Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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See also _A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury_ (1907), by T.E.S.
Clarke and H.C. Foxcroft, with an introduction by C.H. Firth, which
contains a chronological list of Burnet's published works. Of Burnet's
personal character there are well-known descriptions in chapter vii. of
Macaulay's _History of England_, and in W.E.H. Lecky's _History of England
in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. i. pp. 80 seq.

BURNET, THOMAS (1635-1715), English divine, was born at Croft in Yorkshire
about the year 1635. He was educated at Northallerton, and at Clare Hall,
Cambridge. In 1657 he was made fellow of Christ's, and in 1667 senior
proctor of the university. By the interest of James, duke of Ormonde, he
was chosen master of the Charterhouse in 1685, and took the degree of D.D.
As 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.

Burnet published his famous _Telluris Theoria Sacra_, or _Sacred Theory of
the Earth_,[1] at London in 1681. This work, containing a fanciful theory
of the earth's structure,[2] attracted much 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 John Keill, William Whiston and Erasmus 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. But he suddenly marred his prospects by the
publication, in 1692, of a work entitled _Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive
Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus_, in which he treated the Mosaic
account of the fall of man as an allegory. This excited a great clamour
against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at
court. Of this book an English translation was published in 1729. Burnet
published several other minor works before his death, which took place at
the Charterhouse on the 27th September 1715. Two posthumous works appeared
several years after his death--_De Fide et Officiis Christianorum_ (1723),
and _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.

[1] "Which," says Samuel Johnson, "the critick ought to read for its
elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety"
(_Lives of English Poets_, vol. i. p. 303).

[2] Burnet held that at the deluge the earth was crushed like an egg, the
internal waters rushing out, and the fragments of shell becoming the
mountains.

BURNET, known botanically as _Poterium_, a member of the rose family. The
plants are perennial herbs with pinnate leaves and small flowers arranged
in dense long-stalked heads. Great burnet (_Poterium officinale_) is found
in damp meadows; salad burnet (_P. Sanguisorba_) is a smaller plant with
much smaller flower-heads growing in dry pastures.

BURNETT, FRANCES ELIZA HODGSON (1849- ), Anglo-American novelist, whose
maiden name was Hodgson, was born in Manchester, England, on the 24th of
November 1849; she went to America with her parents, who settled in
Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1865. Miss Hodgson soon began to write stories for
magazines. In 1873 she married Dr L.M. Burnett of Washington, whom she
afterwards (1898) divorced. Her reputation as a novelist was made by her
remarkable tale of Lancashire life, _That Lass o' Lowrie's_ (1877), and a
number of other volumes followed, of which the best were _Through one
Administration_ (1883) and _A Lady of Quality_ (1896). In 1886 she attained
a new popularity by her charming story of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, and
this led to other stories of child-life. _Little Lord Fauntleroy_ was
dramatized (see COPYRIGHT for the legal questions involved) and had a great
success on the stage; and other dramas by her were also produced. In 1900
she married a second time, her husband being Mr Stephen Townesend, a
surgeon, who (as Will Dennis) had taken to the stage and had collaborated
with her in some of her plays.

BURNEY, CHARLES (1726-1814), English musical historian, was born at
Shrewsbury on the 12th of April 1726. He received his earlier education at
the free school of that city, and was afterwards sent to the public school
at Chester. His first music master was Edmund 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, 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. Burney wrote some music for Thomson's _Alfred_, which was
produced at Drury Lane theatre on the 30th of March 1745. In 1749 he was
appointed organist of St Dionis-Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, with a salary
of L30 a year; and he was also engaged to take the harpsichord in the "New
Concerts" then recently established at the King's Arms, Cornhill. In that
year he married Miss Esther Sleepe, who died in 1761; in 1769 he married
Mrs Stephen Allen of Lynn. Being threatened with a pulmonary affection he
went in 1751 to Lynn in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an
annual salary of L100, and there he resided for the next nine years. During
that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of
music. His _Ode for St Cecilia's Day_ was performed at Ranelagh Gardens in
1759; and in 1760 he returned to London in good health and with a young
family; the eldest child, a girl of eight years of age, surprised the
public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. The concertos for the
harpsichord which Burney published soon after his return to London were
regarded with much admiration. 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_. The university of Oxford
conferred upon him, on the 23rd of 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. In 1769 he published
_An Essay towards a History of Comets_.

Amidst his various professional avocations, Burney never lost sight of his
favorite 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, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples.
The results of his observations he published in _The Present State of Music
in France and Italy_ (1771). Dr Johnson [v.04 p.0854] 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_ (1773). In 1773 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In
1776 appeared the first volume (in 4to) of his long-projected _History of
Music_. In 1782 Burney published his second volume; and in 1789 the third
and fourth. Though severely criticized 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), 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 Leipzig, 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 1774 he had written _A Plan for a Music School_. 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 title-page, 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_. Towards the close
of his life Burney was paid L1000 for contributing to Rees's _Cyclopaedia_
all the musical articles not belonging to the department of natural
philosophy and mathematics. In 1783, through the treasury influence of his
friend Edmund Burke, he was appointed organist to the chapel of Chelsea
Hospital, and he moved his residence from St Martin's Street, Leicester
Square, to live 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. From 1806 until his death he
enjoyed a pension of L300 granted by Fox. He died at Chelsea College on the
12th of April 1814, and was interred in the burying-ground of the college.
A tablet was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Burney's portrait was painted by Reynolds, and his bust was cut by
Nollekens in 1805. He 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 in public life appears to have been very amiable and
exemplary. Dr Burney's eldest son, James, was a distinguished officer in
the royal navy, who died a rear-admiral in 1821; his second son was the
Rev. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757-1817), a well-known classical scholar,
whose splendid collection of rare books, and MSS. was ultimately bought by
the nation for the British Museum; and his second daughter was Frances
(Madame D'Arblay, _q.v._).

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 Burney 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 introduction 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, &c._; (11) _Anthems, &c._; (12) _XII. Canzonetti a due voci in
Canone, poesia dell' Abate Metastasio_.

BURNHAM BEECHES, a wooded tract of 375 acres in Buckinghamshire, England,
acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved
for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more
beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the
road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches
station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed
frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the
beauty of the Beeches ina letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the
township of Burnham are slight Early English remains of an abbey founded in
1265. Burnham is an urban district with a population (1901) of 3245.

BURNHAM-ON-CROUCH, an urban district in the southeastern parliamentary
division of Essex, England, 43 m. E. by N. from London on a branch of the
Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2919. The church of St Mary is
principally late Perpendicular, a good example; it has Decorated portions
and a Norman font. There are extensive oyster beds in the Crouch estuary.
Burnham lies 6 m. from the North Sea; below it the Crouch is joined on the
south side by the Roch, which branches into numerous creeks, and, together
with the main estuary, forms Foulness, Wallasea, Potton and other low, flat
islands, embanked and protected from incursions of the sea. Burnham is in
some repute as a watering-place, and is a favourite yachting station. There
is considerable trade in corn and coal, and boat-building is carried on.

BURNING TO DEATH. As a legal punishment for various crimes burning alive
was formerly very wide-spread. It was common among the Romans, being given
in the XII. Tables as the special penalty for arson. Under the Gothic codes
adulterers were so punished, and throughout the middle ages it was the
civil penalty for certain heinous crimes, _e.g._ poisoning, heresy,
witchcraft, arson, bestiality and sodomy, and so continued in some cases,
nominally at least, till the beginning of the 19th century. In England,
under the common law, women condemned for high treason or petty treason
(murder of husband, murder of master or mistress, certain offences against
the coin, &c.) were burned, this being considered more "decent" than
hanging and exposure on a gibbet. In practice the convict was strangled
before being burnt. The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the
punishment being abolished in 1790.

Burning was not included among the penalties for heresy under the Roman
imperial codes; but the burning of heretics by orthodox mobs had long been
sanctioned by custom before the edicts of the emperor Frederick II. (1222,
1223) made it the civil-law punishment for heresy. His example was followed
in France by Louis IX. in the Establishments of 1270. In England, where the
civil law was never recognized, the common law took no cognizance of
ecclesiastical offences, and the church courts had no power to condemn to
death. There were, indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries isolated
instances of the burning of heretics. William of Newburgh describes the
burning of certain foreign sectaries in 1169, and early in the 13th century
a deacon was burnt by order of the council of Oxford (Foxe ii. 374; cf.
Bracton, _de Corona_, ii. 300), but by what legal sanction is not obvious.
The right of the crown to issue writs _de haeretico comburendo_, claimed
for it by later jurists, was based on that issued by Henry IV. in 1400 for
the burning of William Sawtre; but Sir James Stephen (_Hist. Crim. Law_)
points out that this was issued "with the assent of the lords temporal,"
which seems to prove that the crown had no right under the common law to
issue such writs. The burning of heretics was actually made legal in
England by the statute _de haeretico comburendo_ (1400), passed ten days
after the issue of the above writ. This was repealed in 1533, but the Six
Articles Act of 1539 revived burning as a penalty [v.04 p.0855] for denying
transubstantiation. Under Queen Mary the acts of Henry IV. and Henry V.
were revived; they were finally abolished in 1558 on the accession of
Elizabeth. Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., however, burned heretics
(illegally as it would appear) under their supposed right of issuing writs
for this purpose. The last heretics burnt in England were two Arians,
Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Wightman at Lichfield, both in
1610. As for witches, countless numbers were burned in most European
countries, though not in England, where they were hanged. In Scotland in
Charles II.'s day the law still was that witches were to be "worried at the
stake and then burnt"; and a witch was burnt at Dornoch so late as 1708.

BURNLEY, a market town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of
Lancashire, England, at the junction of the rivers Brun and Calder, 213 m.
N.N.W. of London and 29 m. N. of Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire
railway and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Pop. (1891) 87,016; (1901) 97,043.
The church of St Peter dates from the 14th century, but is largely
modernized; among a series of memorials of the Towneley family is one to
Charles Towneley (d. 1805), who collected the series of antique marbles,
terra-cottas, bronzes, coins and gems which are named after him and
preserved in the British Museum. In 1902 Towneley Hall and Park were
acquired by the corporation, the mansion being adapted to use as a museum
and art gallery, and in 1903 a summer exhibition was held here. There are a
large number of modern churches and chapels, a handsome town-hall, market
hall, museum and art gallery, school of science, municipal technical
school, various benevolent institutions, and pleasant public parks and
recreation grounds. The principal industries are cotton-weaving,
worsted-making, iron-founding, coal-mining, quarrying, brick-burning and
the making of sanitary wares. It has been suggested that Burnley may
coincide with Brunanburh, the battlefield on which the Saxons conquered the
Dano-Celtic force in 937. During the cotton famine consequent upon the
American war of 1861-65 it suffered severely, and the operatives were
employed on relief works embracing an extensive system of improvements. The
parliamentary borough (1867), which returns one member, falls within the
Clitheroe division of the county. The county borough was created in 1888.
The town was incorporated in 1861. The corporation consists of a mayor, 12
aldermen and 36 councillors. By act of parliament in 1890 Burnley was
created a suffragan bishopric of the diocese of Manchester. Area of the
municipal borough, 4005 acres.

BURNOUF, EUGENE (1801-1852), French orientalist, was born in Paris on the
8th of April 1801. His father, Prof. Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844), was a
classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of
an excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827-1833). Eugene Burnouf
published in 1826 an _Essai sur le Pali ..._, written in collaboration with
Christian Lassen; and in the following year _Observations grammaticales sur
quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pali_. The next great work he undertook
was the deciphering of the Zend manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil
du Perron. By his labours a knowledge of the Zend language was first
brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the _Vendidad Sade_,
part of one of the books bearing the name of Zoroaster, to be lithographed
with the utmost care from the Zend MS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and
published it in folio parts, 1829-1843. From 1833 to 1835 he published his
_Commentaire sur le Yacna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses_; he also
published the Sanskrit text and French translation of the _Bhagavata Purana
ou histoire poetique de Krichna_ in three folio volumes (1840-1847). His
last works were _Introduction a l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien_ (1844),
and a translation of _Le lotus de la bonne loi_ (1852). Burnouf died on the
28th of May 1852. He had been for twenty years a member of the Academie des
Inscriptions and professor of Sanskrit in the College de France.

See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to
the second edition (1876) of the _Introd. a l'histoire du Bouddhisme
indien_; also Naudet, "Notice historique sur M.M. Burnouf, pere et fils,"
in _Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions_, xx. A list of his valuable
contributions to the _Journal asiatique_, and of his MS. writings, is given
in the appendix to the _Choix de lettres d'Eugene Burnouf_ (1891).

BURNOUS (from the Arab. _burnus_), a long cloak of coarse woollen stuff
with a hood, usually white in colour, worn by the Arabs and Berbers
throughout North Africa.

BURNS, SIR GEORGE, Bart. (1705-1890), English shipowner, was born in
Glasgow on the 10th of December 1795, the son of the Rev. John Burns. In
partnership with a brother, James, he began as a Glasgow general merchant
about 1818, and in 1824 in conjunction with a Liverpool partner, Hugh
Matthie, started a line of small sailing ships which ran between Glasgow
and Liverpool. As business increased the vessels were also sailed to
Belfast, and steamers afterwards replaced the sailing ships. In 1830 a
partnership was entered into with the McIvers of Liverpool, in which George
Burns devoted himself specially to the management of the ships. In 1838
with Samuel Cunard, Robert Napier and other capitalists, the partners
(McIver and Burns) started the "Cunard" Atlantic line of steamships. They
secured the British government's contract for the carrying of the mails to
North America. The sailings were begun with four steamers of about 1000
tons each, which made the passage in 15 days at some 81/2 knots per hour.
George Burns retired from the Glasgow management of the line in 1860. He
was made a baronet in 1889, but died on the 2nd of June 1890 at Castle
Wemyss, where he had spent the latter years of his life.

John Burns (1829-1901), his eldest son, who succeeded him in the baronetcy,
and became head of the Cunard Company, was created a peer, under the title
of Baron Inverclyde, in 1897; he was the first to suggest to the government
the use of merchant vessels for war purposes. George Arbuthnot Burns
(1861-1905) succeeded his father in the peerage, as 2nd baron Inverclyde,
and became chairman of the Cunard Company in 1902. He conducted the
negotiations which resulted in the refusal of the Cunard Company to enter
the shipping combination, the International Mercantile Marine Company,
formed by Messrs J.P. Morgan & Co., and took a leading part in the
application of turbine engines to ocean liners.

BURNS, JOHN (1858- ), English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in
October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire
extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten
years old, when he was sent to work in Price's candle factory. He worked
for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen
was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. He continued his
education at the night-schools, and read extensively, especially the works
of Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Paine and Cobbett. He ascribed his conversion to
the principles of socialism to his sense of the insufficiency of the
arguments advanced against it by J.S. Mill, but he had learnt socialistic
doctrine from a French fellow-workman, Victor Delahaye, who had witnessed
the Commune. After working at his trade in various parts of England, and on
board ship, he went for a year to the West African coast at the mouth of
the Niger as a foreman engineer. His earnings from this undertaking were
expended on a six months' tour in France, Germany and Austria for the study
of political and economic conditions. He had early begun the practice of
outdoor speaking, and his exceptional physical strength and strong voice
were invaluable qualifications for a popular agitator. In 1878 he was
arrested and locked up for the night for addressing an open-air
demonstration on Clapham Common. Two years later he married Charlotte Gale,
the daughter of a Battersea shipwright. He was again arrested in 1886 for
his share in the West End riots when the windows of the Carlton and other
London clubs were broken, but cleared himself at the Old Bailey of the
charge of inciting the mob to violence. In November of the next year,
however, he was again arrested for resisting the police in their attempt to
break up the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and was condemned to six weeks'
imprisonment. A speech delivered by him at the Industrial Remuneration
Conference of 1884 had attracted considerable attention, and in that year
he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation, which put him
forward [v.04 p.0856] unsuccessfully in the next year as parliamentary
candidate for West Nottingham. His connexion with the Social Democratic
Federation was short-lived; but he was an active member of the executive of
the Amalgamated Engineers' trade union, and was connected with the trades
union congresses until 1895, when, through his influence, a resolution
excluding all except wage labourers was passed. He was still working at his
trade in Hoe's printing machine works when he became a Progressive member
of the first London County Council, being supported by an allowance of L2 a
week subscribed by his constituents, the Battersea working men. He
introduced in 1892 a motion that all contracts for the County Council
should be paid at trade union rates and carried out under trade union
conditions, and devoted his efforts in general to a war against monopolies,
except those of the state or the municipality. In the same year (1889) in
which he became a member of the County Council, he acted with Mr Ben
Tillett as the chief leader and organizer of the London dock strike. He
entered the House of Commons as member for Battersea in 1892, and was
re-elected in 1895, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an
independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local
Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with
his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his
administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals
put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing
with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr
Asquith's cabinet.

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