Earle, quarrelled with him violently at about this time; and Sir William Fraser relates that, meeting Mr Earle, that gentleman said: “I know what your feelings must be about this Reform Bill, and I think it right to tell you that it was not Disraeli’s bill, but Lord Derby’s. I know everything that occurred.” Mr Earle gave the same assurances to the writer of these lines, and did so with hints and half-confidences (quite intelligible, however) as to the persuasions that wrought upon his chief. Mr Earle’s listener on these occasions confesses that he heard with a doubting mind, and that belief in what he heard still keeps company with Mahomet’s coffin. One thing, however, is clear. To suppose Disraeli satisfied with the excuses made for his adoption of the “dishing” process is forbidden by the whole tenor of his teaching and conduct. He could not have become suddenly blind to the fallacy of the expectations derived from such a course; and all his life it had been his distinction to look above the transient and trafficking expedients of the professional politician. However, the thing was done. After various remodellings, and amid much perturbation, secession, violent reproach, the Household Suffrage Bill passed in August 1867. Another memorable piece of work, the confederation of Canada, had already been accomplished. A few days after parliament met in the next year Lord Derby’s failing health compelled him to resign and Mr Disraeli became prime minister. Irish disaffection had long been astir; the Fenian menace looked formidable not only in Ireland but in England also. The reconstructed government announced its intention of dealing with Irish grievances. Mr Gladstone approved, proposing the abolition of the Irish Church to begin with. A resolution to that effect was immediately carried against the strong opposition of the government. Disraeli insisted that the question should be settled in the new parliament which the franchise act called for, and he seems to have had little doubt that the country would declare against Mr Gladstone’s proposal. He was mistaken. It was the great question at the polls; and the first elections by the new constituencies went violently against the authors of their being.

The history of the next five years is Mr Gladstone’s. The Irish Church abolished, he set to work with passionate good intention on the Irish land laws. The while he did so sedition took courage and flourished exceedingly, so that to pacify Ireland the constable went hand in hand with the legislator. The abolition of the Irish Church was followed by a coercion act, and the land act by suspension of Habeas Corpus. Disraeli, who at first preferred retirement and the writing of Lothair, came forward from time to time to point the moral and predict the end of Mr Gladstone’s impulsive courses, which soon began to fret the confidence of his friends. Some unpleasant errors of conduct—the case of Sir R. Collier (afterwards Lord Monkswell, q.v.), the Ewelme rectory case, the significant Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill) episode (to help the government out of a scrape the ambassador was accused of exceeding his instructions)—told yet more. Above all, many humiliating proofs that England was losing her place among the nations came out in these days, the discovery being then new and unendurable. To be brief, in less than four years the government had well-nigh worn out its own patience with its own errors, failures and distractions, and would gladly have gone to pieces when it was defeated on an Irish university bill. But Disraeli, having good constitutional reasons for declining office at the moment, could not allow this. Still gathering unpopularity, still offending, alarming, alienating, the government went on till 1874, suddenly dissolved parliament, and was signally beaten, the Liberal party breaking up. Like most of his political friends, Disraeli had no expectation of such a victory—little hope, indeed, of any distinct success. Yet when he went to Manchester on a brief political outing two years before, he was received with such acclaim as he had never known in his life. He was then sixty-eight years old, and this was his first full banquet of popularity. The elation and confidence drawn from the Manchester meetings were confirmed by every circumstance of the 1874 elections. But he was well aware of how much he owed to his opponents’ errors, seeing at the same time how safely he could lay his future course by them. He had always rejected the political economy of his time, and it was breaking down. He had always refused to accept the economist’s dictum without reference to other considerations than the turnover of trade; and even Manchester could pardon the refusal now. The national spirit, vaporized into a cosmopolitan mist, was fast condensing again under mortification and insult from abroad uncompensated by any appreciable percentage of cash profit. This was a changing England, and one that Disraeli could govern on terms of mutual satisfaction; but not if the reviving “spirit of the country” ran to extremes of self-assertion. At one of the great Manchester meetings he said, “Do not suppose, because I counsel firmness and decision at the right moment, that I am of that school of statesmen who are favourable to a turbulent and aggressive diplomacy. I have resisted it during a large part of my life.”

But for the hubbub occasioned by the Public Worship Regulation Act, the first two years of the 1874 administration had no remarkable excitements till near the end of them. The Public Worship Act, introduced by the archbishop of Canterbury, was meant to restrain ritualism. Disraeli, who from first to last held to the Reformed Church as capable of dispensing social good as no other organization might, supported the Bill as “putting down ritualism”; spoke very vehemently; gave so much offence that at one time neither the bill nor the government seemed quite safe. For some time afterwards there was so little legislation of the kind called “enterprising” that even some friends of the government began to think it too tame; but at the end of the second year an announcement was made which put that fear to rest. The news that the khedive’s Suez Canal shares had been bought by the government was received with boundless applause. It was a courageous thing to do; but it was not a Disraeli conception, nor did it originate in any government department. It was suggested from without at a moment when the possibility of ever acquiring the shares was passing away. On the morning of the 15th of November 1875, Mr Frederick Greenwood, then editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, went to Lord Derby at the foreign office, informed him that the khedive’s shares were passing into the hands of a French syndicate, and urged arrest of the transaction by purchase for England. (The shares being private property their sale could not, of course, be forbidden.) Lord Derby thought there must be a mistake. He could not believe that bargaining of that kind could go on in Cairo without coming to the knowledge of the British consul there. He was answered that nevertheless it was going on. The difficulties of purchase by England were then arrayed by Lord Derby. They were more than one or two, and of course they had a formidable look, but so also had the alternative and the lost opportunity. One difficulty had already come into existence, and had to be met at once. Lord Derby had either to make direct inquiry of the khedive or to let the matter go. If he inquired, and there was no such negotiation, his question might be interpreted in a very troublesome way; moreover, we should put the idea of selling the shares into the khedive’s head, which would be unfortunate. “There’s my position, and now what do you say?” The answer given, Lord Derby drafted a telegram to the British consul-general at Cairo, and read it out. It instructed Colonel Stanton to go immediately to the khedive and put the question point blank. Meanwhile the prime minister would be seen, and Lord Derby’s visitor might call next day to hear the reply from Cairo. It is enough to add here that on receipt of the answer the purchase for England was taken up and went to a speedy conclusion.

As if upon the impulse of this transaction, Disraeli opened the next session of parliament with a bill to confer upon the queen the title of empress of India—a measure which offended the instincts of many Englishmen, and, for the time, revived the prejudices against its author. More important was the revival of disturbances in European Turkey, which, in their outcome, were to fill the last chapter of Disraeli’s career. But for this interruption it is likely that he would have given much of his attention to Ireland, not because it was an attractive employment for his few remaining years, but because he saw with alarm the gathering troubles in that country. And his mind was strongly drawn in another direction. In a remarkable speech delivered in 1872, he spoke with great warmth of the slighting of the colonies, saying that “no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this island.” However, nothing was done in fulfilment of this duty in the first two years from 1874, and early in the third the famous Andrassy note, the Berlin memorandum, the Bashi-Bazouk atrocities, and the accumulative excitement thereby created in England, reopened the Eastern question with a vengeance. The policy which Disraeli’s government now took up may be truly called the national policy. Springing from the natural suggestions of self-defence against the march of a dangerous rivalry, it had the sanction of all British statesmanship for generations, backed by the consenting instinct of the people. It was quite unsentimental, being pro-Turkish or anti-Russian only as it became so in being pro-British. The statesmen by whom it was established and continued saw in Russia a power which, unless firmly kept within bounds, would dominate Europe; more particularly that it would undermine and supersede British authority in the East. And without nicely considering the desire of Russia to expand to the Mediterranean, the Pacific or in any other direction, they thought it one of their first duties to maintain their own Eastern empire; or, to put it another way, to contrive that Great Britain should be subject to Russian ascendancy (if ever), at the remotest period allowed by destiny. Such were the ideas on which England’s Russian policy was founded. In 1876 this policy revived as a matter of course in the cabinet, and as spontaneously, though not upon a first provocation, became popular almost to fury. And furiously popular it remained. But a strong opposing current of feeling, equally passionate, set in against the Turks; war began and lasted long; and as the agitation at home and the conflict abroad went on, certain of Disraeli’s colleagues, who were staunch enough at the beginning, gradually weakened. It is certainly true that Disraeli was prepared, in all senses of the word, to take strong measures against such an end to the war as the San Stefano treaty threatened. Rather than suffer that, he would have fought the Russians in alliance with the Turks, and had gone much farther in maturing a scheme of attack and defence than was known at the time or is commonly known now. That there was a master motive for this resolution may be taken for granted; and it is to be found in a belief that not to throw back the Russian advance then was to lose England’s last chance of postponing to a far future the predominance of a great rival power in the East. How much or how little judgment shows in that calculation, when viewed in the light of later days, we do not discuss. What countenance it had from his colleagues dropped away. At the end their voices were strong enough to insist upon the diplomatic action which at no point falls back on the sword; Lord Derby (foreign minister) being among the first to make a stand on that resolution, though he was not the first seceder from the government. Such diplomacy in such conditions is paralytic. It cannot speak thrice, with whatever affectation of boldness, without discovering its true character to trained ears; which should be remembered when Disraeli’s successes at Berlin are measured. It should be remembered that what with the known timidity of his colleagues, and what with the strength and violence of the Russian party in England, his achievement at Berlin was like the reclamation of butter from a dog’s mouth; as Prince Bismarck understood in acknowledging Disraeli’s gifts of statesmanship. It should also be remembered, when his Eastern policy in 1876-1878 is denounced as malign and a failure, that it was never carried out. Good or bad, ill or well calculated, effective existence was denied to it; and a man cannot be said to have failed in what he was never permitted to attempt. The nondescript course of action which began at the Constantinople conference and ended at Berlin was not of his direction until its few last days. It only marked at various stages the thwarting and suppression of his policy by colleagues who were haunted night and day by memories of the Crimean War, and not least, probably, by the fate of the statesmen who suffered for its blunders and their own. Disraeli also looked back to those blunders, and he was by no means insensible to the fate of fallen ministers. But just as he maintained at the time of the conflict, and after, that there would have been no Crimean War had not the British government convinced the tsar that it was in the hands of the peace party, so now he believed that a bold policy would prevent or limit war, and at the worst put off grave consequences which otherwise would make a rapid advance.

As if aware of much of this, the country was well content with Disraeli’s successes at Berlin, though sore on some points, he himself sharing the soreness. Yet there were great days for him after his return. At the Berlin conference he had established a formidable reputation; the popularity he enjoyed at home was affectionately enthusiastic; no minister had ever stood in more cordial relations with his sovereign; and his honours in every kind were his own achievement against unending disadvantage. But he was soon to suffer irretrievable defeat. A confused and unsatisfactory war in Afghanistan, troubles yet more unsatisfactory in South Africa, conspired with two or three years of commercial distress to invigorate “the swing of the pendulum” when he dissolved parliament in 1880. Dissolution the year before would have been wiser, but a certain pride forbade. The elections went heavily against him. He took the blow with composure, and sank easily into a comparative retirement. Yet he still watched affairs as a great party leader should, and from time to time figured vigorously in debate. Meanwhile he had another novel to sit down to—the poor though highly characteristic Endymion; which, to his great surprise and equal pleasure, was replaced on his table by a cheque for ten thousand pounds. Yet even this satisfaction had its tang of disappointment; for though Endymion was not wholly written in his last days, it was in no respect the success that Lothair was. This also he could bear. His description of his grandfather recurs to us: “A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous and fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could disturb.”

As earl of Beaconsfield (failing health had compelled him to take refuge in the House of Lords in 1876) Benjamin Disraeli died in his house in Curzon Street on the 19th of April 1881. The likelihood of his death was publicly known for some days before the event, and then the greatness of his popularity and its warmth were declared for the first time. No such demonstration of grief was expected even by those who grieved the most. He lies in Hughenden churchyard, in a rail-enclosed grave, with liberty for the turf to grow between him and the sky. Within the church is a marble tablet, placed there by his queen, with a generous inscription to his memory. The anniversary of his death has since been honoured in an unprecedented manner, the 19th of April being celebrated as “Primrose Day”—the primrose, for reasons impossible accurately to define, being popularly supposed to have been Disraeli’s favourite flower. Even among his friends in youth (Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, for example), and not improbably among the city men who wagered their money in irrecoverable loans to him on the chance of his success, there may have been some who compassed the thought of Benjamin Disraeli as prime minister and peer; but at no time could any fancy have imagined him remembered so enduringly as Lord Beaconsfield has been. It is possible that Sarah Disraeli (the Myra of Endymion), or that “the most severe of critics but a perfect wife,” may have had such dreams—hardly that they could have occurred to any mind but a devoted woman’s. Disraeli’s life was a succession of surprises, but none was so great as that he should be remembered after death more widely, lastingly, respectfully, affectionately, than any other statesman in the long reign of Queen Victoria. While he lived he did not seem at all cut out for that distinction even as an Imperialist. Significant as was the common grief when he died, no such consequence could be inferred from it, and certainly not from the elections of 1880. It stands, however, this high distinction, and with it the thought that it would have been denied to him altogether had the “adventurer” and “mystery man” of the sixties died at the age of threescore years and ten. We have said that never till 1872 did he look upon the full cup of popularity. It might have been said that even at that time intrigue to get rid of him had yet to cease in his own party; and but a few years before, a man growing old, he was still in the lowest deeps of his disappointments and humiliations. How, then, could it be imagined that with six years of power from his seventieth year, the Jew “adventurer,” mysterious and theatrical to the last, should fill a greater space in the mind of England twenty years after death than Peel or Palmerston after five? Of course it can be explained; and when explained, we see that Disraeli’s good fortune in this respect is not due entirely to his own merits. His last years of power might have been followed by as long a period of more acceptable government than his own, to the effacement of his own from memory; but that did not happen. What did follow was a time of universal turbulence and suspicion, in which the pride of the nation was wounded again and again. To say “Majuba” and “Gordon” recalls its deepest hurts, but not all of them; and it may be that a pained and angry people, looking back, saw in the man whom they lately displaced more than they had ever seen before. From that time, at any rate, Disraeli has been acknowledged as the regenerator and representative of the Imperial idea in England. He has also been accused on the same grounds; and if the giver of good wine may be blamed for the guest who gets drunk on it, there is justice in the accusation. It is but a statement of fact, however, that Disraeli retains his hold upon the popular mind on this account mainly. The rekindling of the Imperial idea is understood as a timely act of revolt and redemption: of revolt against continuous humiliations deeply felt, redemption from the fate of nations obviously weak and suspected of timidity. It has been called rescue-work—deliverance from the dangers of invited aggression and a philosophical neglect of the means of defence. And its first achievement for the country (this is again a mere statement of fact) was the restoration of a much-damaged self-respect and the creation of a great defensive fleet not a day too soon for safety. So much for “the great heart of the people.” Meanwhile political students find to their satisfaction that he never courted popularity, and never practised the art of working for “quick returns” of sympathy or applause. As “adventurer,” he should have done so; yet he neglected the cultivation of that paying art for the wisdom that looks to the long future, and bears its fruit, perchance, when no one cares to remember who sowed the seed. So it is that to read some of his books and many of his speeches is to draw more respect and admiration from their pages than could have been found there originally. The student of his life understands that Disraeli’s claim to remembrance rests not only on the breadth of his views, his deep insight, his long foresight, but even more on the courage which allowed him to declare opinions supplied from those qualities when there was no visible likelihood of their justification by experience, and therefore when their natural fate was to be slighted. His judgments had to wait the event before they were absolved from ridicule or delivered from neglect. The event arrives; he is in his grave; but his reputation loses nothing by that. It gains by regret that death was beforehand with him.

“Adventurer,” as applied to Disraeli, was a mere term of abuse. “Mystery-man” had much of the same intention, but in a blameless though not in a happy sense it was true of him to the end of his days. Even to his friends, and to many near him, he remained mysterious to the last. It is impossible to doubt that some two or three, four or five perchance, were at home in his mind, being freely admitted there; but of partial admissions to its inner places there seem to have been few or none. Men who were long associated with him in affairs, and had much of his stinted companionship, have confessed that with every wish to understand his character they never succeeded. Sometimes they fancied they had got within the topping walls of the maze, and might hope to gain the point whence survey could be made of the whole; but as often they found themselves, in a moment, where they stood at last and at first—outside. His speeches carry us but a little way beyond the mental range; his novels rather baffle than instruct. It is commonly believed that Disraeli looked in the glass while describing Sidonia in Coningsby. We group the following sentences from this description for a purpose that will be presently seen:—(1) “He was admired by women, idolized by artists, received in all circles with great distinction, and appreciated for his intellect by the very few to whom he at all opened himself.” (2) “For, though affable and generous, it was impossible to penetrate him: though unreserved in his manners his frankness was limited to the surface. He observed everything, thought ever, but avoided serious discussion. If you pressed him for an opinion he took refuge in raillery, and threw out some paradox with which it was not easy to cope. The secret history of the world was Sidonia’s pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive with the public pretext of transactions.” (3) “He might have discovered a spring of happiness in susceptibilities of the heart; but this was a sealed fountain for Sidonia. In his organization there was a peculiar, perhaps a great deficiency; he was a man without affection. It would be hard to say that he had no heart, for he was susceptible of deep emotions; but not for individuals. Woman was to him a toy, man a machine.” These sentences are separately grouped here for the sake of suggesting that they will more truly illustrate Disraeli’s character if taken as follows:—The first as representing his most cherished social ambitions—in whatever degree achieved. The second group as faithfully and closely descriptive of himself; descriptive too of a character purposely cloaked. The third as much less simple; in part a mixture of truth with Byronic affectation, and for the rest (and more significantly), as intimating the resolute exercise of extraordinary powers of control over the promptings and passions by which so many capable ambitions have come to grief. So read, Sidonia and Benjamin Disraeli are brought into close resemblance by Disraeli himself; for what in this description is untrue to the suspected fundamentals of his character is true to his known foibles. But for a general interpretation of Lord Beaconsfield and his career none serves so well as that which Froude insists on most. He was thoroughly and unchangeably a Jew. At but one remove by birth from southern Europe and the East, he was an Englishman in nothing but his devotion to England and his solicitude for her honour and prosperity. It was not wholly by volition and design that his mind was strange to others and worked in absolute detachment. He had “none of the hereditary prepossessions of the native Englishman.” No such prepossessions disturbed his vision when it was bent upon the rising problems of the time, or rested on the machinery of government and the kind of men who worked it and their ways of working. The advantages of Sidonia’s intellect and temperament were largely his, in affairs, but not without their drawbacks. His pride in his knowledge of the English character was the pride of a student; and we may doubt if it ever occurred to him that there would have been less pride but more knowledge had he been an Englishman. It is certain that in shrouding his own character he checked the communication of others to himself, and so could continue to the end of his career the costly mistake of being theatrical in England. There was a great deal too (though little to his blame) in Lord Malmesbury’s observation that he was not only disliked in the House of Commons for his mysterious manner, but prejudiced by a pronounced foreign air and aspect. Lord Malmesbury does not put it quite as strongly as that, but he might have done so with truth. No Englishman could approach Disraeli without some immediate consciousness that he was in the presence of a foreigner.

Lord Beaconsfield has been praised for his integrity in money matters; the praise could have been spared—it does not rise high enough. It is also said to his honour that he “never struck at a little man,” and that was well; but it is explained as readily by pride and calculation as by magnanimity. A man of extraordinary coolness and self-control, his faults in every kind were faults of excess: it is the mark of them all. But whatever offence they gave, whatever mischief they did, was soon exhausted, and has long since been pardoned.

Authorities.—The writer’s personal knowledge is largely represented in the above article. Among the biographical literature available prior to the authoritative Life the following may be cited:—Lord Beaconsfield’s Preface to 1849 edition of Isaac D’Israeli’s works; Correspondence with his Sister, and Home Letters, edited by Ralph Disraeli; Samuel Smiles, Memoirs and Correspondence of John Murray; Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield, by F. Hitchman; Memoir by T.E. Kebbel; Memoir by J.A. Froude; Memoir by Harold Gorst; Sir William Fraser’s Disraeli and his Day; The Speeches of Lord Beaconsfield, edited by T.E. Kebbel. In 1904, however, the large collection of material for Lord Beaconsfield’s life, in the hands of his executors Lord Rowton and Lord Rothschild, was acquired by The Times, and the task of preparing the biography was assigned to Mr W.F. Monypenny, an assistant editor of The Times (1894-1899), who was best known to the public as editor of the Johannesburg Star during the crisis of 1899-1903.

(F. G.)

The crown had in 1871 appointed the Rev. W.W. Harvey (1810-1883), a Cambridge man, to the living of Ewelme, near Oxford, for which members of the Oxford house of convocation were alone eligible. Gladstone was charged with evading this limitation in allowing Harvey to qualify for the appointment by being formally admitted M.A. by incorporation.

For a detailed, if somewhat controversial, account of this affair, see Lucien Wolf’s article in The Times of December 26, 1905, and Mr Greenwood’s letters on the subject.

BEACONSFIELD, a town of Devon county, Tasmania, on the river Tamar, 28 m. direct N.W. of Launceston. Pop. (1901) 2658. From its port at Beauty Point, 3½ m. distant, with which it is connected by a steam tramway, communication is maintained with Georgetown and Launceston. It is the centre of the most important gold-field in the island.

BEACONSFIELD, a town of South Africa in Griqualand West, about 3 m. S.W. of Kimberley, of which it is practically a suburb, though possessing a separate municipality. Pop. (1904) 9378, of whom 2780 were whites. Beaconsfield was founded in 1870 near the famous Dutoitspan diamond mine. The land on which the town is built belongs to the De Beers Company. (See Kimberley.)

BEACONSFIELD, a town in the Wycombe parliamentary division of Buckinghamshire, England. 23 m. W. by N. of London, on the main road to Oxford, and on the Great Central & Great Western joint railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 1570. It lies in a hilly well-wooded district above the valley of the small river Wye, a tributary of the Thames. The broad Oxford road forms its picturesque main street. It was formerly a posting station of importance, and had a considerable manufacture of ribbons. The Perpendicular church of St Mary and All Saints is the burial place of Edmund Burke (d. 1797), who lived at Gregories, or as he named it Butler’s Court, near the town. He would have taken his title from Beaconsfield had he survived to enter the peerage. A monument to his memory was erected in 1898. Edmund Waller the poet owned the property of Hall Barn, and died here in 1687. His tomb is in the churchyard. Benjamin Disraeli chose the title of earl of Beaconsfield in 1876, his wife having in 1868 received the title of Viscountess Beaconsfield. The opening of railway communication with London in 1906 resulted in a considerable accretion of residential population.

BEAD, a small globule or ball used in necklaces, and made of different materials, as metal, coral, diamond, amber, ivory, stone, pottery, glass, rock-crystal and seeds. The word is derived from the Middle Eng. bede, from the common Teutonic word for “to pray,” cf. German beten and English bedesman, the meaning being transferred from “prayer” to the spherical bodies strung on a rosary and used in counting prayers. Beads have been made from remote antiquity, and are found in early Egyptian tombs; variegated glass beads, found in the ground in certain parts of Africa, as Ashantiland, and highly prized by the natives as aggry-beads, are supposed to be of Egyptian or Phoenician origin. Beads of the more expensive materials are strung in necklaces and worn as articles of personal adornment, while the cheaper kinds are employed for the decoration of women’s dress. Glass beads have long been used for purposes of barter with savage tribes, and are made in enormous numbers and varieties, especially in Venice, where the manufacture has existed from at least the 14th century. Glass, either transparent, or of opaque coloured enamel (smalti), or having complex patterns produced by the twisting of threads of coloured glass through a transparent body, is drawn out into long tubes, from which the beads are pinched off, and finished by being rotated with sand and ashes in heated cylinders.

In architecture, the term “bead” is given to a small cylindrical moulding, in classic work often cut into bead and reel.

BEADLE, also Bedel or Bedell (from A.S. bydel, from beodan, to bid), originally a subordinate officer of a court or deliberative assembly, who summoned persons to appear and answer charges against them (see Du Cange, supra tit. Bedelli). As such, the beadle goes back to early Teutonic times; he was probably attached to the moot as its messenger or summoner, being under the direction of the reeve or constable of the leet. After the Norman Conquest, the beadle seems to have diminished in importance, becoming merely the crier in the manor and forest courts, and sometimes executing processes. He was also employed as the messenger of the parish, and thus became, to a certain extent, an ecclesiastical officer, but in reality acted more as a constable by keeping order in the church and churchyard during service. He also attended upon the clergy, the churchwardens and the vestry. He was appointed by the parishioners in vestry, and his wages were payable out of the church rate. From the Poor Law Act of 1601 till the act of 1834 by which poor-law administration was transferred to guardians, the beadle in England was an officer of much importance in his capacity of agent for the overseers. In all medieval universities the bedel was an officer who exercised various executive and spectacular functions (H. Rashdall, Hist. of Universities in the Middle Ages, i. 193). He still survives in many universities on the continent of Europe and in those of Oxford and Cambridge, but he is now shorn of much of his importance. At Oxford there are four bedels, representing the faculties of law, medicine, arts and divinity. Their duties are chiefly processional, the junior or sub-bedel being the official attendant on the vice-chancellor, before whom he bears a silver mace. At Cambridge there are two, termed esquire-bedels, who both walk before the vice-chancellor, bearing maces.

BEAK (early forms beke and becke, from Fr. bec, late Lat. beccus, supposed to be a Gaulish word; the Celtic bec and beq, however, are taken from the English), the horny bill of a bird, and so used of the horny ends of the mandibles of the octopus, the duck-billed platypus and other animals; hence the rostrum (q.v.) or ornamented prow of ancient war vessels. The term is also applied, in classic architecture, to the pendent fillet on the edge of the corona of a cornice, which serves as a drip, and prevents the rain from flowing inwards.

The slang use of “beak” for a magistrate or justice of the peace has not been satisfactorily explained. The earlier meaning, which lasted down to the beginning of the 19th century, was “watchman” or “constable.” According to Slang and its Analogues (J.S. Farmer and W.E. Henley, 1890), the first example of its later use is in the name of “the Blind Beak,” which was given to Henry Fielding’s half-brother, Sir John Fielding (about 1750). Thomas Harman, in his book on vagrants, Caveat or Warening for commen cursitors, Vulgarely called Vagabones, 1573, explains harmans beck as “counstable,” harman being the word for the stocks. Attempts have been made to connect “beak” in this connexion with the Old English beag, a gold torque or collar, worn as a symbol of authority, but this could only be plausible on the assumption that “magistrate” was the earlier significance of the word.

BEAKER (Scottish bicker, Lat. bicarium, Ger. Becher, a drinking-bowl), a large wide-mouthed drinking-cup or laboratory vessel. See Drinking-Vessels.

BEALE, DOROTHEA (1831-1906), English schoolmistress, was born on the 21st of March 1831 in London, her father being a physician of good family and cultivated tastes. She had already shown a strong intellectual bent and considerable force of character when in 1848 she was one of the first to attend lectures at the newly opened Queen’s College for Ladies, London, and from 1849 to 1856 she herself took classes there. In 1857 for a few months she became head teacher of the Clergy Daughters’ school at Casterton, Westmoreland, but narrow religious prejudices on the part of the governors led to her retirement. In 1858 she was appointed principal of the Ladies College at Cheltenham (opened 1854), then in very low water. Her tact and strenuousness, backed by able financial management, led to its success being thoroughly established by 1864, and as the college increased in numbers new buildings were erected from 1873 onwards. Under Miss Beale’s headship it grew into one of the great girls’ schools of the country, and its development and example played an important part in the revolution effected in regard to the higher education of women. Miss Beale retained her post till her death on the 9th of November 1906. Strongly religious by nature, broad-minded and keenly interested in all branches of culture, she exercised a far-reaching influence on her pupils.

Her Life was written by Elizabeth Raikes (1908).

BEAM (from the O. Eng. béam, cf. Ger. Baum, a tree, to which sense may be referred the use of “beam” as meaning the rood or crucifix, and the survival in certain names of trees, as hornbeam), a solid piece of timber, as a beam of a house, of a plough, a loom, or a balance. In the last case, from meaning simply the cross-bar of the balance, “beam” has come to be used of the whole, as in the expression “the king’s beam,” or “common beam,” which refers to the old English standard balance for wholesale goods, for several hundred years in the custody of the Grocers’ Company, London. As a nautical term, “beam” was transferred from the main cross-timbers to the side of the ship; thus “on the weather-beam” means “to windward,” and a ship is said to be “wide in the beam” when she is wide horizontally. The phrase “to be on one’s beam-ends,” denoting a position of extreme peril or helplessness, is borrowed from the position of a ship which has heeled over so far as to stand on the ends of her horizontal beams. The meaning of “beam” for shafts or rays of light comes apparently from the use of the word to translate the Latin columna lucis, a pillar of light.

BEAN (a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. Bohne), the seed of certain leguminous plants cultivated for food all over the world, and furnished chiefly by the genera Vicia, Phaseolus, Dolichos and others. The common bean, in all its varieties, as cultivated in Britain and on the continents of Europe and America, is the produce of Vicia Faba. The French bean, kidney bean, or haricot, is the seed of Phaseolus vulgaris; but in India several other species of this genus of plants are raised, and form no small portion of the diet of the inhabitants. Besides these there are numerous other pulses cultivated for the food both of man and domestic animals, to which the name bean is frequently given. The common bean is even more nutritious than wheat; and it contains a very high proportion of nitrogenous matter under the form of legumin, which amounts on an average to 24%. It is, however, a rather coarse food, and difficult of digestion, and is chiefly used to feed horses, for which it is admirably adapted. In England French beans are chiefly, almost exclusively, used in the green state; the whole pod being eaten as a table vegetable or prepared as a pickle. It is wholesome and nutritious; and in Holland and Germany the pods are preserved in salt by almost every family for winter and spring use. The green pods are cut across obliquely, most generally by a machine invented for the purpose, and salted in barrels. When wanted for use they are steeped in fresh water to remove the salt, and broiled or stewed they form an agreeable addition to the diet at a time when no other vegetable may be had.

The broad bean—Vicia Faba, or Faba vulgaris, as it is known by those botanists who regard the slight differences which distinguish it from the great majority of the species of the vetch genus (Vicia) as of generic importance—is an annual which has been cultivated fiom prehistoric times for its nutritious seeds.

The lake-dwellers of Switzerland, and northern Italy in the bronze age cultivated a small-fruited variety, and it was grown in ancient Egypt, though, according to Herodotus, regarded by the priests as unclean. The ancient Greeks called it κύαμος, the Latins faba, but there is no suggestion that the plant is a native of Europe. Alphonse de Candolle (Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 320) concludes that the bean was introduced into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time of their earliest migrations. He suggests that its wild habitat was twofold some thousands of years ago, one of the centres being to the south of the Caspian, the other in the north of Africa, and that its area has long been in process of diminution and extinction. The nature of the plant favours this hypothesis, for its seed has no means of dispersing itself, and rodents or other animals can easily make prey of it; the struggle for existence which was going against this plant as against maize would have gradually isolated it and caused it to disappear, if man had not saved it by cultivation. It was introduced into China a little before the Christian era, later into Japan and more recently into India, though it has been suggested that in parts of the higher Himalayas its cultivation has survived from very ancient times. It is a plant which will flourish in all ordinary good garden soil. The seeds are sown about 4 in. apart, in drills 2½ ft. asunder for the smaller and 3 ft. for the larger sorts. The soil should, preferably, be a rather heavy loam, deeply worked and well enriched. For an early crop, seeds may be sown in November, and protected during winter in the same manner as early peas. An early crop may also be obtained by dibbling in the seeds in November, sheltering by a frame, and in February transplanting them to a warm border. Successional crops are obtained by sowing suitable varieties from January to the end of June. All the culture necessary is that the earth be drawn up about the stems. The plants are usually topped when the pods have set, as this not only removes the black aphides which often settle there, but is also found to promote the filling of the pods.

The following are some of the best sorts:—for early use, Early Mazagan, Long-pod, Marshall’s Early Prolific and Seville Long-pod; for late use, Carter’s Mammoth Long-pod and Broad Windsor.

The horse-bean is a variety—var. equina.

Cultivation of Field-bean.—Several varieties of Vicia Faba (e.g. the horse bean, the mazagan, the tick bean, the winter bean) are cultivated in the field for the sake both of the grain, which is used as food for live-stock, and of the haulm, which serves for either fodder or litter. They are best adapted for heavy soils such as clays or clayey loams. The time for sowing is from the end of January to the beginning of March, or in the case of winter beans from the end of September to the middle of November. The bean-crop is usually interposed between two crops of wheat or some other cereal. If spring beans are to be sown, the land after harvest is dressed with farmyard manure, which is then ploughed in. In January the soil is levelled with the harrows, and the seed, which should be hard and light brown in colour, is drilled in rows from 15 to 24 in. apart at the rate of from 2 to 2½ bushels to the acre and then harrowed in. The alternative is to “dibble” the seed in the furrow left by the autumn ploughing and cover it in with the harrows; or the land may be ridged with the double-breasted plough, manure deposited in the furrows and the seed sown broadcast, the ridges being then split back so as to cover both manure and seed. After the plant shows, horse-hoeing and hand-hoeing between the rows is carried on so long as the plant is small enough to suffer no injury therefrom. The routine of cultivation for winter beans hardly differs from that described except as regards the time of sowing.

Beans are cut when the leaf is fallen and the haulm is almost black either with the fagging hook or the reaping machine, though the stoutness of the stalks causes a severe strain on the latter implement. They are tied and stocked, and are so left for a considerable time before stacking. There is less fear of injury to the crop through damp than in the case of other cereals. Their value for feeding purposes increases in the stack, where they may remain for a year or more before threshing. Pea and bean weevils, both striped (Sitones lineatus) and spotted (Sitones crinitus), and the bean aphis (Aphis rumicis), are noted pests of the crop. Winter beans come to maturity earlier than the spring-sown varieties, and are therefore strong enough to resist the attacks of the aphis by the end of June, when it begins its ravages. Field-beans yield from 25 to 35 bushels to the acre.

Phascolus vulgaris, the kidney, French or haricot bean, an annual, dwarf and bushy in growth, is widely cultivated in temperate, sub-tropical and tropical regions, but is nowhere known as a wild plant. It was long supposed to be of Indian origin, an idea which was disproved by Alphonse de Candolle, who sums up the facts bearing on its origin as follows:—Phaseolus vulgaris has not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia and Egypt, and it is not certain that it was known in Europe before the discovery of America. At the latter epoch the number of varieties in European gardens suddenly increased, and all authors began to mention them. The majority of the species of the genus exist in South America, and seeds apparently belonging to the species in question have been found in Peruvian tombs of an uncertain date, intermixed with many species, all American. Hence it is probable that the plant is of South American origin.

It is a tender annual, and should be grown in a rich light loamy soil and a warm sheltered situation. The soil should be well enriched with hot-bed dung. The earliest crop may be sown by the end of March or beginning of April. If, however, the temperature of the soil is below 45°, the beans make but little progress. The main crops should be got in early in May; and a later sowing may be made early in July. The earlier plantings may be sown in small pots, and put in frames or houses, until they can be safely planted out-of-doors. A light covering of straw or some other simple shelter suffices to protect from late frosts. The seeds should be covered 1½ or 2 in. deep, the distance between the rows being about 2 ft., or for the dwarfest sorts 18 in., and that between plants from 4 to 6 in. The pods may be used as a green vegetable, in which case they should be gathered whilst they are so crisp as to be readily snapped in two when bent; but when the dry seeds are to be used the pods should be allowed to ripen. As the green pods are gathered others will continue to be formed in abundance, but if old seed-forming pods are allowed to remain the formation of young ones will be greatly checked. There are numerous varieties; among the best are Canadian Wonder, Canterbury and Black Negro.

Phaseolus multiflorus, scarlet runner, is nearly allied to P. vulgaris, of which it is sometimes regarded as a variety, but differs in its climbing habit. It is naturally perennial and has a thick fleshy root, but is grown in Great Britain as a tender annual. Its bright, generally scarlet flowers, arranged in long racemes, and the fact that it will flourish in any ordinary good garden soil, combine to make it a favourite garden plant. It is also of interest as being one of the few plants that twine in a direction contrary to the apparent motion of the sun. The seeds of the runner beans should be sown in an open plot,—the first sowing in May, another at the beginning of June, and a third about the middle of June. In the London market-gardens they are sown 8 to 12 in. apart, in 4 ft. rows if the soil is good. The twining tops are pinched or cut off when the plants are from 2 to 2½ ft. high, to save the expense of staking. It is better, however, in private gardens to have the rows standing separately, and to support the plants by stakes 6 or 7 ft. high and about a foot apart, the tops of the stakes being crossed about one-third down. If the weather is dry when the pods are forming abundantly, plenty of tepid water should be supplied to the plants. In training the shoots to their supports, they should be twined from right to left, contrary to the course of the sun, or they will not lay hold. By frequently picking the pods the plants are encouraged to form fresh blooms from which pods may be picked until the approach of frost.

The ordinary scarlet runner is most commonly grown, but there is a white-flowered variety which has also white seeds; this is very prolific and of excellent quality. Another variety called Painted Lady, with the flowers red and white, is very ornamental, but not so productive. Carter’s Champion is a large-podded productive variety.

Another species P. lunatus, the Lima bean, a tall biennial with a scimitar-shaped pod (whence the specific name) 2 to 3 in. long containing a few large seeds, is widely cultivated in the warmer parts of the world.

The young pods of another leguminous climbing herb, Dolichos Lablab, as well as the seeds, are widely used in the tropics, as we use the kidney bean. The plant is probably a native of tropical Africa, but is now generally cultivated in the tropics. The word Dolichos is of Greek origin, and was used by Theophrastus for the scarlet runner.

Another species, D. biflorus, is the horse gram, the seed of which is eaten by the poorer class of natives in India, and is also, as are the pods, a food for horses and cattle.

The Soy bean, Glycine hispida, was included by Linnaeus in the genus Dolichos. It is extensively cultivated in China and Japan, chiefly for the pleasant-flavoured seed from which is prepared a piquant sauce. It is also widely grown in India, where the bean is eaten, while the plant forms a valuable fodder; it is cultivated for the latter purpose in the United States.

Other references to beans will be found under special headings, such as Calabar Bean, Locust-Tree. There are also several non-leguminous seeds to which the popular name bean is attached. Among these may be mentioned the sacred Egyptian or Pythagorean bean (Nelumbium speciosum), and the Ignatius bean (probably Strychnos multiflora), a source of strychnine.

The ancient Greeks and Romans made use of beans in gathering the votes of the people, and for the election of magistrates. A white bean signified absolution, and a black one condemnation. Beans had a mysterious use in the lemuralia and parentalia, where the master of the family, after washing his hands three times, threw black beans over his head nine times, reiterating the words “I redeem myself and my family by these beans.”

BEAN-FEAST, primarily an annual dinner given by an employer to his workpeople, and then colloquially any jollification. The phrase is variously derived. The most probable theory is that which connects it with the custom in France, and afterwards in Germany and England, of a feast on Twelfth Night, at which a cake with a bean buried in it was a great feature. The bean-king was he who had the good fortune to have the slice of cake in which was the bean. This choosing of a king or queen by a bean was formerly a common Christmas diversion at the English and Scottish courts, and in both English universities. This monarch was master of the revels like his congener the lord of misrule. A clue to his original functions is possibly found in the old popular belief that the weather for the ensuing twelve months was determined by the weather of the twelve days from Christmas to Twelfth Night, the weather of each particular month being prognosticated from each day. Thus the king of the bean of Twelfth Night may have originally reigned for the twelve days, his chief duty being the performance of magical ceremonies for ensuring good weather during the ensuing twelve months. Probably in him and the lord of misrule it is correct to find the lineal descendant of the old king of the Saturnalia, the real man who personated Saturn and, when the revels ceased, suffered a real death in his assumed character. Another but most improbable derivation for bean-feast connects it with M.E. bene “prayer,” “request,” the allusion being to the soliciting of alms towards the cost of their Twelfth Night dinner by the workpeople.

See Wayzgoose; Misrule, Lord of; also J. Boemus, Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium (Lyons, 1541), p. 222; Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et légendes du centre de la France, i. 19-29; Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage normand, ii. 125; Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen des Eifler Volkes, i. 6; Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (Hazlitt’s edit. 1905), under “Twelfth Night”; Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, p. 29 sqq.

BEAR, properly the name of the European brown bear (Ursus arctus), but extended to include all the members of the Ursidae, the typical family of Arctoid carnivora, distinguished by their massive bodies, short limbs, and almost rudimentary tails. With the single exception of the Indian sloth-bear, all the species have forty-two teeth, of which the incisors and canines closely resemble those of purely carnivorous mammals; while the molars, and especially the one known as the “sectorial” or “carnassial,” have their surfaces tuberculated so as to adapt them for grinding vegetable substances. As might have been supposed from their dentition, the bears are omnivorous; but most prefer vegetable food, including honey, when a sufficient supply of this can be had. The grizzly bear, however, is chiefly carnivorous; while the polar bear is almost wholly so.

Bears are five-toed, and provided with formidable claws, which are not retractile, and thus better fitted for digging and climbing than for tearing. Most climb trees in a slow, lumbering fashion, and, in descending, always come hind-quarters first. The grizzly bear is said to lose this power of climbing in the adult stage. In northern countries bears retire during the winter into caves and the hollows of trees, or allow the falling snow to cover them, and there remain dormant till the advent of spring, about which time the female usually produces her young. These are born naked and blind, and it is commonly five weeks before they see, or become covered with hair. Before hibernating the adults grow very fat, and it is by the gradual consumption of this fat—known in commerce as bear’s grease—that such vital action as is necessary to the continuance of life is sustained.

The bear family is widely distributed, being found in every quarter of the globe except Australia, and in all climates, from the highest northern latitudes yet reached by man to the warm regions of India and Malaya. In the north-west corner of Africa the single representative of the family found on that continent occurs.

The polar or white bear (Ursus maritimus), common to the Arctic regions of both hemispheres, is distinguished from the other species by having the soles of the feet covered with close-set hairs,—in adaptation to the wants of the creature, the bear being thereby enabled to walk securely on slippery ice. In the whiteness of its fur also, it shows such an assimilation in colour to that of surrounding nature as must be of considerable service in concealing it from its prey. The food of the white bear consists chiefly of seals and fish, in pursuit of which it shows great power of swimming and diving, and a considerable degree of sagacity; but its food also includes the carcases of whales, birds and their eggs, and grass and berries when these can be had. That it can sustain life on a purely vegetable diet is proved by instances on record of its being fed for years on bread only, in confinement. These bears are strong swimmers, Sir Edward Sabine having found one “swimming powerfully 40 m. from the nearest shore, and with no ice in sight to afford it rest.” They are often carried on floating ice to great distances, and to more southern latitudes than their own, no fewer than twelve Polar bears having been known to reach Iceland in this way during one winter. The female always hibernates, but the male may be seen abroad at all seasons. In bulk the white bear exceeds most other members of the family, measuring nearly 9 ft. in length, and often weighing 1600 ℔.

Land bears have the soles of the feet destitute of hair, and their fur more or less shaggy. On these the brown bear (Ursus arctus,—ἄρκτος of Aristotle) is found in one or other of its varieties all over the temperate and north temperate regions of the eastern hemisphere, from Spain to Japan. The fur is usually brownish, but there are black, blackish-grey and yellowish varieties. It is a solitary animal, frequenting the wooded parts of the regions it inhabits, and living on a mixed diet of fruits, vegetable, honey, fish and the smaller animals. In winter it hibernates, concealing itself in some hollow or cavern. It does not seek to attack man; but when baited, or in defence of its young, shows great courage and strength, rising on its hind legs and endeavouring to grasp its antagonist in an embrace. Bear-baiting, till within comparatively recent times, was a favourite sport throughout Europe, but, along with cock-fighting and badger-baiting, has gradually disappeared before a more humane civilization. It was a favourite pastime among the Romans, who imported their bears from Britain, a proof that the animal was then comparatively abundant in that country; indeed, from reference made to it in early Scottish history, the bear does not appear to have been extirpated in Britain before the end of the 11th century. It is now found in greatest abundance in Norway, Russia and Siberia, where hunting the bear is a favourite sport, and where, when dead, its remains are highly valued. Among the Kamchadales “the skin of the bear,” says a traveller, “forms their beds and their coverlets, bonnets for their heads, gloves for their hands and collars for their dogs. The flesh and fat are their dainties. Of the intestines they make masks or covers for their faces, to protect them from the glare of the sun in the spring, and use them as a substitute for glass, by extending them over their windows. Even the shoulder-blades are said to be put in requisition for cutting grass.” In confinement the brown bear is readily tamed; and advantage has been taken of the facility with which it can sustain itself on the hind feet to teach it to dance to the sound of music. It measures 4 ft. in length, and is about 2½ ft. high. Of this species Crowther’s bear from the Atlas Mountains, the Syrian bear (Ursus arctus pyriacus) and the snow or isabelline bear (Ursus arctus isabellinus) of the Himalaya are local races, or at most subspecies. American naturalists regard the big brown bears of Alaska as a distinct group. They range from Sitka to the extremity of the Alaskan Peninsula, over Kodiak Island, and inland. Their distinctive external features are their large size, light-brown colour, high shoulders, massive heads of great breadth and shaggy coat.

The grizzly bear (Ursus arctus horribilis, formerly known as U. ferox) is regarded by some naturalists as a distinct species and by others as a variety of the brown bear, to which it is closely allied. It was said to exceed all other American mammals in ferocity of disposition and muscular strength. Stories were told of its attacking the bison, and it has been reported to carry off the carcase of a wapiti, weighing nearly 1000 ℔, for a considerable distance to its den, there to devour it at leisure. It also eats fruit and vegetables. Its fur is usually of a yellowish-brown colour, coarse and grizzled, and of little value commercially, while its flesh, unlike that of other bears, is uneatable even by the Indians. The grizzly bear is now rare in the United States, save in the Yellowstone Park and the Clearwater Mountains of Idaho, though more common in British Columbia. Several geographical races are recognized. The Tibet bear (U. pruinosus) is a light-coloured small species.

The American black bear (Ursus americanus) occurs throughout the wooded parts of the North American continent, whence it is being gradually driven to make room for man. It is similar in size to the brown bear, but its fur is of a soft even texture, and of a shining black colour, to which it owes its commercial value. At the beginning of the 19th century black bears were killed in enormous numbers for their furs, which at that time were highly valued. In 1803 the skins imported into England numbered 25,000, but the imports have since decreased to one-half of that number. They are chiefly used for military accoutrements. This is a timid animal, feeding almost solely on fruits, and lying dormant during winter, at which period it is most frequently killed. It is an object of superstitious reverence to the Indians, who never kill it without apologizing and deploring the necessity which impels them to do so.

The Himalayan black bear (U. torquatus) is found in the forest regions ranging from the Persian frontier eastward to Assam. The average length is about 5 ft.; there is no under-fur, and the coat is smooth, black in colour, with the exception of a white horseshoe-mark on the chest. It feeds chiefly on fruit and roots, but kills sheep, goats, deer, ponies and cattle, and sometimes devours carrion.

The small bruang or Malayan bear (Ursus malayanus) is of a jet-black colour, with a white semilunar mark on the chest, and attains a length of 4½ ft. Its food consists almost solely of vegetables and honey, but the latter is its favourite food,—the extreme length and pliability of the tongue enabling it to scoop out the honeycombs from the hollows of trees. It is found in the Malay Peninsula and Islands, and is readily tamed.

Not much larger than the Malay bear is the South American spectacled bear of the Andes (U. ornatus), distinguished from all the rest by the presence of a perforation in the lower end of the humerus, and hence sometimes separated as Tremarctus. It is black, with tawny rings round the eyes, and white cheeks, throat and chest. A second race or species exists.

The sloth-bear (Melursus labiatus or ursinus) is distinguished by the absence of one pair of upper incisors, the small size of the cheek-teeth and the very extensile character of the lips. It is also known as the aswail and the honey-bear, the last name being also given to the Malay bear and the kinkajou. It is about the size of the brown bear, is covered with long, black hair, and of extremely uncouth aspect. It inhabits the mountainous regions of India, is readily tamed and is the bear usually exhibited by the Hindu jugglers. The food consists of fruits, honey and white ants.

Fossil remains of extinct bears first occur in strata of the Pliocene age. Those of the great cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), found abundantly in certain caverns of central Europe and Asia, show that it must have exceeded in size the polar bear of the present day. Its remains are also found in similar situations in Britain associated with those of an allied species (Ursus priscus).

Lydekker, in Proc. Zool. Soc., 1897, p. 412.

BEAR-BAITING and BULL-BAITING, sports formerly very popular in England but now suppressed on account of their cruelty. They took place in arenas built in the form of theatres which were the common resort even of cultivated people. In the bear-gardens, which are known to have existed since the time of Henry II., the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. Erasmus, writing (about 1500) from the house of Sir Thomas More, spoke of “many herds of bears maintained in the country for the purpose of baiting.” Sunday was the favourite day for these sports. Hentzner, writing in 1598, describes the bear-garden at Bankside as “another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of Bulls and Bears. They are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other, and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired.” He also describes the whipping of a blinded bear, a favourite variation of bear-baiting. For a famous baiting which took place before Queen Elizabeth in 1575 thirteen bears were provided. Of it Robert Laneham (fl. 1575) wrote, “it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies’ approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy.” The famous “Paris Garden” in Southwark was the chief bear-garden in London. A Spanish nobleman of the time, who was taken to see a pony baited that had an ape tied to its back, expressed himself to the effect that “to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screaming of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable.” Butler describes a bear-baiting at length in the first canto of his Hudibras.

The Puritans endeavoured to put an end to animal-baiting, although Macaulay sarcastically suggested that this was “not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” The efforts of the Puritans seem, however, to have had little effect, for we find the sport flourishing at the Restoration; but the conscience of cultivated people seems to have been touched, for Evelyn wrote in his Diary, under the date of June 16th, 1670: “I went with some friends to the bear-garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear and bull baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceedingly well, but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady’s lap, as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed, and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in twenty years before.” Steele also attacked these cruel sports in the Tatler. Nevertheless, when the tsar Nicholas I. visited England as cesarevich, he was taken to see a prize-fight and a bull-baiting. In this latter form of the sport the bull’s nose was usually blown full of pepper to render him the more furious. The bull was often allowed a hole in the ground, into which to thrust his nose and lips, his most vulnerable parts. Sometimes the bull was tethered, and dogs, trained for the purpose, set upon him one by one, a successful attack resulting in the dog fastening his teeth firmly in the bull’s snout. This was called “pinning the bull.” A sport called bull-running was popular in several towns of England, particularly at Tutbury and Stamford. Its establishment at Tutbury was due to John of Gaunt, to whose minstrels, on the occasion of their annual festival on August 16th the prior of Tutbury, for his tenure, delivered a bull, which had his horns sawn off, his ears and tail cut off, his nostrils filled with pepper and his whole body smeared with soap. The minstrels gave chase to the bull, which became the property of any minstrel of the county of Stafford who succeeded in holding him long enough to cut off a lock of his hair. Otherwise he was returned to the prior. At the dissolution of the monasteries this tenure devolved upon the dukes of Devonshire, who suppressed it in 1788. At Stamford the running took place annually on November 13th, the bull being provided by the butchers of the town, the townspeople taking part in the chase, which was carried on until both people and beast were exhausted, and ended in the killing of the bull. Certain rules were strictly observed, such as the prohibition of carrying sticks or staves that were shod with iron. The Stamford bull-running survived well into the 19th century. Bear-baiting and bull-baiting were prohibited by act of parliament in 1835.

BEARD, WILLIAM HOLBROOK (1825-1900), American painter, was born on the 13th of April 1825 at Painesville, Ohio. He studied abroad, and in 1861 removed to New York City, where in 1862 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was a prolific worker and a man of much inventiveness and originality, though of modest artistic endowment. His humorous treatment of cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, generally with some human occupation and expression, usually satirical, gave him a great vogue at one time, and his pictures were largely reproduced. His brother, James Henry Beard (1814-1893), was also a painter.

BEARD (A.S. beard, O.H. and Mod. Ger. Bart, Dan. baard, Icel. bar, rim, edge, beak of a ship, &c., O. Slav, barda, Russ. barodá. Cf. Welsh barf, Lat. barba, though, according to the New English Dictionary, the connexion is for phonetic reasons doubtful). Modern usage applies this word to the hair grown upon a man’s chin and cheek. When the chin is shaven, what remains upon the cheeks is called whiskers. “Moustache” or “moustaches” describes the hair upon the upper lip. But the words have in the past had less exact meaning. Beard has stood alone for all these things, and whisker has in its time signified what we now call moustache, as in the case of Robinson Crusoe’s great pair of “Turkish whiskers.”

The bearded races of mankind have ever held the beard in high honour. It is the sign of full manhood; the lad or the eunuch is beardless, and the bearded woman is reckoned a witch, a loathsome thing to all ages. Also the beard shrinks from the profane hand; a tug at the beard is sudden pain and dishonour. The Roman senator sat like a carven thing until the wondering Goth touched his long beard; but then he struck, although he died for the blow. The future King John gave deadly offence to the native chieftains, when visiting Ireland in 1185, by plucking at their flowing beards.

David’s ambassadors had their beards despitefully shaven by a bold heathen. Their own king mercifully covered their shame—“Tarry ye at Jericho until your beards be grown”—but war answered the insult. The oath on the beard is as old as history, and we have an echo of it in the first English political ballad when Sir Simon de Montfort swears “by his chin” revenge on Warenne.

Adam, our first father, was by tradition created with a beard: Zeus Allfather is bearded, and the old painters and carvers who hardily pictured the first person of the Trinity gave Him the long beard of his fatherhood. The race-fathers have it and the ancient heroes. Abraham and Agamemnon, Woden and King Arthur and Charlemagne, must all be bearded in our pictures. With the Mahommedan peoples the beard as worn by an unshaven prophet has ever been in high renown, the more so that amongst most of the conquering tribes who first acknowledged the unity of God and prophethood of Mahomet it grows freely. But before Mahomet’s day, kings of Persia had plaited their sacred beards with golden thread, and the lords of Nineveh had curiously curled and oiled beards such as their winged bull wears. Bohadin tells us that Saladin’s little son wept for terror when he saw the crusaders’ envoys “with their clean-shaven chins.” Selim I. (1512-1521) comes down as a Turkish sultan who broke into holy custom and cut off his beard, telling a remonstrating Mufti that his vizier should now have nothing to lead him by. But such tampering with tradition has its dangers, and the absolute rule of Peter the Great is made clear when we know that he taxed Russian beards and shaved his own, and yet died in his bed. Alexander the Great did as much and more with his well-drilled Macedonians, and was obeyed when he bade them shave off the handle by which an enemy could seize them.

With other traditions of their feudal age, the Japanese nation has broken with its ancient custom of the razor, and their emperor has beard and moustache; a short moustache is common amongst Japanese officers and statesmen, and generals and admirals of Nippon follow the imperial example. The Nearer East also is abandoning the full beard, even in Mahommedan lands. Earlier shahs of the Kajar house have glorious beards below their girdles, but Náṣiru’d-Dín and his successor have shaved their chins. In later years the sultan of Turkey has added a beard to his moustache; the khedive of Egypt, son of a bearded father, has a soldier’s moustache only. In Europe the great Russian people is faithful to the beard, Peter’s law being forgotten. The tsar Alexander III.’s beard might have satisfied Ivan the Terrible, whose hands played delightedly with the five-foot beard of Queen Elizabeth’s agent George Killingworth. Indeed the royal houses of Europe are for the most part bearded or whiskered. It may be that the race of Olivier le Dain, of the man who can be trusted with a sharp razor near a crowned king’s throat, is extinct. Leopold II., king of the Belgians, however, was in 1909 the only sovereign with the full beard unclipped. The Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph, retained the moustache and whiskers of the ’sixties, and the German emperor, William II., for a short period, commemorated by a few very rare photographs, had a beard, although it was never suffered to reach the length of that beard which gave his father an air of Charlemagne or Barbarossa. In France bearded presidents have followed each other, but it may be noted that the waxed moustache and “imperial” beard of the Second Empire is now all but abandoned to the Frenchman of English comedy. The modern English fashion of shaving clean is rare in France save among actors, and during 1907 many Parisian waiters struck against the rule which forbade them to grow the moustache.

For the most part the clergy of the Roman obedience shave clean, as have done the popes for two centuries and more. But missionary bishops cultivate the long beard with some pride, and the orders have varying customs, the Dominican shaving and the Franciscan allowing the hair to grow. The Roman Catholic clergy of Dalmatia, secular and regular, are allowed to wear the moustache without beard or whiskers, as a concession to national prejudices.

Amongst English people, always ready to be swayed by fashion, the hair of the face has been, age by age, cherished or shaved away, curled or clipped into a hundred devices. Before the immigration from Sleswick the Briton knew the use of the razor, sometimes shaving his chin, but leaving the moustaches long. The old English also wore moustaches and forked beards, but, save for aged men, the beard had passed out of fashion before the Norman Conquest. Thus, in the Bayeux needlework, Edward the king is venerable with a long beard, but Harold and his younger fighting men have their chins reaped. “The English,” says William of Malmesbury, “leave the upper lip unshaven, suffering the hair continually to increase,” and to Harold’s spies the Conqueror’s knights, who had “the whole face with both lips shaven,” were strange and priest-like. Matthew Paris had a strange idea that the beard was distinctive of Englishmen; he asserts that those who remained in England were compelled to shave their beards, while the native nobles who went into exile kept their beards and flowing locks “like the Easterns and especially the Trojans.” He even believed that “William with the beard,” who headed a rising in London under Richard I., came of a stock which had scorned to shave, out of hatred for the Normans, a statement which Thierry developed.

The Chanson de Roland shows us “the pride of France” as “that good bearded folk,” with their beards hanging over coats of mail, and it makes the great emperor swear to Naimes by his beard. It was only about the year 1000, according to Rodolf Glaber, that men began in the north of France to wear short hair and shave “like actors”; and even in the Bayeux tapestry the old Norman shipwrights wear the beard. But so rare was hair on the face amongst the Norman invaders that William, the forefather of the Percys, was known in his lifetime and remembered after his death as William “Asgernuns” or “Oht les gernuns,” i.e. “William with the moustaches,” the epithet revived by one of his descendants making our modern name of Algernon. Count Eustace of Boulogne was similarly distinguished. Fashion swung about after the Conquest, and, in the day of Henry I., Serle the bishop could compare bearded men of the Norman-English court with “filthy goats and bristly Saracens.” The crusades, perhaps, were accountable for the beards which were oddly denounced as effeminate in the young courtiers of William Rufus. Not only the Greeks but the Latins in the East sometimes adopted the Saracen fashion, and the siege of Antioch (1098) was as unfavourable to the use of the razor as that of Sevastopol. When the Latins stormed the town by night, bearded knights owed their death to the assumption that every Christian would be a shaven man. But for more than four centuries diversity is allowed, beards, moustaches and shaven faces being found side by side, although now and again one fashion or another comes uppermost to be followed by those nice in such matters. Henry II. is a close-shaven king, and Richard II.’s effigy shows but a little tuft on each side of the chin, tufts which are two curled locks on the chin of Henry IV. But Henry III. is long-bearded, Edward II. curls his beard in three great ringlets, and the third Edward’s long forked beard flows down his breast in patriarchal style. The mid-13th century, as seen in the drawings attributed to Matthew Paris, is an age of many full and curled beards, although the region about the lips is sometimes clipped or shaved. The beard is common in the 14th century, the forked pattern being favoured and the long drooping moustache. Amongst those who ride with him to Canterbury, Chaucer, a bearded poet, notes the merchant’s “forked beard,” the white beard of the franklin and the red beard of the miller, but the reeve’s beard is “shave as ny as ever he can.” Henry of Monmouth and his son are shaven, and thereafter beards are rare save with a few old folk until they come slowly back with the 16th century. In Ireland the statute enacted by a parliament at Trim in 1447 recited that no manner of man who will be taken for an Englishman should have beard above his mouth—the upper lip must be shaven at least every fortnight or be of equal growth with the nether lip,—and this statute remained unrepealed for nigh upon two hundred years. Henry VIII., always a law to himself, brought back the beard to favour, Stowe’s annals giving 1535 as the year in which he caused his beard “to be knotted and no more shaven,” his hair being polled at the same time. Many portraits give his fashion of wearing a thin moustache, whose ends met a short and squarely trimmed beard parted at the chin, a fashion in which he was followed by his brother-in-law Charles Brandon. But it is remarkable that those about him rarely imitated their most dread sovereign. While Cromwell and Howard the Admiral go clean shaven, the Seymour brothers, Denny and Russell, have the beard long and flowing. Even the forty shilling a year man, says Hooper in 1548, will waste his morning time while he sets his beard in order. About this time the clergy began to break with the long tradition of smooth faces. A priest in 1531 is commanded to abstain from wearing a beard, and Cardinal Pole, coming from the court of a bearded pope, appears bearded like a Greek patriarch. The law too, the church’s kinswoman, begins to forbid, a sign of the change, and from 1542 the society of Lincoln’s Inn makes rules for fining and expelling those who appear bearded at their mess, rules which the example of exalted lawyers caused to be withdrawn in 1560.

The age of Elizabeth saw lawyers, soldiers, courtiers and merchants all bearded. Her Cecils, Greshams, Raleighs, Drakes, Dudleys and Walsinghams have the beard. A shaven chin such as that seen in the portrait of Philip Howard, earl of Arundel, is rare, but the beards take a hundred fashions, and satirists and Puritan pamphleteers were busy with them and with the men who wasted hours in perfuming or starching them, in dusting them with orris powder, in curling them with irons and quills. Stubbs gives them a place amongst his abuses. “It is a world to consider how their mowchatowes must be preserved or laid out from one cheek to another and turned up like two horns towards the forehead.” Of the English variety of beards Harrison has a good word: “beards of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of Marquess Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a pique de vant (O! fine fashion) or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being grown to be so cunning in this behalf as the tailors. And therefore if a man have a lean and straight face, a Marquess Otto’s cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter-like, a long slender beard will make it seem the narrower; if he be weasel-becked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner look big like a bowdled hen, and as grim as a goose, if Cornelis of Chelmersford say true.” Nevertheless he adds that “many old men do wear no beards at all.” The Elizabethan fashions continued under King James, the beard trimmed to a point being common wear; but under King Charles there is a certain reaction, and the royal style of shaving the cheeks and leaving the moustache whose points sweep upward and the chin beard like a downward flame is followed by most of the gentry. With some the beard disappears altogether or remains a mere fleck below the lip. Archbishop Laud has a cavalier-like chin tuft and upturned moustache, but Abbot his predecessor wore the spade beard, the “cathedral beard” of Randle Holme, seen in all its dignity on the Chigwell brass of Samuel Harsnett, archbishop of York (died 1631), a grim figure with his angry moustache and a long and broad beard, cut square at the bottom.

From the Restoration year the razor comes more into use. Young men shave clean. The restored king curls a few dark hairs of a moustache over each cheek, but his brother James is shaven. With the reign of Queen Anne the country enters the beardless age, and beards, moustaches and whiskers are no more seen. In the 18th century the moustache indicated a soldier from beyond sea. A Jew or a Turk was known by the beard, an appendage loathsome as comic. Matthew Robinson, the second Lord Rokeby, was indeed wearing a beard in 1798, but he was reckoned a madman therefor, and Phillips’s Public Character pictures him as “the only peer and perhaps the only gentleman of either Great Britain or Ireland who is thus distinguished.” That George III. in his madness should have been left unshaved was a circumstance of his misery that wrung the hearts of all loyal folk. But in the very year of 1798, when Lord Rokeby’s image was engraved for the curious, the Worcestershire militia officers quartered near Brighton were copying the Austrian moustache of the foreign troops, and we may note that the hair of the face, which disappeared when wigs came in, began to reappear as wigs went out. Early in the 19th century the bucks began to show a patch of whisker beside the ear, and the soldier’s moustache became a common sight. Before Waterloo, guardsmen were complaining that officers of humbler regiments imitated their fashion of the moustache, and by the Waterloo year most young cavalry officers were moustached. The Horse Artillery were the next moustached corps, the rest of the army, already whiskered, following their example in the ’fifties. But for a civilian to grow a moustache was long reckoned a piece of unseemly swagger. Clive Newcome, it will be remembered, wore one until the taunting question whether he was “going in the Guards” shamed him into shaving clean. When in 1840 Mr George Frederick Muntz appeared in parliament with a full beard there were those who felt that this tall Radical had taken his own strange method of insulting English parliamentary institutions. James Ward, R.A. (d. 1859), painter of animals, was another breaker of the unwritten law, defending his beard in a pamphlet of eighteen arguments as a thing pleasing at once to the artist and to his Creator. Freedom in these matters only came when the troops were home from the Crimea, when officers who had grown beards and acquired the taste for tobacco during the long months in the trenches showed their beards and their cigars in Piccadilly. Then came the Volunteer movement, and every man was a soldier, taking a soldier’s licence. The dominant fashion was the moustache, worn with long and drooping whiskers. But the “Piccadilly weepers” of the ’sixties were out of the mode for the younger men when the ’eighties began, and by the end of the century whiskers were seen in the army only upon a few veteran officers. The fashion of clean shaving had made some way, the popularity of the shaven actor having a part in this. In 1909 all modes of dealing with the hair of the face might be recognized, but the full beard had become somewhat rare in England and the full whiskers rarer still. The upper class showed an inclination to shave clean, although the army grudgingly recognized a rule which ordered the moustache to be worn. Naval men, by regulation, shaved or wore both beard and moustache, but their beards were always trimmed. Most barristers shaved the lips, although the last judge unable to hear an advocate whose voice a moustache interrupted had left the bench. Clergymen followed the lay fashions as they did under the first Stuart kings, although there was still some prejudice against the moustache as an ornament military and inappropriate. A newspaper of 1857, describing the appearance of Livingstone the missionary at a Mansion House meeting, records that he came wearing a moustache, “braving the prejudices of his countrymen and thus evincing a courage only inferior to that exhibited by him amongst the savages of Central Africa.” Even as late as 1884 the Pall Mall Gazette has some surprised comments on the beard of Bishop Ryle, newly consecrated to the see of Liverpool.

The footman, whose full-dress livery is the court dress of a hundred years ago, must show no more than the rudimentary whisker of the early eighteen-hundreds, and butler, coachman and groom come under the same rule. The jockey and the hunt whip are shaven likewise, but the courier has the whiskers and moustache that once marked him as a foreigner in the English milor’s service, and the chauffeur, a servant with no tradition behind him, is often moustached.

Lastly, we may speak of the practice of the royal house since England came out of the beardless century. The regent took the new fashion, and sat “in whiskered state,” but his brother and successor shaved clean and disliked even the hussar’s moustache. The prince consort wore the moustache as a young man, adding whiskers in later years. King Edward VII. wore moustache and trimmed beard, and his heir apparent also followed the fashion of many fellow admirals.

(O. Ba.)

BEARDSLEY, AUBREY VINCENT (1872-1898), English artist in black and white, was born at Brighton on the 24th of August 1872. In 1883 his family settled in London, and in the following year he appeared in public as an “infant musical phenomenon,” playing at several concerts with his sister. In 1888 he obtained a post in an architect’s office, and afterwards one in the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company (1889). In 1891, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Puvis de Chavannes, he took up art as a profession. In 1892 he attended the classes at the Westminster School of Art, then under Professor Brown; and from 1893 until his death, at Mentone, on the 16th of March 1898, his work came continually before the public, arousing a storm of criticism and much hostile feeling. Beardsley had an unswerving tendency towards the fantastic of the gloomier and “unwholesome” sort. His treatment of most subjects was revolutionary; he deliberately ignored proportion and perspective, and the “freedom from convention” which he displayed caused his work to be judged with harshness. In certain phases of technique he especially excelled; and his earlier methods of dealing with the single line in conjunction with masses of black are in their way unsurpassed, except in the art of Japan, the country which probably gave his ideas some assistance. He was always an ornamentist, rather than an illustrator; and his work must be judged from that point of view. His frontispiece to Volpone is held by some to be, from this purely technical standpoint, one of the best pen-drawings of the age. His posters for the Avenue theatre and for Mr Fisher Unwin were among the first of the modern cult of that art.

The following are the chief works which are illustrated with drawings by Beardsley: the Bon Mot Library, The Pall Mall Budget, and The Studio (1893), Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1893-1894), Salomé (1894), The Yellow Book (1894-1895), The Savoy Magazine (1896), The Rape of the Lock (1896).

See also J. Pennell, The Studio (1893); Symons, Aubrey Beardsley (1898); R. Ross, Volpone (1898); H.C. Marillier, The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley (1899); Smithers, Reproductions of Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley; John Lane, The Later Works of Aubrey Beardsley (1901); R. Ross, Aubrey Beardsley (1908).

(E. F. S.)

BEARDSTOWN, a city of Cass county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the W. part of the state, on the E. bank of the Illinois river, about 111 m. N. of St Louis, Missouri. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western, and the Burlington (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) railways, and by steamboats plying between it and St. Louis. Pop. (1890) 4226; (1900) 4827 (444 foreign-born); (1910) 6107. The industrial establishments of the city include flour, planing and saw mills, the machine shops (of the St Louis division) of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railway, ice factories, pearl button factories and a shoe factory. The fishing interests are also important. Beardstown was laid out in 1827 and was incorporated as a city in 1896. It was named in honour of Thomas Beard, who settled in the vicinity in 1820. During the Black Hawk War (1832) it was a base of supplies for the Illinois troops. The old court house in which Abraham Lincoln, in 1854, won his famous “Armstrong murder case,” is now used for a city hall.

BEARER, strictly “one who carries,” a term used in India for a palanquin-bearer, and now especially for a body-servant. The term is also used in connexion with military ambulances, and “bearer” companies formed part of the Royal Army Medical Corps until amalgamated with the field-hospitals to form field-ambulances (1905). In banking and commerce the word is applied to the holder or presenter of a cheque or draft not made payable to a specific person; it has also a technical use, as in printing, of anything that supports pressure in machinery, &c.

BEARINGS. In engineering a “bearing” is that particular kind of support which, besides carrying the load imposed upon it by the shaft associated with it, allows the shaft freedom to revolve. Or, put in another way, a bearing forms with the shaft a pair of elements having one degree of freedom to turn relatively to one another about their common axis. The part of the shaft in the bearing is commonly called the journal. The component parts of a small bearing, pillow block, plummer block or pedestal, as it is variously styled, are illustrated in fig. 1, and these parts, put together, are further illustrated in fig. 2 with the shaft added. Corresponding parts are similarly lettered in the two illustrations. The shaft (S) is encircled by the brasses (B1 and B2) made of gun metal, phosphor bronze or other suitable material. The lower brass fits into the main casting (A) in the semicircular seat provided for it, and is prevented from moving endways by the flanges (F, F) and from turning with the shaft by the projections (P, P), which fit into corresponding recesses in the casting (A), one of which is shown at p. After the shaft has been placed in position, the upper brass (B2) and the cap (C) are put on and both are held in place by the bolts (Q1, Q2). The brasses are bedded into the main casting (A) and the cap (C) respectively at the surfaces D, D, D, D. The complete bearing is held to the framework of the machine by bolts (R1, R2) passing through holes (H, H) which are slotted to allow endwise adjustment of the whole bearing in order to facilitate the alignment of the shaft. Oil or other lubricant is introduced through the hole (G), and it passes through the top brass to grooves or oilways cut into the surface of the brass for the purpose of distributing the oil uniformly to the journal.

Some form of lubricator is usually fitted at G in order to supply oil to the bearing continuously. A form of lubricator used for this purpose is shown in place, fig. 2, and an enlarged section is shown in fig. 3. It will be seen that the lubricator consists essentially of a cup the base of which is pierced centrally by a tube which reaches to within a small distance of the lid of the cup inside, and projects into the oilway leading to the journal outside. The annular space round the tube inside is filled with oil which is transferred to the central tube and thence to the bearing by the capillary action of a cotton wick thrust down on a piece of wire. It is only necessary to withdraw the wick from the central tube to stop the supply of oil. The lubricator is fitted through a hole in the lid which is usually plugged with a piece of cane or closed by more elaborate means. A line of shafting would be supported by several bearings of the kind illustrated, themselves supported by brackets projecting from or rigidly fixed to the walls of the workshop, or on frames resting on the floor, or on hangers attached to the roof girders or principals.

In bearings of modern design for supporting a line shaft the general arrangement shown in fig. 1 is modified so that the alignments of the shaft can be made both vertically or horizontally by means of adjusting screws, and the brass is jointed with the supporting main body so that it is free to follow the small deflections of the shaft which take place when the shaft is working. Another modern improvement is the formation of an oil reservoir or well in the base of the bearing itself, and the transference of the oil from this well to the shaft by means of one or two rings riding loosely on the shaft. The bottom part of the ring dips into the oil contained in the well of the bearing and, as the shaft rotates, the ring rolls on the shaft and thus carries oil up to the shaft continuously, from which it finds its way to the surfaces of the shaft and bearing in contact. It should be understood that the upper brass is slotted crossways to allow the ring to rest on the shaft. When the direction of the load carried by the bearing is constant it is unnecessary to provide more than one brass, and the construction is modified accordingly. Figs. 4 and 5 show an axle box used for goods wagons on the Great Eastern railway, and they also illustrate the method of pad lubrication in general use for this kind of bearing. The main casting, A, is now uppermost, and is designed so that the upper part supports and constrains the spring buckle through which the load W is transmitted to the bearing, and the lower part inside is arranged to support the brass, B. The brass is jointed freely with the main casting by means of a hemispherical hump resting in a corresponding recess in the casting. What may be called the cap, C, forms the lower part of the axle box, but instead of supporting a second brass it is formed into an oil reservoir in which is arranged a pad of cotton wick woven on a tin frame. The upper part of the pad is formed into a kind of brush, shaped to fit the underside of the journal, whilst the lower part consists of streamers of wick resting in the oil. The oil is fed to the brush by the capillary action of the streamers. The reservoirs are filled with oil through the apertures P and O. The bottom cap is held in position by the T-headed bolts Q1 and Q2 (fig. 5). By slackening the nuts and turning the T-heads fair with the slots in the cap, the cap comes right away and the axle may be examined. A leather ring L is fitted as shown to prevent dust from entering the axle box.

Fig. 6.

Footsteps.—A bearing arranged to support the lower end of a vertical shaft is called a footstep, sometimes a pivot bearing. A simple form of footstep is shown in fig 6. A casting A, designed so that it can be conveniently bolted to a foundation block, cross beam, or bracket is bored out and fitted with a brass B, which is turned inside to carry the end of the shaft S. The whole vertical load on the shaft is carried by the footstep, so that it is important to arrange efficient lubricating apparatus. Results of experiments made on a footstep, reported in Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., 1891, show that if a diametral groove be cut in the brass, as indicated at g (fig 6), and if the oil is led to the centre of this groove by a channel c communicating with the exterior, the rotation of the shaft draws in a plentiful supply of oil which radiates from the centre and makes its way vertically between the shaft and the brass and finally overflows at the top of the brass. The overflowing oil may be led away and may be re-introduced into the footsteps at c. The rotation of the shaft thus causes a continuous circulation of oil through the footstep. One experiment from the report mentioned above may be quoted. A 3-in. shaft, revolving 128 times per minute and supported on a manganese bronze bearing lubricated in the way explained above sustained increasing loads until, at a load of 300 pounds per square inch of the area of the end of the shaft, it seized. The mechanical details of a footstep may be varied for purposes of adjustment in a variety of ways similarly to the variations of a common bearing already explained.

Thrust Block Bearing.—In cases where a bearing is required to resist a longitudinal movement of the shaft through it, as for example in the case of the propeller shaft of a marine engine or a vertical shaft supporting a heavy load not carried on a footstep, the shaft is provided with one or more collars which are grooved with corresponding recesses in the brasses of the bearing. A general sketch of a thrust block for a propeller shaft is shown in fig. 7. There are seven collars turned on the shaft and into the circumferential grooves between them fit corresponding circumferential projections on the brasses, these projections being formed in the case illustrated by means of half rings which are fitted into grooves turned in the brasses. This method of construction allows an individual ring to be replaced or adjusted if it should get hot. The total area of the rubbing surfaces should be proportioned so that the average load is not more than from 50 to 70 ℔ per sq. in. Arrangements are usually made for cooling a thrust block with water in case of heating. The spindles of drilling machines, boring machine spindles, turbine shafts may be cited as examples of vertical shafts supported on one collar. Experiments on the friction of a collar bearing have been made by the Research Committee of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., 1888).

Roller and Ball Bearings.—If rollers are placed between two surfaces having relative tangential motion the frictional resistance to be overcome is the small resistance to rolling. The rollers move along with a velocity equal to one half the relative velocity of the surfaces. This way of reducing frictional resistance has been applied to all kinds of mechanical contrivances, including bearings for shafts, railway axle boxes, and axle boxes for tramcars. An example of a roller bearing for a line shaft is illustrated in figs. 8 and 9. The main casting, A, and cap, C, bolted together, form a spherical seating for the part of the bearing E corresponding to the brasses in a bearing of the usual type. Between the inside of the casting E and the journal are placed rollers held in position relatively to one another by a “squirrel cage” casting, the section of the bars of which are clearly shown in the half sectional elevation, fig. 9. This squirrel cage ensures that the several axes of the rollers keep parallel to the axis of the journal during the rolling motion. The rollers are made of hard tool steel, and the surfaces of the journal and bearing between which they roll are hardened.

Two rings of balls may be used instead of a single ring of rollers, and the kind of ball bearing thus obtained is in general use principally in connexion with bicycles and motor cars (see Bicycle). In ball bearings the load is concentrated at a few points, the points where the balls touch the race, and in the roller bearing at a few lines, the lines of contact between the rollers and the surfaces of the journal and bearing; consequently the load which bearings of this kind carry must not be great enough to cause any indentation at the points or lines of contact. Both rollers and balls, and the paths on which they roll, therefore, are made of hard material; further, balls and rollers must all be exactly the same size in an individual bearing in order to distribute the load between the points or lines of contact as uniformly as possible. The finest workmanship is required therefore to make good roller or good ball bearings.

Bearings for High Speeds and Forced Lubrication.—When the shaft turns the metallic surfaces of the brass and the journal are prevented from actual contact by a film of oil which is formed and maintained by the motion of the shaft and which sustains the pressure between the journal and the brass provided the surfaces are accurately formed and the supply of oil is unlimited. This film changes what would otherwise be the friction between metallic surfaces into a viscous resistance within the film itself. When through a limited supply of oil or imperfect lubrication this film is imperfect or fails altogether and allows the journal to make metallic contact with the brass, the friction increases; and it may increase so much that the bearing rapidly becomes hot and may ultimately seize, that is to say the rubbing surfaces may become stuck together. With the object of reducing the friction at the points of metallic contact and of confining the damage of a hot bearing to the easily renewable brass, the latter is partially, sometimes wholly, lined with a soft fusible metal, technically known as white metal, which melts away before actual seizure takes place, and thus saves the journal which is more expensive because it is generally formed on a large and expensive shaft. However perfectly the film fulfils its function, the work required to overcome the viscous resistance of the film during the continuous rotation of the shaft appears as heat, and in consequence the temperature of the bearing gradually rises until the rate at which heat is produced is equal to the rate at which it is radiated from the bearing. Hence in order that a journal may revolve with a minimum resistance and without undue heating two precautions must be taken: (1) means must be taken to ensure that the film of oil is complete and never fails; and (2) arrangements must be made for controlling the temperature should it rise too high. The various lubricating devices already explained supply sufficient oil to form a partial film, since experiments have shown that the friction of bearings lubricated in this way is akin to solid friction, thus indicating at least partial metallic contact. In order to supply enough oil to form and maintain a film with certainty the journal should be run in an oil bath, or oil should be supplied to the bearing under pressure sufficient to force it in between the surfaces against the load. A bearing to which forced lubrication and water cooling are applied is illustrated in fig. 10, which represents one of the bearings of a Westinghouse turbo-alternator installed at the power station of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London at Lots Road, Chelsea. Oil flows under pressure from a tank on the top of a tower along a supply pipe to the oil inlet O, and after passing through the bearing and performing its duty as a film it falls away from each end of the journal into the bottom of the main casting, from which a pipe, E, conveys the oil back to the base of the tank tower where it is cooled and finally pumped back into the tank. There is thus a continuous circulation of oil through the bearing. The space C is for cooling water; in fact the bearing is water jacketed and the jacket is connected to a supply pipe and a drain pipe so that a continuous circulation may be maintained if desired. This bearing is 12 in. in diameter and 48 in. long, and it carries a load of about 12.8 tons. The rise in temperature of the bearing under normal conditions of working without water circulating in the jacket is approximately 38° F. The speed of rotation is such that the surface velocity is about 50 ft. per second.

Forced lubrication in connexion with the bearings of high-speed engines was introduced in 1890 by Messrs Belliss & Morcom, Ltd., under patents taken out in the name of A.C. Pain. It should be understood that providing the film of oil in the bearing of an engine can be properly maintained a double-acting engine can be driven at a high speed without any knocking, and without perceptible wear of the rubbing surfaces. Fig. 11 shows that the general arrangement of the bearings of a Belliss & Morcom engine arranged for forced lubrication. A small force-pump F, driven from the eccentric strap X, delivers oil into the pipe P, along which it passes to A, the centre of the right-hand main bearing. There is a groove turned on the inside of the brass from which a slanting hole leads to B. The oil when it arrives at A thus has two paths open to it, one to the right and left of the groove through the bearing, the other along the slanting hole to B. At B it divides again into two streams, one stream going upwards to the eccentric sheave, and a part continuing up the pipe Q to the eccentric pin. The second stream from B follows the slanting hole in the crank shaft to C, where it is led to the big end journal through the pipe R to the crosshead pin, and through the slanting hole to D, where it finds its way into the left main bearing. The oil forced through each bearing falls away to the right and to the left of the journal and drops into the bottom of the engine framing, whence it is again fed to the pump through a strainer. The parts of an engine lubricated in this way must be entirely enclosed.

Load on bearings.—The distribution of pressure over the film of lubricant separating the rubbing surfaces of a bearing is variable, being greatest at a point near but not at the crown of the brass, and falling away to zero in all directions towards the boundaries of the film. It is usual in practice to ignore this variation of pressure through the film, and to indicate the severity with which the bearing is loaded by stating the load per square inch of the rubbing surfaces projected on to the diametral plane of the journal. Thus the projected area of the surfaces of a journal 6 in. in diameter and 8 in. long is 48 sq. in., and if the total load carried by the bearing is 20,000 pounds, the bearing would be said to carry a load of 417 pounds per square inch. When a shaft rotates in a bearing continuously in one direction the load per square inch with which it is safe to load the bearing in order to avoid undue heating is much less than if the motion is intermittent. A table of a few values of the bearing loads used in practice is given in the article Lubricants.

Bearing Friction.—If W is the total load on a bearing, and if µ is the coefficient of friction between the rubbing surfaces, the tangential resistance to turning is expressed by the product µW. If v is the relative velocity of the rubbing surfaces, the work done per second against friction is µWv foot pounds. This quantity of work is converted into heat, and the heat produced per second is therefore µWv/778 British Thermal Units. The coefficient µ is a variable quantity, and bearing in mind that a properly lubricated journal is separated from its supporting brass by a film of lubricant it might be expected that µ would have values characteristic of the coefficient of friction between two metallic surfaces, merging into the characteristics properly belonging to fluid friction, according as the oil film varied from an imperfect to a perfect condition, that is, according as the lubrication is partial or complete, completeness being attained by the use of an oil bath or by some method of forced lubrication. This expectation is entirely borne out by experimental researches. Beauchamp Tower (“Report on Friction Experiments,” Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., November 1883) found that when oil was supplied to a bearing by means of a pad the coefficient of friction was approximately constant with the value of 1⁄100, thus following the law of solid friction; but when the journal was lubricated by means of an oil bath the coefficient of friction varied nearly inversely as the load on the bearing, thus making µW = constant. The tangential resistance in this case is characteristic of fluid friction since it is independent of the pressure. Tower’s experiments were carried out at a nearly constant temperature. The later experiments of O. Lasche (Zeitsch. Verein deutsche Ingenieure, 1902, 46, pp. 1881 et seq.) show how µ depends upon the temperature. Lasche’s main results with regard to the variation of µ are briefly:—µW is a constant quantity, thus confirming Tower’s earlier experiments; µ is practically independent of the relative velocity of the rubbing surfaces within the limits of 3 to 50 ft. per second; and the product µt is constant, t being the temperature of the bearing. Writing p for the load per unit of projected area of the bearing, Lasche found that the result of the experiments could be expressed by the simple formula pµt = constant = 2, where p = the pressure in kilograms per square centimetre, and t = the temperature in degrees centigrade. If p is changed to pounds per square inch the constant in the expression is approximately 30. The expression is valid between limits of pressure 14 to 213 pounds per square inch, limits of temperature 30° to 100° C., and between limits of velocity 3 to 50 ft. per second.

Theory of Lubrication.—After the publication of Tower’s experiments on journal friction Professor Osborne Reynolds showed (Phil. Trans., 1886, p. 157) that the facts observed in connexion with a journal lubricated by means of an oil bath could be explained by a theory based upon the general principles of the motion of a viscous fluid. It is first established as an essential part of the theory that the radius of the brass must be slightly greater than the radius of the journal as indicated in fig. 12, where J is the centre of the journal and I the centre of the brass. Given this difference of curvature and a sufficient supply of oil, the rotation of the journal produces and maintains an oil film between the rubbing surfaces, the circumferential extent of which depends upon the rate of the oil supply and the external load. With an unlimited supply of oil, that is with oil-bath lubrication, the film extends continuously to the extremities of the brass, unless such extension would lead to negative pressures and therefore to a discontinuity, in which case the film ends where the pressures in the film become negative. The minimum distance between the journal and the brass occurs at the point H (fig. 12), on the off side of the point O where the line of action of the load cuts the surface of the journal. To the right and left of H the thickness of the film gradually increases, this being the condition that the oil-flow to and from the film may be automatically maintained. With an unlimited supply of oil the point H moves farther from O as the load increases until it reaches a maximum distance, and then it moves back again towards O as the load is further increased until a limiting load is reached at which the pressure in the film becomes negative at the boundaries of the film, when the boundaries recede from the edges of the brass as though the supply of oil were limited.

In the mathematical development of the theory it is first necessary to define the coefficient of viscosity. This is done as follows:—If two parallel surfaces AB, CD are separated by a viscous film, and if whilst CD is fixed AB moves in a tangential direction with velocity U, the surface of the film in contact with CD clings to it and remains at rest, whilst the lower surface of the film clings to and moves with the surface AB. At intermediate points in the film the tangential motion of the fluid will vary uniformly from zero to U, and the tangential resistance will be F = µU/h, where µ is the coefficient of viscosity and h is the thickness of the film. With this definition of viscosity and from the general equations representing the stress in a viscous fluid, the following equation is established, giving the relations between p, the pressure at any point in the film, h the thickness of the film at a point x measured round the circumference of the journal in the direction of relative motion, and U the relative tangential velocity of the surfaces,

d (h³ dp ) = 6µU dh

dx dx dx

(1)

In this equation all the quantities are independent of the co-ordinate parallel to the axis of the journal, and U is constant. The thickness of the film h is some function of x, and for a journal Professor Reynolds takes the form,

h = a {1 + c sin(θ − φ0)},

in which the various quantities have the significance indicated in fig. 12. Reducing and integrating equation (1) with this value of h it becomes

dp = 6RµUc {sin(θ − φ0) − sin(φ1 − φ0)}

dθ a²{1 + c sin(θ − φ0)}³

(2)

φ1 being the value of θ for which the pressure is a maximum. In order to integrate this the right-hand side is expanded into a trigonometrical series, the values of the coefficients are computed, and the integration is effected term by term. If, as suggested by Professor J. Perry, the value of h is taken to be h = h0 + ax², where h0 is the minimum thickness of the film, the equation reduces to the form

− dp = 6µU + C

dx (h0 + ax²)² (h0 + ax²)³

(3)

and this can be integrated. The process of reduction from the form (1) to the form (3) with the latter value of h, is shown in full in The Calculus for Engineers by Professor Perry (p. 331), and also the final solution of equation (3), giving the pressure in terms of x.

Professor Reynolds, applying the results of his investigation to one of Tower’s experiments, plotted the pressures through the film both circumferentially and longitudinally, and the agreement with the observed pressure of the experiment was exceedingly close. The whole investigation of Professor Reynolds is a remarkable one, and is in fact the first real explanation of the fact that oil is able to insinuate itself between the journal and the brass of a bearing carrying a heavy load. (See also Lubrication.)

(W. E. D.)

BEAR-LEADER, formerly a man who led bears about the country. In the middle ages and Tudor times these animals were chiefly used in the brutal sport of bear-baiting and were led from village to village. Performing bears were also common, and are even still sometimes seen perambulating the country with their keepers, generally Frenchmen or Italians. The phrase “bear-leader” has now come colloquially to mean a tutor or guardian, who escorts any lad of rank or wealth on his travels.

BÉARN, formerly a small frontier province in the south of France, now included within the department of Basses-Pyrénées. It was bounded on the W. by Soule and Lower Navarre, on the N. by Chalosse, Tursan and Astarac, E. by Bigorre and S. by the Pyrénées. Its name can be traced back to the town of Beneharnum (Lescar). The civitas Beneharnensium was included in the Novempopulania. It was conquered by the Vascones in the 6th century, and in 819 became a viscounty dependent on the dukes of Aquitaine—a feudal link which was broken in the 11th century, when the viscounts ceased to acknowledge any suzerain. They then reigned over the two dioceses of Lescar and Oloron; but their capital was Morlaas, where they had a mint which was famous throughout the middle ages. In the 13th century Gaston VII., of the Catalonian house of Moncade, made Orthez his seat of government. His long reign (1229-1290) was a perpetual struggle with the kings of France and England, each anxious to assert his suzerainty over Béarn. As Gaston left only daughters, the viscounty passed at his death to the family of Foix, from whom it was transmitted through the houses of Grailly and Albret to the Bourbons, and they, in the person of Henry IV., king of Navarre, made it an apanage of the crown of France. It was not formally incorporated in the royal domains, however, until 1620. None of these political changes weakened the independent spirit of the Béarnais. From the 11th century onward, they were governed by their own special customs or fors. These were drawn up in the language of the country, a Romance dialect (1288 being the date of the most ancient written code), and are remarkable for the manner in which they define the rights of the sovereign, determining the reciprocal obligations of the viscount and his subjects or vassals. Moreover, from the 12th century Béarn enjoyed a kind of representative government, with cours plénières composed of deputies from the three estates. From 1220 onward, the judiciary powers of these assemblies were exercised by a cour majour of twelve barons jurats charged with the duty of maintaining the integrity of the fors. When Gaston-Phoebus wished to establish a regular annual hearth-tax (fouage) in the viscounty, he convoked the deputies of the three estates in assemblies called états. These soon acquired extensive political and financial powers, which continued in operation till 1789. Although, when Béarn was annexed to the domains of the crown, it was granted a conseil d’état and a parlement, which sat at Pau, the province also retained its fors until the Revolution.

See also Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Béarn et Navarre (1609); Pierre de Marca, Histoire de Béarn (1640). This work does not go beyond the end of the 13th century; it contains a large number of documents. Faget de Baure, Essais historiques sur le Béarn (1818); Les Fors de Béarn, by Mazure and Hatoulet (1839), completed by J. Brissaud and P. Rogé in Textes additionnels aux anciens Fors de Béarn (1905); Léon Cadier, Les États de Béarn depuis leur origine jusqu’au commencement du XVIe siècle (1888).

(C. B.*)

BEAS or Bias, a river of India. The Beas, which was the Hyphasis of the Greeks, is one of the Five Rivers of the Punjab. It issues in the snowy mountains of Kulu at an altitude of 13,326 ft. above sea-level, flows through the Kangra valley and the plains of the Punjab, and finally joins the Sutlej after a course of 290 m. It is crossed by a railway bridge near Jullundur.

BEAT (a word common in various forms to the Teutonic languages; it is connected with the similar Romanic words derived from the Late Lat. battere), a blow or stroke; from the many applications of the verb “to beat” come various meanings of the substantive, in some of which the primary sense has become obscure. It is applied to the throbbing of the pulse or heart, to the beating of a drum, either for retreat, or charge, or to quarters; in music to the alternating sound produced by the striking together of two notes not exactly of the same pitch (see Sound), and also to the movement of the baton by which a conductor of an orchestra or chorus indicates the time, and to the divisions of a bar. As a nautical term, a “beat” is the zigzag course taken by a ship in sailing against the wind. The application of the word to a policeman’s or sentry’s round comes either from beating a covert for game and hence the term means an exhaustive search of a district, or from the repeated strokes of the foot in constantly walking up and down. In this sense the word is used in America, particularly in Alabama and Mississippi, of a voting precinct.

BEATIFICATION (from the Lat. beatus, happy, blessed, and facere, to make), the act of making blessed; in the Roman Catholic Church, a stage in the process of canonization (q.v.).

BEATON (or Bethune), DAVID, (c. 1494-1546), Scottish cardinal and archbishop of St Andrews, was a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour in the county of Fife, and is said to have been born in the year 1494. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and in his sixteenth year was sent to Paris, where he studied civil and canon law. About this time he was presented to the rectory of Campsie by his uncle James Beaton, then archbishop of Glasgow. When James Beaton was translated to St Andrews in 1522 he resigned the rich abbacy of Arbroath in his nephew’s favour, under reservation of one half of the revenues to himself during his lifetime. The great ability of Beaton and the patronage of his uncle ensured his rapid promotion to high offices in the church and kingdom. He was sent by King James V. on various missions to France, and in 1528 was appointed keeper of the privy seal. He took a leading part in the negotiations connected with the king’s marriages, first with Madeleine of France, and afterwards with Mary of Guise. At the French court he was held in high estimation by King Francis I., and was consecrated bishop of Mirepoix in Languedoc in December 1537. On the 20th of December 1538 he was appointed a cardinal priest by Pope Paul III., under the title of St Stephen in the Coelian Hill. He was the only Scotsman who had been named to that high office by an undisputed right, Cardinal Wardlaw, bishop of Glasgow, having received his appointment from the anti-pope Clement VII. On the death of Archbishop James Beaton in 1539, the cardinal was raised to the primatial see of Scotland.

Beaton was one of King James’s most trusted advisers, and it was mainly due to his influence that the king drew closer the French alliance and refused Henry VIII.’s overtures to follow him in his religious policy. On the death of James in December 1542 he attempted to assume office as one of the regents for the infant sovereign Mary, founding his pretensions on an alleged will of the late king; but his claims were disregarded, and the earl of Arran, head of the great house of Hamilton, and next heir to the throne, was declared regent by the estates. The cardinal was, by order of the regent, committed to the custody of Lord Seaton; but his imprisonment was merely nominal, and he was soon again at liberty and at the head of the party opposed to the English alliance. Arran too was soon won over to his views, dismissed the preachers by whom he had been surrounded, and joined the cardinal at Stirling, where in September 1543 Beaton crowned the young queen. In the same year he was raised to the office of chancellor of Scotland, and was appointed protonotary apostolic and legate a latere by the pope. Had Beaton confined himself to secular politics, his strenuous opposition to the plans of Henry VIII. for the subjugation of Scotland would have earned him the lasting gratitude of his countrymen. Unfortunately politics were inextricably interwoven with the religious controversies of the time, and resistance to English influence involved resistance to the activities of the reformers in the church, whose ultimate victory has obscured the cardinal’s genuine merits as a statesman. During the lifetime of his uncle, Beaton had shared in the efforts of the hierarchy to suppress the reformed doctrines, and pursued the same line of conduct still more systematically after his elevation to the primacy. The popular accounts of the persecution for which he was responsible are no doubt exaggerated, and it sometimes ceased for considerable periods so far as capital punishments were concerned. When the sufferers were of humble rank not much notice was taken of them. It was otherwise when a more distinguished victim was selected in the person of George Wishart. Wishart had returned to Scotland, after an absence of several years, about the end of 1544. His sermons produced a great effect, and he was protected by several barons of the English faction. These barons, with the knowledge and approbation of King Henry, were engaged in a plot to assassinate the cardinal, and in this plot Wishart is now proved to have been a willing agent. The cardinal, though ignorant of the details of the plot, perhaps suspected Wishart’s knowledge of it, and in any case was not sorry to have an excuse for seizing one of the most eloquent supporters of the new opinions. For some time he was unsuccessful; but at last, with the aid of the regent, he arrested the preacher, and carried him to his castle of St Andrews. On the 28th of February 1546 Wishart was brought to trial in the cathedral before the cardinal and other judges, the regent declining to take any active part, and, being found guilty of heresy, was condemned to death and burnt.

The death of Wishart produced a deep effect on the Scottish people, and the cardinal became an object of general dislike, which encouraged his enemies to proceed with the design they had formed against him. Naturally resolute and fearless, he seems to have under-estimated his danger, the more so since his power had never seemed more secure. He crossed over to Angus, and took part in the wedding of his illegitimate daughter with the heir of the earl of Crawford. On his return to St Andrews he took up his residence in the castle. The conspirators, the chief of whom were Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, and William Kirkaldy of Grange, contrived to obtain admission at daybreak of the 29th of May 1546, and murdered the cardinal under circumstances of horrible mockery and atrocity.

The character of Beaton has already been indicated. As a statesman he was able, resolute, and in his general policy patriotic. As an ecclesiastic he maintained the privileges of the hierarchy and the dominant system of belief conscientiously, but always with harshness and sometimes with cruelty. His immoralities, like his acts of persecution, were exaggerated by his opponents; but his private life was undoubtedly a scandal to religion, and has only the excuse that it was not worse than that of most of his order at the time. The authorship of the writings ascribed to him in several biographical notices rests on no better authority than the apocryphal statements of Thomas Dempster.

Beaton’s uncle, James Beaton, or Bethune (d. 1539), archbishop of Glasgow and St Andrews, was lord treasurer of Scotland before he became archbishop of Glasgow in 1509, was chancellor from 1513 to 1526, and was appointed archbishop of St Andrews and primate of Scotland in 1522. He was one of the regents during the minority of James V., and was chiefly responsible for this king’s action in allying himself with France and not with England. He burned Patrick Hamilton and other heretics, and died at St Andrews in September 1539.

This prelate must not be confused with another, James Beaton, or Bethune (1517-1603), the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Glasgow. A son of John Bethune of Auchmuty and a nephew of Cardinal Beaton, James was a trusted adviser of the Scottish regent, Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V., and a determined foe of the reformers. In 1552 he was consecrated archbishop of Glasgow, but from 1560 until his death in 1603 he lived in Paris, acting as ambassador for Scotland at the French court.

See John Knox, Hist. of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. D. Laing (1846-1864); John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, Hist. of the Church of Scotland (Spottiswoode Soc., 1847-1851); Art. in Dict. of Nat. Biog. and works there quoted; and A. Lang, Hist. of Scotland, vols. i. and ii. (1900-1902).

BEATRICE, a city and the county-seat of Gage county, in S.E. Nebraska, U.S.A., about 40 m. S. of Lincoln. Pop. (1900) 7875 (852 foreign-born); (1910) 9356. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Union Pacific railways. Beatrice is the seat of the state institute for feeble-minded youth, and has a Carnegie library. The city is very prettily situated in the valley of the Big Blue river, in the midst of a fine agricultural region. Among its manufactures are dairy products (there is a large creamery), canned goods, flour and grist mill products, gasoline engines, well-machinery, barbed wire, tiles, ploughs, windmills, corn-huskers, and hay-balers. Beatrice was founded in 1857, becoming the county-seat in the same year. It was reached by its first railway and was incorporated as a town in 1871, was chartered as a city in 1873, and in 1901 became a city of the first class.

BEATTIE, JAMES (1735-1803), Scottish poet and writer on philosophy, was born at Laurencekirk, Kincardine, Scotland, on the 25th of October 1735. His father, a small farmer and shopkeeper, died when he was very young; but an elder brother sent him to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he gained a bursary. In 1753 he was appointed schoolmaster of Fordoun in his native county. Here he had as neighbours the eccentric Francis Garden (afterwards Lord Gardenstone, judge of the supreme court of Scotland), and Lord Monboddo. In 1758 he became an usher in the grammar school of Aberdeen, and two years later he was made professor of moral philosophy at Marischal College. Here he became closely acquainted with Dr Thomas Reid, Dr George Campbell, Dr Alexander Gérard and others, who formed a kind of literary or philosophic society known as the “Wise Club.” They met once a fortnight to discuss speculative questions, David Hume’s philosophy being an especial object of criticism. In 1761 Beattie published a small volume of Original Poems and Translations, which contained little work of any value. Its author in later days destroyed all the copies he found. In 1770 Beattie published his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in opposition to sophistry and scepticism, the object of which, as explained by its author, was to “prove the universality and immutability of moral sentiment” (letter to Sir W. Forbes, 17th January 1765). It was in fact a direct attack on Hume, and part of its great popularity was due to the fact. Hume is said to have justly complained that Beattie “had not used him like a gentleman,” but made no answer to the book, which has no philosophical value. Beattie’s portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hangs at Marischal College, Aberdeen. The philosopher is painted with the Essay on Truth in his hand, while a figure of Truth thrusts down three figures representing, according to Sir W. Forbes, sophistry, scepticism and infidelity. Reynolds in a letter to Beattie (February 1774) intimates that he is well enough pleased that one of the figures is identified with Hume, and that he intended Voltaire to be one of the group. Beattie visited London in 1773, and was received with the greatest honour by George III., who conferred on him a pension of £200 a year. In 1771 and 1774 he published the first and second parts of The Minstrel, a poem which met with great and immediate success. The Spenserian stanza in which it is written is managed with smoothness and skill, and there are many fine descriptions of natural scenery. It is entirely on his poetry that Beattie’s reputation rests. The best known of his minor poems are “The Hermit” and “Retirement.”

In 1773 he was offered the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University, but did not accept it. Beattie made many friends, and lost none. “We all love Beattie,” said Dr Johnson. “Mrs Thrale says, if ever she has another husband she will have him.” He was in high favour too with Mrs Montagu and the other bas bleus. Beattie was unfortunate in his domestic life. Mary Dunn, whom he married in 1767, became insane, and his two sons died just as they were attaining manhood. The elder, James Hay Beattie, a young man of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had been associated with his father in his professorship, died in 1790. In 1794 the father published Essays and Fragments in Prose and Verse by James Hay Beattie with a touching memoir. The younger brother died in 1796. Beattie never recovered from this second bereavement. His mind was seriously affected, and, although he continued to lecture occasionally, he neither wrote nor studied. In April 1799 he had a stroke of paralysis, and died on the 18th of August 1803.

Beattie’s other poetical works include The Judgment of Paris (1765), and “Verses on the death of [Charles] Churchill,” a bitter attack which the poet afterwards suppressed. The best edition is the Poetical Works (1831, new ed. 1866) in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, with an admirable memoir by Alexander Dyce.

See also An Account of the Life of James Beattie (1804), by A. Bower; and An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie (1807), by Sir William Forbes; a quantity of new material is to be found in Beattie and his Friends (1904), by the poet’s great-grand-niece, Margaret Forbes; and James Beattie, the Minstrel. Some Unpublished Letters, edited by A. Mackie (Aberdeen, 1908).

BEATUS, of Liebana and Valcavado, Spanish priest and monk, theologian and geographer, was born about 730, and died in 798. About 776 he published his Commentaria in Apocalypsin, containing one of the oldest Christian world-maps. He took a prominent part in the Adoptionist controversy, and wrote against the views of Felix of Urgel, especially as upheld by Elipandus of Toledo. As confessor to Queen Adosinda, wife of King Silo of Oviedo (774-783), and as the master of Alcuin and Etherius of Osma, Beatus exercised wide influence. His original map, which was probably intended to illustrate, above all, the distribution of the Apostolic missions throughout the world—depicting the head of Peter at Rome, of Andrew in Achaia, of Thomas in India, of James in Spain, and so forth—has survived in ten more or less modified copies. One only of these—the “Osma” of 1203—preserves the Apostolic pictures; among the remaining examples, that of “St Sever,” now at Paris, and dating from about 1030, is the most valuable; that of “Valcavado,” recently in the Ashburnham Library, executed in 970, is the earliest; that of “Turin,” dating from about 1100, is perhaps the most curious. Three others—“Valladolid” of about 1035, “Madrid” of 1047, and “London” of 1109—are derivatives of the “Valcavado-Ashburnham” of 970; the eighth, “Paris II,” is connected, though not very intimately, with “St Sever,” otherwise “Paris I”; the ninth and tenth, “Gerona” and “Paris III,” belong to the Turin group of Beatus maps. All these works are emphatically of “dark-age” character; very seldom do they suggest the true forms of countries, seas, rivers or mountains, but they embody some useful information as to early medieval conditions and history. St Isidore appears to be their principal authority; they also draw, directly or indirectly, from Orosius, St Jerome, St Augustine, and probably from a lost map of classical antiquity, represented in a measure by the Peutinger Table of the 13th century.

The chief MSS. of the Commentaria in Apocalypsin are (1-3) Paris, National Library, Lat. 8878; Lat. nouv. acq. 1366 and 2290; (4) Ashburnham MSS. xv.; (5) London, B. Mus., Addit. MSS. 11695; (6) Turin, National Library 1, ii. (1); (7) Valladolid, University Library, 229; (8) the MS. in the Episcopal Library at Osma, in Old Castile.

There is only one complete edition of the text, that by Florez (Madrid, 1770). See also Konrad Miller, Die Weltkarte des Beatus, Heft I. of Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten (Stuttgart, 1895); d’Avezac in Annales de ... géographie (June 1870); Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, i. 387-388 (1897); ii. 549-559; 591-605 (1901).

(C. R. B.)

BEAUCAIRE, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Gard, 17 m. E. by S. of Nîmes on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 7284. Beaucaire is situated on the right bank of the Rhone, opposite Tarascon, with which it is connected by two handsome bridges, a suspension-bridge of four spans and 1476 ft. in length, and a railway bridge. A triangular keep, a chapel, and other remains of a château (13th and 14th centuries) of the counts of Toulouse stand on the rocky pine-clad hill which rises to the north of the town; the chapel, dedicated to St Louis, belongs to the latest period of Romanesque architecture, and contains fine sculptures. The town derives celebrity from the great July fair, which has been held here annually since the 12th century, but has now lost its former importance (see Fair). Beaucaire gives its name to the canal which communicates with the sea (near Aigues-Mortes) and connects it with the Canal du Midi, forming part of the line of communication between the Rhone and the Garonne. The town is an important port on the Rhone, and its commerce, the chief articles of which are wine, and freestone from quarries in the vicinity, is largely water-borne. Among its industries are distilling and the manufacture of furniture, and the preparation of vermicelli, sausages and other provisions.

Beaucaire occupies the site of the ancient Ugernum, and several remains of the Roman city have been discovered, as well as (in 1734) the road that led from Nîmes. The present name is derived from Bellum Quadrum, a descriptive appellation applied in the middle ages either to the château or to the rock on which it stands. In 1125 Beaucaire came into the possession of the counts of Toulouse, one of whom, Raymund VI., established the importance of its fairs by the grant of privileges. In the Wars of the League it suffered severely, and in 1632 its castle was destroyed by Richelieu.

BEAUCE (Lat. Belsia), a physical region of north-central France, comprising large portions of the departments of Eure-et-Loir and Loir-et-Cher, and also extending into those of Loiret and Seine-et-Oise. It has an area of over 2800 sq. m., its limits being roughly defined by the course of the Essonne on the E., of the Loire on the S., and of the Brenne, the Loir and the Eure towards the W., though in the latter direction it extends somewhat beyond these boundaries. The Beauce is a treeless, arid and monotonous plain of limestone formation; windmills and church spires are the only prominent features of the landscape. Apart from the rivers on its borders, it is watered by insignificant streams, of which the Conie in the west need alone be mentioned. The inhabitants live in large villages, and are occupied in agriculture, particularly in the cultivation of wheat, for which the Beauce is celebrated. Clover and lucerne are the other leading crops, and large flocks of sheep are kept in the region. Chartres is its chief commercial centre.

BEAUCHAMP, the name of several important English families. The baronial house of Beauchamp of Bedford was founded at the Conquest by Hugh de Beauchamp, who received a barony in Bedfordshire. His eldest son Simon left a daughter, whose husband Hugh (brother of the count of Meulan) was created earl of Bedford by Stephen. But the heir-male, Miles de Beauchamp, nephew of Simon, held Bedford Castle against the king in 1137-1138. From his brother Payn descended the barons of Bedford, of whom William held Bedford Castle against the royal forces in the struggle for the Great Charter, and was afterwards made prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, while John, who sided with the barons under Simon de Montfort, fell at Evesham. With him the line ended, but a younger branch was seated at Eaton Socon, Beds., where the earthworks of their castle remain, and held their barony there into the 14th century.

The Beauchamps of Elmley, Worcestershire, the greatest house of the name, were founded by the marriage of Walter de Beauchamp with the daughter of Urise d’Abetot, a Domesday baron, which brought him the shrievalty of Worcestershire, the office of a royal steward, and large estates. His descendant William, of Elmley, married Isabel, sister and eventually heiress to William Mauduit, earl of Warwick, and their son succeeded in 1268 to Warwick Castle and that earldom, which remained with his descendants in the male line till 1445. The earls of the Beauchamp line played a great part in English history. Guy, the 2nd, distinguished himself in the Scottish campaigns of Edward I., who warned him at his death against Piers Gaveston. Under Edward II. he was one of the foremost foes of Piers, who had styled him “the black cur of Arden,” and with whose death he was closely connected. As one of the “lords ordainers” he was a recognized leader of the opposition to Edward II. By the heiress of the Tonis he left at his death in 1315 a son Earl Thomas, who distinguished himself at Crécy and Poitiers, was marshal of the English host, and, with his brother John, one of the founders of the order of the Garter. In 1369 his son Earl Thomas succeeded; from 1376 to 1379 he was among the lords striving for reform, and in the latter year he was appointed governor to the king. Under Richard II. he joined the lords appellant in their opposition to the king and his ministers, and was in power with them 1388-1389; treacherously arrested by Richard in 1397, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London (the Beauchamp Tower being called after him), but liberated by Henry IV. on his triumph (1399). In 1401 he was succeeded by his son Earl Richard, a brave and chivalrous warrior, who defeated Owen Glendower, fought the Percys at Shrewsbury, and, after travelling in state through Europe and the Holy Land, was employed against the Lollards and afterwards as lay ambassador from England to the council of Constance (1414). He held command for a time at Calais, and took an active part in the French campaigns of Henry V., who created him earl and count of Aumale in Normandy. He had charge of the education of Henry VI., and in 1437 was appointed lieutenant of France and of Normandy. Dying at Rouen in 1439, he left by Isabel, widow of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester, a son, Earl Henry, who was created duke of Warwick, 1445, and is alleged, but without authority, to have been crowned king of the Isle of Wight by Henry VI. He died, the last of his line, in June 1445. On the death of Anne, his only child, in 1449, his vast inheritance passed to Anne, his sister of the whole blood, wife of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury (“the Kingmaker”), who thereupon became earl of Warwick.

Of the cadet branches of the house, the oldest was that of Powyke and Alcester, which obtained a barony in 1447 and became extinct in 1496; from it sprang the Beauchamps, Lords St. Amand from 1448, of whom was Richard, bishop of Salisbury, first chancellor of the order of the Garter, and who became extinct in 1508, being the last known male heirs of the race. Another cadet was Sir John Beauchamp of Holt, minister of Richard II., who was created Lord Beauchamp of Kidderminster (the first baron created by patent) 1387, but beheaded 1388; the barony became extinct with his son in 1400. Roger, Lord Beauchamp of Bletsoe, summoned in 1363, is said to have been descended from the Powyke branch; his line ended early in the 15th century. Later cadets were John, brother of the 3rd earl, who carried the standard at Crécy, became captain of Calais, and was summoned as a peer in 1350, but died unmarried; and William, brother of the 4th earl, who was distinguished in the French wars, and succeeding to the lands of the Lords Abergavenny was summoned in that barony 1392; his son was created earl of Worcester in 1420, but died without male issue in 1422; from his daughter, who married Sir Edward Neville, descended the Lords Abergavenny.

The Lords Beauchamp of “Hache” (1299-1361) were so named from their seat of Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset, and were of a wholly distinct family. Their title, “Beauchamp of Hache,” was revived for the Seymours in 1536 and 1559. The title of “Beauchamp of Powyke” was revived as a barony in 1806 for Richard Lygon (descended through females from the Beauchamps of Powyke), who was created Earl Beauchamp in 1815.

See Sir W. Dugdale, Baronage (1675-1676) and Warwickshire (2nd ed., 1730); G.E. C[okayne], Complete Peerage (1887-1898); W. Courthope, Rows Roll (1859); and J.H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville (1892).

(J. H. R.)

BEAUCHAMP, ALPHONSE DE, French historian and man of letters, was born at Monaco in 1767, and died in 1832. In 1784 he entered a Sardinian regiment of marines, but on the outbreak of war with the French Republic, he refused to fight in what he considered an unjust cause, and was imprisoned for several months. After being liberated he took up his residence in Paris, where he obtained a post in one of the government offices. On the fall of Robespierre, Beauchamp was transferred to the bureau of the minister of police, and charged with the superintendence of the press. This situation opened up to him materials of which he made use in his first and most popular historical work, Histoire de la Vendée et des Chouans, 3 vols., 1806. The book, received with great favour by the people, was displeasing to the authorities. The third edition was confiscated; its writer was deprived of his post, and in 1809 was compelled to leave Paris and take up his abode in Reims. In 1811 he obtained permission to return, and again received a government appointment. This he had to resign on the Restoration, but was rewarded with a small pension, which was continued to his widow after his death.

Beauchamp wrote extensively for the public journals and for the magazines. His biographical and historical works are numerous, and those dealing with contemporary events are valuable, owing to the sources at his disposal. They must, however, be used with great caution. The following are worth mention:—Vie politique, militaire et privée du général Moreau (1814); Catastrophe de Murat, ou Récit de la dernière révolution de Naples (1815); Histoire de la guerre d’Espagne et du Portugal, 1807-1813 (2 vols., 1810); Collection de mémoires relatifs aux révolutions d’Espagne (2 vols., 1824); Histoire de la révolution de Piémont (2 vols., 1821, 1823); Mémoires secrets et inédits pour servir à l’histoire contemporaine (2 vols., 1825). The Mémoires de Fouché have also been ascribed to him, but it seems certain that he only revised and completed a work really composed by Fouché himself.

See an article by Louis Madelin in La Revolution française (1900).

BEAUFORT, the name of the family descended from the union of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, with Catherine, wife of Sir Hugh Swynford, taken from a castle in Anjou which belonged to John of Gaunt. There were four children of this union—John, created earl of Somerset and marquess of Dorset; Henry, afterwards bishop of Winchester and cardinal (see Beaufort, Henry); Thomas, made duke of Exeter and chancellor; and Joan, who married Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, and died in 1440. In 1396, some years after the birth of these children, John of Gaunt and Catherine were married, and in 1397 the Beauforts were declared legitimate by King Richard II. In 1407 this action was confirmed by their half-brother, King Henry IV., but on this occasion they were expressly excluded from the succession to the English throne.

John Beaufort, earl of Somerset (c. 1373-1410), assisted Richard II. in 1397 when the king attacked the lords appellants, and made himself an absolute ruler. For these services he was made marquess of Dorset, but after the deposition of Richard in 1399, he was degraded to his former rank as earl. In 1401, however, he was declared loyal, and appeared later in command of the English fleet. He married Margaret, daughter of Thomas Holland, second earl of Kent, and died in March 1410, leaving three sons, Henry, John, and Edmund, and two daughters, Jane or Joan, who married James I., king of Scotland, and Margaret, who married Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon.

Thomas Beaufort (d. 1426) held various high offices under Henry IV., and took a leading part in suppressing the rising in the north in 1405. He became chancellor in 1410, but resigned this office in January 1412 and took part in the expedition to France in the same year. He was then created earl of Dorset, and when Henry V. became king in 1413, he was made lieutenant of Aquitaine and took charge of Harfleur when this town passed into the possession of the English. In 1416 he became lieutenant of Normandy, and was created duke of Exeter; and returning to England he compelled the Scots to raise the siege of Roxburgh. Crossing to France in 1418 with reinforcements for Henry V., he took an active part in the subsequent campaign, was made captain of Rouen, and went to the court of France to treat for peace. He was then captured by the French at Baugé, but was soon released and returned to England when he heard of the death of Henry V. in August 1422. He was one of Henry’s executors, and it is probable that the king entrusted his young son, King Henry VI., to his care. However this may be, Exeter did not take a very prominent part in the government, although he was a member of the council of regency. Having again shared in the French war, the duke died at Greenwich about the end of the year 1426. He was buried at Bury St. Edmunds, where his remains were found in good condition 350 years later. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Neville of Nornby, but left no issue. The Beaufort family was continued by Henry Beaufort (1401-1419), the eldest son of John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, who was succeeded as earl of Somerset by his brother John Beaufort (1403-1444). The latter fought under Henry V. in the French wars, and having been taken prisoner remained in France as a captive until 1437. Soon after his release he returned to the war, and after the death of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in 1439, acted as commander of the English forces, and, with his brother Edmund, was successful in recapturing Harfleur. Although chagrined when Richard, duke of York, was made regent of France, Beaufort led an expedition to France in 1442, and in 1443 was made duke of Somerset. He died, probably by his own hand, in May 1444. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp, and left a daughter, Margaret Beaufort, afterwards countess of Richmond and Derby, who married, for her first husband, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, by whom she became the mother of King Henry VII. In this way the blood of the Beauforts was mingled with that of the Tudors, and of all the subsequent occupants of the English throne.

The title of earl of Somerset descended on the death of John Beaufort in 1444 to his brother Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset (q.v.), who was killed at St Albans in 1455. By his marriage with Eleanor Beauchamp, daughter of the fifth earl of Warwick, he left three sons, Henry, Edmund and John, and a daughter, Margaret.

Henry Beaufort (1436-1464) became duke of Somerset in 1455, and soon began to take part in the struggle against Richard, duke of York, but failed to dislodge Richard’s ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, from Calais. He took part in the victory of the Lancastrians at Wakefield in 1460, escaped from the carnage at Towton in 1461, and shared the attainder of Henry VI. in the same year. In May 1464 he was captured at Hexham and was beheaded immediately after the battle. The title of duke of Somerset was assumed by his brother, Edmund Beaufort (c. 1438-1471), who fled from the country after the disasters to the Lancastrian arms, but returned to England in 1471, in which year he fought at Tewkesbury, and in spite of a promise of pardon was beheaded after the battle on the 6th of May 1471. His younger brother John Beaufort had been killed probably at this battle, and so on the execution of Edmund the family became extinct.

Margaret Beaufort married Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and was the mother of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham. Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset (d. 1464), left an illegitimate son, Charles Somerset, who was created earl of Worcester by Henry VIII. in 1514. His direct descendant, Henry Somerset, fifth earl of Worcester, was a loyal partisan of Charles I. and in 1642 was created marquess of Worcester. His grandson, Henry, the third marquess, was made duke of Beaufort in 1682, and the present duke of Beaufort is his direct descendant.

See Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, edited by H.T. Riley (London, 1863-1864); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vols. ii. and iii. (Oxford, 1895); The Paston Letters, edited by James Gairdner (London, 1904).

BEAUFORT, FRANÇOIS DE VENDÔME, Duc de (1616-1669), a picturesque figure in French history of the 17th century, was the second son of César de Vendôme, and grandson of Henry IV., by Gabrielle d’Estrées. He began his career in the army and served in the first campaigns of the Thirty Years’ War, but his ambitions and unscrupulous character soon found a more congenial field in the intrigues of the court. In 1642 he joined in the conspiracy of Cinq Mars against Richelieu, and upon its failure was obliged to live in exile in England until Richelieu’s death. Returning to France, he became the centre of a group, known as the “Importants,” in which court ladies predominated, especially the duchess of Chevreuse and the duchess of Montbazon. For an instant after the king’s death, this group seemed likely to prevail, and Beaufort to be the head of the new government. But Mazarin gained the office, and Beaufort, accused of a plot to murder Mazarin, was imprisoned in Vincennes, in September 1643. He escaped on the 31st of May 1648, just in time to join the Fronde, which began in August 1648. He was then with the parlement and the princes, against Mazarin. His personal appearance, his affectation of popular manners, his quality of grandson (legitimized), of Henry IV., rendered him a favourite of the Parisians, who acclaimed him everywhere. He was known as the Roi des Halles (“king of the markets”), and popular subscriptions were opened to pay his debts. He had hopes of becoming prime minister. But among the members of the parlement and the other leaders of the Fronde, he was regarded as merely a tool. His intelligence was but mediocre, and he showed no talent during the war. Mazarin, on his return to Paris, exiled him in October 1652; and he was only allowed to return in 1654, when the cardinal had no longer any reason to fear him. Henceforth Beaufort no longer intrigued. In 1658 he was named general superintendent of navigation, or chief of the naval army, and faithfully served the king in naval wars from that on. In 1664 he directed the expedition against the pirates of Algiers. In 1669 he led the French troops defending Candia against the Turks, and was killed in a night sortie, on the I5th of June 1669. His body was brought back to France with great pomp, and official honours rendered it.

See the memoirs of the time, notably those of La Rochefoucauld, the Cardinal de Retz, and Madame de Motteville. Also D’Avenel, Richelieu et la monarchic absolue (1884); Cheruel, La France sous le ministère Mazarin (1879); and La France sous la minorité de Louis XIV (1882).

BEAUFORT, HENRY (c. 1377-1447), English cardinal and bishop of Winchester, was the second son of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, by Catherine, wife of Sir Hugh Swynford. His parents were not married until 1396, and in 1397 King Richard II. declared the four children of this union to be legitimate. Henry spent some of his youth at Aix la-Chapelle, and having entered the church received various appointments, and was consecrated bishop of Lincoln in July 1398. When his half-brother became king as Henry IV. in 1399, Beaufort began to take a prominent place in public life; he was made chancellor in 1403, but he resigned this office in 1404, when he was translated from Lincoln to Winchester as the successor of William of Wykeham. He exercised considerable influence over the prince of Wales, afterwards King Henry V., and although he steadily supported the house of Lancaster he opposed the party led by Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury. A dispute over money left by John Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, caused or widened a breach in the royal family which reached a climax in 1411. The details are not quite clear, but it seems tolerably certain that the prince and the bishop, anxious to retain their power, sought to induce Henry IV. to abdicate in favour of his son. Angry at this request, the king dismissed his son from the council, and Beaufort appears to have shared his disgrace. When Henry V. ascended the throne in 1413 the bishop again became chancellor and took a leading part in the government until 1417, when he resigned his office, and proceeded to the council which was then sitting at Constance. His arrival had an important effect on the deliberations of this council, and the compromise which was subsequently made between the rival parties was largely his work. Grateful for Beaufort’s services, the new pope Martin V. offered him a cardinal’s hat which Henry V. refused to allow him to accept. Returning to England, he remained loyal to Henry; and after the king’s death in 1422 became a member of the council and was the chief opponent of the wild and selfish schemes of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. In 1424 he became chancellor for the third time, and was mainly responsible for the conduct of affairs during Gloucester’s expedition to Hainaut. He was disliked by the citizens of London; and this ill-feeling was heightened when Gloucester, who was a favourite of the Londoners, returned to England and was doubtless reproached by Beaufort for the folly of his undertaking. A riot took place in London, and at the bishop’s entreaty, the protector, John, duke of Bedford, came back to England. As this dispute was still unsettled when the parliament met at Leicester in February 1426, Bedford and the lords undertook to arbitrate. Charged by Gloucester with treason against Henry IV. and his successors, Beaufort denied the accusations. But although a reconciliation was effected, the bishop evidently regarded this as a defeat; and having resigned the chancellorship his energies were diverted into another channel.

Anxious to secure his aid for the crusade against the Hussites, Pope Martin again offered him a cardinal’s hat, which Beaufort accepted. He went to France in 1427, and was then appointed papal legate for Germany, Hungary and Bohemia; and proceeding eastwards, he made a bold but futile effort to rally the crusaders at Tachau. Returning to England to raise money for a fresh crusade, he was received with great state in London; but his acceptance of the cardinalate had weakened his position and Gloucester refused to recognize his legatine commission. Beaufort gave way on this question, but an unsuccessful attempt was made in 1429 to deprive him of his see. Having raised some troops he set out for Bohemia; but owing to the disasters which had just attended the English arms in France, he was induced to allow these soldiers to serve in the French war; and in February 1431 the death of Martin V. ended his commission as legate. Meanwhile an attempt on the part of Gloucester to exclude the cardinal from the council had failed, and it was decided that his attendance was required except during the discussion of questions between the king and the papacy. He accompanied King Henry VI. to Normandy in April 1430, and in December 1431 crowned him king of France. About this time Gloucester made another attempt to deprive Beaufort of his see, and it was argued in the council that as a cardinal he could not hold an English bishopric. The general council was not inclined to press the case against him; but the privy council, more clerical and more hostile, sealed writs of praemunire and attachment against him, and some of his jewels were seized. On his return to England he attended the parliament in May 1432, and asked to hear the charges against him. The king declared him loyal, and a statute was passed freeing him from any penalties which he might have incurred under the Statute of Provisors or in other ways. He supported Bedford in his attempts to restore order to the finances. In August 1435 he attended the congress at Arras, but was unable to make peace with France; and after Bedford’s death his renewed efforts to this end were again opposed by Gloucester, who favoured a continuance of the war. On two occasions the council advised the king to refuse him permission to leave England, but in 1437 he obtained a full pardon for all his offences. In 1439 and 1440 he went to France on missions of peace, and apparently at his instigation the English council decided to release Charles, duke of Orleans. This step further irritated Gloucester, who drew up and presented to the king a long and serious list of charges against Beaufort; but the council defended the policy of the cardinal and ignored the personal accusations against him. Beaufort, however, gradually retired from public life, and after witnessing the conclusion of the treaty of Troyes died at Wolvesey palace, Winchester, on the 10th of April 1447. The “black despair” which Shakespeare has cast round his dying hours appears to be without historical foundation. He was buried in Winchester cathedral, the building of which he finished. He also refounded and enlarged the hospital of St Cross near Winchester.

Beaufort was a man of considerable wealth, and on several occasions he lent large sums of money to the king. He was the lover of Lady Alice Fitzalan, daughter of Richard, earl of Arundel, by whom he had a daughter, Joan, who married Sir Edward Stradling of St Donat’s in Glamorganshire. His interests were secular and he was certainly proud and ambitious; but Stubbs has pictured the fairer side of his character when he observes that Beaufort “was merciful in his political enmities, enlightened in his foreign policy; that he was devotedly faithful, and ready to sacrifice his wealth and labour for the king; that from the moment of his death everything began to go wrong, and went worse and worse until all was lost.”

See Historiae Croylandensis continuatio, translated by H.T. Riley (London, 1854); Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, edited by N.H. Nicolas (London, 1834-1837); Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Historica Bohemica (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1707); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. iii. (Oxford, 1895): M. Creighton, A History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation (London, 1897); and L.B. Radford, Henry Beaufort (1908).

BEAUFORT, LOUIS DE (d. 1795), French historian, of whose life little is known. In 1738 he published at Utrecht a Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire romaine, in which he showed what untrustworthy guides even the historians of highest repute, such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were for that period, and pointed out by what methods and by the aid of what documents truly scientific bases might be given to its history. This was an ingenious plea, bold for its time, against traditional history such as Rollin was writing at that very moment. A German, Christopher Saxius, endeavoured to refute it in a series of articles published in vols. i.-iii. of the Miscellanea Liviensia. Beaufort replied by some brief and ironical Remarques in the appendix to the second edition of his Dissertation (1750). Beaufort also wrote an Histoire de César Germanicus (Leyden, 1761), and La République romaine, ou plan général de L’ancien gouvernement de Rome (The Hague, 1766, 2 vols. quarto). Though not a scholar of the first rank, Beaufort has at least the merit of having been a pioneer in raising the question, afterwards elaborated by Niebuhr, as to the credibility of early Roman history.

BEAUFORT SCALE, a series of numbers from 0 to 12 arranged by Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) in 1805, to indicate the strength of the wind from a calm, force 0, to a hurricane, force 12, with sailing directions such as “5, smacks shorten sails” for coast purposes, and “royals, &c., ‘full and by’” for the open sea. An exhaustive report was made in 1906 by the Meteorological Office on the relation between the estimates of wind-force according to Beaufort’s scale and the velocities recorded by anemometers belonging to the office, from which the following table is taken:—

Beaufort scale. Corresponding wind. Limits of hourly
velocity.

Numbers. Miles per hour.

0 Calm Under 2

1-3 Light breeze 2-12

4-5 Moderate wind 13-23

6-7 Strong wind 24-37

8-9 Gale 38-55

10-11 Storm 56-75

12 Hurricane Above 75

BEAUFORT WEST, in Cape province, South Africa, the capital of a division of this name, 339 m. by rail N.E. of Cape Town. Pop.(1904) 5481. The largest town in the western part of the Great Karroo, it lies, at an elevation of 2792 ft., at the foot of the southern slopes of the Nieuwveld mountains. It has several fine public buildings and the streets are lined with avenues of pear trees, while an abundant supply of water, luxuriant orchards, fields and gardens give it the appearance of an oasis in the desert. It is a favourite resort of invalids. The town was founded in 1819, and in its early days was largely resorted to by Griquas and Bechuana for the sale of ivory, skins and cattle. The Beaufort West division has an area of 6374 sq. m. and a pop. (1904) of 10,762, 45% being whites. Sheep-farming is the principal industry.

BEAUGENCY, a town of central France, in the department of Loiret, 16 m. S.W. of Orleans on the Orleans railway, between that city and Blois. Pop. (1906) 2993. It is situated at the foot of vine-clad hills on the right bank of the Loire, to the left bank of which it is united by a bridge of twenty-six arches, many of them dating from the 13th century. The chief buildings are the château, mainly of the 15th century, of which the massive donjon of the 11th century known as the Tour de César is the oldest portion; and the abbey-church of Notre-Dame, a building in the Romanesque style of architecture, frequently restored. Some of the buildings of the Benedictine abbey, to which this church belonged, remain. The hôtel de ville, the façade of which is decorated with armorial bearings of Renaissance carving, and the church of St Étienne, an unblemished example of Romanesque architecture, are of interest. Several old houses, some remains of the medieval ramparts and the Tour de l’Horloge, an ancient gateway, are also preserved. The town carries on trade in grain, and has flour mills.

The lords of Beaugency attained considerable importance in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries; at the end of the 13th century the fief was sold to the crown, and afterwards passed to the house of Orleans, then to those of Dunois and Longueville and ultimately again to that of Orleans. Joan of Arc defeated the English here in 1429. In 1567 the town was sacked and burned by the Protestants. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of December 1870 the German army, commanded by the grand-duke of Mecklenburg, defeated the French army of the Loire, under General Chanzy, in the battle of Beaugency (or Villorceau-Josnes), which was fought on the left bank of the Loire to the N.W. of Beaugency.

BEAUHARNAIS, the name of a French family, well known from the 15th century onward in Orléanais, where its members occupied honourable positions. One of them, Jean Jacques de Beauharnais, seigneur de Miramion, had for wife Marie Bonneau, who in 1661 founded a female charitable order, called after her the Miramiones. François de Beauharnais, marquis de la Ferté-Beauharnais, was a deputy in the states-general of 1789, and a devoted defender of the monarchy. He emigrated and served in Condé’s army. Later he gave his adherence to Napoleon, and became ambassador in Etruria and Spain; he died in 1823. His brother Alexandre, vicomte de Beauharnais, married Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie (afterwards the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte) and had two children by her—Eugène de Beauharnais (q.v.) and Hortense, who married Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, and became mother of Napoleon III. Claude de Beauharnais, comte des Roches-Baritaud, uncle of the marquis and of the vicomte de Beauharnais, served in the navy and became a vice-admiral. He married Marie Anne Françoise (called Fanny) Mouchard, a woman of letters who had a celebrated salon. His son, also named Claude (d. 1819), was created a peer of France in 1814, and was the father of Stéphanie de Beauharnais, who married the grand-duke of Baden. The house of Beauharnais is still represented in Russia by the dukes of Leuchtenberg, descendants of Prince Eugène.

(M. P.*)

BEAUHARNAIS, EUGÈNE DE (1781-1824), step-son of Napoleon I., was born at Paris on the 3rd of September 1781. He was the son of the general Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais (1760-1794) and Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie. The father, who was born in Martinique, and served in the American War of Independence, took part in the politics of the French Revolution, and in June-August 1793 commanded the army of the Rhine. His failure to fulfil the tasks imposed on him (especially that of the relief of Mainz) led to his being arrested, and he was guillotined (23rd June 1794) not long before the fall of Robespierre. The marriage of his widow Josephine to Napoleon Bonaparte in March 1796 was at first resented by Eugène and his sister Hortense; but their step-father proved to be no less kind than watchful over their interests. In the Italian campaigns of 1796-1797 Eugène served as aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, and accompanied him to Egypt in the same capacity. There he distinguished himself by his activity and bravery, and was wounded during the siege of Acre. Bonaparte brought him back to France in the autumn of 1799, and it is known that the intervention of Eugène and Hortense helped to bring about the reconciliation which then took place between Bonaparte and Josephine. The services rendered by Eugène at the time of the coup d’état of Brumaire (1799) and during the Consulate (1799-1804) served to establish his fortunes, despite the efforts of some of the Bonapartes to destroy the influence of the Beauharnais and bring about the divorce of Josephine.

After the proclamation of the Empire, Eugène received the title of prince, with a yearly stipend of 200,000 francs, and became general of the chasseurs à cheval of the Guard. A year later, when the Italian republic became the kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon as king, Eugène received the title of viceroy, with large administrative powers. (See Italy.) Not long after the battle of Austerlitz (2nd December 1805) Napoleon dignified the elector of Bavaria with the title of king and arranged a marriage between Eugène and the princess Augusta Amelia of Bavaria. On the whole the government of Eugène gave general satisfaction in the kingdom of Italy; it comprised the districts between the Simplon Pass and Rimini, and also after the peace of Presburg (December 1805), Istria and Dalmatia. In 1808 (on the further partition of the papal states) the frontier of the kingdom was extended southwards to the borders of the kingdom of Naples, in the part known as the Abruzzi. In the campaign of 1809 Eugène commanded the army of Italy, with General (afterwards Marshal) Macdonald as his adlatus. The battle of Sacile, where he fought against the Austrian army of the Archduke John, did not yield proofs of military talent on the part of Eugène or of Macdonald; but on the retreat of the enemy into Austrian territory (owing to the disasters of their main army on the Danube) Eugène’s forces pressed them vigorously and finally won an important victory at Raab in the heart of the Austrian empire. Then, joining the main army under Napoleon, in the island of Lobau in the Danube, near Vienna, Eugène and Macdonald acquitted themselves most creditably in the great battle of Wagram (6th July 1809). In 1810 Eugène received the title of grand-duke of Frankfort. Equally meritorious were his services and those of the large Italian contingent in the campaign of 1812 in Russia. He and they distinguished themselves especially at the battles of Borodino and Malojaroslavitz; and on several occasions during the disastrous retreat which ensued, Eugène’s soldierly constancy and devotion to Napoleon shone out conspicuously in 1813-1814, especially by contrast with the tergiversations of Murat. On the downfall of the Napoleonic régime Eugène retired to Munich, where he continued to reside, with the title duke of Leuchtenberg and prince of Eichstädt. He died in 1824, leaving two surviving sons and three daughters.

For further details concerning Eugène see Mémoires et correspondance politique et militaire du Prince Eugène, edited by Baron A. Ducasse (10 vols., Paris, 1858-1860); F.J.A. Schneidewind, Prinz Eugen, Herzog van Leuchtenberg in den Feldzügen seiner Zeit (Stockholm, 1857); A. Purlitzer, Une Idylle sous Napoléon Ier: le roman du Prince Eugène (Paris, 1895); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (Paris, 1897-1900).

(J. Hl. R.)

BEAUJEU. The French province of Beaujolais was formed by the development of the ancient seigniory of Beaujeu (department of Rhône, arrondissement of Villefranche). The lords of Beaujeu held from the 10th century onwards a high rank in feudal society. In 1210 Guichard of Beaujeu was sent by Philip Augustus on an embassy to Pope Innocent III.; he was present at the French attack on Dover, where he died in 1216. His son Humbert took part in the wars against the Albigenses and became constable of France. Isabeau, daughter of this Humbert, married Renaud, count of Forez; and their second son, Louis, assumed the name and arms of Beaujeu. His son Guichard, called the Great, had a very warlike life, fighting for the king of France, for the count of Savoy and for his own hand. He was taken prisoner by the Dauphinois in 1325, thereby losing important estates. Guichard’s son, Edward of Beaujeu, marshal of France, fought at Crécy, and perished in the battle of Ardres in 1351. His son died without issue in 1374, and was succeeded by his cousin, Edward of Beaujeu, lord of Perreux, who gave his estates of Beaujolais and Dombes to Louis II., duke of Bourbon, in 1400. Pierre de Bourbon was lord of Beaujeu in 1474, when he married Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., and this is why that princess retained the name of lady of Beaujeu. Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., got Beaujolais assigned to herself despite the claims of the constable de Bourbon. In 1531 the province was reunited to the crown; but Francis II. gave it back to the Montpensier branch of the Bourbons in 1560, from which house it passed to that of Orleans. The title of comte de Beaujolais was borne by a son of Philippe “Égalité,” duke of Orleans, born in 1779, died in 1808.

(M. P.*)

BEAULIEU, a village in the French department of Alpes-Maritimes. Pop. (1906) 1460. It is about 4 m. by rail E. of Nice (1¼ m. from Villefranche), and on the main line between Marseilles and Mentone; it is also connected with Nice and Mentone by an electric tramway. Of late years it has become a much frequented winter resort, and many handsome villas (among them that built by the 3rd marquess of Salisbury) have been constructed in the neighbourhood. The harbour has been extended and adapted for the reception of yachts.

(W. A. B. C.)

BEAULY (pronounced Bewley; a corruption of Beaulieu), a town of Inverness-shire, Scotland, on the Beauly, 10 m. W. of Inverness by the Highland railway. Pop. (1901) 855. Its chief interest is the beautiful remains of the Priory of St John, founded in 1230 by John Bisset of the Aird, for Cistercian monks. At the Reformation the buildings (except the church, now a ruin) passed into the possession of Lord Lovat. On the right bank of the river is the site of Lovat Castle, which once belonged to the Bissets, but was presented by James VI. to Hugh Fraser and afterwards demolished. To the south-east is the church of Kirkhill containing the vault of the Lovats. Three miles south of Beauly is Beaufort Castle, the chief seat of the Lovats, a fine modern mansion in the Scottish baronial style. It occupies the site of a fortress erected in the time of Alexander II., which was besieged in 1303 by Edward I. This was replaced by several castles in succession, of which one—Castle Dounie—was taken by Cromwell and burned by the duke of Cumberland in 1746, the conflagration being witnessed from a neighbouring hill by Simon, Lord Lovat, before his capture on Loch Morar. The land around Beauly is fertile and the town drives a brisk trade in coal, timber, lime, grain and fish.

BEAUMANOIR, a seigniory in what is now the department of Côtes-du-Nord, France, which gave its name to an illustrious family. Jean de Beaumanoir, marshal of Brittany for Charles of Blois, and captain of Josselin, is remembered for his share in the famous battle of the Thirty. This battle, sung by an unknown trouvère and retold with variations by Froissart, was an episode in the struggle for the succession to the duchy of Brittany between Charles of Blois, supported by the king of France, and John of Montfort, supported by the king of England. John Bramborough, the English captain of Ploërmel, having continued his ravages, in spite of a truce, in the district commanded by the captain of Josselin, Jean de Beaumanoir sent him a challenge, which resulted in a fight between thirty picked champions, knights and squires, on either side, which took place on the 25th of March 1351, near Ploërmel. Beaumanoir commanded thirty Bretons, Bramborough a mixed force of twenty Englishmen, six German mercenaries and four Breton partisans of Montfort. The battle, fought with swords, daggers and axes, was of the most desperate character, in its details very reminiscent of the last fight of the Burgundians in the Nibelungenlied, especially in the celebrated advice of Geoffrey du Bois to his wounded leader, who was asking for water: “Drink your blood, Beaumanoir; that will quench your thirst!” In the end the victory was decided by Guillaume de Montauban, who mounted his horse and overthrew seven of the English champions, the rest being forced to surrender. All the combatants on either side were either dead or seriously wounded, Bramborough being among the slain. The prisoners were well treated and released on payment of a small ransom. (See Le Poème du combat des Trente, in the Panthéon littéraire; Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, c. iv. pp. 45 and 110 ff., and pp. 338-340).

Jean de Beaumanoir (1551-1614), seigneur and afterwards marquis de Lavardin, count of Nègrepelisse by marriage, served first in the Protestant army, but turned Catholic after the massacre of St Bartholomew, in which his father had been killed, and then fought against Henry of Navarre. When that prince became king of France, Lavardin changed over to his side, and was made a marshal of France. He was governor of Maine, commanded an army in Burgundy in 1602, was ambassador extraordinary to England in 1612, and died in 1614. One of his descendants, Henry Charles, marquis de Lavardin (1643-1701), was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1689, on the occasion of a difference between Louis XIV. and Innocent XI.

BEAUMANOIR, PHILIPPE DE RÉMI, Sire de (c. 1250-1296), French jurist, was born in the early part of the 13th century and died in 1296. The few facts known regarding his life are to be gathered from legal documents in which his name occurs. From these it appears that in 1273 he filled the post of bailli at Senlis, and in 1280 held a similar office at Clermont. He is also occasionally referred to as presiding at the assizes held at various towns. His great work is entitled Coutumes de Beauvoisis and first appeared in 1690, a second edition with introduction by A.A. Beugnot being published in 1842. It is regarded as one of the best works bearing on old French law, and was frequently referred to with high admiration by Montesquieu. Beaumanoir also obtained fame as a poet, and left over 20,000 verses, the best known of his poems being La Manekine, Jehan et Blonde and Salut d’amour.

BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERRE AUGUSTIN CARON DE (1732-1799), French dramatist, was born in Paris on the 24th of January 1732. His father, a watchmaker named Caron, brought him up to the same trade. He was an unusually precocious and lively boy, shrewd, sagacious, passionately fond of music and imbued with a strong desire for rising in the world. At the age of twenty-one he invented a new escapement for watches, which was pirated by a rival maker. Young Caron at once published his grievance in the Mercure, and had the matter referred to the Academy of Sciences, which decided in his favour. This affair brought him into notice at court; he was appointed, or at least called himself, watchmaker to the king, who ordered from him a watch similar to one he had made for Mme de Pompadour. His handsome figure and cool assurance enabled him to make his way at court. Mme Franquet, the wife of an old court official, persuaded her husband to make over his office to young Caron, and, on her husband’s death, a few months later, married the handsome watchmaker. Caron at the same time assumed the name Beaumarchais; and four years later, by purchasing the office of secretary to the king obtained a patent of nobility.

At court his musical talents brought him under the notice of the king’s sisters, who engaged him to teach them the harp. This position enabled him to confer a slight favour on the great banker Joseph Duverney, who testified his gratitude by giving Beaumarchais a share in his speculations. The latter turned the opportunity to good account, and soon realized a handsome fortune. In 1764 he took a journey to Spain, partly with commercial objects in view, but principally on account of the Clavijo affair. José Clavijo y Fajardo had twice promised to marry the sister of Beaumarchais, and had failed to keep his word. The adventure had not the tragic ending of Goethe’s Clavigo, for Beaumarchais did not pursue his vengeance beyond words. Beaumarchais made his first essay as a writer for the stage with the sentimental drama Eugénie (1767), in which he drew largely on the Clavijo incident. This was followed after an interval of two years by Les Deux Amis, but neither play had more than moderate success. His first wife had died within a year of the marriage and in 1768 Beaumarchais married Mme Lévêque. Her death in 1771 was the signal for unfounded rumours of poisoning. Duverney died in 1770; but some time before his death a duplicate settlement of the affairs between him and Beaumarchais had been drawn up, in which the banker acknowledged himself debtor to Beaumarchais for 15,000 francs. Duverney’s heir, the comte de La Blache, denied the validity of the document though without directly stigmatizing it as a forgery. The matter was put to trial. Beaumarchais gained his cause, but his adversary at once carried the case before the parlement. In the meantime the duc de Chaulnes forced Beaumarchais into a quarrel over Mdlle Menard, an actress at the Comédie Italienne, which resulted in the imprisonment of both parties. This moment was chosen by La Blache to demand judgment from the parlement in the matter of the Duverney agreement. Beaumarchais was released from prison for three or four days to see his judges. He was, however, unable to obtain an interview with Goezman, the member of the parlement appointed to report on his case. At last, just before the day on which the report was to be given in, he was informed privately that, by presenting 200 louis to Mme Goezman and 15 to her secretary, the desired interview might take place, if the result should prove unfavourable the money would be refunded. The money was sent and the interview obtained; but the decision was adverse, and 200 louis were returned, the 15 going as business expenses to the secretary. Beaumarchais, who had learned that there was no secretary save Mme Goezman herself, insisted on restitution of the 15 louis, but the lady denied all knowledge of the affair. Her husband, who was probably not cognisant of the details of the transaction at first, doubtless thought the defeated litigant would be easily put down, and at once brought an accusation against him for an attempt to corrupt justice. The battle was fought chiefly through the Mémoires, or reports published by the adverse parties, and in it Beaumarchais’s success was complete. For vivacity of style, fine satire and broad humour, his famous Mémoires have never been surpassed. Even Voltaire was constrained to envy them. Beaumarchais was skilful enough to make his particular case of universal application. He was attacking the parlement through one of its members, and the parlement was the universally detested body formed by the chancellor Maupeou. The Mémoires were, therefore, hailed with general delight; and the author, from being perhaps the most unpopular man in France, became at once the idol of the people. The decision went against Beaumarchais. The parlement condemned both him and Mme Goezman au blâme, i.e. to civic degradation, while the husband was obliged to abandon his position. Beaumarchais was reduced to great straits, but he obtained restitution of his rights within two years, and finally triumphed over his adversary La Blache.

During the next few years he was engaged in the king’s secret service. One of his missions was to England to destroy the Mémoires secrets d’une femme publique in which Charles Theveneau de Morande made an attack on Mme Du Barry. Beaumarchais secured this pamphlet, and burnt the whole impression in London. Another expedition to England and Holland to seize a pamphlet attacking Marie Antoinette led to a series of incidents more amazing than the intrigues in Beaumarchais’s own plays, but his own account must be received with caution. Beaumarchais pursued the libeller to Germany and overtook him in a wood near Neustadt. After a struggle he had gained possession of the document when he was attacked by brigands. Unfortunately the wound alleged to have been received in this fight was proved to be self-inflicted. The Austrian government regarded Beaumarchais with a suspicion justified by the circumstances. He was imprisoned for some time in Vienna, and only released on the receipt of explanations from Paris.

His various visits to England led him to take a deep interest in the impending struggle between the American colonies and the mother-country. His sympathies were entirely with the former; and by his unwearied exertions he succeeded in inducing the French government to give ample, though private, assistance in money and arms to the Americans. He himself, partly on his own account, but chiefly as the agent of the French and Spanish governments, carried on an enormous traffic with America. Under the name of Rodrigue Hortalez et Cie, he employed a fleet of forty vessels to provide help for the insurgents.

During the same period he produced his two famous comedies. The earlier, Le Barbier de Seville, after a prohibition of two years, was put on the stage in 1775. The first representation was a complete failure. Beaumarchais had overloaded the last scene with allusions to the facts of his own case and the whole action of the piece was laboured and heavy. But he cut down and remodelled the piece in time for the second representation, when it achieved a complete success. The intrigues which were necessary in order to obtain a licence for the second and more famous comedy, Le Mariage de Figaro, are highly amusing, and throw much light on the unsettled state of public sentiment at the time. The play was completed in 1778, but the opposition of Louis XVI., who alone saw its dangerous tendencies, was not overcome till 1784. The comedy had an unprecedented success. The principal character in both plays, Figaro, is a completely original conception; in fact Beaumarchais drew a portrait of himself in the resourceful adventurer, who, for mingled wit, shrewdness, gaiety and philosophic reflection, may not unjustly be ranked with Tartuffe. To English readers the Figaro plays are generally known through the adaptations of them in the grand opera of Mozart and Rossini; but in France they long retained popularity as acting pieces. The success of Le Mariage de Figaro was helped on by the methods of self-advertisement so well understood by Beaumarchais. The proceeds of the fiftieth performance were devoted to a charity, the choice of which provoked numerous epigrams. Beaumarchais had the imprudence to retaliate by personalities that were reported by his enemies to be dedicated against the king and queen. Beaumarchais was imprisoned for a short time by royal order in the prison of St Lazare. Brilliant pamphleteer as he was, Beaumarchais was at last to meet more than his match. He undertook to defend the company of the “Eaux de Paris,” in which he had a large interest, against Mirabeau, and brought down on himself an invective to which he could offer no reply. His real influence was gone from that date (1785-1786). Shortly afterwards he was violently attacked by Nicolas Bergasse, whom he sued for defamation of character. He gained his case, but his reputation had suffered in the pamphlet war. Beaumarchais’s later productions, the bombastic opera Tarare (1787) and the drama La Mère coupable (1792), which was very popular, are in no way worthy of his genius.

By his writings Beaumarchais contributed greatly, though quite unconsciously, to hurry on the events that led to the Revolution. At heart he hardly seems to have been a republican, and the new state of affairs did not benefit him. The astonishing thing is that the society travestied in Le Mariage de Figaro was the most vehement in its applause. The court looked on at a play justly characterized by Napoleon as the “revolution already in action” apparently without a suspicion of its real character. His popularity had been destroyed by the Mirabeau and Bergasse affairs, and his great wealth exposed him to the enmity of the envious. A speculation into which he entered, to supply the Convention with muskets from Holland, proved a ruinous failure. He was accused of concealing arms and corn in his house, but when his house was searched nothing was discovered but some thousands of copies of the edition (1783-1790) of the works of Voltaire which he had had printed at his private press at Kehl, in Baden. He was charged with treason to the republic and was imprisoned in the Abbaye on the 20th of August 1792. A week later he was released at the intercession of Mme Houret de la Marinière, who had been his mistress. He took refuge in Holland and England. His memoirs entitled, Mes six époques, detailing his sufferings under the republic, are not unworthy of the Goezman period. His courage and happy disposition never deserted him, although he was hunted as an agent of the Convention in Holland and England, while in Paris he was proscribed as an émigré. He returned to Paris in 1796, and died there, suddenly, on the 18th of May 1799.

Gudin de la Brenellerie’s Histoire de Beaumarchais (1809) was edited by M. Maurice Tourneux in 1888. See also L. de Loménie, Beaumarchais et son temps (1855), Eng. trans. by H.S. Edwards, (4. vols., 1856); A. Hallay’s Beaumarchais (1897); M. de Lescure, Éloge de Beaumarchais (1886); and Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vi. Beaumarchais’s works have been edited by Gudin (7 vols., 1809); by Furne (6 vols., 1827); and by É. Fournier (1876). A variorum edition of his Théâtre complet was published by MM. d’Heylli and de Marescot (4 vols., 1869-1875); and a Bibliographie des œuvres de Beaumarchais, by H. Cordier in 1883.

BEAUMARIS, a market town and municipal borough, and the county town of Anglesey, N. Wales, situated on the Bay of Beaumaris, not far from Penmon, the northern entrance of the Menai Strait. Pop. (1901) 2326. It has but one considerable street. The large castle chapel, dedicated to the Virgin, has some fine monuments. David Hughes, of Jesus College, Oxford, founded the free grammar school in 1603. Buildings include town-hall and county-hall, with St Mary’s church of the 13th century, with chancel of the 16th. Practically without trade and with no manufactures, Beaumaris is principally noted as a bathing-place. Its earliest charter dates from 1283 and was revised under Elizabeth. The town was formerly called Barnover and, still earlier, Rhosfair, and bears its present name of French origin since Edward I. built its castle in 1293. This extensive building was erected on low ground, so that the fosse might communicate with the sea, and vessels might unload under its walls. The castle capitulated, after siege, to General Mytton (1646).

BEAUMONT, Belmont, or Bellomont, the name of a Norman and English family, taken from Beaumont-le-Roger in Normandy. Early in the 11th century Roger de Beaumont, a kinsman of the dukes of Normandy, married a daughter of Waleran, count of Meulan, and their son, Robert de Beaumont (d. 1118), became count of Meulan or Mellent about 1080. Before this date, however, he had fought at Hastings, and had added large estates in Warwickshire to the Norman fiefs of Beaumont and Pont Audemer, which he received when his father entered the abbey of St Peter at Préaux. It was during the reigns of William II. and Henry I. that the count rose to eminence, and under the latter monarch he became “the first among the counsellors of the king.” A “strenuous and sagacious man” he rendered valuable service to both kings in their Norman wars, and Henry I. was largely indebted to him for the English crown. He obtained lands in Leicestershire, and it has been said he was created earl of Leicester; this statement, however, is an error, although he exercised some of the privileges of an earl. His abilities as a counsellor, statesman and diplomatist gained him the admiration of his contemporaries, and Henry of Huntingdon describes him as “the wisest man between this and Jerusalem.” He seems to have been a man of independent character, for he assisted Anselm against William Rufus, although he supported Henry I. in his quarrel with Pope Paschal II. When Robert died on the 5th of June 1118 his lands appear to have been divided between his twin sons, Robert and Waleran, while a third son, Hugh, became earl of Bedford in 1138.

Robert de Beaumont (1104-1168), justiciar of England, married a granddaughter of Ralph Guader, earl of Norfolk, and receiving his father’s English fiefs in 1118 became earl of Leicester. He and his brother, Waleran, were the chief advisers of Stephen, and helped this king to seize the bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln in 1139; later, however, Robert made his peace with Henry II., and became chief justiciar of England. First among the lay nobles he signed the Constitutions of Clarendon, he sought to reconcile Henry and Archbishop Becket, and was twice in charge of the kingdom during the king’s absences in France. The earl founded the abbey of St Mary de Pré at Leicester and other religious houses, and by a charter confirmed the burgesses of Leicester in the possession of their merchant-gild and customs. His son, Robert, succeeded to the earldom of Leicester, and with other English barons assisted prince Henry in his revolt against his father the king in 1173. For this participation, and also on a later occasion, he was imprisoned; but he enjoyed the favour of Richard I., and died in Greece when returning from a pilgrimage in 1190. His son and heir, Robert, died childless in 1204.

Waleran de Beaumont (1104-1166) obtained his father’s French fiefs and the title of count of Meulan in 1118. After being imprisoned for five years by Henry I. he spent some time in England, and during the civil war between Stephen and the empress Matilda he fought for the former until about 1150, when he deserted the king and assisted the empress. His later history appears to have been uneventful. The county of Meulan remained in possession of the Beaumont family until 1204, when it was united with the royal domain.

Another member of the Beaumont family, possibly a relative of the earlier Beaumonts, was Louis de Beaumont (d. 1333), bishop of Durham from 1317 until his death. This prelate was related to the English king, Edward II., and after a life spent in strife and ostentation, he died on the 24th of September 1333. John Beaumont, master of the rolls under Edward VI., was probably a member of the same family. A dishonest and corrupt judge, he was deprived of his office and imprisoned in 1552.

The barony of Beaumont dates from 1309, when Henry Beaumont (d. 1340), who was constable of England in 1322, was summoned to parliament under this title. It was retained by his descendants until the death of William, the 7th baron and the 2nd viscount, in 1507, when it fell into abeyance. In 1840 the barony was revived in favour of Miles Thomas Stapleton (1805-1854), a descendant of Joan, Baroness Lovel, a daughter of the 6th baron, and it has since been retained by his descendants.

In 1906 Wentworth Blackett Beaumont (1829-1907), the head of a family well known in the north of England, was created Baron Allendale.

His father John (d. 1460), the 6th baron, great chamberlain and constable of England, was the first person advanced to the dignity of a viscount in England.

BEAUMONT, CHRISTOPHE DE (1703-1781), French ecclesiastic and archbishop of Paris, was a cadet of the Les Adrets and Saint-Quentin branch of the illustrious Dauphiné family of Beaumont. He became bishop of Bayonne in 1741, then archbishop of Vienne in 1743, and in 1746, at the age of forty-three, archbishop of Paris. Beaumont is noted for his struggle with the Jansenists. To force them to accept the bull Unigenitus which condemned their doctrines, he ordered the priests of his diocese to refuse absolution to those who would not recognize the bull, and to deny funeral rites to those who had confessed to a Jansenist priest. While other bishops sent Beaumont their adhesion to his crusade, the parlement of Paris threatened to confiscate his temporalities. The king forbade the parlement to interfere in these spiritual questions, and upon its proving obdurate it was exiled (September 18, 1753). The “royal chamber,” which was substituted, having failed to carry on the administration of justice properly, the king was obliged to recall the parlement, and the archbishop was sent into honourable exile (August 1754). An effort was made to induce him to resign the active duties of his see to a coadjutor, but in spite of the most tempting offers—including a cardinal’s hat—he refused. On the contrary, to his polemic against the Jansenists he added an attack on the philosophes, and issued a formal mandatory letter condemning Rousseau’s Émile. Rousseau replied in his masterly Lettre à M. de Beaumont (1762), in which he insists that freedom of discussion in religious matters is essentially more religious than the attempt to impose belief by force.

De Beaumont’s Mandements, lettres et instructions pastorales were published in two volumes in 1780, the year before his death.

BEAUMONT, SIR JOHN (1583-1627), English poet, second son of the judge, Sir Francis Beaumont, was born at Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire in 1583. The deaths of his father (in 1598) and of his elder brother, Sir Henry Beaumont (in 1605), made the poet early the head of this brilliant family; the dramatist, Francis Beaumont, being a younger brother. John went to Oxford in February 1597, and entered as a gentleman commoner in Broadgates Hall, the present Pembroke College. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1600, but on the death of Henry he no doubt went down to Grace-Dieu to manage the family estates. He began to write verse early, and in 1602, at the age of nineteen, he published anonymously his Metamorphosis of Tabacco, written in very smooth couplets, in which he addressed Drayton as his “loving friend.” He lived in Leicestershire for many years as a bachelor, being one “who never felt Love’s dreadful arrow.” But in process of time he became a tardy victim, and married a lady of the Fortescue family, who bore him four stout sons, the eldest of whom, another John, was accounted one of the most athletic men of his time. “He could leap 16 ft. at one leap, and would commonly, at a stand-leap, jump over a high long table in the hall, light on a settle beyond the table, and raise himself straight up.” This magnificent young man was not without literary taste; he edited his father’s posthumous poems, and wrote an enthusiastic elegy on him; he was killed in 1644 at the siege of Gloucester. Another of Sir John Beaumont’s sons, Gervaise, died in childhood, and the incidents of his death are recorded in one of his father’s most touching poems. Sir John Beaumont concentrated his powers on a poem in eight books, entitled The Crown of Thorns, which was greatly admired in MS. by the earl of Southampton and others, but which is lost. After long retirement, Beaumont was persuaded by the duke of Buckingham to move in larger circles; he attended court and in 1626 was made a baronet. This honour he did not long survive, for he died on the 19th of April 1627, and was buried in Westminster Abbey ten days later. The new Sir John, the strong man, published in 1629 a volume entitled Bosworth Field; with a taste of the variety of other Poems left by Sir John Beaumont. No more “tastes” were ever vouchsafed, so that it is by this volume and by the juvenile Metamorphosis of Tobacco that Beaumont’s reputation has to stand. Of late years, the peculiarities of John Beaumont’s prosody have drawn attention to his work. He wrote the heroic couplet, which was his favourite measure, with almost unprecedented evenness. Bosworth Field, the scene of the battle of which Beaumont’s principal poem gives a vaguely epical narrative, lay close to the poet’s house of Grace-Dieu. He writes on all occasions with a smoothness which was very remarkable in the first quarter of the 17th century, and which marks him, with Edmund Waller and George Sandys, as one of the pioneers of the classic reformation of English verse.

The poems of Sir John Beaumont were included in A. Chalmers’s English Poets, vol. vi. (1810). An edition, with “memorial introduction” and notes, was included (1869) in Dr A.B. Grosart’s Fuller Worthies’ Library; and the Metamorphosis of Tobacco was included in J.P. Collier’s Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature, vol. i. (1863).

(E. G.)

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, English dramatists The names of Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) are inseparably connected in the history of the English drama. John Fletcher was born in December 1579 at Rye in Sussex, and baptized on the 20th of the same month. Richard Fletcher, his father, afterwards queen’s chaplain, dean of Peterborough, and bishop successively of Bristol, Worcester and London, was then minister of the parish in which the son was born who was to make their name immortal. That son was just turned of seven when the dean distinguished and disgraced himself as the spiritual tormentor of the last moments on earth of Mary Stuart. When not quite twelve he was admitted pensioner of Bene’t College, Cambridge, and two years later was made one of the Bible-clerks: of this college Bishop Fletcher had been president twenty years earlier, and six months before his son’s admission had received from its authorities a first letter of thanks for various benefactions, to be followed next year by a second. Four years later than this, when John Fletcher wanted five or six months of his seventeenth year, the bishop died suddenly of over much tobacco and the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth at his second marriage—this time, it appears, with a lady of such character as figures something too frequently on the stage of his illustrious son. He left eight children by his first marriage in such distress that their uncle, Dr Giles Fletcher, author of a treatise on the Russian commonwealth which is still held in some repute, was obliged to draw up a petition to the queen on their behalf, which was supported by the intercession of Essex, but with what result is uncertain.

From this date we know nothing of the fortunes of John Fletcher, till the needy orphan boy of seventeen reappears as the brilliant and triumphant poet whose name is linked for all time with the yet more glorious name of Francis Beaumont, third and youngest son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, one of the justices of the common pleas—born, according to general report, in 1586, but, according to more than one apparently irrefragable document, actually born two years earlier. The first record of his existence is the entry of his name, together with those of his elder brothers Henry and John, as a gentleman-commoner of Broadgates Hall, Oxford, now supplanted by Pembroke College. But most lovers of his fame will care rather to remember the admirable lines of Wordsworth on the “eager child” who played among the rocks and woodlands of Grace-Dieu; though it may be doubted whether even the boy’s first verses were of the peaceful and pastoral character attributed to them by the great laureate of the lakes. That passionate and fiery genius which was so soon and for so short a time to “shake the buskined stage” with heroic and tragic notes of passion and of sorrow, of scorn and rage, and slighted love and jealousy, must surely have sought vent from the first in fancies of a more ardent and ambitious kind; and it would be a likelier conjecture that when Frank Beaumont (as we know on more authorities than one that he was always called by his contemporaries, even in the full flush of his adult fame—“never more than Frank,” says Heywood) went to college at the ripe age of twelve, he had already committed a tragedy or two in emulation of Tamburlaine, Andronicus or Jeronymo. The date of his admission was the 4th of February 1597; on the 22nd of April of the following year his father died; and on the 3rd of November 1600, having left Oxford without taking his degree, the boy of fifteen was entered a member of the Inner Temple, his two brothers standing sponsors on the grave occasion. But the son of Judge Beaumont was no fitter for success at the bar than the son of Bishop Fletcher for distinction in the church: it is equally difficult to imagine either poet invested with either gown. Two years later appeared the poem of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, generally attributed to Beaumont, a voluptuous and voluminous expansion of the Ovidian legend, not on the whole discreditable to a lad of eighteen, fresh from the popular love-poems of Marlowe and Shakespeare, which it naturally exceeds in long-winded and fantastic diffusion of episodes and conceits. At twenty-three Beaumont prefixed to the magnificent masterpiece of Ben Jonson some noticeable verses in honour of his “dear friend” the author; and in the same year (1607) appeared the anonymous comedy of The Woman-Hater, usually assigned to Fletcher alone; but being as it is in the main a crude and puerile imitation of Jonson’s manner, and certainly more like a man’s work at twenty-two than at twenty-eight, internal evidence would seem to justify, or at least to excuse those critics who in the teeth of high authority and tradition would transfer from Fletcher to Beaumont the principal responsibility for this first play that can be traced to the hand of either. As Fletcher also prefixed to the first edition of Volpone a copy of commendatory verses, we may presume that their common admiration for a common friend was among the earliest and strongest influences which drew together the two great poets whose names were thenceforward to be for ever indivisible. During the dim eleven years between the death of his father and the dawn of his fame, we cannot but imagine that the career of Fletcher had been unprosperous as well as obscure. From seventeen to twenty-eight his youth may presumably have been spent in such painful struggles for success, if not for sustenance, as were never known to his younger colleague, who, as we have seen, was entered at Oxford a few months after Fletcher must in all likelihood have left Cambridge to try his luck in London: a venture most probably resolved on as soon as the youth had found his family reduced by the father’s death to such ruinous straits that any smoother course can hardly have been open to him. Entering college at the same age as Fletcher had entered six years earlier, Beaumont had before him a brighter and briefer line of life than his elder. But whatever may have been their respective situations when, either by happy chance or, as Dyce suggests, by the good offices of Jonson, they were first brought together, their intimacy soon became so much closer than that of ordinary brothers that the household which they shared as bachelors was conducted on such thoroughly communistic principles as might have satisfied the most trenchant theorist who ever proclaimed as the cardinal point of his doctrine, a complete and absolute community of bed and board, with all goods thereto appertaining. But in the year following that in which the two younger poets had united in homage to Jonson, they had entered into a partnership of more importance than this in “the same clothes and cloak, &c.,” with other necessaries of life specified by Aubrey.

In 1608, if we may trust the reckoning which seems trust-worthiest, the twin stars of our stage rose visibly together for the first time. The loveliest, though not the loftiest, of tragic plays that we owe to the comrades or the successors of Shakespeare, Philaster, has generally been regarded as the first-born issue of their common genius. The noble tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret has sometimes been dated earlier and assigned to Fletcher alone; but we can be sure neither of the early date nor the single authorship. The main body of the play, comprising both the great scenes which throw out into full and final relief the character of either heroine for perfect good or evil, bears throughout the unmistakable image and superscription of Fletcher; yet there are parts which for gravity and steady strength of style, for reserve and temperance of effect, would seem to suggest the collaboration of a calmer and more patient hand; and these more equable and less passionate parts of the poem recall rather the touch of Massinger than of Beaumont. In the second act, for example, the regular structure of the verse, the even scheme of the action, the exaggerated braggardism which makes of the hero a mere puppet or mouthpiece of his own self-will, are all qualities which, for better or for worse, remind us of the strength or the weakness of a poet with whom we know that Fletcher, before or after his alliance with Beaumont, did now and then work in common. Even the Arbaces of Beaumont, though somewhat too highly coloured, does not “write himself down an ass,” like Thierry on his first entrance, after the too frequent fashion of Massinger’s braggarts and tyrants; does not proclaim at starting or display with mere wantonness of exposure his more unlovely qualities in the naked nature of their deformity. Compare also the second with the first scene of the fourth act. In style and metre this second scene is as good an example of Massinger as the first is of Fletcher at his best. Observe especially in the elaborate narrative of the pretended self-immolation of Ordella these distinctive notes of the peculiar style of Massinger; the excess of parenthetic sentences, no less than five in a space of twenty lines; the classical common-place of allusion to Athens, Rome and Sparta in one superfluous breath; the pure and vigorous but somewhat level and prosaic order of language, with the use of certain cheap and easy phrases familiar to Massinger as catchwords; the flat and feeble terminations by means of which the final syllable of one verse runs on into the next without more pause or rhythm than in a passage of prose; the general dignity and gravity of sustained and measured expression. These are the very points in which the style of Massinger differs from that of Fletcher; whose lightest and loosest verses do not overlap each other without sensible distinction between the end of one line and the beginning of the next; who is often too fluent and facile to be choice or forcible in his diction, but seldom if ever prosaic or conventional in phrase or allusion, and by no means habitually given to weave thoughts within thoughts, knit sentence into sentence, and hang whole paragraphs together by the help of loops and brackets. From these indications we might infer that this poem belongs altogether to a period later than the death of Beaumont; though even during his friend’s life it appears that Fletcher was once at least allied with Massinger and two lesser dramatists in the composition of a play, probably the Honest Man’s Fortune, of which the accounts are to be found in Henslowe’s papers.

Hardly eight years of toil and triumph of joyous and glorious life were spared by destiny to the younger poet between the date assigned to the first radiant revelation of his genius in Philaster and the date which marks the end of all his labours. On the 6th of March 1616 Francis Beaumont died—according to Jonson and tradition, “ere he was thirty years of age,” but this we have seen to be inconsistent with the registry of his entrance at Oxford. If we may trust the elegiac evidence of friends, he died of his own genius and fiery overwork of brain; yet from the magnificent and masculine beauty of his portrait one should certainly never have guessed that any strain of spirit or stress of invention could have worn out so long before its time so fair and royal a temple for so bright and affluent a soul. A student of physiognomy will not fail to mark the points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two friends; both models of noble manhood, handsome and significant in feature and expression alike;—Beaumont’s the statelier and serener of the two, with clear thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and strong aquiline nose, with a little cleft at the tip; a grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a long pure oval, and the imperial head with its “fair large front” and clustering hair set firm and carried high with an aspect at once of quiet command and kingly observation: Fletcher’s a more keen and fervid face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardour and glad fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and colour of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost recalling that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;—two heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of great men can show. That spring of 1616, we may note in passing, was the darkest that ever dawned upon England or the world; for, just forty-eight days afterwards, it witnessed, on the 23rd of April, the removal from earth of the mightiest genius that ever dwelt among men. Scarcely more than a month and a half divided the death-days of Beaumont and of Shakespeare. Some three years earlier by Dyce’s estimate, when about the age of twenty-nine, Beaumont had married Ursula, daughter and co-heiress to Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent, by whom he left two daughters, one of them posthumous. Fletcher survived his friend just nine years and five months; he died “in the great plague, 1625,” and was buried on the 29th of August in St Saviour’s, Southwark; not, as we might have wished, beside his younger fellow in fame, who but three days after his untimely death had added another deathless memory to the graves of our great men in Westminster Abbey, which he had sung in such noble verse. Dying when just four months short of forty-six, Fletcher had thus, as well as we can now calculate, altogether some fourteen years and six months more of life than the poet who divides with him the imperial inheritance of their common glory.

The perfect union in genius and in friendship which has made one name of the two names of these great twin brothers in song is a thing so admirable and so delightful to remember, that it would seem ungracious and unkindly to claim for either a precedence which we may be sure he would have been eager to disclaim. But if a distinction must be made between the Dioscuri of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than Castor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was a poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and ears to discern in the fabric of their common work a distinction without a difference. Few things are stranger than the avowal of so great and exquisite a critic as Coleridge, that he could trace no faintest line of demarcation between the plays which we owe mainly to Beaumont and the plays which we owe solely to Fletcher. To others this line has always appeared in almost every case unmistakable. Were it as hard and broad as the line which marks off, for example, Shakespeare’s part from Fletcher’s in The Two Noble Kinsmen, the harmony would of course be lost which now informs every work of their common genius, and each play of their writing would be such another piece of magnificent patchwork as that last gigantic heir of Shakespeare’s invention, the posthumous birth of his parting Muse which was suckled at the breast of Fletcher’s as a child of godlike blood might be reared on the milk of a mortal mother—or in this case, we might sometimes be tempted to say, of a she-goat who left in the veins of the heaven-born suckling somewhat too much of his nurse Amalthaea. That question however belongs in any case more properly to the study of Shakespeare than to the present subject in hand. It may suffice here to observe that the contributions of Fletcher to the majestic temple of tragedy left incomplete by Shakespeare show the lesser workman almost equally at his best and at him worst, at his weakest and at his strongest. In the plays which we know by evidence surer than the most trustworthy tradition to be the common work of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is indeed no trace of such incongruous and incompatible admixture as leaves the greatest example of romantic tragedy—for Cymbeline and the Winter’s Tale, though not guiltless of blood, are in their issues no more tragic than Pericles or the Tempest—a unique instance of glorious imperfection, a hybrid of heavenly aid other than heavenly breed, disproportioned and divine. But throughout these noblest of the works inscribed generally with the names of both dramatists we trace on every other page the touch of a surer hand, we hear at every other turn the note of a deeper voice, than we can ever recognize in the work of Fletcher alone. Although the beloved friend of Jonson, and in the field of comedy his loving and studious disciple, yet in that tragic field where his freshest bays were gathered Beaumont was the worthiest and the closest follower of Shakespeare. In the external but essential matter of expression by rhythm and metre he approves himself always a student of Shakespeare’s second manner, of the style in which the graver or tragic part of his historical or romantic plays is mostly written; doubtless, the most perfect model that can be studied by any poet who, like Beaumont, is great enough to be in no danger of sinking to the rank of a mere copyist, but while studious of the perfection set before him is yet conscious of his own personal and proper quality of genius, and enters the presence of the master not as a servant but as a son. The general style of his tragic or romantic verse is as simple and severe in its purity of note and regularity of outline as that of Fletcher’s is by comparison lax, effusive, exuberant. The matchless fluency and rapidity with which the elder brother pours forth the stream of his smooth swift verse gave probably the first occasion for that foolish rumour which has not yet fallen duly silent, but still murmurs here and there its suggestion that the main office of Beaumont was to correct and contain within bounds the overflowing invention of his colleague. The poet who while yet a youth had earned by his unaided mastery of hand such a crown as was bestowed by the noble love and the loving “envy” of Ben Jonson was, according to this tradition, a mere precocious pedagogue, fit only to revise and restrain the too liberal effusions of his elder in genius as in years. Now, in every one of the plays common to both, the real difficulty for a critic is not to trace the hand of Beaumont, but to detect the touch of Fletcher. Throughout the better part of every such play, and above all of their two masterpieces, Philaster and The Maid’s Tragedy, it should be clear to the most sluggish or cursory of readers that he has not to do with the author of Valentinian and The Double Marriage. In those admirable tragedies the style is looser, more fluid, more feminine. From the first scene to the last we are swept as it were along the race of a running river, always at full flow of light and buoyant melody, with no dark reaches or perilous eddies, no stagnant pools or sterile sandbanks; its bright course only varied by sudden rapids or a stronger ripple here and there, but in rough places or smooth still stirred and sparkling with summer wind and sun. But in those tragic poems of which the dominant note is the note of Beaumont’s genius a subtler chord of thought is sounded, a deeper key of emotion is touched, than ever was struck by Fletcher. The lighter genius is palpably subordinate to the stronger, and loyally submits itself to the impression of a loftier spirit. It is true that this distinction is never grave enough to produce a discord: it is also true that the plays in which the predominance of Beaumont’s mind and style is generally perceptible make up altogether but a small section of the work that bears their names conjointly; but it is no less true that within this section the most precious part of that work is comprised. Outside it we shall find no figures so firmly drawn, no such clearness of outline, no such cunning of hands as we recognize in the three great studies of Bellario, Evadne and Aspatia. In his male characters, as for instance in the parts of Philaster and Arbaces, Beaumont also is apt to show something of that exaggeration or inconsistency for which his colleague is perhaps more frequently and more heavily to blame; but in these there is not a jarring note, not a touch misplaced; unless, indeed, a rigid criticism may condemn as unfeminine and incongruous with the gentle beauty of her pathetic patience the device by which Aspatia procures herself the death desired at the hand of Amintor. This is noted as a fault by Dyce; but may well be forgiven for the sake of the magnificent scene which follows, and the highest tragic effect ever attained on the stage of either poet. That this as well as the greater part of those other scenes which are the glory of the poem is due to Beaumont might readily be shown at length by the process of comparison. The noble scene of regicide, which it was found expedient to cancel during the earlier years of the Restoration, may indeed be the work of Fletcher; but the part of Evadne must undoubtedly be in the main assigned to the more potent hand of his fellow. There is a fine harmony of character between her naked audacity in the second act and her fierce repentance in the fourth, which is not unworthy a disciple of the tragic school of Shakespeare; Fletcher is less observant of the due balance, less heedful of the nice proportions of good and evil in a faulty and fiery nature, compounded of perverse instinct and passionate reaction. From him we might have had a figure as admirable for vigour of handling, but hardly in such perfect keeping as this of Beaumont’s Evadne, the murderess-Magdalen, whose penitence is of one crimson colour with her sin. Nor even in Fletcher’s Ordella, worthy as the part is throughout even of the precious and exquisite praise of Lamb, is there any such cunning touch of tenderness or delicate perfume of pathos as in the parts of Bellario and Aspatia. These have in them a bitter sweetness, a subtle pungency of mortal sorrow and tears of divine delight, beyond the reach of Fletcher. His highest studies of female character have dignity, energy, devotion of the heroic type; but they never touch us to the quick, never waken in us any finer and more profound sense than that of applause and admiration. There is a modest pathos now and then in his pictures of feminine submission and slighted or outraged love; but this submission he is apt to make too servile, this love too dog-like in its abject devotion to retain that tender reverence which so many generations of readers have paid to the sweet memories of Aspatia and Bellario. To excite compassion was enough for Fletcher as in the masculine parts of his work it was enough for him to excite wonder, to sustain curiosity, to goad and stimulate by any vivid and violent means the interest of readers or spectators. The single instance of noble pathos, the one scene he has left us which appeals to the higher and purer kind of pity, is the death of the child Hengo in Bonduca—a scene which of itself would have sufficed to enrol his name for ever on the list of our great tragic poets. To him we may probably assign the whole merit of that fiery and high-toned tragedy, with all its spirit and splendour of national and martial passion; the conscious and demonstrative exchange of courtesy between Roman and Briton, which is one of the leading notes of the poem, has in it a touch of overstrained and artificial chivalry characteristic of Fletcher; yet the parts of Caratach and Poenius may be counted among the loftiest and most equal of his creations. But no surer test or better example can be taken of the distinctive quality which denotes the graver genius of either poet than that supplied by a comparison of Beaumont’s Triumph of Love with Fletcher’s Triumph of Death. Each little play, in the brief course of its single act, gives proof of the peculiar touch and special trick of its author’s hand: the deeper and more delicate passion of Beaumont, the rapid and ardent activity of Fletcher, have nowhere found a more noticeable vent for the expression respectively of the most tender and profound simplicity of quiet sweetness, the most buoyant and impatient energy of tragic emotion.

In the wider field of their comic or romantic drama it is yet easier to distinguish the respective work of either hand. The bias of Fletcher was towards mixed comedy; his lightest and wildest humour is usually crossed or tempered by an infusion of romance; like Shakespeare in this one point at least, he has left no single play without some touch on it of serious interest, of poetic eloquence or fancy, however slight and fugitive. Beaumont, evidently under the imperious influence of Ben Jonson’s more rigid theories, seems rather to have bent his genius with the whole force of a resolute will into the form or mould prescribed for comedy by the elder and greater comic poet. The admirable study of the worthy citizen and his wife, who introduce to the stage and escort with their applause The Knight of the Burning Pestle through his adventurous career to its untimely end, has all the force and fulness of Jonson’s humour at its best, with more of freshness and freedom. In pure comedy, varied with broad farce and mock-heroic parody, Beaumont was the earliest as well as the ablest disciple of the master whose mantle was afterwards to be shared among the academic poets of a younger generation, the Randolphs and Cartwrights who sought shelter under the shadow of its voluminous folds. The best example of the school of Jonson to be found outside the ample range of his own work is The Scornful Lady, a comedy whose exceptional success and prolonged popularity must have been due rather to the broad effect of its forcible situations, its wealth and variety of ludicrous incidents, and the strong gross humour of its dialogue, than to any finer quality of style, invention or character. It is the only work of Beaumont and Fletcher which a critic who weighs the meaning of his words can admit to be as coarse as the coarsest work of Ben Jonson. They are prone, indeed, to indulge elsewhere in a wanton and exuberant licence of talk; and Fletcher, at least, is liable to confuse the shades of right and wrong, to deface or efface the boundary lines of good and evil, to stain the ermine of virtue and palliate the nakedness of vice with the same indecorous and incongruous laxity of handling. Often in mere haste to despatch the business of a play, to huddle up a catastrophe or throw out some particular scene into sharp and immediate relief, he will sacrifice all seemliness and consistency of character to the present aim of stage effect, and the instant impression of strong incident or audacious eloquence. His heroines are too apt to utter sentiments worthy of Diana in language unworthy of Doll Tearsheet. But in this play both style and sentiment are throughout on a lower level, the action and emotion are of a baser kind than usual; the precept of Aristotle and the practice of Jonson have been so carefully observed and exaggerated that it might almost be said to offer us in one or two places an imitation not merely of the sorrier but of the sorriest qualities of human nature; and full as it is of spontaneous power and humorous invention, the comedy extolled by the moral Steele (with just so much of reservation as permits him to deprecate the ridicule cast upon the clerical character) is certainly more offensive to artistic law and aesthetic judgment by the general and ingrained coarseness of its tone, than the tragi-comedy denounced by the immoral Dryden as exceeding in licence his own worst work and that of his fellow playwrights; an imputation, be it said in passing, as groundless as the protest pleaded on their behalf is impudent; for though we may hardly agree with the uncompromising panegyrist who commends that play in particular to the approval of “the austere scarlet” (remembering, perhaps, that Aristophanes was the chosen bedfellow of Chrysostom), there is at least no such offence against art or taste in the eccentricity of its situations or the daring of its dialogue. The buoyant and facile grace of Fletcher’s style carries him lightly across quagmires in which a heavier-footed poet, or one of slower tread, would have stuck fast, and come forth bemired to the knees. To Beaumont his stars had given as birthright the gifts of tragic pathos and passion, of tender power and broad strong humour; to Fletcher had been allotted a more fiery and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and swiftness of action, a more various readiness and fulness of bright exuberant speech. The genius of Beaumont was deeper, sweeter, nobler than his elder’s; the genius of Fletcher more brilliant, more supple, more prodigal, and more voluble than his friend’s. Without a taint or a shadow on his fame of such imitative servility as marks and degrades the mere henchman or satellite of a stronger poet, Beaumont may fairly be said to hold of Shakespeare in his tragedy, in his comedy of Jonson; in each case rather as a kinsman than as a client, as an ally than as a follower: but the more special province of Fletcher was a land of his own discovering, where no later colonist has ever had power to settle or to share his reign. With the mixed or romantic comedy of Shakespeare it has nothing in common except the admixture or alternation of graver with lighter interest, of serious with humorous action. Nothing is here of his magic exaltation or charm of fairy empire. The rare and rash adventures of Fletcher on that forbidden track are too sure to end in pitiful and shameful failure. His crown of praise is to have created a wholly new and wholly delightful form of mixed comedy or dramatic romance, dealing merely with the humours and sentiments of men, their passions and their chances; to have woven of all these a web of emotion and event with such gay dexterity, to have blended his colours and combined his effects with such exquisite facility and swift light sureness of touch, that we may return once and again from those heights and depths of poetry to which access was forbidden him, ready as ever to enjoy as of old the fresh incomparable charm, the force and ease and grace of life, which fill and animate the radiant world of his romantic invention. Neither before him nor after do we find, in this his special field of fancy and of work, more than shadows or echoes of his coming or departing genius. Admirable as are his tragedies already mentioned, rich in splendid eloquence and strong in large grasp of character as is the Roman history of The False One, full of interest and vigour as is the better part of Rollo Duke of Normandy, and sublime in the loveliness of passion as is the one scene of perfect beauty and terror which crowns this latter tragedy, Fletcher may claim a yet higher and more special station among his great dramatic peers by right of his comic and romantic than by right of his tragic and historic plays. Even in these he is more a romantic than a tragic poet. The quality of his genius, never sombre or subtle or profound, bears him always towards fresh air and sunshine. His natural work is in a midday world of fearless boyish laughter and hardly bitter tears. There is always more of rainbow than of storm in his skies; their darkest shadow is but a tragic twilight. What with him is the noon of night would seem as sunshine on the stage of Ford or Webster. There is but one passage in all these noble plays which lifts us beyond a sense of the stage, which raises our admiration out of speech into silence, tempers and transfigures our emotion with a touch of awe. And this we owe to the genius of Beaumont, exalted for an instant to the very tone and manner of Shakespeare’s tragedy, when Amintor stands between the dead and the dying woman whom he has unwittingly slain with hand and tongue. The first few lines that drop from his stricken lips are probably the only verses of Beaumont or Fletcher which might pass for Shakespeare’s even with a good judge of style—

“This earth of mine doth tremble,” &c.

But in Fletcher’s tragedy, however we may be thrilled and kindled with high contagious excitement, we are never awed into dumb delight or dread, never pierced with any sense of terror or pity too deep or even deep enough for tears. Even his Brunhalts and Martias can hardly persuade us to forget for the moment that “they do but jest, poison in jest.” A critic bitten with the love of classification might divide those plays of Fletcher usually ranked together as comedies into three kinds: the first he would class under the head of pure comedy, the next of heroic or romantic drama, the third of mixed comedy and romance; in this, the last and most delightful division of the poet’s work the special qualities of the two former kinds being equally blended and delicately harmonized. The most perfect and triumphant examples of this class are The Spanish Curate, Monsieur Thomas, The Custom of the Country, and The Elder Brother. Next to these and not too far below them, we may put The Little French Lawyer (a play which in its broad conception of a single eccentric humour suggests the collaboration of Beaumont and the influence of Jonson, but in style and execution throughout is perfect Fletcher), The Humorous Lieutenant (on which an almost identical verdict might be passed), Women Pleased, Beggars’ Bush, and perhaps we might add The Fair Maid of the Inn; in most if not in all of which the balance of exultant and living humour with serious poetic interest of a noble and various kind is held with even hand and the skill of a natural master. In pure comedy Rule a Wife and have a Wife is the acknowledged and consummate masterpiece of Fletcher. Next to it we might class, for comic spirit and force of character, Wit without Money, The Wildgoose Chase, The Chances, and The Noble Gentleman, a broad poetic farce to whose overflowing fun and masterdom of extravagance no critic has ever done justice but Leigh Hunt, who has ventured, not without reason, to match its joyous and preposterous audacities of superlative and sovereign foolery with the more sharp-edged satire and practical merriment of King and No King, where the keen prosaic humour of Bessus and his swordsmen is as typical of the comic style in which Beaumont had been trained up under Ben Jonson as the high interest and graduated action of the serious part of the play are characteristic of his more earnest genius. Among the purely romantic plays of Fletcher, or those in which the comic effect is throughout subordinate to the romantic, The Knight of Malta seems most worthy of the highest place for the noble beauty and exaltation of spirit which informs it with a lofty life, for its chivalrous union of heroic passion and Catholic devotion. This poem is the fairest and the first example of those sweet fantastic paintings in rose-colour and azure of visionary chivalry and ideal holiness, by dint of which the romance of more recent days has sought to cast the glamour of a mirage over the darkest and deadliest “ages of faith.” The pure and fervent eloquence of the style is in perfect keeping with the high romantic interest of character and story. In the same class we may rank among the best samples of Fletcher’s workmanship The Pilgrim, The Loyal Subject, A Wife for a Month, Love’s Pilgrimage, and The Lover’s Progress,—rich all of them in exquisite writing, in varied incident, in brilliant effects and graceful and passionate interludes. In The Coxcomb, and The Honest Man’s Fortune—two plays which, on the whole, can hardly be counted among the best of their class—there are tones of homelier emotion, touches of a simpler and more pathetic interest than usual; and here, as in the two admirable first scenes between Leucippus and Bacha, which relieve and redeem from contempt the tragic burlesque of Cupid’s Revenge, the note of Beaumont’s manner is at once discernible.

Even the most rapid revision of the work done by these great twin poets must impress every capable student with a sense of the homage due to this living witness of their large and liberal genius. The loss of their names from the roll of English poetry would be only less than the loss of the few greatest inscribed on it. Nothing could supply the want of their tragic, their comic or romantic drama; no larger or more fiery planet can ever arise to supplant or to eclipse the twin lights of our zodiac. Whatever their faults of shortcoming or excess, there is in their very names or the mere thought of their common work a kind of special and personal attraction for all true lovers of high dramatic poetry. There is the glory and grace of youth in all they have left us; if there be also somewhat too much of its graceless as well as its gracious qualities, yet there hangs about their memory as it were a music of the morning, a breath and savour of bright early manhood, a joyous and vigorous air of free life and fruitful labour, which might charm asleep for ever all thought or blame of all mortal infirmity or folly, or any stain of earth that may have soiled in passing the feet of creatures half human and half divine while yet they dwelt among men. For good or for evil, they are above all things poets of youth; we cannot conceive of them grown grey in the dignity of years, venerable with the authority of long life, and weighted with the wisdom of experience. In the Olympian circle of the gods and giants of our race who on earth were their contemporaries and corrivals, they seem to move among the graver presences and figures of sedater fame like the two spoilt boys of heaven, lightest of foot and heart and head of all the brood of deity. Shakespeare may have smiled as Jonson may have nodded approval of their bright swift work, neither of these great elders grudging his praise to the special charm which won for it a preference during one generation at least even over their own loftier and weightier verse; and indeed the advance in natural ease, in truth and grace of dialogue, is alike manifest whether we turn to such of their comic characters as Valentine and Don John, Rutilio and Monsieur Thomas, from the Truewit of Jonson or even from the Mercutio of Shakespeare; the one too stiff with classic starch, the other too full of mere verbal catches and forced conceits, to persuade us that either can in any age have fairly represented the light free talk and facile humour of its youth. In another field than this Beaumont and Fletcher hold as high and secure a station of their own as any poet of their race. In perfect workmanship of lyrical jewellery, in perfect bloom and flower of song-writing, they equal all compeers whom they do not excel; the blossoms of their growth in this kind may be matched for colour and fragrance against Shakespeare’s, and for morning freshness and natural purity of form exceed the finest grafts of Jonson. The Faithful Shepherdess alone might speak for Fletcher on this score, being as it is simply a lyric poem in semi-dramatic shape, to be judged only as such, and as such almost faultless; but in no wise to be classed for praise or blame among the acting plays of its author, whose one serious error in the matter was the submission of his Dryad to the critical verdict of an audience too probably in great part composed of clowns and satyrs far unlike the loving and sweet-tongued sylvan of his lovely fancy. And whether we assign to him or to Beaumont the divine song of melancholy (moestius lacrymis Simonideis), perfect in form as Catullus and profound in sentiment as Shelley, which Milton himself could but echo and expand, could not heighten or deepen its exquisite intensity of thought and word alike, there will remain witness enough for the younger brother of a lyric power as pure and rare as his elder’s.

The excess of influence and popularity over that of other poets usually ascribed to the work of Beaumont and Fletcher for some half century or so after their own time has perhaps been somewhat overstated by tradition. Whatever may have been for a season the fashion of the stage, it is certain that Shakespeare can show two editions for one against them in folio; four in all from 1623 to 1685, while they have but their two of 1647 and 1679. Nor does one see how it can accurately or even plausibly be said that they were in any exact sense the founders of a school either in comedy or in tragedy. Massinger, for some years their survivor, and in some points akin to them as a workman, cannot properly be counted as their disciple; and no leading poet of the time had so much in common with them as he. At first sight, indeed, his choice of romantic subject and treatment of foreign stories, gathered from the fertile tale-tellers of the south, and ranging in date from Boccaccio to Cervantes, may seem to mark him out as a member of the same school; but the deepest and most distinctive qualities of his genius set it far apart from theirs; though undoubtedly not so far that any discrepancy or discord should impair the excellence or injure the keeping of works in which he took part with Fletcher. Yet, placed beside theirs, the tone of his thought and speech seems by comparison severe as well as sober, and sad as well as severe. Their extravagant and boyish insanity of prostrate royalism is not more alien from his half pensive and half angry undertone of political protest than his usually careful and complete structure of story from their frequently lax and slovenly incoherence of character or plot, than his well composed and proportioned metre from their lighter and looser melodies, than the bitter insistence and elaborate acrimony of his judicial satire on hypocrisy or oppression from the gaiety or facility of mood which suffers them in the shifting of a scene to redeem their worst characters by some juggler’s trick of conversion at the last moment allowed them to wind up a play with universal reconciliation and an act of oblivion on all hands. They could hardly have drawn with such steady skill and explicit finish an Overreach or a Luke; but the strenuous and able work of Massinger at its highest point of success has no breath in it of their brighter and more immediate inspiration. Shirley, on the other hand, may certainly be classed as a pupil who copied their style in water-colour; his best tragedy and his best comedy, The Traitor and The Lady of Pleasure, might pass muster undetected among the plays of Fletcher, and might fairly claim to take rank above the lowest class of these. In the finest work of Middleton we recognize an almost exact reproduction of Fletcher’s metrical effects,—a reverberation of that flowing music, a reiteration of those feminine final notes. In his later tragi-comedies, throughout his masterpiece of Women beware Women, and in the noble scenes which make up the tragic or serious parts of The Changeling or The Spanish Gipsy,—wherever, in a word, we find the admirable but unequal genius of this poet at its best—we find a likeness wholly wanting in his earlier and ruder work, which undoubtedly suggests the influence of Fletcher. Other instances of imitation, other examples of discipleship, might perhaps be found among lesser men of the next generation; but the mass of succeeding playwrights began in a very short time to lower the style and debase the scheme of dramatic poetry; and especially to loosen the last ties of harmony, to deface the very form and feature of tragic verse. In Shirley, the last and least of those in whom the lineal blood of the old masters was yet discernible, we find side by side with the fine ancestral indications of legitimate descent exactly such marks of decadence rather than degeneracy as we might have anticipated in the latest heir of a long line which began with the rise of Marlowe, “sun of the morning,” in the highest heaven of our song, to prepare a pathway for the sun. After Shakespeare there was yet room for Beaumont and Fletcher; but after these and the other constellations had set, whose lights filled up the measure of that diviner zodiac through which he moved, there was but room in heaven for the pallid moonrise of Shirley; and before this last reflex from a sunken sun was itself eclipsed, the glory had passed away from English drama, to alight upon that summit of epic song, whence Milton held communion with darkness and the stars.

(A. C. S.)

Bibliographical Appendix

The chief collected editions of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are: Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Gentlemen, printed by Humphrey Moseley in folio in 1647 as containing plays “never printed before”; Fifty Comedies and Tragedies written, &c. (fol. 1679); Works ... (11 vols. 1843-1846), edited by Alexander Dyce, which superseded earlier editions by L. Theobald, G. Colman and H. Weber, and presented a modernized text; a second two-volume edition by Dyce in 1852; The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (15 vols. 1905, &c.) edited by Arnold Glover and A.R. Waller in the “Cambridge English Classics” from the text of the 2nd folio, and giving variant readings from all separate issues of the plays previous to that edition; and Works ... (12 vols. 1904, &c.), under the general editorship of A.H. Bullen, the text of which is founded on Dyce but with many variant readings, the last volume containing memoirs and excursuses by the editor.

The foundation of all critical work on Beaumont and Fletcher is to be found in Dyce. Discrimination between the work of the two dramatists and their collaborators has been the object of a series of studies for the establishment of metrical and other tests. Fletcher’s verse is recognizable by the frequency of an extra syllable, often an accented one, at the end of a line, the use of stopped lines, and the frequency of trisyllabic feet. He thus obtained an adaptable instrument enabling him to dispense with prose even in comic scenes. The pioneer work in these matters was done by F.G. Fleay in a paper read before the New Shakspere Society in 1874 on “Metrical Tests as applied to Fletcher, Beaumont and Massinger.” His theories were further developed in the article “Fletcher” in his Biog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama. Further investigations were published by R. Boyle in Englische Studien (vols. v.-x., Heilbronn, 1882-1887), and in the New Shakspere Society Transactions (1880-1886), by Benno Leonhardt in Anglia (Halle, vols. xix. seq.), and by E.H. Oliphant in Englische Studien (vols. xiv. seq.). Mr Oliphant restores to Beaumont much which other critics had been inclined to deny him. On the sources of the plays see E. Köppel in Münchener Beiträge zur roman. u. eng. Phil. (Erlangen and Leipzig, 1895). Consult further articles by A.H. Bullen and R. Boyle respectively on Fletcher and Massinger in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.; G.C. Macaulay, Francis Beaumont, a Critical Study (1883); and Dr A.W. Ward’s chapter on “Beaumont and Fletcher” in vol. ii. of his Hist. of Eng. Dram. Lit. (new ed. 1899).

A list of the plays attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher, with some details, is added, with the premiss that beyond the main lines of criticism laid down in Mr Swinburne’s article above it is often difficult to dogmatize on authorship. Even in cases where the play was produced long after Beaumont had ceased to write for the stage there can be no certainty that we are not dealing with a piece which is an adaptation of an earlier play by a later hand.

The Joint Works of Beaumont and Fletcher.—The Scornful Lady (acted c. 1609, pr. 1616) is a farcical comedy of domestic life, in which Oliphant finds traces of alteration by a third and perhaps a fourth hand. Philaster or Love Lies a-Bleeding is assigned by Macaulay to Beaumont practically in its entirety, while Fleay attributes only three scenes to Fletcher. It was probably acted c. 1609, and was printed 1620; it was revised (1695) by Elkanah Settle and (1763) by the younger Colman, probably owing its long popularity to the touching character of Bellario. Beaumont’s share also predominated in The Maid’s Tragedy (acted c. 1609, pr. 1619), in A King and No King (acted at court December 26, 1611, and perhaps earlier, pr. 1619), while The Knight of the Burning Pestle (c. 1610, pr. 1613), burlesquing the heroic and romantic play of which Heywood’s Four Prentices is an example, might perhaps be transferred entire to Beaumont’s account. In Cupid’s Revenge (acted at court January 1612, and perhaps at Whitefriars in 1610, pr. 1615), founded on Sidney’s Arcadia, the two dramatists appear to have had a third collaborator in Massinger and perhaps a fourth in Nathaniel Field.

The Coxcomb (acted c. 1610, and by the Children of the Queen’s Revels in 1612, pr. 1647) seems to have undergone later revision by Massinger. Fletcher’s collaboration with other dramatists had begun during his connexion with Beaumont, who apparently ceased to write for the stage two or three years before his death.

Works Assigned to Beaumont’s Sole Authorship.—The Woman Hater (pr. 1607, as “lately acted by the children of Paul’s”) was assigned formerly to Fletcher. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn was presented at Whitehall on the 26th of February 1612, on the marriage of the Prince and Princess Palatine. Of Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One (acted 1608, pr. 1647), the Induction, with The Triumph of Honour and The Triumph of Love, both founded on tales from the Decameron, are by Beaumont.

Works Assigned to Fletcher’s Sole Authorship.—The Faithful Shepherdess (pr. c. 1609) was ill received on its original production, but was revived in 1634. That Fletcher was the sole author is practically unquestioned, though Ben Jonson in Drummond’s Conversations is made to assert that “Beaumont and Fletcher ten years since hath written The Faithful Shepherdess.” It was translated into Latin verse by Sir R. Fanshawe in 1658, and Milton’s Comus owes not a little to it. In Four Plays in One, the two last, The Triumph of Death and The Triumph of Time, are Fletcher’s. In the indifferent comedy of The Captain (acted 1612-1613, revived 1626, pr. 1647) there is no definite evidence of any other hand than Fletcher’s, though the collaboration of Beaumont, Massinger and Rowley has been advanced. Other Fletcher plays are: Wit Without Money (acted 1614, pr. 1639); the two romantic tragedies of Bonduca (in which Caradach or Caractacus is the chief figure rather than Bonduca or Boadicea) and Valentinian, both dating from c. 1616 and printed in the first folio; The Loyal Subject (acted 1618, revived at court 1633, pr. 1647); The Mad Lover (acted before March 1619, pr. 1647), which borrows something from the story of Mundus and Paulina in Josephus (bk. xviii.); The Humorous Lieutenant (1619, pr. 1647); Woman Pleased (c. 1620, pr. 1647); The Woman’s Prize or The Tamer Tam’d (produced probably between 1610 and 1613, acted 1633 at Blackfriars and at court, pr. 1647), a kind of sequel to The Taming of the Shrew; The Chances (uncertain date, pr. 1647), taken from La Sennora Cornelia of Cervantes, and repeatedly revived after the Restoration and in the 18th century; Monsieur Thomas (acted perhaps as early as 1609, pr. 1639); The Island Princess (c. 1621, pr. 1647); The Pilgrim and The Wild Goose-Chase (pr. 1652), the second of which was adapted in prose by Farquhar, both acted at court in 1621, and possibly then not new pieces; A Wife for a Month (acted 1624, pr. 1647); Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (lic. 1624, pr. 1640). The Pilgrim received additions from Dryden, and was adapted by Vanbrugh.

Fletcher in Collaboration with other Dramatists.—External evidence of Fletcher’s connexion with Massinger is given by Sir Aston Cokaine, who in an epitaph on Fletcher and Massinger wrote: “Playes they did write together, were great friends,” and elsewhere claimed for Massinger a share in the plays printed in the 1647 folio. James Shirley and William Rowley have their part in the works that used to be included in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon; and to a letter from Field, Daborne and Massinger, asking for £5 for their joint necessities from Henslowe about the end of 1615, there is a postscript suggesting the deduction of the sum from the “mony remaynes for the play of Mr Fletcher and ours.” The problem is complicated when the existing versions of the play are posterior to Fletcher’s lifetime, that is, revisions by Massinger or another of pieces which were even originally of double authorship. In this way Beaumont’s work may be concealed under successive revisions, and it would be rash to assert that none of the late plays contains anything of his. Mr R. Boyle joins the name of Cyril Tourneur to those of Fletcher and Massinger in connexion with The Honest Man’s Fortune (acted 1613, pr. 1647), which Fleay identifies with “the play of Mr Fletcher’s and ours.” The Knight of Malta (acted 1618-1619, pr. 1647) is in its existing form a revision by Fletcher, Massinger, and possibly Field, of an earlier play which Oliphant thinks was probably written by Beaumont about 1608. The same remarks (with the exclusion of Field’s name) apply to Thierry and Theodoret (acted c. 1617, pr. 1621), perhaps a satire on contemporary manners at the French court, though Beaumont’s share in either must be regarded as problematical. Fletcher and Massinger’s great tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnaveldt (acted 1619) was first printed in Bullen’s Old Plays (vol. ii., 1883). They followed it up with The Custom of the Country (acted 1619, pr. 1647), based on an English translation (1619) of Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda; The Double Marriage (c. 1620, pr. 1647); The Little French Lawyer (c. 1620, pr. 1647), the plot of which can be traced indirectly to a novellino by Massuccio Salernitano; The Laws of Candy (c. 1618, pr. 1647), of disputed authorship; The False One (c. 1620, pr. 1647), dealing with the subject of Caesar and Cleopatra; The Spanish Curate (acted 1622, pr. 1647), repeatedly revived after the Restoration, was derived from Leonard Digges’s translation (1622) of a Spanish novel, Gerardo, the Unfortunate Spaniard; The Prophetess (1622, pr. 1647), afterwards made into an opera by Betterton to Purcell’s music; The Sea-Voyage (1622, pr. 1647); The Elder Brother (perhaps originally written by Fletcher c. 1614; revised and acted 1635, pr. 1647); Beggar’s Bush (acted at court 1622, probably then not new, pr. 1647); and The Noble Gentleman (1625-1626, pr. 1647). Fletcher only had a small share in Wit at Several Weapons—“if he but writ an act or two,” says an epilogue on its revival (1623 or 1626),—and the play is probably a revision by Rowley and Middleton of an early Beaumont and Fletcher play. A Very Woman (1634, pr. 1655) is a revision by Massinger of The Woman’s Plot ascribed to Fletcher and acted at court in 1621. Field worked with Fletcher and Massinger on the lost play of the Jeweller of Amsterdam (1619), as on the Faithful Friends (1613-1614) and The Queen of Corinth (c. 1618, pr. 1647). The Lover’s Progress (acted 1634, pr. 1647) is probably a revision by Massinger of the Fletcher play licensed in 1623 as The Wandering Lovers, and is perhaps identical with Cleander, licensed in 1634. Love’s Cure or The Martial Maid (1623 or 1625) is thought by Mr Fleay to be a revision by Massinger of a Beaumont and Fletcher play produced as early as 1607-1608. W. Rowley joined Fletcher in The Maid in the Mill (1623, pr. 1647), and had a share with Massinger in the revision of The Fair Maid of the Inn (licensed 1626, pr. 1647), based on La illustre Fregona of Cervantes. Nice Valour (acted 1625-1626, pr. 1647) seems to have been altered by Middleton from an earlier play; The Widow, printed in 1652 as by Jonson, Fletcher and Middleton, must be ascribed almost exclusively to Middleton. The Night Walker (1633) is a revision by Shirley of a Fletcher play.

Fletcher and Jonson in Collaboration.—The history of The Bloody Brother or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, printed in 1637 as by “B.J.F.,” is matter of varied speculation. Mr Oliphant thinks the basis of the play to be an early work (c. 1604) of Beaumont, on which is superimposed a revision (1616) by Fletcher, Jonson and Middleton, and a subsequent revision (1636-1637) by Massinger. The general view is that the main portion of the play is referable to Jonson and Fletcher. Jonson apparently had a share in Fletcher’s Love’s Pilgrimage (pr. 1647), which seems to have been revised by Massinger in 1635.

Fletcher and Shakespeare.—The Two Noble Kinsmen was printed in 1634 as by Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakespeare. If its first representation was in 1625 it was in the year of Fletcher’s death. It was included in the second folio of Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedies and tragedies. If Shakespeare and Fletcher worked in concert it was probably in 1612-1613, and the existing play probably represents a revision by Massinger in 1625. Henry VIII. (played at the Globe in 1613) is usually ascribed mainly to Fletcher and Massinger, and the conditions of its production were probably similar. Fletcher and Shakespeare are together credited at Stationers’ Hall with the lost play of Cardenio, destroyed by Warburton’s cook.

(M. Br.)