Metkerke

, or Meetkercke, or Mekerchus (Adolphus), a learned writer, was born at Bruges in 1528, and passed the greater part of his life in the service of the revolted states of the Low Countries, as counsellor of state, and envoy to the foreign potentates. He was employed on an embassy to queen Elizabeth in the latter part of his life, an office which was probably very agreeable to him, as he was a protestant, and had resided here for the quiet enjoyment of his religion for some time before he was appointed on the embassy. He appears to have been an ornament and delight of the age in which he lived, second to none in literary accomplishments, and was a man also of great benevolence and amiable temper. Grief for the loss of his son is said to have hastened his death, which took place at London in 1591, in his sixty-fourth year. He was buried in the church of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, under a monument which, when that church was rebuilt, was conveyed to Julians, near Buntingford, in Hertfordshire, the seat of his descendants who settled in this country, and where some of them are still living. The present owner of the estate is in possession, among others, of a folio ms. of Greek and Latin poetry by his ancestor, the subject of this article, with additions by his son Adolphus, who died without issue, and by his son Edward, D. D. of Christchurch, Oxford, professor of Hebrew in that university, and prebendary of Winchester. He became professor in 1621, and died in 1660. Foppen asserts that sir Adolphus, as the ambassador was called, declared in writing, on his death-bed, that there was no true religion out of the catholic church, and that his daughter was so struck with this as to return to Bruges, and to the Roman catholic religion. As far as respects the daughter, this may be true, but her father certainly died in the protestant faith, as appears by the inscription on his monument, which Foppen is obliged to confess, is written “stylo acatholico.” Sir AdoU phus published in 1565, not a translation of some pieces of Bion and Moschus, as it has been erroneously called, but the first edition of “Bion and Moschus,” printed at Bruges in 1565, 4to, Gr. and Lat. It has a double Latin version with the Variorum scholia, the elegies of Phanoclis, and | some fragments of Propertius. It is a very rare and curious edition. Retranslated into Latin verse “Theocriti Epigrammata,” and published a treatise “De veteri et recta pronuntiatione linguae Graecas Commentarius,” Bruges, 1565, and Antwerp, 1576, 8vo. He contributed also to editions of the “Fasti Consulares,” “Vitae Caesarum,” “Magna Grsecia,” &c. and in his political character published “A Collection of the Proceedings at the Peace of Cologne, in 1579.” ¹