her affection, as he explained it), besides three children, of whom two were boys. He also left, in the hands of the printer, his celebrated Argenis, and also an unpublished history of the conquest of Jerusalem, and some fragments of a general history of Europe. He was buried in the church of St Onuphrius, and his widow erected a monument to him, with his bust in marble, at the church of St Lawrence on the road to Tivoli. A strange circumstance caused the destruction of this trophy. Cardinal Barberini chanced to erect a monument, exactly similar, at the same place, to his preceptor, Bernardus Gulienus a monte Sancti Sabini. When the widow of Barclay heard of this, she said, "My husband was a man of birth, and famous in the literary world; I will not suffer him to remain on a level with a base and obscure pedagogue." She therefore caused the bust to be removed, and the inscription to be obliterated. The account given of the Argenis, by Lord Hailes, who wrote a life of John Barclay as a specimen of a Biographia Scotica,[1] is as follows: "Argenis is generally supposed to be a history under feigned names, and not a romance. Barclay himself contributed to establish this opinion, by introducing some real characters into the work. But that was merely to compliment certain dignitaries of the church, whose good offices he courted, or whose power he dreaded. The key prefixed to Argenis has perpetuated the error. There are, no doubt, many incidents in it that allude to the state of France during the civil wars in the seventeenth century; but it requires a strong imagination indeed to discover Queen Elizabeth in Hyanisbe, or Henry III. of France in Meleander." On the whole, Argenis appears to be a poetical fable, replete with moral and political reflections. Of this work three English translations have appeared, the last in 1772; but it now only enjoys the reflective reputation of a work that was once in high repute. We may quote, however, the opinion which Cowper was pleased to express regarding this singular production. "It is," says the poet of Olney, "the most amusing romance that ever was written. It is the only one, indeed, of an old date, that I had ever the patience to go through with. It is interesting in a high degree, richer in incident than can be imagined, full of surprises, which the reader never forestalls, and yet free from entanglement and confusion. The style too, appears to me to be such as would not dishonour Tacitus himself."
BASSANTIN, or BASSANTOUN, James, astronomer and mathematician, was the son of the Laird of Bassantin, in Berwickshire, and probably born in the early part of the sixteenth century. Being sent to study at the University of Glasgow, he applied himself almost exclusively to mathematics, to the neglect of languages and philosophy, which were then the most common study. In order to prosecute mathematics more effectually than it was possible to do in his own country, he went abroad, and travelled through the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany; fixing himself at last in France, where for a considerable time he taught his favourite science with high reputation in the University of Paris. In that age, the study of astronomy was inseparable from astrology, and Bassantin became a celebrated proficient in this pretended science, which was then highly cultivated in France, insomuch that it entered more or less into almost all public affairs, and nearly every court in Europe had its astrologer. Bassantin, besides his attainments in astrology, understood the laws of the heavens to an extent which excited the wonder of the age—especially, when it was considered that he had scarcely any knowledge of the Greek or Latin languages, in which all that was formerly known of this science had been embodied. But, as may be easily conceived, astronomy was as yet a most imperfect science; the Copernican system, which forms the groundwork of modern astronomy, was not yet discovered or acknowledged; and all that was really known had
- ↑ Printed in 4to, in 1782, and the ground-work of the present sketch.
