Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/430

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Baillie
418
Baillie

arithmetic, in conducting a school. Afterwards he lectured in a schoolroom in St. Nicholas's churchyard at Newcastle, and in 1797 his friends fitted up the old Postern Chapel for his use. He was in pecuniary difficulties for several years previous to his death, which occurred at Gateshead on 12 Dec. 1806. He published several detached sermons, including 'A Funeral Discourse on the Death of the Papacy, delivered before a crowded audience,' Newcastle, 1798, 8vo, and 'A Funeral Sermon occasioned by the death of Frances Baillie,' his daughter, who kept a school at Newcastle, and who died in 1801 at the age of twenty-three. His other works are: 1. 'A Course of Lectures upon various antient and interesting Prophecies; tending to strengthen the faith and enliven the hopes of believers in the Divine Saviour, to whom all the Prophets bare witness. Lecture i. Haggai ii. 6-10,' Newcastle, 1784, 8vo. 2. 'An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and its Vicinity' (anon.), Newcastle, 1801, 8vo. 3. 'History of the French War, from 1791 to 1802,' 8vo. He also assisted in writing a 'History of Egypt.'

[Gent. Mag. Ixxvi. (ii.) 1182; Mackenzie's Newcastle, i. 394; Sykes's Local Records, 227; Richardson's Local Historian's Table Book (Historical Division), iii. 60.]

BAILLIE, JOHN (1772–1833), colonel, orientalist, political agent, and director of the East India Company, entered the company's service in 1790, arriving in India in 1791. He took ensign's rank in 1793 and lieutenant's in 1794, devoting his leisure to the study of oriental languages, which he prosecuted with such success that on the foundation of the new college of Fort William in 1801 he was appointed professor of the Arabic and Persian languages and of Mohammedan law. In 1803, on the outbreak of the Mahratta war, he joined in the siege of Agra with the rank of captain, and soon after was appointed to the difficult post of political agent at Bundelkhand. Disaffection was rife here, and the chiefs were forming dangerous combinations. Captain Baillie, however, succeeded in disuniting the league of the chiefs and re-establishing order and security, for which services he was publicly thanked by the governor-general in a letter to the directors, in which it was said that 'the British authority in Bundelkhand was only preserved by his fortitude, ability, and influence.' He had, in fact, transferred to the company a territory with a revenue of 225,000l. a year. Baillie resigned his professorship in 1807 for the position of resident at Lucknow, which he held till 1815. Three years later he retired from the service, and on his return to England went into parliament as one of the members for the borough of Hedon (now disfranchised), for which he sat from 1820 to 1830, and afterwards from 1830 to 1832 represented the burghs of Inverness. He was elected a director of the East India Company in 1823, and died 20 April 1833. While professor, Colonel Baillie published his useful 'Sixty Tables elucidatory of a Course of Lectures on Arabic Grammar delivered in the College of Fort William during the first year of its institution' (1801), and the text of 'The Five Books upon Arabic Grammar,' i.e. the ' Meeut Âmel,' 'Shurhu Meeut Âmel,' 'Mesbâh,' 'Hedâyut oon-Nuhve,' and the 'Kâfeea,' of which the first four were issued in two thin volumes in 1802-3, and the last was not published. He also translated from the Arabic part (relating to commercial transactions) of a digest of Mohammedan law in 1797, at the request of Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth), the then governor-general, but the work was never completed.

[Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, iii. 100, 101 (1834); Annual Register, 1833, Ixxv. 219.]

BAILLIE, MARIANNE (1795?–1830), traveller and verse-writer, whose maiden name was Wathen (Guy of Warwick, &c., 1817, pp. 42, 43, and 64), married Mr. Alexander Baillie 'some years previous' to 1817 (Guy of Warwick, pp. 47, 66, and 72). Mrs. Baillie's first contribution to literature was a small volume, entitled 'Guy of Warwick, a Legende, and other Poems,' Kingsbury, 1817. A very limited edition was printed by Mr. Baillie at his private printing-press, and, in 1818, a second edition was in demand. Some of the poems in this work were afterwards reproduced in a volume privately printed in London in 1825, and 'not published,' entitled 'Trifles in Verse.' The preface is written by Mr. Baillie, who says that after the year 1817 'hard times came.' Early in 1818 the Baillies found a 'shelter' and a 'calm retreat' at Twickenham, where they received kindness from Lady Howe, whose second husband, Sir Wathen Waller, would seem to have been a relative of Mrs. Baillie. It was from Twickenham that the Baillies set out for a continental tour, crossing the Channel from Dover to Calais 9 Aug. 1818, and returning 8 Oct. following. The literary result of this journey appeared in a volume inscribed by the author to the Right Hon. John Trevor, who had been British minister at Turin from 1783 to 1798; of