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The archbishop sat in the see of Canterbury twentyeight years, and died at St. Stephen’s near that city, in the house of William Warham, his kinsman, and archdeacon of Canterbury, in 1532. He was interred, without any pomp, in his cathedral, in a little chapel built by himself for the place of his burial, on the north of Becket’s tomb, where a monument was erected for him, which was defaced in the civil wars. He laid out to the value of 300Q/. in repairing and beautifying the houses belonging to his see. It appears, from a letter of Erasmus to sir Thomas More, that though he had passed through the highest posts in church and state, he had so little regarded his own private advantage, that he left no more than was sufficient to pay his debts and funeral charges. And it is said, that, when he was near his death, he called upon his steward to know what nioney he had in his hands; who telling him “that he had hut thirty pounds,” he cheerfully answered, Satis maticiin cwlum, i.e. “That was enough to last till he got to Heaven.” ' He left his theological books to the library of All-Souls college, his civil and canon law books to New college, and all his books of church music to Winchester college.

He was the warm friend and generous patron of Erasmus, to whom, besides many letters, he sent his portrait, which Dr. Knight suppose* to have been a copy of that at Lambeth by Holbein; Erasmus, in return, sent him his own. He also dedicated his edition of St. Jerome to the archbishop, and in other parts of his works, bestows the highest encomiums on him. He calls him his only M*aeeenas, and says that his generosity and liberality extended not to bim only, but to all men of letters. Erasmus gives us a very pleasing account of Warham’s private life. “That,” says he, “which enabled him to go through such various cares and employments, was, that no part of his time, nor no degree of his attention, was taken up with hunting, or gaming, in idle or trifling conversation, or in luxury or voluptuousness. Instead of any diversions or amusements of this kind, he delighted in the reading of some good and pleasing author, or in the conversation of some learned man. And although he sometimes had prelates, dukes, and earls as his guests, he never spent more than an hour at dinner. The entertainment which he provided for his friends was liberal and splendid, and suitable to the dignity of his rank; but he never touched any dainties of the kind himself. He seldom tasted wine; and when he had attained the age of seventy years, drank nothing, for the most part, but a little small beer. But notwithstanding his great temperance and abstemiousness, he added to the cheerfulness and festivity of every entertainment at which he was present, by the pleasantness of his countenance, and the vivacity and agreeableness of his conversation. The same sobriety was seen in him after dinner as before. He abstained from suppers altogether: unless he happened to have any very familiar friends with him, of which number I was; when he would, indeed, sit down to table, but then could scarcely be said to eat any thing. If that did not happen to be the case, he employed mr time by others usually appropriated to suppers, in study or devotion. But as he was remarkably agreeable and facetious in his discourse, but without biting or buffoonery, so he delighted much in jesting freely with his frit-lids But scurrility, defamation, or slander, he abhorred, and avoided as he would a snake. In this manner did this great man make his days sufficiently long', of the shortness of which many complain.”!

, Lucasian professor of mathematics in the university of Cambridge, was descended from an ancient family at Mitton, in the parish of Fittes, Shropshire, being the eldest son of John Waring of that place. He was born in 1734, and after being educated at the free school at Shrewsbury, under Mr. Kotchkis, was sent on one of Millington’s exhibitions to Magdalen college, Cambridge, where he applied himself with such assiduity to the study of mathematics, that in 1757, when he proceeded bachelor of arts, he was the senior wrangler, or most distinguished graduate of the year. This honour, for the securing of which he probably postponed his first degree to the late period of his twenty-third year, led to his election, only two years afterwards, to the office of Lucasian professor. The appointment of a young man, scarcely twenty-five years of age, and still only a bachelor of arts, to a chair which had been honoured by the names of Newton, Saunderson, and Barrow, gave great offence to the senior members of the university, by whom the talents and pretensions of the new professor were severely arraigned. The first chapter of his “Miscellanea Analytica,” which Mr. Waring circulated in vindication of his scientific character, gave rise to a controversy of some duration. Dr. Powell, master of St. John’s, commenced the attack by a pamphlet of “Observations” upon this specimen of the professor’s qualifications for his office. Wariug was defended in a very able reply, for which he was indebted to Mr. Wilson, then an under-graduate of Peter House, afterwards sir John Wilson, a judge of the common pleas, and a magistrate justly beloved and revered for his amiable temper, learning, honesty, and independent spirit. In 1760, Dr. Powell wrote a defence of his “Observations,” and here the controversy ended. Mr. Waring’s deficiency of academical honours was supplied in the same year by the degree of M. A. conferred upon him by royal mandate, and he remained in the undisturbed possession of his office. Two years afterwards, his work, a part of which had excited so warm a dispute, was published from the university press, in quarto, under the title of “Miscellanea Analytica de Æquationibus Algebraicis et Curvarum Proprietatibus,” with a dedication to the duke of Newcastle. It appears from the title-page, that Waring was by this time elected a fellow of his college. The book itself, so intricate and abstruse are its subjects, is understood to have been little studied even by expert mathematicians. Indeed, speaking of this and his other works, in a subsequent publication, he says himself, “I never could hear of any reader in England out of Cambridge, who took the pains to read and understand what I have written.”

For his profession in life, Mr. Waring chose the study of medicine, and proceeded a doctor in that faculty in 1767. In 1771 he appears in the list of physicians to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge; and about this time practised in the neighbouring town of St. Ives. But though he followed this pursuit with characteristicai assiduity, and attended lectures and hospitals in London, he never enjoyed extensive practice. Of this he was the less careful, as, in addition to the emoluments, which are considerable, of his professorship, he possessed a very handsome patri­' monial fortune, while his favourite science supplied him with an inexhausible fund of amusement and occupation. In 1776 he entered into a matrimonial connexion with miss Mary Oswell, sister of Mr. William Oswell, a respectable draper in Shrewsbury; and not many years afterwards retired from the university, first to a house in Shrewsbury, and at length to his own estate at Plealey, near Pontesbury. The mathematical inquiries which had occupied so large a portion of his early lite, he still continued to cultivate with undiminished diligence; and he also occasionally indulged in philosophical excursions of a more popular and intelligible class. The result of these he collected in a volume printed at Cambridge, in 1794, with the title of “An Essay on the Principles of Human Knowledge.” Under this comprehensive title are contained his opinions on a great variety of subjects. But this book, in the front of which he designates himself as fellow of the Royal Society of London, and of those of Bologna and Gottingen, was never published. Thus passed the even tenour of Dr. Waring’s life, interrupted occasionally by a visit to the Board of Longitude, in London, of which he was a member, and from which he always returned with an encreased relish for his country retreat at Plealey: and here he might have promised himself many years of life and health, when his career was terminated by a short illness, produced by a violent cold caught in superintending some additions which he was making to his house. He died on the 15th of August, 1798, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

Dr. Waring successively produced a number of pieces, of a like abstruse kind as his “Miscellanea Analytica,” such as the “Proprietates Algebraicarum Curvarum,” published in 1772, the “Meditationes Algebraicae,” published in 1770, and the “Meditationes A nalyticoe,” which were in the press during 1773, 1774, 1775, and 1776. These were the chief and the most laborious works edited by the professor; and in the Philosophical Transactions is to be found a variety of papers, the nature of which may be seen from the following catalogue.

Vol. LIII. page 294, Mathematical Problems. LIV. 193, New Properties in Conies, LV. 143, Two Theorems in Mathematics. LXIX. Problems concerning Interpolations. Ib. 86, A general Resolution of Algebraical Equations. LXXVI. 81, On Infinite Series. LXXVII. 71, On finding the Values of Algebraical Quantities by converging serieses, and demonstrating and extending propositions given by Pappus and others. LXXVIII. 67, On Centripetal Forces. Ib. 588, On some Properties of the Sum of the Division of Numbers. LXXIX. 166, On the Method of correspondent Values, &c. Ib. 185, On the Resolution of attractive Powers. LXXXI. 146, On infinite Serieses. LXXXIV. 385 415, On the Summation of those Serieses whose general term is a determinate function of z, the distance of the term of the Series. For these papers, the professor was, in 1784, deservedly honoured by the Royal Society with sir Godfrey Copley’s medal; and most of them afford very strong proofs of the powers of his mind, both in abstract science, and the application of it to philosophy; though they labour, in common with his other works, under the disadvantage of being clothed in a very unattractive form.

In his disposition and character, Dr. Waring is represented as of inflexible integrity, great modesty, plainness, and simplicity of manners; of a meekness and a diffidence of rnind to such a degree, as to be always embarrassed before strangers. His extreme short-sightedness too, joined to a certain want of order and method in his mind, which appeared remarkably even in his hand-writing, rendered his mathematical compositions so confused and embarrassed, that in manuscript they were often utterly inexplicable, a circumstance which may account for the numerous typographical errors in his publications.

We shall sum up this sketch of the life of Dr. Waring, with the concluding words of his “Essay on Human Knowledge,” which contain a just and pleasing specimen of his genuine piety and unfeigned humility. “Should it please Providence to deprive me of the use of my Faculties, may I submit with humble resignation! May I for the future lead a life better in practice, and more fervent in devotion to the Supreme Being; and may God grant me his grace here, and pardon for my sins, when the trumpet of the great Archangel shall summon me to life again, and to judgement!”

, a very voluminous writer, was born in 1703, but where we are not told. He was of Jesus college, Cambridge, according to Mr. Cole, but we do not find his name among the graduates of that university. In 1730 he became vicar of Ronde, in Wiltshire; in 1746 rector of St. Michael Queenhithe, London, and in 1758 rector of Barnes, in Surrey. He also styles himself chaplain to the lord chancellor, and LL. D.; the latter title probably obtained from some northern university. He died Oct. 3, 1768, aged sixty-five. Dr. Warner was a laborious man, and having deservedly attained the character of a judicious and useful writer, as well as a popular preacher, he was frequently engaged in compilations for the booksellers, which, however, he executed in a very superior manner, and gave many proofs of diligent research and judgment, both in his reflections and in the use he made of his materials. The following we believe to be a complete, or nearly complete list of his publications 1. “A Sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, January 30, 1748.” 2. “A Sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, on September 2,” 1749. 3. “A system of Divinity and Morality, containing a series of discourses on the principal and most important points of natural and revealed Religion; compiled from the works of the most eminent divines of the Church of England,” 1750, 5 vols. J2mo. This was reprinted in 1756, 4 vols. 8vo. 4. “A scheme for a Fund for the better Maintenance of the Widows and Children of the clergy,” 1753, 8vo. For this scheme, when carried into execution, he received the thanks of the London clergy, assembled in Sion college, May 21, 1765, and published another pamphlet, hereafter to be mentioned. 5. “An illustration of the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies of the Church of England,” &c. 1754, folio. In this year he took the degree of LL. D. probably, as we have already suggested, at some northern university. 6. “Bolingbroke, or a dialogue on the origin and authority of Revelation,” 1755, 8vo. 7. “A free and necessary enquiry whether the Church of England in her Liturgy, and many of her learned divines in their writings, have not, by some unwary expressions relating to Transubstantiation and the real presence, given so great an advantage to papists and deists as may prove fatal to true religion, unless some remedy be speedily supplied; with remarks on the power of priestly absolution,” 1755, 8vo. 8. In 1756 he published the first volume of his “Ecclesiastical History to the Eighteenth Century,” folio; the second volume in 1757. This is the most valuable of all his works, and has frequently been quoted with approbation. 9. “Memoirs of the Life of sir Thomas More, lord high chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII. 1758,” 8vo. This is dedicated to sir Rcbert Henley, afterwards lord chancellor Northington, who is complimented for the favours he had conferred on him on his receiving the seals; probably for the rectory of Barnes, with which he held Queenhithe and Trinity the Less. 10. “Remarks on the History of Fingal and other poems of Ossian, translated by Mr. Macpherson, in a letter to the right hon. the lord L (Lyttelton),” 1762,

8vo. 11. “The History of Ireland, vol*. 1.” 1763, 4to. He published no more of this, being discouraged by a disappointment in his expectations of some parliamentary assistance. Yet in one of those newspaper notices, which Dr. Warner did not disdain, he speaks of the encouragement which he met with when he went to Ireland in 1761 in search of materials for this work. He tells us of “the liberty granted him by the provost and fellows of the university to peruse the books and Mss. in the college library, as also those in the library of St. Sepulchre, founded by the late primate Marsh; and of his free access to the collections of Mr. Harris, which were purchased by the parliament, &c. that he was likewise complimented with the liberty of searching the records of the privy council, and other offices, &c.” 12. “A letter to the fellows of Sion college, and to all the clergy within the bills of mortality, and in the county of Middlesex, humbly proposing their forming themselves into a Society for the Maintenance of the Widows and Orphans of such Clergymen. To which is added, a sketch of some Rules and Orders suitable to that purpose,” 1765, 8vo. 13. “The History of the Rehellion and Civil War in Ireland,” 1767, 4to. 14. “A full and plain account of the Gout, whence will be clearly seen the folly or the baseness of all pretenders to the cure of it, in which every thing material by the best writers on that subject is taken notice of, and accompanied with some new and important instructions for its relief, which the author’s experience in the gout above thirty years hath induced him to impart.” This was the most unfortunate of all his publications, for soon after imparting his cure for the gout he died of the disorder, and destroyed the credit of his system.

Dr. Warner is said to have declared that he wrote his “Ecclesiastical History,” and his “Dissertation on the Common Prayer,” three folio volumes, both the original and corrected copies, with one single pen, which was an old one when he began, and when he finished was not worn out. We are likewise told that a celebrated countess begged the doctor to make her a present of it, and he having complied, her ladyship had a gold case made with a short history of the pen engraved upon it, and placed it in her cabinet of curiosities. This foolish story, for such it probably is, reminds us of a similar one related of the pious Matthew Henry, who is said to have written the whole of his commentary on the Bible, 5 vols. fol. with one pen. Mr. Henry is also said to have made this declaration in public. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Henry never wrote the whole of his commentary, nor lived to see it completed, and consequently could have made no such declaration.

Dr. Warner’s son, the late Dr. John Warner, was of Trinity college, Cambridge, B. A. 1758, M. A. 1761, and D. D. 1773. For many years he was preacher at a chapel in Long Acre, which was his private property. In 1771 he was presented to the united rectories of HocklifTe and Chalgrave, in Bedfordshire, and afterwards to the rectory of Stourton, in Wilts. Having resided in France at the sera of the revolution he imbibed all those principles which produced it, and although no man could be more an enemy to the atrocities which followed, they made no difference in his republican attachments. He is known in the literary world by a singular publication entitled “Metronariston,” and wrote the *' Memoirs of Mekerchus," in the Gentleman’s Magazine. He died, after a few days illness, in St. John’s-square, Clerkenwell, Jan. 22, 1800, aged sixtyfour.

, a learned and munificent prelate, was the son of Herman Warner, citizen of London, and was born in the parish of St. Clement Danes, Strand, about 1585. After some grammatical education, in which he made a very rapid progress, he was sent to Oxford in 1598, and the year following was elected demy of Magdalen college. Here he proceeded successfully in his studies, and taking the degree of B. A. in 1602, commenced M. A. in June 1G05, in which year he was elected to a fellowship. In 1610 he resigned this, probably in consequence of the fortune which came to him from his godmother. In 1614 he was presented to the rectory of St. Michael’s, Crookedlane, by archbishop Abbot, which he resigned in 1616, and remained without preferment until 1625, when the archbishop gave him the rectory of St. Dionis Backchurch in Fenchurch-street. In the interim he had taken both his degrees in divinity at Oxford; and Abbot, continuing his esteem, collated him to the prebend of the first stall in the cathedral of Canterbury. He was also appointed governor of Sion college, London, and was made chaplain to Charles I. In the second year of this monarch’s reign Dr. Warner preached before him while the parliament was sitting, during passion week, on Matt. xxi. 28, and took such liberties with the proceedings of that parliament as very highly provoked some of the members who happened to be present. Some measures appear to have been taken against him, but the dissolution of the parliament soon after protected him, yet vre are told that a pardon from the king was necessary, which pardon was extant at the time Dr. Zachary Pearce communicated some particulars of his life to the editors of the “Biographia Britannica.”

In 1633 he attended the king on his coronation in Scotland, and the same year was collated by him to the deanery of Lichfield. In 1637 the king advanced him to the bishopric of Rochester, and notwithstanding the small revenue attached to this see, Dr. Warner resigned his deanery and his prebend, besides a donative of 200l. per annum in Kent, probably Barham, or Bishops-bourne, of which, it is said, he was parson. In 1640 he assisted the king with 1500l. on the Scotch invasion of England, and gave his attendance, when there was only one prelate besides himself in the council at York. The same year he had the courage to oppose the praemunire in the House of Peers, and asserted the rights of the bishops sitting in parliament. With equal zeal he joined in the declaration made by some others of his brethren, May 14, 1641, to maintain and defend, as far as lawfully they might, with their life, power, and estate, the true reformed protestant religion, expressed in the doctrine of the Church of England, against all popery and popish innovation within this realm; and maintain and defend his majesty’s royal person, honour, and estate; also the power and privilege of parliaments, the lawful rights and liberties of the subjects, and endeavour to preserve the union and peace between the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

All this opposition to the changes then proposed soon appeared to be fruitless, and in August of the same year he was impeached with twelve other bishops, for acting in the convocation of 1640, making then canons and constitutions, and granting his majesty a benevolence. On this occasion his brethren unanimously relied on bishop Warner’s talents for their defence, which he undertook with spirit, but their total subversion being determined, nothing availed. He continued, however, inflexible in his adherence to the cause of his sovereign, at whose command, not long before his death, the bishop wrote a treatise against the ordinance of the sale of church lands, which was printed in 1646 and 1648, 4to, under the title “Church Lands not to be sold,” &c. After the death of Charles I. likewise, our prelate published several sermons against that illegal act. And having maintained his consistency so far as to refuse to pay any tax or loan to the parliament, his estate, ecclesiastical and temporal, was sequestered, his books seized, and by a singular refinement in robbery, all bonds due to him from any person whatever were released. He would probably also have been imprisoned, had he not escaped into Wales, where he led for three years a wandering and insecure life, but wherever he had opportunity, constantly performed the duties of his episcopal function, which he also did wherever he might happen to be, tiU the restoration.

After his majesty’s garrisons were given up he was forced to compound for his temporal estate, now four years sequestered, at the rate of the tenth part real and personal; but all oaths to the usurping government he refused to the last; and having, although after a heavy deduction, saved a considerable part of his estate, he devoted it to the assistance of his suffering brethren, and was a great support to such of the sequestered clergy and their families as vver^ reduced to absolute poverty. Of this, bishop Rennet, in his life of Somner, affords the following proof and instance “When in the days of usurpation an honest friend paid a visit to him (Warner), and upon his lordship’s importunity told him freely the censures of the world, aJi being of a close and too thrifty a temper, the bishop produced a roll of distressed clergy, whom in their ejectments he had relieved with no less than eight thousand pounds; and inquirked of the same friend, whether he knew of any other like objects of charity; upon which motion the gentleman soon after by letter recommended a sequestered divine, to whom at the first address he gave 100l.”

He sent 100l. to Charles II. in his exile, designing to continue remitting money as he could afford it, but he was betrayed by his servant, who discovered the matter to Cromwell, and he would have suffered for it, had he not prevailed on the treacherous informer, by money, to. go into Ireland. On the restoration, bishop Warner was replaced in the see of Rochester, and enjoyed it till his decease on Oct. 11, 1666. He was interred in Rochester cathedral, where a handsome monument was soon after erected to his memory in a small chapel, at the east end of the north aile.

He married the widow of Dr. Robert Abbot, bishop of Salisbury, and had issue by her one daughter, his heiress, who by her husband, Thomas Lee, of London, had a son, John, to whom and his sons bishop Warner bequeathed so considerable an estate as surprised those who knew the extent of his charities, and the small income arising from his bishopric. Nor will that surprise be much diminished by the fact, that when young he had 16,Oooz. left him by a relation, who was his god-mother, for if we take into account what he suffered by the usurpation, and what he gave to his distressed brethren during that period, it will yet appear surprising that he was enabled to exert his charity and munificence to such a vast amount as appears was the case. To account for this, some have accused him of parsimony, but for this there is no proof, and the greater part of what he gave was given at various periods in his life-time; but others have with more probability supposed that he lived on the profits, small as they were, of his bishopric, while the produce of his estates was accumulating. Be this as it may, we have the following items of nearly twenty thousand pounds, which he expended or bequeathed to the following objects:

Cathedral of Canterbury, for fonts and library - 1,2OO

Repairs of that cathedral, and by his will - - 1,Ooo

Bromley college above-mentioned was founded by him for the residence and maintenance of twenty widows of loyal and orthodox clergymen. By his will he empowered his executors, sir Orlando Bridgman, and sir Philip Warwick, to raise a sum of money adequate to the purposes of such a building, out of his personal estate, and charged his manor of Swayton with the annual payment of 450l. viz. 50l. per ann. for the chaplain, and 20l. each for the widows. The founder had expressed a desire that this building should be erected as near to Rochester as conveniently might be; but as no healthy or convenient spot could be obtained near that town, the present site was chosen at the north end of the town of Bromley, under the sanction of an act of parliament passed in 1670; and by other subsequent benefactions the institution has been brought to its present useful state. Another of bishop Warner’s foundations was that of four scholarships in Baliol college, Oxford, for four young men of Scotland, to be chosen from time to time by the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of Rochester. Each was to have 2Ql. yearly until M. A. when they were to return to their own country in holy orders, “that there may never be wanting in Scotland some who shall support the ecclesiastical establishment of England.” Owing to some demur on the part of this college, these scholars were first placed in Gloucester hall (now Worcester college), and there was a design to have made that a college for their use; but, in the mastership of Dr. Thomas Good, in 1672, they were removed to Baliol.

Bishop Warner is said to have been an accurate logician, philosopher, and well versed in the fathers and schoolmen. He was a man of a decided character, equally cheerful and undaunted. In his manner he had less of the courtier than of the kind friend, always performing more than he professed. Of his religious principles the only evidence we have is in a letter addressed to bishop Jeremy Taylor, in defence of the doctrine of original sin, which that prelate had endeavoured to explain away in a manner totally inconsistent with the tenets of the church, as laid down in her liturgy, articles, and homilies. Warner was of the school of Abbot, and less likely to adopt Arminianism, although he was personally attached to its great fnenc. archbishop Laud.

, an eminent surgeon, was born in the island of Antigua, in 1717, on the family estate, which he inherited, together with a ring, famous in history, as the one given by queen Elizabeth to the earl of Essex, and which in the hour of impending danger he entrusted to the countess of Nottingham, who never delivered it to the queen, and this, according to the story, was the cause of Essex’s losing his life. By some means this ring had regularly descended, together with the estate, in the Warner family. Mr. Warner was sent to England at an early age, and educated at Westminster school. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to the celebrated surgeon, Samuel Sharpe, and after residing seven years with him, was admitted joint lecturer in anatomy at St. Thomas’s hospital with Mr. Sharpe, after whose resignation Mr. Warner continued the lectures for several years. In 1746, during the rebellion in Scotland, he volunteered his professional services, and joined the royal army under the duke of Cumberland, In the course of that campaign he was recalled to London to fill the office of surgeon to Guy’s hospital, a situation which he held, with increasing reputation, and great professional success, for the long period of forty-four years. During this time his private practice became extensive, and his fame was increased by his valuable treatises on the cataract, the hydrocele, &c. and his still more va-r luable volume of “Cases in Surgery,” 1754, &c. In 1756 he was elected a fellow of the royal society, in whose Transactions a number of his communications were published. In 1764 he was elected a -member of the court of assistants of the then corporation of surgeons, and in 1771, became one of the court of examiners, in which office he continued to discharge his duty most punctually until the last month of his life.

He died at his house in Hatton-garden, July 24, 1801, in the eighty-fifth year of his life, without much illness, but of the mere effects of age, and retained his faculties to the last. He left a very estimable character, both as to professional and private merit. He was among the earliest teachers of anatomy, whose labours have greatly contributed to lessen the necessity of going abroad, and have rendered London at the present day the first chirurgical school in the world.

, who merits notice for his regard to the science of botany, and the respect and honour he ever shewed to the lovers of it, was the son of John Warner, a banker, who is somewhere mentioned by Addison or Steele, as having always worn black leather garters buckled under the knee, a custom most religiously observed by our author, who in no other instance affected singularity. He was born in 1711, educated at Wadham college, Oxford, and being bred to the law, had chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, but possessing a genteel fortune, he principally resided in an ancient family seat with an extensive- garden belonging to it, on Woodford Green, in Essex. Here he maintained a botanical garden, was very successful in the cultivatioii of rare exotics, and was not unacquainted with indigenous plants. The herborizations of the company of apothecaries were, once in the season, usually directed to the environs of Woodford, where, after the researches of the day, at the table of Mr. Warner, the products of Flora were displayed. The result of the investigations made in that neighbourhood was printed for private distribution by Mr. Warner, under the title “Plantae Woodfordienses; or a catalogue of the more perfect plants growing spontaneously about Woodford in Essex,” Lond. 1771, 8vo. As none of the graminaceous or cryptogamous tribes are introduced, the list does not exceed 518 species. The order is alphabetical, by the names from Ray’s Synopsis; after which follow the specific character at length, from Hudson’s “Flora Anglica,” the Linnsean class and order, and the English name, place, and time of flowering.

Mr. Warner was also distinguished for polite learning, and eminently so for his critical knowledge in the writings of Shakspeare. He published “A Letter to David Garrick, esq. concerning a glossary to the Plays of Shakspeare,” &c. 1768', 8vo. He bad been long making collections for a naw edition of that author; but on Mr. Steevens’s advertisement of his design to. engage in the same task on a different plan, he desisted from the pursuit of his own. In his youth he had been remarkably fond of dancing; nor till his rage for that diversion subsided, did he convert the largest room in his house into a library. To the last hour of his life, however, he was employed on the te Glossary" already mentioned, although it never was completed. At his death, which happened April 11, 1775, he bequeathed all his valuable books to Wadham college, Oxford, where he received his education; and to the same society a small annual stipend to maintain a botanical lecture. He also translated the comedies of Plautus left untranslated by Thornton, which were published in 1772 and 1774. The books he left to Wadham college form a good, although not a complete collection of the old English poets, with many editions of Shakspeare, some of which are interleaved with writing paper, obviously intended for annotations, &c. had he pursued his design of a new edition.

, an old English poet, is called by Phillips, “a good honest plain writer of moral rules and precepts, in that old-fashioned kind ef seven-footed verse, which yet sometimes is in use, though in different manner, that is to say, divided into two. He may be reckoned with several other writers of the same time^ i. e> Queen Elizabeth’s reign: who, though inferior to Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel, yet have been thought by some not unworthy to be remembered and quoted: namely George Gascoigne, Thomas Hudson, John Markham, Thomas Achely, John Weever, Charles Middleton, George TurberviTle, Henry Constable, sirEdward Dyer, Thomas Churchyard, Charles Fitzgeoffry.”

William Warner was a native of Oxfordshire, and born, as Mr. Ellis is inclined to think, about 1558, which supposes him to have published his first work at the age of twenty-five. He was educated at Oxford, but spent his time in the flowery paihs of poetry, history, and romance, in preference to the dry pursuits of logic and philosophy, and departed without a degree to the metropolis, where he sioon became distinguished among the minor poets. It is said, that in the latter part of his life, he was retained in the service of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicates his poem. Mr. Ritson adds to this account, that by his dedications to Henry and George, successive barons of Hunsdon, he appears to have been patronized by, or in some manner connected with, that family.

In the fourth edition of Percy’s Ballads, we find the following extract from the parish register of Am well, in Hertfordshire, communicated by Mr. Hoole, although first given by Scott, in his poem of “Amwell,” edit. 1776. “1608—1609 Master William Warner, a man of goodyeares and of honest reputation; by his profession an atturnye of the Comnon Pleas; author of Albion’s England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without any form'er complaynt or sicknesse, on Thursday-night beeinge the ninth day of March, was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner, under the stone of Walter Ffader,”

His “Albion’s England” was his principal work; and was not only a favourite with his own age, but has received very high praise from the critics of our own time. It is an epitome of the British history, and, according to the editor of the “Muses Library,” Mrs. Cooper, is written with great learning, sense, and spirit; in some places fine to an extraordinary degree, of which an instance is given in the story ofArgentill and Curan, a tale which, Mrs. Cooper adds, is full of beautiful incidents, in the romantic taste, extremely affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in style, and in short one of the most beautiful pastorals she ever met with. To this opinion, high as it is, Dr. Percy thinks nothing can be objected, unless perhaps an affected quaintness in some of his expressions, and an indelicacy in some of his pastoral images. Warner’s contemporaries ranked him on a level with Spenser, and called him the Homer and Virgil of their age. But Dr. Percy remarks, that he rather resembled Ovid, whose Metamorphosis he seems to have taken for a model, having deduced a perpetiial poem from the deluge down to the reign of queen Elizabeth, full of lively digressions and entertaining episodes. And though he is sometimes harsh, affected, and indelicate, he often displays a most charming and pathetic simplicity.

He was numbered in his own time among the refiners of the English tongue, which “by his pen was much enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments, and resplendent habiliments.” Such is the opinion of Meres, in his “Wit’s Treasury;” but the progress Warner made in refining the English tongue was certainly very inconsiderable. He owed his simplicity to his taste; but he had not the courage to abandon the uncouth and quaint expressions so peculiar to his time, and to shew that wit and point might exist without them. His style, however, was then thought elegant, and such was his power of pleasing, that “Albion’s England” superseded that very popular work “the Mirror of Magistrates.”

Warner was a writer of prose. His work was entitled “Syrinx, or a seauenfold Historic, handled with varietie of pleasant and profitable, both comical and tragical argument,” printed in 1597. Warton calls it a novel, or rather a suite of stories, much in the style of the adventures of Heliodorus’s Ethiopic romance. He appears also to have translated Plautus’s “Mencechmi,” published in 1595. Ritson informs us, that by an entry in the Stationers’ ­book,' v on the 17th of October, 1586, “The Wardens, upon serche of Roger Ward’s house, dyd find there in printing, a book in verse, intytled” England’s Albion, beinge in English, and not aucthorised to be printed, which he had been forbidden to prynte, aswell by the L. archb. of Canterburye, as also by the said wardens at his own house;“and forasmuch as he had done this” contrary to the late decrees of the, hon. court of Starre-chamber, the said wardens seised three heaps of the said * England’s Albion'.“Why this work was prohibited, except for the indelicacies already noticed, is not very apparent. We know that bishop Hall’s satires incurred the displeasure of the guardians of the press at no long distance from this time. Mr. Headley, who has extracted many beauties from Warner, says, that his tales, though often tedious, and not unfrequently indelicate, abound with all the unaffected incident and artless ease of the best old ballads, without their cant and puerility. The pastoral pieces that occur are superior to all the eclogues in our language, those of Collins only excepted. He also quotes Drayton’s lines on Warner, which the reader will find in his piece of V Poets and Poesy.”

, the historian of English poetry, was descended from an ancient and honourable family of Beverley in Yorkshire. His father was fellow of Magdalen-college, Oxford, poetry professor in that university, and afterwards vicar of Basingstoke, Hampshire, and Cobham, Surrey. He married Elizabeth daughter of the rev. Joseph Richardson, rector of Dunsford, Surrey, and had by her three children; Joseph, the subject of the next article, Thomas, and Jane a daughter, who survived both her brothers. He died in 1746, and is buried under the rails of the altar of his church at Basingstoke, with an inscription on a tablet near it, written by his sons, who afterwards published a volume of his poems, by subscription, chiefly with a view to pay the few debts he left behind, and supply his children with some assistance in the progress of their education. Whether the success of this volume was equal to their hopes, is uncertain, but the poems acquired no reputation,

Thomas was born at Basingstoke in 1728, and from his earliest years discovered a fondness for reading, and a taste for poetry. In his ninth year he sent to his sister the following translation from the Latin of Martial:

In March 1743, in his. sixteenth year, he was admitted a commoner of Trinity-college, and soon after was elected a scholar. How much he was ever attached to that college, his writings, and a residence of forty-seven years, with very few intervals, sufficiently shew. In 1745, he is said to have published “four Pastoral Eclogues;” but this appears to be a mistake. About this time, however, he sent one or two articles to Dodsley’s Museum to which his brother was likewise a contributor; but his first detached publication was “The Pleasures of Melancholy,” of which the first copy differs considerably, particularly in the introductory part, from that published in his collection of poems. On the appearance of Mason’s “Isis,” reflecting on the loyalty of Oxford, which a foolish riot among some students had brought into question, Mr. Warton, encouraged by Dr. Huddesford, the president of Trinity, published in 1749, “The Triumph of Isis,” in which he retaliated on the sons of Cam in no very courtly strains. The poem, however, discovered certain beauties, which pointed him out as a youth of great promise. It is remarkable, that although he omitted this piece in an edition of his poems printed in 1777, he restored it in that of 1779. This is said to have been done at Mason’s suggestion, who was candid enough to own that it greatly excelled his own elegy, both in poetical imagery and correct flow of versification; but Mason appears to have forgot that his personal share in the contest was but trifling, and that it contained a libel on the university of Cambridge.

In 1750, our author contributed a few small pieces to the “Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany,” then published by Newbery. Among these was the “Progress of Discontent,” which had been written in 174-6, and was founded on a copy of Latin verses, a weekly exercise much applauded by Dr. Huddesford, and, at his desire, paraphrased into English verse: In this state his brother, Dr. Warton, preferred it to any imitation of Swift he had ever seen. His talents were now generally acknowledged, and in 1747 and 1748, he held the office of poet laureate, conferred upon him according to an ancient practice in the Common- room of Trinity-college. The duty of this office was to celebrate a lady chosen by the same authority, as the lady-patroness; and Warton performed this task, on an appointed day, crowned with a wreath of laurel. The verses, which Mr. Mant says are still to be seen in the Common-room, are written in an elegant and flowing style, but he has not thought them worthy of transcription.

In 1750, he took his master’s degree; and in 1751, succeeded to a fellowship. In this last year, he published his excellent satire entitled “Newmarket;” “An Ode to Music performed at the Theatre;” and verses “on the death of Frederic prince of Wales,” which he inserted in the Oxford collection, under the fictitious name of John Whetham; a practice not uncommon. In 1753, appeared at Edinburgh “The Union, or Select Scots and English Poems.” Mr. Warton was the editor of this small volume, in which he inserted his “Triumph of Isis,” and other pieces, particularly the “Ode on the approach of Summer,” and the “Pastoral in the manner of Spenser,” which is said to be written by a gentleman formerly of the university of Aberdeen. Why he should make use of such a deception, cannot now be discovered.

About 1754, he drew up from the Bodleian and Savilian statutes, a body of statutes for the Radcliffe library. In the same year he published his “Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser,” in one volume octavo, which were afterwards enlarged and published in two volumes, 1762. By this work he not only established his character as aa acute critic, but opened to the world at large that new and important field of criticism and illustration which has since been so ably cultivated by Steevens, Malone, Reed, Todd, and other commentators on our ancient poets.

Soon after the appearance of the “Observations” they were attacked in an abusive pamphlet entitled “The Observer observed,” written by Huggins, the author of a very indifferent translation of Ariosto. Huggins had engaged Mr. Warton in this translation, but when he read what Warton asserted of the inferiority of Ariosto to Spenser, he immediately cancelled his share of the translation, and published this angry pamphlet*. Mr. Warton, who was

* The following paragraph from specimen of the whole. “Sect. If, He Huggins’s pamphlet will be a sufficient (Warton) resumes the poisonous aciinow in his thirty-sixth year, had employed fully half that time in an unwearied perusal of the old English poets and such contemporary writers as could throw light on their obscurities. The” Observations on Spenser“must have evidently been the result of much industry and various reading, aided by a happy memory. In 1757, on the resignation of Mr. Hawkins of Pembroke college, our author was elected professor of poetry, which office, according to the usual practice, he held for ten years. His lectures were elegant and original. The translations from the Greek anthologies, now a part of his collected poems, were first introduced in them; and his” Dissertatio de Poesi Bucolica Graecorum,“which he afterwards enlarged and prefixed to his edition of Theocritus, was also a part of the same course. During the publication of the” Idler“he sent to Dr. Johnson, with whom he had long been intimate, Nos. 33, 93, and 96 of that paper. His biographer, however, is mistaken in supposing that he contributed any papers to the” Connoisseur.“His being invited by Colman and Thornton to engage in a periodical publication has no relation to the” Connoisseur.“It was Moore, the editor of the” World,“who projected a Magazine, soon after the conclusion of that paper, and told the two Wartons that” he wanted a dull plodding fellow of one of the universities, who understood Latin and Greek." Mr. Bedingfield, one of Dodsley’s poets, and Gataker, the surgeon, were to be concerned in this Magazine, but Moore’s death prevented the execution of the scheme.

In 1760 he published, but without his name, “A description of the City, College, and Cathedral of Winchester,” 12mo. From his own copy, in the possession of the present editor, he appears to have been preparing a new edition about 1771, which was perhaps prevented by a “History of Winchester‘ 7 published soon after in two vomony with which he charges his wea- let us pass the chronicles of the seven pon, which he takes care shall be ju- champions, Morte Arlhur, sir Tristram, diciously two-edged, lest it fail of slash- the Blatant Beast, the Questyn Beast, ing. friend as well as foe. * Although which is afterwards more particularly (saith our observer) Spenser formed his described, wiih a bed-roll of quotations, Faerie Queene upon the fanciful plan no less delectable than erudite, most of Ariosto.’ Poor Spenser Wretched appositely collected, to give not only Ariosto And oh most mighty War- a dignity, but also a magnitude to this ton - Let this suffice, for reply to all important tome that purchasers may he here advances of falsehood against be well supply'd for their disbursement Ariosto, which that poem totally con- of pence, either in their meditative fufronts such falsehood, that were it irrigations, or at the Cloacmian offertruth, is insipid and immaterial; and tory.” lumes, a more showy work, but far more inaccurate. In the same year (1760) he published a piece of exquisite humour, entitled “A Companion to the Guide, and a Guide to the Companion, being a complete Supplement to all the accounts of Oxford hitherto published.” This passed through three editions in a very short time, but for some years has been ranked among scarce books *. A more scarce work, however, is his “Inscriptionum Romanarum Metricarmn Delectus,” 4 to, which ought to have been noticed under the year 1758. The design of this collection was to present the reader with some of the best Roman epigrams and inscriptions, taken from the “Elegantiae antiquorum marmorum,” from Mazochius, Smetius, Gruterus, and other learned men. It contains likewise a few modern epigrams, one by Dr. Jortin, and five'by himself, on the model of the antique, the whole illustrated with various readings and notes.

About 1760 he wrote for the “Biographia Britannica,” the life of sir Thomas Pope, which he republished in 1772, 8vo, and again in 1780, with very considerable additions and improvements; and in 1761 he published the “Life and Literary Remains of Dr. Batburst.” In the same year, and in 1762, he contributed to the Oxford collections, verses on the royal marriage, and on the birth of the prince of Wales, and an ode entitled the “Complaint of Cherwell,” under the name of John Chichester, brother to the earl of Donegal f. His next publication was the “Oxford Sausage, or select pieces written by the most celebrated wits of the university of Oxford.” The preface and several of the poems are undoubtedly his, and the latter are authenticated by his adding them afterwards to his avowed productions. In 1766 he superintended an edition from the Clarendon press of “Cephalus’ Anthology,” to which he prefixed a very curious and learned preface. In this he announced his edition of “Theocritus,” which made its appearance in 1770, 2 vols. 4to, a most correct and splendid work, that carried his fame to the continent.

In 1767, he took his degree of. B. D. and in 1771 was elected a fellow of the society of antiquaries. In October of the same year he was instituted to the small living of

ver, one of Mr. Warton’s pupils, who could not write for themselves. Kiddington, Oxon. on the presentation of George Henry earl of Litchfield, then chancellor of the university, a nobleman whose memory he afterwards honoured by an epitaph. In 1774 he published the first volume of his “History of English Poetry,” the most important of all his works, and to the completion of which the studies of his whole life appear to have been bent. How much it is to be regretted that he did not live to complete his plan, every student in ancient literature must be deeply sensible. He intended to have carried the history down to the commencement 6f the eighteenth century. A second volume accordingly appeared in 1778, and a third in 1781, after which he probably relaxed from his pursuit, as at the period of his death in 1.790, a few sheets only of the fourth volume were printed, and no part left in a state for printing. His original intention was to have comprised the whole in two or three volumes, but it is now evident, and he probably soon became aware, that five would have scarcely been sufficient if he continued to write on the same scale, and to deviate occasionally into notices of manners, laws, customs, &c. that had either a remote, or an immediate connection with his principal subject. What his reasons were for discontinuing his labours, cannot now be ascertained. It is well known to every writer that a work of great magnitude requires temporary relaxation, or a change of employment, and may admit of both without injury; but he might probably find that it was now less easy to return with spirit to his magnum opus, than in the days of more vigour and activity. It is certain that he wished the public to think that he was making his usual progress, for in 1785, when he published “Milton’s Juvenile Poems,” he announced the speedy publication of the fourth volume of the history, of which, from that time to his death, ten sheets only were finished. His brother, Dr. Joseph, was long supposed to be engaged in completing this fourth volume. In one of his letters lately published by Mr. Wooll, and dated 1792, he says, “At any leisure I get busied in finishing the last volume of Mr. Warton’s History of Poetry, which I have engaged to do, for the booksellers are clamorous to have the book finished (though the ground I am to go over is so beaten) that it may be a complete work.” Yet on his death in 1800, it did not appear that he had made any progress. Mr. Warton’s biographer has traced the origin of this work to Pope, who, according to Ruffhead, had sketched a plan of a history of poetry, dividing the poets into classes or schools; but Ruffhead’s list of poets is grossly erroneous. Gray, however, Mr. Mason informs us, had meditated a history of English poetry, in which Mason was to assist him. Their design was to introduce specimens of the Provencal poetry, and of the Scaidic, British, and Saxon, as preliminary to what first deserved to be called English poetry about the time of Chaucer, from whence their history, properly so called, was to commence. Gray, however, was deterred by the magnitude of the undertaking; and being informed that Warton was employed on a similar design, more readily relinquished his own.

Such is Mr. Mant’s account, who adds (in p. cxxvi) that Warton “judiciously preferred the plan on which he has proceeded to that proposed by Pope, Gray, and Mason.” Jt appears, however, that Warton had made considerable progress on hisown plan before he knew any thing of Gray’s, and that when he heard of the latter, and perhaps at the same time of its being relinquished, he thought proper, which he might then do without indelicacy, to apply to Gray, through the medium of Dr. Hurd, requesting that he would communicate any fragments, or sketches of his design. Mr. Gray, in answer to this application, sent the following letter:

“Our friend, Dr. Hurd, having long ago desired me in your name to communicate any fragments, or sketches of a design I once had to give a history of English poetry, you may well think me rude or negligent, when you see me hesitating for so many months before I comply with your request, and yet (believe me) few of your friends have been better pleased than I to find this subject (Surely neither unentertaining, nor unuseful) had fallen into hands so likely to do it justice; few have felt a higher esteem for your talents, your taste and industry; in truth, the only cause of my delay has been a sort of diffidence, that would not let me send you any thing so short, so slight, and so imperfect as the few materials I had begun to collect, or the observations I had made on them. A sketch of the division and arrangement of the subject, however, 1 venture to transcribe, and would wish to know whether it corresponds in any thing with your own plan, for I am told your first volume is already in the press. ”Introduction. On the poetry of the Galic (or Celtic) nations, as far back as it can be traced.

"On that of the Goths; its introduction into these islands by the Saxons and Danes, and its duration. On the origin of rhyme among the Franks, the Saxons and Provengaux; some account of the Latin rhyming poetry from its early origin down to the fifteenth century.

<; P. I. On the school of Provence, which rose about the year 1100, and was soon followed by the French and Italians; their heroic poesy, or romances in verse, allegories, fabliaux, Syrvientes, comedies, farces, canzoni, sonnets, balades, madrigals, sestines, &c. Of their imitators, the French, and of the first Italian school (commonly call'd the Sicilian] about the year 1200, brought to perfection by Dante, Petrarch, Boccace, and others. "State of poetry in England, from the Conquest (1066) or rather from Henry IPs time (1154) to the reign of Edward III. (1327).

P. II. On Chaucer, who first introduced the manner of the Provencaux, improved by the Italians into our country; his character and merits at large; the different kinds in which he excelled. Gower, Occleve, Lydgate, Hawes, G. Douglas, Lindsay, Bellenden, Dunbar, &c.

"P. III. Second Italian school (of Ariosto, Tasso, &c.) an improvement on the first, occasioned by the revival of letters in the end of the 15th century. The lyric poetry of this and the former age, introduced from Italy by lord Surrey, sir T. Wyat, Bryan, lord Vaux, &c. in the beginning of the 16th century.

"Spencer his character, subject of his poem allegoric and romantic, of Provencal invention but his manner of creating it borrowed from the second Italian school. Drayton, Fairfax, Phin. Fletcher, Golding, Phaer, &c. this school ends in Milton.

"A third Italian school, full of conceit, begun in Q. Elizabeth’s reign, continued under James, and Charles the first, by Donne, Crashaw, Cleveland; carried to its height by Cowley, and ending perhaps in Sprat.

"P. IV. School of France, introduced after the restoration Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior, and Pope, which has continued down to our own times.

“You will observe, that my idea was in some measure taken from a scribbled paper of Pope, of which (I believe) you have a copy. You will also see that I had excluded dramatic poetry entirely, which if you. have taken in, it will at least double the bulk and labour of your book *.”

"Your plan for the History of English Poetry is admirably constructed and much improved from an idea of Pope, which Mr. Mason obligingly sent me by application from our friend Dr. Hurd. I regret that a writer of your consummate taste should not have executed it.

"Although I have not followed this plan, yet it is of great service to me, and throws much light on many of my periods by giving connected views and details. I begin with such an introduction, or general dissertation, as you had intended; viz. on the Northern poetry, with its introduction into England by the Danes and Saxons, and its duration. I then begin my History at the Conquest, which I write chronologically in sections; and continue, as matter successively offers itself, in a, series of regular annals, down to and beyond the restoration. I think with you, that dramatic poetry is detached from the idea of my work, that it requires a separate consideration, and will -swell the size of my book beyond all bounds. One of my sections, a very large one, is entirely on Chaucer, and exactly fills your title of Part Second. In the course of my annals I consider collaterally the poetry of different nations as influencing our own. What I have at present finished ends with the section on Chaucer, and will almost make my first volume; for I design two volumes in quarto. This first volume will soon be in the press. I should have said before, that, although I proceed chronologically, yet I often stand still to give some general view, as perhaps of a particular species of poetry, &c. and even anticipate sometimes for this purpose. These views often form one section; yet are interwoven into the tenor of the work without inter­* This letter concludes with request- question who if was that had the power

“I cannot take my leave without declaring, that my strongest incitement to. prosecute the History of English Poetry is the pleasing hope of being approved by you, whose true genius I so justly venerate, and whose genuine poetry has ever given me such sincere pleasure.” Winchester college, April 20, 1770. I am, sir, &c."

It is almost needless to say that the progress of Warton’s History afforded the highest gratification to every learned and elegant mind. Hitson, however, whose learning appears to have been dear to him only as it administered to his illiberality, attacked our author in a pamphlet entitled “Observations on the three first volumes of the History of English Poetry, in a familiar letter to the author,” 1782. In this, while he pointed out some real inaccuracies, for which he might have received the thanks of the historian, his chief object seems to have been to violate, by low scurrility and personal acrimony, every principle of liberal criticism, and of that decorous interchange of respect which men of learning, not otherwise acquainted, preserve between one another. What could have provoked all this can be known only to those who have dipped into a heart rendered callous by a contempt for every thing sacred and social.

In 1777 Mr. Warton published a collection of his Poems, but omitting some which had appeared before. A second edition followed in 1778, a third in 1779, and a fourth in 1789. The omissions in all these are restored in the edition published in 1810 of the “English Poets.”

In 1781 he seems to have devoted his mind to a plan as arduous as his History of Poetry. He had been for some time making collections for a parochial history, or, as it is more usually called, a c'ounty history of Oxfordshire. As a specimen, he printed a few copies of the History of the parish of Kiddington, which were given to his friends, but in 1782 an edition was offered to the public. Topography had long formed one of his favourite studies, and the acuteness with which he had investigated the progress of ancient architecture f, gave him undoubtedly high claims to the honours of an antiquary but as he stood of Holboro, 1800. pledged for the completion of his poetical history, it is to be regretted that he should have begun at this advanced period of life to indulge the prospect of an undertaking which he never could complete.

In 1782 he took an active part in the Chattertonian controversy, by publishing “An Enquiry into the authenticity of the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley.” He had already introduced the question into his history, and now more decidedly gave his opinion that these poems were the fabrication of Chatterton. The same year he published his verses “on sir Joshua Reynolds’s painted window in New college chapel.” This produced a letter to him from sir Joshua, in which, with a pardonable vanity, if it at all deserve that appellation, he expresses a wish that his name had appeared in the verses. In a second edition Warton complied with a wish so flattering to himself, by implying the duration of his poetry, and Reynolds was substituted for the word Artist.

In this year also he was presented by his college to the donative of Hill Farrance, in Somersetshire; and about the same time became a member of the literary club, composed of those friends of Dr. Johnson whose conversations form so interesting a part of his Life by Boswell. In 1785 he was chosen Camden professor of history on the resignation of Dr. (now sir William) Scott. By the letters added to Wooll’s life of his brother, we find that our author was making interest for the professorship of modern history in 1768, when Vivian was preferred. Warburton on this occasion sent him a letter complimenting him on the heroic manner ia which he bore his disappointment, and informing him, as a piece of consolation, that Vivian had an ulcer in his bladder which was likely to prove fatal in a short time 1 As Camden professor, he delivered an inaugural lecture, ingenious, learned, and full of promise; but, says his biographer, “he suffered the rostrum to grow cold while it was in his possession.”

The office of poet laureate was accepted by him this year, as it was offered at the express desire of his majesty, and he filled it with credit to himself and to the place. Whitehead, his immediate predecessor, had the misfor r tune to succeed Gibber, and could with difficulty make the public look seriously on the periodical labours of the laureate, yet by perseverance he contrived to restore some degree of respect to the office. Warton succeeded yet better by varying the accustomed modes of address, and by recalling the mind to gothic periods, and splendid events* The facetious authors, indeed, of the “Probationary Odes” (n set of political satires) took some freedoms with his name, but they seemed to be aware that another Gibber would have suited their purpose better; and Warton, who possessed a large share of humour, and a quick sense of ridicule, was not to be offended because he had for once been the “occasion of wit in other men *.”

His last publication was an edition of the “Juvenile Poems of Milton,” with notes, the object of which was “to explain his author’s allusions, to illustrate, or to vindicate his beauties, to point out his imitations, both of others and of Himself, to elucidate his obsolete diction, and by the adduction and juxtaposition of parallels gleaned both from his poetry and prose, to ascertain his favourite words, and to shew the peculiarities of his phraseology.” The first edition of this work appeared in 1785, and the second in 1791, a short time after his death* It appears that he had prepared the alterations and additions for the press some time before. It was indeed ready for the press in 1789, and probably begun about that time, but was not completed until after his death, when the task of correcting the sheets devolved upon his brother. His intention was to extend his plan to a second volume, containing the “Paradise Regained,” and “Sampson Agonistes;” and he left notes on both. He had the proof sheets of the first edition printed only on one side, which he carefully bound. They are still extant, and demonstrate what pains he took in avoiding errors, and altering expressions which appeared on a second review to be weak or improper. The second edition of Milton was enriched by Dr. Charles Burney*s learned remarks on the Greek verses, and by some observations on the other poems by Warburton, which were

* We have his brother’s authority the laugh of the Probationary Odes; that “he always heartily joined in the for a man more devoid of envy, anger, laugh, and applauded the exquisite wit and ill-nature, never existed. So sweet aad humour that appeared in many of was his temper, so remote from pethose original satires.” Mr. Bowles’s dantry and all affectation was his conevidence may be cited a? more impar- duct, that when even Ritson’s scurtial, and as affording the testimony of rilous abuse came out, in which he asan excellent judge, to the character of sertcd that his back was “broad enough, Warton.” I can say, being at that and his heart hard enough,“to bear time a scholar of Trinity college, that anything Ritsou could lay on it, h* the laureate, who did the greatest ho- only said, with hii usual smile,” A nour to hi* station from his real poeti- black-lettered dog, sir" Bowles’s edita.1 abilities, did most heartily join in tion of Pope’s wvrks, VI. 325. communicated to the editor by Dr. Kurd. At the time of our author’s death a new edition of his Poems was also preparing for publication.

His death was somewhat sudden. Until his sixty-second year he enjoyed vigorous and uninterrupted health. On being seized with the gout he went to Bath, from which he returned recovered, in his own opinion, but it was evi­‘dent to his friends that his constitution had received a fatal shock. On Thursday, May 20, 1790, he passed the evening in the Common-room, and was for some time more cheerful than usual. Between ten and eleven o’clock he was suddenly seized with a paralytic stroke, and expired next day about two o'clock. On the 27th his remains were interred in the anti-chapel of Trinity college, with the highest academical honours; the ceremony being attended not only by the members of his own college, but by the vice-chancellor, heads of houses, and proctors. His grave is marked by a plain inscription, which enumerates his preferments, with his age and the date of his death.

To these particulars, some of which have been taken from Mr. Main’s Life of Warton prefixed to an edition of his Poems published in 1802, it may now be added on another authority, that from April 1755 to April 1774, he served the curacy of Woodstock, except during the Jong vacations; and although his pulpit oratory does not appear to have ever entitled him to particular notice, many are still alive who speak of him with more regard and affection than of any person who ever officiated there.

Mr. Warton’s personal character has been drawn at great length by Mr. Mant, and seems to have no defects but what are incident to men who have passed their days in retirement from polished life. A few peculiarities are recorded which might perhaps have been omitted without injury to the portrait. Some of them seem to be given upon doubtful authority, and others are not, strictly speaking, characteristic, because not habitual, or if habitual, are too insignificant for notice. It has been said, however, that Mr. Warton was a lover of low company, a more serio.us charge, if it could be substantiated. But what low company means is not always verp obvious. It is not asserted that Warton disgraced his character by a constant Association with such; and that he should have occasionally amused himself with the manners and conversation of humble tradesmen, mechanics, or peasants, was surely no great crime in one whose researches imposed in some degree, the necessity of studying mankind in all ranks, and who, in the illustration of our ancient poets, had evidently profited by becoming acquainted with the conversation of the modern vulgar.

In literary company he is said to have been rather silent, but this, his surviving friends can recollect, was only where the company consisted of a majority of strangers; and a man who has a reputation to guard will not lightly enter into conversation before he knows something of those with whom he is to converse. In the company of his friends, among whom he could reckon the learned, the polite, and the gay, no man was more communicative, more social in his habits and conversation, or descended more frequently from the grave interchange of sentiment to a mere play of wit,

His temper was habitually calm. His disposition gentle, friendly, and forgiving. His resentments, where he could be supposed to have any, were expressed rather in the language of jocularity than anger. Mr. Mant has given as a report, that Dr. Johnson said of Warton, “he was the only man of genius that he knew without a heart.” But it is highly improbable that Johnson, who loved and practised truth and justice, should say this of one with whom he had exchanged so many acts of personal and literary friendship. It is to be regretted, indeed, that towards the end of Johnson’s life, there was a coolness between him and the Wartons; but if it be true that be wept on the recollection of their past friendship, it is very unlikely that he would have characterised Mr. Warton in the manner reported. Whatever was the cause of the abatement of their intimacy, Mr. Warton discovered no resentment, when he communicated so many pleasing anecdotes of Johnson to Mr. Boswell, nor when he came to discuss the merits of Milton in opposition to the opinions of that eminent critic. Dr. Warton, indeed, as may be seen in his notes on Pope, mixed somewhat more asperity with his review of Johnson’s sentiments.

Instances of Warton’s tenderness of heart, affectionate regard for children, and general humanity, have been accumulated by all who knew him. Nor is this wonderful. for he knew nothing of one quality which ever keeps the heart shut. He had no avarice, no ambition to acquire the superiority which wealth is supposed 1 to confer. For many years he lived on his maintenance from college, and from the profits of a small living, with the occasional fruits of his labour as a teacher or as a writer. It cannot be doubted that as he had been tutor to the son of the prime-minister (lord North), and to the sons of other persons of rank, he might reasonably have expected higher preferment. But it happens with preferment more generally than the world suspects, that what is not asked is not given. Warton had a mind above servile submission, yet he would have asked where asking is a matter of course, had not his contented indolence, or perhaps the dread of a refusal, induced him to sit down with the emoluments which cost neither trouble nor anxiety. What he got by his writings could not be much. However excellent in themselves, they were not calculated for quick and extensive sale, and it is said he sold the copy-right of his “History of Poetry,” for less than four hundred pounds.

In the exercise of his profession as a divine, Mr. Mant has not heard that he was much distinguished. He went through the routine of parochial duty in a respectful manner; but a hurried mode of speaking, partly owing to habit and partly to a natural impediment, prevented his being heard with advantage. It is a more serious objection, that he has, particularly in his notes on Milton, expressed opinions on religious topics, the consequence of which he had not deliberately considered. He hated Puritans and Calvinists, but does not seem to have understood very clearly that his own church, and every pure church, has many doctrines in common with them. His opinions on Psalmody, and on the observation of Sunday, are particularly objectionable.

As a contributor to the literature of his country, few men stand higher than Warton. He was the first who taught the true method of acquiring a taste for the excellencies of our ancient poets, and of rescuing their writings from obscurity and oblivion. In this respect he is the father of the school of commentators, and if some have, in certain instances, excelled their master, they ought to recollect to whom they are indebted for directing them to the paths of research. Of Warton it may be said, as of Addison, “He is now despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects, but by the lights which he afforded them.” His erudition was extensive, and his industry must have been at one time incessant. The references in his History of Poetry only, indicate a course of various reading, collation, and transcription, to which the common life of man seems insufficient. He was one of those scholars who have happily rescued the study of antiquities from the reproaches of the frivolous or indolent." Amidst the most rugged tracks of ancient lore, he produces cultivated spots, flowery paths, and gay prospects. Many of the digressions that have been censured in his history, appear to have been contrived for this purpose; and the relief which his own mind demanded, he thought would not be unacceptable to his fellow-travellers.

To the industry which he employed in all his literary undertakings, there can be no doubt he was indebted for much of that placid temper and contentment which distinguished him as a resident member of the university. The miseries of indolence are known only to those who have no regular pursuit, nothing in view, however easy or arduous, nothing by which time may be shortened by occupation, and occupation rendered easy by habit. To all this waste of time and talent Warton was a stranger. During the long vacation, indeed, he generally resided with his brother at Winchester, but even this was a change of place rather than of occupation. There he found libraries, scholars, and critics, and could still indulge his delight in the “cloysters pale,” “the tapered choir,” and “sequester'd isles of the deep dome;” and there, as well as at home, he continued his researches, and enjoyed solitude or society in such proportions as suited his immediate inclination.

Yet as he pursued an untried path, and was the founder of his own studies, it cannot be a matter of great surprise, if he failed in conducting them with due method. To this it was owing that the emendations and additions to his first and second volumes are so numerous, as to have been made the ground of a serious charge against his diligence and accuracy. But had he lived to complete the work, he could have no doubt offered such excuses as must have been readily accepted by every reflecting mind. If we admit the magnitude of the undertaking, which evidently exceeded his own idea when he fondly hoped that it might have been finished in two or three volumes; if we consider the vast number of books he had to consult for matters apparently trifling, but really important; that he had the duties of a clergyman and tutor to perform while engaged on this work, and above all, that his friends were assisting him, often too late, with additional illustrations or references, it will not appear highly censurable that he dismissed his volumes capable of improvement. From his own copy of the first volume of his history, and of his edition of Milton, both now before us, it appears that he corrected with fastidious cure, and was extremely anxious to render his style what we now find it, perspicuous, vigorous, and occasionally ornamented. His corrections are often written in an indistinct hand; and this perhaps occasioned fresh errors, which he had not an opportunity to correct; but with all its faults, this history will ever remain a monument of learning, taste, and judgment, such as few men in any nation have been able to produce.

His poetry, as well as that of his brother, has been the occasion of some difference of opinion among the critics; and the school of Warton, as it is called, has not of late been always mentioned with the respect it deserves. Among the characteristics of our author’s poetry, however, his style may be considered as manly and ^energetic, but seldom varied by the graces of simplicity. His habits of thought led him to commence all his poems in a style pompous and swelling; his ideas often ran on the imaginary days of Gothic grandeur and mighty achievement, and where such subjects were to be treated, as in his “Triumph of Isis,” and in his “Laureat Odes,” no man could have cloathed them in language more appropriate.

The “Triumph of Isis” was written in his twenty-first year, and exhibiis the same beauties and faults which are to be found in his more mature productions. Among these last, is a redundancy of epithet which is more frequently a proof of labour than of taste. The “Pleasures of Melancholy” appears to be & more genuine specimen of early talent. He was only in his seventeenth year, when his mind was so richly stored with striking and elegant imagery­In general he seems to have taken Milton for his model, and throughout his poems we find expressions borrowed with as much freedom from Milton, as he has proved that Milton borrowed from others. One piece only, “Newmarket,” is an imitation of Pope, and is certainly one of the finest satires in our language. In this he has not only adopted the versification of Pope, and emulated his wit and point, but many of his lines are parodies on what he recollected in Pope’s Satires. This freedom of borrowing, however, seems so generally allowed, that it can form no higher objection against Warton than against Pope, Gray, and others of acknowledged eminence. We cannot be surprized that the memory of such a student as Warton should be familiar with the choicest language of poetry, and that he should often adopt it unconscious of its being the property of another. The frequent use of alliteration is a more striking defect; but perhaps these are strictures which ought not to interfere with the general merit of Warton as a poet of original genius. His descriptive pieces, had he written nothing else, would have proved his claim to that title. Nothing can be more natural, just, or delightful than his pictures of rural life. The “First of April” and the “Approach of Summer” have seldom been rivalled, and cannot perhaps be exceeded. The only objection which some critics have started is, that his descriptions are not varied by reflection. He gives an exquisite landscape, but does not always express the feelings it creates. His brother, speaking of Thomson, observes that the unexpected insertion of reflections “imparts to us the same pleasure that we feel, when, in wandering through a wilderness or grove, we suddenly behold in the turning of the walk a statue of some Virtue or Muse.” Yet in Warton’s descriptive poetry, it is no small merit to have produced so much effect, and so many exquisite pictures without this aid.

“The Suicide” perhaps deserves a yet higher character, rising to the sublime by gradations which speak to every imagination. It has indeed been objected that it is imperfect, and too allegorical. It appeals, however, so forcibly to the heart, awakens so many important reflections, and contains so happy a mixture of terror and consolation, that it seems difficult to lay it down without unmixed admiration. The ' Crusade,“and the” Grave of Arthur,“are likewise specimens of genuine poetical taste acting on materials that are difficult to manage. Both in invention and execution these odes may rank among the finest cf their species in our language. Warton has afforded many proofs of an exquisite relish for humour in his” Panegyric on Oxford Ale,“the” Progress of Discontent,“and other pieces classed under that denomination. His success in these productions leads once more to the remark that few men have combined so many qualities of mind, a taste for the sublime and the pathetic, the gay and humorous, the pursuits of the antiquary, and the pleasures of amusement, the labours of research, and the play of imagination. Upon the whole, it may be allowed that, as a poet, he is original, various, and elegant, but that in most of his pieces he discovers the taste that results from a studied train of thought, rather than the wild and enraptured strains that arise from passion, inspired on the moment, ungovernable in their progress, and grand even in their wanderings. Still he deserves to be classed among the revivers of genuine poetry, by preferring” fiction and fancy, picturesque description, and romantic imagery,“to” wit and elegance, sentiment and satire, sparkling couplets, and pointed periods."

, an elegant scholar, poet, and critic, brother to the preceding, was born at the house of his maternal grandfather, the rev. Joseph Richardson, rector of Dunsford, in 1722. Except for a very short time that he was at New-college school, he was educated by his father until he arrived at his fourteenth year. He was then admitted on the foundation of Winchester-college, under the care of the venerable Dr. Sandby, at that time the head of the school, and * afterwards chancellor of Norwich. He had not been long at this excellent seminary before he exhibited considerable intellectual powers, and a laudable ambition to outstrip the common process of education. Colons, the poet, was one of his school-fellows, and in conjunction with him and another boy, young Warton sent three poetical pieces to the Gentleman’s Magazine, of such merit as to be highly praised in that miscellany, but not, as his biographer supposes, by Dr. Johnson. A letter also to his sister, which Mr. Wooll has printed, exhibits very extraordinary proofs of fancy and observation in one so young.

In September 1740, being superannuated according to the laws of the school, tie was removed from Winchester, and having no opportunity of a vacancy at New-college, he went to Oriel. Here he applied to his studies, not only with diligence, but with that true taste for what is valuable, which rendered the finer discriminations of criticism habitual to his mind. During his leisure hours he composed several of his poems, among which his biographer enumerates “The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature,” “The Dying Indian,” and a prose satire entitled “Ranelagu-house.” He appears likewise to have sketched an allegorical work of a more elaborate kind, which he did not find time or inclination to compU te. On taking his bachelor’s degree in 1744, he was ordained to his father’s curacy at Basingstoke, and officiated in that church till February 1746; he next removed to the duty of Chelsea, whence, in order to complete his recovery from the smallpox, he went to Chobham.

About this time he had become a correspondent in Dodsley’s Museum, to which he contributed, as appears by his copy of that work now before us, “Superstition,” an Ode, dated Chelsea, April 1746, and stanzas written “on taking the air alter a long illness.” In the preceding year, as noticed in his brother’s life, he published* by subscription, a volume of his lather’s poems, partly to do honour to his memory, but principally with the laudable purpose of paying what debts he left behind him, and of raising a little fund for himself and family; and the correspondence Wool! has published, shows with what prudence the two brothers husbanded their scanty provision, and uith what affection they endeavoured to support and cheer each other while at school and college.

Owing to some disagreement with the parishioners of Chelsea, which had taken place before he left that curacy, he accepted the duty of Chawton and Droxford, but after a few months returned to Basingstoke. In 1747-8 he was presented by the duke of Bolton to the rectory of Winslade, and as this, although a living of small produce, was probably considered by him as the earnest of more valuable preferment, he immediately married Miss Daman of that neighbourhood, to whom, his biographer informs us, he had been for some time most enthusiastically attached. In 1747, according to Mr. WoolPs account, he had published a volume of Odes, in conjunction with Collins, but on consulting the literary registers of the time, it appears that each published a volume of poems in 1746, and in the same month. It cannot now be ascertained what degree of fame accrued to our author from this volume, but in the preface we find him avowing those sentiments on the nature of genuine poetry which he expanded more at large afterwards, and which were the foundation of what has since been termed “The School of the Wartons.”

“The public,” he says, “has been so much accustomed of late to didactic poetry alone, and essays on moral subjects, that any work, where the imagination is much indulged, will perhaps not be relished or regarded. The author, therefore, of these pieces is in some pain, lest certain austere critics should think them too fanciful or descriptive. But as he is convinced that the fashion of moralizing in verse has been carried too far, and as he looks upon invention and imagination to be the chief faculties of a poet, so he will be happy if the following Odes may be looked upon as an attempt to bring back poetry into its right channel.” In 1749 he published his “Ode to Mr. West.”

In 1751, his patron the duke of Bolton invited him to be his companion on a tour to the south of France. For this, Mr. Wooll informs us, he had two motives, “the society of a man of learning and taste, and the accommodation of a Protestant clergyman, who, immediately on the death of his duchess, then in a confirmed dropsy, could marry him to the lady with whom he lived, and who was universally known and distinguished by the name of Polly Peachum.” Whichever of these motives predominated in the duke’s mind, it is much to be regretted that our author so far forgot what was due to his character and profession as to accept the offer. But if any circumstance, besides the consciousness of doing wrong, could embitter the remembrance of this solitary blemish in his public life, it was, that, after all, the only hopes which could justify his compliance were very ungraciously disappointed. For some reason or other, he was obliged to leave his patron, and come to England before the duchess died, and when that event took place, and he solicited permission to return to the duke, he had the mortification to learn that the ceremony had been performed by Mr. Devisme, chaplain to the embassy at Turin.

Soon after his return to England, he published his edition of “Virgil” in English and Latin, the Æneid translated by Pitt, and the Eclogues and Georgics by himself, who also contributed the notes on the whole. Into this publication, he introduced Warburton’s Dissertation on the Sixth Æneid a commentary on the character of lapis by Atterbury, and on the Shield of Æneas by Whitehead, the laureate, originally published in Dodsley’s Museum and three Essays on Pastoral, Didactic, and Epic poetry, written by himself. Much of this valuable work, begun in 1748-9, was printed when he was abroad, and. the whole completed in 1753. It is unnecessary to add th.it his share in the translation, his notes, and especially his Essays, raised him to a very high reputation among the scholars and critics of his age. The second edition, which appeared a few years after, was much improved. In addition to the other honours which resulted from this display of classical taste, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of master of arts by diploma, dated June 23, 1759. Such is Mr. Wooll’s account, but it is evident from the date that his essay likewise preceded this just mark of esteem.

During 1753 he was invited to assist in the “Adventurer,” which was begun by Hawkesworth in 1752. The invitation came from his friend Dr. Johnson, who informed him that the literary partners wished to assign to him the province of criticism. His contributions to the Adventurer amount to twenty-four papers. Of these a few are of the humourous cast, but the greater part consist of elegant criticism, not that of cold sagacity, but warm from the heart, and powerfully addressed to the finer feelings as well as to the judgment. His critical papers on Lear have never been exceeded for just taste and discrimination. His disposition lay in selecting and illustrating those beauties of ancient and modern poetry, which, like the beauties of nature, strike and please many who are yet incapable of describing or analysing them. No. 101, on the blemishes in the Paradise Lost, is an example of the delicacy and impartiality with which writings of established fame ought to be examined. His observations on the Odyssey, in Nos. 75, 80, and 83, are original and judicious, but it may be doubted whether they have detached many scholars from the accustomed preference given to the Iliad. If any objection may be made to Dr. Warton’s critical papers, it is that his Greek occurs too frequently in a work intended for domestic instruction. His style is always pure and perspicuous, but sometimes it may be discovered without any other information, that “he kept company with Dr. son.” The first part of No. 139, if found detached, might have been attributed to that writer. It has all his manner, not merely “the contortions of the sybil,” but somewhat of the “inspiration.”

About this time he appears to have meditated a history of the revival of literature. His first intention was to publish select epistles of Politian, Erasmus, Grotius, and others, with notes; but after some correspondence with his brother, who was to assist in the undertaking, it was laid aside, a circumstance much to be lamented, as few men were more extensively acquainted with literary history, or could have detailed it in a more pleasing form. At a subsequent period, he again sketched a plan of nearly the same kind, which was likewise abandoned. Collins some time before this had published proposals for the history of the revival of learning, with a life of Leo the tenth, but probably no part was executed, or could indeed be reasonably expected from one of his unhappy state of mind.

In 1754, our author was instituted to the living of Tunworth, on the presentation of the Jervoise family and in 1755, on the resignation of the rev. Samuel Speed, he was elected second master of Winchester school, with the management and advantages of a boarding-house. In the following year, sir George Lyttelton, then advanced to the peerage, commenced the patronage of nobility by bestowing a scarf on Mr. Warton. He had for some time enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of sir George, and assisted him in the revisal of his history of Henry II.

Amidst all these honours and employments, he now found leisure to complete the first volume of his celebrated “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope,” which he dedicated to Dr. Young, but did not subscribe his name. Dodsley likewise, although the real publisher, thought proper to employ his deputy Mrs. Cooper, on this occasion. The following passage from one of Dodsley’s letters, published by Mr. Wooll, will probably throw some light on his motive. “Your Essay is published, the price 5$. bound, I gave Mrs. Cooper directions about advertising, and have sent it to her this afternoon, to desire she will look after its being inserted in the evening papers. I have a pleasure in telling you that it is lik'd in general, and particularly by such as you would wish should like it. But you have surely not kept your secret; Johnson mentioned it to Me., Hitch as yours. Dr. Birch mentioned it to Garrick as yours, and Dr. Akenside mentioned it as yours to me; and many whom I cannot now think on have asked for it as yours or your brother’s, I have sold many of them iii my own shop, and have dispersed and pushed it as much as I can and have said more than I could have said if my name had been to it.”—The objections made to this admirable piece of criticism xvere, in the mean time, powerful enough to damp the ardour of the essayist, who left his work in an imperfect state for the long space of twentysix years.

In May 1766, he was advanced to the head mastership of Winchester school, a situation for which he was eminently qualified, and in which his shining abilities, urbanity of manners, and eminent success in producing scholars of distinguished talents, will be long and affectionately remembered. In consequence of this promotion he once more visited Oxford, and proceeded to the degree of bachelor and doctor in divinity. In 1772 he lost the wife of his early affection, by whom he had six children. The stroke was severe; but the necessity of providing a substitute for his children, and an intelligent and tender companion for himself, induced him in the following year to marry Miss Nicholas, daughter of Robert Nicholas, esq. a descendant of Dr. Nicholas, formerly warden of Winchester.

The tenour of his life was now even. During such times as he could spare from the school, and especially on the return of the Christmas vacation, he visited his friends in London, among -whom were the whole of that class who composed Dr. Johnson’s Literary Club, with some persons of rank, by whom he was highly respected, but who appear to have remembered their old master in every thing but promotion. In 1782, he was indebted to his friend and correspondent, Dr. Lowth, bishop of London, for a prebend of St. Paul’s and the living of Thorley in Hertfordshire, which, after some arrangements, he exchanged for Wickham. This year also he published his second and concluding volume of the “Essay on Pope,” and a new edition, with some alterations, of the first.

In 1788, through the interest of lord Shaenon, he obtained a prebend in Winchester cathedral, and through that of lord Malmsbury, the rectory of Easton, which, within the year, he was permitted to exchange for Upham. The amount of these preferments was considerable, but they came late, when his family could no longer expect the advantages of early income and ceccnomy. He was sixty years of age before he had any benefice, except the small livings of Wynsiade and Tun worth, and nearly seventy before he enjoyed the remainder. The unequal distribution of ecclesiastic preferments would be a subject too delicate for discussion, if they were uniformly the rewards of ecclesiastical services, but as, among other reasons, they are bestowed on account of literary attainments, we may be allowed to wonder that Dr. Wartou was not remunerated in an early period of life, when he stood almost at the head of English scholars, and when his talents, in their full vigor, would have dignified the highest stations.

In 1793, he came to a resolution to resign the mastership of Winchester. He was now beginning to feel that his time of life required more ease and relaxation than the duties of the school permitted; and his resolution was probably strengthened by some unpleasant proceedings at that period among the scholars. Accordingly he gave in his resignation on the twenty-third of July, and retired to his rectory of Wickham. A vote of thanks followed from the wardens, &c. of the school, for the encouragement he had given to genius and industry; the attention he had paid to the introduction of a correct taste in composition and classical learning, and the many and various services which he had conferred on the Wiccamical societies through the long course of years in which he filled the places of second and head master. These were not words of course, but truly felt by the addressers, although they form a very inadequate character of him as a master.

During his retirement at Wickham, he was induced by a liberal offer from the booksellers of London, and more, probably, by his love for the task, to superintend a new edition of “Pope’s Works;” which he completed in 1797 in nine volumes octavo. That this was the most complete and best illustrated edition of Pope, was generally allowed, but it had to contend with objections, some of which were not urged with the respect due to the veteran critic who had done so much to reform and refine the taste of his age. It was proper to object that he had introduced one or two pieces which ought never to have been published, but it was not so proper or necessary to object that he had given us his essay cut down into notes. Besides that this was unavoidable, they who made the objection had not been very careful to compare the new with the old matter; they would have found upon a fair examination that his original illustrations were very numerous, and that no discovery respecting Pope’s character or writings made since the edition of Warburton, was left untouched.

It has already been mentioned that he had once an intention of compiling a history of the revival of learning, and that he had abandoned it. About 1784, however, he issued proposals for a work which would probably have included much of his original purpose. This was to have been comprized in two quarto volumes, and to contain “The History of Grecian, Roman, Italian, and French Poetry in four parts; I. From Homer to Nonnus; II. From Ennius to Boetius; III. From Dante to Metastasio; IV. From W. de Lorris to Voltaire.” This he announced as “preparing for the press.” Probably his brother’s death, and his desire to complete his History of English Poetry, diverted him from his own design; but it does not appear that he made any progress in either.

After the publication of Pope, he entered on an edition of Dryden, and about 1799 had completed two volumes with notes, which have since been published. At this time the venerable author was attacked by an incurable disorder in his kidneys, which terminated his useful and honourable life on Feb. 23, 1800, in his seventy-eighth year. He left a widow, who died in 1806, a son and three daughters, the youngest by his second wife. He was interred in the same grave with his first wife, in the north aisle of Winchester cathedral: and the Wiccamists evinced their respect for his memory by an elegant monument by Flaxman, placed against the pillar next to the entrance of the choir on the south side of the centre aisle.

In 1806, the rev. John Wooll, master of the school of Midhurst in Sussex, published “Biographical Memoirs of Dr. Warton, with a selection from his Poetry, and a Literary correspondence.” From all these, the present sketch has been compiled, with some additional particulars gleaned from the literary journals of the times, and other sources of information.

The personal character of Dr. Warton continues to be the theme of praise with all who knew him. Without affectation of superior philosophy, he possessed an independent spirit; and amidst what would have been to others very bitter disappointments, he was never known to express the language of discontent or envy. As a husband and parent, he displayed the tenderest feelings mixed with that prudence which implies sense as well as affection. His manners partook of what has been termed the old court: his address was polite, and even elegant, but occasionally it had somewhat of measure and stateliness. Having left the university after a short residence, he mixed early with the world, sought and enjoyed the society of the fair sex, and tempered his studious habits with the tender and polite attentions necessary in promiscuous intercourse. In this respect there was a visible difference between him and his brother, whose manners were more careless and unpolished. In the more solid qualities of the heart, in true benevolence, kindness, hospitality, they approached more closely. Yet though their inclinations and pursuits were congenial, and each assisted the other in his undertakings, it may be questioned whether at any time they could have exchanged occupations. With equal stores of literature, with equal refinement of taste, it may be questioned whether the author of the Essay on Pope could have pursued the History of English poetry, or whether the historian of poetry could have written the papers we find in the Adventurer.

In conversation, Dr. Warton’s talents appeared to great advantage. He was mirthful, argumentative, or communicative of observation and anecdote, as he found his company lean to the one or the other. His memory was more richly stored with literary history than perhaps any man of his time, and his range was very extensive. He knew French and Italian literature most intimately; and when conversing on more common topics, his extempore sallies and opinions bore evidence of the same delicate taste and candour which appear in his writings.

His biographer has considered his literary character under the three heads of a poet, a critic, and an instructor; but it is as a critic principally that he will be known to posterity, and as one who, in the language of Johnson, has taught “how the brow of criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her severity, to attract and to delight.” A book, indeed, of more delightful variety than his Essay on Pope, has not yet appeared, nor one in which there is a more happy mixture of judgment and sensibility. It did not, however, flatter the current opinions on the rank of Pope among poets, and the author desisted from pursuing his subject for many years. Dr. Johnson said that this was owing “to his not having been able to persuade the world to be of his opinion as to Pope.” This was probably the truth, but not the whole truth. Motives of a delicate nature are supposed to have had some share in inducing him to desist for a time. Warburton was yet alive, the executor of Pope and the guardian of his fame, and Warburton was no less the active and zealous friend and correspondent of Thomas Warton; nor was it any secret that Warburton furnished Ruffhead with the materials for his Life of Pope, the chief object of which was a rude and impotent attack on the Essay. Warburton died in 1779, and in 1782, Dr. Warton completed his Essay, and at length persuaded the world that he did not differ from the common opinion so much as was supposed *. Still by pointing out what is not poetry, he gave unpardonable offence to those, whose names appear among poets, but whom he has reduced to moralists and versifiers.

In this work our author produced no new doctrine. The severe arrangement of poets in his dedication to Young, which announced the principles he intended to apply to Pope, and to the whole body of English poetry, was evidently taken from Philips, the nephew of Milton. In the preface to the Theatrum of this writer, it is asserted, that “wit, ingenuity, and learning in verse, even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing true native poetry is another in which there is a certain air and spirit, which, perhaps, the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly apprehend; much less is it attainable by any art or study.” On this text the whole

* “I thank you for the friendly is comprehended in these words of your delicacy in which you speak of my own. He chose to be the poet of reaEssay on Pope. I uever thought we son rather than of fancy.” Letter from disagreed so much as you seem to Dr. Warton to Mr. Haylty, published imagine. All I said, and all I think, by Mr. Wooll, p. 406. of the Essay is founded, and whatever objections were raised to it, while that blind admiration of Pope which accompanied his long dictatorship continued in full force, it is now generally adopted as the test of poetical merit by the best critics, although the partialities which some entertain for individual poets may yet give rise to difference of opinion respecting the provinces of argument and feeling.

That Dr. Warton advanced no novel opinions is proved from Phillips’s Preface; and Phillips, there is reason to suppose, may have been indebted to his uncle Milton for an idea of poetry so superior to what was entertained in his day. It has already been noticed, that the opinions of the two Wartons, “the learried brothers” as they have been justly styled, were congenial on most topics of literature; but, perhaps, in nothing more than their ideas of poetry, which both endeavoured to exemplify in their own productions, although with different effect. Dr. Warton was certainly in point of invention, powers of description, and variety, greatly inferior to the laureate. The “Enthusiast,” the “Dying Indian,” the “Revenge of America,” and one or two of his Odes, are not deficient in spirit and enthusiasm but the rest are more remarkable for a correct and faultless elegance than for any striking attribute of poetry. His “Odes,” which were coeval with those of Collins, must have suffered greatly by comparison. So different is taste from execution, and so strikingly are we reminded of one of his assertions, that “in no polished nation, after criticism has been much studied, and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinary work appeared.” But while we are reminded of this by his own productions, it may yet be doubted whether what may be true when applied to an individual who has lived a life of criticism, will be equally true of a nation. Even among our living poets, we may find more than one who have given proofs that extraordinary poetry may yet be produced, and that the rules of writing are not so fixed, nor criticism so studied, as to impede the progress of real genius. All that can be concluded respecting Dr. Warton is, that if his genius had been equal to his taste, if he could have produced what he appreciates with such exquisite skill in others, he would have undoubtedly been in poetry what he was in erudition and criticism. As an instructor and divine, Mr. Wooll’s opinion of him may be adopted with safety. “His professional exertions united the qualities of criticism and instruction. When the higher classes read under him the Greek tragedians, orators, or poets, they received the benefit, not only of direct and appropriate information, but of a pure, elegant lecture on classical taste. The spirit with which he commented on the prosopopoeia of Œdipus, or Electra, the genuine elegance and accuracy with which he developed the animated rules and doctrines of his favourite Longinus, the insinuating but guarded praise he bestowed, the well-judged and proportionate encouragement he uniformly held out to the first dawning of genius, and the anxious assiduity with which he pointed out the paths to literary eminence, can never, I am confident, be forgotten by those who have hung with steadfast attention on his precepts, and enjoyed the advantage of his superior guidance. Zealous in his adherence to the church-establishment, and exemplary in his attention to its ordinances and duties, he was at the same time a decided enemy to bigotry and intolerance. His style of preaching was unaffectedly earnest, and impressive; and the dignified solemnity with which he read the liturgy (particularly the communion-service), was remarkably awful. He had the most happy art of arresting the attention of youth on religious subjects. Every Wiccamical reader will recollect his inimitable commentaries on Grotius on the Sunday-evenings, and his discourse annually delivered in the school on Good Friday the impressions made by them cannot be forgotten.”

, a political writer and historian of the seventeenth century, was by birth a gentleman, descended from the Warwicks of Warthwykes of Warwicke in Cumberland, and bearing the same arms: “Vert, 3 lions rampant Argent.” His grandfather, Thomas Warwick, is (in the visitation of Kent, by sir Edward Bysche, in 1667), styled of Hereford, but whom he married is not mentioned. His father, Thomas Warwick, was very eminent for his skill in the theory of music, having composed a song of forty parts, for forty several persons, each of them to have his part entire from the other. He was a commissioner for granting dispensations for converting arable land into pasture, and was some time organist of Westminster-abbey and the Chapel-royal. He married Elizabeth daughter and co-heir of John Somerville, of Somerville Aston le Warwick; by whom he had issue: one son, Philip, our author, and two daughters; Arabella, married to Henry Clerke, esq. and afterwards married to Christopher Turnor, of the Middle Temple, esq. barrister at law, who, at the Restoration, was knighted, and made a baron of the exchequer.

Sir Philip Warwick was born in the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in the year 1608. He was educated at Eton-school, and afterwards travelled into France, and was some time at Geneva, where he studied under the famous Diodati. When he returned from abroad, he became secretary to the lord treasurer Juxon; and a clerk of the signet. He was diplomated bachelor of law at Oxford April llth, 1638, and in 1640 was elected burgess for Radnor in Wales, and was one of the fifty-six who gave negative to the bill of attainder against the earl of Strafford. Disapproving afterwards of the conduct of parliament, he went to the king at Oxford, and was for this desertion (by a vote of the House, Feb. 5, 1643), disabled from sitting there. Whilst at Oxford, he lodged in University-college, and his counsel was much relied upon by the king. In 1643, he was sent to the earl of Newcastle in the north, to persuade him to march southerly, which he could not be prevailed to comply with, “designing (as sir Peter Warwick perceived) to be the man who should turn the scale, and to be a self-subsisting and distinct army wherever he was.” In 1646, he was one of the king’s commissioners to treat with the parliament for the surrender of Oxford; and in the following year he attended the king to the Isle of Wight in the capacity of secretary; and there desiring, with some others, a leave of absence to look after their respective affairs, he took leave of the king, and never saw him more. Besides being engaged in these important commissions, he took up arms in the royal cause; one time serving under captain Turberville, who lost his life near Newark, at another in what was called the Troop of Show, consisting of noblemen, gentlemen, and their attendants, in all about 500 horse, whose property taken together was reckoned at 100,000l. per annum, and who, by his majesty’s permission, (they, being his guards,) had the honour of being engaged in the first charge at the battle of Edgehill. He was busily engaged in private conferences with the chief promoters of the Restoration; but this he does not relate “to creep into a little share in bringing back the king,” as he attributed that event to more than earthly wisdom, in the first parliament called by Charles II. he was returned burgess for his native city of Westminster, and about that time received the honour of knighthood, and was restored to his place of clerk of the signet. He was likewise employed by the virtuous earl of Southampton as secretary to the treasury, in which office he acquitted himself with such abilities and integrity as did honour to them both, and in which post he continued till the death of that earl in 1667. The loss which the public sustained in his retirement from business is handsomely acknowledged in one of sir William Temple’s letters to our author.

He married, about the year 1638, Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Button of Mash, Yorkshire, by whom he had an only son Philip. Towards the end of Charles the First’s reign he purchased the seat called Frognal, in the parish of Chiselhurst, in Kent, now or lately the seat of lord viscount Sidney; and about the year 1647, he married, to his second wife, dame Joan, widow of sir William Botteler, bart. who was killed in the battle at Cropredy-bridge, and daughter of sir Henry Fanshaw, of More-park, a near kinswoman to General Fairfax.

Sir Peter Warwick died January 15th, 1682-3, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. His only child, Philip (who married Elizabeth, second daughter and co-heiress of John lord Freskville, of Stavely-le-Derby, by whom he had no issue, died at Newmarket the 26th of March following, as he was returning post from Sweden (where he was envoy) to take his last farewell of his father. She was afterwards fourth wife of John earl of Holdernesse.

By will, proved April 5, 1683, sir Peter Warwick left to the parish of Chiselhurst 100l. to be placed out at interest for apprenticing a boy in the sea-service. To his native parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, the like sum for the same purpose and towards the building of St. Paul’s church lOO/.; to sir Charles Cotterill the little seal of his old master king Charles.

Dr. Smith, the learned editor of sir Peter Warwick’s “Discourse of Government,” says, “That the author was a gentleman of sincere piety, of strict morals, of a great and vast understanding, and of a very solid judgment; and that, after his retiring into the country, he addicted himself to reading, study, and meditation; and, being very assiduous in his contemplations, he wrote a great deal on various subjects, his genius not being confined to any one particular study and learning.” What we have, however, of his in print is, “A Discourse of Government, as examined by reason, scripture, and the law of the land, written in 1678,” and published by Dr. Thomas Smith in 1694, with a preface, which, being displeasing to the then administration, was suffered to remain but in very few copies *. His principal work was, Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I. with a Continuation to the Restoration;“adorned with a head of the author after Lely, engraved by White, and taken at a later period of his life than that which appeared in the” Gentleman’s Magazine“for Sept. 1790. The Memoirs were published in 1701, 8vo; and to which is not unfrequently added his” Discourse on Government,“before mentioned. This History, with several others of the time of Charles I. have this peculiar merit, that the authors of them were both actors and sufferers in the interesting scenes which they describe. Our author is justly allowed to be exceeded by none of them in candour and integrity. There is likewise ascribed to our author” A Letter to Mr. Lenthal, shewing that Peace is better than War,“small 8vo, of 10 pages, published anonymously, 1646; and in the British Museum some recommendatory letters from him in favour of Mr. Colfins the mathematician which are published in Birch’s” 'History of the Royal Society;“and in the Life of Collins, in the newedition of the” Biographia Britannica."

, a man of considerable learning, was born at Hackney in Middlesex, and admitted scholar of King’s-college, Cambridge, Nov. 25, 1645. Before he was made junior fellow, he turned Grotius’s “Baptizatorum puerorum institutio,” from the original Latin verse into Greek verse, which was published by his schoolmaster at Eton, Dr. Nicholas Grey, under the title, “Hugonis Grotii baptizatorum puerorum institutio; cui accesserunt Graeca ejusdem metaphrasis a Christophero Wase Regalis Coll. Cantab, et Anglicana versio a Francisco Goldsmith, Ar­* This seems doubtful. See Granger’s Letters, published by Malcolm, pp. 385, 387, 889. migero, una cum luculentis e S. S. testimoniis, a N. G. scholae Etonensis informatore,” Lond. 1647, 8vo. A second edition of this appeared in 1650, and a third in 1668, with a somewhat different title, and the addition of a “Praxis in Graecam metaphrasin per Barthol. Beale.”

Mr. Wase was afterwards made fellow of King’s-college, and went out bachelor of arts. In 1650 he published an English translation in verse of the “Electra” of Sophocles. For something offensive in the preface of this translation, or some other accusation bythe parliamentary party, which is not quite clear, (Walker says he delivered a feigned letter from the king to Dr. Collins) he was ejected from his fellowship, and obliged to leave the kingdom. He was afterwards taken at sea, and imprisoned at Gravesend, from which he contrived to escape, and served in the Spanish army against the French. He was taken prisoner in an engagement, but released soon after, and came to England, where he was appointed tutor to William lord Herbert, eldest son to the earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. To this nobleman he dedicated “Gratii Falisci Cynegeticon, a poem on hunting by Gratius, &c.” Lond. 1654, 8vo. This translation, and his comment on that elegant poem, are sufficient proof of his abilities. Waller addressed a copy of verses to him on his performance.

In 1655 he proceeded M. A. and was schoolmaster of Dedham near Colchester in Essex, and about the same time married. He was afterwards made master of the freeschool of Tunbridge in Kent, probably about 1660. While here he published his “Dictionarium Minus; a compendious Dictionary English-Latin, and Latin- English,” Lond. 1662, 4to. In 1671 he was elected superior beadle of law in the university of Oxford, and printer or architypographus to the same university. The same year he published “Cicero against Cataline, in four invective orations; containing the whole manner of discovering that notorious conspiracy,” Lond. 8vo. This was followed by “The History of France under the ministry of cardinal Mazarine, written in Latin by Benjamin Priolo,” Lond. 8vo. In 1678 he published at Oxford, “Considerations concerning free-schools as settled in JJngland,” 8vo; and in 1687, “Christopheri Wasii Senarius, sive de legibus et licentia veterum poetarum,” Oxon. 4to. He wrote also “Structurae Nonianse,” and appears to have been concerned in an edition of sir John Spelman’s life of king Alfred. Hearne says he translated it into Latin, and published it at Oxford in a thin folio, with a commentary by Obadiah Walker, master of University-college. He died Aug. 29, 1690, and appears to have been a man of great parts, and a very considerable sufferer for his loyalty. Hearne, at p. 20 of his discourse, prefixed to the eighth volume of Leland’s Itinerary, stiles him “that eminent philologer,” and makes honourable mention of a son of his of the same name, who was fellow of Corpus Christicollege, Oxford. He died, B. D. 1711, and was buried at Corpus, where 1 is an inscription to his memory.

, commander in chief of the armies, and first president of the United States of America, was born Feb. 11, 1732, in the parish of Washington, Virginia. He was descended from an ancient family in Cheshire, of which a branch had been established in Virginia about the middle of the seventeenth century. No remarkable circumstances have transpired of his education or his early youth; and we should not indeed expect any marks of that disorderly prematureness of talent, which is so often fallacious, in a character whose distinguishing praise was to be regular and natural. His classical instruction was probably small, such as the private tutor of a Virginian country gentleman could at that period have imparted; and if his opportunities of information had been more favourable, the time was too short to profit by them. Before he was twenty he was appointed a major in the Colonial militia, and he had very early occasion to display those political and military talents, of which the exertions on a greater theatre have since made his name so famous throughout the world.

The plenipotentiaries who framed the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, by leaving the boundaries of the British and French territories in North America unfixed, had sown the seeds of a new war, at the moment when they concluded a peace. The limits of Canada and Louisiana, furnished a motive, or a pretext, for one of the most successful but one of the most bloody and wasteful wars in which Great Britain had ever been engaged. In the disputes which arose between the French and English officers on this subject, major Washington was employed by the governor of Virginia, in a negotiation with the French governor of Fort du Quesne (now Pitsburgh); who threatened the English frontiers with a body of French and their Indian allies. He succeeded in averting the invasion; but hostilities becoming inevitable, he was in the next year appointed lieutenant colonel of a regiment raised by the colony for its own defence; to the command of which he soon after succeeded. The expedition of general Braddock followed in 1755; of which the fatal issue is too well known to require being described by us. Colonel Washington served in that expedition only as a volunteer; but such was the general confidence in his talents, that he may be said to have conducted the retreat. Several British officers lately alive, attested the calmness and intrepidity which he shewed in that difficult situation, and the voluntary obedience which was so cheerfully paid by the whole army to his superior mind. After having acted a distinguished part in a subsequent and more successful expedition to the Ohio, he was obliged by ill health, in 1758, to resign his military situation. The sixteen years which followed of the life of Washington, supply few materials for the biographer. Having married Mrs. Curtis, a Virginian lady of amiable character and respectable connections, he settled at his beautiful seat of Mount Vernon, of which we have had so many descriptions; where, with the exception of such attendance as was required by his duties as a magistrate and a member of the assembly, his time was occupied by his domestic enjoyments, and the cultivation of his estate, in a manner well suited to the tranquillity of his unambitious mind. At the end of this period he was called by the voice of his country from this state of calm and secure though unostentatious happiness.

For almost half a century symptoms of disaffection to the mother country had been so visible in the New England provinces, that as far back as 1734, the celebrated bishop Berkeley had predicted a total separation of North America from Great Britain. That prelate, when a private clergyman, had lived three years in Rhode-Island, and was an attentive and sagacious observer of the mariners and principles of the people, among whom he perceived the old leaven of their forefathers fermenting even then with great violence. The middle and southern provinces, however, were more loyal, and their influence, together with perpetual dread of the French before the peace of 1763, put off the separation to a more distant day than that at which, we have reason to believe, the bishop expected it to take place. Virginia, the most loyal of all the colonies, had long been in the habit of calling itself, with a kind of proud pre-eminence, “his Majesty’s ancient dominion,” and it was with some difficulty that the disaffected party of New England could gain over that province, when the time arrived for effecting their long-meditated revolt. At last, however, they succeeded, and we find Mr. Washington a delegate from Virginia in the Congress, which met at Philadelphia Oct. 26, 1774. As no American united in so high a degree as he did, military experience with an estimable character, he was appointed to the command of the army which had assembled in the New England provinces, to hold in check the British army which was then encamped under general Gage at Boston.

At this period there is some reason to believe that neither general Washington nor his constituents entered heartily into the views of the New Englanders; but afraid lest their army, after shaking off the yoke of Great Britain, might give laws to the Continent, he took upon himself the command of that army in the month of July 1775. To detail his conduct in the years which followed, would be to relate the history of the American war. It may be said generally, that within a very short period after the declaration of independence, the affairs of America were in a condition so desperate, that perhaps nothing but the peculiar character of Washington’s genius could have retrieved them. Activity is the policy of invaders, and in the field of battle the superiority of a disciplined army is displayed. But delay was the wisdom of a country defended by undisciplined soldiers against an enemy who must be more exhausted by time than he could be weakened by defeat. It required the consummate prudence, the calm wisdom, the inflexible firmness, the moderate and well-balanced temper of Washington, to embrace such a plan of policy, and to persevere in it: to resist the temptations of enterprize; to fix the confidence of his soldiers without the attraction of victory; to support the spirit of the army and the people amidst those slow and cautious plans of defensive warfare which are more dispiriting than defeat itself; to contain his own ambition and the impetuosity of his troops; to endure temporary obscurity for the salvation of his country, and for the attainment of solid and immortal glory; and to suffer even temporary reproach and obloquy, supported by the approbation of his own conscience and the applause of that small number of wise men whose praise is an earnest of the admiration and gratitude of posterity. Victorious generals easily acquire the confidence of their army. Theirs, however, is a confidence in the fortune of their general. That of Washington’s army was a confidence in his wisdom. Victory gives spirit to cowards, and even the agitations of defeat sometimes impart a courage of despair. Courage is inspired by success, and it may be stimulated to desperate exertion even by calamity, but it is generally palsied by inactivity. A system of cautious defence is the severest trial of human fortitude. By this test the firmness of Washington was tried.

It must not, however, be concealed, that some of the British commanders gave him advantages which he surely did not expect; and it has been thought that more than once they had it in their power to annihilate his army, merely by following up their victories. The issue of the contest is well known.

Much has been said by the American biographers of Washington, concerning his magnanimity during the ravages of a civil war, in which he acted so conspicuous a part; but, on the other hand, two instances have been mentioned in which he is thought to have been deficient in this great quality of a hero. Granting (it has been said) that duty required him to execute, as a spy, the accomplished major Andre, true magnanimity would have prevented him from insultingly erecting, in the view of that unfortunate officer, the gallows on which he was to be hung, several days before his execution. And when earl Cornwallis was overpowered by numbers, and obliged at York-town to surrender to the united armies of America and France, a magnanimous conqueror would not have claimed, contrary to the usage of civilized war, the sword from the hands of that gallant nobleman. On these two occasions, and on some others, the conduct of Washington agreed so ill with his general character, that he has been supposed to be influenced by the leaders of the French army. Cue thing is certain, that he was so little pleased either with his own conduct on particular occasions, or with the general principle of the American revolution, that he never could be forced to talk on the subject. An Italian nobleman, who visited him after the peace, had often attempted, in vain, to turn the conversation to the events of the war. At length he thought he had found a favourable opportunity of effecting his purpose; they were riding together over the scene of an action where Washington’s conduct had been the subject of no small animadversion.

Count said to him, “Your conduct, sir, in this action has been criticized.” Washington made no answer, but clapped spurs to his horse; after they had passed the field he turned to the Italian, and said, “Count, I observe that you wish me to speak of the war. It is a conversation which I always avoid. I rejoice at the establishment of the liberties of America. But the time of the struggle was a horrible period, in which the best men were compelled to do many things repugnant to their nature.”

The conclusion of the American war permitted Washington to return to those domestic scenes, from which nothing but a sense of duty seems to have had the power to draw him. But he was not allowed long to enjoy this privacy. The supreme government of the United States, hastily thrown up, in a moment of turbulence and danger, as a temporary fortification against anarchy, proved utterly inadequate to the preservation of general tranquillity and permanent security. The confusions of civil war had given a taint to the morality of the people, which rendered the restraints of a just and vigorous government more indispensably necessary. Confiscation and paper money, the two greatest schools of rapacity and dishonesty in the world, had widely spread their poison among the Americans. One of their own writers tells us that the whole system of paper money was a system of public and private frauds. In this state of things, which threatened the dissolution of morality and government, good men saw the necessity of concentrating and invigorating the supreme authority. Under the influence of this conviction, a convention of delegates was assembled at Philadelphia, which strengthened the bands of the federal union, and bestowed on congress those powers which were necessary for the purposes of good government. Washington was the president of this convention, as he, in three years after, was elected president of the United States of America, under what was called “The New Constitution,” though it ought to have been called a reform of the republican government, as that republican government itself was only a reform of the ancient Colonial coustiuitioii under the British crown. None of these changes extended so far as an attempt to newmodel the whole social and political system.

Events occurred during his chief magistracy, which convulsed the whole political world, and which tried most severely his moderation and prudence. The French revolution took place. Both friends and enemies have agreed in stating that Washington, from the beginning of that revolution, had no great confidence in its beneficial operation. He must indeed have desired the abolition of despotism, but he is not to be called the enemy of liberty, if he dreaded the substitution of a more oppressive despotism. It is extremely probable that his wary and practical understanding, instructed by the experience of popular commotions, augured little good from the daring speculations of inexperienced visionaries. The progress of the revolution was not adapted to cure his distrust, and when, in 1793, France, then groaning under the most intolerable and hideous tyranny, became engaged in war with almost all the governments of the civilized world, it is said to have been a matter of deliberation with the president of the United States, whether the republican envoy, or the agent of the French princes should be received in America as the diplomatic representative of France. But whatever might be his private feelings of repugnance and horror, his public conduct was influenced only by his public duties. As a virtuous man he must have abhorred the system of crimes which was established in France. But as the first magistrate of the American commonwealth, he was bound only to consider how far the interest and safety of the people whom he governed, were affected by the conduct of France. He saw that it was wise and necessary for America to preserve a good understanding and a beneficial intercourse with that great country, in whatever manner she was governed, as long as she abstained from committing injury against the United States. Guided by this just and simple principle, uninfluenced by the abhorrence of crimes which he felt, he received Mr. Genet,the minister of the French republic, and was soon shocked by the outrages which that minister committed, or instigated, or countenanced against the American government. The conduct of Washington was a model of firm and dignified moderation. Insults were offered to his authority in official papers, in anonymous libels, by incendiary declaimers, and by tumultuous meetings. The law of nations was trampled under foot. His confidential ministers were seduced to betray him, and the deluded populace were so inflamed by the arts of their enemies that they broke out into insurrection. No vexation, however galling, could disturb the tranquillity of his mind, or make him deviate from the policy which his situation prescribed. With a more confirmed authority, and at the head of a longer established government, he might perhaps have thought greater vigour justifiable. But in his circumstances, he was sensible that the nerves of authority were not strong enough to bear being strained. Persuasion, always the most desirable instrument of government, was in his case the safest; yet he never overpassed the line which separates concession from meanness. He reached the utmost limits of moderation, without being betrayed into pusillanimity. He preserved external and internal peace by a system of mildness, without any of those virtual confessions of weakness, which so much dishonour and enfeeble supreme authority. During the whole of that arduous struggle, his personal character gave that strength to a new magistracy which in other countries arises from ancient habits of obedience and respect. The authority of his virtue was more efficacious for the preservation of America, than the legal powers of his office.

During this turbulent period he was re-elected to the office of president of the United States, which he held from April 1789 till September 1796. Probably no magistrate of any commonwealth, ancient or modern, ever occupied a place so painful and perilous. Certainly no man was ever called upon so often to sacrifice his virtuous feelings (he had no other sacrifices to make) to his public duty. Two circumstances of this sort deserve to be particularly noticed. In the spring of 1794 he sent an ambassador to Paris with credentials, addressed to his “dear friends, the citizens composing the committee of public safety of the French republic,” whom he prays God “to take under his holy protection.” Fortunately the American ambassador was spared the humiliation of presenting his credentials to those bloody tyrants. Their power was subverted, and a few of them had suffered the punishment of their crimes, which no punishment could expiate, before feis arrival at Paris.

Washington had another struggle of feeling and duty to encounter when he was compelled to suppress the insurrection in the western counties of Pennsylvania by force of arms. But here hq had a consolation in the exercise of mefey, for the necessity of having recourse to arms. Never was there a revolt quelled with so little blood. Scarcely ever was the hasest dastard so tender of his own life, as this virtuous man was of the lives of his fellow citizens. The value of his clemency is enhanced by recollecting that he was neither without provocations to severity, nor without pretexts for it. His character and his office had been reviled in a manner almost unexampled among civilized nations. His authority had been insulted. His safety had been threatened. Of his personal and political enemies some might, perhaps, have been suspected of having instigated the insurrection; a greater number were thought to wish well to it; and very few shewed much zeal to suppress it. But neither resentment, nor fear, nor even policy itself, could extinguish the humanity of Washington. This seems to have been the only sacrifice which he was incapable of making to the interest of his country.

Throughout the whole course of his second presidency, the danger of America was great and imminent almost beyond example. The spirit of change indeed, at that period, shook all nations. But in other countries it had to encounter ancient and solidly established power. It had to tear up by the roots long habits of attachment in some nations for their government, of awe in others, of acquiescence and submission in all. But in America the government was new and weak. The people had scarce time to recover from the ideas and feelings of a recent civil war. In other countries the volcanic force must be of power to blow up the mountains, and to convulse the continents that held it down, before it could escape from the deep caverns in which it was imprisoned: in America it was covered only by the ashes of a late convulsion, or at most by a little thin soil, the produce of a few years’ quiet.

The government of America had none of those salutary prejudices to employ which in every other country were used with success to open the eyes of the people to the enormities of the French revolution. It had, on the contrary, to qontend with the prejudices of the people in the most moderate precautions against internal confusion, in the most measured and guarded resistance to the unparalleled insults and enormous encroachments of France. Without zealous support from the people, the American government was impotent. It required a considerable time, and it cost an arduous and dubious struggle, to direct the popular spirit against a sister republic, established among a people to whose aid the Americans ascribed the establishment of their independence. It is probable, indeed, that no policy could have produced this effect, unless it had been powerfully aided by the crimes of the French government, which have proved the strongest allies of all established governments; which have produced such a general disposition to submit to any known tyranny, rather than rush into all the unknown and undefinable evils of civil confusion, with the horrible train of new and monstrous tyrannies of which it is usually the forerunner. Of these circumstances Washington availed himself with uncommon address. He employed the horror excked by the atrocities of the French revolution for the most honest and praiseworthy purposes; to preserve the internal quiet of his country; to assert the dignity, and to maintain the rights, of the commonwealth which he governed, against foreign enemies. He avoided war without incurring the imputation of pusillanimity. He cherished the detestation of Americans for anarchy, without weakening the spirit of civil liberty, and he maintained, and even consolidated, the authority of government, without abridging the privileges of the. people.

The resignation of Washington in 1796 was certainly a measure of prudence, but it may be doubted whether it was beneficial for his country, In the then unsettled state of public affairs. When he retired, he published a valedictory address to his countrymen, as he had before done when he quitted the command of the army in 1783. In these compositions the whole heart and soul of Washington are laid open. Other state papers have, perhaps, shewn more spirit and dignity, more eloquence, greater force of genius, and a more enlarged comprehension of mind. But none ever displayed more simplicity and ingenuousness, more moderation and sobriety, more good sense, more prudence, more honesty, more earnest affection for his country and for mankind, more profound reverence for virtue and religion; more ardent wishes for the happiness of his fellow-creatures, and more just and rational views of the means which alone can effectually promote that happiness.

From his resignation till the month of July 1798, he lived in retirement at Mount Vernon. At this latter pe r riod it became necessary for the United States to arm, They had endured with a patience of which there is no example in the history of states, all the contumely and wrong which successive administrations in France had heaped upon them. Their ships were every where captured, their ministers were detained in a sort of imprisonment at Paris; while incendiaries, cloathed in the sacred character of ambassadors, scattered over their peaceful provinces the firebrands of sedition and civil war. An offer was made to terminate this long course of injustice, by a bribe to the French ministers. This offer was made by persons who appeared to be in the confidence of M. Talleyrand, who professed to act by his authority, but who have been since disavowed by him. In the mean time the United States resolved to arm by land and sea. The command of the army was bestowed on general Washington, which he accepted because he was convinced that “every thing we hold dear and sacred was seriously threatened;” though he had flattered himself “that he had quitted for ever the boundless field of public action, incessant trouble and high responsibility, in which he had long acted so conspicuous a part.” In this office he continued during the short period of his life which still remained. On Thursday the 12th December 1799, he was seized with an inflammation in his throat, which became considerably worse the next day; and of which, notwithstanding the efforts of his physicians, he died on Saturday the 14th of December 1799, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and in the twenty-third year of the independence of the United States, of which he may be considered as the founder. The same calmness, simplicity, and regularity, which had uniformly marked his demeanour, did not forsake him in his dying moments. Even the perfectly well-ordered state of the most minute particulars of his private business, bore the stamp of that constant authority of prudence and practical reason over his actions, which was a distinguishing feature of his character. He died with those sentiments of piety, which had given vigour and consistency to his virtue, and adorned every part of his blameless and illustrious life.

, a very learned scholar, was born in Yorkshire in 1672, and educated at Queen’s college, Cambridge, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1694, that of master in 1698, and that of bachelor of divinity in 1707. Before this he had assisted Kuster in his edition of Suidas, as appears by a letter of his, giving an account of that eminent critic. (See Kuster.) In 1710 Wasse became more generally known to the literary world by his edition of “Sallust,” 4to, the merits of which have been long acknowledged. He amended the text by a careful examination of nearly eighty manuscripts, as well as some very ancient editions. In Dec. 1711 he was presented to the rectory of Aynhoe in Northamptonshire, by Thomas Cartwright, esq. where John Whiston (the bookseller) says “he lived a very agreeable and Christian life, much esteemed by that worthy family and his parishioners.” He had an equal regard for them, and never sought any other preferment. He had a very learned and choice library, in which he passed most of his time, and assisted many of the learned in their publications. He became at length a proselyte to Dr. Clarke’s Arianism, and corresponded much with him and with Will. Whiston, as appears by Whiston’s Life of Dr. Clarke, and his own life. According to Whiston he was the cause of Mr. Wasse’s embracing the Arian sentiments, which he did with such zeal, as to omit the Athanasian creed in the service of the church, and other passages which militated against his opinions. Whiston calls him “more learned than any bishop in England since bishop Lloyd,” and informs us of the singular compliment Bentley paid to him, “When I am dead, Wasse will be the most learned man in England.”

That he was a good scholar and critic, his essays in the “Bibliotheca Literaria” afford sufficient 'evidence; but he was not the editor of that work, as some have reported. Dr. Jebb was the editor, but Wasse contributed several pieces, as many others did, and at length destroyed the sale of the work by making his essays too long, particularly his life of Justinian, who filled two whole numbers, and was not then finished. This displeased the readers of the work, and after it had reached ten numbers (at Is. each) it was discontinued for want of encouragement. * What were published make a 4to volume, finished in 1724. Mr. Wasse was the author of three articles in the Philosophical Transactions;!. “On the difference of the height of a human body between morning and night.” 2. “On the effects of Lightning, July 3, 1725, in Northamptonshire.” 3. “An account of an earthquake In Oct. 1731, in Northamptonshire.” He was also a considerable contributor to the edition of “Thucydides,” which by the name of “Wassii et Dukeri,” Amst. 1721, 2 vols. fol. He died of an apoplexy, November 19, 1738, and was succeeded in his living of Aynhoe by Dr. Yarborough, afterwards principal of Brasenose college, Oxford, who purchased part of his collection of books, many of them replete with ms notes and collections of Mss. by Mr. Wasse. They are now in the library of that college, by the kindness of the heirs of Dr. Yarborough. John “Whiston adds that Wasse was” a facetious man in conversation, but a heavy preacher; a very deserving charitable man, and universally esteemed." A considerable part of his library appeared in one of Whiston’s sale catalogues.

, a heraldic and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1619. He had a learned education, and resided some time at Oxford, for the sake of the Bodleian Library there; but was not a member of that university. Soon after the passing of the second charter of the Royal Society, he was proposed on the 22d July, 1668, candidate for election into it; and chosen the 29th of the same month being admitted the 5th August. He afterwards entered into holy orders, by the persuasion of Dr. Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1668. He was twice married: to his first wife he had Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Smith, alias Carrington, by Magdalen his wife, daughter of Robert Hervey, esq. comptroller of the custom-house to James the First; secondly to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Richard Bateman of Hartington in Derbyshire, and London, esq. by Christiana, his first wife, daughter of William Stone, of London, esq. who died, leaving him one son, and two daughters; the daughters only survived him. He died 30th May, 1670, aged fifty-one, at his house at Mile-end-green, and was interred June 2d, at Greenford in Middlesex, where he had an estate. He was author of the following works, some of which are much sought after at present: 1. “An Apology for Learning and Learned Men,” 1653, 8vo. 2. “Two Contemplations of Magnanimity and Acquaintance with God,” 1653, 8vo. 3. “A Discourse of the Piety, Policy, and Charity of Elder Times, and Christians,” 1655, 12mo. 4. “A Defence of Arms and Armory,” 1660, 8vo; with a frontispiece of his quarterings. 5. “Fortescutus illustratus; or, a Commentary on sir John Fortescue, lord chancellour to Henry VI. his book, De Laudibus legum AngUsfe,*' 1663, fol. with a fine portrait of Waterhouse, by Loggan, and of sir John Fortescue, by Faithorne. 6.” The Gentleman’s Monitor," 1665, 8vo, with a portrait by Horlocks.

, a learned English divine, and able assertor of the doctrine of the Trinity, was born Feb. 34, 1683, at Waseley, or Walesiy, in the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire, of which parish his father, the rev. Henry Waterland, was rector. He received his early education partly at Flixborough, of which also his father was rector, under his curate Mr. Sykes, and partly under his father, until he was fit to be sent to the free-school at Lincoln, then in great reputation. His uncommon diligence and talents recommended him to the notice of Mr. Samuel Garmstone and Mr. Antony Read, the two successive masters of that school, at whose request, besides the ordinary exercises, he frequently performed others, which were so excellent as to be handed about for the honour of the school. In 1699, he went to Cambridge, and on March 30, was admitted of Magdalen college, under the tuition of Mr. Samuel Barker. In December 1702 he obtained a scholarship, and proceeding A. B. in Lent term following, was elected fellow in Feb. 1703-4. He then took pupils, and was esteemed a good teacher. In 1706 he commenced A.M. In February 1713, on the death of Dr. Gabriel Quadrin, master of the college, the earl of Suffolk and Binden, in whose family the right is vested, conferred the mastership upon Mr. Waterland, who having taken holy orders, was also presented by that nobleman to the rectory of Ellingham in Norfolk. But this made little or no addition to his finances, as he gave almost the whole revenue of it to his curate, his own residence being necessary at college, where he still continued to take pupils, and for their advantage wrote his “Advice to a young student, with a method of study for the first four years,” which went through several editions.

In 1714, he took the degree of bachelor of divinity, at the exercise for which he gave a proof of no common abilities. He chose for his first question, upon which consequently his thesis was made, “Whether Arian subscription be lawful?” a question, says Mr. Seed, worthy of him who abhorred all prevarications, and had the capacity to see through and detest those evasive arts, with which some would palliate their disingenuity. When Dr. James, the professor, had endeavoured to answer his thesis, and embarrass the question with the dexterity of a person long practised in all the arts of a subtle disputant, he immediately replied in an extempore discourse of about half an hour long, with such an easy flow of proper and significant words, and such an undisturbed presence of mind, as if he had been reading, what he afterwards printed, “The case of the Arian subscription considered.” He unravelled the professor’s fallacies, reinforced his own reasoning, and shewed himself so perfect a master of the language, the subject, and himself, that all agreed no one ever appeared to greater advantage. He was on this occasion happy in a first opponent Mr. (afterwards the celebrated bishop) Sherlock, who gave full play to his abilities, and called for all that strength of reason of which he was master. One singular consequence is said to have followed this exercise. I)r. Clarke, in the second edition of his “Scripture Doctrige,” &c. published in 17 19, omitted the following words, which were in his former edition of that book: “It is plain that a man may reasonably agree to such forms (of subscription to the thirty-nine articles) whenever he can in any sense at all reconcile them with scripture.” This is remarked by our author in the preface to his vindication of Christ’s divinity, as redounding to Dr. Clarke’s honour, and it is well known that Dr. Clarke afterwards constantly refused subscription.

On the death of Dr. James, regius professor of divinity, Mr. Waterland was generally considered as fit to succeed him, but his great esteem for Dr. Bentley, who was elected, prevented his using his interest. He was soon after appointed one of the chaplains in ordinary to George I. who, on a visit to Cambridge in 1717, honoured him with the degree of D.D. without his application; and in this degree he was incorporated at Oxford, with a handsome encomium from Dr. Delaune, president of St. John’s college in that university. In 1719, he gave the world the first specimen of his abilities on a subject which has contributed most to his fame. He now published the first “Defence of his Queries,” in vindication of the divinity of Christ, which engaged him in a controversy with Dr. Clarke. (See Clarke, p. 409.) The “Queries” which he thus defended were originally drawn up for the use of Mr. John Jackson the rector of Rossington in Yorkshire (See Jackson, p. 420), and it was intended that the debate should be carried on by private correspondence; but Jackson having sent an answer to the “Queries,” and received Waterland’s reply, acquainted him that both were in the press, and that he must follow him thither, if he wished to prolong the controversy. On this Dr. Waterland published “A vindication of Christ’s Divinity: being a defence of some queries, &c. in answer to a clergyman in the country;” which being soon attacked by the Arian party, our author published in 1723, “A second vindication of Christ’s Divinity, or, a second defence of some queries relating to Dr. Clarke’s scheme of the holy Trinity, in answer to the country clergyman’s reply,” &c. This, which is the longest, has always been esteemed Dr. Waterland’s most accurate performance on the subject. We are assured that it was finished and sent to the press in two months; but it was a subject he had frequently revolved, and that with profound attention. In answer to this work, Dr. Clarke published in the following year, “Observations on the second defence,” &c. to which Dr. Waterland replied in “A farther defence of Christ’s divinity,” &c. It was not to be expected that these authors would agree, as Dr. Clarke was for explaining the text in favour of the Trinity, by what he called the maxims of right reasoning, while Dr. Waterland, bowing to the mysterious nature of the subject, considered it as a question above reason, and took the texts in their plain and obvious sense, as, he proved, the fathers had done before him.

A short time before the commencement of this controversy, Dr. Waterland had attacked a position in Dr. Whitby’s “Disquisitiones modestae in Bulli defensionem fidei Nicenae,” which produced an answer from Whitby, entitled “A reply to Dr. Waterland’s objections against Dr. Whitby’s Disquisiiiones.” This induced our author to publish in the same year (1718) “An answer to Dr. Whitby’s Reply; being a vindication of the charges of fallacies, misquotations, misconstructions, misrepresentations, &c. respecting his book, entitled `Disquisitiones modestae, in a letter to Dr. Whitby'.” In consequence of the reputation which Dr. Waterland had acquired by his first publication on this subject, he was appointed by Dr. Robinson, bishop of London, to preach the first course of sermons at the lecture founded by lady Moyer. This he accomplished in 1720, and afterwards printed in fc< Eight Sermons, &c. in defence of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ,“c. 8vo, and in the preface informs us that they may be considered as a supplement to his” Vindication of Christ’s Divinity.“In 1721 Dr. Waterland was promoted by the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s to the rectory of St. Austin’s and St. Faith’s, and in 1723 to the chancellorship of the church of York, by archbishop Dawes. The same year he published his” History of the Athanasian Creed," which he undertook in order to rescue this venerable form of faith from Dr. Clarke’s censures, who had gone so far as to apply to the prelates to have it laid aside. In 1727, upon the application of lord Townsend, secretary of state, and Dr. Gibson, bishop of London, his majesty collated him to a canonry of Windsor; and in 1730, he was presented by the dean and chapter to the vicarage of Twickenham in Middlesex. On this he resigned his living of St. Austin and St. Faith, objecting to holding two benefices at the same time with the cure of souls; but as this principle did not affect his holding the archdeaconry of Middlesex, he accepted that preferment this year, given him by bishop Gibson.

Dr. Clarke’s exposition of the Church Catechism being published in 1730, our author immediately printed some remarks upon it, with a view to point out what he esteemed to be dangerous passages in that exposition, and to counteract their influence. In the prosecution of this design, he advanced a position concerning the comparative value of positive and moral duties, which drew him into a controversy with Dr. Sykes. Sykes having published an answer to Dr. Waterland’s “Remarks,” the latter replied in a pamphlet, entitled “The nature, obligation, and efficacy of the Christian Sacraments considered as also the comparative value of moral and positive duties distinctly stated and cleared.” Other pamphlets passed between them on the same subject, until Dr. Waterland' s attention was called to Tindal’s deistical publication of “Christianity as old as the Creation.” Against this, he wrote “Scripture vindicated, in answer to Christianity as old as the Creation,” 1730 1732, three parts; and two charges to the clergy of the archdea* conry of Middlesex on the same subject. He now found an antagonist in Middleton, (a Tindal in disguise), who published “A Letter to Dr. Wateriand,” c. the purport and consequences of which we have already detailed. (See Middleton, p. 137.)

Dr. Waterland had another controversy with Mr. Jackson before mentioned, on account of Dr. Clarke’s “Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God,” Dr. Waterland undertaking to show the weakness of the argument a priori, which Clarke had thought proper to employ on this occasion. In the <c Second defence of his Queries,“Dr. Wateriand had dropt some hints against this kind of argument, but did not at that time enter into the subject; nor were his objections published until 1734, when the substance of what he had written upon the subject, in some letters to a gentleman, was given to the public by Mr. (afterwards bishop) Law, partly in his notes on King’s” Origin of Evil“and partly in his” Inquiry into the ideas of Space,“&c. to which is added” A Dissertation on the argument a priori by a learned hand," i.e. Wateriand. In this dissertation he endeavoured to prove, first, that the argumentum a priori is very loose and precarious, depending on little else than an improper use of equivocal terms or phrases: secondly, that, moreover, when fully understood, it is palpably wrong and absurd; thirdly, that the several pleas or excuses invented for it are fallacious, and of no real weight; and he concludes with a brief intimation of the hurtful tendency of insisting so much upon this pretended argument, both with regard to religion and science. The publication of these sentiments served to renew the controversy between Mr. Law, himself, and Mr. Jackson.

In the same year, 1734, Dr. Wateriand published “The importance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity asserted,” not the most temperate of his writings, for he hints at the interference of the civil magistrate; but as he considers the doctrine of the Trinity to be fundamental, this was alone an assertion sufficient to call down the vengeance of the Arian and Socinian writers, both then and since, when speaking of him. He pursued the same subject in two charges delivered to the clergy of his archdeaconry, in this and the following year. Having often introduced the doctrine of the Eucharist in his charges, he combined his sentiments on that topic in a large 8vo volume, entitled “A Review of the doctrine of the Eucharist, as laid down in scripture and antiquity,” 1737. This was the last of his works that appeared in his life-time, and was calculated to confute the opinions of Hoadly, Johnson, and Brett.

About 1740, a complaint which he had long neglected, as appearing a trifle (the nail growing into one of his great toes) obliged him to remove from Cambridge to London for the benefit of the advice of the celebrated surgeon, Cheselden: but this was now too late; for a bad habit of body, contracted by too intense an application to his studies, rendered his case desperate; and after undergoing several painful operations, with exemplary patience, a mortification took place, of which he died Dec. 23. He was interred, at his own request, in one of the small chapels on the south side of the collegiate church of Windsor, where is a plain stone with his name and age, fifty -eight, inscribed on it.

Dr. Water land married, about 1719, a lady of good family and fortune, who survived him; but he left no child. He was a man free from ambition; all his preferments were bestowed without any application on his part direct or indirect, and he might have reached to higher, had he desired them, by the recommendation of archbishop Potter. The bishopric of Llandaff was once offered to him, but he declined it.

In his life time he published some single sermons, and after his death two volumes more were added, with two tracts, 1. “A summary view of the doctrine of Justification. 2. An Inquiry concerning the antiquity of the practice of infant communion, as founded on the notion of its necessity. The whole published from the originals, in pursuance of the request of the author, by Joseph Clarke, M. A.” 1742. The tract on justification seems chiefly levelled at Whitfield’s answer to the bishop of London’s pastoral letter, in which he asserted good works to be only fruits and consequences of justification.

Dr. Waterland was one of the ablest defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity in his day, not perhaps always the most temperate, for he appears to have occasionally lost his temper amidst the rude attacks of some of his antagonists, but in general he adhered closely to his argument, and avoided personalities. As Arianism was the chief object of his aversion, it was some times retorted that he too had departed from the* creed of his church by inclining towards Arminianism. His character was drawn at great length by the rev. Jeremiah Seed, in a funeral sermon, preached Jan. 4, 1740-1, the Sunday after his interment. “His head,” says Mr. Seed, “was an immense library, where the treasures of learning were ranged in such exact order, that, whatever himself or his friends wanted, he could have immediate recourse to, without any embarrassment. A prodigious expence of reading, without a confusion of ideas, is almost the peculiar characteristic of his writings. His works, particularly those upon our Saviour’s Divinity, and the Importance of the doctrine, and the Eucharist, into which he has digested the learning of all preceding ages, will, we may venture to say, be transmitted to, and stand the examination of, all succeeding ones. He has so thoroughly exhausted every subject that he wrote a set treatise upon, that it is impossible to hit upon any thing which is not in his writings, or to express that more justly and clearly, which is there.”

, known chiefly as a translator of Horace, was born at Brechin in Scotland, 1710, and educated in St. Leonard’s college, St. Andrew’s, where he took his degrees, and was appointed professor of philosophy. When the college of St. Leonard was united by act of parliament to that of St. Salvador, 1747, he came to London, and completed his translation of Horace, 2 vols. 8vo, with notes, &c. which is in great esteem. But his dissipated life brought him into many wants, and he was frequently destitute of the common necessaries of life. In his latter years he taught the classics to private gentlemen; but his love of pleasure plunged him into new difficulties; and he sunk beneath his character as a scholar. He died in great want near London, 1756, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and was buried at the expence of the parish. Besides his translation of Horace, he wrote “The History of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses.”

, a gallant officer and able engineer, was the son of a grazier, who lived at Holbeach, in Lincolnshire, where he was born about 1737, and educated at Gosberton school. Here his genius for the mathematics soon discovered itself, and in 1753 he was a frequent contributor to the “Ladies Diary.” About this time his abilities became known to Mr. Whichcot, of HarpsweJJ, then one of the members of parliament for Lincolnshire, who introduced him to the royal academy at Woolwich; and he soon after obtained a commission in the corps of engineers. Under the celebrated mathematician, Thomas Simpson, Watson prosecuted his studies at Woolwich, and continued to write for the “Ladies Diary,” of which Simpson was at that time the editor. Such was Simpson’s opinion of Watson’s abilities, that at his decease he left him his unfinished mathematical papers, with a request that he would revise them, and make what alterations and additions he might think necessary; but of this privilege it seems to be doubted whether he made the best use. (See Simpson, p. 20.)

During the war which broke out in 1756, he gave signal proofs of his superior abilities as an engineer; particularly at the siege of Belleisle in 1761, and at the Havannah in 1762. At the latter place his skill was particularly put to the proof; for having declared at a consultation, contrary to the opinion of the other engineers, that a breachmight be made in the Moro Castle, then deemed impregnable, he was asked by the commander in chief in what time he would engage to make the breach? He gave for answer, that with a certain number of men and cannon (naming them) he would undertake to do it in forty-eight hours atter the proposed batteries were erected. Accordingly he undertook it, and though he was struck down by the wind of a ball which passed near his head, and carried for dead to his tent, yet he soon recovered and returned to his duty, and the breach was made in a little more than half the time. For this piece of service he not only received the particular thanks of the commander in chief, but of his majesty.

His abilities soon became too conspicuous to be overlooked by that eminent soldier and politician, lord Clive, who singled him out as an engineer qualified for great and noble enterprises. Accordingly he accompanied his lordship to Bengal fojr the purpose of carrying such plans into execution which might be thought necessary for the preservation of the British acquisitions in that quarter; or to assist his lordship in any further operations he might think requisite for the interest of his country.

It was not difficult for a person of the, colonel’s penetration to see the advantageous situation of the Bay of Bengal. He knew that if proper forts were built, and the English marine put on a tolerable^ footing in that part, they might soon become masters of the Eastern seas; he therefore got a grant of lands from the East India company for constructing wet and dry docks, and a marine yard at Calcutta, for cleaning, repairing, and furnishing with stores the men, of war and merchantmen. A plan of the undertaking wa* drawn, engraved, and presented to his majesty, and the East India company, and fully approved of; and the works were carried on for some years with a spirit and vigour that manifested the judgment and abilities of the undertaker; and though the utility of such a national concern is too obvious to be 'insisted on, yet the colonel, after sinking^ upwards of 100,000l. of his own property in the noble design, was obliged to desist, for reasons that are not very clear.

Colonel Watson had determined to come immediately for England to seek redress; but, on consulting his friend Mr. Creassy (the superintendant of the works) he changed his resolution. Mr. Creassy represented to the colonel the loss he would sustain in quitting so lucrative an office as chief engineer to the East India company; the gratification his enemies would receive on his leaving that rountry; the loss’the company might experience during his absence; and finally the delay and uncertainty of the law. These considerations induced him to send Mr. Creassy in his stead. This happened just at the eve of the Spanish war; and, as the colonel had great quantities of iron and timber in store, he resolved to build three ships, two of $6, and one of 32 guns; and in consequence he sent instructions to his agents in England to procure letters of marque, and Mr. Creassy was to return with them over land. These vessels were to cruise off the Philippines for the purpose of intercepting the Spanish trade between Manilla and China. This design, however, was frustrated, perhaps by the same means that stopped his proceeding with the docks: for his agents, on applying for the letters, received a positive refusal. But these disappointments did not damp the colonel’s enterprising spirit; for, as soon as he heard of the ill success of his agents in England, he very prudently employed the two vessels he had finished in commercial service. The third never was finished.

For near ten years colonel Watson was the chief engineer of Bengal, Bahar, aod Orissa, The East India company, in a great measure, owe their valuable possessions in that quarter to his unexampled exertions; for, in spite of party dispute, of bribery on the part of the nations then at war with the company, and of the numerous cabals which perplexed and embarrassed their councils, he executed the works of Fort- William, which will long remain a monument of his superior skill and, for its strength, this may justly be styled the Gibraltar of India. Nor are the works at Buge Buge, and Melancholy Point, constructed with less judgment. But he did not confine his studies to the military sciences. In 1776 he published a translation of Euler’s “Theorie complete de la construction et de la niancpuvre des vaisseaux,” with a supplement upon the action of oars, which he received in manuscript from Eulerjust before he had finished the translation of what was published. This translation he has enriched with many additions and improvements of his own; and he intended to have enlarged the work in a future edition, by making experiments for discovering the resistance of bodies when moving in a fluid; but it is not known if he left any papers on the subject.

This book, which is almost the only one of the kind in the English language, is of great importance in ship-building; for though the subjects are handled scientifically, yet such practical rules for constructing vessels to advantage might be drawn therefrom, as would amply repay the trouble of a close perusal. The colonel gave the best proof of this in the Nonsuch and Surprise frigates; the first of 36, the other of 32 guns. These were built under his particular direction by Mr. G. Louch, and a few black carpenters at Bengal, at his own expence, and proved the swiftest sailers of any ships hitherto known.

The colonel’s genius was formed for great undertakings. He was judicious in planning, cool and intrepid in action, and undismayed in danger. He studied mankind, and was a good politician. Few, perhaps, better understood the interests of the several nations of Europe and the East. He was humane, benevolent, and the friend of indigent genius. When Mr. Rollinson, a man of great abilities as a mathematician, conducted the Ladies Diary, after the death of Mr. Simpson, and was barely existing on the pittance allowed him by the proprietors, the colonel sought and found him in an obscure lodging, and generously relieved his necessities, though a stranger to his person. This the old man related while the tears of gratitude stole down his cheeks. He survived the colonel’s bounty but a short time.

By long and hard service in a unfavourable climate, he found his health much impaired, two or three years before he left India; and therefore, in 1785, he put affairs in a train of settlement, in order to return to England, to try the effects of his native air. In the spring of 1786, he embarked on board the Deptford Indiaman; but the flux and a bilious complaint with which he had sometimes been afflicted, so much reduced him by the time he reached St. Helena, that he was not able to prosecute his voyage in that ship. This island is remarkable for the salubrity of its air, of which the colonel soon found the benefit but the importunity of his friends, or his own impatienceto see England, got the better of his prudence, for as soon as he began to gather strength, he took his passage in the Asia; the consequence was a relapse, which weakened him to such a degree by the time he arrived at Dover, that he lingered but a short time, and at that place departed this life on September 17, 1786. He was buried in a vault made in the body of the church at Dover, on the 22d of the same month, in a private manner. His death mHy be accounted a national loss. No English engineer, since Mr. Benjamin Robins, F. R. S. possessed equal abilities. The same climate proved fatal to both: Mr. Robins died at Madras in the company’s service; and it may be said of the colonel, that after he had quitted it, he lived but just long enough to bring his bones to England.

, an excellent printer, was born at Aberdeen, where his father was an eminent merchant during the reign of Charles II. and in 1695 set up a printinghouse in Edinburgh, which reduced him to many hardships, being frequently prosecuted before the privy-council of Scotland for printing in opposition to a patent granted to one Mr. Anderson some years before. In 1711, however, Mr. Watson, in conjunction with Mr. Freebairn, obtained a patent from queen Anne, and they published several learned works; and some of them were printed on very elegant types, particularly a Bible, in crown 8vo, 1715, a matchless beauty, and another in 4to. He wrote also a curious “History of Printing,” in Scotland, which is prefixed to his “Specimens of Types,” a rare little volume, printed in the early part of the last century. He died at Edinburgh, Sept. 24, 1722.

, a learned English lawyer, and one of the judges of the supreme court of judicature at Bengal, was born November 25,1746, in the parish of Great Chishill, in the county of Essex. He was the eldest son. of the Rev. James Watson, D. D. an eminent presbyteriau minister, then pastor of a dissenting congregation in that place, as well as of Melbourne, in the county of Cambridge, fey Anne his wife, the daughter of John Hanchet, esq. of Crissel Grange, in the county of Essex. Though the retired situation in which this family lived, and the talents of the father, were very favourable to a domestic education, yet the son was very judiciously placed under the care of the Rev. Mr. Banks, a clergyman in that neighbourhood, under whose tuition he was prepared for the peculiar advantages of a public school. Accordingly, Dr. Watson having discovered the progress that his beloved child had made in the elements of language, sent him to the metropolis, and placed him under the care of a person with whom he could confide, that he might be admitted into St. Paul’s school.

That seminary was then under the superintendence of the very learned and amiable Mr. George Thicknesse, of whom his worthy pupil always spake with the deepest reverence. While, however, he was embellishing his mind with the rich stores of classic literature, a violent fever impeded the pursuit, and compelled him to return to the country for the restoration of his health. This desirable end being accomplished, his venerable parent conducted him to London, removing thither indeed with his family. Having expressed a strong inclination for the ministerial profession, which might naturally be expected from the powers of eloquence he discovered, he was placed at the academy for Protestant dissenting ministers, then kept at Mile-end, near London, by John Walker, D. D. Thomas Gibbons, D.D. and John Conder, D. D.

Here he added considerably to his stock of knowledge, and at length entered upon his profession. He spent one year in assisting Mr. Newton of Norwich, and then repaired to the university of Edinburgh, where he acquired the esteem of some of its most eminent professors, especially the late principal Robertson, and as a proof of it, that university afterward conferred upon him the degree of doctor of laws. On his return to England, he was invited to succeed the late Rev. Mr. Williams, of Gosport. This invitation he accepted, and was ordained pastor in 1771. His ministrations being, however, unacceptable to a minority, occasioned a separation, which by his prudence and mildness very little interrupted their harmony. He generally preached thrice each Sunday, and was constant, unremitting, and peculiarly tender and consoling in his visits to the sick and afflicted. But at length, through the persuasions of some friends, who had discerned his talent for disputation, and had witnessed his clear and intimate acquaintance with the laws of his country, he was induced to change his profession, and enter himself at the InnerTemple. Accordingly he relinquished the ministry in the summer of 1776.

Mr. Watson chiefly resided at Titchfield, a pleasant village in the neighbourhood of Gosport, and there availed himself of the professional knowledge of the late Mr. Missen, recorder of Southampton. In August 1777, he married miss Joanna Burges, who then resided with her grandmother at Titchfield. She was the daughter of a gentleman who was long resident at Calcutta. By this union he had fourteen children. Soon after his marriage he removed to London.

In 1778, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in a very honourable manner, having previously acquired the friendship of its president sir Joseph Banks, the late Dr. Solander, and several other men of eminence. In the autumn of 1780, he was called to the bar, and travelled the western circuit, where he always met with that reception which his friends had promised and his abilities warranted. Having commenced this profession, at this period of his life, he deemed it very expedient to be uncommonly assiduous in his application to the study of the law. This attention to business he paid to the last, allowing himself little rest, seldom indulging in relaxation of any kind. In July 1783, his excellent father departed this life. On his removal to London, he had been chosen pastor of a congregation in the Borough of Southwark, and continued in that relation till his death. At the close of 1787, Mr. Watson was called to the rank of serjeant, with Messrs. Runnington and Marshall. The year before he was elected recorder of Bridport in Dorsetshire, and was then so much esteemed by the corporation, that in the last parliament he was chosen one of their representatives without any opposition. His attendance in the senate was frequent, and though he did not signalize himself so much in debate as some others have done, yet he rendered himself useful as a chairman upon several committees, for which indeed his firmness, tempered with sweetness, admirably qualified him. But he reserved his greatest strength for the India court of proprietors, of which he was one, and where he frequently spoke with much applause.

On the much-lamented death of the very celebrated sir William Jones, Mr. Watson was appointed to succeed him in March 1795, an honour which he, and every one connected with him, very deeply felt; but while he was preparing for his voyage, his filial piety suffered a deep blow, death depriving him of his valuable mother, who departed this life on the 26th of April that year. But on the 8th of July, having been previously knighted, though far from agreeable to his modest disposition, he, accompanied by his lady, and two eldest children, set sail for Calcutta in the Berrington. The voyage was long and stormy, for they did not reach their destination till Feb. 27, 1797. It being term-time, on his arrival at Calcutta, he was immediately called upon to discharge the duties of his office, and went through the business with the utmost spirit and reputation. But a period was soon put to his active services, for on April 29th he was seized with a fever, of which he died May 2. Next day he was inferred with the customary honours of his rank, his corpse being followed to the grave by a numerous concourse of the gentlemen of the settlement, who had been led to form considerable expectations of his merit.

, the historian of Halifax, was eldest son of Legh Watson by Hester daughter and at last heiress of John Yates, of Svvinton in Lancashire, and was born at Lyrne-cum-Hanley, in the parish of Prestbury, in Cheshire, March 26, 1724. Having been brought up at the grammar-schools of Eccles, Wigan, and Manchester, all in Lancashire, he was admitted a commoner in BrazenNose-college, Oxford, April 7, 1742. In Michaelmasterm, 1745, he took the degree of B. A. June 27, 1746, he was elected a fellow of Brazen-Nose college, being chosen into a Cheshire fellowship, as being a Prestburyparish man. On the title of his fellowship he was ordained a deacon at Chester by bishop Peploe, Dec. 21, 1746. After his year of probation, as fellow, was ended, and his residence at Oxford no longer required, he left the college; and his first employment in- the church was the curacy of Runcorn, in. Cheshire here he stayed only three months, and removed thence to Ardwick, near Manchester, where he was an assistant curate at the chapel there, and private tutor to the three sons of Samuel Birch, of Ardwick, esq. During his residence here, he was privately ordained a priest at Chester, by the above bishop Peploe, JMay 1, 1748, and took the degree of M. A. at Oxford, in act- term the same year. From Ardwick he removed to Halifax, and was licensed to the curacy there, Oct. 17, 1750, by Dr. Matthew Hutton, archbishop of York. June 1, 1752, he married Susanna, daughter and heiress of the late rev. Mr. Allon, vicarof Sandbach, in Cheshire, vacating thereby his fellpwship at Oxford. Sept. 3, 1754, he was licensed by the above Dr. Hutton, on the presentation of George Legh, LL. D. vicar of Halifax, to the perpetual curacy of Ripponden, in the parish of Halifax. Here he rebuilt the curate’s house, at his own expence, laying out above 400l. upon the same, which was more than a fourth part of the whole sum he there received; notwithstanding which, his unworthy successor threatened him with a prosecution in the spiritual court, if he did not allow him ten pounds for dilapidations, v^hich, for the sake of peace, he complied with. Feb. 17, 1759, he was elected F. S. A. After his first wife’s death, he was married, July 11, 1761, at Ealand, in Halifax parish, to Anne, daughter of Mr. James Jaques, of Leeds, merchant. August 17, 1766, he was inducted to the rectory of Meningsby, Lincolnshire, which he resigned in 1769, on being promoted to the rectory of Stockport, in Cheshire, worth about 1500l. a year. His presentation to this, by sir George Warren^ bore date July 30, 1769, and he was inducted thereto August the 2d following. April 11, 1770, he was appointed one of the domestic chaplains to the right hon. the earl of Dysart. April 24, 1770, having received his dedimus for acting as a justice of the peace in the county of Chester, he was sworn into that office on that day. Oct. 2, 1772, he received his dedimus far acting as a justice of peace for tfie county of Lancaster, and was sworn in accordingly. His principal publication was “The History of Halifax,” 1775, 4to, whence these particulars are chiefly taken. He died March 14, 1783, after finishing for the press, in 2 vols. 4to, “A History of the ancient earls of Warren and Surrey,” with a view to represent his patron sir George Warren’s claim to those ancient titles; but it is thought by a very acute examiner of the work and judge of the subject, that he has left the matter in very great doubt.

Mr. Watson’s other publications were, 1. “A Discourse preached at Halifax church, July 28, 1751, 8vo, entitled Moderation, or a candid disposition towards those that differ from us, recommended and enforced,” 8vo. This passed through a second edition. 2. “An Apology for his conduct yearly, on the 30th of January,” 8vo. To this is annexed, a sermon preached at Ripponden chapel, on Jan. 30, 1755, entitled “Kings should obey the Laws.” 3. “A Letter to the Clergy of the Church, known by the name of Unitas Fratrum, or Moravians, concerning a remarkable book of hymns used in their congregations, pointing out several inconsistencies and absurdities in the said book,” 1756, 8vo. 4. “Some account of a Roman station lately discovered on the borders of Yorkshire.” 5. “A mistaken passage in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History explained.” 6. “Druidical remains in or near the parish of Halifax, &c.” These three last are printed in the Archæologia. He had also made collections for the antiquities of Chester and of a part of Lancashire. The late Mr. Gilbert Wakefield, who married his niece, says, Mr. Watson was one of the hardest students he ever knew. His great excellence was a knowledge of antiquities, t>ut “he was by no means destitute of poetical fancy; had written, some good songs, and was possessed of a most copious collection of bon-mots, facetious stories, and humorous compositions of every kind, both in verse and prose, written out with uncommon accuracy and neatness.” From the same authority we learn that Mr. Watson had once a hudibrasric controversy with Dr. Byrom of Manchester.

, a late eminent and learned prelate, was born in August 1737, at Heversham in Westmoreland, five miles from Kendal, in which town his father, a clergyman, was master of the free grammar-school, and took upon himself the whole care of his son’s early education. From this seminary he was sent, in November 1754, with a considerable stock of classical learning, a spirit of persevering industry, and an obstinate provincial accent, to Trinity college, Cambridge, where, from the time of his admission, he distinguished himself by close application to study, residing constantly, until made a scholar in May 1757. He became engaged with private pupils in November following, and took the degree of B. A. (with superior credit, being second Wrangler,) in January 1759. He was elected fellow of Trinity college in Oct. 1760; was appointed assistant tutor to Mr. Backhouse in November that year; took the degree of M. A. in 1762, and was made moderator, for the first time, in October following. He was unanimously elected professor of chemistry in Nov. 1764; became one of the head tutors of Trinity college in 1767; appointed regius professor of divinity (on the death of the learned Dr. Rutherforth) in Oct. 1771, with the rectory of Somersham in Huntingdonshire annexed.

During a residence of more than thirty years, he was distinguished at one time by the ingenuity of his chemical researches; at another, by his demeanour in the divinity chair*. He wrote, within the above period, the following papers in the Philosophical Transactions (having been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1769): “Experiments and Observations on various Phenomena attending the Solution of Salts;” “Remarks on the Effects of Cold in February 1771;” “Account of an Experiment made with a Thermometer, whose Bulb was painted black, and exposed to the rays of the Sun;” “Chemical Experiments and Observations on Lead Ore;” all which were reprinted in the fifth volume of the “Chemical Essays.” In 1768 be published “Institutiones Metallurgies,” 8vo, intended as a text-book for that part of his chemical lectures which

signs himself Clencus Londinensis, af- respondents, and their opponents- and

"The late regius professor, bishop and elegance which few cau attain in a

of impressing a numerous auditory he presided in the chair, and left the

every subject, and, as moderator, he health, to retire to his native county.“united the urbanity of the gentleman explained the properties of metallic substances; and in 1771, xc An Essay, on the Subjects of Chemistry and their general divisions,” 8vo,

In 1769, he published an Assize Sermon, preached at Cambridge, 4to; and in 1776, two other sermons preached at Cambridge, 4to, which extended his fame beyond the precincts of the university one, on the 29th of May, “The Principles of the Revolution vindicated” the other, on the “Anniversary of his Majesty’s Accession.”

In 1774, he was presented to a prebend in the church of Ely; and in January 1780, succeeded Dr. Charles Plumptre in the archdeaconry of that diocese. He published a sermon preached before the university at the general fast, Feb. 4, 1780; and a discourse delivered to the clergy of the archdeaconry of Ely. In August that year he was presented by bishop Keene to the rectory of Northwold, in Norfolk.

The principles expressed by Mr Gibbon, in various parts of the “History of the Rise and Declension of the Roman Empire,” called forth the zeal of Dr. Watson; whose 66 Apology for Christianity, in a series of letters, addressed to Edward Gibbon, e*q " was published in 1776, 12mo, and several times repr.nted. This work is certainly replete with sound information and reasoning, but it produced in the learned historian no diffidence of his own powers, although he did not choose to exert them in controversy. A correspondence took place on that occasion between the antagonists, which is preserved in the Life of Gibbon by lord Sheffield. In this, which consists of only two short letters, Dr. Watson must, we think, be allowed to have carried his politeness or his liberality to the utmost verge.

“Mr. Gibbon takes the earliest opportunity of presenting his compliments and thanks to Dr. Watson, and of expressing his sense of the liberal treatment which he has received from so candid an adversary. Mr. Gibbon entirely coincides in opinion with Dr. Watson, that as their different sentiments, on a very important period of history, are now submitted to the public, they both may employ their time in a manner much more useful, as well as agreeable, than they could possibly do by exhibiting a single combat in the amphitheatre of controversy. Mr. Gibbon is therefore determined to resist the temptation of justifying, in a professed reply, any passages of his history, which might perhaps be easily cleared from censure and misapprehension; but he still reserves to himself the privilege of inserting iq a future edition some occasional remarks and explanations of his meaning. If any calls of pleasure or business should bring Dr. Watson to town, Mr. Gibbon would think himself happy in being permitted to solicit the honour of his acquaintance.”

It will give me the greatest pleasure to ‘have an opportunity of becoming better acquainted with Mr. Gibbon. I beg he would accept my sincere thanks for the too favourable manner in which he has spoken of a performance, which derives its chief merit from the elegance and importance of the work it attempts to oppose.’ I have no hope of a future existence, except that which is grounded on the truth of Christianity. I wish not to be deprived of this hope; but I should be an apostate from the mild principle of the religion I profess, if I could be actuated with the least animosity against those who do not think with me upon this, of all others, the most important subject. I beg your pardon for this declaration of my belief; but my temper is naturally open, and it ought assuredly to be without disguise to a man whom I wish no longer to look upon as an antagonist, but as a friend. I have the honour to be, with every sentiment of respect, your obliged servant, V"

So extraordinary a letter surely requires no comment. In 1781, he published a volume of “Chemical Essays,” addressed to his pupil the duke of Rutland, which was received with such deserved approbation, as to induce the author to give to the world, at ditferent times, four additional volumes of equal merit with the first. It has been stated, that when bishop Watson obtained the professorship of chemistry, without much previous knowledge of that science, he deemed it his duty to acquire it; and accordingly studied it with so much industry, as materially to injure his health: with what success, his publications on that branch of philosophy demonstrate. When he was appointed to that professorship, he gave public lectures, which were attended by numerous audiences; and his “Chemical Essays” prove that his reputation was not undeserved. They have passed already through several editions, and are accounted a valuable manual to those who pursue that branch of science. “The subjects of these Essays,” to use the author’s own words, “have been chosen, not so much with a view of giving a system of Chemistry to the world, as with the humble design of conveying, in a popular way, a general kind of knowledge to persons not much versed in chemical inquiries.” He accordingly apologizes to chemists, for having explained common matters with, what will appear to them, a disgusting minuteness; and for passing over in silence some of the most interesting questions, such as those respecting the analysis of air and fire, &c. The learned author also apologizes to divines; whose forgiveness he solicits, for having stolen a few hours from the studies of his profession, and employed them in the cultivation of natural philosophy; pleading, in his defence, the example of some of the greatest characters that ever adorned either the University of Cambridge, or the Church of England. In the preface to the last of these volumes, he introduces the following observations: “When I was elected professor of divinity in 1771, I determined to abandon for ever the study of chemistry, and I did abandon it for several years but the veteris vestigia jtamm& still continued to delight me, and at length seduced me from my purpose. When I was made a bishop in 1782, I again determined to quit my favourite pursuit: the volume which I now offer to the public is a sad proof of the imbecility of my resolution. I have on this day, however, offered a sacrifice to other people’s notions, I confess, rather than to my own opinion of episcopal decorum. I have destroyed all my chemical manuscripts. A prospect of returning health might have persuaded me to pursue this delightful science; but I have now certainly done with it for ever at least I have taken the most effectual step I could to wean myself from an attachment to it: for with the holy zeal of the idolaters of old, who had been addicted to curious arts I have burned my books.”

Having been tutor to the late duke of Rutland, when his grace resided at Cambridge, Dr. Watson was presented by him to the valuable rectory of Knaptoft, Leicestershire, in 1782; and in the same year, through the recommendation of the same noble patron, was advanced and consecrated to the bishopric of Landaff. In consequence of the small ness of the revenues of the latter, Dr. Watson was allowed to hold with it the archdeaconry of Ely, his rectory in Leicestershire, the divinity professorship, and rectory of Somersham. At that time his fame for talents and science stood very high; but his politics having taken an impression from the party which he had espoused, and which, though then admitted to power, had been in opposition, probably prevented his advancement to a more considerable eminence on the episcopal bench*. Immediately after his promotion, he published “A Letter to archbishop Cornwallis on the Church Revenues,” 1783, 4to; recommending a new disposition, by which the bishoprics should be rendered equal to each other in value, and the smaller livings be so far increased in income, by a proportionate deduction from the richer endowments, as to render them a decent competency. This letter produced several pamphlets in opposition to the scheme, which was never afterwards brought forward in any other shape. In 1784 bishop Watson published “A Sermon preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the Abbey Church, Westminster, on Friday, Jan. 30,” 4to; and also “Visitation Articles for the Diocese of Landaff,” 4to.

In 1785, this learned prelate was editor of a “Collection of Theological Tracts, selected from various authors, for the use of the younger Students in the University,” 6 vols. 8vo. This compilation, comprising pieces on the most interesting subjects in sacred literature by different writers, was intended to form a library of divinity for every candidate for holy orders. Some objections, however, have been made to it on the score of its not being entirely confined to the writings of members of the Church of England, or at least that it did not exclude some of dubious principles. In the same year he published “The Wisdom and Goodness of God, in having made both Rich and Poor, a Sermon,” 4to; and a second edition in 1793.

in 1789, bishop Watson advocated the American War. and at an early period

In 1788 he published “Sermons on Public Occasions, and Tracts on Religious Subjects,” 8vo, consisting. chiefly of smaller pieces which had before been printed separately. “An Address to young Persons after Confirmation, 1789,” 12mo, which had been annexed to the first of his charges; and (anonymous) “Considerations on the Expediency of revising the Liturgy and Articles of the Church of England,” 1790, 8vo. On the 27th of February, 1791, bishop Watson preached, to a crowded congregation, at the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a sermon before the governors of the Royal Humane Society, and again pleaded for the same Society in 1797, in a sermon at St. Bride’s, Fleetstreet; but neither of these has been printed. His sermon for the Westminster Dispensary (preached in 1785), was published in 1792, with an excellent appendix; as well as “A Charge delivered to the Ciergy of his Diocese in June 179J,” 4to. “Two Sermons, preached in the Cathedral Church of Landaff, and a Charge delivered to the Clergy of that Diocese in June 1795,” were published together in 1795, 4to. The first of these Sermons is a general argument against Atheists; the second, a more particular discussion of the evidences for Christianity. The purport of the charge is, to recommend theological humility, in opposition to dogmatizing.

In 1796, his lordship’s powers in theological controversy were called forth on a most important occasion, though by a very inferior antagonist to Gibbon. Thomas Paine, after having enlightened the world in regard to politics, proceeded, in his “Age of Reason,” to dispel the clouds in which, he impiously conceived, Christianity had for so many ages enveloped the world. The arguments of this man were abundantly superficial; but his book was likely to produce greater effect than the writings of the most learned infidels. The connexion of his political with his religious opinions tended still farther to increase the danger; for atheism and jacobinism at that time went hand in hand. It was on this occasion that the bishop of Landaff stood forward in defence of Christianity, by publishing his most seasonable and judicious “Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine,” 12mo. His genius was here rendered peculiarly conspicuous, by his adopting the popular manner and style of his antagonist; and by thus addressing himself in a particular manner to the comprehensions and ideas of those who were most likely to be misled by the arguments he so very ably confuted. By this he in a great measure contributed to prevent the pernicious effects of “The Age of Keason” among the lower classes of the community, and at the same time led them to suspect and (detest the revolutionary and political tenets of the author. The British Critics, speaking of this apology, say, “We hail with much delight the repetition of editions of a book so important to the best of causes, the cause of Christianity, as the present. It is written in an easy and popular style. The author has purposely, and we think wisely, abstained from pouring into it much of that learning which the stores of his mind would readily have supplied. He has contented himself with answering every argument or cavil in the plainest and clearest manner, not bestowing a superfluous word, or citing a superfluous authority for any point whatever.”

From the very i commencement of the discussions on the slave trade, his lordship always stood forward as a strenuous advocate “for its abolition; and though in the earlier years of the eventful contest with France which speedily succeeded, he in general recommended pacific measures, yet before its conclusion he became convinced of the necessity of prosecuting the war with vigour. His lordship’s” Address to the People of Great Britain,“1798, 8vo, is evidently the address of a man, who amidst all the differences in matters of less moment, feels honestly for his country in the hour of danger, and wishes to unite all hands and hearts in her defence. Such a tract from so distinguished a character was not likely to pass unnoticed: several replies appeared, among which the most intemperate was that of Gilbert Wakefield. His” Charge delivered to the Clergy of Landaff, is a suitable supplement to the “Address;” and in 1802 appeared another very excellent “Cnarge to the Clergy of Landaff.” hi 1803, the bishop published “A Sermon, preached in the Chapel of the London Hospital, on the 8th of April;” a powerful antidote to the mischief produced among the people at large by his old antagonist Paine; of whom he takes occasion thus to speak, contrasting him, as an unbeliever, with sir Isaac Newton as a believer: “I think myseli justified in saying, that a thousand such men are, in understanding, but as the dust of the balance, when weighed against Newton;” an indubitable truth, most usefully presented to the contemplation of the multitude. In the same year appeared his “Thoughts on the intended Invasion,” 8vo. In “The Substance of a Speech intended to have been delivered in the House of Lords, Nov. 22, 1803,” which was printed in 1804, bishop Watson warmly entreats the nation, to coincide with the measures proposed for the emancipation of the catholics, and also states some proposals for freeing the nation of its public burthens by one patriotic effort.

The bishop published a Sermon preached at St. George, Hanover-square, May 3, 1804, before the Society for the Suppression of Vice; for which, it cannot be denied, he pleads with his usual energy; though it must be admitted, the principles and maxims of the society may not be found so efficacious towards the wished-for reformation, which is levelled at the lower ranks of society, instead of the higher, who are the manifest corrupters of the others, by their example and influence.

“A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Landaff in June 1805,” was published in that year; and another in 1808: “Two Apologies, one for Christianity against Gibbon, and the other for the Bible against Paine, published together with two Sermons and a Charge in Defence of Revealed Religion,” in 1806, 8vo: “A Second Defence of Revealed Religion, in two Sermons; preached in the Chapel-royal, St. James’s, 1807.” “Communica r tion to the Board of Agriculture, on Planting and Waste Lands,” 1808. His lordship’s latest publication was a collection, of “Miscellaneous Tracts on Religious, Political, and Agricultural subjects,” 1815, 2 vols. 8vo. Some articles by him occur in the Transactions of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was one of the earliest members, During the last years of his life his lordship employed his leisure upon a history of his own times, after the manner of bishop Burnet’s celebrated work; and left directions for its publication after his decease. Such a performance from so, eminent a character will, of course, be expected with no ordinary anxiety by the political as well as the literary world, and will throw light on those parts of his own character and conduct which have been the subject of some difference of opinion. In the mean time it may be said of him, that he was an excellent public speaker, both in the pulpit and in the senate; his action graceful, his voice full and harmonious, and his delivery chaste and correct. As far as his influence extended, he was invariably the patron of merit. As a writer, bishop Watson united the knowledge of a scholar with the liberality of a gentlemaa, and in the course of a long, active, and conspicuous life, his lordship’s demeanour was marked by the characteristics of a very superior mind. His partiality to unlimited toleration in regard to religious opinion called down upon him the applauses of one part of the community, and the censures of the other. He uniformly exerted his endeavours to procure the abolition of the corporation and test-acts. In his private deportment, though somewhat reserved, he was remarkable for the simplicity of his manners, and the equality of his temper; enjoying all the emoluments of his stations, and the fame arising from his writings, in rural retirement, at Calgarth-park, Westmorland, a beautiful sequestered situation on the celebrated Lakes, a retreat which he had not only adorned and improved, but in some measure created, and where he passed much of his time in the indulgence of those deep studies to which his whole life was addicted. His plantations here were very extensive, and in 1789 gained him a premium from the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. On the whole, Dr. Watson may justly be pronounced a prelate of distinguished abilities, learning, research, and industry. He had a numerous family, and many distinguished personages were attached to him by the ties of friendship; amongst whom, the late duke of Grafton, to the close of his life, was long one of the most conspicuous.

, an elegant historian, was born at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, about 1730. He was the son of an apothecary of that place, who was also a brewer. Having gone through the usual course of languages and philosophy at the school and university of St. Andrew’s, and also entered on the study of divinity, a desire of being acquainted with a larger circle of literati, and of improving himself in every branch of knowledge, carried him, first, to the university of Glasgow, and afterwards to that of Edinburgh. The period of theological studies at the universities of Scotland is four years; but during that time young men of ingenious minds raid sufficient leisure to earry on and advance the pursuits of general knowledge. Few men studied more 'constantly than Mr. Watson. It was a rule with him to study eight hours every day; and this law he observed during the whole course of his life*. An acquaintance with the polite writers of England, after the union of the two kingdoms, became general in Scotland; and in Watson’s younger years, an emulation began to prevail of writing pure and elegant English. Mr. Watson applied himself with great industry to the principles of philosophical or universal grammar; and by a combination of these, with the authority of the best English writers, formed a course of lectures on style or language. He proceeded to the study of rhetoric or eloquence; the principles of which he endeavoured to trace to the nature of the human mind. On these subjects he delivered a course of lectures at Edinburgh, similar to what Dr. Adam Smith had delifered in the same city previous to his removal to Glasgow in 1751. To this he was encouraged by lord Kames, who judged very favourably of his literary taste and acquirements; and the scheme was equally successful in Watson’s as in Smith’s hands.

At this time he had become a preacher; and a vacancy having happened in one of the churches of St. Andrew’s, he offered himself a candidate for that living, but was dis^­appointed, yet he succeeded in what proved more advantageous. Mr. Henry Rymer, who then taught logic at St. Salvador’s college, was in a very infirm state of health, and entertaining thoughts of retiring. Mr. Watson purchased, for no great sum of money, what, in familiar phraseology, may be termed the good-will of Mr. Rymer’s place; and with the consent of the other masters of St. Salvador’s, was appointed professor of logic. He obtained also a patent from the crown, constituting him professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres. The study of logic in St. Andrew’s, as in most other places, was at this time confined to syllogisms, modes, and figures. Mr. Watson, whose mind had been opened by conversation, and by reading the writings of the literati who had begun to flourish in the Scotch capital, prepared, and read to his students, a course of metaphysics and logic on the most enlightened plan; in which he analyzed the powers of the mind, aod entered deeply into the nature of truth or knowledge. Oil the death of principal Tullidelph, Dr. Watson, through the interest of the earl of Kinnoul, was appointed his successor, in which station he lived only a few years, dying in 1780. He is chiefly known in the literary world by his “History of Philip II.” a very interesting portion of history, and in which the English, under queen Elizabeth, had a considerable share. He wrote also the history of Philip III. but lived only to complete four books; the last two were written, and the whole published in 4to, 1783 (afterwards reprinted in 2 vols. 8vo), by Dr. William Thomson, at the desire of the guardians of Dr. Watson’s children, whom he had by his wife, who was daughter to Mr. Shaw, professor of divinity in St. Mary’s-college, St. Andrew’s.

, a Roman catholic prelate in the reign of queen Mary, was educated at St. John’s-college, Cambridge, of which he was elected fellow, and in 1553 master. In November of the same year the queen gave him the deanery of Durham, vacant by the deprivation of Robert Home. He had previously to this been for some time chaplain to Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and was equally hostile to the reformed religion. In April 1554, he was incorporated D. D. at Oxford, and in August 1557, was consecrated bishop of Lincoln. In this see he remained until the accession of queen Elizabeth, when he was deprived on account of denying the queen’s supremacy; and remaining inflexible in his adherence to popery, he suffered confinement in or near London until 1580, when he was removed to Wisbech-castle, together with the abbot Feckenham, and several others. He died there Sept. 25, 1582, and was interred in the church-yard of Wisbech. He held several conferences with those of the reformed religion, and particularly was one of those appointed to confer with, or rather sit in judgment on Cranmer, Ridley f and Latimer, previously to their execution at Oxford. For some time he w,gs confined in Grindal’s house, and that prelate wished to converse calmly with him on the points in dispute at that time, but he answered that he would not enter into conference with any man. Watson is represented as of a sour and morose temper. Of his works we have heard only of, 1. “Two Sermons before queen Mary, on the real presence and sacrifice of the mass,” Lond. 1554, 8vo. 2. “Wholesome and Catholic doctrine concerning the seven Sacraments, in thirty Sermons,” ibid. 1558, 4to. Dodd mentions as his. antagonists or answerers, “A Sermon against Thomas Watson’s two Sermons, by which he would prove the real presence,” ibid. 1569, 4to, by Robert Crowley; and “Questio in Thomam Watsonium Episc. Lincoln, aliosque, super quibusdam articulis de bulla papali contra reginam Eliz.” Francfort, 1621.

Bishop Watson has been confounded by Wood, Dodd, and others, with Thomas Watson, the sonnetteer, and they have attributed to the prelate the translation of the “Antigone” of Sophocles, which belongs to the other. Bishop Watson, indeed, who appears to have been at one time a polite scholar, composed a Latin tragedy called “Absolon;” but this he would not allow to be printed because in locis paribus, anapaestus was twice or thrice used instead of iambus"

Of Watson, the sonnetteer, we have very little personal history. He was a native of London, and educated at Oxford, where he applied all his studies to poetry and romance, in which he obtained an honourable name. An ample account of his various productions, valuable rarities in the poetico-commercial world, may be seen in our authorities. He is supposed to have outlived his namesake, the prelate, and died in 1591 or 1592.

, a nonconformist divine of considerable eminence, was educated at Emmanuel college, Cambridge, where he was remarked to be a very hard student. In 1646, he became rector of St. Stephen’s, W r albrook, by the sequestration of his predecessor, and was a preacher of great fame and popularity until the restoration, when he was ejected for nonconformity. In other respects he was a man rather of loyal principles, and besides a vigorous opposition to the measures adopted against the life of Charles 1. and a remonstrance to Cromweli r against the murder of that sovereign, he was concerned in what was called Love’s plot to bring in Charles II. and was for some time imprisoned in the Tower on that account. After his ejectment from St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, he occasionally preached where he could with safety, until undulgence being granted in 1672, he fitted up the great hall in Crosby House, Bishopsgate-street, which then belonged to sir John Langham, a nonconformist, and preached there several years. At length he retired to Essex, where he died sud* denly, as is supposed about 1689 or 1690. The time, either of his birth or death, is no where mentioned. He published a variety of small works on practical subjects, particularly “The Art of Divine Contentment,” which has gone through several editions; but his greatest work is his “Body of Divinity,” 1692, fol. consisting of a series of sermons on the Assembly’s Catechism, reprinted a few years ago in 2 vols. 8vo.

, eminent for his skill in botany and electricity, was born in 1715, in St. John’s-street, near Smithfield, where his father was a reputable tradesman. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ school, and in 1730 was apprenticed to Mr. Richardson, an apothecary. In his youth he had a strong propensity to the study of natural history, and particularly to that of plants. This led him to make frequent excursions in- a morning, several miles from London so that he became early well acquainted with the indigenous plants of the environs of London; and, during his apprenticeship, he gained the honorary premium given annually by the apothecaries company to such 'young men as exhibit a superiority in the knowledge of plants. In 1738 Mr. Watson married, and set up in business for himself. His skill and diligence in his profession soon distinguished him among his acquaintance, as did his taste for natural history and his, general knowledge of philosophical subjects among the members of the royal society, into which learned body he was elected in 1741; his first two communications being printed in the 41st volume of the Philosophical Transactions.

Soon alter his admission he distinguished himself as a botanist, and communicated some ingenious papers to the society, which are printed in their Transactions, particularly “Critical remarks on the Rev. Mr. Pickering’s paper concerning the Seeds of Mushrooms,'” which that gentleman considered as a new discovery, whereas Mr. Watson shewed that they had been demonstrated several years prior to that period by M. Micheli, in his “Nova plantarucn genera,” printed at Florence in 1729. But "that which attracted the attention of foreign botanists mostly, was his description of a rare and elegant species of fungus, called from its form geaster. This was written in Latin, and accompanied with an engraving. In 1748 Mr. Watson had an opportunity of showing attention to M. Kalm, during his abode in England, which was from February till August, when' he embarked for America. He introduced him to the curious gardens, and accompanied hjm in several botanical excursions in the environs of London. This eminent pupil of Linnæus, who was a Swedish divine, on his return home, became professor of osconomy at Abo, where he died Nov. 16, 1779. (See Kalm.) The same civilities were manifested by Dr. Watson to the eminent Dr. Pallas, of Petersburgh, during his abode in England, which was from July 1761 to April 1762.

In 1749, in company with Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Watson examined the remains of the garden formerly belonging tothe Tradescants. They found the arbutus, and the cupressus Americana, with other exotics, in a vigorous state^ after having sustained the winters of this climate for one hundred and twenty years. This situation had also afforded a proof, not often exemplified, of the large size to which the common buckthorn will grow. They found one about twenty feet high, and near a foot in diameter. In 1751 were laid before the public some very curious and interesting particulars relating to the sexes of plants, which tended to confirm the truth of that doctrine in a remarkable manner. These were occasioned by a letter from Mr. Mylins, of Berlin, informing Mr. Watson that a tree of the palma major foliis ftabelliformilus, which, although it had borne fruit for thirty years past, had never brought any to perfection until the flowers of a male tree, brought from Leipsic, twenty German miles distant, had been suspended over its branches. After this operation, the tree yielded the first year above one hundred, and the second, upon repeating the experiment, above two thousand ripe fruit; from which eleven young palm-trees had been propagated.

Mr. Watson paid the same tribute, in 1751, to the memory of Dr. Henry Compton, bishop of London, the friend and patron of Mr. Kay, as he had done to that of the Tradescants; and gives a list of thirty-three exotic trees, which were then remaining in the garden at Fulham. From this catalogue may be inferred, not only the original splendour of the garden, and the zeal and taste the bishop shewed in the cultivation of such numerous curiosities, but the facility with which trees of very different latitudes may become naturalized in England.

In the 45th volume of the Philosophical Transactions, we find “an account of the cinnamon-tree;” occasioned by a large specimen, equal in size to a walking cane, sent over by Mr. Robins to Dr. Leatherland, and which was exhibited to the inspection of the royal society. From this account we learn that three cinnamon trees, which were intended to have been sent to Jamaica, were growing in the garden of Hampton Court in the reign of king William.

Mr. Watson, about this time, was the first, his biographer apprehends, who communicated to the English reader an account of a revolution which was about to take place among the learned, in botany and zoology, respecting the removal of a large body of marine productions, which had heretofore been ranked among vegetables; but which were now proved to be of animal origin, and stand under the name of zoophytes, in the present system of nature. It may be easily seen that this respects the corals, corallines, escharae, madrepores, sponges, &c. and although even Ges* ner, Imperatus, and Rumphius, had some obscure ideas relating to the dubious structure of this class, yet the full discovery that these substances were the fabrications of polypes, was owing to JV1. Peyssonnel, physician at Guac*aloupe. This gentleman had imbibed this opinion first in 1723, at Marseilles, and confirmed it in 1725, on the coast of Barbary. While at Guadaloupe he wrote a volume of 400 pages in 4to, in proof of this subject, which he trant^ mitted in manuscript to the royal society of London. It was afterwards translated, analyzed, and abridged in 1752 by Mr. Watson, and published in vol. XLVII. of the Philosophical Transactions, at a time when the learned were wavering in their opinions on this matter.

Omitting the very minute account which Dr. Pulteney has given of every botanical communication made by Mr. Watson, we may observe that his talents rendered him a welcome visitor to sir Hans Sloane, who had retired to Chelsea in 1740. In fact, he enjoyed no small share of the favour and esteem of that veteran in science, and was honoured so far, as to be nominated one of the trustees of the British Museum by sir Hans himself. After its establishment in Montague house, Mr. Watson was very assiduous, not only in the internal arrangement of subjects, but also in procuring the garden to be furnished with plants, i much that, in the first yearof its establishment, in 1756, it contained no fewer than 600 species, all in a flourishing state.

Nothing however contributed so much to extend Mr. Watson’s fame as his discoveries in electricity. He took up this subject about 1744, and made several important discoveries in it. At this time it was no small advancement in the progress of electricity, to be able to fire spirit of wine. He was the first in England who effected this, and he performed it, both by the direct and the repulsive power of electricity. He afterwards fired inflammable matter, gunpowder, and inflammable oils, by the same means. He also instituted several other experiments, which helped to enlarge the power of the electrician; but the most important of his discoveries was, the proving that the electric power was not created by the globe or tube, but only col* lected by it. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Wilson were alike fortunate about the same time. It is easy to see the extreme utility of this discovery in conducting all subsequent experiments. It soon led to what he called “the circulation of the electric matter.”

Besides these valuable discoveries, the historian of electricity informs us that Mr. Watson first observed the different colour of the spark, as drawn from different bodies; that electricity suffered no refraction in passing through glass; that the power of electricity was not affected by the presence or absence of fire, since the sparks were equally strong from a freezing mixture, as from red-hot iron; that flame and smoke were conductors of electricity; and that the stroke was, as the points of contact of the non-electrics on the outside of the glass. This investigation led to the coating of phials, in order to increase the power of accumulation; and qualified him eminently to be the principal actor in those famous experiments, which were made on the Thames, and at Shooter’s Hill, in 1747 and 1748; in one of which the electrical circuit was extended four miles, in order to prove the velocity of electricity; the result of which convinced the attendants that it was instantaneous.

It ought also to be remembered, that Mr. Watson conducted some other experiments, with so much Sagacity and address, relating^ to the impracticability of transmitting odours, and the power of purgatives, through glass; and those relating to the exhibition of what was called the “glory round the head,” or the “beatification,” boasted to have been done by some philosophers on the continent; that he procured, at length, an acknowledgment from Mr. Bose, of what he called “an embellishment,” in conducting the experiments; a procedure totally incompatible with the true spirit of a philosopher!

Mr. Watson’s first papers on the subject of electricity were addressed, in three letters, to Martin Folkes, esq. president of the royal society, dated in March, April, and October, 1745, and were published in the Philosophical Transactions, under the title of ' Experiments and observations tending to illustrate the nature and properties of electricity.“These were followed in the beginning of the next year (1746) by” Farther Experiments, &c.“and these by” A sequel to the Experiments," &c. These tracts were collected, and separately published in octavo, and reached to a third or fourth edition. They were of so interesting a nature that they gave him the lead, as it were, in this branch of philosophy; and were not only the means of raising him to a high degree of estimation at home, but of extending his fame throughout all Europe. His house became the resort of the most ingenious and illustrious experimental philosophers that England could boast. Several of the nobility attended on these occasions; and his present majesty George III. when prince of Wales, honoured him with his presence. In fact there needs no greater confirmation of his merit, at that early time, as an electrician, than the public testimony conferred upon him by the royal society, which, in 1745, presented him with sir Godfrey Copley’s medal, for his discoveries in electricity.

After this mark of distinction, Mr. Watson continued to prosecute electrical studies and experiments, and to write on the subject for many years. In 1772 he was appointed by the royal society to examine into the state of the powder magazines at Purfleet, and with the hon. Mr. Cavendish, Dr, Franklin, and Mr. Robertson, fixed on pointed conductors as preferable to blunt ones; and again, was of the committee in 1778, after the experiments of Mr. Wilson in the Pantheon.

Those who were acquainted with the extent of Mr. Watson’s knowledge in the practice of physic, in natural history, and experimental philosophy, were not surprised to see him rise into the higher rank of his profession. This event took place in 1757, previous to which he had been chosen a member of the royal academy of Madrid, and he was created doctor of physic by the university of Halle. The same honour was conferred upon him by that of Wittemberg about the same time, soon after which he was disfranchised from the company of apothecaries. In 1759 he became a licentiate in the college of physicians. This alteration in his circumstances, hazardous as it might be considered by some, occasioned no diminution in his emoluments, but far the contrary. He had before this time removed from Aldersgate-street to Lincoln’s-inn-fields, where he lived the remainder of his days: and now he found himself at greater liberty to pursue his studies, and carry on at more leisure the extensive literary connexion in which he was engaged both at home and abroad. In Oct. 1762 he was chosen one of the physicians to the Foundling Hospital, which office he held during the remainder of his life.

Jn 1768 Dr. Watson published “An account of a series of Experiments, instituted with a view of ascertaining the most successful method of inoculating the Small-pox,” 8vo. These experiments were designed to prove whether there was any specific virtue in preparing medicines; whether the disease was more favourable when the matter was taken from the natural or the artificial pock; and whether the crude lymph, or the highly concocted matter, produced different effects. The result was, what succeeding and ample experience confirmed, that after due abstinence from animal food, and heating liquors, it is of small importance what kind of variolous matter is used; and that no preparatory specifics are to be regarded. Dr. Watson also published various papers in “The London Medical Observations,” and other similar works, of which it is unnecessary to give a detailed account, as they are well known to medical practitioners.