connexion. Blandrata was charged with “Italian vice”; Dávid renounced the worship of Christ. To influence Dávid, Blandrata sent for Faustus Socinus from Basel. Socinus was Dávid’s guest, but the discussion between them led to no result. At the instance of Blandrata, Dávid was tried and condemned to prison at Déva (in which he died) on the charge of innovation. Having amassed a fortune, Blandrata returned to the communion of Rome. His end is obscure. According to the Jesuit, Jacob Wujek, he was strangled by a nephew (Giorgio, son of Alphonso) in May 1588. He published a few polemical writings, some in conjunction with Dávid.
See Malacarne, Commentario delle Opere e delle Vicende di G. Blandrata (Padova, 1814); Wallace, Anti-trinitarian Biography, vol. ii. (1850). (A. Go.*)
BLANE, SIR GILBERT (1749–1834), Scottish physician,
was born at Blanefield, Ayrshire, on the 29th of August 1749.
He was educated at Edinburgh university, and shortly after
his removal to London became private physician to Lord Rodney,
whom he accompanied to the West Indies in 1779. He did much
to improve the health of the fleet by attention to the diet of the
sailors and by enforcing due sanitary precautions, and it was
largely through him that in 1795 the use of lime-juice was made
obligatory throughout the navy as a preventive of scurvy.
Enjoying a number of court and hospital appointments he built
up a good practice for himself in London, and the government
constantly consulted him on questions of public hygiene. He
was made a baronet in 1812 in reward for the services he rendered
in connexion with the return of the Walcheren expedition.
He died in London on the 26th of June 1834. Among his works
were Observations on the Diseases of Seamen (1795) and Elements
of Medical Logic (1819).
BLANFORD, WILLIAM THOMAS (1832–1905), English
geologist and naturalist, was born in London on the 7th of
October 1832. He was educated in private schools in Brighton
and Paris, and with a view to the adoption of a mercantile career
spent two years in a business house at Civita Vecchia. On returning
to England in 1851 he was induced to enter the newly established
Royal School of Mines, which his younger brother Henry
F. Blanford (1834–1893), afterwards head of the Indian Meteorological
Department, had already joined; he then spent a year
in the mining school at Freiburg, and towards the close of 1854
both he and his brother obtained posts on the Geological Survey
of India. In that service he remained for twenty-seven years,
retiring in 1882. He was engaged in various parts of India, in
the Raniganj coalfield, in Bombay, and in the coalfield near
Talchir, where boulders considered to have been ice-borne
were found in the Talchir strata—a remarkable discovery confirmed
by subsequent observations of other geologists in equivalent
strata elsewhere. His attention was given not only to
geology but to zoology, and especially to the land-mollusca and
to the vertebrates. In 1866 he was attached to the Abyssinian
expedition, accompanying the army to Mágdala and back;
and in 1871–1872 he was appointed a member of the Persian
Boundary Commission. The best use was made of the exceptional
opportunities of studying the natural history of those
countries. For his many contributions to geological science
Dr Blanford was in 1883 awarded the Wollaston medal by the
Geological Society of London; and for his labours on the zoology
and geology of British India he received in 1901 a royal medal
from the Royal Society. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1874,
and was chosen president of the Geological Society in 1888.
He was created C.I.E. in 1904. He died in London on the 23rd
of June 1905. His principal publications were: Observations
on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (1870), and Manual of
the Geology of India, with H. B. Medlicott (1879).
Biography, with bibliography and portrait, in Geological Magazine, January 1905.
BLANK (from the Fr. blanc, white), a word used in various
senses based on that of “left white,” i.e. requiring something
to be filled in; thus a “blank cheque” is one which requires
the amount to be inserted, an insurance policy in blank, where
the name of the beneficiary is lacking, “blank verse” (q.v.)
verse without rhyme, “blank cartridge” that contains only
powder and no ball or shot. The word is also used, as a substantive,
for a ticket in a lottery or sweepstake which does not
carry a number or the name of a horse running or for an
unstamped metal disc in coining.
BLANKENBERGHE, a seaside watering-place on the North
Sea in the province of West Flanders, Belgium, 12 m. N.E.
of Ostend, and about 9 m. N.W. of Bruges, with which it
is connected by railway. It is more bracing than Ostend, and
has a fine parade over a mile in length. During the season,
which extends from June to September, it receives a large
number of visitors, probably over 60,000 altogether, from
Germany as well as from Belgium. There is a small fishing port
as well as a considerable fishing-fleet. Two miles north of this
place along the dunes is Zeebrugge, the point at which the new
ship-canal from Bruges enters the North Sea. Fixed population
(1904) 5925.
BLANKENBURG. (1) A town and health resort of Germany,
in the duchy of Brunswick, at the N. foot of the Harz Mountains,
12 m. by rail S.W. from Halberstadt. Pop. (1901) 10,173. It
has been in large part rebuilt since a fire in 1836, and possesses
a castle, with various collections, a museum of antiquities, an old
town hall and churches. There are pine-needle baths and a
hospital for nervous diseases. Gardening is a speciality. In the
vicinity is a cliff or ridge of rock called Teufelsmauer (Devil’s
wall), from which fine views are obtained across the plain and
into the deep gorges of the Harz Mountains.
(2) Another Blankenburg, also a health-resort, is situated in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, at the confluence of the rivers Rinne and Schwarza, and at the entrance of the Schwarzatal. Its environs are charming, and to the north of it, on an eminence, rise the fine ruins of the castle of Greifenstein, built by the German king Henry I., and from 1275 to 1583 the seat of a cadet branch of the counts of Schwarzburg.
BLANKETEERS, the nickname given to some 5000 operatives
who on the 10th of March 1817 met in St Peter’s Field, near
Manchester, to march to London, each carrying blankets or rugs.
Their object was to see the prince regent and lay their grievances
before him. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the
leaders were seized and imprisoned. The bulk of the demonstration
yielded at once. The few stragglers who persisted in
the march were intercepted by troops, and treated with considerable
severity. Eventually the spokesmen had an interview with
the ministers, and some reforms were the result.
BLANK VERSE, the unrhymed measure of iambic decasyllable
in five beats which is usually adopted in English epic
and dramatic poetry. The epithet is due to the absence of the
rhyme which the ear expects at the end of successive lines. The
decasyllabic line occurs for the first time in a Provençal poem
of the 10th century, but in the earliest instances preserved it is
already constructed with such regularity as to suggest that it
was no new invention. It was certainly being used almost
simultaneously in the north of France. Chaucer employed it
in his Compleynte to Pitie about 1370. In all the literatures of
western Europe it became generally used, but always with
rhyme. In the beginning of the 16th century, however, certain
Italian poets made the experiment of writing decasyllables
without rhyme. The tragedy of Sophonisba (1515) of G. G.
Trissino (1478–1550) was the earliest work completed in this
form; it was followed in 1525 by the didactic poem Le Api
(The Bees), of Giovanni Rucellai (1475–1525), who announced
his intention of writing “Con verso Etrusco dalle rime sciolto,”
in consequence of which expression this kind of metre was called
versi sciolti or blank verse. In a very short time this form was
largely adopted in Italian dramatic poetry, and the comedies
of Ariosto, the Aminta of Tasso and the Pastor Fido of Guarini
are composed in it. The iambic blank verse of Italy was, however,
mainly hendecasyllabic, not decasyllabic, and under French
influences the habit of rhyme soon returned.
Before the close of Trissino’s life, however, his invention had been introduced into another literature, where it was destined to enjoy a longer and more glorious existence. Towards the
