Bois-Guilbert (bwa´gel-bär´), Brian de.—Ivanhoe, Scott. A brave but cruel, crafty, and dissolute commander of the Knights Templar.
Boniface (bon´i-fās).—The Beaux’s Stratagem, Farquhar. A fine representation of an English landlord. Hence applied to landlords generally.
Bontemps (bôn-ton´), Roger.—Song, Beranger. Known in France as the personification of care-free leisure. The equivalent, among the French peasantry, for the English proverb, “There’s a good time coming,” is Roger Bontemps. This one of Beranger’s most celebrated songs was written in 1814.
Bottom, Nick.—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare. A man who fancies he can do everything, and do it better than anyone else. Shakespeare has drawn him as profoundly ignorant and with an overflow of self-conceit. Oberon, the fairy king, desiring to punish Titania, his queen, commissioned Puck to watch her till she fell asleep, and then to anoint her eyelids with the juice of a plant called “love-in-idleness,” the effect of which, when she awoke, was to make her dote upon Bottom, upon whom Puck had fixed an ass’s head.
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le (bōōr-zhwä´ zhon-tē-yōm´ lû).—A comedy by Molière, with music by Lulli, produced in 1670. The hero is a tradesman, M. Jourdain, who is ambitious to marry his daughter to a titled husband.
Bowling, Tom.—Roderick Random, Smollett. A name made almost famous as hero of the novel. Critics have said, “The character of Tom Bowling, in Roderick Random will be regarded in all ages as a happy exhibition of those naval heroes to whom Britain is indebted for so much of her happiness and glory.” The Tom Bowling referred to in Dibdin’s famous sea song was Captain Thomas Dibdin, brother of Charles Dibdin, who wrote the song.
Boz (boz), Sketches by.—By Charles Dickens. They were the first of their class. Dickens was the first to unite the delicately playful thread of Charles Lamb’s street musings—half experiences, half bookish fantasies—with the vigorous wit and humor and observation of Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, his Indigent Philosopher, and Man in Black, and twine them together in the golden cord of essay, which combines literature with philosophy, humor with morality, amusement with instruction. The most powerful and popular of the sketches are probably those entitled, A Visit to Newgate, The Drunkard’s Death, Election for Beadle, Greenwich Fair, and Miss Evans at the Eagle.
Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists.—Miscellaneous sketches, in fiction and essay, by Washington Irving, published in 1822.
Brag, Jack.—Jack Brag, Theodore Hook. Hero of the novel and a spirited embodiment of the arts employed by a vulgar pretender to creep into aristocratic society, and of his ultimate discomfiture. General Burgoyne figures in an old ballad known as Sir Jack Brag.
Bramble, Matthew.—Humphrey Clinker, Smollett. Noted character in the novel described as “an odd kind of humorist,” afflicted with the gout, and “always on the fret,” but full of generosity and benevolence.