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 AB 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 collection of maps and plates in 66 vols. folio. He also continued Grævius' "Thesaurus Antiquitatum Italiæ," and carried on an extensive business from 1682 until his death in 1730.Nour. Dict. Hist. AAGESEN (SUEND.) in Latin, Sueno Agonis, a Danish historian, much esteemed for his antiquity and accuracy, who flourished about 1186. He was secretary to Archbishop Absalon, under whose auspices he compiled-1.a history of Denmark, under the title of "Compendiosa Historia regum Daniæ, a Skioldo ad Canutum VI;" 2. "Historia legum castrensium Regis Canuti Magni;" both which works have been often reprinted. Biog. Universelle. AARON, a presbyter of Alexandria in the seventh century, author of thirty books on me dicine in the Syrian language, which he called "Pandects."" These works include treatises on the small pox and measles, which diseases were propagated from Arabia.-Friend's Hist. Med. AARON (BEN ASSER) a rabbi of the fifth century, author of a Hebrew Grammar, printed at Venice, to whom the invention of Hebrew points is very doubtfully assigned. - Moreri. AARON (PIETRO) a Florentine and a canon of Rimini, was one of the composers in the chapel of Leo X, and an elaborate writer on music. The most considerable of his works is, "Il Toscanello della Musica," Venice, 1523, 1529, 1539, an able production. Pietro Aaron wrote in the Italian language, which rendered his labours more widely useful in his own country, almost all the musical writers before him having written in Latin. - Burney's Hist. Mus. connexion which led to the most important consequences. Aarsens died ennobled, at an advanced age, leaving an only son, the richest man in Holland. A volume of his negociations has been printed.-Bayle. Un. Biog. 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. ABAUZIT (FIRMIN) a French writer of great merit, was born at Uzes, in Languedoc, in 1679. He lost his father, who was a French Protestant, at two years of age; and the Edict of Nantes being then revoked, his mother, under all the terrors of that perfidious and merciless persecution, contrived to have him conveyed to Geneva, for which act she was herselt confined for two years in the castle of Somieres. On regaining her liberty, she repaired to Geneva, and expended the remains of a small fortune in the education of Abauzit, who made great acquirements in languages, history, antiquities, mathematics, natural history, physics AARSENS (FRANCIS) Lord of Someldyk and Spyck, one of the ablest negociators ever produced by the United Provinces, was born at the Hague in 1572. Being early introduced into public life by his father, who was registrar 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," cabinet 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 Bιού. DICT.-No. I. B ac |