Tiflis. Pop. (1897) 5800. It is situated at an altitude of 2750 ft. in the Borzhom gorge, a narrow rift in the Little Caucasus mountains, and on the Kura. Its warm climate, its two hot springs (7112°–82° Fahr.) and its beautiful parks make it a favourite summer resort, and give it its popular name of “the pearl of Caucasus.” The bottled mineral waters are very extensively exported.
BOS, LAMBERT (1670–1717), Dutch scholar and critic, was
born at Workum in Friesland, where his father was headmaster
of the school. He went to the university of Franeker (suppressed
by Napoleon in 1811), and was appointed professor of Greek there
in 1704; after an uneventful life he died at Franeker in 1717.
His most famous work, Ellipses Graecae (1702), was
translated into English by John Seager (1830); and his Antiquitates Graecae (1714) passed through several editions. He also published
Vetus Testamentum, Ex Versione lxx. Interpretum (1709);
notes on Thomas Magister (1698); Exercitationes Philologicae (1700);
Animadversiones ad Scriptores quosdam Graecos (1715);
and two small treatises on Accents and Greek Syntax.
BOSA, a seaport and episcopal see on the W. coast of Sardinia,
in the province of Cagliari, 30 m. W. of Macomer by rail. Pop.
(1901) 6846. The height above the town is crowned by a castle
of the Malaspina family. The cathedral, founded in the 12th
century, restored in the 15th, and rebuilt in 1806, is fine. There
are some tanneries, and the fishing industry is important, but
the coral production of Sicily has entirely destroyed that of Bosa
since 1887. The district produces oil and wine. The present town
of Bosa was founded in 1112 by the Malaspina, 112 m. from the site
of the ancient town (Bosa or Calmedia), where a well-preserved
church still exists. The old town is of Roman origin, but is only
mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and as a station on the coast-road
in the Itineraries (Corp. Inscr. Lat. x. 7939 seq.).
One of the inscriptions preserved in the old cathedral records
the erection of four silver statues, of Antoninus Pius, his wife
Faustina and their two sons.
BOSBOOM-TOUSSAINT, ANNA LOUISA GEERTRUIDA (1812–1886),
Dutch novelist, was born at Alkmaar in north Holland
on the 16th of September 1812. Her father, named
Toussaint, a local chemist of Huguenot descent, gave her a fair
education, and at an early period of her career she developed a
taste for historical research, fostered, perhaps, by a forced
indoor life, the result of weak health. In 1851 she married the
Dutch painter, Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891), and thereafter
was known as Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint. Her first romance,
Almagro, appeared in 1837, followed by the Graaf van Devonshire
(The Earl of Devonshire) in 1838; the Engelschen te Rome (The English at Rome) in 1840, and Het Huis Lauernesse (The House of Lauernesse) in 1841, an episode of the Reformation, translated
into many European languages. These stories, mainly founded
upon some of the most interesting epochs of Dutch history,
betrayed a remarkable grasp of facts and situations, combined
with an undoubted mastery over her mother tongue, though her
style is sometimes involved, and not always faultless. Ten
years (1840–1850) were mainly devoted to further studies, the
result of which was revealed in 1851–1854, when her Leycester in Nederland (3 vols.), Vrouwen van het Leycestersche Tydperk
(Women of Leicester’s Epoch, 3 vols.), and Gideon Florensz (3 vols.)
appeared, a series dealing with Robert Dudley’s adventures
in the Low Countries. After 1870 Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint
abandoned historical romance for the modern society novel,
but her Delftsche Wonderdokter (The Necromancer of Delft, 1871,
3 vols.) and Majoor Frans (1875, 3 vols.) did not command the
success of her earlier works. Major Frank has been translated
into English (1885). She died at the Hague on the 13th of
April 1886. Her novels have been published there in a collected
edition (1885–1888, 25 vols.).
BOSC, LOUIS AUGUSTIN GUILLAUME (1759–1828), French
naturalist, was born at Paris on the 29th of January 1759. He
was educated at the college of Dijon, where he showed a taste for
botany, and he followed up his studies in Paris at the Jardin des
Plantes, where he made the acquaintance of Mme M. J. P.
Roland. At the age of eighteen he obtained a government
appointment, and he rose to be one of the chief officials in the
postal department. Under the ministry of J. M. Roland in 1792
he also held the post of superintendent of prisons, but the violent
outbreaks of 1793 drove him from office, and compelled him to
take refuge in flight. For some months he lay concealed at
Sainte-Radégonde, in the forest of Montmorency, barely subsisting
on roots and vegetables. He was enabled to return to Paris
on the fall of Robespierre, and under the title Appel à l’impartiale postérité par la citoyenne Roland published a manuscript Mme
Roland had entrusted to him before her execution. Soon
afterwards he set out for America, resolving to explore the
natural riches of that country. The immense materials he
gathered were never published in a complete form, but much
went to enrich the works of B. G. E. de Lacépède, P. A. Latreille
and others. After his return, on the establishment of the
Directory, he was reinstated in his old office. Of this he was
again deprived by the coup d’état of 1799, and for a time he was
in great destitution; but by his copious contributions to scientific
literature he contrived to support himself and to lay the foundations
of a solid reputation. He was engaged on the new Dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle, and on the Encyclopédie méthodique, he
edited the Dictionnaire raisonné et universel d’agriculture, and was
one of the editors of the Annales de l’agriculture française. He
was made inspector of the gardens at Versailles, and of the public
nurseries belonging to the ministry of the interior. The last
years of his life were devoted to an elaborate work on the vine,
for which he had amassed an immense quantity of materials, but
his death at Paris on the 10th of July 1828 prevented its completion.
BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER, JUAN (1490?–1542), Spanish poet,
was born about the close of the 15th century. He was a Catalan
of patrician birth, and, after some years of military service,
became tutor to the duke of Alva. His poems were published in
1543 at Barcelona by his widow. They are divided into sections
which mark the stages of Boscán’s poetical evolution. The first
book contains poems in the old Castilian metres, written in his
youth, before 1526, in which year he became acquainted with the
Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, who urged him to adopt
Italian measures, and this advice gave a new turn to Boscán’s
activity. The remaining books contain a number of pieces in the
Italian manner, the longest of these being Hero y Leander, a poem
in blank verse, based on Musaeus. Boscán’s best effort, the
Octava Rima, is a skilful imitation of Petrarch and Bembo.
Boscán also published in 1534 an admirable translation of
Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. Italian measures had been introduced
into Spanish literature by Santillana and Villalpando; it is
Boscán’s distinction to have naturalized these forms definitively,
and to have founded a poetic school.
The best edition of his poems is that issued at Madrid in 1875 by W. J. Knapp; for his indebtedness to earlier writers, see Francesco Flamini, Studi di storia literaria italiana e straniera (Livorno, 1895).
BOSCASTLE, a small seaport and watering-place in the
Launceston parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 5 m.
N. of Camelford station on the London & South-Western railway.
Pop. (civil parish of Forrabury, 1901) 329. The village rises
steeply above a very narrow cove on the north coast, sheltered,
but difficult of access, vessels having to be warped into it by
means of hawsers. A mound on a hill above the harbour marks
the site of a Norman castle. The parish church of St Symphorian,
Forrabury, also stands high, overlooking the Atlantic from
Willapark Point. The tower is without bells, and the tradition
that a ship bearing a peal hither was wrecked within sight of the
harbour, and that the lost bells may still be heard to toll beneath
the waves, has been made famous by a ballad of the Cornish
poet Robert Stephen Hawker, vicar of Moorwinstow. The coast
scenery near Boscastle is severely beautiful, with abrupt cliffs
fully exposed to the sea, and broken only by a few picturesque
inlets such as Crackington Cove and Pentargan Cove. Inland
are bare moors, diversified by narrow dales.
BOSCAWEN, EDWARD (1711–1761), British admiral, was born on the 19th of August 1711. He was the third son of Hugh,
