regiment, but received the command of the Woolwich district, with the important charge of the Warren, as the arsenal was then called. He was promoted, in due course, lieutenant-general in 1760, and general in 1777. On the outbreak of the Gordon riots, says the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' the rioters meant to burn the Warren. 'But General Belford had made such dispositions that 40,000 men could not have forced the arsenal. This important service, and the despatching trains of artillery to the different camps, kept him on horseback day and night. Such extraordinary fatigue, such unremitting application, burst a blood-vessel, and brought on a fever, which carried him off in a few days' (Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 1., 1780, p. 347). General Belford died at the Warren, Woolwich, on 1 July 1780, and was succeeded in his command by his eldest son, who was also an officer in the artillery. Belford seems to have been a very competent officer, and to have greatly contributed to the high position since taken by the royal regiment; he contributed a curious little pamphlet, 'Colonel Belford's March of the Artillery,' to Muller's 'Treatise on the War in Flanders,' published in 1757, and he was the first officer to introduce the fife into the English army by bringing over a Hanoverian fifer, named Johann Ulrich, in 1748, who taught the fifers of the royal artillery.
[Gent. Mag. 1780; Kane's List of Officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, 2nd ed. 1869, p. 166 note.]
BELFOUR, HUGO JOHN (1802–1827), author of poems signed St. John Dorset, was born in or near London in 1802. He was the eldest child of Edward Belfour, of the Navy Office, by his wife Catherine, daughter of John Greenwell, of the India House (Gent. Mag. May 1801). Before the completion of his nineteenth year, Belfour produced 'The Vampire, a Tragedy in five acts, by St. John Dorset,' 8vo, London, 1st and 2nd editions, 1821. The scene is laid in Egypt. The second edition was inscribed 'To W. C. Macready, Esq.,' to whom the work had been submitted in manuscript. Belfour also wrote 'Montezuma, a Tragedy in five acts, and other Poems, by St. John Dorset,' 8vo, London, 1822. In May 1826 he was ordained, and 'appointed to a curacy in Jamaica, with the best prospects of preferment' (Gent. Mag.). He died in Jamaica in September 1827.
[The Vampire, a tragedy, 1821; Gent. Mag. May 1801, January 1816, September 1818, and December 1827; Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain, Edinburgh, 1882.]
BELFOUR, JOHN (1768–1842), was an orientalist and miscellaneous writer, of whom little is recorded, except that he was a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and that he died in the City Road, London, in 1842, at the age of seventy-four. His works are:
- 'Literary Fables imitated from the Spanish of Yriarte,' London, 1806, 8vo.
- 'Spanish Heroism, or the Battle of Roncesvalles; a metrical romance,' London, 1809, 8vo.
- 'Music; a didactic poem from the Spanish of Yriarte,' London, 1811, 8vo.
- 'Odes in honour of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent; with other poems,' 1812; only twenty-five copies printed.
- 'The Psalms of David, according to the Coptic version, accompanied by a literal translation into English, and by the version of the Latin Vulgate, with copious notes, in which the variations from the original text are noticed, the corruptions in the Egyptian text pointed out, and its numerous affinities with the Hebrew for the first time determined,' 1831; manuscript in British Museum, 1110 E. 31.
- 'Remarks on certain Alphabets in use among the Jews of Morocco,' 1836. In the 'Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom,' iii. 136-142, with plates. Belfour also revised, corrected, and augmented the fifth edition of Ray's 'English Proverbs,' London, 1813, 8vo.
[Biog. Dict. of Living Authors (1816), 19; Gent. Mag. N. S. xviii. 213; Watts's Bibl. Brit.; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.]
BELFRAGE, HENRY, D.D. (1774–1835), divine of the Secession church, was son of the Rev. John Belfrage, minister of the first Associate congregation in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, who was of a Kinross-shire family. The father was born at Colliston on 2 Feb. 1736, soon after the Secession. He had been called to Falkirk in 1758; married Jean Whyte, daughter of John Whyte, a corn merchant, who belonged to the congregation, and had by her five sons and seven daughters. Henry was the fourth son, and was born at the manse in Falkirk on 24 March 1774. From the first he was destined by his parents to be a minister of the Gospel. He 'ran away' to school, while between four and five, along with his elder brother Andrew. At six he read Latin grammatically. He had the advantage of a good teacher at the grammar school in James Meek. At ten he used to preach, and was commonly spoken of as 'the young or wee minister.' In his thirteenth year he proceeded to the university of Edinburgh, in 1786 (November), with his elder brother Andrew. He at once took a high place in his Latin and Greek classes, and read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as readily as
