BURNES, Sir Alexander (1805-1841), a traveller in Central Asia, was born at Montrose 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 Hindostani 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, which at that time were 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 to the Rajah Rungit Sing, and took advantage of the opportunity for extensive investigations. In the following years his travels were extended through Afghanistan, across the Hindu Kush to Bokhara ar.d Persia. The narrative which he published on his visit to England in 1834 added immensely to our knowledge of the countries traversed, and was one of the most popular books of the time. The first edition brought the author the sum of £800, and his services were recognized not only by the Royal Geographical Society of London, but also by that of Paris. Soon after his return to India in 1835 he was appointed to the court of Sindh to secure a treaty for the navigation of the Indus; and in 1836 he undertook a political mission to Dost Mohammed at Cabul. On tho restoration of Shah Shujah in. 1839, he became regular political agent at Cabul, and remained there till his assassination in 1841 (November 2), during the heat of an insurrection. The calmness with which he continued at his post, long after the ...imminence of his danger was apparent, gives an heroic colouring to the close of an honourable and devoted life. A narrative of his later labours was published in 1842 under the title of Cabool.
BURNET, Gilbert (1643-1715), bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh in 1643, and was descended of an ancient family of the county of Aberdeen. His father had been bred to the law, and was at the Restoration appointed one of the lords of Session, with the title of Lord Crimond. Gilbert, the youngest son, was at ten years of age sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was admitted A. Μ. before he was fourteen years of age. His own inclination led him to the study of the civil and feudal law; but he afterwards changed his views, and, to the great satisfaction of his father, began to apply to divinity. He received ordination before the age of eighteen; and Sir Alexander Burnet, his cousin-german, offered him a benefice, which, however, he refused to accept.
In 1663, about two years after the death of his father, he went to England; and after six months stay at Oxford and Cambridge, returned to Scotland, which he soon left again to make a tour of some months, in 1664, in Holland and France. At Amsterdam, by the help of a Jewish rabbi, he perfected himself in the Hebrew language; and likewise became acquainted with the leading men of the different persuasions tolerated in that country—Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Brownists, Papists, and Unitarians. In each of these sects he used frequently to declare he met with men of such unfeigned piety and virtue that be became fixed in a strong principle of universal charity, and an invincible abhorrence of all severities on account of religious dissensions....
Upon his return from his travels he was admitted minister of Saltoun, in which station he served five years in the most exemplary manner. He drew up a memorial, in which he took notice of the principal errors in the conduct of the Scottish bishops, which he observed not to be conformable to the primitive institution, and he sent a copy of it to several of them. This exposed him to their resentment; but to show he was not actuated by a spirit of ambition, he led a retired course of life for two years, which so endangered his health that he was obliged to abate his excessive application to study. In the year 1668 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow; and, according to the usual practice, he read his lectures in the Latin language. It was apparently at this period that he laid the chief foundation of that theological learning for which he became so distinguished. In 1669 he published his Modest and Free Conference between a Conformist and Nonconformist. He became acquainted with the duchess of Hamilton, who communicated to him all the papers belonging to her father and her uncle; upon which he drew up the Memoirs of the Dulces of Hamilton, afterwards printed at London, in folio, in the year 1677. The duke of Lauderdale, hearing that he was engaged in this work, invited him to London, and introduced him to Charles II. He returned to Scotland, and married Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the earl of Cassillis, a lady of great knowledge, and highly esteemed by the Presbyterians, to whose sentiments she was strongly inclined. As there was some disparity in their ages, that it might be sufficiently evident that the match was wholly owing to inclination, and not to avarice or ambition, the day before their marriage he delivered to the lady a deed, by which he renounced all pretensions to her fortune, which was very considerable, and must otherwise have fallen into his hands, she herself having no intention to secure it. His Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland was printed at Glasgow, in 8vo, in the year 1673. This was considered so material a service to the Government, that he was offered a bishopric, with a promise of the next vacant archbishopric; but he did not accept of it, because he could not approve of the measures of the court, the great aim of which he perceived to be the advancement of popery. The publication itself was one of those which the author could not afterwards recollect with much satisfaction.
His intimacy with the dukes of Hamilton and Lauderdale procured 1 him frequent messages from the king and the duke of York, who had conversations with him in.private. But Lauderdale, who was the most unprincipled man of the age, conceiving a resentment against him on account of the freedom with which he spoke to him, represented at last to the king that Dr Burnet was engaged in an opposition to his measures; and on his return to London he perceived that these suggestions had entirely deprived him of the king’s favour, though the duke of York treated him with greater civility than ever, and dissuaded him from going to Scotland. He accordingly resigned his professorship at Glasgow, and settled in London. About this time the living of Cripplegate being vacant, the dean and chapter of St Paul’s (in whose gift it was), hearing of his circumstances, and the hardships which he had undergone, made him an offer of the benefice; but, as he had been informed of their first intention of conferring it on Dr Fowler, he generously declined it. In 1675, at the recommendation of Lord Hollis, whom he had known in France as ambassador at that court, he was appointed preacher at the Rolls chapel, by Sir Harbottle Grimstone, master of the rolls, notwithstanding the opposition of the court; and he was soon afterwards chosen lecturer at St Clement’s, and became one of the most popular preachers in town. The first volume of his History of the Reformation of the Church of England was published in folio in 1681, the second in 1683, and the third in 1715. For this great work he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Of the first two volumes he published an abridgment in the year 1683.
In 1682, when the administration was changed in favour of the duke of York, being much resorted to by persons of all ranks and parties, in order to avoid returning visits, he built a laboratory, and for above a year pursued a course of chemical experiments. Not long after he refused a country living of £300 a year offered him by the carl of Essex on condition that he should reside in London. When the inquiry concerning the popish plot was on foot he was frequently sent for and consulted by the king, who offered him the bishopric of Chichester, then vacant, if he would engage in his interests; but he refused to accept it on these terms. He preached at the Rolls till 1684, when he was dismissed by order of the court.
On the accession of James II. to the throne, having obtained leave tc quit the kingdom, he first went to Paris, and lived in great retirement, till, contracting an acquaintance with Brigadier Stouppe, a Protestant gentleman in the French service, he made a tour with him into Italy. He met with an agreeable reception at Rome. Pope Innocent XI. hearing of his arrival, sent the captain of the Swiss guard to acquaint him he would give him a private audience in bed, to avoid the ceremony of kissing his holiness’s slipper; but Dr Burnet excused himself as well as he could. Here, with more zeal than prudence, he engaged in some religious disputes; and, on receiving an intimation from Prince Borghese, he found it necessary to withdraw from this stronghold of priestcraft, and pursued his travels through Switzerland and Germany. He afterwards came to Utrecht, with an intention to settle in some of the seven provinces. There he received an invitation from the. prince and princess of Orange (to whom their party in England had recommended him) to come to the Hague, and accepted the invitation. He was soon made acquainted with the secret of their councils, and advised the preparation of a fleet in Holland sufficient to support their designs and encourage their friends. His known share in the councils of the Prince of Orange, and the pamphlets which he sent over to England, excited against him the intensest enmity of James. A prosecution for high treason was commenced against him both in England and Scotland; but having received the intelligence before it was announced to the States he avoided the storm by petitioning for, and obtaining without any difficulty, a bill of naturalization, in order to his intended marriage with Mary Scott, a Dutch lady of considerable fortune.
Being now legally under the protection of Holland, he omitted no opportunity of supporting and promoting the design which the prince of Orange had formed of delivering Great Britain; and, having accompanied him in the capacity of chaplain, he was in the year 1689 advanced to the see of Salisbury. He declared for moderate measures with regard to the clergy who scrupled to take the oaths, and many were displeased with him for advocating the toleration of Nonconformists. “As my lord of Salisbury,” says the earl of Shaftesbury, “has done more than any man living for the good and honour of the Church of England and the Reformed religion, so he now suffers more than any man from the tongues and slander of those ungrateful churchmen; who may well call themselves by that single term of distinction, having no claim to that of Christianity or Protestant, since they have thrown off all the temper of the former, and all concern or interest with the latter.” The same noble writer has elsewhere mentioned him in the following terms of commendation :—“The bishop of Salisbury’s Exposition of the Articles is, no doubt, highly worthy of your study. None can better explain the sense of the church than one who is the greatest pillar of it since the first founders,—one who best explained and asserted the Reformation itself, was chiefly instrumental in saving it from Popery before and at the Revolution, and is now the truest example of laborious, primitive, pious, and learned episcopacy.”
In 1693, after the publication and condemnation of Blount’s anonymous pamphlet, King William and Queen Mary Conqτιerors (see Blount), an opportunity was taken by Burnet’s enemies to bring a pastoral letter of his before the House of Commons. After a warm discussion the letter was condemned to be burned by the common hangman.
In 1698 he lost his wife by the small-pox; and as he was almost immediately after appointed preceptor to the duke of Gloucester, of whose education he took great care, this employment, and the tender age of his children, induced him the same year to supply her loss by a marriage with Mrs Berkeley, a widow, who was eldest daughter of Sir Richard Blake. In 1699 he published his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, which occasioned a charge against him in the Lower House of Convocation in the year 1701, but he was vindicated in the Upper House. His speech in the House of Lords in 1704 against the Bill to prevent occasional conformity was severely attacked. He formed a scheme for augmenting the small livings, which he pressed forward with such success, that an Act of Parliament was passed in the second year of Queen Anne, for the augmentation of the livings of the poor clergy. He died in 1715, and was interred in the church of St James’s, Clerkenwell, where a monument was erected to his memory.
Bishop Burnet’s History of his Own Time, consisting of two large volumes in folio, was not published till several years after the author’s death; the first volume appeared in 1724, and the second in 1734. An account of his life was added by his youngest son Sir Thomas Burnet, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. The History itself was not printed without mutilations; but after an interval of nearly a century, an edition containing all the passages which had formerly been suppressed, was published under the superintendence of the learned Dr Routh. (Oxford, 1823, 6 vols. 8vo.) This is a work of great and intrinsic value; without it our knowledge of the times would be exceedingly imperfect. His materials are not always very carefully digested, and the style is sometimes supposed to be too familiar; but these defects are abundantly compensated for by the copiousness of his information, the benevolence of his sentiments, and the earnestness of his manner. In general Burnet’s statements may be accepted with great confidence, his judgment is always sound and sober, and he possesses considerable skill in the delineation of character. The best editions of his two great works are— History of his Own Time, 6 vols., Oxford, 1833; History of the Ref ormation, 7 vols., bv N. Pocock, 1865.
Besides the works mentioned above the following are worthy of notice :— Some Passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester, Lond. 1680, 8vo; The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt., sometime Lord Chief-Justice of his Majestie's Court of Kings Bench, Lond. 1682, 8vo; The History of the Rights of Princes in disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands, Lond. 1682, 8vo; The Life of William Bedell, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland, Lond. 1685, 8vo; Reflections on Mr Varillas ’ s a History of the Revolutions that have happened in Europe in matters of Religion,” and more particularly on his Ninth Book, that relates to England, Amst. 1686, 12mo; A Defence of the Reflections on the Ninth Book of the first volume of Mr Varillas ’ s “History of Heresies]’ being a Reply to his Answer, Amst. 1687, 12mo; A Continuation of Reflections on Mr Varillas ’ s “History of Heresies," particularly on that which relates to English Affairs in his Third and Fourth tomes, Amst. 1687, 12mo. He took a very conspicuous part in the continued controversy which was in his time maintained against the papists; and a complete catalogue of his polemical works would occupy no small space. The following translations deserve to be mentioned :— Utopia, written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England: translated into English, Lond. 1685, 8vo; A Relation of the Death of the Primitive Persecutors, written originally in Latin, by L. C. F. Lactantius: Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D.D., to which he hath made a large preface concerning Persecution, Amst. 1687, 12mo.
BURNET, Thomas (1635-1715), best known as the author of The Sacred Theory of the Earth, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635, but is supposed to have been descended of a Scottish family. He was educated at the free school of Northallerton, and in June 1651 was admitted a pensioner of Clare Hall at Cambridge, under the tuition of Tillotson, who continued to remember him with kindness. In the year 1654 he removed to Christ’s College, on the election of Dr Cudworth to the mastership, and there he obtained a fellowship in the year 1657. In 1661 he became senior proctor of the university. He was successively domestic tutor to Charles duke of Bolton, and to James earl of Ossory, afterwards duke of Ormond, grandson to the first duke; and by the interest of the latter nobleman he was chosen master of the Charterhouse in 1685. Among the electors some of the bishops opposed him on account of his wearing a lay habit; but the duke was satisfied that he possessed the more essential qualifications of a life and conversation suitable to his clerical character. After this appointment he took the degree of D.D. In his capacity of master he made a noble stand against the illegal attempts to admit Andrew Popham as a pensioner of the house, strenuously opposing an order of the 26th of December 1686, addressed by James II. to the governors dispensing with the statutes for the occasion.
Dr Burnet published his Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, at London in 1681. This work, containing a fanciful theory of the earth’s structure, attracted an unusual share of public attention, and he was afterwards encouraged to issue an English translation, which was printed in folio, 1684-1689. Addison commended the author in a Latin ode, but his theory was attacked by Dr Keill, Mr Whiston, and Mr Warren, to all of whom he returned answers. His reputation obtained for him an introduction at court by Archbishop Tillotson, whom he succeeded as clerk of the closet to King William. He seemed already to be on the direct road to much higher preferment, when he suddenly marred his prospects by the publication, in 1692, of a work entitled Archao- logioe Philosophicae : sive Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus, in which lie treated the Mosaic account of the fall of man as an allegory. The method of treatment excited a great clamour against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at court. Ot this book, an English translation was executed by Mr Foxton, Lond. 1729, 8vo. Dr Burnet published several other minor works before his death, which took place at the Charter-house on the 27tl∣ September 1715. Two posthumous works were published several years after his death— De Fide et Officiis Christianorum, 1723, anà De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus, 1723; in which he maintained the doctrine of a middle state, the millennium, and the limited duration of future punishment. A Life of Dr Burnet by Heathcote appeared in 1759.
BURNEY, Charles, Doctor of Music (1726-1814), was born in the ancient city of Shrewsbury, the capital of Shropshire, on the 7th of April 1726. He received his earlier education at the excellent free school of that city, and was afterwards sent to the public school at Chester. His first music master was Mr Baker, organist of Chester Cathedral, and a pupil of Dr John Blow. Returning to Shrewsbury when about fifteen years old, he continued his musical studies for three years under his half-brother, Mr James Burney, organist of St Mary’s Church, and was then sent to London as a pupil of the celebrated Dr Arne, with whom he remained three years. In 1749 he was appointed organist of a church in the city, with a salary of £30 a year; and he was also engaged as conductor of a concert established at the King’s Arms, Cornhill. In that year and the next he composed the music of three dramas for Drury Lane theatre— Alfred, Robin Hood, and Queen Mab. Being threatened with a pulmonary affection he went, on the advice of his physician, in 1751 to Lynn, in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an annual salary of £100, and where he resided for the next nine years. During that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of music. In 1760 he returned to London in good health, and with a young family; the eldest of whom, a girl of eight years of age, surprised the public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. In 1766 he produced, at Drury lane, a free English version and adaptation of J. J. Rousseau’s operetta Le Devin du Village, under the title of The Cunning Man, which was favourably received. The university of Oxford conferred upon him, on 23d June 1769, the degrees of bachelor and doctor of music, on which occasion he presided at the ...performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives, and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. His friend, C. P. E. Bach, requested a copy of this exercise, and had it performed in St Catharine’s Church at Hamburg, under his own direction, in 1773. It was repeatedly performed at Oxford, “after it had fufilled its original destination,” as Burney tells us (Hist. of Music, vol. iii. p. 329); and he apologizes as follows for saying so much about it :—“It is hoped that the reader will pardon this egotism, which has been extorted from me by occasional and sinister assertions, ‘that I neither liked nor had studied church music.’” (Ibid). In 1769 he published An Essay towards a History of Comets. Amidst his various professional avocations, Burney never lost sight of his favourite object,—his History of Music,— and therefore resolved to travel abroad for the purpose of collecting materials that could not be found in Great Britain. Accordingly, he left London in June 1770, furnished with numerous letters of introduction, and proceeded to Paris, and thence to Geneva, Turin, and the principal cities of Italy. The results of his observations he published in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1 vol. 8vo, London, 1771). Dr Johnson thought so well of this work, that, alluding to his own Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, he said, “I had that clever dog Burney’s Musical Tour in my eye.” In July 1772 Burney again visited the Continent, to collect further materials, and, after his return to London, published his tour under the title of The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1773). In 1773 he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1776 appeared the first volume (in 4to) of his long-projected History of Music; in 1782 the second volume; and in 1789 the third and fourth. Though severely criticised by Forkel in Germany and by the Spanish ex-Jesuit, Requeno, who, in his Italian work Saggj sul Ristabilimento dell' Arte Armonica de' Greci e Romani Cantori, Parma, 1798 (2 vols. 8vo), attacks Burney’s account of the ancient Greek music, and calls him lo scompigliato Burney, the History of Music was generally recognized as possessing great merit. The least satisfactory volume is the fourth, the treatment of Handel and Bach being quite inadequate. Burney’s first Tour was translated into German by Ebeling, and printed at Hamburg in 1772; and his second Tour, translated into German by Bode, was published at Hamburg in 1773. A Dutch translation of his second Tour, with notes by J. W. Lustig, organist at Groningen, was published there in 1786 The Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients, in the first volume of Burney’s History, was translated into German by J. J. Eschenburg, and printed at Leipsic, 1781. Burney derived much aid from the first two volumes of Padre Martini’s very learned Storia della Musica, Bologna, 1757-1770. One cannot but admire his persevering industry, and his sacrifices of time, money and personal comfort, in collecting and preparing materials for his History; and few will be disposed to condemn severely errors and oversights in a work of such extent and difficulty. In 1779 he wrote for the Royal Society an account of the infant Crotch, whose remarkable musical talent excited so much attention at that time In 1784 he published, with an Italian titlepage, the music annually performed in the Pope’s chapel at Rome during Passion Week. In 1785 he published, for the benefit of the Musical Fund, an account of the first commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey in the preceding year, with an excellent life of Handel. In 1796 he published Memoirs and Letters of Metastasio, 3 vols. 8vo. Towards the close of his life, Burney contributed to the Rev. Dr Rees’s Cyclopaedia all the musical articles not belonging to the department of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics. For these articles he received £1000, which seems a remarkable remuneration, considering that most of his materials were merely transcribed from his own History of Music. In 1789, through the treasury influence of his friend Edmund Burke, he was appointed organist to the chapel of Chelsea Hospital, and he resided in the hospital for the remainder of his life. He was made a member of the Institute of France, and nominated a correspondent in the class of the Fine Arts, in the year 1810. He died at Chelsea College on the 12th of April 1814, and was interred in the burying-ground of the college on the 20th of the same month.
Burney had a wide circle of acquaintance among the distinguished artists and literary men of his day. At one time he thought of writing a life of his friend Dr Samuel Johnson; but he retired before the crowd of biographers who rushed into that field. His character in private as well as public life appears to have been very amiable and exemplary. Dr Burney’s eldest son, James, was a distinguished officer in the royal navy, and died a rear-admiral in 1821. He published several works of merit. A notice of his second son, the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D., an eminent Greek scholar, will be found below, and of his second daughter Frances (Madame D’Arblay) under the heading D’Arblay. The Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay contain many minute and interesting particulars of her father’s public and private life, and of his friends and contemporaries. A life of her father, by Madame D’Arblay, appeared in 1832.
Besides the operatic music above mentioned, Burney’s known compositions consist of—1. Six Sonatas for the harpsichord; 2. Two Sonatas for the harp or piano, with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; 3. Sonatas for two violins and a bass: two sets; 4. Six Lessons for the harpsichord; 5. Six Duets for two German flutes; 6. Three Concertos for the harpsichord; 7. Six concert pieces with an in-trodτuΛιon and fugue for the organ; 8. Six Concertos for the violin, & c., in eight parts; 9. Two Sonatas for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello; 10. A Cantata, Ac.; 11. Anthems, Ac.; 12. XII. Canzonetti a due voci in Canone, poesia dell' Abate Metastasio.
BURNEY, Charles (1757-1817), son of the preceding, an eminent classical scholar, was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, in 1757. At the age of eleven he was sent to the Charterhouse in London, whence he removed to Caius College, Cambridge. He quitted the university without taking his degree; but in 1791 he received the diploma of LL.D. from Aberdeen, and in 1808 that of D.D. from Cambridge. In 1783 he married the daughter of Dr Rose, the translator of Sallust, and continued for some time to assist his father-in-law in the management of his academy. He contributed at this time many articles to the Monthly Review, and afterwards edited for two or three years the London Magazine. Some of his contributions to the first of these periodicals gained him much credit not only among English but among Continental scholars. In the course of time he realized a handsome fortune, great part of which ho expended in the formation of his splendid library. The manuscripts and rare books collected by him were considered so valuable that at his death, which happened in 1817, they were purchased by the nation and deposited in the British Museum.
BURNEY, Frances. See D’Arblay.
