A GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. BY JOHN GORTON, AUTHOR OF THE "GENERAL TOPOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY," &c. &c. A NEW EDITION, CONTINUED TO THE YEAR 1833. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE-MARIA-LANE. 1833. A GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. A A A B AA (PETER VAN DER) a bookseller of Ley-dinary embassies to England and Venice; that den, and a laborious publisher and compiler of to England was to negociate the marriage of voyages, travels, and geographical collections, William Prince of Orange with the daughter in the Dutch and French languages. Among of Charles I-the commencement of a family these is the "Galerie du Monde," an immense connexion which led to the most important collection of maps and plates in 66 vols. folio. consequences. Aarsens died ennobled, at an He also continued Grævius' "Thesaurus Anti- advanced age, leaving an only son, the richest quitatum Italiæ," and carried on an extensive man in Holland. A volume of his negociations business from 1682 until his death in 1730.- has been printed.-Bayle. Un. Biog. Nouv. Dict. Hist. ABARIS, a Scythian, the son of Seuthes, priest of the Hyperborean Apollo, and probably a real personage; but the facts recorded of him are so fabulous and contradictory, that the time even of his existence is a subject of dispute. The least absurd of these accounts make him a sort of ambassador from the Scythians to the Athenians, at the time of a general plague, on which mission he is said to have disputed with Pythagoras, in the presence of Phalaris; a story that is contradicted by chronology. He is fabled to have been presented with an arrow by Apollo, astride of which he could fly through the air. This fiction has produced much figurative and humourous allusion to a character, which probably appertains rather to Mythology than to Biography.- Bayle. ABATE (ANDREA) a Neapolitan painter, celebrated for his representation of flowers, fruit, and inanimate life. He was employed by Charles II King of Spain, to decorate the Escurial in conjunction with Luca Giordano. He died in 1732.-Pilkington. AARON (PIETRO) a Florentine and a canon of Rimini, was one of the composers in the ABAUZIT (FIRMIN) a French writer of chapel of Leo X, and an elaborate writer on mu- great merit, was born at Uzes, in Languedoc, sic. The most considerable of his works is, "I in 1679. He lost his father, who was a French Toscanello della Musica," Venice, 1523, 1529, Protestant, at two years of age; and the Edict 1539, an able production. Pietro Aaron wrote of Nantes being then revoked, his mother, unin the Italian language, which rendered his der all the terrors of that perfidious and mercilabours more widely useful in his own country, less persecution, contrived to have him conalmost all the musical writers before him hav-veyed to Geneva, for which act she was herselt ing written in Latin.-Burney's Hist. Mus. confined for two years in the castle of Somieres. AARSENS (FRANCIS) Lord of Someldyk and On regaining her liberty, she repaired to GeSpyck, one of the ablest negociators ever pro- neva, and expended the remains of a small duced by the United Provinces, was born at fortune in the education of Abauzit, who made the Hague in 1572. Being early introduced great acquirements in languages, history, aninto public life by his father, who was re- tiquities, mathematics, natural history, physics gistrar of the States, he first became resident, and theology. To finish his education, he suband subsequently ambassador to the court of sequently visited Holland and England, where France, where he remained fifteen years. Pro- he was introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, who foundly skilled in the arts of diplomacy, he seems quickly appreciated his great attainments, and to have occasionally much annoyed the French sent him his "Commercium Epistolicum," accabinet by the depth of his penetration; but was, companied with the following honourable testinevertheless, held in high esteem by Cardinal mony in writing-"You are well worthy to judge Richelieu. He was also employed in extraor-between Leibnitz and me.' King William BLOG. DICT.-No. I. B |