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In 1683 Dacier married mademoiselle le Fevre; and in 1685 abjured with his lady the protestant religion. His marriage, which was styled “the union of Greek and Latin,” added considerably to his felicity, and procured him an able assistant in his studies and publications. In 1691 he was assisted by madame Dacier in a French translation of the moral reflections of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, with notes, in 2 vols. 12mo. In 1692 he published Aristotle’s Poetics, translated into French, with critical remarks, in 4to. This work was reprinted in Holland in 12mo; and some have considered it as Dacier’s masterpiece. In 1693 he published a French translation of the Oedipus and Electra of Sophocles, in 12mo; but not with the same success as the Poetics just mentioned. We have already noticed six publications of Dacier: the rest shall now follow in order; for the life of this learned man, like that of most others, is little more than a history of his works. He published, 7. Plutarch’s Lives, translated into French, with notes, Paris, 1694, vol. I. 8vo. This essay, which contains only five lives, is the beginning of a work, which he afterwards finished. 8. The works of Hippocrates, translated into French, with notes, and compared with the manuscripts in the king’s library, Paris, 1697, 2 vols. 12mo. The Journal des Sgavans speaks well of this version. 9. The works of Plato, translated into French, witli notes, and the life of that philosopher, with an account of the principal doctrines of his philosophy, 1699, 2 vols. 12mo. These are only some of Plato’s pieces. 10. The life of Pythagoras, his Symbols, and Golden Verses, the life of Hierocles, and his Commentary upon the Golden Verses, 1706, 2 vols. 12mo. In 1695, Dacier had succeeded Felibien in the academy of inscriptions, and Francis de Harlay, archbishop of Paris, in the French academy. In 1701 a new regulation was made in the academy of inscriptions, by which every member was obliged to undertake some useful work suitable to his genius and course of studies: and, in conformity to this order, Dacier undertook the above translation of the life of Pythagoras, &c. 11. The manual of Epictetus, with five treatises of Simplicius upon important subjects, relating to morality and religion, translated into French, with notes, 1715, 2 vols. 12mo. The authors of the “Europe Sgavante of Jan. 1718,” having criticised the specimen he had given of his translation of Plutarch’s Lives, he printed, 12. An Answer to them, and inserted it in the Journal des Sçavans of the 25th of June and the llth of July 1718. 13. Plutarch’s Lives of illustrious men, revised by the Mss. and translated into French, with notes historical and critical, and the supplement of those comparisons which are lost. To which are added, those heads which could be found, and a general index of matters contained in the work, Paris, 1721, 8 vols. 4to; Amsterdam, 1723, 9 vols. 8vo. This work was received with applause, and supposed to be well executed; yet not so, say the authors of the Bibliotheque Franchise, as to make the world at once forget the translation of Amyot, obsolete as it is. Dacier published some other things of a lesser kind, as, 14. A Speech made in the French academy, on his admission. 15. Answers, which he made, as director of the academy, to the speech of M. Cousin in 1697, and to that of M. de Boze in 1715, both inserted in the collections of the French academy. 16. A dissertation upon the origin of Satire, inserted in the second volume of the memoirs of the academy of Belles Lettres in 1717. 17. Notes upon Longinus. Boileau, in the preface to his translation of Longinus, styles these notes very learned and says, that “the author of them is not only a man of very extensive learning, and an excellent critic, but likewise a gentleman of singular politeness; which is so much the more valuable, as it seldom attends great learning.” Boileau has added them to his own notes upon Longinus; and they are printed in all the editions of his works. Dacier wrote also a commentary upon Theocritus, which he mentions in his notes upon Horace, ode xxix; and a short treatise upon religion, containing the reasons which brought him over to the church of Rome: but these two works were never printed.

He had a share too in the medallic history of Lewis XIV.; and, when it was finished, was chosen to present it to his majesty; who, being informed of the pains which Dacier had taken in it, settled upon him a pension of 2000 livres; and about the same time appointed him keeper of the books of the king’s closet in the Louvre. In 1713 he was made perpetual secretary of the French academy. In 1717 he obtained a grant in reversion of 10,000 crowns upon his place of keeper of the books of the king’s closet; and when this post was united to that of library-keeper to the king, in 1720, he was not only continued in the privileges of his place during life, but the reversion of it was granted to his wife; a favour, of which there had never been an instance before. But her death happening first, rendered this grant, so honourable to her, ineffectual. Great as Dacier’s grief was for the loss of an helpmate so like himself, it did not prevent him from seeking out another; and he had actually been married at a very advanced period of life, had he not died almost suddenly on Sept. 18, 1722, of an ulcer in the throat, which he did not think at all dangerous, since that very evening he was present at the academy. He was 7 1 years of age; short of stature, and of a long and meagre visage. He was a great promoter of virtue and learning; and if he was somewhat partial to the ancients, in the famous controversy on the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, yet this may be pardoned in one who had so assiduously studied their works. It would be less easy to excuse his occasional boldness as a critic, and his intemperance as a disputant. In his own time, however, he enjoyed deserved reputation. He chose none but useful subjects; devoted his labours to works only of importance; and enriched the French language with those remains of wise antiquity, which are most advantageous to the morals of mankind. He could not make his countrymen classical, but he did what he could to give them a relish for the ancients. This, however, although an useful attempt in his day, has narrowed the bounds of his fame, and except in his Aristotle’s Poetics, and some parts of his Horace, modern critics seem disinclined to acknowledge his taste and critical acumen.

, the learned wife of the preceding, was born at Saumur, about the end of 1651. She was only eleven years old when her father resolved to give her a learned education; which is said to have been owing to the following circumstance, that while he was teaching one of his sons the rudiments of grammar, in the same room where mademoiselle le Fevre was employed with her needle, she, with every appearance of unconcern, now and then supplied her brother with answers to questions that puzzled him. This induced her father to give her a regular course of lessons, and educate her as a scholar, in which character she soon excelled the youths under his care, and became her father’s associate in some of his publications. We are told that when she had learned Latin enough to read Phaedrus and Terence, he began to instruct her in the Greek, which she was so much pleased with, that in a short time she was capable of reading Anacreon, Callimachus, Homer, and the Greek Tragic Poets. As she read them, she shewed so much taste of the beauties of those admirable writers, that all the fatigue of her father in his professorship was softened by the pleasure which he found in teaching her. To divert her in her more serious studies, he taught "her the Italian language, and read over with her several poets of that nation, and particularly Tasso, in the perusal of whom she very acutely remarked the difference between that poet and Virgil and Homer. She sometimes took the liberty of disputing with her father, particularly, on one occasion, respecting Vaugelas’s translation of Quintus Curtius. Her father was charmed with it, but mademoiselle le Fevre ventured to point out some negligences of style, errors in language, and passages ill translated; and he was frequently obliged to own himself of the same opinion with her. These little contests, however, gave him great satisfaction, and he was extremely surprized to find so delicate a taste, and so uncommon a penetration, in so young a person.

In 1673, the year after her father died, she went to Paris, and was then engaged in an edition of Callimachus, which she published in 1674, in 4to. Some sheets of that work having been shewn to Huetius, preceptor to the dauphin, and other learned men at court, a proposal was made to her of preparing some Latin authors for the use of the dauphin; which, though she rejected at first, she at last Undertook, and published an edition of Florus in 1674, in 4to. Her reputation being now spread over all Europe, Christina of Sweden ordered count Coningsmark to make her a compliment in her name; upon which mademoiselle le Fevre sent the queen a Latin letter with her edition of Florus. Her majesty wrote her an obliging answer; and not long after wrote her another letter, to persuade her to quit the protestant religion, and made her considerable offers to settle her at court. This, however, she declined, and proceeded in the task she had undertaken, of publishing authors for the use of the dauphin, the next of which was “Sextus Aurelius Victor,” Paris, 1681, 4to; in which same year also she published a French translation of the poems of Anacreon and Sappho with notes, which met with great applause; so great, as to make Boileau declare, that it ought to deter any person from attempting to translate those poems into verse. She published, for the use of the dauphin, Eutropius, Paris, 1683, 4to, which was afterwards printed at Oxford, 1696, 8vo; and Dictys Cretensis & Dares Phrygius, Paris, 1684, 4to, which was afterwards printed, cum notis variorum, at Asnst. 1702, 8vo. She had also published French translations of the Amphitryo, Epidicus, and Iludens, comedies of Plautus, Paris, 1683, 3 vols. 12mo, and of the Plutus and Clouds of Aristophanes, 1684, 12mo, with notes, and an examen of all these plays according to the rules of the theatre. She was so charmed with the Clouds of Aristophanes, it seems, that, as we learn from herself, she had read it over 200 times with pleasure.

In the midst of all these various publications, so close to eacli other, she married Dacier, with whom she had been brought up in her father’s house from her earliest years. This happened, as we have already observed in our account of that gentleman, in 1683; though some have controverted not only the date, but even the marriage itself; and have surmised that she was previously married to one John Lesnier, a bookseller of her father’s, and that she ran away from him for the sake of Dacier, with whom she was never married in any regular way. But it is hardly possible to conceive, that so extraordinary a circumstance in the history of this celebrated lady must not, if it were true, have been notorious and incontested. We are therefore apt to admit father Niceron’s solution of this difficulty; vyho observes, upon this occasion, that “nothing is more common than for a person, who abandons any party, to be exposed to the calumies of those whom they have quitted,” and to suffer by them. Madame Dacier, soon after her marriage, declared to the duke of Montausier and the bishop of Meaux, who had been her friends, a design of reconciling herself to the church of Rome; but as M. Dacier was not yet convinced of the reasonableness of such a change, they thought proper to retire to Castres in 1684, in order to examine the controversy between the protestants and papists. They at last determined in favour of the latter; and, as already noticed, made their public abjuration in Sept. 1685. This, in the opinion of her catholic admirers, might probably occasion the above-mentioned rumour, so much to the disadvantage of madame Dacier, and for which there was probably very little foundation. After they had become catholics, however, the duke of Montausier and the bishop of Meaux recommended them at court; and the king settled a pension of 1500 livres upon M. Dacier, and another of 500 upon his lady. The patent was expedited in November; and, upon the advice which they received of it, they returned to Paris, where they resumed their studies; but before proceeding in our account of madame Dacier' s publications, it is necessary to do justice to the liberality of her patron the duke de Montausier. We are informed, that in 1682 this lady having dedicated a book to the king of France, she could not find any person at court, who would venture to introduce her to his majesty, in order to present it, because she was at that time a protestant. The duke of Montausier, being informed of this, offered his service to introduce her to the king, and taking her in his coach, presented her and her book to his majesty; who told him with an air of resentment, that he acted wrong in supporting persons of that lady’s religion; and that for his part he would forbid his name to be prefixed to any book written by Huguenots; for which purpose he would give orders to seize all the copies of mademoiselle le Fevre’s book. The duke answered with that freedom with which he always spoke to the king, and in which no person else would presume to follow him: “Is it thus, sir, that you favour polite literature? I declare to you frankly, a king ought not to be a bigot.” He added then, that he would thank the lady in his majesty’s name, and make her a present of an hundred pistoles; and that he would leave it to the king to pay him, or not pay him; and he did as he had said. In 1688 she published a French translation of Terence’s comedies, with notes, in 8 vols. 12mo. She is said to have risen at five o'clock in the morning, during a very sharp winter, and to have dispatched four of the comedies; but, upon looking them over some months after, to have flung them into the fire, being much dissatisfied with them, and to have begun the translation again. She brought the work then to the highest perfection; and, in the opinion of the French critics, even reached the graces and noble simplicity of the original. It was a circumstance greatly to her honour, that, having taken the liberty to change the scenes and acts, her disposition of them was afterwards confirmed by an excellent ms. in the king of France’s library. The best and most finished edition of this universally-admired performance, is that of 1717; which, however, was greatly improved afterwards, by adopting the emendations in Bentley’s edition. She had a hand in the translation of Marcus Antoninus, which her husband published in 1691, and likewise in the specimen of a translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which he published three years after; but being now intent on her translation of Homer, she left her husband to finish that of Plutarch. In 1711 appeared her Homer, translated into French, with notes, in 3 vols. 12mo and the translation is reckoned elegant and faithful. In 1714 she published the Causes of the Corruption of Taste. This treatise was written against M. de la Motte, who, in the preface to his Iliad, had declared very little esteem for that poem. Madame Dacier, shocked with the liberty he had taken with her favourite author, immediately began this defence of him, in which she did not treat La Motte with the greatest civility. In 1716 she published a defence of Homer, against the apology of father Hardouin, or, a sequel of the causes of the corruption of Taste: in which she attempts to shew, that father Hardouin, in endeavouring to apologize for Homer, has done him a greater injury than ever he received from his most declared enemies. Besides these two pieces, she had prepared a third against La Motte; but suppressed it, after M. de Valiincourt had procured a reconciliation between them. The same year also she published the Odyssey of Homer, translated from the Greek, with notes, in 3 vols. 12mo, and this, as far as we can find, was her last appearance as an author. She was in a very infirm state of health the last two years of her life; and died, after a very painful sickness, Aug. 17, 1720, being 69 years of age. She bad two daughters and a son, of whose education she took the strictest care; but the son died young: one of her daughters became a nun; and the other, who is said to have had united in her all the virtues and accomplishments of her sex, died at 18 years of age. Her mother has said high things of her, in the preface to her translation of the Iliad.

Madame Dacier was a lady of great virtue as well as learning. She was remarkable for firmness, generosity, good nature, and piety. The causes of her change of religion are not well explained, but she appears to have been at least sincere. Her modesty was so great, that she never spoke of subjects of literature; and it was with some difficulty that she could at any time be led to do it. There is an anecdote related of her, which her countrymen say sets this modesty in a very strong light, although others may think the pi oof equivocal. It is customary with the scholars in the northern parts of Europe, who visit, when they travel, the learned in other countries, to carry with them a book, in which they desire such persons to write their names, with some sentence or other. A learned German paid a visit to madame Dacier, and requested her to write her name and sentence in his book. She seeing in it the names of the greatest scholars in Europe, told him, that she should he ashamed to put her name among those of so many illustrious persons; and that such presumption would by no means become her. The gentleman insisting upon it, she was at last prevailed upon and taking her pen, wrote her name with this verse of Sophocles, Γυναιξὶν ὴ πιγὴ φέρει χόσμον, that is, “Silence is the ornament of the female sex.” When likewise she was solicited to publish a translation of some books of scripture, with remarks upon them, she always answered, that “a woman ought to read, and meditate upon the scriptures, and regulate her conduct by them, and to keep silence, agreeably to the command of St. Haul.” Among her other literary honours, the academy of Iticovrati at Padua chose her one of their body in 1684.

, a painter, was born at Stockholm in 1656, and came to London at an early age, being introduced into this country by an English merchant, but he afterwards travelled to Paris, and resided there some time. He then visited Italy, where he painted, amongst others, the portrait of queen Christina of Sweden. In 1688 he returned to England, where he acquired very considerable reputation as a portrait painter, and was no contemptible rival of sir Godfrey Kneller, with whom he lived in habits of friendship. He died in London in 1743 at the advanced age of 87 years. His portraits of Addison, queen Anne, prince George of Denmark, the duke of Marlborough, and the duke of Ormond, have been engraved.

, a minister of the church of Paris, and one of the ablest advocates the protestants ever had, was born at Chatelleraut, Jan 6, 1594; but carried soon after to Poitiers, where his father usually lived, on account of the office which he bore of receiver of the deposits there. His father designed him for business, and proposed to leave him his office; but his strong attachment to books made him prefer a literary education, and when his son had attained his eleventh year, he sent him to S. Maixent in Poitou, to learn the first rudiments of learning. He continued his studies at Poitiers, Chatelleraut, and Saumur; and, having finished his classical course in the last of those towns, he entered on logic at Poitiers, at the age of sixteen, and finished his course of philosophy at Saumur under the celebrated Mark Duncan. He began his theological studies at Saumur in 1612; which, says his son, was indisputably one of the most fortunate years in his whole life, as in October of it, he was admitted into the family of the illustrious mons. du Plessis Mornay, who did him the honour to appoint him tutor to two of his grandsons. Here, though he discharged the trust he had undertaken very well, yet it is said that he received more instruction from the grandfather than he communicated to the grandsons. Mornay was extremely pleased with him, frequently read with him, and concealed from him nothing of whatever he knew; so that some have been ready to impute the great figure Mr. Daillc afterwards made, to the assistance he received here; and it is but reasonable to suppose, that Mornay’s advice and instructions contributed not a little to it.

Daillé, having lived seven years with so excellent a master, set out on his travels with his pupils in the autumn of 1619, and went to Geneva; and from thence through Piedmont and Lombardy to Venice, where they spent the winter. During their abode in Italy, a melancholy affair happened, which perplexed him not a little. One of his pupils fell sick at Mantua; and he removed him with all speed to Padua, where those of the protestant religion have more liberty, but here he died; and the difficulty was, to avoid the observation of the inquisitors, and remove the corpse to France, to the burial-place of his ancestors. After much consideration, no more eligible plan presented itself than to send him under the disguise of a bale of merchandize goods, or a cargo of books; and in this manner the corpse was conveyed to France, under the care of two of his servants; not, however, without the necessary safe-conduct and passports, which were procured for him from the republic by the celebrated father Paul. He then continued his travels with his other pupil, visiting Switzerland, Germany, Flanders, Holland, England; and returned to France towards the end of 1621. The son relates, that he had often heard his father regret those two years of travelling, which he reckoned as lost, because he could have spent them to better purpose in his closet; and, it seems, he would have regretted them still more, if he had not enjoyed the privilege at Venice of a familiar acquaintance with father Paul, the only fruit which he said he had reaped from that journey. M. du Plessis, with whom that father corresponded by letters, had recommended to him in a very particular manner both his grandsons and their crovernor; so that M. Daille was immediately admitted into his confidence, and there passed not a day without his enjoying some hours discourse with him. The good father even conceived such an affection for M. Daille, that he used his utmost endeavours with a French physician of the protestant religion, and one of his intimate friends, to prevail with him to stay at Venice. This circumstance of Daille’s life, among many others, has been thought no inconsiderable proof, that father Paul concealed, under the habit of a monk, a temper wholly devoted to protestantism and its professors.

Daille was received minister in 1623, and first exercised his office in the family of du Plessis Mornay: but this did not last long; for that lord fell sick a little after, and died the same year, in the arms of the new pastor. Daille spent the following year in digesting some papers of his, which were afterwards published in two volumes, under the title of “Memoirs.” In 1625 he was appointed minister of the church of Sauinur; and the year after removed to that of Paris. Here he spent the rest of his life, and diffused great light over the whole hody, as well by his sermons, as by his books of controversy. In 1628 he wrote his celebrated book, “De l'usage des Peres,” or, “Of the Use of the Fathers;” but, on account of some troubles which seemed to be coming upon the protestants in France, it was not published till 1631. Bayle has pronounced this work a master-piece; but it has been attacked with great seventy by some, as tending to lessen the just respect due to the fathers, and to the views of religious opinions which they exhibit, and which are at least important in point of historical evidence. On the other hand, some eminent scholars, and orthodox churchmen in England have acknowledged its high worth and merit; and so early as 1651 an English translation of it was published by the learned Thomas Smith, B. D. fellow of Christ’s college in Cambridge. An advertisement is prefixed to it, from which we transcribe a passage or two, as illustrating the translator’s opinion and views of the work: “The translation of this tract,” says Mr. Smith, “hath been often attempted, and oftener desired by many noble personages of this and other nations: among others by sir Lucius Gary late lord viscount Falkland, who, with his dear friend Mr. Chillingworth, made very much use of it in all their writings against the Romanists. But the papers of that learned nobleman, wherein this translation was half finished, were long since involved in the common loss. Those few, which have escaped it, and the press, make a very honourable mentipn of this monsieur, whose acquaintance the said lord was wont to say, was worth a voyage to Paris. In page 202 of his Reply, he hath these words: ‘This observation of mine hath been confirmed by consideration of what hath been so temperately, learnedly, and judiciously written by M. Daille, our protestant Perron.’ I shall add but one lord’s testimony more, namely, the lord George Digby*S in his late Letters concerning Religion, in these words, p. 27, 28: 'The reasons prevalent with me, whereon and enquiring and judicious person should be obliged to rely and acquiesce, are so amply and so learnedly set down by M. Daille in his `Emploi des Peres,‘ that I think little, which is material and weighty, can he said on this subject, that his rare and piercing observation hath not anticipated.’ And for myself, I must ingenuously profess, that it was the reading of this rational book, which first convinced me that my study in the French language was not ill employed; which hath also enabled me to commend this to the world, as faithfully translated by a judicious hand.” Mr. Mettayer, who was minister of St. Quintin, published a Latin translation of this work; which translation was revised and augmented with new observations, by Daille himself, and was printed at Geneva in 1656.

In 1633 he published another work of general concern, entitled “L'Apologie de nos Eglises,” or, “An Apology for the reformed Churches;” in which he vindicates, with much learning and argument, their separation from the church of Rome, from the imputation of schism, which was usually brought against them. This work was also translated into English by Mr. Smith, in 1658; as it was into Latin the same year by Daille himself, and printed at Amsterdam in 8vo. It was much censured by the clergy of France, as soon as it was published, and some were employed to write against it. Daille“wrote two or three little pieces in defence of it, which were afterwards printed with it in the Latin edition. That Daille was a very voluminous writer, will not seem strange, when it is considered that he lived long, was very laborious, and enjoyed a good state of health. He was endued with the qualifications of a writer in a most eminent degree; and had this singular advantage, that his understanding was not impaired with age: for it is observable, that there is no less strength and fire in his two volumes” De objecto cultds religiosi," the first of which was published when he was 70 years old, than in any of his earlier works.

He assisted at the national synod, which was held at Alengon in 1637: and his authority and advice contributed much to quiet the disputes, which were then warmly agitated among the protestants concerning universal grace. He declared strenuously for universal grace; and afterwards published at Amsterdam, in 1655, a Latin work against Frederic Spanheim, the divinity professor at Leyden, entitled “An apology for the synods of Alengon and Cbarenton.” This work rekindled the war among the protestant divines; yet Daille endeavoured to clear himself. by saying, that his book had been published without his knowledge. Nevertheless, he answered the celebrated Samuel des Marets, professor of Groning-en, which produced a short, but very warm contest between them, in which Daille’s spirit of controversy has not been approved even by his friends. He died at Paris, April 15, 1670, having never experienced throughout his life any illness, except that in 1650 he was suddenly seized with a lethargic or apopletic disorder, in which he lay 10 or 11 days, apparently without a possibility of recovering. He left a high reputation behind him; and the protestants used to say in France, that “they had no better writer since Calvin than M. Daille.” In 1720, M. Engelschall, a Roman catholic clergyman at Dresden, published proposals for a complete edition of Daille’s works, for which it is probable he had no encouragement, as we have not been able to find such a publication in any catalogue; but his proposals, which are drawn up with great candour, will at least enable us to give a more correct list of Daille’s works, with the best editions. 1. “De Usu Patrum,” Geneva, 1656. 2. “Apologia ecclesiarum veformatarum,” Amst. 3. “Fides ex S. Scripturis demonstrate,” Gen. 1660. 4. “Examen Sententiae Theoph. Bracheti Milleterii super conciliatione Controversiarum religionis,” Paris, 1637. 5. “De Patrum, fide circa imagines,” Leyden, 1642. 6. “De pcenis et satisfactionibus humanis,” Amst. 1649. 7. “Pseudepigrapha Apostolica de octo libris constitutionum Apostolicarum,” Harderw. 1653. 8. “De jejuniis et quadragesima,” Daventer, 1G54. 9. “Pro duabus Synodis, Alenson et Carenton. Apologia,” Amst. 1655. 10. “De coniirmatione et extrema unctione,” Genev. 1659. II. “De confessione auriculari,” Genev. 1661. 12. “Adversus Latinorurn traditionem de cultus religiosi objecto, disputatio,” Gen. 1664. 13. “De Scriptis, quae sub Dionysii Areopagii et Ignatii nominibus circumferuntur,” Gen. 1666. 14. “De cultibus Latinorum religiosis Libri Novem,” Gen. 1671. In all those he has been thought to be very perspicuous, both with regard to the expression, and to the disposition of his subject. He was reproached by one of his adversaries with stealing several things from Dr. Davenant, in his “Exposition of the Epistle to the Colossians;” but he answered the charge.

He married in the Lower Poitou, in May 1625; and his wife died the 31st of that month, 1631, leaving him only one son, born in the house of the Dutch ambassador, Oct. 31, 1628. She had taken refuge there, because the. protestants were afraid lest the news of the taking of Rochelle might excite popular tumults. This only son, whose name was Hadrian Daille, was received a minister in 1653. He had continued his theological studies with his father for several years, when the consistory of Rochelle invited him. thither. Five years after, that is, in 1658, he was chosen a minister of Paris, and became a colleague with his father. He was alive at the revocation of the edict of Nantz, and, then retiring to Switzerland, died at Zurich in May 169O. All his Mss. among which were several works of his father’s, were carried to the public library. He wrote that abridgement of his father’s life, from which we have chiefly collected the materials of this article.

, one of the translators of the Bible, of whose family history we have no account, was educated at Westminster school, whence being removed to Cambridge, he was admitted of Trinity college May 8, 1587; chosen junior fellow there Oct. 3, 1593, and senior fellow March 16th following. In 1601 he took the degree of B. D. and was sworn Greek lecturer of that college (an annual office) Oct. 2, 1602. In July 1604 he was chosen professor of divinity in Gresham college, to which he was recommended, in the most honourable terms, not only by the vice-chancellor and several heads of houses at Cambridge, but also by some of the nobility, and even by king James I. in a letter to the Gresham committee. His majesty’s object seems to have been that Mr. Dakins should not be without a suitable provision while employed on the new translation of the Bible, undertaken by royal order, and for a part of which important work Mr. Dakins was considered as excellently qualified by his skill in the Oriental languages. The translators being divided into six classes, two of which were to meet at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge, Mr. Dakins was one of those at Westminster, and his part was the Epistles of St. Paul and the canonical Epistles. He did not, however, live to see the work completed, as he died in Feb. 1607, a few months after being chosen junior dean of Trinity college.

, M. D. an antiquary and botanist, was originally an apothecary at Braintree in Essex, until about 1730, when he became a licentiate of the college of physicians, and a fellow of the royal society, according to Pulteney, but his name does not appear in Dr. Thomson’s list. About the time above-mentioned, Dr. Dale is supposed to have settled at Bocking, where he practised as a physician until his decease June 6, 1739, in the eightieth year of his age. He was buried in the dissenters’ burying ground at Bocking. His separate publications are, 1. “Pharmacologia, seu Manuductio ad Materiam Medicam,” 1693, 8vo, republished in 1705, 1710, 8vo, and 1737,4to,a much improved edition. It was also four times printed abroad. The first edition was one of the earliest rational books on the subject, and the author attended so much to subsequent publications and improvements, as to give his last edition the importance of a new work. Scarcely in any author, says Dr. Pulteney, is there a more copious collection of synonyms, a circumstance which, independent of much other intrinsic worth, will long continue the use of the book with those who wish to pursue the history of any article through all the former writers on the subject. 2. “The Antiquities of Harwich and Dover Court,” 1730, 4to, originally written by Silas Taylor, gent, about the year 1676. That part of this work which regards natural history is so copious and accurate as to render the book a real acquisition to science. Dale was also the author of various communications to the royal society, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions.

, a learned French physician and indefatigable botanist, was born at Caen in 1513, studied medicine and botany at Montpelier, xvas admitted doctor in medicine in 1547, and died at Lyons, where he had long practised physic, in 1538. He published several elaborate translations, particularly of the fifteen books of Athenseus into Latin, in 1552, in 2 vols. fol. illustrated with notes and figures; and some of the works of Galen and Paul Egineta into French. In 1556 he published a translation of “Ccelius Aurelianus de Morbis acutis” and in 1569, “Chirurgie Franchise, avec plusieurs figures d'instrumens,” 8vo, which has been several times reprinted. He principally followed the practice of Paree, from whose work he borrowed the figures of the instruments; but he has added a translation into French of the seventh book ol' Paree, with annotations, and some curious cases occurring in his own practice. He was also the editor of an edition of Pliny with notes, published in 1537. His first work, according to Ilaller, was an 8vo edition of Iluellius’s Commentary on Dioscorides, which appeared at Lyons in 1552, enriched by Dalechamp with thirty small figures of plants, at that time but little known. But his principal performance in this branch was an universal history of plants, in Latin, with above two thousand five hundred wooden cuts, besides repetitions, published after his death in two folio volumes. The publisher, William Uouille, seems to take upon himself the chief credit of collecting and arranging the materials of this great work, though he allows that Dalechamp laid its first foundations. Haller says the latter was engaged in it for thirty years; his aim being to collect together all the botanical knowledge of his predecessors, and enrich it with his own discoveries. He employed John Bauhin, then a young man, and resident at Lyons, to assist him; but Bauhin being obliged on account of his religion to leave France for Switzerland, like many other good and great men of that and the following century, the work in question was undertaken by Des Moulins, and soon afterwards Dalechamp died. It is often quoted by the title of“Historia Lugdunensis,” and hence the merits of its original projector are overlooked, as well as the faults arising from its mode of compilation, which are in many instances so great as to render it useless. A French translation was published in 1615, and again in 1653. Besides these Dalechamp published, 1. “Caelius Aurelianus de morbis chronicis,” Lond. 1579, 8vo; and 2. An edition of the works of the two Senecas, the orator and the philosopher, with notes and various readings, Geneva, 1628, 2 vols. fol.

, an eminent engraver, who flourished about the year 1640, was a native of Holland; but under what master he learnt the art of engraving, is uncertain. It is difficult to form a proper judgment of his merit; for sometimes his prints resemble those of Cornelius Vischer; of Lucas Vosterman; of P. Pontius; of Bolswert; and other masters. A set of antique statues engraved by him, are in a bold, freestyle, as if founded upon that of Goltzius; others again seem imitations of that of Francis Poilly. In all these different manners he has succeeded; and they plainly manifest the great command he had with his graver, for he worked with that instrument only. He engraved a great variety of portraits, some of which are very valuable, and form the best as well as the largest part of his works.

, a learned Swede, who was born at Winberga, in Holland, in 1708, deservedly obtained the appellation of the father of Swedish poetry by two poems written in that language; the one entitled “The Liberty of Sweden,” published in 1743; the other the tragedy of “Brunhilda.” He successively raised himself to be preceptor to prince Gustavus, counsellor in ordinary of the chancery, knight of the northern star, and at last to the dignity of chancellor of the court. By command of the king he engaged to compile a history of his own country from the earliest period to the present time, which he accomplished in three volumes quarto; and which was afterwards translated into the German language. Sweden is indebted to him also lor a great number of epistles, satires, fables, thoughts, and some panegyrics on the members otthe royal academy of sciences, of which he was a principal ornament: all these have been collected and printed in 6 vols. There is likewise by him a translation of the president Montesquieu, on the Causes of the grandeur and declension of the Romans. Von Dalin died in August 1763, leaving a reputation for literature, which his works are thought to confirm.

, as Fuller informs us, was born at Geddington, in the county of Northampton, and bred a bible-clerk in Corpus Christi college, Cambridge: but Wood has made him a Greek scholar in Pembroke-hall. As a confirmation, however, of the former, he published “A Book of Epitaphs, made upon the death of the right worshipful sir William Buttes, knt.” in 1583, which were chiefly composed by himself and the members of Corpus. It appears that he was afterwards placed in a school in Norfolk, where, Fuller says, he gained so much money as enabled him to travel over France and Italy. Concerning Italy, we have a specimen of his accurate observations in his “Survey of the Great Duke’s State of Tuscany in the year 1596,” which was inscribed to him by the publisher, Edward Blount, in 1605, 4to; and in the same year appeared his “Method of Travel, shewed bjjj taking a view of France as it stood in 1598,” 4to. In the preface he says that he was at the last jubilee at Rome, and that “this discourse was written long since, when the now lord secretary was then lord ambassador, and intended for the private use of an hon. gent.” The second edition, published in 162y, contains the clause of Guicciardini defaced by the inquisition, consisting of sixty-one pages. After his return he became secretary to Francis earl of Rutland, then one of the privy chamber to prince Charles, and master of the Charter-house, where he introduced i:ito the school the custom of versifying on passages of the holy scripture; about which time he had also the honour of knighthood conferred upon him. He was incorporated A.M. at Oxford in 1601, and published “Aphorismes, Civil and Military; amplified with authorities, and exemplified with history out of the first quaterne of Fr. Guicciardini/' Lond. 1615, fol. in which he is said to have” shown both wit and judgment." He died in the latter end of the year 1637, upwards of seventy-six years old, and was buried in the Charter-house chapel.

According to the records of the Charter-house, he was appointed master July 9, 1624, when he was only in deacon’s orders, which was through the recommendation “of the most excellent prince of Wales.” He is described as a man “of good merit and deserte.” The governors resolved at the same time that no future master should be elected under forty years of age; or who was not in holy orders of priesthood two years before his election; and having not more than one living, and that within thirty miles of London. Sir Robert had grown so very infirm in 1636, that the governors ordered three persons as his assistants.

, a very learned Lutheran divine of the sixteenth century, of whose personal history little is known, deserves notice as thetranslator of Luther’s German Bible into the Sclavonian, which language being . spoken in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, the states of those countries came to a determination that this Bible should be printed for their use. They first employed John Manlius, a printer of Laybach, who was the first that printed the Sclavonic in Roman letters: but while Manlius was making his calculations of expence, &c. the archduke Charles of Austria forbad him to print it. This appears to have happened in 1580. The states, however, only changed their determination so far as to have it printed elsewhere, and sent Dalmatin for that purpose to Gratz, where he was to correct the press, after the copy had been carefully revised at Laybach by him, in conjunction with other eminent divines and Oriental scholars. But, finding that no impression of this Bible would be permitted in the Austrian dominions, the states sent, in April 1583, Dalmatin, and another divine, Adam Bohoritsch, to Wittemberg, with a recommendation to the elector of Saxony, and the work being begun in May 1583, was finished Jan. 1, 1584. They had agreed with Samuel Seelfisch, bookseller at Wittemberg, that he should print fifteen hundred copies, each to contain two hundred and eighty sheets of the largest paper, on a fine character, with wooden cuts; for which the states of Carniola were to pay after the rate of twenty florins for every bale of five hundred sheets. The expences of the impression of this Bible amounted to about eight thousand florins: towards which the states of Styria gave a thousand florins, those of Carirrthia nine hundred, and the evangelic states of Carniola six thousand one hundred. These particulars may not be unacceptable to typographical students, as it is but seldom we have access to the history of early printing. Of Dalmatin we are only told that he afterwards was put in possession of the cure of St. Khazaim, or St. Catiani, near Aurspergh, by Christopher, baron of Aurspergh, in 1585, who, when the popish party banished Dalmatin in 1598, kept him concealed in his house; and a vault under the stable before the castle used long to be shewn as the hole of the preacher."

, an eminent hydrographer, F. R. S. and F. S. A. was born July 24, 1737, at New Hailes, near Edinburgh, the seat of his fattier sir James Dalrymple, bait, of Hailes. His mother, lady Christian, daughter of the earl of Haddington, a very amiable and accomplished woman, bore sixteen children, all of whom Alexander, who was the seventh son, survived. He was educated at the school of Haddington, under Mr. David Young; but as he left school before he was fourteen years of age, and never was at the university, his scholastic endowments were very limited. At school he had the credit of being a good scholar; and, after he left school, his eldest hrother was wont to make him translate, off hand, some of the odes of Horace; so that he was, for his years, a tolerable proficient in Latin: but going abroad, entirely his own master, before he was sixteen years of age, he neglected his Latin; and, as he says, never found so much use for it as to induce him to take any pains to recover it.

Sir James Dalrymple died in 1750; and the hon. general St. Clair having married sir James’s sister, a very sensible and accomplished woman (the relict of sir John Baird, bart.), in 1752, from his intimacy with alderman Baker, then chairman of the East India company, general St. Clair got Mr. Baker’s promise to appoint his nephew, Mr. Dalrymple, a writer in the company’s service; the young man having conceived a strong desire of going to the East Indies, by reading Nieuhoff’s Voyages, and a novel of that time, called Joe Thomson. He accordingly left Scotland in the spring of 1752, with his brother sir David, who affectionately accompanied him to London. He was put to Mr. Kinross’s academy, at Forty-hill, near Enfield, for some months antecedent to his appointment in the company’s service. He tells us he was obliged to Mr. Kinross for his great kindness and attention to him, and received much good instruction for his conduct through life; by which he greatly profited: but was too short a time at that academy to learn much of what was the object of sending him there, viz. writing and merchants’ accounts; which are, at least were at that time, the only qualifications the East India company thought requisite in their servants: and the absurdity of supposing a boy of sixteen from an academy competent to keep a set of merchants’ books not being considered, some demur was made to Mr. Kinross’s certificate of this part of Mr. Dalrymple’s education not being expressed in terms sufficiently direct; however, this was not insisted on.

On the 1st of November, 1752, he was appointed a writer in the East India company’s service, and on the 8th of November, stationed on the Madras establishment. Alderman Baker disqualified early the next year; so that it was by a very accidental coritingence that Mr. Dairy m pie went to India, his family having no India connexions; more particularly as he wanted a few months of sixteen years of age, which was the age required for a writer to be: and his mother lady Christian strongly objected to his father’s son even tacitly assenting to countenance what was untrue; and she was not quite satisfied with being assured that it was with alderman Baker’s concurrence and approbation;“it being urged, that the spirit of the regulation was to prevent infants being introduced into the service as writers, and not to preclude a person for the difference of a few months in age.” This,“says our author,” is the only instance in which Alexander Dalrymple is conscious of having been accessary to cheating the company, if it can be so termed."

About the middle of December, he embarked at Gravesend on board the Suffolk Indiaman, commanded by captain William Wilson, and the vessel sailed from the Downs Dec. 25, 1752, and arrived at Madras on May 11. At first Mr. Dalrymple was put under the store-keeper, but was soon after removed to the secretary’s office, and on lord Pigot’s being appointed governor, was noticed by his lordship with great kindness, as well as by Mr. Orme, the historian, then a member of council and accountant, who continued his friendship to him during the remainder of his life. While in the secretary’s office, examining the old records, to qualify himself, by the knowledge of them, to fill the office of secretary, which he was in succession to expect, he found the commerce of the eastern islands was an object of great consideration with the company, and he was inspired with an earnest desire to recover that important object for this country.

A favourable opportunity offered for putting this into train: his old friend captain Wilson, who was appointed by the East India company commodore of all their ships and vessels, and commander of the Pitt, of 50 guns, for his good and gallant conduct, arrived in September 1758, having on board sir William (then colonel) Draper, and part of his regiment. The Pitt was destined for China. Commodore Wilson, whose sagacity and maritime knowledge was equal to his courage, had reflected during the course of his voyage from England, in what manner his passage to China could be attained at that season; and it occurred to him, that the same principle by which ships went to the Malabar coast and Persia from Madras in the south west monsoon, was applicable in a passage to China, viz. by crossing the line, and taking advantage of the contrary monsoons that prevail at the same time in north and south latitudes. Thus, as the ships from Madras stand to the south east with the south west winds, till they get into the south east trade in south latitude, and then stand westward, till they are to windward of their intended port, when they cross the line again into north latitude; so commodore Wilson reasoned, that the north-west winds would, in south latitude, carry him far enough eastward to make the north-east wind a fair wind to China. Sir William Draper countenancing his opinion, commodore Wilson, on his arrival at Madras, mentioned the subject to Mr. Dalrymple, and asked his sentiments; which entirely concurring with his own, and being confirmed by reference to Saris, &c. who had performed the most essential part of the voyage, though with a different object; commodore Wilson was thereby induced to propose it to governor Pigot, who consulted Mr. Dalrymple, and being convinced that it was practicable, commodore Wilson performed the voyage highly to the credit of our maritime reputation, and much to the advantage of the company.

As the Cuddalore went under the secret orders of the governor, it was not thought proper to apply to the council for the provision of such a cargo as was necessary in countries where there was no regular communication or commerce; and where even provisions could, probably, only be purchased by barter; a small cargo was put on board at the expence of the governor, who permitted captain Baker, the captain, to have a fourth concern. The evening before Mr. Dalrymple embarked, governor Pigot presented him with an instrument, making him a present of whatever profits might accrue from the three-fourths concern. Having never insinuated such an intention, he left no ground for mercenary imputation against Mr. Dalrymple, in undertaking the voyage, or against the governor himself for ordering it. In consequence of an offer made by the hon. Thomas Howe, commander of that ship, he first embarked in the Winchelsea, April 22, 1759, and having joined the Cuddalore, captain George Baker, in the strait of Malacca, whither that vessel had been dispatched a few days before the Winchelsea, Mr. Dalrymple quitted the Winchelsea, and embarked on the Cuddalore June 3, in the Strait of Sincapore.

It cannot be pretended to give a recital, however brief, of the course of this voyage, of which Mr. Dalrymple did not publish any connected journal, but it was in this voyage the English visited Sooloo. Mr. Dalrymple concluded a treaty with the sultan, and made a contract with the principal persons, for a cargo to be brought on the East India company’s account, which the natives engaged to receive at 100 per cent, profit, and to provide a cargo for China, which they engaged should yield an equivalent profit there. The principal person with whom this contract was negociated, was Dato Bandahara, the head and representative of the nobility; for the Sooloo government is a mixed monarchy, in which, though the principal nobility and orauky’s meet in the national council to deliberate, the authority is vested in a few officers, who are hereditary, the Sultan, Dato Bandahara, who represents the nobility, and Oranky Mallick, who represents the people; matters of government depending on the concurrence of two of the states, of which the people must be one.

The person then filling the hereditary office of Bandahara, was as conspicuous for the probity and exalted justice ok his character, as by his distinguished rank, of which, whilst Mr. Dalrymple was at Sooloo, in 1761, an occasion occurred for Bandahara to exert. There were at this time two Chinese junks in Sooloo road; in the cargo of one of them the sultan had an interest; the other belonged entirely to Chinese merchants of Amoy. The sultan, who was very avaricious, in hopes of getting money from the Chinese, or thinking, perhaps, that it would be more advantageous for the sale of the cargo in which he was concerned, laid an embargo on the other junk: Bandahara and Oranky Mailick remonstrated with the sultan on the impropriety of this behaviour to merchants, but without effect; upon which Bandahara, and Oranky Mailick, with Pangleema Milabain, a person of a military order, consonant to ancient knighthood, went on board the China junk, in which the sultan had an interest, and brought her rudder on shore, informing the sultan that they would detain the one if he obstructed the departure of the other: this well-timed interference had its due effect, and both junks proceeded without further molestation on their voyage home.

He returned to Madras from this eastern voyage, Jan. 23, 1762. The company’s administration approved of his proceedings, and in March 1762, having resolved to send on the company’s account the cargo stipulated, employed him in expediting the provision of that cargo. His expences in the voyage of almost three years, amounted to 612l. which was repaid by the governor and council of Madras, but he neither asked or received any pecuniary advantage to himself. On the 10th of May, the London packet was destined for the Sooloo voyage, and Mr. Dalrymple was appointed captain. In the passage from Madras to Sooloo, he first visited Balambangan; and on his arrival at Sooloo, found the small-pox had swept off many of the principal inhabitants, and dispersed the rest; so that very ineffectual measures had been taken towards providing the intended cargo. But although this unexpected calamity, which in the Eastern Islands is similar in its effects to the plague, was a sufficient reason for the disappointment of the cargo, yet a still more efficient cause, was the death of Bandahara, soon after Mr. Dalrymple’s departure from Sooloo, the preceding year. A few days before the death of this good man, he sent for the linguist whom Mr. Dalrymple had employed, and who had remained behind at Sooloo, asking if he thought the English would certainly come again. The linguist declaring that it was not to be doubted; Bandahara thereupon expressed his concern, saying that it would have made him very happy to have lived to have seen this contract faithfully performed on their part, and the friendship with the English established on a firm footing. The linguist observed, that they were all equally bound. Banclahara replied, that although this was true, all had not the same disposition; and perhaps none else the power of enforcing the due execution of their engagements; but that he was resigned to the divine will.

This situation of affairs at Sooloo, made new arrangements necessary, the result of which was, that one half of the cargo brought thither in the London should be delivered, to enable the Sooloos to provide goods for the expected Indiaman; but that ship not arriving, new difficulties arose; as the London was not large enough to receive the goods they had provided; and the necessity of her departure made it indispensable to deliver the remaining half of the cargo, which had been retained as an incitement to the Sooloos faithfully to pay for that portion they had received. By delivery of the remainder, every thing was necessarily left to the mercy of the Sooloos, subjected not only to their honour, but to their discretion; for if the goods they received were dissipated, they could obtain no cargo in return, having nothing to deliver to their vassals for their services, without which they were not entitled to those services. Ualrymple, however, obtained a grant of the island of Balambangan, for the East India company, of which he took possession Jan. 23, 1763, on his return towards Madras, and as it appeared necessary that the court of directors should have full information on the subject of our future intercourse in the eastern islands, he determined to proceed to England for that purpose. But as the president and council thought it proper that he should proceed again to Sooloo in the Neptune Indiaman, in the way to China, and embark thence for England, he accordingly sailed from Madras July 5, 1763. Many circumstances, however, prevented the execution of every part of this plan, and he appears to have been disappointed in his views respecting the intercourse with the eastern islands, the advantages of which he afterwards fully stated in a pamphlet entitled “A Plan for extending the commerce, &c.” published in 1771, though printed in 1769.

Soon after his arrival home in 1765, discoveries in the South Sea being a favourite object of Mr. Dalrymple’s researches, he communicated his col -m that subject to the secretary of state, lord Shelburne, late marquis of Lans^ downe, who expressed a strong desire to employ him on these discoveries. Afterwards, when the royal society proposed to send persons to observe the transit of Venus, in 1769, Mr. Dalrymple was approved of by the admiralty, as a proper person to be employed in this service, as well as to prosecute discoveries in that quarter; but from some differences of opinion, partly owing to official etiquette, respecting the employment of any person as commander of a vessel who was not a naval officer, and partly owing to Mr. Dalrymple’s objections to a divided command, this design did not take place. In that year, however, the court of directors of the East India company gave Mr. Dalrymple 5000l. for his past services, and as an equivalent to the emoluments of secretary at Madras, which he had relinquished in 1759, to proceed on the eastern voyage. As the various proceedings concerning Balambangan were published in 1769, it may be sufficient to notice in this place that the court of directors appointed Mr. Dalrymple chief of Balambangan, and commander of the Britannia; but some unhappy differences arising with the directors, he was removed from the charge of that intended settlement, and another person appointed in his stead. In 1774, however, the court of directors being dissatisfied with this person’s conduct, had it in contemplation to send a supervisor thither. On this occasion Mr. Dalrymple made an offer of his services to redeem the expedition from destruction, without any emolument except defraying his expences, on condition that a small portion of the clear profits of the establishment should be granted to him and his heirs, &c. But this offer was not accepted, and soon after the settlement of Balambangan was lost to the company.

From the time Mr. Dalrymple returned to England, in 1765, he was almost constantly engaged in collecting and arranging materials for a full exposition of the importance of the Eastern Islands and South Seas; and was encouraged by the court of directors to publish various charts, &c. It is positively affirmed that the chart of the northern part of the Bay of Bengal, published in 1772, was the occasion of saving the Hawke Indiaman from the French, in the war.

Mr. Dalrymple had taken every occasion to keep up his claim on the Madras establishment; but after lord Pigot was, in 1775, appointed governor of Fort St. George, he was advised by the then chairman and deputy chairman, to make a specific application before the arrangement of the Madras council was made, his former letters being considered as too general. Accordingly, on the 3d of March, 1775, he applied to be restored to his standing on the Madras establishment; which application the company were pleased to comply with, and he was appointed in his rank, as a member of council, and was nominated to be one of the committee of circuit. In the proceedings of the council at Madras, no man, however violent in his animosity or opposition, ever imputed to Mr. Dalrymple any want of integrity or zeal, for what he thought was for the company’s interest, and he had the satisfaction to find that the court of directors gave him distinguished marks of their approbation. On the 1st of April, 1779, when the company were pleased to accept of his services in the employment he held until his death, namely, that of hydrographer, by advice of sir George Wombwell, the then chairman, he accepted on the 8th that employment by letter, read in court on the 9th of April, on condition it should not invalidate his pretensions at Madras.

On the 27th of May 1780, the court of directors resolved that Messrs. Russell, Dalrymple, Stone, and Lathom, having come home in pursuance of the resolution of the general court, in 1777, to have their conduct inquired into, and no objection having been made in so long a time, nor appearing against their conduct, should be again employed in the company’s service. The other gentlemen were afterwards appointed to chiefships, Mr. Dalrymple continuing in his present employment, with the reservation of his Madras pretensions. When the employment of hydrographer was confirmed on the 19th of July, he expressed by letter, that he trusted, if he wished to return to Madras hereafter, that the court would appoint him, and this letter was ordered to lie on the table.

In 1784, when the India bill was brought into parliament, there was a clause precluding the company from sending persons back to India, who had been a certain time in England; Mr. Dalrymple represented the injustice this was to him, who had accepted his employment, on condition that it should not injure his pretensions at Madras; a clause was thereupon inserted, precluding that measure, unless with the concurrence of three-fourths of the directors, and three-fourths of the proprietors; he was still not satisfied, and carried on a sort of controversial correspondence with the directors, the merits of which would now be but imperfectly. understood. It having been long in contemplation to have an hydrographical office at the Admiralty, this was at length established during the administration of earl Spencer. In 1795 Mr. Dalrymple was appointed to the office of hydrographer, and received the assent of the court of directors, xinder whom he held a similar office, and who had lately given him a pension for life.

From this time little occurred in his history worthy of particular notice until the month of May 1808, when having refused to resign his place of hydrographer to the Admiralty, on the ground of superannuation, and to accept of a pension, he was dismissed from his situation; and it is said, that in the opinion of his medical attendants, his death was occasioned by vexation arising from that event. A motion was shortly afterwards made on this subject in the house of commons, when the secretary to the admiralty, after bearing the most ample testimony to the talents and services of Mr. Dalrymple, fully justified the conduct of 'that board, which had adopted a necessary measure with much reluctance. Mr. Dalrymple, indeed, had exhibited so many symptoms of decayed faculties, joined to an irritable habit, as to lessen the value of those services for which he had been so highly respected. He died June 19, 1808, at his house in High-street Mary-le-bone, and was buried in the small cemetery adjoining the church. His collection of books was very large and valuable, and particularly rich in works pertaining to geography and navigation, which were purchased by the admiralty. His valuable collection of poetry he bequeathed to his heir at law, to be kept at the family seat in Scotland, as an heir-loom; and his miscellaneous collection, containing, among others, a great number of valuable foreign books, particularly in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, was sold by auction, and produced a considerable sum.

His printed works were very numerous. The following list, exclusive of his nautical publications, was furnished by himself at the end of some memoirs of his life, which he drew up for the European magazine in 1802, and of which we have availed ourselves in the preceding account. In the following list, those marked * were never published, and those marked † were not sold.

1. “Account of Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean before 1764,” 1767, 8vo. 2. † “Memorial to the Proprietors of East India Stock,” 1768, 8vo. 3. † “Account of what has passed between the East India Directors and Alexander Dalrymple,” as first printed, 1768, 8vo. 4. “Account of what has passed Do. Do. as published,” 8vo. 5. “Plan for extending the Commerce of this Kingdom, and of the East India Company, by an Establishment at Balambangan,” 1771. 6. * “Letter concerning the proposed Supervisors,” 20th June 1769, 8vo. 7. “Letter concerning the proposed Supervisors,” 30th June 1769, 4to. 8. Second Letter Do. 10th July 1769, 4to. 9. “Vox populi Vox Dei, lord Weymouth’s Appeal to the General Court of India Proprietors, considered, 14th August,” 1769, 4to. 10. “Historical collection of South Sea Voyages,” 1770, 2 vols. 4to; 1771, 4to. 11. † “Proposition of a benevolent Voyage to introduce Corn, &c. into New Zealand,” &c. 1771, 4to. 12. Considerations on a Pamphlet (by governor Johnstone) entitled “Thoughts onour acquisitions in the East Indies, particularly respecting Bengal,” 1772, 8vo. 13. “General View of the East India Company’s Affairs (written in January 1769), to which are added some Observations on the present State of the Company’s Affairs,” 1772, 8vo. 14. † “A paper concerning the General Government for India,” 8vo. 15. † “Rights of the East India Company.” N. B. This was printed at the company’s expence, 1773, 8vo. 16. “Letter to Dr. Hawkesworth,” 1773, 4to. 17. *“Observations on Dr. Hawkesworth’s Preface to 2d edition,” 1773, 4to. An opinion of sir David Dalrymple, that there was too much asperity in this Reply, retarded, and the death of Dr. Hawkesworth prevented, the publication. 18. † “Memorial of Doctor Juan Louis Arias (in Spanish),” 1773, 4to. 19. † “Proposition for printing, by subscription, the ms voyages and travels in the British Museum,” 1773, 4to. 20. “A full and clear proof that the Spaniards have no right to Balambangan,” 1774, 8vo. 21. “An historical relation of the several Expeditions, from Fort Marlbro' to the Islands off the West Coast of Sumatra,” 1775, 4to. 22. “Collection of Voyages, chiefly in the South Atlantic Ocean, from the original Mss. by Dr. H alley, M. Bouvet, &c. with a Preface concerning a Voyage on Discovery, proposed to be undertaken by Alexander Dalrymple at his own expence; Letters to Lord North on the subject, and Plan of a Republican Colony,” 1775, 4to. 23. † “Copies of papers relative to the Restoration of the King of Tanjour, the Imprisonment of Lord Pigot, &c. Printed by the East India Company, for the use of the Proprietors.” 1777, 4to. N. B. In this collection are many Minutes of Council, and some Letters by Alexander Dalrymple. 24. † Several other pieces on the same subject, written by Alexander Dalrymple, were printed by admiral Pigot and Alexander Dalrymple, but not sold; those particularly by Alexander Dalrymple are 4to, 1777. 25. “Notes on Lord Pigot’s Narrative.” 26. “Letter to Proprietors of East India Stock,” 8th May 1777. 27. “Account of the transactions concerning the Revolt at Madras, 30th April 1777. Appendix.” 28. “Letter to the Court of Directors, 19th June 1777. Memorial 19th June 1777.” 29. † “Account of the subversion of the Legal Government of Fort St. George, in answer to Mr. Andrew Stuart’s Letter to the Court of Directors,” 1778, 4to. 30. “Journal of the Grenville,” published in the Philosophical Transactions, 1778, 4to. 31. “Considerations on the present State of Affairs between England and America, 1778,” 8vo. 32. “Considerations on the East India Bill, 1769,” 8vo, 1778. 33. “State of the East India Company, and Sketch of an equitable Agreement,” 1780, 8vo. 34. “Account of the Loss of the Grosvenor,” 1783, 8vo. 35. “Reflections on the present State of the East India Company,” 1783, 8vo. 36. “A short account of the Gentoo Mode of collecting the Revenues on the Coast of Coromandel,” 1783, 8vo. 37. “A Retrospective View of the Ancient System of the Blast India Company, with a Plan of Regulation,” 178-4, 8vo. 38. “Postscript to Mr. Dairy mple’s account of the Gentoo Mode of collecting the Revenues on the Coast of Coromandel, being, Observations made on a perusal of it by Moodoo Kistna,” 1785, 8vo. 39. “Extracts from Juvenilia, or Poems by George Wither,” 1785, 24mo. 40. “Eair State of the Case between the East India Company and the Owners of Ships now in their service; to which are added, Considerations on Mr. Brough’s Pamphlet, concerning East India Shipping,” 1786, 8vo. 41. “A serious Admonition to the Public on the intended Thief Colony at Botany Bay.” 42. “Review of the Contest concerning Four New Regiments, graciously offered by his Majesty to be sent to India,” &c. 178S, 8vo. 43. * “Plan for promoting the Fur-trade, and securing it to this Country, by uniting the Operations of the East India and Hudson’s Bay Companies,” 1789, 4to. 44. “Memoir of a Map of the Lands around the North Pole,” 1789, 4to, 45. “An Historical Journal of the Expeditions by Sea and Land, to the North of California in 1768, 1769, and 1770, when Spanish establishments were first made at San Diego and Monterey, translated from the Spanish ms. by William Revely, esq. to which is added, Translation of Cabrera Bueno’s Description of the Coast of California, and an Extract from the ms Journal of M. Sauvague le Muet, 1714,” 1790, 4to. 46. “A Letter to a Friend on the Test Act,” 1790, 8vo. 47. “The Spanish Pretensions fairly discussed,” 1790, 8vo, 48. “The Spanish Memorial of 4th June considered,” 1790, 8vo. 49. † “Plan for the publication of a Repertory of Oriental Information,” 1790, 4to. 50. * “Memorial of Alexander Dalrymple,” 1791, 8vo. 51. “Parliamentary Reform, as it is called, improper, in the present State of this Country,” 1793, 8vo. 52. “Mr. Fox’s Letter to his worthy and independent Electors of Westminster, fully considered,” 1793, 8vo. 53. † “Observations on the Copper-coinage wanted for the Circars. Printed for the use of the East India Company,” 1794, 8vo. 54. “The Poor Man’s Friend,” 1795, 8vo. 55. “A collection of English Songs, with an Appendix of Original Pieces,” 1796, 8vo. 56. * “A Fragment on the India Trade, written in 1791,” 1797, 8vo. 57. “Thoughts of an old Man of independent mind, though dependent fortune,” 1800, 8vo. 58. “Oriental Repertory,” vol. I. 4to. April 1791 to January 1793. 59. “Oriental Repertory,” vol. II. 4to. (not completed).

, an eminent Scotch lawyer and antiquary, and brother to the preceding, was born in Edinburgh on the 28th of October 1726, and was educated at Eton school, where he was distinguished no less for his acquisitions in literature-than for the regularity of his manners. From Eton he was removed, to complete his studies at Utrecht, where he remained till 1746. In 1748 he was called to the Scotch bar, where, notwithstanding the elegant propriety of the cases which he drew, his success did not answer the expectations which had been formed of him. This was not owing either to wajjt of science or to want of industry, but to certain peculiarities, which, if not inherent in his nature, were the result of early and deep-rooted habits. He possessed on all occasions a sovereign contempt, not only for verbal antithesis, but for well-rounded periods, and every thing which had the semblance of declamation; and indeed he was wholly unfitted, by an ill-toned voice, and ungraceful elocution, for shining as an orator. It is not surprizing, therefore, that his pleadings, which were never addressed to the passions, did not rival those of some of his opponents, who, possessed of great rhetorical powers, did not, like him, employ strokes of irony too fine to be perceived by the bulk of any audience, but expressed themselves in full, clear, and harmonious periods. Even his memorials, though classically written, and often replete with valuable matter, did not on every occasion please the court; for they were always brief, and sometimes, it was said, indicated more attention to the minutiye of forms than to the merits of the cause. Yet on points which touched his own feelings, or the interests of truth and virtue, his language was animated, his arguments forcible, and his scrupulous regard to form thrown aside. He was on all occasions incapable of misleading the judge by a false statement of facts, or his clients, by holding out to them fallacious grounds of hope. The character indeed which he had obtained for knowledge and integrity in the Scotch law, soon raised him to an eminence in his profession. Accordingly, in March 1766, he was appointed one of the judges of the court of session with the wannest approbation of his countrymen; and in May 1776 he succeeded to the place of a lord commissioner of the justiciary on the resignation of lord Coalston, his wife’s father. Upon taking his seat on the bench he assumed the title of lord Hailes, in compliance with the usage established in the court of session: this is the name by which he is generally known among the learned of Europe.

As a judge of the supreme, civil, and criminal courts, he acted in the view of his country; from which he merited and obtained high confidence and approbation. But he was not only conspicuous as an able and upright judge, and a sound lawyer; he was also eminent as a profound and accurate scholar; being a thorough master of classical learning, the belles lettres, and historical antiquities particularly of his own country, to the study of which he was led by his profession. Indefatigable in the prosecution of these studies, his time was sedulously devoted tq the promotion of useful learning, piety, and virtue. Numerous are the works that have issued from his pen, ali of them distinguished by uncommon accuracy, taste, and learning. Besides some occasional papers, both serious and humorous, of his composing, that appeared in the World , and a variety, of communications, critical and biographical, in the Gentleman’s Magazine , and other publications of like nature, he allotted some part of his time to the illustration and defence of primitive Christianity.

In 1771 he composed a very learned and ingenious paper, or law-case, on the disputed peerage of Sutherland. He was one of the trustees of the lady Elizabeth, the daughter of the last earl, and being then a judge, the names of two eminent lawyers were annexed to it. In that case, he displayed the greatest accuracy of research, and the most profound knowledge of the antiquities and rules of descent, in that country; which he managed with such dexterity of argument, as clearly established the right of his pupil, and formed a precedent, at the same time, for the decision of all such questions in future. In 1773 he published a small volume, entitled “Remarks on the History of Scotland.” Tnese appeared to be the gleanings of the historical research which he was making at that time, and discovered his lordship’s turn for minute and accurate inquiry into doubtful points of history, and at the same time displayed the candour and liberality of his judgment. This publication prepared the public for the favourable reception of the Annals of Scotland, in 2 vols. 4to, the first of which appeared in 1776, and the second in 1779, and fully answered the expectations which he had raised. The difficulties attending the subject, the want of candour, and the spirit of party, had hitherto prevented the Scotch from having a genuine history of their country, in times previous to those of queen Mary. Lord Hailes carried his attention to this history, as far back as to the accession of Malcolm Canmore, in 1057, and his work contains the annals of 14 princes, from Malcolm III. to the death of David II. Aiul happy it was that the affairs of Scotland attracted the talents of so able a writer, who to the learning and skill of a lawyer, joined the industry and curiosity of an antiquary; to whom no object appears frivolous or unimportant that serves to elucidate his subject.

in 1786, Lord Hailes came forward with the excellent Dr. Watson, and other writers in England, to repel Mr. Gibbon’s attack on Christianity, and published a 4to volume, entitled “An Enquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr. Gibbon has assigned for the rapid progress of Christianity,” in which there is a great display of literary acumen, and of zeal for the cause he espouses, without the rancour of theological controversy. Tins was the last work he sent from the press; except a few biographical sketches of eminent Scotsmen, designed as specimens of a “Biographia Scotica,” which he justly considered as a desideratum, and which, it is much to be regretted, the infirmities of age, increasing fast upon him, did not allow him to supply; for he was admirably qualified for the undertaking, not only by his singular diligence and candour, but from the uncommon extent and accuracy of his literary and biographical knowledge; in which, it is believed, he excelled all his contemporaries.

Although his lordship’s constitution had been long in an. enfeebled state, he attended his duty on the bench till within three days of his death, which happened on the 29th of November 1792, in the 66th year of his age. His lordship was twice married; by his first wife, Anne Brown, only daughter of lord Coalston, he left issue one daughter, who inherits the family estate. His second marriage (of which also there is issue one daughter) was to Helen Fergusson, youngest daughter of lord Kilkerran, who survived him. Leaving no male issue, the title of baronet descends to his nephew, son of the late lord provost Darrymple.

Lord Hailes was for some years the correspondent of Dr. Johnson, to whose inspection he submitted much of his “Annals” in manuscript. He had early formed a high opinion of the author of the Rambler, and considered him as one of the best moral writers England had produced. Johnson praised him as “a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit.” His minute accuracy, and acuteness in detecting error, were in unison with Johnson’s love of truth. “The exactness of his dates,” said he on one occasion, “raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Renault, without his constraint;” and this opinion he takes a pleasure in repeating in a subsequent letter to Mr. Bosvvell “Be so kind as to return lord Hailes my most respectful thanks for his first volume his accuracy strikes me with wonder his narrative is far superior to that of Henault, as I have formerly mentioned.” “Lord Hailes’s Annals of Scotland have not that pointed form which is the taste of this age; but it is a book which will always sell it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with certainty.”

The erudition of lord Hailes, says his friend the late lord Woodhousiee, was not of a dry and scholastic nature; he felt the beauties of the composition of the ancients; he entered with taste and discernment into the merits of the Latin poets, and that peculiar vein of delicate and ingenious thought which characterises the Greek epigrammatists; and a few specimens which he has left of his own composition in that style, evince the hand of a master. It would not, adds his lordship, be easy to produce from the works of any modern Latin poet, a more delicate, tender, and pathetic effusion, or an idylliou of greater classical purity, than the iambics he wrote “On the death of his first wife, in child-bed of twins.” Lord Hailes was a man of wit, and possessed a strong feeling of the absurd and ridiculous in human conduct and character, which gave a keen edge of irony both to his conversation and writings. To his praise, however, it must be added, that that irony, if not always untinctured with prejudice, was never prompted by malignity, and was generally exerted in the cause of virtue and good morals. How much he excelled in painting the lighter weaknesses and absurdities of mankind, may be seen from the papers of his composition in the “World” and the “Mirror.” His private character was every thing that is praise-worthy and respectable. In a word, he was an honour to the station which he filled, and to the age in which he lived. That such a man should not yet have found a biographer worthy of his merits, cannot be ascribed either to the obscurity of his character and station, or to the incapacity of his contemporaries. But lord Hailes was a man of piety of the old stamp, and a strenuous advocate for revealed religion, and therefore did not share, as he uould not have been ambitious to share, the celebrity that has been conferred on some of his countrymen of a very opposite character.

The works of lord Hailes, arranged in the order of their publication, are as follow: 1. “Sacred poems, by various authors,” Edinb. 1751, 12mo. 2. “The wisdom of Solomon, wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus.” Edinb. 1755, 12mo. 3. “Select discourses, nine in number, by John Smith, late fellow of Queen’s college, Cambridge,” Ediub. 17 06, 12mo. 4. “World,” No. 140, Sept. 4, 1755; a meditation among books. 5. World, No. 147, Thursday, Oct. 23, 1755. 6. World, No. 204, Thursday, Nov. 25, 1756. 7. “A discourse of the unnatural and vile Conspiracy attempted by John earl of Go wry, and his brother, against his majesty’s person, at St. Johnstoun, upon the 5th of Aug. 1600,” 1757, 12mo. 8. “A sermon which might have been preached in East Lothian, upon the 25th day of Oct. 1761, from Acts xxvii. 1, 2.” The barbarous people sbewed us no little kindness,“Edinb. 1761, 12mo; occasioned by the country people pillaging the wreck of two vessels, viz. the Betsy, Cunningham, and the Leith packet, Pitcairn, from London to Leith, cast away on the shore between D unbar and North Berwick. All the passengers on board the former, in number seventeen, perished; five on-board the latter, Oct. 16, 1761. An affecting discourse, which is said to have produced the restitution of some part of the pillage. 9.” Memorials and Letters relating to the history of Britain in the reign of James I. published from the originals,“Glasgow, 1762. 10.” The works of the ever-memorable Mr. John Hailes of Eton, now first collected together,“Glasgow, 1765, 3 vols. The fine-paper copies of this work are truly elegant. 11. A specimen of a book entitled: Ane compendious booke of godlie and spiritual sangs, collectit out of sundrie parts of the Scripture, with sundrie other ballates, changed out of prophaine sangs, for avoyding of sin and harlotrie, with augmentation of sundrie gucle and godlie ballates, not contained in the first edition. Printed by Andro Hart,” Edinb. 1765, 12mo. 12. “Memorials and Letters relating to the history of Britain in the reign of Charles’ I. published from the originals,” Glasgow, 1766. 13. “An Account of the Preservation of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, drawn up by himself; to which are added, his letters to several persons,” Glasgow, 1766. 14. “The secret correspondence between sir Robert Cecil and James VI.” 1766, 12mo. 15. “A catalogue of the lords of session, from the institution of the college of justice, in 1532, with historical notes,” Edinb. 1767, 4to. 16. “The private correspondence of doctor Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, and his friends, in 1725, never before published,” 1768, 4to. 17. “An examination of some of the arguments for the high antiquity of regiam majestatem; and an inquiry into the authenticity of the leges Malcolrni,” Edinb. 1769, 4to. 18. “Historical Memoirs concerning the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy, from the earliest accounts of the,; aera of the reformation,” Edinb. 1769, 4to. 19. “Canons of the church of Scotland, drawn up in the provincial councils held at Perth, anno 1242 and 1269,” Edinb. 1769, 4to. 20. “Ancient Scottish poems, published from the manuscript of George Bannatyne, 1568,” Edinb. 1770, 12mo. 21 .“The additional case of Elizabeth, claiming the title and dignity of countess of Sutherland,” 4to. 22. “Remarks on the History of Scotland,” Edinb. 1773, 12mo. 23. “Hubert! Langueti Epistolae ad Philippum Syclm-ium eqtritem Anglum, ace ura rite D. Dalrymple de Hailes eq.” Edinb. 1776, 8vo. 24. “Annals of Scotland, from the accession of Malcolm III. suriiamed Canmore, to the accession of Robert!.” Edinb. 1776. 25. “Tables of the succession of the kings of Scotland, from Malcolm 111. to Robert 1.” 26. Chronological abridgment of the volume.“The appendix contains eight dissertations. 27.” Annah of Scotland, from the accession of Robert I. surnamed Bruce, to the accession of the house of Stewart,“177:, 4to, with an appendix containing nine dissertations. 28.” Account of the Martyrs of Smyrna and Lyons, in the 2d century, with explanatory notes,“Edinb. 1776. 29,” Remains of Christian Antiquity,“Edinb. 1778, 3 vols. 30.” Octavius, a dialogue by Marcus Minucius Felix,“Edinb. 1781. 31.” Of the manner in which the persecutors died, by Lactantius,“Edinb. 17S2. 32.” Luciani Coelii Firmiani Lactantii divinarum institutionum liber quintus, sen de justitia,“1777. 33.” Disquisitions concerning the Antiquities of the Christian Church,“Glasgow, 1783. 34.” Sketch of the life of John Barclay,“1786, 4to. 35.” Sketch of the life of John Hamilton, a secular priest, who lived about 1600,“4to. 36.” Sketch of the life of sir James Ramsay, a general officer in the armies of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden.“37.” Life of George Leslie,“4 to. 38.” Sketch of the life of Mark Alex. Boyd,“4to. 39.” The opinions of Sarah duchess dowager of Marlborough, published from her originalMSS.“1788, 12mo. 40.” The address of Q. Septini. Tertullian to Scapula Tertullus, proconsul of Africa," Edinb. 1790, 12mo. This address contains many particulars relating to the church after the 3d century. The translator has rejected all words and phrases of French origin, and writes entirely in the Anglo-Saxon dialect. In the course of the notes, many obscurities of the original, not adverted to by other commentators, are explained. Some strange inaccuracies of Mr. Gibbon are also detected, not included in the misrepresentations of his two famous chapters. He was long engaged in pursuits to examine the authenticity of the books of the New Testament. The result is said to have been, that he discovered every verse contained in it, with the exception of two or three, in the writings of the three first centuries. Indeed this seems to have been an object in all his works; for, at the end of each of his translations and editions of the primitive Christian writers, a table is given of passages quoted or mentioned by them.

, the seventh baron and first viscount Stair, was born in 1609, studied at the college of Glasgow, and passed all the regular degrees of learning in that university. On the commencement of the rebellion in the reign of Charles I. he accepted a captain’s commission from the parliament, in the earl of Glencain.'s regiment, but was soon called off to a more suitable province, that of filling a philosophy chair in the university of Glasgow. Having applied himself particularly to the study of the laws, he entered as an advocate in 1648, and became eminent for his judgment and skill, if not for his integrity. When the estates of the nation sent commissioners to Breda to invite Charles II. to Scotland, he was appointed secretary to the embassy, and acquitted himself entirely to his majesty’s satisfaction. He then resumed his practice at the bar, but could not be prevailed upon to take any oaths to the government during the usurpation. When Charles II. was restored to the throne, he conferred on Mr. Dalryrnple the honour of knighthood, appointed him a senator of the college of justice, and in 1671, lord president of the session, in which office his conduct was very unpopular; and in 1682, being dismissed from all his offices, he retired to Holland, where he became such a favourite with William prince of Orange, that when advanced to the throne of these kingdoms, his majesty restored him to his place of lord president, and raised him to the dignity of viscount Stair, lord Glenluce and Stranrawer. His lordship continued to enjoy his high legal office, and the favour of his prince, till his death, Nov. 25, 1695 4 His character as a politician has not been favourably drawn by some historians, particularly Mr. Laing, in. his lately -published “History of Scotland.” His personal character seems liable to less objection, and of his learning no doubt can be justly entertained. He wrote: 1. “The Institutions of the Law of Scotland,” second edit. fol. 1693. 2. “Decisions of the Court of Session from 1661 to 1681,'” 2 vols. fol. 3. “Philosophia nova experimentalis,” published in Holland during his exile, and much commended by Bayle in his Journal. 4. “A Vindication of the Divine Perfections, &c. by a Person of Honour,” 1695, 8vo. 5. “An Apology for his own Conduct,” 4to, the only copy of which extant is said to be in the advocates’ library at Edinburgh. Had lord Orford read much of his history, he needed not have added that “it is not known on what occasion-he published it.”

was born in 1709, at Deane, in Cumberland, where his father was then rector. He had his school education at Lowther, in Westmoreland, and thence was removed, at the age of sixteen, to Queen’seollege, in Oxford. When he had taken his first degrees, he was employed as tutor or governor to lord Beauchamp, only son of Algernon Seymour, earl of Hertford, late duke of Somerset. During his attendance on that noble youth, he employed some of his leisure hours in adapting Milton’s “Masque at Ludlow Castle” to the stage, by a judicious insertion of several songs and passages selected from other of Milton’s works, as well as of several songs and other elegant additions of his own, suited to the characters and to the manner of the original author. This was received as a very acceptable present to the public; and it still continues one of the most favourite dramatic entertainments, under the title of “Comus, a masque,” being set to music by Dr. Arne. We cannot omit mentioning to Dalton’s honour, that, during the run of this piece, he industriously sought out a grand-daughter of Milton’s, oppressed both by age and penury; and procured her a benefit from this play, the profits of which to her amounted, it is said, to upwards of 120l. Dr. Johnson wrote the Prologue spoken on this occasion. A bad state of health prevented Dr. Dalton from attending his pupil abroad, and saved him the mortification of being an eye-witness of his death, which was occasioned by the small-pox, at Bologna, in Italy. Soon after, succeeding to a fellowship in his college, he entered into orders, according to the rules of that society.

He now applied himself with diligence to the duties of his function, and was noticed as an able preacher at the university, in which character he was employed by Seeker, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, as his assistant at St. James’s. In July 1750 he took his degrees of B. and D. D. for which he went out grand compounder, and about the same time, was presented to the rectory of St. Mary at Hill by the late duke of Somerset; and upon his recommendation, promoted by the king to a prebend of Worcester, at which place be died, July 21, 1763. He married a sister of sir Francis Gosling, an alderman of London, by whom he left no issue. He had published, 1. “A volume of Sermons,” 1757 and before that, 2. “Two Epistles,” 1744, 4to, written in 1735. 3. “A descriptive Poem, addressed to two ladies, at their return from viewing the coal-mines near Whitehaven;” to which are added some thoughts on building and planting, addressed to sir James Lowther, of Lowther-hall, bart. 1755, 4to. This entertaining poem, which is reprinted in Pearch’s collection, vol. I. describes the real descent of two fair heroines into the subterraneous, and indeed submarine, regions; the mines, which are remarkable for many singularities; Savery’s fire-engine; and the remainder is employed in a survey of the improvements in Whitehaven, by the great commerce which these mines occasion, and in a very elegant display of the beauties of the adjacent country. 4. “Remarks on twelve historical designs of Raphael, and the Museum Gr^ccum & Egvptiacum” illustrated by prints from his brother Mr. Richard Dalton’s drawings.

, brother to the preceding, keeper of the pictures, medals, &c. and antiquary to his majesty, was originally apprenticed to a coach-painter in Clerkenwell, and after quitting his master, went to Rome to pursue the study of painting, where, about the year 1749, an invitation was given him by Roger Kynaston, esq. of Shrewsbury, in company with Mr. (afterwards sir John) Frederick, to accompany them to Naples. From that city they proceeded in a felucca, along the coast of Calabria, crossed over to Messina, and thence to Catania, where they met with lord Charlemont, Mr. Burton, afterwards lord Cunningham, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Murphy. They then sailed together in a ship, hired by lord Charlemont and his party, from Leghorn, with the intention of making that voyage; the felucca followed first to Syracuse, then to the isle of Malta, and afterwards separated; but Mr. Dalton, accompanying the party in the ship, made the voyage to Constantinople, several parts of Greece, and Egypt. This voyage led to his publication, which appeared in 1781, called, “Explanation of the set of prints relative to the manners, customs, &c. of the present inhabitants of Egypt, from discoveries made on the spot, 1749, etched and engraved by Richard Daiton, esq.” On his return to England, he was, by the interest of his noble patron lord Charlemont, introduced to the notice of his present majesty, then prince of Wales, who, after his accession to the throne, appointed him his librarian, an office for which it would appear he was but indifferently qualified, if Dr. Morell’s report be true. Soon after, it being determined to form a noble collection of drawings, medals, &c. Mr. Daltou was sent to Italy in 1763, to collect the various articles suited to the intention. The accomplishment of that object, however, was unfortunately attended with circumstances which gave rise to sir Robert Strange’s memorable letter of complaint to the earl of Bute, in which he says, indignantly, although not altogether unjustly, that “persecution haunted him, even beyond the Alps, in the form of Mr. Dalton.” On this subject it may here be necessary only to refer to sir Robert’s letter, and to the authorities in the note.

The object of Mr. Dalton’s tour being achieved, he returned to London, and when the royal cabinet was adjusted, his department of librarian was changed to that of keeper of the drawings and medals; and in 1778, upon the death of Mr. Knapton, his majesty appointed him surveyor of the pictures in the palaces. Upon his first appointment at court, he had apartments at St. James’s palace, where he resided until his death Feb. 7, 1791. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1767; and when the society of artists was incorporated by charter, he was appointed treasurer, but soon resigned the office, in consequence of the dissentions which took place in that institution. In 1764, he married Esther, daughter of Abraham Deheulle, a silk weaver in Spitalfields, by whom he had a considerable fortune. Having no issue by her, he left 1000l. to a natural son, after the death of his brother Dr. Dalton’s widow; and directed all his pictures, antiques, drawings, &c. and other personal property, to be sold for the benefit of his servants.

As an artist, Mr. Edwards is of opinion that he never acquired any great powers. In one of the early exhibitions was a drawing executed by him; the subject, an Egyptian dancing girl, which was the only specimen he ever exhibited: but he published several works at different periods of his life. The first was the collection of prints after the antique statues, a few of which he etched himself, but they cannot be considered as masterly performances. Some of these are dated 1744; the names of the others may be found in our authorities, with many, and some not very pleasing, traits of personal character.

, an English lawyer, was born somewhere in the county of Cambridge, in 1554, and bred to his profession in Lincoln’s-inn, or Gray’s-inn, and was formerly as well known for his book on the office of justice of the peace, as Burn is at present: his “Duty of Sheriffs” was also a book in good esteem. In Neal’s “History of the Puritans,” mention is made of Mr. Dalton the queen’s counsel, who, in 1590, pleaded against Mr. Udal, who was condemned for writing a libel called “A demonstration of Discipline:” this was probably our Dalton, who also in 1592 supported the episcopal power in parliament, of which he was a member, when attacked by the puritan party. There is a ms. of his in the British Museum, entitled “A Breviary or Chronology of the state of the lioinan or Western church or Empire; the decay of true religion, and the rising of papacy, from the time of our Saviour till Martin Luther.” In this he is styled Michael Dalton of Gray’s-inn, esq. It is supposed that he died before the commencement of the civil war.

, an Irishman by birth, was born in the county of Kerry in 1595, and became a Dominican, adopting the name of Dominicus a Rosario. He was at first educated in a convent of his order at Tralee, but studied principally in Flanders. The fame which he acquired for learning and piety procured him an invitation to Lisbpn, to assist in founding a convent for the Irish Dominicans, which had been projected by Philip IV. then master of Portugal. This being accomplished, he was elected the first superior. He also assisted at the foundation of a second, for the natives of Ireland, and so entirely gained the good opinion and confidence of the duke of Braganza when he ascended the throne, that in 1655, his majesty honoured him with the appointment of ambassador to Louis XIV. of France, to negociate a treaty of alliance and affinity between the two courts. At Paris he was equally valued in the character of churchman and statesman, and became highly popular by his works of piety and charity. He died at Lisbon June 30, 1662, and was interred in the chapel of his convent, with a monument and inscription; from which we learn that at the time of his death he was bishop elect of Coimbra. He had before refused the archbishopric of Goa. Among his ecclesiastical dignities, he was censor of the inquisition, visitor-general and vicargeneral of the kingdom. One book only of his is known, which is probably a very curious one, “Initium, incrementum, et exitus fainiliae Giraldinorum Desmoniae comitum. Palatinorum Kyerria in Hibernia, ac persecutionis hsereticorum descriptio, ex nonnullis fragmentis collecta'ac latinitate donata,” Lisbon, 1655, 8vo.

, M. A. F. R. S. Edin. Greek professor in the university of Edinburgh, keeper of the university library, &c. was born in 1750, in the parish of Rathos near Edinburgh, and was educated partly at the parish school, but principally at Edinburgh, where his learning and moral conduct induced the late earl of Lautierdale to appoint him tutor to his eldest son, lord Maitland, the present earl. With this young nobleman, he attended a course of the lectures of the celebrated professor Millar at Glasgow, and afterwards accompanied his lordship to Paris. On his return from the continent, Mr. Dalzcll, at the recommendation of the late earl of Landerdale, was appointed to the professorship of Greek at Edinburgh, an office which he rilled for many years with the highest reputation and advantage to the university. He has thfe credit indeed of reviving a taste for that language, which from various causes, had been disused at Edinburgh, or studied very superficially. To enable his pupils to prosecute this accomplishment with the more effect, and imbibe a taste for what was elegant in the language, he compiled and printed, at a great expence, a series of collections out of the Greek authors, including all those passages which he wished to explain in the course of his teaching. These were printed in several 8vo volumes, under the titles of “Collectanea Minora,” and “Collectanea Majora.” He added to each volume short notes in Latin, explanatory of the difficult places, and the text was printed with great accuracy. The notes, which are in elegant Latin, are admirable for brevity, perspicuity, and judgment. He at the same time composed and read to the students a series of lectures on the language and antiquities, the philosophy and history, the literature, eloquence, poetry, and fine arts of the Greeks. By these means he became eminently successful in disseminating a taste for classical literature in the university, nor was he less happy in the art of engaging the affections and fixing the attention of his pupils on the objects which he considered as the fundamentals of all genuine scholarship.

On the death of the learned professor of Oriental languages, Dr. James Robertson, he was chosen to succeed him as keeper of the university library; and likewise succeeded Dr. John Drysdale in the honourable appointment of principal clerk to the general assembly of the church of Scotland, being the first layman who had ever been elected to that office. Besides an intimacy with his learned contemporaries at home, he corresponded with Heyne and other eminent scholars abroad, and enriched the Edinburgh Royal Society Transactions with a variety of interesting communications in biography, or on subjects of erudition. He also translated and illustrated Chevalier’s description of the plain of Troy; and was editor of the sermons of Dr. Drysdale, whose daughter he married. This learned professor, whose private character was in, every respect amiable, and threw a lustre on his public services, died at Edinburgh, Dec. 3, 1806.

, or John of Damascus, a learned priest and monk of the 'eighth century, surnamed Mansur, was born at Damascus about G76. His father, who was rich, and held several considerable offices, had him instructed in the sciences by an Italian monk, named Cosmo, and he was afterwards raised to the highest posts, and became chief counsellor to the prince of the Saracens All these dignities, however, St. John Damascenus resigned, and entered himself a monk in the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem, where he led a pious and exemplary life, and became famous in the church by his piety and writings. It is said, that the caliph Hiocham, having ordered his right hand to be cut off on account of a forged letter by the emperor Leo, the hand was restored to him the night following by a miracle, as he slept; which miracle was universally known, or as much so as many other miracles propagated in the credulous ages. He died about the year 760, aged eighty-four. He left an excellent treatise on the orthodox faith, and several other works published in Greek and Latin, by le Quien, 1712, 2 vols. fol. A book entitled “Liber Barlaam et Josaphat Indite regis,” is ascribed to St. John Damascenus, but without any foundation; it has no date of time or place, but was printed about 1470, and is scarce. There are several French translations of it, old, and little valued. Damascenus may be reckoned the most learned man of the eighth century, if we except our countryman Bede; and, what is less to his credit, ono of the first who mingled the Aristotelian philosophy with the Christian religion. He became among the Greeks what Thomas Aquinas was afterwards among the Latins. Except with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, most of his notions were erroneous, and his learning and fame gave considerable support to the worshipping of images, and other superstitions of that time.

, a celebrated heathen philosopher and writer, of the stoic school as some say, of the peripatetic according to others, was born at Damascus, and flourished about 540, when the Goths reigned in Italy. If great masters can make a great scholar or philosopher, Damascius had every advantage of this kind. Theon, we are told, was his preceptor in rhetoric; Isidorus in logic; Mavinus, the successor of Proclus in the school of Athens, in geometry and arithmetic; Zenodotus, the successor of Marinus, in philosophy ', and Ammonias in astronomy, and the doctrines of Plato. He wrote the life of his master Isidorus, and dedicated it to Theodora, a very learned and philosophic lady, who had been a pupil of Isidorus. In this Life, which was copiously written, Damascius frequently attacked the Christian religion; yet obliquely, it is said, and with some reserve and timidity: for Christianity was then too firmly established, and protected by its numbers, to endure any open attacks with impunity, especially in a work so remarkable for obscurity, fanaticism, and imposture. Of this Life, however, we have nothing remaining, but some extracts which Photius has preserved; who also acquaints us with another work of Damascius, of the philosophic or the theologic kind. This was divided into four books; 1. De admirandis operibus; 2. Admirandae narrationes de daemonibus; 3. De animarum apparitionibus post obitum admirandae narrationes. The title of the fourth has not been preserved. Damascius succeeded Theon in the rhetorical school, over which he presided nine years: and afterwards Isidorus in that of philosophy at Athens, in which situation it is supposed that he spent the latter part of his life.

, a celebrated pope, was born at Guimaraens in Spain, and succeeded Liberius in the year 366. Ursinus, or Ursicinus, opposed his election, and caused himself to be ordained bishop of Rome, which raised a sedition, in which many of the people were murdered. Ursinus was sent into exile by order of the emperor, but, returning to Italy in the year 381, excited fresh troubles there. The Italian bishops, however, condemned him the same year, in the council of Aquileia, and he was banished for ever by the emperor Gratian, at their request: thus Daniasus remained in peaceful possession of his seat at Rome. He held several councils, condemned Ursaces, Valens, and Auxentius; took the part of Paul in us against Meletius, excommunicated ApolUnanus, Vitalus, and Timotheus; and declared himself against the Luciferians. Datnasus had an illustrious secretary in St. Jerome. He governed the church of Rome with what the catholic writers term great glory, for eighteen years, and died in the year 384. Some of his letters remain,. Rome, 175-i, fol. with his life, in the library of the fathers, and in the Epist. Rom. Pont, of Coustant, fol. He also left some Latin verses, which may be found in Maittaire’s Corpus Poetarum. Fabricius gives a very particular account of his works. This pope is said to have introduced the custom of singing hallelujah in the church. He is more noted, however, for having extended the power and authority of the bishops of Rome, and laid the foundation of the custom of conferring upon certain bishops the title of vicars to the pope, by which they were enabled to perform several authoritative acts, which they could not by the mere virtue of episcopal power: hence the rights of bishops and synods became gradually and entirely dependent on the authority of the pope.

, an eminent cardinal, was born at Ravenna in the beginning of the eleventh century, became a Benedictine, and, it is thought, would always have preferred solitude to the dignities of the church, if he had not been in some measure forced to accept them. In 1057 he was created cardinal by pope Stephen IX. and under pope Nicolas II. was sent as papal legate to Milan, to reform certain clerical abuses, which he successfully accomplished, and even turned his arguments against his superiors, whom he found licentious, without any respect for their rank or power. Among other proofs of his zeal, he publicly condemned the liberty which the popes took of opposing the emperors in cases of war; affirming, that the offices of emperor and pope are distinct, and that the emperors ought not to meddle with what belongs to the popes, nor the popes with what belongs to the emperors. “As the son of God,” says he, “surmounted all the obstacles of worldly power, not by the severity of vengeance, but by the lively majesty of an invincible patience, so has he taught us rather to bear the fury of the world with constancy, than to take up arms against those who offend us; especially since between the royalty and the priesthood there is such a distinction of offices, that it belongs to the king to use secular arms, and to the priest to gird on the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God,” &c. Damian described also in a very lively manner the enormous vices of his age, in several of his works;, in his Gomorrhaetis particularly, which, though pope Alexander II. thought fit to suppress it, has nevertheless been preserved. Disappointed, however, in his hopes of producing any favourable change, he resigned all his preferments in the church in 1061, although he appears afterwards to have been employed on missions as legate. He died in 1073, and his writings, while in ms. must have been frequently read and admired, as we find that between five and six centuries after his deaih they were ordered to be printed by Clement VIII. who employed Constantino Cajetan as editor. This first edition was published at Home in 3 vols. fol. 160b, 1608, 1615, and reprinted at Leyden, 1623, fol. In 1640 Cajeta 1 added a fourth volume. The whole were afterwards reprinted at Paris in 1642 and 1663, in a thick folio. These works consist of

, a celebrated English navigator, descended from a good family in Somersetshire, was bora in 1652; but losing his father when very young, he was sent to sea, where he soon distinguished himself particularly in the South Sea. He associated himself with capt. Cook, in order to cruize on the Spaniards; and, Aug. 23, 1683, sailed from Achamac in Virginia for the Cape de Verde islands. After touching at several of them, he steered for the Streights of Magellan; but, the wind being against them, they stood over for the Guinea coast, and in u few days anchored at the mouth of Sherborough river, where the ship’s crew were hospitably received by the inhabitants. He then proceeded to the South Seas through the Streights of Magellan; and, arriving at the isle of Juan Fernandez, took on board a Moskito Indian, who had been left in that uninhabited place above three years before. After staying fourteen days at this island, they set sail April 8, 1684, steering towards the line, off the islands of Peru and Chili; took several prizes, and proceeded to the Gallipago islands, and from thence to cape bianco, where captain Cook was interred. July 19, Mr. Edward Davis was appointed captain in the room of Cook, sailed the next day towards Rio Leja, and from thence to the gulph of Amapalla; and Sept. 20th came to an anchor in the island of Plata. Here they made a descent upon Plata, attacked the fort, and took it with little opposition. But finding that the governor and inhabitants had quitted the town, and carried off their money, goods, and provisions, they set fire to it, and afterwards sailed for Guaiquil, and attacked it, but without success.

They entered now the bay of Panama: for their design was to look into some river unfrequented by the Spaniards, in search of canoes; and therefore they endeavoured to make the river St. Jago, on account of its nearness to the island of Gallo, in which there is much gold, and safe ancborage for ships. Dampier with some others, in four canoes, ventured to row six leagues up the river; but the Indians, at their approach, got into their canoes, and paddled away against the stream much faster than they could follow. They therefore returned the next morning in order to sail for the island of Gallo; and in their way took a Spanish pacquet-boat, sent with dispatches from Panama to Lima, by which they learned that the armada, being arrived from Spain at Porto Bello, waited for the plate fleet from Lima, which made them resolve to rendezvous among the King’s or Pearl Islands, by which all the ships bound to Panama from Lima must necessarily pass. On May 28th they discovered the Spanish fleet; but night approaching, they exchanged only a few shot. The Spanish admiral, by the artifice of a false light, got the weather-gage of them the next day, and came up to them with full sail, which obliged them to make a running fight of it all round the bay of Panama, and thus their long-projected design ended unsuccessfully. They sailed now for the island of Quibo, where they found captain Harris; and as their late attempt at sea had been fruitless, they resolved to try their fortune by land, by attacking the city of Leon, on the coast of Mexico. This place they took and burnt, and proceeded to Rio Leja, which they also took. Here Dampier left captain Davis, and went on board captain Swan, in order to satisfy his curiosity by obtaining a more perfect knowledge of the northern parts of Mexico. They continued sailing to the westward till they came to Guatulco, one of the best ports in the kingdom of Mexico; and from thence to Cape Cerientes, where they waited some time in hopes of meeting with a galleon, of which they had received information. They continued cruizing off this cape till Jan. 1, when their provisions being exhausted, they steered to the valley of Valderas to procure a supply of beef. And while they were engaged in this necessary business, the Manilla ship passed by them to the eastward. After this they steered towards California, and anchored in one of the Tres Maria islands. Dampier, having been long sick of a dropsy, was here buried for about half an hour up to the neck in sand, which threw him into a profuse sweat; and being afterwards wrapped up warm, and put to bed in a tent, found great benefit from this extraordinary remedy.

Their success in this part of the world having been very indifferent, and there appearing no probability of its mending, Swan and Dampier agreed to steer their course for the East Indies. They sailed to St. John’s island, and to the Piscadores, to Bouton island, to New Holland, to Triest; and arriving at Nicobar, Dampier with others was left on shore, and treated with great civility by the inhabitants. He, however, left them, and arrived at the English factory at Achen, where he became acquainted with captain Bowry, who would have persuaded him to sail with him to Persia in quality of boatswain but he declined accepting of this proposal, on account of the ill state of his health. He afterwards engaged with captain Weldon, under whom he made several trading voyages, for upwards of fifteen months, and afterwards entered as a gunner to an English factory at Bencoolen. Upon this coast he staid till 1691, and then embarked for England, when he was obliged to make his escape by creeping through one of the port-holes, for the governor had revoked his promise of allowing him to depart; but he brought off his journal and most valuable papers. He arrived in the Downs Sept. 16; and being in want of money, sold his property in a painted Indian prince, who was carried about for a sight, and shewn for money. He appears afterwards to have been concerned in an expedition concerted by the merchants of Bristol to Uie South Sea, commanded by caplain Woodes “Rogers, which sailed in Aug. 1708, and returned Sept. 1711; a voyage attended with many singular circumstances, and a great number of curious and entertaining events. We have no further particulars of Dampier’s life or death. His” Voyage round the World" has gone through many editions, and the substance of it has been transferred to many collections of voyages. It was first published in 3 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1697.

, a French poet, was born at Jliom in Auvergne in 1671; and went to Paris, where he distinguished himself very early in the republic of letters. At the age of nineteen he was invited to Chartres, to be professor of rhetoric; which office he discharged with high repute for four years. Upon his return to Paris, he devoted his labours entirely to the service of the theatre, for which he continued to write songs, operas, and tragedies, to the end of his life. He was admitted a member of the academy of inscriptions in 1706, and of the French academy in 1712. He had a place in the king’s library, and died at Paris Feb. 21, 1748. His works were collected and printed at Paris, 1751, in 4 vols. 12mo. As a man Danchet was highly esteemed for the qualities of his mind, and the mildness of his temper; he was sincere, upright, and disinterested, and was an enemy to every species of satire and calumny, weapons too frequently used by poets and men of genius. Of this a singular instance is on record. One of his rivals having insulted him in a published satire, Danchet sent him privately an epigrammatic answer of the severest cast, which he assured him no other person had seen, and begged him to observe, that it was as easy as shameful for men of letters to embark in such kind of warfare.

, or Danckerts, is the name of a family of engravers of considerable reputation in Holland. Cornelius Danckkkts, who was born at Amsterdam in 1561, established himself at Antwerp as a print-seller; but he did not suffer this employment to engross his whole time, as he engraved many portraits, landscapes, and historical pieces, as well from his own compositions as from the designs of Berghem, Rembrandt, and others. His son, Danckert Danckerts, who was born at Antwerp about 1600, also engraved different subjects, as well from his own designs as from those of other artists; and though his pieces are not so numerous as his father’s, they surpass them in merit. Danckert combined the point and the graver with very great success, and the pieces from Berghem and Wouvermanns, which he has wrought in this manner, are much esteemed.

John Danckilkts, of the same family, a designer and engraver, about 1654 settled at Amsterdam; but being invited into England, he went to London, where he designed for the English Juvenal, the plates engraved by Hollar. This artist also engraved some plates. Hesiiy Danckerts, his brother, was also bred an engraver, but afterwards became a landscape-painter. He was born at the Hague, but at an early age travelled into Italy, from whence he came to England. Here he enjoyed the favour of Charles II. who employed him to draw views of the British sea-ports, and royal palaces. During the disturbances which preceded the abdication of James II. he quitted England for Amsterdam, where he died soon after. The landscapes painted by this artist were numerous, anil are chiefly to be found in England. Amongst them are Views of Windsor, Plymouth, Penzance, &c. He also engraved from Vandyk, Titian, Jacopo Palma, &c. Justus Danckerts, of the same family, was a designer, engraver, and print-seller, and resided in Amsterdam. The following plates bear his name: the Portrait of Casimir, king of Poland; a ditto of William III. prince of Orange; the Harbours of Amsterdam, a set of seven pieces. One other of the name remains to be noticed, Cornelius Danckerts. The circumstance of both Milizia and Heinecken dating the birth of this architect in 1.561, and saying that he was born in Amsterdam (the very time and place of the birth of Cornelius Danckerts mentioned above), leads us to suspect some chronological error, if not, indeed, that these two artists were one and the same person. Cornelius was originally a stonemason, but afterwards applied himself to architecture. He constructed in the city of Amsterdam many public and private buildings, highlycreditable to his talents on account of their beauty and convenience, and, amongst others, three of the principal churches, the exchange, and the gate which leads to Haarlem, the most beautiful of the city. He had a son named Peter, who was born at Amsterdam in 1605, and afterwards became painter to Uladislaus, king of Poland.

, count, and professor of law at Padua, was born at Ancona in 1696, and arrived at high reputation as a lawyer. Among his works are, 1. “De Forensi scribendi ratione.” 2. “De servitutibus praediorum interpretationes per epistolas,” &c. He died in November 1747, at the age of fifty-two, lamented on account of his learning and virtues.

, an Italian Jesuit, was born at Cesena in the ecclesiastical state in 1554, and was the first of his order who taught philosophy at Paris. He bore several honourable offices in the society; for, besides teaching divinity at Padua, he was rector of the several colleges at Ferrara, Forli, Bologna, Parma, and Milan; visitor in the provinces of Venice, Toulouse, and Guienne; provincial in Poland, and in the Milanese. He taught philosophy in Perugia, 1596, when he was appointed by Clement VIII. to be his nuncio to the Maronites of mount Libanus. He embarked at Venice in July the same year, and returned to Rome in August the year following. The French translation which was made of his journey to Mount Libanus by father Simon, was printed at Paris in 1675, and reprinted at the Hague in 1685. Dandini’s book was printed at Cesena in 1656, under the title of “Missione apostolica al patriarcha e Maroniti del Monte Libano.” It contains the relation of his journey to the Maronites and to Jerusalem; but father Simon has left out the journey to Jerusalem in his translation, because, he says, there is nothing in it but what has been observed by travellers already. Dandini died at Forli, 1634, aged eighty. His commentary on the three books of Aristotle “de Anima” was printed at Paris, 1611, in folio; and after his death his “Ethica sacra, de virtutibus et vitiis,” was printed at Cesena, 1651, fol.

, an historical painter, was born at Florence in 1595, and was the elder brother and first instructor of Vincent Dandini, the uncle of Pietro. This master had successively studied as a disciple with Curradi, Passignano, and Christofane Allori from whom he acquired a very pleasing but fugitive manner of colouring. He was extremely correct in his drawing, and finished his pictures highly. His best altar-piece is at Ancona, and several other noble altar-pieces in the churches of Florence are of his hand one, which is in the chapel l'Annonciata, is particularly admired. He died in 165S.

, brother to the preceding, was born at Florence in 1607. After having been taught the first rudiments of his art by his brother, he studied some time at Rome under Pietro da Cortona, and copied with the greatest assiduity the master-pieces of art in the palaces and temples of that city. He was considered one of the best of Cortona’s scholars, and met with ample encouragement from the grand duke, as well as from private persons, on his return to Florence. One of his best altar-pieces, which are frequent at Florence, is the Conception of the Virgin, in the church of Ognisanti.

, an eminent painter, nephew to the preceding, was born at Florence in 1646, and received his first instruction in the art of painting from Valerio Spada, who excelled in small drawings with a pen. Whilst he was under the tuition of thrt artist he gave such evident proofs of genius, that he was then placed as a disciple with his uncle Vincent. He afterwards travelled through most of the cities of Italy, studying the works of those who were most distinguished; and resided for a long time at Venice, where he copied the paintings of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. He next visited Parma and Modena, to study the works of Correggio; omitting no opportunity that might contribute to improve his hand or his judgment. When he returned to Florence, the grand duke Cosmo III. the grand duchess Victoria, and the prince Ferdinand, kept him perpetually employed, in fresco painting as well as in oil; his subjects being taken not only from sacred or fabulous history, but from his own invention and fancy, which frequently furnished him with such as were odd and singular, and especially with whimsical caricatures. He died in 1712. — This master had an extraordinary talent for imitating the style of even the most celebrated ancient painters of every school, particularly Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto; and with a force and elegance, equal to his subjects of history, he painted portraits, landscapes, architecture, flowers, fruit, battles, animals of all kinds, and likewise sea-pieces; proving himself an universal artist, and excellent in even thing he undertook. Mr. Fuseli, however, says that the avidity of gain led him to dispatch and a general mediocrity, compensated by little more than the admirable freedom of his pencil. He exerted his powers according to the price he received for his work: they are seen to advantage in the cupolas of S. Maria Maddalena, in various frescos of the ducal palace and villas, and in the public hall of Pisa, where he represented the taking of Jerusalem. There are likewise altar-pieces which shew his merit: that of St. Francis in S. Maria Maggiore, and another of S. Piccolomini saying mass in the church a'Servi, a pleasing animated performance. He had a son, Octavio, who proved not inferior to him in any branch of his profession, and was an honour to his family and his country.

, doge of Venice, merits some notice here as one of the first historians of his country. He was born in 1310, and in 1344 became doge, being not only distinguished for military and political knowledge, but for considerable attainments in literature. By his means Venice was first enabled to extend her commerce to Egypt, which, however, had the bad effect of involving Venice and Genoa in a war, in the course of which he lost his life in 1354. As an author he is mentioned for his “Chronicle of Venice,” which comprehends the history of the republic from its foundation to the year 1342 and to him has been ascribed the compilation of the sixth book of Venetian statutes. His chronicle obtained considerable reputation for impartiality, and for the exhibition of authentic documents which the author produced to substantiate his facts. Petrarch, with whom he corresponded, Blondus, Justinian, Sabellicus, Leander, and Cuspinian, always mention this Chronicle with praise, it is inserted in Muratori’s collection, with a continuation to 1388, by Caresino.

, one of the professors of the academy of painting, &,c. was born May 22, 1700, at Aix in Provence, and was first intended for the study of the law, but dishknig it at the outset, he took lessons in painting from Vanloo and De Troy, and soon distinguished himself botli as a painter and as a writer. He succeeded more particularly in historical pictures, and undoubtedly had an affection for all the arts, was a man of considerable learning, and in society was sensible, upright, and friendly. He died at Marseilles, where he was director of the academy, April 14, 1783. Some of his writings gained him much reputation. The principal of them are, l. “De l'utilite” d‘un Cours d’Histoire pour les artistes,“1751. 2.” Principesdu Dessin,“1754, 12mo. 3.” Anecdotes sur la Mort de Bouchardon,“1764. 4.” Vie de Carle Vanloo,“1765, 12mo. 5.” Monumens de la ville de Reims,“1765, 12mo. 6.” Traite de Peinture,“1765, 2 vols. 12mo. 7.” Histoire universelle relative aux arts,“1769, 3 vols. 12mo. 8.” Costumes des anciens peuples," 1776, 4to. This curious collection was republishecl in a very enlarged form by Cochin, in 4 vols. 1786 and 1792, 4to. Dandre-Bardon wrote also some poetry, but that his countrymen seem inclined to forget.

, an eminent French protestant divine, was born at Orleans about the year 1530. Having at first an inclination for the law, he studied that science in his native city for four years under Aune du Bourg, then a teacher of high reputation, and who, after holding the office of clerk of the parliament of Paris for two years, was strangled and burnt, Dec. 20, 1559, for his adherence to the protestant faith. Affected by the constancy with which his master suffered, and of which he appears to have been an eye-witness, and referring such constancy to its proper source, Daneau embraced the principles of the deceased martyr, and the following year retired to Geneva, where he could enjoy his religion unmolested. From this time he gave over all thoughts of the law, and began the study of divinity, in which he made such progress as to be acknowledged one of the ablest divines of the protestant persuasion. At Geneva he became one of their preachers, and professor of divinity. In 15S1 he was invited to Leyden in the same character, and taught there about a year. He at length returned to France, and after residing some time atOrthcs, finally took up his abode at Castres, where he exercised the functions of the ministry until the year 1596, vvheu he died. His works are very numerous. A considerable collection of them was published by himself at Geneva in 1583, in a large folio volume, divided into three classes, didactic, exegetic, and polemic. But, besides these, Niceron and other authors give a very large catalogue of separate publications, commentaries on the Holy Scriptures; and moral, historical, and geographical treatises. One of these, “Primi mundi antiquitatum sectiones quatuor,” was published in English by Thomas Twine, under the title of “The wonderful workmanship of the World,” 1578, 4to. His “Les Sorciers” was also published here in 1564-, under the title, “A Dialogue of Witches.”

, born in 1497, at Paris, of a noble family, studied at the college of Navarre, and was the pupil of Budeus and of John Lascaris. Being appointed by Francis I. to open the Greek school at the college-royal, he was professor there for five years, and had scholars that afterwards signalized themselves. He next became preceptor and confessor to the dauphin, afterwards Francis If. He was sent to the council of Trent, where he delivered a very celebrated speech in 1546, which was afterwards published; and during the session of this council he was made bishop of Lavaur. Sponde and de Thou have handed down to us an ingenious answer of this prelate. Nicholas Pseaume, bishop of Verdun, speaking very freely one day in the council, the bishop of Orvietta looking at the French, said to them with a sarcastic smile, “Gallus cantat,” (the cock crows), “Utinam,” replied Danes, “ad istud Gallicinium Petrus resipisceret!” (I wish that Peter would repent at this cock’s crowing.) This prelate died at Paris the 23d of April, 1577, at the age of 80. He had been married. When news was brought him of the death of his only son, he retired for a moment into his closet; and, on rejoining the company, “Let us be comforted,” said he, “the poor have gained their cause,” alluding to his being wont to distribute a part of his revenues among the poor, which he now thought he might increase. With the erudition of a true scholar he had the talent of speaking well, integrity of character, and a great simplicity of manners. His custom was to write much, and almost always to conceal his name. It has been suspected by some critics that the tenth book of the history of France, by Paulus Æmilius, is his. At least it was Danes who sent it from Venice to the printer Vascosan. His “Opuscula” were collected and printed in 1731, 4to, by the care of Peter Hilary Danes, of the same family with the bishop of Lavaur, who added the life of the author. The abbe Lenglet du Fresnoi attributes to P. Danes, two Apologies for king Henry II. printed in Latin in 1542, 4to. One publication of Danes’s merits particular notice, viz. an edition of Pliny the elder, very beautiful and correct, Paris, 1532, folio. This, for whatever reason, he thought proper to publish under the name of Bellocirius, i. e. Belletiere, the name of one of his servants. The short and elegant preface, so highly praised by Rezzonicus in his “Disquisitiones Pliniani,” is to be found amongour author’s “Opuscula.” This edition is so rare on the continent that Rezzonicus was able to find only two copies of it in Spain, and not a single one in Italy; and Ernesti pronounces it as valuable as it is rare.

, a French cure at Paris, and afterwards abbe of St. Nicholas de Verdun, of which he took possession in 1674, devoted the principal part of his life to grammatical studies, and produced some works which at that time were important to the literature of his country, His first publication appeared under the title of “Radices Lingute Latinae,” 8vo, a work somewhat incorrectly printed, which was followed by his two Dictionaries, both in 4to, French and Latin, and Latin and French, in which the Latin part was considered as best executed. Although both have been supplanted by works more ample and accurate, they could not fail at that time of facilitating the study of the Latin among his countrymen. He published also, “Dictionarium antiquitatum Romanarum et Grsecarum,” for the use of the dauphin, Paris, 1698 and 1701, 4to, and published in English at London in 1700. Danet being one of the scholars appointed as editors of the Delphin classics, produced the Phsedrus, which, although it has been often printed, is reckoned inferior to the subsequent editions. He died at Paris in 1701). His contemporary Baillet has spoken with great candour of all his publications.

, a French abbe, and a man of family, was the son of Louis cle Courcillon, lord oi' Dangeau, &c. by a daughter of the celebrated Plessis-Mornay. He was born in January 1643, and educated in the protestant religion, which was that of his family, and which he professed in 1667, when envoy extraordinary in Poland but he was afterwards induced to become a Roman catholic, and entered into the church, in which he held some benefices, although none of such importance as might have been expected from his merits and family interest. In 1671 he purchased the office of reader to the king, which he sold again in 1685. In 1680 the king gave him the abbey of Fontaine-Daniel, and in 1710 that of Clermont, and he was also prior of Gournay and St. Arnoul. He devoted himself, however, principally to the belles lettres, the study of which he endeavoured to facilitate by various new modes of instruction, some of which were successful, and others rather whimsical. In the sme way, by some new expedients, he endeavoured to increase the knowledge of history, geography, heraldry, grammar, &c. and his services were so highly esteemed, that in 1682 he was admitted into the French academy, and in 1698 into that of the Ilicovrati of Padua. His own house, indeed, was a species of academy, where men of taste and learning were invited to assemble once a week for conversation. The abbe Dangeau was an accomplished scholar: besides the sciences we have mentioned, he knew Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, &c. Being admitted into the confidence of his sovereign, he took frequent opportunities to promote learning and learned men, and along with his brother the marquis Dangeau established a school for the education of voung men of family, the superintendance of which he took upon himself; but this did not last above ten years, the wars having obliged the king to withdraw the pecuniary assistance he had given^ a striking proof of the necessities to which Louis XIV. was sometimes driven by his ambition. He died Jan. 1, 1723, leaving the character of a man whose virtues were superior to his knowledge, extensive us the latter was. “His humanity towards the sons and daughters of misfortune was such, (says his eulogist M. d'Alembert), that, with but a moderate fortune, he was lavish of his bounty towards the poor, and added to his benefits the more uncommon benefit of Concealing them. He possessed that prudent œconomy, without which there can be no generosity; and which, never dissipating for the sake of giving continually, is always giving with propriety. His heart was formed for friendship, and for that reason he was not careless in bestowing it; but when once it was obtained, it was settled for ever. If he had any defect, it was perhaps too much indulgence for the faults and weaknesses of mankind; a defect, which by its scarceness is almost a virtue, and of which few persons have to reproach themselves, even in regard to their friends. He possessed in the highest degree that knowledge of the world and of man, which neither books nor genius ever gave the philosopher, while neglecting the commerce of his fellow creatures. Enjoying the esteem and the confidence of all the great men in the kingdom, no one had better advice to give in the most important affairs. He kept inviolably the secrets of others as well as his own. Yet his generous, delicate, and honest soul disdained dissimulation, and his prudence was too enlightened to be mistaken for artifice. Easy and affable in company, but preferring truth in all things, he never disputed except in its defence: accordingly the lively interest he shewed for truth on all such occasions gave him in the eyes of the generality an air of obstinacy, which truth is much less likely to find among mankind than a cold and criminal indifference.”

He wrote above an hundred treatises on different subjects of history, grammar, geography, &c. the greater part of which remained in manuscript, and of those which were published, many soon became very scarce, as it was his custom to print only a few copies for distribution among his friends. 1. “Quatre Dialogues,” on the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, &c. Paris, 1684, 12mo, with a vignette of Sebastian le Clerc to each dialogue, This was animadverted upon by the celebrated Jurieu in “Apologie d'un tour nouveau pour ies Quatre Dialogues, &c.” Cologne (the Hague), 1685. 2. “Cartes Geographiques, Tables Chronologiques, Tables Genealogiques, &c.” 1693, 12mo. 3. “Lettre sur Tortographe aM.de Poutchartrain,” 1693, 12mo. 4. “Reflexions sur toutes Ies parties de la Grammaire,” 1694, 12mo. ]n this and the preceding, he attempts some new modes of spelling, which have never been adopted. 5. “Nouvelle methods de Geographic historique, &c.” 1697, folio. 6. “Leg principes du Blason en quatorze planches,” Paris, 1709, folio, reprinted in 1715, 4to. 7. “Essais de Grammaire,” 1711, 8vo. 8. “Reflexions sur la Grammaire Franeoise,” 1717, 8vo, with some other treatises on the same subjects he also invented a historical game of the kinos of France, somewhat like what have lately been introduced in our schools. The best of the above treatises were reprinted by the abbe Olivet in 1754, under the title of“Opuscules sur la langue Francaise.”

, brother of the preceding, was born in 1638. The endowments of his mind and person advanced him at the court of Louis XIV. and his decided taste for literature obtained him a place in the French academy, and in that of sciences. He died at Paris in 1720, at the age of eighty-two, privy ­councillor, knight of several orders, grand-master of the royal and military order of Notre Dame dn Mont Carmel, and of St. Lazare de Jerusalem. On being invested with this last dignity, he paid greater attention than had been before shewn to the choice of the chevaliers, iincl revived the ancient pomp at their reception, which the wits endeavoured to turn into ridicule. But what was superior to all ridicule was, that by his care he procured the foundation of upwards of twenty-five commanderies, and employed the revenues of the office of grand-master, to the education of twelve young gentlemen of the best nobility of the kingdom, as has been mentioned in onr account of his brother. At the court (says Fontenelle), where there is but little faith in probity and virtue, he always preserved his reputation clear and entire. His conversation, his manners, all savoured of a politeness which was far less that of a man of fashion, than of a friendly and obliging person. His wish at all times to play the part of a grandee, might have been passed over, on account of the worthiness of his character. Madame de Montespun, who thought him not qualified exactly for that, said rather tartly, that it was impossible not to love him, and not to laugh at hi ID. His first wife was Frances Morin, sister to the marechal dEstrées, and his second the countess de Louvestein, of the palatine house. There are extant by the marquis de Dangeau, memoirs in manuscript, from whence Voltaire, Renault, and la Beaumelle, have taken many curious anecdotes; but it was not always Dangeau, says Voltaire, who made these memoirs: “It was (according to this satirist) an old stupid valet-de-chambre, who thought proper to make manuscript gazettes of all the nonsense, right or wrong, that he could pick up in the anti-chambers,” by which Voltaire would insinuate that the memoirs which bear the name of the marquis de Dangeau are to be read with caution. There is Another little work of his, also in manuscript, in which he gives the picture of Louis XIV. in a very interesting manner, such as he was among his courtiers.

, so in Moreri, but in other French biographical works placed under Arnaud, one of the troubadours of the twelfth century, was born of noble parents, in the castle of Ribeyrac, in Perigord. If we may judge of his merit by his works which have descended to us, it would be difficult to give him the preference to his brethren in that century, yet the old Italian critics assign him the first place. Dante in particular speaks of him as the best writer of tender verses in the Provencal language, and seems equally partial to the prose part of his romances; Petrarch also, who places him at the head of the Provencal poets, calls him the great master of love, and has honoured him so far as to conclude one of his own stanzas with a verse from Arnaud. It has, however, been doubted whether this verse be the production of Arnaud, and Crescinjbeni has employed a long digression in discussing the question. The best, however, of Arnaud’s productions must have been lost, for what remain by no means support the character which Dante and Petrarch have given of him. He has the credit of inventing that species of composition called the sestine, and attached great importance to rhyme. Besides his poetical talents, he had musical skill, and composed some of his own songs. Milloi speaks of having seen seventeen pieces by Arnaud, and there are eight in the imperial library at Paris, with a life of him. One of his works is entitled “Fantaumasias del Paganisme.” He is supposed to have died about 1180.

, a very ingenious and learned Frenchman, was born at Roan, Feb. 8, 1649; and in Sept. 1667, entered as a novitiate into the society of the Jesuits, He read lectures upon polite literature, upon philosophy, and theology, at several places in the early part of his life by the desire of his superiors, after which he appears to have devoted his time to his historical and controversial works. One of his earliest productions was his “Voyage to the world of Descartes,” a satirical confutation of the Cartesian philosophy, under the appearance of a romance, which was so well received, that it was soon translated into several languages into English, into Italian, &c. It has undergone several editions, which have been revised and enlarged by the author; and to that printed in 1703 there were added, by way of supplement, two or three pieces, which have a connection with the subject. They are entitled, “New difficulties proposed to the author of the Voyage,” &c. concerning the consciousness or perception of brutes: with a refutation of two defences of Descartes’s general system of the world.

But the work which will longest perpetuate the name of father Daniel, is, “The History of France,” published at Paris, 1713, in 3 vols. fol. a second edition of which he brought out at Paris, 1722, in 7 vols. 4to, revised, corrected, augmented, and enriched with several authentic medals; and a very pompous edition of it was afterwards published, with a continuation, but in the way of annals only, from the death of Henry IV. in 1610, where father Daniel stopped, to the end of Lewis XIV. He was the author of some other works; of an answer to the Provincial Letters, entitled 1. Dialogues between Cleander and Eudoxus. This book in less than two years ran through twelve editions; it was translated into Latin by father Juvenci; and afterwards into Italian, English, and Spanish, but it is a weak attack, after all, on Pascal. 2. Two letters of M. Abbot to Eudoxus, by way of remarks upon the new apology for the Provincial Letters. 3. Ten letters to father Alexander, in which he draws a parallel between the doctrine of the Thomists and the Jesuits, upon the subjects of probability and grace. 4. The system of Lewis de Leon concerning the sacrament. 5. A defence of St. Augustin against a book supposed to be written by Launoi. 6. Four letters upon the argument of the book entitled A defence of St. Augustin. 7. A theological tract, touching the efficacy of grace, in two volumes. In the second volume, he answers Serry’s book, entitled “Schola Thomistica vindicata,” a remonstrance to the lord archbishop of Rheinia, occasioned by his order published July 15, 1G97. This performance of father Daniel’s was often printed, and also translated by Juvenci into Latin. He published other smaller works, which were all collected and printed in 3 vols. 4to.

Father Daniel was superior of the Jesuits at Paris, and died there June 23, 1728. By his death, that society lost one of the greatest ornaments they ever had. His “History,” to which Voltaire and some modern French critics have objected, and his “Histoire de la Mil ice Françoise,” 2 vols. 4to, although equally liable to censure on account of its prolixity, are works which gave him a very high rank among French historians. The best edition of, his history is that of 1757, 17 vols. 4to.

, a scholar and antiquary of the sixteenth century, was an advocate at Orleans, where he mostly resided, and assessor to the abbey of St. Benoitsur-Loire, which he was frequently obliged to visit, in the discharge of his office. His taste for polite literature, and general reputation for such learning as was not very common in his time, recommended him to the esteem of the cardinal de Chatillon, a liberal Maecenas of that age. The abbey of St. Benoit having been pillaged during the war in 1562, Daniel with great difficulty saved some manuscripts, and purchased others from the soldiers, and removed them to Orleans. Among these was the Commentary of Servius on Virgil, which he published in 1600 and the “Aulularia” of Plautus, which he had printed immediately after rescuing these Mss. in 1564. He prepared also an edition of Petronius, but it was not published until 1629, after his death. This event took place at Paris, in 1603, when his friends Paul Petau, and James Bongars, purchased his library for 15OO livres, and divided the Mss. between them. Among other eminent men, Daniel was particularly intimate with Buchanan, and has been highly praised by Scioppius, Scaliger, and Turnebus.

, an English poet and historian, the son of a music-master, was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. In 1579 he was admitted a commoner of Magdalen-hall, Oxford, where he continued about three years, and by the help of an excellent tutor, made considerable improvement in academical studies. He left the university, however, without taking a degree, and pursued the study of history and poetry under the patronage of the earl of Pembroke’s family. This he thankfully acknowledges in his “Defence of Rhime,” which is printed in the late edition of his works, as a necessary document to illustrate the ideas of poetry entertained in his time. To the same family he was probably indebted for an university education, as no notice occurs of his father, who, if a music-master, could not well have escaped the researches of Dr. Burney. The first of his product ions, at the age of twenty-three, was a translation of Paulns Jovius’s ' Discourse of Rare Inventions, both military and amorous, called Imprese,“London, 1585, 8vo, to which he prefixed an ingenious preface. He afterwards became tutor to the lady Anne Clifford, sole daughter and heiress to George, earl of Cumberland, a lady of very high accomplishments, spirit, and intrepidity. To her, when at the age of thirteen, he addressed a delicate admonitory epistle. She was married, first to Richard, earl of Dorset, and afterwards to the earl of Pembroke,” that memorable simpleton,“says lord Orford,” with whom Butler has so much diverted himself." The pillar which she erected in the county of Westmoreland, on the road-side between Penrith and Appleby, the spot where she took her last leave of her mother,

Among her other munificent acts, was a monument to the memory of our poet, on which she caused it to be engraven that she had been his pupil; a circumstance which she seems to have remembered with delight, at the distance of more than half a century after his decease.

At the death of Spenser, Daniel, according to Anthony Wood, was appointed poet-lanreat to tiuceu Elizabeth; but Mr. Malone, whose researches lead to more decisive accuracy, considers him only as a volunteer laureat, like Jonson, Dekker, and others who furnished the court with masks and pageants. In king James’s reign he was made gentleman extraordinary, and afterwards one of the grooms of the privy-chamber to the queen consort, who took great delight in his conversation and writings. Some of la’s biographers attribute this promotion to the interest of his brother-in-law, Florio, the Italian lexicographer, but it is perhaps more probable that he owed it to the Pembroke family. Mrs. Cooper, in her Muses’ Library, observes, that in the introduction to his poem on the civil wars, he acknowledges the friendship of one of the noble family of Mountjoy; and this, adds our female critic, is the more grateful and sincere, as it was published after the death of his benefactor. He now rented a small house and garden in Old-street, in the parish of St. Luke’s, London, where he composed most of his dramatic pieces, and enjoyed the friendship of Shakspeare, Marlowe, and Chapman, as well as of many persons of rank; but he appears to have been dissatisfied with the opinions entertained of his poetical talents; and towards the end of his life retired to a farm, which he had at Beckington, near Philips-Norton, in Somersetshire, and where, after some time devoted to study and contemplation, he died, and was buried Oct. 14, 1619. He had been married to his wife Justina, several years, but left no issue.

“He was born not far from Taunton, in this county (Somersetshire), whose father was a master of musick and his harmonious mind made an impression on his son’s genius, who proved an exquisite poet. He carried in his Christian and surname, two holy prophets, his monitors so to qualify his raptures, that he abhorred all prophaneness. He was also a judicious historian, witness his Lives of our English kings since the conquest, until king Edward III. wherein he hath the happiness to reconcile brevity with clearness, qualities of great distance in other authors. He was a servant in ordinary to queen Anne, who allowed him, a fair salary. As the tortoise burieth himself all the winter under the ground, so Mr. Daniel would lye hid at his garden-house in Old -street, nigh London, for some months together (the more retiredly to enjoy the company of the muses) and then would appear in publick, to converse with his friends, whereof Dr. Cowel and Mr. Camden were principal. Some tax him to smack of the old cask, as resenting of the Romish religion, but they have a quicker palate than I, who can make any such discovery. In his old age he turned husbandman, and rented a farm in Wiltshire, nigh the Devizes. I can give no account how he thrived thereupon. For though he was well versed in Virgil, his fellow-husbandman-poet, yet there is more required to make a rich farmer, than only to say his Georgics by heart; and I question whether his Italian will fit our English husbandry. Besides, I suspect that Mr. Daniel his fancy was too fine and sublimated to be wrought down to his private profit.”

Mr. Headly, who appears to have studied his works with much attention, thus appreciates his merit: “Though very rarely sublime, he has skill in the pathetic; and his pages are disgraced with neither pedantry nor conceit. We find, both in his poetry and prose, such a legitimate and rational flow of language as approaches nearer the style of the 18th than the 16th century, and of which we may safely assert, that it never will become obsolete. He certainly was the Atticus of his day. It seems to have been his error to have entertained too great a diffidence of his own abilities. Constantly contented with the sedate propriety of good sense, which he no sooner attains than he seems to rest satisfied, though his resources, had he but made the effort, would have carried him much farther. In thus escaping censure, he is not always entitled to praise. From not endeavouring to be great, he sometimes misses of being respectable. The constitution of his mind seems often to have failed him in the sultry and exhausting regions of the muses; for though generally neat, easy, and perspicuous, he too frequently grows slack, languid, and enervated. In perusing his long historical poem, we grow sleepy at the dead ebb of his narrative, notwithstanding being occasionally relieved with some touches of the pathetic. Unfortunate in the choice of his subject, he seems fearful of supplying its defects by digressional embellishment; instead of fixing upon one of a more fanciful cast, which the natural coolness of his judgment would necessarily have corrected, he has cooped himself up within the limited and narrow pale of dry events; instead of casting his eye on the general history of human nature, and giving his genius a range over her immeasurable fields, he has confined himself to an abstract diary of fortune; instead of presenting us with pictures of truth from the effects of the passions, he has versified the truth of action only; he has sufficiently, therefore, shown the historian, but by no means the poet. For, to use a sentiment of sir William Davenant’s, ‘ Truth narrative and past is the idol of historians, (who worship a dead thing); and truth operative, and by its effects continually alive, is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in mutter, but in reason.’ Daniel Las often the softness of Rowe without his effeminacy. In his Complaint of Cleopatra, he has caught Ovid’s manner very happily, as he has no obscurities either of style or language, neither pedantry nor affectation, all of which have concurred in banishing from use the works of his contemporaries. The oblivion he has met with is peculiarly undeserved; he has shared their fate, though innocent of their faults.”

The justice of these remarks cannot be disproved, although some of them are rather too figurative for sober criticism. Daniel’s fatal error was in causing history instead of fiction; yet in his lesser pieces, and particularly in his sonnets, are many striking poetical beauties; and his language is every where so much more harmonious than that of his contemporaries, that he deserves a place in every collection of English poetry, as one who had the taste or genius to anticipate the improvements of a more refined age. As a dramatic writer, he has been praised for his adherence to the models of antiquity, but whoever attempts this, attempts what has ever been found repugnant to the constitution of the English Theatre.

, an illustrious Italian poet, descended from one of the first families of Florence, of the name of Caccia Guida. Alighieri was the surname of the maternal line, natives of Ferrara, so called from a golden wing which the family bore on their arms. He was born in 1265, a little after the return of the Guelfs or pope’s faction, who had been exiled from their native country in consequence of the defeat at Monte Aperte. The superiority of his genius appeared early, and if we may credit his biographer Boccaccio, his amorous disposition appeared almost as soon. His passion for the lady whom he has celebrated in his poem by the name of Beatrice, is said to have commenced at nine years of age. She was the daughter of Eoleo Portinari, a noble citizen of Florence. His passion seems to have been of the platonic kind, according to the account he gives of it in his “Vita Nuova,” one of his earliest productions. The lady died at the age of twenty-six and Dante, affected by the afflicting event, fell into a profound melancholy, to cure which his friends recommended matrimony. Dante took their advice, but was unfortunate in choosing a lady of a termagant temper, from whom he found it necessary to separate, but not until they had lived miserably for a considerable time, during which she bore him several children. Either at this period, or after the death of his first mistress, he seems by his own account to have fallen into a profligate course of life, from which he was rescued by the prayers of his mistress, now a saint, who prevailed on the spirit of Virgil to attend him through the infernal regions. It is not easy to reduce this account to matter of fact, nor is it very clear indeed whether his reigning vice was profligacy, or ambition of worldly honours. It is certain, however, that he possessed this ambition, and had reason to repent of it.

He had already conceived notions of military glory, and had distinguished himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory at Arezzo. This, joined with his acknowledged learning, prepared the way for his advancement to the first honours of the state. Italy, at that time, was distracted between the factions of the Guelfs, or partizans of the pope, and the Ghibellines, who adhered to the emperor. After many revolutions, the Gnelfs had got the superiority in Florence; and in 130O Dante, with several colleagues, was elected prior, the first executive office in the republic of Florence, and from this he is said to have dated all his misfortunes. Although the faction of the Ghibellines seemed totally extinct, an uninterrupted flow of ten years prosperity was attended with consequences more fatal to the Guelfs than all their past misfortunes. The two noble families of the Cherchi and Donati had been engaged in a quarrel of old standing, and now had recourse to arms, in consequence of a dispute between two branches of the family of Cancelieri, of Pistoia. The rival factions had distinguished themselves by the names of the blacks and the whites, i. e. the Neri and the Bianchi. Donati, from an old attachment to the part of the Cancelieri, called the blacks, joined their faction, which immediately determined the Cherchi to join the whites; and in order to put an end to the quarrel, Dante and his colleagues, ordered the heads of the opposite factions t remove from Pistoia to Florence, the consequence of which was, that all the noble families of Florence ranged themselves with the one or the other, and even the lower order of the citizens became partizans. At last, at a secret meeting of the blacks, Carso Donati proposed to apply to pope Boniface VIII. to terminate these intestine broils, by sending Charles of Valois of the blood royal of France. The whites, having learned this, assembled in arms, and clamoured loudly against the project, and Dante was so dissatisfied with it, that from that moment it is probable he took a decided part against the black faction.

To preserve, however, the appearance of impartiality, he and his colleagues, gaining the multitude on their side, ordered the leaders of both parties, Donati and Cherchi, into confinement; but Dante’s real sentiments soon appeared: the whites were set at liberty, and the blacks remained in bonds or in exile, and although Dante’s priorate had expired before the whites were released, the measure was attributed to his influence. This appearance of partiality gave the wished for pretext to Boniface to send Charles of Valois to Florence, who, after producing a letter pretended to be written by some of the leaders of the whites, offering to corrupt his integrity in their favour, recalled the exiles of the black faction, and banished their opponents. Dante was at this time at Rome soliciting the pope to conciliate the two parties, and finding his solicitations in vain, returned, and found the sentence of exile passed upon him, his possessions confiscated, and his house razed to the foundation. This news met him at Siena, where he was soon joined by a numerous body of exiles, who formed themselves into an army, and after makingsome unsuccessful efforts to enter their native city byforce, which they repeated for four years, were obliged tu disperse.

Dante first found a patron in the great Cane de la Scala, prince of Verona, whom he has celebrated in the first canto of the Inferno; but his high spirit was ill-suited to courtly dependance; and it is very probable he lost the favour of the prince by the frankness of his behaviour. Of this an instance is given in several authors. The disposition of the poet, in the latter part of his life, had acquired a strong tincture of melancholy, which made him less acceptable in the gay court of Verona, where probably a poet was only thought a character fit to find frivolous amusements for his patron. A common jester, or buffoon (a noted personage in those days), eclipsed the character of the hard, and neither the variety of his learning, nor the sublimity of his genius, stood him in any stead. Cane, the prince, perceived that he was hurt by it; and, instead of altering his mode of treatment, very ungenerously exasperated his resentment, by observing one day in public company, that it was very extraordinary, that the jester, whom every one knew to be a worthless fellow, should be so much admired by him, and all his court; while Dante, a man unparalleled in learning, genius, and integrity, was universally neglected. “You will cease to wonder (says Dante), when you consider that similarity of manners is the strongest bond of attachment.” It does not appear whether the prince resented this answer, which he surely must have felt; but it is certain that the prince endeavoured to make the poet an occasional object of merriment in some very low instances, and Dante condescended to meet him even in that humble species of wit. Dante, however, soon found it necessary to seek his fortune elsewhere, and from Verona he retired to France, according to Manetti; and Boccaccio affirms that he disputed in the theological schools of Paris with great reputation, which Boccaccio had a much better opportunity of knowing than Bavle, who takes upon him to question the fact.

Dante’s first prospect of better fortune opened in 1308, when Henry, count of Luxemburgh was raised to the empire. In hopes of being restored to his native country, he attached himself to the interests of the new emperor, in whose service he is supposed to have written his Latin work “De Monarchia,” in which he asserts the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the papacy. In 131 J, he instigated the emperor to lay siege to Florence, in which enterprize, says one of his biographers, he did not chuse to appear in person, from motives of respect to his native country. But the emperor was repulsed by the Florentines; and his death, which happened next year, deprived Dante of all hopes of re-establishment in his native country. After this disappointment he is supposed to have spent several years in roving about Italy, in a state of poverty and dependance; till he found an honourable establishment at Ravenna, by the friendship of Guido NoVelio de Polenta, lord of that place, who received tbl? illustrious exile with the most endearing liberality, continued to protect him during the few remaining years of his life, and extended his munificence even to the ashes of the poet.

Eloquence was one of the many talents which Dante possessed in an eminent degree; on this account he is said to have been employed in fourteen different embassies during the course of his life, and to have succeeded in most of them. His patron Guido had occasion to try his abilities in a service of this nature, and dispatched him as his ambassador, to negociate a peace with the Venetians, who were preparing for hostilities against Ravenna. Manetti asserts that he was unable to procure a public audience at Venice, and returned to Ravenna by land, from his apprehension of the Venetian fleet. But the fatigue of his journey, and the mortification of having failed in his attempt to preserve his generous patron from the impending danger, threw him into a fever, which terminated in death. He died Sept. 14, 1321, in the palace of Guido, who paid the most tender regard to his memory. This magnificent patron, says Boccaccio, commanded the body to be adorned with poetical ornaments; and alter being carried on a bier through the principal streets of Ravenna, by the most illustrious citizens, to be deposited in a marble coffin. He pronounced himself the funeral oration, and expressed his design of erecting a most splendid monument, in honour of the deceased; a design, which his subsequent misfortunes rendered him unable to accomplish. At his request, however, many epitaphs were written on the poet. The best of them, says Boccaccio, was by Giovanni di Virgilio, of Bologna, a famous author of the time, and the intimate friend of Dante. Bernardo Bembc, the father of the celebrated cardinal, raised a handsome monument over the neglected ashes of the poet, with a Latin inscription; but before this, the Florentines had vainly endeavoured to gain the bones of their great poet from the city of Ravenna. In the age of Leo X. they made a second attempt, by a solemn application to the pope for that purpose; and Michael AngeJo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, very liberally offered to execute a magnificent monument to the poet, but the hopes of the Florentines were again unsuccessful.

Dante is described by Boccaccio, as a man of middle stature; his demeanour was solemn, and his walk slow; his dress suitable to his age and rank; his visage long, his nose aquiline, his eyes full, his cheek bones large, and upper lip a little projecting over the under one; his complexion was olive, his hair and beard thick and curled. This gave him that singularity of aspect, which made his enemies observe, that he looked like one who had visited the infernal regions. His deportment, both in public and private life, was regular and exemplary, and his moderation in eating and drinking remarkable.

His fame rests on his “Divina Commedia,” unquestionably a great and singular, but very unequal work. At what time, or in what place, he wrote it, his numerous commentators seem unable to determine. The life of Dante, in which we have principally followed Mr. Boyd, in the preliminary matter to his excellent translation, is after all not the life of a poet, nqr does it furnish the information we naturally look for in order to enable us to trace the progress of genius. Boccaccio asserts, that he began the “Commedia” in his thirty-eighth year, and had finished seven cantos of his “Inferno” before his exile, and that in the plunder of his house, on that event, the beginning of his poem was fortunately preserved, but remained for some time neglected, till, its merit being accidentally discovered by an intelligent poet, Dino, it was sent to the marquis Marcello Marespina, an Italian nobleman, by whom Dante was then protected. The marquis restored these lost papers to the poet, and intreated him to proceed in the work, which opened in so promising a manner. To this accident we are probably indebted for the poem of Dante, which he must have continued under all the disadvantages of an unfortunate and agitated life. It does not appear at what time he completed it: perhaps before he quitted Verona, as he dedicated the “Paradeso” to his Veronese patron. The critics are not agreed why he called this poem “Commedia.”

The very high estimation in which this work was held in, Florence appears from a very singular institution. The republic of Florence, in 1373, assigned a public stipend to a person appointed to read lectures on the poem of Dante. Boccaccio was the first person engaged in this office; but his death happening two years after his appointment, his comment extended only to the first seventeen cantos of the “Inferno.” Another very terrible instance of their veneration for their native bard is told by the author of the “Memoires de Petrarque.” Ceno de Ascoli, a celebrated physician and astrologer, had the boldness to write parodies on the poem of Dante. This drew on him the animadversion of the inquisition. Charles, duke of Calabria, thought to protect him, but in vain. The bishop of Aversa, his chancellor, declared it was highly impious to entertain a sorcerer as a physician, and Ascoli was accordingly burnt at Florence, about three years after the death of the poet whom he had maligned.

The “Commedia” of Dante is a species of satiric epic, in which the reader is conducted through the three stages, “the Inferno,” the “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso,” the whole consisting of a monstrous assemblage of characters, pagan heroes and philosophers, Christian fathers, kings, popes, monks, ladies, apostles, saints, and hierarchies; yet frequently embellished with passages of great sublimity and pathos (of the latter, what is comparable to the tale of Ugolino?) and imagery and sentiments truly Homeric. The highest praise, however, must be given to his “Inferno,” a subject which seems to have suited the gloomy vvildness of his imagination, which appears tamed and softened even in the most interesting pictures in the “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso.” Whether, says an excellent living critic, Dante was stimulated to his singular work by the success of his immediate predecessors, the Provenal poets, or by the example of the ancient Roman authors, has been doubted. The latter opinion, Mr. Roscoe thinks the more probable. In his “Inferno” he had apparently the descent of ^neas in view, but in the rest of his poem there is little resemblance to any antecedent production. Compared with the ^neid, adds Mr. Roscoe, “it is a piece of grand Gothic architecture at the side of a beautiful Roman temple,” on which an anonymous writer remarks that this Gothic grandeur miserably degenerates in the adjoining edifices, the “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso.”

The editions of Dante’s “Commedia” have been very numerous. The best is said to be that of Venice, 1757, 3 vols. 4to. It was first printed in 1472, probably at Foligno, in a folio volume, without place. This is of great rarity and value. The second is in folio of the same date, and the third also of the same date in 4to. The three are accurately described by Mr. Dibdin in his valuable tract, “Book Rarities.” Dante is the author of some sonnets which are not unworthy of him. A considerable number of them are in his “Vita Nuova.” In the few Latin works he wrote, his progress in that language is evident, but all were soon so eclipsed by his “Commedia,” that, except as matters of curiosity, they have seldom been perused.

, according to some, a descendant of the famous poet, was born at Perugia in 1537, and took the habit of a Dominican. He became skilful in philosophy and divinity, but more so in the mathematics. He was invited to Florence by the great duke Cosmo I. and explained to him the sphere and the books of Ptolemy, and left here a marble quadrant, and an equinoctial and meridian line on the front of the church of St. Maria Novella. He read public lectures on the same subject, and had many auditors in the university of Bologna, where he was appointed mathematical professor. Before he returned to Perugia, he made a fine map of that city, and of its whole territory, and in 1576 traced the grand meridian in the church of St. Petrona, which Cassini completed. The reputation of his learning caused him to be invited to Rome by Gregory XIII. who employed him in making geographical maps and plans. He acquitted himself so well in this, that the pope thought himself obliged to prefer him; and accordingly gave him the bishopric of Alatri, near Rome. He went and resided in his diocese; but Sixtus V. who succeeded Gregory XIII. would have him near his person, and ordered him to return to Rome. Dante was preparing for the journey, but was prevented by death, in 1586. His principal works are, “A Treatise of the Construction and Use of the Astrolabe,” “Mathematical Tables,” and a “Commentary on the Laws of Perspective.”

, of the same family, probably, with the preceding, and native also of Perugia, was an excellent mathematician, and is memorable for having fitted a pair of wings so exactly to his body, as to be able to fly with them. He made the experiment several times over the lake Trasimenus; and succeeded so well, that he had the courage to perform before the whole city of Perugia, during the solemnity of the marriage of Bartholomew d'Alviano with the sister of John Paul Baglioni. He shot himself from the highest part of the city, and directed his flight over the square, to the admiration of the spectators: but unfortunately the iron, with which he managed one of his wings, failed; and then, not being able to balance the weight of his body, he fell on a church, and broke his thigh. Bayle fancies, that the history of this Daedalus, for so he was called, will not generally be credited; yet he observes, that it is said to have been practised at other places, for which he refers us to the “Journal des Sgavans” of 1678. Dante was afterwards invited to be professor of the mathematics at Venice. He flourished towards the end of the fifteenth century, and died before he was forty years old.

, a native of Perugia, of the family of Rainaldi, imitated so well the verses of the poet Dante, that he was generally called by his name. He was not less distinguished by the delicacy of his poetry, than by his skill in the mathematics and in architecture. He died in 1512, in an advanced age, after having invented several machines, and composed a commentary on the sphere of Sacrobosco. His grandson Vincent Dante, an able mathematician, like him, was at the same time painter and sculptor. His statue of Julius III. has been generally looked upon as a master-piece of the art. Philip II. king of Spain, offered him a large salary to induce him to come and finish the paintings of the Escurial; but the delicacy of Dante’s constitution would not permit him to quit his natal air. He died at Perugia in 1576, at the age of forty-six. There is extant by him, “The lives of those who have excelled in drawings for statues.”

D'Antine (Francis), a Benedictine of the congregation of St. Maur, was born at Gouvieux in the diocese of Liege, in 1688, and made himself highly respected among his brethren by his piety and charitable attention to the poor and afflicted. To the learned world he is known as the editor of the first five volumes of the new edition of Du Gauge’s Glossary, in 1736, which he very much improved and enlarged. He was also one of the editors of the great collection of French historians begun by Bouquet, and of the “Art de verifier les dates,” of which a new edition was published by Clement in 1770, folio. D'Amine translated the Psalms from the Hebrew, Paris, 1739 and 1740. He died in 1746.

, a learned German divine of the Lutheran church, and whose talents contributed greatly to raise the reputation of the university of Jena, was born Feb. 1, 1654, at Sandhusen, a village near Gotha. He appears to have obtained the patronage of the duke Frederick, who defrayed the expence of his education, both at school, and at the university of Wittemberg, where he took his master’s degree in 1676. Having devoted much of his attention to the Hebrew language and antiquities, he went to Hamburgh, where he profited by the assistance of Esdras Edzardi and other learned Jews, and was enabled to read the rabbinical writings with facility. From Hamburgh he went to Leipsic, and thence to Jena, from which in 1683 he visited Holland and England, acquiring in both countries the acquaintance of men of learning. On his return, having determined to settle at Jena, he was appointed professor extraordinary of the oriental languages, and on the death of the learned Frischmuth, was advanced to be professorordinary. In these offices he acquired great reputation, and attracted a number of foreign students. Some time after, he was appointed professor of divinity, in which he was no less popular. He died of a stroke of apoplexy, Dec. 20, 1727. He wrote, among many other works, “Sinceritas sacrae Scripturae veteris testamenti triumphans, cujus prodromus Sinceritas Scriptuvae Vet. Test, prevalente Keri vacillans,” Jena, 1713, 4to; and various dissertations in Latin, in controversy with the Jews, or on topics of Jewish antiquities, particularly “Divina Elohim inter coaequales de primo homine condendo deliberatio,” 1712 “Inauguratio Christi haud obscurior Mosaica, decem dissert, asserta,” Jena, 1717, 4to and a very ingenious tract entitled “Davidis in Ammonitas devictos mitigata crudelitas,” 1713.

, a brave warrior in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, and created earl of Dariby by king Charles I. was the second son of sir John Danvers, knight, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter and coheir to John Nevil the last lord Latimer. He was born at Dantesey in Wiltshire, on the 28th of June, 1573. After an education suitable to his birth, he went and served in the Low Country wars, under Maurice count of Nassau, afterwards prince of Orange; and was engaged in many military actions of those times, both by sea and land. He was made a captain in the wars of France, occasioned in that kingdom by the League; and there knighted for his good service under Henry IV. king of France. He was next employed in Ireland, as lieutenantgeneral of the horse, and serjeant-major of the whole army, under Robert earl of Essex, and Charles Baron of Montjoy, in the reign of queen Elizabeth. Upon the accession of king James I. he was, on account of his family’s deserts and sufferings, advanced, July 21, 1603, to the dignity of a peer of this realm, by the title of Baron of Dantesey: and in J 605, by a special act of parliament, restored in blood as heir to his father, notwithstanding the attainder of his elder brother, sir Charles Danvers, knight. He was also appointed lord president of Munster in Ireland; and in 1620 made governor of the Isle of Guernsey for life. By king Charles I. he was created earl of Danby, February 5, 1625-6; and made of his privy council; and knight of the order of the garter. Being himself a man of learning, as well as a great encourager of it, and observing that opportunities were wanting in the university of Oxford for the useful study of botany, he purchased for the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, five acres of ground, opposite Magdalen college, which had formerly served for a burying-place to the Jews (residing in great numbers at Oxford, till they were expelled England by king Edward I. in 1290), and conveyed his right and title to that piece of land to the university, on the 27th of March, 1622. The ground being first considerably raised, to prevent its being overflowed by the river Cherwell, the heads of the university laid the first stones of the walls, on the 25th of July following. They were finished in 1633, being fourteen feet high: and cost the noble benefactor about five thousand pounds. The entrance into the garden is on the north side under a stately gate, the charge of building which amounted to between rive and fix hundred pounds. Upon the front of that gateway, is this Latin inscription: Gloriie Dji Opt. Max. Honori Caroli Regis, in usum Acad. et Keipub. Henricus Comes Danby, D.D. MDCXXXII. For the maintenance of it, and of a gardener, the noble founder left, by will, the impropriate rectory of Kirkdale in Yorkshire: which was afterwards settled for the same purpose, by his brother and heir sir John Danvers, knt. The earl of Danby’s will bore date the 14th of December, 1640.

He founded also an alms-house, and a free-school, at Malmesbury in Wiltshire. In his latter days he chose a retired life and (upon what account is not well known) fell under the displeasure of the court. At length, he died at his house in Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire, Jan. 20, 1643-4, in the seventy-first year of his age: and was buried in the chancel of the parish-church of Dantesey, under a noble monument of white marble, with an epitaph which contains a high character of him. He was never married.

His younger brother and heir was sir John Danvers, knt. one of the gentlemen of the privy-chamber to Charles I. who was so ungrateful and inhuman, as to sit in judgment upon his gracious master, that unfortunate prince, and to be one of those who signed the warrant for his execution. He died before the restoration of king Charles II. but, however, all his estates both real and personal were confiscated in 1661.

, a French military surgeon, who acquired much celebrity for his skill in treating disorders in the urethra, particularly for his improved method of making bougies, was born at St. Frajon in Gascony March 6, 1701, and after studying the art, became surgeon-major of the imperial troops, and afterwards practised at Milan, and at Turin, where the king Victor Amadeus promised him great encouragement if tie would remain; but at that time he wished to travel for improvement, and after visiting Rome and Vienna, continued some time at Messina, where he exerted his skill and humanity with great success. Having devoted much of his attention to the disorders of the bladder, he published in 1745, “Recueil d‘Observations Chirurgicales sur les Maladies de l’Urethra,” which has been several times reprinted, and in 1750, was translated into English by Mr. Tomkyns, an eminent surgeon of London, who was able, he says, from his own experience, to attest the superior utility of Daran’s bougies over those that had been commonly used. In the fifth volume of the “Journeaux de Medicine,” there is a communication by Daran, in which he makes mention of a tube he had invented for drawing off the urine. This he describes more particularly in his “Treatise on the Gonorrhoea Virulenta,” first published in 1756. It is a flexible catheter, formed of a spiral wire, covered with the same composition as that used in making the bougies, and was capable of being introduced into the bladder, in many cases, where it would have been dangerous, often impossible, to use the common catheter. Considerable improvements have been since made of this instrument, but the merit of the invention still remains with Daran. The fame he acquired, during his residence at Paris, brought a nun her of strangers to visit him, and the profits of his practice were very great; but his charity to the indigent, and an easiness of temper, which led him into speculations, reduced him at last to very low circumstances, and he was comparatively poor when he died, in 1784. It is much to his honour that when thus reduced, and when the infirmities of age were approaching, he divulged, in 1779, the secret of the composition of his bougies in a work entitled “Composition du remede de Daran, &c.” 12mo, when he could derive no benefit except from the sale of his book. His other publications were, 1. “Reponse a la Brochure de Bayet sur la defense et la conservation des parties les plus essentielles de l'homme,” 1750, 12mo; and 2. “Lettre sur ua article des Tumeurs.”

. See Darcy. D‘Arcon (John Claudius Eleonore Limiceaud), an eminent French engineer, and memorable in history as the contriver of a mode of besieging Gibraltar which proved so fatal to his countrymen, was born at Pontarlier in 1733. His father, an advocate, intended to bring him up for the church, and had provided him with a benefice, but Dar5011 from his infancy had a turn for the military life; and when at school, instead of learning Latin, was copying drawings and sketches of fortifications. On one occasion he took a singular mode of acquainting his parents with the error they had committed, in seeking a profession for him. Having by their desire sat for his portrait, he substituted, with his own hand, the uniform of an engineer, instead of the dress of an abbe, in which the artist had clothed him. His father, struck with this silent hint, no longer opposed his inclinations. In 1754 he was admitted into the school of Mezieres, and the following year was received as an ordinary engineer. He served afterwards with distinguished honour in the seven years’ war, and particularly in 1761, at the defence of Cassel. He atterwar is devoted himself to improvements in the military art, and even in the making of drawings and charts; and having great ambition, with a warmth of imagination that presented every thing as practicable, he at length in 1780 conceived the memorable plan of the siege of Gibraltar. This, say his countrymen, which has made so much noise in Europe, has not been fairly estimated, because everyone has judged from the event. Without entering, however, in this place, on its merits, all our historians have attributed to Darcon’s ideas a grandeur and even sublimity of conception vviiich did him much honour, and it is yet remembered that almost all Europe was so perfectly convinced of the success of the plan as to admit of no doubt or objection. Nothing of the kind, however, was ever attended with a discomfiture more complete, and D’Arcou wrote and printed a species of justification, which at least shows the bitterness of his disappointment. On the commencement of the revolutionary war, he engaged on the popular side; but, except some concern he had in the invasion of Holland, does not appear to have greatly distinguished himself. He was twice denounced by Hnctuating governments; and being treated in the same manner after his Dutch campaign, he retired from the service, and wrote his last work on fortifications. In 179y the first consul introduced him into the senate, but he did not enjoy this honour long, as he died July 1, 1800. He was at that time a member of the Institute. His works, still in high estimation in France, are: 1. “Reflexions d'un ingenieur, en reponse a un tacticien,” Amst. 1773, 12mo. 2. “Correspondanee sur Part de la Guerre entre un colonel de dragons et un capitaine d'infanterie,” Bouillon, 1774, 8vo. 3. “Defense d‘une systeme de Guerre Nationale, ou analyse raisonne d’un ouvrage, intitule * Refutation complete du systeme, 1 &c.” This is a defence of M. Menil Durand’s system, which had been attacked by Guibert and the preceding pamphlet has a respect to the same dispute concerning what the French call the ordre projond and the ordre mince. 4. “Conseil de Guerre prive, sur revenement de Gibraltar en 1782,” 1785, 8vo. 5. “Memoires pour serrir a l‘histoire du siege de Gibraltar, par l’auteur des batteries flottantes,” 1783, 8vo. 6. “Considerations sur l'influence du genie de Vauban dans la balance des forces de Petat,” 1786, 8vo. 7. “Examen detaillté de l'importante question de Putilite des places fortes et retranchments,” Strasburgh, 1789, 8vo. 8. “De la force militaire considered dans ses rapports conservateurs,” Strasburgh, 1789, 8vo, with a continuation, 1790. 9. “Reponse aux Memoires de M. de Montalembert, sur la fortification dite perpendiculaire,” 1790, 8vo. 10. “Considerations militaires et politiques sur les Fortifications,” Paris, 1795, 8vo. This, which is the most important of all his works, and was printed at the expence of the government, contains the essence of all his other productions, and the result of his experience on an art which he had studied during the whole of his life.

, of a noble and ancient family in Ireland, was born in Galloway Sept. 18, 1725. His parents, who were attached to the exiled house of Stuart, sent him to Paris in 1739, where, being put under the care of M. Clairault, at seventeen years of age he gave a new solution of the problem of the curve of equal pressure in a resisting medium. This was followed the year after by a determination of the curve described by a heavy body, sliding by its own weight along a moveable plane, at the same time that the pressure of the body causes an horizontal motion in the plane. This problem had indeed been solved by John Bernoulli and Clairault; but, besides that chevalier Darcy’s method was peculiar to him, we discover throughout the work traces of that originality which is the leading character of all his productions. The commencement of the war took him off in some measure from his studies, and he served during several campaigns in Germany and Flanders, as captain of the regiment of Conde. In 1746 he was appointed to accompany the troops that were to be sent to Scotland to assist the pretender; but the vessel in which he sailed was taken by the English, and Darcy, whose life was forfeited by the laws of his country, as being taken in arms against her, was saved by the humanity of the English commander. During the course of this war, amidst all its bustle and dangers, he found leisure to contribute two memoirs to the academy. The first contained a general principle of mechanics, that of the preservation of the rotatory motion. Daniel Bernoulli and Euler had found it out in 1745; but, besides that it is not likely their works should have reached Mr. Darcy in the midst of his campaigns, his method, which is different from theirs, is equally original, simple, elegant, and ingenious. This principle, which he again brought forward in 1750, by the name of “the principle of the preservation of action,” in order to oppose it to Maupertuis’s principle of the least action, Darcy made use of in solving the problem of the precession of the equinoxes: here, however, he miscarried; and in general it is to be observed, that though all principles of this kind may be used as mathematical formuloe, two of them at least must necessarily be employed in the investigation of problems, and even these with great caution; so that the luminous and simple principle given by M. d'Alembert in 1742 is the only one, on account of its being direct, which can be sufficient of itself for the sotion of problems.

Having published an “Essay on Artillery” in 1760, containing various curious experiments on the charges of powder, &c. and several improvements on Robins (who was not so great a mathematician as he), Darcy continued the experiments to the last moment of his life, but has left nothing behind him. In 1765 he published his “Memoir on the duration of the sensation of 8i^ht,” the most ingenious of his works, and that which shews him in the best light as an accurate and ingenious maker of experiments: the result of these researches was, that a body may souietimes pass by our eyes without being seen, or marking its presence, otherwise than by weakening the brightness of the object it covers; thus, in turning pieces of card painted blue and yellow, you only perceive a continued circle of green; thus the seven prismatic colours, rapidly turned, produce an obscure white, which is the obscurer as the motion is more rapid. As this duration of the sensation increases with the brightness of the object, it would have been interesting to know the laws, according to which the augmentation of the duration follows the intensity of the light, and, contrarywise, what are the gradations of the intensity of the light of an object which motion makes continually visible; but Darcy, now obliged to trust to other eyes than his own, was forced to relinquish this pursuit. Darcy, always employed in comparing mathematical theory and observation, made a particular use of this principle in his “Memoir on Hydraulic Machines,” printed in 1754. In this he shews how easy it is to make mistakes in looking by experiment for the laws of such effects as are susceptible of a maximum or minimum; and indicates at the same time, how a system of experiments may be formed, which shall lead to the discovery of these laws. All Darcy’s works bear the character which results from the union of genius and philosophy; but as he measured every thing upon the largest scale, and required infinite accuracy in experiment, neither his time, fortune, nor avocations allowed him to execute more than a very small part of what he projected. He was amiable, spirited, lively, and a lover of independence; a passion to which he sacrificed even in the midst of literary society, where perhaps a little aristocracy may not be quite so dangerous.

Darcy, though estranged from it by circumstances, loved and respected his old country: the friend and protector of every Irishman who came to Paris, he could not help feeling a secret pride, even in the successes of that enemy, against whom he was so often and so honourably to himself employed. Of his personal history, it yet remains to be added, that in the seven years’ war he served in the regiment of Fitz-James; and in 1770 was appointed mareschal de-camp, and the same year the academy of sciences admitted him to the rank of pensionary. In 1777 he married a niece who was brought up under his care at Paris, and then took the name of Count Darcy. He died two years after this marriage, Oct. 18, 1779. Condorcet wrote his cloge, published in the History of the Academy, and seems throughout anxious to do justice to his talents and character, a circumstance, which, we are told, was very highly honourable to Condorcet, as he had been most unjustly the continual object of Darcy’s aversion and hatred. Darcy’s essays, printed in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, are various and very ingenious, and are contained in the volumes for the years 1742, 1747, 1749, 1750, 1751, 17-52, 1753, 1754, 1758, 1759, 1760, 1765, and in tom. I. of the “Savans Etrangers.”

D'Arquier (Augustine), a French astronomer, fellow of the royal society of Toulouse, correspondent member of the royal academy of Paris, and a member of the Institute, was born at Toulouse, Nov. 23, 1718, and having early cultivated the science of astronomy, and the sciences connected with it, devoted his long life to the same pursuits, and acquired great reputation among his countrymen. Such was his enthusiasm, that, without any assistance from government, he purchased the most valuable instruments, erected an observatory on his house, taught scholars, and defrayed the expence of calculations, &c. He died in his native city, Jan. 18, 1802. He published, 1. “Observations Astronomiques faites a Toulouse, &c.” Paris, 1778, 4to, the most complete collection of observations that had ever been furnished from a provincial city. There are six hundred of the moon, thirtythree oppositions, several observations of Mercury, of the spots in the sun, the satellites of Jupiter, and the eclipses of the stars. One of the most surprizing circumstances in this collection is the great number of the passages of Mercury that have been observed by M. D'Arquier, notwithstanding the pretended difficulties which have discouraged modern astronomers from observing that planet. 2. “Observations Astronomiques,” 1783, 2 vols. 4to, containing a series of the usual astronomical observations, from 1748 to 1781: some useful instructions on the management of the pendulum: and observations on the motion and magnitude of the Georgium sidus. 3. “Lettres sur l'astronome pratique,” 1786, 8vo. Besides these he published some translations, as Simson’s Geometry, Lambert’s Cosmological Letters, and Ulloa’s Observation on the eclipse of the sun in 1778. D'Arquier died Jan. 18, 1802, in Toulouse.

, a learned lawyer, was born 1572, at Cahors, and after studying there, at Rhodez, and Toulouse, went to Paris with the president de Verdun, and succeeded Nicholas Oudin as professor of law, 1618. He was afterwards professor of common law at the royal college, and died April 2, 1651. It appears from his works, which were published at Paris, 1656, fol. that he was well acquainted with the ancient church discipline, and a very useful compiler, if not a profound scholar. He published some separate tracts besides those included in the above volume, which are enumerated in our authorities.

, a physician and poet, was a native of Elton, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, where he was born December 12, 1731. After going through the usual school education, under the Rev. Mr. Burrows, at the grammar-school at Chesterfield, with credit, he was sent to St. John’s college, at Cambridge. There he only continued until he took his bachelor’s degree in medicine, when he went to Edinburgh to complete his studies; which being finished, and having taken the degree of doctor in medicine, a profession to which he was aUvays attached, he went to Lichfield, and there commenced his career of practice. Being sent for, soon after his arrival, to Mr. Inglis, a gentleman of considerable fortune in the neighbourhood, who was ill with fever, and in so dangerous a state that the attending physician had given up the case as hopeless, the doctor had the good fortune to restore him to health. This gave him so high a degree of reputation at Litchfield, and in the neighbouring towns and villages, that his competitor, who was before in considerable practice, finding himself neglected, and nearly deserted, left the place. Dr. Darwin soon after married miss Howard, the daughter of a respectable inhabitant of Lichfield, by which he strengthened his interest in the place. By this lady he had three sons, who lived to the age of manhood; two of them he survived; the third, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, is no.v in considerable practice as a physician at Shrewsbury. In 1781, our author, having married a second wife, removed to Derby, where he continued to reside to the time of his death, which happened on Sunday the 18th of April, 1802, in the seventieth year of his age. Six children by his second lady, with their mother, remain to lament the loss of him.

The doctor was of an athletic make, much pitted with the small-pox. He stammered much in his speech. He had enjoyed an almost uninterrupted good state of health until towards the conclusion of his life, which he attributed, and reasonably, to his temperate mode of living, particularly to his moderation in the use of fermented liquors. This practice he recommended strenuously to all who consulted him. Miss Seward, from whose Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin these notices are principally taken, gives him the credit of having introduced habits of sobriety among the trading part of Lichfield, where it had been the custom to live more freely before he went to reside there. His frequent journies into the country on professional business, contributed also in no small degree to the preservation of his health and his faculties, which latter remained unimpaired to the day of his death. His death was sudden, occasioned by a fit of what he was used to call angina-pectoris, which he had several times experienced, and always relieved by bleeding plentifully.

As Dr. Darwin was a votary to poetry, as well as medicine, he occasionally sent his effusions in that way, to one or other of the monthly publications, but without his name, conceiving, from the example of Akenside and Armstrong, that the reputation he might acquire by his poetry, would operate as a bar to his advancement in the practice of medicine. His “Botanic Garden,” in which he celebrates what he calls the “Loves of the Plants,” the first of his poems to which he put his name, was not published until 1781, when his medical fame was so well established as to make it safe for him to indulge his taste in any way he should chuse. Besides, the poem was so amply furnished with notes, containing the natural history, and accounts of the properties of plants, that it did not seem very alien from his profession. The Botanic Garden is comprised in two parts. In the first the author treats of the economy of vegetables, in the second of the loves of the plants. The novelty of the design, the brilliancy of the diction, full of figurative expressions, in which every thing was personified, rendered the poem for some years extremely popular. But the fame which it acquired has in a great degree subsided, and it is now little noticed. It is probable, that an ingenious little poem, “The Loves of the Triangles,” published in a monthly journal, which is a happy imitation of the Darwinian manner, contributed to its decline.

In 1753, the author published the first volume of“Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life,” 4to. The second volume, which completed the author’s plan, was printed in 1796. As the eccentric genius of the author was known, great expectations were formed of this work, the labour, we were told, of more than twenty years. It was to reform, or entirely new model, the whole system of medicine, professing no less than to account for the manner in which man, animals, and vegetables are formed. They all, it seems, take their origin from living filaments, susceptible of irritation, which is the agent that sets them in motion. Archimedes was wont to say, “give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth:” such was his confidence in his know edge of the power of the lever. Our author said, “give me a fibre susceptible of irritation, and I will make a tree, a dog, a horse, a man.” “I conceive,” he says, Zoonomia, vol. I. p. 492, “the primordium, or rudiment of the embryon, as secreted from the blood of the parent, to consist in a single living filament, as a muscular fibre, which I suppose to be the extremity of a nerve of loco-motion, as a fibre of the retina is the extremity of a nerve of sensation; as, for instance, one of the fibrils which compose the mouth of an absorbent vessel; I suppose this living filament, of whatever form it may be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the capacity of being exciied into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By the stimulus of the surrounding fluid in which it is received from the mah-, it may bend into a ring, and thus form the lieg'nninj of a tube. This living ring may now embrace, or absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid in which it swims, and by drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude, and, by degrees, the living-ring may become a living tube. With this new organization, or accretion of parts, new kinds of irritability may commence,” &c.; whence, sensibility, which may be only an extension of irritability, and sensibility further extended, beget perception, memory, reason, and, in short, all those faculties which have been, it seems, erroneously attributed to mind, for which, it appears, there is not the smallest necessity; ajid as the Deity does nothing in vain, of course such a being does not exist. It would be useless to enter into a further examination of theZoonomia, which has long ceased to be popular; those who wish to see a complete refutation of the sophisms contained in it will read with satisfaction, “Observations on the Zoonomia of Dr. Darwin, by Thomas Brown, esq.” published at Edinburgh in 8vo, in 1798. In ISOi, the author published “Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening;” but the public, tired with the reveries of the writer, let this large book of 600 pages in 4to pass almost unnoticed. As little attention was paid to a small tract on Female Education, which had little indeed to attract notice. “It is,” Miss Seward observes, “a meagre work, of little general interest, those rules excepted, which are laid down for the preservation of health.” It is, however, harmless, a character that can by no means be accorded to the Zoonomia, as may he gathered from the strictures which the author of his life in the Cyclopædia has justly passed on that work, and to which nothing could have given even a temporary popularity but the activity of a small sect to whom the author’s political and religious, or rather irreligious principles, were endeared. His son, Charles Darwin, who died at Edinburgh the 15th of May, 1778, while prosecuting his studies in medicine, deserves to be noticed for having discovered a. test distinguishing pus from mucus, for which a gold medal was adjudged him by the university. “As the result of numerous experiments,” he says, “when any one wishes to examine the matter expectorated by his patient, let him dissolve a portion of it in vitriolic acid, and another portion of it in caustic alkaline lixivium, and then add pure water to both solutions; if there is a precipitation in each solution, it is clear the expectorated matter is pus; if there is no precipitation, the matter is simply mucus.” Mr. Darwin left an unfinished essay on the retrograde motion of the absorbent vessels of animal bodies in some diseases. This was, some time after the death of the young man, published by his father, together with the dissertation for which he had obtained the prize medal.

, medallist to the republic of Geneva, where he was born in 1678, aspiring to be employed in the English mint, struck a series of kings of England in a good style, though not all of them taken from originals. He published them by subscription in 1731, at six guineas the set in copper, and fifteen in silver. He published also a series of events in the Roman History; some of the great characters in the reign of Louis XVI.; and a series of the reformers. He died in 1763. His brother James was in London three or four years to solicit a place for John in the mint, but did not succeed. James Antony Dassier, nephew of John, came over on Croker’s death in 1740, was next year appointed second engraver to the mint, returned to Geneva in 1745, and died at Copenhagen in 1759. The uncle had begun large medals of some of our great men then living; the nephew did several more, which were sold in copper at 7s. 6d. each. There is also a numerous suite of Roman history in small medals of bronze, by the younger Dassier, that are good performances.

, a learned Italian writer, the son of a lawyer at Sienna, was born at that place in 1420, and after acquiring some knowledge of the Latin language, was put under the care of Francis Philelphus, an eminent teacher at Sienna, who at the end of two years declared he was his best scholar. Dati, however, at this time suffered not a little from the ridicule of his schoolfellows, owing to a hesitation in his speech, which he is said to have cured by the means which Demosthenes adopted, that of speaking with small pebbles in his mouth. After finishing his classical studies, he learned Hebrew of some Jews, and then entered on a course of philosophy, jurisprudence, and theology. During his application to these branches, Odo Anthony, duke of Urbino, from the very favourable account he had of him, invited him to Urbino to teach the belles lettres. Dati accordingly set out for that city in April 1442, where he was received with every mark of honour and friendship by the duke, but this prosperity was not of long duration. He had not enjoyed it above a year and a half, when the duke, whose excesses and tyranny had rendered him odious, was assassinated in a public tumult, with two of his favourites; and Dati, who was hated by the populace merely because he was respected by the duke, was obliged to take refuge for his life in a church, while the mob pillaged his house. The successor of Odo, prince Frederick, endeavoured to console Dati for this misfortune, and offered him a pension, besides recompense for all he had lost; but Dati could not be reconciled to a residence so liable to interruption, and in 1444 returned to Sienna. Here, after refusing the place of secretary of the briefs, offered to him by pope Nicholas V. he opened a school for rhetoric and the classics, and acquired so much reputation, that the cardinal of Sienna, Francis Piccolomini, formally granted him permission to lecture on the Holy Scriptures, although he was a married man; and at the same time gave him a similar licence to teach and lecture on any subject, not only in his college, but in all public places, and even in the church, where, his son informs us, he once preached during Lent. He was also much employed in pronouncing harangues on public occasions in Latin, many of which are among his works. Nor were his talents confined to literature, but were the means of advancing him to the first offices of the magistracy, and the republic of Sienna entrusted him with the negociation of various affairs of importance at Rome and elsewhere. In 1 J-57 he was appointed secretary to the republic, which he held for two years. Towards the close of his life he laid aside the study of profane authors for that of the Scriptures and ecclesiastical historians. He died of the plague at Sienna, April 6, 1478. His son Nicolas collected his works for publication, “Augustini Dathi, Senensis, opera,” of which there are two editions, that printed at Sienna, 1503, fol. and an inferior in correctness, printed at Venice, 1516. They consist of treatises on the immortality of the soul letters; three books on the history of Sienna; a history of Piombinoj on grammar, &c. &c.

, professor of polite literature at Florence, where he was born, became famous, as well for his works as for the eulogies which many writers have bestowed on him. He behaved with great courtesy to all learned travellers who went to Florence, many of whom expressed their acknowledgment of it in their writings; but of his personal history, his countrymen have left us little account. He was a member of the academy della Crusca, and in that quality took the name of Smarrito, and became one of the chief ornaments of that society. He made a panegyric upon Lewis XIV. in Italian, and published it at Florence in 1699; the French translation of it was printed at Rome the year following. That monarch gave him a pension of an hundred pistoles, with a liberal invitation to France, which however he declined. He had already published some Italian poems in praise of Louis. The book entitled “Lettera di Timauro Antiate a Filaleti, della vera storia della Cicloide, e della famosissima esperienza dell' argento vivo,” and printed at Florence in 1663, was written by him; for it appears from the 26th page of the letter, that the pretended Timauro Antiate is no other than Charles Dati. In this work he endeavours to prove that father Mursennus is not the inventor of the cycloid, as is said in the history of it, but that the glory of that invention belongs to Galileo; the other, that Torricelli was innocent of plagiarism, when he pretended to be the first who explained the suspension of quicksilver in a glass tube by the pressure of the air, for that he was the real author of this supposition. But the chief work to which our Dati applied himself, was the “Vite dei Pittori,” which he published in 1667. This, which was to have embraced the lives of all the ancient painters, contains only those of Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Apelles, and Protogenes. He published also a valuable collection of elegant and useful lessons for writing Italian, entitled “Prose Fiorentiui.” Few men had studied that language with more attention. He died in 1675, greatly lamented for his personal, as well as public character. Among his numerous correspondents we find the name of our illustrious Milton. There is a recent and much improved edition of his “Vite dei Pittori” by Della Valle, published at Sienna, 1795, 4to.

, esq. of the Middle Temple, a barrister at law, afterwards master in chancery, and at the time of his death, Jan. 8, 1763, accomptaiit-general of that court, is noticeable as having translated the “Memoirs of cardinal de Retz,” which were printed in 1723, 12mo, xvith a dedication to Congreve, who encouraged the publication. He was F. R. S. and an able mathematician. In the dispute concerning elliptical arches, at. the time when Bluckfriars bridge was built, application was made by the committee for his opinion on the subject, and his answer may be seen in the London Magazine for March, 1760. He also published in 1761, “A Vindication of the New Calendar Tables, and Rules annexed to the Act for regulating the commencement of the year,” &c. 410.

, bishop of Salisbury in the seventeenth century, was born in Watling-street, London, where his father was an eminent merchant, but originally descended from the ancient family of the Davenants of Sible-Heningham, in Essex. What school he was educated in, we cannot find. But, on the 4th of July, 1587, he was admitted pensioner of Queen’s college, in Cambridge. He regularly took his degrees in arts; that of master in 1594. A fellowship was offered him about the same time; but his father would not permit him to accept of it, on account of his plentiful fortune: however, after his father’s decease he accepted of one, into which he was admitted September 2, 1597. Being thus settled in the college, he distinguished himself, as before, by his learning and other excellent qualifications. Tn 1601-he took his degree of B. D. and that of D. D. in 1609. This same year last-mentioned he was elected lady Margaret’s professor, which place he enjoyed till 1621. He was also one of her preachers in 1609 and 1612. On the 20th of October 1614, he was admitted master of his college, and continued in that station till April 20, 1622. And so considerable did he become, that he was one of those eminent English divines sent by king James I. to the synod of Dovt, in 1618. He returned to England in May 1619, after having visited the principal cities in the Low Countries. Upon the death of his brother-in-law, Dr. Robert Townson, he was nominated bishop of Salisbury; and was elected June 11, 1621, confirmed November 17 following, and consecrated the 18th of the same month. He continued in favour during the remainder of king James the First’s reign; but in Lent 1630-1, he incurred the displeasure of the court Cor meddling (in a sermon preached before the king at Whitehall) with the predestinarian controversy “all curious search” into which his majesty had strictly enjoined “to be laid aside.” In a letter to Dr. Ward, bishop Davenant gives the following account of this unpleasant affair. As soon as his sermon was ended, it was signified to him that his majesty was much displeased that he had stirred this question, which his majesty had forbidden to be meddled withal, one way or other: the bishop’s answer was, that he had delivered nothing but the received doctrine of our church, established in the 17th article, and that he was ready to justify the truth of what he had then taught. He was told, the doctrine was not gainsaid, but his majesty had given command these questions should not be debated, and therefore he took it more offensively that any should be so bold as in his own hearing to break his royal commands. To this he replied, that he never understood his majesty had forbidden the handling of any doctrine comprised in the articles of our church, but only raising of new questions, or adding of new sense thereunto, which he had not done, nor ever should do. Two days after, when he appeared before the privy-council, Dr. Sam. Harsnet, archbishop of York, made a speech nearly half an hour long, aggravating the boldness of bishop Davenant’s offence, and shewing many inconveniencies that it was likely to draw after it. When the archbishop had finished his speech, the bishop desired, that since he was called thither as an offender, he might not be put to answer a long speech upon the sudden; but that his grace would be pleased to charge him point by point, and so to receive his answer; for he did not yet understand wherein he had broken any commandment of his majesty’s, which was taken for granted. After some pause, the archbishop told him he knew well enough the point which was urged against him, namely, the breach of the king’s declaration. Then he stood upon this defence, that the doctrine of predestination, which he taught, was not forbidden by the declaration; 1st, Because in the declaration all the articles are established, amongst which, the article of predestination is one. 2. Because all ministers are urged to subscribe unto the truth of the article, and all subjects to continue in the profession of that as well as of the rest. Upon these and such like grounds, he gathered that it could not be esteemed amongst forbidden, curious, or needless doctrines; and here he desired that out of any clause in the declaration it might be shewed him, that keeping himself within the bounds of the article, he had transgressed his majesty’s command; but the declaration was not produced, nor any particular words in it; only this was urged, that the king’s will was, that for the peace of the church these high questions should be forborne. He added, that he was sorry he understood not his majesty’s intention; which if he had done before, he should have made choice of some other matter to treat of, which might have given no offence; and that for the time to come, he should conform himself as readily as any other to his majesty’s command; whereupon he was dismissed. At his departure he entreated the lords of the council to let his majesty understand that he had not boldly, or wilfully and wittingly, against his declaration, meddled with the fore-named point; and that now, understanding fully his majesty’s mind and intention, he should humbly yield obedience thereunto. But although he was dismissed without farther censure, and was even admitted to kiss the king’s hand, yet he was never afterwards in favour at court. He died of a consumption April 20, 1641, to which a sense of the melancholy event approaching did not a little contribute. Among other benefactions, he gave to Queen’scollege, in Cambridge, the perpetual advowsons of the rectories of Cheverel Magna, and Newton Tony, in Wiltshire, and a rent-charge of 3 1l. 10s. per annum, for the founding of two Bible-clerks, and buying books for the library in the same college. His character was that of a man humble and hospitable; painful in preaching and writing; and behaving in every station with exemplary gravity and moderation. He was a man of great learning, and an eminent divine; but strictly attached to Calvinism in the article of unconditionate predestination, &c. Whilst he was at the synod of Dort, he inclined to the doctrine of universal redemption; and was for a middle way between the two extremes, maintaining the certainty of the salvation of a certain number of the elect; and that offers of pardon were sent not only to all that should believe and repent, but to all that heard the Gospel; that grace sufficient to convince and persuade the impenitent (so as to lay the blame of their condemnation upon themselves) went along with these offers; that the redemption of Christ and his merits were applicable to these; and consequently there was a possibility of their salvation. He was buried in Salisbury cathedral.

He published: 1. A Latin Exposition on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. “Kxpositio Epistolcc D. Pauli ud Colossenses,” fol. The third edition was printed at Cambridge, in 1639. It is the substance of lectures read by our author as lady Margaret professor. So was also the following. 2. “Praelectiones de duobus in Theologia controversis capitibus; de Judice Controversiarum, primo; de Justitia habituali & actuali, altero,” Cantab. 1631, fol. 3. In 1634 he published the questions which he had disputed upon in the schools, 49 in number, under this title “Determinationes Qusestionum quarundaniTheologicarum, per reverendissimum virum Joannem Davenantium,” &c. fol. 4. The last thing he published, was, “Animadversions upon a treatise lately published, and entitled, God’s Love to Mankind, manifested by disproving his absolute decree for their damnation,” Camb. 1641, 8vo. This treatise was written by S. Hoard.

, a poet and dramatic writer of considerable note, was the son of John Davenant, who kept the Crown tavern or inn at Oxford, but owing to an obscure ins nuation in Wood’s accountof his birth, ithas been supposed that he was the natural son of Shakspeare; and to render this story probable, Mrs. Davenant is represented as a woman of beauty and gaiety, and a particular favourite of Shakspeare, who was accustomed to lodge at the Crown, on his journies between Warwickshire and London. Modern inquirers, particularly Mr. Steevens, are inclined to discredit this story, which indeed seems to rest upon no very sound foundation. Young Davenant, who was born Feb. 1605, very early betrayed a poetical bias, and one of Iris first attempts, when he was only ten years old, was an ode in remembrance of master William Shakspeare: this is a remarkable production for one so young, and one who lived, not only to see Shakspeare forgotten, but to contribute, with some degree of activity, to that instance of depraved taste. Davenant was educated at the grammarschool of All Saints, in his native city, under Mr. Edward Sylvester, a teacher of high reputation. In 1621, the year in which his father served the office of mayor, he entered of Lincoln-college, but being encouraged to try his success at court, he appeared there as page to Frances duchess of Richmond, a lady of great influence and fashion. He afterwards resided in the family of the celebrated sir Ftilke Greville, lord Brooke, who was himself a poet and a patron of poets. The murder of this nobleman in! 628 depriving him of what assistance he might expect from his friendship, Davenant had recourse to the stage, on which he produced his first dramatic piece, the tragedy of Albovine, king of the Lombards.

This play had success enough to procure him the recommendation, if nothing more substantial, of many persons of distinction, and of the wits of the times; and with such encouragement he renewed his attendance at court, adding to its pleasures by his dramatic efforts, and not sparingly to the mirth of his brethren the satirists, by the unfortunate issue of some of his licentious gallantries. For several years his plays and masks were acted with the greatest applause, and his character as a poet was raised very high by all who pretended to be judges. On the death of Ben Jonson, in 1638, the queen procured for him. the vacant laurel, which is said to have given such offence to Thomas May, his rival, as to induce him to join the disaffected party, and to become the advocate and historian of the republican parliament. In 1639, Davenaut was appointed “Governor of the king and queen’s company acting at the Cockpit in Drurv-lane, during the lease which Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias Hutcheson, hath or doth hold in the said house.” When the civil commotions had for some time subsisted, the peculiar nature of them required that public; amusements should be the decided objects of popular resentment, and Davenant, who had administered so copiously to the pleasures of the court, was very soon brought under suspicions of a more serious kind. In May 16M, he was accused before the parliament, of being a partner with many of the king’s friends, in the design of bringing the army to London for his majesty’s protection. His accomplices effected their escape, but Davenant was apprehended at Feversham, and sent up to London. In July following he was bailed, but on a second attempt to withdraw to France, was taken in Kent. At last, however, he contrived to make his escape without farther impediment, and remained abroad for some time. The motive of his flight appears not to have been cowardice, but an unwillingness to sacrifice his life to popular fury, while there was any prospect of his being able to devote it to the service of his royal master. Accordingly, when the queen sent over a considerable quantity of military stores for the use of the earl of Newcastle’s army, Davenant resolutely ventured to return to England, and volunteered his services under that nobleman, who had been one of his patrons. The earl ma.le him lieutenant-general of his ordnance, a post for which, if he was not previously prepared, he qualified himself with so much skill and success, that in September 1643, he was rewarded with the honour of knighthood for the service he rendered to the royal cause at the siege of Gloucester. Of his military prowess, however, we have no farther account, nor at what time he found it necessary, on the decline of the king’s affairs, to retire again into France. Here he was received into the confidence of the queen, who in 1646 employed him in one of her importunate and ill-advised negociations with the king, who was then at Newcastle. About the same time Davenant had embraced the popish religion, a step which probably recommended him to the queen, but which, when known, could only tend to increase the animosity of the republicans against the court, which was already too closely suspected of an attachment to that persuasion. The object of his negociation was to persuade the king to save his crown by sacrificing the church; a proposition which his majesty rejected with becoming dignity; and this, as lord Clarendon observes, “evinced an honest and conscientious principle in his majesty’s mind, which elevated him above all his advisers.” The queen’s advisers in the measure were, his majesty knew, men of no religious principle, and he seems to have resented their sending an ambassador of no more consequence than the manager of a play-house.

During our poet’s residence at Paris, where he took up his habitation in the Louvre, with his old friend lord Jermyn, he wrote the first two books of his “Gondibert,” which were published in England, but without exciting much interest. Soon after he commenced projector, and hearing that vast improvements might be made in the loyal colony of Virginia, by transporting good artificers, whom France could at that time spare, he embarked with a number of them, at one of the ports in Normandy. This humane and apparently wise scheme ended almost immediately in the capture of his vessel on the trench coast, by one of the parliamentary ships of war, which carried him to the Isle of Wight, where he was imprisoned at Cowescastle. After endeavouring to reconcile himself to this unfortunate and perilous situation, he resumed his pen, and proceeded with his “Gondibert,” but being in continual dread of his life, he made but slow progress. His fears, indeed, were not without foundation. In 1650, when the parliament had triumphed over all opposition, he was ordered to be tried by a high commission court, and for this purpose was removed to the Tower of London. His biographers are not agreed as to the means by which he was saved. Some impute it to the solicitations of two aldermen, of York, to whom he had been hospitable when they were his prisoners, and whom he suffered to escape. Others inform us that Milton interposed. Both accounts, it is hoped, are true, and it is certain that after the restoration, he repaid Milton’s interference in kind, by preserving him from the resentment of the court. He remained, however, in prison for two years, and was treated with some indulgence, by the favour of the lord-keeper, Whitlocke, whom he thanked in a letter written with peculiar elegance of style and compliment.

By degrees he obtained complete enlargement, and had nothing to regret but the wreck of his fortune. In this dilemma, he adopted a measure which, like a great part of his conduct throughout life, shews him to have been a man of an undaunted and unaccommodating spirit, fertile in expedients, and possessed of no common resources of mind. Indeed, of all schemes, this seemed the most unlikely to succeed, and even the most dangerous to propose. Yet, in the very teeth of national prejudices or principles, and at a time when all dramatic entertainments were suspended, discouraged by the protectoral court, and anathematized by the people, he conceived, that if he could contrive to open a theatre of some kind, it would be sure to be well filled. Viewing his difficulties with great precaution, he proceeded by slow steps, and an apparent reluctance to revive what was so generally obnoxious. Having, however, obtained the countenance of lord Whitlocke, sir John Maynard, and other persons of rank, he opened a theatre in Rutland-house, Charterhouse-yard, on the 21st of May, 1656, and performed a kind of non-descript entertainments, as they were called, which were dramatic in every thing but the names and form, and some of them were called operas. When he found these relished and tolerated, he proceeded to more regular pieces, and with such advantages in style and manner, as, in the judgment of the historians of the stage, entitle him to the honour of being not only the reviver, but the improver of the legitimate drama. These pieces he afterwards revised, and published in a more perfect state, and they now form the principal part of his printed works, although modern taste has long excluded them from the stage.

On the restoration, he received the patent of a playhouse, under the title of the Duke’s Company, who first performed in the theatre in Portugal row, Lincoln’s-inntields, and afterwards in that in Dorset-gardens. Here he acted his former plays, and such new ones as he wrote after this period, and enjoyed the public favour until his death, April 7, 1668, in his sixty-third year. He was interred with considerable ceremony, two days after, in Westminster-abbey, near the place where the remains of May, his once rival, had been pompously buried by the parliament, but were ordered to be removed. On his grave-stone is inscribed, in imitation of Ben. Jonson’s short epitaph, “O rare sir William Davenant.”

The life of sir William Davenant occupies an important space in the history of the stage, to which he was in many respects a judicious benefactor, by introducing changes of scenery and decorations; but he assisted in banishing Shakspeare to make way for dramas that are now intolerable. He appears to have been, in his capacity of nianager, as in every part of life, a man of sound and original sense, firm in his enterpriser, and intent to gratify the taste of the public, with little advantage to himself, as he died insolvent. The greater part of his works was published in his life-time, in 4to, but they were collected in 1673, into one large folio volume, dedicated by his widow to the duke of York.

, the eldest son of sir William Davenant, was born in 1656, and was initiated in grammar-learning at Cheame in Surrey. Though he had the misfortune to lose his father when scarce twelve years of age, yet care was taken to send him to Oxford to finish his education, where he became a commoner of Baliol college in 1671. He took no degree, but went to London, where, at the age of nineteen, he distinguished himself by a dramatic performance, the only one he published, entitled, “Circe, a tragedy, acted at his royal highness the duke of York’s theatre with great applause.” This play was not printed till two years after it was acted; upon which occasion Dryden wrote a prologue, and the earl of Rochester an epilogue. In the former, there was an apology for the author’s youth and inexperience. He had a considerable share in the theatre in right of his father, which probably induced him to turn his thoughts so early to the stage; however, he was not long detained there either by that, or the success of his play, but applied himself to the civil law, in which, it is said, he had the degree of doctor conferred upon him by the university of Cambridge. He was elected to represent the borough of St. Ives in Cornwall, in the first parliament of James II. which was summoned to meet in May 1685; and, about the same time, jointly empowered, with the master of the revels, to inspect all plays, and to preserve the decorum of the stage. He was also appointed a commissioner of the excise, and continued in that employment for near six years, that is, from 1683 to 1689: however, he does not seem to have been advanced to this rank before he had gone through some lesser employments. In 1698 he was elected for the borough of Great Bedwin, as he was again in 1700. He was afterwards appointed inspector-general of the exports and imports; and this employment he held to the time of his death, which happened Nov. 6, 1714. Dr. Davenant’s thorough acquaintance with the laws and constitution of the kingdom, joined to his great skill in figures, and his happiness in applying that skill according to the principles advanced by sir William Petty in his Political Arithmetic, enabled him to enter deeply into the management of affairs, and procured him great success as a writer in politics; and it is remarkable, that though he was advanced and preferred under the reigns of Charles II. and James II. yet in all his pieces he reasons entirely upon revolution principles, and compliments in the highest manner the virtues and abilities of the prince then upon the throne.

His first political work was, “An Essay upon Ways and Means of supplying the War,” 1695. In this treatise he wrote with so much strength and perspicuity upon the nature of funds, that whatever pieces came abroad from the author of the Essay on Ways and Means, were sufficiently recommended to the public; and this was the method he usually took to distinguish the writings he afterwards published. 2. “An Essay on the East-India Trade,” 1697. This was nothing more than a pamphlet, written in form of a letter to the marquis of Normandy, afterwards duke of Buckinghamshire. 3. “Discourses on the public revenues, and of the trade of England. Part I. To which is added, a discourse upon improving the revenue of the state of Athens, written originally in Greek by Xenophon, and now made English from the original, with some historical notes by another hand,” 1698. This other hand was Walter Moyle, esq. who addressed his discourse to Dr. Pavenant. There is a passage in it which shews, that there were some thoughts of sending over our author in quality of director-general to the East-Indies; and is also a clear testimony what that great man’s notions were, in regard' to the importance of his writings. It is this: “The great trade to the East-Indies, with some few regulations, might be established upon a bottom more consistent with the manufactures of England; but in all appearance this is not to be compased, unless some public-spirited man, with a masterly genius,” meaning Dr. Davenant himsrlf, “be placed at the head of our affairs in India. And though we, who are his friends, are loth to lose him, it were to be wished for the good of the kingdom, that the gentleman, whom common fame and the voice of the world have pointed out as the ablest man for such a station, would employ his excellent judgment and talents that way, in the execution of so noble and useful a design.” 4. “Discourses on the Public Revenues, and on the Trade of England, which more immediately treat of the foreign traffic of this kingdom. Part II.” 1698. 5. “An Essay on the probable Method of making the people gainers in the Balance of Trade,” 1699. 6. “A Discourse upon Grants and Resumptions: shewing, how our ancestors have proceeded with such ministers as have procured to themselves grants of the crown revenue; and that the forfeited estates ought to be applied to the payment of public debts,” 1700. 7. “EsMiys upon the Balance of Power; the right of making War, Peace, Alliances; Universal Monarchy. To which is added, an Appendix, containing the records referred to in the second essay,” 1701. It was in this book that our author was carried away by his zeal to treat the church, or at least some churchmen, in so disrespectful a manner, as to draw upon himself a censure from one of the houses of convocation. 8. “A picture of a Modern Whig, in two parts,” 1701. There is, however, nothing but general report, founded upon the likeness of style and other circumstantial evidence, to prove that this bitter pamphlet fell from the pen of our author; and, if it did, he must be allowed to have been the greatest master of invective that ever wrote in our language; others have attributed it to Defoe. 9. “Essays upon Peace at Home and War Abroad, in two parts,” 1704. This is the first piece our author published after the time that he is supposed to have reconciled himself to the ministry; it was suspected to be written at the desire of lord Halifax, and was dedicated to the queen. It drew upon him the resentment of that party, by whom he had been formerly esteemed, but who now bestowed upon him as ill language, or rather worse, than he had received from his former opponents. 10. “Reflections upon the Constitution and Management of the Trade to Africa, through the whole course and progress thereof, from the beginning of the last century to this time,” &c. 1709, fol. in 3 parts. 11. “A Report to the honourable the Commissioners for putting in execution the Act, entitled, an Act for the taking, examining, and stating the Public Accounts of the Kingdom, from Charles Davenant, LL. D. inspector-general of the exports and imports,” 1712, part I. 12. “A Second Report to the Honourable the Commissioners,” &c. 1712. It may be necessary to observe, that several of the above-recited pieces were attacked in the warmest manner, at the time they were published; but the author seems to have satisfied himself in delivering his sentiments and opinions, without shewing any further concern to defend and support them against the cavils of party zeal and contention. Most of his political works were collected and revised by sir Charles Whitworth, 1771, in 5 vols. 8vo.

“Davenant,” says sir John Sinclair, “is certainly a most valuable political author; and considering that the modern system of politics, founded on a spirit of commerce, on public credit, on paper circulation, and on skill in finance, was then in a manner in its infancy, he undoubtedly was a writer whose progress was more advanced than could hare been expected at that time. It appears from his works, that he had access to official information, from which he derived many advantages. He seems, however, to have depended too much upon political arithmetic, or the strength of figures, which ought only to be resorted to when the fact itself cannot be ascertained, being only a succedaneum when better evidence cannot be procured. He was unfortunately, also, a party writer, and saw every thing in the manner the best calculated to promote the views and purposes of his political friends at the time. Every thing they did was right, whilst every action of their enemies was ill-intended and ruinous. He possessed a very considerable command of language, and is sometimes too prolix; but on the whole there are certainly very few that can rival him as a political author.”

, younger brother to the former, and fourth son to sir Wiiliam Davenant, was educated at Magdalen hall, in the university of Oxford, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts, July 19, 1677. He translated into English from the French a book entitled, “Animadversions upon the famous Greek and Latin Historians,” written by the celebrated Mr. la Mothe le Vayer, tutor to the French king Louis XIII., which was very well received. He took the degree of master of arts July 5, 1680, and about the same time entering into holy orders, was presented to a living in the county of Surrey, by his patron Robert Wymondsole, of Putney, esq. with whom he travelled into France; and in the summer of 1681, as he was diverting himself by swimming in a river near Paris, he was unfortunately drowned in the sight of his pupil, to the great regret of all who knew him, having added to great natural parts, by an assiduous application to study, as much sound learning and true knowledge as could be expected in a person so young.

, a learned Englishman, was born at Coventry, in Warwickshire, about 1598, and educated in grammar-learning at a school in that city. He was sent to Merton-college in Oxford at fifteen years of age; where, spending two years, he, upon an invitation from some Romish priest, afterwards went to Doway. He remained there for some time; and then going to Ypres, he entered into the order of Franciscans among the Dutch there, in 1617. After several removals from place to place, he became a missionary into England, where he went by the name of Franciscus a Sancta Clara; and at length was made one of the chaplains to Henrietta Maria, the royal consort of Charles I. Here he exerted himself to promote the cause of popery, by gaining disciples, raising money among the English catholics to carry on public matters abroad, and by writing books for the advancement of his religion and order. He was very eminent for his uncommon learning, being excellently versed in school-divinity, in fathers and councils, in philosophers, and in ecclesiastical and profane histories. He was, Wood tells us, a person of very free discourse, while his fellowlabourer in the same vineyard, Hugh Cressey, was reserved; of a lively and quick aspect, while Cressey was clouded and melancholy: all which accomplishments made him agreeable to protestants as well as papists. Archbishop Laud, it seems, had some knowledge of this person; for, in the seventh article of his impeachment, it is said, that “the said archbishop, for the advancement of popery and superstition within this realm, hath wittingly and willingly received, harboured, and relieved divers popish priests and Jesuits, namely, one called Sancta Clara, alias Davenport, a dangerous person and Franciscan friar, who hath written a popish and seditious book, entitled, ‘ Dens, Natura, Gratia,’ &c. wherein the thirtynine articles of the church of England, established by act of parliament, are much traduced and scandalized: that the said archbishop had divers conferences with him, while he was writing the said book,” &c. To which article, the archbishop made this answer: “I never saw that Franciscan friar, Sancta Clara, in my life, to the utmost of my memory, above four times or five at most. He was first brought to me by Dr. Lindsell: but 1 did fear, that he would never expound the articles so, that the church of England might have cause to thank him for it. He never came to me after, till he was almost ready to print another book, to prove that episcopacy was authorised in the church by divine right; and this was after these unhappy stirs began. His desire was, to have this book printed here; but at his several addresses to me for this, I still gave him this answer: That I did not like the way which the church of Rome went concerning episcopacy; that I would never consent, that any such book from the pen of a Romanist should be printed here; that the bishops of England are very well able to defend their own cause and calling, without any help from Rome, and would do so when they saw cause: and this is all the conference I ever had with him.” Davenport at this time absconded, and spent most of those years of trouble in obscurity, sometimes beyond the seas, sometimes at London, sometimes in the country, and sometimes at Oxford. After the restoration of Charles II. when the marriage was celebrated between him and Catherine of Portugal, Sancta Clara became one of her chaplains; and was for the third time chosen provincial of his order for England, where he died May 31, 1680, and was buried in the church-yard belonging to the Savoy. It was his desire, many years before his death, to retire to Oxford to die, purposely that his bones might be laid in St. Ebb’s churcb, to which the mansion of the Franciscans or grey-friars sometime joined, and in which several of the brethren were anciently interred, particularly those of his old friend John Day, a learned friar of his order, who was there buried in 165;s. He was the author of several works: 1. “Paraphrastiea expositio articulorum confessionis Anglicae:” this book was, w r e know not why, much censured by the Jesuits, who would fain have had it burnt; but beino-soon after licensed at Rome, all farther rumour about it stopped. 2. “Deus, Natura, Gratia sive, tractatus de praedestinatione, de mentis,” &c. this book was dedicated to Charles I. and Prynne contends, that the whole scope of it, as well as the paraphrastical exposition of the articles, reprinted at the end of it in 1635, was to reconcile the king, the church, and the articles of our religion, to the church of Rome. He published also a great number of other works, which are not now of consequence enough to be mentioned.

, elder brother of Christopher just mentioned, was born at Coventry in 1597, and sent from thence with his brother to Merton-college in 1613; but while Christopher went to Doway, and became a catholic, John went to London, and became a puritan. He was minister of St. Stephen’s in Coleman-street, and esteemed by his brethren a person of excellent gifts in preaching, and in other qualities belonging to a divine. About 1630 he was appointed one of the feoffees for the buying in impropriations, which involved him in a dispute with archbishop Laud; but that project miscarrying, he left his pastoral charge about 1633, under pretence of opposition from the bishops, and went to Amsterdam. Here, endeavouring to be a minister in the English congregation, and to join with them in all duties, he was opposed by John Paget, an elder, on account of some difference between them about baptism; upon which he wrote, in his own defence, “A Letter to the Dutch Classis, containing a just complaint against an unjust doer; wherein is declared the miserable slavery and bondage that the English church at Amsterdam is now in, by reason of the tyrannical government and corrupt doctrine of Mr. John Paget, their minister,” Amst. 1634. Two or three more pieces relating to this controversy were published by him afterwards; and such were his parts and learning, that he drew away from them many of their congregation, to whom he preached and prayed in private houses.

In the beginning of the rebellion, he returned into England, according to Wood, as other nonconformists did, and had a cure bestowed on him; but Neal says he came back in disguise, which is most probable, as this happened about 1637, when the power of the church was yet in force. In this year he went into New-England, and became a pastor of New-Haven there. He afterwards removed from thence to Boston in 1668, where he died March 15, 1670. He was the author of, a “Catechism containing the chief heads of the Christian religion,” which was printed at London in 1659; several sermons; the power of congregational churches asserted and vindicated; and of an exposition of the Canticles, which has never been published. Neal agrees that his notions of churchdiscipline were very rigid, and that he was a millenarian, being fully persuaded in his own mind of the thousand years’ personal reign of Christ upon earth; but adds, that notwithstanding this or any other singular notions he might entertain, he was one of the greatest men that New England ever enjoyed.

, the patron of Wales, was the son of Xantus or Santus, prince of Ceretica, now Cardiganshire, and born about the close of the fifth century. Being brought up to the church, he was ordained priest; he then retired to the Isle of Wight, and for some time lived in the accustomed solitude of those times. From this he at length emerged, and went into Wales, where he preached to the Britons. He built a chapel at Glastonbury, and founded twelve monasteries, the principal of which was in the vale of Ross, near Menevia. Of this monastery frequent mention is made in the acts of the Irish saints. The rules he established for his monasteries were, as usual; rigid, but not so injudicious or absurd as some of the early monastic statutes. One of his penances was manual labour in agriculture, and, for some time at least, there was no accumulation of worldly goods, for whoever was admitted as a member, was enjoined to leave every thing of that kind behind him. When the synod of Brevy in Cardiganshire was held in the year 519, St. David was invited to it, and was one of its chief champions against Pelagianism. At the close of this synod, St. Dubricius, archbishop of Caerleon upon Usk, resigned his see to St. David, who translated it to Menevia, now called St. David’s. Here he died about the year 544 in a very advanced age. He is praised by his biographers for his eloquence and powers in conversion, and has, according to them, been in all succeeding ages the glory of the British church. He wrote the “Decrees of the Synod of Victoria,” which he called soon after he became bishop; the “Rules of his Monasteries;” some “Homilies,” and “Letters to king Arthur,” all of which have perished.

, a most extraordinary fanatic, was the son of a waterman of Ghent, and educated a glazier, or, as some say, a glass-painter. He began about 1525 to preach that he was the true Messiah, the third David, nephew of God, not after the flesh, but after the spirit. “The heavens,” he said, “being empty, he was sent to adopt children worthy of that kingdom and to restore Israel, not by death, as Christ, but by grace.” With the Sadducees, he denied eternal life, the resurrection, and the last judgment: with the Adamites, he was against marriage, and for a community of women: and with the followers of Manes, he thought that the body only, and not the soul, could be defiled with sin. According to him, the souk of unbelievers ought to be saved, and those of the apostles damned. Lastly, he affirmed it folly to believe that there was any sin in denying Jesus Christ; and ridiculed the martyrs for preferring death to apostacy. A prosecution being commenced against him and his followers, he fled first to Friesland, and from thence to Basil, where he lurked under the name of John Bruck. He died in that city in 1556, promising to his disciples, that he should rise again in three days; which, as it happened, was not altogether false; for the magistrates of Basil, understanding at length who he was, about that time, dug tip his corpse, which, together with his writings, they caused to be burned by the common executioner. This George David had many followers in his life-time, and it is even said that there are still some remains of them in Holstein, Friesland, and other countries, whose temper and conduct seem to discredit the exaggerated account which some writers have given of their founder.

, D. D. an eminent writer and antiquary, was born in the latter part of the sixteenth century in Denbighshire, and educated by William Morgan, afterwards bishop of St. Asaph. He was admitted a student of Jesus-college, Oxford, in 1589, where he took one degree in arts, and afterwards became a member of Lincoln-college in the same university. He was rector ol Malloyd, or Maynlloyd in Merionethshire, and afterwards a canon of St. Asaph, to which dignity he was promoted by Dr. Parry, then bishop, whose chaplain he was. He commenced doctor in 1616, and was highly esteemed by the university, says Wood, as well versed in the history and antiquities of his own nation, and in the Greek and Hebrew languages; a most exact critic, and indefatigable searcher into ancient writings, and well acquainted with curious and rare authors. The time of his death is not known. His works are, 1. “Antiques Linguae Britannicse nunc communiter dictae Cambro-Britannicoe, a suis Cymrascae vel Cambricee, ab aliis Wallicoe rudimenta,” &c. 1621, 8vo. 2. “Dietionarium Latino-Britannicum,” 1631, folio. With this is printed, “Dictionarium Latino-Britannicum,” which was begun and greatly advanced by Thomas Williams, physician, before 1600. It was afterwards completed and published by Dr. Davies. 3. “Aclagia Britannica, authorum Britannicorum nomina, & quando floruerunt,” 1632, printed at the end of the dictionary before mentioned. 4. “Adagiorum Britannicorum specimen,” ms. Bibl. Bodl. He also assisted W. Morgan, bishop of Landaff, and Richard Parry, bishop of St. Asaph, in translating the Bible into Welsh, in that correct edition which came out in 1620. He also translated into the same language (which he had studied at vacant hours for 30 years) the book of “Resolution,” written by Robert Parsons, a Jesuit.

, an eminent and learned critic, was the son of a merchant in London, and born there April 22, 1679. After being educated in classical learning at the Charterhouse-school, he was, June 8, 1695, admitted of Queen’s-college in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1698. On July 7, 1701, he was chosen fellow of his college and the year following took the degree of M. A. and was proctor in 1709. In 1711, having distinguished himself by several learned publications hereafter mentioned, he was collated by Moore, bishop of Ely, to the rectory of Fen-Ditton near Cambridge, and to a prebend in the church of Ely; taking the same year the degree of LL. D. Upon the death of Dr. James, or, as Bentham says, Dr. Humphrey Gower, he was, on March 23, 1716-17, chosen master of Queen’s-college; and created D. D. the same year, when George I. was at Cambridge. He died March 7, 1731-2, aged 53, and was buried in the chapel of his college, where a flat marble stone was laid over his grave, with a plain inscription at his own desire. His mother, who was daughter of sir John Turton, knt. is said to have been living in 1743.

This learned man was not, as far as we can find, the author of any original works, but only employed himself in publishing some correct editions of Greek and Latin authors of antiquity. In 1703 he published in octavo, 1. “Maximi Tyrii dissertationes, Gr. & Lat. ex interpretatione Heinsii,” &c. 2. “C. Julii Caesaris, et A. Hirtii quas extant omnia,” Cant. 1706, 4to; 1727; the latter the best edition. 3. “M. Minucii Felicis Octavius,” Cant. 1707, 8vo. This was printed again in 1712, 8vo, with the notes greatly enlarged and corrected, and the addition of Commodianus, a writer of the Cyprianic age. 4. He then projected new and beautiful editions of Cicero’s philosophical pieces, by way of supplement to what Graevius had published of that author; and accordingly published in 170y, his “Tusculanarum disputationum, libri quinque,” 8vo. This edition, and that of 1738, which is the fourth, have at the end the emendations of his intimate friend Dr. Bentley. The other pieces were published by our author in the following order: “De Natura Deorum,” 1713. “De divinauone & de fato,” 1721. “Academica,” 17-5. “De legibus,” 1727. “De finibus bonorum & malorum,” 17-8. These several pieces of Tully were printed in 8vo, in a handsome manner, were very favourably received, and have passed, most of them, through several editions. He had also gone as far as the middle of the third book of Cicero’s Offices; but being prevented by death from finishing it, he recommended it in his will to the care of Dr. MeaJ, who put it into the hands of Dr. Thomas Bentley, that he might fit and prepare it for the press. But the house where Dr. Bentley lodged, which was in the Strand, London, being set on fire through his carelessness, as it is said, by reading after he was in bed, Davies’s notes and emendations perished in the flames. 5. Another undertaking published by our learned author, which we have not already mentioned, was, “Lactantii Firmiani epitome divinarum institutionum,” Cantab. 1718, 8vo.

, a poet and statesman, was the third son of John Davies, of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, not a tanner, as Anthony Wood asserts, but a gentleman, formerly of New Inn, and afterwards a practitioner of law in his native place. His mother was Mary, the daughter of Mr. Bennett, of Pitt-house in the same county. When not fifteen years of age he was sent to Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1585, where he was admitted a commoner of Queen’s college, and prosecuted his studies with perseverance and success. About the beginning of 1588 he removed to the Middle Temple, but returned to Oxford in 1590, and took the degree of B. A. At the Temple, while he did not neglect the study of the law, he rendered himself obnoxious to the discipline of the place by various youthful irregularities, and after being fined, was at last removed from commons. Notwithstanding this, he was called to the bar in 1595, but was again so indiscreet as to forfeit his privileges by a quarrel with Mr. Richard Martin, whom he beat in the Temple hall. For this offence he was in Feb. 1597-8 expelled by the unanimous sentence of the society. Martin was, like himself, a wit and a poet, and had once been expelled for improper behaviour. Both, however, outlived their follies, and rose to considerable eminence in their profession. Martin became reader of the society, recorder of London, and member of parliament, and enjoyed the esteem of Selden, Ben Jonson, and other men of learning and genius, who lamented his premature death in 1618.

After this affair Davies returned to Oxford, where he is supposed to have written his poem on the “Immortality of the Soul.” There is some mistake among his biographers as to the time of its publication, or even of its being written. If, as they all say, he wrote it at Oxford in 1598, and published it in 1599, how is either of these facts to be reconciled with the dedication to queen Elizabeth, which is dated July 11, 1592? Mr. Park, whose accuracy and zeal for literary history induced him to put this question to the readersof the Biographia Britannica, has not attempted a solution, and it must remain in this state, unless an edition of the “Nosce Teipsum” can be found of a prior date, or any ground for supposing that the date of the dedication was a typographical error. This poem, however, procured to him, as he deserved, a very high distinction among the writers of his time, whom, in harmony of versification, he has far surpassed. Whether Elizabeth bestowed any marks of her favour does not appear. He knew, however, her love of flattery, and wrote twenty-six acrostic hymns on the words “Elizabetha regina,” which are certainly the best of their kind.

It is probable that these complimentary trifles made him known to the courtiers, for when the queen was to be entertained by Mr. Secretary Cecil, our poet, by desire, contributed his share in “A Conference between a gentleman usher and a post,” a dramatic entertainment, which does not add much to his reputation. A copy exists in the British Museum, Harl. ms. No. 286. His progress from being the terrae filius of a court to a seat in parliament is not known, but we find that he was chosen a member in the last parliament of Elizabeth, which met on the 27th of October 1601. He appears to have commenced his political career with spirit and intelligence, by opposing monopolies, which were at that time too frequently granted, and strenuously supporting the privileges of the house, for which the queen had not the greatest respect.

In consequence of the figure he now made, and after suitable apologies to the judges, he was restored in Trinity term 1601 to his former rank in the Temple. Lord chancellor Ellesmere appears to have stood his friend on this occasion, and Davies continued to advance in his profession, until the accession of James I. opened new prospects. Having gone with lord Hunsdon to Scotland to congratulate the new king, the latter, finding that he was the author of “Nosce Teipsum,” graciously embraced him, as a mark of his friendship, and certainly no inconsiderable proof of his taste.

In 1603 he was sent as solicitor-general to Ireland, and immediately rose to be attorney-general. Being afterwards appointed one of the judges of assize, he conducted himself with so much prudence and humanity on the circuits as greatly to contribute to allay the ferments which existed in that country, and received the praises of his superiors, “as a painful and well-deserving servant of his majesty.” In Trinity term 1606 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and received the honour of knighthood on the llth of February 1607. His biographer attributes these promotions to the patronage of lord Ellesmere and the earl of Salisbury, with whom he corresponded, and to whom he sent a very interesting account of a circuit he performed with the lord-deputy in July 1607. Such was Ireland then, that a guard of “six or seven score foot and fifty or three score horse” was thought a necessary protection against a peasantry recovering from their wildness.

In 1608 he was sent to England with the chief justice in order to represent to king James the effects which the establishment of public peace, and these progresses of the law, had produced since the commencement of his majesty’s reign. His reception on such an occasion could not but be favourable. As his residence in Ireland afforded him many opportunities to study the history and genius of that people, he published the result of his inquiries in 1612 under the title of “A Discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued till the beginning of his majesty’s reign.” This has been reprinted four times, and has always been considered as a most valuable document for political inquirers. Soon after the publication of it he was appointed the king’s serjeant, and a parliament having been called in Ireland in the same year, he was elected representative for the county of Fermanagh, the first that county had ever chosen; and after a violent struggle between the Roman catholic and protestant members, he was chosen speaker of the house of commons. In 1614 he interested himself in the restoration of the society of antiquaries, which had been institued in 1590, but afterwards discontinued, and was now again attempted to be revived by sir James Ley; at this period it could enumerate among its members the names of Cotton, Hackwell, Camden, Stow, Spelman, and Whitlock. In 1715 he published “Reports of Cases adjudged in the king’s courts in Ireland.” These, says his biographer, were the first reports of Irish judgments which had ever been made public during the four hundred years that the laws of England had existed in that kingdom. To the Reports is annexed a preface, addressed to lord chancellor Ellesmere, “which vies with Coke in solidity and learning, and equals Blackstone in classical illustration and elegant language.”

In 1616 he retired from Ireland, and found that a change had taken place in the English administration. He continued, however, as king’s serjeant, in the practice of the law, and was often associated as one of the judges of assize. Some of his charges on the circuits are still extant in the British Museum. In 1620 we find him sitting in the English parliament for Newcastle-under-Line, where he distinguished himself chiefly in debates on the affairs of Ireland, maintaining, against Coke and other very high authorities, that England cannot make laws to bind Ireland, which had an independent parliament. Amidst these employments he found leisure to republish his “Nosce Teipsum” in 1622, along with his “Acrostics” and “Orchestra,” a poem on the antiquity and excellency of dancing, dedicated to Charles prince of Wales, originally published in 1596 But this first edition has escaped the researches of modern collectors, and the poem, as we now find it, is imperfect. Whether it was not so in the first edition may be doubted. His biographer thinks it was there perfect, but why afterwards mutilated cannot be ascertained.

Sir John Davies lived four years after this publication, employed, probably, in the duties of his profession; and at the time when higher honours were within his reach, he died suddenly of an apoplexy in the night of the 7th of December 1626, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. He had previously supped with the lord keeper Coventry, who gave him assurances of being chief justice of England. He was buried in St. Martin’s Church in the Fields, where a monument was erected to his memory, which appears to have been destroyed when the old church was pulled down.

He married, while in Ireland, Eleanor, the third daughter of lord Audley, by whom he had one son, who was an idiot and died young, and a daughter, Lucy, who was married to Ferdinando lord Hastings, afterwards earl of Huntingdon. Sir John’s lady appears to have been an enthusiast; a volume of her prophecies was published in 1649, 4to. Anthony Wood informs us that she foretold the death of her husband, who turned the matter off with a jest. She was harshly treated during the republic for her officious prophecies, and is said to have been confined several years in Bethlem hospital, and in the Tower of London, where she suffered all the rigour that could be inflicted by those who would tolerate no impostures but their own. She died in 1652, and was interred near her husband in St. Martin’s church. The late earl of Huntingdon informed lord Mountmorres the historian of the Irish parliament, that sir John Davies did not appear to have acquired any landed property in Ireland from his great employments. The character of sir John Davies as a lawyer, is that of great ability and learning. As a politician he stands unimpeached of corruption or servility, and his “Tracts” are valued as the result of profound knowledge and investigation. They were republished with some originals in 1786 by Mr. George Chalmers, who prefixed a Life of the Author, to which the present sketch is greatly indebted.

As a poet, he was one of the first of his day, but has been unaccountably neglected, although his style approaches the refinement of modern times. The best arbiters of poetical merit, however, seem to be agreed that his “Nosce Teipsum” is a noble monument of learning, acuteness, command of language, and facility of versification. It has none, indeed, of the sublimer flights which seem adapted to philosophical poetry, hut he is particularly happy in his images, which strike by their novelty and elegance. As to his versification, he has anticipated the harmony which the modern ear requires, more successfully than any of his contemporaries.

According to Wood, he wrote a version of some of the Psalms, which is probably lost. It is more certain that he wrote epigrams, which were added to Mario w’s translation of Ovid’s Epistles, printed at Micldleburgh in 1596. Mr. Ellis has given two of them among his “Specimens,” which do not excite much curiosity for the rest. Mar-low’s volume is exceedingly scarce, which may be accounted for by the following information: in 1599, the hall of the stationers underwent as great a purgation as was carried on in don Quixote’s library. Marston’s Pygmalion, Marlow’s Ovid, the satires of Hall and Marston, the epigrams of Davies, &c. were ordered for immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and Bancroft. There are other pieces frequently ascribed to sir John Davies, which, Mr. Ritson thinks, belong to John Davies of Hereford, but a& our author superintended the edition of his poems printed about four years before his death, he included all that he thought proper to acknowledge, and probably, if we except the epigrams, nearly all that he had written. The lord Dorset recommended an edition of his works to Tate, who published the “Nosce Teipsum,” with the preface. In 1773 another edition was published by Mr. Thomas Davies from a copy corrected by Mr. William Thomson, the poet, including the “Acrostics” and “Orchestra.” The whole have been added to the late edition of the Poets.

, a translator of some note in the seventeenth century, was born at Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, May 25, 1625, and first educated in Jesus college, Oxford, which he entered in May 1641, and where he continued until Oxford became the seat of the civil war, when his relations removed him to St. John’s college, Cambridge. Here he conformed to the professions of the republican party, but was better employed in studying the French tongue, and afterwards, during a visit to France, made himself complete master of it. On his return he settled in London, and lived entirely by translating for the booksellers, writing prefaces, and superintending editions of books. He appears to have retired afterwards to Kidwelly, his native place, where he died July 22, 1693, leaving, says Wood, “the character of a genteel, harmless, and quiet man.” Wood has given a list of upwards of thirty volumes translated by him on various subjects, the choice probably of his employers, history, travels, novels, lives, criticism, medicine, &c.

, a Welsh clergyman, was born in Tre'r-Abbot, in Whiteford parish, Flintshire. Of his personal history little is known, except that he was a good scholar, very conversant in the literary history of his country, and very unfortunate in attempting to turn his knowlege to advantage. He was a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and Socinianism, and of the most fervent loyalty. to George I. and the Hanoverian succession. Owing to some disgust, he quitted his native place, and probably his profession when he came to London, as he subscribes himself “counsellor-at-law;” and in one of his volumes has a long digression on law and law-writers. Here he commenced author in the humblest form, not content with dedicating to the great, but hawking his books in person from door to door, where he was often repulsed with rudeness, and seldom appears to have been treated with kindness or liberality. How long he carried on this unprosperous business, or when he died, we have not been able to discover. Mr. D'Israeli, who has taken much pains to rescue his name from oblivion, suspects that his mind became disordered from poverty and disappointment. He appears to have courted the Muses, who certainly were not very favourable to his addresses. The most curious of his works consist of some volumes under the general title of “Athenæ Britannicæ,” 8vo, 1715, &c. a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical work, “the greatest part (says Baker, the antiquary) borrowed from modern historians, but containing some things more uncommon, and not easily to be met with.” The first of these volumes, printed in 1715, is entitled Ειχων Μιχρο-βιβλιχε, sive Icon Libellorum, or a Critical History of Pamphlets.“In this he styles himself” a gentleman of the inns of, court.“The others are entitled” Athenæ Britannicæ, or a Critical History of the Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Writings, &c. by M. D.“London, 1716, 8vo. They are all of so great rarity, that Dr. Farmer never saw but one volume, the first, nor Baker but three, which were sent to him as a great curiosity by the earl of Oxford, and are now deposited in St. John’s college, Cambridge. In the British Museum there are seven. From the” Icon Libellorum," the only volume we have had an opportunity of perusing attentively, the author appears to have been well acquainted with English authors, their works and editions, and to have occasionally looked into the works of foreign bibliographers.

, an American clergyman of dissenting principles, and known by three volumes of sermons, in 8vo, edited by Dr. Gibbons, of London, was born November 3, 1721, in the county of Newcastle in Delaware, in America, and was early designed by his parents for the ministry, in which he became very popular. In 1759 he succeeded Mr. Jonathan Edwards as president of his college of New Jersey, which he held to his death, Feb. 4, 1761. He was succeeded in his post by the rev. Dr. S. Finley, who died on the 17th of July 1766, being the fourth president that filled that chair in the short space of less than nine years. In the sermons above mentioned Mr. Davies deserves little praise for style, and his editor not much for judgment of selection.

, the son of a physician who practised in Wales, was born at Shrewsbury, and educated at Eton, whence he removed to King’s college, Cambridge, and regularly took the degrees of A. B. 1732, A. M. 1737, and D. D. 175y. He was early noticed by his school-fellow, Cornwallis, archbishop of Canterbury, when bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, who appointed him his chaplain, and collated him to a canonry of Lithfield, and in 1751 presented him to the mastership of St. John’s hospital, Lichfield. He was also archdeacon of Derby, and rector of Kingsland, in Herefordshire, in the gift of his family. He died Feb. 6, 1769, much esteemed for his learning and amiable disposition; and his numerous poems, both printed and manuscript, bear ample testimony to his talents. He wrote several of the anonymous imitations of Horace in Buncombe’s edition, 1767, and at the end of vol. IV. is given the character of the ancient Romans from a poem by him, styled “The Progress of Science.” He has many poems in Dodsley’s and Nichols’s collections, and one, in Latin, preserved in the “Alumni Etonenses.” Mr. Pennant also, in his “Tour in Wales,” vol. II. p. 422, has preserved some animated lines by Dr. Davies on Caractacus, which he says were delivered almost extempore at one of the annual meetings held on Caer Caradoc some years ago by gentlemen from different parts, to celebrate the name of that renowned British chieftain, in prose or verse.

, a man of considerable talents, and who prided himself on being through life “a companion of his superiors,” was born about 1712. In 1728 and 1729 he was at the university of Edinburgh, completing his education, and became, as Dr. Johnson used to say of him, “learned enough for a clergyman.” That, however, was not his destination, for in 1736 we find him among the dramatis personae of Lillo’s celebrated tragedy of “Fatal Curiosity,” at the theatre in the Hay market, where he was the original representative of young Wilmot, under the management of Henry Fielding. He afterwards commenced bookseller in Duke’s court, opposite the church of St. Martin-in-the-fields, and afterwards in Round court in the Strand, but met with misfortunes which induced him to return to the theatre. For several years he belonged to various companies at York, Dublin, and other places, particularly at Edinburgh, where he appears to have been at one time the manager of the theatre. At York he married miss Yarrow, daughter of a performer there, whose beauty was not more remarkable than the blamelessness of her conduct and the amiableness of her manners. In 1753 he returned to London, and with Mrs. Davies was engaged at Drury-lane, where they remained for several years in good estimation with the town, and played many characters, if not with great excellence, at least with propriety and decency. Churchill, in his indiscriminate satire, has attempted to fix some degree of ridicule on Mr. Davies’s performance, which, just or not, had the effect of driving him from the stage, which about 1762 he exchanged for a shop in Russel-street, Covent Garden; but his efforts in trade were not crowned with the success which his abilities in his profession merited. In 1778 he became a bankrupt; when, such was the regard enterr tained for him by his friends, that they readily consented to his re-establishment; and none of them, as he says himself, were more active to serve him than those who had suffered most by his misfortunes. Yet, all their efforts might possibly have been fruitless if his powerful and firm friend Dr. Johnson had not exerted himself to the utmost in his behalf. He called upon all over whom he had any influence to assist Tom Davies; and prevailed on. Mr. Sheridan, patentee of Drury-lane theatre, to give him a benefit, which he granted on the most liberal terms. In. 1780, by a well-timed publication, the “Life of David Garrick,” which has passed through several editions, Mr. Davies acquired much fame, and some money. He afterwards published “Dramatic Miscellanies,” if) 3 yols. of which a second edition appeared a few days only before the author’s death. His other works are, 1. “Some Memoirs of Mr. Henderson.” 2. “A Review of lord Chesterfield’s Characters.” 3. A “Life of Massinger.” 4. Lives of Dr. John Eacharo, sir John Davies, and Mr. Lillo, prefixed to editions of their works, published by Mr. Davies; and fugitive pieces without number in prose and verse in the St. James’s Chronicle, and almost all the public newspapers. The compiler of this article in the last edition of this Dictionary, informs us that he “knew him well, and has passed many convivial hours in his company at a social meeting, where his lively sallies of pleasantry used to set the table in a roar of harmless merriment. The last time he visited them he wore the appearance of a spectre; and, sensible of his approaching end, took a solemn valediction of all the company.” Mr. Davies died the 5th of May, 1785, and was buried, by his own desire, in the vault of St. Paul, Covent Garden, close by the side of his next door neighbour, the late Mr. Grignion, watchmaker. Mrs. Davies died Feb. 9, 1801. Tom Davies, as he was familiarly called, was a good-natured and conscientious man in business as in private life, but his theatrical bias created a levity not consistent with prudence. Had he been rich, he would have been liberal: Dr. Campbell used to say he was not a bookseller, but a gentleman who dealt in books"

, a Spanish ecclesiastic, and historiographer to the king of Spain, was a native of the town of Avila, from which he derived his name. He accompanied the cardinal Pierra Deza to Rome, and made great progress in the study of sacred and profane history. On his return to Spain, he was presented to a benefice in the church of Salamanca; and being invited to Madrid in 1612, he was appointed king’s historiographer for Castille. He composed in Spanish, “A History of the Antiquities of Salamanca;” the “Life of Alphonso Tostat;” “Theatre* de las Grandesas de Madrid;” “Theatro ecclesiastico de las iglesias de las Indias;”a life of Henry III. king of Castille, &c. and other works. He died in 1658, upwards of eighty years old.

, a Spanish gentleman, native of Placentia, was commander in the order of Alcantara, and general of cavalry for Charles V. at the siege of Metz in 1552. The duke of Guise had the command of that place. Davila sent a trumpet to him to ask for a fugitive slave who had run off with a horse of great value, which was only a pretext for gaining an observation of the town. The duke of Guise was not a man to be so easily imposed upon: however, he sent him back the horse, which he ransomed with his own money; and, as the slave had pushed on farther, he sent him word, that “he was already a good way in France; and that a slave became free on setting his foot on that ground.” He wrote historical memoirs of the war carried on by that emperor against the protestants of Germany, printed for the first time in Spain, 1546, and afterwards translated into Latin and French. The president Thuanus censures him for his partiality in favour of Charles V. There is also by him, “Memoires de la Guerre d'Afrique.”

, a celebrated historian, was the son of Anthony Davila, who was constable of the kingdom of Cyprus when it was under the power of the Venetians; but having lost his situation by the conquest made by the Turks in 1570, retired to Venice, and being possessed of some property at Sacco in the territory of Padua, determined to settle there. His son was born in this place in 1576, and named Henry Catherine, in honour of Henry III. and Catherine de Medicis, who had shown marks of great respect and kindness for the constable, when he was in France a little before the war of Cyprus. When young Davila had attained his seventh year, his father sent him to France, where he was placed under the care of the marechal D‘Hemery, who had married his father’s sister. D’Hemery, who resided at Villars in Normandy, gave his nephew an excellent education, and at a suitable age introduced him at court as one of the pages to the queen mother. At the age of eighteen, he served in the war against the League, and distinguished himself by an ardour which frequently endangered his life. In 1599, the war being concluded by the peace of Vervins, Davila was recalled by his father and by the Venetians, and returned to Italy. The republic of Venice entrusted him with various employments, both military and civil, such as the government of Candy, and of Dalmatia, and what pleased him most, the title of constable was confirmed to him, and in the senate and on all public occasions he took precedence after the doge. The last office to which he was appointed, but which he never enjoyed, was that of commander of Crema. On his way to this place, the different towns and villages, through which he was to pass, were ordered to furnish him with a change of horses and carriages; but when he arrived at a place near Verona, and requested the usual supplies, they were denied; and on his remonstrating, a brutal fellow shot him dead with a pistol. The assassin was immediately killed by one of Davila’s sons, who happened to be with him. This misfortune happened in 1631, exactly a year after he had published, in Italian, his history of the civil wars of France, under the title “Istoria delle Guerre civili di Francia,” Venice, 4to, reprinted in 1634, 1638, and often since. The finest editions are tnose of Paris, 1644, 2 vols. folio, and of Venice, 1733, 2 vols. folio. We have two old translations into English, 1647, by Aylesbury, and 1678. by dottrel, folio; but the best is that by Farneworth, 1755, 2 vols. 4to. The French have likewise translations by Baudouin, 1642, and by Grosley and the abbe Mallet, 1757, 3 vols. 4to, and there is a Latin translation by Cornazano, Rome, 1743, 3 vols. 4to.

Davila is unquestionably one of the best of the French historians, but is liable to the objections made to other historians, of relying too much on his own invention, all the speeches and harangues in his narrative being of his own composition, and adapted to his own sentiments of the persons and events concerned. Want of variety, it has also been observed, is sensibly felt in his history: the events indeed are important and various; but the reader languishes by a tiresome monotony of character, every person engaged being figured a consummate politician, governed by interest only. His partiality to Catherine of Medicis may perhaps be forgiven, as she was not only his great benefactress, but communicated many particulars to his history. It may be added that the early editions of this history are more incorrect in geography and names than those which are of more recent date.

, son of Mr. John Davis, of Windsor, was born July II, 1756, and educated at Eating, Middlesex; whence he removed to Baliol college, Oxford, May 17, 1774, where he took his degree of B. A. about January 177-. In the spring of that year he wrote an Examination of Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” in which he evinced more knowledge than is usually found at the age of twenty-one. This was answered by the historian in a Vindication, which brougut out a reply by Mr. Davis, who, it is evident, gave Gibbon no small uneasiness by attacking him on his veracity and fairness of quotation, in which Gibbon fancied himself impregnable. In 1780, Mr. Davis having taken his master’s degree, and entered into priest’s orders, was made a fellow of his college; and, for some time before his death, had the office of tutor, which he discharged with a solicitude and constancy too great for the sensibility of his mind, and the delicacy of his constitution. A lingering illness removed him from the society of his many estimable friends, and deprived the public of his expected services. Affected by the strongest and tenderest of those motives, which endear life and subdue fortitude, he sustained the slow approaches of dissolution, not only resigned but cheerful, supported by the principles he had well defended. Feb. 10, 1784, without any apparent change, between a placid slumber and death, he expired. He was buried at Windsor, the place of his nativity. He had cultivated a taste for elegant literature, particularly in poetry. Though his voice was not strong, his elocution was distinct, animated, unaffected, and pathetic. The cheerfulness and vivacity of his conversation, the warmth and benevolence of his heart, fixed by principle, and animated by sentiment, rendered him in his private character, alike amiable and worthy of esteem.

, an eminent navigator, of the sixteenth century, was born at Sandridge, in the parish of StokeGabriel, near Dartmouth in Devonshire. His birth near that eminent sea-port, having given him a fair opportunity, to which probably was added a strong natural disposition, he put himself early to sea; where, by the help of a good master, and his subsequent industry, knowledge, and experience, he became the most expert pilot, and one of the ablest navigators of his time. The first public employment he had was in 1585, when he undertook to discover a new passage, by the north-west parts of America, to the East-Indies. For that purpose, he sailed from Dartmouth, on the seventh of June, with two barks, one of fifty and the other of thirty-five tons, which were fitted out at the charge of some noblemen and gentlemen; and met, July 19, many islands of ice floating, in 60 degrees northern latitude. They were soon encompassed with them; and going upon some, perceived, that the roaring noise they heard, at which they were greatly astonished, was caused only by the rolling of the ice together. The next day, they discovered the southern coast of Greenland, five hundred leagues distant from the Durseys, or Missenhead, in Ireland; and observed it to be extremely rocky and mountainous, and covered with snow, without any signs of wood, grass, or earth to be seen. The shore, likewise, was so full of ice, that no ship could come near it by two leagues: and so shocking was the appearance of it, and the cracking of the ice so hideous, that they imagined it to be a quite desolate country, without a living creature, or even any vegetable substance; for which reason captain Davis named it, “The Land of Desolation.” Perceiving that they were run into a very deep bay, wherein they were almost surrounded with ice, they kept coasting along the edge of it, south-south-west, till the 25th of July; when, after having gone fifty or sixty leagues, they found that the shore lay directly north. This made them alter their course to the north-west, in hopes of finding their desired passage: but on the 29th they discovered land to the north-east, in 64 degr. 15 min. latitude. Making towards it, they perceived that they were passed the ice, and were among many green, temperate, and pleasant islands, bordering upon the shore; though the hills of the continent were still covered with great quantities of snow. Among these islands were many fine bays, and good roads for shipping: they landed in some, and the people of the country came down and conversed with them by signs, making Mr. Davis understand, that there was a great sea towards the north west. He staid in this place till the first of August, and then proceeded in his discovery. The sixth of that month, they found land in 66 degr. 40 min. latitude, quite free from ice; and anchored in a safe road, under a great mountain, the cliffs whereof glistered like gold. This mountain he named, Mount Raleigh: the road where their ships lay at anchor, Totness Road: the bay which encompassed the mountain, Exeter Sound: the foreland towards the north, Dier’s Cape: and the foreland towards the south, Cape Walsingham. He departed from hence the eighth of August, coasting along the shore, which lay south-south-west, and east-north-east; and on the eleventh came to the most southerly cape of that land, which he named, “The Cape of God’s Mercy,” as being the place of their first entrance for the discovery. Going forward, they came into a very fine straight, or passage, in some places twenty leagues broad, in others thirty, quite free from ice, the weather in it very tolerable, and the water of the same colour and nature as the main ocean. This passage still retains the name of its first discoverer, being called to this day Fretum Davis, or Davis’s Straights. Having sailed, north-west, sixty leagues in this passage, they discovered several islands in the midst of it; on some of which they landed. The coast was very barren, without wood or grass; and the rocks were like fine marble, full of veins of divers colours. Some days after they continued searching for the north-west passage, but found only a great number of islands. And, on the 2oth, the wind coming contrary, they altered their course and design, and returning for England, arrived at Dartmouth the 29th of September. The next year Mr. Davis undertook a second voyage, for the farther discovery of the north-west passage, being supported and encouraged again by secretary Walsingham, and other adventurers. With' a view therefore of searching the bottom of the Straights he had been in the year before, he sailed from Dartmouth, May the 7th, 1586, with four ships, and the 15th of June discovered land in 60 degrees latitude, and 47 degrees longitude west from London. The ice along the coast reached in some places ten, in some twenty, and in others fifty leagues into the sea; so that, to avoid it, they were forced to bear into 57 degrees latitude. After many tempestuous storms, they made the land again, June the 29th, in 64 degrees of latitude, and 58 of longitude; and ran among the temperate islands they had been at the year before. But the water was so deep, they could not easily come to an anchor; yet they found means to go ashore, on some of the islands, where they were much caressed and welcomed by the natives, who knew them again. Having finished a pinnace, which was to serve them for a front in their discoveries, they landed, not only in that, but also in their boats, in several places: and, upon the strictest search, found the land not to be a continent, as they imagined, but a collection of huge, waste, and desert isles, with great sounds and inlets passing between sea and sea. They pursued their voyage the 11th of July, and on the 17th, in 63 degrees 8 minutes latitude, met with a prodigious mass of ice, which they coasted till the 30th. This was a great obstacle and discouragement to them, not having the like there the year before; and, besides, the men beginning to grow sickly, the crew of one of the ships, on which he chiefly depended, forsook him, and resolved to proceed no farther. However, not to disappoint Mr. W. Sanderson, who was the chief adventurer in this voyage, and for fear of losing the favour of secretary Walsingham, who had this discovery much at heart, Mr. Davis undertook to proceed alone in his small bark of thirty tons. Having therefore fitted, and well-victualled it, in a harbour lying in 66 degrees 33 minutes latitude, and 70 degrees longitude, which he found to be a very hot place, and full of muscatoes, he set sail the 12th of August, and coming into a straight followed the course of it for eighty leagues, till he came among many islands, where the water ebbed and flowed six fathom deep. He had hopes of finding a passage there, but upon searching farther in his boat, he perceived there was none. He then returned again into the open sea, and kept coasting southward as far as 54 degrees and a half of latitude: in which time he found another great inlet near forty leagues broad, between two lands, west, where the water ran in with great violence. This, he imagined, was the passage so long sought for; but the wind being then contrary, and two furious storms happening soon after, he neither thought it safe nor wise to proceed farther, especially in one small bark, and when the season was so far advanced. He, therefore, sailed for England the 11th of September; and arrived there in the beginning of October. By the observations which he made, he concluded, that the north parts of America are all islands. He made a third voyage to these parts again the year following, 1587. All the western merchants, and most of those of London, refused to be engaged farther in the undertaking; but it was encouraged by the lord treasurer Burleigh and secretary Walsinghain. Mr. Davis having, in his last voyage, discovered prodigious quantities of excellent cud-tish, in 56 degrees of latitude, two ships were sent along with him for fishing, and one only for the discovery of the North west passage. They sailed from Dartmouth the 19tii of May, and discovered land the 14th of June, at sixteen leagues distance, but very mountainous, and covered with snow. On the 21st of June the two barks left him, and went upon the fishing, after having promised him, not to depart till his return to them about the end of August, yet having finished their voyage in about sixteen days after, they set sail for England without any regard to their promise. Captain Davis, in the mean time, pursued his intended discovery, in the sea between America and Greenland, from 64 to 73 degrees of latitude. Having entered the Straights which bear his name, he went on northward, from the 21st to the 30th of June; naming one part Merchants Coast; another, the London Coast; another, Hope Sanderson in 73 degrees latitude, being the farthest he went that day. The wind coming northerly, he altered his course, and ran forty leagues west, without seeing any laud. On the 2d of July, he fell in with a great bank of ice, which he coasted southward till the 1 9th of July, when he came within sight of Mount Raleigh on the American coast, in about 67 degrees of latitude. Having sailed sixty leagues north-west into the gulf that lies beyond it, he anchored, July 23, at the bottom of that gulf, among many islands, which he named “The Earl of Cumberland’s Isles” He quitted that place again the same day, and sailed back south-east, in order to recover the sea; which he did the 29th in 62 degrees of latitude. The 30th he passed by a great bank, or inlet, to which he gave the name of Lumley’s Inlet; and the next day by a head land, which he called “The Earl of Warwick’s Foreland.” On the first of August he fell in with the southermost cape, named by him Chudley’s Cape: and, the 12th, passed by an island which he named Darcy’s Island. When he came in 52 degrees of latitude, not finding the two ships that had promised to stay for him, he was in great distress, having but little wood, and only half a hogshead of water left; yet, taking courage, he made the best of his way home, and arrived at Dartmouth September the 15th, very sanguine, that the north-west passage was most probable, and the execution easy; but secretary Walsinghaw dying not long after, all farther search was laid aside. Mr. Davis, notwithstanding, did not remain idle. For, August 26, 1591, he was captain of the Desire, rear admiral to Mr. Thomas Cavendish, in his second unfortunate expedition to the South -Sea; and is highly blamed by Mr. Cavendish, for having deserted him, and thereby being the cause of his overthrow. After many disasters, Mr. Davis arrived again at Bear-haven in Ireland, June 11, 1593. He performed afterwards no less than five voyages to the East-Indies, in the station of a pilot. One was in a Dutch ship, in which he set out, March 15, 1597-8, from Flushing, and returned to Middleburgh, July 23, 1600. Of the rest we have no account, except of that which he performed with sir Edward Michelbourne, in which were spent nineteen months, from December 5, 1604, to July 9, 1606. During this voyage Mr. Davis was killed, on the 27th of December, 1605, in a desperate fight with some Japonese near the coast of Malacca. He married Faith, daughter of sir John Fulford, of Fulford in Devonshire, knight, by Dorothy his wife, daughter of John lord Bouchier, earl of Bath, by whom probably he had issue: for some of his posterity are said to have been living about the middle of the last century, at or near Deptford.

“The account of his second voyage for the Discovery of the North-west Passage, in 1586,” seems to be of his composition; for he speaks always in the first person. There are likewise in print two letter.-? of his to Mr. Sanderson, one dated from Exeter, October 14, 1586; and the other from Sandridge, September 16, 1587. Hakluyt has also preserved “A Traverse Booke made by M. John Davis, in his third voyage for the discoverie of the Northwest Passage, anno 1587,” and it appears that he composed a treatise entitled “The World’s Hydrographicall Description,” for Hakluyt has extracted from it, and published, “A report of Master John Davis, of his three voyages made for the Discovery of the North-west Passage.” His voyage to the East Indies in a Dutch ship, in 1598, was written also by himself. It is said that “There is a flutter, [Routier] or Brief Directions for sailing into the East Indies, digested into a plain method by this same person, John Davis, of Limehouse, (as he is there called) written upon experiment of his five voyages thither, and home again.” But either it was not written by the same John Davis, who is the subject of this article, or else our John Davis was not killed in the East Indies, as we have said above upon the authority of Purchas, and of those that have copied from him.

, of Hereford, as he usually styled himself, a poet and schoolmaster, was born in that city, and sent when young from a grammar-school there, to the university of Oxford; but Wood has not discovered in what college he studied, nor does it appear that he took any degree. After leaving the university, he returned to his native place, where he obtained the character of a poet, and published several productions of the rhyming kind; but not finding, as it would indeed have been wonderful if he had found, much profit accrue, he set up a writing-school, first at Hereford, and afterwards in London, where he at length acquired the character of one of the first penmen in England. In 1611 we find him living in Fleet-street, and a Roman catholic. From Peck’s Desiderata it appears that Arthur Wilson was one of his pupils, and that the conversation of Davis and his family inspired him with some doubts of the religious kind. From his poems we learn that Davis left a brother, James, at Oxford, who was also a writing-master; and that he himself married a wife whose name was Croft, by whom, he says, he had a “crop of care,” meaning, probably, a large family. As a writing-master, he published some engraved books of instruction, or specimens, but Massey has seen only “The Writing School-master, or Anatomy of Fair Writing,” engraved, after his death, by Ingheenram, which he thinks does not support the high character given of his penmanship by his contemporaries. It is said he was some time tutor to prince Henry, who, according to Birch, wrote a very fine hand. He died about 1618, and, Fuller informs us, was buried in the church or church-yard of St. Giles’s in the Fields.

, an Irish divine, was born near Cork, in 1649, and educated at Trinity-college, Dublin, where he took his degree of LL. D. and was accounted an eminent civilian. Having entered into holy orders, he was promoted to be dean of Cork, and was afterwards vicargeneral of the diocese, both which preferments he retained until his death in 1721. He wrote, “A Letter to a friend concerning his changing his religion,” Lond. 1694, 4to. This friend was a Mr. Turner, recorder of Limerick, who had become a Roman catholic. Dr. Davis published also, “The truly Catholick and Old Religion, shewing that the established church in Ireland is more truly a member of the catholic church, than the church of Rome, and that all the ancient Christians, especially in Great Britain and Ireland, were of her communion,” Dublin, 1716, 4to. This was answered the same year by Timothy O'Brien, D. D. of Toulouse, a native of Cork, and then parish priest of Castlelions, in a pamphlet printed at Cork, anonymously, to which Dr. Davis replied in “A Letter to the pretended Answer, &c.” O'Brien returned to the charge with “Goliath beheaded with his own sword,” 4to, to which Dr. Davis replied in “Remarks on a pamphlet entitled Goliath, &c.” He also published two occasional sermons, one on the 30th of January, entitled “Christian Loyalty,” 1716, 4to; the other a charity sermon, Dublin, 1717, 8vo.

, a very eminent statesman, and secretary of state in the reign of queen Elizabeth, was, if not a native of Scotland, at least descended from those who were, as himself professed to sir James Mel vile. At what time he came into the court of queen Elizabeth, or in what state, is uncertain. It is most probable, that his parts and learning, together with that extraordinary diligence and wonderful address for which he was always distinguished, recommended him to Mr. Killigrew, afterwards sir Henry Kiiligrew, with whom he went in quality of secretary, at the time he was sent into Scotland, to compliment queen Mary upon the birth of her son. This was in 1566, and there is a good reason to believe that he remained from that time about the court, and was employed in several affairs of great consequence. In 1575, when the states of Brabant and Flanders assumed to themselves the administration of all affairs till his catholic majesty should appoint a new governor of the Low Countries, Mr. Davison was sent over with a public character from the queen to those states, under the plausible pretence of exhorting them to continue in their obedience to his catholic majesty; but, in reality, to see how things actually stood in that part of the world, that her majesty might be the better able to know how to proceed in respect to the several applications made to her from the prince of Orange, and the people of Holland. He executed this commission very successfully, and therefore the queen sent him over as her minister, to pacify the troubles that had arisen at Ghent; and when his presence was no longer necessary there, he was commissioned on her behalf to the States of Holland, in 1579. His conduct there gave equal satisfaction to the queen his mistress, and to those with whom he negotiated. He gave them great hopes of the queen’s assistance and support, and when a sum of money was desired, as absolutely necessary towards providing for their defence, he very readily undertook to procure it upon reasonable security; in consequence of which, a very considerable sum was sent from England, for which all the valuable jewels and fine plate that had been pledged by Matthias of Austria to the States of Holland, and which were the remains of the magnificence of the house of Burgundy, were transported to England. These journies, and the success attending them, gave Mr. Davison great reputation at court, insomuch, that in all matters of a nice and difficult nature, Davison was some way or other continually employed. Thus in 1583, when matters wore a serious aspect in Scotland, he was sent thither as the queen’s ambassador, in order to counteract the French ministers, and to engage the king of Scots and the people, both to slight the offers made them from that country, and to depend wholly upon assistance from England. Affairs in the Low Countries coming at last to a crisis, and the states resolving to depend upon queen Elizabeth, in the bold design they had formed of defending their freedom by force of arms, and rendering themselves independent, Mr. Davison, at this time clerk of the privy council, was chosen to manage this delicate business, and to conclude with them that alliance which was to be the basis of their future undertakings. In this, which, without question, was one of the most perplexed transactions in that whole reign, he conducted things with such a happy dexterity, as to merit the strongest acknowledgments on the part of the States, at the same time that he rendered the highest service to the queen his mistress, and obtained ample security for those expences which that princess thought necessary in order to keep danger at a distance, and to encourage the flames of war in the dominions of her enemy, whom at that juncture she knew to be meditating how he might transfer them into her own. Upon the return of Mr. Davison into England, after the conclusion of this treaty, he was declared of the privy-council, and appointed one of her majesty’s principal secretaries of state, in conjunction with sir Francis Walsingham; so that, at this time, these offices may be affirmed to have been as well filled as in any period that can be assigned in our history, and yet by persons of very different, or rather opposite dispositions; for Walsingham was a man of great art and intrigue, one who was not displeased that he was thought such a person, and whose capacity was still deeper than 'those who understood it best apprehended it to be. Davison, on the other hand, had a just reputation for wisdom and probity; and, though he had been concerned in many intricate affairs, yet he preserved a character so unspotted, that, to the time he came into this office, he had done nothing that could draw upon him the least imputation. It is an opinion countenanced by Camden, and which has met with general acceptance, that he was raised in order to be ruined, and that, when he was made secretary of state, there was a view of obliging him to go out of his depth in that matter, which brought upon him all his misfortunes. This conjecture is very plausible, and yet there is good reason to doubt whether it is well founded. Mr. Davison had attached himself, during the progress of his fortunes, to the potent earl of Leicester; and it was chiefly to his favour and interest that he stood indebted for this high employment, in which, if he was deceived by another great statesman, it could not be said that he was raised and ruined by the same hands. But there is nothing more probable than that the bringing about such an event by an instrument which his rival had raised, and then removing him, and rendering his parts useless to those who had raised him, gave a double satisfaction to him who managed this design. It is an object of great curiosity to trace the principal steps of this transaction, which was, without doubt, one of the finest strokes of political management in that whole reign. When the resolution was taken, in the beginning of October 1586, to bring the queen of Scots? to a trial, and a commission was issued for that purpose, secretary Davison’s name was inserted in that commission; but it does not appear that he was present when that commission was opened at Fotheringay castle, on the llth of October, or that he ever assisted there at all. Indeed, the management of that transaction was very wisely left in the hands of those who with so much address had conducted the antecedent business for the conviction of Anthony Babington, and his accomplices, upon the truth and justice of which, the proceedings against the queen of Scots entirely depended. On the 25th of October the sentence was declared in the star-chamber, things proceeding still in the same channel, and nothing particularly done by secretary Davison. On the 29th of the same month the parliament met, in which Serjeant Puckering was speaker of the house of commons; and, upon an application from both houses, queen Elizabeth caused the sentence to be published, which, soon after, was notified to the queen of Scots; yet hitherto all was transacted by the other secretary, who was considered by the nation in general as the person who had led this prosecution from beginning to end. The true meaning of this long and solemn proceeding was certainly to remove, as far as possible, any reflection upon queen Elizabeth; and, that it might appear in the most conspicuous manner to the world, that she was urged, and even constrained to take the life of the queen of Scots, instead of seeking or desiring it. This assertion is not founded upon conjecture, but is a direct matter of fact; for, in her first answer to the parliament, given at Richmond the 12th of November, she complained that the late act had brought her into a great strait, by obliging her to give directions for that queen’s death; and upon the second application, on the 24th of the same month, the queen enters largely into the consequences that must naturally follow upon her taking that step, and on the consideration of them, grounds her returning no definitive resolution, even to this second application. The delay which followed after the publication of the sentence, gave an opportunity for the French king, and several other princes, to interpose, but more especially to king James, whose ambassadors, and particularly sir Robert Melvile, pressed the queen very hard. Camden says, that his ambassadors unseasonably mixing threatenings with intreaties, they were not very welcome; so that after a few days the ambassadors were dismissed, with small hopes of succeeding. But we are elsewhere told, that, when Melvile requested a respite of execution for eight days, she answered, “Not an hour.” This seemed to be a plain declaration of her majesty’s final determination, and such in all probability it was, so that her death being resolved, the only point that remained under debate was, how she should die, that is, whether by the hand of an executioner, or otherwise. In respect to this, the two secretaries seem to have been of different sentiments. Mr. Davison thought the forms of justice should go on, and the end of this melancholy transaction correspond with the rest of the proceedings. Upon this, sir Francis Walsingham pretended sickness, and did not come to court, and by this means the whole business of drawing and bringing the warrant to the queen to sign, fell upon Davison, who, pursuant to the queen’s directions, went through it in the manner that Camden has related. But it is very remarkable, that, while these judicial steps were taking, the other method, to which the queen herself seemed to incline, proceeded also, and secretary Walsingham, notwithstanding his sickness, wrote the very day the warrant was signed, which was Wednesday, February 1st, 1586-7, to sir Amiss Pawlet and sir Drew Drury, to put them in mind of the association, as a thing that might countenance, at least, if not justify, this other way of removing the queen of Scots. It is true, that Mr. Davison subscribed this letter, and wrote another to the same persons two days after; but it appears plainly from the anssver, that the keepers of the queen of Scots considered the motion as coming from Walsingharn. The warrant being delivered to the lords of the council, they sent it down by Mr. Beale, their clerk, a man of sour and stubborn temper, and who had always shewn a great bitterness against the queen of Scots. The day of his departure does not appear; but queen Mary had notice given her on the Monday, to prepare for death on the Wednesday, which she accordingly suffered. As soon as queen Elizabeth was informed of it, she expressed great resentment against her council, forbad them her presence and the court; and caused some of them to be examined, as if she intended to call them to an account for the share they had in this transaction. We are not told particularly who these counsellors were, excepting the lord treasurer Burleigh, who fell into a temporary disgrace about it, and was actually a witness against Mr. Davison. As for the earl of Leicester and secretary Walsingharn, they had prudently withdrawn themselves at the last act of the tragedy, and took care to publish so much, by their letters into Scotland; but secretary Davison, upon whom it was resolved the whole weight of this business should fall, v.-deprived of his office, and sent prisoner to the Tower, at which nobody seerus to have been so much alarmed as the lord treasurer, who, though himself at that time in disgrace, wrote to the queen in strong terms, and once intended to have written in much stronger. This application bad no effect, for the queen having sent her kinsman Mr. Cary, son to the lord Hunsdon, into Scotland, to excuse the matter to king James, charged with a letter to him under her own hand, in which she in the strongest terms possible asserted her own innocence, there was a necessity of doing something that Davison[?] carry an air of evidence, in support of the turn she had now given to the death of that princess. On the 28th of March following, Davison, after having undergone various examinations, was brought to his trial in the star chamber, for the contempt of which he had been guilty, in revealing the queen’s counsels to her privy counsellors, and performing what he understood to be the duty of his office in quality of her secretary. We have several accounts of this trial, which, in a variety of circumstances, differ from each other. In this, however, they all agree, that the judges, who fined him ten thousand marks, and imprisonment during the queen’s pleasure, gave him a very high character, and declared him to be, in their opinions, both an able ana an honest man. One thing is very remarkable, that, in the conclusion of this business, sir Christopher Wray, chief justice of the queen’s bench, told the court, that though the queen had been offended with her council, and had left them to examination, yet now she forgave them, being satisfied that they were misled b? this man’s suggestions. Sir James Melvile, who wrote at that time, and who seems to have had some prejudice against Davison, said very candidly and fairly upon this occasion, that he was deceived by the council. As soon as the proceeding was over, the queen, to put it out of doubt with the king of Scots, that his mother was put to death without her privity or intention, sent him the judgment given against Davison, subscribed by those who had given it, and exemplified under the great seal, together with another instrument, under the hands of all the judges of England, that the sentence against his mother could not in the least prejudice his title to the succession. As for Mr. Davison, now left to a strange reward for his past services, a long imprisonment, which reduced him to indigence, he comforted himself with the thoughts of his innocence; and, to secure his memory from being blasted by that judgment which had withered his fortune, he had long before written an apology for his own conduct, which he addressed to secretary Walsingham, as the man most interested in it, and who could best testify whether what he affirmed was truth or not. In this he gave a very clear and natural detail of the transaction which cost him all his sufferings. It is allowed by all who have written on this subject, and especially by Camden, that he was a very unhappy, though at the same time a very capable and honest man. As such we have seen him recommended to queen Elizabeth by the treasurer Burleigh, and as such he was strongly recommended by the earl of Essex to king James I. It seems, that noble person stuck fast by him under his misfortunes, which plainly shews the party to which he had always adhered. That lord lost no opportunity of soliciting the queen in his favour, and never let slip any occasion of testifying for him the warmest and thesincerest affection. At length, it seems he was not altogether unsuccessful; for though, upon the death of secretary Walsingham, the queen absolutely rejected his motion, that Mr. Davison should come into his place, yet, afterwards, it seems that she yielded in some degree, as plainly appears by the earl’s letter to king James. That we are under an incapacity of tracing him farther, is owing to the profound silence of the writers of those times.

Davison came not suddenly or surprisingly into his high office, but easily, naturally, and gradually, in the very same way that his predecessors, Cecil, Smith, and Walsingham had done, and with the general approbation of all the council; and, as he was no mean or obscure person when called to that high employment, so he was not given to subserviency, at the peril of his life and reputation; and notwithstanding the star chamber sentence, he very well knew how to make his innocence plain, both to that age and to posterity.

Mr. Whitaker, in his elaborate work entitled “Mary queen of Scots vindicated,” has not forgotten Elizabeth’s conduct with regard to Davison. In the first edition he took proper notice of it, and gave a general account of the unfortunate secretary’s apology. But in the second edition he has inserted the apology at large, and accompanied it with a number of notes that strongly display the unjust and cruel manner in which Davisou was treated by his royal mistress. The pointed observations of Mr. Whitaker’s concluding note afford such a correct view of his character, as, although somewhat different from the preceding in the Biographia Britannica, is probably nearer the truth.

"Let me here, at the end of the apology, remark finally concerning Davison, that, though he was not an honest man, yet he was so nearly one, as to be a very prodigy for the ministry of Elizabeth. He refused, it appears, to sign that very bond of association which was signed by all the nation, and which even the despairing Mary offered, on her liberty being granted, to sign herself. Yet he refused, though Leicester pushed on the association, and though Elizabeth urged him to sign it. Among the pleas which he advances for himself in his other apology, he particularly states * his former absolute refusal to sign the band of association, being earnestly pressed thereunto by her majesty’s self,‘ (Robertson, II. 483). This indeed is a very strong evidence of a manly virtuousness in him. But he did other things in the same spirit of virtue. He declined to act as a commissioner on the examination of Babington and his accomplices for their conspiracy in favour of Mary, and took a journey to Bath, in order to save himself from acting, (Robertson, II. 483). He was a means, too, of preventing the commissioners who were sent to try Mary at Fotheringay castle, from pronouncing sentence upon her immediately after the trial, and of obliging them to return first to London, and report their proceedings to Elizabeth, (Robertson, II. 483). We have already seen that he kept the warrant for the execution of Mary five or six weeks in his hands, without offering to present it to Elizabeth for her signing. We have equally seen that he actually neglected to obey a personal command of Elizabeth’s for bringing the warrant to her, and that he thus neglected for ’ many days,‘ even till the queen fired at his conduct, and sent him a peremptory order to bring it. Even then, and even when Paulet’s answer had been received, and all delay was now at an end for ever, he would not be concerned in sending away the warrant himself, but returned it into the hands from which he had received it, and left Cecil and the council to send it. And, as in all the time ’ before her trial, he neither is nor can be charged, to have had any hand at all in the cause of the said queen, or done any thing whatsoever concerning the same, directly or indirectly,‘ so, * after the return thence of the commissioners, it is well known to all her council, that he never was at any deliberation or meeting whatsoever, in parliament or council, concerning the cause of the said queen, till the sending down of her majesty’s warrant unto the commissioners by the lords and others of her council,’ (Robertson, II. 481).

“These deeds of honesty, no doubt, had successively marked him out for vengeance to the rest of the ministry, and to the queen. He was therefore selected by Cecil, `with her majesty’s own privity,' to be the secretary with whom the warrant should he lodged for signing, (Robertson, II. 481). He was thus exposed to a train of decisive trials. It would be seen whether he offered to present the warrant to Elizabeth for her signature. Should he not offer, a command might be given him by Elizabeth to bring it up. Should he hesitate to obey this, a sharp rebuke and a peremptory order might be sent him. If he was refractory in all these points, then the wrath of Elizabeth would burst out upon him, and sweep him away from her presence for ever. If he complied in any, his farther compliance might be tried in ordering him to the great seal with the warrant, and in directing him to use the warrant, when sealed, with secresy. Should he be found pliable in this trial, the grand scheme of assassination, the favourite wish of Elizabeth’s heart, which had repeatedly been talked over by her other ministers before Elizabeth and him, which they all united to approve, though none of them offered to undertake, and which had been so talked over and so approved of, merely to put Davison upon undertaking it, might finally be urged upon Davisou in private by Elizabeth herself. Should he bend to this urgency, and engage in the work of assassination, Elizabeth, as soon as ever the work was done, would have risen upon him with an affected passion, and made his life the forfeit of his compliance. And should he not bend, all his present, and all his former refractoriness would be remembered at once against him, and unite to draw down the rage of Elizabeth in a storm of real resentment upon him. Either way the man was sure to be ruined. He complied, though only in part. He brought up the warrant at the second order. He carried it to the great seal. He even united with Walsingham to mention Elizabeth’s proposal of assassination to Paulet; but he would go no farther. He actually protested to Elizabeth herself against the proposal before he mentioned it to Paulet. He protested to her against every scheme of assassination. And he was therefore ruined at last by Elizabeth, in a most impudent stretch of falsehood, for doing what he did not do, and in truth and reality, for not doing what he was wanted to do.”

“Thus fell Davison, a memorable evidence of the cunning, the perfidiousness, and the barbarity of Elizabeth and her Cecil! But he was fully revenged of them both in his fall. He wrote the present apology, which serves so greatly to expose the characters of both. It is very convincing in itself; is even drawn up with the air and address of a fine writer, and is peculiarly valuable to the critical investigators of Elizabeth’s conduct. It differs very usefully from that in Dr. Robertson’s Appendix, in being written within the very month of all the main transactions recorded in it, and being therefore very full, circumstantial, and accurate; while that was written many years afterward, is only general and short, and is often inaccurate. It was not, however, a? Camden says, a ‘ private’ apology sent to ‘ Walsingham,’ (Orig. i. 465. Trans. 392). It was evidently calculated, as I have shown before, for the inspection of Elizabeth herself. And, as it would naturally be sent to his brother-secretary for her inspection, so was it a bold challenge to her for the truth and exactness of all his averments, and would serve only to increase the load already descending to crush him. The other was written, not only when the little particulars had faded off from the mind, when memory had confounded some circumstances that were distinct in themselves, and a regular narrative, if it could have been given, was no longer of consequence but, what is very surprizing, when Davison had lost all copy, and even all minutes of this very apology. It was drawn up, too, when he was no longer afraid of showing his forbearance in the cause of Mary, and indeed had reason for displaying it all at large. He therefore goes back much farther in the second apology than in the first, to the return of Mary’s judges from Fotheringay, to the moment of her trial, to the examination of Babington, &c. and to the times preceding all. In this whole period he shows us his secret attachment to Mary, by such a train of incidents as seems peculiarly calculated for the eye of Mary’s son on his accession to the throne of England. Yet Elizabeth must have been alive at the writing of it, since she is spoken of as still queen; and I therefore suppose it to be written at the latter end of Elizabeth’s reign, when all the nation began to turn their eyes towards Scotland for a successor to her; and when Davison would naturally endeavour to make that attachment to Mary, for which he had suffered so severely from Elizabeth, promote his interest with James.”

, an eminent French naturalist, was born at Montbar in the department of tlio Cote D'Or, May 29, 1716. His father, John Daubenton, was a notary in that place, and his mother’s name was Mary Pichenot. In his youth he distinguished himself by the sweetness of his temper, and by a diligent application to his Studies. The Jesuits of Dijon, under whose tuition he was first placed, noticed him in a peculiar manner. Having gone through the philosophical course taught by the Dominicans of Dijon, his father, who destined him for the church, and who had made him assume the ecclesiastical dress at the age of twelve, sent him to Paris to study theology, but his predilection for natural history induced him privately to study medicine. Accordingly he attended the lectures of Baron, Martiney, and Col de Villars, and likewise those of Winslow, Hunault, and Anthony Jussieu, in the botanic garden. The death of his father, which happened in 1736, leaving him at liberty to pursue the bent of his own inclinations, he took his degrees at Rheims in 1740 and 1741, after which he returned to his native province, where, doubtless, his ambition would have been for ever confined to the practice of medicine, had not a happy accident brought him upon a more brilliant theatre.

Montbar had given birth, about the same time, to the celebrated Buffon, a man of a very different character; who, though possessed of an independent fortune, a robust constitution, and actuated by a violent passion for pleasure, had determined to devote himself to the cultivation of the sciences; and of those, at length to give the preference to natural history, which he saw in its infancy and rude state, and very justly conceived that every thing must be collected, revised, and examined. Perceiving, however, that iiis ardent and lively imagination rendered him unequal to such laborious and difficult researches, and even that the weakness of his sight excluded the hope of succeeding in them, he endeavoured to discover a man, who, besiJes a sound judgment, and a certain quickness of perception, should possess sufficient modesty and devotedness to induce him to rest satisfied with acting, in appearance, a subordinate part, and to serve him, as it were, as a hand and an eye in the prosecution of his undertaking. Such a man he at last found in Daubenton, the companion of his early years. The character, however, of these two philosophers was almost opposite in every respect. Buffon was violent, impatient, rash: Daubenton was all gentleness, patience, and caution: Buffon wished to divine the truth rather than to discover it: Daubenton believed nothing which he had not himself seen and ascertained: Buffon suffered his imagination to lead him from nature; Daubenton, on the contrary, discarded from his writings every expression which was calculated to mislead. They were thus happily fitted to correct each other’s faults. Accordingly, the History of Quadrupeds, which appeared while they laboured together, is the most exempt from error of any of the divisions which constitute Buffon’s Natural History.

About 1742 Buffon drew him to Paris. At that time, the office of keeper and demonstrator of the cabinet of natural history was in a great measure nominal, and as Noguez, who possessed that title, had been long absent, his place was occasionally supplied by any one present. By the influence of Buffon, this office was revived, and conferred on Daubenton in 1745. His salary, which at first did not exceed 500 francs, was, by degrees, afterwards augmented to 2000, or, as some say, 4000. While he was only an assistant in the academy of sciences, Buffon, who acted as its treasurer, conferred upon him several favours. On his arrival at Paris he procured him. a lodging, and neglected nothing in order to secure to him ease and independence; while Daubenton pursued with indefatigable industry those labours which were necessary to second the views of his benefactor, and established by this means the two principal monuments of his own glory.

One of these is the cabinet of natural history in the botanical garden. That before his time served merely as a repository for the products of the different pharmaceutical operations, performed during the public lectures on chemistry, in order that they might be distributed to the poor while suffering under disease. It contained nothing appertaining to natural history, strictly so called, except a collection of shells made by Tournefort, which had afterwards been employed to amuse Lewis XV. during his infancy; but such was the industry of Daubenton, that, within a few years, he collected specimens of minerals, fruits, woods, shells, from every quarter, and methodically arranged them. By applying himself to ascertain, or to improve the operations necessary to preserve the different parts of organized bodies, he succeeded in giving to the inanimate forms of quadrupeds and birds the appearance of real life; and presented to the naturalist the most minute circumstances of. their characters, while at the same time he no less gratified the virtuosi by exhibiting them in their natural forms and colours.

Availing himself of the patronage of Buffon, and of his influence with the government, Daubenton soon formed and executed a very extensive plan: he conceived that all the productions of nature should find a place in the temple he had consecrated to her; he was fully aware that those objects which are regarded as the most important, could only be thoroughly known by a comparison of them with others; and that there existed no one that had not a greater or less affinity with the rest of nature. Impressed with this view of the subject, he made the most unremitting efforts to render his collection complete; whilst at the same time he bestowed the greatest attention on the formation of those anatomical preparations which for a long time distinguished the cabinet of Paris, and which, however disagreeable they may be to the common eye, are not the less useful to those who wish to penetrate beyond the move surface of organized beings, and who endeavour to render natural history a philosophical science, by illustrating the phenomena it exhibits.

The study and arrangement of these productions engrossed his whole attention, and seemed to constitute the only passion he ever experienced. Shut up for whole days in the cabinet, he incessantly occupied himself in changing the disposition of the objects he had accumulated, till by a scrupulous investigation of their several parts, and attempting every possible method, he fell upon that arrangement which was equally consonant to true taste and accurate science^ This passion for arrangement was again revived in full force during his latter years; when, in consequence of victories obtained by the republican arms, there was brought to the museum a fresh store of natural curiosities, and when circumstances permitted him to give to the whole a more complete illustration. At eighty-four years of age, when he stooped much, and both his hands and feet had suffered greatly from the gout, not being able to walk without assistance, he was conducted by two persons every morning to the cabinet, in order to superintend the arrangement of the minerals, the only department allotted to him according to the new organization of the establishment. The second monument that Daubenton has left behind him, and which must ever perpetuate his name, is his Description of Quadrupeds. It must, however, afford a subject of regret to every lover of science, that some circumstances prevented him from extending, as was his original intention, that description to all the productions contained in the cabinet of natural history. It is not now our business to analyze the descriptive part of the Natural History, a work as immense in its details as astonishing in the boldness of the plan, nor to characterize the new and important improvements introduced by him into this department of science. It may be sufficient, in order to convey some idea of the immensity of that work, to observe, that it comprehends not only the external characters, but the internal description of one hundred and eighty-two species of quadrupeds, of which fifty-eight had never been dissected, and thirteen were absolutely non-descripts. It contains, moreover, the external description of twenty-six species, five of which were wholly unknown. The number of new species there described by him is eighteen; but the new and interesting facts which he has brought forward respecting those species of which we had only before a very superficial knowledge, are extremely numerous. The greatest inerit of the work, however, consists in the order and disposition with which all the species are described. It delighted the author to repeat, that he was the first who had established an accurate system of comparative anatomy; the truth of which must certainly be admitted, in this sense, that as all his observations were conducted upon one uniform plan, and equally extended to every animal, it is extremely easy to comprehend their reciprocal relations; that as he was never biassed by any preconceived hypothesis, he has bestowed an equal attention upon every part, and in no instance ever omitted or concealed what could not be reconciled to his own system. This work of Daubenton may be considered as a rich mine, which all who devote themselves to similar pursuits, find it necessary to explore, and of which many have profited without due acknowledgment. Nothing more is frequently necessary than to exhibit a general view of his observations, and to place them under different heads, in order to obtain results highly interesting: it is in this sense that we must understand the expression of the celebrated Camper, “that Daubenton was unconscious of all the discoveries of which he was the author.”

This work procured for Daubenton a very high reputation, and drew upon him the envy of Reaumur, who at that time considered himself as at the head of natural history. But the credit and reputation of Buffon was sufficient to prevent his friend from falling a victim to the attack of this formidable antagonist.

It gives us a very unfavourable idea of Buffon that after this he should himself commence the enemy of Daubenton. He was, however, weak enough to listen to some parasites, who persuaded him that it would redound greatly to his honour to dismiss his associate; and, accordingly, Buffon actually published a new edition of his Natural History, in 13 volumes, 12mo, in which are omitted not only the anatomy, but even the external characters, of the animals which Daubenton had furnished for the large edition; and as nothing was substituted in their stead, the work exhibits no idea of the form, colour, or distinctive attributes of the animals; so that this small edition cannot supply any data whereby to ascertain the animals to which the author alludes, especially as they are not to be found either in Pliny, or Aristotle, who likewise, as is well known, neglected the descriptive details.

Buffon moreover determined not to avail himself of his aid in the works he had projected on ornithology and mineralogy. Independently of this insult, Daubenton susr tained a loss of 12,000 francs yearly. He might indeed have complained, but it would necessarily have embroiled him with the intendant of the king’s garden, and forced him to resign the superintendance of the cabinet he had formed, and to which he was as much attached as to life; overlooking, therefore, this injurious treatment, he continued to pursue his former occupations. The regret which all naturalists testified when the first part of his Ornithology made its apptarance without being accompanied by those accurate descriptions and anatomical details which they estimated so highly, served, however, to console him. He would still have felt more chagrin if his attachment for the great man who neglected him had not yielded to his self-love when he beheld the first volumes, to which Gueiieau de Montbeliard did not contribute, filled with inaccuracies, and destitute of all those particulars which it was impossible for Butfbn to supply. All this was still more manifest in the supplements the productions of Buffon in his old age; and in which he carried his injustice so far as to employ a common draughtsman, for the part which Daubenton had so well executed in the former volumes. Hence many naturalists have endeavoured to supply this void; and, among others, the celebrated Pallas took Daubenton for a model in his Miscellanies and Zoological Gleanings, as well as in his History of Rodentia; works which must be considered as real supplements to Buffon; and, next to his large work, the best on quadrupeds. It is well known how successfully La Cepede, the illustrious continuator of Buffon, and who was also the friend and colleague of Daubenton, whose loss he equally bewails with ourselves, has united in his works on ichthyology and reptiles a rich and brilliant style with the most scrupulous accuracy of description; and how well he has supplied the province of his two predecessors. Daubenton so far forgot the injurious treatment he had received from Buffon, that he afterwards contributed to several parts of the natural history, although his name does not appear; and there exist proofs that when Buffbn composed his History of Miner-Is, he derived much assistance from the manuscript of his lecturts delivered in the French college. Their intimacy, notwithstanding the interruption from the circumstance before mentioned, was even fully re-established, and continued to be maintained to the death of Buffon. It was not in the power of Daubenton to furnish many Ihemoirs to the academy of sciences during the eighteen years in which the fifteen volumes in quarto of the “History of Quadrupeds” successively appeared; but he afterwards fully compensated for this, by supplying not only the academy, but aisothe medical and agricultural societies, and the national institute, with a. great number of papers, all of which contain, as well as the works he published separately, many interesting facts and original observations. His experiments on agriculture and rural oeconomy were, however, of more service to him afterwards than all the rest of his labours, on account of the reputation among the populace which they had procured him. In 1784 he published “Instructions for Shepherds and Proprietors of Flocks,” and was the means of introducing an improved breed of sheep into France. His experiments on this subject were begun about 1766, and the object of his constant pursuits, in which he was encouraged by successive administrations, and in which he eminently succeeded, was to demonstrate the bad effects of confining sheep in stables during the night, and the utility of allowing them to range at large; to attempt different means of improving their breed; to point out how to determine the different qualities of the wool; to d.scover the mechanism of rumination, and thence to deduce some useful conclusions respecting the temperament of wool -bearing animals, as well as with regard to the mode of rearing and feeding them; to disseminate the produce of his sheep-fold throughout every province; to distribute his rams to all the proprietors of flocks; to manufacture woollen-cloth from his own raw material, with the view of convincing the most prejudiced of its superiority; to form intelligent shepherds in order that they might propagate his method, and to render his instructions intelligible to all classes of agriculturists.

By these labours he had acquired a kind of popularity which proved very useful to him in a dangerous crisis. During the second year of the revolution, when it was left for an ignorant multitude to decide on the fate of the most intelligent and virtuous of men, the venerable octogenarian Daubenton found it necessary, in order to preserve the situation which he had filled with so much credit to himself during a period of fifty years, to solicit from the section of Sans Culottes a certificate of his civisrn. It was then scarcely possible for a professor, or an academician, to obtain one; but some sensible persons who intermingled with the populace in the hope of moderating their fury, presented him under the appellation of the Shepherd; and it was thus the shepherd Daubenton procured the necessary certificate as director of the museum of natural history. This paper is still preserved, and may serve as a curious proof of the degraded state of France at that period.

Besides his publications, Danhenton was of great service to science as a lecturer. From 1775 he gave lectures on natural history in the college of medicine. In 1783 he lectured on rural ceconomy. He was appointed professor of mineralogy hy the Convention at the garden of plants, and he gave lectures during the short existence of what' was called the Normal school. He was likewise one of the editors of the “Journal des Savans,” and contributed to both the Encyclopaedias. As a lecturer he was extremely popular, and retained his popularity to the last.

Notwithstanding the feebleness of his constitution, he arrived at a very advanced age without much disease, or loss of his faculties. This may be in some measure ascribed to the gentleness of his temper, and his remarkable resignation. He varied his studies also by frequently reading amusing books of the lighter kind. In 1799, he was named a member of the Conservative Senate, and was anxious to fulfil his new duties as he had formerly fulfilled all those with which he was charged; he was forced to make some change in his usual dress, and the weather being extremely rigorous, the first time he assisted at the sitting of that body, of which he had become a member, he was struck with an apoplexy, and fell senseless into the arms of his colleagues: the most prompt means were employed to afford him relief, but he only recovered his recollection for a short period, during which he evinced the same character as that he had uniformly displayed throughout life. With the utmost calmness, observing the progress of his disease, he pointed out to his friends the' different parts of his body which were still sensible, and unaffected by paralysis. He expired without a struggle on January 1, 1800, and was interred with the funeral honours due to the high character he supported among his countrymen.

, a French Jesuit, of some fame, was born at Auxerre October 21, 1648, and aftt-r performing his noviciate, became a member of the society of Jesuits at Nancy in 1683. After preaching with much success for some time, his health obliged him to desist, and he was chosen companion or assistant of the provincial. He was afterwards elected rector of the college of Strasburgh, and promoted to be provincial of Champagne. He would have been advanced to another ecclesiastical government, had not Louis XIV. requested that he might continue in the college of Strasburgh, more effectually to establish some regulations which he had begun when-first appointed rector. In 1700 the king appointed him confessor to Philip V. of Spain, and he remained in high favour with that prince until the courtiers, grown jealous of his power, prevailed upon the king to send him from the court in 1706. He was, however, recalled again in 1716, and being reinstated in his office, gained a still greater ascendancy over the mind of Philip V. This prince, when disgusted with his throne, and wishing to abdicate it, confided his design to Daubenton, who is said to have betrayed the secret to the duke of Orleans, which conduct terminated in his disgrace a second time, but the manner of it is variously represented by historians. He died, however, in 1723. His character is doubtful, some main.aining that he was a man of intrigue, and others that he made no improper use of his talents or influence. His works consist chiefly of funeral orations, and a life of St. Francis Regis, Paris, 1716, 4to, which was translated and published in English, Lond. 1738, 8vo, a work full of absurd miracles. He published likewise a more enlarged account of the merits of this saint, entitled “Scripta varia in causa beatificationis et canonrzationis J. F. Regis,” Rome, 1710 and 1712, 2 vols. folio.

, a learned French protestant divine, was born about 1670, and came to England on the revocation of the edict of Nantz. Of his history we hare only a short memorandum in ms. by Mr. Whiston, who supposes that he died in 1740. He wrote “Pro Testinonio Josephi de Jesn Christo, contra Tan. Fubrum et alios,” Lond. 1700, 8vo; and a “Commentary on the Revelation of St. John,” 1712, folio. This was, in 1730, published by Peter Lancaster, vicar of Bowden in Cheshire, under the title of “A Perpetual Commentary, &c. newly modelled, abridged, and rendered plain to the meanest capacities.” Mr. Daubuz is here said to have been vicar of Brotherton in Cheshire. Mr. Whiston adds that he had a son, a clergyman, also beneficed in Yorkshire, near Ferrybridge, a studious man, who lived in obscurity, and died a bachelor about 1752.

, an eminent classical and philological scholar, was born March 29, 1612, at Zwickau, became regent of the college in that place 1642, and rector of the same 1662, which office he discharged with great credit till his death, December 26, 1687. He was one of the most learned men of his age he understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, the Turkish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Bohemian languages, and had a complete knowledge of Arabic. Besides editions of several works, which afford a testimony of his industry and superior talents, he left “Letters,” Jena, 1670, 4to; Dresden, 1697, 8vo; Chemnits, 1709, 8vo, all different: some poems and dissertations, as, “Tractatus de causis amissarum Linguae Latince radicum,” 1642, 8vo and in the “Systema Dissert, rar.” of Grævius, Utrecht, 1701, 4to.

, a celebrated Austrian general, prince of Tiano, knight of the golden fleece, and of the order of Maria Theresa, field marshal, minister of state, and president of the Aulic council of war, was born in 1705, of an ancient and illustrious family. He was colonel of a regiment of infantry in 1740, and distinguished himself in the war which Maria Theresa carried on for the preservation of the dominions which were left her by Charles VI. The succeeding war procured him a still more brilliant fame. Prince Charles of Lorraine being besieged in Prague, Daun, at the headof an army collected in haste, took the resolution to force the enemy to raise the siege, gave battle to the king of Prussia at Chotchemitch, the 18th of June, 1757, and gained a complete victory. It was on this occasion that the empress-queen instituted the military order that bears her name. The battle of Hochkirchen, in 1758, added fresh laurels to those of the deliverer of Prague. In 1758, by a series of judicious movements he delivered Olmutz, and attacked the Prussians in 1759 at Pirna, took the whole army commanded by general Finck, and made them prisoners of war. He had not the same success at Siplitz near Torgau, in 1760, where the enemy, after the marshal had been obliged to retire from the field on account of a dangerous wound, gained the superiority. This was followed by the peace of Hubertsbourg in 1763. He died at Vienna, the 5th of February 1766, with the reputation of an experienced, brave, circumspect general, humane and compassionate, uniting the virtues of the Christian with those of the soldier. Occasions where prudence was more necessary than activity, were particularly favourable to him. His perceptions were quick and sure; but, when the urgency of the moment excluded maturity of reflection, he found it difficult to take a vigorous determination. Accordingly his victories were often without effect, and the vanquished, by bold and rapid manoeuvres, sometimes were enabled almost instantly to repair their defeat.

, an. eminent French poet, was born near the head of the Vienne, in the Limousin, about 1507. Removing to the capital of the kingdom to finish his studies, he distinguished himself in such a manner by his skill in Greek, and his talent at poetry, that he became one of the professors of the university of Paris. In 1560 he succeeded John Stracellus in the post of king’s reader and professor of Greek; but before this he had been principal of the college of Coqueret, and tutor to John Antony de Baif, in the house of his father Lazarus de Baif, who was master of the requests. He continued to instruct this young pupil in the college of Coqueret; and he had also the famous Ronsard for his scholar there, during the space of seven years. His highest praise is, that his school produced a great number of able men; but imprudent generosity and want of management reduced him to poverty, and procured him a place in the list of those learned men, whose talents have been of little benefit to themselves. In the reign of Henry II. he had been preceptor to the king’s pages and Charles IX. honoured him with the title of his poet, took great delight in conversing with him, and endeavoured to support him in his old age. It will not now be thought much in his favour that Daurat had an uncommon partiality for anagrams, of which he was the first restorer. It is pretended, that he found the model of them in Lycophron, and brought them so much into vogue, that several illustrious persons gave him their names to anagrammatise. He undertook also to explain the centuries of Nostradamus, and with such imposing plausibility as to be considered in the light of his interpreter or subprophet. When he was near 80, having lost his first wife, he married a young girl; and by her had a son, for whom he shewed his fondness by a thousand ridiculous actions. In excuse for this marriage, he said that he would rather die by a bright sword than a rusty one. He had by his first wife, among other children, a son, who was the author of some French verses, printed in a collection of his own poems; and a daughter, whom he married to a learned man, named Nicolas Goulu, in whose favour he resigned his place of regius professor of Greek. He wrote a great many verses in Latin, Greek, and French, in some of which he attacked the protestants; and no book was printed, nor did any person of consequence die, without his producing some verses on the subject; as if he had been poet in ordinary to the kingdom, or his muse had been a general mourner. The odes, epigrams, hymns, and other poems in Greek and Latin, composed by Daurat, have been estimated at the gross sum of 50,000 verses; Scaliger had such an opinion of him as a critic, that he said he knew none but him and Cujacius, who had abilities sufficient to restore ancient authors; but he has presented the public with no specimen of that talent, except some remarks on the Sybilline verses in Opsopseus’s edition. Scaliger tells us, with some ridicule, however, that he spent the latter part of his life in endeavouring to find all the Bible in Homer. He died at Paris, Nov. 1, 1588, aged Si. His principal collection of verses is entitled “Joannis Aurati, Lemovicis, Poetse et interprets regii, Poematia, hoc est, Poematum libri quinque; Epigrammatum libri tres; Anagrammatum liber unus; Funerum liber unus; Odarum libri duo; Epithalamiorum liber unus; Eclogarum libri duo; Variarum rerum liber unus,” Paris, 1586, 8vo, a very singular collection, although of no great merit as to taste or versification. He deserves more praise as one of the revivers of Greek literature in France, and in that character his memory was honoured, in 1775, hy an eloge, written by the abbe Vitrac, professor of humanity at Limoges.

, a learned Jesuit, was born at St. Omer’s in 1566, and became canon, of Tournay, where he died Jan. 17, 1644. He was an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, and a good critic, but wrote in an affected and obscure style. Some of his works are still valued, although their rarity prevents their being generally known. Among these are, 1. “Antiqui novique Latii Orthographies,” Tournay, 1632, fol. Of this there is a pretended Paris edition of 1677, which is precisely the same, with a new title-page and date. 2. “Terra et aqua, seu terrae fiuctuantes,” Tournay, 1633, 4to; of this there are also copies of Paris, 1677, with only a new title. The small floating isles near St. Omer’s furnished the idea of this work, in which there are many curious observations on marine productions. He also translated into Latin, the “Orations of St. Basil of Seleucia,” with notes, 1604, 8vo; and published an edition of Quintus Calaber, 1614, 8vo, and some other works, theological and critical, which are enumerated in our authorities.

, a learned English divine, was born in 1530, at Barton-Kirk in Westmoreland, and became a student in Queen’s college, Oxford, in 1597, and when B. A. was made tabarder, and in 1605, master of arts and fellow. At college he was of a retired studious disposition, and accounted an ornament to the society. Having taken orders, he was beneficed at Barton-kirk, and afterwards presented to a prebend of Carlisle. About the same time he received the degree of D. D. from the university of St. Andrew’s, and was promoted to the rectory of Ashby in Westmoreland. He was much esteemed for learning, and talents in preaching, of which he published a specimen in “Sermons preached upon several occasions,” London, 1653. He died in the month of February in the same year, and was buried in the chancel of Bartonkirk. His character was honoured by verses in Greek, Latin, and English, by Tully, Williamson, and Ellis, three scholars of Queen’s.

, a learned critic, especially in the Greek tongue, was born in 1708. A respectable family of the name of Dawes had long been situated at Stapleton, between Market-Bosworth and Hinckley in Leicestershire, and our critic was probably of the same family, but it does not appear, from the register of the parish, that he was born at that place. There was a Dr. Dawes, who, early in the last century, resided at Stapleton, and was a great scholar, and a searcher after the philosopher’s stone. It has been supposed, that he might be father to the subject of the present article; but of this fact no decisive evidence can be produced. All the traditions concerning Richard Dawes are, that the place of his birth was either MarketBosworth, or the vicinity of that town. Whoever his parents were, or whatever was their condition in life, it is probable that they perceived such marks of capacity in their son, as determined them to devote him to a literary profession; and accordingly he was put to the free grammar-school at Bosworth, where he had the happiness of receiving part of his education under the care of Mr. Anthony Blackwall. Here he laid the foundation of that critical knowledge of the Greek language which he afterwards displayed so conspicuously. In 1725, he was admitted a sizar of Emanuel college, in the university of Cambridge, where he proceeded bachelor of arts in 1729. On the 2d of October, 1731, he became a fellow of the college on the nomination of sir Wolston Dixie, bart. In 1733, he took the degree of master of arts. The next year he was a candidate for the place of esquire beadle of the university, but his application was not crowned with success. Whilst Mr. Dawes was at Cambridge, he distinguished himself by some peculiarities of conduct, which probably arose from a mixture of insanity in his constitution; and in his conversation he occasionally took such liberties on certain topics as gave great offence to those about him. Having indulged himself too much, at college, in an indolent sedentary way of life, he, at length, found it absolutely necessary to have recourse to some kind of exercise. In this case, being of a strong athletic frame of body, and not over-delicate in the choice of his company, he took to the practice of ringing; and, as such a genius could not stop at mediocrity, he quickly became the leader of the band, and carried the art to the highest perfection.

Another circumstance, though of a very different nature, by which Mr. Dawes rendered himself remarkable, was his taking a violent part against Dr. Bentley, and even endeavouring to depreciate that great man’s literature. In his “Miscellanea Critica,” on several occasions, he detracts from Dr. Bentley’s praises and did not scruple to assert, that the doctor, “nihil in Graecis cognovisse, nisi ex indicibus petitum,” knew nothing relative to Grecian literature, but what he had drawn from indexes; an assertion which could only proceed from extreme vanity, or personal dislike, or a bigoted attachment to a party. Indeed, the contempt with which writers of distinguished abilities sometimes speak of each other, is a disgrace to the republic of letters; and it is much to be lamented that a spirit so contrary to the dictates of justice and urbanity, should still continue to prevail among men who otherwise deserve to be held in esteem.

In 1736, Mr. Dawes published Proposals for printing by subscription, “Paradisi amissi, a cl. Miltono conscripti, Liber primus, Grasca versione donatus, una cum Aunotationibus.” These proposals were accompanied with a specimen, which may be seen in the preface to the Miscellanea Critica, where our author explains his reasons for not proceeding in his undertaking, and very ingenuously points out the errors of his own performance. It was customary with him, in conversation, humourously to expose his version to ridicule; and, therefore, though he had actually completed his design, by translating the whole first book of the Paradise Lost, it is no wonder that he did not commit it to the press.

On the 10th of July, 1738, Mr. Dawes was appointed master of the free grammar-school in Newcastle-uponTyne, in the room of Mr. Edmund Lodge, who had resigned that office. The commencement of his duty was to take place at the Michaelmas following. In the same year, on the 9th of October, he was preferred, by act of common council, to the mastership of the hospital of the blessed Virgin Mary in Newcastle. The business of Mr. Dawes’s new station did not prevent him from prosecuting his inquiries into the nature, peculiarities, and elegancies of the Greek tongue; and accordingly, in 1745, he published his “Miscellanea Critica.” Mr. Hubbard, of Emanuel college, Cambridge, and Dr. Mason, of Trinity, assisted in the publication. It was Mr. Dawes’s design in this work, to afford such a specimen of his critical abilities, as should enable the learned world to judge what might be expected from him, in an edition which he had projected of all the Attic poets, as well as of Homer and Pindar. Though his scheme was never carried into execution, he has obtained, by his “Miscellanea Critica,” a very high place among those who have contributed to the promotion of Greek learning in England, and, as such, his name will be transmitted with honour to posterity. Accordingly, the book has been spoken of in terms of distinguished applause, by some of the first literary characters in Europe, particularly Valkener, Pierson, Koen, and Reiske. A second edition of it, in octavo, was given in 1781, from the Clarendon press, by the rev. Mr. Burgess, of Corpus Christi college, Oxford, now bishop of St. David’s, who has enriched the work with a learned preface, and a number of notes of great value and importance, and some assistance from Dawes’s Mss. procured by Dr. Farmer and Mr. Salter. Mr. Dawes’s situation at Newcastle was neither so happy nor so useful as might have been expected; in a great measure owing to the eccentricity of his disposition, and, indeed, to his imagination being in some respects disturbed. Hence he fancied that all his friends had slighted him, or used him ill; and of the jealousy of his temper he has left a remarkable instance, on a very trifling occasion. His printer, by an unfortunate mistake, in a passage of Terentianus Maurus, which Mr. Dawes had quoted in order to correct, had inserted a comma that destroyed the merit of the emendation. In consequence of this involuntary error, our author, in the Addenda to his Mis-cellanea, has expressed himself with great indignation, He declares, that he could not conjecture what fault he had committed against the printer, that he should envy him the honour, whatever it was, that was due to his correction; and he adds, that he knows not how it happened, that, for several years past, he had been ill used by those from whom he had deserved better treatment. With the corporation of Newcastle he became involved in altercations, and adopted a singular method of displaying his resentment, or rather his contempt; for in teaching the boys at school, he made them translate the Greek word for ass into alderman; which some of the lads did seriously, though otherwise well instructed. With such a disposition of mind, it is not surprising that his scholars were, at length, reduced to a very small number; so that it became expedient for him to consent to quit his station. Accordingly, at Midsummer, 1749, he resigned the mastership of the grammarschool, and the mastership of St. Mary’s hospital; and, in consideration of these sacrifices, the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle, on the 25th of September following, executed a bond, by which they engaged to grant him an annuity of eighty pounds a-year, during life.

Mr. Dawes, after his resignation of the above two offices, retired to Heworth-shore, about three miles below Newcastle, on the south side of the Tyne, where his favourite amusement was the exercise of rowing in a boat. In his conversation, he preserved, to the last, his splenetic humour; abusing every thing, and every person that he had formerly regarded. He departed this life, at Heworth, on the 21st of March, 17G6, and, agreeably to his own desire, was buried in the church-yard of that place; where a common head-stone, little suited to the just reputation of so eminent a scholar, continues to mark his grave with the words, “In memory of Richard Dawes, late headmaster of the grammar (sic) school at Newcastle; who died the 21st of March, 1766. Aged 57 years.”