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He died, Jan. 15, 1672, of a pectoral dropsy, in his 78th year, after having been much afflicted with the stone for some time before; and his body was conveyed from his house in Westminster to Bishop’s Aukland, where it was buried in the chapel belonging to the palace, under a tomb of black marble, with a plain inscription prepared by the bishop in his life-time. Besides the son already mentioned, he had four daughters. By his will he bequeathed considerable sums of money to charitable purposes: to be distributed among the poor in several places, a sum amounting to near 400l.; towards rebuilding St. Paul’s cathedral, when it should be raised five yards from the ground, 1001.; to the cathedral at Norwich, whereof the one half to be bestowed on a marble tablet, with an inscription in memory of Dr. John Overall, some time bishop there, whose chaplain he had been, the rest for providing some useful ornaments for the altar, 40l.; towards repairing the south and north side of Peter-house chapel in Cambridge, suitable to the east and west sides, already by him perfected, 200l.; towards the new building of a chapel at Emanuel college in Cambridge, 50l.; to the children of r. John Hayward, late prebendary of Lichfield, as a stimony of his gratitude to their deceased father, who in his younger years placed him with his uncle bishop Overall, 20l. each; to some of his domestic servants 100 marks, to some 50l. and to the rest half a year’s wages, over and above their last quarter’s pay. In his will also, he made a large and open declaration of his faith, and was particularly explicit and emphatical in vindicating himself from the imputation of popery: “I do profess,” says he, “with holy observation, and from my very heart, that I am now, and ever have been from my youth, altogether free and averse from the corruptions, and impertinent, new-fangled, or papistical superstitions and doctrines, long since introduced, contrary to the holy scripture, and the rules and customs of the ancient fathers.” In the third volume of the Clarendon State Papers, lately published, we find a letter, written, in 1658, to the lord chancellor Hyde, by Dr. Cosin, which affords a farther proof that, notwithstanding his superstition and his fondness for the pomp of external worship, he was steadily attached to the protestant religion. In this letter, speaking of the queen dowager Henrietta and lord Jermyn, he says, “They hold it for a mortal sin to give one penny towards the maintenance of such heretics as Dr. Cosin is.” The accusation of popery, however, answered the purposes of his persecutors, and his minute attention to the decorations and repairs of churches and cathedrals afforded some ground of suspicion even with those of more honest and candid minds.

Dr. Cosin wrote a great number of books, from all which he has sufficiently confuted the calumny of his being a papist, or popishly affected. Besides his “Collection of Private Devotions,” mentioned above, he published “A Scholastical History of the Canon of the Holy Scripture; or, the certain and indubitable books thereof, as they are received in the Church of England,” Condon, 1657, 4to, reprinted in 1672. This history, which is still in esteem, is deduced from the time of the Jewish church, to the year 1546, that is, the time when the council of Trent corrupted, and made unwarrantable additions to, the ancient Canon of the Holy Scriptures, and was written by the author during his exile at Paris. He dedicated it to Dr. M. Wren, bishop of Ely, then a prisoner in the Tower. Dr. P. Gunning had the care of the edition. Since the bishop’s decease the following books and tracts of his have been published: 1. “A Letter to Dr. Collins, concerning the Sabbath,” dated from Peterhouse, Jan. 24, 1635, printed in the “Bibliotheca Literaria,” 1723, 4to; in which he proves, that the keeping of our Sunday is immutable, as being grounded upon divine institution and apostolical tradition, which he confirms by several instances. 2. “A Letter from our author to Mr. Cordel, dated Paris, Feb. 7, 165O,” printed at the end of a pamphlet entitled “The Judgment of the Church of England, in the case of Laybaptism, and of Dissenters baptism,' 1 a second edition of which was published in 1712, 8vo. 3.” Regni Anglise Religio Catholica, prisca, casta, defoecata: omnibus Christianis monarchis, principibus, ordinibus, ostensa, anno MDCLII.“i. e. A short scheme of the ancient and pure doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. Written at the request of sir Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, and printed at the end of Smith’s Life of bishop Cosin. 4.” The History of Popish Transubstantiation,“&c. written in Latin by the author at Paris, for the use of some of his countrymen, who were frequently attacked upon that point by the papists. It was published by Dr. Durrell, at London, 1675, 8vo, and translated into English in 1676, by Luke de Beaulieu, 8vo. There is a second part still in manuscript. 5.” The differences in the chief points of religion between the Roman Catholics and us of the Church of England; together with the agreements which we, for our parts, profess, and are ready to embrace, if they, for theirs, were as ready to accord with us in the same. Written to the countess of Peterborough, “printed at the end of bishop Bull’s” Corruptions of the Church of Rome.“6.” Notes on the Book of CommonPrayer.“Published by Dr. William Nicholls, at the end of his Comment on the Book of Common-Prayer, Lond. 171O, fol. 7.” Account of a Conference in Paris, between Cyril, archbishop of Trapezond, and Dr. John Cosin;“printed in the same book. 8.” A Letter from Dr. Cosin to bishop Moreton his predecessor, giving an account of his studies and employment when an exile abroad;“and,” A Memorial of his, against what the Romanists call the Great General Council of Lateran under Innocent III. in 1215,“both published by Des Maizeaux in vol. VI. of” The Present State of the Republic of Letters,“1730. 9.” An Apology of Dr. John Cosin,“in answer to Fuller’s misrepresentations of him in that author’s Church History, printed at the end of the first part of Heylin’s” Examen Historicum.“The following pieces were also written by bishop Cosin, but never primed: I.” An Answer to a Popish pamphlet pretending that St. Cyprian was a Papist.“2.” An Answer to four queries of a Roman Catholic, about the Protestant Religion.“3. ti An Answer to a paper delivered by a Popish BifUop to the lord Inchiquin. ' 4.” Annales Ecclesiastic!,“imperfect. 5.” An Answer to Father Robinson’s Papers concerning the validity of the Ordinations of the Church of England.“6.” Historia Conciliorum,“imperfect. 7.” Against the foraakers of the Church of England, and their seducers in this time of her tryal.“8.” Chronologia Sacra,“imperfect. 9.” A Treatise concerning the abuse of auricular confession in the Church of Rome." Some few of Dr. Cosin’s letters are extant among Dr. Birch’s collections in the British Museum.

, of Alexandria in Egypt, called Indopleustj-:S or Indicopleustes, on account of a voyage which he made to the Indies, was at first a merchant, afterwards a monk, and author, and is supposed to have flourished about the year 547. He wrote several things, particularly the “Christian Topography, or the opinion of Christians concerning the World, in 12 books still extant, and published by Montfaucon in 1707, in the” Nova collectio Patrum,“vol. II. Cosmas performed his voyage in 522, and pub^ lished his book at Alexandria in 547: it contains some very curious information, but contrary to the sentiments of all astronomers, he denies the earth to be spherical, and endeavours to prove his opinion from reason, scripture, and Christian writers, who lived before him. As his testimony to the authenticity of the scriptures, however, is very considerable, Lardner has selected many passages from” The Christian Topography,“in his” Credibility."

, whose family name was Baseillac, was a monk of the order of the Fetiillans, in Paris, and born in 1703. He was educated to the practice of surgery; but at his father’s death, which happened when he was young, he retired from the world, and became a monk, yet went on improving himself in the art to which he had been bred, and gave his assistance to all who applied without any reward. He had bestowed his principal attention on lithotomy, and the instrument with which he performed the operation he called lithotome cachc^ a hollow tube, in which was concealed a knife, with which he cut through the prostate gland, into the bladder. His care was to make the wound sufficiently large, to enable him to extract the stone easily, and without bruising the parts. To this, it is probable, his success, which was far superior to any of his rivals, must be attributed. The fame he acquired drew upon him the envy of the surgeons of Paris so far, that they applied to the king to interdict his practising. Not succeeding in this attempt, Mons. Le Cat published “Lettre au sujet du Lithotome Cache*, &c. contre F. Cosme Dissert.” 1749. Cosme’s dissertation, describing, the operation, had been published the preceding year, in the “Journal des Savans.” This produced an answer from De Cosme, under the title of “Recueil des pieces imporiantes sur ['operation da la Taille,” Paris, 1751; in which he acknowledges some failures, and that he had lost one patient by haemorrhage; but challenges his adversaries to produce lists of successful cases equal to his. In 1779, he published “Nouvelle methode d'extraire la Pierre,” Paris, 12mo. After having for some time been director of the hospital of Bayeux, he established an hospital in the Feuillans, where he practised gratis. It is thought that in the course of his life he had performed the operation for the stone above a thousand times. He diedJuly 28, 1781, most particularly lamented by the poor, towards whom he was equally compassionate and charitable. When any father of a family offered him money, he used to say, “Keep it;. I must not injure your children” and often, instead of accepting a fee from the opulent, he would recommend some poor object to be relieved by them.

, a learned Jesuit, was born at Pontoise in 1615, and after being educated among the Jesuits, taught rhetoric at Paris with much reputation for seven years. He then joined with father Labbe, who had commenced his vast collection of the “Councils;” and Labbe dying when the eleventh volume was printing, Cossart completed the whole in 1672, in eighteen volumes. Cossart also wrote some orations and poems, a collection of which was published in 1675, and reprinted at Paris in 1723, 12mo. He was thought one of the best orators and poets which the society of Jesuits had produced. He died at Paris, Sept. 18, 1674.

* So says the author of a life of Mr. to man, not to the gratitude of a nation Costard, which accompanies his por- whose literary character he had coutritrait in the Gent. Mag. vol. LXXV. buted to exalt, but to the private chaBut according to an account very feel- rity of a few humble individuals; who, ingly given in the Month. Rev. vol. while they wept over the ashes of their LXXV“I. p. 419, it appears that he pastor, knew not the variety of his tadied so poor as to be” indebted, even lents, or the extent of his acquire, for the last sad duties that man owes ments.“ Paris August 21, 1661, aged 66, leaving several works, full of curious and interesting particulars, but written without any regard to the rules of criticism. The principal are: 1.” Hist. Catholique, ou sont ecrites toutes les vies, faits, &c. des hommes et dames illustres, du 16emeet 17eme siecle,“1625, fol. 2.” La Vie de Jeanne de France, fondatrice des Annonciades.“3.” Les eloges et les vies des reines, des princesses, et dames illustres,“1647, 2 vol. 4to. 4.” Les eloges de nos rois et des enfans de France qui ont et6 Dauphins,“1643, 4to. 5.” Vie du pere Marin Mersene,“1649, 8vo. 6.” Le portrait en petit de St. Franc.ois de Paul,“1655, 4to. 7.” Le parfait Ecclesiastique, ou la vie de Francois le Picart, docteur de Paris, avec les“eloges de 40 autres docteurs de la Faculte”," 1658, 8vo. This last work is the most sought after, and the most curious.

, was a native of Uzez, who fled to England on account of religion in the time of queen Anne, and after residing many years in London, where he was employed in literary pursuits, returned to Paris some time before his death, which happened in 1746. His principal works were: l. Translations into French of Locke’s Essay on human understanding, Amsterdam, 1736, 4to, and Trevoux, 4 vols. 12mo; of Newton’s Optics, 4to, and of the Reasonableness of Christianity, by Locke, 2 vols. 8vo. 2. An edition of Montaigne’s Essays, 3 vols. 4to, and 10 vols. 12mo, with remarks and annotations. 3. An edition of Fontaine’s Fables, 12mo, with cursory notes at the bottom of the pages. He ventured to add a fable of his own, which served to prove that it was far more easy to comment on Fontaine than to imitate him. 4. The defence of la Bruyere, against the Carthusian d'Argonne, who assumed the name of Vigneul Marville: which is prefixed to OzelPs English translation of Bruyere’s works, 1713, 2 vols. 8vo, 5. The life of the Grand Conde, 4to and 12mo. Coste, as an editor, was often tediously minute, and, as an original author, not above mediocrity; but he bestowed great attention on whatever he did. He was an excellent corrector of the press, thoroughly versed in his own language, well acquainted with the foreign tongues, and had a general knowledge of the sciences. In this country he must have been highly respected, as, although he died in France, a monument was erected to his memory in the old church of Paddington, in which parish he probably resided. This monument is now in a light vault under the present church

, or Laurensz Jansz Koster, an inhabitant of Haerlem, who died about 1440, has acquired a name in the annals of printing, as the Dutch affirm him to be the inventor of that art about the year 1430, but this claim has been obstinately disputed. It is objected that it was not till 130 years after the first exercise of this art at Mentz, that the town of Haerlem formed any pretence to the honour of this invention; and that, to the known and certain facts, to the striking and incontestable proofs of its belonging to Mentz, the men of Haerlem oppose nothing but obscure traditions and conjectures, and not one typographical production that can in any way shew the merit of it to belong to Coster. All that such objectors allow to Haerlem, is the circumstance of being one of the first towns that practised the art of cutting in wood, which led by degrees to the idea of printing a book, first in wooden blocks engraved, then in moveable characters of wood, and lastly in fusile types. But it still remains to be proved, that this idea was conceived and executed at Haerlem; whereas it is demonstrated that Gutemberg printed, first at Strasburg, and afterwards at Mentz, in moveable characters of wood, and that the fusile types were invented at Mentz by Schojffert. The learned Meerman, counsellor and pensionary of Rotterdam, zealous for the honour of his country, supported the cause of Haerlem with all the sagacity and all the erudition that could be exerted, in a work entitled “Oru gines Typographies:,” printed at the Hague in 1765, 2 vols. 4to, and of which an abridgment may be seen in Bowyer and Nichols’s “Origin of Printing.” The question is too complicated for discussion in this place: we shall therefore only add the tradition respecting Coster’s invention. It is said that walking in a wood near Haerlem, he amused himself by cutting letters upon the bark of a tree, which he impressed upon paper. Improving this incident, he proceeded to cut single letters upon wood, and uniting them by means of thread, he printed a line or two for his children. It is added, that he afterwards printed a book, entitled, “Speculum salvationis.” Baron Heinecken, who has minutely investigated the whole story, considers it as not entitled to the least credit; and pronounces the prints, attributed to Coster, to be the works of a later date.

, B. D. of Sorbonne, and king’s Greek professor, was born at Nismes, in Languedoc, in 1627. He made an extraordinary proficiency in the languages under his father, when very young: for being, at twelve years only, brought into the hall of the general assembly of the French clergy held at Mante in 1641, he construed the New Testament in Greek, and the Old in Hebrew, at the first opening of the book. He unfolded, at the same time, several difficulties proposed in regard to the peculiar construction of the Hebrew language; and explained also the text from the customs practised among the Jews. After this, he demonstrated certain mathematical propositions, in explaining Euclid’s definitions. This made him looked upon as a prodigy of genius; and his reputation rose as he advanced in life. In 1643 he took the degree of M. A.; B. D. in 1647; and was elected a fellow of the Sorbonne in 1.649. In 1651 he lost his father, who died at Paris, whither he had come to reside with his children in 1638; and he lamented him much, as a parent who had taken the greatest pains in his education. This appears from a letter of Cotelerius to his father, in which he says, “I must necessarily be obedient in every respect to you, to whom, besides innumerable benefits and favours, I owe not only my life, but also the means of living well and happily, those seeds of virtue and learning which you have been careful to plant in me from my infancy. Now, if Alexander of Macedon could own himself so much indebted to his father Philip for begetting him, and so much more to Aristotle for forming and educating him, what ought not I to acknowledge myself indebted to you, who have been both a Philip and an Aristotle to me?”

In 1654, when the archbishop of Embrun retired into his diocese, he took Cotelerius along with him, as one who would be an agreeable companion in his solitude, and with him he remained four years; but afterwards, when he returned to Paris, complained heavily of the want of books and conversation with learned men in that retreat. He do dined going into orders, and spent his time wholly in ecclesiastical antiquity. The Greek fathers were his chief study, whose works he read, both in print and manuscript, with great exactness; made notes upon them, and translated some of them into Latin. In 1660 he published “Four homilies of St. Chrysostom upon the Psalms,” and his “Commentary upon Daniel,” with a Latin translation and notes. He then commenced his “Collection of those Fathers who lived in the apostolic age;” which he published in two vois. folio, at Paris, 1672, reviewed and corrected from several manuscripts, with a Latin translation and notes. The editor’s notes, which are learned and curious, explain the difficulties in the Greek terms, clear up several historical passages, and set matters of doctrine and discipline in a perspicuous light. He would have published this work some years sooner, but was interrupted by being appointed, with Du Cange, to review the Mss. in the king’s library. This task he entered upon by Colbert’s order in 1667, and it occupied his time for five years.

, an English artist, was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, he and three others (Moser, West, and Chambers) being the only persons who signed the petition presented to his Majesty, to solicit that establishment. He was the son of an apothecary, who resided in Cork-street, Burlington-gardens, and was born in 1726. He was the pupil of Knapton, but in the sequel much excelled his master. He was particularly eminent for his portraits in crayons, in which branch of the art he surpassed all his predecessors; though it must be confessed that he owed something of his excellence to the study of the portraits of Rosalba. He also painted with considerable ability in oil colours; and at one time Hogarth declared him to be superior to sir Joshua Reynolds; an opinion, however, which must have arisen from some prejudice, for sir Joshua had then produced some of his best portraits. But though those of Cotes deserve not this high character, they were very pleasing, well finished, coloured with great spirit, and, by the aid of Mr. Toms’s draperies (who generally supplied him with these), were justly ranked with the best portraits of the time. Yet his greatest excellence was in crayons, which were much improved under his hands, both in their preparation and application. Lord Orford says, that his pictures of the queen holding the princess royal, then an infant, in her lap; of his own wife; of Polly Jones, a woman of pleasure; of Mr. Obryen, the comedian; of Mrs. Child, of Osterley-park; and of Miss Wilton, afterwards lady Chambers; are portraits which, if they yield to Rosalba’s in softness, excel hers in vivacity and invention.

January 1706, he was appointed professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy, upon the foundation of Dr. Thomas Plume, archdeacon of Rochester; being the first that enjoyed that office, to which he was unanimously chosen, on account of his high reputation and merits. He took the degree of M. A. in 1706 and went into orders in 1713. The same year, at the desire of Dr. Bentley, he published at Cambridge the second edition of sir Isaac Newton’s “Mathematica Principia, &c.” and inserted all the improvements which the author had made to that time. To this edition he prefixed a most admirable preface, in which he expressed the true method of philosophising, shewed the foundation on which the Newtonian philosophy was built, and refuted the objections of the Cartesians and all other philosophers against it. It may not be amiss to transcribe a paragraph from this preface, in which the editor has given an answer to those who supposed that gravity or attraction, in sir Isaac Newton’s system, was in no wise a clearer principle, and more adapted to explain the phaenomena of nature, than the occult qualities of the peripatetics; because there are still philosophers who persist in the same supposition. Gravity, say the objectors, is an occult cause; and occult causes have nothing to do with true philosophy. To this Mr. Cotes replies, that “occult causes are, not those whose existence is most clearly demonstrated by observation and experiment, but those only whose existence is occult, fictitious, and supported by no proofs. Gravity therefore can never be called an occult cause of the planetary motions; since it has been demonstrated from the phenomena, that this quality really exists. Those rather have recourse to occult causes, who make vortices to govern the heavenly motions; vortices, composed of a matter entirely fictitious, and unknown to the senses. But shall gravity, therefore, be called an occult cause, and on that account be banished from philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult, and as yet undiscovered? Let those, who affirm this, beware of laying down a principle, which will serve to undermine the foundation of every system of philosophy that can be established. For causes always proceed, by an uninterrupted connexion, from those that are compound, to those that are more simple; and when you shall have arrived at the most simple, it will be impossible to proceed farther. Of the most simple cause therefore no mechanical solution can be given;. for if there could, it would not be the most simple. Will you then call these most simple causes occult, and banish them from philosophy? You rnay so; but you must banish at the same time the causes that are next to them, and those again that depend upon the causes next to them, till philosophy at length will be so thoroughly purged of causes, that there will not be one left whereon to build it.” The publication of this edition of Newton’s Principia added greatly to his reputation nor; was the high opinion the public now conceived of him in the least diminished, but rather much increased, by several productions of his own, which afterwards appeared. He gave a description of the great fiery meteor, that was seen March 6, 1716, which was published in the Phil. Trans, a little after his death. He left hehind hirn also some admirable and judicious tracts, part of which, after his decease, were published by Dr. Robert Smith, his cousin and successor in his professorship, afterwards master of Trinity college. His “Harmonia Mensurarum,” &c. was published at Cambridge, 1722, 4to, and dedicated to Dr. Mead by the learned editor; who, in an elegant and affectionate preface, gives us a copious account of the performance itself, the pieces annexed to it, and of such other of the author’s works as were unpublished. He tells us how much this work was admired by professor Saunderson, and how dear the author of it was to Dr. Bentley. The first treatise of the miscellaneous works annexed to the “Harmonia Mensurarum” is “Concerning the estimation of errors in mixed mathematics/' The second,” Concerning ^he differential method;“which he handles in a manner somewhat different from sir Isaac Newton’s treatise upon that subject, having written it before he had seen that treatise. The name of the third piece is” Canonotechnia, or concerning the construction of tables by differences.“The book concludes with three small tracts,” Concerning the descent of bodies, the motion of pendulums in the cycloid, and the motion of projectiles;“which tracts, the editor informs us, were all composed by him when very young. He wrote also” A compendium of arithmetic, of the resolutions of equations, of dioptrics, and of the nature of curves.“Besides these pieces, he drew up a course of” Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures" in English, which were published by Dr. Smith in 1737, and again in 1747, 8vo.

This uncommon genius in mathematics died, to the regret of the university, and all lovers of that science, June 5, 1716, in the very prime of his life; for he was advanced no farther than to his 33d year. He was buried in the chapel of Trinity college; and an inscription fixed over him, from which we learn that he had a very beautiful person. The inscription was written by Dr. Bentley, and is very elegant; but the most lasting and decisive tribute to his memory was paid by sir Isaac Newton, who said, <e Had Cotes lived, we should have known something."

When Dr. Plume’s professorship for astronomy and experimental philosophy was contended for, Mr. Whiston was one of the electors. Besides Mr. Cotes, there was another candidate, who had been a scholar of Dr. Harris’s. As Mr. Whiston was the only professor of mathematics who was directly concerned in the choice, the rest of the electors naturally paid a great regard to his judgment. At the time of election, Mr. Whiston said, that he pretended himself to be not much inferior to the other candidate’s master, Dr. Harris; but he confessed “that he was but a child to Mr. Cotes.” The votes were unanimous for Mr. Cotes, who was then onJy in the twenty-fourth year of his age.

, a member of the French academy, so ill-treated by Boileau in his satires, and by Moliere in his comedy of the “Femmes Savantes,” under the name of Trissotiu, was born at Paris, and has at least as good a title to a place in this work, as some of Virgil’s military heroes in the Æneid, who are celebrated purely for being knocked on the head. It is said, that he drew upon him the indignation of Boileau and Moliere: of the former, because he counselled him in a harsh and splenetic manner, to devote his talents to a kind of poetry different from satire; of the latter, because he had endeavoured to hurt him with the duke de Montausier, by insinuating that Moliere designed him in the person of the Misanthrope. Cotin, however, was a man of learning, understood the learned languages, particularly the Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, was respected in the best companies, where merit only could procure admittance, and preached sixteen Lents, in the principal pulpits of Paris. He died in that city in 1682, leaving several works tolerably well written the principal are, K “Theoclee, on la vraie Philosophie des principes du monde.” 2. “Traite de l'Ame immortelle.” 3. “Oraison funeb. pour Abel Servien.” 4. “Reflexions sur la conduite du roi Louis XIV. quand il prit le soin des affaires par lui-meme.” 5. “Salomon, ou la Politique Royale.” 6. “Poesies Chretiennes,” 1668, 12mo. 7. “CEuvres galantes,” 1665, 2 vols. 12uio, &c. The sonnet to Urania in the “Femmes Savantes” of Molitjre, was really written by abbe Cbtin: he composed it for Madame de Nemours, and was reading it to that lady when Menage entered, who disparaging the sonnet, the two scholars abused each other, nearly in the same terms as Trissotin and Vadius in Moliere.

, an advocate in the parliament of Paris, and a native of Aix or of Avignon, who died at the beginning of the eighteenth century, gained a reputation in the literary world by several works. The principal are: 1. “The voyages of Peter Texeira, or the history of the kings of Persia down to 1609,” translated from the Spanish into French, 1681, 2 vols. 12mo. 2. “The Life of St. Francis de Sales,” 1689, 4to. 3. “The Life of Christopher Columbus,” translated into French, 1681, 2 vols. 12mo. 4. “The Life of the Duchess of Montmorenci,” 2 vols. 8vo. 5. “Arlequiniana, or bon-mots,” &c. collected from the conversations of Harlequin, 1694. 6. “The book without a name,” 1711, 2 vols. 12rno, and, as his countrymen say, worthy of its title. 7. “Dissertation on the works of St. Evremont,” 1704, 12rno, under the name of Dumont. “I find many things in this work, justly censured,” says St. Evremont; “I cannot deny that the author writes well; but his zeal for religion and morals surpasses all things else. 1 should gain less in changing iny style for his, than my conscience for his. Favour surpasses severity in the judgment, and I feel more gratitude for the former than resentment against the latter.” This certainly discovers modesty, which, if sincere, should atone for many faults in St. Evremont.

, an elegant modern Latin poet, was born in a village near Verona in 1483, and gained considerable reputation by his talents. -He followed to the army Bartholomew d'Alviano, a Venetian general who had a regard for him; but he was taken by the French at the battle of Ghiara d'Adda, in the year 1509, lost some of his manuscripts, and did not regain his liberty for some time. His patron sent him to pope Julius II. at Viterbo, where he died in 1511, of a pestilential fever. Several of his epigrams and orations are printed in the collection entitled “Carmina quinque poetarum,” Venice, 1548, 8vo.

, a French lady of considerable talents, whose maiden name was Ristau, was born in 1772, the daughter of a merchant at Bourdeaux, according to whose wish she was married, at eighteen, to M. Cottin, a rich banker at Paris, who was also a relation. Her husband left her a beautiful widow at the age of twenty-two. She resided for some time with a lady to whom she was warmly attached, who was also a widow, and she devoted much of her attention to the education of that lady’s two daughters; but it does not appear that madame de Cottin herself ever was a mother. Much of her time seems likewise to have been occupied in writing those novels which have established her fame in that branch in her own country. She died at Paris, August 25, 1807. Her principal novels are, 1. “Claire d'Albe,” 1798. 2. “Malvina,” 1800, 4 vols. 12mo. 3. “Amelia Mansfield,” 1802, 4 vols. 12mo. 4. “Mathilcle,” 6 vols. 12mo. 5. “Elizabeth, ou les Exiles cle Siberia,” 1806, 2 vols. 12mo. Some of these have been translated into English, and published here. Madame Cottin is of the high sentimental cast, with all that warmth of imagination which distinguishes the more elegant French novelists; but the moral tendency of her writings seems rather doubtful.

, an English poet, was the son of Charles Cotton, esq. of Beresford in Staffordshire, a man of considerable fortune and high accomplishments. His son, who inherited many of these characteristics, was born on the 28th of April, 1630, and educated at the university of Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Mr. Ralph Rawson, whom he celebrates in the translation of an ode of Joannes Secundus. At the university, he is said to have studied the Greek and Roman classics with distinguished success, and to have become a perfect master of the French and Italian languages. It does not appear, however, that he took any degree, or studied with a view to any learned profession; but after his residence at Cambridge, travelled into France and other parts of the continent. On his return, he resided during the greater part of his life at the family seat at Beresford. In 1656, when he was in his twenty-sixth year, he married Isabella, daughter of sir Thomas Hutchinson, knt. of Owthorp in the county of Nottingham, a distant relation, and took her home to his father’s house, as he had no other establishment. In 1658 he succeeded to the family estate encumbered by some imprudencies of his deceased father, from which it does not appear that he was ever able to relieve it.

From this time, almost all we have of his life is comprized in a list of his various publications, which were chiefly translations from the French, or imitations of the writers of that nation. In 1664, he published Mons. de Vaix’s “Moral Philosophy of the Stoics,” in compliance, sir John Hawkins thinks, with the will of his father, who was accustomed to give him themes and authors for the exercise of his judgment and learning. In 1665, he translated the Horace of Corneille for the amusement of his sister, who, in 1670, consented that it should be printed. In this attempt he suffered little by being preceded by sir William Lower, and followed by Mrs. Catherine Phillips. In 1670 he published a translation of the Life of the duke D'Espernon and about the same time, his affairs being much embarrassed, he obtained a captain’s commission in the army, and went over to Ireland. Some adventures he met with on this occasion gave rise to his first burlesque poem, entitled “A Voyage to Ireland,” in three cantos. Of his more serious progress in the army, or when, or why he left it, we have no account.

At what time his first wife died, is not recorded. His second was Mary, countess dowager of Ardglass, widow of Wingfield lord Cromwell, second earl of Ardglass, who died in 1649. She must therefore have been considerably older than our poet, but she had a jointure of 1500l. a year, which, although it probably afforded him many comforts, was secured from his imprudent management. He died in the parish of St. James’s, Westminster, in 1687, and, it would appear, in a state of insolvency, as Elizabeth Bludworth, his principal creditor, administered to his effects, his widow and children having previously renounced the administration. These children were by the first wife, One of them, Mr. Beresford Cotton, published in 1694- the “Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis,” translated by his father; and perhaps assisted in the collection of his poems which appeared in 1689. This gentleman had a company given him in a regiment of foot raised by the earl of Derby, for the service of king William; and one of his sisters was married to the celebrated Dr. George Stanhope, dean of Canterbury,

, an English physician, poet, and amiable man, was born in 1707, but in what county, or of what family, is not known. He studied physic under the celebrated Boerhaave, at Leyden, and is supposed to have taken his degree at that university, which was then the first medical school in Europe, and the resort of all who wished to derive honour from the place of their education. On his return he endeavoured to establish himself as a general practitioner, but circumstances leading him more particularly to the study of the various species of lunacy, he was induced to become the successor of a Dr. Crawley, who kept a house for the reception of lunatics at Dunstable, in Bedfordshire: and having engaged the housekeeper, and prevailed on the patients’ friends to consent to their removal, he opened a house for their reception at St. Alban’s. Here he continued for some years, adding to his knowledge of the nature of mental disorders, and acquiring considerable fame by the success and humanity of his mode of treatment. When his patients began to increase, he found it necessary to hire a larger house, where he formed a more regular establishment, and dignified it by the name of The College. His private residence was in St. Peter’s street in the town of St. Alban’s, and was long known as the only house in that town defended from the effects of lightning by a conductor.

The cares of his college, and the education of his numerous family, occupied near the whole of his long life. His poems and prose pieces were probably the amusement of such hours as he could snatch from the duties of his profession. He carried on also an extensive correspondence with some of the literary characters of the day, by whom, as well as by all who knew him, he was beloved for his amiable and engaging manners. Among others, he corresponded with Dr. Dodd ridge, and appears to have read much and thought much on subjects which are usually considered as belonging to the province of divines. He is not known to have produced any thing of the medical kind, except a quarto pamphlet, entitled “Observations on a particular kind of Scarlet Fever that lately prevailed in and about St. Alban’s,” 1749. The dates of some of his poetical pieces show that he was an early suitor to the muses. His “Visions in Verse” were first published in 1751, again in 1764, and frequently since. He contributed likewise a few pieces to Dodsley’s collection. A complete collection of his productions, both in prose and verse, was published in 1791, 2 vols. 12mo, by one of his sons, but without any memoir of the author.

Dr. Cotton was twice married: first, about the year 1738, to Miss Anne Pembroke, sister to George Pembroke, esq. formerly of St. Alban’s, receiver- general for the county of Hertford, and to Joseph Pembroke, town-clerk of St. Alban’s. By this lady, who died in 1749, he had issue, 1. Mary, who became the second wife of John Osborn, esq. of St. Alban’s, and died without issue, Nov. 2, 1790; 2. Anne, who became the second wife of major Brooke of Bath, and died July 13, 1800, leaving a son and daughter, since dead; S.Nathaniel, who was entered of Jesus college, Cambridge, where he proceeded B. A. 1766, and M. A. 1769, and is now vicar of Welford, in Northamptonshire; 4. Joseph, now a director of the honourable East India company; 5. Phebe, married to George Bradshaw, esq. since dead; 6. Katherine, who died unmarried, Dec. 2, 1780, and is buried under an altar tomb in the churchyard of St. Peter’s, St. Alban’s. He had also bv his first wife, a son and daughter, who died in infancy. He married, secondly, in 1750, or 1751, Miss Hannah Everett, who died May 1772, leaving a son, now living, and two daughters, since dead.

From his letters it appears that about the year 1780 his health was greatly impaired. He was much emaciated, and his limbs so weak as to be insufficient to support his weight. The languors, likewise, which he suffered, were so frequent and severe, as to threaten an entire stop to the circulation, and were sometimes accompanied with that most distressing of all sensations, an anxiety circa priecordia. His memory too began to fail, and any subject which required a little thought was a burthen hardly supportable. He died August 2, 1788, and we are told his age was so far unknown, that the person who entered his burial in the parish register, wrote after his name, “eighty-eight at least.” In a letter, however, written on the death of his daughter Katherine, in 1780, he says, “he had passed almost three winters beyond the usual boundary appropriated to human life, and had thus transcended the longevity of a septuagenarian” This, therefore, will fix his age at eighty-one, or eighty-two. He was interred with his two wives in St. Peter’s church-yard, under an altartomb between those of his two daughters, Mary and Katherine, on which nothing more is inscribed than “Here are deposited the remains of Anne, Hannah, and Nathaniel Cotton.”

If we have few particulars of the life of Dr. Cotton, we have many testimonies to the excellence of his character. We find from Mr. Hayley’s Life of Cowper, that he had at one time among his patients, that amiable and interesting poet, who speaks of Dr. Cotton’s services in a manner that forms a noble tribute to his memory: and Mr. Hayley says, that Dr. Cotton was “a scholar and a poet, who added to many accomplishments, a peculiar sweetness of manners, in very advanced life,” when Mr. Hayley had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him. In a subsequent part of his Life of Cowper, the latter, alluding to an inquiry respecting Dr. Cotton’s works, pays the following compliment to his abilities: “I did not know that he had written any thing newer than his Visions: 1 have no doubt that it is so far worthy of him as to be pious and sensible, and I believe no man living is better qualified to write on such subjects as his title seems to announce. Some years have passed since I heard from him, and considering his great age, it is probable that I shall hear from him no more: but I shall always respect him. He is truly a philosopher, according to my judgment of the character, every tittle of his knowledge in natural subjects being connected in his mind with the firm belief of an omnipotent agent.” His writings, indeed, are uniformly in favour of piety and benevolence, and his correspondence, from which many extracts are given in the lute edition of his Works, justifies the high respect in which he was held by his numerous friends. His prose pieces consist of reflections on some parts of scripture, which he has entitled “Sermons;” and various essays on health, husbandry, zeal, marriage, and other miscellaneous topics. One of these, entitled “Mirza to Selim” (an imitation of Lyttelton’s Persian Letters) is said to relate to the death of the Rev. Robert Romney, D, D. vicar of St. Alban’s, which happened in 1743. When dying, this gentleman prophesied that his brother and heir would not long enjoy his inheritance, which proved true, as he died in June 1746. Some of these essays were probably written for the periodical journals, and others for the amusement of private friends. As a poet, he wrote with ease, and had a happy turn for decorating his reflections in familiar verse: but we find very little that is original, fanciful, or vigorous. He scarcely ever attempts imagery, or description, and nowhere rises beyond a certain level diction adapted to the class of readers whom he was most anxious to please. Yet his “Visions” have been popular, and deserve to continue so. Every sensible and virtuous mind acquiesces in the truth and propriety of his moral reflections, and will love the poems for the sake of the writer.

, a Jesuit, born in 1564, at Neronde near the Loire, of which place his father was governor, distinguished himself early in life by his zeal for the conversion of protestants, and by his success in the pulpit. He was called to the court of Henry IV. at the instance of the famous Lesdiguieres, whom he had converted, and the king pleased with his wit, manners, and conversation, appointed him his confessor. M. Mercier censures the king, for “having too peculiar a deference for this Jesuit, a man of very moderate talents, solely attached to the narrow views of his order;” and it was commonly said, “Our prince is good, but he has cotton in his ears.” Henry was desirous of making him archbishop of Aries, and procuring him a cardinal’s hat; but Cotton persisted in refusing his offers. His brotherhood, after their recall, unable easily to settle themselves in certain towns, that of Poitiers especially, started great difficulties, and Cotton wished to persuade the king that this opposition was the work of Sulli, governor of Poitou; but Henry having refused to listen to this calumny, and blaming Cotton for having adopted it with too much credulity: “God forbid,” said Cotton, “that I should say any harm of those whom your majesty honours with his confidence! But, however, I am able to justify what I advance. I will prove it by the letters of Sulli. I have seen them, and I will shew them to your majesty.” Next day, however, he was under the necessity of telling the king that the letters had been burnt by carelessness. This circumstance is related in the “Cours d'histoire de Condillac,” tom. XIII. p. 505. After the much lamented death of Henry, Cotton was confessor to his son Louis XIII, but the court being a solitude to him, he asked permission to quit it, and obtained it in 1617, so much the more easily as the duke de Luynes was not very partial to him. Mezerai and other historians relate, that when Ravaillac had committed his parricide, Cotton went to him and said: “Take care that you do not accuse honest men!” There is room to suppose that his zeal for the honour of his society prompted him to utter these indiscreet words, and his notions on the subject appear to be rather singular. We are told that Henry IV. having one day asked him, “Would you reveal the confession of a man resolved to assassinate me?” he answered “No; but I would put my body between you and him.” The Jesuit Santarelli having published a work, in which he set up the power of the popes over that of kings, Cotton, then provincial of Paris, was called to the parliament the 13th of March 1626, to give an account of the opinions of his brethren. He was asked whether he thought that the pope can excommunicate and dispossess a king of France “Ah” returned he, “the king is eldest son of the church and he will never do any thing to oblige tae pope to proceed to that extremity” “But,” said the first president. “are you not of the same opinion with your general, who attributes that power to the pope?” —“Our general follows the opinions of Rome where he is and we, those of France where we are.” The many disagreeable things experienced by Cotton on this occasion, gave him so much uneasiness, that he fell sick, and died a few days afterwards, March 19, 1626. He was then preaching the Lent-discourses at Paris in the church of St. Paul. This Jesuit wrote, “Traite du Sacrifice de la Messe;” “Geneve Plagiaire,” Lyons, 1600, 4to; “L'Institution Catholique,” 1610, 2 torn, fol; “Sermons,” 1617, 8vo; “La Rechute de Geneve Plagiaire;” and other things, among which is a letter declaratory of the doctrine of the Jesuits, conformable to the doctrine of the council of Trent, which gave occasion to the “Anti Cotton,” 1610, 8vo, and is found at the end of the history of D. Inigo, 2 vols. 12mo. This satire, which betrays more malignity than wit, was attributed to Dumoulin and to Peter du Coignet, but is now given to Caesar de Plaix, an advocate of Paris. Fathers Orleans and Rouvier wrote Cotton’s Life, 12mo, and as well as Gramont, give him a high character, which from the society of the Jesuits, at least, he highly deserved.

, an eminent English antiquary, “whose name,” says Dr. Johnson, “must always be mentioned with honour, and whose memory cannot fail of exciting the warmest sentiments of gratitude, whilst the smallest regard for learning subsists among us,” was son of Thomas Cotton, esq. descended from a very ancient family, and born at Denton in Huntingdonshire, Jan. 22, 1570; admitted of Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. 1585; and went to London, where he soon made himself known, and was admitted into a society of antiquaries, who met at stated seasons for their own amusement. Here he indulged his taste in the prosecution of that study for which he afterwards became so famous; and in his 18th year began to collect ancient records, charters, and other Mss. In 1600 he accompanied Camden to Carlisle, who acknowledges himself not a little obliged to him for the assistance he received from him in carrying on and completing his “Britannia;” and the same year he wrote “A brief abstract of the question of Precedency between England and Spain.” This was occasioned by queen Elizabeth’s desiring the thoughts of the society of antiquaries upon that point, and is still extant in the Cotton library. Upon the accession of James I. he was created a knight; and during this reign was very much courted and esteemed by the great men of the nation, and consulted as an oracle by the privy counsellors and ministers of state, upon very difficult points relating to the constitution. In 1608 he was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the state of the navy, which had lain neglected ever since the death of queen Elizabeth; and drew up a memorial of their proceedings, to be presented to the king, which memorial is still in his library. In 1609 he wrote “A discourse of the lawfulness of Combats to be performed in the presence of the king, or the constable and marshal of England,” which was printed in 1651 and in 1672. He drew up also, the same year, “An answer to such motives as were offered by certain military men to prince Henry, to incite him to affect arms more than peace.” This was composed by order of that prince, and the original ms. remains in the Cotton library. New projects being contrived to repair the royal revenue, which had been prodigally squandered, none pleased the king so much as the creating a new. order of knights, called baronets; and sir Robert Cotton, who had been the principal suggester of this scheme, was in 1611 chosen to be one, being the thirty-sixth on the list. His principal residence was then at Great Connington, in Huntingdonshire; which he soon exchanged for Hatley St. George, in the county of Cambridge.

"On Saturday in the evening there were sent Mr. Vicechamberlain and others to seal up sir Robert Cotton’s library, and to bring himself before the lords of his majesty’s council. There were found in his custody a pestilent tractate, which he had fostered as his child, and had sent it abroad into divers hands; containing a project how a prince may make himself an absolute tyrant. This pernicious advice he had communicated by copies to divers lords, who, upon his confession, are questioned and restrained my lord of Somerset sent it to the bishop of London the lord Clare to the bishop of Winchester; and the lord Bedford I know not well to whom. Cotton himself is in custody . God send him well out!

The same, to the same, dated Nov. 9. "Yesterday his majesty was pleased to sit in council with all the board, and commanded that devilish project found upon sir Robert Cotton to be read over unto us. For my own part, I never heard a more pernicious diabolical device, to breed suspicious, seditious humours amongst the people. His majesty was pleased to declare his royal pleasure touching the lords and others restrained for communicating that project; which was, to proceed in a fair, moderate, mild, legal course with them, by a bill of information preferred into the star-chamber, whereunto they might make their answer by the help of the most learned counsel they could procure. And though his majesty had it in his power most justly and truly to restrain them till the cause was adjudged, yet, out of his princely clemency, he commanded the board to call them, and to signify unto them to attend their cause in the star-chamber. They were personally called in before the lords (the king being gone) and acquainted by the keeper with his majesty’s gracious favour. Two never spoke a word expressing thankfulness for his majesty’s so princely goodness; two expressed much thankfulness, which were my lord of Bedford and sir Robert Cotton. St. John and James are still in prison; and farther than unto these the paper reachetb not in direct travel, save to Selden, who is also contained in the bill of information. I tear the nature of that contagion did spread farther; but as yet no more appeareth. I am of opinion it will fall heavy on the parties delinquent.

“Amongst other books,” says he, “which Mr. Richard James lent out, one Mr. St. John, of Lincoln’s-inn, a young studious gentleman, borrowed of him, for money, a dangerous pamphlet that was in a written hand, by which a course was laid down, how the kings of England might oppress the liberties of their subjects, and for ever enslave them and their posterities. Mr. St. John shewed the book to the earl of Bedford, o.r a copy of it; and so it passed from hand to hand, in the year 1629, till at last it was lent to sir Robert Cotton himself, who set a young fellow he then kept in his house to transcribe it; which plainly proves, that sir Robert knew not himself that the written tract itself had originally come out of his own library. This untrusty fellow, imitating, it seems, the said James, took one copy secretly for himself, when he wrote another for sir Robert; and out of his own transcript sold away several copies, till at last one of them came into Wentworth’s hands, of the North, now lord deputy, of Ireland. He acquainted the lords and others of the privy-council with it. They sent for the said young fellow, and examining him where he had the written book, he confessed sir Robert Cotton delivered it to him. Whereupon in the beginning of November, in the same year 1629, sir Robert was examined, and so were divers others, one after the other as it had been delivered from hand to hand, till at last Mr. St. John himself was apprehended, and, being conceived to be the author of the book, was committed close prisoner to the Tower. Being in danger to have been questioned for his life about it, upon examination upon oath, he made a clear, full, and punctual declaration that he had received the same manuscript pamphlet of that wretched mercenary fellow James*, who by this means proveed the wretched instrument of shortening the life of sir Robert Cotton; for he was presently thereupon sued in the star-chamber, his library locked up from his use, and two or more of the guards set to watch his house continually. When I went several times to visit and comfort him in the year 1630, he would tell me, ‘ they had broken his heart, that had locked up his library from him.’ I easily guessed the reason, because his honour and esteem were much impaired by this fatal accident; and his house, that was formerly frequented by great and honourable personages, as by learned men of all sorts, remained now upon the matter desolate and empty. I understood from himself and others, that Dr. Neile and Dr. Laud, two prelates that had been stigmatized in the first session of parliament in 1628, were his sore enemies. He was so outworn, within a few months, with anguish and grief, as his face, which had been formerly ruddy and well coloured, (such as the picture I have of him shews), was wholly changed into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage. I, at one time, advised him to look into himself, and seriously consider, why God had sent this chastisement upon him; which, it is possible, he did; for I heard from Mr. Richard Holdesworth, a great and learned divine, that was with him in his last sickness, a little before he died, that he was exceedingly penitent, and was much confirmed in the faithful expectation of a better life.”

The other works of.sir Robert Cotton, not already mentioned, are, 1. “A relation of the proceedings against Ambassadors, who have miscarried themselves, and exceeded their commission.” “2. That the sovereign’s person is required in the great councils or~ assemblies of the states, as well at the consultations as at the conclusions.” 3. “The argument made by the command of the house of commons, out of the acts of parliament and authority of law expounding the same, at a conference of the lords, concerning the liberty of the person of every freeman.” 4. “A brief discourse concerning the power of the peers and commons of parliament in point of judicature.” These lour are printed in “Cottoni Posthuma.” 5. “A short view of the long life and reign of Henry III. king of England,” written in 1614, and presented to king James I. printed in 1627, 4to, and reprinted in “Cottoni Posthuma.” 6. “Money raised by the king without parliament, from the conquest until this day, either by imposition or free gift, taken out of records or ancient registers,” printed in the “Royal treasury of England, or general history of taxes, by captain J. Stevens,” 8vo. 7. “A narrative of count Gondomar’s transactions during his embassy in England,” London, 1659, 4to. 8. “Of antiquity, etymology, and privileges of castles.” 9. “Of towns.” 10. “Of the measures of Land.” 11. “Of the antiquity of Coats of Arms.” All printed in Hearne’s Discourses, p. 166, 174, 178, 182. He wrote books upon several other subjects, that remain still in ms. namely, Of scutage; of enclosures, and converting arable land into pasture; of the antiquity, authority, and office of the high steward and marshal of England; of curious collections; of military affairs; of trade; collections out of the rolls of parliament, different from those that were printed under his name, in 1657, by William Pry nne, esq. He likewise made collections for the history and antiquities of Huntingdonshire; and had formed a design of writing an account of the state of Christianity in these islands, from the first reception of it here to the reformation. The first part of this design was executed by abp. Usher, in his book “De Britannic-arum ecclesiarum primordiis,” composed probably at the request of sir Robert Cotton, who left eight volumes of collections for the continuation of that work. Two of sir Robert’s speeches are printed in the Parliamentary History. A “Treatise of the Court of Chancery,” in ms. by sir Robert Cotton, is often cited in disputes concerning the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, and the authority of the Master of the Rolls, as a ms. in lord Sorners’s library. A copy of it, however, is in Mr. Hargrave’s Collection of Law Mss. The “Cottoni Posthuma,” so often mentioned above, was published by James Howell, fol. 1651, 1672, and 1679. The first of these editions contains a life of Henry III. omitted in the subsequent editions. Mr. Petyt, however, terms this a fictitious work (Petyt’s ms. vol. II. p. 281.), yet it contains several valuable and curious particulars.

But, without intending to derogate from the just merits of this learned and knowing man as an author, it may reasonably be questioned, whether he has not done more service to learning by securing, as he did, his valuable library for the use of posterity, than by all his writings. This library consists wholly of Mss. many of which being in loose skins, small tracts, or very thin volumes, when they were purchased, sir Robert caused several of them to be bound up in one cover. They relate chiefly to the history and antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, though the ingenious collector refused nothing that was curious or valuable in any point of learning. He lived indeed at a time when he had great opportunities of making such a fine collection: when there were many valuable books yet remaining in private hands, which had been taken from the monasteries at their dissolution, and from our universities and colleges, at their visitations when several learned antiquaries, such as Joceline, Noel, Allen, Lambarde, Bowyer, Elsinge, Camden, and others, died, who had made it their chief business to scrape up the ^scattered remains of our monastical libraries: and, either by legacy or purchase, he became possessed of all he thought valuable in their studies. This library was placed in his own house at Westminster, near the house of commons; and very much augmented by his son sir Thomas Cotton, and his grandson sir John (who died in 1702, aged 71). In 1700 an act of parliament was made for the better securing and preserving that library in the name and family of th\ Cottons, for the benefit of the public; that it might not be sold, or otherwise disposed of and embezzled Sir John, great grandson of sir Robert, having sold Cotton -house to queen Anne, about 1706, to be a repository for the royal as well as the Cottonian library, an act was ma le for the better securing of her Majesty’s purchase of that house; and botli house and library were settled and vested in trustees. The books were then removed into a more convenient room, the former being very damp; and Cotton-house was set apart for the use of the king’s library-keeper, who had there the royal and Cottonian libraries under his care. In 1712 the Cottonian library was removed to Essex house, in Essexstreet; and in 1730 to a house in Little DeanVyard, Westminster, purchased by the crown of the lord Ashburnham; where a fire happening, Oct. 23, 1731, 111 books were lost, burnt, or entirely defaced, and 99 rendered imperfect. It was thereupon removed to the Old Dormitory belonging to Westminster-school; and finally, in 1753, to the British Museum, where they still remain.

He died of a fever, at his house in Westminster, May 6, 1631, aged 60 years, three months, and 15 days. He married Elizabeth, one of the daughters and coheirs of William Brocas, of Thedingworth in the county of Leicester, esq, by whom he left one only son, sir Thomas the second baronet, who died 1662, and was succeeded by sir John the third, and he, 1702, by his son John, who died in the life-time of his father, 1681, leaving two sons, of whom the elder, John, succeeded his grandfather, and died without issue 1731. The title and part of the estate went to his uncle Robert, by whose death, at the age of 80, July 12, 1749, the tide became extinct. He had one son, John, who died before his father; and one grandson, John, who died of the small-pox, on his return from his travels, in 1739.

At length, after having led a kind of itinerant life, as he himself informs us, at York, in Holland, and elsewhere, he arrived at his long journey’s end Dec. 19, 1722, in his 85th year, and was buried in the chapel of Christ’s college, where there is an epitaph to his memory. He gave a benefaction of 3l. a year to the poor of the parish of Littlebury above mentioned. Mr. Thomas Baker, who was well acquainted with him, says that he was a person noted for polite and curious learning, singular humanity, and knowledge of the world.

As the famous dispute between M. Arnauld, of the Sorbonne, and M. Claude, minister at Charenton, concerning the faith of the Greek church in the article of the real presence, was then in its full height, which much interested learned men of all denominations in Europe, and particularly the English clergy, Dr. Cove! was desired, by some of the principal persons of the university of Cambridge, particularly the doctors (afterwards bishops) Gunning, Pearson, and Sancroft, to inquire into this matter at Constantinople. When he arrived there, the controversy was handled with great warmth by the Roman Catholic party, at the head of which was the marquis de Nointel, ambassador from the king of France at the Porte, a man of great learning; but Dr. Covel’s disputes with him were conducted rather in an amicable manner, Nointel being a man of a liberal mind. Dr. Covel remained here, as we have already noticed, for the space of seven years, daring which he had an opportunity of informing himself well of the ancient and present state of the Greek church; and having collected several observations and notices relating thereto, digested them afterwards into a curious and useful book, entitled “Some account of the present Greek church, with reflections on their present doctrine and discipline, particularly in the Eucharist,” &c. Cambridge, 1722, folio. In the preface he informs us, that Arnauld, not content to say that the church in all ages believed transubstantiation, did also positively affirm, that all the eastern churches do at this very day believe it, in the same sense as it was defined by the council of Trent. Claude, in answer to him, brought most authentic proofs of the contrary; upon which Arnauld set all the missionaries of the East at work to procure testimonies for him: these, by bribes and other indirect means, they obtained in such numbers, that there was soon after a large quarto in French, printed at Paris, full of the names of patriarchs, bishops, and doctors of those churches, who all approved the Roman doctrine. But Claude, having had most certain information, by means of a French gentleman at Colchis, that some of those testimonies were mere fictions, and others quite different from what they were represented, sent some queries into the East, and desired the English clergymen residing there to inquire of the Greeks, and other eastern Christians of the best note, who had no connections with the Romanists, “Whether transubstantiation, or the real and natural change of the whole substance of the bread into the same numerical substance as the body of Christ, which is in heaven, be an article of faith amongst them, and the contrary be accounted heretical and impious?” Dr. Covel, having instituted this inquiry, published the result in the volume above mentioned.

, the eldest son of Thomas Coventry, esq. by Anna Maria Brown, was born in Cambridgeshire, and educated at Magdalen college, Cambridge, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1748, and his master’s in 1752. He was a young man of very considerable talents, and would probably have been more distinguished for polite literature, had he not been cut off in the prime of life by the small pox, in 1759, soon after he bad been presented by his relation, the earl of Coventry, to the donative or perpetual curacy of Edgware. He published “Penshurst,” an elegant poem, 1750, reprinted in Dodsley’s collection, with a poetical epistle to “The hon. Wilmot Vaughari in Wales.” He was also the author of a paper in the “World,” on the absurdities of modern gardening and of the well-known satirical romance of “Pompey the Little,” 1751. Mr. Gray told Mr. Waipole, in a letter of that date, “Pompey is the hasty production of Mr. Coventry (cousin to him you know), a young clergyman. I found it out by three characters, which made part of a comedy that he shewed me, of his own writing.” This cousin was Henry Coventry, author of the “Letters of Philemon to Hydaspes,” and who was one of the writers of the “Athenian Letters.” He was a fellow of Magdalen college; once, we are told, a religious enthusiast, and afterwards an infidel. He died Dec. 29, 1752.

He died at Durham-house in the Strand on the 14th of January, 1639-40, and was interred in the church of Croome d'Abitot on the 1st of March following, after he had continued in his post of lord-keeper with an universal reputation for his exact administration of justice, for the space of about sixteen years; which was another important circumstance of his felicity, that great office being of a tenure so precarious, that no man had died in it before for near the space of forty years; nor had his successors for some time after him much better fortune. And he himself had made use of all his strength to preserve him-­self from falling by two attacks; the one hy the earl Portland, lord high treasurer of England; the other by the marquis of Hamilton, who had the greatest power over the affections of the king of any man of that time. Whitelocke indeed tells us, that he was of “no transcendant parts or fame;” and sir Anthony Weldon, an author, whose very manner of writing weakens the authority of whatever he advances, asserts, that if his actions had been scanned by a parliament, he had been found as foul a man as ever lived. But our other historians represent him in a much more advantageous light. Mr. Lloyd observes, that he had a venerable aspect, but was neither haughty nor ostentatious; that in the administration of justice, he escaped even the least reproach or suspicion; that he served the king most faithfully; and the more faithfully, because he was a zealous opposer of all counsels which were prejudicial to his majesty, and highly disliked those persons who laboured to stretch the prerogative. But lord Clarendon’s character of him seems entitled to higher respect, not only as a faithful portrait, but a useful lesson. “He was,” says that noble writer, " a man of wonderful gravity and wisdom and not only understood the whole science and mystery of the law, at least equally with any man who had ever sat in his post, but had likewise a clear conception of the whole policy of the government both of church and state; which, by the unskilfulness of some well-meaning men, jostled each other too much. He knew the temper, disposition, and genius of the kingdom most exactly; saw their spirits grow every day more sturdy, inquisitive, and impatient; and therefore naturally abhorred all innovations, which he foresaw would produce ruinous effects. Yet many, who stood at a distance, thought he was not active and stout enough in opposing those innovations. For though by his place he presided in all public councils, and was most sharp-sighted in the consequence of things, yet he was seldom known to speak in matters of state, which he well knew were, for the most part, concluded before they were brought to that public agitation; never in foreign affairs, which the vigour of his judgment could well have comprehended; rior indeed freely in any thing, but what immediately and plainly concerned the justice of the kingdom; and in that, as much as he could, he procured references to the judges. Though in his nature he had not only a firm gravity, but a severity, and even some moroseness; yet it was so happily tempered, and his courtesy and affability towards all men so transcendent, and so much without affectation, that it marvellously recommended him to men of all degrees; and he was looked upon as an excellent courtier, without receding from the natural simplicity of his own manners. He had in the plain way of speaking and delivery, without much ornament of elocution, a strange power of making himself believed (the only justifiable design of eloquence) so that though he used very frankly to deny, and would never suffer any man to depart from him with an opinion that he was inclined to gratify, when in truth he was not; holding that dissimulation to be the worst of lying: yet the manner of it was so gentle and obliging, and his condescension such, to inform the persons whom he could not satisfy, that few departed from him with illwill and ill-wishes.

“But then this happy temper, and those good faculties, rather preserved him from having many enemies, and supplied him with some well-wishers, than furnished him with any fast and unshaken friends, who are always procured in courts by more ardour and more vehement professions and applications than he would suffer himself to be entangled with: so that h,e was a man rather exceedingly liked, than passionately loved; insomuch that it never appeared that he had any one friend in the court of quality enough to prevent or divert any disadvantage he might be exposed to. And therefore it is no wonder, nor to be imputed to him, that he retired within himself as much as he could; and stood upon his defence, without making desperate sallies against growing mischiefs; which, he knew well, he had no power to hinder, and which might probably begin in his own ruin. To conclude, his security consisted very much in his having but little credit with the king; and he died in a season the most opportune in which a wise man would have prayed to have finished his course, and which, in truth, crowned his other signal prosperity in the world.”

, the pious and learned bishop of Exeter in the reign of Edward VI. was born in Yorkshire in 1487, as appears by his age on his epitaph. He was educated at Cambridge, in the house of the Augustine friars, of which Dr. Barnes, afterwards one of the protestant martyrs, was then prior. One of his name took the degree of bachelor of law in 1530, but Lewis thinks this must have been too late for the subject of the present article; yet it is not improbable it was the same, as he appears to have been in Cambridge at that time. He afterwards, according to Godwin, who does not furnish the date, received the degree of D. D. from the university of Tubingen, and was, though late in life, admitted ad eundem at Cambridge. Being in his early years attached to the religion in which he was brought up, he became an Augustine monk. In 1514 he entered into holy orders, being ordained at Norwich; but afterwards changing his religious opinions, Bale says he was one of the first, who, together with Dr. Robert Barnes, his quondam prior, taught the purity of the gospel, and dedicated himself wholly to the service of the reformation. About this time, probably 1530, or 1531, the reformed religion began to dawn at Cambridge. Various eminent men, not only in the colleges, but monasteries, began to assemble for conference on those points which had been discussed by the reformers abroad, and their usual place of meeting was a house called the White Horse, which their enemies nicknamed Germany, in allusion to what was passing in that country; and this house being contiguous to King’s, Queen’s, and St. John’s colleges, many members of each could have access unobserved. Among the names on record of these early converts to protestantism, we find that of Coverdale. In 1532 he appears to have been abroad, and assisted Tyndale in his translation of the Bible, and in 1535 his own translation of the Bible appeared, with a dedication by him to king Henry VIII. It formed a folio volume, printed, as Humphrey Wanley thought, from the appearance of the types, at Zurich, by Christopher Froschover. If so, Coverdale must have resided there while it passed through the press, as his attention to it was unremitting. He thus had the honour of editing the first English Bible allowed by royal authority, and the first translation of the whole Bible printed in our language. It was called a special translation, because it was different from the former English translations, as Lewis shews by comparing itwithTyndale’s; and the psalms in it are those now used in the Book of Common Prayer. In 1538 a quarto New Testament, in the Vulgate Latin, and in Coverdale’s English, though it bore the name of Hollybushe, was printed with the king’s licence, and has a dedication by Coverdale, in which he says, “he does not doubt but such ignorant bodies as, having cure of souls, are very unlearned in the Latin tongue, shall, through this small labour, be occasioned to attain unto more knowledge, or at least be constrained to say well of the thing which heretofore they have blasphemed.”

About the end of this year we find Coverdale again abroad on the business of a new edition of the Bible, on which occasion an event happened which shewed the vigilance and jealousy of the Romanists with respect to vernacular translations. Grafton, the celebrated pri liter, had permission from Francis I. king of France, at the request of king Henry himself, to print a Bible at Paris, on account of the superior skill of the workmen, and the comparative goodness and cheapness of the paper. But, notwithstanding the royal licence, the inquisition interposed by an instrument dated Dec. 17, 1538. The Frenchprinters, their English employers, and our Coverdale, who was the corrector of the press, were summoned by the inquisitors; and the impression, consisting of 2500 copies, was seized and condemned-to the flames. But the avarice of the officer who superintended the burning of these “heretical books,” as they were called, induced him to sell some chests of them to a haberdasher for the purpose of wrapping his wares, and thus some copies were preserved. The English proprietors, who fled at the alarm, returned to Paris when it-subsided; and not only recovered some of those copies which had escaped the fire, but brought with them to London the presses, types, and printers. This valuable importation enabled Grafton and Whitchurch to print in 1539, what is called Cranmer’s, or the “Great Bible,” in which Coverdale compared the translation with the Hebrew, corrected it in many places, and was the chief overseer of the work. Dr. Fulk, who was one of Coverdale’s hearers when he preached at St. Paul’s Cross, informs us that he took an opportunity in his sermon to defend his translation against some slanderous reports then raised against it, confessing-, “that he himself now saw some faults, which, if he might review the book once again, as he had twice before, he doubted not he should amend: but for any heresy, he was sure that there was none maintained in his translation.” In all these labours Coverdale found a liberal patron in Thomas lord Cromwell.

It is highly probable also that Coverdale was held in estimation for piety or talents at court, for he was almoner to queen Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII. a lady who was a favourer of the reformed religion, and as such he officiated at her funeral in Sept. 1548, in the chapel at Sudeley castle in Gloucestershire, the seat of her third husband, Thomas, lord Seymour of Sudley; and took that opportunity of declaring his sentiments on religion in the sermon he preached, which, says our manuscript authority, “was very good and godlie, and in one place thereof he toke occasion to declare unto the people howe that there shulde none there thinke, seye nor spread abrode, that the offeringe which was there don, was don anye thing to proffytt the deade, but for the poore onlye; and also the lights which were caried and stode abowte the corps, were for the honnour of the parson, and for none other entente nor purpose; and so wente thorowghe with his Sermon de, and made a godly e Prayer, &c.”

In 1547 we find him preaching at St. Paul’s with such effect against certain anabaptists, that they are said to have recanted their opinions. On the 14th of August, 1551, he succeeded Dr. John Harman, or Voysey, in the see of Exeter, his collocation, with licence of entry, bearing date July of that year, and it was expressly stated that king Edward VI. had promoted him “on account of his extraordinary knowledge in divinity, and his unblemished character.” When lord Russel was sent down to quell the rebellion in the West of England in 1549, he was attended by Coverdale to preach among them, and it was probably the influence of his preaching in composing the religious differences in that quarter, which pointed him out as a fit person to succeed Hartnan, a bigotted papist, who seldom resided, and took little care of his diocese, and to whom, some time before, Coverdale had been appointed coadjutor, an office not uncommon in those days. On his appointment to this bishopric, Coverdale was so poor as to be unable to pay the first fruits, which, therefore, the king, at the solicitation of archbishop Cranmer, excused. In the same year he was nominated one of the commissioners for compiling a new body of ecclesiastical laws, a favourite object with Cranmer, which, however, did not then take effect.

On the accession of queen Mary, and the consequent re-establishment of popery, he was ejected from the see and thrown into prison, out of which he was released after two years confinement, at the earnest request of the king of Denmark. Coverdale and Dr. John Machabseus, chap­* Dr. Weston does not occur in Le Neve’s List of Chancellors, bu.1 there can be no doubt of the fact. lain to that monarch, had married sisters, and it was at his chaplain’s request that the king interposed, but was obliged to send two or three letters be Core he could accomplish his purpose. By one of these, dated April 25, 1554, it would appear that Coverdale was imprisoned in consequence of being concerned in an insurrection against the queen, but this is not laid to his charge in the queen’s answer, who only pretended that he was indebted to her concerning his bishopric. As the first fruits had been forgiven by Edward VI. this must be supposed to allude to his tenths; and Coverdale’s plea, as appears by the king of Denmark’s second letter, was, that he had not enjoyed the bishopric long enough to be enabled to pay the queen. This second letter bears date Sept. 24, 1554, and, according to Strype, the queen’s grant of his request was not given till Feb. 18, 1555. Strype, therefore, from his own evidence, is erroneous in his assertion that in 1554 Coverdale was preacher to a congregation of exiled protestants at Wesel, until he was called by the duke of Deux Fonts, to be preacher at Bergzabern . On his release, which was on the condition of banishing himself, he repaired to the court of Denmark, where the king would fain have detained him, but as he was not so well acquainted with the language as to preach in Danish, he preferred going to the places above mentioned, where he could preach with facility in Dutch; and there and at Geneva he passed his time, partly in teaching and partly in preaching. He also, while here, joined some other English exiles, Goodman, Gilby, Whittingham, Sampson, Cole, &c. in that translation of the Bible usually called the “Geneva translation;” part of which, the New Testament, was printed at Geneva, by Conrad Badius, in 1557, and again in 1560, in which last year the whole Bible was printed in the same place by Rowland Harte. Of this translation, which had explanatory notes, and therefore was much used in private families, there were above thirty editions in folio, quarto, and octavo, mostly printed in England by the king’s and queen’s printers, from the year 1560 to 1616. On the accession of queen Elizabeth, he returned from his exile, but, unfortunately for the church, had imbibed the principles of the Geneva reformers, as far as respected the ecclesiastical habits and ceremonies. In 1559, however, we find him taking his turn as preacher at St. Paul’s Cross, and he assisted also at the consecration of archbishop Parker, in which ceremony, although he performed the functions of a bishop, he wore only a long black cloth gown. This avowed non-compliance with the habits and ceremonies prevented his resuming his bishopric, or any preferment being for some time offered to him. In 1563 bishop Grindal recommended him to the bishopric of Llandaff; and in 1564, Coverdale had the honour to admit that prelate to his doctor’s degree, by a mandate from the vicechancellor of Cambridge, a proof that he was still in high estimation. Grindal, particularly, had a great regard for him, and was very uneasy at his want of preferment. On one occasion he exclaimed, “I cannot excuse us bishops.” He also applied to the secretary of state, “telling him, that surely it was not well that father Coverdale,” as he styled him, “qui ante nos omnes fuit in Christo,” “who was in Christ before us all,” should be now in his age without stay of living.“It was on this occasion that Grindal recommended him to the bishopric of Llandaff, as already noticed, but it is supposed Coverdale’s age and infirmities, and the remains of the plague, from which he had just recovered, made him decline so great a charge. In lieu of it, however, the bishop collated him to the rectory of St. Magnus, London Bridge; and here again the good man’s poverty presented an obstruction, as appears from some affecting letters he wrote to be excused from the first fruits, amounting to 60l. which he was utterly incapable of paying: one of these letters, in which he mentions his age, and the probability of not enjoying the preferment long, he concludes with these words:” If poor old Miles might be thus provided for, he should think this enough to be as good as a feast." His request being granted, he entered upon his charge, and preached about two years; but resigned it in 1566, a little before his death. He was very much admired by the puritans, who flocked to him in great numbers while he officiated at St. Magnus’s church, which he did without the habits, and when he had resigned it, for it does not appear that he was deprived of it, as Neal asserts, his followers were obliged to send to his house on Saturdays, to know where they might hear him the next day, which he declined answering lest he should give offence to government. Yet, according to Strype, he had little to fear; for, Fox, Humphrey, Sampson, and others of the same way of thinking, were not only connived at, but allowed to hold preferments. He died, according to Richardson in his edition of Godwin, May 20, 1565 and according to Neal in his History of the Puritans, May 20, 1567 but both are wrong. The parish register proves that he was buried Feb. 19, 1568, in the chancel of the church of St. Bartholomew, Exchange, with the following inscription on his tombstone, which was destroyed at the great fire along with the church.

Coverdale was the author of several tracts calculated to promote the doctrines of the reformation, and of several translations from the writings of the foreign reformers. All these are now of such rare occurrence, that it is very difficult to make out a correct list. That in Bale, and in the meagre account of him in the Biographia Britannica, is both defective and indistinct. The following, which probably is also imperfect, may, in some measure, assist the collectors of curiosities, and has been taken principally from Ames and Herbert: 1. “A faithful and true Prognostication upon the Year 1548, &c.” translated from the German, 8vo, 1536, 1548, and often reprinted. 2. Translation of “Luther’s Exposition of the 23d Psalm,” 1537, 16mo. 3. “How and whither a Chryten man ought to fly the horryble Plague and Pestilence,” a sermon, from the German, to which is added, “A comfort concerning them that be dead, and howe wyfe, chyldren, and other frendes shal be comforted, the husband being dead,” 1537, 8vo. 4. “The Olde Faithe,” 1541 and 1547, 16mo. 5. A translation of Bullinger’s “Christen State of Matrimony,” 1541, 8vo, and 1543, one of the books prohibited by proclamation of Henry VIII. but reprinted twice in 1552. 6. “A Confutacion of that Treatise, which one John Standish made against the Protestacion of D. Barnes, in the year 1540,” 1541, 8vo. 7. Translation of “The Actes of the Disputation in the cowncell of the empyre, holden at Regenspurg 1” 8vo, about 1542. 8. Translation from the German of “The Defence of a certayne poore Christen Man who als shuld have beene condemned by the Popes Lawe,” Nuremberg, 1545, 16mo. 9. “An Abridgment of Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani,” 1545, 12mo. 10. A translation of the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, in “The second volume of the Paraphrase ef Erasmus on the New Testament,” 1549, fol. 11. Translation of “A godly Treatise, wherein is proved the true Justification of a Christian Man to come freely to the Mercie of God,” 1579, 16mo. 12. Translation of “The Hope of the Faithfull, &c.” 1579, 16mo, and of 13. “The Booke of Death, or how a Christian Man ought to behave himself in the danger of Death, &c.” 1579, 16mo. 14. Translation of “A spiritual and most precious pearle, teaching all men to love and embrace the Cross,” from the German of Otho Wermylierus, or Wermulerus, no date, but printed by Singleton about 1588. 15. ,“Fruitful Lessons upon the passion, buriall, resurrection, ascension, and of the sending of the Holy Ghost,” 1593, 4to. 16. Translation of “The Supplication of the nobles and commons of Ostericke made unto king Ferdinandus, in the cause of Christian Religion, &c.” 8vo, no date. 17. “Declaration of the Order that the churches in Denmark, and many other places in Germany, do use, not only at the Holy Supper, but also at Baptisme,” printed beyond sea; no date, 16mo. No manuscripts of bishop Coverdale exist in any of our public libraries, except a short letter in the Harleian collection, lately printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine.

, a French Jesuit, who died at Paris Aug. 4, 1774, at an advanced age, connected himself with the Jansenists, and particularly with the learned abbé Boursier. His sentiments on the bull Unifrenitus occasioned his being imprisoned for some weeks at Vincennes in 1755, and for more than a year in the Bastille in 1758-9. He wrote some works in defence of his opinions, and some political tracts; but his most celebrated publication was his “History of the Jesuits,” 1761, 4 vols, 12mo, to which he added 2 vols. of a supplement in 1764. This work cost him so much literary research, as to have injured his sight; but it is more remarkable, that, notwithstanding he owed his advancement to the Jesuits, and was the friend of many members of that society, he was a decided enemy to the society itself; and when their dissolution was concerted, in 1762, this work is said to have furnished many arguments in favour of the measure. His character was that of a laborious, active, useful, and disinterested ecclesiastic.

, a learned divine of the church of Rome, who was long resident in England, was born at Vernon in “Normandy, in the year 1681, and being educated for the church, became canon regular and librarian of the abbey of St. Genevieve, a situation extremely favourable to the prosecution of his studies, as the library of which he had the care is a very considerable one. Among other theological inquiries, he engaged in one, which was productive of very important consequences respecting his future life. Having been employed in reading abbe Reuaudot’s” Memoire sur la validite des Ordinations des Anglois,“inserted in abbe Gould’s” La veritable croyance de T'eglise Catholique,“he was induced to enter into a farther examination of that subject. Accordingly he drew up a memoir upon it, for his own satisfaction only, but which grew insensibly into a treatise; and at the instance of some friends to whom it was communicated, he was at length prevailed with to consent to its publication. He therefore made the usual application for permission to print it; and obtained the approbation of Mons. Arnaudin, the royal licenser of the press. Some persons, however, afterwards found means to prevail on the chancellor to refuse to affix the seal to the approbation of the licenser. Terms were proposed to father Courayer, to which he could not accede, and he gave up all thoughts of publishing. Some of his friends, however, being in possession of a copy, resolved to print it; and this obliged him to acquiesce in the publication. When he first wrote his treatise, all his materials were taken from printed authorities, and he had no acquaintance or correspondence in England. But sundry difficulties, which occurred to him in the course of his inquiries, suggested to him the propriety of writing to England, in order to obtain clearer information on some points; and knowing that a correspondence had been carried on between Dr. Wake, then archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Dupin, on the project of re-uniting the churches of England and France, he took the liberty, in 1721, although entirely unknown to that prelate, to desire his information respecting some particulars. The archbishop answered his inquiries with great readiness, candour, and politeness, and many letters passed between them on this occasion. Father Courayer’s book was at length published in 1723, in two volumes small 8vo, entitled,” Dissertation sur la validite des Ordinations des Anglois, et sur la Succession des Evesques de l'Eglise Anglicane: avec les preuves justificatives des faits avancez dans cet ouvrage.“It was printed at Nancy, though Brussels is placed in the title. It was afterwards translated into English, by the rev. Mr. Daniel Williams, and published at London in one volume 8vo, under the title” A Defence of the validity of the English Ordinations, and of the Succession of the Bishops in the Church of England: together with proofs justifying the facts advanced in this treatise.“Father Courayer’s work was immediately attacked by several popish writers, particularly by father le Quien and father Hardouin. But in 1726 he published, in four volumes 12mo,” Defense de la Dissertation sur la validite des Ordinations des Anglois, coutre les differentes reponsesqui y out 6te faites. Avec les preuves justiticatives des faits avancez dans cet ouvrage. Par l'Auteur de la Dissertation.“An English translation of this also was afterwards published at London, in two volumes 8 vo, under the following title:” A Defence of the Dissertation on the validity of the English Ordinations," &c.

But father Courayer was not only attacked by those writers who published books against him: he was likewise censured both by the mandates and by the assemblies of several bishops, and particularly by cardinal de Noaiiles, archbishop of Paris, and the bishop of Marseilles. During this time he retired from Paris into the country, but was recalled by his superior to reside at the priory of Hennemonte, four leagues from Paris. Here he received a diploma for the degree of doctor in divinity from the university of Oxford, dated Aug. 28, 1727: and from hence he returned his thanks to the University in an elegant Latin letter, dated Dec. 1, the same year, both of which he afterwards printed. But though his book had procured this honourable testimonial of his merit from an English university, his enemies in France were not satisfied with publishing censures and issuing episcopal mandates against him, but proceeded to measures for compelling him to recant what he had written, and to sign such submissions as were inconsistent with the dictates of his conscience. In this critical state of things, he resolved to quit his native country, and to seek an asylum in England. He was the more inclined to embrace this resolution in consequence of the warm and friendly invitations which he had received from archbishop Wake, who had conceived a great regard for him. After having spent four months very disagreeably at Hennemonte, he obtained leave to remove to Senlis; but, instead of going thither, he took the road to Calais in the common stage-coach, from thence got safely over to Dover, and arrived in London on the 24tlr of January, 1728.

He was well received in England: the marquis of Blandford made him a present of fifty pounds, and he obtained a pension of one hundred pounds a year from the court. In 1729 he published, at Amsterdam, in two vols. 12mo, “Relation Historique et Apologetique des sentimens et de la conduite du P. le Courayer, chanoine regulier de Ste. Genevieve: avec les preuves justificatives des faits avancez dans l'ouvrage.” In this work he entered into a farther justification of his sentiments and of his conduct, and shewed the necessity that he was under of quitting France, from the virulence and power of his enemies. In 1733 he was at Oxford, and was present in the theatre at the public act that year, and made a speech there upon the occasion, which was afterwards printed both in Latin and English. In 1726 he published at London, in two vols. folio, a translation, in French, of “Father Paul’s History of the Council of Trent;” with notes critical, historical, and theological. He dedicated this work to queen Caroline, and speaks of it as having been undertaken by her command; and he expresses, in the strongest terms, his gratitude to her majesty for her patronage, and for the liberality which she liad manifested towards him. A list of subscribers is prefixed, in which are found the names of the prince of Wales, the duke of Cumberland, the prince and princess of Orange, the princesses Amelia and Caroline, the archbishop of Canterbury, the lord Chancellor, lord Hardwicke, then chief Justice of the King’s Bench, sir Robert Walpole, and many of the nobility, andother persons of distinction. By the sale of this work he is said to have gained fifteen hundred pounds, and the queen also raised his pension to two hundred pounds per annum. He gave sixteen hundred pounds to lord Feversham, for an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum, which he enjoyed forty years. By these means he came into very easy circumstances, which were rendered still more so by the reception which his agreeable and instructive conversation procured him, among persons of rank and fortune, with many of whom it was his custom to live for several months at a time. He wrote some other works in French, besides those that have been mentioned; and, in particular, he translated into that language Sleidan’s “History of the Reformation.” His exile from his own country was probably no diminution of his happiness upon the whole; for he appears to have passed his time in England very agreeably, and he lived to an uncommon age. Even in his latter years, he was distinguished for the cheerfulness of his temper and the sprightliness of his conversation. He died in Downingstreet, Westminster, after two days illness, on the 17th of October, 1776, at the age of ninety-five. Agreeably to his own desire, he was buried m the cloister of Westminsterabbey, by Dr. Bell, chaplain to the princess Amelia. In his will, which was dated Feb. 3, 1774,* he declared, “That he died a member of the Catholic church, but without approving of many of the opinions and superstitions which have been introduced into the Romish church, and taught in their schools and seminaries, and which they have insisted on as articles of faith, though to him they appeared to be not only not founded in truth, but also to be highly improbable.” It is said, that soon after he came to England, he went to a priest of the Romish church for confession, and acquainted him who he was. The priest would not venture to take his confession, because he was excommunicated, but advised him to consult his superior of Genevieve. Whether he made any such application, or what was the result, we are not informed bat it is certain that, when in London, he made it his practice to go to mass; and when in the country, at Ealing, he constantly attended the service of the parish-church, declaring, at all times, that he had great satisfaction in the prayers of the church of England. In discoursing on religious subjects he was reserved and cautious, avoiding controversy as much as possible. He left 500l. to the parish of St. Martin; and gave, in his life-time, his books to the library there, founded by archbishop Tenison. He bequeathed 200l. to the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, and a handsome sum of money to the poor of Vernon, in Normandy; and, after many legacies to his friends in England, the remainder to two nephews of his name at Vernon. During his lifetime, he was occasionally generous to some of his relations in France, and in England was very liberal to the poor. He had two sisters, who were nuns; and a brother at Paris, in the profession of the law, to whom he gave a handsome gold snuff-box, which had been presented to him by queen Caroline.

In 1787 was 'published, in octavo, by the rev. William Bell, D. D. prebendary of Westminster, “Declaration de mes derniers sentimens sur les differens dogmes de la Religion. par feu pierre franois le courayer, docteuren theologie,” &c. An English translation of this has been since published. The original manuscript, which was given by father Courayer to the princess Amelia, who had a great esteem for him, was written in 1767, which was about nine years before his death. The princess Amelia left this manuscript by will to Dr. Bell; who published it, as being of opinion, that the last sentiments of a writer of Dr. Courayer’s reputation, and whose situation was so peculiar, were calculated to excite the attention of the learned, and of those who were zealously attached to the interests of religion: and, indeed, it appears to have been the wish of the author himself that it should be published, though not till after his death.

One other circumstance respecting Courayer’s history remains to be noticed. From the fourth volume of bishop Atterbury’s Epistolary Correspondence, we learn that the bishop was exposed to some trouble on account of Courayer' s escape from France, which he was supposed to have facilitated. The French king and cardinal Fleury sent him a message on the subject by the lieutenant de police. “I did not mince the matter to the magistrate,” says the bishop, “nor am I at all ashamed of what has happened, or concerned for it. I owned my friendship for Pere Courayer told them frankly a great deal more than they knew of that matter, as <far as I was concerned and thought there was no reason to wonder at, or blame my conduct. I convinced them of that point, and I believe there is an end of it. I shewed the lieutenant the picture of Pere Courayer hanging up in my room; told him I had visited him in his retreat at Hanment, while he was in disgrace there; and that he came to take his leave of me the night before he left Paris; and that in all this I thought I had done nothing that misbecame me.” The lieutenant, who behaved with great politeness, was perfectly satisfied with our prelate’s explanation but this was not the case with the cardinal, who was persuaded that father Courayer’s escape was entirely owing to Atterbury, and displayed much resentment on that account. The picture of Courayer, in the bishop’s possession, was left by him to the university of Oxford.

, the son of a tailor at Menin, was one of many who experienced the oppression of Olivarez duke of Alva, who, being appointed by Philip II. governor of the seventeen provinces, endeavoured, with execrable policy, to establish over all the Netherlands an irreligious and horrible court of judicature, on the model of the Spanish inquisition. By consequence, in 1567, great numbers of industrious, thriving, and worthy people were imprisoned by the rigorous orders of this petty tyrant, and treated with great injustice and cruelty. Courten had the good fortune to escape from prison; and in the year following, 1568, arrived safe in London, with his wife Margaret Casiere, a daughter named Margaret, her husband, son of a mercantile broker at Antwerp of the name of Boudean, and as much property as they could hastily collect under such disadvantages. Soon after their arrival, they took a house in Abchurch-lane, where they lived together, following for some time the business of making what were commonly called French hoods, much worn in those days and long after, which they vended in wholesale to the shopkeepers who sold them in retail. Encouraged by great success in this employment, they soon removed to a larger house in Pudding-lane or Love-lane, in the parish of St. Mary Hill, where they entered on a partnership trade, in silks, fine linens, and such articles as they had dealt in before when in Flanders. Michael Boudean, the daughter Margaret’s husband, died first, leaving behind him, unfortunately for the family, a son and only child, named Peter, after an uncle certainly not much older than himself. The widow married John Money, a merchant in London, who instantly became an inmate with the family, which was moreover increased by the parents themselves, with two sons, William, born in 1572, and Peter, born in 1581. The young men, being instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, were early initiated in business, and soon after sent abroad as factors for the family: William to Haerlem, Peter to Cologne, and Peter Boudean the grandchild to Middleburg. At what time William Courten and Margaret Casiere died is at present uncertain most probably their deaths happened about the end of queen Elizabeth’s, or in the beginning of king James’s reign; but it seems certain, that they left their descendants not only in easy, but even in affluent circumstances. At the following aera of this little history it does not appear clearly, whether the old people were actually dead, or had only declined all farther active, responsible concern in business: but, in 1606, William and Peter Courtens entered into partnership with John Money, their sister Margaret’s second husband, to trade in silks and fine linen. Two parts, or the moiety of the joint stock, belonged to William Courten, and to each of the others, Peter Courten and John Money, a fourth share. As for Peter Boudean, the son of Margaret Courten by her first husband, he seems to have been employed to negotiate for the partnership at Middleburg on some stipulated or discretionary salary; for it does not appear that he had any certain or determinate share in the trade, which was carried on prosperously till 1631, with a return, it is said, one year with another, of 150,000l. During the course of this copartnership, there is nothing upon record unfavourable to the character of John Money. The characters too of William and Peter Courtens appear unexceptionable, fair, and illustrious. They prospered, it seems, remarkably in all their undertakings, for twenty years and more; in the course of which time they were both dignified with the honours of knighthood.

The elder brother, sir William Courten, besides his capital concern in the original partnership above mentioned, traded very extensively on his own account to Guinea, Portugal, Spain, and the West Indies. He married first a Dutch woman of the name of Cromling, the daughter of Mr. Peter Cromling, an opulent merchant in Haerlem, who, though both deaf and dumb, was book-keeper to her father. By this marriage he got, it is said, 60,000l. of which he was enjoined to lay out 50,000l. in the purchase pf lands in England, to be settled upon his son by this lady, of whom she was delivered in London, and whose name was Peter. This son, who was all the offspring from this marriage, king James I. made one of the first rank of his baronets. He was afterwards married to lord Stanhope’s daughter, but died without issue, leaving the estate in lands to his father sir William, who settled that estate, and 3000l. more per annum, upon his only son and heir, by a second wife, the daughter of Mr. Moses Tryon. Sir Peter, the uncle to Peter just mentioned, and brother to sir William Courten, kept the books of the family partnership, and died unmarried in 1630 at Middleburgh. It is affirmed that he was worth at his death 100,000l. and that he left his nephew Peter Boudean, the son of his sister by her first husband, his sole heir and executor, who seems at this time to have taken the name of Courten, which he annexed to his own. This crafty man took immediate possession, not only of his uncle sir Peter’s property, which could not have been ascertained without balancing the accounts of the copartnership, but seized likewise the shipping and goods that belonged unquestionably to his other uncle sir William, and Mr. Money, amounting, as it is stated, to 100,000l. more; nor could he, to the very end of his life, which lasted above thirty years longer, be brought, by argument or law, to settle the accounts of the company.

1642. He had probably no knowledge or remembrance of his father, who, the next year after his son was born, in

1643, became insolvent, and quitted this kingdom, to which it does not appear that he ever returned. When he died at Florence, in 1655, the subject of this article was about thirteen years of age; and it is most likely that his mother did not survive her husband above four or five years: for as no mention is made of lady Katharine in 1660, when Mr. Carew obtained letters of administration to the estates of the Courten family, it is probable she was then dead. In a petition to parliament, a rough draught of which is in the British Museum, there is a like ground for the same supposition, no mention being made of his mother; for it is only said there, that he the petitioner, and his only sister, had been left for many years destitute of a livelihood. It is not said at what time this gentleman’s father sold the great bulk of sir William Courten’s lands. Even the wrecks of a fortune, once so ample, must have been very considerable, and more than sufficient for the proper education and decent maintenance of William Courten and his sister. She could very well live in those days on no more income, as appears, than 30l. per annum. That this moderate annual sum was her principal support, we are led to believe from a slight attention to two papers still in being. If he and his sister had even been more reduced in point of income than we can well suppose, they still had infallible resources in the number, rank, and riches of their relations. Their grandfather the earl of Bridgewater, two uncles, with eleven aunts on the side of their mother, and three aunts on their father’s side, were people of fortune and distinction; many of them married into honourable and wealthy families, and all of them apparently in affluent or easy circumstances. It may therefore be reasonably concluded that William Courten was well educated, though the fact were not ascertained by other testimony. Having previously received a good education in this country, forwarded probably with peculiar care, and earlier certainly than is now usual, William Courten began his travels; or was sent, while yet a minor, to prosecute his studies abroad. The genius of a naturalist, which he discovered, it seems, from his infancy, led him to cultivate it at Montpellier, distinguished then, as Upsal since, for its botanical garden, its peculiar attention to natural history, and the abilities and celebrity of masters in various branches of this science. Here he met, as might be probably expected, with students of a congenial taste, and persons then and afterwards eminent in various walks of literature, with several of whom he appears to have lived in great familiarity, and to have cultivated long correspondence. Tournefort, the celebrated French botanist, was of this number. William Courten, who was the senior by several years, had no doubt made a very considerable proficiency in botany before his acquaintance with this illustrious foreigner commenced; but it must have been much improved by the intimacy that appears to have subsisted between them. It was at Montpellier probably, but many years after his primary settlement there, that William Courten contracted his first acquaintance with sir Hans Sloane, a zealous naturalist, who spared no pains or expence in the acquisition and promotion of knowledge in natural history, and who was yet more honourably distinguished by his skill in his own profession, his general patronage of scholars, his public spirit, and extensive phiJanthropy. Sir Hans Sloane unquestionably spent a considerable time at Montpellier, probably to improve his knowledge and to establish his health; and here too it is said he got his degree of M. D. But at what place and at what time soever their acquaintance began, being forwarded'by a similarity of studies, in which William Courten had undoubtedly the pre-eminence, it ripened into a friendship that continued without interruption to the end of his life.

Soon after his arrival in England, in concert with his friends, William Courten began his litigations in behalf of himself and his sister. The first object he aimed at was to set aside the letters that, in his absence and minority, Carew had surreptitiously obtained, and to get himself legally invested with the administration of the estate and effects of his ancestors. He contended that George Carew was an officious intruder, under false pretexts of being a sufferer, and an agent for other sufferers by the losses of his father and grandfather; and urged that this man’s intermeddling with the wrecks of their fortunes, had been equally t > the prejudice of the rightful heirs, and to the detriment of the legal creditors of the family. He claimed therefore for himself, as his natural right, the administration of the Courten estates and his aunt, lady Knightly, who seems to have been then the only surviving child of sir William, from whom the estates descended, concurred with her nephew in this claim. George Carew, who was both a courtier and a lawyer, seems to have exerted his utmost address and professional skill to stop or frustrate these proceedings. He expressly owns in one of his papers that he had indeed paid indefinite sums of money to William Courten, esq. after he came of age, though he says at the same time that he did not pay the monies because William Courten had a right to them, but solely to prevent and terminate debates. The causes here assigned for the payments to William Courten, esq. after he came of age, are very questionable; for Carew does not appear a man likely to have parted with money on such principles merely to prevent or terminate debates.

It was most probably abroad, and about the year 1675, that Mr. Courten’s acquaintance and friendship with the celebrated Mr. John Locke began; for in the summer of that year the bad state of Locke’s health, and an apprehended consumption, induced him to repair to Montpellier, then famous for the cure of diseases in the lungs. For many years past people have discontinued to resort to Montpellier, when afflicted with pulmonary and consumptive complaints, its air having been long judged peculiarly improper for them; though it is now said to be much mended, by draining a morass, or planting, or destroying a wood. Bishop Atterbury, who was there in the summer 1729, represents it as so uncomfortable, that he was forced to take shelter from the sultry heats, at Vigan in the Cevennes, ten leagues distant.

It appears that Mr. Courten was one of the select friends among whom Locke practised physic, of which he had taken a bachelor’s degree at Oxford. That Mr. Courten attended particularly to Locke’s prescription, and derived benefit from it, is evident from his answer, and from the following entries in a Saunders’s almanac for 1698, in which there is a ms diary, not by Dr. Walter Charleton, as it is entitled in the Museum, and the catalogue of Mss. but relative solely to Mr. William Courten, being his own hand-writing, which is sufficiently distinguishable, and moreover vouched as his by the information itself. “July 27, 1698, being distressed with my headach and giddiness, I left off entirely taking tobacco in snuff, having only taken it but four times a day, for several days before, and never after seven at night.” “Aug. 20, 1698, must shew my things [meaning his Museum] but seldom, never two days consecutively for the future.” Certainly Mr. Courten cultivated medallic science with pleasure, avidity, and considerable success, as is evident in the British Museum, both in the coins he collected, and in the accounts he has given of them. It appears likewise from many of his papers in the same repository, that as a general scholar he was far from being contemptible, and that he was not unskilled in making experiments. Mr. Courten’s intimacies, correspondences and friendships, with doctor, afterwards sir Hans Sloane, with doctor, afterwards sir Tancred Robinson, physician in ordinary to George I. with doctor Martin Lister, with Mr. L. Plukenet, with Mr. Edward Llwyd, &c. were certainly founded on congenial taste, and argue no inferior degrees of proficiency in the various branches of natural history. Mr. Courten' s own museum remains to this day, though improved, as may well be supposed, and now arranged for the most part to greater advantage, according to the Linnaean system. Of his curious collection it is now impossible to ascertain the exact catalogues or precise value. Swelled with short histories and accounts of their contents, they amount, it is said, in all, to thirty-eight volumes in folio, and eight volumes in quarto. It remained for about half a century after the death of Mr. Courten, in the possession of his executor and residuary legatee, who certainly added very much to it, and was then purchased in 1753, for the use of the public, without so much as the mention of the name of its first and most scientific collector and proprietor, so far as appears in the whole course of the transaction, for 20,000l. though the coins and precious stones alone were said to be of that value. It is now preserved in the British Museum. Mr. Courten passed the last fourteen or fifteen years of his life in chambers at the Temple, promoting the knowledge of natural history, and exhibiting his collection gratis in an instructive way. Latterly the declining state of his health obliged him to practise more abstemiousness than was agreeable to his convivial turn; and for several years he was^ under the necessity of abstaining almost entirely from wine and all spirituous liquors, in which, from a companionable disposition, and in compliance with a fashion then much more prevalent than at present, it seems that he indulged at times rather too freely. He died at Kensington gravel-pits, on the 26th of March 1702, aged 63, and was buried in the church-yard of that parish.

, archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of king Richard II. was the fourth son of Hugh Courtney, earl of Devonshire, by Margaret, daughter of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of king Edward I. and was born in the year 1341. He had his education at Oxford, where he applied himself to the study of the civil and canon law. Afterwards, entering into holy orders, he obtained three prebends in three cathedral churches, viz. those of Bath, Exeter, and York. The nobility of his birth, and his eminent learning, recommending him to public notice, in the reign of Edward III. he was promoted in 1369 to the see of Hereford, and thence translated to the see of London, September 12, 1375, being then in the 34th year of his age. In a synod, held at London in 1376, bishop Courtney distinguished himself by his opposition to the king’s demand of a subsidy; and presently after he fell under the displeasure of the high court of chancery, for publishing a bull of pope Gregory II. without the king’s consent, which he was compelled to recall. The next year, in obedience to the pope’s mandate, he cited Wickliff to appear befofe his tribunal in St. Paul’s church: but that reformer being accompanied by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and other nobles, who favoured his opinions, and appeared openly in the bishop’s court for him, and treated the bishop with very little ceremony, the populace took his part, went to the duke of Lancaster’s house in the Savoy, plundered it, and would have burnt it to the ground, had not the bishop hastened to the place, and drawn them off by his persuasions. The consequences of this difference with so powerful a nobleman as John of Gaunt, were probably dreaded even by Courtney; for, with respect to Wickliff, he at this time proceeded no farther than to enjoin him and his followers silence. In 1378, it is said by Godwin, but without proper authority, that Courtney was made a cardinal. In 1381, he was appointed lord high chancellor of England. The same year, he was translated to the see of Canterbury, in the room of Simon Sudbury; and on the 6th of May, 1382, he received the pall from the hands of the bishop of London in the archiepiscopal palace at Croydon. This year also he performed the ceremony of crowning queen Anne, consort of king Richard II. at Westminster. Soon after his inauguration, he restrained, by ecclesiastical censures, the bailiffs, and other officers, of the see of Canterbury, from taking cognizance of adultery and the like crimes, which then belonged to the ecclesiastical court. About the same time, he held a synod at London, in which several of Wickliff’s tenets were condemned as heretical and erroneous. In 1383, he held a synod at Oxford, in which a subsidy was granted to the king, some of WicklifT's followers obliged to recant, and the students of the university to swear renunciation of his tenets. The same year, in pursuance of the pope’s bull directed to him for that purpose, he issued his mandate to the bishop of London for celebrating the festival of St. Anne, mother of the blessed virgin. In 1386, the king, by the advice of his parliament, put the administration of the government into the hands of eleven commissioners, of whom archbishop Courtney was the first; but this lasted only one year. In 1387, he held a synod at London, in which a tenth was granted to the king. The same year, it being moved in a parliament held at London on occasion of the dissension between the king and his nobles, to inflict capital punishment on some of the ringleaders, and it being prohibited by the canons for bishops to be present and vote in cases of blood, the archbishop and his suffragans withdrew from the house of lords, having first entered a protest in relation to their peerage and privilege to sit upon all other matters. In 1399, he held a synod in St. Mary’s church in Cambridge, in which a tenth was granted to the king, on condition that he should pass over into France with an army before the 1st of October following. This year, archbishop Courtney set out upon his metropolitical visitation, in which he was at first strongly opposed by the bishops of Exeter and Salisbury; but those prelates being at last reduced to terms of submission, he proceeded in his visitation without farther opposition: only, at the intercession of the abbot of St. Alban’s, he refrained from visiting certain monasteries at Oxford. The same year, the king directed his royal mandate to the archbishop, not to countenance or contribute any thing towards a subsidy for the pope. In a parliament held at Winchester in 1392, archbishop Courtney, being probably suspected of abetting the papal encroachments upon the church and state, delivered in an answer to certain articles exhibited by the commons in relation to those encroachments, which is thought to have led the way to the statute of pr&munire. The same year, he visited the diocese of Lincoln, in which he endeavoured to check the growth of Wickliff’s doctrines. In 1395, he obtained from the pope a grant of four-pence in the pound on all ecclesiastical benefices; in which he was opposed by the bishop of Lincoln, who would not suffer it to be collected in his diocese, and appealed to the pope. But before the matter could be decided, archbishop Courtney died, July 31, 1396, at Maidstone in Kent, where he was buried, but has a monument in the cathedral church of Canterbury, on the south side, near the tomb of Thomas Becket, and at the feet of the Black Prince. His remains at Maidstone, only a few bones, were seen some years ago. This prelate founded a college of secular priests at Maidstone. He left a thousand marks for the repair of the cathedral church of Canterbury also to the same church a silver- gilt image of the Trinity, with six apostles standing round it weighing 160 pounds some books, and some ecclesiastical vestments. He obtained from king Richard a grant of four fairs to be kept at Canterbury yearly within the site of the priory. The character of archbishop Courtney, weighed in the balance of modern opinions, is that of a persecuting adherent to the church of Rome, to which, however, he was not so much attached as to forget what was due to his king and country. He appears to have exhibited in critical emergencies, a bold and resolute spirit, and occasionally a happy presence of mind. One circumstance, which displays the strength and firmness of Courtney’s mind in the exercise of his religious bigotry, deserves to be noticed. When the archbishop, on a certain day, with a number of bishops and divines, had assembled to condemn the tenets of Wickliff, just as they were going to enter upon business, a violent earthquake shook the monastery. Upon this, the terrified bishops threw down their papers, and crying out, that the business was displeasing to God, came to a hasty resolution to proceed no farther. “The archbishop alone,” says Mr. Gil pin in his Life of Wickliff, “remained unmoved. With equal spirit and address he chid their superstitious fears, and told them, that if the earthquake portended any thing, it portended the downfall of heresy; that as noxious vapours are lodged in the bowels of the earth, and are expelled by these violent concussions, so by their strenuous endeavours, the kingdom should be purified from the pestilential taint of heresy, which had infected it in every part. This speech, together with the news that the earthquake was general through the city, &s it was afterwards indeed found to have been through the island, dispelled their fears Wickliff would often merrily speak of this accident; and would call this assembly the council of the herydene; herydene being the old English word for earthquake.”

, in Latin, Cognatus, a learned writer of the sixteenth century, was born at Nozeret, in Franche-Comte, Jan. 21, 1506. Having a turn for the law, he went to study at Dole in 1526, but not relishing it after six months application, he entered upon a course of divinity, and being introduced to Erasmus, was employed by him as an amanuensis or copyist. Erasmus also instructed him in the learned languages and in polite literature. In 1535 the prince of Orange conferred on him a canonry of St. Antony at Nozeret, in consequence of which preferment, he was obliged to leave Erasmus, who expressed a very high regard for him in several of his letters. When established at Nozeret, he appears to have taught school. In 1553, he accompanied the archbishop of Besancon on a tour into Italy; but being soon after suspected of heresy, he was arrested by order of pope Pius V. and thrown into prison, in which he died in 1567. It is generally agreed that he inclined in some measure to the sentiments of the reformers. His works, of which a collection was published in 1562, 3 ' vols. folio, at Basle, consist of translations from various authors, a treatise on grammar, erroneously ascribed to St. Basil Latin dissertations letters historical and critical treatises, &c. Niceron has an elaborate article on this author; and in 1775 was published at Altorf, “Commentatio de vita Gilberti Cognati, et Commentatio de scriptis,” by Schwartz, 4to. Cousin’s notes upon Lucian are in Bourdelot’s edition of that classic, 1615, folio, but had been published before by himself, in an edition printed at Basil, 1563, and reprinted in 1602, and 1619, 4 vols. 8vo.

, sculptor in ordinary to the French king, was born at Lyons in 1658, and died at Paris the 1st of May, 1733, aged 75, member of the royal academy of painting and sculpture. He went to Italy as pensionary of the king. It was there he produced his fine statue of the emperor Commodus, represented under the character of Hercules, forming one of the ornaments of the gardens of Versailles. On his return to France, he decorated Paris, Versailles, and Marly, with several pieces of exquisite workmanship. The groupe at the back of the high-altar of Notre Dame de Paris is by him, as well as the two groupes ut Marly, representing two horses tamed by grooms. A fop, who gave himself airs as a great connoisseur, thought fit to say to the artist, while he was employed on this his last grand work: “But this bridle, methinks, should be tighter.” “What pity, sir,” replied Coustou, “you did not come in a moment sooner! you would have seen the bridle just as you would have it; but these horses are so tender-mouthed, that it could not continue so for the twinkling of an eye.” In all his productions he displays an eleyated genius; with a judicious and delicate taste, a fine selection, a chaste design, natural, pathetic and noble attitudes; and his draperies are rich, elegant, and mellow. His brother William was director of the royal academy of painting and sculpture, and died at Paris the 22d of February, 1746, at the age of 69. Although he had not much less merit in the number and perfection of his works, he was not always esteemed so highly as he deserved.

, a medical and metaphysical writer, was the son of Mr. William Coward of Winchester, where he was born in the year 1656 or 1657. It is not certain where young Coward received his grammatical education; but it was probably at Winchester-school. In his eighteenth year he was removed to Oxford, and in May 1674 became a commoner of Hart-hall; the inducement to which might probably be, that his uncle was at the head of that seminary. However, he did not long continue there; for in the year following he was admitted a scholar of Wadham college. On the 27th of June, 1677, betook the degree of B. A. and in January 1680 he was chosen probationer fellow of Merton college. In the year 1681, was published Mr. Dvyden’s Absalom and Achitophel, a production on the celebrity of which we need not expatiate. At Oxford it could not fail to be greatly admired for its poetical merit; besjde which, it might be the better received on account of its containing a severe satire on the duke of Monmouth and the earl of Sbftftesboryj two men who were certainly no favourites with tnat loyal university. Accordingly, the admiration of the poem produced two Latin versions of it, both of which were written and printed at Oxford; one by Mr. Francis Atterbury (afterwards the celebrated bishop of Rochester), who was assisted in it by Mr. Francis Hickman, a student of Christchurch; and the other by Mr. Coward. These translations were published in quarto, in 1682. Whatever proof Mr. Coward’s version of the Absalom and Achitophel might afford oi“his progress in classical literature, he was not very fortunate in this first publication. It was compared with Mr. Atterbury’s production, not a little to its disadvantage. According to Anthony Wood, he was schooled for it in the college; it was not well received in the university; and Atterbury’s poem was extolled as greatly superior. To conceal, in some degree, Mr. Coward’s mortification, a friend of his, in a public paper, advertised the translation, as written by a Walter Curie, of Hertford, gentleman; yet Coward’s version was generally mistaken for Atterbury’s, and a specimen given of it in Stackhouse’s life of that prelate. On the 13th of December, 1683, Mr. Coward was admitted to the degree of M.A. Having determined to apply himself to the practice of medicine, he prosecuted his studies in that science, and took the degree of bachelor of physic on the 23d of June 1685, and of doctor on the 2,d of July 1687. After his quitting Oxford he exercised his profession at Northampton, from which place he removed to London in 1693 or 1694, and settled in Lombard-street. In 1695 he published a tract in 8vo, entitled” De fermento volatili nutritio conjectura rationis, qua ostenditur spiritum volatilemoleosum, e sanguine suffusurn, esse verum ac genuinum concoctionis ac nutritionis instrumentum.“For this work he^iad an honourable approbation from the president and censors of the college of physicians. But it was not to medical studies only that Dr. Coward confined his attention. Besides being fond of polite learning, he entered deeply into metaphysical speculations, especially with regard to the nature of the soul, and the natural immortality of man. The result of his inquiries was his publication, in 1702, under the fictitious name of Estibius Psycalethes, entitled” Second Thoughts concerning Human Soul, demonstrating the notion of human soul, as believed to be a spiritual immortal substance united to a human body, to be a plain heathenish invention, and not consonant to the principles of philosophy, reason, or religion; but the ground only of many absurd and superstitious opinions, abominable to the reformed church, and derogatory in general to true Christianity.“This work was dedicated by the doctor to the clergy of the church of England; and he professes at his setting out,” that the main stress of arguments, either to confound or support his opinion, must be drawn from those only credentials of true and orthodox divinity, the lively oracles of God, the Holy Scriptures.“In another part, in answer to the question, Does man die like a brute beast? he says,” Yes, in respect to their end in this life; both their deaths consist in a privation of life.“” But then,“he adds,” man has this prerogative or pre-eminence above a brute, that he will be raised to life again, and be made partaker of eternal happiness in the world to come.“Notwithstanding these professions to the authority of the Christian Scriptures, Dr. Coward has commonly been ranked with those who have been reputed to be the most rancorous and determined adversaries of Christianity. Swift has ranked him with Toland, Tindal, and Gildon; and passages to the like purpose are not unfrequent among controversial writers, especially during the former part of the last century. His denial of the immateriality and natural immortality of the soul, and of a separate state of existence between the time of death and the general resurrection, was so contrary to universal opinion, that it is not very surprising that he should be considered as an enemy to revelation. It might be expected that he would immediately meet with opponents; and accordingly he was attacked by various writers of different complexions and abilities; among whom were Dr. Nichols, Mr. John Broughton, and. Mr. John Turner. Dr. Nichols took up the argument in his” Conference with a Theist.“Mr. Broughton wrote a treatise entitled” Psychologia, or, an Account of the nature of the rational Soul, in two parts;“and Mr. Turner published a” Vindication of the separate existence of the Soul from a late author’s Second Thoughts.“Both these pieces appeared in 1703. Mr. Turner’s publication was answered by Dr. Coward, in a pamphlet called” Farther Thoughts upon Second Thoughts,“in which he acknowledges, that in Mr. Turner he had a rational and candid adversary. He had not the same opinion of Mr. Broughton who therefore was treated by him with severity, in” An Epistolary Reply to Mr. Broughton’s Psychologia;“which reply was not separately printed, but annexed to a work of the doctor’s, published in the beginning of the year 1704, and entitled,” The Grand Essay or, a Vindication of Reason and Religion against the impostures of Philosophy." In this last production, the idea of the human soul’s being an immaterial substance was again vigorously attacked.

So obnoxious were Dr. Coward’s positions, that on Friday, March 10, 1704, a complaint was made to the house of commons of the “Second Thoughts” and the “Grand Essay;” which books were brought up to the table, and some parts of them read. The consequence of this was, an order, “that a committee be appointed to examine the said books, and collect such parts thereof as are offensive; and to examine who is the author, printer, and publisher thereof.” At the same time the matter was referred to a committee, who were directed to meet that afternoon, and had power given them to send for persons, papers, and records. On the 17th of March, Sir David Cullum, the chairman, reported from the committee, that they had examined the books, and had collected out of them several passages which they conceived to be offensive, and that they found that Dr. Coward was the author of them; that Mr. David Edwards was the printer of the one, and Mr. W. Pierson of the other; and that both the books were published by Mr. Basset. Sir David Cullum having read the report in his place, and the same being read again, after it had been delivered in at the clerks’ table, the house proceeded to the examination of the evidence with regard to the writing, printing, and vending of the two books. Sufficient proof having been produced with respect to the writer of them, Dr. Coward was called in. Being examined accordingly, he acknowledged that he was the author of the books, and declared that he never intended any thing against religion; that there was nothing contained in them contrary either to morality or religion; and that if there were any thin^ therein contrary to religion or morality, he was heartily sorry, and ready to recant the same. The house then resolved, “that the said books do contain therein divers doctrines and positions contrary to the doctrine of the church of England, and tending to the subversion of the Christian religion;” and ordered that they should be burnt, next day, by the common hangman, in New Palace-yard, Westminster; which order was carried into execution. Notwithstanding this proceeding, in the course of the same year he published a new edition of his “Second Thoughts;” which was followed by a treatise, entitled, “The just Scrutiny; or, a serious inquiry into the modern notions of the Soul.”

From a letter of our author to Dr. Hans Sloane, dated May 2ti, 1706, it appears that he was in habits of intimacy with this eminent physician and naturalist. Dr. Sloane carried his friendship so far as take upon himself the supervisal of the “Oplulialrniatria.” As the letter to Dr. Sloane is dated from the Green Bell, over against the Castle tavern, near Holborn, in Fetter-lane, there is reason to believe that Dr. Coward had quitted London, and was now only a visitant in town, for the purpose of his publication. Indeed the fact is ascertained from the list of the college of physicians for 1706, where Dr. William Coward, who stands under the head of candidates, is then for the first time mentioned as residing in the country. The opposition he had met with, and the unpopularity arising from his works, might be inducements with him for leaving the metropolis. It does not appear, for twelve years, to what part of the kingdom he had retired nor, from this period, do we hear more of Dr. Coward as a medical or metaphysical writer. Even when he had been the most engaged in abstruse and scientific inquiries, he had not omitted the study of polite literature; for we are told, that in 1705 he published the “Lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” an heroic poem, which was little noticed at first, and soon sunk in total oblivion. Another poetical performance by Dr. Coward, and the last of his writings that has come to our knowledge, was published in 1709, and is entitled, “Licentia poetica discussed; or, the true Test of Poetry: without which it is difficult to judge of or compose a correct English poem. To which are added, critical observations on the principal ancient and modern poets, viz. Homer, Horace, Virgil, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, &c. as frequently liable to just censure.” This work, which is divided into two books, is dedicated to the duke of Shrewsbury, and introduced by a long and learned preface. Prefixed are three copies of commendatory verses, signed A. Hill, J. Gay, and Sam. Barklay. The two former, Aaron Hill and John Gay, were then young poets, who afterwards, as is well known, rose to a considerable degree of reputation. Coward is celebrated by them as a great bard, a title to which he had certainly no claim; though his “Licentia,” considered as a didactic poem, and as such poems were then generally written, is not contemptible. It is not so correct as lord Roscommon’s essay on translated verse; but it is little, if at all, inferior to the duke of Buckingham’s essay on poetry, which was so much extolled in its day. The rules laid down by Dr. Coward for poetical composition are often minute, but usually, though not universally, founded on good sense and just taste; but he had not enough of the latter to feel the harmony and variety of Milton’s numbers. Triplets, double rhymes, and Alexandrines, are condemned by him; the last of which, however, he admits on some great occasion. The notes, which are large and numerous, display no small extent of reading; and to the whole is added, by way of appendix, a political essay, from which it appears that our author was a very zealous whig.

In the list of the college of physicians for 1718, Dr. Coward begins to be mentioned as residing at Ipswich. From this place he wrote, in 1722, a letter to his old friend, sir Hans Sloane, the occasion of which is somewhat curious. He had learned from the newspapers, that the duchess dowager of Maryborough proposed to give five hundred guineas to any person who should present her with an epitaph, suitable to the late duke her husband’s character. “Now,” says he, “I have one by me, which gives him his just character, without flattery or ostentation, and which I verily believe may be acceptable to any learned man.” He adds, that he hears it was to be approved by Dr. Hare, Dr. Freind of Westminster-school, and Dr. Bland of Eton-school; and, if this be true, he begs that sir Hans would give him leave to send it for his approbation and recommendation. What was the issue of this we know not. From the omission of Dr. Coward’s name in the catalogue of the college of physicians for 1725, it is evident that he was then dead. Though his medical works are now in no reputation, and his other writings are but little attended to, it is nevertheless certain that he was a man of considerable abilities and literature. We cannot dismiss this article without taking notice of a mistake which was commit Led by the late Dr. Caleb Fleming; who, in the year 1758, published a treatise, entitled “A Survey of the Search after Souls,” imagining that he was writing against Dr. Coward. But the Search after Souls was the production of Henry Layton, a barrister of Gray’s Inn .

In the mean time Bancroft was so satisfied with the abilities and learning shewn in the “Interpreter,” that he appointed the author his vicar-general in 1608: nor was this performance censured for some time. But at last great offence was taken at it, because, as was pretended, the author had spoken too freely, and with expressions even of sharpness, of the common law, and some eminent professors of it, Littleton in particular: and this irritated sir Edward Coke especially, who was not only privately concerned for the honour of Litileton, whom he had commented upon, but also valued himself as the chief advocate of his profession. Sir Edward took all occasions to affront him, and used to call him in derision Doctor Cow-heel; and, not satisfied with this, he endeavoured to hurt him with the king, by suggesting that Dr. Cowell “had disputed too nicely upon the mysteries qf this our monarchy, yea, in some points, very derogatory to the supreme power of this crown and had asserted that the king’s prerogative is in some cases limited.” This was touching James ia a most tender part, and had probably ruined Cowell, if the archbishop had not stood his friend. The common lawyers, however, whose contests with the civilians then ran very high, finding that they coukl not hurt him with the king, resolved to try what they could do with the people, and represented him now as a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the people; in consequence of which a complaint was carried up against him in the house of commons, and the author was committed to custody, and his book publicly burnt. The commons also complained of him to the lords, as equally struck at; and he was censured by them for asserting, 1. That the king was solutus a legibus, and not bound by his coronation-oath. 2. That it was not ex necessitate, that the king should call a parliament to make laws, but might do that by his absolute power: for that voluntas regis with him was lex populi. 3. That it vvas a favour to admit the consent of his subjects in giving of subsidies. 4. That he draws his arguments from the imperial laws of the Roman emperors, which are of no force in England." The commons were therefore very desirous to proceed criminally against him, if the king had not interposed. But upon his majesty’s promise to condemn the doctrines of the book as absurd, together with the author of them, they proceeded no farther. In both prosecutions of this work, the malice of Cowell’s enemies was obvious, for the same book could not have had a tendency to infringe upon the prerogative of the king and the liberties of the subject.

, an eminent English poet, was born in London, 1618. His father, who was a grocer, dying before his birth, he was left to the care of his mother, who, by the interest of friends, procured him to be admitted a king’s scholar in Westminster school. The occasion of his first inclination to poetry, was his casual meeting with Spenser’s Fairy Queen. “I believe,” says he, in his essay on himself, “I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verses as have never since left ringing there. For I remember, when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother’s parlour—I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion; but there was wont to lie—Spenser’s Works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stones of the knights and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every-where, though my understanding had little to do with all this, and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old.”

In 1656 he was sent over into England, with all imaginable secrecy, to take cognizance of the state of affairs here; but soon after his arrival, while he lay hid in London, he was seized on by a mistake, the search having been intended after another gentleman of considerable note in the king’s party. He was often examined before the usurpers, who tried all methods to make him serviceable to their purposes; but proving inflexible, he was committed to close imprisonment, and scarce at last obtained his liberty upon the terms of 1000l. bail, which was tendered by Dr. Scarborough. Thus he continued a prisoner at large, till the general redemption; yet, taking the opportunity of the confusions that followed upon Cromwell’s death, he ventured back into France, and there remained in the same situation as before, till' near the time of the king’s return. Upon his return to England, in 1656, he published a new edition of all his poems, consisting of four parts; viz. 1. Miscellanies. 2. The Mistress. 3. Pindaric Odes. 4. “Davideis.” The “Mistress” had been published in his absence, and his comedy called “The Guardian,” afterwards altered and published under the title of “Cutter of Coleman-street,” but both very incorrectly. In the preface to his poems, he complains of the publication of some things of his, without his consent or knowledge; and those very mangled and imperfect, particularly of the “Guardian,” already noticed. In this preface also he seems to have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. He declares, that “his desire had been for some days past, and did still very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American plantations, and to forsake this world for ever.” From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers brought upon him, Dr. Sprat and Dr. Johnson have successfully laboured to clear him, and indeed it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish for retirement, says Dr. Johnson, we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harassed in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of business that employed all his days and half his nights in cyphering and deciphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prison, will be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and safety. As to the verses on Oliver’s death, which Ant. Wood seems to hint were of the encomiastic kind, no judgment can be formed, since they have not been published. There is, indeed, a discourse concerning his government, with verses intermixed, but such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of usurpation.

During his stay in England, he wrote his two books of Plants, published first in 1662, to which he afterwards added four books more; and all the six, together with his other Latin poems, were printed after his death at London, in 1678. The occasion of his choosing the subject of his six books of plants, Dr. Sprat tells us, was this: When he returned into England, he was advised to dissemble the main intention of his coming over, under the disguise of applying himself to some settled profession; and that of physic was thought most proper. To this purpose, after many anatomical dissections, he proceeded to the consideration of simples, and having furnished himself with books of that nature, retired into a fruitful part of Kent, where every field and wood might shew him the real figures of those plants of which he read. Thus he soon mastered that part of the art of medicine; but then, instead of employing his skill for practice and profit, he laboured to digest it into its present form. The two first books treat of Herbs, in a style, says Sprat, resembling the elegies of Ovid and Tibullus; the two next, of Flowers, in all the variety of Catullus and Horace’s numbers, for which last author he is said to have had a peculiar reverence; and the two last, of Trees, in the way of Virgil’s Georgics. Of these, the sixth book is wholly dedicated to the honour of his country; for, making the British oak to preside in the assembly of the forest trees, he takes that occasion to enlarge upon the history of the late troubles, the king’s affliction and return, and the beginning of the Dutch war; and he does it in a way which is honourable to the nation. Such is Dr. Sprat’s judgment. A more recent and accomplished botanical critic, however, observes that neither the text, nor the notes, manifest sufficient proof of Cowley’s intimate acquaintance with those authors of true fame, among the moderns, through whose assistance the want of that information might in some measure have been supplied. Nevertheless, as in the language of Dr. Johnson, “botany, in the mind of Cowley, turned into poetry,” to those who are alike enamoured with the charms of both, the poems of Cowley must yield delight; since his fertile imagination has adorned his subject with all the beautiful allusions that ancient poets and mythologists could supply; and even the fancies of the modern Signatores, of Baptista Porta, Crollius, and their disciples, who saw the virtues of plants in the physiognomy, or agreement in colour or external, forms with the parts of the human body, assisted to embellish his verse. Vol. X. C c It appears by Wood’s Fasti, that Cowley was created M. D. at Oxford, Dec. 2, 1657, who says, that he had this degree conferred upon him by virtue of a mandamus from the then prevailing powers, and that the thing was much taken notice of by the royal party. At the commencement of the royal society, according to Dr. Birch’s history, he appears busy among the experimental philosophers, with the title of Dr. Cowley, but there is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice.

Besides his works already mentioned, we have of his, 1. “A proposition for the advancement of Experimental Philosophy;” and, 2. “A discourse, by way of vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.” He had designed, also, a discourse concerning style, and a review of the principles of the primitive Christian church; but was prevented by death. A spurious piece, entitled the “Iron Age,” was published under his name, during his absence abroad; of which he speaks, in the preface to his poems, with some asperity and concern. “I wondered very much,” says he, “how one who could be so foolish to write so ill verses, should yet be so wise to set them, forth as another man’s, rather than his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the bastard upon such a person, whose stock of reputation is, I fear, little enough for the maintenance of his own numerous legitimate offspring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the author to put forth some of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under mine. He had been in that a more pardonable plagiary, and had done less wrong by robbery, than he does by such a bounty; for nobody can be justified by the imputation even of another’s merit, and our own coarse clothes are like to become us better than those of another man’s, though never so rich. But these, to say the truth, were so beggarly, that I myself was ashamed to wear them.”

“After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.” Of his poetry, Dr. Johnson subjoins that “it may be affirmed, without any encomiastic fervour, that he brought to his poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his passages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.”

Cowley’s poems for many years after his death enjoyed a large share of popularity. In 1707 a tenth edition was printed by Jacob Tonson, in 2 vols. 8vo, but exclusive of his Latin poems, which used to form a third. We recollect no subsequent edition, except those given in Dr. Johnson’s and other general collections. In 1772, the late Jbishop of Worcester, Dr. Hurd, published a selection from Cowley’s poems, in 2 small vols. which had the usual fate of selections, to be censured by those critics who thought they could have made a better; nor indeed did it ever become a popular book.

, an ingenious and popular dramatic writer, the daughter of Mr. Philip Parkhouse, of Tiverton, in Devonshire, was born at that place in 1743. Her father was educated for holy orders, but a family loss depriving him of a certainty of provision in the church, he desisted from his first intention, and became a bookseller, as the nearest approach he could then prudently make to a life of some degree of literary enjoyment. He afterwards rose to be a member of the corporation of Tiverton, and was very highly respected as a man of talents and probity, and a good scholar. He was not very distantly related to the poet Gay, who recordshis visit to his relations in Devonshire in his “Journey to Exeter,” inscribed to the earl of Burlington. It was Mr. Parkhouse’s favourite aim to cultivate the promising talents of his daughter, and he lived to witness the reputation she acquired almost to the last period of her literary career. In her twenty -fifth year she was married to Mr. Cowley, a man of very considerable talents, who died in 1797, a captain in the East India company’s service. It was when he was with his regiment in India that she dedicated her comedy of “More Ways than One” to him, in the affectionate lines prefixed to it; and it was to this gentleman’s brother, an eminent merchant of London, now living, that “The Fate of Sparta” is dedicated with so much feeling.

, bishop of Galloway, was born at Edinburgh in 1566, and at eight years old was sent by his father to the school of Dunbar, where he made great proficiency in grammar-learning, and evinced a pious disposition, which adhered to him throughout life. Five years after he studied at the university of St. Andrew’s, but made less progress in philosophy than in divinity, to which he was particularly attached. On his return home in 1582, his parents recommended various pursuits, hut his inclination still being to that of divinity, he resolved to go to England, in which, as he informs us, lie arrived but scantily provided; yet just as he had spent the little money he brought with him, he was engaged as an assistant teacher with a Mr. Guthrie, who kept a school at Hoddesden, in Hertfordshire. There he remained three quarters of a year, and having occasion to go to London, was hospitably received by the famous Hugh Broughton, who assisted him for the space of a year and a half in his theological studies. At the age of nineteen he returned to Edinburgh, was admitted into the church, and appointed to preach at the parish of Bothkenner in Stirlingshire. When he arrived at this his first charge, he found a church almost in ruins, without roof, doors, pulpit, pews, of windows, yet such was the effect of his labours, that in less than half a year, the parishioners bestowed a complete repair on the church, with suitable ornaments. From this place, in about eight years, he was removed to Perth, where he continued to preach for nineteen years, not only on the Sundays, but every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evening. About the close of this period he was appointed by king James, on the recommendation of some prelates whom his majesty consulted, to be bishop of Galloway, in which see he continned until his death, Feb. 15, 1619, at which time he was also dean of the Chapel Royal. His works were afterwards collected and published at London in one volume folio, 1629, consisting of treatises on various parts of scripture, many of which were originally delivered as sermons, and left by him in a fit state for the press They breathe, says a recent writer, a spirit of cordial piety, and if we consider the time and country of the writer, the simplicity and strength of his style maybe thought peculiarly worthy of commendation. He introduces several of his religious treatises with a variety of dedicatory epistles, which shew that his ardent devotion was united to great elegance of manners. He appears to have been familiar with many illustrious persons of his time, and there is a sonnet prefixed to his commentary on the Revelation, by that adjrurable Scotch poet, Drummond of Hawthornden.

, earl Cowper, lord high chancellor of Great Britain, was descended from an ancient family, and son to sir William Cowper, baronet, and member of parliament for the town of Hertford in the reigns of Charles II. and William III. He is supposed to have been born in the castle of Hertford, of which his family had been a considerable time in possession; but of the place or time of his birth, or where he was educated, we have not been able to obtain any certain information. It appears, however, that he made so great a proficiency in the study of the law, that, soon after he was called to the bar, he was chosen recorder of Colchester, and in the reign of king William he was appointed one of his majesty’s council. In 1695 he was chosen one of the representatives in parliament for the town of Hertford, and on the day he took his seat had occasion to speak three times, with great applause. The following year he appeared as counsel for the crown on the trials of sir William Perkins, and others, who were convicted of high treason, for being concerned in the plot to assassinate king William. He was also counsel for the crown on the trial of captain Thomas Vaughan, for high treason on the high seas; and he likewise supported in parliament the bill of attainder against sir John Fenwick. In 1704, in a speech in the house of commons, in the famous case of Ashby and White, he maintained that an action did lie at common law, for an elector who had been denied his vote for members of parliament. His reputation continuing greatly to increase, on the accession of queen Anne he was again appointed one of the counsel to the crown; and on October 11, 1705, he was constituted lord keeper of the great seal of England. A few days after, queen Anne addressed both houses of parliament in a speech, which was well received, and which was said to be written by the new lord keeper.

On the demise of queen Anne, lord Cowper was nominated one of the lords justices of the kingdom, till the arrival of king George I. from Hanover. On the 29th of August, 1714, he was appointed lord chancellor of Great Britain; and shortly after lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Hertford. When a new parliament was assembled, on the 27th of March, 1715, George I. declared from the throne, “That he had ordered the lord chancellor to declare the causes of calling this parliament in his majesty’s name and words.” He then delivered his speech into lord Cowper’s hands, who read it to both houses. On the 6th of February, 1716, his lordship was appointed lord high-steward for the trial of the rebel lords; as he was also, the following year, at the trial of the earl of Oxford, to whom he behaved on that occasion with great politeness. A change taking place in the ministry in the beginning of March 1718, lord Cowper resolved to resign the great seal; but, before his resignation, the king, on account of his great merit and services, on the 18th of that month, raised him to the dignity of a viscount and earl, by the title of viscount Fordwich, in the county of Kent, and earl Cowper. The preamble to his patent was drawn up by Mr. Hughes the poet, whom he had patronized. He resigned the great seal in the month of April, and was succeeded by lord Parker.

After his resignation, lord Cowper diligently attended in the house of peers, and frequently opposed the measures of the court, particularly the peerage bill, and the famous South-sea scheme. When a motion was made, that the South-sea bill should be referred to a committee of the whole house, he observed, “That, like the Trojan horse, the bill was ushered in, and received with great pornp and acclamations of joy, but it was contrived for treachery and destruction.” He advanced a variety of arguments against the bill, but it was carried by a large majority, and was productive of great national evils. Lord Cowper also opposed a bill “for the more effectual suppressing of blasphemy and profaneness;” by which persons were to be subjected to penalties, who denied the doctrine of the Trinity, or the inspiratioa of the scriptures; and by which any preachers, who should deny any of “the fundamental articles of the Christian religion,” were to be deprived of the benefit of the act of toleration. This bill did not pass. On the 13th of December, 1721, he endeavoured to procure the repeal of so much of an act, which had passed the preceding session, relative to the plague, as gave a power to remove to a lazaretto, or pest-house, any persons whatsoever infected with the plague, or ‘healthy persons out of an infected family, from their habitations, though distant from any other dwelling; and also so much of the said act, as gave’ power for drawing lines or trenches round any city, town, or place infected: but he was unsuccessful, and indeed his conduct in this affair seems to have proceeded from too fastidious a regard for the liberty of the subject, which never could be endangered by a measure for the preservation of health. He was yet more unfortunate in signing a protest against the rejection of the bill for the better securing the freedom of election of members to serve for the commons in parliament, which was also signed by twenty-three lay-lords, and two bishops, and gave so much offence, that a vote was passed for expunging it from the Journals. Omitting the other parliamentary proceedings in which his lordship took a part, we must now advert to a circumstance in which he was personally concerned. In the year 1723, Christopher Layer, who had been convicted of high treason, underwent a long examination before a secret committee of the house of commons, relative to a conspiracy for raising the pretender to the throne; in the course of which he mentioned a club of disaffected persons, of which, he said, John Plunket had told him, that lord Cowper was one. This occasioned his lordship to remark in the house of peers, that after having on so many occasions, and in the most difficult times, given undoubted proofs of his hearty zeal and affection for the protestant succession, and of his attachment to his majesty’s person and government, he had just reason to be offended, to see his name bandied about in a list of a chimerical club of disaffected persons, printed in the report of the secret committee, on the bare hearsay of an infamous person, notoriously guilty of prevarication; and who, in the opinion even of the secret committee, “in order to magnify the number of the pretender’s friends, did, in several lists, insert the names of persons as well affected to the pretender’s service, without having the least authority for so doing:” which alone was sufficient to give an air of fiction to the whole conspiracy. But, in justice to his own character, he thought it necessary to move, that John Plunket, from whom Layer pretended to have received the list of the club, mentioned in the report of the committee, should be immediately sent for to the bar of that house, to be there examined. This motion, alter some debate, was rejected by the majority; and it was observed by lord Townshend, that as the secret committee had declared, that they were entirely satisfied of lord Cowper’s innocence, his lordship’s reputation could not have suffered. Lord Cowper, however, thought proper to make a public declaration of his innocence, which is inserted in the Historical Register for 1723.

The eloquence and abilities of earl Cowper were highly celebrated ii> his own time he made a very conspicuous figure at the bar he was a distinguished member of both houses of parliament; his general character as a public man appears to have been entitled to high praise, from which, perhaps, in our days, it will be thought no deduction that he did not always act with the independence which rejects party connections and views. But in his conduct in the court of chancery he displayed great disinterestedness. He opposed the frequency and facility with which private bills passed in parliament; and refused the new year’s gifts, which it had been customary to present to those who held the great seal. Mr. Tindal, who had an opportunity of knowing him, says that he “was eminent for his integrity in the discharge of the office of lord chancellor, which he had twice filled. There may have been chancellors of more extensive learning, but none of more knowledge in the laws of England. His judgment was quick, and yet solid. His eloquence manly, but flowing. His manner graceful and noble.” Lord Chesterfield, in his Letters to his Son, represents earl Cowper as more distinguished, as a speaker, by the elegance of his language, and the gracefulness of his manner, than by the force of his arguments; that his strength as an orator lay by no means in his reasoning, for he often hazarded very weak ones. “But such was the purity and elegancy of his style, such the propriety and charms of his elocution, and such the gracefulness of his action, that he never spoke without universal applause. The ears and the eyes gave him up the hearts and the understanding of the audience.”

Earl Cowper was one of the governors of the Charterhouse, and a fellow of the royal society. He was twice married. By his first wife, Judith, who was daughter and heiress of sir Robert Booth, of London, knight, he had one son, who died young. Mary, his second wife, who did not long survive him, was daughter of John Clavering, esq. of Chopwell, in the bishopric of Durham. By this lady he had issue two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, William, succeeded him in his titles and estate; and his second son, Spencer, became dean of Durham. His eldest daughter, lady Sarah Cowper, who is said to have been “distinguished for her sense and accomplishments,” died unmarried in 1758. His. youngest, lady Anne, was married in 1731 to James Edward Colleton, esq. of Hayneshill in Berkshire, and died in 1750.

William, the second earl Cowper, was twice married; in 1732, to lady Henrietta, youngest daughter and coheir of Henry D'Auverquerque earl of Grantham; and in 1750, to lady Georgina, daughter to earl Granville, and widow of the hon. John Spencer, esq. by whom she was mother of John earl Spencer. By lady Georgina, lord Cowper had no issue; but by his first countess, who died in 1747, he was father of George Nassau, third earl Cowper, who died at Florence in 1789, and was succeeded by his son George Augustus, who also dying in 1799, was* succeeded by Leopold Louis Francis, his brother, the present and fifth earl Cowper.

, a very distinguished modern English poet, and one whose singular history will apologize for the length of the present article, was the descendant of an ancient and honourable family. His father was the second son of Spencer Cowper (a younger brother of the lord chancellor Cowper) who was appointed chief justice of Chester in 1717, and afterwards a judge in the court of common pleas. He died in 1728, leaving a daughter, Judith, a young lady who had a striking taste for poetry, and who married colonel Madan, and transmitted her poetical taste and devotional spirit to a daughter. This daughter was married to her cousin major Cowper, and was afterwards the friend and correspondent of our poet. His father, John Cowper, entered into the church, and became rector of Great Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire. He married Anne, the daughter of Roger ponne, esq. of Ludlam-hall in Norfolk, by whom he had several children who died in their infancy, and two sons,William and John, who survived their mother. William was born at Berkhamstead Nov. 26, 1731, and from his infancy appears to have been of a very delicate habit both of mind and body. To such a child the loss of a mother is an incalculable misfortune, and must have been particularly so to young Cowper. In his biographer’s opinion, it contributed in the highest degree to the dark colouring of his subsequent life. Undoubtedly when a child requires a more than ordinary share of attention, the task can seldom be expected to be performed with so much success as by a mother, who to her natural affection joins that patience and undisturbed care which are rarely to be found in a father: but at the same time it may be remarked, that Cowper’s very peculiar frame of mind appears to have been independent of any advantages or misfortunes in education. In 1737, the year of his mother’s death, he was sent to a school at Market-street in Hertfordshire, under the conduct of Dr. Pitman, but was removed from it, at what time is uncertain, on account of a complaint in his eyes for which he was consigned to the care of a female oculist for the space of two years. It does not, however, appear that he profited so much from her aid as from the small-pox, which seized him at the age of fourteen, and removed the complaint for the present, but left a disposition to inflammation, to which he was subject nearly the whole of his life.

At Market-street, as well as at Westminster-school, to which he was now removed, he is reported to have suffered much from the wanton tyranny of his school-fellows, who with the usual unthinking cruelty of youth, triumphed over the gentleness and timidity of his spirit. As he informs us, however, that he “excelled at cricket and foot-ball,” he could not have been wholly averse from joining in youthful sports, yet the preponderance of uneasiness from the behaviour of his companions was such, that in his advanced years he retained none but painful recollections of what men in general remember with more pleasure than any other period of their lives. And these recollections no doubt animated his pen with more than his usual severity in exposing the abuses of public schools, to which he uniformly prefers a domestic education. This subject has since been discussed by various pens, and the conclusion seems to be, that the few instances which occur of domestic education successfully pursued are strongly in its favour where it is practicable, but that from the occupations and general state of talents in parents, it can seldom be adopted, and is continually liable to be interrupted by accidents to which public schools are not exposed. In the case of Cowper, a public school might have been judiciously recommended to conquer his constitutional diffidence and shyness, which, it was natural to suppose, would have been increased by a seclusion from boys of hi* owu

He left Westminster-school in 1749, at the age of eighteen, and was articled to Mr. Chapman, an attorney, for the space of three years. This period he professed to employ in acquiring a species of knowledge which he was never to bring into use, and to which his peculiarity of disposition must have been averse. We are not told whether he had been consulted in this arrangement, but it was probably suggested as that in which his family interest might avail him. His own account may be relied on. “I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, that is to say, I slept three years in his house, but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton-row, as you very well remember. There was I, and the future lord chancellor (Thurlow), constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle, instead of studying the law.” Yet with this apparent gaiete de caur, and with every advantage, natural and acquired, that bade fair for his advancement in public life, he was kept back by an extreme degree of modesty and shyness from all intercourse with the world, except the society of a few friends, who knew how to appreciate his character, and among whom he found himself without restraint. The loss of a friend and of a mistress appears, among other adversities, to have aggravated his sufferings at this time, and to have strengthened that constitutional melancholy which he delighted to paint, and which, it is to be feared, he loved to indulge.

When he had fulfilled the terms of his engagement in Mr. Chapman’s office, he entered the Temple with a view to the further study of the law, a profession that has been more frequently deserted by men of lively genius than any other. Cowper was destined to add another instance to the number of those who, under the appearance of applying to an arduous and important study, have employed their time in the cultivation of wit and poetry. He is known to have assisted some contemporary publications with essays in prose and verse, and what is rather more extraordinary, in a man of his purity of conduct, cultivated the acquaintance of Churchill, Thornton, Lloyd, and Colman, who had been his schoolfellows at Westminster. It is undoubtedly to Churchill and Lloyd, that he alludes in a letter to lady Hesketh, dated Sept. 4, 1765. “Two of my friends have been cut off during my illness, in the midst of such a life as it is frightful to reflect upon; and here am I, in better health and spirits than I can almost remember to have enjoyed before, after having spent months in the apprehension of instant death. How mysterious are the ways of Providence! Why did I receive grace and mercy? Why was I preserved, afflicted for my good, received, as I trust, into favour, and blessed with the greatest happiness I can ever know, or hope for, in this life, while these were overtaken by the great arrest, unawakened, unrepenting, and every way unprepared for it?”

About the period alluded to, he assisted Colman with, some papers for the Connoisseur, and probably Thornton and Lloyd, who then carried on various periodical undertakings, but the amount of what he wrote cannot now be ascertained, and was always so little known, that on the appearance of his first volume of poems, when he had reached his fiftieth year (1782), he was considered as a new writer. But his general occupations will best appear in an extract from one of his letters to Mr. Park in 1792. “From the age of twenty to thirty-three (when he left the Temple) I was occupied, or ought to have been, in the study of the law from thirty-three to sixty, I have spent my time in the country, where my reading has been only an apology for idleness, and where, when I had not either a magazine or a review, I was sometimes a carpenter, at others a bird-cage maker, or a gardener, or a drawer of landscapes. At fifty years of age I commenced an author; it is a whim that has served me longest, and best, and will probably be my last.” His first poetical effort was a translation of an elegy of Tibullus, made at the age of fourteen; at eighteen, he wrote the beautiful verses “On finding the heel of a Shoe;” but as little more of his juvenile poetry has been preserved, all the steps of his progress to that perfection which produced the “Task,” cannot now be traced.

Unfit as he was, from extreme diffidence, to advance in his profession, his family interest procured him a situation which seemed not ill adapted to gratify his very moderate ambition, while it did not much interfere with his reluctance to public life. In his 34th year he was nominated to the offices of reading clerk and clerk of the private committees of the house of lords. But in this arrangement his friends were disappointed. It presented to his the formidable danger of reading in public, which was next to speaking in public: his native modesty, therefore, recoiled at the thought, and he resigned the office. On this his friends procured him the place of clerk of the journals to the house of lords, the consequence of which is thus related by Mr. Hayley: “It was hoped, from the change of his station, that his personal appearance in parliament might not be required; but a parliamentary dispute made it necessary for him to appear at the bar of the house of lords, to entitle himself publicly to the office. Speaking of this important incident in a sketch, which he once formed himself, of passages in his early life, he expresses what he endured at the time, in these remarkable words: ‘ They, whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation; others can have none.’ His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason: for although he had endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which made him conceive, that, whatever knowledge he might previously acquire, it would all forsake him at the bar of the house. This distressing apprehension increased to such a degree, as the time for his appearance approached, that when the day, so anxiously dreaded, arrived, he was unable to make the experiment. The very friends who called on him for the purpose of attending him to the house of lords acquiesced in the cruel necessity of his relinquishing the prospect of a station so severely formidable to a frame of such singular sensibility. The conflict between the wishes of just affectionate ambition, and the terrors of diffidence, so entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Martin Madan, his first cousin), had vainly endeavoured to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind, by friendly and religious conversation, it was found necessary to remove him to St. Alban’s, where he resided a considerable time, under the care of that eminent physician Dr. Cotton.”

About this time he added to the number of his friends the late venerable and pious John Newton, rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, but then curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, who being consulted by Mr. Cowper as to an eligible residence for Mrs. Unwin, recommended a house at Olney, to which that lady, her daughter, and our poet, removed on the 14th of October 1767. At this residence, endeared to them by the company and public services of a man of congenial sentiments, Cowper for some years continued to enjoy those blessings of a retired and devotional life, which had constituted his only happiness since his recovery. His correspondence at this aera evinces a placid train of sentiment, mixed with an air of innocent gaiety, that must have afforded the highest satisfaction to his friends. Among other pleasures, of the purest kind, he delighted in acts of benevolence; and as he was not rich, he had the additional felicity of being employed as an almoner in the secret benevolences of that most charitable of all human heings, the late John Thornton, esq. an opulent merchant of London, whose name he has immortalized in his poem on charity, and in some verses on his death, which Mr. Hayley first published. Mr. Thornton statedly allowed Mr. Newton the sum of 200l. per annum, for the use of the poor of Olney, and it was the joint concern of Mr. Newton and Mr. Cowper to distribute this sum in the most judicious and useful manner. Such a bond of union could not fail to increase their intimacy. “Cowper,” says Mr. Newton, “loved the poor; he often visited them in their cottages, conversed with them in the most condescending manner, sympathized with them, counselled and comforted them in their distresses; and those, who were seriously disposed, were often cheered and animated by his prayers.” Of their intimacy, the same writer speaks in these emphatic terms: “For nearly twelve years we were seldom separated for seven hours at a time, when we were awake and at home. The first six I passed in daily admiring, and aiming to imitate him: during the second six, I walked pensively with him in the valley of the shadow of death.” Among other friendly services about this time, he wrote for Mr. Newton some beautiful hymns, which the latter introduced in public worship, and published in a collection long before Cowper was known as a poet.

From this period, his life affords little of the narrative kind, until 1773, when, in the language of his biographer, “he sunk into such severe paroxysms of religious despondency, that he required an attendant of the most gentle, vigilant, and inflexible spirit. Such an attendant he found in that faithful guardian (Mrs. Unwin), whom he had professed to love as a mother, and who watched over him, during this long fit of depressive malady, extended through several years, with that perfect mixture of tenderness and fortitude, which constitutes the inestimable influence of maternal protection. I wish to pass rapidly over this calamitous period, and shall only observe, that nothing could surpass the sufferings of the patient, or excel the care of the nurse. That meritorious care received from heaven the most delightful of all rewards, in seeing the pure and powerful mind, to whose restoration it has contributed so much, not only gradually restored to the common enjoyments of life, but successively endowed with new and marvellous funds of diversified talents and courageous application.” His recovery was slow; and he knew enough of his malady, to abstain from literary employment' while his mind was in any degree unsettled. The first amusement which engaged his humane affections was the laming of three hares, a circumstance that would have scarcely deserved notice unless among the memoranda of natural history, if he had not given to it an extraordinary interest in every heart, by the animated account he wrote of this singular family. In the mean time his friends, Mrs. Unwin and Mr. Newton, redoubled their efforts to promote his happiness, and to reconcile him to the world, in which he had yet a very important part to act; but as, in 1780, Mr. Newton was obliged to leave Olney, and accept of the living of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, he contrived to introduce Cowper to the friendship of the rev. Mr. Bull, of Newport Pagnell. This gentleman, who had many excellent qualities to recommend him as a fit successor to Mr. Newton, soon acquired the unreserved confidence of our author . It was at Mr. Bull’s request that he translated several spiritual songs from the French of Madame de la Mothe Guion , which have since been published separately. His recovery from this second illness may be dated from the summer of 1778, after which he began to meditate those greater exertions upon which his fame rests.

About this time he was advised to make application to lord Thurlow, who had been one of his juvenile companions, for some situation of emolument; but he declined this from motives of highly justifiable delicacy; intimating, that he had hopes from that quarter, and that it would be better not to anticipate his patron’s favours by solicitation. He afterwards sent a copy of his first volume of poems to his lordship, accompanied with a very elegant letter; and seems to murmur a little, on more occasions than one, at his lordship’s apparent neglect. A correspondence took place between them at a more distant period; but whether from want of a proper representation of his situation, or from forgetfulness, it is to be lamented that this nobleman’s interest was employed when too late for the purpose which Cowper’s friends hoped to promote. It will be difficult to impute a want of liberality to lord Thurlow, while his voluntary and generous offer to Dr. Johnson remains on record.

The success of this volume was undoubtedly not equal to its merit; for, as his biographer has justly observed, “it exhibits such a diversity of poetical powers as have beep given very rarely indeed to any individual of the modern, or of the ancient world.” As an apology for the inattention of the public to a present of such value, Mr. Hayley has supposed that he gave offence by his bold eulogy on Whitefield, “whom the dramatic satire of Foote, in his comedy of the ‘ Minor,’ had taught the nation to deride as a mischievous fanatic;” and that he hazarded sentiments too precise and strict for public opinion. The character of Whitefield, however, had been long rescued from the impious buffooneries of Foote, and the public could now bear his eulogium with tolerable patience: but that there are austerities in these poems, which indicate the moroseBess of a recluse, Cowper was not unwilling to allow. Whether he softened them in the subsequent editions, his biographer has not informed us. It may be added, that the volume was introduced into the world without any of the quackish parade so frequently adopted, and had none of those embellishments by which the eye of the purchaser is caught, at the expence of his pocket. The periodical critics, whose opinions Cowper watched with more anxiety than could have been wished, in a man so superior to the common candidates for poetic fame, were divided; and even those who were most favourable, betrayed no extraordinary raptures. In the mean time, the work crept slowly into notice, and acquired the praise of those who knew the value of such an addition to our stock of English poetry.

The public was soon laid under a far higher obligation to lady Austen for having suggested our author’s principal poem, “The Task,' 1” a poem,“says Mr. Hayley,” of such infinite variety, that it seems to include every subject, and every style, without any dissonance or disorder; and to have flowed without effort, from inspired philanthropy, eager to impress upon the hearts of all readers, whatever may lead them most happily to the full enjoyment of human life, and to the final attainment of Heaven.“This admirable poem appears to have been written in 1783 and 1784, but underwent many careful revisions. The public had iiot done much for Cowper, but he had too much regard for it and for his own character, to obtrude what was incorrect, or might be made better. It was his opinion, an opinion of great weight from such a critic, that poetry, in order to attain excellence, must be indebted to labour; and it was his correspondent practice to revise his poems with scrupulous care and severity. In a letter to his friend Air. Bull, on this poem, he says,” I find it severe exercise to mould and fashion it to my mind." Much of it was written in the winter, a season generally unfavourable to the author’s health, but there is reason to think that the encouragement and attentions of his amiable and judicious friends animated him to proceed, and that the regularity of his progress was favourable to his health and spirits. Disorders, like his, have been known to give way to some species of mental labour, if voluntarily undertaken, and pursued with steadiness. The Task rilled up many of those leisure hours, for which rural walks and employments would have amply provided at a more favourable season. It may be added, likewise, that no man appears to have had a more keen relish for the snugness of a winter fireside, and that, free from ambition, or the love of grand and tumultuous enjoyments, his heart was elated with gratitude for those humbler comforts which a mind like his would be apt to magnify by reflecting on the misery of those who want them.

In this year, when he was beginning his translation of Homer, the quiet and even tenour of his life was disturbed by the necessity he felt of parting with lady Austen. A short extract from Mr. Hayley will give this matter as clear explanation as delicacy can permit: “Delightful and advantageous as his friendship with lady Austen had proved, he now began to feel that it grew -impossible to preserve that triple cord, which his own pure heart had led him to suppose not speedily to be broken. Mrs. Unwin, though by no means destitute of mental accomplishments, was eclipsed by the brilliancy of the poet’s new friend, and naturally became uneasy, under the apprehension of being so, for to a woman of sensibility, what evil can be more afflicting, than the fear of losing all mental influence over a man of genius and virtue, whom she has long been accustomed to inspirit and to guide? Cowper perceived the painful necessity of sacrificing a great portion of his present gratifications. He felt, that he must relinquish that ancient friend, whom he regarded as a venerable parent; or the new associate, whom he idolized as a sister of a heart and mind peculiarly C9ngenial to his own. His gratitude for past services of unexampled magnitude and weight, would not allow him to hesitate: with a resolution and delicacy, that do the highest honour to his feelings, he wrote a farewell letter to lady Austen, explaining and lamenting the circumstances that forced him to renounce the society of a friend, whose enchanting talents and kindness had proved so agreeably instrumental to the revival of his spirits and to the exercise of his fancy. In those very interesting conferences with which I was honoured by lady Austen, I was irresistibly led to express an anxious desire for the sight of a letter written by Cowper, in a situation that must have called forth all the finest powers of his eloquence as a monitor and a friend. The lady confirmed me in my opinion that a more admirable letter could not be written; and had it existed at that time, I am persuaded from her noble frankness and zeal for the honour of the departed poet, she would have given me a oopy; but she ingenuously confessed, that in a moment of natural mortification, she burnt this very tender yet resolute letter. Had it been confided to my care, I am persuaded I should have thought it very proper for publication, as it displayed both the tenderness and the magnanimity of Cowper, nor could I have deemed it a want of delicacy towards the memory of lady Austen, to exhibit a proof, that animated by the warmest admiration of the great poet, whose fancy slie could so successfully call forth, she was willing to devote her life and fortune to his service and protection. The sentiment is to be regarded as honourable to the lady; it is still more honourable to the poet, that with such feelings as rendered him perfectly sensible of all lady Austen’s fascinating powers, he could return her tenderness with innocent gallantry, and yet resolutely preclude himself from her society when he could no longer enjoy it without appearing deficient in gratitude towards the compassionate and generous guardian of his sequestered life. No person can justly blame Mrs. Unwin for feeling apprehensive that Cowper’s intimacy with a lady of such extraordinary talents, might lead him into perplexities, of which he was by no means aware. This remark was suggested by a few elegant and tender verses, addressed by the poet to lady Austen, and shown to me by that lady. Those who were acquainted with the unsuspecting innocence, and sportive gaiety of Cowper, would readily allow, if they had seen the verses to which I allude, that they are such as he might have addressed to a real sister; but a lady only called by that endearing name, may be easily pardoned if she was induced by them to hope, that they might possibly be a prelude to a still dearer alliance. To me they appeared expressive of that peculiarity in his character, a gay and tender gallantry, perfectly distinct from arr-orous attachment. If the lady, who was the subject of the verses, had given them to me with a permission to print them, I should have thought the poet himself might have approved of their appearance, accompanied with such a commentary.”

Notwithstanding this interruption to his tranquillity, for such it certainly proved, although he was conscious that he had acted the part which was most honourable to him, he proceeded with the “Tirocinium,” and the other pieces which composed his second volume. These were published in 1785, and soon engaged the attention and admiration of the public, in a way that left him no regret for the cool reception and slow progress of his first volume. Its success also obtained for him another female friend and associate, lady Hesketh, his cousin, who had long been separated from him. Their intercourse was first revived by a correspondence, of which Mr. Hayley has published many interesting specimens, and says, with great truth, that Cowper’s letters “are rivals to his poems in the rare excellence of representing life and nature with graceful and endearing fidelity.” In explaining the nature of his situation to lady Hesketh, who came to reside at Olney in the month of June 1786, he informs her, that he had lived twenty years with Mrs. Unwin, to whose affectionate care it was owing that he lived at all; but that for thirteen of those years he had been in a state of mind which made all her care and attention necessary. He informs her at the same time that dejection of spirits, which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made him one. He found employment necessary, and therefore took care to be constantly employed. Manual occupations do not engage the mind sufficiently, as he knew by experience, having tried many. But composition, especially of verse, absorbs it wholly. It was his practice, therefore, to write generally three hours in a morning, and in an evening he transcribed. He read also, but less than he wrote, for bodily exercise was necessary, and he never passed a day without it. All this shews that Cowper understood his own case most exactly, and that he was not one of those melancholies who are said to give way to their disorder. No man could have discussed the subject with more perspicuity, or treated himself with more judgment. The returns of his malady, therefore, appear to have been wholly unavoidable, and wholly independent of his employments, whether of a religious or literary kind.

During the composition of this work, he at first declined what he had done before, shewing specimens to his friends; and on this subject, indeed, his opinion seems to have undergone a complete change. To his friend Mr. Unwin, who informed him that a gentleman wanted a sample, he says, with some humour, “When I deal in wine, cloth, or cheese, I will give samples, but of verse, never. No consideration would have induced me to comply with the gentleman’s demand, unless he could have assured me, that h^s wife had longed.” From this resolution he afterwards departed in a variety of instances. He first sent a specimen, with the proposals, to his relation general Cowper; it consisted of one hundred and seven lines, taken from the interview between Priam and Achilles in the last book. This specimen fell into the hands of Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated painter, whose critical knowledge of Homer is universally acknowledged; and Cowper likewise agreed that if Mr. Maty, who then published a Review, wished to see a book of Homer, he should be welcome, and the first book and a part of the second were accordingly sent . Mr. Fuseli was afterwards permitted to revise the whole of the manuscript, and how well Cowper was satisfied in falling in with such a critic, appears (among other proofs of his high esteem) from the short character he gives of him in one of his letters: “For his knowledge of Homer, he has, I verily believe, no fellow.” Colman, likewise, his old companion, with whom he had renewed an epistolary intimacy, revised some parts in a manner which afforded the author much satisfaction, and he appears to have corrected the sheets for the press. With Maty he was less pleased, as his criticisms appeared “unjust, and in part illiberal.”

While thus intent on his Homer, he was enabled, by the kindness of lady Hesketh, to remove in November 1786, from Olney to Weston, about two miles distant, where the house provided for him was more sequestered and commodious. Here too he had access to the society of Mr. Throckmorton, a gentleman of fortune in that neighbourhood, whose family had for some time studied to add to his comforts in a manner the most delicate and affectionate. It is indeed not easy to speak of the conduct of Cowper’s friends in terms adequate to their merit, their kindness, sensibility, and judgment. Their attentions exceeded much of what we read, and perhaps all that we commonly meet with under the name of friendship. In the midst of these fair prospects, however, he lost his steady and beloved friend Mr. Unwin, who died in December of this year.

Mr. Hayley about this time had written a life of Milton, to accompany the splendid edition published by Messrs. Boydell; and having been represented, in a newspaper, as the rival of Cowper, he immediately wrote to him on the subject. Cowper answered him in such a manner as drew on a closer correspondence, which soon terminated in mutual esteem and cordial friendship. Personal interviews followed, and Mr. Hayley has gratified his readers with a very interesting account of his first visit to Weston, and of the return by Cowper and Mrs. Unwin at his seat at Eartham, in Sussex, in a style peculiarly affectionate. On Cowper’s journey to Eartham, he passed through London, but without stopping, the only time he had seen it for nearly thirty years, thirty such years! What his feelings were on this occasion, who would not wish to be informed?

In January 1794, he informed his friend Mr. Rose that he had just ability enough to transcribe, and that he wrote at that moment under the pressure of sadness not to be described. In the expressive language of his biographer, “his health, his comfort, and his little fortune, were perishing most deplorably.” Mrs. Unwin had passed into a state of second childhood, and something seemed wanting to cheer the mind of Cowper, if possible, against the prospect of decaying comforts and competence. Application was accordingly made to those who had it in their power to procure what so much merit must have dignified, a pension; but many months elapsed before effectual attention could be obtained. What power refused, however, was in some degree performed by friendship; lady Hesketh, with her accustomed benevolence of character, and with an affection of which the instances are very rare, removed to Weston, and became the tender nurse of the two drooping invalids, of Mrs. Unwin, who was declining by years and infirmities, and of Cowper, who, in April 1794, had relapsed into his worst state of mental inquietude.

At this time, in consequence of a humane and judicious letter from the rev. Mr. Greathead, of Newport-Pagnel, Mr. Hayley paid a visit to this house of mourning, but found his poor friend “too much overwhelmed by his oppressive malady to show even the least glimmering of satisfaction at the appearance of a guest, whom he used to receive with the most lively expressions of affectionate delight.” In this deplorable state he continued during Mr. Hayley’s visit of some weeks, and the only circumstance which contributed in any degree to cheer the hearts of the friends who were now watching over him, was the intelligence that his majesty had been pleased to confer upon him such a pension as would insure an honourable competence for his life. Earl Spencer was the immediate agent in procuring this favour, and it would no doubt have added to its value, had the object of it known that he was indebted to one, who of all his noble friends, stood the highest in his esteem. But he was now, and for the remainder of his unhappy life, beyond the power of knowing or acknowledging the benevolence in which his heart delighted. Mr. Hayley left him for the last time in the spring of 1794, and from that period till the latter end of July 1795, Cowper remained in a state of the deepest melancholy.

At intervals he still wrote a few original verses, of which “The Cast-away,” his too favourite subject, was the last that came from his pen, but he amused himself occasionally with translations from Latin and Greek epigrams. His last effort of the literary kind, was an improved version of a passage in Homer, which he wrote at Mr. Hayley’s gestion, and which that gentleman received on the 31st of January, 1800. In the following month he exhibited all the symptoms of dropsy, which soon made a rapid progress. On April 25, about five in the afternoon, he expired so quietly that not one of his friends who were present perceived his departure, but from the awful stillness which succeeded.

That such a man should have been doomed to endure a life of mental distraction, relieved by few intervals, will probably ever be the subject of wonder; but that wonder will not be removed by curious inquiries into the state of Cowper’s mind, as displaying circumstances that have never occurred before. Awful as his case was, and most deeply as it ever must be deplored, there was nothing singular in the dispensation, unless that it befell one of more than common powers of genius, and consequently excited more general sympathy. Mr. Hayley, who has often endeavoured to reason on the subject, seems to resolve it at last into a bodily disorder, a sort of scorbutic affection, which, when repelled, brought on derangement of more or less duration. It appears to the present writer, from a careful perusal of that instructive piece of biography, that Cowper from his infancy had a tendency to errations of mind; and without admitting this fact in some degree, it must seem extremely improbable that the mere dread of appearing as a reader in the house of lords should have brought on his first settled fit of lunacy. Much, indeed, has been said of his uncommon shyness and diffidence, and more, perhaps, than the history of his early life will justify. Shyness and diffidence are common to all young persons who have not been early introduced into company; and Cowper, who had not, perhaps, that advantage at home, might have continued to be shy when other boys are forward. But had his mind been, even in this early period, in a healthful state, he must have gradually assumed the free manners of an ingenuous youth, conscious of no unusual imperfection that should keep him back. At school, we are told, he was trampled upon by ruder hoys, who took advantage of his weakness, yet we find that he mixed in their amusements, which must in some degree have advanced him on a level with them; and what is yet more extraordinary, we find him for some years associating with men of more gaiety than pure morality admits, and sporting with the utmost vivacity and wildness with Thurlow and others, when it was natural to expect that he would have been glad to court solitude for the purposes of study, as well as for the indulgence of his habitual shyness, if indeed at this period it was so habitual as we are taught to believe.

Although, therefore, it be inconsistent with the common theories of mania, to ascribe his first attack to his aversion to the situation which was provided for him, or to the operation of delicacy or sensibility on a healthy mind, it is certain that at that time, and when, by his own account, he was an entire stranger to the religious system which he afterwards adopted, he was visited by the first attack of his disorder, which was so violent, and of such a length, as to put an end to all prospect of advancement in his profession. It is particularly incumbent on all who venerate the sound and amiable mind of Cowper, the clearness of his understanding, and his powers of reasoning, to notice the date and circumstances of this first attack, because it has been the practice with superficial observers, and professed infidels, who are now running down all the important doctrines of revealed religion, under the name of methodism, to ascribe Cowper' s malady to his religious principles, and his religious principles to the company he kept. But, important as it may be to repel insinuations of this kind, it is become less necessary since the publication of Mr. Hayley’s life, which affords the most complete vindication of Mr. Cowper’s friends, and decidedly proves that his religious system was no more connected with his malady than with his literary pursuits; that his malady continued to return without any impulse from either, and that no means of the most judicious kind were omitted by himself or his friends to have prevented the attack, if human means could have availed. With respect to his friends, there can be nothing conceived more consolatory to him who wishes to cherish a good opinion of mankind, than to contemplate Cowper in the midst of his friends, men and women exquisitely tender, kind, and disinterested, animated by the most pure benevolence towards the helpless and interesting sufferer, enduring cheerfully every species of fatigue and privation, to administer the least comfort to him, and sensible of no gratification but what arose from their success in prolonging and gladdening the life on which they set so high a value.

If this p'raise be admitted, it will be needless to inquire in what peculiar charms Cowper’s poems consist, or why he, above all poets of recent times, has become the universal favourite of his nation. Yet, as he appears to have been formed not only to be an ornament, but a model to his brethren, it may not be useless to remind them, that in him the virtues of the man, and the genius of the poet, were inseparable; that in every thing he respected the highest interests of human kind, the promotion of religion, morality, and benevolence, and that while he enchants the imagination by the decorations of genuine poetry, and even condescends to trifle with innocent gaiety, his serious purposes are all of the nobler kind. He secures the judgment by depth of reflection on morals and manners; and by a vigour of sentiment, and a knowledge of human nature, such as every man’s taste and every man’s experience must confirm. In description, whether of objects of nature, or of artificial society, he has few equals, and whether he passes from description to reasoning, or illustrates the one by the other, he has found the happy art of administering to the pleasures of the senses and those of the intellect with equal success. But what adds a peculiar charm to Cowper, is, that his language is every where the language of the heart. The pathetic, in which he excels, is exclusively consecrated to subjects worthy of it. He obtrudes none of those assumed feelings by which some have obtained the character of moral, tender, and sympathetic, who in private life are known to be gross, selfish, and unfeeling. In Cowper we have every where the happiness to contemplate not only the most favourite of poets, but the best of men.

, a learned writer of the sixteenth century, was the second son of Laurence Cox, son of John Cox, of the city of Monmouth. His mother’s name was Elizabeth Willey. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took his bachelors degree in arts, but at what college is not known. In 1528 he went to Oxford, and was incorporated in the same degree in February 1529. He supplicated also for the degree of M. A. but it does not appear that he was admitted to it. About this time he became master of Reading school; and was living there, in great esteem, at the time when Fryth, the martyr, was first persecuted by being set in the stocks. Cox, who soon, discovered his merit by his conversation, relieved his wants, and out of regard to his learning, procured his release. In 1532 he published “The art or craft of Rhetoryke,” inscribed to Hugh Farington, abbot of Reading, in which he divides his subject into four parts, invention, judgment, disposition, and eloquence in speaking; but the present treatise is confined to the first. In 1540 he published tc Commentaries on William Lilly’s construction of the eight parts of speech,“which are mentioned in Dr. Ward’s edition of Lilly’s grammar; and, according to Wood, he translated from Greek into Latin,” Marcus Eremita de lege et spiritu;“and from Latin into English,” The paraphrase of St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus,“by Erasmus, with whom he was well acquainted. These, Wood says, were published in 1540, but by a ms note of Mr. Baker, we are told, that the paraphrase of Erasmus was published in 1549, at which time, the author says,” he was then in hand“with Eremita, who had written” on the law and the spirit,“and” of them that thynke to be justyfyed by their works."

In 1541, Henry VIII. granted him, by patent, the office of master of the grammar-school of Reading, with a certain tenement called “a scole-house,” with a stipend of ten pounds, issuing out of the manor of Cholsey, belonging to the late dissolved monastery of Reading. A few years after he had obtained this patent, which he appears, to have had the power of assigning during his life, he quitted Reading, and travelled over great part of the continent, teaching the learned languages. Leland, in some Latin verses, among his “Encomia,” addressed to Cox, speaks of his visiting the universities of Prague, Paris, and Cracow, and that he was known to Melancthon, who was Greek professor at Wittemberg. In the latter part of his life he kept a school at Caer-leon, and is said to have survived until the reign of Edward VI. Bale says that he was instructed in all the liberal arts, that he was a grammarian, a rhetorician, and a poet; a sound divine, and a diligent preacher of God’s word. It is needless after this to add that he was of the reformed religion. In Edward Vlth’s time, he was one of the licensed preachers.

, a learned English bishop, was born at Whaddon in Buckinghamshire, of mean parentage, in the year 1499. He had probably his first education in the small priory of Snelshall, in the parish of Whaddon; but being afterwards sent to Eton-school, he was elected into a scholarship at King’s college in Cambridge, of which he became fellow in the year 1519. Having the same year taken his bachelor of arts degree, and being eminent for his piety and learning, he was invited to Oxford by cardinal Wolsey, to fill up his new foundation. He was accordingly preferred to be one of the junior canons of Cardinal college; and on the 7th of December, 1525, was incorporated bachelor of arts at Oxford, as he stood at Cambridge. Soon after, having performed his exercises, he took the degree of M. A. July 2, 1526, and at this time was reputed one of the greatest scholars of his age; and even his poetical compositions were in great esteem. His piety and virtue were not inferior to his learning, and commanded the respect of all impartial persons. But shewing himself averse to many of the popish superstitions, and declaring freely for some of Luther’s opinions, he incurred the displeasure of his superiors, who stripped him of his preferment, and threw him into prison on suspicion of heresy. When he was released from his confinement, he left Oxford; and, some time after, was chosen master of Eton-school, which flourished under his care. In 1537, he commenced doctor in divinity at Cambridge, and December 4, 1540, was made archdeacon of Ely; as he was also appointed in 1541, the first prebendary in the first stall of the same cathedral, upon its being new founded by king Henry VIII. September 10, 1541. He was likewise, June 3, 1542, presented by the same king to the prebend of Sutton with Buckingham in the church of Lincoln, and installed the llth of that month, but this he surrendered up in 1547. In the year 1543, he supplicated the university of Oxford, that he might take place among the doctors of divinity there, which was unusual, because he was not then incorporated in that degree, but this took place in June 1545. When a design was formed, of converting the collegiate church of Southwell into a bishopric, Dr. Cox was nominated bishop of it. On the 8th of January, 1543-4, he was made the second dean of the new-erected cathedral of Osney near Oxford; and in 1546, when that see was translated to Christ church, he was also made dean there. These promotions he obtained by the interest of archbishop Cranmer and bishop Goodrich, to the last of whom he had been chaplain; and, by their recommendation, he was chosen tutor to the young prince Edward, whom he instructed with great care in the true principles of religion, and formed his tender mind to an early sense of his duty, both as a Christian and a king. On that prince’s accession to the throne, he became a great favourite at court, and was made a privy-counsellor, and the king’s almoner. The 2 1st of May, 1547, he was elected chancellor of the university of Oxford; installed July 16, 1548, canon of Windsor; and the next year made dean of Westminster. About the same time he was appointed one of the commissioners to visit the university of Oxford, in which he and his brother commissioners destroyed some of the most valuable treasures in the libraries, from a notion that they encouraged popery and conjuration *. In 1550, he was ordered to go down into Sussex, and endeavour by his learned and affecting sermons, to quiet the minds of the people, who had been disturbed by the factious preaching of Day bishop of Chichester, a violent papist: and when the noble design of reforming the canon law was in agitation, he was appointed one of the commissioners. Both in this and the former reign, when an act passed for giving all chantries, colleges, &c. to the king, through Dr. Cox’s powerful intercession, the colleges in both universities were excepted out of that act. In November 1552, be resigned the office of chancellor of Oxford and soon after queen Mary’s accession to the crown, he was stripped of his preferments and on the 15th of August, 1553, committed to the Marshalsea. He was indeed soon discharged from this confinement; but foreseeing the inhuman persecution likely to ensue, he resolved to quit the realm, and withdraw to some place where he might enjoy the free exercise of his religion, according to the form established in the reign of king Edward. With this view he went first to Strasburgh in Germany, where he heard with great concern of some English exiles at Francfort having thrown aside the English Liturgy, and set up a form of their own, framed after the French and Geneva models. On the 13th of March 1555, he came to Francfort in order to oppose this innovation, and to have the Common- Prayer-Book settled among the English congregation there, which he had the satisfaction to accomplish. Then he returned to Strasburgh for the sake of conversing with Peter Martyr, with whom he had contracted an intimate friendship at Oxford, and whom he loved and honoured for his great learning and moderation. After the death of queen Mary he returned to England; and was one of those divines who were appointed to revise the Liturgy. When a disputation was to be held at Westminster between eight papists and eight of the reformed clergy, he was the chief champion on the protestants’ side. He preached often before queen Elizabeth in Lent; and, in his sermon at the opening of her first parliament, exhorted them in most affecting terms to restore religion to its primitive purity, and banish all the popish innovations and corruptions. These excellent discourses, and the great zeal he had shewn in support of the English liturgy at Francfort, so effectually recommended him to the queen’s esteem, that in June 1559, she nominated him to the bishopric of Norwich; but altering her mind, preferred him to the see of Ely in July 1559, in the room of Dr. Thirlby, who was deprived. Before his consecration (Dec. 19) he joined with Dr. Parker, elect archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops elect of London, Chichester, and Hereford, in a petition to the queen, against an act lately passed for the alienating and exchanging the lands and revenues of the bishops; and sent her several arguments from scripture and reason against the lawfulness of it; observing withal, the many evils and inconveniencies both to church and state that would thence arise. In 1559 we find him again appointed one of the visitors of the university of Oxford, but this visitation was conducted so moderately as to obtain a letter of thanks to queen Elizabeth for the services of the commissioners. He enjoyed the episcopal dignity about twenty-one years and seven months, and was justly considered one of the chief pillars and ornaments of the church of England, having powerfully co-operated with archbishop Parker, and his successor Grindal, in restoring our church in the same beauty and good order it had enjoyed in king Edward’s reign. He indeed gave some offence to the queen by his zealous opposition to her retaining the crucifix and lights on the altar of the Chapel Royal, and his strenuous defence of the lawfulness of the marriage of the clergy, to which the queen was always an enemy. He was a liberal patron to all learned men whom he found well affected to the church; and shewed a singular esteem for Dr. Whitgift, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, made him his chaplain, and gave him the rectory of Teversham in Cambridgeshire, and a prebend of Ely. He did his utmost to get a body of ecclesiastical laws established by authority of parliament; but through the opposition of some of the chief courtiers, this design miscarried a third time. As he had, in his exile at Francfort, been the chief champion against the innovations of the puritans, he still continued, with some vigour and resolution, to oppose their attempts against the discipline and ceremonies of the established church. At first he tried to reclaim them by gentle means; but finding that they grew more audacious, and reviled both church and bishops in scurrilous libels, he wrote to archbishop Parker, to go on vigorously in reclaiming or punishing them, and not be disheartened at the frowns of those court-favourites who protected them; assuring him that he might expect the blessing of God on his pious labours to free the church from their dangerous attempts, and to establish uniformity. When the privycouncil interposed in favour of the puritans, and endeavoured to screen them from punishment, he wrote a bold letter to the lord- treasurer Burieigh in which he warmly expostulated with the council for meddling with the affairs of the church, which, as he said, ought to be left to the determination of the bishops; admonished them to keep within their own sphere; and told them he would appeal to the queen if they continued to interpose in matters not belonging to them. He is blamed by some for giving up several manors and other estates belonging to his see, while others thought he deserved commendation for his firmness in resolving to part with no more, and for being proof against the strongest solicitations and most violent attacks which he had to encounter, even from those who were most in favour at court, and who were backed by royal command and authority. In the years 1574- and 1575, sir Christopher Hatton, a noted favourite of the queen, endeavoured to wrest Ely-house in Holborn from him; and in order to preserve it to his see he was forced to have a long and chargeable suit in chancery, which was not determined in 1579. The lord North also attempted, in 1575, to oblige him to part with the manor of Somersham, in Huntingdonshire, one of the best belonging to his bishopric; and with Downham park; which he refusing to yield, that lord endeavoured to irritate the queen against him, and to have him deprived. For that purpose, North, and some others of the courtiers, examined and ransacked his whole conduct since his first coming to his see, and drew tip a large body of articles against him addressed to the privy-council. But the bishop, in his replies, so fully vindicated himself, that the queen was forced to acknowledge his innocence, though the lord North boasted he had found five prsemunires against him. Vexed, however, with the implacable malice of the lord North, and other his adversaries, he desired, in 1577, leave to resign his bishopric, which the queen refused. North, though disappointed in his former attempt, yet not discouraged, brought three actions against the poor old bishop for selling of wood, on which the bishop offered again, in 1579, to resign, provided he had a yearly pension of two hundred pounds out of his see, and Donnington (the least of five country houses belonging to Ely bishopric) for his residence during life. The lord- treasurer Burieigh, at the bishop’s earnest desire, obtained leave of the queen for him to resign; and in February 1579-80, upon the bishop’s repeated desires, forms of resignation were actually drawn up. But the court could not find any divine of note who would take that bishopric on their terms, of surrendering* up the best manors belonging to it. The first offer of it was made to Freak, bisbop of Norwich; and, on his refusal, it was proffered to several others; but the conditions still appeared so ignominious that they all rejected it; by which means bishop Cox enjoyed it till his death, which happened on the 22d of July 1581, in the eighty-second year of his arge. By his will he left several legacies, amounting in all to the sum of 945l.; and died worth, in good debts, 2,322l. He had several children. His body was interred in Ely cathedral, near bishop Goodrich’s monument, under a marble stone, with an inscription, now nearly effaced. His character is said to have been that of a man of a sound judgment and clear apprehension, and skilled in all polite and useful learning. He wanted no advantages of education, and improved them with such diligence and industry, that he soon became an excellent proficient both in divine and human literature. The holy scriptures were his chief study; and he was perfectly well versed in the original language of the New Testament. He was extremely zealous for the true interest of the reformed church, and a constant and vigorous defender of it against alj, the open, assaults of all its enemies. He is accused by some of having been a worldly and covetou’s person; and is said to have made a great havock and spoil of his woods and parks, feeding his family with powdered venison to save expences. Several complaints and long accusations were exhibited against him and his wife, in 1579, to queen Elizabeth upon these accounts, but the bishop fully vindicated himself, and shewed that all these complaints were malicious calumnies. It is likewise said, that he appears to have been of a vindictive spirit, by reason of his prosecution of, and severity to, the deprived catholics in his custody; and especially by his complaints against Dr. Feckenham, the last abbot of Westminster. But the bishop alleges in his own excuse, that these complaints were well founded; and that his endeavours to convert him were by order of the court. It must be remembered of this bishop, that he was the first who brought a wife to live in a college; and that he procured a new body of statutes for St, John’s college in Cambridge, of which, as bishop of Ely, he was, visitor.

, bart. lord chancellor of Ireland, and author of a history of that kingdom, was son to Richard Cox, esq. captain of a troop of horse, and was born at Bandon, in the county of Cork, on the 25th of March 1650. He had the misfortune to become an orphan before he was full three years of age and was then taken care of by his mother’s father, Walter Bird, esq. of Cloghnakilty. But his grandfather also dying when he was about nine years old^ he was then taken under the protection of his uncle, John Bird, esq. who placed him at an ordinary Latin school at Cloghnakiity, where he soon discovered a strong inclination to learning. In 1668, in his eighteenth year, he began to practise as an attorney in several manor courts where his uncle was seneschal, and continued it three years, and was entered of Gray’s Inn in 1671, with a view of being called to the bar. Here he was so much distinguished for his great assiduity and consequent improvement, that in the summer of 1673 he was made one of the surveyors at sir Robert Shaftoe’s reading. He soon after married a lady who had a right to a considerable fortune; but, being disappointed in obtaining it, he took a farm near Cloghnakiity, to which he retired for seven years. Being at length roused from his lethargy by a great increase of his family, he was, hy the interest of sir Robert Southwell, elected recorder of Kinsale in 1680. He now removed to Cork; where he practised the law with great success. But, foreseeing the storm that was going to fall on the protestants, he quitted his practice, and his estate, which at that time amounted to 300l. per ann. and removed with his wife and five children to England, and settled at Bristol. At this place he obtained sufficient practice to support his family genteelly, independently of his Irish estate; and at his leisure hours compiled the History of Ireland;“the first part of which he published soon after the revolution, in 1689, under the title of” Hibernia Anglicana; or the History of Ireland, from the conquest thereof by the English to the 'present time." When the prince of Orange arrived in London, Mr. Cox quitted Bristol, and repaired to the metropolis, where he was made undersecretary of state. Having given great satisfaction to the king in the discharge of this office, Mr. Cox was immediately after the surrender of Waterford made recorder of that city. On the 15th of September 1690, he was appointed second justice of the court of common pleas. In April 1691 Mr. Justice Cox was made governor of the county and city of Cork. His situation now, as a judge and a military governor, was somewhat singular; and he was certainly not deficient in zeal for the government, whatever objections may be made to his conduct on the principles of justice and humanity. During the time of Mr. Cox’s government, which continued till the reduction of Limerick, though he had a frontier of 80 railes to defend, and 20 places to garrison, besides Cork and the fort of Kinsale, yet he did not lose a single inch of ground. On the 5th of November 1692, Mr. justice Cox received the honour of knighthood; in July 1693 was nominated lord chancellor of Ireland, and in October 1706 was created a baronet. On the death of queen Anne, and the accession of king George I. sir Richard Cox, with the other principal Irish judges, was removed from his office, and also from the privy council. He then retired to his seat in the county of Cork, where he hoped to have ended his days in peace; hut his tranquillity was disturbed by several attacks which were made against him in the Irish parliament, but though several severe votes were passed against, him, they were not followed by any farther proceedings. He now divided his time between study, making improvements on his estate, and acts of beneficence. But in April 1733, he was seized by a fit of apoplexy, which ended in a palsy, under which he languished till the 3d of May that year, when he expired without pain, at the age of 83 years one month and a few days.

, a faithful and industrious collector of old English literature, was born of an ancient and respectable family at Lechdale in Gloucestershire, Sept. 20, 1689. He was educated in grammatical learning, first under the rev. Mr. Collier, at Coxwell in Berkshire, and afterwards under the rev. Mr. Collins, at Magdalen school, Oxford, from which he entered a commoner of Trinity college, Oxford, in 1705. From Oxford, where he wore a civilian’s gown, he came to London, with a view of pursuing the civil law; but losing his friend and patron sir John Cook, knight, who was dean of the arches and vicargeneral, and who died in 1710, he abandoned civil law and every other profession. An anonymous funeral poem to the memory of sir John Cook, entitled “Astrea lacrirnans,” the production probably of Coxeter, appeared in 1710. Continuing in London without any settled pursuit, he became acquainted with booksellers and authors. He amassed materials for a biography of our poets, which were afterwards used in what is called Gibber’s Lives. (See art. The Cibber). He also assisted Mr. Ames in the History of British typography. He had a curious collection of old plays, and pointed out to Theobald many of the blackletter books which that critic used in his edition of Shakspeare. He compiled one, if not more, of the indexes to Hudson’s edition of Josephus in 1720. In 1739 he published a new edition of Baily’s, or rather Hall’s, lire of bishop Fisher, first printed in 1655. In 1744 he circulated proposals “for printing the dramatic works of Thomas May, esq. a contemporary with Ben Jonson, and, upon his decease, a competitor for the bays. With notes, and an account of his life and writings.” fl The editor,“says he,” intending to revive the best of our plays, faithfully collated with all the editions, that could be found in a search of above thirty years, happened to communicate his scheme to one who now invades it. To vindicate which, he is resolved to publish this deserving author, though out of the order of his design. And, as a late spurious edition of “Gorboduc” is sufficient to shew what mistakes and confusion may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, a correct edition will be added of that excellent tragedy; with other poetical works of the renowned Sackville, his life, and a glossary. These are offered as a specimen of the great care that is necessary, and will constantly be used, in the revival of such old writers as the editor shall be encouraged to restore to the public in their genuine purity.“Such are the terms of the proposals: and they shew, that, though this design did not take effect, Coxeter was the first who formed the scheme, adopted by Dodsley, of publishing a collection of our ancient plays. Sackville’s” Gorboduc,“here referred to, is the edition published by Mr. Spence in 1736. In 1747 he was appointed secretary to a society for the encouragement of an essay towards a complete English history; under the auspices of which appeared the first volume of Carte’s” History of England.“Mr. Warton made considerable use of his Mss. in his” History of Poetry“and in 1759, an edition of Massinger’s works was published in 4 vols. 8vo. said to be” revised, corrected, and the editions collated by Mr. Coxeter." He died of a fever April 19, 1747, in his 59th year, and was buried in the chapel-yard of the Royal hospital of Bridewell: leaving an orphan daughter, who was often kindly assisted with money by Dr. Johnson, and in her latter days by that excellent and useful institution, the Literary Fund. She died in Nov. 1807.

, who was born at Baumeles-Nones in Franche-Comtt;, and died at Paris July 18, 1782, in an advanced age, was for some time a Jesuit. Having quitted that society, he repaired to the capital about 1751, and sought a livelihood by his pen. He began his career by certain fugitive pieces, of which some, as the “Discovery of the Philosopher’s stone,” in imitation of Swift, and the “Miraculous year,” had the most success. These trifles were collected under the very suitable title of “Bagatelles morales.” Some of the pieces in this collection are written, with ease, delicacy, and sprightliness; but irony being the favourite figure with the author, the style of it is too monotonous, and the witticisms sometimes too far fetched. There was visible in the writings of the abbe Coyer, as well as in his conversation, a perpetual effort at being agreeable, which he was unable to sustain to any length. Besides some temporary pieces, the abbé Coyer also wrote, 1. “The History of John Sobieski,” 1761, 3 vols. 12mo; a very interesting work. 2. “Travels in Italy and Holland,” 1775, 2 vols. 12mo. The abbe Coyer ran over these countries, oiot so much in the character of a deep observer, as of a light Frenchman, who takes a superficial glance, and then hastily sets down some remarks analogous to the fluctuation of his mind, of his inclinations and his character. The book is far inferior both to the observations of M. Grosley and the travels of M. de la Lande. 3. “New observations on England,” 1779, 12mo, which is little else that an abridgment of Grosley’s London. 4. “Noblesse Commenjante,” 2 vols. 8vo, and a little romance entitled “Chinki, histoire Cochin-Chinoise,” which made more noise in France than his “Bagatelles,” and are said to have contributed to two important changes in France, the granting of letters of noblesse to eminent merchants, and the abolition of wardenships. 5. “Plan d'education publique,” 1770, 12 mo. The abbe Coyer also translated Biackstone’s Commentaries on the Criminal Law of England. He had long fruitlessly endeavoured to obtain admittance into the French academy, and had adopted many of the sentiments of the modern philosophers, who do not appear, however, to have had a profound respect for him. He was always telling Voltaire that he intended to come and spend three months with him, until the poet, frightened at his threat, wrote to him, “Mons. Abbe, do you know the difference which I find between you and Don Quixote It is, that he took inns for castles, and you take castles for inns.”

was admitted into the academy of painting in his twentieth year, where he had already executed several pictures of great merit; his son, who was born at Paris in 1694, and to whom he left his name, his talents, his knowledge, and virtues, enjoyed the same good fortune. in his 2ist year: he was first painter to the duke of Orleans, and in 1747 to the king. Though his peronal qualities and endowments had already made him a welcome guest with the princes and great men of the court, yet this last appointment increased his reputation; and the first use he made of his consequence, was to induce M. de Tourathem, who had fortitude of mind sufficient for such a sacrifice, to decline the title of a protector of the academy, which hitherto had always been connected with the office of superintendant of the buildings, in order that the academy of painting, like all the rest, might be under the immediate protection of the king. He also erected a preparatory school, at Paris, for the y^ung pupils, who went to Rome, where they studied history, and exercised themselves under able masters. To him likewise the public were indebted for the exhibition of the pictures in the Luxembourg gallery. Like all men of genius, he had his enviers and rivals; but his rivals were his friends, his modesty drew them to him, and he never refused them his esteem. His place as first painter to the king brought him to court, and made him more intimately acquainted with the queen and the dauphin. The queen often gave him, work to do, which chiefly consisted in pictures of the saints and other objects of devotion. On her return from Metz, finding over her chimney a picture which he had privately executed, representing France in the attitude of returning thanks to heaven for the deliverance of the king, she was so moved, that she exclaimed, “No one but my friend Coypel is capable of such. a piece of gallantry!” The dauphin had frequently private conversations with him. He himself executed the drawing for the last work of Coypel, the “Sultan in his seraglio.” His table was always strewed with the manuscripts of this artist, which he intended to publish at his own expence. The death of the author prevented his design, and on hearing of the event, the prince said publicly at supper: “I have in one year lost three of my friends!”

A similar anecdote of the duke of Orleans the regent, and Antony Coypei the father, deserves to be related here by way of conclusion. The regent knew that Coypel, on account of some disgusts, was intending to accept of an invitation to England. He therefore drove to his lodgings one morning, in a fiacre, quite alone, without any attendants, and had him called down: “Come into the carriage,” said he to the artist, who was quite disconcerted at this visit; “let us go and take a drive together: you are. chagrined I want to try whether I cannot put you in a good humour,” and this jaunt made Coypel at once forget both England and his chagrin. The subject of this memoir died in 1752, in the 58th year of his age.

, an ingenious French sculptor, born at Lyons, in 1640, died chancellor and regent of the academy of painting and sculpture in 1720. Versailles boasts his best works, except the figure of that great minister, M. Colbert, on his tomb, in the church of S. Eustache; the two groupes of Renown, and Mercury, in the Thuilleries; and the player on the flute, in the same garden. The Neptune and Amphytrite, at Marly, with many very fine busts, are the chief works of this artist, who was endowed with a most fruitful imagination, and an admirable execution.

, a Russian by birth, was a landscape painter in London, but chiefly practised as a drawing-master. He taught in a way that was new and peculiar, and which appears to have been adopted from the hint given by Leonardo da Vinci, who recommends selecting the ideas of landscape from the stains of an old plaster wall, and his method of composing his drawings may be considered as an improvement upon the advice of Da Vinci. His process was to dash out, upon several pieces of paper, a number of accidental large blots and loose flourishes, from which he selected forms, and sometimes produced very grand ideas; but they were in general too indefinite in their execution, and unpleasing in their colour. He published a small tract upon this method of composing landscapes, in which he has demonstrated his process. He also published some other works, the most considerable of which was a folio, entitled “The Principles of Beauty relative to the Human Head,” 1778, French and English, a very ingenious, but somewhat fanciful work, illustrated with engravings by Bartolozzi, showing the gradations of character, from the outline of a feature, 'to the outline of the face, and to each face is applied an head dress in the style of the antique. He also published “The various species of Composition in Nature, in sixteen subjects, on four plates,” with observations and instructions and “The shape, skeleton, and foliage of thirty-two species of Trees,” 1771, reprinted 1736; but, in Mr. Edwards’s opinion, not very creditable to the artist. As a drawingmaster, he had very considerable reputation and employment. He attended for some years at Eton school, and among other pupils of high rank, had the honour of giving some lessons to his royal highness the prince of Wales, He died at his house in Leicester-street, Leicester-square, April, 1786, leaving a son John Cozens, who greatly excelled him as a landscape painter: rejecting his lather’s method of fortuitous blots and dashes, he followed the arrangements of nature, which he saw with an enchanted eye, and drew with an enchanted hand. He owes his fame to those tinted drawings, of which, Mr. Fuseli says, the method has been imitated with more success than the sentiment which inspired them. A collection of his drawings, amounting to ninety-four, the property of Mr. Beckford, were sold by Christie in 1805, and produced 510l. He visited Italy twice, where he appears to have drawn most of these In 1794, he was seized with a mental derangement which continued to his death in 1799.

, an eminent benefactor to the taste, elegance, and literature of his time, was the son of col. Mordaunt Cracherode, who sailed with lord Anson, and in 1753 was appointed lieut. governor of Fort St. Philip, in Minorca. His mother was Mary, the daughter of Thomas Morice, esq. paymaster of the British forces in Portugal in queen Anne’s time, and brother to William Morice, esq. who married bishop Atterbury’s daughter. The colonel died June 20, 1773, and his widow Dec. 27, 1784, at their house in Queen’s-square, Westminster, which was afterwards inhabited by their son, the subject of the present article. Mr. Cracherode was born in 1729, and educated at Westminster school, where his contemporary the late Mr. Cumberland says, he was “as grave, studious, and reserved as he was through life; but correct in morals and elegant in manners, not courting a promiscuous acquaintance, but pleasant to those who knew him, beloved by many, and esteemed by all.” He was admitted a scholar at Westminster in 1742, and in 1746 was elected to Christ-church, Oxford, where he took his degree of B. A. and M.A. at the usual periods: the latter, April 5, 1753. He entered into holy orders, and atone time held the curacy of Binsey, a donative, near Oxford, but accepted no preferment afterwards. At the same time, he maintained that simplicity and purity in his appearance, manners, and sentiments, which belong to the character he professed. The tenor of Mr. Cracherode’s life, after he came to reside in London, that of a man of literary taste and research, was even and uniform: his principal object was the collection of a library and museum, and while his thoughts were confined to it, his associations were necessarily with men of similar pursuits. He employed a considerable part of a large revenue in making collections of what was best and most curious in literature, and certain branches of the arts. His library soon became unrivalled in its kind; and his cabinet of prints, drawings, and medals, was considered as among the most select and valuable in a country that possesses so many of them. He was an exquisite judge of art, both ancient and modern, particularly of sculpture, painting, and music, and collected the choicest'of early printed books, drawings, coins, and gems. Many of hisarticles were unique for their beauty, their preservation, or the rarity of their occurrence: such, for instance, as his cameo of a lion on a sardonyx, and intaglio of the discobolos; his Tyndale’s New Testament on vellum, that formerly belonged to Anne Boleyn; his lord Finch, with wings on his head, by Marshal; his Olbiopolis, and his Dichalcos, the first and smallest coin, being the fourth part of an obolus. Of these, and every other curiosity in his possession, he was, at all times, most obligingly communicative. His books, which he used modestly to call a specimen collection, particularly books of the fifteenth century, form perhaps the most perfect series ever brought together by one man. His passion for collecting was strong in death, and while he was at the last extremity, his agents were buying prints for him. In his farewell visit to Payne’s shop he put an Edinburgh Terence in one pocket, and a large paper Cebes in another, and expressed an earnest desire to carry away “Triveti Annales,” and Henry Stephens’s “Pindar” in old binding, both beautiful copies, and, as he thought, finer than his own, but which Mr. Payne had destined for lord Spencer.

This last visit was paid on the Monday before his death, when he seemed to depart in a manner that was visibly affecting. Soon after he got home, it was found necessary to call in sir George Baker, who paid the most unremitting attention, and revived him from the momentary effects of a fit in which he fell down, but could not protract life beyond the Friday following, April 6, 1799, when this amiable man expired. He was interred in Westminsterabbey.

Mr. Cracherode left no formal will; and as he never was married, his fortune devolved by inheritance to his sister, a maiden lady, who died July 17, 1802. He left detached memoranda, bequeathing his immense collection of books, medals, drawings, &c. to the British Museum, of which he had for some years been a trustee. He was also a fellow of the royal and antiquarian societies. Every friend to literature must rejoice to hear that this unparalleled library (with the exception of his Polyglott Bible, which he left to the bishop of Durham, and his copy of the first edition of Homer, formerly belonging to the celebrated historian Thuanus, which he gave to Dr. Cyril Jackson, late dean of Christ church) went entire to this excellent repository, where they now are placed under the title of the Museum Cracherodiqnum.

, an eminent writer among the nonconformists, was born in 1620, but where we do not find. He was educated at Emanuel college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow, and was presented to the college living of North Cadbury in Somersetshire, worth 300l. a year. When he kept the bachelor of divinity’s act, at the public commencement in 1651, his performance was highly applauded. He was ejected for nonconformity in 1662, but his wants were soon supplied by the death of a relation, who left him a good estate at Wickham Brook in Suffolk, on which he resided for twenty-six years, occasionally preached, and kept an academy for teaching young nonconformists those branches of science usually taught at the universities. Dr. Calamy, who was one of his pupils, gives him a high character for learning and piety, and Granger remarks that he has never seen two different characters of Mr. Cradock. He was so good and inoffensive, that every body spoke well of him, when it was usual for men of all religions to speak ill of each other. Nothing was ever objected to him but his nonconformity. In the reign of Charles II. he drew up a vindication of himself and others who kept private academies, notwithstanding their having taken an oath to the contrary at the university; a copy of it may be seen in Calamy. In his 79th year he became pastor of a congregation at Bishop Stortford in Hertfordshire, where he died October 7, 1706, in his 86th year, and was buried at Wickham Brook. His works, which were recommended by bishop Reynolds and archbishop Tillotson, are still in high esteem with the orthodox dissenters. They consist of, 1. “Knowledge and Practice,” a system of divinity, folio. 2. “The Harmony of the Four Evangelists,” folio, revised by Dr. Tillotson, who preserved it from the flames in the fire of London. 3. “The Apostolical History, containing the Acts, &c. of the Apostles,” folio. 4. “A Catechism on the principles of the Christian Faith.” 5. “The Old Testament History methodized.” 6. “A plain and brief Exposition on the Revelation.” Most of these have been often reprinted.

, said to be brother to the preceding, was born in 1633, and was educated at Queen’s college, Cambridge, where he gained such esteem by his learning and piety, that Dr. Cudworth, in 1656, wrote in the strongest terms to secretary Thurloe, to recommend him to Oliver Cromwell, as a proper person for the chaplainship of the English factory at Lisbon. Some years after the restoration, he was made canon-residentiary of Chichester, and was elected fellow of Eton college in 1672. In 1680 he was chosen by the fellows provost of Eton in opposition to Waller the poet, who was twice disappointed of the same preferment, once in 1665, when the lord chancellor Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, because it could be held only by a clergyman, and now when the privy-council came to the same determination. Dr. Cradock, who was admired in his own time for his uncommon talents, great copiousness and vivacity in preaching, is scarce known to the present day, except by the high character given of him by his contemporaries, and two excellent sermons: one on Providence, preached before Charles II. by whose command it was printed: it has since passed through several editions: the other “On the great end and design of Christianity,” was printed some years after his death, which happened Oct. 16, 1695, when he was interred in the college chapel.

, a brave officer, was of a respectable Scottish family, the Craigs of Dalnairand Costarton; and born in 1748 at Gibraltar, where his father held the appointments of civil and military judge* He entered the army at the early age of fifteen; and in a season of peace he imbibed the elementary knowledge of his profession in the best military schools of the continent. In 1770, he was appointed aid-de-camp to general sir Robert Boyd, then governor of Gibraltar, and obtained a company in the 47th regiment, with which he went to America in 1774, and was present at the battles of Lexington and Bunker’s-hill, in which latter engagement he was severely wounded. In 1776, he accompanied his regiment to Canada, commanding his company in the action of Trois Rivieres, and he afterwards commanded the advanced guard of the army in the expulsion of the rebels from that province. In 1777 he was engaged in the actions at Ticonderago and Hnbertown, in the latter of which engagements he was again severely wounded. Ever in a position of honourable danger, he received a third wound in the action at Freeman’s Farm. He was engaged in the disastrous affair at Saratoga, and was then distinguished by general Burgoyne, and the brave Fraser, who fell in that action, as a young officer who promised to attain to the very height of the military career. On that occasion he was selected by general Burgoyne to carry home the dispatches, and was immediately thereafter promoted to a majority in the new 82d regimen^ which he accompanied to Nova Scotia in 1778, to Penobscot in 1779, and to North Carolina in 1781; being engaged in a continued scene of active service during the whole of those campaigns, and generally commanding the light troops, with orders to act from his own discretion, on which his superiors in command relied with implicit confidence. In a service of this kind, the accuracy of his intelligence, the fertility of his resources, and the clearness of his military judgment, were alike conspicuous, and drew on him the attention of his sovereign, who noted him as an officer of the highest promise. In 1781, he obtained the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 82d regiment, and in 1783 that of the 16th, which he commanded in Ireland till 1791, having been promoted to the rank of colonel in 1790. In 1782, he went to the continent for the purpose of instructing himself in the discipline of the Prussian army, at that time esteemed the most perfect in Europe; and in a correspondence with general sir D. Dundas, communicated the result of his knowledge to that most able tactician, from whose professional science his country has derived so much advantage in the first improvement of the disciplinary system; and it is believed that the first experiments of the new exercise were, by his majesty’s orders, reduced to the test of practice, under the eye of colonel Craig, in the 16th regiment. In 1793 he was appointed to the command of Jersey, and soon thereafter of Guernsey, as lieutenant-governor. In 1794 he was appointed adjutant-general to the army under his royal highness the duke of York, by whose side he served during the whole of that campaign on the continent, and whose favour and confidence he enjoyed to the latest moment of his life. In 1794 he obtained the rank of major-­general, and in the beginning of the following year, he was sent on the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, where, in the reduction and conquest of that most important settlement, with the co-operation of admiral sir G. K. Elphinstone, and major-gen. Clark, he attained to the highest pitch of his military reputation, and performed that signal service to his king and country, of which the memory will be as lasting as the national annals. Nor were his merits less conspicuous in the admirable plans of civil regulation, introduced by him in that hostile quarter, when invested with the chief authority, civil and military, as governor of the Cape, till succeeded in that situation by the earl of Macartney, in 1797, who, by a deputation from his majesty, invested general Craig with the red ribbon, as an honourable mark of his sovereign’s just sense of his distinguished services. Sir James Craig had scarcely returned to England, when it was his majesty’s pleasure to require his services on the staff in India. On his arrival at Madras, he was appointed to the command of an expedition against Manilla, which not taking place, he proceeded to Bengal, and took the field service. During a five years command in India, his attention and talents were unremittingly exerted to the improvement of the discipline of the Indian army, and to the promotion of that harmonious co-operation between its different constituent parts, on which not only the military strength, but the civil arrangement of that portion of the British empire so essentially depend. January 1801, sir James Craig was promoted to the rank of lieutenantgeneral, and returned to England in 1S02. He was appointed to the command of the eastern district, and remained in England till 1805, when, notwithstanding his constitution was much impaired by a long train of most active and fatiguing service, he was appointed by his sovereign to take the command of the British troops in the Mediterranean. He proceeded to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Malta, and from thence to Naples, to act in co-operation with the Russian army. But these plans being frustrated by the event of the battle of Austerlitz, sir James withdrew the troops from Naples to Messina, in Sicily. During the whole period of his command in the Mediterranean, he had suffered severely from that malady which terminated his life, a dropsy, proceeding from an organic affection of the liver; and feeling his disease sensibly gaining ground, he returned, with his sovereign’s permission, to England in 1805. A temporary abatement of his disorder flattering him with a prospect of recovery, and being unable to reconcile his mind to a situation of inactivity, he once more accepted of an active command from the choice of his sovereign; and in 1808, on the threatening appearance of hostilities with the United American States, was sent out to Quebec, as governor in chief of British America. The singular union of vigour and prudence, which distinguished his government in that most important official situation, are so recently impressed on the public mind, as to need no detail in this place. His merits were avowed and felt on both sides of the Atlantic: and as they proved the termination, so they will "ever be felt as throwing the highest lustre on the whole train of his public services. His constitution being now utterly enfeebled by a disease which precluded all hope of recovery, he returned to England in July 1811. Within three weeks of his death he was promoted to the rank of general. He looked forward with manly fortitude to his approaching dissolution, and in January 1812, ended a most honourable and useful career by an easy death, at the age of sixty-two.

, a divine of the church of Scotland, was the son of a merchant in Glasgow, where he was horn in February 1709; and in the seminaries of education in that city, he began and prosecuted his studies. At college he distinguished himself by his early taste and uncommon proficiency in classical learning; and received great assistance and encouragement from his kinsman the rev. Mr. Clerk, of Neilston in Renfrewshire. The moral philosophy of the ancients engaged his attention in a particular manner: and the moral writers of Greece and Rome were his favourite authors. By the attentive perusal of their works, and of the moral poets of antiquity, he had committed to his memory a great number of their most striking passages, and used to apply them occasionally, in the company of his select friends, with great ease, judgment, and ingenuity. In this he had an excellent example in the practice of his friend and instructor, the justly-celebrated Dr. Hutcheson, who was elected to the professorship of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow about the time that Craig had nearly finished his theological and philosophical course. W T ith this amiable and eminent philosopher he was early and intimately connected. Com-­mencing preacher in 1734, his philosophical monitor embraced every opportunity of hearing him; and with a frankness which shewed the opinion he entertained of the candour and abilities of his disciple, he offered such remarks on his sermons as he thought necessary. He particularly admonished him against a propensity to which young clergymen of ability are very liable, of indulging themselves in abstruse and philosophical disquisition. He advised, because he knew he was able to follow the advice, to preach to and from the heart. He did so. Habitually pious, ardently devout, and deeply interested in the welfare of those who listened to his instruction, he delivered himself with genuine and becoming earnestness. This was the spirit that directed his manner, which was solemn, yet animated; earnest, but correct; and though correct, not formal.

It is not to be supposed that a preacher of such eminence, especially at a time when this mode of preaching was rare, should remain unknown or unnoticed. He soon received a presentation from Mr. Lockhart of Cambusnethan, to be minister of that parish and settled there in the year 1737. About this time great opposition was made by the people of Scotland, and particularly by those of Clydesdale, to the manner of appointing ministers by presentations from lay-patrons, and Mr. Craig encountered considerable opposition. Zealous, however, in the discharge of his duty, and hoping, in the conscious ardour of his endeavours, to reconcile his parishioners to that system of instruction which he thought best suited to their condition, and most consistent with Christianity, he refused a presentation to a church in Airshire, offered him by Mr. Montgomery of Coilsfield; and another offered him by the amiable but unfortunate earl of Kilmarnock. At length he accepted of a presentation to a church in Glasgow, the place of his nativity, where most of his relations resided, where he could have opportunities of conversing with his literary friends, and where the field for doing good was more extensive. He was first appointed minister of the Wyndchurch in that city: and, after the building of St. Andrew’s churrh, one of the most elegant places of public worship in Scotland, he was removed thither. His audience was at no time so numerous, but especially during the last fiveand-twenty years of his life, as those who valued good composition and liberality of sentiment apprehended that he deserved.

Craig about this time married the daughter of Mr. Anderson, a considerable merchant in Glasgow. She lived with him sixteen years; and by her he had several children; two of whom, namely, William, an eminent lawyer at the Scottish bar, and John, a merchant in Glasgow, survived their father. But the excellent understanding and amiable dispositions of his wife, which rendered his married state happy, contributed, by their painful recollection, to embitter the sufferings of his declining age. She died in 1758 and though he afterwards formed a very happy marriage with the daughter of Gilbert Kennedy, esq. of Auchtifardel, he scarcely ever recovered the shock of his first separation. Several years before he died, his strength and health gradually declined; his spirits were overwhelmed with melancholy; he seemed to have lost the power of enjoying happiness-; no amusement could relieve his depressions; he lamented that he was become useless; and that he felt, not only his body, but the faculties of his soul impaired. His sufferings were heightened by many additional afflictions; particularly by the death of his son Alexander, a very agreeable young man, who had been bred a merchant, but who was strongly inclined to the study of polite literature: and soon after by the death of his second wife, whose affectionate assiduities had been invariably employed in endeavouring to solace and support his infirmities. In this state of feebleness and dejection, notwithstanding the unwearied attention of, his surviving sons, he continued to languish: and, at length, in 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, he was released by an easy death. Great sensibility seems to have given the general and prevailing colour to his character. It rendered his piety devout, his benevolence tender, and his friendship affectionate. In the culture of his understanding it inclined him to those studies that please by their beautiful imagery, or touch the heart with agreeable feelings. He was therefore very early addicted to classical learning; and cherished those views of religion that represent both God and man in a favourable light. Such sentiments and propensities, though not altogether singular at the time that he commenced his studies, were, however, so rare among students of theology, that, speaking figuratively, we may call them singular. But singularity of disposition or opinion is usually disliked or opposed. The man of fortitude and strong nerves encounters the opposition; and either makes converts, or, by a bold authoritative tone, though he fails to conciliate affection, imposes respect. But the man of extreme sensibility, yielding to his native bias, is afraid of the struggle, declines the contest; and, excepting in the retirements of confidential friendship, not only appears, but really becomes shy and reserved. This disposition is nearly allied to modesty, and even humbleness of mind; yet the appearance of distance it so often assumes, is misrepresented by the undiscerning multitude; and, by a violent misapplication of terms, is misconstrued into pride. Effects almost of an opposite appearance are produced by the same principle, yet tend in their final issue to confirm this mistaken reserve. The man of sensibility, conscious of powers, exerts them; and, conscious of his own candour, expects suitable returns. He is disappointed. The observation of men is otherwise engaged: accidental circumstances, and other causes than such as arise from perversion of mind, carry away their attention from the merit that claims and deserves their notice. Of these the man of shy and retired sensibility is not aware; he becomes still more cautious in his intercourse with mankind; more shy, and more retired. But Craig, under the sacred shade, and in the retirements of intimate and confidential friendship, was unreserved, open, and even ardent. The spirit of real enjoyment, with which in his better days he engaged in familiar and literary conversation with his friends, displayed the most interesting view of his character. Conversations on the merits of elegant authors, both ancient and modern, but, above all, the liberal discussion of moral and religious topics, were the joy of his soul. On these occasions, his eyes, naturally animated, sparkled with additional lustre; his voice, naturally musical, became delightfully mellow; his features brightened, for his heart glowed. These were blessed intervals, anticipations, perhaps, of what he now enjoys. By degrees, this glowing mood became tinged with melancholy: at first it was amiable and interesting; but became at last distressful. The sensibility which gave him such moments of rapture, had not, perhaps, been duly managed; and contributed to or occasioned his sufferings. It had rendered him averse to indiscriminate society, and thus precluded him from many innocent means of relieving the lassitude, or alleviating the weight of declining age. It quickened his sense of misfortune, and rendered his affliction for the loss of friends too poignant. It overwhelmed him with too much sorrow, if at any time he apprehended that the affection of those in whose love he trusted had suffered change. His sense of deity was strong and lively. Even though the dejection and the despondency of affliction might at times have brought a gloomy cloud between him and the radiance of heaven, the cloud was transient: his religious opinions, founded not merely on feeling, but on conviction, were permanent: and even in the earlier periods of his life he often lamented that men of worth and integrity were not pious; and though they performed many charitable and disinterested actions from very laudable motives, yet that their conduct did not seem to be founded on any principles of religion. It might be friendship, it might be compassion, it might be beneficence; but it wanted those aids, those supports and comforts, which alone could arise from hope and trust in God. It is unnecessary to say of such a character, that he was just, charitable, and temperate. His virtues were those of a Christian, his failings were those incident to the weakness of human nature; and his sufferings were occasioned, or much aggravated by his feelings.

, a learned protestant divine, was born at Retz in the new march of Brandenburgh, Jan. 20, 1568, where his father was pastor of the church, and for some time superintended his education. In 1531 he was sent to Lansberg, where he was educated in Greek and Latin by J. M. Capito, and afterwards pursued his studies at other seminaries, particularly Rostock, where he applied to philosophy and mathematics under Dr. Duncan Liddel, a learned native of Scotland, and Gotschovius. Under the presidentship of Dr. Liddel he defended a thesis on the organon of Aristotle with great applause, and lectured on the ethics to some of his fellow-students. About this time, 1590, the son of the prime minister of Denmark, Rosenkranz, being at Rostock for his education, Cramer was appointed his tutor, and afterwards accompanied him to Denmark, and to the university of Whtemberg; here he was appointed professor of logic, and superintendant of the scholars who were exhibitioners. From hence, being invited to Stettin, he was made first dean, and professor, and assessor of the consistory. In 1597 he was appointed pastor at Marienkirk, and inspector of the college. In 1598 he received the degree of doctor of divinity at Wittemberg, where Moreri, blunderingly, makes him die in the following year: on the contrary, after refusing many preferments, he remained here until Oct. 5, 1637, on which day he died, in his sixty-ninth year. His works, both in Latin and German, are very numerous. Freher has given a complete list, in which we find several treatises on Aristotle, “Emblematum Sacrorum Decades X.” with plates, and Latin, German, Italian and French verses,“8vo. ”Isagoge ad libros Propheticos et Apostolicos,“8vo;” Arbor hsereticse consanguinitatis," a history of heresies, divided into four classes, 4to; and various controversial works in favour of the Lutheran opinions.

, an eminent mathematician, was born at Geneva, in 1704, and became a pupil of John Bernouilli, and a professor of mathematics at the age of nineteen. He was known all over Europe, and was of the academies of London, Berlin, Montpellier, Lyons, and Bologna. He died in 1752, worn out with study, at the baths of Languedoc, whither he had repaired for the recovery of his health. He made a most important and interesting collection of the works of James and John Bernouilli, which was published 1743, under his inspection, in 6 vols. 4to, and he had before bestowed no less pains on an edition of Christopher Wolf’s “Elementa universae matheseos,” Genev. 1732 1741, 5 vols. 4to. The only work he published of his own was an excellent “Introduction to the Theory of Curve lines,” 1750, 4to. L'Avocat says he was an universal genius, a living Encyclopedia, and a man of pious and exemplary conduct. His family appears to have been numerous and literary. There wap another Gabriel Cramer, probably his father, who was born at Geneva, 1641, rose to be senior of the faculty of medicine, died in 1724, and left a son, John Isaac, who took the degree of doctor in 1696, succeeded to his practice, and published an “Epitome of Anatomy,” and a “Dissertation on Diseases of the Liver,” left by his father. Also, “Thesaurus secretorum curiosorum, in quo curiosa, ad omnes corporis humani, turn internes turn externos, morbos curandos, &c. continentur,” 1709, 4to, He again was succeeded by his son, John Andrew Cramer, who rendered himself famed by his skill in mineralogy and chemistry; and published at Leyden, in 1739, 2 vols. 8vo, “Elementa Artis Docirnasticae.” It was reprinted in 1744, and again translated into French, in 1755. He wrote also a treatise on the management of forests and timber, and gave public lectures on Assaying, both in Holland and England. He died Dec. 6, 1777. Tn his person he was excessiyely slovenly, in his temper irritable, and when disputes occurred, not very delicate in his language.

, a learned protestant divine, was born at Elcau, Feb. 14, 1678, and was first instructed in classical learning by his father, who was a pastor of the reformed church, and who intended him for the medical profession, but by the advice of his brother, professor of the oriental languages at Zurich, he studied divinity, after the death of his father, in 1693, and was admitted into the ministry in 1699. The same year he accompanied his brother to Herborn, where the latter had been appointed professor of divinity, and pursued his studies in that place for two years, under the ablest professors. He then removed to Leyden, and having made great progress in Hebrew antiquities, he published there, in 1702, his “Seven Dissertations on the Hilcoth Biccurim.” His brother dying at Zurich the same year, he was unanimously chosen to succeed him as Hebrew professor, and on Sept. 18, he opened his lectures with a discourse “de philologis a reformatione in schola Tigurina claris.” In 1705 he was appointed to teach sacred and profane history, and the year following succeeded to the Hebrew professorship in the superior college. In 1725 he succeeded John James Lavater, the elder, as professor of theology, and after some other preferments, the duties of which appear to have affected his health, he died July 14, 1737. His works are very numerous: 1. “Decas Thesium Theologicarum,” 1704, 4to. 2. “Constitutiones de primitivis R. Mosis F. Maimonis, &c. cum versione et notis philologicis,” Leyden, 1702, 4to. 3. “De Summa pryedicationis apostolicae, quod Jesus sit Christus,” 1725, 4to. 4. “De genuina indole fidei Jesum ceu Christum recipientis,” two parts, 1726 and 1727, 4to. 5. “Dissertationes Theolog. VII. de benedictione Mosis in tribum Levi enunciata,” 1725, 1736, 4to. 6. “Positiones theolog. ex pastorali instructione sancti Pauli ad Titum data,” 1727, 4to. 7. “Demonstratio quibus in rebus S'erae religionis prsestantia ponenda sit,” 172H. 8. “De nonnullis Antichrist! characteribus,” 1729, 4to. He published, also, various other dissertations in Latin and German, and after his death appeared, “Meditatio sacra in verba S. Pauli, quee beatitudinem in Domino morientium veram ac certam demonstrat,” Zurich, 1737, 4to. His funeral oration was pronounced by John James Zimmerman.

, the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of Thomas Cranmer, esq. and of Agnes, daughter of Laurence Hatfield, of Willoughby, in Nottinghamshire. He was born at Aslacton, in that county, July 2, 1489, and educated in grammar learning, under a rude and severe parish-clerk, of whom he learned little, and endured much. In 1503, at the age of fourteen, he was admitted into Jesus college, in Cambridge; of which he became fellow, and where he studied such learning as the times afforded, till the age of twenty-two, For the next four or five years he applied himself to polite literature; and for three years more, to the study of the Scriptures. After he was M. A. he married a gentleman’s daughter named Joan, living at the Dolphin, opposite Jesus-lane, and having by this match lost his fellowship, he took up his residence at the Dolphin, and became reader of the common lecture in Buckingham, now Magdalen college; but his wife dying in child-bed within a year, he was again admitted fellow of Jesus college. Upon cardinal Wolsey’s foundation of his new college at Oxford, Cranmer was nominated to be one of the fellows; but he refused the offer, or, as some say, was on the road to Oxford, when he was persuaded to return to Cambridge. In 1523, he was made D. D. reader of the theological lecture in his own college; and one of the examiners of those that took the degrees in divinity. The most immediate cause of his advancement to the greatest favour with king Henry VIII. and, in consequence of that, to the highest dignity in the church of England, was the opinion he gave in the matter of that king’s divorce. Having, on account of the plague at Cambridge, retired to Waltham-abbey, in Essex, to the house of one Mr. Cressy, to whose wife he was related, and whose sons were his pupils at the university; Edward Fox, the king’s almoner, and Stephen Gardiner, the secretary, happened accidentally to come to that house, and the conversation turning upon what then was a popular topic, the king’s divorce, Cranmer, whose opinion was asked, said, that “it would be much better to have this question, e whether a man may marry his brother’s wife, or no?' decided and discussed by the divines, and by the authority of the word of God, than thus from year to year prolong the time by having recourse to the pope; and that this might be done as well in England in the universities here, as at Rome, or elsewhere.” This opinion being communicate-d by Dr. Fox to the king, his majesty approved of it much; saying, in his coarse language, that Cranmer “had the sow by the right ear.” On this, Cranmer was sent for to court, made the king’s chaplain, ordered to write upon the subject of the divorce, furnished with books for that purpose, and placed in the family of Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. When he had finished his book, he went to Cambridge to dispute upon that point, and brought several over to his opinion, which was, that, according to the Scriptures, general councils, and ancient writers, the pope had no authority to dispense with the word of God. About this time he was presented to a living, and made archdeacon of Tauntpn. In 1530 he was sent, with some others, into France, Italy, and Germany, to discuss the affair of the king’s marriage. At Rome he got his book presented to the pope, and offered to dispute openly against the validity of king Henry’s marriage; but no one chose to engage him. While he was at Rome, the pope constituted him his pcenitentiary throughout England, Ireland, and Wales. In Germany he was sole embassador on the same affair; and in 1532 concluded a treaty of commerce between England and the Low Countries. He was also employed on an embassy to the duke of Saxony, and other Protestant princes. During his residence in Germany, he married at Nuremberg a second wife, named Anne, niece of Osiander’s wife. Upon the death of archbishop Warham, in August 1532, Cranmer was nominated for his successor; but, holding still to his opinion on the supremacy, he refused to accept of that dignity, unless he was to receive it immediately from the king, without the pope’s intervention Before his consecration, the king so far engaged him in the business of his divorce, that he made him a party and an actor almost in every step he took in that affair. He not only pronounced the sentence of divorce between king Henry and queen Catherine, at Dunstable, May the 23d, 1533, but, according to Parker, married him to Anne Boleyn; although lord Herbert says they were privately married by Rowland Lee, afterwards bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, in the presence of lady Anne’s father, mother, and brother, Dr. Cranmer, and the duke of Norfolk. However this may be, on March 30th, 1533, he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, by the bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St. Asaph, when he made an unusual protestation. His design was by this expedient to save his liberty, to renounce every clause in his oath which barred him doing his duty to God, the king, and his country. Collier, who often argues as if he were fee'd by the church of Rome, thinks there was something of human infirmity in this management, because it was not made at Koine to the pope, nor by Cranmer’s proxies there, before the obtaining of the bulls, not perceiving that Cranmer’s opposition to the power of the pope was as uniform as it had been early, and the effect of conviction. The temporalities of the archbishopric were restored to Cranmer the 29th of April following. Soon after, he forbad all preaching throughout his diocese, and visited it this year in December. The pope threatening him with excommunication, on account of his sentence against queen Catherine, he appealed from his holiness to a general council, and in the ensuing parliaments, strenuously disputed against the pope’s supremacy. All along he showed himself a zealous promoter of the reformation; and, as the first step towards it, procured the convocation to petition the king that the Bible might be translated into English. When that was obtained, he diligently encouraged the printing and publication of it, and caused it to be recommended by royal authority, and to be dispersed as much as he possibly could. Next, he forwarded the dissolution of the monasteries, which were one of the greatest obstacles to a reformation *. He endeavoured also to restore the church of England to its original purity. In 1535 he performed a provincial visitation, in order to recommend the king’s supremacy, and preached upon that subject in several parts of his diocese, urging that the bishop of Rome was not God’s vicar upon earth, as supposed, and that that see so much boasted of, and by which name popes affected to be styled, was but a holiness in name, and that there was no such holiness at Rome, as he easily proved from the vices of the court of Rome. In

1537 he visited his diocese, and endeavoured to abolish the superstitious observation of holidays. In 1538, he was in a commission against the anabaptists, and visited the diocese of Hereford. The next year, he and some of the bishops fell under the king’s displeasure, because they could not be brought to give their consent in Parliament, that the monasteries should be suppressed for the king’s sole use. He also strenuously opposed the Act for the six articles, in the house of lords. It has been observed by a late biographer, that he never appeared in a more truly Christian light than on this occasion. In the midst of so general a defection (for there were numbers in the house who had hitherto shewn great forwardness in reformation), he alone made a stand. Three days he maintained his ground, and baffled the arguments of all opposers. But argument was not their weapon, and the archbishop saw himself obliged to sink under superior power. Henry ordered him to leave the house. The primate refused “It was God’s business,” he said, “and not man’s.” And when he could do no more, he boldly entered his protest, and upon the passing of the statute, sent his wife into Germany. In 1540 he was one of the commissioners for inspecting into matters of religion, and explaining some of its chief doctrines. The result of their commission was the book entitled “A necessary erudition of any Christian man.” After lord Cromwell’s death (in whose behalf he had written to the king), he retired, and lived in great privacy, meddling not at all with state affairs. In 1541, he gave orders, pursuant to the king’s directions, for taking away superstitious shrines; and exchanging Bishopsbourn for Bekesbourn, united the latter to his diocese. In 1542 he procured the “Act for the advancement of true religion, and the abolishment of the contrary,” which moderated the rigour of the six articles. But, the year following, some persons preferring accusations against him, for being an enemy to popery, he would have been ruined, had not the king interposed in his behalf. He was complained of in the house of commons, and in the privycouncil, and was very near being sent to the Tower; but the king protected him, and gave him his ring, as a token that he took the affair into his own hands. The substance of the accusations against him, which were contrived by Gardiner, the implacable enemy to the reformation, was.

bishop of Canterbury; Nicolas Rid- Lincoln; John Skip, bishop of Hereley, bishop of Rochester, afterwards ford; Thomas Thirlby, bishop of Westbook towards the end of the next year, and several things changed or amended that were thought to savour too much of superstition. In 1552, it was printed again with amendments and alterations, by the archbishop’s care, and authorized by parliament. This same year, he and some others compiled the articles of religion, and caused them, to be enjoined by the king’s authority. He confined not his care to the church of England, but extended it also to those protestant foreigners who fled to England, by obtaining churches for them, and recommending them to the favour and protection of the crown.

His palace at Lambeth, says Mr. Gilpin, might be called a seminary of learned men; the greater part of whom persecution had driven from home. Here, among other celebrated reformers, Martyr, Bucer, Aless, Pha.je, found sanctuary. Martyr, Bucer, and Phage, were liberally pensioned by the archbishop, till he could otherwise provide for them. It was his wish to fix them in the two universities, where he hoped their great knowledge and spirit of inquiry would forward his designs of restoring learning; and he at length obtained professorships for them all. Bucer and Phage were settled at Cambridge; where they only shewed what might have been expected from them, both dying within a few months after their arrival. But at Oxford, Martyr acted a very conspicuous part; and contributed to introduce among the students there a very liberal mode of thinking. Aless had been driven from Scotland, his native country, for the novelty of his opinions. The cause in which he suffered, added to his abilities and learning, so far recommended him to the university of Leipsic, to which he retired, that he was chosen a professor there. At this place he became acquainted with Melancthon, who, having written a treatise on some part of the controversy between the papists and protestants, was desirous of consulting the archbishop on a few points; and engaged Aless, otherwise not averse to the employment, to undertake a voyage into England for that purpose. In the course of the conference, the archbishop was

minster, afterwards of Ely; George Paul’s; Dr. Thomas Robertson, archDay, bishop of Chichester; Dr. John deacon of Leicester, afterwards dean Taylor, dean, afterwards bishop of of Durham; Dr. Simon Heines, dean Lincoln; Dr. Richard Cox, chancellor of Exeter; and Dr. John Rednflayne, of Oxford, and dean of Christ-church master of Trinity-college, in Camand Westminster, afterwards bishop of bridge. Ely Dr. Willia'm May, dean of St. so much taken with his simplicity and learning, that he settled a pension on him, and retained him in his family. The misfortunes of the times drew Alasco also into England, where the archbishop became an early patron to him; and shewed on this occasion at least, the candour and liberality of his sentiments, by permitting a person who held many opinions very different from his own, to collect his brethren, and such as chose to communicate ttith him, into a church. At the head of this little assembly Alasco long presided, exhibiting an eminent example of piety and decency of manners. Among other learned foreigners, John Sleidan was under particular obligations to the archbishop. Sleidan was at that time engaged in writing the “History of the Reformation,” a work from which much was expected; and which the archbishop, by allowing him a pension, and opportunities of study, enabled him to prosecute with less difficulty than Jiad attended the beginning of his labours.

the third, he submitted to the king and qii'vn, and to all their laws, as well concerning the pope’s supremacy, as others: and promised, that he would stir and move all others to live in quietness and obedience to their majesties. As for his book, he was content to submit to the judgment of the Catholic church, and the next general council. Tiiis was followed by a fourth, wherein be- professed firmly, stedfastly, and assnndly to believe in all articles and points of the Christian religion and Catholic faith, as the Catholic church doih believe. Moreover, as concerning the sacraments, he declared he believed uiiiVig-iiediy in all poinis as the said Catholic church did. In the fifth paper, which is that in Fox, and has been thought to be his only recantation, they required of him, to renounce and anathematize all Lutheran and Zumglian heresies and errors; to acknowledge the one only Catholic church, to be that whereof the pope is the head; and to declare him Christ’s vicar. Then followed an express acknowledgment of transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, and of all the doctrines of the church of Rome in general. A sixth was still required of him, which was drawn up in so strong terms, that nothing was capable of being added to it. For it contained a large acknowledgment of all the popish errors and corruptions, and a most grievous accusation of himself as a blasphemer, enemy of Christ, and murderer of souls, on account of his being the author of king Henry’s divorce, and of all the calamities, schisms, and heresies of which that was the fountain. This was subscribed on the 18lh of March. These six papers were, soon after his death, sent to the press by Bonner, and published with the addition of another, which they had prepared for him to speak at St. Mary’s, before his execution: and though he then spoke to a quite contrary effect, and revoked his former recantations, Bonner had the confidence to publish this to the world, as if it had been approved and made use of by the archbishop. In 1736, William Whiston, M. A. published a little book, entitled “An Enquiry into the Evidence of Archbishop Cranmer’s Recantation: or reasons for a suspicion that the pretended copy of it is not genuine.” In this he supposes, that what Cranmer signed, was only the first part of the Recantation printed in Fox’s “Acts and Monuments,” as far as the words -“without which there is no Salvation,” that the rest was added by the papists, but that Cranmer never set his hand to it. the king and queen; to love each other; and to be charitable. After this he made a confession of his faith, beg nning with the Creed, and concluding with these words, “And I believe every word and sentence taught by our Saviour Jesus Christ, his apostles and prophets, in the Old and New Testament. And now,” added he, “I come to the great thing, that so much troubleth my conscience more than any thing I ever did or said in my whole life-; and that is the setting abroad a writing contrary to the truth, which 1 here now renounce as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which 1 thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be; that is, all such bills and papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished; for, may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned. As for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine. And as for the Sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the bishop of Winchester.” Thunderstruck as it were with this unexpected declaration, the enraged popish crowd admonished him not to dissemble: “Ah,” replied he with tears, “since I lived hitherto, I have been a hater of falsehood, and a lover of simplicity, and never before this time have I dissembled.” On this, they pulled him off the stage with the utmost fury, and hurried him to the place of his martyrdom, over against Baliol-college; where he put off his clothes in haste, and standing in his shirt, and without shoes, was fastened with a chain to the stake. Some pressing him to agree to his former recantation, he answered, showing his hand, “This is the hand that wrote it, and therefore it shall first suffer punishment.” Fire being applied to him, he stretched out his right hand into the flame, and held it there unmoved (except that once with it he wiped his face) till it was consumed, crying with a loud voice, “This hand hath offended;” and often repeating, “This unworthy right hand.” At last, the fire getting up, he soon expired, never stirring or crying out all the while, only keeping his eyes fixed to heaven, and repeating more than once, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Such was the end of the renowned Thomas Cranmer, in the 67th year of his age, a man who deservedly ranks high among the most illustrious characters in ecclesiastical history, although his conduct was not in all respects free from blame. Of the two instances in which Cranmer has been accused of retaining the spirit of persecution, after he had got rid of every other attribute of popery, Mr. Gilpin gives the following account: “Joan Bocher and George Paris were accused, though at different times, one for denying the humanity of Christ the other for denying his divinity. They were both tried, and condemned to the stake: and the archbishop not only consented to these acts of blood; but even persuaded the aversion of the young king into a compliance.” Your majesty must distinguish (said he, informing his royal pupil’s conscience) between common opinions, and such as are the essential articles of faith. These latter we must on no account suffer to be opposed.“Mr. Gilpin justly observes, that” nothing even plausible can be suggested in defence of the archbishop on this occasion; except only that the spirit of popery was not yet wholly repressed." That he was not, however, a man of blood, and that in every case of personal injury he was the most placable of human beings, is amply confirmed by all authorities. The last act of Henry’s reign, says the same biographer, was an act of blood; and gave the archbishop a noble opportunity of shewing, how well he had learned that great Christian lesson of forgiving an enemy. Almost without the shadow of justice, Henry had given directions to have the duke of Norfolk attainted by an act of parliament. The king’s mandate stood in lieu of guilt; and the bill passed the house with great ease. No man, except the bishop of Winchester, had been so great an enemy to the archbishop as the duke of Norfolk. He had always thwarted the primate’s measures; and oftener than once had practised against his life. How many would have seen with secret pleasure the workings of Providence against so rancorous an enemy; satisfied in having themselves no hand in his unjust fate! But the archbishop saw the affair in another light; he saw it with horror: and although the king had in a particular manner interested himself in this business, the primate opposed the bill with all his might; and when his opposition was vain, he left the house with indignation, and retired to Croydon.

Bishop Burnet takes notice of some malevolent accusations that had been privately brought to the king against Cranmer, with a view to ruin him, including a charge of heresy, and on which subject his majesty conversed with him; and the bishop adds: “His candour and simplicity wrought so on the king, that he discovered to him the whole plot that was laid against him; and said, that instead of bringing him to any trial about it, he would have him try it out, and proceed against those his accusers. But he excused himself, and said it would not be decent for him to sit judge in his own cause. But the king said to him, he was resolved none other should judge it, but those he should name. So he named his chancellor and his register; to whom the king added another: and a commission being given them, they went into Kent, and sat three weeks to find out the first contrivers of this accusation. And now every one disowned it, since they saw he was still firmly rooted in the king’s esteem and favour. But it being observed, that the commissioners proceeded faintly, Cranmer’s friends moved, that some man of courage and authority might be sent thither, to canvass this accusation more carefully. So Dr. Lee, dean of York, was brought up about Allhallow-tide, and sent into Kent.And he, who had been well acquainted with the arts of discovering secrets, when he was one of the visitors of the abbies, managed it more vigorously. He ordered a search to be made of all suspected persons; among whose papers letters were found, both from the bishop of Winchester, and Dr. London, and some of those whom Cranmer had treated with the greatest freedom and kindness, in which the whole plot against him was discovered. But it was now near the session of parliament: and the king was satisfied with the discovery, but thought it not fit to make much noise of it. And he received no addresses from the archbishop to prosecute it further: who was so noted for his clemency, and following our Saviour’s rule of doing good for evil, that it was commonly said, the way to get his favour was to do him an injury. These were the only instances in which he expressed his resentments. Two of the conspirators against him had been persons signally obliged by him. The one was the bishop suffragan of Dover; the other was a civilian, whom he had employed much in his business. But all the notice he took of it was to shew them their letters, and to admonish them to be more faithful and honest for the future. Upon which he freely forgave them, and carried it so to them afterwards, as if he had absolutely forgotten what they had contrived against him. And a person of quality coming to him about that time, to obtain his favour and assistance in a suit, in which he was to move the king, he went about it, and had almost procured it: but the king calling to mind that he had been one of his secret accusers, asked him whether he took him for his friend. He answered that he did so. Then the king said, the other was a knave, and his mortal enemy; and bad him, when he should see him next, call him knave to his face. Cranmer answered, that such language did not become a bishop. But the king sullenly commanded him to do it; yet his modesty was such, that he could not obey so harsh a command. And so he passed the matter over. When these things came to be known, all persons, that were not unjustly prejudiced against him, acknowledged, that his behaviour was suitable to the example and doctrine of the meek and lowly Saviour of the world: and very well became so great a bishop, and such a reformer of the Christian religion; who in those sublime and extraordinary instances practised that which he taught others to do.”

Among others, who were under obligations to the archbishop’s generosity, was the amiable bishop Latimer, who not choosing to be reinstated in his old bishopric, and having made but an indifferent provision for his future necessities, spent a great part of his latter life with the archbishop, at Lambeth; and besides this intimacy with learned men at home, the archbishop held a constant correspondence with most of the learned men in Europe. The great patron of Erasmus had been archbishop Warham; than whom, to give popery its due, few churchmen of those times led a more apostolical life. When Cranmer succeeded Warham, Erasmus was in the decline of age. He found, however, during the short time he lived, as beneficent a friend under the new archbishop, as he had lost in the old one. The primate corresponded also with Osiander, Melancthon, and Calvin. His foreign correspondence, indeed, was so large, that he appointed a person with a salary at Canterbury, whose chief employment it was, to forward and receive his packets.

He was a sensible writer, rather nervous than elegant. His writings were entirely confined to the great controversy which then subsisted; and contain the whole sum of the theological learning of those times. His library was filled with a very noble collection of books; and was open to all men of letters. “I meet with authors here,” Roger Ascham would say, “which the two universities cannot furnish.” At the archbishop’s death, the greater part of his original Mss. were left at his palace of Ford near Canterbury, where they fell into the hands of his enemies. In the days of Elizabeth, archbishop Parker, who had an intimation that many of them were still in being, obtained an order from lord Burleigh, then secretary of state, in 1563. to search for them in all suspected places; and recovered a great number of them. They found their way afterwards into some of the principal libraries of England; but the greatest collection of them were deposited in Bene't-college in Cambridge.

In his sermons to the people he was very plain and instructive; insisting chiefly on the essentials of Christianity. Sir Richard Morrison, a gentleman who had been much employed in embassies abroad, both under Henry the eighth and Edward the sixth, gives us this character of the archbishop’s sermons, of which he was a frequent auditor: “The subjects of his sermons, for the most part, were, from whence salvation is to be fetched and on whom the confidence of man ought to lean. They insisted much on doctrines of faith and works; and taught what the fruits of faith were, and what place was to be given to works. They instructed men in the duties they owed their neighbour; and that every one was our neighbour, to whom we might any way do good. They declared, what men ought to think of themselves, after they had done all; and lastly, what promises Christ hath made; and who they are, to whom he will make them good. Thus he brought in the true preaching of the Gospel, altogether different from the ordinary way of preaching in those days, which was to treat concerning saints, to tell legendary tales of them, and to report miracles wrought for the confirmation of transubstantiation, and other popish corruptions. And such a heat of conviction accompanied his sermons, that the people departed from them with minds possessed of a great hatred of vice, and burning with a desire of virtue.”

He was a very amiable master in his family; and admirably preserved the difficult medium between indulgence and restraint. He had, according to the custom of the times, a very numerous retinue; among whom the most exact order was observed. Every week the steward of his household held a kind of court in the great hall of his palace, in which all family affairs were settled; servants wages were paid; complaints were heard; and faults examined. Delinquents were publicly rebuked, and after the third admonition discharged. His hospitality and charities were great and noble, equal to his station, greater often than his abilities. A plentiful table was among the virtues of those days. His was always bountifully covered. In an upper room was spread his own; where he seldom wanted company of the first distinction. Here a great many learned foreigners were daily entertained, and partook of his bounty. In his great hall a long table was plentifully covered, every day, for guests and strangers of a lower rank; at the upper end of which were three smaller tables, designed for his own officers, and inferior gentlemen. The learned Tremellius, who had himself often been an eye-witness of the archbishop’s hospitality, gives this character of it: “Archiepiscopi domus, publicum erat doctis, et piis omnibus hospitium; quod ipse hospes, Mcecenas, et pater, talibus semper patere voluit, quoad vixit, aut potuit homo piXofevo; nee minus <pi*o*oyoj.”

It has been taken notice of, that after the passing of the act for the six articles, archbishop Cranmer sent his wife into Germany. But she afterwards returned again to England; and Mr. Strype informs us, that " in the time of king Edward, when the marriage of the clergy was allowed, he brought her forth, and lived openly with- her. 7 ' He left behind him a widow and children but as he always kept his family in obscurity, for prudential reasons, we know little about them. They had been kindly provided for by Henry VIII.; who, without any solicitation from the primate himself, gave him a considerable grant from the abbey of Welbeck in Nottinghamshire; which his family enjoyed after his decease. King Edward made some addition to his private fortune: and his heirs were restored in blood by an act of parliament, in the reign of Elizabeth.

, the last celebrated philosopher of the Old Academy, a native of Soli in Cilicia, flourished about 30O years B. C. and died about the 270th year B. C. He studied under Xenocrates and Polemo; and he was the first who wrote commentaries on the works of Plato, whose system he supported. He was highly celebrated for the purity of his moral doctrine, as we may infer from the praises that are bestowed by the ancients upon his discourse “On Grief,” which Cicero calls “a small but golden piece, adapted to heal the wounds of the mind, not by encouraging stoical insensibility, but by suggesting arguments drawn from the purest fountains of philosophy.” That Grantor acquired great reputation as a moral preceptor is intimated by Horace.

"Who better taught fair virtue’s sacred rules,

, an English poet, was the son of the rev. William Crashaw, a divine of some note in his day, and preacher at the Temple church, London. He published several volumes on points controverted between the Roman catholics and protestants, either original or translated; and in 1608, a translation of the Life of Galeacius Caracciolo, marquis of Vico, an Italian nobleman, who was converted by the celebrated reformer Peter Martyr, and forsook all that rank, family, and wealth could yield, for the quiet enjoyment of the reformed religion. Mr. Crashaw also translated a supposed poem of St. Bernard’s, entitled “The Complaint or Dialogue between the Soule and the Bodie of a damned man,” 1616, and in the same year published a “Manual for true Catholics, or a handfull or rather a heartfull of holy Meditations and Prayers.” All these show him to have been a zealous protestant; but, like his son, somewhat tinctured with a love of mystic poetry and personification.

In 1641, Wood informs us, he took degrees at Oxford. At what time he was admitted into holy orders is uncertain, but he soon became a popular preacher, full of energy and enthusiasm. In 1644, when the parliamentary army expelled those members of the university who refused to take the covenant, Crashaw was among the number; and being unable to contemplate with resignation or indifference, the ruins of the church-establishment, went over to France, where his sufferings and their peculiar influence on his mind prepared him to embrace the Roman catholic religion. Before he left England, he appears to have practised many of the austerities of a mistaken piety, and the poems entitled “Steps to the Temple,” were so called in allusion to his passing his time almost constantly in St. Mary’s church, Cambridge. “There,” says the author of the preface to his poems, “he lodged under Tertullian’s roof of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David’s swallow near the house of God; where like a primitive saint he offered more prayers in the night, than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these poems,” Steps for happy souls to climb Heaven by.“The same writer informs us that he understood Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, and was skilled in poetry, music, drawing, painting, and engraving, which last he represents as” recreations for vacant hours, not the grand business of his soul."

In 1646, the poet Cowley found Crashaw in France in great distress, and introduced him to the patronage of Charles the First’s queen, who gave him letters of recommendation to Italy. There he became secretary to one of the cardinals at Rome, and was made canon in the church of Loretto, where he died of a fever, soon after this last promotion, about the year 1650. Cowley’s very elegant and affectionate lines may be seen in the works of that poet. Mr. Hayley remarks, that “fine as they are, Cowley has sometimes fallen into the principal defect of the poet whom he is praising. He now and then speaks of sacred things with a vulgar and ludicrous familiarity of language, by which (to use a happy expression of Dr. Johnson’s), ` readers far short of sanctity, may be offended in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate. 1 Let us add, that if the poetical character of Crashaw seem not to answer this glowing panegyric; yet in his higher character of saint, he appears to have had the purest title to this affectionate eulogy.” It appears by a passage in Selden’s Table Talk, that Crashaw had at one time an intention of writing against the stage, and that Selden succeeded in diverting him from his purpose. He had not, however, to regret that the stage outlived the church.

Crashaw’s poems were first published in 1646, under the title of, 1. Steps to the Temple. 2. The Delights of the Muses. 3. Sacred Poems presented to the Countess of Denbigh. But Mr. Hayley is of opinion that this third class only was published at that time, and that the two others were added to the subsequent editions. So many republications within a short period, and that period not very favourable to poetry, sufficiently mark the estimation in which this devotional enthusiast was held, notwithstanding his having relinquished the church in which he had been educated. His poems prove him to have been of the school which produced Herbert and Quarles. Herbert was his model, and Granger attributes the anonymous poems, at the end of Herbert’s volume, to Crashaw; but however partial Crashaw might be to Herbert, it is impossible he could have been the author of these anonymoVis poems, which did not appear until after his death, and were written by a clergyman of the church of England known to Walton, who subjoins some commendatory lines dated 1654.

, the most distinguished philosopher of the Cynic sect after Diogenes, was by birth a Theban, and flourished about the 113th olympiad, B. C. 328, and died after the year 287 B. C. He was honourably descended, and inherited a large estate; but when he devoted himself to philosophy, that he might be free from the dominion of those passions which are fostered by wealth, he distributed his whole properly among the poorer citizens. Leaving his native city, where he had been a disciple of Bryso, he went to Athens, and hecame a zealous disciple of Diogenes adopting all the singularities of his master. In his natural temper, however, he was not, like Diogenes, morose and gloomy, but cheerful and facetious. The following whimsical tarif of expences is attributed to him: To a cook should be given two minae, to a physician a drachma, to a flatterer five talents, to an adviser smoke, a talent to a courtezan, and three oboles to a philosopher. Being asked of what use philosophy was to him? “To teach me,” returned he, “to be contented with a vegetable diet, and to live exempt from care and trouble.” Alexander, curious to see this Cynic, offered to rebuild Thebes, the place of his nativity; “To what purpose?” interrogated Crates; “Another Alexander will destroy it afresh. The contempt of fame, and my complacency with poverty stand me in stead of a country: these are comforts that are above the reach of fortune.” Patient under injuries, he took no other revenge for a blow he had received from a certain Nicodromus, than by writing under the mark of it on his cheek, “Nicodromus fecit.” This disposition attached to him many friends, and procured for him access to the houses of the most wealthy Athenians, and he frequently became an arbiter of disputes and quarrels among relations. His influence in private families is said to have had a great e fleet in correcting the luxuries and vices which prevailed at that time in Athens. His wife, Hipparchia, who was rich and of a good family, and had many suitors, preferred Crates to every other, and when her parents opposed her inclination, so determined was her passion, she threatened to put an end to her life. Crates, at the request of her parents, represented to Hipparchia every circumstance in his condition and manner of -living, which might induce her to change her mind. Slill she persisted in her resolution, and not only became his wife, but adopted all the Cynic peculiarities. Disgraceful tales have been circulated concerning Crates and his wife; but since they do not appear in any writings of the period in which they lived, and are neither mentioned by Epictetus, who wrote an apology for the Cynic philosophy, nor by Lucian or Athenxus, who were so industrious in accumulating calumnies against philosophers, Brucker thinks they must be set down among the malicious fictions of later writers, who were desirous to bring the Cynic and Stoic sects into discredit. Had either Diogenes or Crates been the beasts which some have represented them, it is wholly incredible that Zeno and the Stoics would have treated their memory with so much respect.

There was another Crates, an Athenian, who succeeded Polemo in the direction of the old academy. Long attached to one another by a similarity of dispositions and pursuits, their friendship was uninterrupted whilst they lived, and they were both buried in the same grave. This Crates died about the year 250 B. C.

, an ancient comic poet, frequently mentioned by Quhuilian, Horace, and Persius, along with Eupolis and Aristophanes, as the great masters of what we call the ancient comedy, flourished in the 81st olympiad, about twenty or thirty years before Aristophanes. He was un Athenian, and appears to have spent his long life in his native city; where, if he did not invent comedy, he was at least the first who brought it into some form and method, and made it fit for the entertainment of a civilized audience, although it still retained many marks of its rude original. Persons and vices were exposed in barefaced satire, and the chief magistrates of the commonwealth ridiculed by name upon the stage. We find in Plutarch’s life of Pericles several passages out of Cratinus’s plays, where he reflected boldly on that great general. Cratinus appears to have been an excessive drinker, for which he offered the excuse that it was absolutely necessary to warm his fancy, and Horace quotes his authority to shew what short-lived things the offspring of water poets commonly prove. For the same reason, Aristophanes, in his “Irene,” attributes the death of Cratinus to the shock he received at the sight of a noble cask of wine split in pieces and washing the streets. The time of it is preserved in the same jest of Aristophanes, and referred to the year in which the Lacedaemonians first invested Athens; namely, in the 37th olympiad, or B. C. 431. Suidas tells us, that be wrote twenty-one plays, none of which are extant, and he gives only this short description of his excellencies, that he was “splendid and animated in his characters.”

, pronounced by Cicero to be by far the greatest of all the Peripatetic philosophers he ever heard, was of Mitylene, and taught philosophy there. He went afterwards to Athens, where he followed the sa'riie profession; and amongst his disciples had Cicero’s son. Cicero had an high esteem for him, and prevailed upon Ca;sar to grant him the freedom of Rome; and afterwards engaged the Areopagus to make a decree, by which Cratippns was desired to continue at Athens, as an ornament to the city, and to read lectures to the youth there. These lectures were probably interesting, as Brutus went to hear them when he was preparing for the war against Marc Antony. Cratippus had the art of making himself agreeable to his disciples, and of pleasing them by his conversation, which was free from austerity. This appears from a letter of young Cicero, where there is the following passage: “Know then that Cratippus loves me not as a disciple, but as a son; and as I am very well pleased to hear his lectures, so I am extremely delighted with the sweetness of his temper. I prevail with him whenever I can to sup with me; and this being now customary, he comes often to us unawares, when we are at supper; and, laying aside his philosophic gravity, he is so kind as to laugh and joke with us.” There are other proofs beside this, that Cratippus was a man who understood life as well as philosophy. After the battle of Pharsalia, Pompey went to Mitylene, where the inhabitants paid their respects to him, and Cratippus among them. Pompey complained, as Plutarch tells us, and disputed a little upon divine providence; but Cratippus gently yielded to him, giving him hopes of better times, lest he should have tired and vexed him with answering and refuting his objections. Cratippus wrote some pieces about divination; and is supposed to he the same with him whom Tertullian, in his book “De Anima,” has ranked among the writers upon dreams.

Crawfurd’s “Memoirs” have hitherto been held in considerable estimation, and frequently quoted as authorities; but a discovery has lately been made which proves him to Jiave been in one instance at least, shamefully regardless of veracity, and has procured him the disgrace of being “the first Scotchman who published his own compositions as the genuine productions of a former age.” This discovery was made by Mr. Laing, the editor of “The Historic and Life of king James the sext,” published in 1804, 8vo. He informs us that in Crawfurd’s “Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland,” references occur to a ms. in support of certain positions, which includes nothing that in the least countenances them, and the above “Historic,” printed from that identical ms. amply confirms this heavy charge, “the earliest, if not the most impudent literary furgery ever practised in Scotland.” Every circumstance in the ms. unfavourable either to queen Mary or to Bothwell, or favourable to their adversaries, Crawford carefully suppressed; while every vague assertion in Camden, Spottiswood, Melvill, and others, or in the state papers which Crawfurd had transcribed from the Cotton Mss. is inserted in the Memoirs; and these writers are quoted on the margin as collateral authorities, confirming the evidence of some unknown contemporary. Fictions, invented by Crawfurd himself, are profusely intermixed: and even the illdigested form of the genuine narrative is a pretext for the transposition and alteration of facts. Crawfurd, having thus, on the narrow basis of the original ms. constructed spurious memoirs of his own, “declares solemnly that he has not wrested any of the words to add to one man’s credit, or to impair the honesty of another: that he has neither heightened nor diminished any particular character or action; but that he has kept as close as possible to the meaning and sense of his author;” and even in his titlepage professes that the work “is faithfully published from an authentic manuscript.” The Memoirs, adds the editor of the “Historic,” have been quoted as genuine by Hume and Robertson, and their authority has been re-echoed by disputants as a full confirmation of the most absolute fictions. Nor is it possible to acquit Goodall of connivance at the fraud: he had collated the memoirs with two copies of the original ms. and was conscious of the imposture, which, in the preface to the second edition, he endeavours partly to vindicate, and partly to conceal.

, an eminent artist, was born at Antwerp in 1585, and was a disciple of Raphael Coxis, the son of that Coxis who had studied under Raphael; but Crayer soon shewed such proofs of genius, that he far surpassed his master, and therefore quitted him. Afterwards he made judicious observations on the particular excellencies of the most renowned masters, and taking nature for his constant guide, formed for himself a manner that was extremely pleasing. The first work which established him in the favour of the court of Brussels, was a portrait of cardinal Ferdinand, brother to the king of Spain, a full length, as large as life, in which he succeeded so happily, that when it was viewed by the court at Madrid it laid the foundation of his fame and fortune. The king sent him a gold chain with a medal; and added, as a farther instance of his favour, a considerable pension. The testimony of Rubens was also highly in his favour, who went to Antwerp to visit Crayer, and after examining attentively a picture of his painting in the refectory of the abbey of Affleghem, he publicly declared that no painter could surpass Crayer. Nor was he less distinguished by Vandyck, who always expressed a friendship for him, and painted his portrait. It has been said that he had somewhat less fire in his compositions than Rubens; but that his design was frequently more correct. Yet, says Mr. Fuseli, let not this high strain of commendation seduce the reader to imagine that Crayer was a painter of the same rank with Rubens. If he was more equal, the reason lay in his inferiority. Rubens had the flights, the falls, and the neglects of genius. Crayer steered a middle course, and preserved dignity by caution. His composition generally consisted of a small number of figures; and he very judiciously avoi ded the encumbering his design with superfluous particulars, or loading his subject with any thing that seemed not to contribute to its elegance. He grouped his figures with skill, and his expressions have all the truth of nature. There is a remarkable variety in his draperies, and an equal degree of simplicity in their folds; and his colouring is admirable. Of all his contemporaries he was reckoned to approach nearest to Vandyck, not only in history, but in portrait. He principally painted religious subjects, and was continually at work; and although he lived to a great age, yet his temperance and regular habits preserved the full use of his faculties; and to the last month of his long life his pencil retained the same force and freedom which it possessed in his most vigorous days. He died in 1669, aged eighty-four. The subject of the picture which was so highly honoured by the approbation of Rubens, is the centurion alighting from his horse to prostrate himself at the feet of Christ. Yet sir Joshua Reynolds says of it, that though it cannot be said to be defective in drawing or colouring, it is far from being a striking picture. There is no union between his figures and the ground; the outline is every where seen, which takes away the softness and richness of effect; the men are insipid characters, and the women want beauty. The composition is something on the plan of the great picture of Rubens in the St. Augustins at Antwerp: that is, the subject is of the same kind, but there is a great difference indeed in their degree of merit.

, who has been called the Æsehvlus of France, was born at Dijon, Feb. 13, 1671, and was educated among the Jesuits, who are said to have recorded him in their registers “as a boy of parts, but remarkably graceless.” His family, long distinguished in the magistracy both on the father’s and mother’s side, wishing to preserve its acquired lustre, his father, who was chief register in the chamber of accounts at Dijon, recommended the law to him, without, it would appear, consulting his inclination. He studied it, however, at Paris; was admitted advocate, and afterwards entered as pupil to a solicitor. His frequent attendance on public spectacles, appears to have early given him a relish for the stage, and he could not conceal it from his master, the solicitor, who, from the eloquence with which Crebillon spoke of the master-pieces of the drama, predicted that he would one day make a figure on the theatre. He even ventured to advise his pupil to renounce the bar, and follow the impulse of his genius. This, however, rather disheartened, than encouraged him, as he had a great diffidence of himself; but at length, daily urged by counsels, the sincerity of which he could not suspect, and still more by inclination, he hazarded a piece which he ventured to read to the players, but it was rejected, and he almost forswore the pursuit of dramatic fame.

After the success of “Electra,” it might have been supposed that Crebillon’s dramatic glory had been at its height, as he had already left behind him the whole swarm of tragic poets who lingered on the scene after Corneille and Racine. He surpassed himself, however, in “Rhadamistus,” his master-piece; bold and lofty in its design, original and vigorous in its execution. The characters of Rhadamistus, Zenobia, and Pharasmanes, are drawn with equal energy and warmth; the action is interesting and animated; the situations striking and theatrical; the style is marked with a kind of savage dignity, which seems to be the characteristic quality of this tragedy, and to distinguish it from all others. The subject of “Rhadamistus” had wonderfully delighted Crebillon. The part of Pharasmanes, the implacable enemy of Roman ambition and arrogance, gave scope to the author to display in all its force the deep and lively hatred with which he was himself penetrated for “tyrants of the universe;” for this was the title he always gave to the Romans, whose annals awaken so many ideas of glory, and whose glory made so many wretched. He considered the conquests of this insolent and cruel nation, and the chains which it imposed upon so many nations, as one of the greatest calamities which had ever befallen the human race. We know not how far the English reader may understand the merits of this piece from Mr. Murphy’s tragedy of Zenobia, professedly taken from it, and which was at one time very popular. Of Crebillon’s “Rhadamistus,” two editions were printed in a week. It received the highest applause at Versailles, which in this instance agreed with Paris; and the author’s friends pressed him to shew himself at court, to enjoy his triumph, and to receive thence those favours which his narrow fortune rendered necessary. Full of those fallacious hopes, he repaired to Versailles, but was totally disregarded. After a considerable stay, he determined to depend upon his own resources, and flattered himself with obtaining fresh laurels, and with giving worthy successors to “Rhadamistus.” But to all writers, and especially to dramatic writers, there is an aera at which their success reaches the highest point which their measure of genius permits them to attain. This happened to Crebillon, who now produced “Xerxes,” and “Semiramis,” both of which had very small success. His “Pyrrhus” met with a better reception, yet its success was temporary, and the work has disappeared from the stage. In the interval between “Xerxes” and “Semiramis,” he commenced a tragedy of “Cromwell,” in which he gave the freest range to the sentiments of liberty, and was prohibited from continuing the piece. But the tragedy of “Pyrrhus” may be considered as almost the limit of his dramatic labours. Alter this, becoming disgusted with the theatre, he went to an unknown retreat, where he adopted a simple, frugal, and almost rigid mode of living, surrounded by about thirty dogs and cats, whose attachment, as he said, consoled him for the injustice of men; and here he used to smoke tobacco to render his room bearable with such company. Crebillon, however, was not unjust to the world; he might have felt the disappointment of his ambition at court, but he imputed his theatrical disgraces to himself alone. Alter the first representation of “Xerxes,” which was not a favourable one, he asked the players for their parts, and having thrown them into the lire in their presence, he said, “I was mistaken, but the public has undeceived me.”

Notwithstanding his repeated successes, he was unable in the most brilliant season of his reputation, to obtain a seat in the French academy, perhaps, for one reason, because he had written a severe satire against them. After, however, he had been long forgotten, he was elected into the academy, Sept. 27, 1731, and obtained favours from the court. He was also urged to finish the tragedy of “Cataline *,” which he had begun thirty years before, and which, from some passages he had read to his friends, was spoken of as a dramatic wonder. This piece had but a transient success, however, and even for this it was indebted to the interest inspired in the public by the advanced a;e of the author, and especially to the numerous and powerful cabal, whose object was to sacrifice his rival Voltaire f, who was now making an eminent figure in the drama. Crebillon himself was so little flattered by the

2400 French livres. When Crebillon to his memory in the church of St. Gerwent to thank his patroness, she re- vais, where his remains are interred. indiscreet ardour of his friends, that he opposed, as much as he was able, all the means they wished to employ for his success. One of them having asked him for tickets for the first representation of “Cataline,” “You well know,” he replied, “that I would not have a single person in the pit who should think himself ohliged to applaud me.” * c Such applause,“returned his friend,” it is so far from my intention to procure, that, you may he assured, the persons to whom I shall give your tickets, will he the fir>t to hiss the piece, if it deserves to be hissed.“” In that case,“said Crebillon,” you shall have them."

About the time when Crebillon first devoted himself to the theatre, he fell in love, and married without the consent of his parents. His father was already greatly irritated against him for having preferred the glory of a celebrated writer to the consequence of a subaltern magiatrate. But he thought his son entirely dishonoured by alliance with a family neither opulent nor noble; and he disinherited him for his ingratitude and rebellion. Some years afterward, however, when the brilliant 'reputation Crebillon began to enjoy, came to the ears of his hitherto inexorable father, the old man’s vanity was flattered, and he began to think that his son had acted his part in life very prudently. In consequence he restored him to his rights. Crebillon, after his father’s death, went to receive the very moderate inheritance he had left him; but the fees of justice devoured a part, and the Mississippi bubble finished the rest. For some time he found a resource in the bounty of some opulent persons; but they were soon wearied with heaping favours upon one who would neither be their humble servant nor their dependent. Crebillon again became free and poor; and though, during the season of his transitory opulence, he had carried the love of expence to a taste for fancies and superfluities, he had no difficulty in accommodating himself to the kind of life his new situation required.

Crebillon died on June 17, 1762, aged eighty-eight, of a disease which the robustness of his constitution long resisted. The players caused a solemn service to be performed for him in the church of St. Jean de Latran, at which they all assisted with the most respectful decorum, and the ceremony was also graced by the presence of the academies, the most distinguished men of letters, and a great number of persons of the highest rank. From La Harpe’s Lectures, who is rather severe on Crebillon, we learn that the “Rhadamistus” and “Atreus” are the only pieces by him which still keep their place on the stage. His works, however, continue to be in demand in France, if we 'may judge from the numerous editions which have very lately issued from the press.

, son of the preceding, was born at Paris February 12, 1707, and died there April 12, 1777, at the age of 70. It is said that his father being one day asked, in a large company, which of his works he thought the best? “I don't know,” answered he, “which is my best production; but this (pointing to his son, who was present) is certainly my worst.” “It is,” replied the son, with vivacity, “because no Carthusian had a hand in it:” alluding to the report, that the best passages in his father’s tragedies had been written by a Carthusian friar, who was his friend. His father had gained his fame as a manly and nervous writer; the son was remarkable for the ease, elegance, and caustic malignity of his conversation and writings, and might be surnamed the Petronius of France, as his father had been characterised by that of the Æschylus. The abbe Boudot, who lived on familiar terms with him, said to him one day in reply to some of his jokes: “Hold thy tongue! Thy father was a great man; but as for thee, thou art only a great boy.” “Crebiilon the father,” says M. d'Alembert, “paints in the blackest colours the crimes and wickedness of man. The son draws, with a delicate and just pencil, the refinements, the shades, and even the graces of our vices; that seducing levity which renders the French what is called amiable, but which does not signify worthy of being beloved; that restless activity, which makes them feel ennui even in the midst of pleasure; that perversity of principles, disguised, and as it were softened, by the mask of received forms; in short, our manners, at once frivolous and corrupt, wherein the excess of depravity combines with the excess of ridiculousness.” This parallel is more just than the opinion of L'Advocat, who says that the romances of Crebiilon are extremely interesting, because all the sentiments are drawn from a sensible heart, but it is plain that this “sensible heart” is full of affectation, and that the author describes more than he feels. However this may be, Crebiilon never had any other post than that of censor-royal. He is said to have lived with his father as with a friend and a brother; and his marriage with an English woman, whom Crebiilon the father did not approve, only produced a transient misunderstanding. The principal works of the son are: 1. Letters from the marchioness to the count of ***, 1732, 2 vols. 12rno. 2. Tanzai and Neadarne“, 1734, 2 vols. 12mo. This romance, abounding in satirical allusions and often unintelligible, and which caused the author to be put into the bastille, was more applauded than it deserved. 3.” Les egarements du coeur & de Tesprit,“1736, three parts, 12mo. 4.” The Sopha,“a moral tale, 1745, 1749, 2 vols. 12mo, grossly immoral, as most of his works are. For this he Was banished from Paris for some time. 5.” Lettres Atheniennes,“177I,4vols. 12mo. 6.” Ah! que?i conte“1764, 8 parts, 12mo. 7.” Les Heureux Orphelins,“1754, 2 vols. 12mo. 8.” La Nuit & le Moment,“1755, 12mo. 9.” Le hasard du coin du feu,“1763, 12mo. 10.” Lettres de la duchesse de ***,' &c. 1768, 2 vols. 12mo. 11. “Lettres de la marquise de Pompadour,” 12mo, an epistolary romance, written in an easy and bold style; but relates few particulars of the lady whose name it bears. The whole of his works have been collected in 7 vols. 12mo, 1779.

, an English poet, chiefly noted for his translatious of ancient authors, was son of Thomas Creech, and born near Sherbourne in Dorsetshire, 1659. He was educated in grammar learning under Mr. Gurganven of Sherbourne, to whom he afterwards dedicated a translation of one of Theocritus’s Idylliums; and entered a commoner of Wadham college in Oxford, 1675. Wood tells us, that his father was a gentleman; but Jacob says, in his “Lives and Characters of English Poets,” that his parents were not in circumstances sufficient to support him through a liberal education, but that his disposition and capacity for learning raised him up a patron in colonel Strangeways, whose generosity supplied that defect. Creech certainly distinguished himself much; and was accounted a good philosopher and poet, and a severe student. June 13, 1683, he took the degree of M. A. and not long after was elected probationer fellow of All-souls college; to which, Jacob observes, the great reputation acquired by his translation of Lucretius recommended him. Wood tells us, that upon this occasion he gave singular proofs of his classical learning and philosophy before his examiners. In 1696 he took his degree of bachelor of divinity, and began to be well known by the works he published; but they were of no great advantage to his fortune, since his circumstances were always indifferent. In 1699, having taken orders, he was presented by his college to the living of Welwyn in Hertfordshire; but while at Oxford, on another occasion, in June 1700, he put an end to his life. The motives of this fatal catastrophe have been variously represented. M. Bernard informs us, in the “ Republic of Letters,” that in 1700, Creech fell in love with a, woman, who treated him contemptuously, though she was complaisant enough to others; that not being able to digest this usage, he was resolved not to survive it; and that he hanged himself in his study, in which situation he was found three days after. Jacob says nothing of the particular manner of his death, but only that he unfortunately made away with himself: which he ascribes to a naturally morose and splenetic temper, too apt to despise the understandings and performances of others. “This,” says Jacob, “made him less esteemed than his great merit deserved; and his resentments on this account frequently engaged him in those heats and disputes which in the end proved fatal to him.” But from an original letter of Arthur Charlett, preserved in the Bodleian library, it has lately been discovered, that this unhappy event was owing to a very different cause. There was a fellow collegian of whom Creech frequently borrowed money; but repeating his applications too often, he met one day with such a cold reception, that he retired in a fit of gloomy disgust, and in three days was found hanging in his room: and Mr. Malone has more recently published a letter from Dr. Tanner, by which it appears that Creech had before exhibited marks of insanity.

The following is a list of his translations; for we do not find him to have been the author of any original works. 1. A translation of “Lucretius,” printed in 8vo, at Oxford, 1682. Dryden, in the preface to the “Miscellany Poems,” which were published by him, speaks of this translation in the highest terms of approbation, calling Creech “the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius” and every body else entertained the same opinion of it.' In the edition of 1714, in 2 vols. 8vo, all the verses of the text, which Creech had left untranslated, particularly those in the fourth book about the nature of love, are supplied; and many new notes added and intermixed by another hand, by way of forming a complete system of the Epicurean philosophy. Creech had published in 1695 an edition of Lucretius in Latin, with notes, which were afterwards printed at the end of the English translation. Another edition of this, much enlarged, but very incorrect, was published in 1717 in 8vo. The best is that of Glasow, 1759, 12 mo. He will perhaps be far longer rememred as the editor than the translator of Lucretius. 2. In 1684 he published a translation of “Horace” in which, however, he has omitted some few odes. As to the satires, he was advised, as he tells us in the preface, “to turn them to our own time; since Rome was now rivalled in her vices; and parallels for hypocrisy, profaneness, avarice, and the like, were easy to be found.” But those crimes,“he declares,” were out of his acquaintance; and since the character is the same whoever the person is, he was not so fond of being hated, as to make any disobliging application. Such pains,“says he,” would look like an impertinent labour to find a dunghill.“3. The” Idylliums“of Theocritus, with Rapin’s discourse of pastorals, 1684,- 8vo. 4. The second elegy of Ovid’s first book of elegies the sixth, seventh, eighth, and twelfth of the second book; the story of Lucretia, out of the Fasti; and the second and third of Virgil’s eclogues; printed in a collection of miscellany poems, 1684. 5. The thirteenth satire of Juvenal, with notes. Printed in the English translation of the satires, 1693, in folio. 6. A translation into English of the verses prefixed to Quintinie’s Complete Gardener. 7. The Lives of Solon, Pelopidas, and Cleomenes, from Plutarch. 8. The Life of Pelopidas, from Cornelius Nepos. 9. Laconic apophthegms, or remarkable sayings of the Spartans, from Plutarch. 10. A discourse concerning Socrates’s da3mon, and the two first books of the Symposiacs, from Plutarch. These translations from Plutarch were published in the English translations of his” Lives“and” Morals.“11. A translation of Manilius’s Astronomicon, dated from All-Souls, Oct. 10, 1696. On his father’s monument he is called” the learned, much admired, and much envied Mr. Creech.“By whom he could have been envied, we know not, yet there is a ridiculous story that Dryden became so jealous of him, as to incite him to translate Horace that he might lose as much reputation by that poet, as he had gained by Lucretius. His poetry will scarcely at present be deemed an object which calls for much criticism, as he is rather a good scholar than a good poet; and in the instance of Lucretius, a most judicious editor. Dr. Warton, however, who will be allowed Jto be an admirable judge, has spoken of him in terms of applause.” Creech,“says the doctor,” in truth, is a much better translator than he is usually supposed and allowed to be. He is a nervous and vigorous writer: and many parts, not only of his Lucretius, but of his Theocritus and Horace (though now decried) have not been excelled by other translators. One of his pieces may be pronounced excellent; his translation of the thirteenth satire of Juvenal; equal to any that Dryden has given us of that author.“Pope certainly paid him no small compliment by beginning his epistle to Mr. Murray (afterwards lord Mansfield) with two lines from Creech’s Horace. Pope used to say that” he hurt his translation of Lucretius very much by imitating Cowley, and bringing in turns even into some of the most grand parts. He has done more justice to Manilius."

, a very amiable and ingenious lady, nearly related to the poet Dryden, was the only daughter of sir Gilbert Pickering, bart. by Elizabeth, the only daughter of sir Sidney Montagu, knt. and sister of Edward Montagu, first earl of Sandwich. She was born in 1642, and was married to John Creed of Oundle, esq. a wise, learned, and pious man (as his inscription, written by her, intimates), “who served his majesty Charles II. in diverse honourable employments at home and abroad; lived with honour, and died lamented, 1701.” By this gentleman she had a numerous family, one of whom, the brave major Richard Creed, is commemorated by a monument in Westminster-abbey, as well as by one erected by his mother in the church of Tichmarsh. During her widowhood, Mrs. Creed resided many years in a mansionhouse at Barnwell, near Oundle in Northamptonshire, belonging to the Montagu family, where she amused and employed herself in painting, and gratuitously instructed many young women in drawing, fine needle-work, and other elegant arts. Many of the churches in the neighbourhood of Oundle are decorated with altar-pieces, monuments, and ornaments of different kinds, the works of her hand; and her descendants are possessed of many portraits, and some good pictures painted by her. Two days in every week she constantly allotted to the public; on one, she was visited by all the nobility and gentry who resided near her; on the other, she received and relieved all the afflicted and diseased of every rank, giving them food, raiment, or medicine, according to their wants. Her reputation in the administration of medicine was considerable; and as she afforded it gratis, her practice was of course extensive. Her piety was great and unaffected. That it was truly sincere, was evinced by the magnanimity with which she endured many trials more heavily afflictive than what usually fall to the lot even of those whose life is prolonged to so great an extent. In 1722, when in her eightieth year, she erected a monument in the church of Ticbmarsh to the memory of Dryden and his ancestors, with a:; inscription by herself. She died at Ountlle in May 1728, and her remains were removed to Tichmarsh, where she was buried with her ancestors. Her funeral sermon, which Mr. Malone doesnot appear to have seen, was preached hy Henry Lee, D. D. rector of Tichmarsh in May 1728, and therefore probably the date of her death, in Malone’s Life of Dryden, viz. “the beginning of 1724-5,” must be incorrect. This sermon, printed at London the same year, 8vo, is dedicated to Mrs. Stuart, executrix and sole surviving daughter of Mrs. Creed. An extract from it, confirming the excellence of her character, may be seen in a compilation less respected than it deserves, Wilford’s “Memorials.”

, a once celebrated writer of the Sociriian persuasion, was born in Franconia in 1590, and after some early education received from his father, studied at Nuremberg, and other German schools or universities. He was brought up in the Lutheran church, but in the course of his reading, having formed to himself a set of opinions nearly coinciding with those of Socinus, he declined the offers of promotion in the Lutheran church, where he probably would not have been favourably received, and determined to go to Poland, where such opinions as his were no bar to advancement. In 1612 he went to Racow, and besides becoming a preacher, was appointed Greek professor and afterwards rector of the university. His theological works form a considerable part of the works’ of the “Fratres Poloni,” and he engaged in a controversy with Grotius, who had written against Socinus, and a correspondence, of great politeness, took place between them, which made Grotius be suspected of inclining too much to the opinions of his antagonist. He certainly carried his politeness very far, when he told Crellius that “he was, grieved to see so much enmity between those, who call themselves Christians, for such trifling matters,” these matters being no less than the doctrine of the Trinity, and the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ. Crellius, we are told, like many of his descendants, would not be called a Socinian, but an Artemonite, after Artemon, who lived in the reign of the emperor Severus, and denied the pre-existence and divinity of Christ. Crellius’ opinions on other subjects will not probably procure him much respect, at least from one sex. In his “Ethics,” he is said to maintain that it is lawful for men upon certain occasions to beat their wives! Crellius died at Racow, of an epidemic fever, 1633. Father Simon’s opinion of him may be quoted as generic. “Crellius is a grammarian, a philosopher, and a divine throughout. He has a wonderful address in adapting St. Paul’s words to his own prejudices. He supports the doctrines of his sect with so much subtlety, that he does not seem to say any thing of himself, but to make the scriptures speak for him, even where they are most against him.”

, professor of philosophy at Fer­*ara and at Padua, who raised himself to such a pitch of fame, that princes and kings were ambitious to procure his portrait, was born at Cento in the Modenese, in 1550; and died at Padua, of the plague, in 1630, at the age of 80. His principal works are; 1. “Aminta e Clori, favola silvestre,” Ferrara, 1591, 4to. 2. '< II nasciinento di Venetia,“Bergamo, 1617, 12mo. 3.” De physico auditu,“1596, folio. 4.” De calido innato,“1626, 4to. 5.” De sensibus & facilitate appetiva," 1644, 4to, and other works which shew that his religious creed was reducible to very few articles. He thought that, according to the principles of Aristotle, the soul is material, capable of corruption, and mortal, as well as the souls of brutes.

, an Italian poet, and poetical historian, the son of John Philip Crescimbeni, a lawyer, and Anna Virginia Barbo, was born Oct. 9, 1663, at Macerata in the marche ofAncona. Jerome Casanati, afterwards cardinal, was his godfather, and gave him the names of John-Maria-Ignatius-Xavier-Joseph-Antony, of which he retained only John Maria, and afterwards changed the latter into Mario. After receiving grammatical education at home, his uncle Antony-Francis, an advocate, invited him to Rome in 1674; hut the following year his father and mother recalled him to Macerata, where he engaged in a course of study among the Jesuits. His teacher of rhetoric was Charles d' Aquino, under whom he made great progress in eloquence and poetry. Among his early attempts, he wrote a tragedy in the style of Seneca, “The Defeat of Darius, king of Persia,” and translated the first two hooks of Lucan’s Pharsalia into Italian verse from which performances he derived so much reputation, as to be admitted a member of the academy of the Disposti, in the town of Jesi, although only in his fifteenth year. About that time he continued his classical studies for eight months under Nicolas Antony Raffaelli, and entered upon a course of philosophy. His father now recommending the law as a profession, Crescimbeni took his doctor’s degree Oct. 3, 167 y, and was appointed to lecture on the institutes, which he did for a year. His uncle before mentioned, aoain inviting him to Rome, he divided his time there between law and polite literature, and in 1685, the academy of the Infecondi admitted him a member. Hitherto his studies in Italian poetry had not been conducted so as to inspire him with a very pure taste; but about 1687, he entered on a course of reading of the best Italian poets, which not only enabled him to correct his own taste and style, but gave him hopes that tie might improve those of his countrymen. With this intention he endeavoured to form a new society, or, as they are called in Italy, academy, rindcr the name of Arcadia, the members to be called the shepherds of Arcadia, and each to take the name of a shepherd, and that of some place in ancient Arcadia, and his own name accordingly was Alfesibeo Cario. Such was the origin of this celebrated academy, and surely no origin was ever mure childishly romantic, or unpromising as to any beneficial e licet on solid or elegant literature, to which purposes, however, we are told it has eminently contributed. It was established Oct. 5, 1690. A short account of it, written in 1757, informs us that the first members were those itained persons chiefly who were about queen Christina of Sweden. (See Christina, vol. IX.) It admits all sciences, all arts, all nations, all ranks, and both sexes. The number of its members is not determined; they are said at present to be upwards of two thousand, but we have heard a much larger number assigned, for they sometimes aggregate whole academies. At Home, the academicians assemble in pastoral habits, in a most agreeable garden, called Bosco Parrhasia. The constitution of the society being democratic, they never chusje a prince for their protector. At the end of each olympiad, for that is the method of computing adopted by the Arcadians, they cbuse a custode, who is the speaker, and has the sole right of assembling the society, who are also represented by him alone, when they are not assembled. In order to be admitted a member, it is requisite that the person should be twenty-four years of age complete, of a reputable family, and to have given some specimen of abilities in one or more branches of education. As to the ladies, a poem, or a picture, is a testimony of genius that is held sufficient. The stated assemblies of this academy are fixed to seven different days, between the first of May and the seventh of October. In the first six they read the works of the Roman shepherds, the productions of strangers being reserved for the seventh and last. Each author reads his own compositions, except ladies and cardinals, who are allowed to employ others.

, a Milanese, born in 1592, at first was a disciple of Gio. Batista Crespi, though he afterwards studied under Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and soon became superior to the first, and at least equal to the second. With great vigour of conception, and facility of execution, he combines equal suavity and strength of colour in oil and fresco the distribution of his figures leavesk> wish for alteration. He seems familiar with the best principles of the Caracci, without having frequented their school. In the church della Passione at Milan, where he painted the “Taking down from the Cross,” he has left many portraits that may vie with the best of Titian’s. Continued progress from good to better marked the short period of his life. His last and most admired works are the histories from the life of St. Bruno, in the Certosa at Milan. The most celebrated of them is that of the Parisian teacher, who, raising himself from the bier, pronounces his own condemnation; despair and terror are personified in him and the assembly. Nor is that of the duke of Calabria, who in hunting discovers the solitary cell of the hermit, much inferior. On this the painter wrote, “Daniel Crispus Mediolanensis pinxit hoc temphim an. 1629,” one year before his death, for he died of the plague in 1630, extremely lamented, and with him all his family.

, sometimes called La Spagnuolo, from the style in which he affected to dress, was born at Bologna, in 1665, and received his earliest instruction in design from Angelo Toni, a very moderate artist; but in a short time he quitted that school, and successively studied under Domenico Cainuti, Carlo Cignani, and Giovanni Antonio Burrini. From them he applied himself to study the works of Baroccio, and afterwards the principles of colouring at Venice, from the paintings of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese. Thus qualified to appear with credit in his profession, his merit was made known to the grand duke Ferdinand, who immediately engaged him in several noble compositions, which he executed with success. In portrait he was particularly excellent; and to those subjects he gave elegant attitudes, with a strong and graceful resemblance.

, a celebrated popish writer, descended from an ancient and honourable family, seated formerly in Nottinghamshire, but before his time it had removed into Yorkshire, in which county he was born, at Wakefield, in 1605. His father was Hugh Cressey, esq. barrister of Lincoln’s-inn; his mother’s name was Margery, the daughter of Dr. Thomas Doylie, an eminent physician in London. He was educated at a grammar-school at Wakefield, and about the age of fourteen, in Lent term 1619, he was removed to Oxford, where he studied with great vigour and diligence, and in the year 1626 was admitted fellow of Merton college, in that university. After taking the degrees of B. A. and M. A. he entered into holy orders, and became chaplain to Thomas lord Wentworth, then lord president of the north, with whom he lived some years. About 1638, he went over to Ireland with Lucius Carey, lord viscount Falkland, to whom he was likewise chaplain; and by him, when he was secretary of state, Cressey was, in 1642, promoted to a canonry in the collegiate church of Windsor, and to the dignity of dean of Laughlin, in the kingdom of Ireland, but through the disturbances of the times, he never attained the possession of either of these preferments. After the unfortunate death of his patron, who was killed in the battle of Newbury, he found himself destitute of subsistence, and therefore readily accepted a proposal that was made him, of travelling with Charles Bertie, esq. afterwards created earl of Falmouth, a great favourite of king Charles II. who was unhappily killed in a battle at sea in the first Dutch war after the restoration. Cressey quitted England in 1644, and making the tour of Italy with his pupil, moved by the declining state of the church of England, he began to listen to the persuasion of the Romish divines, and in 1646 made a public profession at Rome of his being reconciled to that church. He went from thence to Paris, where he thought fit to publish what he was pleased to style the motives of his conversion, which work of his, as might reasonably be expected, was highly applauded by the Romanists, and was long considered by them as a very extraordinary performance. It is entitled, “Exomologesis, or a faithfal narration of the occasions and motives of his conversion to Catholic Unity,” Paris, 1647, and 1653, 8vo. To the last edition is an appendix, “In which are cleared certain misconstructions of his Exomologesis, published by J. P. author of the preface to the lord Falkland’s discourse of Infallibility.” As soon as this was finished, he sent it over to his friend Dr. Henry Hammond, as to one whose sincerity he had experienced, and for whose judgment he had a high esteem. That learned person wrote him a kind letter of thanks for his book, but at the same time told him there was a vein of fallacy ran through the whole contexture of it; adding, “we are friends, and I do not propose to be your antagonist.” At the close of this epistle, he invited him into England, assuring him that he should be provided with a convenient place to dwell in, and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably, without being molested by any about his religion and conscience. This offer, though our author did not accept, yet he returned, as became him, an answer full of respect and gratitude to the kind friend who had made it.

After this, he was much inclined to become a monk of the Carthusian order, and had thoughts of entering into the monastery of English Carthusians at Newport, in Flanders, but from this he was dissuaded by some of his zealous countrymen, who were desirous that he should continue to employ his pen in defence of their religion, for which the severe discipline of that order would have allowed him but little time; and therefore by their advice he laid aside that design, and being recommended to Henrietta-Maria, queen-dowager of England, he was taken under her protection, and being invited by the Benedictine college of English monks at Douay, in Flanders, he at length resolved to retire thither, and for the expence of his journey received one hundred crowns as a bounty from that princess, who could but ill spare even so small a sura at that time. Some time after his arrival at Douay he entered into the Benedictine order, and upon that occasion changed the name he received at his baptism, of Hugh Paulin, for that of Serenus de Cressey, by which he was afterwards known to the learned world. He remained about seven years or more in that college, and during his residence tnere published a large work, of the mystical kind, entitled “Sancta Sophia, or directions for the prayers of contemplation, &c. extracted out of more than XL treatises, written by the late reverend father Aug. Baker, a monk of the English congregation of the holy order of St. Benedict,” Douay, 1657, 2 vols. 8vo. To which are added, “Certain patterns of devout exercises of immediate acts and affections of the will.” This father Augustine Baker, whose true name was David Baker, who had studied the law in the Middle temple, and who from being little better than an atheist, became a convert to popery, and a very zealous devotionist, had once, it seems, some intention of writing the Ecclesiastical History of England, for which he had made very copious collections, that were of great service to Cressey, when he entered upon the execution of the same project.

After the restoration, and the marriage of king Charles II. queen Catharine appointed our author, who was then become one of the mission in England, her chaplain, and from that time he resided in Somerset-house, in the Strand. The great regularity of his life, his sincere and unaffected piety, his modest and mild behaviour, his respectful deportment to persons of distinction, with whom he was formerly acquainted when a protestant, and the care he took to avoid all concern in political affairs or intrigues of state, preserved him in quiet and safety, even in the most troublesome times- He was, however, a very zealous champion in the cause of the church of Rome, and was continually writing in defence of her doctrines, or in answer to the books of controversy written by protestants of distinguished learning or figure; and as this engaged him in a variety of disputes, he had the good fortune to acquire great reputation with both parties, the papists looking upon him to be one of their ablest advocates, and the protestants allowing that he was a grave, a sensible, and a candid writer. Among the works he published after his return to England, were: 1. “A non est inventus returned to Mr. Edward Bagshaw’s enquiry and vainly boasted discovery of weakness in the Grounds of the Church’s Infallibility,” 1662, 8vo. 2. “A Letter to an English gentleman, dated July 6th, 1662, wherein bishop Morley is concerned, printed amongst some of the treatises of that reverend prelate,” 3. “Roman Catholic Doctrines no Novelties; or, an answer to Dr. Pierce’s court-sermon, miscalled The primitive rule of Reformation,” 1663, 8vo; answered by Dr. Daniel Whitby. But that which contributed to make him most known, was his large and copious ecclesiastical history, entitled “The Church History of Britanny,” Roan, 1668, fol. which was indeed a work of great pains and labour, and executed with much accuracy and diligence. He had observed that nothing made a greater impression upon the people in general of his communion, than the reputation of the great antiquity of their church, and the fame of the old saints of both sexes, that had flourished in this island; and therefore he judged that nothing could be more serviceable in promoting what he styled the catholic interest, than to write such a history as might set these points in the fairest and fullest light possible. He had before him the example of a famous Jesuit, Michael Alford, alias Griffith, who had adjusted the same history under the years in which the principal events happened, in four large volumes, collected from our ancient historians; but, as this was written in Latin, he judged that it was less suited to the wants of common readers, and therefore he translated what suited his purpose into English, with such helps and improvements as he thought necessary. His history was very much approved by the most learned of his countrymen of the same religion, as appears by the testimonies prefixed to it. Much indeed may be said in favour of the order, regularity, and coherence of the facts, and the care and punctuality shewn in citing his authorities. On the other hand, he has too frequently adopted the superstitious notions of many of our old writers; transcribing from them such fabulous passages as have been long ago exploded by the inquisitive and impartial critics of his own faith. The book, however, long maintained its credit among the Romanists, as a most authentic ecclesiastical chronicle, and is frequently cited by their most considerable authors. He proposed to have published another volume of this history, which was to have carried it as low as the dissolution of monasteries by king Henry VIII. but he died before he had proceeded full three hundred years lower than the Norman conquest. Dodd, however, informs us that a considerable part of the second volume was preserved in ms. in the Benedictine monastery at Douay, and that it was never published “upon account of some nice controversies between the see of Rome, and some of our English kings, which might give offence.” While engaged on this work, he found leisure to interfere in all the controversies of the times, as will presently be noticed. His last dispute was in reference to a book written by the learned Dr. Stillingfleet, afterwards bishop of Worcester, to which, though several answers were given by the ablest of the popish writers, there was none that seemed to merit reply, excepting that penned by father Cressey, and this procured him the honour of a very illustrious antagonist, his old friend and acquaintance at Oxford, Edward earl of Clarendon. Being now grown far in years, and having no very promising scene before his eyes, from the warm spirit that appeared against popery amongst all ranks of people, and the many excellent books written to confute it by the most learned of the clergy, he was the more willing to seek for peace in the silence of a country retirement; and accordingly withdrew for some time to the house of Richard Caryll, esq. a gentleman of an ancient family and affluent fortune, at East Grinstead, co. Sussex, and dying upon the 10th of August 1674, being then near the seventieth year of his age, was buried in the parish church there. His loss was much regretted by those of his communion, as being one of their ablest champions, ready to draw his pen in their defence on every occasion, and sure of having his pieces read with singular favour and attention. His memory also was revered by the protestants, as well on account of the purity of his manners, and his mild and humble deportment, as for the plainness, candour, and decency with which he had managed all the controversies that he had been engaged in, and which had procured him, in return, much more of kindness and respect, than almost any other of his party had met with, or indeed deserved. It is very remarkable, however, that he thought it necessary to apologize to his popish readers for the respectful mention he made of the prelates of our church. Why this should require an apology, we shall not Inquire, but that his candour and politeness deserve the highest commendation will appear from what he says of archbishop Usher: “As for B. Usher, his admirable abilities in ‘chronological and historical erudition,’ as also his faithfulness and ingenuous sincerity in delivering without any provoking reflection*, what with great labour he has observed, ought certainly at least to exempt him from being treated by any one rudely and contemptuously, especially by me, who am moreover always obliged to preserve a just remembrance of very many kind effects of friendship, which I received from, him.” We have already taken notice of his inclination to the mystic divinity, which led him to take so much pains about the works of father Baker, and from the same disposition he also published “Sixteen revelations of divine love, shewed to a devout servant of our Lord, called mother Juliana, an anchorete of Norwich, who lived in the days of king Edward Hi.” He left also in ms. “An Abridgment of the book called The cloud of unknowing, and of the counsel referring to the same.” His next performance, was in answer to a famous treatise, written by Dr. Stillingfleet, against the church of Rome, which made a very great noise in those days, and put for some time a stop to the encroachments their missionaries were daily making, which highly provoked those of the Roman communion. This was entitled “Answer to part of Dr. Stillingfleet’s book, entitled Idolatry practised in the church of Rome,” 1672, 8vo, and was followed by “Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholic Church by Dr. Stillingfleet, and the imputation refuted and retorted,” &c. 1672, 8vo, and “Question, Why are you a Catholic? Question, Why are you a Protestant?” 1673, 8vo. In support of Dr. Stillingfleet, the earl of Clarendon wrote “Animadversions” upon our author’s answer; in which he very plainly tells him and the world, that it was not devotion, but necessity and want of a subsistence, which drove him first out of the church of England, and then into a monastery. As this noble peer knew him well at Oxford, it may be very easily imagined that what he said made a very strong impression, and it was to efface this, that our author thought tit to send abroad an answer under the title of “Epistle apologetical to a person of honour, touching his vindication of Dr. Stillingfleet,' 1 1674, 8vo. In this work he gives a large relation of the state and condition of his affairs, at the time of what he styles his conversion, in order to remove the imputation of quitting his faith to obtain bread. The last work that he published was entitled” Remarks upon the Oath of Supremacy."

, bishop of Durham, the fifth sen of John lord Crewe, of Stean, co. Northampton, by Jemima, daughter and coheir of Edward Walgrave, of Lawford, in Essex, esq. was born at Stean, the 3 1st of January, 1633; and in 1652 admitted commoner of Lincoln college, in Oxford, where he took the degree of B. A. Feb. 1, 1655-6; soon after which he was chosen fellow of that college. On June 29th, 1658, he took the degree of M. A. At the restoration he declared heartily in favour of the crown and hierarchy; and in 1663 was one of the proctors of the university. The year following, on the 2d of July, he took the degree of LL. D.; and soon after went into holy orders. August the 12th, 1668, he was elected rector of Lincoln -college, upon the decease of Dr. Paul Hood. On the 29th of April, 1669, he was installed dean of Chichester, and held with that dignity, the praecentorship, in which he had been installed the day before. He was also appointed clerk of the closet to king Charles II. In 1671, upon the translation of Dr. Blandford to the see of Worcester, he was elected hishop of Oxford in his room, on the 16th of June, confirmed June the ISth, consecrated July the 2d, and enthroned the 5th of the same month; being allowed to hold with it, in commendam, the living of Whitney, and the rectorship of Lincoln college, which last he resigned in October 1672. In 1673 he performed the ceremony of the marriage of James duke of York with Maria of Este; and through that prince’s interest, to whom he appears to have been subservient, he was translated, the 22d of October, 1674, to the bishopric of Durham. In the beginning of J6.75, he baptized Katharina- Laura, the new-born daughter of James duke of York. The 26th of April, 1676, he was sworn of the privy council to king Charles II. and upon the accession of king James II. to the crown, he was in great favour with that prince; he was made dean of his majesty’s royal chapel in 1685, in the room of Compton, bishop of London, who had been removed; and within a few days after, was admitted into the privy council. In 1686 he was appointed one of the commissioners in the new ecclesiastical commission erected by king James, an honoqr which he is said to have valued beyond its worth. By virtue of that commission, he appeared on the 9th of August, at the proceedings against Henry bishop of London, and was for suspending him during the king’s pleasure; though the earl and bishop of Rochester, and chief justice Herbert, were against it. Immediately after that bishop’s suspension, commissioners were appointed to exercise all manner of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the diocese of London, of which bishop Crewe was one. The 20th of November following, he was present at, and consenting to, the degradation of Mr. Samuel Johnson, previously to the most severe punishment that was inflicted on that eminent divine; and countenanced with his presence a prosecution carried on, in May 1687, against Dr. Peachy, vice-chancellor of Cambridge, for refusing to admit one Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk, to the degree of master of arts in that university, without taking the oaths. In July the same year, he offered to attend the pope’s nuncio at his public entry into London; but we are told his coachman refused to "drive lijm that way. His name was put again in a new ecclesiastical commission issued out this year, in October; in which he acted, during the severe proceedings against Magdalen college in Oxford, for refusing to elect one Anthony Farmer their president, pursuant to the king’s mandate. The bishop continued acting as an ecclesiastical commissioner till October 1688; when that commission was abolished. Towards the end of the year 1687, he was employed, with the bishops of Rochester and Peterborough, to draw up a form of thanksgiving for the queen’s being with child. But finding that the prince of Orange’s party was likely to' prevail, he absented himself from the council-board, and told the archbishop of Canterbury, that he was sorry for having so long concurred with the courtand desired now to be reconciled to his grace, and the other bishops. Even in the convention that met January 22, 1688-9, to consider of filling the throne, he was one of those who voted, on the 6th of February, that king James II. had abdicated the kingdom. Yet his past conduct was too recent to be forgotten, and therefore he was excepted by name out of the pardon granted by king William and queen Mary, May 23, 1690, which so terrified him, that he went over to Holland, and returned just in time to take the oaths to the new government, and preserved his bishopric. But, in order to secure to himself the possession of that dignity, he was forced to permit the crown to dispose of, or at least to nominate to, his prebends of Durham, as they should become vacant. By the death of his two elder brothers, he became in 1691, baron Crewe of Stean; and, about the 21st of December the same year, he married, but left no issue. During the rest of king William’s reign, he remained quiet and unmolested; and in the year 1710, he was one of the lords that opposed the prosecution then carried on against Dr. Sacheverell, and declared him not guilty; and likewise protested against several steps taken in that affair. He applied himself chiefly, in the latter part of his life, to works of munificence and charity. Particularly, he was a very great benefactor to Lincoln college, of which he had been fellow and rector; and laid out large sums in beautifying the bishop’s palace at Durham; besides many other instances of generosity and munificence of a more private nature. At length, his lordship departed this life on Monday September 18, 1721, aged eighty-eight; and was buried in his chapel at Stean, the 30th of the same month, with an inscription on his monument. He held the see of Durham forty-seven years. Dying without issue, the title of Baron Crewe of Stean became extinct with him.

, was a Scotch gentleman, who lived in the sixteenth century, and has furnished a sort of biographical romance. His endowments both of body and mind were esteemed so great, that he obtained the appellation of “The admirable Crichton,” and by that title he has continued to be distinguished down to the present day. The accounts given of his abilities and attainments are indeed so wonderful, that they seem scarcely to be credible; and many persons have been disposed to consider them as almost entirely fabulous, though they have been delivered with the. utmost confidence, and without any degree of hesitation, by various writers. The time of Crichton’s birth is said, by the generality of authors, to have been in 1551; but according to lord Buchan, it appears from several circumstances, that he was born in the month of August, 1560. His father was Robert Crichton of Elliock in the county of Perth, and lord advocate of Scotland in queen Mary’s reign, from 1561 to 1573; part of which time he held that office in conjunction with Spens of Condie. The mother of James Crichton was Elizabeth Stuart, the only daughter of sir James Stuart of Beath, who was a descendant of Robert duke of Albany, the third son of king Robert II. by Elizabeth Muir, or More, as she is commonly called. It is hence evident, that when the admirable Crichton boasted, as he did abroad, that he was sprung from Scottish kings, he said nothing but what was agreeable to truth. Nevertheless, Thomas Dempster, who sufficiently amplifies his praises in other respects, passes a severe censure upon him on this account; which is the more remarkable, as Dempster lived so near the time, and was well acquainted with the genealogies of the great families of Scotland. James Crichton is said to have received his grammatical education at Perth, and to have studied philosophy in the university of St. Andrew. His tutor in that university was Mr. John Rutherford, a professor at that time famous for his learning, and who distinguished himself by writing four books on Aristotle’s Logic, and a commentary on his Poetics. But nothing, according to Mackenzie, can give us a higher idea of Rutherford’s worth and merit, than his being master of that wonder and prodigy of his age, the great and admirable Crichton. However, it is not to this professor alone that the honour is ascribed of having formed so extraordinary a character. There are others who may put in their claim to a share in the same glory; for Aldus Manutius, who calls Crichton first cousin to the king, says that he was educated, along with his majesty, under Buchanan, Hepburn, and Robertson, as well as Rutherford. Indeed, whatever might be the natural force of his genius, jnany masters must have been necessary, in order to his acquiring such a variety of attainments as he is represented to have possessed. For it is related, that he had scarcely reached the twentieth year of his age, when he had run through the whole circle of the sciences, and could speak and write to perfection in ten different languages. Nor was this all; for he had likewise improved himself to the highest degree in riding, dancing, and singing, and in playing upon all sorts of instruments. Crichton, being thus accomplished, went abroad upon his travels, and is said to have gone to Paris; of his transactions at which place the following account is given. He caused six placards to be fixed on the gates of the schools, halls, and colleges belonging to the university, and on the pillars and posts before the houses of the most renowned men for literature in the city, inviting all those who were well versed in any art or science to dispute with him in the college of Navarre, that day six weeks, by nine o'clock in the morning, where he would attend them, and be ready to answer to whatever should be proposed to him in any art or science, and in any of these twelve languages, Hebrew, Syrlac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Flemish, and Sclavonian; and this either in verse or prose, at the discretion of the disputant. During this whole time, instead of closely applying to his studies, he regarded nothing but hunting, hawking, tilting, vaulting, riding of a well-managed horse, tossing the pike, handling the musquet, and other military feats; or else he employed himself in domestic games, such as balls, concerts of music, vocal and instrumental; cards, dice, tennis, and other diversions of youth. This conduct so provoked the students of the university, that, beneath the placard that was fixed on the Navarre gate, they caused the following words to be written: “If you would meet with this monster of perfection, to search for him either in the tavern or t)ie brothel is the readiest way to find him.” Nevertheless, when the day appointed arrived, Crichton appeared in the college of Navarre, and acquitted himself beyond expression in the disputation, which lasted from nine in the morning till six at night. At length, the president, after extolling him highly for the many rare and excellent endowments which God and nature had bestowed upon him, rose from his chair; and, accompanied by four of the most eminent professors of the university, gave him a diamond ring and a purse full of gold, as a testimony of their approbation and favour. The whole ended with the repeated acclamations and huzzas of the spectators; and henceforward our young disputant was called “The admirable Crichton.” It is added, that he was so little fatigued with the dispute, that he went the very next day to the Louvre, where he had a match'at tilting, an exercise then in great vogue; and, in presence of some princes of the court of France, and a great many ladies, carried away the ring fifteen times successively, and broke as many lances on the Saracen, whatever that might be; probably a sort of mark.

The next account we have of Crichton is, that he went to Rome, where he fixed a placard in all the eminent places of the city, in the following terms: “Nos Jacobus Crichtonus, Scotus, cuicunque rei propositae ex improviso respondebimus.” In a city which abounded in wit, this bold challenge, to answer to any question that could be proposed to him, without his being previously advertised of it, could not escape the ridicule of a pasquinade. It is said, however, that being nowise discouraged, he appeared at the time and place appointed, and that, in presence of the pope, many cardinals, bishops, and doctors of divinity, and professors in all the sciences, he displayed such wonderful proofs of his universal knowledge, that he excited no less surprise than he had done at Paris. Boccalini, who was then at Rome, gives something of a different relation of the matter. According to this author, the pasquinade against Crichton, which was to the following effect, “And he that will see it, let him go to the sign of the Falcon, and it shall be shewn,” made such an impression upon him, that he left a place where he had been so grossly affronted as to be put upon a level with jugglers and mountebanks. From Rome he went to Venice, at his approach to which city he appears to have been in considerable distress, of mind at least, if not with regard to external circumstances. This is evident from the following lines of his poem, “In suum ad urbem Venetam appulsum:”

The chief design of Crichton in this poem was to obtain a favourable reception at Venice, and particularly from Aldus JMamitius, whose praises he celebrates in very high strains. When he presented his verses to Manutins, that critic was struck with a very agreeable surprise; and judged, from the performance, that the author of it must be a person of extraordinary genius. Upon discoursing with the stranger, he was filled with admiration; and, finding him to be skilled in every subject, he introduced him to the acquaintance of the principal men of learning and note in Venice. Here he contracted an intimate friendship not only with Aldus Manutius, but with Laurentius Massa, Spero Speronius, Johannes Donatus, and various other learned persons, to whom he presented several poems in commendation of the city and university. Three of CrichtoH's odes, one addressed to Aldus Manutius, and another to Laurentius Massa, and a third to Johannes Donatus, are still preserved; but are certainly not the productions either of an extraordinary genius, or a correct writer. At length he was introduced to the doge and senate; in whose presence he made a speech, which was accompanied with such beauty of eloquence, and such grace of person and manner, that he received the thanks of that illustrious body; and nothing was talked of through the whole city but this rara in tcrris avis, this prodigy of nature. He held likewise disputations on the subjects of theology, philosophy, and mathematics, before the most eminent professors, and large multitudes of people. His reputation was so great, that the desire of seeing and hearing him brought together a vast concourse of persons from different quarters to Venice. It may be collected from Manutius, that the time in which Crichton exhibited these demonstrations of his abilities, was in the year 1580. During his residence at Venice, he fell into a bad state of health, which continued for the space of four months, and before he was perfectly recovered, he went, by the advice of his friends, to Padua, the university of which city was at that time in great reputation. The day after his arrival, there was a meeting of all the learned men of the place, at the house of Jacobus Aloysius Cornelius; when Crichton opened the assembly with an extemporary poem in praise of the city, the university, and the company who had honoured him with their presence. After this, he disputed for six hours with the most celebrated professors, on various subjects of learning; and he exposed, in particular, the errors of Aristotle, and his commentators, with so much solidity and acuteness, and, at the same time, with so much modesty, that he excited universal admiration. In conclusion, he delivered, extempore, an oration in praise of ignorance, which was conducted with such ingenuity and elegance, that his hearers were astonished. This display of Crichton’s talents was on the 14th of March, 1581. Soon after, he appointed another day for disputation at the palace of the bishop of Padua; not for the purpose of affording higher proofs of his abilities, for that could not possibly be done, but in compliance with the earnest solicitations of some persons, who were not present at the former assemhly. However, several circumstances occurred, which prevented this meeting from taking place. Such is the account of Manutius; but Imperialis relates, that he was informed by his father, who was present upon the occasion, that Crichton was opposed by Archangel us Mercenarius, a famous philosopher, and that he acquitted himself so well as to obtain the approbation of a very honourable company, and even of his antagonist himself. Amidst the discourses which were occasioned by our young Scotchman’s exploits, and the high applauses that were bestowed on his genius and attainments, there were some persons who endeavoured to detract from his merit. For ever, therefore, to confound these invidious impugners of his talents, he caused a paper to be fixed on the gates of St. John and St. Paul’s churches, in which he offered to prove before the university, that the errors of Aristotle, and of all his followers, were almost innumerable; and that the latter had failed, both in explaining their master’s meaning, and in treating on theological subjects. He promised likewise to refute the dreams of certain mathematical professors; to dispute in all the sciences and to answer to whatever should be proposed to him, or objected against him. All this he engaged to do, either in the common logical way, or by numbers and mathematical figures, or in an hundred sorts of verses, at the option of his opponents. According to Manutius, Crichton sustained this contest without fatigue, for three days; during which time he supported his credit, and maintained his propositions, with such spirit and energy, that, from an unusual concourse of people, he obtained acclamations and praises, than which none more magnificent were ever heard by men.

The next account we have of Crichton, and which appears to have been transmitted, through sir Thomas Urquharr, to later biographers, is of an extraordinary instance of bodily courage and skill. It is said, that at Mantua there was at this time a gladiator, who had foiled, in his travels, the most famous fencers in Europe, and had lately killed three persons who had entered the lists with him. The duke of Mantua was much grieved at having granted this man his protection, as he found it to be attended with such fatal consequences. Crichton, being informed of his highness’s concern, offered his service, not only to drive the murderer from Mantua, but from Italy, and to fight him for fifteen hundred pistoles. Though the duke was unwilling to expose such an accomplished gentleman to so great a hazard, yet, relying upon the report he had heard of his warlike achievements, he agreed to the proposal; and, the time and place being appointed, the whole court attended to behold the performance. At the beginning of the combat, Crichton stood only on his defence; while the Italian made his attack with such eagerness and fury, that, having over-acted himself, he began to grow weary. Our young Scotchman now seized the opportunity of attacking his antagonist in return; which he did with so much dexterity and vigour, that he ran him through the body in three different places, of which wounds he immediately died. The acclamations of the spectators were loud and extraordinary upon this occasion; and it was acknowledged by all of them, that they had never seen art grace nature, or nature second the precepts of art, in so lively a manner as they had beheld these two things accomplished on that day. To crown the glory of the action, Crichton bestowed the prize of his victory upon the widows of the three persons who had lost their lives in fighting with the gladiator. It is asserted, that, in consequence of this, and his other wonderful performances, the duke of Mantua made choice of him for preceptor to his son Vincentio di Gonzaga, who is represented as being of a riotous temper and a dissolute life. The appointment was highly pleasing to the court. Crichton, to testify his gratitude to his friends and benefactors, and to contribute to their diversion, framed, we are told, a comedy, wherein he exposed and ridiculed all the weaknesses and failures of the several employments in which men are engaged. This composition was regarded as one of the most ingenious satires that was ever made upon mankind. But the most astonishing part of the story is, that Crichton sustained fifteen characters in the representation of his own play. Among the rest, he acted the divine, the philosopher, the lawyer, the mathematician, the physician, and the soldier, with such inimitable grace, that every time he appeared upon the stage he seemed to be a different person . From being the principal actor in a comedy, Crichton soon became the subject of a dreadful tragedy. One night, during the time of carnival, as he was walking along the streets of Mantua, and playing upon his guitar, he was attacked by half a dozen people in masks. The assailants found that they had no ordinary person to deal with; for they were not able to maintain their ground against him. In the issue, the leader of the company, being disarmed, pulled off his mask, and begged his life, telling him that he was the prince his pupil. Crichton immediately fell on his knees, and expressed his concern for his mistake; alleging, that what he had done was only in his own defence, and that if Gonzaga had any design upon his life he might always be master of it. Then, taking his own sword by the point, he presented it to the prince, who immediately received it, and was so irritated by the affront which he thought he had sustained in being foiled with all "his attendants, that he instantly ran Crichton through the heart. Various have been the conjectures concerning the motives which could induce Vincentio di Gonzaga to be guilty of so ungenerous and brutal an action. Some have ascribed it to jealousy, asserting that he suspected Crichton to be more in favour than himself with a lady whom he passionately loved; and sir Thomas Urqnhart has told a story upon this head which is extravagant and ridiculous in the highest degree. Others, with greater probability, represent the whole transaction as the result of a drunken frolic; and it is uncertain, according to Imperiaiis, whether the meeting of the prince and Crichton was by accident or design. However, it is agreed on all hands, that Crichton lost his life in this rencontre. The time of his decease is said, by the generality of his biographers, to have been in the beginning-of July 1583; but lord Buchan, most likely in consequence of a more accurate immiry, fixes it to the same month in the preceding year. There is a difference likewise with regard to the period of life at which Crichton died. The common accounts declare that he was killed in the thirty-second year of his age; but Imperialis asserts that he was only in his twenty-second when that calamitous event took place; and this fact is confirmed by lord Buchan. Criehton’s tragical end excited a very great and general lamentation. If the foolish ravings of sir Thomas Urquhart are to be credited, the whole court of Mantua went three quarters of a year into mourning for him; the epitaphs and elegies that were composed upon his death, and stuck upon his hearse, would exceed, if collected, the bulk of Homer’s works; and, for a long time afterwards, his picture was to be seen in most of the bed-chambers and galleries of the Italian nobility, representing him on horseback, with a lance in one hand and a book in the other. From all this wonderful account we can only infer, with any degree of confidence, that Crichton was a youth of such lively parts as excited great present admiration, and high expectations with regard to his future attainments. He appears to have had a fine person, to have been adroit in his bodily exercises, to have possessed a peculiar facility in learning languages, to have enjoyed a remarkably quick and retentive memory, and to have excelled in a power of declamation, a fluency of speech, and a readiness of reply. His knowledge likewise was probably very uncommon for his years; and this, in conjunction with his other qualities, enabled him to shine in public disputation. But whether his knowledge were accurate or profound, may justly be questioned; and it may equally be doubted whether he would have arisen to any extraordinary degree of eminence in the literary world, which, however, his early and untimely death prevented from being brought to the test of experiment.

, bishop of Bath and Wells, was born of an ancient family at Dunkeld, in Scotland, in 1593, and was educated at Westminster school, whence in 1613 he was elected to Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took his degrees in arts, and was chosen Greek professor, and university orator. In 1632 he was made treasurer of the cathedral of Wells, and was also canon residentiary, prebendary of Taunton, and had a living in Somersetshire. In 1637 he was admitted to the degree of D. D. and, as reported, was made dean of St. Burian, in Cornwall, but this seems doubtful. In the beginning of the rebellion, Dr. Crighton’s loyalty endangered his person and property, and to save the former he joined the king’s troops at Oxford. But from this place he was obliged afterwards to escape into Cornwall, in the dress of a day-labourer, and contrived to go to Charles II. abroad, who employed him as his chaplain, and bestowed on him the deanery of Wells, of which he took possession at the restoration. In 1670 he was promoted to the bishopric of Bath and Wells, which he held until his death Nov. 21, 1672. He was accounted a man of much learning, and in the discharge of his duty as a preacher, reproved the vices of the court with great boldness and plainness. His only publication was a translation from Greek into Latin, of Sylvester Syguropolus’s history of the council of Florence, Hague, 1660, fol. which was animadverted upon by Leo Allatius, to whom the bishop wrote an answer. Wood says he has some sermons in print. His son, who was chanter of Wells, published a volume of Sermons in 1720.

, of an illustrious family of Italy, established in the comtat Venaissin, knight of Malta, and one of the greatest generals of his age, was born in 1541, and entered into the service in 1557. At the age of fifteen he was at the siege of Calais, and contributed greatly to the taking of that place, by a brilliant action that brought him to the notice of Henry II. He afterwards signalized himself against the Huguenots, or protestants, at the battles of Dreux, of Jarnac, and of Moncontour, in 1562, 1568, and 1569. The youthful hero so greatly distinguished himself in his caravans, especially at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, that he was made choice of, though wounded, to carry the news of the victory to the pope and to the king of France. We find him two years afterwards, in 1573, at the siege of la Rochelle, and in almost all the other considerable rencontres of that period. He every where shewed himself worthy of the name usually given him hy Henry IV. of the Brave Crillon. Henrv Hi. who was well acquainted with his valour, made him knight of his orders in 1585. The specious pretences of the league, the mask of religion which it put on, could never shake the fidelity of the brave Crillon, however great his antipathy to the Huguenots. He rendered important services to his prince in the affair of the Barricades, at Tours, and elsewhere. Henry III. ventured to propose to Crillon to assassinate the duke de Guise, a rebellious subject whom he was afraid to put to death by the sword of the law. Crillon offered to fiorht him; but disdained to hear of assassination. When Henry IV. had made the conquest of his kingdom, Crillon was as faithful to him as he had been to his predecessor. He repulsed the leaguers before Boulogne. The army of Villars having invested Villebceuf in 1592, he vigorously defended that place, replying to the besiegers, on their summoning the besieged to surrender, “Crillon is within, and the enemy without.” Henry, however, did but little for him; “because,” said he, “I was sure of the brave Crillon and I had to gain over my persecutors.” The peace of Vervins having put an end to the wars that had troubled Europe, Crillon retired to Avignon, and there died, in the exercises of piety and penance, the 2d of December 1615, at the age of seventy-four. Francis Bening, a Jesuit, pronounced the discourse at his funeral: a piece of burlesque eloquence, printed in 1616, under the title of “Boucher d'Honnenr,” the “Buckler of Honour,” and reprinted not many years since, as a specimen of ridiculous jargon. Mademoiselle de Lusson published in 2 vols. 12mo, 1757, the life of this hero, called by his contemporaries I'homme sans peur (the man without fear), le brave des braves (the bravest of the brave). This was translated into English by Miss Lomax, of Hertfordshire, and after being revised by Richardson, the author of Clarissa, was published at London, 1760, 2 vols. 12mo. Crillon appears to have been a second chevalier Bayard, not on account of his fantastic and sullen humour, but from the excellence of his heart and his attachment to religion. It is well known that being present one day at a sermon on the sufferings of Christ, when the preacher was come to the description of the flagellation, Crillon, seized with a sudden fit of enthusiasm, put his band to his sword, crying out, “Where wert thou, Crillon?” These sallies of courage, the effect of an exuberant vivacity of temper, engaged him too frequently in duels, in which he always came off with honour. Two instances are recorded of an intrepidity highly characteristic of Crillon. At the battle of Moncontour in 1569, a Huguenot soldier thought to serve his party by dispatching the bravest and most formidable of the catholic generals. In this view he repaired to a place where Crillon, in his return from pursuing the fugitives, must necessarily pass. The soldier no sooner perceived him than he drew the trigger of his piece. Crillon, though severely wounded in the arm, ran up to the assassin, laid hold on him, and was instantly going to thrust him through with his sword, when the soldier threw himself at his feet and begged his life. “I grant it thee,” said Crillou; “and if any faith could be put in a man that is at once a rebel to his king, and an apostate to his religion, I would put thee on thy parole never to bear arms but in the service of thy sovereign.” The soldier, confounded at this act of magnanimity, swore that he would for ever shake off all correspondence with the rebels, and return to the catholic religion. — The young duke of Guise, to whom Henry IV. had sent him at Marseilles, was desirous of trying how far the fortitude of Crillon would go. In this design he caused the alarm to be sounded before the quarters of his brave commander, and two horses to be led to his door. Then, running up to his apartments, pretended that the enemy was master of the port and town, and proposed to him to make his escape, that he might not swell the triumph of the conquerors. Though Crillon was hardly well awake when he heard these tidings, he snatched up his arms without the least trepidation, maintaining that it was better to die sword in hand, than survive the loss of the place. Guise, finding it impossible, by all the arguments he could use, to alter his resolution, accompanied him out of the chamber; but, when they were about the middle of the stairs, he burst out into a violent laughter, which plainly discovered the trick to Crillon. He then put on a graver countenance than when he thought he was going to fight; and griping the duke of Guise by the hand, he said, with an oath, according to his custom, “Young man, never again amuse thyself with putting to the test the heart of an honest man. Par la mort! if thou hadst found me weak, I would have poignarded thee!” After these words he retired without saying any thing more. We will conclude with the laconic billet written to him from the field of battle by Henry IV. after the victory of Arques, where Crillon was unable to be present: “Hang thyself, Crillon! We have been fighting at Arques, and thou wert not there. Adieu, brave Crillon! I love thee whether right or wrong.”

, a learned Bohemian, was born at Schlackowald, in 1584, and after receiving the first rudiments of education at home, was sent in 1603, first to Jena, and afterwards to Wittemberg, where he studied divinity, philosophy, and the learned languages, in which last, particularly the oriental languages, he became critically skilled. He also taught the oriental languages at Wittemberg, published several critical works, which were highly esteemed, and had for his pupils many young men who were afterwards authors of great name. His reputation extending to Austria, he was invited in 1614 to become pastor at Geschwend, where he remained five years, until he was induced to accept the pastoral office at Muhlgrub, the residence of a nobleman named Fenzelius, who offered him the situation, with a liberal income; and here, probably, he would have spent his days, had not Ferdinand II, banished all Lutheran preachers and teachers, which obliged him to go to Ratisbon, and afterwards to Nuremberg. He was then made professor of divinity at Altdorff, which he enjoyed only four years, dying there, of what his biographers call the falling sickness, (comitialis morbus), Aug. 28, 1629. His principal works are, 1. “A Dissertation on the Confusion of Tongues.” 2. “Exercitationes Hebraicse.” 3. “Gymnasium & Lexicon Syriacum,” 2 vols. 4to. 4. “Lingua Samaritica,” 4to. 5. “Grammatica Chaldaica,” 4to. 6. “De auctoritate verbi divini in Hebraico codice,” Amsterdam, 1664, in 4to, &c.

, an eminent and loyal citizen in the reigns of king Charles the First, and king Charles the Second, the son of a very eminent merchant of London, was born in 1598, and bred, according to the custom of those times, in a thorough knowledge of business, though heir to a great estate. He made a considerable addition to this by marriage; and being a man of an enterprizing genius, ever active and solicitous about new inventions and discoveries, was soon taken notice of at court, was knighted, and became one of the farmers of the king’s customs. When the trade to Guinea was under great difficulties and discouragements, he framed a project for retrieving it, which required a large capital, but his reputation was so great, that many rich merchants willingly engaged with him in the prosecution of the design; and to give a good example, as well as to shew that he meant to adhere to the work that he had once taken in hand, he caused the castle of Cormantyn upon the Gold Coast, to be erected at his own expence. By this judicious precaution, and by his wise and wary management afterwards, himself and his associates carried their trade so successfully, as to divide amongst them fifty thousand pounds a year. When the rebellion began, and the king was in want of money, sir Nicholas Crispe, and his partners in the farming of the customs, upon very short warning, and when their refusing it would have been esteemed a merit with the parliament, raised him one hundred thousand pounds at once. After the war broke out, and in the midst of all the distractions with which it was attended, he continued to carry on a trade to Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Norwaj', Moscovy, and Turkey, which produced to the king nearly one hundred thousand pounds a year, besides keeping most of the ports open and ships in them constantly ready for his service. All the correspondence and supplies of arms which were procured by the queen in Holland, and by the king’s agents in Denmark, were consigned to his care, and by his prudence and vigilance safely landed in the north, and put into the hands of those for whom they were intended. In the management of so many nice and difficult affairs, he was obliged to keep up a very extensive correspondence, for which he hardly ever made use of cypher, but penned his letters in such a peculiar style, as removed entirely his intentions from the apprehension of his enemies, and yet left them very intelligible unto those with whom he transacted. He had also great address in bringing any thing to bear that he had once contrived, to which it contributed not a little, that in matters of secrecy and danger he seldom trusted to any hands but his own, and made use of all kinds of disguises. Sometimes, when he was believed to be in one place, he was actually at another; letters of consequence he carried in the disguise of a porter; when he wanted intelligence he would be at the water side, with a basket of flounders upon his head, and often passed between London and Oxford in the dress of a butter-woman on horseback, between a pair of panniers. He was the principal author of a well-laid design for publishing the king’s commission of array at London, in which there was nothing dishonourable, so far as sir Nicholas Crispe was concerned, which, however, Clarendon inadvertently confounds with another design, superinduced by Mr. Waller, of surprizing the parliament, in bringing which to bear he proceeded very vigorously at first, till, finding that he had engaged in a matter too big for his management, he suddenly lost his spirits, and some of the chief men in the house of commons gaining intelligence that something was in agitation to their prejudice, May 31st, 1643, they presently seized Mr. Waller, and drew from him a complete discovery, which, from the account they published, plainly distinguished these two projects. By the discovery of this business, sir Nicholas Crispe found himself obliged to declare openly the course he meant to take; and having at his own expence raised a regiment of horse for the king’s service, he distinguished himself at the head of it as remarkably in his military, as he had ever done in his civil capacity. When the siege of Gloucester was resolved on, sir Nicholas Crispe was charged with his regiment of horse to escort the king’s train of artillery from Oxford, which important service he very gallantly performed; but in the month of September following, a very unlucky accident occurred, and though the circumstances attending it clearly justified his conduct to the world, yet the concern it gave him was such as he could not shake off so long as he lived. He happened to be quartered at Rouslidge, in Gloucestershire, where one sir James Ennyon, bart. of Northamptonshire, and some friends of his took up a great part of the house, though none of them had any commands in the army, which, however, sir Nicholas bore with the utmost patience, notwithstanding he was much incommoded by it. Some time after, certain horses belonging to those gentlemen were missing, and sir James Ennyon, though he had lost none himself, insinuating that some of sir Nicholas’s troopers must have taken them, insisted that he should immediately draw out his regiment, that search might be made for them. Sir Nicholas answered him with mildness, and offered him as full satisfaction as it was in his power to give, but excused himself from drawing out his regiment, as a thing improper and inconvenient at that juncture, for reasons which he assigned. Not content, however, sir James left him abruptly, and presently after sent him a challenge, accompanied with a message to this effect, that if he did not comply with it, he would pistol him against the wall. Upon this, sir Nicholas Crispe taking a friend of his with him, went to the place appointed, and finding sir James Ennyon and the person who brought him the challenge, sir Nicholas used his utmost endeavours to pacify him; but he being determined to receive no satisfaction, unless by the sword, they engaged, and sir James received a wound in the rim of the belly, of which he died in two days. Before this, however, he sent for sir Nicholas Crispe, and was sincerely reconciled to him. Upon the 2d of October following, sir Nicholas was brought to a court-martial for this unfortunate affair, and upon a full examination of every thing relating to it, was most honourably acquitted. He continued to serve with the same zeal and fidelity during 1644, and in the spring following; but when the treaty of Uxbridge commenced, the parliament thought fit to mark him, as they afterwards did in the Isle of Wight treaty, by insisting that he should be removed from his majesty’s presence; and a few months after, on April 16th, 1645, they ordered his large house in Breadstreet to be sold, which for many years belonged to his family. Neither was this stroke of their vengeance judged a sufficient punishment for his offences, since having resolved to grant the elector palatine a pension of eight thousand pounds a year, they directed that two thousand should be applied out of the king’s revenue, and the remainder made up out of the estates of lord Culpeper and sir Nicholas Crispe, Sir Nicholas finding himself no lon^ev in a capacity to render his majesty any service, thought it expedient to preserve himself; and in April 1646 embarked with lord Culpeper and colonel Monk for France, but as he had many rich relations who had interest with those in power, they interposed in his favour; and as sir Nicholas perceived that he could be of no service to the royal cause abroad, h did not look upon it as any deviation from his duty, to return and live quietly at home. Accordingly, having submitted to a composition, he came back to London, to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and very soon engaged again in business, with the same spirit and success as before. In this season of prosperity he was not unmindful of the wants of Charles II. but contributed cheerfully to his relief, when his affairs seemed to be in the most desperate condition. After the death of Oliver Cromwell, he was instrumental in reconciling many to their duty, and so well were his principles known, and so much his influence apprehended, that when it was proposed that the royalists in and about London should sign an instrument signifying their inclination to preserve the public tranquillity, he was called upon, and very readily subscribed it. He was also principally concerned in bringing the city of London, in her corporate capacity, to give the encouragement that was requisite to leave general Monk without any difficulties or suspicion as to the sincerity and unanimity of their inclinations. It was therefore very natural, after reading the king’s letter and declaration in common-council, May 3d, 1660, to think of sending some members of their own body to preSent their duty to his majesty; and having appointed nine aldermen and their recorder, they added sir Nicholas Crispe, with several other worthy persons, to the committee, that the king might receive the more satisfaction from their sentiments being delivered by several of those who had suffered deeply in his own and in his father’s cause. His majesty accordingly received these gentlemen very graciously, as a committee, and afterwards testified to them separately the sense he had of their past services, and upon his return, sir Nicholas Crispe and sir John Wolstenholme, were re-instated as farmers of the customs. Sir Nicholas was now in years, and somewhat infirm, spent a great part of his time at his noble country seat near Hammersmith, where he was in some measure the founder of the chapel, and having an opportunity of returning the tbligation he had received from some of his relations, he procured for them that indemnity from the king, gratis, for which he had so dearly paid during the rebellion. The last testimony he received of his royal master’s favour, was his being created a baronet, April 16th, 1665, which he did not long survive, dying February 26th, the next year, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, leaving a very large estate to his grandson, sir Nicholas Crispe. His corpse was interred with his ancestors, in the parish church of St. Mildred, in Bread-street, and his funeral sermon was preached by his reverend and learned kinsman Mr. Crispe, of Christ-church, Oxford. But his heart was sent to the chapel at Hammersmith, where there is a short and plain inscription upon a cenotaph erected to his memory; or rather upon that monument which himself erected in grateful commemoration of king Charles I. as the inscription placed there in sir Nicholas’s life-time tells us, under which, after his decease, was placed a small white marble urn, upon a black pedestal, containing his heart.

, a puritan writer of considerable eminence, the third son of Ellis Crisp, esq. an alderman, and probably related to the family of the subject of the preceding article, was born in Bread-street, London, in 1600, and educated at Eton-school. He afterwards went to Cambridge, where he studied until he took his degree of B. A, and was, on his removal to Oxford, “for the accomplishment,” says Wood, “. of certain parts of learning,” incorporated in the same degree as a member of Baliol-college, in the end of Feb. 1626, and the degree was completed by him in the act following, July 1627. In this year he was presented to the rectory of Newington Butts, near Southwark, but enjoyed the living only a few months, being removed on account of a simoniacal contract. In the same year, however, he became rector of Brinkwortb, in Wiltshire, and a few years after proceeded D. D. At Brinkworth he was much followed for his edifying manner of preaching, and for his great hospitality. But on the breaking out of the rebellion, being noted among those who were inclined to favour the republicans, he met witk. such harsh treatment from the king’s soldiers, as obliged him to repair to London, where his preaching, although at first acceptable, was soon accused of leaning to Antinomianism, and involved him with many of his brethren in a controversy. He was baited, says Wood, by fifty-two opponents, in a grand dispute concerning the freeness of the grace of God in Jesus Christ; and by this encounter, which was eagerly managed on his part, he contracted a disease that brought him to his grave. This disease, communicated by infection, and probably nowise connected with the eagerness of his dispute, was the small-pox, of which he died Feb. 27, 1642, and was buried in the family vault in St. Mildred’s, Bread-street. In his last sickness, he avowed his firm adherence in the doctrines he had preached. The dispute mentioned by Wood, was probably carried on in person, or in the pulpit, for we do not find that he published any thing in his life-time; but, after his death, three 4to volumes of his sermons were printed by his son, under the title of “Christ alone exalted,” containing in all forty-two sermons. When they appeared, we are told, that the Westminster assembly proposed to have them burnt; and although we do not find that this was done, Flavel, and other non-conformists, endeavoured to expose the danger of some of his sentiments. Here, probably, the controversy might have rested, had not his works been again published about the revolution, by one of his sons, with additions. This excited a new controversy, confined almost entirely to the dissenters, but in which some of the most eminent of that body took a part, and carried it on with an asperity which produced considerable disunion. In particular it disturbed the harmony of the weekly lecture established at Pinners’ -hall, and the congregation mostly inclining to Dr. Crisp’s sentiments, the minority seceded, and began a weekly lecture at Salters’-hall. The principal writers in this controversy were Williams, Edwards, Lorimer, &c. against Crisp; and Chauncey, Mather, Lobb, &c. for him; and after a contest of seven-years, they rather agreed to a suspension of hostilities than came to a decision. The truth appears to have been, that Crisp was extremely unguarded in many of his expressions, but was as far as the fiercest of his antagonists from intending to support any doctrine that tended to licentiousness. A very full account of the whole controversy may be seen in the last of our authorities.

, abbot of Westminster in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was born in Normandy, of a considerable family, and educated in the monastery of Bee, under Lanfranc, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who was then prior of that convent, and taught the liberal arts with great reputation. In this seminary Crispin became a monk, under Anselm, who was at that time abbot. He was much esteemed by both these eminent men, the former of whom, after his advancement to the see of Canterbury, sent for him to England, and made him abbot of St. Peter’s, Westminster, and Lanfranc parted with him reluctantly, and continued to correspond with him as long as he lived. Crispin was abbot of Westminster thirty-two years, during which he was sent on different embassies by king Henry I. Leland says, that he was some time at Rome, probably on some ecclesiastical errand. He died in 1117, and was buried in the south part of the great cloisters. Leland, Bale, and Pits, who give him the character of a very learned and pious ecclesiastic, attribute a great many works in divinity to him, of which we know of one only that was published, “De fide ecclesise, contra Judasos,” Cologne, 1537, and Paris, 1678, with Anselm’s works. This was occasioned by a disputation which he held with a very learned Jew at Mentz, whose arguments, with his own, he drew up in the form of a dialogue.

, a protestant divine, and author of a “History of the Quakers,” was born at Amsterdam April 27, 1642. He was partly educated there, but principally at Leyden, where he studied polite literature under Gronovius and Hornius, and divinity under Cocceius and Hoornbek. He then accompanied the son of admiral de Ruyter to Smyrna, and on his return came to England, and had some intention of residing at Norwich, but preferring his own country, he was appointed chaplain to the garrison of Ypres, and pastor of the church of Alblas near Dort, where he died May 10, 1710. His principal work was his “History of the Quakers,” entitled “Historia Quakeriana,” Amst. 1695, 8vo, and translated into English 1696. It does not appear that this history gave much satisfaction to the sect, and it is certainly very inferior to that of Sewell, who furnished him with some materials, of which, according to Sewell, he did not make a judicious use. It was also answered by a quaker at Amsterdam, in a work entitled “DiluciJationes quasdam valde neces$ariae in Gerardi Croesii Hist.” 1696, 8vo. Croese’s other publication, a singular mixture of misapplied learning and fanciful criticism, is entitled “Homerus Hebraeus, sive Historia Hebraeorum ab Homero, Hebraicis hominibus ac sententiis conscripta, in Odyssea et Iliade, exposita et illustrata,” Dort, 1704. Perizonius, and after him Saxms, conceives that nothing can be imagined more foolish than this book, in which probably our readers will agree, when they are told that his object is to prove that the Odyssey contains the history of the Jews in the patriarchal ages, and the Iliad is an account of the siege and capture of Jericho. Croese left also some dissertations.

, the son of Edward Croft, esq. of a very ancient family at Croft-castle in Herefordshire, was educated at Christ-church, Oxford, and became a member of parliament in the latter end of queen Elizabeth’s reign. On the accession of James I. he waited on him at Theobalds, and his majesty being informed of his family and personal merits, he was honoured with knighthood. After he had lived fifty-two years as a protestant, he became a member of the Roman catholic church, and going over to Doway, had an apartment in the monastery of the English Benedictines, and, as some say, became a lay brother of the order. After residing here about five years he died April 10, 1622, a rare example, says his popish biographer, of piety and resolution. He left four sons: William, also knighted and a colonel in the civil wars, who was killed in battle in 1645; James and Robert, both colonels; and Herbert, the subject of the following article. He wrote, 1. “Letters persuasive to his wife and children, to take upon them the Catholic religion,” Doway, 1619, 12mo, 2. “Arguments to show that the church in communion with the see of Rome, is the true church; against Dr. Field’s four books of the church,” 1619. 3. “Reply to the answer of his daughter (Mary) which she made to a paper of his, sent to her concerning the Roman church,” 1619, 12mo, 255 pages. This must be a very rare book if, according to Wood, eight copies only were printed.

This was the first thing bishop Croft published, except two sermons: one on Isaiah xxvii. verse last, preached before the house of lords upon the fast-day, Feb. 4, 1673; the other before the king at Whitehall, April 12, 1674, on Philipp. i. 21. In 1678 he published a third sermon, preached Nov. 4, at the cathedral church in Hereford, and entitled, “A second call to a farther Humiliation.” The year after he published “A Letter written to a friend concerning popish idolatry:” and also a second impression, corrected, with additions, of his “Legacy to his diocese; or a short determination of all controversies we have with the papists by God’s holy word,” 4to. Besides the epistle to all the people within his diocese, especially those of the city of Hereford, and a preface, this work consists of three sermons upon John v. 39. “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life;” and a supplement, together with a tract concerning the holy sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, promised in the preface. This work was calculated by him to preserve the people of his diocese from the snares of popish missionaries, who were then very active all over the kingdom. In 1685 he published some animadversions on a book entitled “The Theory of the Earth;” and in 1688, “A Short Discourse concerning the reading his majesty’s late declaration in Churches.” This, which was the last employment of his pen, was shewn by a certain courtier to king James; who ordered so much of the discourse, as concerned the reading of the declaration, to be published to the world, and the rest to be suppressed, as being contrary to the views with which that declaration had been set forth. It is remarkable of this excellent prelate, that he had taken a resolution some years before his death, of resigning his bishopric; to which, it seems, he was moved by some scruples of conscience. His motives he expressed in a long letter to Dr. Stillingfleet; who, however, in an answer, persuaded him to continue his episcopal charge with his usual earnestness and vigour. He died at his palace at Hereford, May 18, 1691, and was buried in the cathedral there, with this short inscription over his grave-stone “Depositum Herbert! Croft de Croft, episcopi Herefordensis, qui obiit 18 die Maii A. D. 1691, DDtatis suae 88; in vita conjuncti” that is, “Here are deposited the remains of Herbert Croft of Croft, bishop of Hereford, who died May 18, 1691, in the 88th year of his age in life united.” The last words, “in life united,” allude to his lying next dean Benson, at the bottom of whose grave-stone are these, “in morte non divisi,” that is, “in death not divided:” the two gravestones having hands engraven on them, reaching from one to the other, and joined together, to signify the lasting and uninterrupted friendship which subsisted between these two reverend dignitaries.

As bishop Croft lived, so he died, without the least tincture of that popery which he had contracted in his youth, as appears clearly enough from the preamble to his will: “I do,” says he, “in all humble manner most heartily thank God, that he hath been most graciously pleased, by the light of his most holy gospel, to recall me from the darkness of gross errors and popish superstitions, into which I was seduced in my younger days, and to settle me again in the true ancient catholic and apostolic faith, professed by our church of England, in which I was born and baptized, and in which I joyfully die,” &c. He had one only son, Herbert, who was educated in Magdalen college, Oxford, was created baronet by Charles II. Nov. 167 1, and was twice knight of the shire in the reign of king William. He died 1720, and was succeeded by his son Archer, and he by his son and namesake in 1761, who dying in 1792, without male issue, the title descended to the rev. Herbert Croft, a gentleman well known in the literary world.

, was born in the province of Maine in 1552. He was sieur or lord of the manor of Croix du Maine, and of Vieille Cour, four leagues from Mans. From his youth he. had a passionate inclination for learning and books, and collected so large a library at the university in Greek and Latin authors, and most European languages, that, as he says himself, the catalogue of them would make a volume. He began to make this collection in his seventeenth year; and in his thirty-second, viz. in 1584, he published his “French Library,” being a general account of all authdfs that wrote in that language, fol. Of this we shall take particular notice under the article Verdier. In 1519 he addressed a discourse to viscount de Pauliny, and speaks of a great many works which he had written, none of which, however, are known, except a small 4to, *' Dessems ou projets, &c. pour dresser une bibliotheque parfaite," Paris, 1583, and a long Latin epitaph on the poet Monin, who was assassinated at Paris in 1586, a fate which befell himself at Tours in 1592.

, in Latin Crocus, one of the revivers of classical learning, was a native of London, educated at Eton, and admitted scholar of King’s college, Cambridge, April 4, 1506. During the time of his scholarship he went to Oxford, and was instructed in the Greek language by Grocyn. He then went to Paris and some other parts of Europe for further improvement, and continued abroad about twelve years, supported chiefly by the liberality of Warham, archbishop of Canterbury. During his residence there he received a very high honour, that of being chosen Greek professor at Leipsic, being the fiirt that ever taught Greek in that university. Camerarius was one of his pupils here. He resided at Leipsic from 1514 to 1517, and afterwards for some time at Louvain in the same capacity. But as now the study of the Greek language began to be encouraged in our own universities, and as they could ill spare a scholar of Croke’s accomplishments, he was invited home, and in 1519, by the interest of Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was chosen public orator, and lecturer or teacher of Greek in that university. Here, likewise, as well as at Leipsic, he was the first who publicly and by authority taught Greek, Erasmus, who preceded him, having only made some private attempts; yet, in some respect he may be said to have succeeded that eminent scholar, as in his oration in praise of Greek learning, he makes honourable mention of Erasmus, and speaks modestly of himself as unworthy to succeed him. Erasmus had so good an opinion of him, that knowing he was poor, he desired dean Colet to assist him. In 1524, having proceeded in divinity, he became doctor in that faculty, and Henry VIII. being informed of his abilities, employed him as tutor to his natural son, the duke of Richmond. This promotion led to higher; for, being introduced at court when the question respecting the king’s divorce was agitated, Dr. Croke was thought a proper person to be sent abroad, in order to influence the university of Padua to the king’s side; which he successfully accomplished, although the enemies of that divorce say, not in the most honourable manner. From Collier we learn that Croke owns, in a letter to his royal master, that he had paid various sums to at least five of the members of the universities of Padua and Bologna, in order to keep them steady to the cause. But Burnet appears to explain this matter more to Croke’s honour.

On his return to England, the university of Oxford invited him to settle there, with which he complied in 1532, and taught Greek in Peckwater school (on the site of which Peckwater quadrangle is built), and soon after he was made a canon of Cardinal Wolsey’s college, which he held until 1545, when he removed to Exeter college on a pension of 26l. 135. 6d. per annum, from the smallness of which it has been inferred that he had not now the same interest at court as formerly but long before this, in 1532 f when, upon the death of dean Higden, the canons supplicated his majesty, through lord Cromwell, that he might be appointed to that office, the request was denied, nor was he afterwards made a canon of the college upon the new foundation by Henry VIII. when it had the name of the King’s college. It appears by his will that he had only the living of Long Buckby, in Northamptonshire, which Dodd supposes was conferred upon him in queen Mary’s time. The same historian thinks that in king Edward’s reign he did not go all the lengths of the reformers, and gives as a proof some reflections against Leland on account of his inconstancy in religion. There can be no doubt, however, of Dr. Croke’s remaining Jinn in the popish religion, for we find him enumerated among the witnesses appointed to discover heresy in archbishop Cranmer’s writings. Dr. Croke died at London in 1558, but where buried is not known. His writings are, 1. “Oratio de Groecarum disciplinarum laudibus,” dated July 1519, and probably printed about that time, 4to. It is dedicated to his fellow collegian, Nicholas West, bishop of Ely; and the date shows the error of those biographers who inform us that he was not chosen Greek professor at Cambridge until 1522. With this is printed “Oratio qua Cantabrigienses est hortatus, ne Grascarum literarum desertores essent.” Before, and at the end of these orations, Gilbert Ducher wrote an epistle in praise of Croke’s learning. 2. “Introductiones ad Grascam linguam,” Cologn, 1520, 4to. 3. “In Ausonium annotationes.” 4. “Elementa Gr. Gram.” 5. “De Verborum constructione.” His Letters from Italy to Henry VIII. on the subject of the divorce may be seen in Burnet’s History of the Reformation, with a full account of his proceedings there, which gives us no very favourable notion of the liberality of his royal employer, and proves that Collier’s accusation of bribery has not much foundation. Croke is also said to have made some translations from the Greek of Theodore Gaza and Elysius Calentinus. Hody says that he and Erasmus translated Gaza’s Greek Grammar in 1518, which may be the same mentioned above; and we suspect that the work “De Verborum constructione” is also from Gaza. Bale and Pits are seldom to be depended on in the titles of books. The fame of Croke has been recently revived on the continent by John Gott. Boehmius, in his “Specimen Literature Lipsicae Saeculo XVI.” 1761, 4to, in which he notices Croke as the reviver of Greek literature in that university. The same author, in his “Opuscula Academica de Litteratura Lipsiensi,” has published Croke’s “Encomium Academic Lipsiensis.”

, earl of Essex, an eminent statesman in the sixteenth century, was the son of Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, at Putney, near London, and in his latter days a brewer; after whose decease, his mother was married to a sheerman in London. What education he had, was In a private school: and all the learning he attained to, was (according to the standard of those times), only reading and writing, and a little Latin. When he grew up, having a very great inclination for travelling, he went into foreign countries, though at whose expence is not known; and by that means he had an opportunity of seeing the world, of gaining experience, and of learning several languages, which proved of great service to him afterwards. Coming to Antwerp, where was then a very considerable English factory, he was by them retained to be their clerk, or secretary. But that office being too great a confinement, he embraced an opportunity that offered in 1510, of taking a journey to Rome. Whilst he remained in Italy he served for some time as a soldier under the duke of Bourbon, and was at the sacking of Rome: and at Bologna he assisted John Russel, esq. afterwards earl of Bedford, in making his escape, when he had like to be betrayed into the hands of the French, being secretly in those parts about our king’s affairs. It is also much to his credit, as an early convert to the reformation, that, in his journey to and from Rome, he learned by heart Erasmus’s translation of the New Testament. After his return from his travels he was taken into the family and service of cardinal Wolsey, who is said to have first discovered him in France, and who made him his solicitor, and often employed him in business of great importance. Among other things, he had the chief hand in the foundation of the two colleges begun at Oxford and Ipswich by that magnificent prelate; and upon the cardinal’s disgrace in 1529, he used his utmost endeavours and interest to have him restored to the king’s favour: even when articles of high-treason against him were sent down to the house of commons, of which Cromwell was then a member, he defended his master with so much wit and eloquence, that no treason cauld be laid to his charge: which honest beginning procured Cromwell great reputation, and made his parts and abilities to be much taken notice of. After the cardinal’s household was dissolved, Cromwell was taken into the king’s service (upon the recommendation of sir Christopher Hales, afterwards master of the rolls, and sir John Russel, knt. above-mentioned) as the fittest person to manage the disputes the king then had with the pope; though some endeavoured to hinder his promotion, and to prejudice his majesty against him, on account of his defacing the small monasteries that were dissolved for endowing Wolsey’s colleges. But he discovering to the king some particulars that were very acceptable to him respecting the submission of the clergy to the pope, in derogation of his majesty’s authority, he took him into the highest degree of favour, and soon after he was sent to the convocation, then sitting, to acquaint the clergy, that they were all fallen into a praemunire on the above account, and the provinces of Canterbury and York were glad to compromise by a present to the king of above 100,000l. In 1531 he was knighted; made master of the king’s jewel-house, with a salary of 50l. per annum; and constituted a privy-counsellor. The next year he was made clerk of the Hanaper, an office of profit and repute in chancery; and, before the end of the same year, chancellor of the exchequer, and in 1534, principal secretary of state, and master of the rolls. About the same time he was chosen chancellor of the university of Cambridge; soon after which followed a general visitation of that university, when the several colleges delivered up their charters, and other instruments, to sir Thomas Cromwell. The year before, he assessed the fines laid upon those who having 40l. per annum estate, refused to take the order of knighthood. In 1535 he was appointed visitor-general of the monasteries throughout England, in order for their suppression; and in that office is accused of having acted with much violence, although in other cases promises and pensions were employed to obtain the compliance of the monks and nuns. But the mode, whatever it might be, gave satisfaction to the king and his courtiers, and Cromwell was, on July 2, 1536, constituted lord keeper of the privy seal, when he resigned his mastership of the rolls . On the 9th of the same month he was advanced to the dignity of a baron of this realm, by the title of lord Cromwell of Okeham in Rutlandshire; and, six days after, took his place in the house of lords. The pope’s supremacy being now abolished in England, lord Cromwell was made, on the 18th of July, vicar-general, and vicegerent, over all the spirituality, under the king, who was declared supreme head of the church. In that quality his lordship satin the convocation holden this year, above the archbishops, as the king’s representative. Being-invested with such extensive power, he employed it in discouraging popery, and promoting the reformation. For that purpose he caused certain articles to be enjoined by the king’s authority, differing in many essential points from the established system of the Roman-catholic religion; and in September, this same year, he published some injunctions to the clergy, in which they were ordered to preach up the king’s supremacy; not to lay out their rhetoric in extolling images, relics, miracle*, or pilgrimages, but rather to exhort their people to serve God, and make provision for their families: to put parents and other directors of youth in mind to teach their children the Lord’s-prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in their mother-tongue, and to provide a Bible in Latin and English, to be laid in the churches for every one to read at their pleasure. He likewise encouraged the translation of the Bible into English; and, when finished, enjoined that one of the largest volume should be provided for every parish church, at the joint charge of the parson and parishioners. These alterations, with the dissolution of the monasteries, and (notwithstanding the immense riches gotten from thence) his demanding at the same time for the king subsidies both from the clergy and laity, occasioned very great murmurs against him, and indeed with some reason. All this, however, rather served to establish him in the king’s esteem, who was as prodigal of money as he was rapacious and in 1537 his majesty constituted him chief justice itinerant of all the forests beyond Trent and on the 26th of August, the same year, he was elected knight of the garter, and dean of the cathedral church of Weils. The year following he obtained a grant of the castle and lordship of Okeham in the county of Rutland; and was also made constable of Carisbrook-castle in the Isle of Wight. In September he published new injunctions, directed to all bishops and curates, in which he ordered that a Bible, in English, should be set up in some convenient place in every church, where the parishioners might most commodiously resort to read the same: that the clergy should, every Sunday and holiday, openly and plainly recite to their parishioners, twice or thrice together, one article of the Lord’s Prayer, or Creed, in English, that they might learn the same by heart: that they should make, or cause to be made, in their churches, one sermon every quarter of a year at least, in which they should purely and sincerely declare the very gospel of Christ, and exhort their hearers to the works of charity, mercy, and faith not to pilgrimages, images, &c. that they should forthwith take clown all images to which pilgrimages or offerings were wont to be made: that in all such benefices upon which they were not themselves resident, they should appoint able curates: that they, and every parson, vicar, or curate, should for every church keep one book of register, wherein they should write the day and year of every wedding, christening, and burying, within their parish; and therein set every person’s name that shall be so wedded, christened, or buried, &c. Having been thus highly instrumental in promoting the reformation, and in dissolving the monasteries, he was amply rewarded by the king in 1539, with many noble manors and large estates that had belonged to those dissolved houses. On the 17th of April, the same year, he was advanced to the dignity of earl of Essex; and soon after constituted lord high chamberlain of England. The same day he was created earl of Essex he procured Gregory his son to be made baron Cromwell of Okeham. On the 12th of March 1540, he was put in commission, with others, to sell the abbey-lands, at twenty years’ purchase: which was a thing he had advised the king to do, in order to stop the clamours of the people, to attach them to his interest, and to reconcile them to the dissolution of the monasteries. But as, like his old master Wolsey, he had risen rapidly, he was now doomed, like him, to exhibit as striking an example of the instability of human grandeur; and au unhappy precaution to secure (as he imagined) his greatness, proved his ruin. Observing that some of his most inveterate enemies, particularly Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, began to be more in favour at court than himself, he used his utmost endeavours to procure a marriage between king Henry and Anne of Cleves, expecting great support from a queen of his own making; and as her friends were Lutherans, he imagined it would bring down the popish party at court, and again recover the ground he and Cranmer had now lost. But this led immodiaieiy to his destruction; for the king, not liking the queen, began to hate Cromwell, the great promoter of the marriage, and soon found an opportunity to sacrifice him; nor was this difficult. Cromwell was odious to all the nobility by reason of his low binh: hated particularly by Gardiner, and the Roman catholics, for having been so busy in the dissolution of the abbies: the reformers themselves found he could not protect them from persecution; and the nation in general was highly incensed against him for his having lately obtained a subsidy of four shillings in the pound from the clergy, and one tenth and one fifteenth from the laity; notwithstanding the immense sums that had flowed into the treasury out of the monasteries. Henry, with his usual caprice, and without ever considering that Cromwell’s faults were his own, and committed, if we may use the expression, for his own gratification, caused him to be arrested at the council table, by the duke of Norfolk, on the 10th of June, when he least suspected it. Being committed to the Tower, he wrote a letter to the king, to vindicate himself from the guilt of treason; and another concerning his majesty’s marriage with Anne of Cleves; but we do not find that any notice was taken of these: yet, as his enemies knew if he were brought to the bar he would justify himself by producing the king’s orders and warrants for what he had done, they resolved to prosecute him by attainder; and the bill being brought into the house of lords the 17th of June, and read the first time, on the 19th was read the second and third times, and sent down to the commons. Here, however, it stuck ten days, and at last a new bill of attainder was sent up to the lords, framed in the house of commons: and they sent back at the same time the bill the lords had sent to them. The grounds of his condemnation were chieHy treason and heresy; the former very confusedly expressed. Like other falling favourites, he was deserted by most of his friends, except archbishop Cranmer, who wrote to the king in his behalf with great boldness and spirit. But the duke of Norfolk, and the rest of the popish party, prevailed; and, accordingly, in pursuance of his attainder, the lord Cromwell was brought to a scaffold erected on Tower-hill, where, after having made a speech, and prayed, he was beheaded, July 28, 1540. His death is solely to be attributed to the ingratitude and caprice of Henry, whom he had served with great faithfulness, courage, and resolution, in the most hazardous, difficult, and important undertakings. As for the lord Cromwell’s character, he is represented by popish historians as a crafty, cruel, ambitious, and covetous man, and a heretic; but their opponents, on better grounds, assert that he was a person of great wit, and excellent parts, joined to extraordinary diligence and industry; that his apprehension was quick and clear; his judgment methodical and solid; his memory strong and rational; his tongue fluent and pertinent; his presence stately and obliging; his heart large and noble; his temper patient and cautious; his correspondence well laid and constant; his conversation insinuating and close: none more dextrous in finding out the designs of men and courts; and none more reserved in keeping a secret. Though he was raised from the meanest condition to a high pitch of honour, he carried his greatness with wonderful temper; being noted in the exercise of his places of judicature, to have used much moderation, and in his greatest pomp to have taken notice of, and been thankful to mean persons of his old acquaintance. In his whole behaviour he was courteous and affable to all; a favourer in particular of the poor in their suits; and ready to relieve such as were in danger of being oppressed by powerful adversaries; and so very hospitable and bountiful, that about two hundred persons were served at the gate of his house in Throgmorton-strcet, London, twice every day, with bread, meat, and drink sufficient. He must be regarded as one of the chief instruments in the reformation; and though he could not prevent the promulgation, he stopped the execution, as far as he could, of the bloody act of the six articles. But when the king’s command pressed him close, he was not firm enough to refuse his concurrence to the condemnation and burning of John Lambert. In his domestic concerns he was very regular; calling upon his servants yearly, to give him an account of what they had got under him, and what they desired of him; warning them to improve their opportunities, because, he said, he was too great to stand long; providing for them as carefully, as for his own son, by his purse and credit, that they might live as handsomely when he was dead, as they did when he was alive. In a word, we are assured, that for piety towards God, fidelity to his king, prudence in the management of affairs, gratitude to his benefactors, dutifulness, charity, and benevolence, there was not any one then superior to him in England.

, protector of the commonwealth of England, and one of the most remarkable characters in English history, was descended, both by his father and mother, from families of great antiquity. He was the son of Mr. Robert Cromwell, who was the second son of sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrooke, in the county of Huntingdon, knt. whose great grandfather is conjectured to have been Walter Cromwell, the blacksmith at Putney, spoken of in the preceding article; and his grandmother sister to Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex. Yet we are told that when Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, who turned papist, and was very desirous of making his court to the protector, dedicated a book to him, and presented a printed paper to him, by which he pretended to claim kindred with him, as being himself someway allied to Thomas earl of Essex, the protector with some warmth told him, “that lord was not related to his family in any degree.” For this story, however, told by Fuller, there seems little foundation . Robert Cromwell, father of the protector, was settled at Huntingdon, and had four sons (including the protector) and seven daughters. Though by the interest of his brother sir Oliver, he was put into the commission of the peace for Huntingdonshire, he had but a slender fortune; most of his support arising from a brewhouse in Huntingdon, chiefly managed by his wife. She was Elizabeth, daughter of a Stewart, of Rothseyth in Fifeshire, and sister of sir Robert Stewart, of the isle of Ely, knt. who has been reported, and not without some foundation of truth, to have been descended from the royal house of Stuart; as appears from a pedigree of her family still in being. Out of the profits of this trade, and her own jointure of 60l. per annum, Mrs. Cromwell provided fortunes for her daughters, sufficient to marry them into good families. The eldest, or second surviving, was the wife of Mr. John Desborough, afterwards one of the protector’s major-generals; another married, first, Roger Whetstone, esq. and afterwards colonel John Jones, who was executed for being one of the king’s judges; the third espoused colonel Valentine Walton, who died in exile; the fourth, Robina, married first Dr. Peter French, and then Dr. John Wilkins, a man eminent in the republic of letters, and after the restoration bishop of Chester. It may be also added, that an aunt of the protector’s married Francis Barrington, esq. from whom descended the Barringtons of Essex; another aunt, John Hampden, esq. of Buckinghamshire, by whom she was mother of the famous John Hampden, who lost his life in Chalgrave field; a third was the wife of Mr. Whaley, and the mother of colonel Whaley, in whose custody the king was while he remained at Hampton-court; the fourth aunt married Mr. Dunch.

Cromwell was born in the parish of St. John, Huntingdon, where his father mostly lived, April 25, 1599, and baptized 29th of the same month; and educated in grammar-learning at the free-school in that town, under Dr. Beard, a severe disciplinarian. We have very different accounts of his behaviour while he remained at school: some say that he shewed very little propensity to learning; others, that he made a great proficiency in it. It is very probable that berth are wrong; and that he was not either incorrigibly dull, or wonderfully bright; but that he was an unlucky boy, and of an uneasy and turbulent temper, is reported by authors of unsuspected veracity. Many stories are told of his enthusiasm in this early part of his life; one of which we shall mention: lying melancholy upon his bed, in the day-time, he fancied he saw a spectre, which told him, that he should be the greatest man in the kingdom. His father, being informed of this, was very angry, and desired his master to correct him severely, which, however, had no great effect; for Oliver was still persuaded of the thing, and would sometimes mention it, notwithstanding his uncle Stewart told him, “it was too traitorous to repeat it.” Sir Philip Warwick tells us, that he was very well acquainted with one Dr. Simcot, Cromwell’s physician in the earlier part of his life, who assured him, that he was a very fanciful man, and subject to great disorders of imagination: and it is. certain, that he was not altogether free from these fits during his whole life, not even in the height of his prosperity.

From Huntingdon he was removed to Sidney college in Cambridge, where he was admitted fellow-commoner, April 23, 1616. The entry of his admission is in these words “Oliverus Cromwell, Huntingdonensis, admissus ad commeatum sociorum coll. Siden. Aprilis 23, 1616; tutore M. Kicardo Howlet.” We have very different accounts of the progress he made in his studies while a member of the university. It is certain that he was acquainted with Greek and Roman history; but whether he acquired this knowledge at Cambridge, is a point that may be doubted; since, as several writers inform us, he spent much of his time there at foot-ball, cricket, and other robust exercises, for his skill and expertness in which he was famous. His father dying about two years after he had been at college, he returned home; where the irregularity of his conduct so disturbed his mother, that, by the advice of friends, she sent him to London, and placed him in Lincoln’s-inn. But here, instead of applying to the study of the law, he gave himself up to wine, women, and play; so that he quickly dissipated what his father had left him. His stay at Lincoln’s-inn could not be long, nor was this season of wildness of much continuance; for he was married when he was twenty-one years of age, as appears from the parish register of St. John, Huntingdon; in which we find, that his eldest son Robert, who died a child, was born Oct. 8, 1621; so that if he staid but two years at the university, and it is very probable that he did not stay there longer, there was not above two years more for his going to Lincoln’s-inn, and running through the whole circle of his follies. The lady he married was Elizabeth, daughter of sir James Bouchier of Essex, knt. descended from the ancient earls of Essex of that name; whom he gained more by the interest of his relations Hampden, Barrington, Stewart, &c. than by his own. She was a woman of spirit and parts, but had not many personal charms, and it is said, was not without a considerable share of pride.

Soon after, he returned to Huntingdon, where he led a very grave and sober life. Some have imputed this very sudden renunciation of his vices and follies, to his falling in with the puritans; but it is certain, that he remained then, and for some time after, a zealous member of the church of England, and entered into a close friendship with several eminent divines. He continued at Huntingdon till an estate of above 400l. a year, devolving to him by the death of his uncle sir Thomas Stewart, induced him to remove into the isle of Ely. It was about this time that he began to fall off from the church, and to converse with the puritans, whose notions he soon after embraced with his usual warmth, and with as much sincerity as could be expected from one who was so soon to convert these notions into the instruments of ambition. He was elected a member of the third parliament of Charles I. which met Jan. 20, 1628; and was of the committee for religion, where he distinguished himself by his zeal against popery, and by complaining of Neile bishop of Winchester’s licensing books which had a dangerous tendency. After the dissolution of that parliament, he returned into the country, where he continued to express much concern for religion, and to frequent silenced ministers, and to invite them often to lectures and sermons at his house. By this he brought his affairs again into a very indifferent situation, so that, by way of repairing his fortune, he took a farm at St. Ives, which he kept about five years, but which he mismanaged, and would have been ruined if he had not thrown it up. These disappointments revived in him a scheme, which his bad circumstances first suggested while at Lincoln’s-inn, of going over into New England. This was in 1637; and his design, it is thought, had certainly been executed, if he had not been hindered by the issuing out a proclamation for restraining such embarkations. The next year he had less time upon his hands; for the earl of Bedford, and some other persons of high rank, who had large estates in the fen country, were very desirous of seeing it better drained; and though one project of this sort had failed, they set on foot another, and got it countenanced by royal authority, and settled a share of the profits upon the crown. This, though really intended for a public benefit, was opposed as injurious to private property; and at the head of the opposition was Cromuell, who had a considerable interest in those parts. The activity and vigilance which he shewed upon this occasion, first rendered him conspicuous, and gave occasion to his friend and relation Hampden, to recommend him afterwards in parliament, as a person capable of contriving and conducting great things. Notwithstanding this, he was not very successful in his opposition, and, as his private affairs were still declining, he was in a very necessitous condition at the approach of the long parliament.

In these circumstances one might wonder, how he should form a design, at a time when elections were considered as things of the utmost consequence, of getting himself chosen, more especially for the town of Cambridge, where he was so far from having any interest, that he was not so much as known; and, if he had been known, would never have been elected. But the whole of that affair was owinor to an accidental intrigue, in which himself had at first no hand. One reason why he quitted Huntingdon was, a dispute he had with Mr. Bernard, upon his becoming recorder, about precedency; a point in which he was very nice. After he came to Ely, he resorted entirely to nonconformist meetings, where he quickly distinguished himself by his gifts, as they were styled in those days, of preaching, praying, and expounding. At one of these meetings he met with Richard Tims, a tradesman of Cambridge, who rode every Sunday to Ely for the sake of pure doctrine; and captivated his heart entirely. This man, hearing that a parliament was to be called, and being himself one of the common-council, took it into his head, that there could not be a fitter man to be their burgess than Mr. Cromwell; and with this notion he went to Wildbore, a draper in the town, and a relation of Cromwell’s, who agreed with him exactly as to the fitness of the person, but told him the thing was impossible, as he was not a freeman. Tims, not satisfied with that, addressed himself next to Evett, a tallow-chandler, who was also a puritan. He relished the thought; but, for the same reason, pronounced the design impracticable. However, Tims had hardly left his house, before Evett sent for him back, and whispered, that the mayor had a freedom to bestow, and that one Kitchingman, an attorney, who had married his wife’s sister, and was of their party, had a great influence over him. He advised him therefore to move Kitchingman in it, who was to use his interest with the mayor, stating that Mr. Cromwell was a gentleman of fortune, and had a mind to come and live in the town, which was then in a poor condition; but with a strict charge to hide the true design, alderman French, who was then the mayor, being a declared royalist. When they came to make this application to him, French said he was sorry, but that in reality they came too late, for he had promised his freedom to the king’s fisherman. Kitchingman easily removed this objection, by undertaking that the town should confer a freedom upon the person he mentioned; and accordingly at the next court-day, the mayor declared his intention to bestow his freedom on a very worthy gentleman of the isle of Ely, one Mr. Cromwell; who, being apprized of his friend’s industry, came to town over night, and took up his lodgings at Almond’s, a grocer. Thither the mace was sent for him, and he came into court dressed in scarlet, richly laced with gold; where, having provided plenty of claret and sweetmeats, they were so well circulated among the corporation, that they unanimously declared Mr. Mayor’s freeman to be a civil worthy gentleman. When the election came on, the mayor discovered his mistake; but it was then too late, for the party among the burgesses was strong enough to choose him, which they accordingly did at the next election the ensuing year.

1643, having settled matters in the six associated counties of Essex, Hertford, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, he advanced into Lincolnshire, where he did great service by restraining the king’s garrison at Newark, giving a check to the earl of Newcastle’s troops at Horncastle, and performing many other services, which increased his credit with the parliament. The Scots having been invited to England by the parliament, it was judged highly requisite that the army under the earl of Manchester anil Cromwell, who was now declared lieutenant-general of the horse, should join them, the better to enabie them to reduce York, which they had closely besieged. This service was performed with great vigour and diligence, especially by Cromwell; for though the earl had the title, the power was chiefly in Cromwell; and things were so clextrously managed between him and his friends at Westminster, that, as they knew they might depend upon him, they took care to put as much in his hands as they could. Ih the battle of Marston-moor, fought July 3, 1644, it is unanimously agreed, that Cromwell’s cavalry, who were commonly styled Ironsides, changed the fortune of the day, as that battle did of the war; for the king’s affairs declined, and the parliament’s flourished ever after. Some, however, though they allow this readily to Cromwell’s forces, have yet represented him as acting in a pitiful cowardly manner, and so terrified, as even to run away: but allowance must be made for the relators. It is certain, that on the 19th of the same month he stormed the earl of 'Exeter’s fine house at Burleigh; and no man’s courage, conduct, and services, were more valued at London. He was also in the second battle at Newbury, Sept. 17, in the same year, and is said to have made so bold a charge with his horse upon the guards, that his majesty’s person had been in the utmost danger, if the old earl of Cleveland had not come in to his relief, and preserved his master’s liberty at the expence of his own. And in the winter, when the disputes in parliament ran higher than, ever, nothing but Cromwell’s merit and good fortune were taiked of by his party; some of whom even styled him the saviour of the nation.

The wisest men and the best patriots saw very clearly whither these excessive praises tended. That the nation might be made as fully convinced of it, the earl of Manchester exhibited a charge against him in the house of lords; and Cromwell, in return, brought another against the noble peer in the house of commons. It is true, that neither of these charges was prosecuted; but it is equally true, that Cromwell and his friends absolutely carried their point, by bringing in what was called the self-denying ordinance, which excluded the members of either house from having any commands in the army; from which, however, on account of his extraordinary merit, which set him above all ordinances, Cromwell was at first occasionally, and at length altogether exempted. From being lieutenant-general of the horse, he became lieutenant-general of the army; and he procured an address from his regiment, declaring their satisfaction with the change. He continued to distinguish himself by his military successes, and to receive the thanks of both houses for the services he did. He shone particularly at the battle of Naseby, June 14, 1646, and had also his share in reducing the west; till, upon the surrender of Exeter, April 13, 1645, he found leisure to return to London. Upon taking his seat in the house, thanks were returned him, in terms as strong as words could express; and the prevailing party there received from him such encouragement, as induced them to believe he was wholly at their devotion. But in this they were mistaken; for while they thought the lieutenant-general employed in their business, he was in reality only attentive to his own. Thus, when the parliament inclined to disband a part of their forces, after the king had delivered himself to the Scots and the Scots had agreed to deliver him to the parliament, Cromwell opposed it vigorously, if not openly. For, in the first place, he insinuated by his emissaries to the soldiers, that this was not only the highest piece of ingratitude towards those who had fought the parliament into a power of disbanding them, but also a crying act of injustice, as it was done with no other view than to cheat them of their arrears. Secondly, he procured an exemption for sir Thomas Fairfax’s army, or, in other words, for his own, the general only having that title and appointments, while Cromwell had the power; and the weight of the reduction fell upon Massey’s brigade in the west, together with the troops which colonel Poyntz commanded in Yorkshire; men of whom he had good reason to doubt, but upon whom the parliament might have depended. Thus he dextrously turned to his own advantage the means which, in truth, were contrived for his destruction. Nov. 12, 1646, the army marched triumphantly through London; and in February following, the Scots having received the money agreed on, delivered up the king, who was carried prisoner to Holmby. At this time Cromwell had a most difficult part to play. What wore the legal appearance of power was evidently in the hands of the parliament, in which the presbyterian party was still prevalent; and as the general sir Thomas Fairfax was likewise in that interest, the real power seemed also to be on their side. At bottom, however, the army, now taught to know their own strength, were in reality the masters; and they were entirely directed by Cromwell, though they knew it not themselves. He saw the necessity of having a strong place, and getting the king’s person into their power and he contrived to do both, without seeming to have a hand in either. Oxford was at that time in a good condition, and well supplied with artillery, upon which the army seized it, with the magazines, and every thing else; and Cromwell, then at London, prevailed upon cornet Joyce to seize the king’s person with a strong detachment of horse, not only without the general’s orders, but without any orders at all, except those verbal instructions from Cromwell. This was executed June 4, 1G47, notwithstanding the parliament’s commissioners were then with the king; who was conducted from Holmby to Childersly, in Cambridgeshire, then the army’s head quarters. Here, through the management chiefly of Cromwell and his son-in-law commissary Ireton, the king was treated, not only with reverence, but with kindness; and when sir Thomas Fairfax, who knew nothing of the taking of the king away, and disliked it, would have sent him back asrain with the commissioners, under the guard of two regiments of horse, the king absolutely refused to move. Nay, to such a degree was that monarch convinced of the sincerity of his new friends, that he had the indiscretion to tell sir Thomas Fairfax, when he made him a tender of his duty and respect, with promises of fair treatment, that “he thought he had as good an interest in the army as himself.”

Soon after this, a new party sprung up among the soldiers, under the title of Levellers, who made no secret of their hating equally both king and parliamentand it was to save himself from these people, who, as he was informed by Cromwell, sought his life, that the king, Nov. 11, fled from Hampton-court to the Isle of Wight, after having rejected the parliament’s proposals by Cromwell’s and Ireton’s advice. Immediately after this, Cromwell altered his behaviour to the king entirely; for, having made use of the king’s presence to manage the army, and of the power which the army had thereby acquired, to humble and debase the parliament, there remained no end to be answered by keeping measures any longer with the king. The parliament, now much altered from what it was, upon the king’s refusing to pass four bills they had sent him, fell into very warm debates; in which it is asserted that Cromwell was a principal speaker, and inveighed bitterly against his majesty, saying, “the king was a very able man, but withal a great dissembler; one in whom no trust could be reposed, and with whom, therefore, they ought to have nothing to do for the future.” However this might be, the parliament, Jan. 5, voted that no more addresses should be made to the king; and from that time he was more strictly imprisoned than ever. In the mean time, there were risings in several parts of the kingdom; which employing the military power, the city of London and the parliament were left in some measure at liberty to pursue their own sentiments; and what these were, quickly appeared; for on June 27, 1648, the city petitioned for a personal treaty with the king, which was very well received, and some steps taken to advance it. A few days after, the commons recalled their vote for non-addresses, began a personal treaty with the king at the Isle of Wight, and at length voted his majesty’s concessions satisfactory, and an attempt was even made to impeach Cromwell of high treason. But the army having now reduced all opposition, and returning towards London, Nov. 20, sent a remonstrance to the house of commons, disapproving all they had done. The remonstrance was carried by colonel Ewers, who went next into the isle of Wight, where he seized the person of the king, and carried him to Hurst castle. This was resented by the parliament, who commanded the general to recall his orders; but instead of this, the army marched directly to London, and in December, took possession of it; purged, as they called it, the house of commons, turning out the greater part of its members, and then forcing the rest to do what they pleased. In most of these proceedings Cromwell appeared veryactive, and is, with good reason, believed to have directed them all.

It is not necessary to dwell particularly upon those wellknown circumstances relating to the king’s being brought before the high court of justice, and to the sentence of death passed upon him there; since the part Cromwell acted therein was open and public. He sat at the court; he signed the warrant; and he prosecuted the accomplishment of it by the bloody execution of the king. When the first proposition was made in the house of commons for trying the king, he rose up, and said, that “if any man moved this upon design, he should think him the greatest traitor in the world; but since Providence and necessity had cast them upon it, he should pray God to bless their councils, though he was not provided on the sudden to give them counsel.” But not long after, he was; for, being a great pretender to enthusiasm and revelations, he told them with consummate hypocrisy, that as he was praying for a blessing from God on his undertaking to restore the king to his pristine majesty, his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, that he could not speak one word more; which he took as a return of prayer, that God had rejected him from being king. Many applications were made to Cromwell for saving the king’s life; and some of the passages relating to them are worth notice. One of the most remarkable, which greatly illustrates the character of the man, is the transaction between the lieutenantgeneral and a cousin of his, colonel John Cromwell, an officer in the service of the States. This gentleman is said to have been in England while the king was in the hands of the army; and that, in a conference he had with the lieutenant-general, the latter made use of this expression, u I think the king the most injured prince in the world;“and then, clapping his hand upon his sword, added,” But this, cousin, shall do him right.“The colonel returning to Holland soon after, reported what he took to be truth, that the lieutenant-general had a great respect for the king. When therefore the news of the king’s trial reached Holland, he was sent over with letters credential from the States, to which was added a blank with the king’s signet, and another of the prince’s, both confirmed by the States, for Cromwell to set down his own conditions, if he would now save his majesty’s life. The colonel went directly to his kinsman’s house; who was so retired and shut up in his chamber, with an order to let none know he was at home, that it was with much difficulty he obtained admittance, after he had declared who he was. Having mutually saluted each other, the colonel desired to speak a few words with him in private; and began with much freedom to set before him the heinousness of the fact then about to be committed, and with what detestation it was looked upon abroad; telling him, that” of all men living he could never have imagined he would have had any hand in it, who in his hearing had protested so much for the king.“To this Cromwell answered,” It was not he, but the army; and though he did once say some such words, yet now times were altered, and Providence seemed to order things otherwise.“And it is said he added, that” he had prayed and tasted for the king, but no return that way was yet made to him.“Upon this the colonel stepped a little back, and Suddenly shut the door, which made Cromwell apprehend he was going to be assassinated; but pulling out his papers, he said to him,” Cousin, this, is no time to trifle with words: see here, it is now in your own power, not only to make yourself, but your family, relations, and posterity, happy and honourable for ever; otherwise, as they changed their name before from Williams to Cromwell, (which was the fact, as appears by their pedigree), so now they must be forced to change it again: for this will bring such an ignominy upon the whole generation of them, as no time will he able to deface.“At this Cromwell paused a little, and then said,” I desire you will give me till night to consider of it; and do yuu go to your inn, but not to bed, till you hear from me.“The colonel did accordingly; and about one in the morning a messenger came to tell him” He might go to rest, and expect no other answer to carry to the prince; for the council of officers had been seeking God, as he also had done the same, and it was resolved by them all that the king must die."

The government being now entirely changed, for in five days after the king’s death the house of lords was voted useless, it became necessary to think of some expedient for managing the executive power; and therefore it was resolved to set up a council of state, of which John Bradshaw was president, and lieutenant-general Cromwell a principal member. But before he had well taken possession of this new dignity, he was again called to action; and that too as hazardous as any in which he had hitherto been concerned. The persons he had to engage were part of the army he commanded; who, being dissatisfied on some account or other, set forth their sentiments by way of remonstrance presented to the general. For this high offence they were seized, and tried by a court martial, and sentenced to ride with their faces to their horses’ tails, at the head of their respective corps, with a paper expressing their crime fixed on their breasts, after which their swords were to be broke over their heads, and themselves cashiered; every circumstance of which was strictly executed, March 6, in Great Palace-yard. This served only to increase the flame; for several regiments of horse, and among the rest Cromwell’s own, mutinied, put white cockades in their hats, and appointed a rendezvous at Ware; where Cromwell appeared, when he was least suspected, and brought with him some regiments quartered at a distance, that he couicl depend on. Here, without any previous expostulations, he with two regiments of horse surrounded one regiment of the mutineers, and calling four men by name out of their ranks, obliged them to cast dice for their lives; and the two that escaped were ordered to shoot the others, which they did; upon which the rest thought fit to slip their white cockades into their pockets, and to secure themselves by a submission. The same spirit of mutiny broke out in another regiment of horse; but it was entirely subdued by Cromwell, and the fomenters of it punished. After this, he and Fairfax went first to Oxford, where they were made doctors in civil law; and thence to London, where they were splendidly entertained by the city, and had presents of great value when they took leave. At this time England, if not quiet, was totally subdued; the Scots were discontented, but not in arms; so that Ireland became the principal object of the parliament’s care, since in that island, of three parties which had for many years been shedding each other’s blood, their own was the weakest. In August, therefore, 1649, Cromwell embarked with an army for Ireland, where his successes, as in England, were attended with so few disappointments, that, by June 1650, he had in a manner subdued the whole island. By that time his presence was required in England, not only by those who wished him well, but even by his most inveterate enemies; and therefore constituting his son-inlaw Ireton, his deputy, he took ship for Bristol, where, after a dangerous passage, he safely arrived, leaving such a terror upon the minds of the Irish as made every thing easy to those who succeeded him, and completed the conquest of that country.

His return to London was a kind of triumph; and all ranks of people contended, either from love or fear, who should shew him the most respect. At his taking his seat in the house, he had thanks returned him for his services in the highest terms. When these ceremonies were over, they proceeded to matters of greater consequence; for, by this time the parliament had another war upon their hands, the Scots having invited home Charles II. and prepared an army to invade England. There is no doubt that the parliament would readily have trusted this war to the conduct of lord Fairfax, a brave man and good officer; but Fairfax had taken the covenant, and such were his scruples, he could not bring himself to think of breaking it, by attacking the Scots in their own country. Cromwell thought, and rightly, that they should not wait for an invasion, but prevent one invasion by another; and therefore pressed Fairfax to continue in his command, and the more earnestly, because he knew he would not do it; declaring that he thought it a greater honour to serve as his lieutenant-general, than to command in chief the finest army in the world. Fairfax, however, remained inflexible in his resolution; so that, June 26, an ordinance passed for repealing his commission, and at the same time another for appointing Cromwell general and commander in chief of all the forces of the commonwealth. He had now such power as might have satisfied the most ambitious mind; for though he offered to resign his lieutenancy of Ireland, the parliament would not accept it. He marched with an army to Scotland, and Sept. 3, gained the victory of Dunbar, than which none ever did him greater credit as a commander. He continued the war all the winter; in the spring was severely attacked by an ague; of which recovering, he, after several successes, forced the king into England, and blocked him up in Worcester. Sept. 3, 165J, he attacked and carried that city, totally defeated the king’s forces, and gained what he himself called, in his letter to the parliament, the crowning victory. It is said, that this signal stroke of success took Cromwell a little off his trnard. He would have knighted two of his principal commanders upon the field of battle, and was with difficulty dissuaded from it: his letter to the parliament on this occasion was conceived in higher and loftier terms than usual: and Ludlow says, that his behaviour was altered from that day, and that all who were about him observed it. It is certain, nevertheless, that he afterwards behaved with great humility and submission to the parliament; though in the mean time he took all care imaginable to make the army sensible of their own importance, and to let them see that nothing could divide their interests from his own. This was the true foundation of his growing greatness, and of the gradual declension of the parliament’s power; which, though they clearly discerned, they knew not how to prevent.

He did not remain long with the troops, but directed his inarch to London; where, besides many considerable marks of honour that were paid him, a general thanksgiving was appointed for his victory, and September 3d made an anniversary state holiday. When these ceremonies and acknowledgments were over, he had leisure to look about him, and to consider his own condition as well as that of the nation. He saw himself at present general and commander in chief of a great army in England, and at the same time was lord lieutenant of Ireland. But then he knew that all this was derived to him from the parliament; and he clearly discerned, that, whether independents or presbyterians sat there, they would endeavour to perpetuate supreme power in their own hands, which for many reasons he disliked. He therefore sifted the most eminent persons, in order to find out their sentiments about the establishment of the kingdom; which was a new phrase invented to cover the design of subverting the parliament. In a meeting among them, held some time after the battle of Worcester, he proposed the question fairly; when some declared for a monarchy, as others did for a commonwealth: but this conference came to nothing. Nov. 7, 1652, meeting the lord commissioner Whitlocke in the Park, he entered into a long discourse with him upon this important subject: in which he undertook to shew Whitlocke, that the parliament was now become a faction; that they were resolved to ruin all, and to rule for ever, merely for their own sakes; that they gave all employments to themselves, their relations, aud friends that they drew every thing within their own cognizance, by which the subject lost the benefit of the law, and held his property by a precarious tenure; that, all this considered, they had fought themselves into a worse condition; and that, instead of a monarch with a prerogative royal, they had now many masters, who made laws and broke them at their pleasure; that, on the other hand, the army was very sensible of this; that they bore it with great reluctance; that they too had great disputes among themselves: and that it could not be long before those mischiefs broke out into a new flame. Whitlocke very readily agreed, that he had described both parties truly; but at the same time acknowledged, that, notwithstanding he was acquainted with the diseases of the commonwealth, he was entirely ignorant of any right method of cure. “What,” said Cromwell, “if a man should take upon himself to be king?” Whitlocke replied by shewing him, that he would get nothing by it; that he had more power already than former kings ever had; and that by assuming the name, he might run great hazard of losing the thing, Cromwell then pressed to know, what he would hare done? Upon which Whitlocke proposed compromising matters with Charles Stuart: the debating of which Cromwell declined, as an affair of much difficulty. Cromwell had many conversations of this sort with the most intelligent of all parties, none of which diverted him from his secret purpose, to possess himself of the regal power, under some name or other.

Notwithstanding this, he behaved in public with great decency and duty towards that body of men he was contriving to remove. The whole winter of 1652 was spent in contrivances and cabals on both sides; by the friends of the parliament to support and maintain its authority, by their opponents to bring things into such a situation, as to render the necessity of dissolving that assembly universally apparent. April 19, 1653, Cromwell called a council of officers once more to debate this point; in which, as he had many friends, so he had also some opponents, who insinuated, that what he did proceeded from self-interest and ambition. Major-general Harrison, a zealous fanatic, but absolutely deceived by Cromwell, assured the assembly, in the sincerity of his heart, that “the lord-general sought only to pave the way for the government of Jesus and his saints;” to which major Streater briskly returned, that “then he ought to come quickly; for if it was after Christmas, he would come too late.” Upon this, Cromwell adjourned the meeting till the next morning, when a new point was started, whether it might not be expedient for the house and the army to appoint twenty persons on a title to be intrusted with the supreme power? In the midst of this dispute advice came that the house had under consideration their own dissolution; and upon this, such as were members withdrew, and went thither to promote that design. But in reality the parliament had framed a bill, to continue themselves to November 5th of the next year, proposing in the mean time to fill up the house by new elections. Cromwell, informed what the house was upon, was so enraged, that he left the council, and marched directly with a party of 300 soldiers to Westminster. There placing some of them at the door, some in the lobby, and others on the stairs, he went into the house; and, addressing himself first to his friend St. John, told him, that “he then came to do that which grieved him to the very soul, and what he had earnestly with tears prayed to God against; nay, that he had rather be torn in pieces than do it; but that there was a necessity laid upon him tilt-rein, in order to the glory of God, and the good of the nation.” Then he sat down, and heard their debates for some time on the forementioned bill; after which, calling to major-general Harrison, who was on the other side of the house, to come to him, he told him, that “he judged the parliament ripe for a dissolution, and this to be the time of doing it.” Harrison answered, “Sir, the work is very great and dangerous; therefore I desire you seriously to consider of it before you engage in it.” “You say well,” replied Cromwell; and thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an hour. Then the question being put for passing the said bill, he declared again to Harrison, “This is the time, I must do it:” and so standing up of a sudden, he bade the speaker leave the chair, and told the house that they had sat long enough, unless they had done more good; that some of them were whoremasters, others drunkards, others corrupt and unjust men, and scandalous to the profession of the gospel; that it was not fit they should sit as a parliament any longer, and therefore he must desire them to go away. He charged them with not having a heart to do any thing for the public good, and with being the supporters of tyranny and oppression. When some of the members began to speak, he stepped into the midst of the house, and said, “Come, come, I will put an end to your prating:” then walking up and down the house, he cried out, “You are no parliament, I say, you are no parliament;” and stamping with his feet, he bid them for shame be gone, and give place to honester men. Upon this signal the soldiers entered the house, and he bade one of them take away that bauble, pointing to the mace; and Harrison taking the speaker by the hand, he came down. Then Cromwell, addressing himself again to the members, who were about an hundred, said, ‘ 4 ’Tis you that have forced me to this; for I have sought the Lord night and day, that he would rather slay me, than put me upon the doing of iliis work.“And then seizing on all their papers, he ordered the soldiers to see the house cleared of all members; and having caused the doors to be locked up, went away to Whitehall. Here he found a council oi'oiHcers still assembled, and this grand point yet in debate: upon which he told them roundly,” thev need trouble themselves no farther about it, for he had done it.“”Done what?“replied colonel Okey, who was not one of his creatures; and, upon his telling him, expostulated the point warmly. But Cromwell talked so much louder than he, of the glory of God and the good of the nation, the removing of yokes and badges of slavery, that Okey very soon thought proper to be silent, and to wait for the conclusion of the affair. In the afternoon of the same day, Cromwell, attended by the majors-general Lambert and Harrison, went to the council of state, and, finding them sitting, addressed them in the following terms:” Gentlemen, if you are met here as private persons, you shall not be disturbed; but, if as a council of state, this is no place for you. And since you cannot but know what was done at the house this morning, so take notice, that the parliament is dissolved.“Serjeant Bradshaw boldly answered,” Sir, we have heard what you did at the house in the morning, and before many hours all England will hear it. But, sir, you are mistaken to think that the parliament is dissolved, for no power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves; and therefore take you notice of that." Some others also spoke to the same purpose: but the council finding themselves to be under the same force, all quietly departed.

The true reason why Cromwell thus dismissed this council of state, was, because he intended to have another of his own framing; these being men entirely devoted to the parliament, from whom they derived their authority. He now projected such measures as appeared to him the most proper for the support of that great authority which he had attained. He continued for a few days to direct all things by the advice of the council of officers; but afterwards a new council of state was called, by virtue of letters or warrants under the lord-general’s hand. But this consisting chiefly of fifth-monarchy and other madmen, soon dissolved of itself; and then the power returned into the hands of Cromwell, from whom it came. Harrison, and about twenty more, remained in the house, and seeing the reign of the saints at an end, placed one Moyer in the speaker’s chair, and began to draw up protests; but they were soon interrupted by colonel White with a party of soldiers. White asking them what they did there, they told him, “they were seeking the Lord;” to which he replied, “that they might go somewhere else, for to his knowledge, the Lord had not been there many years;” and so turned them out of doors. The scene thus changed, the supreme power was said to be in the council of officers again; and they very speedily resolved, that the lordgeneral, with a select council, should have the administration of public affairs, upon the terms contained in a paper, entitled “The Instrument of Government;” and that his excellency should be protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and have the title of Highness. Accordingly he was invested therewith Dec. 16, 1653, in the court of chancery in Westminster-hall, with great solemnity; and thus, in his 54th year, assumed the sovereign power, which he well knew how to exercise with firmness. When he had thus reduced the government into some order at least, he proceeded very wisely and warily; appointed a privy-council, in which there were great and worthy men, who he knew would either not act at all, or not very long with him; but their names giving a sanction for the present, he proceeded, with the advice of as many of them as attended, to make several ordinances that were necessary, as also to dispose matters for the holding a new parliament. He applied himself also to the settlement of the public affairs, both foreign and domestic; he concluded a peace with the states of Holland and Sweden; he obliged the king of Portugal, notwithstanding all that had passed between the parliament and bim, to accept of a peace upon his terms; and adjusted matters with France, though not without some difficulty. As to affairs at home, he filled the courts in Westminsterhall with able judges; and directed the lawyers themselves to make such corrections in the practice of their profession, as might free them from public odium. The same moderation he practised in church matters; professing an unalterable resolution to maintain liberty of conscience. He gave the command of all the forces in Scotland to general Monk, and sent his son Henry to govern Ireland. By an ordinance dated April 12, 1654, he united England and Scotland, fixing the number of representatives for the latter at 30; and soon after he did the same by Ireland. He affected to shew great zeal for justice, in causing the brother of the ambassador from Portugal to be executed for murder; which he did July 10, in spite of the greatest application to prevent it.

But, notwithstanding the pains which he took to gain the affections of the people, he found a spirit rising against him in all the three kingdoms; and his government so cramped for want of money, that he was under an absolute necessity of calling a parliament, according to the form which he had prescribed in the Instrument of Government. He fixed Sept. 3 for the day on which they were to assemble, esteeming it particularly fortunate to him; and to this he peremptorily adhered, though it happened to full upon a Sunday. The parliament svas accordingly opened on that day, alter hearing a sermon at Westminster-abbey, to which the protector went in very great state. He received this house of commons in the painted chamber, where he gave them a full account of the nature of that government which he had thought fit to establish, the ends he proposed, and the means he had used to promote those ends, &c. When they came to the house, they fell to debating, whether the supreme legislative power of the kingdom should be in a single person, or a parliament; which alarming the protector, who found himself in danger of being deposed by a vote of this new parliament, he caused a guard to be set at the door, on the 12th of the same month, to prevent their going into the house of commons; then sent for them into the painted chamber, where he gave them a very sharp rebuke; nor did he permit any to go into the house afterwards, hefore they had taken an oath to be faithful to the protector and his government. While this parliament was sitting, an odd accident happened to the protector. He had received a set of Friesland horses from the duke of Holstein as a present; and would needs drive his secretary Thurloe in his coach, drawn by these horses, round Hyde Park. But the horses, proving as ungovernable as the parliament, threw his highness out of the box, and in his fall one of his pocket pistols went off; notwithstanding which he escaped, without either wound or broken bones. By the Instrument of Government, the parliament was to sit five months; but finding they were about to take away his power, and would give him no money, he, Jan. 23, sent for them once more into the painted chamber, where after a long and bitter speech he dissolved them.