ments, will generally enable a very correct judgment to be formed respecting the relative values of all. The same remark, indeed, applies to all the awards of the Royal Society, and especially its medals.

BAKER, (John,) a British admiral. He entered the navy before the revolution. In 1692, he was made captain of the Newcastle, of 46 guns, one of the ships sent under Sir George Rook, in the following year, as convoy to the unfortunate Smyrna fleet. At the accession of queen Anne, he was advanced to captain of the Monmouth, of 70 guns. This ship he commanded as one of the fleet sent on the expedition against Cadiz, and bore a very distinguished share in the subsequent attack on Vigo, being one of vice-admiral Hopson's division, who led the assault. He continued during the two following years in the command of the same ship, first under Sir Cloudesly Shovel in 1703, who was sent to the Mediterranean to attempt the relief of the Cevennois; and in 1704, under Sir George Rook. The latter expedition will always be remembered; as well on account of the capture of Gibraltar, as of the victory over the French fleet off Malaga. In both these signal services, captain Baker highly distinguished himself; and in the latter was severely wounded. He attained his flag rank in 1707-8, and held several important commands during the reign of Anne. He escorted Mary Anne of Austria, afterwards queen of Portugal, from Holland to Portsmouth, on her route to Lisbon. Soon after the accession of George the First, he was appointed to command a squadron which was to restrain the depredations of the Salletines, who, about this time, began to be troublesome. He was ordered also to renew the treaties of peace with the rest of the Barbary States. He sailed on this service in June 1716. He arrived at Tripoli early in July; and having included in the renewed treaty of peace, the Minorquins, the recently acquired subjects of the king of Great Britain, he sailed for Tunis, where he was equally successful as a negociator. The Salletines were not so equitably and pacifically disposed; the vice-admiral was compelled to have recourse to compulsatory measures. Having fulfilled the object of his mission, he was preparing to return to England, when death closed his honourable career. He died at Port Mahon, 10th November, 1716, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. "The loss

66 was

of admiral Baker," says Lediard, very much lamented, he being an officer of consummate skill and experience." A splendid monument has been erected to his memory in Westminster abbey. (Charnock, Lediard, Campbell, &c.)

He

BAKER, (Sir George, Bart.,) a distinguished physician of the eighteenth century. He was the son of the Rev. George Baker, archdeacon and registrar of Totness, and born in Devonshire, in 1722. He was educated at Eton, and from thence entered as a scholar at King's college, Cambridge, in July 1742. He took the degree of B. A. in 1745, M. A. in 1749, and M. D. in 1756. first practised at Stamford, but afterwards in London, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, of which he was appointed the president in 1797. He delivered the Harveian Oration in 1761. He was a fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, was appointed physician in ordinary to queen Charlotte, and afterwards to George III. He was created a baronet, Aug. 26, 1776, and he died in Jermyn-street, June 15, 1809, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. Sir George Baker has always been admired as a scholar and as a critic; his Latin compositions have received the applause of the first scholars; his English writings are alike distinguished by their purity. His ability as a practitioner, his acute perception of disease, and his skill in the relief of it, are fully admitted by his contemporaries; and his amiable manners and his accomplishments endeared him to a very large circle of the most distinguished characters in rank, science, letters, and the arts. He contributed many papers to the Transactions of the Royal College of Physicians, and to the Medical Observations and Inquiries. Fourteen papers read at the college were collected together, and published by his son, the late Sir Frederic Baker, bart., in 1818. These were read between the years 1767 and 1785, and treat of various subjects in medicine. The principal one, and that which deserves to be especially recorded, relates to the poison of lead, and its effects on the human frame. Sir George Baker was a native of Devonshire, and did not fail to observe that the inhabitants of that county were particularly liable to a peculiar and fatal species of colic, the symptoms of which resembled those following the absorption of lead. He was therefore induced to examine into the nature of

tion against the Greeks, he sent his son in his stead, and died soon after, about A.H. 213 (A.D. 828-9). The titles of several of his works are preserved, but, as far as the writer is aware, none of them are now extant, certainly none of them have been published. He is quoted by Rhazes (Contin. lib. viii. cap. 1; lib. xi. cap. 1), and a great number of curious sayings and observations by him are to be found in Ibn Abi Osaibia. He said that in Spain two drachms of scammony were sometimes given at a dose, while at Bagdad half a drachm was sufficient. There is also a curious list of all the presents that he received, and of his annual income from the khalif, from which it appears that his riches must have been immense.

His son, who is called, by Ibn Abi Osai

بختيشوع بن جبريل بن بختیشوع bia

BAKTISHWA BEN GIABRÍL BEN BAKHTISHWA, was the fourth physician of the family, and succeeded his father as physician to the khalif Al-Mamoún, A.H. 213 (A.D. 828-9). Like his father, he experienced many vicissitudes of fortune, and was disgraced and banished by Al-Mamoún, who, however, recalled him to his court in his last illness, A.H. 218 (A.D. 833), but not in time to save his life. He is the person alluded to by AbulPharaj (Hist. Dyn. p. 154) in the pleasantry between Mesue and Bakhtishwa in the camp of Al-Motassem, A.H. 220 (A.D. 835), of which he gives an account, and which, if dates be not attended to, may occasion some perplexity; for Giabríl was at that time dead, and therefore the historian, who sometimes relates anecdotes out of their chronological order, speaks there of the son. He was afterwards physician to the khalif Al-Motawakkel, who succeeded to the throne A.H. 232, (A.D. 847). He died, according to Abul-Pharaj, (Hist. Dyn. p. 171,) A.H. 256 (A.D. 870).

GIABRIL BEN OBEID ALLAH BEN BAKHTISHWA, who made a considerable figure in physic, was the author of several books, and died at the age of eighty-five, A.H. 396 (A.D. 1005-6).

The last physician of this family mentioned by Ibn Abi Osaibia, is called OBEID ALLAH BEN GIABRIL, also called ABOU SAID, who is perhaps the same person mentioned by Casiri (Bibl. Arabico-Hisp. Escur. t. i. p. 312) as the author of a work called, Al-raudat altabíat, Hortus Medicinæ, consisting of fifty chapters, and written for the use of the khalif Motaki, A.H. 330 (A.D. 941-2).

A treatise entitled, Menáfe al-Haiwán, De Utilitate quæ ex Animalibus percipi potest, by one of this family, named ABDALLAH BEN GIABRIL BEN BAKHTISHWA, is stated by D'Herbelot to be still extant in the king's library at Paris, No.939. D'Herbelot suspects him to have been a Moslem, from his name, because the Christians, he says, never gave the name of Abdallah to their children; but in this (says Russell, Appendix to Nat. Hist. of Aleppo) he is most certainly mistaken, that name being not less common among the Christians than the Mohammedans.

It may be useful to mention that the article Bakhtischua in D'Herbelot is very confused and incorrect; but some of these long Arabic genealogies are so very intricate and puzzling that the writer is not at all sure that he has himself succeeded in avoiding some inaccuracies.

BAKHTIYAR, (Fortunate,) the name of a prince of the Bouiyan family in Persia, better known by the name of Azzed-Doulah. See Azz-ED-DOULAH.

BAKHUYSEN, (Ludolf,) a Dutch painter, born at Embden, in 1631. Brought up as a merchant, and placed at the age of eighteen in a house at Amsterdam, he made his first essays in drawing the ships in the harbour, and, following the line which he had thus taken up, he became especially eminent as a painter of marine subjects. He received lessons from Van Everdingen and others; and his zeal was so great, that he often exposed himself in an open boat to the dangers of the storm, in order to study nature. His pictures have always been much valued. One presented by the burgomasters of Amsterdam to Louis XIV., with several other paintings by

D

him, are still preserved at Paris. Bakhuysen also cultivated poetry. He died in 1709. (Biog. Univ.)

BAKI, (commonly so called, but more properly Abd-ol-Baki,) the most celebrated lyric poet of the Ottomans, was born in the reign of Soliman the Magnificent, the Augustan age of Turkish poetry. He applied himself from his earliest youth to the cultivation of literature; and on his presenting his first work to Soliman, the sultan, who was both a munificent patron of genius, and himself a poet of respectable pretensions, not only recognised and rewarded with gifts and honours the talent of the youthful lyrist, but addressed to him an ode, in which he hailed him as the greatest of the national poets, and felicitated himself on possessing such an ornament in his reign. The judgment of the monarch has been confirmed by that of his subjects, both in his own and succeeding ages; and Baki has been unanimously styled the king and sultan of lyrical versification by Turkish critics, who rank him with Hafez in the Persian, and Motanebbi in the Arabic language. The elegy, in which he deplored the death of his first patron, sultan Soliman, has been esteemed the most precious gem of Turkish poetry; and his renown continued unshaken during the reigns of Selim II. and Mourad III., both of whom, like their great predecessor, were personally candidates for the poetic wreath. The attainments of Baki were not, however, confined to his poetical merits; he was also a legist of high reputation, and held at three different times the dignity of cazi-asker, or supreme judge of Roumelia. In 1598 he was even proposed by the grand vizir to Mohammed III., to fill the vacant post of mufti, but the sultan conferred it on his own tutor Saad-ed-Deen; and the mortification consequent on a second disappointment after the death of Saad-edDeen two years later, is said to have shortened the life of Baki, who died April 7, A. D. 1600, A. H. 1009. In opposition to many of the earlier Turkish poets, who by preference clothed their thoughts in the more harmonious glow of the Persian language, Baki adopted his native tongue as the vehicle of his compositions; and their enduring popularity among all ranks of the Osmanlis, has justified the appellation of Baki (the durable,) by which their author is generally known. Besides his poetical works, he is said by Von Hammer-Purgstall

(from whose History of the Ottoman Empire the foregoing account is principally extracted,) to have translated into Turkish, three standard Arabic treatises— a Life of Mohammed; a History of Mecca; and a Dissertation on the Meritoriousness of the Holy War (against infidels). The same author alludes in his notes to a German translation of the works of Baki, with which we have been unable to meet in England.

BAKICS, pronounced Bakitsh, (Paul,) a gallant Hungarian champion in the wars against the Turks, who was descended from a Slavonian family. He came, with his four brothers, at the instigation of Paul Tomori, to Hungary, where king Lewis II. gave him the castle Lak. He fought in 1524 against Pasha Ferhat, and escaped unhurt the slaughter of Mohács.

Afterwards he united himself with John Zápolya against Ferdinand I.; but when the army of the former was defeated in 1527, near Tokaj, he went over to the king, at the instigation of Stephen Bátori, and obtained a military command. At the famous siege of Vienna by sultan Soliman, Bakics defended with two hundred raizes the bridge of the Danube most valorously, and made also some successful sorties against the enemy. He was sent at a subsequent period with 1000 hussars to the fortress of Sophia, where the Turks, believing the whole christian army coming on, burnt the fortress and fled. On this occasion, some prisoners acquainted him with the intention of the Turks to fight the battle of Eszek. In that battle Bakics was slain, and his head sent as a trophy to the sultan.

BAKICS, (Peter,) brother of the foregoing, was a staunch supporter of Ferdinand I. When in consequence of the Schmalkalden league, Francis Nyári conducted a Hungarian army against John Frederic of Saxony, Peter was made commander in chief, Nyári becoming severely indisposed. At the battle of Mühlberg, at which Charles V. of Ausstria, and his brother Ferdinand, were present, John Frederic burnt the bridge over the Elbe, but the Spanish troopers caught it while afloat, whilst Peter Bakics swam over the river with his barbarian troops, attacked the protestants, and took the unfortunate Saxon prince a prisoner. Charles V. recommended Bakics for a distinguished reward. When Ferdinand determined to march home through Bohemia, the inhabitants of Prague refused to let him pass; but Bakics sabred them, with the