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In 1712 he published a most beautiful and splendid edition of “Caesar’s Commentaries,” adorned with elegant engravings. It was printed in 1712, fbl. and afterwards in 1720, 8vo. It was dedicated to the great duke of Marlborough, “at a time,” says bishop Hoadly, “when his unequalled victories and successes had raised his glory to the highest pitch abroad, and lessened his interest and favour at home.” In the publication of this book, the doctor took particular care of the punctuation. In the annotations, he selected what appeared the best and most judicious in former editors, with some corrections and emendations of his own interspersed.

The same year, 1712, he published his celebrated book entitled “The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, &c.” which is divided into three parts. The first is, a collection and explication of all the texts in the New Testament relating to the doctrine of the Trinity: in the second, the foregoing doctrine is set forth at large, and explained in particular and distinct propositions; and in the third, the principal passages in the liturgy of the church of England, relating to the doctrine of the Trinity, are considered. Whiston informs us, that some time before the publication of this book, there was a message sent to him from lord Godolphin, and others of queen Anne’s ministers, importing, “that the affairs of the public were with difficulty then kept in the hands of those that were for liberty that it was therefore an unseasonable time for the publication of a book that would make a great noise and disturbance; and that, therefore, they desired him to forbear till a fitter opportunity should offer itself.” Which message, says he, the doctor paid no regard to, but went on, according to the dictates of his own conscience, with the publication of his book. The ministers, however, were right in their conjectures; for the work occasioned a great number of books and pamphlets, written by himself and others . It also made its author obnoxious to the ecclesiastical power, and his book was complained of by the lower house of convocation. Their complaint being sent to the upper house June 2, 1714, the bishops returned in two days an answer, “that they approved the zeal of the lower house thought they had just cause of complaint, and would take it into their consideration:” and on the 12th sent a message to them directing an extract to be made of particulars out of the books complained of. On the 23d the said extract was laid before the bishops. The doctor drew up a reply to this extract, dated June 26, which, it seems, was presented to some of the bishops; but, for reasons unknown, not laid before the house. After this, there appearing in almost the whole upper house a great disposition to prevent dissensions and divisions, by some moderate step, Dr. Clarke was prevailed upon to lay before the house a paper, dated July 2, which concludes with these words “I am sorry that what I sincerely intended for the honour and glory of God, and so to explain this great mystery, as to avoid the heresies in both extremes, should have given any offence to this synod, and particularly to my lords the bishops. I hope my behaviour for the time to come, with relation hereunto, will be such as to prevent any future complaints against me.”

After this paper had been before the upper house, being apprehensive that, if it should be published separately, as afterwards happened, without any true account of the preceding and following circumstances, it might be misunderstood in some particulars, he caused an explanation, dated July 5, to be presented to the bishop of London, the next time the upper house met: setting forth, “That whereas the paper laid before their lordships the Friday before, was, through haste and want of time, not drawn up with sufficient exactness, he thought himself indispensably obliged in conscience to acquaint their lordships, that he did not mean thereby to retract any thing he had written, but to declare that the opinion set forth at large in his Scripture Doctrine, &c. is, that the Son was eternally begotten by the eternal incomprehensible power and will of the Father, &c. and that, by declaring he did not intend to write any more concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, he did not preclude himself from a liberty of making any inoffensive corrections in his former books, if they should come to another edition, or from vindicating himself against any misrepresentations or aspersions, which might possibly hereafter be cast upon him, on occasion of this controversy.” After the delivery of this explanation, the upper house resolved, July 5,. to proceed no farther upon the extract, laid before them by the lower house and ordered Dr. Clarke’s papers to be entered in the acts of that house. But the lower house, not so satisfied, resolved, July 7, that the paper subscribed by Dr. Clarke, and communicated to them by the bishops, does not contain in it any recantation of the heretical assertions and offensive passages complained of in their representation, and afterwards produced in their extract; nor gives such satisfaction for the great scandal occasioned thereby, as ought to put a stop to any farther examination and censure thereof. Thus ended. this affair; the most authentic account of which we have in a piece entitled, “An Apology for Dr. Clarke, containing an account of the late proceedings in convocation, upon his writings concerning the Trinity, 1714, 8vo,” written, Whiston tells us, by a clergyman in the country, a common friend of his and Dr. Clarke’s, with the knowledge and assistance of the latter. The “Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,” as we have observed, was first published in 1712; afterwards there was a second edition, with many alterations, in 1710; and there has been, since his death, a third edition, with very great additions, left under the doctor’s hand ready prepared for the press. Bishop Hoadly assures us, in opposition to those who have supposed Clarke to have retracted his notions concerning the Trinity, that, “from the time of publishing this book to the day of his death, he found no reason, as far as he was able to judge, to alter the notions which he there professed.” Mr. Whitaker, in his “Origin of Arianism disclosed,” has taken uncommon pains to support the truth of chevalier Ramsay’s assertion, that Dr. Clarke greatly repented of his ever having published his work upon the Trinity. The testimonies on the other side of the question Mr. Whitaker endeavours to reconcile, by supposing that the doctor occasionally avowed his repentance, and yet continued his practices. He avowed fully “to Mr. Ramsay what he was too timid to avow to his son, to a Hoadly, or to an Emlyn; and what he even took pains to conceal from them, in a seeming continuance of opinion, and in an actual perseverance of conduct.” All this, however, has been most confidently denied by Dr. Clarke’s friends.

In 1715 and 1716 he had a dispute with the celebrated Leibnitz, relating to the principles of natural philosophy and religion: and a collection of the papers which passed between them was published in 1717; and remarks upon a book entitled “A philosophical enquiry concerning Human Liberty,” by Anthony Collins, 8vo. The letters from Cambridge, which Clarke answers in this volume, were written by Richard Bulkeley, esq. author of a poem in 12 books,entitled “The Last Day,” who died in 1718, at about twenty-four years of age. All the pieces contained in this volume were translated into French, and published by Des Maizeaux in the first volume of “Recueil de diverses pieces sur la philosophic, la religion naturelle, Phistoire, les mathematiques, &c. par Messrs. Leibnitz, Clarke, Newton, et autres auteurs celebres,” printed at Amsterdam in 1720, 2 vols. 12 mo. This book of the doctor’s is inscribed to her late majesty queen Caroline, then princess of Wales, who was. pleased to have the controversy pass through her hands, and was the witness and judge of every step of it. It related chiefly to the important and difficult subjects of liberty and necessity. Whiston says, “I confess, I look upon these letters of Dr. Clarke as among the most useful of his performances in natural philosophy.” He has also preserved an anecdote relating to this controversy^; which is, that sir Isaac Newton once pleasantly told Clarke, that “he had broke Leibnitz’s heart with his reply to him.”

About 1718 Clarke made an alteration in the forms of doxology in the singing psalms, in a collection of “Psalms and Hymns” for the use of St. James’s church, which produced no small disturbance, and occasioned some pamphlets to be written. The alteration was this:

A considerable number of these “Select Psalms and Hymns” having been dispersed by the Society for promoting Christian knowledge, before the alteration of the doxologies was taken notice of, he was charged with a design of imposing upon the society, whereas it was answered that the edition of them had been prepared by him for the use of his own parish only, before the society had thoughts of purchasing any of the copies: and as the usual forms of doxology were not established by any legal authority, ecclesiastical or civil, in this he had not offended. Robinson, however, bishop of London, so highly disliked this alteration, that he thought proper to publish a letter to the incumbents of all churches and chapels in his diocese, against their using any new forms of doxology. The letter is dated Dec. 26, 1718, and begins thus: “Reverend brethren, there is an instance of your care and duty, which I conceive myself at this time highly obliged to offer, and you to regard, as necessary for the preservation of the very foundations of our faith. Some persons, seduced, I fear, by the strong delusions of pride and self-conceit, have lately published new forms of doxology, entirely agreeable to those of some ancient heretics, who impiously denied a trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead, I do therefore warn and charge it upon your souls, as you hope to obtain mercy from God the Father through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord, and by the sanctification of the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God blessed for ever, that you employ your best endeavours to prevail with your several flocks, to have a great abhorrence for the abovementioned new forms, and particularly that you do not suffer the same to be used, either in your churches, or in any schools, where you are to prevent that most pernicious abuse, &c.” This letter was animadverted upon by Whiston, in “A Letter of Thanks to the right reverend the lord bishop of London, for his late letter to his clergy against the use of new forms of Doxology, &c.” Jan. 17, 1719; and in a pamphlet entitled “An humble apology for St. Paul and the other apostles; or, a vindication of them and their doxologies from the charge of heresy. By Cornelius Paets,” 1719. Soon after came out an ironical piece entitled “A Defence of the Bishop of London, in answer to Winston’s Letter of Thanks, &c. addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury. To which is added, a Vindication of Dr. Sacheverell’s late endeavour to turn Mr. Winston out of his church.” Winston’s Letter of Thanks occasioned likewise the two following pieces; viz. “The lord bishop of London’s Letter to his Clergy vindicated, <kc. by a Believer, 1719;” and “A seasonable review of Mr. Winston’s account of primitive Doxologies, &c. by a Presbyter, &c. 1719.” This presbyter was supposed to be Dr. William Berriman. To the latter Whiston replied in a second letter to the bishop of London; and the author of “The seasonable Review, &c.” answered him in a second Review, &c. As to Clarke’s conduct in this affair, we are not surprised to find Whiston declaring it to be one of the most Christian attempts towards somewhat of reformation, upon the primitive foot, that he ever ventured upon: but he adds,“that the bishop of London, in the way of modern authority, was quite too hard for Dr. Clarke, in the way of primitive Christianity.”

About this time Dr. Clarke was presented by the lord Lechmere, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, to the mastership of Wigston’s hospital in Leicester. In 1724 he published seventeen sermons preached on several occasions, eleven of which were never before printed; and the year following a sermon preached at the parish church of St. James, upon the erecting a charity-school for the education of women servants. In 1727, upon the death of sir Isaac Newton, he was offered by the court the place of master of the mint, worth communibus annis 1200 or 1500l. a year. Upon this offer, Whiston tells us, the doctor advised with his friends, and particularly with Mr. Emlyn and himself, ahout accepting or refusing it. They advised him against accepting it, as what he wanted not; as what was entirely remote from his profession, and would hinder the success of his ministry. He was himself generally of the same opinion with them, could not thoroughly reconcile himself to this secular preferment, and therefore absolutely refused it. Whiston seems to wonder that Clarke’s admirers should lay so little stress upon this refusal, as to mention it not at all, or at least very negligently; while “he takes it,” he says, “to be one of the most glorious actions of his life, and to afford undeniable conviction that he vvas in earnest in his religion.”

In 1728 was published, “A Letter from Dr. Clarke to Mr. Benjamin Hoadly, F. R. S. occasioned by the controversy relating to the proportion of velocity and force in bodies in motion,” and printed in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 401; and in 1729, he published the twelve first books of “Homer’s Iliad,” in 4to, and dedicated to the duke of Cumberland. The Latin version is almost entirely new; and annotations are added to the bottom of the pages. Homer, bishop Hoadly tells us, was Clarke’s admired author, even to a degree of something like enthusiasm, hardly natural to his temper; and that in this he went a little beyond the bounds of Horace’s judgment, and was so unwilling to allow the favourite poet ever to nod, that he has taken remarkable pains to find out and give a reason for every passage, word, and tittle, that could create any suspicion. It has however so long and so justly been the popular edition of Homer, that it would be unnecessary to expatiate on its merits in this place. Whiston informs us, that he had begun this work in his younger years; and that “the notes were rather transcribed than made new.” The twelve last books of the Iliad were published in 1732, in 4to, by our author’s son, Samuel Clarke; who informs us in the preface, that his father had finished the annotations to the three first of those books, and as far as the 359th verse of the fourth; and had revised the text and version as far as verse 510th of the same book.

While Clarke was thus employed in finishing the remaining books of Homer, he was interrupted with an illness which ended in his death. Though not robust, he had all his life long enjoyed a firm state of health, without any indisposition severe enough to confine him, except the small-pox in his youth; till, on Sunday May 11, 1729, going out in the morning to preach before the judges at Serjeants’-inn, he was there seized with a pain in his side, which quickly became so violent, that he was obliged to be carried home. He went to bed, and thought himself so much better in the afternoon, that he would not suffer himself to be blooded; against which remedy he had strong prejudices. But the pain returning violently about two the next morning, made bleeding absolutely necessary: he appeared to be out of danger, and continued to think himself so, till the Saturday morning following; when, to the inexpressible surprise of all about him, the pain removed from his side to his head; and, after a very short interval, took away his senses, in which state he continued breathing till between seven and eight of the evening of that day, May 17, 1729, and then died, in his 54th year. The same year was printed his “Exposition of the Church Catechism,” and ten volumes of sermons, in 8vo, by his brother Dr. John Clarke, dean of Sarum. His “Exposition” is made up of those lectures he read every Thursday morning for some months in the year at St. James’s church. In the latter part of his time he revised them with great care, and left them completely prepared for the press. This performance was immediately animadverted upon by Dr. Waterland, and defended by Dr. Sykes, in a controversy which produced some pamphlets.

The character of Dr. Clarke has been thus drawn by Dr. Hare, bishop of Chichester, and by bishop Hoadly. Dr. Hare, in his pamphlet entitled “The difficulties and discouragements which attend the study of the Scripture, in the way of private judgement,” says that he is “a man who has all the good qualities that can meet together to recommend him. He is possessed of all the parts of learning that are valuable in a clergyman, in a degree that few possess any single one. He has joined to a good skill in the three learned languages a great compass of the best philosophy and mathematics, as appears by his Latin works; and his English ones are such a proof of his own piety, and of his knowledge in divinity, and have done so much service to religion, as would make any other man, that was not under the suspicion of heresy, secure of the friendship and esteem of all good churchmen, especially of the clergy. And to all this piety and learning, and the good use that has been made of it, is added a temper happy beyond expression: a sweet, easy, modest, inoffensive, obliging behaviour adorns all his actions; and no passion, vanity, insolence, or ostentation, appears either in what he writes or says: and yet these faults are often incident to the best men, in the freedom of conversation, and writing against impertinent and unreasonable adversaries, especially such as strike at the foundation of virtue and religion. This is the learning, this the temper of the man, whose study of the scriptures has betrayed him into a suspicion of some heretical opinions.”

Bishop Hoadly writes thus of Clarke: “He was a person of a natural genius, excellent enough to have placed him in the superior rank of men without the acquirements of learning; and of learning enough to have rendered a much less cdmprehensive genius very considerable in the ways of the world. But in him they were both united to such a degree, that those who were of his intimate acquaintance 'knew not which to admire most. The first strokes of knowledge, in some of its branches, seemed to be little less than natural to him: for they appeared to lie right in his mind, as soon as any thing could appear; and to be the very same, which afterwards grew up with him into perfection, as the strength and cultivation of his mind increased. He had one happiness very rarely known among the greatest men, that his memory was almost equal to his judgment, which is as great a character as can well be given of it.” Then, after observing how great the doctor was in “all branches of knowledge and learning, he goes on thus:” If in any one of these many branches he had excelled only so much as he did in all, this alone would justly have entitled him to the name of a great man. But there is something so very extraordinary, that the same person should excel, not only in those parts of knowledge which require the strongest judgment, but in those which want the help of the strongest memory also; and it is so seldom seen, that one who is a great master in theology, is at the same time skilfully fond of all critical and classical learning, or excellent in the physical and mathematical studies, or well framed for metaphysical and abstract reasonings; that it ought to be remarked, in how particular a manner, and to how high a degree, divinity and mathematics, experimental philosophy and classical learning, metaphysics and critical skill, all of them, various and different as they are amongst themselves, united in Dr. Clarke.“Afterwards the bishop informs us, how earnestly his acquaintance and friendship was sought after by the greatest lovers of virtue and knowledge; what regard was paid to him by the chief persons of the law; and, above all, what pleasure her late majesty queen Caroline took in his conversation and friendship: for” seldom a week passed, says he, “in which she did not receive some proof of the greatness of his genius, and of the force of his superior understanding.”

“If any one should ask,” continues the bishop, “as it is natural to do, how it came to pass that this great man was never raised higher in the church? I must answer, that it was neither for want of merit, nor interest, nor the favour of some in whose power it was to have raised him. But he had reasons within his own breast, which hindered him from either seeking after, or accepting any such promotion. Of these he was the proper, and indeed the only judge: and therefore I say no more of them.” The truth is, his scruples about subscription were very great; as we are informed by Sykes, who observes, in his eulogium of Clarke, printed at the end of Whiston’s Historical Memoirs, that "the doctor would often wish, that those things which were suspected by many, and judged unlawful by some, might be seriously considered, and not made terms of communion. He thought it would be the greatest happiness to see the occasions of good and learned men’s scruples removed out of the public forms of divine service, and the doctrines of Christianity reduced to the New Testament only; and that it would be right to have nothing required from the preachers of the gospel, but what was

Vol. IX, purely primitive. This he thought to be the only means of making the minds of sincere Christians easy and quiet. This he believed would make men much more charitable to one another: and make the governors of the church and state transact their important affairs with greater ease and freedom from disturbances.“Upon the whole, bishop Hoadly makes no scruple to declare, that” by Dr. Clarke’s death, the world was deprived of as bright a light, and masterly a teacher of truth and virtue, as ever yet appeared amongst us and,“says he in the conclusion of his account,” as his works must last as long as any language remains to convey them to future times, perhaps I may flatter myself that this faint and imperfect account of him may be transmitted down with them. And I hope it will be thought a pardonable piece of ambition and self-interestedness, if, being fearful lest every thing else should prove too weak to keep the remembrance of myself in being, I lay hold on his fame to prop and support my own. I am sure, as I have little reason to expect that any thing of mine, without such an assistance, can live, I shall think myself greatly recompensed for the want of any other memorial, if my name may go down to posterity thus closely joined with his; and I myself be thought of, and spoke of, in ages to come, under the character of The Friend of Dr. Clarke.“' On the other hand, Whiston, who wrote his Life, and held him in as high estimation as either Dr. Hare or Dr. Hoadly, candidly mentions those failings, some of which, perhaps, may occur to the reader in perusing the preceding pages, and considerably lessen our opinion of his consistency. In the lirst place, he blames Clarke for subscribing the articles, at a time when he could not, with perfect truth and sincerity, assent to the Athanasian parts of them; namely, at his taking the degree of doctor in divinity. Mr. Whiston, then professor of mathematics at Cambridge, endeavoured to dissuade him from it; and, when he could not prevail on that head, he earnestly pressed him to declare openly, and in writing, in what sense he subscribed the suspected articles: but he could not prevail on this head neither. Upon this occasion, professor James, who suspected Dr. Clarke of an inclination to heretical pravity, said to him, upon his subscribing the articles,” he hoped he would not go from his subscription.“The doctor replied,” He could promise nothing as to futurity, and eould only answer as to his present sentiments*“However, Mr.Whiston acknowledges, that Dr. Clarke, for many years before he died, perpetually refused all, even the greatest preferments, which required subscription, and never encouraged those who consulted him to subscribe. In the next place, he objects to Dr. Clarke his not acting sincerely, boldly, and openly, in the declaration of his true opinions, and his over-cautious and over-timorous way of speaking, writing, and acting, in points of the highest consequence. When Mr. Whiston gave him frequent and vehement admonitions upon this head, his general answer, he tells us, was, who are those that act better than I do” Very few of which,“says he,” I could ever name to him though I did not think that a sufficient excuse.“Lastly, Mr. Whiston is greatly displeased with Dr. Clarke’s conduct in relation to the affair of the convocation, and concludes the account of that affair with these words” Thus ended this unhappy affair unhappy to Dr. Clarke’s own conscience unhappy to his best friends and above all unhappy as to its consequences, in relation to the opinion unbelievers were hereupon willing to entertain of him, as if he had prevaricated all along in his former writings for Christianity."

Some anecdotes respecting Dr. Clarke’s personal character, lately collected by the rev. Mr. Jones of Welwyn, are not incurious. We learn from them, that Dr. Clarke was of a very humane and tender disposition. When his young children amused themselves with tormenting and killing flies upon the windows, he not only forbad such practices, but calmly reasoned with them, in such a familiar manner, as was calculated to make a powerful impression upon their minds. He was very ready and condescending in answering applications to him with respect to scruples; numberless instances of which occurred in the course of his life. One thing of which Dr. Clarke was peculiarly cautious was, not to lose the least minute of his time. He always carried some book about him, which he would read whilst riding in a coach, or walking in the fields, or if he had any leisure moments free from company or his other studies. Nay, he would read even in company itself, where he might take such a liberty without offence to good manners, and yet with all this value for time, we are told that he would spend whole hours in playing cards.

When our author was a young student at the university, he was so distinguished by the excellence of his exercises,

2 and by other marks of unusual proficiency in literature, that he was commonly spoken of, among the rest of the scholars, by the title of “The lad of Cains.” His public exercise, which we have mentioned above, was long remembered in the university, and by the learned men of that period. Dr. Henry Yarborough, prebendary of York, and rector of Tewing, Herts, declared, that he never heard any act equal to it or like it. The same gentleman, when at the age of seventy- seven, said, that he would gladly take a ride to Cambridge, to hear such another act as had been kept by Dr. Clarke. Dr. Clarke’s memory was remarkably strong. He told Mr. Pyle, of Lynn, that he never forgot any thing which he had once thoroughly apprehended and understood. The doctor, with his intimate friends, was perfectly free and easy; but if strangers were introduced, he behaved with much circumspection, conversing only upon common topics. When he visited Dr. Sykes, his usual way was to sit with him upon a couch, and, reclining upon his bosom, to discourse with him, in the most familiar manner, upon such subjects as were agreeable to the taste and judgment of both.

When sir John Germaine lay upon his death-bed, and was in great confusion and trouble of mind, he sent for Dr. Clarke, and requested to know of him whether he should receive the Sacrament, and what he should do in his sad condition. The doctor, who was well acquainted with sir John’s pursuits and course of life, sedately replied, that he could not advise him to receive the Sacrament, and that he did not think it likely to be of any avail to him with respect to his final welfare. Having said this, he departed, without administering the communion, having first recommended the dying man to the mercy of God. Mr. Pope has a kind of reflection upon Dr. Clarke’s frequenting the court; to which the poet was stimulated by resentment against the doctor, because he refused to use his interest for obtaining the recall of lord Bolingbroke from France, with a general pardon.

Dr. Clarke married Katherine, only daughter of the rev. Mr. Lockwood, rector of Little Massingham in Norfolk, by whom he had seven children, two of which died before him, and one a few weeks after him. His widow had a pension from queen Caroline of 105l. per annum. One of his sons was living in 1771; and in an article inserted in the London Evening Post, Dec. 7, of that year, positively contradicted "the report that his father had ever retracted his opinions on the Trinity.

, a learned divine and antiquary, was horn at Haghmon abbey, in Shropshire, in the year 1696, and was educated at Shrewsbury school, under the care of Mr. Lloyd, for whom he always entertained the greatest regard. From Shrewsbury he was removed to St. John’s college, in the university of Cambridge, where he became a fellow, Jan. 22, 1716-17. His election at so early a period of life was owing to a number of vacancies, occasioned by the removal of several non-juring fellows, in consequence of an act of parliament. He commenced B. A. 1715; in 1719 became M. A.; and the reputation which he acquired when young was such, that he was chosen to be chaplain to Dr. Adam Ottley, bishop of St. David’s: but this prelate dying in 1723, he does not appear to have received any advantage from the appointment. He was afterwards domestic chaplain to Thomas Holies, duke of Newcastle; in which situation he did not continue long, as in 1724, he was presented by archbishop Wake to the rectory of Buxted, in Sussex, without any solicitation of his own, partly on account of his extraordinary merit, and partly from a regard to the special recommendation of the learned Dr. William Wotton, whose daughter he married. In 1738, he was made prebendary and residentiary of the prebend of Hova Villa in the cathedral church of Chichester, Some years before this he had given to the public a specimen of his literary abilities, in a preface to his father-in-law Dr. Wotton’s “Leges Walliae Ecclesiastical,” 1730; and it is thought that an excellent “Discourse on the Commerce of the Romans,” which was highly extolled by Dr. Taylor, in his “Elements of the Civil Law,” came either from his hand or from that of his friend Mr, Bowyer. It is reprinted in that gentleman’s “Miscellaneous Tracts,” and in “The Progress of Maritime Discovery,” by Mr. Clarke’s grandson. But Mr. Clarke’s chief work was “The Connexion of the Roman, Saxon, and English Coins; deducing the antiquities, customs, and manners of each people to modern times; particularly the origin of feudal tenures, and of parliaments: illustrated throughout with critical and historical remarks on various authors, both sacred and profane,” 1767, 4to, dedicated to the duke of Newcastle. It had been perused in manuscript by Arthur Onslow, esq. speaker of the house of commons, who honoured him with some useful hints and observations: but he was chiefly indebted to Mr. Bowyer, who superintended the publication, drew up several of the notes, wrote part of the dissertation on the Roman sesterce, and formed an admirable index to the whole. By this work our author acquired great reputation. Mr. Pinkerton, in his Essay on Medals, says that a student cannot begin with a better book in this science.

In 1768 Mr. Clarke obtained from archbishop Cornwallis permission to resign the rectory of Buxted (after having held it more than thirty-four years), to his son Edward, through the unsolicited interest of the late marquis Cornwallis, who recollected on this occasion the intimacy that had subsisted between himself and the rev. Edward Clarke in the island of Minorca. In June 1770, he was installed chancellor of the church of Chichester, to which office the rectories of Chittingley and Pevensey are annexed; and in August that year was presented to the vicarage of Amport. These preferments he did not long enjoy, as he died Oct. 21, 1771. In the “Anecdotes of Bowyer” are many letters and extracts of letters, written to that learned printer and other persons, by Mr. Clarke, which exhibit him to great advantage as a man of piety, a friend, and a scholar. Besides the writings already mentioned, Mr. Clarke joined with Mr. Bowyer in the translation of Trapp’s Lectures on poetry, and in annotations on the Greek Testament; and was the author of several of the notes subjoined to the English version of Bleterie’s Life of the Emperor Julian. He left behind him a considerable number of manuscripts, among which are some volumes of excellent sermons, the best of which were given to the late Ashburnham, bishop of Chichester, and at his death were inadvertently burnt with some other papers. Bishop Bagot had strongly recommended the publication of a selection of Mr. Clarke’s sermons.

Although antiquities were the favourite study of Mr. Clarke, he was a secret, and by no means an unsuccessful votary of the muses. He wrote English verse with ease, elegance, and spirit. Perhaps there are few better epigrams in our language than that which he composed on seeing the words Domus ultima inscribed on the vault belonging to the dukes of Richmond in the cathedral of Chichester. Among the happier I'ittle pieces of his sportive poetry, there are in the Life of Bowyer some animated stanzas, describing the character of the twelve English poets, whose portraits, engraved by Vertue, were the favourite ornament of his parlour: but he set so modest and humble a value on his poetical compositions, that they were seldom committed to paper, and are therefore very imperfectly preserved in the memory of those, to whom he sometimes recited them. His taste and judgment in poetry appears, indeed, very striking in many parts of his learned and elaborate “Connexion of Coins.” His illustration of Nestor’s cup, in particular, may be esteemed as one of the happiest examples of that light and beauty, which the learning and spirit of an elegant antiquary may throw on a cloudy and mistaken passage of an ancient poet. He gave a very beneficial proof of his zeal for literature, by the trouble he took in regulating the library of the cathedral to which he belonged. He persuaded bishop Mavvson to bestow a considerable sum towards repairing the room appropriated to this purpose. He obtained the donation of many valuable volumes from different persons; and by his constant and liberal attention to this favourite object, raised an inconsiderable and neglected collection of books, into a very useful and respectable public library.

By his only wife, Anne, daughter of Dr. Wotton, Mr. Clarke had three children, two of whom survived him; Edward, of whom in the next article, and a daughter, who inherited not only the virtues of her parents, but their taste for literature. She died at Chichester, and was buried in a cemetery adjoining the cathedral. His widow died July 11, 1783.

, son to the preceding, was born at Btixted, March 16, 1730, and was educated at St. John’s college, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B. A,. 1752, and after being elected a fellow, proceeded M. A. 1755. In 1758 he was presented to the rectory of Pepperharrow, in Surrey. He was, like his father, a man of genius and an excellent scholar. His taste and wit gave peculiar charms to his conversation, in which he particularly excelled. His first publication, we believe, was a copy of Greek hexameters on the death of Frederic prince of Wales, in the “Luctus Academias Cantabrigiensis,” 1751. Jn 1755, he published “A Letter to a Friend in Italy, and verses on reading Montfaucon.” In concert with Mr. Itowyer, he projected the improvement of a Latin dictionary, by reducing that of Faber from its present radical to a regular form. One single sheet of this work was completed, when the design dropped for want of due encouragement. In 1759, he published a thanksgiving sermon, for the victory over the French fleet; and the following year, went as chaplain to the embassy at Madrid, and during a residence there of two years, collected the materials of a very curious work which he published on his return, entitled “Letters concerning the Spanish nation, written at Madrid during the years 1760 and 1761,” 1763, 4to. In this year also, he married Anne, daughter of Thomas Grenfield, esq. and soon afterwards attended general James Johnstone to Minorca (of which island that officer had been appointed lieutenant-governor), as secretary and chaplain. In 1767 he published “A defence of the conduct of the lieutenantgovernor, in reply to a printed libel.” On his return from Minorca, about 1768, he was inducted to the vicarages of Willingdon and Arlington, in Sussex, through the interest of his father, by whose resignation also he succeeded to the rectory of Buxted, on which he principally resided, devoting his whole life to literature. In 1769 he resigned Pepperharrow, from a dislike, very honourable to him, of the character of a pluralist. In 1778, he printed proposals for an edition in folio of the “Greek Testament,” with a selection of notes from the most eminent critics and commentators, but sufficient encouragement was not given. The copy, however, is in the possession of his son the rev. James Stanier Clarke, with another that was interleaved and filled with notes by his grandfather Mr. William Clarke. He died November 1786, and was buried at Buxted. He left three sons, and a daughter married to capt. Parkinson of the royal navy. Of his sons, the youngest, capt. George Clarke of the royal navy, a brave and skilful officer, was unfortunately drowned by the upsetting 1 of a pleasure-boat in the Thames, Oct. 1, 1805. It would be unnecessary to add how much the literary honours of this family are likely to be perpetuated by his other sons, the rev. James Stanier Clarke, LL. B. and F. K. S. the biographer of Nelson, and the rev. Edward Daniel Clarke, LL. D. a gentleman of consummate abilities in the antiquities of literature, and author of two volumes of “Travels” just published, which have interested the public in no common degree.

, a nonconformist divine of considerable celebrity, and one of the tutors of archbishop Tiilotson, was the son of Robert Clarkson of Bradford in Yorkshire, where he was born February 1622, and educated at Clare-hall, Cambridge^and was some time fellow of that college. He was then tutor to Tiilotson, who succeeded him in his fellowship in 1651. He was, according to Baxter, a divine of extraordinary worth for solid judgment, healing moderate principles, acquaintance with the fathers, great ministerial abilities, and a godly upright life. He held for some time the living of Mortlake in Surrey, from which he was ejected for nonconformity in August 1662. After this he shifted about, according to Neal, from one place of obscurity to another, until, in 1682, he was chosen co-pastor with Dr. Owen, whom he succeeded the year following. He died June 14, 1686. Of his works, which principally consist of occasional Sermons, and a volume of “Sermons” in folio, the most remarkable were, one entitled “No evidence of Diocesan Episcopacy in the primitive times,” 1681, 4to, in answer to Dr. Stillingfleet; and another on the same subject, printed after his death, under the title of “Primitive Fpiscopacy,” 1688; this was answered by Dr. Henry Maurice in 1691, in his “Defence of Diocesan Episcopacy.” Tiilotson, notwithstanding Clarkson’s nonconformity, always preserved a very high respect for him.

, properly Claude Gele'I;, an inimitable landscape painter, was born at Lorraine in 1600, and served an apprenticeship to the trade of a pastry-cook. In the early part of his life he shewed no symptoms of- that astonishing genius, which in his more advanced years attracted the admiration of the world. He was very little indebted to any master for instruction, except Agostino Tassi, who had been a disciple of Paul Bril, and with great labour taught Claude some of the rules of perspective, and the method of preparing his colours. But although at first be could with difficulty comprehend the rudiments y of the art, yet in the progress of his instructions his rnind seemed to expand; his ideas improved; his imagination became more lively; and with wonderful eagerness he applied himself to his studies. During these he explored the true principles of painting, by an incessant examination of nature, usually studying in the open fields, where he very frequently continued frofn sun-rise till the dusk of the evening. There he sketched whatever he thought beautiful or striking; and every curious tinge of light, on all kinds of objects, he marked in his sketches with a similar colour; from which he gave his landscapes such an appearance of nature and truth, as has rarely been discovered in any artist that ever painted in that style. Sandrart relates, that Claude used to explain to him, as they walked through the fields, the causes of the different appearances of the same prospect at different hours of the day, from the reflections or refractions of light, from dews or vapours, in the evening or morning, with all the precision of a philosopher.

He worked on his pictures with great care, endeavouring to bring them to perfection, by touching them frequently over again; and if any performance did not answer his idea, it was customary with him to alter, to deface, and repaint it again several times over, till it corresponded with that image pictured in his mind. But, whatever struck his imagination, while he observed nature abroad, was so strongly impressed on his memory, that, on his return to work, he never failed to make the happiest use of it. His skies are warm, and full of lustre, and every object is properly illumined. His distances are admirable, and in every part a delightful union and harmony never fail to excite our applause and admiration. His invention is pleasing, his colouring delicate, and his tints have such an agreeable sweetness and variety, as to have been but imperfectly imitated by the best subsequent artists, but were never equalled. He frequently gave an uncommon tenderness to his finished trees, by glazing; and in his large compositions which he painted in fresco, he was so exact, that the distinct species of every tree might readily be distinguished. Among several of his performances in that manner of painting, one was on the four walls of a magnificent saloon at Rome, belonging to a nobleman named Mutius, the height of the walls being very considerable. On the first side he represented the vestiges of an ancient palace, bounded by a deep grove of trees, incomparably expressed as to the forms, stems, barks, branchings, and foliage; the proportional grandeur of those trees, as well as the length of the grove, were perspectively and beautifully set off by the shrubs and plants with which his ground was diversified; and the eye was pleasingly conducted to the second wall, which seemed, by an artful contrivance and disposition, to be only a continuation of the same scene, the same elevation of the horizontal line being observed through the whole work. On the second side, he shewed an extensive plain interspersed with mountains and falls of water, as also with a variety of trees, plants, travellers, and animals; and this part of the composition was likewise connected with the third wall. In that, the lengthened prospect shewed a sea-port at the foot of some high hills, with a view of the ocean, and vessels labouring amongst the waves, which appeared in violent agitation; and on the fourth wall were represented caverns amongrude rocks, ruins of buildings, and fragments of antique statues; the composition, though divided into so many parts, constituting in the whole but one entire connected prospect, the beauty, truth, and variety of which, the power of language cannot sufficiently represent. As to his figures, if he painted them himself, they are very indifferent; though Sandrart assures us, that he spent a great deal of time and labour in practising to design them; that he drew for some years in the academy at Rome, after living models, as well as after statues; and that he took much more pains in endeavouring to form his hand to draw figures correctly, than to perfect himself in landscape, in which he was confessedly superior to all. And he was so conscious of his deficiency in figures, that he usually engaged other artists who were eminent to paint them for him; of which number were Courtois, and Philippo Laura. His pictures are very rare, especially such as are undamaged; and those are at this time so valued, that no price, however great, is thought to be superior to their merit. There are some of uncommon excellence in this country; and a few years ago the vast price of 6000 guineas was given for two of them. In order to avoid a repetition of the same subject, and also to detect such copies of his works as might be injurious to his fame by being sold for originals, it was his custom to draw (in a paper book prepared for his purpose) the designs of all those pictures which were transmitted to different countries; and on the back of the drawings he wrote the name of the person who had been the purchaser. That book, which he titled “Libro di Verita,” is now in the possession of the duke of Devonshire. For his amusement Claude etched a set of twenty-eight middling-sized landscapes, lengthways, from his own compositions. They are very slight, but very spirited, and abundantly testify the hand of the master. De Piles says he died in 1678, but all other writers place his death in 1682.

, an eminent French protestant clergyman, was born at Sauvetat in the province of Angenois, in 1619, and studied grammar and philosophy under his father Francis Claude, also a minister, ~and a man of great piety, and afterwards went through a course of divinity at Montauban, where he was ordained in 1645. He was made minister of the church of la Treyne, where he officiated a year, and then became minister of a church of St. Afric in Rovergne and eight years after, pastor of that of Nismes. As the protestants had an university in the city of Nismes, Claude had an opportunity of displaying one of his chief talents, that of happily explaining a theological subject; and he used to read private lectures to such as were candidates for the ministry. He had undertaken to refute the piece called “The Method,” which was written by cardinal Richelieu against the protestants; but hearing that Martel, an eminent professor of divinity, had a synodical commission for that purpose, he laid aside that design. Havfng opposed, in the synod of the Lower Languedoc, a person whom the court had won over to attempt a re-union between the Roman catholics and protestants, he was forbid, by a decree of council, the functions of a minister in Languedoc, after he had exercised them eight years at Nismes. He went to Paris to get this resolution taken off; and, after staying there six months to no purpose, he went to Montauban, preached the day after his arrival, and accepted an offer from the people of that church.

During this journey, he wrote a little book, which gave rise to the most famous dispute that ever was carried on in. France between the protestants and Roman catholics. Mess, de Port-Royal in their endeavours to make a convert of Mr. de Turenne to the Romish religion, presented hin with a work in which they pretended to shew that the protestant churches had always believed what is taught in that of the Romanists concerning the real presence, and that a change of belief, such as the protestants suppose, is impossible. Mr. de Turenne’s lady, who always dreaded, what happened after her decease, namely, that her husband would turn Roman catholic, was very anxious to confirm him in the protestant faith, and employed Claude to write an answer to the piece of Mess, de Port-Royal, which he executed with so much ability, that several copies were taken and circulated as extensively, both in Paris and in the provinces, as if it had been printed. Mess, de PortRoyal, hearing of this, thought themselves absolutely obliged to answer it, by publishing in 1664, the famous work entitled “The perpetuity of the catholic church in regard to its doctrine of the Eucharist.” It contains the first piece, and a reply to Claude’s answer, who was then at Montauban; and published in 1666, with his first answer, a work entitled “An answer to two treatises, entitled The perpetuity, &c.” There is no doubt but the intrinsic merit of Claude’s book contributed greatly to its fame; but he had also the Jansenists on his side, who hoped that it would vex the gentlemen of the Port-Royal; and therefore, for their own sake, they spread in all places his name and merit. Arnauld undertook to refute Claude’s book, and published a large volume in 1669. Father Nonet also, a famous Jesuit, engaged in the controversy, and published a book against Claude, who wrote an answer to it, which was printed in 1668, and which some prefer to his other pieces; and we are told it was his own favourite piece. The author of the “Journal des S^avans” opposed Claude, by inserting an extract of that Jesuit’s book, which induced Claude to publish an anonymous letter, entitled “A Letter from a provincial to a friend, occasioned by the journal of the 28th of June, 1667” and this obtained a reply from the journalist some time after, which terminated this contest; but as Arnauld had added two more volumes to the former, Claude was forced to engage in a very laborious study, in order to examine the tenets of the Greek church, and those of the eastern schismatics, and shewed great learning and abilities in the answer he made to him. The Jansenists only made a general reply to Claude’s book. They published their “Just prejudices against Calvinism:” which Claude refuted by one of the ablest vindications of protestantism, entitled -“' Defense de la Reformation,” Roan, 1673, and Hague, 1682.

Claude, as we have observed, was elected minister of the church of Montauban, about 1662; but four years after he was forbid by the court to exercise his functions there, which obliged him to go a second time to Paris, where he continued near nine months, without being able to remove the obstacles of his return to Montauban. During this interval, he was invited to the church of Bourdeaux; but the congregation of Charenton, being unwilling to lose a person of Claude’s abilities, gave him also an invitation in 1666. From that time to the revocation of the edict of Nantz, he did very great service to the cause of the French protestants by his excellent works, and by the minute attention he paid to the affairs which the deputies of provinces communicated to him. No man was ever better qualified to head either a consistory or a synod, or to manage a personal dispute. He discovered this latter talent in the last conference, which Mad. de Duras desired to hear. This lady would not forsake her religion till she had heard Claude and the bishop of Meaux dispute in her presence; and they accordingly disputed at the countess de Roie’s, her sister’s, the 1st of March, 1678. Each disputa'nt wrote the relation of his conference, and ascribed the victory to himself. These relations were at first only handed about in ms. but at last the bishop of Meaux published his in 1682, and that of Claude followed soon after. Claude was distinguished from the rest of the ministers, by the manner in which the court ordered him to leave the kingdom. He, like them, had a fortnight allowed him to leave it: but the Romish clergy found means to shorten even that time. For, Oct. 22, 1685, the day on which the revocation of the edict of Nantz was registered at Paris, Claude at ten in the morning was ordered to leave France in twenty-four hours. He obeyed with the utmost submission; and set out, attended by one of the king’s footmen, who was ordered to conduct him to the frontiers of France; and who, though he executed his orders faithfully, yet treated him with civility. He travelled in the Brussels coach; and his fame flying before him, procured him much kind and hospitable attention during his journey. He passed through Cambray, where he lay; and was there presented with some refreshments by the Jesuits. Even their rector paid him a visit, which Claude returned; and the difference of religion did not interrupt this interchange of civilities.

Having arrived at Holland, he met with a very kind reception, and was honoured with a considerable pension by the prince of Orange. He used to preach occasionally at the Hague; and his last sermon was on Christmas-day, 1686, so eloquent and impressive, that the princess of Orange was greatly affected. Claude had not a pleasing voice; which gave pccasion to the witticism of Morus, “that all the voices will be for him except his own” but this did not lessen the effect of his sermons, nor the popularity of the preacher. At the conclusion of the last-mentioned sermon, he was seized with an illness, of which he died Jan. 13, 1687; and his death was just matter of grief to his whole party, who lost a man of great abilities, and one likely to have healed the- animosities which afterwards took place in some of the protestant churches.

Claude married in 1648 Elizabeth de Malcare, by whom he had a son, Isaac Claude, born March 5, 1653, of whom he was very fond, and bred him to the ministry. He studied in the universities of France; after which he returned to his father, who completed his education for the pulpit. He was examined at Sedan in 1678, and approved; he was invited by the congregation of the church of Clermont in Beauvoisis; and his father had the satisfaction to impose his hands on him in 1678, and to see him minister of the Walloon church at the Hague, when he retired to Holland in 1685. He died at the Hague, July 29, 1695, after having published many excellent works of his deceased father, particularly 5 vols. 12mo of posthumous theological and controversial treatises, Amst. 1689.Lavocat, a Roman catholic writer, allows that his works are written in a manly, exact, elegant and close style, discover great genius and learning, and an uncommon talent for employing all the subtleties of logic. So candid a critic may be forgiven for adding, “happy had he not talents by writing against the catholic church.” These volumes just mentioned contain “An answer to a treatise on the Sacrament,” supposed to be written by cardinal le Camus, bishop of Grenoble; Four Letters on the same subject; an “Essay on the composition of a Serinon;” a “Body of Christian Divinity;” expositions of parts of Scripture, Letters, &c. His Life, written by M. de la Devaize, was translated into English by G. P. and published Lond. 1688, 4to. His “Historical Defence of the Reformation” was published in English by T. B. Lond. 1683, 4to, and his “Essay on the Composition of a Sermon,” which he wrote about the year 1676, for the use of his son, was translated and published in English, in 1778, by the late rev. Rob. Robinson, of Cambridge, 2 vols. 8vo, with a Life of the author, and notes, all which, as displaying an implacable and unprovoked hostility to the established church, have been very properly omitted in a new edition of the translation published in 1796, by the rev. Charles Simeon, of King’s college, Cambridge.

, son of Isaac Claude, pastor at the Hague, and grandson of the celebrated minister of that name, was born January 16, 1684, in that city, and from his infancy displayed a taste for reading and literary research. At fifteen he wrote a curious Latin dissertation on the manner of saluting among the ancients, and published it at eighteen, with another dissertation, in the same language, on nurses and paedagogues, under the title “J. J. Claudii Dissertatio de Salutationibus Veterum, cui addita est Diatribe de Nutricibus et Paedagogis,” Utrecht, 1702, 12mo. He then studied at Utrecht, under Burman, and devoted himself entirely to the belles lettres; but M. Martin, his relation and tutor, who was minister there, falling dangerously ill, and seeing M. Claude one day by his- bed-side, said to him, among other things, “Behold, my dear child, of what use the belles lettres are, when a man is reduced to my situation.' 7 These words made so deep an impression on the young scholar, that he determined from that time to make divinity his chief study. He afterwards came over to England, and became pastor of the Drench church in London, 1710, where he died of the small-pox, March 7, 1712, lamented by the friends of learning and piety. A volume of his” Sermons" was published by his brother in 1713. They are only ten in number, but were highly praised in the literary journals of the time, and occasioned redoubled regret that the world had been so soon deprived of his talents

, a Latin poet, who flourished in the fourth century, under the emperor Theodosius and his sons Arcadius and Honorius, was born in the year 365. Many learned men imagine him to have been born at Alexandria, in Egypt; others, however, have made a Spaniard of him, others a Frenchman, and Plutarch and Politian suppose Florence to have been the place of his nativity. It is certain that he came to Rome in the year 395, and insinuated himself into Stilico’s favour, who, being a person of great abilities, both for civil and military affairs, though a Goth by birth, was now become so considerable under Honorius, that he may be said for many years to have governed the western empire. Stilico afterwards fell into disgrace, and was put to death; and it is more than probable, that the poet was involved in the misfortunes of his patron, whom he had egregiously flattered, and severely persecuted by Hadrian, who was captain of the guards to Honorius, and seems to have succeeded Stilico. There is a reason, however, to think that he rose afterwards to great favour, and obtained several honours both civil and military. Arcadius and Honorius are said to have granted him an honour, which seems to exceed any that had ever been bestowed upon a poet before, having at the senate’s request ordered a statue to be erected for him in Trajan’s forum, with a very honourable inscription; and this is said to be confirmed by the late discovery of a marble, supposed to be the pedestal of Claudiau’s statue in brass. The inscription runs thus: “To Claudius Claudianus, tribune and notary, and among other noble accomplishments, the most excellent of poets: though his own poems are sufficient to render his name immortal, yet [as] a testimony of their approbation, the most learned and [h]appy emperors Arcadius and Honorius have, at the request of the senate, ordered this statue to be erected and placed in the forum of Trajan.” Under the inscription was placed an epigram in Greek, signifying that he had united the perfections of Homer and Virgil. The princess Serena had a great esteem for Claudian, and recommended and married him to a lady of great quality and fortune in Libya, as he acknowledges very gratefully in an epistle which he addresses to Serena from thence, a little before his wedding day.

There are a few little poems on sacred subjects, which, through mistake, have been ascribed by some critics to daudian, and have made him be thought a Christian, But St. Austin, who was contemporary with him, expressly says that he was a heathen; and this is confirmed by Paulus Orosius, another contemporary. They are with more propriety ascribed to Claudianus Mamertus, the subject of the following article. The time of Claudian’s death is uncertain, nor do we know any farther particulars of his life than what are to be collected from his works.

In consequence of Orosius pronouncing him a heathen, “an obstinate pagan,” Cave thinks it may be reasonably inferred that he had written against the Christian religion. This Fabricius opposes, but Lardner says it may be reckoned somewhat remarkable, that a learned man, a devout worshipper of all the gods, a wit and a poet, and author of many works, should never say any thing disrespectful of Christianity. He allows, however, that it is somewhat more extraordinary that Claudian should so excel in Latin verse, as to approach the best writers of the Augustan age in purity and elegance. Gibbon’s character of Claudian, corresponding with this, is written with more than usual care and discrimination. If, says this historian, we fairly balance Claudian’s merits and defects, we shall acknowledge that he does not either satisfy, or silence our reason. It would not be easy to produce a passage that deserves the epithet of sublime or pathetic; to select a verse that melts the heart, or enlarges the imagination. We should vainly seek in the poems of Claudian, the happy invention and artificial conduct of an interesting fable, or the just and lively representation of the characters and situations of real life. For the service of his patron, he published occasional panegyrics and invectives; and the design of these slavish compositions encouraged his propensity to exceed the limits of truth and nature. These imperfections, however, are compensated in some degree by the poetical virtues of Claudian. He was endowed with the rare and precious talent of raising the meanest, of adorning tjie most barren, and of diversifying the most similar topics; tys colouring, mere specially in descriptive poetry, is soft and splendid; and he seldom fails to display, and even to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated understanding, a copious fancy, an easy, and sometimes forcible expression; and a perpetual flow of harmonious versification. To these commendations, independent of any accidents of time and place, we must add the peculiar merit which Claudian derived from the unfavourable circumstances of his birth. In the decline of arts, and of empire, a native of Egypt, who had received the education of a Greek, assumed in a mature age the familiar use and absolute command of the Latin language, soared above the heads of his feeble contemporaries, and placed himself, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome. Strada, in his Prolusions, allows him to contend with the five heroic poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius. His patron is the accomplished courtier, Balthazar Castiglione. His admirers are numerous and passionate. Yet the rigid critics reproach the exotic weeds, or flowers, which spring too luxuriantly in his Latian soil, and for which Dr. Warton, one probably ranked by Gibbon among these “rigid critics,” places Claudian with Statius and Seneca the tragedian, as authors into which no youth of genius ought to be suffered to look.

The first edition of Claudian was supposed to be one of 1470, but as the best critics reject it, the claim of priority is allowed to that of 1482, fol. The best editions are those of Barthius, Francfort, 1650, 4to; of Heinsius, Leyden, 1650, 12mo; Amst. 1665, 8vo; of Gesner, Leipsic, 1759, 2 vols. 8vo, and thought the edit. opt.; and of Burmann, Amst. 1760, 4to.

, or, as some add, Claudius Clemens, bishop of Turin in the ninth century, and one of the earliest reformers of popish superstitions, was a native of Spain, and in his youth a disciple of Felix bishop of Urgel, whom he accompanied into France, Italy, and Germany, but whose errors he afterwards renounced, and obtained access to the court of Lewis le Debonnaire, emperor and king of France. Lewis admitted him among his almoners and chaplains, and having preached before the court, a thing very rare in those days, he was much admired as an expounder of the Scriptures, of which Fleury assures us he had great knowledge. On this account Lewis, who perceived the ignorance of a great part of Italy, and was willing to provide the churches of Piedmont with one who might stem the growing torrent of image worship, promoted Claudius to the see of Turin, about the year 817, in which he fully answered his expectations, and both in his preaching and writings successfully combated the prevailing superstitions. His commentaries on several parts of the Old and New Testaments are still extant in manuscript, in various French libraries; but his “Commentary on the Galatians,” Paris, 1542, is the only part of his works which has been printed, except his “prefaces” to the book of Leviticus and to the Epistle to the Ephesians, which father Mabillon published; an abridged “Chronicle” which father Labbe attributes to him; and a letter addressed to the emperor Charlemagne on the two eclipses of the year 8 10, which is in the tenth vol. of D'Acheri’s collection. In his commentary on the Galatians, he every where asserts the equality of all the apostles with St. Peter, and owns Jesus Christ as the proper head of the church. He inveighs against the doctrine of human merits, and against raising traditions to a height of credibility equal to that of the divine word. He maintains salvation by faith alone, admits the fallibility of the church, exposes the futility of praying for the dead, and of the idolatrous practices then supported by the Roman see. These tenets involved him in a controversy with a recluse named Dungal, and with Jonas, bishop of Orleans; and created many more dangerous enemies, from whom, however, he appears to have been protected by the French court, and died in peace in the year 339.

, a German Jesuit, was born at Bamberg, in Germany, in 1537. He became a very studious mathematician, and elaborate writer, his works making five large folio volumes; and containing a complete body or course of the mathematics. They are mostly elementary, and commentaries on Euclid and others; having very little of invention of his own. His talents and writings have been variously spoken of, and it must be acknowledged that he exhibits more of industry than genius. He was sent for to Rome, to assist, with other learned men, in the reformation of the calendar, by pope Gregory; which he afterwards undertook a defence of, against Scaliger, Vieta, and others, who attacked it. He died at Rome, the 6th of February, 1612, after more than fifty years close application to the mathematical sciences.

, one of the presidents of Magdalen college, Oxford, and nr>t president of Corpus Christ! college, in that university, was born at Frampton, in Lincolnshire, of parents who, although not opulent, were enabled to afford him a liberal education. He was first sent to a grammar-school in Oxford, and then entered of Magdalen college, where he became fellow, D, D. about 1507, and held several valuable benefices. In 1516-17, bishop Fox, the founder of Corpus Christi college, requested him to become president of that new foundation, and, as it was inferior in value to that of Magdalen, bestowed on him the rectory of Cleeve, in Gloucestershire, Claymond presided above twenty years, and died in 1537, and was buried in the chapel of Corpus. He left a considerable part of his property, in scholarships and other benefactions, to Brazen-nose, Magdalen, and Corpus Christi colleges He appears from his manuscripts, some of which are in the library of Corpus, to have been a classical scholar, and acquainted with natural history, his works consisting of commentaries on Aulua Gellius and Plautus, and notes and observations on Pliny. From these, likewise, we learn that he was the correspondent of Grynaeus, Erasmus, and other learned men of his time. With Erasmui he became personally acquainted at Oxford, and Erasmus afterwards dedicated to him some tracts of Chrysostom.

, bishop of Clogher, was born at Dublin in 1695, a descendant of the Claytons of Fulwood, in Lancashire, whose estate he became possessed of, by right of inheritance. His father, Dr. Clayton, minister of St. Michael’s, Dublin, and dean of Kildare, sent him to Westminster-school, under the private tuition of Zachary Pearce, afterwards bishop of Rochester, with whom he held a lasting friendship. From Westminster school Dr. Clayton removed his son to Trinity college, Dublin, of which, in due time, he became a fellow, and afterwards made the tour of Italy and France. From whom Mr. Clayton received holy orders, what preferments he had before he was raised to the episcopacy, and when he took his degrees, we are not informed; only we find that he was become D. D. in 1729. In 1728, having come into the possession of an affluent estate, in consequence of his father’s decease, he married Catharine, daughter of lord chief baron Donnellan, and gave her fortune, which was not considerable, to her sister. He behaved with the same generosity to his own three sisters, and gave to each of them the double of what had been bequeathed to them by their father’s will.

Soon after Dr. Clayton’s marriage, he went with his lady to England, and while at London, a person in distressed circumstances applied to him for assistance, with the testimony of Dr. Samuel Clarke for a recommendation, upon which, instead of the usual donation on such occasions, he gave to the necessitous man the sum of three hundred pounds, which was the whole that he wanted to make him easy in the world. This circumstance introduced him to Dr. Clarke, and the result of their acquaintance was, Dr. Clayton’s embracing the Arian principles, to which he adhered during the remainder of his life. Dr. Clarke having carried to queen Caroline an account of Dr. Clayton’s remarkable beneficence, it made a powerful impression on her majesty’s mind in favour of his character; which impression was strongly enforced by her bed-chamber woman, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards lady Sundon. Such a powerful interest procured an immediate recommendation to lord Carteret, then chief governor of Ireland, for the very first bishopric tbat should become vacant, and accordingly, he was advanced to that of Killala, January 1729-30. In this situation he continued till November 1735, when he was translated to the see of Cork, and in 1745 to that of Clogher. Excepting a letter written to the royal society upon a subject of no great consequence, his first publication was an “Introduction to the History of the Jews,” which was afterwards translated into French, and printed at Leyden. His next work was “The Chronology of the Hebrew Bible vindicated: the facts compared with other ancient histories, and the difficulties explained, from the flood to the death of Moses; together with some conjectures in relation to Egypt during that period of time; also two maps, in which are attempted to be settled the journeyings of the children of Israel,” 1747, 4to, and containing a variety of observations which deserve the attention of the learned reader. In 1749 he published a “Dissertation on Prophecy,” in which he endeavoured to shew, from a joint comparison of the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Revelation of St. John, that the final end of the dispersion of the Jews will be coincident with the ruin of the popedom, and take place about 2000. This was followed by an “Impartial Enquiry into the time of the coming of the Messiah,” in two letters to an eminent Jew, printed first separately, and then together, in 1751. In the same year (1751), appeared the “Essay on Spirit,” a performance which excited very general attention, and was productive of a fruitful controversy. Its object was to recommend the Arian doctrine of the inferiority of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and to prepare the way for suitable alterations in the Liturgy. His biographer, who is at the same time his warm panegyrist, allows that in this performance he has indulged too freely in imagination and conjecture; and that he might have confined the question with greater advantage to the direct and simple standard of Scripture. The work, after all, was not Dr. Clayton’s, but one of his adoption, the real authoi being a young clergyman in his diocese, who shewed the manuscript to his lordship, but had not the courage to print it in his own name. The bishop, with what is called a romantic generosity, conveyed it to the press, and managed the affair in such a manner, that the treatise was universally ascribed to him in all the attacks to which it was exposed, and the sentiments certainly were his. One effect of this conduct was, his being prevented from rising higher in the church. In 1752, he was recommended by the duke of Dorset, then viceroy of Ireland, to the vacant archbishopric of Tuam, but this was refused, solely on account of his being regarded as the writer of the Essay.

The next appearance of Dr. Clayton from the press, was in a work undoubtedly his own, “A Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament; in answer to the Objections of the late Lord Bolingbroke; in two letters to a young nobleman,” 1752, 8vo; a work of great ability, in which some of lord Bolingbroke’s objections to several parts of scripture are well exposed and confuted. In 1753, he published “A Journal from Grand Cairo to Mount Sinai, and back again. Translated from a manuscript written by the Prefetto of Egypt, in company with the Missionaries de propaganda Fids at Grand Cairo. To which are added, some remarks on the origin of hieroglyphics, and the mythology of the ancient heathens.” Dedicated to the Society of Antiquaries, London, 4to and 8vo. The bishop, having become possessed of the original Journal from Grand Cairo to Mount Sinai, and which had been mentioned by Dr. Pococke in his Travels through the East, communicated this translation of it to the Society of Antiquaries, with a view of exciting them to make some inquiry into certain ancient characters, which, as appears from the Journal, are discovered in great numbers in the Wilderness of Sinai, at a place well known by the name of Gebel el Mokatah, or the Written Mountains. It does not appear that any measures were taken by the Society of Antiquaries; but the celebrated Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, who went from Cairo to the Desert of Sinai, with, the express purpose of seeing and describing the objects proposed by the bishop, was greatly disappointed, and convinced that the characters were not written by the Israelites; and we believe the researches of more recent travellers have been equally unsuccessful.

In 1754, the bishop of Clogher favoured the literary world with the second part of his “Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament,” but written with more ingenuity than judgment. His account of the formation of the earth and of the deluge, was successfully attacked by Mr. Alexander Catcott. Our prelate’s next publication was in 1755, and consisted only of some letters which had passed between his lordship, when bishop of Cork, and Mr. William Penn, on the subject of baptism, in which he contended that the true Christian baptism is to continue to the end of the world; whereas the baptism of the Holy Ghost ceased with the ceasing of miracles. We have already noticed that his object in publishing the “Essay on Spirit” was to recommend Arianism, and consequently, alterations in the Liturgy. He now determined to avow the same sentiments in his legislative capacity; and accordingly, on Monday the 2d of February, 1756, he proposed in the Irish house of lords, that the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds should for the future be left out of the Liturgy of the church of Ireland. The speech which our prelate delivered upon this occasion being taken down in short-hand, was afterwards published, and passed through several editions. Though so declared and avowed an attack upon the establishment was regarded in a very unfavourable light, no measures were taken for calling Dr. Clayton to an account for it till he had published the third part of his “Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament,” 1757, in which he renewed his attacks upon the Trinity, and gave up so many doctrines as indefensible, and advanced others so contradictory to the thirtynine articles, that the governors of the church of Ireland determined to proceed against him. Accordingly his late majesty ordered the lord-lieutenant to take the proper steps toward a legal prosecution of the bishop of Clogher. A day was fixed for a general meeting of the Irish prelates at the house of the primate, to which Dr. Clayton was summoned, that he might receive from them the notification 1 of their intentions. A censure was certain; a deprivation was apprehended. But, before the time appointed, he was seized with a nervous fever, of which he died February 26, 1753. It is on all hands agreed, that the agitation of mind into which the bishop was thrown by the prosecution commenced against him, was the immediate cause of his death. When informed of the prosecution, he consulted a celebrated lawyer on the subject, and asked him if he thought he would lose his bishopric? “My lord,” he answered, “I believe you will.” “Sir,” he replied, “you have given me a stroke I'll never get the better of.” What followed is surely very inconsistent with the story reported by his biographer, namely, that after he had delivered hi$ speech in the house of lords, the bishop declared “that his mind was eased of a load which had long lain upon it and that he now enjoyed a heart- felt pleasure, to which he had been a stranger for above twenty years before.”

In private life Dr. Clayton displayed many amiable qualities. The objects of his chanty were uncommonly numerous; the sums bestowed by him large, and given with such privacy that his beneficiaries seldom saw the hand by which they were relieved. Being a member of the linen board, he got a great many wheels and reels for the poor about Clogher, and thus kept the most of them employed. As to his literary abilities, it is apparent from his writings that he was a man of a great capacity, of a vigorous imagination, but deficient in judgment, and too Frequently carried into the regions of conjecture.

Our prelate left behind him several works in manuscript in the possession of his executor, Dr. Barnard, dean of Derry, but these have not been thought worthy of publication. Dr. Clayton was a member of the royal society, and of the society of antiquaries. He maintained a regular correspondence with several gentlemen of eminent literature in this country; and, among the rest, with the learned printer, Mr. Bowyer, to whom he made a present of the copy-right of all his works published in England. His Lancashire estate he bequeathed to his nearest male heir, Richard Clayton, esq. chief justice of the common pleas in Ireland; but the greatest share of his fortune fell to Dr. Barnard, who married his niece. Some interesting' anecdotes of the bishop are given in Burdy’s Lite of the rev. Philip Skelton, to whom he was neither a liberal nor impartial patron.

, a celebrated Greek philosopher, of the stoical sect, son of Phanias, and disciple of Zeno, was born at. Assus in Lydia, 33<J B. C. He subsisted by drawing water during the night, that he might pursue his studies by day. Being cited before the areopagus to declare how he gained his livelihood, he brought with him a gardener and a country-woman, saying that he drew water for the one, and kneaded dough for the other. The judges were ordering him a present; but Cleanthes refused to accept of it. This philosopher was for many years so poor, that he was obliged to write the heads of his master’s lectures upon shells and bones, for want of money to buy paper. But, notwithstanding all his poverty, he persevered in the study of philosophy, and remained a pupil of Zeno nineteen years. His natural faculties were slow; but resolution and perseverance enabled him to overcome every difficulty; and he at last became so complete a master of the stoic system, that he was perfectly qualified to succeed Zeno in his school. His fellow disciples often ridiculed him for his dulness, by calling him an ass; but he took no other notice of the sarcasm, than by saying in his defence, that if he was an ass, he was the better able to bear the burthen of Zeno’s doctrine. Being reproved for his timidity, he replied, “It is to this quality that I am indebted for my innocence.” Though he was not of the school of Arcesilaus, when he heard him condemned for undermining by his doctrine the foundations of virtue, he candidly apologized for him, by remarking, that though he might seem an enemy to virtue in his discourses, he showed himself her friend in his conduct. Arcesilaus being informed of the handsome apology which Cleanthes had made for him, said to him, “You know how much I dislike flattery; why will you flatter me?” “Is it then flattery,” replied Cleanthes, “to say of you, that you speak one thing, and do another?” Cleanthes frequently advised his pupils to conceive of pleasure, as a deity sitting on her throne, attended by the virtues, who are ready on every occasion to whisper in her ear, “Do nothing which will occasion pain or grief 'to yourself or others.” A friend observing him silent in company, said, “One would think, Cleanthes, from your silence, that you took no pleasure in conversing with your friends” Cleanthes replied, “It is because I know the value of this pleasure, that I am silent for I wish my friends to enjoy it as well as myself.” The reason which he assigned for the superiority of former philosophers above the present was, that formerly philosophers studied things, whereas now they study only words. When he was old, he still retained the entire use of his faculties, and often said, that he should always think life worth preserving as long as he should be able to write and "study. Long after his death; which happened in his ninetieth year, the Roman senate paid respect to his memory, by ordering a statue to be erected in honour of him at Assus.

He wrote many pieces, none of which are come down to us, except his “Hymn to Jupiter,” and a few fragments; the several editions of which have been enumerated, with the various readings, and critical remarks, by the learned reviewer of Butler’s edition of “Marcus Musurus,” &c. containing this hymn, and other fragments. It was first published by Fulvius Ursinus, in 1568; then by Henry Stephens, in his “Poesis Philosophica,” in 1573; afterwards by Cudworth, in his “Intellectual System,” 1678, fol.; again in Mosheim’s Latin translation of Cudworth, in 1733; a fifth time in the third dissertation added to Daniel Secundum Septuagint, Rom. 1773, fol.; a sixth time in the 2d edition of Mosheim’s translation of Cudworth, published after his death, Leyd. Bat. 1773, fol.; again in Brunck’s “Analecta,” in 1776, and afterwards by Brunck, in his edition of the “Gnomici Poetae;” a ninth time in, the “Eclogss Physicse” of John Stoboeus, published at Gottingen, 1792, 8vo, by A. H. Heeren, It has also been translated into German, Latin, and English, the latter by Mr. West, at the desire of a friend, who was pleased to find such just sentiments of the deity in a heathen, and so much poetry in a philosopher.

, a learned physician, was born of reputable parents, at Granton, in the parish of Crammond, near Edinburgh, on the 13th of December 1716. His father died in 1719, and left a widow and five children. George, who was the youngest son, received the rudiments of his education in the grammar-school of Crammond, and in 1728 was sent to Edinburgh to be further instructed in the Latin, Greek, and French; where, to a singular proficiency in these languages, he added a considerable stock of mathematical knowledge. In the beginning of 1731 he resolved to study physic and surgery, and had the happiness of being placed under the tuition of the late Dr. Alexander Monro, and under his roof. In one of his letters his pupil appeared to dwell with peculiar pleasure upon this circumstance; observing, that “his amiable manners and unremitting activity in promoting the public welfare, endeared him to all his acquaintance, but more particularly to those who lived under his roof, and had daily opportunities of admiring the sweetness of his conversation, and the invariable benignity of his disposition.” For five years he continued to profit by the instruction and example of his excellent master, visiting patients in company with him, and assisting at the dissections in the anatomical theatre; at the same time he attended in their turn the lectures in botany, materia medica, chemistry, and the theory and practice of medicine; and by extraordinary diligence he attracted the notice of all his preceptors. On Dr. Fothergill’s arrival from England at this university in 1733, Dr. Cleghorn was introduced to his acquaintance, and soon became his inseparable companion. These twin pupils then studied together the same branches of science under the same masters, with equal ardour and success; they frequently met to compare the notes they had collected from the professors, and to communicate their respective observations. Their moments of relaxation, if that time can be called relaxation which is devoted to social studies, were spent in a select society of fellowstudents, of which Fothergill, Russel, and Cuming, were associates; a society since incorporated under the name of The Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh.

Early in the year 1736, when young Cleghorn had scarcely entered into his twentieth year, so great had been his progress, and so high a character had he acquired, that at the recommendation of Dr. St. Clair he was appointed urgeon in the 22d regiment of foot, then stationed in Minorca, under the command of Gen. St. Clair. During a residence of thirteen years in that island, whatever time could be spared from attending the duties of his station, he employed either in investigating the nature of epidemic diseases, or in gratifying the passion he early imbibed for anatomy, frequently dissecting human bodies, and those of apes, which he procured from Barbary, and comparing structure with the descriptions of Galen and Vesalius. In these pursuits he was much assisted by his correspondent Dr. Fothergill, who he acknowledges was indefatigable in searching the London shops for such books as he wanted, and in forwarding them by the earliest and best opportunities.

In 1749 he left Minorca, and came to Ireland with the S2d regiment; and in autumn 1750 he went to London, and, during his publication of “The Diseases of Minorca,” attended Dr. Hunter’s anatomical lectures. In the publication of his book he was materially assisted by Dr. Fothergill. This work not only exhibits an accurate state of the air, but a minute detail of the vegetable productions of the island; and concludes with medical observations, important in every point of view, and in some instances either new, or applied in a manner which preceding practitioners had not admitted. We are indebted to Dr. Cleghorn for recommending acescent vegetables in low, remittent, and putrid fevers, and the early and copious exhibition of bark, which had been interdicted from mistaken facts, deduced from false theories.

In 1751 the doctor settled in Dublin; and, in imitation of Monro and Hunter, began to give annual courses of anatomy. A few years after his coming to Dublin he was admitted into the university as lecturer in anatomy. In 1784 the college of physicians there elected him an honorary member; and since that time, from lecturer in anatomy he was made professor; and had likewise the honour of being one of the original members of the Irish Academy for promoting arts and sciences, which is now established by royal authority. In 1777, when the royal medical society was established at Paris, he was nominated a fellow of it. About 1774, on the death of his only brother in Scotland, he sent for his surviving family, consisting of the widow and nine children, and settled them in Dublin under his own eye, that he might have it more in his power to afford them that protection and assistance which they might stand in need of. His elder nephew William he educated in the medical profession; but after giving him the best education which Europe could afford, and getting him joined with himself in the lectureship, his hopes were unfortunately frustrated by the young gentlesnan’s death, which happened about 1784. He died universally and sincerely regretted by all who knew him, on account of his uncommon abilities and most amiable disposition.

, was the son of colonel Cleland, that celebrated fictitious member of the Spectator’s Club whom Steele describes under the name of Will Honeycombe. He was educated at Westminster- school, to which he was admitted in 1722, and was there the contemporary of lord Mansfield, He was early in life sent as consul to Smyrna, where perhaps he first imbibed those loose principles which in the infamous work he afterwards wrote, are so dangerously exemplified. On his return from Smyrna, he went to the East Indies; but, quarrelling with some of the members of the presidency of Bombay, he made a precipitate retreat from the east, with little or no benefit to his fortune. Being without profession, or any settled means of subsistence, he soon fell into difficulties; a prison and its miseries were the consequences. In this situation, about the year 1750, one of those booksellers who disgrace the profession, offered him a temporary relief for writing a work most grossly immoral, and fit only for the brothels, which brought a stigma on his name that time has not obliterated. The sum given for the copy was 20 guineas; the sum received for the sale could not be less than 10,000l. For this publication he was called before the privy council; and the circumstance of his distress being known, as well as his being a man of some parts, John earl Granville, the then president, nobly rescued him from the like temptation, by getting him a pension of 100l. a. year, which he enjoyed to his death, and which had so much the desired effect, that except the “Memoirs of a Coxcomb,” which has some smack of dissipated manners, and the “Man of Honour,” written as an amende honorable for his former exceptionable book, he dedicated the rest of his life to political, dramatic, and philological studies. In 1765 he published “The Way to Things by Words, and to Words by Things,” 8vo, which wast followed in 1768 by “Specimens of an Etymological Vocabulary, or Essay by means of the Analytic method to retrieve the ancient Celtic,” and Proposals for publishing by subscription, in 2 vols. 4to, “The Celtic retrieved by the Analytic method, or reduction to Radicals; illustrated by various and especially British antiquities;” but he does not appear to have received encouragement sufficient to enable him to print this work. In these publications, however, he has displayed a fund of ingenuity and erudition, not unworthy the education he received at Westminster. His political effusions appeared chiefly in the Public Advertiser, under the signatures A Briton, Modestus, &c. but were tedious and dull. His dramatic trifles and occasional poems were more lively, although they had not strength to survive their day. He Jived within the income of his pension, with some addition from his newspaper labours, in a retired situation in Petty France, where he died Jan. 23, 1789, in his eightieth year, having survived his infamous publication long enough to see, we trust with shame and sorrow, the extensive misery it created, and which it never was in his power to check.

, was born at Painblanc, in the diocese of Autun, in 1704, and entered among the Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur, 1723. His piety and strict attachment to the observance of all his duties, made him admired and respected by the nuns and solitaries of Port Royal, whose history he wrote under the title of “Hist, generale du Port Royal,” 1755, 10 vols. J2mo. He died April 5, 1778, in the monastery des Blanc-Manteaux, aged 75. He composed with D. Durand “PArt de verifier les dates,” 1750, 4to, reprinted in 1769, folio, and continued the “Hist. Litte*raire de la France,” with D, Clement; which consists of 12 vols. 4to. He published alone the letters to Morenas on his abridgement of Fleury’s ecclesiastical history, 1757, J2mo, and the posthumous works of Racine, 1759, 12mo. He published also the “Conferences de la Mere Angelique, de St. Jean Arnaud de Port Royal,” 1760, 3 vols. 12mo.

is said to have been born at Rome, where he probably became the companion and fellow labourer of St. Paul; and was one of those, as it is generally imagined, whom St. Paul mentions as having their “names written in the book of life.” Origen calls him a disciple of St. Peter; and it is not unlikely that he might aid and assist this apostle in founding the church at Rome. It is certain, that he was afterwards bishop of that see; but when he was made so, cannot be clearly determined. Some follow the authority of Tertullian and Eusebius, that Clemens was consecrated by St. Peter, but admitted at first to preside over that part only of the church which comprised the Jewish converts; and that he did not come into the full possession and administration of his office till the death of Linus, who had been ordained by St. Paul, bishop of the Gentile church, and of Anacletus, who succeeded him: and this has been fixed to the year 93. Others have contended, that Clemens succeeded to the care of the whole church in the year 64 or 65, and that he held it to the year 81, or, as others again will have it, 83; but all this, with the other circumstances of this father’s life, are matters of conjecture.

We have nothing remaining of his works, of whose genuineness we can be certain, excepting one epistle, which Dr. Lardner thinks was written in the year 95 or 96. It was written to the church of Corinth, in the name of the church of Rome, to quiet some disturbances which had been raised by unruly brethren in the former; and to reestablish and confirm them in that faith which had been delivered to them by the apostles, but from which some of them had revolted. This epistle has usually been esteemed one of the most valuable monuments which have come down to us of ecclesiastical antiquity, and affords ample testimony to the antiquity, genuineness, or authority of the books of the New Testament, while it bears itself all the characters of primitive simplicity. References to, and quotations from it, are often to be found among the early writers for Christianity. Here Clemens exhorts the Corinthians to be united, and at peace with one another he enjoins obedience particularly, and submission to their spiritual governors he declares those who had formed cabals against their pastors s and had troubled the church with their seditions, utterly unworthy of the name of Christians: he points out to them the fatal consequences of such divisions: he presses them to return immediately to their duty, by submitting to their rightful pastors, and practising all humility, kindness, and charity one towards another.

The only manuscript copy of this epistle, which exists in the world, as far as we know, is in the British Museum, written on vellum, and bound up with the Alexandrian Bible. It is said to have been written by Thecla, a woman of rank, in the fourth century, which shows how highly it was esteemed as far down as. the council of Nice. When Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, was translated to the patriarchate of Constantinople, in the seventeenth century, he brought with him out of Egypt a valuable collection of manuscripts, and among them this copy of the Bible and Clemens’s Epistle, which he generously sent as a most valuable present to king Charles I. by sir Thomas Roe, at that time his majesty’s ambassador at the Porte. The first edition of it was printed at Oxford, by P. Junius, Gr. and Lat. 1633, 4to, again by Dr. Fell, Gr. and Laf. ibid. 1677, and at London, 1687, 8vo, by Paul Colornesius; but the best is said to be that by Wotton, Gr. and Lat. Cambridge, 1718, 8vo. The first English translation was by William Burton in 1647, and afterwards by abp. Wake, a fourth edition of which was printed in 1737, with the epistles of the other apostolic fathers. We know of no other English translation, unless a very scarce and beautifully printed one, by an anonymous author, Aberdeen, 1768, 12mo, more literal than Wake’s, and with a very sensible preface. Other writings are attributed to Clemens, particularly a second epistle, but none of them are considered as genuine.

, an eminent father of the church in the end of the second and beginning of the third century, was an Athenian, or according to others an Alexandrian on which account he is usually called Clemens Alexandrines, by way of distinguishing him from Clemens Romanus. When Pantsenus was sent by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, to preach the gospel to the Indians, at th6 request of their ambassadors, about the year 191 Clemens succeeded him in the catechetical school. He acquitted himself admirably well in this employment, and had many eminent pupils, as Origen and Alexander bishop of Jerusalem. Clemens’s method of instructing the catechumens is said to have been this. He pointed out to them, and explained all that was good in the pagan philosophy; and then led them on insensibly to Christianity. In his philosophic character, which he too much preserved, he was an eclectic; that is, not attached to any particular sect of philosophers, but a selector of what he thought good and sound in them all.

After holding the office of catechist, Clemens was raised to the priesthood, probably at the beginning of the emperor Severus’s reign; since Eusebius, in his history of the evert ts of the year 195, gives Clemens the title of priest. About this time he undertook a defence of Christianity against pagans and heretics, in a work entitled “Stromata,” on account of the variety of matter of which it treats— Stromata signifying discourses abounding with miscellaneous matter. In this work he has made so great a collection of heathen learning, for the sake of shewing the conformity there is between some opinions which the Christians and the philosophers held in common, as shews that his reading must have extended to almost everything that had been written. When Severus began a persecution against the Christians, for which he pleaded a rebellion of the Jews (for the pagans had not as yet learned to distinguish Jews and Christians), Clemens left Egypt to escape the violence of it; and upon this occasion drew up a discourse, to prove the lawfulness of flying in times of persecution: for this expedient, though explicitly allowed and even enjoined in the gospel, had been rejected by some early converts, especially Tertullian, as a base desertion of the cause. He then went to Jerusalem, and took up his abode for some time with Alexander, who was soon after bishop of that see. During his stay there he was of great service to the 'church, as appears from a letter of Alexander to the church of Antioch, which Clemens himself carried: in which Alexander says, that “Clemens was a man of great virtue, as the church of Antioch knew already, and would know better when he came among them; and that having been at Jerusalem, he had, by God’s blessing, greatly confirmed and strengthened that church.” From Antioch he returned to Alexandria; but we know not how long he lived. He appears to have survived Pantoenus at least some years, and was not old when he composed his “Stromata;” for he tells us, that he had made that collection with a view of its serving him in his old age, when his faculties should fail him. His memory appears to have been highly reverenced at Alexandria, as we learn from an extract of a letter from Alexander to Origen, preserved by Eusebius. Among several works which Clemens wrote, there are only three considerable ones remaining:

1. “Protrepticon ad gentes,” or, An exhortation to the pagans in which he refutes the error and falsehood of their religion, and exhorts them to embrace Christianity. 2. “Paedagogus,” or, the schoolmaster: or, a regular plan of duty for the Christian convert. And, 3. The “Stromata.” Daniel Heinsius has well enough compared these three works of Clemens to the three different degrees which the heathen mystagogues and philosophers observed, when they introduced a candidate to the knowledge of the jnysteries: the first of which was purgation, the second initiation, and the third intuition. Clemens, he adds, in his “Protrepticon” has laboured to purge his pupil from the filth of heathen idolatry and superstition: in his “Psedagogus” he has initiated him into the rites and duties of a Christian: and in his “Stromata” he has admitted him. to a sight of those mysteries which the adepts only were qualified to contemplate; but it must be allowed that his philosophical opinions frequently tended to obscure his theology, and he is less explicit than most of the fathers on the leading principles of Christianity.

, one of the popes so called, whose proper name was Bertrand de Gouth, or de Goth, was appointed bishop of Comminges, then archbishop of Bourdeaux by Boniface VIII. and afterwards elected pope at Perugia, June 5, 1305. The ceremony of his coronation was performed at Lyons, Sunday, November 10, but interrupted by a wall giving way, from being overloaded with spectators: by which accident John II. duke of Bretany was ^killed, the king wounded, and the tiara thrown from the pope’s head. This accident was considered as a presage of the misfortunes which afflicted Italy and all Christendom during the pontificate of Clement V. He was the first pope who resided at Avignon. In 1311, he held the general council of Vienne, appropriated to himself the first year’s revenue of all the English benefices, which was the origin of first fruits, abolished the order of templars, and made the collection of what are called the “Clementine Constitutions” of which there are some scarce editions; Mentz, 1460, 1467, and 1471, fol. They formed afterwards part of the body of canon law. Clement V. died at Roquemaure on the Rhone, April 20, 1314, as he was going to Bourdeaux for change of air. It is generally allowed that he was a reproach to the church, and the high office he held in it.

, an eminent German bibliographer, was a French preacher at Hanover, a man profoundly acquainted with the history of literature, and the author of a well-known collection of bibliography, entitled “Bibliotheque curieuse, historique, et critique, ou Catalogue raisonne de livres difficiles a trouver,” 9 vols. 4to, Gottingen, &c. 1750 1760, at which last date^this useful work was interrupted by his death, and has never been completed. It is in alphabetical order, and extends no farther than the letter H. Its only fault is that the author marks many books as rare, which are very common. He published also “Specimen Bibliothecae Hispano-Maiansianae, sive idea novi catalog! critici operum scriptorum Hispanorum, quse kabet in sua bibliotheca Gregorius Maiansius,” Hanover, 1753, 4to.

, a learned French historian,- and a Benedictine of the congregation of St. Maure, was born at Beze in Burgundy, April 7, 1714, After his first studies at the college of Dijon, he embraced the monastic life in the abbey of Vendome, where he studied so hard as to injure his health. Being afterwards ordered to Paris by his superiors, he devoted himself principally to history, to which his attention was drawn by that vast collection of French historical documents, of which we have already spoken so largely in the lives of Bouquet and Andrew du Chesne, and which was continued by Haudiquier, Housseau, Precieux, and Poirier. Clement became now their successor in this great work, and in conjunction with father B rial, published in 1770 the twelfth volume, and in 1786 the thirteenth, enriched by two hundred articles of great value and curiosity. Clement wrote also, 1. “Nouveaux eclaircissemens sur l'origine de Pentateuque des Samaritains,” a work begun by Poncet, and completed with a preface, &c. by Clement. 2. “A Catalogue of the Mss. in the library of the Jesuits at St. Germain-des-Pres. 3.” L'art de verifier les dates,“1780 1792, 3 vols. folio. This work, which is accounted in France a master-piece of learning, was begun by the Benedictins Antine, Clemencet, and Durand, whose labours, however, are far inferior to those of Clement, who employed thirty years of his life upon it, almost without any intermission. The only objection is to the chronological table, or index, which is said to be somewhat inaccurate. Clement was a free associate of the academy of inscriptions, but his studies were interrupted by the revolution, which obliged him to quit one convent after another, and at last seek an asylum with a nephew. The remainder of his days were employed in a work to introduce the former, under the title of” L'art de verifier les dates avant J. C." In this he had made considerable progress, when he was carried oft by a stroke of apoplexy, March 29, 1793.

, was a native of Diest, who, after teaching ethics at Louvaine, travelled into France, Spain, Portugal, and Africa, and died at Granada, 1542. He left some curious and scarce letters in Latin, concerning his travels, 1606, 8vo; a Greek grammar, which has been revised and corrected by several grammarians, and among others by Vossius, who published an edition of it at Amsterdam, 1650, 8vo, a Hebrew grammar, Louvain, 1529, and other works.

, the celebrated queen of Egypt, was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, king of that country; who, dying in the year 51 B. C. bequeathed his crown to the eldest of his sons and the eldest of his daughters; ordering them to be joined to each other in marriage, according to the usage of their family, and jointly to govern. They were both of them very young, Cleopatra the eldest being only seventeen; and therefore he committed them to the tuition of the Roman senate. They, however, could not agree, either to be married, or to reign together, and Ptolemy, the brother, having deprived Cleopatra of that share in the government which was left her by Auletes’s will, and driven her out of the kingdom, she raised an army in Syria and Palestine, and commenced a war with him. At this time Julius Caesar, who was in pursuit of Pompey, came to Alexandria, and began to arbitrate between Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra. But Cleopatra, considering that Cossar was extravagantly addicted to women, laid a plot to attach him first to her person, and next to her cause: and requested that she might be peiv mitted to plead her cause in person before him. This being granted, she came secretly into the port of Alexandria in a small skiff towards the dusk of the evening; and contrived to be carried to Caesar’s apartment, who was too sensible of the charms of beauty not to be touched with those of Cleopatra. She was then in the prime of her youth, about the twentieth year of her age; a perfect beauty, with a commanding address, and a voice harmonious and bewitching. All these charms she prostituted immediately to Caesar, who next morning sent for Ptolemy, and pressed him to receive his sister again upon her own terms: but Ptolemy appealed to the people, and a war commenced, in which Ptolemy lost a battle, and his life, in endeavouring to escape. Caesar then settled the kingdom upon Cleopatra, and the surviving Ptolemy, her younger brother, as king and queen. This Ptolemy, however, was at this time only eleven years old, and Cleopatra, when he was grown up, and capable of sharing the royal authority, causeu him to be poisoned, and thus reigned alone in Egypt. However, she followed Caesar to Rome, and was there when he was killed in the senatehouse; but being terrified by that accident, and the subsequent disorders of the city, she made her escape with great precipitation.

After the battle of Philippi, Cleopatra was accused by Antony of favouring the interest of Cassius. Against this charge, she again depended on her wit and beauty; and approached Antony, who waited for her at Tarsus in Cilicia, in a manner calculated to display her whole charms. At the mouth of the river Cydnus, she embarked in a vessel whose stern was of gold, sails of purple silk, oars of silver, and a concert of several instruments that kept time with the oars. She herself was laid under a canopy of a rich cloth of gold, dressed like Venus rising out of the sea: about her were lovely children like Cupids fanning her: the handsomest of her women, habited like Nereids and Graces, were leaning negligently on the sides and shrouds of the vessel: the sweets that were burning perfumed the banks of the river, which were covered wijh an infinite number of people, who ran thither with such earnestness, that Antony, who was mounted on a throne to make a shew of majesty, was left quite alone; while the multitude at the river shouted for joy, and cried, that “the goddess Venus was come to visit the god Bacchus for the happiness of Asia.” By these arts, and the charms of her person, she drew Antony into those snares which held him enslaved to her as long as he lived, and finally caused his death.

It would not be to our purpose to be particular in relating the war between Antony and Caesar; the battle of Actium, as is well known, determined the victory in favour of the latter, and Cleopatra flying first, Antony hastened after. He conceived however great displeasure against her upon this occasion, and continued three days without seeing her; but afterwards recovered his usual humour, and devoted himself to pleasure. Meanwhile, Cleopatra made trial of all sorts of poisons upon criminals, even to the biting of serpents; and finding, after many experiments, that the sting of an asp gave the quickest and the easiest death, it is believed she made choice of that kind of death, if she should be driven to despair. After they were returned to Egypt, and found themselves abandoned by all their allies, they sent to make proposals to Caesar. Cleopatra asked the kingdom of Egypt for her children; and Antony desired he might live as a private man at Athens, if Caesar was not willing he should remain in Egypt. Cuesar absolutely rejected Antony’s proposal, and sent to Cleopatra that he would refuse her nothing that was just and reasonable, if she would rid herself of Antony, or drive him out of her kingdom. She refused to act openly against Antony; but betrayed him in every effort that he made, till she obliged him to put an end to his own life, for fear of falling into Crcsar’s hands. When Antony was dead, Cleopatra could not forbear most passionately bemoaning the loss of him: however, upon Caesar’s approach to Alexandria, she began to consult her own security. Near the temple of Isis she had raised a stately building, which she designed for her sepulchre: into this she now retired; and into this was carried by her order all her treasure, as gold, jewels, pearls, ivory, ebony, cinnamon, and other precious woods. It was filled besides with torches, faggots, tow, and other combustible matter: so that Caesar, who had notice of it, was afraid lest out of despair she should burn herself in it, with all those vast riches and therefore contrived to give her hopes from time to time that she might expect all good usage, from the esteem he had for her. It was his secret wish to expose this queen in his triumph to the Romans; and with this view he sent Proculus to employ all his art and address in seizing her, which he at length accomplished, and Cassar, although extremely glad to have her in his possession, commanded her to be served in all respects like a queen. She became, however, inconsolable for the loss of her liberty, and fell into a fever, which gave her hopes that all her sorrows would soon end with her life. She had besides resolved to abstain from eating; but this being known, her children were threatened with death if she persisted in that. Caesar at length resolved to see her, and by his civilities endeavoured to reconcile her to life. He found her upon a low bed; but as soon as she saw Caesar, she rose up in her shift, and threw herself at his feet. Caesar civily raised her up, and sat down at her bed’s head. She began to justify herself; but the proofs against her being too notorious, she turned her justification into prayers, and put into his hand an inventory of all her treasure and jewels. Having private notice soon after, that she was to be carried to Rome within three days, to grace Caesar’s triumph, she caused herself to be bitten by an asp, which, it is said, was brought to her concealed in a basket of figs; and of this she died. Caesar, deprived as he was of the greatest ornament of his triumph, yet ordered her a very magnificent funeral; and her body, as she desired, was laid by that of Antony.

Thus died this princess, whose wit and beauty made so much noise in the world, after she had reigned from the death of her father twenty-two years, and lived thirty-nine. She was a woman of great parts as well as of great vice and wickedness. She spoke several languages with the utmost readi-i ness; for, being well skilled in Greek and Latin, she could converse with Ethiopians, Troglodites, Jews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, and Persians, without an interpreter; and always gave to such as were of these nations, as often as they had occasion to address her, an answer in their own language. In her death ended the reign of the family of the Ptolemies in Egypt, after it had continued from the death of Alexander 294 years; for, after this, Egypt was reduced into the form of a Roman province, and so remained 670 years, till it was taken from them by the Saracens in 641.

, the son of Stephen Le Clerc, a physician and Greek professor at Geneva, was born Feb. 4, 1652, at that place, and educated in his father’s profession. After studying at Montpellier and Paris, he took his doctor’s degree at Valentia in 1672, then returned to his own country, and practised physic with great success. He was also an excellent Greek and Latin scholar and antiquary, and distinguished for his knowledge of medals. He published a “Bibliotheque Anatomique” in conjunction with Manget, in 1681, 2 vols. fol. reprinted in 1699. His “History of Medicine,” which extends to the time of Galen, was published at Geneva in 1696, but the best edition is that of Amsterdam, 1723, 4to. This work is much praised by Dr. Freind, except the continuation to the sixteenth century. In 1704 he succeeded his father as counsellor of state in the republic of Geneva, after which he practised very little. In 1715, the king of Sardinia, then king of Sicily, being at Thonon in Savoy, consulted him on his own health and that of his queen. The same year he published his “Historia latorum lumbricorum,” which was afterwards published in English, 8vo. He died June 8, 1728.

, brother to the preceding, a celebrated writer, and universal scholar, was born at Geneva, March 19, 1657. He was sent to a grammar-school at eight years of age; where he soon discovered an insatiable inclination to books, and such a genius for poetry, that he flattered himself, if he had duly cultivated it, he would probably have gained no small reputation. But the more serious studies, to which he applied himself, made him entirely neglect poetry, and he never wrote verses but on particular occasions. Thus, in 1689, having translated into French two sermons of bishop Burnet, preached before king William, on account, he says, of the friendship which subsisted between himself and that prelate, he subjoined to the one a small poem in heroic, and to the other an epigram in elegiac verse, upon England restored to liberty.

When he was about sixteen years old, he was removed from the grammar-school, and placed under M. Chouet, to study philosophy, in which he spent two years, but did not yet enter upon the study of divinity, thinking it better to employ another year on the belles lettres, and also in acquiring the elements of the Hebrew tongue. He now read all the books that could any ways improve him in this pursuit; and it was this constant assiduity and application, to which he inured himself in his youth, that enabled him afterwards to go through so much uninterrupted fatigue of reading and writing, and to publish such a vast variety of works. At nineteen years of age he began to study divinity under Philip Mestrezat, Francis Turretin, and Lewis Tronchin, and he attended their lectures above two years.

After he had passed through the usual forms of study at Geneva, and had lost his father in 1676, he resolved to go for some time into France; and thither he went in 1678, but returned the year after to Geneva, and was ordained with the general applause of his examiners. Soon after, he met with the works of Curcellseus, his great uncle by his father’s side, which had been published by Limborch in 1674, but were not easily to be got at Geneva among the Calvinists, who had no intercourse with the Arminians; and by reading these he became so convinced that the remonstrants had the better of the argument against all other protestants, that he resolved to leave both his own country and France, where the contrary principles were professed. In 1680 he went to Sauraur, a protestant university, where he first read the works of Episcopius, with whose learning and eloquence he was much pleased. He also began to make notes and observations upon the Old Testament, which he read in the Polyglott, which notes he afterwards used in his commentaries. While he was at Saumur, there came out a book with this title, “Liberii de sancto amore, epistolae theoJogicae, in quibus varii scholasticorum errores castigantur.” 8vo, consisting of “eleven theological epistles, in which several errors of the schoolmen are corrected.” It was ascribed by some to le Clerc, while others thought it too learned to be written by a young man of twenty-four. It is certain that though he never owned it, yet he speaks of it in such a manner as must almost convince us that he was really the author of it, and it contains many of those free opinions respecting the Trinity, &c. which could not fail to give offence, and induce him for a time to conceal his name.

In 1682, Le Clerc, intending to visit England, travelled through Paris, and arrived at London in May, chiefly with a view to learn the English language; which, with the help of a master, he soon effected. He preached several times in the French churches at London, and visited several bishops and men of learning; but the air of the town not agreeing with his lungs, he returned to Holland, after less than a year’s stay, in company with the celebrated historian Gregorio Leti, who formerly lived at Geneva, and was then retiring to Holland. He visited Limborch at Amsterdam, from whom he learned the condition of the remonstrants in the United Provinces, but did not yet join them, although he discovered his real sentiments to Limborch, with whom he entered into a strict friendship, which lasted till the death of that great man. He had not been long in Holland before his friends and relations entreated him to return to Geneva, but not being able when there to dissemble his opinions, which wexe contrary to those established by law, he thought it prudent to return to Holland at the latter end of 1683. The year after he preached sometimes in French in the church of the remonstrants, but was soon obliged to leave off preaching; for what reason is not known, but his friends have thought proper to impute it to the jealousy of the Walloon ministers, who finding their audiences very thin when Le Clerc preached, prevailed upon the magistrates to forbid his preaching any more. In 1634, when the remonstrants held a synod at Rotterdam, he preached once more before them; and was then admitted professor of philosophy, the Hebrew tongue, and polite literature in their school at Amsterdam. The remainder of his life offers nothing to us but the history of his works, and of the controversies in which he was engaged; which were numerous, and displayed undoubted talents.

The first thing he published, after he was settled at Amsterdam, was a work of his uncle David Le Clerc, late professor of the oriental languages at Geneva, entiled “Theological Dissertations,” Amst. 1685, 8vo; to which are subjoined dissertations on the same subject by Stephen. Le Clerc, his father, with the lives of both, and notes, in which he frequently differs from them in opinion. In 1687 he published another volume by them, consisting of a “Computus Ecclesiasticus” by David, and some philosophical dissertations by Stephen. About the same time he was editor of his friend Charles Le Cene’s “Dialogues upon several theological subjects,” to which he added five of his own, pointing out the mischiefs that metaphysics have occasioned to religion. Between the first and second publication of his father’s and uncle’s pieces, commenced his celebrated controversy with the learned father Simon, who had just published his “Critical History of the Old Testament.” Le Clerc, in 1685, published a criticism, upon it, entitled “Sentimens de quelques theologiens de Hollande,” &c. In this he vented several bold opinions, which he afterwards retracted or explained into a more harmless sense, such as that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, that the writers of the Old and New Testament were not inspired, &c. Even Bayle, although not scrupulous to make bold assertions, disapproved Le Clerc’s sentiments, as tending to confirm the Calvinists in their dislike of the Arminians, as a sect, which he strongly says, they considered as the common sink of all the Atheists, Deists, and Socinians in Europe.

In the same year, we find him better employed in writing his “Bibliotheque universelle et historique,” a literary journal of great utility. The first eight and part of the ninth volume he wrote in conjunction with de la Crose the tenth is Le Clerc’s, and the 11th La Grose’s; the rest to the 19th Le CHerc’s, and the remainder to the 25th, which is the last, were written by Mr. Bernard. While employed on this work, Le Clerc published various others. In the years 1687 89, he published French translations of bishop Burners “Reflections upon Varillas’s History,” &c. and of some of his sermons and in 1690 the last book of Stanley’s “Lives of the Philosophers,” translated into Latin, with notes. The same year he revised and corrected the sixth edition of Moreri’s Dictionary; and wrote a French letter to Jurieu, vindicating the character of Episcopius, whom Jurieu had classed among Socinians. Besides these labours, he continued to read regular lectures, as professor of philosophy and the belles-lettres, at Amsterdam; and in 1691, published his “Logic, Ontology, and Pneumatology,” which, in order to complete the course, were followed in 1695, by his “Natural Philosophy.” These were all written in Latin, and were reprinted, in a fourth edition, Amst. 1710, 4 vols. 8vo, to which was subjoined also in Latin, his life, written by himself, 1711, which makes a fifth volume, and in 1712 was translated into English, and published at London. In 1693 he published the first volume of his “Commentary on the Bible,” a work he had long projected, and for which he had been long collecting materials. He published the remainder, at different times, until 1731, when the Commentary on the Prophets appeared, but it was still left incomplete, owing to that decay of his faculties which interrupted all his labours in the latter part of his life.

In 1696 he published the two first volumes of what is said to have been his Favourite work, his “Ars Critica,” to which he added, in 1699, his “Epistolae Criticae & Ec clesiasticae,” as a third volume. The censures he passes upon Quintus Curtius at the end of the second volume, involved him in a controversy with certain critics; and Perizonius in particular. His third volume is employed chiefly in defending himself against exceptions which had been made by the learned Dr. Cave to some assertions in the tenth volume of his “Bibliotheque Universelle,” and elsewhere, Le Clerc had said, that Cave, in his “Historia Literaria,” had concealed many things of the fathers, for the sake of enhancing their credit, which an impartial historian should have related; and that, instead of lives of the fathers, he often wrote panegyrics upon them; Le Clerc had also asserted the Arianism of Eusebius. Both these assertions Cave endeavoured to refute, in a Latin dissertation published at London, in 1696, which, with a defence of it, was reprinted in the second edition of his “Historia Literaria.” To this dissertation Le Clerc’s third volume is chiefly an answer and the first six letters, containing the matters of dispute between him and Cave, are inscribed to three English prelates, to whom Le Clerc thought fit to appeal for his equity and candid dealing; the first and second to Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury; the third and fourth to Burnet, bishop of Salisbury; and the fifth and sixth to Lloyd, bishop of Worcester. The seventh, eighth, and ninth, are critical dissertations upon points of ecclesiastical antiquity; and the tenth relates to an English version of his additions to Hammond’s annotations on the New Testament; wherein the translator, not having done him justice, exposed him to the censure of Cave and other divines here. At the end of these epistles, there is addressed to Limborch, what he calls an ethical dissertation, in which this question is debated, “An semper respondendum sit calurnniis theologorurn;” but the previous question should undoubtedly have been whether the answers of his opponents deserved the name of calumnies? The fourth edition of the “Ars Critica,” which had been corrected and enlarged in each successive edition, was printed at Amsterdam in 1712.

In 1694, he published his “Life of Cardinal Richelieu,” 2 vols. 8vo, of which a second edition appeared in 1696, and a third in 1714. In 1696 he also published two tracts on “Lotteries,” and on “Incredulity.” In 1697, his “Compendium of Universal History” appeared, and although merely an abridgment of Petavius, has been found so useful as to pass through several editions. In 1698, he published his Latin translation of Hammond’s “Paraphrase and Notes on the New Testament,” 2 vols. fol. but took many liberties, as already noticed, with Hammond’s sentiments. This was again reprinted in 1714. In 1699, he published, with a dedication to Dr. Sharp, archbishop of York, his “Harmonia Evangelica,” Gr. and Lat. and in the same year the first of his “Parrhasiana” or thoughts upon various subjects, moral and literary. This does not appear to have given universal satisfaction, and involved him in a long dispute with Bayle on the principles of the Manicheans, and in another with the same gentleman, on the system of plastic natures advanced by Cudworth and Dr. Grew. We are not of opinion that a longer account of these disputes would now be very interesting, yet those who have patience to peruse the several attacks and replies of the combatants, will be frequently struck with their talents, ingenuity, and perseverance.

In 1701, another controversy produced his “Questiones Hieronymianae,” an attack on the character of that father, as to his skill in the Greek and Hebrew languages, and on Martinay, who some time before had published an edition of Jerom’s works. In 1701 he published a very indifferent edition of Hesiod, and the following year, under the name of Theodore Gorallus, he edited “P. Cornelii Severi Etna,” which involved him in a philosophical dispute with Burman, who had no respect for his verbal accuracy. In 1703, under another assumed name, Johannes Phereponus, he added to the Amsterdam edition of St. Augustine’s works, some animadversions on that father, which were answered by Dr. Jenkin, master of St. John’s college, Cambridge, in a work printed in 1707. In 1703, his French translation of the “New Testament” occasioned him to be ranked among Socinians, and some steps were taken, although in vain, to have it suppressed. The same year, he returned to his more useful employment, by beginning his “Bibliotheque choisee,” as a supplement to his “Bibliotheque Universelle.” This was continued to the year 1714, and consists of 28 vols. 12mo. It was immediately followed by his “Bibliotheque ancienne et moderne,” which extended to 29 vols. These 83 little volumes contain a great mass of very valuable materials, of critical disquisitions and bibliographical notices and memoirs, and well deserve a place in the library of every literary man. The public are indebted to them for the documents from which Dr. Jortin principally composed his life of Erasmus.

In 1709 he published an elegant edition, with notes of his own, of “Sulpicius Severus,” and also of * 4 Grotius de veritate,“&c. to which, besides notes, he added a treatise” De eligenda inter Christianos dissentientes sententia.“The same year he published and dedicated to lord Shaftesbury, the celebrated author of the Characteristics, &c.” A Collection of the remains of Menander and Philemon,“a completer collection than had been made by Grotius and others, to which he added a new Latin version, and notes. As it is allowed by Le Clerc’s friends, that he committed several errors in this work, which proceeded from his not having carefully enough attended to the metre, it is not surprising that it should have exposed him to the censure of the critics and philologers. The attack was begun by our learned Bentley, under the name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis; whose censure, it is said, we know not how truly, vexed Le Clerc to such a degree, that it threw him into a fit of sickness, which lasted several days. Bentley’s” Emendatioues," as they are called, of Le Clerc’s edition, were published at Utrecht in 1710, with a preface written by Burman; in which there is a very large proportion of critical rancour, to which Le Clerc did net think proper to make any reply, as he was conscious that he had given some reason for the exceptions that were made, although they might not justify the language employed. He was defended, however, by an unknown person, who assumed the name of Philargyrius Cantabrigiensis; and published it in 1711, with a preface written by himself. This Philargyrius Cantabrigiensis is said to have been Cornelius de Pauw, a gentleman who distinguished himself by philosophical and critical publications.

Our predecessors affect to wonder that Le Clerc, who always expressed an high regard for the English nation, dedicated several of his principal works to the prelates and great men of it, and was so instrumental, by means of his “Bibliotheques,” in spreading the abilities, learning, and merits of its ablest writers throughout Europe, should yet be so frequently attacked by some or other of its scholars and divines, and this they explain by adding that Le Clerc’s Arminian principles were directly opposite to the nonjuring and high church principles, which then prevailed much in England; that though he expressed a zeal for Christianity, yet he abhorred any thing which looked like an hierarchy; and that hence he was often led to speak favourably, and perhaps with some degree of approbation, of books published here, which were in the mean time, together with their authors, anathematised by our own divines. Tindal’s “Rights of the Christian Church,” which came out in 1706, affords a memorable instance, which Le Clerc, in his “Bibliotheque Choisie” of the same year, not only approved, but even epitomised, and recommended it in the strongest terms imaginable. It may be remembered also, that about the same time, or perhaps a little before, there was a scheme formed among some great personages, to bring Le Clerc over -to England, and to make a better provision for him than he enjoyed at Anasterdam; for this some affirm to have been one cause of the jealousy and ill-will conceived against him; but after what we have said of Le Clerc’s religious principles, it will not perhaps be thought that any other reason is necessary to explain the zeal of his opponents, or their opinion that such a determined enemy to the establishment and its doctrines would have proved no great acquisition to the church of England.

In 1710, Le Clerc, never successful in his classical attempts, published a very inaccurate edition of “Livy,” 10 vols. 12mo, and the year after the “Three Dialogues ofÆschinus Socraticus,” to which he added his “Sylvoj Philologies.” In 1716 appeared his “Ecclesiastical History of the first two centuries,” and a “History of the United Provinces,” 1723 and 1724, the last of his original works which it is necessary to mention. Besides these, however, he was frequently employed as an editor, and added prefaces and notes to the works published under his inspection, as “Cotelerii Patres Apostolici,” 1698; Petavius de Theologicis dogmatibus,“1700;” Martini! Lexicon philologicum," 1701; and the fine edition of Erasmus’s works, 10 vols. fol. 1703 1707. He was unquestionably a most laborious, as well as a very learned many but frequently deficient in correctness, owing to the vast quantity of labour undertaken by him.

He always enjoyed a very good state of health till 1728, when he was seized with a palsy and fever, which deprived him of speech and almost of memory. The malady increased daily; and after spending the last six years of his life with little or no understanding, he died Jan. 8, 1736, in his seventy-ninth year. He had been married in 1691, when he was abuut thirty-four years old; and his wife, who was the daughter of Gregorio Leti, brought him four children, who all died young. Le Clerc was not ambitious of either honours or riches. He was satisfied with a competency of fortune, if indeed he could be said to have it; and though it may be supposed that he was driven to write so much for the sake of the profits attending it, yet he tells us in that life which he wrote of himself to 1711, that he had received for all his labours little else from the booksellers than books. Whatever projects might be on foot for his coming into England, they do not seem to have been begun on his side: for he always appeared happy in the studious and philosophic ease which he enjoyed at Amsterdam, dividing his time between his pupils and his books.

, an eminent designer and engraver, was born at Metz, in 1637, of a family in such an humble condition, that he entered while very young into the abbey of St. Arnould, in that city, in quality of helper in the kitchen. He had such a natural talent for drawing, that all the moments of leisure he could get from his employment he Hlled up in making little portraits with a pen on such scraps of paper as he found about the kitchen. The prior of the house caught him one day occupied in this manner; and, on examining his performance, perceived in it such marks of genius as allowed him not to doubt that young Le Clerc would attain to excellence if assisted by art. He immediately took the resolution to cultivate his natural talents, put the crayon into his hand, and gave him to the care of one of the monks, with orders to get him instructed. At ten years old he could handle the graver. At the same time he applied himself to the study of geometry, perspective, fortification, and architecture, in which he made as rapid a progress as in drawing and engraving. Marshal de la Ferte made choice of him for his geographical engineer; Louis XIV. for his engraver in ordinary, at the solicitation of Colbert; and pope Clement XI. honoured him with the title of a Roman knight. In addition to this superior merit, and this strong capacity for the arts, Le Clerc had kind affections and an insinuating address. He died at Paris the 25th of October, 1714, at the age of seventy-seven. This master treated every subject with equal excellence; as landscapes, architecture, ornaments, discovering a lively and glowing imagination kept under due restraint, a correctness of design, a wonderful fertility, and elegant expression and execution. The productions of his graver, amounting to upwards of 3000, would have been sufficient of themselves to have gained him great reputation, independently of those of his pen. The principal of the latter kind are: 1. “A Treatise of Theoretic and Practical Geometry,” reprinted in 174-5, 8vo, with the life of the author. Colbert, informed of the success of this work, ordered Le Clerc a pension of 600 crowns, and apartments in the Gobelins. But he presently after gave up this pension, which confined him to the king’s service, in order to work more freely, and on subjects of his own choice. 2. “A Treatise on Architecture,” 12 vols. 4to. 3. “A Discourse on Perspective,” in which the author shews a profound knowledge of his subject. After Callot, he is the engraver who has most distinctly shewn five or six leagues extent of country in a small space.

He had a son of both his names, who was born in 1677, studied historical painting under Bon Boulogne, and became a painter of some note, if we can judge from the number of prints engraved from his works. There is an altar picture by him at the abbey church at Paris, representing the death of Ananias. He was made a member of the royal academy of Paris in 1704, and died, aged eighty-six, in 1763. Another of his sons, Laurent Josse le Clerc, was a man of considerable learning, and published three volumes of remarks on Moreri’s Dictionary, which contributed to improve that work, and compiled the “Bibliotheque des Auteurs cites dans le Dictionnaire cle llichelet,” which was printed with it in the Lyons edition, 1729, 3 vols. fol. but omitted in the 4to Amsterdam edition. He wrote several essays in the literary journals of the time, and died May 6, 1736, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.

, or rather Cleiveland (for so he and his family spelt their name) (John), a noted loyalist and popular poet in the reign of Charles I. was the eldest son of the rev. Thomas Cleiveland, M. A. some time vicar of Hinckley, and rector of Stoke, in the county of Leicester. He was born in 1613, at Loughborough, where his father was then assistant to the rector; but educated at Hinckley, under the rev. Richard Vynes, a man of genius and learning, who was afterwards as much distinguished among the presbyterian party as his scholar was among the cavaliers. In his fifteenth year our poet was removed to Cambridge, and admitted of Christ’s college, Sept. 4, 1627, where he took the degree of B. A. in 163 1 He was thence transplanted to the sister foundation of St. John’s college in the same university, of which he was elected fellow March 27, 1634, and proceeded to the degree of M. A. in 1635. Of this society he continued many years a principal ornament, being one of the tutors, and highly respected by his pupils, some of -whom afterwards attained to eminence. By the statutes of that college, he should have taken orders within six years after his being elected fellow: but he uas admitted on the law line (as the phrase there is) November 2, 1640, and afterwards on that of physic, January 31, 1642, which excused him from complying with this obligation; though it does not appear that he made either law or physic his profession: for, remaining at college, he became the rhetoric reader there, and was usually employed by the society in composing their speeches and epistles to eminent persons (of which specimens may be seen in his works), being in high repute at that time for the purity and terseness of his Latin style. He also became celebrated for his occasional poems in English, and, at the breaking out of the civil wars, is said to have been the first champion that appeared in verse for the royal cause; which he also supported by all his personal influence: particularly by exerting his interest in the town of Cambridge, to prevent Oliver Cromwell (then an obscure candidate, but strongly supported by the puritan partv) from being elected one of its members. Cromwell’s stronger genius in this, as hi every other pursuit, prevailing, Cleveland is said to have shown great discernment, by predicting at so early a period, the fatal consequences that long after ensued to the cause of royalty. Cromwell got his election by a single vote, which Cleveland declared “had ruined both church and kingdom.” The parliament party carrying all before them in the eastern counties, Cleveland retired to the royal army, and with it to the king’s head quarters at Oxford, where he was much admired and caressed for his satirical poems on the opposite faction, especially for his satire on the Scottish covenanters, entitled “The Rebel Scot.” In his absence he was deprived of his fellowship, Feb. 13, 1644, by the earl of Manchester, who, under the authority of an ordinance of parliament, for regulating and reforming the university of Cambridge, ejected such fellows of colleges, &c. as refused to take the solemn league and covenant. From Oxford Cleveland was appointed to be judge-advocate in the garrison at Newark, under sir Richard Willis the governor, and has been commended for his skilful and upright conduct in this difficult office, where he also distinguished his pen occasionally, by returning smart answers to the summons, and other addresses to the garrison. Newark, after holding out the last of all the royal fortresses, was at length, in 1646, by the express command of the king (then a prisoner in the Scots army), surrendered upon terms, which left Cleveland in possession of his liberty, but destitute of all means of support, except what he derived from the hospitality and generosity of his brother loyalists, among whom he lived some years, obscure and unnoticed by the ruling party, till, in November 1655, he was seized at Norwich, as “a person of great abilities,” adverse and dangerous to the reigning government; and being sent to Yarmouth, he was there imprisoned for some time, till he sent a petition to the lord-protector, wherein the address of the writer has been much admired, who, while he honestly avows his principles, has recourse to such moving topics, as might sooth his oppressor, and procure his enlargement: in which he was not disappointed, for the protector generously set him at liberty, disdaining to remember on the throne the opposition he had received in his canvass for parliament as a private burgess. Cleveland thence retired to London, where he is said to have found a generous Maecenas; and, being much admired among all persons of his own party, became member of a club of wits and loyalists, which Butler, the author of Hiir dibras, also frequented. Cleveland then lived in chambers at Gray’s-inn (of which Butler is said to have been a member), and, being seized with an epidemic intermitting fever, died there on Thursday morning, April 29, 1659. His friends paid the last honours to his remains by a splendid funeral: for his body was removed to Hunsdon -house, and thence carried for interment, on Saturday May 1, to the parish church of St. Michael Royal, on College-hill, London, followed by a numerous attendance of persons eminent for their loyalty or learning: to whom his funeral sermon was preached by his intimate friend Dr. John Pearson, afterwards bishop of Chester, author of the Exposition of the Creed.

Cleveland has had the fate of those poets, who, “paying their court to temporary prejudices, have been at one time too much praised, and at another too much neglected.” Both his subjects, and his manner of writing, made his poems extremely popular among his contemporaries, but entirely forgotten and disregarded since. For his manner, he excelled among that class of writers so much admired in the last century, whom our great critic has aptly termed “metaphysical poets, who abound with witty rather than just thoughts, with far-fetched conceits, and learned allusions, that only amuse for a moment, utterly neglecting that beautiful simplicity and propriety which will interest and please through every age.” For his subjects he generally chose the party disputes of the day, which are now no longer understood or regard-ed. Contemporary with Milton, he was in his time exceedingly preferred before him; and Milton’s own nephew, Phillips, tells us, he was by some esteemed the best of the English poets. But Cleveland is now sunk into oblivion, while Milton’s fame is universally diffused. Yet Milton’s works could, with difficulty, gain admission to the press, at the time when it was pouring forth those of Cleveland in innumerable impressions; and the press now continually teems with re- publications of the Paradise Lost, &c. whereas the last edition of Cleveland’s works was in 1687, 8vo.

One of the poet’s brothers, William, was rector of Oldbury and Quat, near Bridgnorth in Shropshire, and dying 1666, left a son, who was grandfather of the rev. William Cleiveland, M. A. late rector of All-saints parish in Worcester, who died in 1794; and four daughters, whereof the youngest was grandmother of Dr. Percy, the late bishop of Dromore in Ireland, who wrote the poet’s life for the last edition of the Biographia Britannica. A sister of theirs, Elizabeth, married Mr. W r illiam II iff, of Hinckley, from whom are descended a respectable family, to which by marriage is allied the Historian of Leicestershire, in whose collection of Poems are many written by his ancestor, and many curious anecdotes of the author.

, an artist of very considerable talents, of the fifteenth century, who practised in England, was born at Rostock, and retained in the service of Christian IV. king of Denmark; but the excellence of his genius prompted him to the search of better models than he found in that northern climate. He travelled into Italy, and remained there four years, where he probably acquired a taste for the beautiful and ornamental grotesque, in which he afterwards shone. At Venice he became known to sir Henry Wotton, and sir Robert Anstruther recommended him to prince Charles, afterwards Charles I. He arrived in England, while the prince was in Spain, but notwithstanding was graciously received by king James, who mentions that circumstance in a Latin letter (preserved in Fuller’s Worthies) which he wrote to the king of Denmark, desiring leave to detain Cleyn in England, though with a permission to return first to Copenhagen and finish a work he had begun there, and promising to pay the expence of his journey. The request being granted, Cleyn returned to London, and appears to have been first employed in jdesigns for sir Francis Crane’s manufactory of tapestry at Mortlack, by which those works were carried to singular perfection. Five of the celebrated cartoons were also sent thither to be copied by him in tapestry. He had an annuity of 100l. which he held until the rebellion, and enjoyed very high reputation by his paintings at Somerset house, and the houses of several of the nobility. There is still extant a beautiful chamber adorned by him at Holland house, with a ceiling in grotesque, and small compartments on the chimneys, in the style and not unworthy of Parmegiano. Lord Orford mentions other works by his hand, and he also made designs for engravers. This ingenious artist, whom Evelyn records as a man of piety also, died in 1658.

, sole daughter and heir to George earl of Cumberland, was born at Skipton castle in Craven, Jan. 30, 1589, and married first, to Richard lord Buckhurst, afterwards earl of Dorset, by whom she had three sons, who died young, and two daughters, Margaret who married John, earl of Thanet, and Isabel, who married James, earl of Northampton. She married, secondly, to Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, by whom she had no issue. This lady, who by the failure of the male line, possessed the great hereditary estates of the Clifford Cumberland family, has lately become celebrated, particularly from a letter of hers published in the “World,” No. 14, by lord Orford, addressed to sir Joseph Williamson, who, when secretary of state to king Charles the second, had written to name a candidate to her for the Borough of Appleby. The brave countess, with all the spirit of her ancestors, and with all the eloquence of independent Greece, returned the following laconic answer:

Few letters have excited a more general admiration; the reason of which is thus explained by Dr. Campbell, in his “Philosophy of Rhetoric.” “We shall find,” says he, “that the very same sentiment expressed diffusely, will be admitted barely to be just expressed concisely, will be admired as spirited. To recur to examples, the famous answer returned by the countess of Dorset, to the letter of sir Joseph Williamson, secretary of state to Charles the Second, nominating to her a member for the borough of Appleby, is an excellent illustration of this doctrine. If we consider the meaning, there is mention made of two facts, which it was impossible that any body of common sense, in this lady’s circumstances, should not have observed, and of a resolution in consequence of these, which it was natural for every person who had a resentment of bad usage to make. Whence then results the vivacity, the fire which is so manifest in the letter? Not from any thing extraordinary in the matter, but purely from the laconism of the manner. An ordinary spirit would have employed as many pages to express the same thing, as there are affirmations in this short letter. The epistle might in that case have been very sensible, and withal very dull; but would never have been thought worthy of being recorded as containing any thing uncommon, or deserving a reader’s notice.”

Mr. Walpole, who, besides introducing her in the “World,” has given a place to this celebrated lady in his “Catalogue of noble Authors,” represents her as having written “Memoirs of her husband Richard earl of Dorset;” and “Sundry memorials of herself and her progenitors.” With regard to the first of these articles, we apprehend there never has appeared in the countess’s manuscripts any account of him, except what is occasionally to be met with in the History of her own life, a curious manuscript in the Harleian collection (6177), the title of which is, “A Summary of the Records, and a true Memorial of the Life of me the lady Anne Clifford, who by birth being sole daughter and heir to my illustrious father George Clifford the third earl of Cumberland, by his virtuous wife Margaret Russel my mother, in right descent from him, and his long continued noble ancestors the Veteriponts, Cliffords, and Veseys, baroness Clifford, Westmoreland, and Vesey, high sheriffess of Westmoreland, and ladye of the honor of Skypton in Craven, was by my lirst marriage countess dowager of Dorset, and by my second marriage countess dowager of Pembroke and Montgomery.” It is written in a manner extremely tedious, abounding with repetitions of matters, for the most part, equally minute and uninteresting, and may perhaps incline some to doubt Mr. Pennant’s character of her, as the most eminent person of her age for intellectual accomplishments. Some circumstances, however, respecting her being brought into the world, are related with an accuracy which biographers will never, perhaps, in any other instance be able to attain. She informs us, that, through the merciful providence of God, she was begotten by her valiant father, and conceived with child by her worthy mother, the first day of May in 1589, in the lord Wharton’s house in Channel-row, in Westminster, hard by the river of Thames, as Psalm 139; yet that she was not born till the 30th day of January following, when her blessed mother brought her forth in one of her father’s chief nouses, called Skypton castle, in Craven.

The countess’s funeral sermon was preached on the 14-th of April, 1676, at Appleby, by Dr. Edward Rainbow, bishop of Carlisle. The text chosen by him, in reference to the numerous works of architecture in which she was perpetually employed, was from the Proverbs of Solomon “Every wise woman buildeth her house.” The bishop has entered very largely into her character, and in describing the extent of her understanding, informs us, that Dr. Donne said to her ladyship, in her younger years, “That she knew well how to discourse of all things, from predestination to slea-silk.” Her munificence and spirit in building were very conspicuous. One of her first structures was a pillar, in the highway, at the place where she and her mother last parted, and took their final farewell; and besides a monument to her tutor Samuel Daniel, the poetical historian, and another to Spenser, she founded two hospitals, and repaired or built seven churches and six castles.

, third earl of Cumberland, and father to the preceding, was very eminent for his skill in navigation. He was born at Brougham castle, We*stmoreland, Aug. 8, 1558, and educated at Peterhouse, Cajnbridge, where his tutor was the celebrated John Whitgift^ afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. In this place he applied himself chiefly to the study of the mathematics, to which his genius led him, and by which he became qualified for the several great expeditions he afterwards undertook. His first public employment, of a melancholy kind indeed, was in 1586, when he was one of the peers who sat in judgment upon Mary queen of Scots. But having a greater inclination to act by sea than by land, and, according to the fashion of the times, being bent on making foreign discoveries, and defeating the ambitious designs of the court of Spain, then preparing the armada that was to conquer England, he fitted out, at his own charge, a little fleet, consisting of three ships and a pinnace, with a view to send them into the South Sea, to annoy the Spanish settlements there. They sailed from Gravesend, June 26, 1586, and from Plymouth Aug. J7; but were forced back hy contrary winds into Dartmouth, from whence putting out again on the 29th, they fell in with the coast of Barbary the 17th September, and the next day sailed into the road of Santa Cruz. On the 25th they came to the river Oro, just under the northern tropic, where they anchored. Searching upwards the next day, they found that river to be as broad all the way for fourteen or fifteen leagues, as at the mouth, which was two leagues over; but met with no town nor house. On the last of September they departed for Sierra Leone; where they arrived the 2 1st of October, and going on shore, they burned a town of the negroes, and brought away to their ships about fifteen tons of rice; and having furnished themselves with wood and water, they sailed the 2 1st of November from Sierra Leone, making the straights of Magellan. The 2d of January 1587 they discovered land; and on the 4th of that month fell in with the American shore, in 30 deg. 40 min. south lat. Continuing their course southward, they took, January 10, not far from the river of Plata, a small Portuguese ship; and the next day another; out of which they furnished themselves with what necessaries they wanted. The 12th of January they came to Seal Island, and two days after to the Green Island, near which they took in water. Returning to Seal Island, a consultation was held on the 7th of February, whether they should continue their course for the South Sea, and winter in the straights of Magellan, or spend three or four months upon the coast of Brazil, and proceed on their voyage in the spring. The majority being for the former, they went as far as 44 degrees of southern latitude. But meeting with storms and contrary winds, they took a final resolution, on the 21st of February, to return to the coast of Brazil. Accordingly they fell in with it the 5th of April, and, after taking in water and provisions in the bay of Camana, came into the port of Baya the llth. Eight Portuguese ships being there, they found means to carry off four of them, the least of which were of a hundred and thirty tons, notwithstanding all the resistance made by the enemy; and also brought a supply of fresh provision from the shore. In this spirited manner, the earl undertook no less than eleven expeditions, fitted out at his own expence, in which he made captures to a prodigious amount 5 and, on his return, was graciously received by his royal mistress, who created him knight of the garter in 1591. In 1601 he was one of the lords that were sent with forces to reduce the earl of Essex to obedience. He departed this life at the Savoy in London, Oct. 30, 1605, and was buried at Skipton, in Yorkshire, the 30th of March following; where a fine toinb was afterwards erected to his memory.

Pennant informs us that at an audience which the earl had after one of his expeditions, queen Elizabeth, perhaps designedly, dropped one of her gloves. His lordship took it up, and presented it to her; upon which she graciously desired him to keep it, as a mark of her esteem. In this manner, Pennant adds, his ambition was gratified with a reward that suited her majesty’s avarice. With the romantic gallantry of the times, he adorned this glove with diamonds, and wore it in the front of his high-crowned hat on days of tournament, as is expressed in the fine print of him, by Robert White. Another instance of the queen’s favour to the earl of Cumberland, was her appointing him her champion in all her tilting matches, from the thirtythird year of her reign. In this office he succeeded the gallant old knight sir Henry Lea, who resigned it with much ceremony in 1590. Mr. Wai pole, in his Miscellaneous Antiquities, has obliged the public with an entertaining account of his lordship’s investiture. He excelled 'all the nobility of his time in the exercises of tiltings, turnings, and courses of the field. His magnificent armour worn on such occasions, adorned with roses and fleurs de lis, is actually preserved at Appleby castle. In Skipton castle is a picture of the earl of Cumberland and his family, which is deemed a curious performance. It is tripartite, in form of a screen. The earl, who occupies the centre, is dressed in armour, spotted with stars of gold; but much of it is concealed by a vest and skirts reaching to his knees: his helmet and gauntlet, lying on the floor, are studded in like manner. His lady stands by him in a purple gown, and white petticoat, -embroidered with gold. She pathetically extends one hand to two beautiful boys, as if in the action of dissuading her lord from the dangerous voyages in which he engaged, when more interesting and tender claims urged the presence of a parent. “How must he have been affected,” says Mr. Pennant, “by his refusal, when he found that he had lost both on his return from two expeditions, if the heart of a hero does not too often divest itself of the tender sensations!” The letters of Margaret, the earl of Cumberland’s lady, are extant in manuscript, and also her Diary; from which it appears that she unfortunately married without liking, and met with the same return. She complains greatly of the coolness of her lord, and of his neglecting their daughter, Anne Clifford. The countess of Cumberland even endured great poverty, of which she writes in a most moving strain to king James I. to several great persons, and to the earl himself. Mr. Pennant observes, that all her letters are humble, suppliant, and pathetic, though the earl was said to have parted with her on account of her high spirit. But although this lady might sometimes be obliged, from peculiar circumstances, to write in a strain of humiliation, it is certain that she was a woman who possessed great fortitude and magnanimity of mind. This is apparent from the account her daughter has given of her; nor do we perceive, in that account, any traces of the poverty which the letters seen by Mr. Pennant represent her to have endured. Her conduct, after the death of her lord, in the contest between her and Francis, earl of Cumberland, her brother-in-law, for the family estate, was truly spirited, as she would never submit to give up her daughter’s right. With regard to her quarrel with her husband, the blame was principally on his side, as he was irregular in his manners, and appears, particularly, to have engaged in an amour with a lady of quality. A reconciliation, however, seems to have been effected between the earl and the countess; for she was present with him at the time of his decease, and he then expressed much affection towards her. We learn, from the inscription on the picture before mentioned, that, during the latter part of his life he felt the good effects of his early education for he died penitently, willingly, and christianly.

, son of Richard Clive, esq. was born on the 29th of September 1725, at Styche, the seat of his ancestors, in the parish of Moreton-Say, near Market Drayton. His father, who possessed but a small estate by inheritance, had, to increase his income, engaged in the profession of the law. At an early period of his youth, Robert was sent for his education to a private school at Lostock in Cheshire. The master, Dr. Eaton, soon discovered in his scholar a superior courage and sagacity which prognosticated the future hero. “If this lad,” he would say, “should live to be a man, and an opportunity be given for the exertion of his talents, few names wdi be greater than his.” At the age of eleven he was removed from Lostock to a school at Market Drayton, of which the reverend Mr. Burslem was the master. On the side of a high hill in that town is an ancient church, with a lofty steeple, from nearly the top of which is an old stone spout, projecting in the form of a dragon’s head. Young Clive ascended this steeple, and, to the astonishment of the spectators below, seated himself on the spout. Having remained a short time at Mr. Burslem’s school, he was placed in that of Merchant Taylors’ at London, which, however, did not long retain him as a scholar. His father having reverted to what seems to have been a predilection for private schools, committed him to the care of Mr. Sterling, at Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, with whom he continued till, in 1743, he received an appointment as a writer to the East India company. From the frequency of his removals, to which perhaps was added an intractable disposition, he obtained no applause, but rather the reverse, from the several masters to whom the care of his education had been entrusted.

To fulfil his engagement in the service to which he had been appointed, he embarked in one of the ships belonging to the East India company, and arrived at Madras in 1744. In his new employment he however discovered the same dislike to application, and the same aversion to controul, by which his character had hitherto been distinguished. This intractable disposition proved as disagreeable to his superiors as it must have been the occasion of much inconvenience to himself. One instance is related. Having acted or neglected something inconsistently with the discipline of office, his misconduct was reported to the governor, who commanded him to ask pardon of the secretary whom he had offended. He made his submission in terms of contempt, which the secretary mistaking for a compliment, invited him to dinner. “No, sir,” replied Clive, “the governor did not command me to dine with you.”

When in 1746 Madras was surrendered to the French, under. the command of their admiral M. de la Bourdonnais, the officers both civil and military, who had served under the East India company, became prisoners on parole. M. Dupleix, however, who was chief commander of the military forces in India, not having been present at the surrender, refused to ratify the treaty, unless they would take another parole under the new governor. The English, in consequence of this new stipulation, thought themselves released from their engagements with Bourdonnais, and at liberty not only to make their escape, but to take up arms, if they should find an opportunity. Mr. Clive, accordingly, disguised as a Moor, in the dress of the country, escaped with a few others to St. David’s, a fortress which is situated to the south of Madras, at about the distance of 21 miles.

He had not been long arrived at St. David’s before he lost some money in a party at cards with two ensigns, who were detected in the act of cheating. They had won considerable sums; but as the fraud was evident, the losers at first refused payment, but at length were intimidated by the threats of the successful gamesters. Clive alone persisted in his refusal, and accepted a challenge from the boldest of his antagonists. They met, each with a single pistol. Clive fired without success. His antagonist, quitting the ground, presented a pistol to his head, and commanded him to ask his life, with which demand, after some hesitation, he complied; but, being required to recant his expressions, he peremptorily refused. The officer told him, if he persisted in his refusal, he would fire. “Fire, and be d——d!” replied Clive. “I said you cheated; I say so still; nor will I ever pay you.” The ensign, finding every expedient to obtain the money ineffectual, threw away the pistol, and declared that his adversary was a madman. Clive replied to the compliments of some of his friends on his conduct in this affair; “The man has given me my life, and I have no right in future to mention his behaviour at the card table; although I will never pay him, nor ever keep him company.” In 1747 Mr. Clive was promoted to the commission of an ensign in the military service; but had no opportunity of displaying his talents till the following year, when the siege of Pondicherry afforded an ample scope for their exertion. At this memorable attack the young ensign distinguished himself by his courage in defence of the advanced trench. He received a shot in his hat, and another in his coat; some officers in the same detachment having been killed. The early rains, however, and admiral Boscawen’s want of experience in military operations, compelled the English to raise the siege, and to return to Fort St. David’s.

On the attack, when the powder was almost exhausted, Clive, instead of sending a serjeant to procure a fresh supply, ran to the trench, and brought it. In consequence of this action, an officer ventured to insinuate, in his absence, that he had relinquished his post through fear. A friend, having informed him of this aspersion, was accordingly requested to go with him to the person who had thus malignantly defamed him. The charge, though true, was at first denied: Clive, however, insisting upon immediate satisfaction, they withdrew; but while they were retiring, he received a blow from his antagonist, who was following him. Instantly he drew his sword, as did the other, relying on the interposition of the company. Both having been put under an arrest, were obliged to submit to a court of inquiry, which decided that the officer should ask pardon at the head of the battalion, for a causeless aspersion, without notice of the blow, for which offence he might otherwise have been disbanded. Unwilling to injure the service, Mr. Clive declined speaking of this quarrel till the return of the army to St. David’s, when, calling upon the officer, he reminded him of the late transaction. Admitting that he was satisfied with the decision of the court, and the consequent compliance of the officer, he still insisted that he must call him to account for the blow, of which no notice had been taken. The officer, on the contrary, alledged that his compliance with the opinion of the court ought to be admitted as satisfactory, and refused to make any other concession. Mr. Clive accordingly waved his cane over his head, saying, that as he thought him too contemptible a coward for beating, he should content himself with inflicting on him that mark of infamy. On the following day the officer resigned his commission.

When the season for military operations was over, the troops remained at St. David’s, and before the return of spring they received news of a cessation of hostilities between Great Britain and France. Still, however, the sense of ancient rivalship. the reciprocal aggravation of recent injuries, an opposition of interests, a mutual confidence in strength, seemed to animate both nations to a renewal of the war. The dominions of the rajah of Tanjore had at that time been claimed by his brother, with a declaration that he, though deposed by his subjects, was their rightful sovereign; and that the reigning rajah was an usurper. The English of St. David’s, convinced by these allegations, determined to espouse the cause of the deposed rajah. They resolved to begin their attack upon a fort of the rajah’s, called Devi Cdtah. On their advance, rinding the approaches difficult, and the ramparts covered with innumerable forces, they were at first deterred from their enterprize. Clive, however, insisted that the attempt, though dangerous, was not hazardous. He thought the town might easily b$ taken by storm; recommending only to advance the cannons in the night, as by them the gates might be effectually destroyed. Captain Cope, the commander, refused to listen to the advice, as too desperate; till, after having exhausted his ammunition by a fruitless cannonade, he was compelled to retreat to Fort St. David’s. The disgrace of this discomfiture; its pernicious influence upon their trade 5 and the exultation of their common enemy the French, induced the English once more to attempt the reduction of Devi Cotah. The command of this expedition was entrusted to major Lawrence, an officer at that time but little known, but who was afterwards distinguished for his abilities in the service. As a breach was made in the walls, Clive, who then possessed only the rank of a lieutenant, solicited the command of the forlorn hope. Lawrence, willing to preserve him from so dangerous a station, told him the service did not then fall in his turn. Clive replied, that knowing it did not, he came rather to ask it as a favour, than to demand it as a right; but that on such an occasion he hoped the request of a volunteer would not be rejected. Major Lawrence consented; and Clive, in consequence of his appointment to the command of thirty-four British soldiers and seven hundred Sepoys, was ordered to storm the breach. Accord, ingly they led the way; but in passing a rivulet between the camp and the fort, four of the English fell by the fire of the enemy. The Sepoys were alarmed, and halted as soon as they had passed the stream but the English persevered, and, advancing closely upon the breach, presented their musquets, when a party of horse, which had been concealed in the tower, rushed upon their rear, and killed twenty-six. Clive, by stepping aside, escaped a stroke which had been aimed at him by oqe of the horse as they passed him. He ran towards the rivulet, and, having passed, had the good fortune to join the Sepoys. Of the whole fouj>and- thirty, himself and three others were all that were left alive. Major Lawrence, seeing the disaster, commanded all the Europeans to advance. Clive still marched in the first division. The horse renewed their attack, but were repulsed with such slaughter that the garrison, dismayed at the sight, gave way as the English approached the breach, and, flying through the opposite gate, abandoned the town to the victors. Alarmed at the success of the English, the rajah sent them overtures of peace; to which, on condition that a settlement should be made on his rival, and the fort of Devi Cutah, with the adjoining district, be ceded to the company, the English readily agreed.

The war being thus concluded, lietenant Clive, to whose active mind the idleness which in time of peace attends a soldier’s life was intolerably irksome, returned to the civil establishment, and was admitted to the same rank as that he would have held had he never quitted the civil for the military line. His income was now considerably increased by his appointment to the office of commissary to the British troops; an appointment which the friendship of major Lawrence had procured him. He had not long been settled at Madras, when a fever of the nervous kind destroyed his constitution, and operated so banefully on his spirits that the constant presence of an attendant became absolutely requisite. As the disease however abated, his former strength was in some degree renewed; but his frame had received so rude a shock, that, during the remainder of his life, excepting when his mind was ardently engaged, the oppression on his spirits frequently returned.

Whoever contemplates the forlorn situation of the company when lord Clive firstarrived at Calcutta in 1756, and then considers the degree of opulence and power they possessed when he finally left that place in 1767, will be convinced that the history of the world has seldom afforded an instance of so rapid and improbable a change. At the first period they were merely an association of merchants struggling for existence. One of their factories was in ruins; their agents were murdered; and an army of 50,000 men, to which they had nothing to oppose, threatened the immediate destruction of their principal settlement. At the last period, distant from the first but ten years, they were become powerful princes, possessed of vast revenues, and ruling over fifteen millions of people. When the merits of those who contributed to this great revolution shall be weighed in the impartial judgment of future times, it will be found that Watson, Pocock, Adams, and Monro, deserved well of the company; but that Clive was its preserver, and the principal author of its greatness.

After lord Clive’s last return from India, he was made, in 1769, one of the knights companions of the noble order of the bath.

Though his exploits will excite the admiration, and receive the plaudits of posterity, yet in his lifetime the same ingratitude was shewn him, which the greatest men, in all ages and countries, have experienced; for, on the pretence “that all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign powers, do of right belong to the state,” a party in the house of commons, countenanced by the minister, attempted to ruin both his fortune and his fame. A motion was made in this assembly, on the 21st of February, 1773, to resolve, that, “in the acquisition of his wealth, lord Clive had abused the powers with which he was entrusted.” The speech he made on the occasion concluded with the following words “If the resolution proposed should receive the assent of the house, I shall have nothing left that I can call my own, except my paternal fortune of 500l. a year; and which has been in the family for ages past. But upon this I am content to live; and perhaps I shall find more real content of mind and happiness, than in the trembling affluence of an unsettled fortune. But to be called, after sixteen years have elapsed, to account for my conduct in this manner; and after an uninterrupted enjoyment of my property, to be questioned, and considered as obtaining it unwarrantably, is hard indeed! and a treatment of which I should not think the British senate capable. Yet if this should be the case, I have a conscious innocence within me, which tells me that my conduct is irreproachable. Frangas non fades. They may take from me what I have*, they may, as they think, make me poor, but I will be happy. Before I sit down, I have one request to make to the house, that when they come to decide upon my honour, they will not forget their own.” The house of commons rejected the motion, and resolved, “that lord Clive had rendered great and meritorious services to his country.”

When the disputes between Great Britain and her colonies had arisen to such a height that they were not likely to be terminated any other way than by open hostilities, overtures were made to lord Ciive to accept of the chief command in America; but he declined the proposal, on account of the ill state of his health, and from a consciousness that the vigour of his mind was not equal to what it had before been.

Lord Clive was one of the few men whose conduct was always directed by the dictates of his own mind, and whose decisions were therefore secret. Like the first of the Caesars, the talents of other men could add nothing to the reach of his genius, or the correctness of his judgment. Lord Chatham emphatically called him a heaven-born general; as, without experience, or being versed in military affairs, he surpassed all the officers of his time. In parliament, he represented, from the year 1760, to his decease, the ancient borough of Shrewsbury, the chief town of the county wherein he was born. The interest which he took in the disputations of this assembly, was seldom sufficient to induce him to speak; but when the attack upon his conduct had called into action the powers of his mind, his eloquence was such as has not been often surpassed.

The severe illness with which lord Clive was attacked, during his first residence in the East Indies, gave an injury to his constitution which was never fully repaired; and his health was farther weakened by his successive visits to the unwholesome climates of that country. Hence it was that he became subject at times to a depression of spirits. His ardent and active mind, when not called into exertion by some great occasion, frequently preyed upon itself. In the latter part of his life, having nothing peculiarly important and interesting to engage his attention, and his body growing more and more infirm, the depression increased; and to this was owing his decease, by his own hand, on the 22d of November, 1774, not long after he had entered into the 50th year of his age. He was interred at Moreton-Say, the parish in which he was born. In the various relations of private life, lord Clive was highly beloved and esteemed; for he was a man of the kindest affections, and of every social virtue. His secret charities- were numerous and extensive but the present he made of seventy thousand pounds, as a provision for the invalids of the company’s service, was the noblest donation of its kind that ever came fron a private individual. His person was of the largest of the middle size; his countenance inclined to sadness; and the heaviness of his brow imparted an unpleasing expression to his features. It was a heaviness that arose not from the prevalence of the unsocial passions (for of these lew men had a smaller share), but from a natural fullness in the flesh above the eye-lid. His words were few; and his manner, among strangers, was reserved; yet it won the confidence of men, and gained admission to the heart. Among his intimate friends he had great pleasantness and jocularity, and on some occasions was too open. In February 1753, immediately before he embarked for England, Jie married Margaret, daughter of Edmund Maskelyne, esq. of Purton in Wiltshire, and sister to the rev. Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, the late astronomer royal. By this lady he had Edward, the present lord Clive, born March 7, 1754; Rebecca, born September 15, 1760; Charlotte, born January 15, 1762; Margaret, born August 15, 1763; and Robert, 'horn August 31, 1769.

, an actress of great merit, whose piaiden name was Raftor, was born in 1711, and shewed a very early inclination and genius for the stage. Being recommended to Cibber, he immediately engaged her at a small salary, and she made her first appearance on the stage in boy’s clothes, in the character of Isnienes, the page of Ziphores, in the play of “Mithridates,” at Drury-lane theatre. Continuing to improve in her profession, she added both to her salary and her fame. In 1731 her performance of Nell in the “Devil to pay,” fixed her reputation as the greatest performer of her time in that species of character, in which for more than thirty years she remained without a rival. In the next year, 1732, she united herself in marriage with George Clive, a gentleman of the law, and brother to baron Chve; an union which was not productive of happiness to either party. They soon agreed to separate, and for the rest of their lives had no intercourse together. Mr. Clive, if we mistake not, died at Bath in 1780, but we doubt whether he was brother to the baron of the exchequer, as above mentioned. In 1768, Mrs. dive’s intimate friend Mrs. Pritchard quitted the stage; and the succeeding year she determined to follow her example; but certainly might have continued several years longer to delight the public in various characters adapted to her figure and time of life, as to the last she was admirable and unrivalled. From this time Mrs. Clive retired to a small but elegant house near Strawberry-hill, Twickenham, where she passed the remainder of her life in ease and independence, respected by the world, and beloved by a circle of friends; at which place, after a short illness, she departed this life, December 6, 1785. A'more extensive walk in comedy than that of Mrs. Clive cannot be imagined; the chambermaid, in every varied shape which art or nature could lend her; characters of whim and affectation, from the high-bred lady Fanciful, to the vulgar Mrs. Heidelberg; country girls, romps, hoydens, and dowdies; superannuated beauties, viragoes, and humourists. To a strong and pleasing voice, with an ear for music, she added all the sprightly action requisite to a number of parts in ballad farces. Her mirth was so genuine, that whether it was restrained to the arch sneer and the suppressed half-laugh, widened to the broad grin, or extended to the downright honest burst of loud laughter, the audience was sure to accompany her. Mrs. Clive, in private life, was so far above censure, that her conduct in every relation of it was not only laudable but exemplary. For her benefits she introduced some trifling pieces on the stage, written by herself or hejr friends, but of no great merit.

, a painter who practised his art in England, was born at Osnaburgh in 1656, and with his countryman, one Tiburen, went to Paris in 1679, where he worked for De Troye. In 1681, they came to England, and Closterman at first painted draperies for Riley and afterwards they painted in conjunction, Riley still executing most of the heads. On his death Closterman finished several of his pictures, which recommended him to the duke of Somerset, who had employed Riley. He painted the duke’s children, but lost his favour on a dispute about a picture of Guercino, which he had bought for liis grace, and which was afterwards purchased by lord Hnlifax. Closterman, however, did nof want business. He drew Gibbons the carver and his wife in one piece, which pleased, and there is a mezzotinto from it. He was even set in competition with sir Godfrey Kneller, and there is a story, not very credible, that sir Godfrey refused to paint a picture with him for a wager. Closterman painted the duke and duchess of Marlborough and all their children in one picture, and the duke on horseback; on which subject, however, he had so many disputes with the duchess, that the duke said, “It has given me more trouble to reconcile my wife and you, than to fight a battle.” Closterman, who sought reputation, went by invitation to Spain in 1696, where he drew the king and queen, and from whence he wrote several letters on the pictures in that country to Mr, Richard Graham. He also went twice to Italy, anil brought over several good pictures. The whole length of queen Anne in Guildhall is by him, and another at Chatsworth of the first duke of Rutland; and in Painters’-hall, ti portrait of Mr. Sannders. Elsum has bestowed an epigram on his portrait of Dryden; yet Closterman was a very moderate performer: his colouring strong, but heavy; and his pictures without any idea of grace. Yet he might have enjoyed very affluent circumstances, had he not shewn a foolish and infatuated fondness (as Houbraken tells us) for a girl that he kept in his house. That insidious young woman, who had persuaded him that she was entirely attached to his person and interest, watched a proper opportunity, and robbed him of all his money, plate, jewels, and every costly moveable, and fled out of the kingdom. So sudden and so unexpected a misfortune, against which he was totally unprepared, affected Closterman so violently, that he pined away his life; not long surviving the loss of his effects, and the infidelity of his mistress, which even impaired his understanding. He died in 1713, and was buried in Cbvent-garden churchyard.

, an ingenious professor of the veterinary art, was born at Norwich, Aug. 12, 1725. His father was a blacksmith, in humble life, and could only afford to allow his son a short time for instruction, in the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. He was taken from school before he had made much progress in his education; and when he was seventeen years old, he was obliged, by the death of his father, to carry on the business for the benefit of his mother and her family, which consisted of four children. About the year 1750, he was first noticed by Dr. Kirwan Wright, an eminent physician, and a man of learning, who encouraged him to direct his mind to the investigation and treatment of the diseases of horses. To this pursuit he devoted his attention with great zeal and success. Through the same friend he was induced to acquire a knowledge of the Latin and French languages, in. order to make himself acquainted with the best authors on farriery and medicine, but particularly Vegetius and La Fosse. His Latin teacher was a Mr. Pagan, under whose tuition he made a rapid progress: and in French he instructed himself without the help of any master. He was much assisted in his Latin studies by acting as an amanuensis, and sometimes read in^ Latin books, to Dr. Wright, who had the misfortune to be deprived of his sight. During this time he was a hard worker as well as a hard student. He used to work at the forge, the regular hours, from sixo'clock in the morning until eight at night, and then frequently got ready the nails requisite for his men the next day. To his labours as a blacksmith, a veterinary practitioner, a student of Latin and French, he added others, as a student of mathematics. He became a member of a society established in Norwich, among men of original minds and small incomes, for improvement in mathematics and experimental philosophy, under the direction of Mr. Peter Bilby. Here ho associated with John Fransham, with Mr. Arderon, F. 11. S. a friend and correspondent of Baker, whose inquiries with the microscope excited general interestat that time, and with other working and thinking men. Mr. Clover had a greater quickness of apprehension, and excelled Fransham in mathematics; but the latter had made a greater proficiency in the classics, and was therefore qualified to become his master. After his return from his eccentric excursion to Newcastle, Mr. Clover employed Fransham occasionally to ride the horses home after they were shod, and whilst the iron was heating, they used both to be employed in Latin exer^ses and mathematical problems, worked upon a slate hung against the forge. Thus the tutor assisted in all the labours of his pupil, and, ' after correcting an exercise, or discussing the properties of a circle, he earned his frugal meal by conducting home the horses which his pupil had shod. Natural philosophy, natural history, and botany, engaged much of this little Bilbean society’s attention. Mr. Clover demonstrated at several of their meetings the origin and progress of the bots found in the stomach and intestines of horses, so early as 1753. He discovered the manner in which the larvae of these insects f&strus equij are conveyed from the coat of the horse, where they are deposited by the fly, into the animal’s stomach; and he illustrated, by many experiments, the whole progress of their transformation, which has been since so well described by Mr. B. Clarke, in the Linnean Transactions for 1796. In 1765, Mr. Clover’s reputation had increased so much that he relinquished working at the forge, and devoted himself wholly to the veterinary art. In this he was assisted by the most eminent medical practitioners of those days, particularly Mr. Gooch, who has inserted in the second volume of his surgical cases, a letter from Mr. Clover, giving a description and a drawing of an ingenious machine invented by him for the cure of ruptured tendons and fractured legs in horses. For many years Mr. Clover was severely afflicted with giddiness and pain in his head, which obliged him to decline business in 178!. He continued, however, to interest himself in every improvement that was made, and always took delight in recounting the results of his extensive experience. One of his greatest amusements was to talk with those who studied physic and surgery; and he continued to read the new medical publications, and to deliver short private lectures on the theory and practice of the healing art, with a lively interest, until the very day of his death. It is to be regretted that he never could be prevailed upon to extend the usefulness of his knowledge and experience in the diseases of animals, by any publication of his observations; but he felt a diffidence and fastidiousness in writing that could never be overcome, though his readiness to communicate information was universally acknowledged. The latter end of his life was cheered by the amusement of gardening, in which he excelled. He marked the gradual decay of his bodily organs with perfect tranquillity and composure, and watched his declining pulse when he expired Feb. 19, 1811, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. With an understanding vigorous and acute, and n. power of discrimination and discernment peculiar to himself, Mr. Clover possessed the external advantage of a strong muscular frame of body, which was tall and well proportioned.

, justly celebrated for his astonishing miniatures and illuminations in missals and other religious books, was born in Sclavonia in the year 1498. He was originally educated for the church, and took orders, but was afterwards suffered to relinquish the sacerdotal habit by a dispensation from the pope. Soon after the age of eighteen, his love of painting prompted him to travel to Rome, where he was taken into the service of the cardinal Grimani, by whom he was, for the space of three years, employed in making careful pen-drawings from the finest medals. He afterwards became the scholar of Julio Romano, and made considerable advancement in oil-painting; but his master, perceiving the extraordinary talent which he evinced for miniature, succeeded in persuading him to apply himself entirely to that branch of the art; and' it may with justice be said, that we owe to the sagacity of Julio Romano, and the unexampled assiduity of Clovio, the most exquisite and delicately finished performances of that kind in the known world; since he not only far surpassed all who went before him, but to this day stands unrivalled, by all those who have since attempted to walk in his footsteps. In addition to the instruction which our artist received from the favourite scholar of Raffaele, he derived great benefit from the works of Buonarotti, many of which he copied in a most beautiful and finished manner; and he afterwards reaped great advantage from the friendship and experience of Girolamo da 1 Libri, a miniature painter of great note at Verona: the result of all these studies was a style of drawing, partaking of the purity of the Roman, and the grandeur of the Florentine school; united, not unfrequently, to the rich colouring of Titian or the ambient hue of Correggio.

, an eminent surgeon, of whom little is known, except what can be collected from his works, flourished in the time of queen Elizabeth, and was for some time a navy surgeon, serving on board one of the queen’s ships, called the Aid, when the emperor’s daughter married Philip II. king of Spain, in 1570. He returned home, and resided several years at London, where he acquired great reputation, as may be inferred from his having been several years surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s and Christ’s hospitals, before he was sent for by letters from the earl of Leicester, general of the English forces in the Low Countries, to take upon him the care of the sick and wounded in 1586. He was surgeon to her majesty, and mentions his having served with Banister under the earl of Warwick; and also speaks in another place of having been a retainer to lord Abergavenny. He seems to have been in full practice about 1596, the date of his last publication, a treatise on the venereal disease, reprinted in 1637; and he laments the frequency of this disorder in England; of which he gives this proof, that in the space of five years he had cured upwards of a thousand venereal patients in vSt. Bartholomew’s hospital. His most capital performance is his approved Practice for all young chirurgeons, 1591, re-printed in 1596 and 1637. He is a strong advocate for writing medical chirurgical books in the vernacular language, and his practice was always ingenious, and often successful.

, rector of Whatfield, and vicar of Debenham, in Suffolk, was the son of the rev. George Clubbe, M. A. of Catherine-hall, Cambridge, and was born in 1703. He was admitted of King’s-college, Cambridge, by an unlucky mistake of an uacle, who did not know until too late, that his not proceeding from Eton school was a bar to his promotion in that college. He left it, therefore, after talcing his bachelor’s degree, in 1725. At what time he was presented to his livings, is not mentioned. He married one of Dr. Jortin’s daughters, by whom he had a large family. He had the misfortune to lose his sight some time before his death, March 2, 1773, but never his placid and agreeable humour. His publications, besides a single “Sermon” before the incorporated Society for the Relief of Clergymen’s Widows and Orphans at Ipswich, 1751, are, 1. “The History and Antiquities of the ancient villa of Wheatfield, in the county of Suffolk,” 1758; an admirable piece of irony at the expence of modern antiquaries, which was reprinted by Dodsley in the second volume of his “Fugitive Pieces.” 2. “Physiognomy; being a. sketch of a larger work upon the same plan, wherein the different tempers, passions, and manners of men, will be particularly considered.” 3. “A Letter of free advice to a young Clergyman,” 1763.

, or Cluvier), a celebrated geographer, was born of an ancient and noble family at Dantzic, in 1580, and educated by his father with a great deal of care, and sent to Leyden to study the civil law. But Cluver had no inclination for law, and his genius inclining him early to the love of geography, Joseph Scaliger is said to have advised him to make that his particular study, and not to do violence to his inclinations any longer. This advice was followed, upon which Cluver presently set out for the Low Countries, in order to take a careful survey of them but passing- through Brabant, for the sake of paying a visit to Justus Lipsius, he had the misfortune to be robbed, which obliged him to return immediately to Leyden. Meanwhile, his father, incensed by his deserting the study of the law, refused to furnish him with money, which drove him to bear arms, as he afterwards did two years in Hungary and Bohemia. It happened at that time, that the baron of Popel, who was his friend, was arrested by an order from the emperor; and thinking himself extremely ill used, he drew up a kind of manifesto by way of apology, which he sent to Cluver to translate into Latin. This Cluver having performed, caused it to be printed at Leyden which so displeased the emperor, that he complained by his ambassador to the States, and had Cluvcr arrested. Ciuver, however, was soon set at liberty, upon which he returned to his geographical studies, and travelled through several countries, particularly England, France, Germany, and Italy. He was also a great linguist, being able to talk with ease and fluency, as we are told, no less than ten languages. He died at Ley den, 1623, only forty -three years old, justly esteemed the first geographer who had put his researches in order, and reduced them to certain principles.

His residence in England has been overlooked by his biographers. It was in 1609 that he became a sojourner at Exeter college, Oxford, for the sake of Drs. Holland and Prideaux, whose fame attracted many foreigners to this college; and here he wrote his first work “De Tribus Rheni alveis et ostiis,” which was published at Leyden, in 1611, 4to. It appears also that after his return from Italy, he again visited Oxford, where Dr. Prideaux, probably, who had a high opinion of him, procured him offers of promotion; but his attachment to Leyden induced him to return thither, and the curators of the university there bestowed an annual stipend on him, to assist him in his pursuits. He left a son, John Sigismund Cluverius, who was born during his father’s residence in England, in St. Saviour’s parish, and was matriculated a member of Exeter college in 1633, as “a Londoner born, and the son of Philip Cluverius, a priest.”

, an ingenious poet, and a man of taste, wit, and learning, was master of the grammar-school of Christ’s hospital, where he was himself educated. He took the degree of B. A. in 1698, and of M. A. in 1702, in Trinity- college, Cambridge. He died at London, in 1713, in the prime of life, and was buried in the cloisters of Christ’s hospital. Jacob says that his “Observations on Virgil” shew that he was well acquainted with that poet. He published in 1707, “A Collection of Poems on several occasions, &c. to which is prefixed a Discourse on Criticism, and the Liberty of Writing, by way of letter to a friend.” He translated the third, and part of the fourth book of Howe’s edition of the “Callipapdia,” and assisted Ozell in the translation of Boileau’s “Lutrin.” His other known productions are, 1. “The Miller’s Tale,” from Chaucer. 2. A translation of the “Muscipula.” 3. “The Oak and the Briar,” a tale. His excellent ode, “The Female Reign,” was printed in Dodsley’s Collection, and afterwards in the Gent. Mag. 1753, with alterations by Dr. Watts, who thought it “the truest and best Pindaric he had ever read,” an opinion in which we find Dr. Warton coinciding, in one of his notes on Pope’s works.

, D. D. and a chaplain in ordinary to George II. was educated at Trinity college, Oxford, where he took his bachelor’s degree, but appears to have removed to King’s college, Cambridge, where he took his master’s degree, in 1713. In 1723 we find him again at Trinity college, Oxford, where he took the degrees of B. and D. D. July 6 of that year. He became early in life chaplain to bishop Gibson, to whose patronage he was indebted for the following preferments; viz. the united rectories of St. Austin and St. Faith, in London, with that of Acton, in Middlesex, a prebend in St. Paul’s, another at Lincoln, and the archdeaconry of London, in which last he succeeded Dr. Tyrwhitt in July 1742. His whole works were collected by himself, in 1757, under the title of “Discourses and Essays, in prose and verse, by Edward Cobden, D. D. archdeacon of London, and lately chaplain to his majesty king George II. above twenty-two years, in which time most of these discourses were preached before him. Published chiefly for the use of his parishioners,” one large 4to volume, divided in two parts. Of this volume 250 copies only were printed, 50 of which were appropriated to a charitable use. In 1748 he preached a sermon before the king at St. James’s, entitled “A Persuasive to Chastity,” which was not a virtue exemplified at that time in the highest place, and he is said to have lost his situation of chaplain by it. Among his works is his “Concio ad Clerum, xi cal. Mail, 1752,” and three sermons preached after the noted one on “Chastity.” The last time he preached hefore the king was Dec. 8, 1751. He resigned his warrant for chaplain Nov. 23, 1752, after having delivered into his majesty’s hands his reasons in writing for so doing. His income, he says, was hut moderate (all his preferments together not exceeding S50l. per annum clear, which, he added, was as much as he desired, and more than he deserved. This income, frugality and moderation converted into plenty, and contentment into happiness); but about this time he met with losses amounting to above 2000l. which reduced his substance very low. In 1762, Dr. Cobden lost his wife; whom he survived little more than two years, dying April 22, 1764, aged more than eighty. He appears to have been a good and conscientious man, but with a mixture of oddity in his character as well as style, and not so wholly free from ambition as "he would make us believe. His poetical talents, which he was fond of gxercising, are not of the first rate.

, an eminent lawyer, was born March 25, 1644, at Bremen. He was professor of law at Heidelberg, Utrecht, and Francfort on the Oder, where he died August 18, 1719, aged seventy-six, leaving several children. In 1670 the degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by the university of Oxford, at the same time with the prince of Orange, afterwards William III. He was employed in various affairs of importance, and received the dignity of baron of the empire from the emperor, 1713, as a reward for his services. He left several works on the science he professed, among which are “Juris publici prndentia,” Francfort, 1695, 8vo “Hypomnemata Juris,” 1698, 8vo, &c.

, son to the preceding, was born at Francfort on the Oder, towards the close of the seventeenth century, and died in 1755. He rose by his profound knowledge of the civil law, to the post of minister of state, and grand chancellor to the late king of Prussia. That royal philosopher entrusted the baron Cocceius with the reform of the administration of justice throughout his dominions. The “Frederkian Code,” which this minister compiled in 1747, proved him worthy of the choice of his prince, and as much a philosopher as himself. Besides this work, which is in 3 vols. 8vo, the world is indebted to baron Cocceius for a Latin edition of “Grotius de jure belli ac pacis,” more ample than any that had before appeared, printed 1755 at Lausanne, 5 vols. 4to. The first volume, which serves as an introduction to the work, is by Cocceius the father.

, was a famous Hebrew professor at Bremen, where he was born in 1603. In 1650 he was chosen to teach theology at Leyden, which he did with great reputation, and died there 1669, aged sixty-six, leaving a son. Cocceius wrote long commentaries on the Bible, and other works, which made much noise in Holland, and were printed at Amsterdam, 1701, 10 vols. fol. In 1708 was published his “Opera Anecdota Theologica et Philologica,” 2 vols. fol. His singular method of interpreting the Holy Scriptures raised him opponents in Voetius, Desmarets, and several other protestants; but he had nevertheless, and has still, numerous disciples in Holland, who are called Cocceians, and believe, like him, and like many other divines in other countries, that there will be a visible reign of Christ upon earth, by which that of antichrist shall be abolished; and that during this reign, the Jews and all nations being converted, the church should attain its highest glory. In explaining the Scriptures, he always looked beyond the literal meaning to something that should wear the appearance of mystery. He regarded the Old Testament as a perpetual representation or mirror of the history of Christ, and his church; he maintained that all the Jewish prophecies have a relation to Christ, and that his miracles, actions, and sufferings, and those of his apostles, were types of future events.

, of Florence, professor of physic at Pisa, afterwards of surgery and anatomy at Florence, was born there in 1693, and died in 1758, at the age of sixty-two. In the course of his travels he became the intimate friend of Newton, Boerhaave, and Dr. Mead. The emperor made him his antiquary. He was esteemed both for his theoretical and practical knowledge. He wrote: 1. “Grsecorum Chirurgici Libri; Sorani unus de Fracturarum signis, Oribasii duo de Fractis, et Luxatis, ex Collectione Nicetse, Florent.” 1754, fol. 2. “O ratio de Usu Artis Anatomicse, Florent.” 1736, 4to. 3. “Medicinae laudatio in Gymnasio Pisis habita,” 1727, 4to, spoken on opening a course of lectures at Pisa, where he had been appointed professor, prior to his returning to Florence. 4. “Del vitto Pythagorico,” Flor. 1743, and 1750, 8vo. It has been several times reprinted, and in 1762 translated into English. He wrote also “On the Baths at Pisa, and Sopra Asclepiadea.” This was published by his son, Raymond Cocchi, who succeeded his father as professor of anatomy, and physician to the public hospital at Florence.

Cocchi, the father, was invited to England by the earl of Huntingdon, and passed three years in London, during which he published an edition of “Xenophont. Ephesii Ephesiacorum Libri V. de Amoribus Anthite et Abrocomse,” printed by Bowyer, 1726, 4to. The earl of Corke, in one of his letters to Mr. Duncombe, represents Cocchi as a man of most extensive learning, studious, polite, modest, humane, and instructive. A very long account of him is given in our authority.

, an eminent French lawyer, was born at Paris June 10, 1687, and admitted a counsellor in 1706, in the grand council, where he acquired such reputation, that at the age of thirty, he was looked upon as one of the ablest canonists, and he now determined, with the advice of his friends and clients, to plead in the parliament. He was heard there with universal applause, and, from that time till his death, there was scarce any affair of importance at the palace but the public crowded to hear him, and returned convinced that M. Cochin possessed all the extraordinary talents which characterise a great orator. He was consulted from every part of the kingdom, and never ceased to serve the public by his assiduous and unremitted labours. He died at Paris, after several attacks of an apoplexy, February 24, 1747, aged 60. His works were published at Paris, 1751, and the following year, 6 vols. 4to, with his life. These, however, have not preserved his reputation undiminished; and M. la Cretelle, in along article on them in the French Mercure for April 1782, concludes with asserting that Cochin was an advocate of great merit, but a genius of the second order. This sen*­tence, however, seems in some measure to proceed from an opinion that no man can be a genius who does not introduce novelties in his profession. France has unfortunately abounded of late years in such geniuses.

, a famous French engraver, was born in 1688, and received into the royal academy of Paris in 1731. His works are full of spirit, correctness, and harmony. The principal are from the paintings of the invalids, which employed him full ten years. He painted also Rebecca, St. Basil; the Origin of Fire, from Le Moine, Jacob and Laban, from Restout, The village Wedding, after Watteau, and the prints for the Lutrin, besides many upon the occasion of the dauphin’s marriage, and the general collection of the gallery of Versailles. He died in 1754.

, son of the preceding artist, was born at Paris in 1715, and, assisted by the instructions of his father, and his mother Louise Madeleine Hortemels, became an engraver of considerable celebrity. In 1749, he travelled to Italy with the marquis de Marigny, and after his return, was in 1752 made a member of the royal academy of Paris, and, in the sequel, appointed secretary and historian to that society. In addition to these honours, he was made a knight of the order of St. Michael, and keeper of the king’s drawings. Of his works, then extremely numerous, Mr. Jombert published a catalogue in 1770. He died April 29, 1790, after having published some works connected with his profession, as, 1. “Lettres sur les Peintures d'Herculaneum,” 1751, 12mo. 2. “Dissertation sur l'effet de la lumiere et des ombres, relativement a la peinture,” 1757, 12mo. 3. “Voyage d‘ltalie, ou Recueil d’ observations sur les ouvrages d‘architecture, de peinture, et de sculpture, que l’on voit dans les principales villes d'ltalie,” Lausanne, 1773, 3 vols. 8vo. 4. “Les Mysotechniques aux enfers,” 1763, 12mo. 5. “Lettres sur les Vies de Slodz et de Deshays,” 1765, 12mo. 6. “Projet d'une salle de spectacle,” 1765, 12mo. Cochin gave the design for the monument of the mareschal D'Harcourt, executed by Pigal, which is now in the French museum.

, a native of Nuremberg, canon of Breslau, was born in 1479, and became a bigotted adherent to the Roman catholic religion, and disputed warmly against Luther, Osiander, Bucer, Melancthon, Calvin, and the other patriarchs of the reformation; but he is too full of invective, even by the confession of the catholics themselves. In 1539 he received from England a refutation by Richard Morrison, D. D. of the tract he had published against the marriage of Henry Vjii. He replied in a publication bearing this title “The broom of Johannes Cochlæus for sweeping down the cobwebs of Morrison.” Morrison had reproached him with having been made canon of Mersberg on condition that he should write no more against Luther, and for having forfeited his word, on being bought over by promises from the pope. Cochlæus declares that he is not canon of Mersberg that prince George of Saxony sent for him to Mentz, where he was canon of St. Victor, to give him a canonry in the cathedral of Misnia, in order to assist Jerom Emser in the defence of the catholic faith; adding, that it is so far from being true that he had promised to write no more against Luther, that in the preceding year he had published no less than six writings against him. He defends what he had written against the divorce of Henry VIII. and boasts that Erasmus had approved his work. The principal productions of this author are: 1. “Historia Hussitarum,” folio; a scarce and curious/work, and one of his best performances. 2. “De actis et scriptis Lutheri,” 1549, folio. 3. “Speculum circa Missam,” 8vo. 4. “De vita Theoxlorici regis Ostrogothorum,” Stockholm, 1699, 4to. 5. “Consilium cardinalium anno 1538,” 8vo. 6. “De emendanda ecclesia,” 1539, 8vo, very scarce. He died at Breslau, January 10, 1552, at the age of 72.

, a Scotch artist, was born Dec. 12, 1738, at Strathaven in Clydesdale, Having early shewn a genius in design, he was put as a scholar to the academy ofpainting in the college of Glasgow in 1754 then chiefly under the inspection of those eminent printers Messrs. Robert and Andrew Fonlis. After some time spent there, he went to Italy about the end of 1764, where he studied for five years, mostly at Rome, under the celebrated Mr. Gavin Hamilton; since which time he followed his profession in Glasgow, with honour and advantage to himself, and satisfaction to his friends. In portrait painting of a large size he excelled, and in miniature and other sizes he had great merit; his drawing was correct, and he seldom failed of producing a most striking likeness. In history, some pieces done by him are now in Glasgow, particularly “Daedalus and Icarus,” “Diana and Endymion,” both essay pieces executed at Rome, that would do credit to any pencil; yet, from an unusual modesty and diffidence, he never could be prevailed upon to put his name to his works. A dutiful attachment to an aged mother and other relations fixed him in Glasgow: ambition with him was no ruling passion, nor was he eager after riches; but a natural philanthropic disposition, and an assiduity to please, were conspicuous traits of his character. By permission 1 of the lord provost and magistrates, he was buried in the choir of the cathedral church, where a neat marble is erected to his memory, with this inscription “In memory of Mr. William Cochran, portrait painter in Glasgow, who died October 23, 1785, aged 47 years. The works of his pencil and this marble bear record of an eminent artist, and a virtuous man.”

, a lady much distinguished by her literary accomplishments, was born in London, August 16, 1679, the daughter of captain David Trotter, who was a native of Scotland, and a commander in the royal navy, in the reign of king Charles the Second. Her mother was Mrs. Sarah Ballenden, nearly related to the noble lord of that name, and to the illustrious families of Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, and Drumrnond, earl of Perth. She had the misfortune to lose her father when very young; an event which also reduced her mother to narrow circumstances. In her childhood, she surprised a company of her relations and friends with some extemporary verses, on an incident which had happened in the street, and which excited her attention. By her own application and diligence, without any instructor, she learned to write, and also made herself mistress of the French language; but had some assistance in the study of the Latin grammar and logic; and of the latter she drew up an abstract for her own use. She was educated in the protestant religion, but having an early intimacy with several Roman catholic families of distinction, she was led, when very young, to embrace the Romish communion, and continued in it for some years.

In 1693, when she was only fourteen years of age, she wrote some verses, and sent them to Mr. Bevil Higgons, tf on his sickness and recovery from the small-pox,“and was only in her seventeenth year when she produced a tragedy, entitled” Agnes de Castro,“which was acted with applause at the Theatre-Royal in 1695, and printed the following year in 4to, without her name. The play is founded upon a French novel of the same title, printed at Paris in 1688. In 1697, she addressed some verses to Mr. Congreve on his” Mourning Bride“which gave rise to an acquaintance between her and that celebrated writer. In 1698, her tragedy, entitled” Fatal Friendship,“was performed at the new theatre in Lincoln’s-inn-fields, and printed the same year in 4to, with a dedication to the princess Anne of Denmark. This play was considered as the most perfect of her dramatic performances and it was praised by Hughes and Farquhar. On the death of Mr. Dry den, in 1701, our poetess joined with several other ladies, in paying a just tribute to his memory in verse. Their performances were published together in that year, under the title of” The Nine Muses; or, Poems written l>y so many Ladies, upon the death of the late famous John Dryden, esq.“The same year she also brought upon the stage a comedy, called” Love at a Loss; or, most votes carry it,“acted at the Theatre-Royal, and published in quarto; but on account of her absence from London while it was in the press, it was so incorrectly printed, that she would gladly have suppressed the edition; and many years after she revised it, with a view to a second performance, which never took place. Soon after, before the close of the year 1701, she produced another tragedy, called” The Unhappy Penitent,“which was performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-lane, also printed in 4to. In the midst of this attention to poetry and dramatic writing, she spent much of her time in metaphysical studies. She was a great admirer of Mr. Locke’s” Essay on Human Understanding;" and drew up a defence of that work, against some remarks written by Dr. Thomas Burnet, master of the Charter-house. This was published in May 1702, without a name, lest the public should be prejudiced against a metaphysical treatise written by a woman. She also professed herself to be desirous of concealing her name, from an unwillingness tobe known to Mr. Locke, under the character of his defender. But her name was not long concealed; and Mr. Locke desired his cousin, Mr. King, afterwards lord chancellor, to pay her a visit, and make her a present of books; and upon her owning her performance, he wrote her a letter of acknowledgment. She also received a letter of thanks for this piece from Mrs. Burnet, the last wife of the celebrated prelate of that name. It appears, that at the latter end of 1701, she was some time at Salisbury, on a visit to her relations in that city.

Her friend Mr. Burnet continued to keep up a correspondence with her during his travels; and upon his arrival at the court of Berlin, where he was received with great marks of respect by Sophia Charlotte, queen of Prussia, daughter to the princess Sophia, he took an opportunity of writing to that princess in such advantageous terms of Mrs. Trotter, that her royal highness, in her answer to him from Hanover, on the 29th of July, 1704, declared herself “charmed with the agreeable picture which he had drawn of the new Scots Sappho, who seemed to deserve all the great things which he had said of her.” Jn 1704, Mrs. Trotter addressed some verses to the duke of Marlborough, upon his return from Germany, after the battle of Blenheim; and in 1706, after the battle of Ramillies, she also addressed a second poem to the duke of Marlborough. The same year, her tragedy called “The Revolution of Sweden,” was acted at the queen’s theatre in the Haymarket, and printed at London in 4to. It is founded upon the revolution in Sweden under Gustavus Erickson.

She had now for some time begun to entertain doubts concerning the Romish religion; which led her into a thorough examination of the grounds of it, by consulting the best books on both sides of the question, and conversing with persons of the best judgment, both papists and protestants, amongst her acquaintance. The result of her inquiries was, a full conviction of the falseness of the pretensions of the Romish church, and a return to the communion of the church of England, about the beginning of 1707; and she continued a firm protestant during the remainder of her life. In the course of her inquiries, the great question concerning “a Guide in Controversies,” was particularly discussed by her; and two letters which she wrote on this subject, were published this year under the following title: “A Discourse concerning a Guide in Controversies, in two Letters: written to one of the church of Rome, by a person lately converted from that communion.”

A considerable part of the summer of 1707 was spent by Mrs. Trotter at Ockham- Mills, near Ripley, in the county of Surrey. During her retirement there, Mr. Fenn, a young clergyman of an excellent character, paid his addresses to her, but she had previously engaged in a correspondence by letters with Mr. Cockburn , which terminated in a mirriage in the beginning of 1708. Mr. Cockburn had taken orders in the church of England but a short time before his marriage; and soon after that event, he had the donative of Nayland in Suffolk, where for some time they settled; but Mr. Cockburn removed to London to be curate of St. Dunstan’s church in Fleet-street. In this situation he remained till the accession of king George the First, when, entertaining some doubts about taking the oath of abjuration, he was obliged to quit his curacy, and for ten or twelve years was reduced to great difficulties in procuring subsistence for his family. During that period, he was employed in instructing the youth of an academy in Chancery-lane in the Latin tongue. But in 1726, by consulting the lord chancellor King, and his own father, upon the meaning and intent of the oath of abjuration, and byreading some papers which were put into his hands upon the subject, he was at length reconciled to taking it. In consequence of this, being the following year invited to be minister of the episcopal congregation at Aberdeen, he qualified himself conformably to the law; and on the day of king George the Second’s accession, he preached there a sermon on the duty and benefit of praying for the government. This sermon was printed, and being animadverted upon, he published a reply to the remarks on it, with some papers relative to the oath of abjuration, which were much commended. Soon after his settlement at Aberdeen, the lord chancellor King presented him to the living of LongHorseley, near Morpeth, in Northumberland, in order to enable him the better to support his family, and he was permitted to remain at Aberdeen, till the negligence and ill behaviour of the curates, whom he employed at LongHorseley obliged him to quit his station at Aberdeen in 1737, whereby his income was considerably lessened.

Mrs. Cockburn, after her marriage, was almost entirely prevented from any application to her studies, for many years, in consequence of her close attention to the duties of a wife and of a mother. To the ordinary cares of an increasing family, were added those resulting from the straitened circumstances of her husband; so that she had little time for reading. But in 1726, when she had been married about eighteen years, she published, “A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth,” in vindication of Mr. Locke. Dr. Holdsvvorth, who was a fellow of St. John’s college in Oxford, had preached a sermon before the university, on John v. 28, 29, concerning the resurrection of tfee same body. This sermon he afterwards printed in 8vo, professing, in his title page, to examine and answer “the cavils, false reasonings, and false interpretations of scripture, of Mr. Locke, and others, against the resurrection of the same body.” Mrs. Cockburn remonstrated, in her publication, against the manner in which Dr. Holdsworth had treated Mr. Locke: and urged, that it could be of no service to the church, nor was it in any respect prudent, to take so much pains to rank Mr. Locke amongst heretics, and the worst enemies of Christianity. Dr. Holdsworth, however, renewed the charge in his “Defence of the doctrine of the Resurrection of the same Body,” 8vo, 1727. To this Mrs. Cockburn wrote a reply, which she entitled, “A Vindication of Mr. Locke’s Christian Principles, from the injurious imputations of Dr. Holdsworth.” But as she could meet with no bookseller who would undertake to print it at his own hazard, it continued in manuscript, until printed in the edition of her works, by Dr. Birch.

In 1732, she wrote a poem on occasion of “the Busts set up in the Queen’s Hermitage,” which was afterwards printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine, for May 1737, with some alterations, which she thought to its disadvantage. About two years after, she wrote “Remarks upon some writers in the controversy concerning the foundation of Moral Duty and Moral Obligation; particularly the translator of archbishop King’s Origin of Moral Evil, and the author of the Divine Legation of Moses: to which are prefixed, some cursory thoughts on the controversies concerning necessary existence, the reality and infinity of space, the extension and place of spirits, and on Dr. Watts’s notion of substance.” These remarks continued in manuscript till the year 1743, when they were printed in “The History of the Works of the Learned.” She had the misfortune this year to lose a daughter; and it appears also, that she had at this time a son in Germany, in some office connected with the army, and who was afterwards clerk of the cheque at Chatham.

When Dr. Rutherforth’s “Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue” appeared, it soon engaged the attention of Mrs. Cockburn, who undertook to write a confutation of that elaborate discourse, and transmitted her manuscript to Mr. Warburton, afterwards the celebrated bishop of Gloucester, who published it in 1747, under the title of “Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth’s Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue, in vindication of the contrary principles and reasonings, enforced in the writings of the late Dr. Samuel Clarke.” In the preface to this confutation of Dr. Rutherforth, Mr. Warburton says, that “it contains all the clearness of expression, the strength of reason, the precision of logic, and attachment to truth, which makes books of this nature really useful to the common cause of virtue and religion.” The merit of this performance, and the general reputation of her writings, at length induced her friends to propose to her an edition of them by subscription, but she did not live to discharge the office of editor; which, in consequence of her death, was afterwards undertaken by Dr. Birch. She lost her husband on the 4th of Jan. 1748-9, in“the seventy-first year of his age; and did not long survive the shock. She died on the llth of May, 1749, in her seventy-first year, after having long supported a painful disorder, with the utmost patience and resignation. Her memory and understanding continued unimpaired, till within a few days of her death. She was interred, near her husband and youngest daughter, at Long-Horseley, with this short sentence on their tomb:” Let their works praise them in the gates," Prov. xxxi. 31.

In her younger years, Mrs. Cockburn was much celebrated for her beauty, as well as for her genius and other accomplishments. She was small of stature, but was distinguished by the unusual vivacity of her eyes, and the delicacy of her complexion, which continued to her death. In her private character she appears to have been benevolent and generous; and remarkable for the uncommon evenness and chearfulness of her temper. Her conversation was innocent, agreeable, and instructive: she had not the least affectation of being thought a wit; but was modest and diffident, and constantly endeavoured to adapt her discourse to her company. Throughout the whole course of her life, she seems to have been in very narrow and straitened circumstances; and after her marriage she had little leisure for study, and was very ill provided with books. But she endured the inconveniences of her situation, with a patience and fortitude that were truly exemplary. It is justly observed by Dr. Birch, that “her abilities as a writer, and the merit of her works, will not have full justice done them, without a due attention to the peculiar circumstances in which they were produced; her early youth, when she wrote some; her very advanced age, and ill state of health, when she drew up others; the uneasy situation of her fortune, during the whole course of her life; and an interval of nearly twenty years, in the vigour of it, spent in the cares of a family, without the least leisure for reading or contemplation. After which, with a mind so long diverted and encumbered, resuming her studies, she instantly recovered its entire powers, and in the hours of relaxation from her domestic employments, pursued, to their utmost limits, some of the deepest inquiries of which the human mind is capable.” It was in 1751, that her works were published by Dr. Birch, 2 vols. 8vo, under the following title: “The Works of Mrs. Catherine Cockburn, theological, moral, dramatic, and poetical.” None of her dramatic pieces were included in this collection, excepting “The Fatal Friendship,” it being found, that all her writings could not be comprised in the two volumes proposed to be printed for those who had subscribed for her works. Besides the other pieces already mentioned in the course of this account of her life, Dr. Birch’s collection contains, a letter of advice to her son; letters between Dr. Sharp, archdeacon of Northumberland, and prebendary of Durham, and Mrs, Cockburn, concerning the foundation of moral virtue letters between Mrs. Cockburn and several of her friends and some short essays in prose, with several songs, and other poems.

, professor of the Oriental languages at Paris, was a son of the family of Langton in the Merse, and educated at St. Andrew’s, Scotland, where he studied the belles lettres, philosophy, the Oriental languages, and philosophy. After taking holy orders, he went to the university of Paris, where he taught the Oriental languages for several years with great applause. In 1551, he published a book on the usefulness and excellency of the word of God, “Oratio de utilitate et excellentia Verbi Dei,” Paris, 1551, 8vo; and next year another on the style of the holy Scriptures, “De vulgari Sacrae Scriptura? phrasi,” Paris, 1552, 8vo, which two brought him under the suspicion of favouring the opinions of the reformers, and rendered it necessary for him to leave Paris. The suspicion was fully confirmed when he returned home, and embraced the doctrines of the reformation. He taught the languages for some years at St. Andrew’s, and in 1555, published there some pious meditations on the Lord’s prayer, “In orationem dominicam pia meditatio,” St. And. 1555, 12mo; and afterwards he was chosen minister at Haddingdon, being the first protestant preacher in that place. He died, far advanced in years, in 1559. Dempster and Bale unite in considering him as one of the greatest scholars and ablest divines of his age, and as a reformer, attached to moderate measures. Besides his published works, he left several manuscripts on subjects of divinity, and some letters and orations, of which a treatise on the “Apostles Creed,” was published at London, 1561, 4to.

, a name almost proverbial in the schools of arithmetic, was a very ingenious penman and engraver, and born, probably in London, in 163f. He became deservedly reckoned among the improvers of the arts of writing and arithmetic, having published no less than fourteen copy-books, engraved by his own hand. Some of his calligraphical pieces, which were done on silver plates, have a neatness and delicacy superior to the rest. Mr Evelyn mentions Cocker, Gery, Gething, and Billingsley, as comparable to the Italian masters both for letters and flourishes. His Vulgar Arithmetic has been often printed, first in 1677, a fortieth edition in 1723, and often since. His Decimal Arithmetic appeared in 1695, but has been less popular. He also compiled a small dictionary, and a book of sentences for writing, called Cocker’s Morals. He died in 1677, and his two books on arithmetic were published from his Mss. after his death.

, a brave soldier and a distinguished benefactor to All Souls college, Oxford, was born at Barbadoes in 1668, and had part of his education in that island. He afterwards came over to England, and was admitted a gentleman-commoner of Christ-church in Oxford, 1685; where having taken a degree in arts, he was elected a probationer fellow of All Souls college in 1639. He became perfect, it is said, not only in logic, history, and the ancient and modern languages, but likewise in poetry, physic, and divinity. Thus qualified, he went into the army, but without quitting his fellowship; and being a well-bred and accomplished gentleman, as well as a scholar, he soon recommended himself to the favour of king William. He was made captain in the first regiment of foot guards, and seems to have'been instrumental in driving the French out of the island of St. Christopher’s, which they had seized at the breaking out of the war between France and England: but it is more certain that he was at the siege of Namur in 1695. Upon the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, he was made captaingeneral and governor in chief of the Leeward Caribhee Islands, in which office he met with some trouble: for in 1701 several articles were exhibited against him to the house of commons in England, but he was honourably acquitted from all imputations. In 1703 he was at the attack upon Guadaloupe, belonging to the French, in which he shewed great bravery, though that enterprise happened to be unsuccessful. Some time after, he resigned his government of the Leeward islands, and led a studious and retired life. For a few years before his death, he chiefly applied himself to church history and metaphysics; and his eulogist tells us, that “if he excelled in any thing, it was in metaphysical learning, of which he was perhaps the greatest master in the world.” He died in Barbadoes, April 7, 1701, and was buried there the day following; but his body was afterwards brought over to England, and interred, June 19, 1716, in All Souls chapel, Oxford. Two Latin orations to his memory were spoken there by two fellows of that college; one by Digby Cotes, M. A. the university orator, at his interment; the other the next day by Edward Young, LL. B. at the laying the foundation stone of his library. Over his grave a black marble stone was soon after laid, with no other inscription on it but Codrington.

By his last will he bequeathed his two plantations in Barbadoes, and part of the island Barbuda, to the society for propagating the gospel in foreign parts; and left a noble legacy to All Souls college, of which he had been fellow. This legacy consisted of his books, which were valued at 6000l. and 10,000l. to be laid out; 6000l. in building a library, and 4000l. in furnishing it with books. He was the author of some poems in the Musse Anglicanoe, printed at London in 1741; and of a copy of verses inscribed to sir Samuel Garth upon his “Dispensary,” of which two lines have at least been uncommonly fortunate in having been adopted as the common-place compliment of all lovers.

, a miscellaneous writer and translator of the seventeenth century, and probably an ancestor of the preceding, was born of an ancient family in Gloucestershire, in 1602, and educated at Oxford, where he was elected demy of Magdalen college, in July 1619, and completed his degree of M. A. in 1626. He then travelled, and on his return settled as a private gentleman in Norfolk, where he married. Wood says he was always accounted a puritan. He died of the plague in London, in 1665. His publications are: 1. “The Life and Death of Robert earl of Essex,” Loud. 1646, 4to, in which, according to Wood, he shewed himself a “rank parliamentarian.” 2. “A Collection of Proverbs.” 3. “The Life of Æsop,” prefixed to Barlow’s edition of the Fables, 1666, fol. 3. A translation of Du Moulin “On the Knowledge of God,” Lond. 1634. 4. “Heptameron, or the History of the Fortunate Lovers,” ibid. 1654, 8vo. The original of this was written by Margaret de Valois, queen of Navarre. He published also translations of Justin, Quiutus Curtius, the comedy of Ignoramus, and the prophecies of the German Prophets, &c.

, called likewise P. Van Aelst, from the place of his nativity, a town in Flanders, was, if we may judge from the writers who have spoken of him, or from the admirable prints remaining from his designs, one of the greatest painters which either Germany or Flanders produced in his age. After he had been some time instructed in the school of Bernard of Brussels, he went to Rome to complete his studies, and soon proved himself an excellent designer, and a bold and spirited painter, as well in fresco as in oil. At his return to his own country he married, but his wife soon dying, he once more travelled, and at the solicitations of a merchant, a friend of his, accompanied him to Constantinople in 1531. Having stayed some time with the Turks, and drawn some most animated representations of their customs and ceremonies, which he afterwards cut in wood, he once more arrived in the place of his nativity, and took a second wife. Towards the latter part of his life he wrote some excellent treatises upon geometry, architecture, and perspective. His pictures of history, as well as his portraits, were much esteemed. He was made painter to the emperor Charles V. and died at Antwerp in 1550. After his death, the prints which he had made of Turkish costume were published by his widow. This admirable work consists of seven large pieces, which, when joined together, form a frieze, divided into compartments by Cariatides on a tablet in the first block is written in old French “Les moeurs et fachom de faire de Turcz, avecq les regions y appertenantes, ont est au vif contrefaicetze par Pierre Cceck d‘Alost, luy estant en Turque, Tan de Jesu Christ MDXXXIII. lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes a Pimpression dy’celles;” and on the last is this inscription: “Marie ver hulst, vefue du diet Pierre d'Alost, tres passe en Tan MDL. a faict imprimer les diet figures, soubz grace et privilege dTimperialle majeste en Tan MCCCCCLIII.” These prints are very rare.

, a learned Dominican, and bishop of Dardania in partibus, was born at St. Calais on the Maine, in 1574. He rose by his merits to the first charges of his order, and died in 1623, after having been named to the bishopric of Marseilles, by Lewis XIII. He was eloquent in his sermons, and wrote ^Hh purity, considering the age. His principal pieces are a Roman history from Augustus to Constantine, folio, which was read with pleasure in the seventeenth century. It was published in 1647, fol. He translated Florus, and was chosen by Henry IV. of Francej at the recommendation of cardinal du Perron, to answer the book which James I. of England had published; and at the instance of Gregory XV. he wrote against Duplessis Mornay, and Marc. Anton, de Dominis, archbishop of Spalatro his answer to the latter was entitled “Pro sacra monarchia ecclesiae catholic^, &c. libri quatuor Apologetici, adversus Rempublicam M. A. de Dominis, &c.” Paris, 1623, 2 vols. fol.

, an eminent French merchant, was the richest subject in Europe in the fifteenth century. He enjoyed an office of trust in the court of Charles VII. of France, and his industry was of more service to that country, than the boasted bravery of a Dunois or a Maid of Orleans. He had established the greatest trade that had ever been carried on by any private subject in Europe; and since his time Cosmo de Medicis is the only person that equalled him. He had 300 factors in Italy and the Levant. He lent 200,000 crowns of gold to his master, Charles VII. without which he never could have recovered Normandy; and therefore nothing can be a greater stain to the annals of this reign, than the persecution of so useful a man. After he had represented his prince in foreign states, he was accused of having poisoned the beautiful Agnes Sorel, Charles’s mistress; but this was without foundation, and the real motive of his persecution is not known. He was by the king’s order sent to prison, and the parliament tried him: all that they could prove against him was, that he had caused a Christian slave to be restored to his Turkish master, whom this slave had robbed and betrayed; and that he had sold arms to the sultan of Egypt. For these two facts, one of which was lawful, and the other meritorious, his estate was confiscated, and he was condemned to the amende honorable, and to pay a fine of 100,000 crowns. He found more virtue in his clerks than in the courtiers who ruined him: the former contributed to relieve him under his misfortunes, and one of them particularly, who had married his niece, facilitated his escape out of his confinement and out of France. He went to Rome, where Calixtus III. filled the papal chair, who gave him the command of part of a fleet which he had equipped against the Turks. He died on his arrival at the Isle of Chio, in 1456; therefore Mr. de Voltaire is mistaken in saying, in his “Essay on Universal History,” that “he removed to Cyprus, where he continued to carry on his trade; but never had the courage to return to his ungrateful country, though strongly invited.” Charles VII. afterwards restored some part of Coeur’s property to his children.

, a learned English monk and Jiistorian, lived Jn the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He was of the Cistercian order, and was esteemed a man of uncommon knowledge for his time. The surname under which we here place this article, was given him from the abbey over which he presided. The principal work of his which is come down to us, is a chronicle of the Holy Land; and it is so much the more valuable, as he was an eye-witness of the facts he relates. He was at Jerusalem, and was even wounded there, during the siege of that city by Saladin. It is thought that he died in 1228. This chronicle was published in 1729, by the fathers Martenne and Durand, in the fifth volume of the “Amplissima collectio veterum scriptorum et monumentorum,” &c. In this volume are likewise two other works of the same author; the first entitled “Chronicon Anglicanum ab anno 1066 ad annum 1200;” and the second, “Libellus de motibus Anglicanis sub Johanne rege.” Some of his Mss. are in our public libraries.

, a learned and ingenious physician, was born at Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony, towards the end of the seventeenth century. Being educated to the practice of medicine, after taking the degree of doctor, he went to M.unster, where he soon distinguished himself by his superior skill and abilities. His works, which are numerous, bear ample testimony to the vigour of his intellects, and of his application to letters. His last work, “If ermippus Redivivus,” in which he professes to shew the practicability of prolonging the lives of elderly persons to 115 years, by receiving the breath and transpirations of healthy young females, was written, or first published, when he was in his seventy-seventh year. This was translated into English, and published, with additions and improvements, by the late Dr. John Campbell, under the title of “Hermippus liedivivus, or the Sage’s triumph over old Age and the Grave.” A vein of humour runs through this, and indeed through most of the productions of this writer, which gave them great popularity when first published, though they are now little noticed, excepting, perhaps, the work ju$t mentioned, in which the irony is extremely delicate; in his rhapsody against the prevailing passion of taking snuff, he affects to consider a passion for taking snuff as a disease of the nostrils, similar to that affecting the stomach of girls in chlorosis, and therefore calls it the pica nasi. The title of this production is, “Dissertatio satyrica, physico-medico-moralis, de Pica Nasi sive Tabaci sternutatorii moderno abusu, et noxa,” Amstelodami, 1716, 12mo.

Ruysch, in the latter part of his life, imagined he had discovered a muscle at the ftindus uteri, to which he delegated the office of expelling the placenta, and to which he thought the performance of that duty might be left. This our author has ridiculed in a little volume, to which he gave the title of “Lucina Ruyschiana, sive musculus uteri orbicularis a clarissimo D. D. Ruyschio delectus,” published at Amsterdam, 1731. He published, the preceding year, “Archaeus faber febrium et medicus,” and in 1716, “Neothea,” written to shew the folly of sending to China for tea, when we have so many herbs at hand, as pleasant, and more healthy; but his wit was not powerful enough to make either the use of tea or tobacco unfashionable. For the titles of others of his works, see Boerhaave’s Methodus Studii Medici. Cohausen died at Munster, July 18, 1750, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

, the Vauban of the Dutch, was born in 1632, or, according to Saxius, in 1641. His genius for the art of war, and for constructing fortifications, displayed itself early in life. Being engineer and lieutenant-general in the service of the States-general, he fortified and defended the greater part of their places. It was a curious spectacle, says the president Heinault, to see in 1692, at the siege of Namur, the fort Cohorn besieged by Vauban, and defended by Cohorn himself. He did not surrender till after he had received a wound judged to be mortal, but which, however, did not prove to be so. In 1703 the elector of Cologne, Joseph Clement, having espoused the part of France, and received a French garrison into Bonn, Cohorn kept up such a strong and terrible fire upon the place, that the commandant surrendered it three days afterwards. This great man died at the Hague in 1704, leaving the Hollanders several places fortified by his industry and skill, Bergen-op-zoom, which he called his master-piece, but which, it ought to be mentioned, he left unfinished, was taken in 1747 by the marshal de Loewendahl, notwithstanding its fine fortifications, which caused it to be regarded as impregnable. We have a treatise by Cohorn, in Dutch, on the new method of fortifying places.

Our countryman, Benjamin Robins, F. R. S. in his “New Principles of Gunnery,” acknowledges the superior merit of Cohorn, who was undoubtedly, he says, the ablest fortifier that the world had ever seen, and yet had much trouble in introducing his system, and was vexatiously opposed by the old engineers, who affected to consider him as a self-conceited pretender.

, a French historian, was born at Troyes, the 4th of November, 1611, and entered very early into the congregation of the oratory, where he was received by the cardinal de Berulle. Father Bourgoin, one of the cardinal’s successors in the generalship, considered him for a long time as a useless being, because he applied himself to the study of history. The prejudice of Bourgoin was so strong in that respect, that when he wanted, according to Richard Simon, to denote a blockhead, he said, he is an historian. Notwithstanding this, when Servien, plenipotentiary at Munster, asked him for a father of the oratory as chaplain to the embassy, he gave him Le Cointe, who attended him, assisted him in making preliminaries of peace, and furnished the memorials necessary to the treaty. Colbert obtained for him the grant of a pension of 1000 livres in 1659; and three years after, another of 500. It was then that he began to publish at Paris his grand work, entitled “Annales ecclesiastici Francorum,” in 8 volumes, folio, from the year 235 to 835. It is a compilation without the graces of style, but of immense labour, and full of curious particulars. His chronology frequently differs from that of other historians; but whenever he departs from them, he usually gives his reasons for it. The first volume appeared in 1665, and the last in 1679. Father Le Cointe died at Paris, the 18th of January, 1681, at the age of seventy.

, an English poet, the son of Thomas Cokayne, esq. of Ashbourne-hall, in Derbyshire, and of Pooley, in Warwickshire, was born in 1608, at Elvaston, in Derbyshire, the seat of the family of his mother, Anne, daughter of sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, knt, He was educated at Trinity- college, Cambridge, and in 1632 set out on his travels through France and Italy, of which he has given an account in a poem to his sou Mr. Thomas Cokayne. On his return he married Anne, daughter of sir Gilbert Kniveton, of Mercaston, in Derbyshire, knt. and retiring to his lordship of Fooley, gave himself up to his books and boon companions. Fie boasts, among his poetical friends, of Donne, Suckling/ Randolph, Drayton, Massinger, Habington, Sandys, and May; and appears also to have cultivated the acquaintance of sir William Dugdale, and other antiquaries. During the civil war, he suffered greatly for his religion, the Romari Catholic, and for what was then as obnoxious, his loyalty to Charles I. under whom he claimed the title ofa baronet. His losses also were increased by his want of ceconomy, and he was obliged to part with his estates during his life, which terminated in Feb. 1684, when he was privately buried in the chancel of Polesworth church. His poems and plays, with altered title-pages, were printed and reprinted in 1658, and are now purchased at high prices, chiefly as curiosities. His mind appears to have been much cultivated with learning, and it is clear that he possessed considerable talents, but he scarcely exhibits any marks of genius. He is never pathetic, sublime, or even elegant; but is generally characterized by a kind of familiarity which amounts to doggrel, and frequently to flatness and insipidity. Still, as our valuable authority adds, it is im possible to read notices of so many of his contemporaries, whose habits of life are recalled to our fancies, without feeling a subordinate kind of pleasure that gives these domestic rhymes a lively attraction.

, lord chief-justice of England, and one of the most eminent lawyers this kingdom has produced, was descended from an ancient family in Norfolk, and born at Mileham, in that county, 1549. His father was Robert Coke, esq. of Mileham; his mother, Winifred, daughter and coheiress of William Knightley, of Margrave Knightley, in Norfolk. At ten years of age he was sent to a free -school at Norwich; and from thence removed to Trinity-college, in Cambridge. He remained in the university about four years, and went from thence to Clifford Vinn, in London and the year after was entered a student of the Inner Temple. We are told that the first proof he gave of the quickness of his penetration, and the solidity of his judgment, was his stating the cook’s case of the Temple, which it seems had puzzled the whole house, so clearly and exactly, that it was taken notice of and admired by the bench. It is not at all improbable that this might promote his being called early to the bar, at the end of six years, which in those strict times was held very extraordinary. He himself has informed us that the first cause he moved in the King? s-bench, was in Trinity-term, 1578, when he was counsel for Mr. Edward Denny, vicar of Northingham, in Norfolk, in an action of scandalum magnatum, brought against him by Henry lord Cromwell. About this time he was appointed reader of Lyon’s-inn, when his learned lectures were much attended, for three years. His reputation increased so fast, and with it his practice, that when he had been at the bar but a few years, he thought himself in a condition to pretend to a lady of one of the best families, and at the same time of the best fortune in Norfolk, Bridget, daughter and coheiress of John Preston, esq. whom he soon married, and with whom he had in all about 30,000l.

After this marriage, by which he became allied to some of the noblest houses in the kingdom, preferments flowed in upon him apace. The cities of Coventry and Norwich chose him their recorder; the county of Norfolk, one of their knights in parliament; and the house of commons, their speaker, in the thirty-fifth year of queen Elizabeth. The queen likewise appointed him solicitor-general, in 1592, and attorney-general the year following. Some time after, he lost his wife, by whom he had ten children; and in 1598 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Jord.Burleigh, afterwards earl of Exeter, and relipt of sir William Hatto.n. As this marriage was the source of many troubles to both parties, so the very celebration of it occasioned no small noise and disquiet, by an unfortunate circumstance that attended it. There had been the same year so much notice taken of irregular marriages, that archbishop Whitgift had signified to the bishops of his province to prosecute strictly all that should either offend in point of time, place, or form. Whether Coke looked upon his own or the lady’s quality, and their being married with the consent of the family, as placing them above such restrictions, or whether he did not advert to them, it is certain that they were married in a private house, without either banns or license; upon which he and his new married lady, the minister who officiated, Thomas lord Burleigh, and several other persons, were prosecuted in the archbishop’s court; but upon their submission by their proxies, were absolved from excommunication, and the penalties consequent upon it, because, says the record, they had offended, not out of contumacy, but through ignorance of the law in that point. The affair of greatest moment, in which, as attorney-general, he had a share in this reign, was the prosecution of the earls of Essex and Southampton, who were brought to the bar in Westminster-hall, before the lords commissioned for their trial, Feb. 19, 1600. After he had laid open the nature of the treason, and the many obligations the earl of Essex was under to the queen, he is said to have closed with these words, that, “by the just judgment of God, he of his earldom should be Robert the last, that of a kingdom thought to be Robert the first.”

In May 1603, he was knighted by king James; and the same year managed the trial of sir W. Raleigh, at Winchester, whither the term was adjourned, on account of the plague being at London; but he lessened himself greatly in the opinion of the world, by his treatment of that unfortunate gentleman; as he employed a coarse and scurrilous language against him hardly to be paralleled. The resentment of the public was so great upon this occasion, that as has been generally believed, Shakspeare, in his comedy of the “Twelfth Night,' 7 hints at this strange behaviour of sir Edward Coke at Raleigh’s trial. He was likewise reproached with this indecent behaviour in a letter which sir Francis Bacon wrote to him after his own fall; wherein we have the following passage:” As your pleadings were wont to insult our misery, and inveigh literally against the person, so are you still careless in this point to praise and disgrace upon slight grounds, and that suddenly; so that your reproofs or commendations are for the most part neglected and contemned, when the censure of a judge, coming slow, but sure, should be a brand to the guilty, and a crown to the virtuous. You will jest at any man in public, without any respect to the person’s dignity, or your own. This disgraces your gravity more than it can advance the opinion of your wit; and so do all your actions, which we see you do directly with a touch of vainglory. You make the laws too much lean to your opinion; whereby you shew yourself to be a legal tyrant, &c.“January 27, 1606, at the trial of the gun-powder conspirators, and March 28 following, at the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, he made two very elaborate speeches, which were soon after published in a book entitled” A true and perfect relation of the whole Proceedings against the late most barbarous traitors, Garnet, a Jesuit, and his confederates, &c.“1606, 4to. Cecil earl of Salisbury, observed in his speech upon the latter trial,” that the evidence had been so well distributed and opened by the attorney-general, that he had never heard such a mass of matter better contracted, nor made more intelligible to the jury.“This appears to have been really true; so true, that many to this day esteem this last speech, especially, his masterpiece. It was probably in reward for this service, that he was appointee! lord chief justice of the common-pleas the same year. The motto he gave upon his rings, when he was called to the degree of serjeant, in order to qualify him for this promotion, was,” Lex est tutissima cassis;“that is,” The law is the safest helmet.“Oct. 25, 1613, he was made lord chief justice of the kingVbench; and in Nov. was sworn of his majesty’s privy-council. In 1615 the king deliberating upon the choice of a lord- chancellor, when that r-ost should become vacant, by the death or resignation of Egerton lord Ellesmere, sir Francis Bacon wrote to his majesty a letter upon that subject, wherein he lias the following passage, relating to the lord chiefjustice:”If you take my lord Coke, this will follow: First, your majesty shall put an over-ruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme. Next, you shall blunt his industries in matter of finances, which seemeth to aim at another place. And lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your majesty’s saddle." The disputes and animosities between these two great men are well known. They seem to have been personal; and they lasted to the end of their lives. Coke was jealous of Bacon’s reputation in many parts of knowledge; by whom, again, he was envied for the high reputation he had acquired in one; each aiming to be admired particularly in that in which the other excelled. Coke was the greatest lawyer of his time, but could be nothing more. If Bacon was not so, we can ascribe, it only to his aiming at a more exalted character; not being able, or at least not willing, to confine the universality of his genius within one inferior province of learning.

Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder in the Tower now broke out, at the distance of two years after; for Overbury died Sept. 16, 1613, and the judicial proceedings against his murderers did not commence till Sept. 1615. In this affair sir Edward acted with great vigour, and, as some think, in a manner highly to be commended; yet his enemies, who were numerous, and had formed a design to humble his pride and insolence, took occasion, from certain circumstances, to misrepresent him both to the king and people. Many circumstances concurred at this time to hasten his fall. He was led to oppose the king in a dispute relating to his power of granting commendams, and James did not choose to have his prerogative disputed, even in cases where it might well be questioned. He had a contest with the lord chancellor Egerton, in which it is universally allowed that he was much to be blamed. Sir Edward, as a certain historian informs us, had heard and determined a case at common law; after which it was reported that there had been juggling. The defendant, it seems, had prevailed with the plaintiff’s principal witness not to attend, or to give any evidence in the cause, provided he could he excused. One of the defendant’s agents undertakes to excuse him; and carrying the maa to a tavern, called for a gallon of sack in a vessel, and bid him drink. As soon as he had laid his lips to the flaggon, the defendant’s agent quitted the room. When this witness was called, the court was informed that he was unable to come; to prove which, this agent was produced, who deposed, “that he left him in such a condition, that if he continued in it but a quarter of an hour, he was a dead man.” For want of this person’s testimony the cause was lost, and a verdict given for the defendant. The plaintiffs, finding themselves injured, carried the business into chancery for relief; but the defendants, having had judgment at common law, refused to obey the orders of that court. Upon this, the lord chancellor commits them to prison for contempt of the court: they petition against him in the star-chamber; the lord chief justice Coke joins with them, foments the difference, and threatens the lord chancellor with a pnemunire. The chancellor makes the king acquainted with the business, who, after consulting sir Francis Bacon, then his attorney, and some other lawyers upon the affair, justified the lord chancellor, and gave a proper rebuke to Coke.

Roger Coke gives us a different account of the occasion of the chief justice’s being in disgrace; and informs us, that he was one of the first who felt the effects of the power of the rising favourite, Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham. The author of the notes on Wilson’s “Life of James,” published in the second volume of Kennet’s “Complete History of England,” tells us “that sir Edward lost the king’s favour, and some time after his place, for letting fall some words upon one of the trials, importing his suspicion that Overbury had been poisoned to prevent the discovery of another crime of -the same nature, committed upon one of the highest rank, whom he termed a sweet prince; which was taken to be meant of prince Henry.” Whatever were the causes of his disgrace, Which it is probable were many, he was brought upon his knees before the council at Whitehall, June J 6 16; and offences were charged upon him by Ylverton, the solicitor-general, implying, amongst other things, speeches of high contempt tittered in the seat of justice, and uncomely and undutiful carriage in the presence of his majesty, “the privy council, and judges.” Soon after, he presented himself again at the council-table upon his knees, when secretary Winwood informed him, that report had been made to his majesty of what had passed there before, together with the answer that he had given, and that too in the most favourable manner; that his majesty was no ways satisfied with respect to any of the heads; but that notwithstanding, as well out of his own clemency, as in regard to the former services of his lordship, the king was pleased not to deal heavily with him: and therefore had decreed, 1. That he be sequestered from the council-table, until his majesty’s pleasure be further known. 2. That he forbear to ride his summer circuit as justice of assize. 3. That during this vacation, while he had time to live privately and dispose himself at home, he take into his consideration and reviewhis books of Reports; wherein, as his majesty is informed, be many extravagant and exorbitant opinions set down and published for positive and good law: and if, in reviewing and reading thereof, he find any thing fit to be altered or amended, the correction is left to his discretion. Among other things, the king was not well pleased with the title of those books, wherein he styled himself “lord chief justice of England,” whereas he could challenge no more but lord chief justice of the King’s-bench. And having corrected what in his discretion he found meet in these Reports, his majesty’s pleasure was, he should bring the same privately to himself, that he might consider thereof, as in his princely judgment should be found expedient. Hereunto Mr. secretary advised him to conform himself in all duty and obedience, as he ought; whereby he might hope that his majesty in time would receive him again to his gracious and princely favour. To this the lord chief justice made answer, that he did in all humility prostrate himself to his majesty’s good pleasure; that he acknowledged that decree to be just, and proceeded rather from his majesty’s exceeding mercy than his justice; gave humble thanks to their lordships for their goodness towards him; and hoped that his behaviour for the future would be such as would deserve their lordships’ favours. From which answer of sir Edward’s we may learn that he was, as such men always are, as dejected and fawning in adversity, as he was insolent and overbearing in prosperity; the same meanness and poorness of spirit influencing his behaviour in both conditions.

In October he was called before the chancellor, and forbid Westminster-hall; and also ordered to answer several exceptions against his Reports. In November the king removed him from the office of lord chief justice. Upon his disgrace, sir Francis Bacon wrote him an admonitory letter, in which he remonstrates to him several errors yi his former behaviour and conduct. We have made a citation from this letter already; we will here give the remainder of it: for though perhaps it was not very generous in Bacon to write such a letter at such a season, even to a, professed adversary, yet it will serve to illustrate the character and manners of Coke. In this letter Bacon advised sir Edward to be humbled for this visitation and observes, “that affliction only levels the molehills of pride in us, ploughs up the heart, and makes it fit for wisdom to sow her seed, and grace to bring forth her increase.” He afterwards points out to him some errors in his conduct. “In discourse,” says he, “you delight to speak too much, not to hear other men. This, some say, becomes a pleader, not a judge. For by this sometimes your affections are entangled with a love of your own arguments, though they be the weaker; and with rejecting of those which, when your affections were settled, your own judgment would allow for strongest. Thus, while you speak in your element, the law, no man ordinarily equals you; but when you wander, as you often delight to do, you then wander indeed, and never give such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election; when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak, as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded, Secondly, you cloy your auditory. When you would be observed, speech must be either sweet or short. Thirdly, you converse with books, not men, and books specially humane; and have no excellent choice with men, who are the best books. For a man of action and employment you seldom converse with, and then but with underlings; not freely, but as a schoolmaster, ever to teach, never to learn. But if sometimes you would in your familiar discourse hear others, and make election of such as knew what they speak, you should know many of those tales, which you tell, to be but ordinary; and many other things, which you delight to repeat and serve in for novelties, to be but stale. As in your pleadings you were wont to insult even misery, and inveigh bitterly against the person so are you still careless in this point,” &c. “Your too much love of the world is too much seen, when having the living of 10,000l. you relieve few or none. The hand that hath taken so much, can it give so little? Herein you shew no bowels of compassion, as if you thought all too little for yourself, or that God had given you all that you have, only to that end you should still gather more, and never be satisfied, but try how much you could gather, to account for all at the great and general audit day. We desire you to amend this, and let your poor tenants in Norfolk find some comfort, where nothing of your estate is spent towards their relief, but all brought up hither to the impoverishing your country.” He then tells him, “that in the case of Overbury he used too many delays, till the delinquent’s hands were loose, and his own bound; and that he was too open in his proceedings, and so taught them how to defend themselves. But that,” continues he, “which we commend you for, are those excellent parts of nature and knowledge in the law, which you are endued withal. But these are only good in their good use. Wherefore we thank you heartily for standing stoutly in the commonwealth’s behalf; hoping, it proceedeth not from a disposition to oppose greatness, as your enemies say, but to do justice, and deliver truth indifferently without respect of persons.”

Low as sir Edward was fallen, he was afterwards restored to credit and favour; the first step to which was, his proposing a match between the earl of Buckingham’s elder brother, sir John Villiers, and his younger daughter by the lady Hatton: for he knew no other way of gaining that favourite. This, however, occasioned a violent dispute and quarrel between sir Edward and his wife; who, resenting her husband’s attempt to dispose of her daughter without asking her leave, carried away the young lady, and lodged her at sir Edmund Withipole’s house near Oatlands. Upon this, sir Edward wrote immediately to the earl of Buckingham, to procure a warrant from the privy-council to restore his daughter to him; but before he received an answer, discovering where she was, he went with his sons and took her, by force, which occasioned lady Hatton to complain in her turn to the privy council. Much confusion followed; and this private match became at length an affair of state. The differences were at length made up, in appearance at least, Sept. 1617; sir Edward was restored to favour, and reinstated in his place as privy-councillor; and sir John Villiers was married to Mrs. Frances Coke at Hampton-court, with all the splendour imaginable. This wedding, however, cost sir Edward dear. For besides 10,000l. paid in money at two payments, he and his son sir Robert did, pursuant to articles and directions of the lords of the council, assure to sir John Villiers a rent-charge of 2000 marks per annum during sir Edward’s life, and of 900l. a year during the lady Hatton’s life, if she survived her husband; and after both their deaths, the manor of Stoke in Buckinghamshire, of the value of 900l. per annum, to sir John Villiers and his lady, and to the heirs of her body. The same were settled by good conveyances carefully drawn the January following, and certified to his majesty under the hands of two Serjeants and the attorneygeneral. All this time the quarrel subsisted between him and his wife: and many letters are still extant, which shew a great deal of heat and resentment in both parties. At the time of the marriage lady Hatton was confined at the complaint of her husband: for, since her marriage, she had purchased the island and castle of Purbeck, and several other estates in different counties; which made her greatly independent of her husband. However, their reconciliation was afterwards effected, but not till July 1621, and then by no less a mediator than the king.

A parliament was summoned, and met January 1621; and in February there was a great debate in the house of commons upon several points of importance, such as liberty of speech, the increase of popery, and other grievances. Sir Edward Coke was a member, and his age, experience, and dignity gave him great weight there: but it very soon appeared that he resolved to act a different part from what the court, and more especially the great favourite Buckingham, expected. He spoke very warmly; and also took occasion to shew, that proclamations against the tenor of acts of parliament were V9id: for which he is highly commended by Camden. The houses, being adjourned by the king’s command in June, met again in November; and fell into great heats about the commitment of sir Edwin Sands, soon after their adjournment, which had such unfortunate consequences, that the commons protested, Dec. 18, against the invasion of their privileges. The king prorogued the parliament upon the 21st; and on the 27th, sir Edward Coke was committed to the Tower, his chambers in the Temple broke open, and his papers delivered to sir Robert Cotton and Mr. Wilson to examine. January 6, 1622, the parliament was dissolved: and the same day sir Edward was charged before the council with having concealed some true examinations in the great cause of the earl of Somerset, and obtruding false ones: nevertheless, he was soon after released, but not without receiving high marks of the king’s resentment: for he was a second time turned out of the king’s privy-council, the king giving him this character, that “he was the fittest instrument for a tyrant that ever was in England.” And yet, says Wilson, in the house he called the king’s prerogative an overgrown monster. Towards the close of 1623 he was nominated, with several others, to whom large powers were given, to go gver to Ireland; which nomination, though accompanied with high expressions of kindness and confidence, was made with no other view but to get him out of the way for fear he should be troublesome, but he remained firm in his opinions, nor does it appear that he ever sought to be reconciled to the court; so that he was absolutely out of favour at the death of king James. In the beginning of the next reign, when it was found necessary to call a second parliament, he was pricked for sheriff of Bucks in 1625, to prevent his being chosen. He laboured all he could to avoid it, but in vain; so that he was obliged to serve the office, and to attend the judges at the. assizes, where he had often presided as lord chief justice. This did not hinder his being elected knight of the shire for Bucks in the parliament of 1628, in which he distinguished himself more than any man in the house of commons, spoke warmly for the redress of grievances, argued boldly in defence of the liberty of the subject, and strenuously supported the privilege of the house. It was he that proposed and framed the petition of rights; and, June 1628, he made a speech, in which he named the duke of Buckingham as the cause of all our miseries, though, lord Clarendon tells us, he had before blasphemously styled him the saviour of the nation; but although there is no great reason to conclude that all this opposition to the arbitrary measures of the court flowed from any principles of patriotism, he became for a time the idol of the party in opposition to the court, and his conduct at this time is still mentioned with veneration by their historians and advocates. Our own opinion is, that although lord Coke was occasionally under the influence of temper or interest, he was, upon the whole, a more independent character than his enemies will admit. After the dissolution of this parliament, which happened the March following, he retired to his house at Stoke Fogeys in Buckinghamshire^ where he spent the remainder of his days; and there, Sept. 3, 1634, breathed his last in his eighty-sixth year, expiring with these words in his mouth, as his monument informs us, “Thy kingdom come! thy will be done!” While he lay upon his death-bed, sir Francis Windebank, by an order of council, came to search for seditious and dangerous papers by virtue whereof he took his “Commentary upon Littleton,” and the “History of his Life” before it, written with his own hand, his “Commentary upon Magna Charta, &c.” the “Pleas of the Crown,” and the “Jurisdiction of Courts,” his eleventh and* twelfth “Reports” in ms. and 51 other Mss. with the last will of sir Edward, wherein he had been making provision for his younger grand-children. The books and papers were kept till seven years after, when one of his sons in 1641 moved the house of commons, that the books and papers taken by sir Francis Windebank might be delivered to sir Robert Coke, heir of sir Edward; which the king was pleased to grant. Such of them as could be found were accordingly delivered up, but the will was never heard of more.

Sir Edward Coke was in his person well-proportioned, and his features regular. He was neat, but not nice, in his dress: and is reported to have said, “that the cleanness of a man’s clothes ought to put him in mind of keeping all clean within.” He had great quickness of parts, deep penetration, a faithful memory, and a solid judgment. He was wont to say, that “matter lay in a little room;” and in his pleadings he was concise, though in set speeches and in his writings too diffuse. He was certainly a great master of his profession, as even his enemies allow; had studied it regularly, and was perfectly acquainted with every thing relating to it. Hence he gained so high an esteem in Westminster-hall, and came to enjoy so large a share in the favour of the great lord Burleigh. He valued himself, and indeed not without reason, upon this, that he obtained all his preferments without employing either prayers or pence; and that he became the queen’s solicitor, speaker of the house of commons, attorney-general, chief justice of both benches, high-steward of Cambridge, and a member of the privy-council, without either begging or bribing. As he derived his fortune, his credit, and his greatness, from the law, so he loved it to a degree of intemperance. He committed every thing to writing with an industry beyond example, and, as we shall relate just now, published a great deal. He met with many changes of fortune; was sometimes in power, and sometimes in disgrace. He was, however, so excellent at making the best of a disgrace, that king James used to compare him to a cat, who always fell upon her legs. He was upon occasion a friend to the church and clergy: and thus, when he had lost his public employments, and a great peer was inclined to question the rights of the church of Norwich, he hindered it, by telling him plainly, that “if he proceeded, he would put on his cap and gown again, and follow the cause through Westminster-hall.” He had many benefices in his own patronage, which he is said to have given freely to men of merit; declaring in his law language, that he would have law livings pass by livery and seisin, and not by bargain and sale.

In 1614 there was published, “A speech and charge at Norwich assizes,” intended to pass for sir Edward Coke’s; but he clearly disclaims it, in the preface to the seventh part of his Reports. He did indeed make a speech at that time, and in some measure to this purpose; but these notes of it were gathered and published without his knowledge in a very incorrect and miserable manner, and published with a design to prejudice and expose him. In 1614 was published in folio, “A book of entries, containing perfect and approved precedents of courts, declarations, informations, plaints, indictments, bars, duplications, rejoinders, pleadings, processes, continuances, essoigns, issues, defaults, departure in despight of the court, demurrers, trials, judgments, executions, and all other matters and proceedings, in effect, concerningthe practic part of the laws of England, in actions real, personal, mixed, and in appeals: being very necessary to be known, and of excellent use for the modern practice of the law, many of them containing matters in law, and points of great learning; collected and published for the common good and beneh't of all the studious and learned professors of the laws of England, 1” His “Institutes” are divided into four parts. The first is the translation and comment upon the “Tenures of Sir Thomas Littleton,” one of the judges of the common-pleas in the reign of Edward IV. It was published in his lifetime, in 1628 but that edition was very incorrect. There was a second published in 1629, said to be revised by the author, and in which this work is much amended; yet several mistakes remained even in that. The second part of the “Institutes” gives us magna charta, and other select statutes, in the languages in which they were first enacted, and much more correct than they were to be had any where else. He adds to these a commentary full of excellent learning, wherein he shews how the common law stood before those statutes were made, how far they are introductory of new laws, and how far declaratory of the old; what were the causes of making them, to what ends they were made, and in what degree, at the time of his writing, they were either altered or repealed. The third part of the “Institutes” contains the criminal law or pleas of the crown: where, among other things, he shews, in regard to pardons and restitutions, how far the king may proceed by his prerogative, and where the assistance of parliament is necessary. The fourth part of the “Institutes” comprehends the jurisdiction of all the courts in this kingdom, from the high court of parliament down to the court-baron. This part not being published till after his decease, there are many inaccuracies and some greater faults in it, which were animadverted upon and amended in a book written by William Pry nne, esq. and published in 1669. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth editions of the “Institutes,” 1788, 1789, and 1794, by Hargrave and Butler, are esteemed the best.

We have besides of his, 1. A treatise of Bail and Mainprize, 1637, 4to. 2. Reading on the state of Fines, 27 Edw. I. French, 1662, 4to. 3. Complete Copyholder, 1640, 4to. There was added in another edition of this book in 1650, 4to, Calthorpe’s reading between a lord of a manor and a copyholder his tenant, &c. And in the editions in 12mo, 1668 and 1673, there is a supplement; but a more complete specification of the various editions may be found in Bridgman’s “Legal Bibliography.”

, a French poet, was born at Janville in the Orleanois in 1735, and was a votary of the muses from his very infancy. He made his first appearance in the literary world in 1758, by a poetical translation of Pope’s Eloisa to Ahelard; in which he was said to have retained the warmth of the original, with the richness of its images. His tragedies of Astarbe and Calisto, the one performed in 1758, and the other in 1760, were not so successful. The complexion of them is indeed sorrowful, and even gloomy, but never tragical. The “Temple of Guides,” and two of the “Nights” of Young, in French verse, the epistle to M. Duhamel, and the poem of Prometheus, which appeared afterwards, are in general versified in a soft and harmonious manner. The epistle to M. Duhamel, which is replete with rural descriptions and sentiments of beneficence, has been ranked by many of its enthusiastic admirers with the best epistles of Boileau. These several performances excited the attention of the French academy towards the author, who elected him a meaaber at the beginning of 1776; but before he had pronounced his inaugural discourse, he was snatched away by death, in the flower of his age, the 7th of April in the same year, after he had risen from his bed in a state of extreme Weakness, and burnt what he had written of a translation of Tasso. This poet, who has so well described the charms of nature in his poems, and who even understood the art of drawing, yet in all the variety of colours saw only white and black, and only the different combinations of light and shade. This singular organization, however, did not weaken the charms of his imagination. His works were collected in two vols. 8vo, Paris, 1779, and have been since reprinted in 12mo. Among these is a comedy entitled “Les perfidies a la mode,” in which are some agreeable verses, two or three characters well enough drawn, but not a single spark of the vis comica.

, marquis of Segnelai, one of the greatest statesmen that France ever had, was born at Paris in 1619, and descended from a family that lived at Rheirns in Champaigne, originally from Scotland (the Cuthberts), but at that time no way considerable for its splendour. His grandfather is said to have been a winejuerchant, and his father at first followed the same occupation but afterwards traded in cloth, and at last in silk. Our Colbert was instructed in the arts of merchandize, and afterwards became clerk to a notary. In 1648 his relation John Baptist Colbert, lord of S. Pouange, preferred him to the service of Michael le Tellier, secretary of state, whose sister he had married; and here he discovered such diligence and exactness in executing all the commissions that were entrusted to his care, that he quickly grew distinguished. One day his master sent him to cardinal Mazarine, who was then at Sedan, with a letter written by the queen mother; and ordered him to bring it back after that minister had seen it. Colbert carried the letter, and would not return without it, though the cardinal treated him roughly, used several arts to deceive him, and obliged him to wait for it several days. Some time after, the cardinal returning to court, and wanting one to write his agencte or memoranda, desired le Tellier to furnish him with a fit person for that employment; and Colbert being presented to him, the cardinal had some remembrance of him, and desired to know where he had seen him. Colbert was afraid of putting him in mind of Sedan, lest the remembrance of his behaviour in demanding the queen’s letter should renew his anger. But the cardinal was so far from disliking him for his faithfulness to his late master, that he received him on condition that he should serve him with the like zeal and fidelity.

Colbert applied himself wholly to the advancement of his master’s interests, and gave him so many marks of his diligence and skill that afterwards he made him his intendant. He accommodated himself so dexterously to the inclinations of that minister, by retrenching his superfluous expences, that he was entrusted with the sale of benefices and governments, and it was by Colbert’s counsel that the cardinal obliged the governors of frontier places to maintain their garrisons with the contributions they exacted. He was sent to Rome, to negociate the reconciliation of cardinal de Retz, for which the pope had shewed some concern; and to persuade his holiness to fulfill the treaty concluded with his predecessor Urban VIII. From all these services Mazarine conceived so high an opinion of Colbert’s abilities, that at his death in 1661, he earnestly recommended him to Louis XIV. as the most proper person to regulate the finances, which at that time were in great confusion. Louis accepted the recommendation, and Colbert being appointed intendant of the finances, applied himself to their regulation, and succeeded: though it procured him many enemies. France is also obliged to this minister for establishing at that time her trade with the East and West Indies, from which she once reaped innumerable advantages.

In 1664 he became superintendant of the buildings; and from that time applied himself earnestly to the enlarging and adorning of the royal edifices, particularly those splendid works, the palace of the Tuilleries, the Louvre, St. Germain, Fontainbleau, and Chombord. Versailles, which he found a dog-kenuel, where Louis XIII. kept his hunting equipage, he rendered a palace fit for the greatest monarch. Colbert also formed several designs for increasing the beauty and convenience of the capital city, and had the principal hand in the establishment of the academy for painting and sculpture in 1664, which originated in the following circumstance: the king’s painters and sculptors, with other skilful professors of those arts, being prosecuted at law by the master-painters at Paris, joined together in a society, under the name of the Royal Academy for sculpture and painting, with a view to hold public exercises, for the sake of improving the arts, and advancing them to the highest degree of perfection. They put themselves under the protection of Mazarine, and chose chancellor Seguier their vice-protector; and after Mazarine’s death chose Seguier their protector, and Colbert their vice-protector; and it was at his solicitation that they were finally established by a patent, containing new privileges, in 1664. Colbert, being made protector after the death of Seguier, thought fit that an historiographer should be appointed, whose business it should be to collect all curious and useful observations made at their conferences. His majesty acquiesced in the appointment of this new officer, and settled on him a salary of 300 livres. To Colbert also the lovers of naval knowledge are obliged, for the erection of the academy of sciences; and in 1667, for the royal observatory at Paris, which was first inhabited by Cassini. France also owes to him all the advantages she receives by the union of the two seas; a prodigious work, begun in 1666, and finished in 1680. Colbert was besides very attentive to matters which regarded the order, decency, and well-being of society. He undertook to reform the courts of justice, and to put a stop to the usurpation of noble titles; which was then very common in France. In the former of those attempts he failed, in the latter he succeeded.

In 1669 he was made secretary of state, and entrusted with the management of affairs relating to the sea: and his performances in this province were answerable to the confidence his majesty reposed in him. He suppressed several offices, which were chargeable and useless: and in the mean time, perceiving the king’s zeal for the extirpation of heresy, he shut up the chamber instituted by the edicts of Paris and Roan. He proposed several new regulations concerning criminal courts; and was extremely severe with the parliament of Tholouse, for obstructing the measures he took to carry the same into execution. His main design in reforming the tedious methods of proceeding at law, was to give the people more leisure to apply themselves to trading: for the advancement of which he procured an edict, to erect a general insurance-office at Paris, for merchants, &c. In 1672 he was made minister of state, and amidst these multiplied employments, it has been observed that he never neglected his own or his family’s interest and grandeur, or missed any opportunity of advancing either. He had been married many years, had sons and daughters grown up; all of whom, as occasion served, he took care to marry to great persons, and thus strengthened his interest by powerful alliances. Business, however, was certainly Colbert’s natural turn; and he not only loved it, but was very impatient of interruption in it. A lady of great quality was one day urging him, when he was in the height of his power, to do her some piece of service; and perceiving him inattentive and inflexible, threw herself at his feet,- in the presence of above an hundred persons, crying, “I beg your greatness, in the name of God, to grant me this favour 1” Upon which, Colbert, kneeling down over against her, replied, in the same mournful tone, “I conjure you, madam, in the name of God, not to disturb me'!”

This great minister died of the stone, Sept. 6, 1683, in his 65th year, leaving behind him six sons and three daughters. He was of a middle stature, his mien low and dejected, his air gloomy, and his aspect stern. He slept little, and was extremely temperate. Though naturally sour and morose, tie knew how to act the lover, and had mistresses. He was of a slow conception, but spoke judiciously of every thing after he had once comprehended it. He understood business perfectly well, and he pursued it with unwearied application. This enabled him to fill the most important places with high reputation and credit^ while his influence diffused itself' through every part of the government. He restored the finances, the navy, the commerce of France; and he erected those various works of art, which have ever since been monuments of his taste and magnificence. He was a lover of learning, though not a man of learning himself, and liberally conferred do r nations and pensions upon scholars in other countries, while he established and protected academies in his own. He invited into France painters, statuaries, mathematicians, and eminent artists of all kinds, thus giving new life to the sciences. Upon the whole, he was a wise, active, generous-spirited minister; ever attentive to the interests of his master, the happiness of the people, the progress of arts and manufactures, and to every thing that could advance the credit and interest of his- country, while his failings were such as could not injure him in the opinion of his age and country.

, an English lawyer, and legal antiquary, was born in the Isle of Ely in 1722, and educated at St. John’s college, Cambridge, which he left after taking his bachelor’s degree in 1743; and having studied law in the Inner Temple, was admitted to the bar. He became afterwards Registrar to the corporation of Bedford Level, and published “A Collection of Laws which form the constitution of the Bedford Level Corporation, with an introductory history thereof,” 1761, 8vo. In 1772 he was editor of a new edition of Sir William Dugdale’s “History of embanking and drayning of divers terms and marshes, &c.” originally printed 1662, to I. This new edition was first undertaken by the corporation of Bedford Level; but upon application to Richard Geast, esq. of Blythe~Hall, in the county of Warwick, a lineal maternal descendant of the author, he desired that it might be entirely conducted at his own e.vpence. Mr. Cole added three very useful indexes. Mr. Cole’s next appearance in the literary world was as editor to Mr. Soame Jenyns’s works, with whom he had lived in habits of friendship for near half a century. Mr. Jenyns, who died in 1787, bequeathed to him the copy-right of all his published works, and consigned to his care all his literary papers, with a desire that he would collect together and superintend the publication of his works. In executing this, Mr. Cole made such a selection as shewed his regard for the reputation of his friend, and prefixed a life written with candour. Mr. Cole, who had long lived a private and retired life, died Dec. 18, 1804, at his house in Edwardstreet, Cavendish-square, after a tedious and severe illness, in the eighty-second year of his age.

, a person of considerable learning in the sixteenth century, was born at Godshill in the Isle of Wight, and educated in Wykeham’s school near Winchester. From thence he was chosen to New college, Oxford, of which he became perpetual fellow in 1523, and studying the civil law, took the degree of bachelor in that faculty, March 3, 1529-30. He then travelled into Italy, and improved himself in his studies at Padua, being a zealous Roman catholic, but upon his return to England, he acknowledged king Henry VIII. to be the supreme head of the church of England. In 1540, he took the degree of doctor of the civil law; and the same year resigned his fellowship, being then settled in London, an advocate in the court of arches, prebendary of Yatminster Secunda in the church of Sarum, and about the same time was made archdeacon of Ely. In September, 1540, he was admitted to the rectory of Chelmsford in Essex; and in October following, collated to the prebend of Holbora, which he resigned April 19, 1541; and was the same day collated to that of Sneating, which he voiding by cession in March ensuing, was collated to the prebend of Wenlakesbarne. In 1542 he was elected warden of New College; and in 1545 made rector of Newton Longville in Buckinghamshire. Soon after, when king Edward VI. came to the crown, Dr. Cole outwardly embraced, and preached up the reformation, but altering his mind, he resigned his rectory of Chelmsford in 1547; and in 1551 his wardenship of New College; and the year following, his rectory of Newton Longville. After queen Mary’s accession to the crown, he became again a zealous Roman catholic and in 1554 was made provost of Eton college, of which he had been fellow. The same year, June 20, he had the degree of D. D. conferred on him, and was one of the divines that disputed publicly at Oxford with archbishop Cranmer, and bishop Ridley. He also preached the funeral sermon before archbishop Cranmer' s execution. He was appointed one of the commissioners to visit the university of Cambridge; was elected dean of St. Paul’s the llth of December, 1556; made (August 8, 1557) vicar-general of the spiritualities under cardinal Pole, archbishop of Canterbury; and the first of October following, official of the arches, and dean of the peculiars; and in November ensuing, judge of the court of audience. In 1558 he was appointed one of the overseers of that cardinal’s will. In the first year of queen Elizabeth’s reign he was one of the eight catholic divines who disputed publicly at Westminster with the same number of protestants, and distinguished himself then and afterwards, by his writings in favour of popery, for which he was deprived of his deanery, fined five hundred marks, and imprisoned. He died in or near Wood -street compter, in London, in December, 1579. Leland has noticed him among other learned men of our nation. He is called by Strype “a person more earnest than wise,” but Ascham highly commends him for his learning and humanity. It is evident, however, that he accommodated his changes of opinions to the times, although in his heart he was among the most bigotted and implacable opponents of the reformed religion. His writings were, 1. “Disputation with archbishop Cranmer and bishop Ridley at Oxford,” in 1554. 2. “Funeral Sermon at the Burning of Dr. Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury.” Both these are in Fox’s Acts and Monuments. 3. “Letters to John Jewell, bishop of Salisbury, upon occasion of a Sermon that the said bishop preached before the queen’s majesty and her honourable council, anno 1560,” Lond.1560, 8vo, printed afterwards among Bishop Jewell’s works. 4. “Letters to bishop Jewell, upon occasion of a Sermon of his preached at Paul’s Cross on the second Sunday before Easter, in 1560.” 5. “An Answer to the first proposition of the Protestants, at the Disputation before the lords at Westminster.” These last are in Burnet’s History of the Reformation.

, an eminent antiquary and benefactor to the history and antiquities of England, was the son of William Cole, a gentleman of landed property, at Baberham in Cambridgeshire, by his third wife, Catharine, daughter of Theophilus Tuer, of Cambridge, merchant, but at the time she married Mr. Cole, the widow of Charles Apthorp . He was born at Little Abington, a village near Baberham, Aug. 3, 1714, and received the early part of “his education under the Rev. Mr. Butts at Saffron-Walden, and at other small schools. From these he was removed to Eton, where he was placed under Dr. Cooke, afterwards provost, but to whom he seems to have contracted an implacable aversion. After remaining five years on the foundation at this seminary, he was admitted a pensioner of Cla/e hall, Cambridge, Jan. 25, 1733; and irt April 1734, was admitted to one of Freeman’s scholarships, although not exactly qualified according to that benefactor’s intention: but in 1735, on the death of his father, from whom he inherited a handsome estate, he entered himself a fellow-commoner of Clare Hall, and next year removed to King’s college, where he had a younger brother, then a fellow, and was accommodated with better apartments. This last circumstance, and the society of his old companions of Eton, appear to have been his principal motives for changing his college. In April 1736, he travelled for a short time in French Flanders with his halfbrother, the late Dr. Stephen Apthorp, and in October of the same year he took the degree of B. A. In 1737, in consequence of bad health, he went to Lisbon, where he remained six months, and returned to college May 1738. The following year he was put into the commission of the peace for the county of Cambridge, in which capacity he acted for many years. In 1740 his friend lord Montfort, then lord lieutenant of the county, appointed him one of his deputy lieutenants and in the same year he proceeded M. A. In 1743, his health beting again impaired, he took another trip through Flanders for five or six weeks, visiting St. Omer’s, Lisle, Tournay, &c. and other principal places, of which he has given an account in his ms collections. In Dec. 1744 he was ordained deacon in the collegiate church of Westminster, by Dr. Wilcocks, bishop of Rochester, and was in consequence for some time curate to Dr. Abraham Oakes, rector of Wethersfield in Suffolk. In 1745, after being admitted to priest’s orders, he was made chaplain to Thomas earl of Kinnoul, in which office he was continued by the succeeding earl, George. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1747; and appears to have resided at Haddenham in the Isle of Ely in 1749, when he was collated by bishop Sherlock to the rectory of Hornsey in Middlesex, which he retained only a very short time. Speaking of that prelate, he says,” He gave me the rectory of Hornsey, yet his manner was such that I soon resigned it again to him. I have not been educated in episcopal trammels, and liked a more liberal behaviour; yet he was a great man, and I believe an honest man." The fact, however, was, as Mr. Cole elsewhere informs us, that he was inducted Nov. 25; but finding the house in so ruinous a condition as to require rebuilding, and in a situation so near the metropolis, which was always his aversion, and understanding that the bishop insisted on his residing, he resigned within a month. This the bishop refused t accept, because Mr. Cole had made himself liable to dilapidations and other expences by accepting of it. Cole continued therefore as rector until Jan. 9, 1751, when he resigned it into the hands of the bishop in favour of Mr. Territ. During this time he had never resided, but employed a curate, the rev. Matthew Mapletoft. In 1753 he quitted the university on being presented by his early friend and patron, Browne Willis, esq. to the rectory of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, which he resigned March 20, 1767, in favour of his patron’s grandson, the rev. Thomas Willis, and this very honourably, and merely because he knew it was his patron’s intention to have bestowed it on his grandson had he lived to effect an exchange.

Having been an early and intimate acquaintance of Mr. Horace Walpole, the late earl of Orford, they went to France together in 1765, Mr. Walpole to enjoy the gaieties of that country, but Mr. Cole to seek a cheap residence, to which he might retire altogether. From the whole tenour of Mr. Cole’s sentiments, and a partiality, which in his Mss. he takes little pains to disguise, in favour of the Roman catholic religion and ceremonies, we suspect that cheapness was not the only motive for thi* intended removal. He had at this time his personal estate, which he tells us was a “handsome one,” and he held the living of Bletchley, both together surely adequate to the wants of a retired scholar, a man of little personal expence, and who had determined never to marry. He was, however, diverted from residing in France by the laws of that country, particularly the Droit d'Aubaine, by which the property of a stranger dying in France becomes the king’s, and which had not at that time been revoked. Mr. Cole at first supposed this could be no obstacle to his settling in Normandy; but his friend Mr. Walpole represented to him that his Mss. on which he set a high value, would infallibly become the property of the king of France, and probably be destroyed. This had a persuasive effect; and in addition to it, we have his own authority that this visit impressed his mind so strongly with the certainty of an impending revolution, that upon that account he preferred remaining in England. His expressions on this subject are remarkable, but not uncharacteristic “I did not like the plan of settling in France at that time, when the Jesuits were expelled, and the philosophic deists were so powerful as to threaten the destruction, not only of all the religious orders, but of Christianity itself.” There is a journal of this tour in vol. XXXIV. of his collections.

In 1767, after resigning Bletchley, he went into a hired house at Waterbeche, and continued there two years, while a house was fitting for him at Milton, a small village on the Ely road, near Cambridge, where he passed the remainder of his days, and from which he became familiarly distinguished as “Cole of Milton.” In May 1771, by lord Montfort’s favour, he was put into the commission o-f the peace for the town of Cambridge. In 1772, bishop Keene, without any solicitation, sent Mr. Cole an offer oif the vicarage of Maddingley, about seven miles from Milton, which, for reasons of convenience, he civilly declined, but has not spoken so civilly of that prelate in his ts Atbenae/' He was, however, instituted by Dr. Green, bishop ef Lincoln, to the vicarage of Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, on the presentation of Eton college, June 10, 1774, void by the cession of his uterine brother, Dr. Apthorp. He still, however, resided at Milton, where he died Dec. 16, 1782, in his sixty-eighth year, his constitution having been shattered and worn down by repeated attacks of the gout. Mr. Cole was an antiquary almost from the cradle, and had in his boyish days made himself acquainted with those necessary sciences, heraldry and architecture. He says, the first “essay of his antiquarianism” was taking a copy both of the inscription and tomb of Ray, the naturalist, in 1734; but it appears that, when he was at Eton school, he used during the vacations to copy, in trick, arms from the painted windows of churches, particularly Baberham iii Cambridgeshire, and Moulton in Lincolnshire* Yet, although he devoted his whole life to topography and biography, he did not aspire to any higher honour than that of a collector of information for the use of others, and certainly was liberal and communicative to his contemporaries, and so partial to every attempt to illustrate our English antiquities, that he frequently offered his services, where delicacy and want of personal knowledge would have perhaps prevented his being consulted.

What he contributed was in general, in itself, original and accurate, and would have done credit to a separate publication, if he had thought proper. Among the works which he assisted, either by entire dissertations, or by minute communications and corrections, we may enumerate Grose’s “Antiquities” Bentham’s “Ely” Dr. Ducarel’s publications; Philips’s “Life of Cardinal Pole” Gough’s “British Topography” the “Memoirs of the Gentlemen’s Society at Spalding” Mr. Nichols’s “Collection of Poems,” “Anecdotes of Hogarth,” “History of Hinckley,” and “Life of Bowyer.” With Granger he corresponded very frequently, and most of his corrections were adopted by that writer. Mr. Cole himself was a collector of portraits at a time when this trade was in few hands, and had a very valuable series, in the disposal of which he was somewhat unfortunate, and somewhat capricious, putting a different value on them at different times. When in the hope that lord Montstuart would purchase them, he valued them at a shilling each, one with another, which he says would have amounted to 160l. His collection must therefore have amounted to 3200 prints, but among these were many topographical articles: 130l. was offered on this occasion, which Mr. Cole declined accepting. This was in 1774; but previous to this, in 1772, he met with a curious accident, which had thinned his collection of portraits. This was a visit from an eminent collector. “He had,” says Mr. Cole, “heard of my collection of prints, and a proposal to see them was the consequence; accordingly, he breakfasted here next morning; and on a slight offer of accommodating him with such heads as he had not, he absolutely has taken one hundred and eighty-seven of my most valuable and favourite heads, such as he had not, and most of which had never seen; and all this with as much ease and familiarity as if we had known each other ever so long. However, I must do him the justice to say, that I really did offer him at Mr. Pemberton’s, that he might take such in exchange as he had not; but this I thought would not have exceeded above a dozen, or thereabouts, &c.” In answer to this account of the devastation of his collection, his correspondent Horace Walpole writes to him in the following style, which is not an unfair specimen of the manner in which, these correspondents treated their contemporaries: “I have had a relapse (of the gout), and have not been able to use my hand, or I should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by that Algerine hog. I pity you, dear sir, and feel for your awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousness. The beast has no sort of taste neither, and in a twelvemonth will sell them again. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself to have a collection, without any choice of what it should be composed. It is the most under-bred ywine I ever saw, but I did not know it was so ravenous. I wish you may get paid any how.” Mr. Cole, however, after all this epistolary scurrility, acknowledges that he was“honourably paid” at the rate of two shillings and sixpence each head, and one, on which he and Walpole set an uncommon value, and demanded back, was accordingly returned.

Mr. Cole’s ms Collections had two principal objects, first, the compilation of a work in imitation of Anthony Wood’s Athense, containing the lives of the Cambridge scholars; and secondly, a county history of Cambridge; and he appears to have done something to each as early as 1742. They now amount to an hundred volumes, small folio, into which he appears to have transcribed some document or other almost every day of his life, with very little intermission. He began with fifteen of these volumes, while at college, which he used to keep in a lock-up case in the university library, until he had examined every book in that collection from which he could derive any informstion suitable to his purpose, and transcribed many ms lists, records, &c. The grand interval from this labour was from 1752 to 1767, while he resided at Bletchley; but even there, from his own collection of books, and such as he could borrow, he went on with his undertaking, and daring frequent jour nies, was adding to his topographical drawings and descriptions. He had some turn for drawing, as his works every where demonstrate, just enough to give an accurate, but coarse outline. But it was at Cambridge and Milton where his biographical researches were pursued with most effect, and where he carefully registered every anecdote he could pick up in conversation; and, in characterising his contemporaries, may literally be said to have spared neither friend nor foe. He continued to fill his volumes in this way, almost to the end of his life, the last letter he transcribed being dated Nov. 25, 1782. Besides his topography and biography, he has transcribed the whole of his literary correspondence. Among his correspondents, Horace Walpole must be distinguished as apparently enjoying his utmost confidence; but their letters add very little to the character of either, as men of sincerity or candour. Botli were capable of writing polite, and even flattering letters to gentlemen, whom in their mutual correspondence, perhaps by the. same post, they treated with the utmost contempt and derision.

Throughout the whole of Mr. Cole’s Mss. his attachment to the Roman catholic religion is clearly to be deduced, and is often almost avowed. He never can conceal his hatred to the eminent prelates and martyrs who were the promoters of the Reformation. In this respect at least he resembled Anthony Wood, whose friends had some difficulty in proving that he died in communion with the church of England, and Cole yet more closely resembled him in his hatred of the puritans and dissenters. When in 1767 an order was issued from the bishops for a return of all papists or reputed papists in their dioceses, Cole laments that in some places none were returned, and in other places few, and assigns as a reason for this regret, that “their principles fare much more conducive to a peaceful and quiet subordination in government, and they might be a proper balance, in time of need, not only to the tottering state of Christianity in general, but to this church of England in particular, pecked against by every fanatic sect, whose good allies the infidels are well known to be but hardly safe from its own lukewarm members; and whose safety depends solely on a political balance.” The “lukewarm members,” he elsewhere characterizes as latitudinarians, including Clarke, Hoadly, and their successors, who held preferments in a church whose doctrines they opposed.

As late as 1778 we find Mr. Cole perplexed as to the disposal of his manuscripts; to give them to one college which he mentions, would, he says, “be to throw them into a horse-pond,” for “in that college they are so conceited of their Greek and Latin, that with them all other studies are mere barbarism.” He once thought of Eton college; but, the Mss. relating principally to Cambridge university and county, he inclined to deposit them in one of the libraries there; not in the public library, because too public, but in Emanuel, with the then master of which, Dr. Farmer, he was very intimate. Dr. Farmer, however, happening to suggest that he might find a better place for them, Mr. Cole, who was become peevish, and wanted to be courted, thought proper to consider this “coolness and indifference” as a refusal. In this dilemma he at length resolved to bequeath them to the British Museum, with this condition, that they should not be opened for twenty years after his death. For such a condition, some have assigned as a reason that the characters of many living persons being drawn in them, and that in no very favourable colours, it might be his wish to spare their delicacy; but, perhaps with equal reason, it has been objected that such persons would thereby be deprived of all opportunity of refuting his assertions, or defending themselves. Upon a careful inspection, however, of the whole of these volumes, we are not of opinion that the quantum of injury inflicted is very great, most of Cole’s unfavourable anecdotes being of that gossiping kind, on which a judicious biographer will not rely, unless corroborated by other au. thority. Knowing that he wore his pen at his ear, there were probably many who amused themselves with his prejudices. His collections however, upon the whole, are truly valuable; and his biographical references, in particular, while they display extensive reading and industry, cannot fail to assist the future labours of writers interested in the history of the Cambridge scholars.

, an English botanist, was the son of a clergyman, and born at Adderbury, in Oxfordshire, about 1626. After he had been well-instructed in grammar-learning and the classics, he was entered in 1642 of Me rton- college, in Oxford. In 1650 he took a degree in arts; after which he left the university, and retired to Putney, near London; where he lived several years, and became the most famous simpler or botanist or his time. In 1656 he published “The art of simpling, or an introduction to the knowledge of gathering plants, wherein the definitions, divisions, places, descriptions, and the like, are compendiously discoursed of;” with which was also printed “Perspicillum microcosmologicum, or, a prospective for the discovery of the lesser world, wherein man is a compendium, c.” And in 1657 he published “Adam in Eden, or Nature’s paradise: wherein is contained the history of plants, herbs, flowers, with their several original names.” Upon the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, he was made secretary to Duppa, bishop of Winchester, in whose service he died in 1662.

, author of a Dictionary once in much reputation, was born in Northamptonshire about 1640. Towards the end of 1658, he was entered of Magdalencollege, in Oxford, but left it without taking a degree; and retiring to London, taught Latin there to youths, and English to foreigners, about 1663, with good success in Russel-street, near Covent-garden, and at length became one of the ushers in merchant-taylors’ school. But being there guilty of some offence, he was forced to withdraw into Ireland, from whence he never returned. He was, says Wood, a curious and critical person in the English and Latin tongues, did much good in his profession, and wrote several useful and necessary books for the instruction of beginners. The titles of them are as follows: 1. “The Complete English Schoolmaster or, the most natural and easy method of spelling and reading English, according to the present proper pronunciation of the language in Oxford and London, &c.” Lond. 1674, 8vo. 3. “The newest, plainest, and shortest Short-hand; containing, first, a brief account of the short-hand already extant, with their alphabets and fundamental rules. Secondly, a plain and easy method for beginners, less burdensome to the memory than any other. Thirdly, a v new invention for contracting words, with special rules for contracting sentences, and other ingenious fancies, &c.” Lond. 1674, 8vo. 3. “Nolens Volens or, you shall make Latin, whether you will or no; containing the plainest directions that have been yet given upon that subject,” Lond. 1675, 8vo. With it is printed: 4. “The Youth’s visible Bible, being an alphabetical collection (from the whole Bible) of such general heads as were judged most capable of Hieroglyphics; illustrated with twenty-four copper-plates, &c.” 5. “An English Dictionary, explaining the difficult terms that are used in divinity, husbandry, physic, philosophy, law, navigation, mathematics, and other arts and sciences,” Lond. 1676, 8vo, reprinted several times since. 6. “A Dictionary, English-Latin, and Latin-English; containing all things necessary for the translating of either language into the other,” Lond. 1677, 4to, reprinted several times in 8vo; the 12th edition was in 1730. 7. “The most natural and easy Method of learning Latin, by comparing it with English: Together with the Holy History of Scripture-War, or the sacred art military, c.” Lond. 1677, 8vo. 8. “The Harmony of the Four Evangelists, in a metrical paraphrase on the history of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” Lond. 1679, 8vo, reprinted afterwards. 9. “The Young Scholar’s best Companion: or an exact guide or directory for children and youth, from the A B C, to the Latin Grammar, comprehending the whole body of the English learning, &c.” Lond. 12mo. Cole’s Dictionary continued to be a schoolbook in very general use, for some time after the publication of Ainswdrth’s Thesaurus. But it has fallen almost into total neglect, since other abridgments of Ainsworth have appeared, by Young, Thomas, and other persons. The men, however, who have been benefactors to the cause of learning, ought to be remembered with graiitude, though their writings may happen to be superseded by more perfeet productions. It is no small point of honour to be the means of paving the way for superior works.

, uncle to the preceding, was also a native of Northamptonshire, but became a trader in London, and probably an unsuccessful one, as during the time that Oxford was in possession of the parliamentary forces, we find him promoted to the office of steward to Magdalen college, by Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the famous independent president of that college. On the restoration, he was obliged to quit this situation, but acquired the preferable appointment of clerk to the East India company, which he probably held to his death, at London, in October 1688, upwards of eighty years old. He is known to this day by his “Practical Discourse of God’s Sovereignty,” London, 1673, 4to, and often reprinted in 8vo. The object of it is to refute the Arminians in those points concerning which they differ most from the Calvinists.

, a learned English divine, and the. founder of St. Paul’s school, was born in the parish of St. Antholin, London, in 1466, and was the eldest son of sir Henry Colet, knt. twice lord-mayor, who had besides him twenty-one children. In 1483 he was sent to Magdalen college in Oxford, where he spent seven years in the study of logic and philosophy, and took the degrees in arts. He was perfectly acquainted with Cicero’s works, and no stranger to Plato and Plotinus, whom he read together, that they might illustrate each other. He could, hcfwever, read them only in the Latin translations; for neither at school nor university had he any opportunity of learning the Greek, that language being then thought unnecessary, and even discouraged. Hence the proverb, “Cave a Graecis, ne lias haereticus,” that is, “Beware of Greek, lest you become an heretic;” and it is well known, that when Linacer, Grocyn, and others, afterwards professed to teach it at Oxford, they were opposed by a set of men who called themselves Trojans. Colet, however, was well skilled in mathematics; and having thus laid a good foundation of learning at home, he travelled abroad for farther improvement first to France, and then to Italy; and seems to have continued in those two countries from 1493 to 1497. But before his departure, and indeed when he was of but two years standing in the university, he was instituted to the rectory of Denington in Suffolk, to which he was presented by a relation of his mother, and which he held to the day of his death. This practice of taking livings, while thus under age, generally prevailed in the church of Rome; and Colet, being then an acolythe, which is one of their seven orders, was qualitied for it. He was also presented by his own father, Sept. 30, 1485, to the rectory of Thyrning in Huntingdonshire, but he resigned it about the latter end of 1493, probably before he set out on his travels. Being arrived at Paris, he soon became^ acquainted with the learned there, with the celebrated Budaeus in particular; and was afterwards introduced to Erasmus. In Italy he contracted a friendship with several eminent persons, especially with his own countrymen, Grocyn, Linacer, Lilly, and Latimer; who were learning the Greek tongue, then but little known in England, under those great masters Demetrius, Angel us Politianus, Hermolaus Barbarus, and Pomponius Sabinus. He took this opportunity of improving himself in this language; and having devoted himself to divinity, he read, while abroad, the best of the antient fathers, particularly Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome, but, it is said, very much undervalued St. Augustine. He looked sometimes also into Sco^ tus and Aquinas, studied the civil and canon law, made himself acquainted with the history and constitution of church and state; and with a view to refinement, not very common at that time, did not neglect to read such English poets, and other authors of the belles lettres, as were then extant. During his absence from England he was made a prebendary of York, and installed by proxy upon March 5, 1494, and was also made canon of St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, and prebendary of Good Easter, in the same church. Upon his return in 1497 he was ordained deacon in December, and priest in July following. He had, indeed, before he entered into orders, great temptations from his natural disposition to lay aside study, and give himself up to the gaiety of the court, for he was rather luxuriously inclined; but he curbed his passions by great temperance and circumspection, and after staying a few months with his father and mother at London, retired to Oxford.

Here he read public lectures on St. Paul’s epistles, without stipend or reward; which, being a new thing, drew a vast crowd of hearers, who admired him greatly. And here he strengthened his memorable friendship with Erasmus, who came to Oxford in 1497, which remained unshaken and inviolable to the day of their deaths. He continued these lectures three years; and in 1501 was admitted to proceed in divinity, or to the reading of the sentences. In 1502 he became prebendary of Durnesford, in the churcfa of Sarum, and in Jan. 1504, resigned his prebend of Good Easter. In the same year he commenced D. D. and in May 1505, was instituted to the prebend of Mora in St. Paul’s, London. The same year and month he was made dean of that church, without the least application of his own; and being raised to this high station, he began to reform the decayed discipline of his cathedral. He introduced a new practice of preaching himself upon Sundays and great festivals, and called to his assistance other learned persons, such as Grocyn, and Sowle, whom he appointed to read divinity-lectures. These lectures raised in the nation a spirit of inquiry after the holy scriptures, which had long been laid aside for the school divinity; and eventually prepared for the reformation, which soon after ensued. Colet was unquestionably in some measure instrumental towards it, though he did not live to see it effected; for he expressed a great contempt of religious houses, exposed the abuses that prevailed in them, and set forth the danger of imposing celibacy on the clergy. This way of thinking, together with his free and public manner of communicating his thoughts, which were then looked upon as impious and heretical, made him obnoxious to the clergy, and exposed him to persecution from the bishop of London, Dr. Fitzjames; who, being a rigid bigot, could not bear to have the corruptions in his church spoken against, and therefore accused him to archbishop Warham as a dangerous man, preferring at the same time some articles against him. But Warham, well knowing the worth and integrity of Colet, dismissed him, without giving him the trouble of putting in any formal answer. The bishop, however, not satisfied with that fruitless attempt, endeavoured afterwards to stir up the king and the court against him; nay, we are told in bishop Latimer’s sermons, that he was not only in trouble, but would have been burnt, if God had not turned the king’s heart to the contrary.

These troubles and persecutions made him weary of the world, so that he began to think of disposing of his effects, and of retiring. Having therefore a very plentiful estate without any near relations (for, numerous as his brethren were, he had outlived them all), he resolved, in the midst of life and health, to consecrate the whole property of it to some standing and perpetual benefaction. And this he performed by founding St. Paul’s school, in London, of which he appointed William Lilly first master in 1512. He ordained, that there should be in this school an high master, a surmaster, and a chaplain, who should teach gratis 153 children, divided into eight classes and he endowed it with lands and houses, amounting then to 122l. 4s. 7½d per annum, of which endowment he made the company of mercers trustees. To further his scheme of retiring, he built a convenient and handsome house near Richmond palace in Surrey, in which he intended to reside, but having been seized by the sweating sickness twice, and relapsing into it a third time, a consumption ensued, which proved fatal September 16, 1519, in his fifty-third year. He was buried in St. Paul’s choir, with an humble monument prepared for him several years before, and only inscribed with his bare name. Afterwards a nobler was erected to his honour by the company of mercers, which was destroyed with the cathedral in 1666; but the representation of it is preserved in sir William Dugdale’s “History of St. Paul’s,” and in Knight’s life of the dean. On the two sides of the bust was this inscription: “John Colet, doctor of divinity, dean of Paul’s, and the only founder of Paul’sschocrf, departed this life, anno 1519, the son of sir Henry Colet, knt. twise mayor of the cyty of London, and free of the company and mistery of mercers.” Lower, there were other inscriptions in Latin. About 1680, when the church was taking down in order to be rebuilt, his leaden coffin was found inclosed in the wall, about two feet and a half above the floor. At the top of it was a leaden plate fastened, whereon was engraved the dean’s name, his dignity, his benefactions, &c. Besides his dignities and preferments already mentioned, he was rector of the fraternity or gild of Jesus in St. Paul’s church, for which he procured new statutes; and was chaplain and preacher in ordinary-to Henry VIII; and, if Erasmus is not mistaken, one of the privy-council.

Of his writings, those which he published himself, or which have been published since his death, are as follow: 1. “Oratio habita a doctore Johanne Colet, decano sancti Pauli, ad clerum in convocatione, anno 1511.” This being hardly to be met with, except in the Bodleian library at Oxford, among archbishop Laud’s Mss. was reprinted by Knight in his appendix to the life of Colet; where also is reprinted an old English translation of it, supposed to have been done by the author himself. 2. “Rudimenta grammatices a Joanne Coleto, decano ecclesioe sancti Pauli Londin. in usum scholae ab ipso institutae:” commonly called “Paul’s Accidence, 1539,” 8vo. 3. “The construction of the eight parts of speech, entitled Absolutissimus de octo orationis partium constructione libellus:” which, with some alterations, and great additions, makes up the syntax in Lilly’s grammar, Antwerp, 1530, 8vo. 4. “Daily Devotions or, the Christian’s morning and evening sacrifice.” This is said not to be all of his composition. 5. “Monition to a godly Life,” 1534, 1563, &c. 6. “Epistolae ad Erasmum.” Many of them are printed among Erasmus’s epistles, and some at the end of Knight’s Life of Colet. There are still remaining in ms. others of his pieces, enumerated in the account of his Life by Knight. It is probable that he had no intention of publishing any thing himself; for he had an inaccuracy and incorrectness in his way of writing, which was likely to expose him to the censures of critics; and besides, was no perfect master of the Greek tongue, without which he thought a man was nothing. The pieces above mentioned were found after his death in a very obscure corner of his study, as if he had designed they should lie buried in oblivion; and were written in such a manner as if intended to be understood by nobody but himself. With regard to sermons, he wrote but few; for he generally preached without notes.

The descriptions which are given of his person and character are much to his advantage. He was a tall, comely, graceful, well-bred man; and of uncommon learning and piety. In his writings his style was plain and unaffected; and for rhetoric he had rather a contempt, than a want of it. He could not bear that the standard of good writing should be taken from the exact rules of grammar; which, he often said, was apt to obstruct a purity of language, not to be obtained but by reading the best authors. This contempt of grammar, though making him sometimes inaccurate, and, as we have observed, laying him open to the critics, did not hinder him from attaining a very masterly style; so that his preaching, though popular, and adapted to mean capacities, was agreeable to men of wit and learning, and in particular was much admired by sir Thomas More. With regard to some of his notions, he was an eminent forerunner of the reformation; and he and Erasmus jointly promoted it, not only by pulling down those strong holds of ignorance and corruption, the scholastic divinity, and entirely routing both the Scotists and Thomists, who had divided the Christian world between them, but also by discovering the shameful abuses of monasteries, and the folly and danger of imposing celibacy upon the clergy; to which places he gave little or nothing while he lived, and left nothing when he died. Colet thought immorality in a priest more excusable than pride and avarice; and was with no sort of men more angry than with those bishops who, instead of shepherds, acted the part of wolves, and who, under the pretence of devotions, ceremonies, benedictions, and indulgences, recommended themselves to the veneration of the people, while in their hearts they were slaves to filthy lucre. He condemned auricular confession; and was content to say mass only upon Sundays and great festivals, or at least upon very few days besides. He had gathered up several authorities from the ancient fathers against the current tenets and customs of the church; and though he did not openly oppose the established religion, yet he shewed a particular kindness and favour to those who disliked the worshiping of images. As to his moral qualities, he was a man of exemplary temperance, and all other virtues: and is so represented by his intimate friend Erasmus, in an epistle to Jodocus Jonas, where the life, manners, and qualifications of Colet are professedly described.

, the second of the name, of an ancient family, admiral of France, was born the 16th of February 1516, at Chatillon-sur-Loing. He bore arms from his very infancy. He signalized himself under Francis I. at the battle of Cerisoles, and under Henry II. who made him colonel-general of the French infantry, and afterwards admiral of France, in 1552; favours which he obtained by the brilliant actions he performed at the battle of Renti, by his zeal for military discipline, by his victories over the Spaniards, and especially by the defence of St. Quintin. The admiral threw himself into that place, and exhibited prodigies of valour; but the town being forced, he was made prisoner of war. After the death of Henry II. he put himself at the head of the protestants against the Guises, and formed so powerful a party as to threaten ruin to the Romish religion in France. We are told by a contemporary historian, that the court had not a more formidable enemy, next to Conde, who had joined with him. The latter was more ambitious, more enterprising, more active. Coligni was of a sedater temper, more cautious, and fitter to be the leader of a party; as unfortunate, indeed, in war as Conde, but often repairing by his ability what had seemed irreparable; more dangerous after a defeat, than his enemies after a victory; and moreover adorned with as many virtues as such tempestuous times and the spirit of party would allow. He seemed to set no value on his life. Being wounded, and his friends lamenting around him, he said to them with incredible constancy, “The business we follow should make us as familiar with death as with life.” The first pitcht battle that happened between the protestants and the catholics, was that of Dreux, in 1562. The admiral fought bravely, lost it, but saved the army. The duke of Guise having been murdered by treachery, a short time afterwards, at the siege of Orleans, he was accused of having connived at this base assassination; but he cleared himself of the charge by oath. The civil wars ceased for some time, but only to recommence with greater fury in 1567. Coligni and Conde fought the battle of St. Denys against the constable of Montmorenci. This indecisive day was followed by that of Jarnac, in 1569, fatal to the protestants. Concle having been killed in a shocking manner, Coligni had to sustain the whole weight of the party, and alone supported that unhappy cause, and was again defeated at the affair of Men Icon tour, in Poitou, without suffering his courage to be shaken for a moment. An advantageous peace seemed shortly after to terminate these bloody conflicts, in 1571. Coligni appeared at court, where he was loaded with caresses, in common with all the rest of his party. Charles IX. ordered him to be paid a hundred thousand francs as a reparation of the losses he had sustained, and restored to him his place in the council. On all hands, however, he was exhorted to distrust these perfidious caresses. A captain of the protestants, who was retiring into the country, came to take leave of him: Coligni asked him the reason of so sudden a retreat: “It is,” said the soldier, “because they shew us too many kindnesses here: I had rather escape with the fools, than perish with such as are over-wise.” A horrid conspiracy soon broke out. One Friday the admiral coming to the Louvre, was fired at by a musquet from a window, and dangerously wounded in the right hand and in the left arm, by Maurevert, who had been employed by the duke de Guise, who had proposed the scheme to Charles IX. The king of Navarre and the prince of Cond6 complained of this villainous act. Charles IX. trained to the arts of dissimulation by his mother, pretended to be extremely afflicted at the event, ordered strict inquiry to be made after the author of it, and called Coligni by the tender name of father. This was at the very time when he was meditating the approaching massacre of the protestants. The carnage began, as is well known, the 24th of August, St. Bartholomew’s day, 1572. The duke de Guise, under a strong escort, marched to the house of the admiral. A crew of assassins, headed by one Besme, a domestic of the house of Guise, entered sword in hand, and found him sitting in an elbow-chair. “Young man,” said he to their leader in a calm and tranquil manner, “thou shouldst have respected my gray hairs but, do what thou wilt thou canst only shorten my life by a few days.” This miscreant, after having stabbed him in several places, threw him out at the window into the court-yard of the house, where the duke of Guise stood waiting. Coligni fell at the feet of his base and implacable enemy, and said, according to some writers, as he was just expiring “If at least I had died by the hand of a gentleman, and not by that of a turnspit!” Besme, having trampled on the corpse, said to his companions: “A good beginning! let us go and continue our work!” His body was exposed for three days to the fury of the populace, and then hung up by the feet on the gallows of Montfaucon. Montmorenci, his cousin, had it taken down, in order to bury it secretly in the chapel of the chateau de Chantilli. An Italian, having cut off the head of the admiral, carried it to Catherine de Medicis; and this princess caused it to be embalmed, and sent it to Rome. Coligni was in the habit of keeping a journal, which, after his death, was put into the hands of Charles IX. In this was remarked a piece of advice which he gave that prince, to take care of what he did in assigning the appanage, lest by so doing he left them too great an authority. Catherine caused this article to be read before the duke of Alei^on, whpm she knew to be afflicted at the death of the admiral: “There is your good friend!” said she, “observe the advice he gives the king!” “I cannot say,” returned the duke, “whether he was very fond of me; but 1 know that such advice could have been given only by a man of strict fidelity to his majesty, and zealous for the good of his country.” Charles IX. thought this journal worth being printed; but the marshal de Retz prevailed on him to throw it into the fire. We shall conclude this article with the parallel drawn by the abbe“de Mably of the admiral de Coligni, and of Francois de Lorraine, due de Guise.” Coligni was the greatest general of his time; as courageous as the duke of Guise, but less impetuous, because he had always been less successful. He was fitter for forming grand projects, and more prudent in the particulars of their executioj. Guise, by a more brilliant courage, which astonished his enemies, reduced conjunctures to the province of his genius, and thus rendered himself in some sort master of them. Coligni obeyed them, but like a commander superior to them. In the same circumstances ordinary men would have observed only courage in the conduct of the one, and only prudence in that of the other, though both of them had these two qualities, but variously subordinated. Guise, more successful, had fewer opportunities for displaying the resources of his genius: his dexterous ambition, and, like that of Pompey, apparently founded on the very interests of the princes it was endeavouring to ruin, while it pretended to serve them, was supported on the authority of his name till it had acquired strength enough to stand by itself. Coligni, less criminal, though he appeared to be more so, openly, like Caesar, declared war upon his prince and the whole kingdom of France. Guise had the art of conquering, and of profiting by the victory. Coligni lost four battles, and was always the terror of his victors, whom he seemed to have vanquished. It is not easy to say what the former would have been in the disasters that befell Coligni; but we may boldly conjecture that the latter would have appeared still greater, if fortune had favoured him as much. He was seen carried in a litter, and we may add in the very jaws of death, to order and conduct the longest and most difficult marches, traversing France in the midst of his enemies, rendering by his counsels the youthful courage of the prince of Navarre more formidable, and training him to those great qualities which were to make him a good king, generous, popular, and capable of managing the affairs of Europe, after having made him a hero, sagacious, terrible, and clement in the conduct of war. The good understanding he kept up between the French and the Germans of his army, whom the interests of religion alone were ineffectual to unite; the prudence with which he contrived to draw succours from England, where all was not quiet; his art in giving a spur to the tardiness of the princes of Germany, who, not having so much genius as himself, were more apt to despair of saving the protestantsof France, and deferred to send auxiliaries, who were no longer hastened in their march by the expectation of plunder in a country already ravaged; are master-pieces of his policy. Coligni was an honest man. Guise wore the mask of a greater number of virtues; but all were infected by his ambition. He had all the qualities that win the heart of the multitude. Coligni, more collected in himself, was more esteemed by his enemies, and respected by his own people. He was a lover of order and of his country. Ambition might bear him up, but it never first set him in motion. Hearty alike in the cause of protestantism and of his country, he was never able, by too great austerity, to make his doctrine tally with the duties of a subject. With the qualities of a hero, he was endowed with a gentle soul. Had he been less of the great man, he would have been a fanatic; he was an apostle and a zealot. His life was first published in 1575, 8vo, and translated and published in English in 1576, by Arthur Golding. There is also a life by Courtilz, 1686, 12mo, and one in the “Hommes Illustres de France.”

, countess de la Suze, a French poetess, whose works have been printed with those of Pellison and others in 1695, and 1725 in 2 volumes 12mo, was the daughter of Gaspar de Coligni, the third of that name, marshal of France, and colonel-general of infantry. She was very early married, in 1643, when she could not be more than seventeen, to Thomas Hamilton, earl of Haddington, according to Moreri, but we find no mention of this in the Scotch peerage. After his death she espoused the count de la Suze, of an illustrious house in Champaigne. But this second match proved unfortunate, owing to the furious jealousy of the count her husband, whose severities towards her made her abjure protestantism, and profess the catholic faith, which occasioned queen Christina of Sweden to say, “that she had changed her religion, that she might not see her husband, neither in this world nor the next.” Their antipathy became so great that the countess at last disannulled the marriage; and to induce the count to accede to it, she offered 25,000 crowns, which he accepted. She then gave herself up to the study of poetry, and became much admired by the geniuses of her time, who made her the subject of their eulogiums. Her fort lay in the elegiac strain, and those works of hers which have come down to us have at least a delicate turn of sentiment. Her other poems are songs, madrigals, and odes. The wits of her time gave her the majesty of Juno with Minerva’s wit and Venus’s beauty in some verses, attributed to Bouhours: but her character in other respects appears not to have been of the most correct kind. She died at Paris, March 10, 1673.

, a Spanish Dominican of the sixteenth century, went as a missionary to Japan in 1621, but his endeavours being obstructed, he made a second attempt in 1635, which was also unsuccessful, and he was recalled by the king to Spain: in his voyage home he was shipwrecked, and lost his life at Manilla in 1638, leaving behind him many works of these the principal are, a “Japonese Grammar and Dictionary in Latin” “A continuation of Hyacinth Orfanels Hist. Ecclesiastica Japon.” “Dictionarium Linguae Sinensis, cum explicatione Latina et Hispanica, charactere Sinensi et Latino.”

, an engraver and print-seller of Antwerp, of the sixteenth century, is said to have received the first instructions in his art, in the place of his nativity; after which he repaired to Italy to complete his studies. He contributed not a little, by his assiduity, and the facility of his graver, to the numberless sets of prints of sacred stones, huntings, landscapes, flowers, fish, &c. with which the states of Germany and Flanders were at that time inundated. Many of these are apparently from his own designs, and others from Martin de Vos, Theodore Bernard, P. Breughel, John Stradanus, Hans Bol, and other masters. His style of engraving is at the same time masterly and neat, and his knowledge of drawing appears to have been considerable; but his prints partake of the defects of his contemporaries, his masses of light and shade being too much scattered, and too equally powerful. The following are amongst his numerous performances. The “Life of Christ in 36 small prints.” “The twelve months, small circles from H. Bol.” “The women of Israel chanting the psalm of praise, after the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea.” This artist flourished according to Strutt and Heinecken about 1530 1550. His son, Hans or John, was an excellent draughtsman and engraver. He studied some time in Rome, and afterwards settled in his native place, Antwerp, where he assisted his father in most of his great works; and afterwards published a prodigious number of prints of his own, nowise inferior to those of Adrian. The works attributed by some to one Herman Coblent, are, by Heinecken, supposed to be by this master. His prints, according to Strutt, are dated from 1555 to 1622, so that he must have lived to a great age. We shall only notice the following amongst his numerous performances “The Life of St. Francis in 16 prints lengthways, surrounded by grotesque borders.” “Time and Truth,” a small upright print beautifully engraved, from J. Stradanus “The Last Judgment,” a large print, encompassed with small stories of the life of Christ. M. Heinecken mentions a print by an artist, who signs himself William Collaert, and supposes him the son of John Collaert.

, born at Tours in Auvergne, in 1524, was valet-de-chambre to Charles IX. Though a true catholic, he was taken for a protestant, and assassinated as such in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. He translated and augmented the polygraphy and the cabalistic writing of Trithemius, Paris, 1561, in 4to, which a Prison, named Dominique de Hottinga," published under his own name, without making any mention either of Trithemius or of Collange, at Embden, 1620, 4to. Collange had also some skill in the mathematics and in cosmography, and left a great many learned manuscripts described in our authorities.

, secretary and reader to the duke of Orleans, was born at Paris in 1709, and died in the same city Nov. 2, 1783, at the age of 75. In his character were united a singular disposition to gaiety, and an uncommon degree of sensibility; the death of a beloved wife accelerated his own. Without affecting the qualities of beneficence and humanity, he was humane and beneficent. Having a propensity to the drama from his infancy, he cultivated it with success. His “Partie-de-Chasse de Henri IV.” (from which our “Miller of Mansfield” is taken) exhibits a very faithful picture of that good king. His comedy of “Dupuis and Desronais,” in the manner of Terence, may perhaps be destitute of the vis cornica; but the sentiments are just, the characters well supported, and the situations pathetic. Another comedy, entitled “Truth in wine, or the Disasters of Gallantry,” has more of satire and broad humour. There are several more pieces of his, in which he paints, with no less liveliness than truth, the manners of his time; but his pencil is frequently as licentious as those manners. His talent at song-writing procured him the appellation of the Anacreon of the age, but here too he was deficient in delicacy. His song on the capture of Portmahon was the means of procuring him a pension from the court of 600 livres, perhaps the first favour of the kind ever bestowed. He was one of the last survivers of a society of wits who met under the name of the Caveau, and is in as much honourable remembrance as the Kit- K at club in London. This assembly, says a journalist, was of as much consequence to literature as an academy. Colle frequently used to regret those good old times, when this constellation of wits were wont to meet together, as men of letters, free and independent. The works of this writer are collected in 3 volumes, 12mo, under the title of " Theatre de SocieteY' Colle* was a cousin of the poet Regnard, whom he likewise resembled in his originality of genius.

, a voluminous French divine, was a native of Ternay in Vendomois, doctor of divinity, and priest of the mission of St. Lazare. He was born Sept. 6, 1693, and died at Paris Oct. 6, 1770, at the seminary des Bons Enfans, where he resided. M. Collet published “A System of Moral Theology,” Is torn, which make 17 vols. 8vo, in Latin, because torn. 1, and torn. 13, are divided each into two, 1744 et seqq. An abridgment of this work, 5 vols. 12mo a scholastic work in 2 vols. “Tr. des Dispenses,” 3 vols. “Tr. des Saints Mysteres,” 3 vols.; “Tr. des Indulgences, et du Jubile,” 2 vols. 12moj and some books of devotion, which are very superficial; “Sermons,” 2 vols. 12mo, an abridgment of Pontas, 2 vols. 4to, &c.

, a learned advocate of parliament of Dombes, was born February 15, 1643, at Chatilon-­les-Dombes, where he died March 31, 1718, aged seventy-­six. He left “Traité des Excommunications,” 1689, 12mo; “Tr. de l'Usure,” 1690, 8vo; Notes on the custom of Bresse, 1698, fol. and several other works containing singular sentiments, more free than his church permitted.

, one of the members of the French academy, was born at Paris in 1598, and died in the same city February 10, 1659, aged sixty-one, leaving scarcely enough to bury him. Cardinal Richelieu appointed him one of the five authors whom he selected to write for the theatre. Colletet alone composed “Cyminde,” and had a part in the two comedies, the “Blindman of Smyrna,” and the “Tuilleries.” Reading the monologue in this latter piece to the cardinal, he was so struck with six bad lines in it, that he made him a present of 6uO livres; saying at the same time, that this was only for the six verses, which he found so beautiful, that the king was not rich enough to recompense him for the rest. However, to shew his right as a patron, and at the same time his judgment as a connoisseur, he insisted on the alteration of one word for another. Colletet refused to comply with his criticism; and, not content with defending his verse to the cardinal’s face, on returning home he wrote to him on the subject. The cardinal had just read his letter, when some courtiers came to compliment him on the success of the king’s arms, adding, that nothing could withstand his eminence!—“You are much mistaken,” answered he smiling; “for even at Paris I meet with persons who withstand me.” They asked who these insolent persons could be? “It is Colletet,” replied he; “for, after having contended with me yesterday about a word, he will not yet submit, as you may see here by this long letter he has been writing to me.” This obstinacy, however, did not so far irritate the minister as to deprive the poet of his patronage. Colletet had also other benefactors. Harlay, archbishop of Paris, gave him a handsome reward for his hymn on the immaculate conception; by sending him an Apollo of solid silver. Colletet took for his second wife, Claudine his maid servant; and, in order to justify his choice, published occasionally pieces of poetry in her name; but, this little artifice being presently discovered, both the supposititious Sappho, and the inspirer of her lays, became the objects of continual satire. This marriage, in addition to two subsequent ones, to the losses he suffered in the civil wars, and to his turn for dissipation, reduced him to the extreme of poverty. His works appeared in 1653, in 12mo.

, an eminent English divine, was born at Stow Qui in Cambridgeshire, Sept. 23, 1650. His father Jeremy Collier was a divine and a considerable linguist; and some time master of the free-school at Ipswich, in Suffolk. He was educated under his father at Ipswich, whence he was sent to Cambridge, and admitted a poor scholar of Caius college under the tuition of John Ellys, in April 1669. He took the degree of B. A. in 1673, and that of M. A. in 1676; being ordained deacon the same year by Gunning, bishop of Ely, and priest the year after by Compton bishop of London. He officiated for some time at the countess dowager of Dorset’s at Knowle in Kent, whence he removed to a small rectory at Ampton near St. Edmund’s Bury in Suffolk, to which he was presented by James Calthorpe, esq. in 1679. After he had held this benefice six years, he resigned it, came to London in 1685, and was some little time after made lecturer of Gray’s Inn. But the revolution coming on, the public exercise of his function became impracticable.

Collier, however, was of too active a spirit to remain supine, and therefore began the attack upon the revolution: for his pamphlet is said to have been the first written on that side the question after the prince of Orange’s arrival, with a piece entitled “The Desertion discussed in a letter to a country gentleman, 1688,” 4to. This was written in, answer to a pamphlet of Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, called “An Enquiry into the present State of Affairs, &c.” wherein king James is treated as a deserter from his crown; and it gave such offence, that, after the government was settled, Collier was sent to Newgate, where he continued a close prisoner for some months, but was at length discharged without being brought to a trial. He afterwards published the following pieces: 1. A translation of the 9th, 10th, llth, and 12th books of Sleidan’s Commentaries, 1689, 4to. 2. “Vindiciae juris regii, or remarks upon a paper entitled An Enquiry into the measures of submission to the Supreme Authority,” 1689, 4to. The author of this inquiry was also Dr. Burnet. 3. “Animadversions upon the modern explanation of 2 Hen. VII. chap. i. or a king de facto,” 1689, 4to. 4. “A Caution against Inconsistency, or the connection between praying and swearing, in relation to the Civil Powers,” 1690, 4to. This discourse is a dissuasive from joining in public assemblies. 5. “A Dialogue concerning the Times, between Philobelgus and Sempronius, 1690, 4to: to the right honourable the lords, and to the gentlemen convened at Westminster, Oct. 1690.” This is a petition for an inquiry into the birth of the prince of Wales, and printed upon a half sheet. 6. “Dr. Sherlock’s Case of Allegiance considered, with some remarks upon his Vindication,” 1691, 4to. 7. “A brief essay concerning the independency of Church Power,” 1692, 4to. The design of this essay is to prove the public assemblies guilty of schism, upon account of their being held under such bishops as had assumed, or owned such as had assumed, the sees of those who were deprived for not taking the oaths of the new government.

Thus did Collier, by such ways and means as were in his power, continue to oppose with great vigour and spirit the revolution and all its abettors: and thus he became obnoxious to the men in power, who only waited for an occasion to seize him. That occasion at length came; for information being given to the earl of Nottingham, then secretary of state, that Collier, with one Newton, another nonjuring clergyman, was gone to Romney marsh, with a view of sending to, or receiving intelligence from the other side of the water, messengers were sent to apprehend them. They were brought to London, and, after a short examination by the earl, committed to the Gate-house. This was in the latter end of 1692, but as no evidence of their being concerned in any such design could be found, they were admitted to bail, and released. Newton, as far as appears, availed himself of this but Collier refused to remain upon bail, because he conceived that an acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of the court in which the bail was taken, and consequently of the power from whence the authority of the court was derived, and therefore surrendered in discharge of his bail before chief justice Holt, and was committed to “the king’s-bench prison. He v/as released again at the intercession of friends, in a very few days; but still attempted to support his principles and justify his conduct by the following pieces, of which, it is said, there were only five copies printed: 8.” The case of giving Bail to a pretended authority examined, dated from the King’s-bench, Nov. 23, 1692,“with a preface, dated Dec. 1692; and, 9,” A Letter to sir John Holt,“dated Nov. 30, 1692; and also, 10.” A Reply to some Remarks upon the case of giving bail, &c. dated April, 1693.“He wrote soon after this, 11.” A Persuasive to consideration, tendered to the Royalists, particularly those of the Church of England,“1693, 4to. It was afterwards reprinted in 8vo, together with his vindication of it, against a piece entitled” The Layman’s Apology.“He wrote also, 12.” Remarks upon the London Gazette, relating to the Streights’ Fleet, and the Battle of Landen in Flanders," 1693, 4to.

We hear no more of Collier till 1696; and then we find him acting a very extraordinary part, in regard to sir John Friend and sir William Perkins, who were convicted of being concerned in the assassination plot. Collier, with Cook and Snatt, two clergymen of his own way of thinking, attended those unhappy persons at the place of their execution, upon April 3; where Collier solemnly absolved the former, as Cook did the latter, and all three joined in the imposition of hands upon them both. This, as might well be expected, was looked upon as an high insult on the civil and ecclesiastical government; for which reason there was a declaration, signed by the two archbishops and the bishops of London, Durham, Winchester, Coven<­try and Litchfield, Rochester, Hereford, Norwich, Peterborough, Gloucester, Chichester, and, St. Asaph, in which they signified their abhorrence of this scandalous, irregular, schismatic, and seditious proceeding. This “Declaration,” which may be seen in the Appendix to the third vol. of the State Tracts in the time of king William, did not only bring upon them ecclesiastical censure; they were prosecuted also in the secular courts, as enemies to the government. In consequence of this Cook and Snatt were committed to Newgate, but afterwards released without being brought to a trial; but Collier having still his old scruple about putting in bail, and absconding, was outlawed, and so continued to the time of his death. He did not fail, however, to have recourse to his pen as usual, in order to justify his conduct upon this occasion; and therefore pubJished, 13. “A Defence of the Absolution given to sir William Perkins at the place of execution; with a farther vindication thereof, occasioned by a paper entitled, A Declaration of the sense of the archbishops and bishops, &c. the first dated April 9, 1696, the other April 21, 1696;” to which is added, “A Postscript in relation to a paper called An Answer to his Defence, &c. dated April 25.” Also, “A Reply to the Absolution of a Penitent according to the directions of the church of England, &c.” dated May 20, 1696: and “An Answer to the Animadversions on two pamphlets lately published by Mr. Collier, &c.” dated July 1, 1696, 4to.

When this affair was over, Collier employed himself in reviewing and finishing several miscellaneous pieces, which he published under the title of “Essays upon several Moral Subjects.” They consist of 3 vols. 8vo; the first of which was printed in 1697, and its success encouraged the author to publish a second in 1705, and a third in 1709. These were written with such a mixture of learning and wit, and in a style so easy and flowing, that notwithstanding the prejudice of party, which ran strong against him, they were in general well received, and have passed through many editions since. In 1698 he entered on his celebrated attempt to reform the stage, by publishing his “Short View of the immorality and profaneness of the English Stage, together with the sense of antiquity upon this argument,” 8vo. This engaged him in a controversy with the wits; and Congreve and Vanbrugh, whom, with many others, he had taken to task very severely, appeared openly against him. The pieces he wrote in this conflict, besides the first already mentioned, were, 2. “A Defence of the Short View, being a reply to Mr. Congreve’s amendments, &c. and to the vindication of the author of the Relapse,” 1699, 8vo. 3. “A Second Defence of the Short View, being a reply to a book entitled The ancient and modern Stages surveyed, &c.” 1700, 8vo the book here replied to was written by Mr. Drake. 4. “Mr. Collier’s dissuasive from the Play-house: in a letter to a person of quality, occasioned by the late calamity of the tempest,” 1703, 8vo. S. “A farther Vindication of the Short View, &c. in whjch the objections of a late book, entitled A Defence of Plays, are considered,” 1708, 8vo. “The Defence of Piays” has Dr. Filmer for its author. In this controversy with the stage, Collier exerted himself to the utmost advantage; and shewed that a clergyman might have wit as well as learning and reason on his side. It is remarkable, that his labours here were attended with success, and actually produced repentance and amendment; for it is allowed on all hands, that the decorum which has been for the most part observed by the later writers of dramatic poetry, is entirely owing to the animadversions of Collier. What Dryden said upon this occasion in the preface to his Fables does much credit to his candour and good sense. “I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly arraigned of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as 1 have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good one.” If Congreve andVanbrugh had taken the same method with Dryden, and made an ingenuous confession of their faults, they would have retired with a better grace than they did: for it is certain that, with all the wit which they have shewn in their respective vindications, they make but a very indifferent figure. “Congreve and Vanbrugh, says Dr. Johnson, attempted answers. Congreve, a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. His chief artifice of controversy is to retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and hoping to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of every term of contumely and contempt: but he has the sword without the arm of Scanderbeg; he has his antagonist’s coarseness, but not his strength. Collier replied; for contest was his delight: he was not to be frighted from his purpose, or his prey. The cause of Congreve was not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man better; and that their Vol. X, ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated. The stage found other advocates, and the dispute was protracted through ten years: but at last comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labour in the' reformation of the theatre.”

The next thing Collier undertook was a work of considerable industry, that of translating Moreri’s great “Historical, geographical, genealogical, and poetical Dictionary.” The two first volumes were printed in 1701, the third, under the title of a “Supplement,” in 1705, and the fourth, which is called “An Appendix,” in 1721. This was a work of great utility at the time it was published. It was the first of its kind in the English language, and many articles of biography in the Appendices may yet be consulted with advantage, as containing particulars which are not to be found elsewhere. About 1701, he published also, “An English translation of Antoninus’s Meditations, &c. to which is added, the Mythological Picture of Cebes, &c.” In the reign of queen Anne, some overtures were made to engage him to a compliance, and he was promised preferment, if he would acknowledge and submit to the government; but as he became a nonjuror upon a principle of conscience, he could not be prevailed upon to listen to any terms. Afterwards he published, in 2 vols. folio, “An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, chiefly of England, from the first planting of Christianity, to the end of the reign of Charles II. with a brief account of the affairs of religion in Ireland, collected from the best ancient historians, councils, and records.” The first volume, which comes down to Henry Vie was published in 1708, the second in 1714. This history, which contains, besides a relation of facts, many curious discourses upon ecclesiastical and religious subjects, was censured by bishop Burnet, bishop Nicolson, and doctor Kennet, afterwards bishop of Peterborough; but was defended by Collier in two pieces. The first was entitled “An Answer to some exceptions in bishop Burnet’s third part of the History of the Reformation, &c. against Mr. Collier’s Ecclesiastical History; together with a reply to some remarks in bishop Nicolson’s English Historical Library, &c. upon the same subject, 1715;” the second, “Some Remarks on Dr. Kennet’s second and third Letters; wherein his misrepresenta-. tions of Mr. Collier’s Ecclesiastical History are laid open, and his calumnies disproved, 1717.” Collier’s prejudices, however, in favour of the popish establishment, aud against the reformers, render it necessary to read this work with much caution: on the other hand, we cannot but observe, to Collier’s credit, an instance of his great impartiality in the second volume of his history; which is, that in disculpating the presbyterians from the imputation of their being consenting to the murder of Charles I. he has shewn, that as they only had it in their power to protest, so they did protest against that bloody act, both before and after it was committed.

In 17 13, Collier, as is confidently related, was consecrated a bishop by Dr. George Hickes, who had himself been consecrated suffragan of Thetford by the deprived bishops of Norwich, Ely, and Peterborough, Feb. 23, 1694. As he grew in years, his health became impaired by frequent attacks of the stone, to which his sedentary life probably contributed: so that he published nothing more but a volume of “Practical Discourses” in 1725, and an additional sermon “upon God not the origin of Evil,” in 1726. Besides what has been mentioned, he wrote some prefaces to other men’s works; and published also an advertisement against bishop Burnet’s “History of his own Times:”' this was printed on a slip of paper, and dispersed in all the coffee-houses in 1724, and is to be seen in the “Evening-post, No. 2254.” He died of the stone, April 26, 1726, aged seventy-six; an.d was interred three days after in the church-yard of St. Pancras near London. Hs was a very ingenious, learned, moral, and religious man* and though stiff in his opinions, is aid to have had nothing stiff or pedantic in his behaviour, but a great deal of life, spirit, and innocent freedom. It ought never to be forgot, that Collier was a man of strict principle, and great sincerity, for to that he sacrificed all the most flattering prospects that could have been presented to him, and died at an advanced age in the profession and belief in which he had lived. He will long be remembered as the reformer of the stage, an attempt which he made, and in which he was successful, single-handed, against a confederacy of dramatic talents the most brilliant that ever appeared on the British stage. His reputation as a man of letters was not confined to his own country: for the learned father Courbeville, who translated into French “The Hero of Balthazar Gratian,” in his preface to that work, speaks in high terms of his “Miscellaneous Essays;” which, he says, set him upon a level with Montaigne, St. Evremond, La Bruyere, &c. The same person translated into French his “Short View of the English Stage;” where he speaks of him again in strong expressions of admiration and esteem.