Witte

, or W1TTEN (Henningus), a German biographer, was born in 1634. We find very few particulars of him, although he has contributed so muc)i to our knowledge of other eminent men. He was a divine and professor of divinity at Riga, where he died Jan. 22, 1696. Morhoff bestows considerable praise on his biographical labours, which were principally five volumes of memoirs of the celebrated men of the seventeenth century, as a sequel to those of Meichior Adam. They were octavo volumes, and published under the titles of “Memoria Theologorum nostri seculi,” Franc. 1674, reprinted in 1695, 2 vols. “Memoria Medicorum” “Memoria Jurisconsultorum” | “Memoria Philosophorum,” &c. which last includes poets and polite scholars. The whole consist of original lives, or eloges collected from the best authorises. The greater part are Germans, butthere are a few French and English. In 1688 he published, what we have often found very useful, his * 4 Diarium Biographicum Scriptorum seculi xvii.“vol. I. 4to, 1688, vol, II. 1691. It appears that Wittepaid a visit to England in 1666, and became acquainted with the celebrated Dr. Pocock, to whom he sent a letter ten years afterwards, informing the doctor that he had for some time been engaged in a design of writing the lives of the most famous writers of that age in each branch of literature, and had already published some decades, containing memoirs of divines, civilians, and physicians;” that he was now collecting eloges on the most illustrious phiiologers, historians, orators, and philosophers; but wanted memoirs of the chief Englishmen who, in the present (seventeenth) century, have cultivated these sciences, having no relation of this sort in his possession, except of Mr. Camden; he begs, therefore, that Dr. Pocock, would, by the bearer, transmit to him whatever he had to communicate in this way." ¹