pianos and organs, and cartoons for tapestry represent his manifold activity. In all works, however, which were only designed and not carried out by him, a decided loss of delicacy is to be noted. The colouring of the tapestries (of which the “Adoration of the Magi” at Exeter College is the best-known) is more brilliant than successful. The range and fertility of Burne-Jones as a decorative inventor can be perhaps most conveniently studied in the sketch-book, 1885–1895, which he bequeathed to the British Museum. The artist’s influence on book-illustration must also be recorded. In early years he made a few drawings on wood for Dalziel’s Bible and for Good Words; but his later work for the Kelmscott Press, founded by Morris in 1891, is that by which he is best remembered. Besides several illustrations to other Kelmscott books, he made eighty-seven designs for the Chaucer of 1897.
Burne-Jones’s aim in art is best given in some of his own words, written to a friend: “I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be—in a light better than any light that ever shone—in a land no one can define or remember, only desire—and the forms divinely beautiful—and then I wake up, with the waking of Brynhild.” No artist was ever more true to his aim. Ideals resolutely pursued are apt to provoke the resentment of the world, and Burne-Jones encountered, endured and conquered an extraordinary amount of, angry criticism. In so far as this was directed against the lack of realism in his pictures, it was beside the point. The earth, the sky, the rocks, the trees, the men and women of Burne-Jones are not those of this world; but they are themselves a world, consistent with itself, and having therefore its own reality. Charged with the beauty and with the strangeness of dreams, it has nothing of a dream’s incoherence. Yet it is a dreamer always whose nature penetrates these works, a nature out of sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones’s men and women are dreamers too. It was this which, more than anything else, estranged him from the age into which he was born. But he had an inbred “revolt from fact” which would have estranged him from the actualities of any age. That criticism seems to be more justified which has found in him a lack of such victorious energy and mastery over his materials as would have enabled him to carry out his conceptions in their original intensity. Representing the same kind of tendency as distinguished his French contemporary, Puvis de Chavannes, he was far less in the main current of art, and his position suffers accordingly. Often compared with Botticelli, he had nothing of the fire and vehemence of the Florentine. Yet, if aloof from strenuous action, Burne-Jones was singularly strenuous in production. His industry was inexhaustible, and needed to be, if it was to keep pace with the constant pressure of his ideas. Invention, a very rare excellence, was his pre-eminent gift. Whatever faults his paintings may have, they have always the fundamental virtue of design; they are always pictures. His fame might rest on his purely decorative work. But his designs were informed with a mind of romantic temper, apt in the discovery of beautiful subjects, and impassioned with a delight in pure and variegated colour. These splendid gifts were directed in a critical and fortunate moment by the genius of Rossetti. Hence a career which shows little waste or misdirection of power, and, granted the aim proposed, a rare level of real success.
Authorities.—In 1904 was published Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, by his widow, two volumes of extreme interest and charm. The Work of Burne-Jones, a collection of ninety-one photogravures, appeared in 1900.
See also Catalogue to Burlington Club Exhibition of Drawings by Burne-Jones, with Introduction by Cosmo Monkhouse (1899); Sir E. Burne-Jones: a Record and a Review, by Malcolm Belt (1898); Sir E. Burne-Jones, his Life and Work, by Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady) (1894); The Life of William Morris, by J. W. Mackail (1899). (L. B.)
BURNELL, ARTHUR COKE (1840–1882), English Sanskrit scholar, was born at St Briavels, Gloucestershire, in 1840. His father was an official of the East India Company, and in 1860 he himself went out to Madras as a member of the Indian civil service. Here he utilized every available opportunity to acquire or copy Sanskrit manuscripts. In 1870 he presented his collection of 350 MSS. to the India library. In 1874 he published a Handbook of South Indian Palaeography, characterized by Max Müller as “indispensable to every student of Indian literature,” and in 1880 issued for the Madras government his greatest work, the Classified Index to the Sanskrit MSS. in the Palace at Tanjore. He was also the author of a large number of translations from, and commentaries on, various other Sanskrit manuscripts, being particularly successful in grouping and elucidating the essential principles of Hindu law. In addition to his exhaustive acquaintance with Sanskrit, and the southern India vernaculars, he had some knowledge of Tibetan, Arabic, Kawi, Javanese and Coptic. Burnell originated with Sir Henry Yule the well-known dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases, Hobson-Jobson. His constitution, never strong, broke down prematurely through the combined influence of overwork and the Madras climate, and he died at West Stratton, Hampshire, on the 12th of October 1882. A further collection of Sanskrit manuscripts was purchased from his heirs by the India library after his death.
BURNELL, ROBERT (d. 1292), English bishop and chancellor, was born at Acton Burnell in Shropshire, and began his public life probably as a clerk in the royal chancery. He was soon in the service of Edward, the eldest son of King Henry III., and was constantly in attendance on the prince, whose complete confidence he appears to have enjoyed. Having received some ecclesiastical preferments, he acted as one of the regents of the kingdom from the death of Henry III. in November 1272 until August 1274, when the new king, Edward I., returned from Palestine and made him his chancellor. In 1275 Burnell was elected bishop of Bath and Wells, and three years later Edward repeated the attempt which he had made in 1270 to secure the archbishopric of Canterbury for his favourite. The bishop’s second failure to obtain this dignity was due, doubtless, to his irregular and unclerical manner of life, a fact which also accounts, in part at least, for the hostility which existed between his victorious rival, Archbishop Peckham, and himself. As the chief adviser of Edward I. during the earlier part of his reign, and moreover as a trained and able lawyer, the bishop took a prominent part in the legislative acts of the “English Justinian,” whose activity in this direction coincides practically with Burnell’s tenure of the office of chancellor. The bishop also influenced the king’s policy with regard to France, Scotland and Wales; was frequently employed on business of the highest moment; and was the royal mouthpiece on several important occasions. In 1283 a council, or, as it is sometimes called, a parliament, met in his house at Acton Burnell, and he was responsible for the settlement of the court of chancery in London. In spite of his numerous engagements, Burnell found time to aggrandize his bishopric, to provide liberally for his nephews and other kinsmen, and to pursue his cherished but futile aim of founding a great family. Licentious and avaricious, he amassed great wealth; and when he died on the 25th of October 1292 he left numerous estates in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Kent, Surrey and elsewhere. He was, however, genial and kind-hearted, a great lawyer and a faithful minister.
See R. W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (London, 1854–1860); and E. Foss, The Judges of England, vol. iii. (London, 1848–1864).
BURNES, SIR ALEXANDER (1805–1841), British traveller and explorer, was born at Montrose, Scotland, in 1805. While serving in India, in the army of the East India Company, which he had joined in his seventeenth year, he made himself acquainted with Hindustani and Persian, and thus obtained an appointment as interpreter at Surat in 1822. Transferred to Cutch in 1826 as assistant to the political agent, he turned his attention more particularly to the history and geography of north-western India and the adjacent countries, at that time very imperfectly known. His proposal in 1829 to undertake a journey of exploration through the valley of the Indus was not carried out owing to political apprehensions; but in 1831 he was sent to Lahore with a present of horses from King William IV. to Maharaja Ranjit Singh and took advantage of the opportunity for extensive investigations. In the following years his travels were extended through Afghanistan across the Hindu Kush to
