daughter of a Hanoverian official; but his passion for his wife’s younger sister Auguste (the “Molly” of his poems and elegies) rendered the union unhappy and unsettled his life. In 1778 Bürger became editor of the Musenalmanach, and in the same year published the first collection of his poems. In 1780 he took a farm at Appenrode, but in three years lost so much money that he had to abandon the venture. Pecuniary troubles oppressed him, and being accused of neglecting his official duties, and feeling his honour attacked, he gave up his official position and removed in 1784 to Göttingen, where he established himself as Privat-docent. Shortly before his removal thither his wife died (30th of July 1784), and on the 29th of June in the next year he married his sister-in-law “Molly.” Her death on the 9th of January 1786 affected him deeply. He appeared to lose at once all courage and all bodily and mental vigour. He still continued to teach in Göttingen; at the jubilee of the foundation of the university in 1787 he was made an honorary doctor of philosophy, and in 1789 was appointed extraordinary professor in that faculty, though without a stipend. In the following year he married a third time, his wife being a certain Elise Hahn, who, enchanted with his poems, had offered him her heart and hand. Only a few weeks of married life with his “Schwabenmädchen” sufficed to prove his mistake, and after two and a half years he divorced her. Deeply wounded by Schiller’s criticism, in the 14th and 15th part of the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung of 1791, of the 2nd edition of his poems, disappointed, wrecked in fortune and health, Bürger eked out a precarious existence as a teacher in Göttingen until his death there on the 8th of June 1794.
Bürger’s character, in spite of his utter want of moral balance, was not lacking in noble and lovable qualities. He was honest in purpose, generous to a fault, tender-hearted and modest. His talent for popular poetry was very considerable, and his ballads are among the finest in the German language. Besides Lenore, Das Lied vom braven Manne, Die Kuh, Der Kaiser und der Abt and Der wilde Jäger are famous. Among his purely lyrical poems, but few have earned a lasting reputation; but mention may be made of Das Blümchen Wunderhold, Lied an den lieben Mond, and a few love songs. His sonnets, particularly the elegies, are of great beauty.
Editions of Bürger’s Sämtliche Schriften appeared at Göttingen, 1817 (incomplete); 1829–1833 (8 vols.), and 1835 (one vol.); also a selection by E. Grisebach (5th ed., 1894). The Gedichte have been published in innumerable editions, the best being that by A. Sauer (2 vols., 1884). Briefe von und an Bürger were edited by A. Strodtmann in 4 vols. (1874). On Bürger’s life see the biography by H. Pröhle (1856), the introduction to Sauer’s edition of the poems, and W. von Wurzbach, G. A. Bürger (1900).
BURGERS, THOMAS FRANÇOIS (1834–1881), president of the Transvaal Republic, was born in Cape Colony on the 15th of April 1834, and was educated at Utrecht, Holland, where he took the degree of doctor of theology. On his return to South Africa he was ordained minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and stationed at Hanover in Cape Colony, where he exercised his ministrations for eight years. In 1862 his preaching attracted attention, and two years later an ecclesiastical tribunal suspended him for heretical opinions. He appealed, however, to the colonial government, which had appointed him, and obtained judgment in his favour, which was confirmed by the privy council of England on appeal in 1865. On the resignation of M. W. Pretorius and the refusal of President Brand of the Orange Free State to accept the office, Burgers was elected president of the Transvaal, taking the oath on the 1st of July 1872. In 1873 he endeavoured to persuade Montsioa to agree to an alteration in the boundary of the Barolong territory as fixed by the Keate award, but failed (see Bechuanaland). In 1875 Burgers, leaving the Transvaal in charge of Acting-President Joubert, went to Europe mainly to promote a scheme for linking the Transvaal to the coast by a railway from Delagoa Bay, which was that year definitely assigned to Portugal by the MacMahon award. With the Portuguese Burgers concluded a treaty, December 1875, providing for the construction of the railway. After meeting with refusals of financial help in London, Burgers managed to raise £90,000 in Holland, and bought a quantity of railway plant, which on its arrival at Delagoa Bay was mortgaged to pay freight, and this, so far as Burgers was concerned, was the end of the matter. In June 1876 he induced the raad to declare war against Sikukuni (Secocoeni), a powerful native chief in the eastern Transvaal. The campaign was unsuccessful, and with its failure the republic fell into a condition of lawlessness and insolvency, while a Zulu host threatened invasion. Burgers in an address to the raad (3rd of March 1877) declared “I would rather be a policeman under a strong government than the president of such a state. It is you—you members of the raad and the Boers—who have lost the country, who have sold your independence for a drink.” Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had been sent to investigate the condition of affairs in the Transvaal, issued on the 12th of April a proclamation annexing the Transvaal to Great Britain. Burgers fully acquiesced in the necessity for annexation. He accepted a pension from the British government, and settled down to farming in Hanover, Cape Colony. He died at Richmond in that colony on the 9th of December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories, Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the Cape Volksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with insufficient means (see Transvaal: History).
For the annexation period see John Martineau, The Life of Sir Bartle Frere, vol. ii. chap, xviii. (London, 1895).
BURGERSDYK, or Burgersdicius, FRANCIS (1590–1629), Dutch logician, was born at Lier, near Delft, and died at Leiden. After a brilliant career at the university of Leiden, he studied theology at Saumur, where while still very young he became professor of philosophy. After five years he returned to Leiden, where he accepted the chair of logic and moral philosophy, and afterwards that of natural philosophy. His Logic was at one time widely used, and is still valuable. He wrote also Idea Philosophiae Moralis (1644).
BURGES, GEORGE (1786–1864), English classical scholar, was born in India. He was educated at Charterhouse school and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1807, and obtaining one of the members' prizes both in 1808 and 1809. He stayed up at Cambridge and became a most successful “coach.” He had a great reputation as a Greek scholar, and was a somewhat acrimonious critic of rival scholars, especially Bishop Blomfield. Subsequently he fell into embarrassed circumstances through injudicious speculation, and in 1841 a civil list pension of £100 per annum was bestowed upon him. He died at Ramsgate, on the 11th of January 1864. Burges was a man of great learning and industry, but too fond of introducing arbitrary emendations into the text of classical authors.
His chief works are: Euripides’ Troades (1807) and Phoenissae (1809); Aeschylus’ Supplices (1821), Eumenides (1822) and Prometheus (1831); Sophocles’ Philoctetes (1833); E. F. Poppo’s Prolegomena to Thucydides (1837), an abridged translation with critical remarks; Hermesianactis Fragmenta (1839).
He also edited some of the dialogues of Plato with English notes, and translated nearly the whole of that author and the Greek anthology for Bohn’s Classical library. He was a frequent contributor to the Classical Journal and other periodicals, and dedicated to Byron a play called The Son of Erin, or, The Cause of the Greeks (1823).
BURGESS, DANIEL (1645–1713), English Presbyterian divine, was born at Staines, in Middlesex, where his father was minister. He was educated under Busby at Westminster school, and in 1660 was sent to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, but not being able conscientiously to subscribe the necessary formulae he quitted the university without taking his degree. In 1667, after taking orders, he was appointed by Roger Boyle, first Lord Orrery, to the headmastership of a school recently established by that nobleman at Charleville, Co. Cork, and soon after he became private chaplain to Lady Mervin, near Dublin. There he was
