1st Viscount Falmouth. He early entered the navy, and in 1739 distinguished himself at the taking of Porto Bello. At the siege of Cartagena, in March 1741, at the head of a party of seamen, he took a battery of fifteen 24-pounders, while exposed to the fire of another fort. On his return to England in the following year he married, and entered parliament as member for Truro. In 1744 he captured the French frigate “Médée,” commanded by M. de Hocquart, the first ship taken in the war. In May 1747 he signalized himself in the engagement off Cape Finisterre, and was wounded in the shoulder with a musket-ball. Hocquart again became his prisoner, and the French ships, ten in number, were taken. On the 15th of July he was made rear-admiral and commander-in-chief of the expedition to the East Indies. On the 29th of July 1748 he arrived off Fort St David’s, and soon after laid siege to Pondicherry; but the sickness of his men and the approach of the monsoons led to the raising of the siege. Soon afterwards he received news of the peace, and Madras was delivered up to him by the French. In April 1750 he arrived in England, and was the next year made one of the lords of the Admiralty, and chosen an elder brother of the Trinity House. In February 1755 he was appointed vice-admiral, and in April he intercepted the French squadron bound to North America, and took the “Alcide” and “Lys” of sixty-four guns each. Hocquart became his prisoner for the third time, and Boscawen returned to Spithead with his prizes and 1500 prisoners. For this exploit, he received the thanks of parliament. In 1758 he was appointed admiral of the blue and commander-in-chief of the expedition to Cape Breton, when, in conjunction with General Amherst, he took the fortress of Louisburg, and the island of Cape Breton—services for which he again received the thanks of the House of Commons. In 1759, being appointed to command in the Mediterranean, he pursued the French fleet, commanded by M. de la Clue, and after a sharp engagement in Lagos Bay took three large ships and burnt two, returning to Spithead with his prizes and 2000 prisoners. The victory defeated the proposed concentration of the French fleet in Brest to cover an invasion of England. In December 1760 he was appointed general of the marines, with a salary of £3000 per annum, and was also sworn a member of the privy council. He died at his seat near Guildford on the 10th of January 1761.
BOSCH (or Bos), JEROM (c. 1460–1518), the name generally given, from his birthplace Hertogenbosch, to Hieronymus van Aeken, the Dutch painter. He was probably a pupil of Albert
Ouwater, and may be called the Breughel of the 15th century,
for he devoted himself to the invention of bizarre types, diableries, and scenes of the kind generally associated with Breughel, whose art is to a great extent based on Bosch’s. He was a satirist much
in advance of his time, and one of the most original and ingenious
artists of the 15th century. He exercised great influence on
Lucas Cranach, who frequently copied his paintings. His works
were much admired in Spain, especially by Philip II., at whose
court Bosch painted for some time. One of his chief works is the
“Last Judgment” at the Berlin gallery, which also owns a
little “St Jerome in the Desert.” “The Fall of the Rebellious
Angels” and the “St Anthony” triptych are in the Brussels
museum, and two important triptychs are at the Munich gallery.
The Lippmann collection in Berlin contains an important
“Adoration of the Magi,” the Antwerp museum a “Passion,”
and a practically unknown painting from his brush is at the
Naples museum.
BOSCOVICH, ROGER JOSEPH (1711?–1787), Italian mathematician
and natural philosopher, one of the earliest of foreign
savants to adopt Newton’s gravitation theory, was born at
Ragusa in Dalmatia on the 18th of May 1711, according to the
usual account, but ten years earlier according to Lalande (Éloge,
1792). In his fifteenth year, after passing through the usual
elementary studies, he entered the Society of Jesus. On
completing his noviciate, which was spent at Rome, he studied
mathematics and physics at the Collegium Romanum; and so
brilliant was his progress in these sciences that in 1740 he was
appointed professor of mathematics in the college. For this
post he was especially fitted by his acquaintance with recent
advances in science, and by his skill in a classical severity of
demonstration, acquired by a thorough study of the works of the
Greek geometricians. Several years before this appointment he
had made himself a name by an elegant solution of the problem
to find the sun’s equator and determine the period of its rotation
by observation of the spots on its surface. Notwithstanding the
arduous duties of his professorship he found time for investigation
in all the fields of physical science; and he published a
very large number of dissertations, some of them of considerable
length, on a wide variety of subjects. Among these subjects
were the transit of Mercury, the Aurora Borealis, the figure of
the earth, the observation of the fixed stars, the inequalities in
terrestrial gravitation, the application of mathematics to the
theory of the telescope, the limits of certainty in astronomical
observations, the solid of greatest attraction, the cycloid, the
logistic curve, the theory of comets, the tides, the law of
continuity, the double refraction micrometer, various problems of
spherical trigonometry, &c. In 1742 he was consulted, with
other men of science, by the pope, Benedict XIV., as to the
best means of securing the stability of the dome of St Peter’s,
Rome, in which a crack had been discovered. His suggestion was
adopted. Shortly after he engaged to take part in the Portuguese
expedition for the survey of Brazil, and the measurement of a
degree of the meridian; but he yielded to the urgent request of
the pope that he would remain in Italy and undertake a similar
task there. Accordingly, in conjunction with Christopher Maire,
an English Jesuit, he measured an arc of two degrees between
Rome and Rimini. The operations were begun towards the
close of 1750, and were completed in about two years. An
account of them was published in 1755, entitled De Litteraria expeditione per pontificam ditionem ad dimetiendos duos meridiani gradus a PP. Maire et Boscovich. The value of this work was
increased by a carefully prepared map of the States of the Church.
A French translation appeared in 1770. A dispute having
arisen between the grand duke of Tuscany and the republic of
Lucca with respect to the drainage of a lake, Boscovich was sent,
in 1757, as agent of Lucca to Vienna, and succeeded in bringing
about a satisfactory arrangement of the matter. In the following
year he published at Vienna his famous work, Theoria philosophiae naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium,
containing his atomic theory (see Molecule). Another occasion
for the exercise of his diplomatic ability soon after presented
itself. A suspicion having arisen on the part of the British
government that ships of war had been fitted out in the port of
Ragusa for the service of France, and that the neutrality of
Ragusa had thus been violated, Boscovich was selected to
undertake an embassy to London (1760), to vindicate the
character of his native place and satisfy the government. This
mission he discharged successfully, with credit to himself and
satisfaction to his countrymen. During his stay in England he
was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He soon after paid
this society the compliment of dedicating to it his Latin poem,
entitled De Solis et Lunae Defectibus (London, 1764). This
prolix composition, one of a class which at that time was much in
vogue—metrical epitomes of the facts of science—contains in
about five thousand lines, illustrated by voluminous notes, a
compendium of astronomy. It was for the most part written
on horseback, during the author’s rides in the country while
engaged in his meridian measurements. The book is characterized
by G. B. J. Delambre as “uninstructive to an astronomer
and unintelligible to any one else.”
On leaving England Boscovich travelled in Turkey, but ill-health compelled him soon to return to Italy. In 1764 he was called to the chair of mathematics at the university of Pavia, and this post he held, together with the directorship of the observatory of Brera, for six years. He was invited by the Royal Society of London to undertake an expedition to California to observe the transit of Venus in 1769; but this was prevented by the recent decree of the Spanish government for the expulsion of the Jesuits from its dominions. The vanity, egotism and petulance of Boscovich provoked his rivals and made him many enemies, so that in hope of peace he was driven to frequent
