Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/434

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BAR
400
BAR

satire was the more stinging because the materials were supplied by Generals Gourgaud and Girard. The prefect of police, too, bore the poet a grudge, so that, upon the day of expiration of his imprisonment, he was presented from the police office with a bill of 1181 francs which he must either pay or remain three months longer in prison. He accepted the latter alternative, and in the meantime broke out the revolution of July, 1830. He was liberated, and celebrated "the three glorious days" in a poem called "The Insurrection," which pleased Louis Philippe so much that he conferred on the author a pension of 1200 francs. Barthelemy, however, commenced in March, 1831, a weekly poetical satire called "Nemesis," in which he lashed the king's ministers, and his pension was withdrawn. In April, 1832, the "Nemesis" ceased to appear, and the author published a pamphlet, than which nothing could run more contrary to public opinion, for it was a defence of martial-law; and it raised such an outcry that he felt obliged to publish a self-justification, in which he laid down that the "foolish man was he who never changed his opinion." Fair judgment of a poet who so varied in opinion can hardly be expected by his own contemporaries, beyond the admission of great talents, the application of which must be awarded by future times, less biassed by contending passions. Barthelemy died in August, 1867.—J. F.

BARTHELEMY, Jean Simon, a French historical painter, born at Leon in 1742, died in Paris in 1811; studied first under Hallè, then at Rome. His pictures illustrative of Buonaparte's expedition into Egypt are reckoned his best works.—R. M.

BARTHELEMY, J. J., the well-known author of the "Voyage d'Anacharsis," born at Cassis in Provence in 1716. Although brought up to the church, his tastes for antiquarian research were too decided to allow of his distinguishing himself in any other walk. Besides the Greek and Latin languages, he had, previously to his arrival in Paris in 1744, studied Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldean, and Arabic. More frequently found poring over antique medals than books of divinity, he was induced by the keeper of the museum in which these precious remains were placed, to accept a situation under himself. On his friend's death in 1753, the Abbé Barthelemy succeeded to his post. It was for the sake of adding to the riches of the collection under his care that Barthelemy set out on a tour of discovery, during which he traversed Italy, visiting the ruins of Pæstum, Pompeii, and Herculaneum. The researches of the inquisitive antiquarian led to a more important result than that of adding curiosities to a royal museum. They produced that famous work which placed the author amongst the most eminent writers of his country. It was in 1788 that, after thirty years spent upon the work, he published the "Voyage d'Anacharsis," in which is presented, in a style which French critics pronounce equal to the subject, a picture of Greece at the time of Pericles. Besides this, he wrote some ingenious dissertations upon Phenician monuments, on the language of Palmyra, and other topics, consulted only by the curious and learned. In 1747 the Academy of Inscriptions opened its doors to the learned abbé, and in 1789 he was admitted a member of the French Academy. When the Revolution broke out, Barthelemy was deprived of his places and emoluments; but so completely apart from public concerns had his exclusively studious life been passed, that even the terrorists of 1793 paid homage to his virtues and his genius, by very soon reinstating him in his position. Like most great celebrities, he has left memoirs of his own life, usually prefixed to his popular work. He died in 1795.—J. F. C.

BARTHELEMY or BARTHOLOMÆUS, Pierre, a French priest who accompanied Raymond de Saint Gilles in the first crusade. In 1099, at the siege of Antioch, he pretended that St. Andrew had appeared to him, and had shown him the spot where the lance that pierced the side of our Saviour was concealed. He was suspected of imposture, and put to the proof by fire, in consequence of which he died.—J. S., G.

BARTHÈZ or BARTHÈS, Paul Joseph, a French physician, who enjoyed a great reputation in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the son of Guillaume Barthèz de Marmonières, engineer of the province of Languedoc, was born at Montpellier on the 11th December, 1734. He received his education at Narbonne, where his father resided, and afterwards at Toulouse. During his earlier years he had a desire for an ecclesiastical life, but this was overruled by his father, who sent him to study medicine at Montpellier in 1750, and here he took his degree of doctor of medicine in 1753. Soon after this, Barthèz went to Paris, where his talents procured him a good reception from Henault, d'Alembert, the Abbé Barthelemy, and many of the other leading scientific and literary celebrities of the French capital. In 1756 he was appointed surgeon in the army, but after serving a short time, he was seized with camp fever, and on his recovery, returned to Paris, when he became one of the staff of the Journal des Savants and of the Encyclopédie. In 1759, when only twenty-five years of age, he obtained a chair in the university of Montpellier; and here his teaching is described as having been so successful as to conduce greatly to the celebrity which that university subsequently enjoyed. Dissatisfied with the mechanical and chemical theories of life held by the physiologists of the day, Barthèz reverted to the views of Hippocrates, which had been already to a certain extent revived by Stahl, and attributed the phenomena of life to the action of a peculiar principle, or vital force, inherent in organized bodies—vegetable as well as animal. Nor did he confine himself to advocating these opinions in his lectures, but supported them in several published works, some of which met with a very favourable reception. After fulfilling the duties of his chair for upwards of twenty years, he was called to Paris in 1780, to receive the honours due to his distinguished talents, in the shape of an appointment as one of the royal physicians, chief physician to the duke of Orleans, and councillor of state. On the breaking out of the French Revolution, Barthèz was compelled to seek safety in obscurity, and retired to Carcasonne, where he practised medicine gratuitously, and continued his scientific labours, until, on the restoration of order in France, and the re-establishment of the medical universities, he was elected honorary professor of the medical faculty in his native Montpellier (his age being considered too great for active teaching), and appointed consulting physician to the first consul. These offices he retained under the empire, and was also made a member of the legion of honour and an associate of the institute. During the latter years of his life, he was afflicted with stone in the bladder, but could not bring himself to undergo an operation. He died on the 15th October, 1806, of a malignant fever.

As a physiologist, Barthèz is regarded as the founder of a new era; but he is, at the same time, accused of too great a facility in generalizing, and of, to a certain extent, neglecting the due criticism of the facts upon which he bases his arguments. His earliest published works are—"Oratio de Principio Vitali Hominis," and "Nova Doctrina de Functionibus Corporis Humani," published respectively in 1773 and 1774, at Montpellier; they contain his first exposition of his physiological views. In 1778 he published a large work on the same subject, entitled "Nouveaux éléments de la Science de l'Homme." Of this a second edition appeared in Paris in 1806, the year of his death; but, singularly enough, although so many years had elapsed since the publication of the first edition, the second is identical with its predecessor, and contains no reference to the great progress which the science of human physiology had made in the interval. During his retirement, Barthèz wrote a treatise under the title of "Nouvelle mécanique des mouvements de l'Homme et des Animaux," which was published at Carcasonne in 1798. His only important work, on a purely medical subject, is his "Traité des Maladies Goutteuses," but he was the author of numerous papers scattered in various journals.—W. S. D.

* BARTHOLD, Friedrich Wilhelm, a distinguished German historian, was born at Berlin, 4th September, 1799. Having devoted himself to the study of history in his native town under Wilke, and afterwards at Breslau under Wachler and Raumer, he became in 1826, one of the masters of the Collegium Fredericianum at Königsberg; in 1831 professor extraordinary, and in 1834 professor ordinary at the university of Greifswald. His works are characterized by great depth of research, and a careful study of details, by which means he has succeeded in producing complete and lively pictures of several periods of German history. His chief productions are—"Der Römerzug König Heinrich's von Lützelburg;" "Geschichte von Rügen und Pommern;" "Georg von Freundsberg;" and "Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft; Geschichte der Deutschen Städte und des Deutschen Bürgerthums."—K. E.

BARTHOLDY, Jacob Salomon, a Prussian diplomatist, was born of a Jewish family at Berlin, 13th May, 1779, and died at Rome, 27th July, 1825. Having studied jurisprudence at the university of Halle, he resided for several years at Paris, and then travelled in Italy and Greece. On his return he em-