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6. “Some farther Remarks, Paragraph by Paragraph, upon Proposals lately published for a new edition of a Greek and Latin Testament, by Richard Bentley,” 1721. His motto was again chosen in the same contemptuous spirit, “Occupatus ille eruditione secularium literarum, scripturas omi)ino sanctas ignoraverit,” c. Hieron. These two pieces against Bentley were thought to be written with great acuteness and learning; but if, as asserted, they prevented the intended publication, whoever can appreciate Bentley’s talents will agree that acuteness and learning were never worse employed.

Upon the great enlargement of the public library at Cambridge, by the addition of bishop Moore’s books, which had been purchased by the king at 6000l. and presented to the university, the erection of a new office there, that of principal librarian, was first voted, and then conferred upon Dr. Middleton: who, to shew himself worthy of it, published, in 1723, a little piece with this title,

7. “Bibliothecae Cantabrigiensis ordinandae methodus quaedam, quam domino procancellario senatuique acaclemico considerandam & perficiendam, officii & pietatis ergo proponit.” The plan is allowed to be judicious, and the whole performance expressed in elegant Latin. In his dedication, however, to the vice-chancellor, in which he alluded to the contest between the university and Dr. Bentley, he made use of some incautious words against the jurisdiction of the court of King’s-bench, for which he was prosecuted, but dismissed with an easy fine. Soon after this publication, having had the misfortune to lose his wife, Dr. Midclleton, not then himself in a good state of health, owing to some experiments he had been making to prevent his growing fat, travelled through France into Italy, along with lord Coleraine, an able antiquary, and arrived at Rome early in 1724. Here, though his character and profession were well known, he was treated with particular respect by persons of the first distinction both in church and state. The author of the account of his life in the “Biographia Britannica,” relates, that when Middleton first arrived at Rome, he met with an accident, which provoked him not a little. “Dr. Middleton,” says he, “made use of his character of principal librarian, to get himself introduced to his brother librarian at the Vatican; who received him with great politeness; but, upon his mentioning Cambridge, said he did not knowbefore that there was any university in England of that name, and at the same time took notice, that he was no stranger to that of Oxford, for which he expressed a great esteem. This touched the honour of our new librarian, who took some pains to convince his brother not only of the real existence, but of the real dignity of his university of Cambridge. At last the keeper of the Vatican acknowledged, that, upon recollection, he had indeed heard of a celebrated school in England of that name, which was a kind of nursery, where youth were educated and prepared for their admission at Oxford; and Dr. Middleton left him at present in that sentiment. But this unexpected indignity put him upon his mettle, and made him resolve to support his residence at Rome in such a manner, as should be a credit to his station at Cambridge; and accordingly he agreed to give 400l. per annum for a hotel, with all accommodations, fit for the reception of those of the first rank in Rome: which, joined to his great fondness for antiques, occasioned him to trespass a little upon his fortune.” Part of this story seems not very probable.

He returned through Paris towards the end of 1725, and arrived at Cambridge before Christmas. He had not been long employed in his study, before he incurred the displeasure of the whole medical faculty, by the publication of a tract, entitled, 8. “De medicorum apud veteres Romanos degentiiuu coiulitione dissertatio qua, contra viros celeberrimos Jacobutn Sponimn &, Richardum Meadium, servilem atque ignobilem earn fuisse ostenditur,” Cant. 1726. Mead had just before published an Harveian Oration, in which he had defended the dignity of his profession: so that this seeming attempt of Middleton to degrade it, was considered by the faculty as an open attack upon their order. Much resentment was shewn, and some pamphlets were published: one particularly with the title of “Responsio,” of which the late professor Ward of Gresham-college was the author. Ward was supposed to be chosen by Mead himself for this task: for his book was published under Mead’s inspection, and at his expence. Middleton defended his dissertation in a new publication entitled, 9. “Dissertations, &e. contra anonymos quosdam notarum brevium, responsionis, atque animadversionis auctores, defensio, Pars prima, 1727.” The purpose of this tract seems to have been, not to pursue the controversy, for he enters little into it, but to extricate himself from it with as good a grace as he could: for nothing more was published about it, and the two doctors, Mead and Middleton, without troubling themselves to decide the question, became afterwards very good friends. A “Pars secunda,” however, was actually written, and printed for private circulation, after his death, by Dr. Heberden, in 1761, 4to. In 1729 Middleton published, 10. “A Letter from Rome, shewing an exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism: or, the Religion of the present Romans derived from that of their Heathen Ancestors.” This letter, though written with great politeness, good sense, and learning, yet drew upon the author the displeasure of some even of our own church; because he attacked in it the Popish miracles with that general spirit of incredulity and levity, which seemed, in their opinion, to condemn all miracles. In his second edition he endeavoured to obviate this objection, by an -express declaration in favour of the Jewish and Christian miracles, to which perhaps more credit was given now than afterwards. A fourth edition came out in 1741, 8vo, to which were added, 1. “A prefatory Discourse, containing an Answer to the Writer of a Popish book, entitled, The Catholic Christian instructed, &c. with many new facts and testimonies, in farther confirmation of the general Argument of the Letter:” and, 2. “A Postscript, in which Mr. Warburton’s opinion concerning the Paganism of Rome is particularly considered.” Hitherto certainly the opinion of the world was generally in his favour, and many thought that he had done great service to Protestantism, by exposing the absurdities and impostures of Popery. He had also several personal qualities, which recommended him; he was an excellent scholar, an elegant writer, a very polite man, and a general favourite with the public, as well as with the community in which he lived; but an affair now happened, which ruined all his hopes, proved fatal to his views of preferment, and disgraced him with his countrymen as long as he lived.

About the beginning of 1730, was published Tindal’s famous book called “Christianity as old as the Creation:” the design of which was to destroy revelation, and to establish natural religion in its stead. Many writers entered into controversy againsMt, and, among the rest, the wellknown Waterland, who published a “Vindication of Scripture,” &c. Middleton, not lik.ng his manner of vindicating Scripture, addressed, 11. “A letter to him, containing some remarks on it, together with the sketch, or plan, of another answer to TindaPs book,” 1731. Two things, we are told, contributed to make this performance obnoxious to the clergy; first, the popular character of Waterland, who was then at the head of the champions for orthodoxy, yet whom Middleton, instead of reverencing, had ventured to treat with the utmost contempt and severity; secondly, the very free things that himself had asserted, and especially his manner of saying them. His name was not put to the tract, n'or was it known for some time who was the author of it. While Waterland continued to publish more parts of “Scripture vindicated,” &c. Pearce, bishop of Rochester, took up the contest in his behalf; which drew from Middleton, 12. “A Defence of the Letter to Dr. Waterland against the false and frivolous Cavils of the Author of the Reply,” 1731. Pearce replied to this “Defence,” and treated him, as he had done before, as an infidel, or enemy to Christianity in disguise; who, under the pretext of defence, meant nothing less than subversion. Middleton was now known to be the author of the letter; and he was very near being stripped of his degrees, and of all his connections with the university. But this was deferred, upon a promise that he would make all reasonable satisfaction, and explain himself in such a manner, as, if possible, to remove every objection. This he* attempted to do in, 13. “Some Remarks on Dr. Pearce’s second Reply, &c. wherein the author’s sentiments, as to all the principal points in dispute, are fully and clearly explained in the manner that had been promised,” 1732: and he at least effected so much by this piece, that he was suffered to be quiet, and to remain in statu quo; though his character as a divine ever after lay under suspicion, and he was reproached by some of the more zealous clergy, by Venn in particular, with downright apostacy. There was also published, in 1733, an anonymous pamphlet, entitled, “Observations addressed to the author of the Letter, to Dr. Waterland” which was written by Dr. Williams, public orator of the university and to which Middleton replied in, 14. “Some remarks,” &c. The purpose of Williams was to prove Middleton an infidel that his letter ought to be burnt, and himself banished and he then presses him to confess and recant in form.“But,” says Middleton, “I have nothing to recant on the occasion nothing to confess, but the same four articles that I have already confessed first, that the Jews borrowed some of their customs from Egypt secondly, that the Egyptians were possessed of arts and learning in Moses’s time; thirdly, that the primitive writers, in vindicating Scripture, found it necessary sometimes to recur to allegory; fourthly, that the Scriptures are not of absolute and universal inspiration. These are the only crimes that I have been guilty of against religion: and by reducing the controversy to these four heads, and declaring my whole meaning to be comprised in diem, I did in reality recant every thing else, that through heat or inadvertency had dropped from me; every thing that could be construed to a sense hurtful to Christianity.”

During this controversy, he was appointed, in Dec. 1731, Woodwardian professor; a foundation to which he had in some degree contributed, and was, therefore, appointed by Woodward’s executors to be the first professor. In July 1732, he published his inauguration speech, with this title, 15. “Oratio de novo physiologies explicandos munere, ex celeberrimi Woodwardi testamento instituto: habita Cantabrigias in scholis publicis.” It is easy to suppose, that the reading of lectures upon fossils was not an employment suited either to Middleton’s taste, or to the turn of his studies; and therefore we cannot wonder that he should resign it in 1734, when made principal librarian. Soon after this, he married a second time, Mary, the daughter of the rev. Conyers Place, of Dorchester; and upon her death, which happened but a few years before his own, a third, who was Anne, the daughter of John Powglf, esq. of Boughroya, Radnorshire, in North Wales. In 1735 he published, 16. “A Dissertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England: shewing, that it was first introduced and practised by our countryman William Caxton, at Westminster, and not, as is commonly believed, by a foreign printer at Oxford” an hypothesis that has been since ably controverted in Bowyer and Nichols’s “Origin of Printing,” 1776.

In 1711, came out his great work, 17. “The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero,” in 2 vols. 4to. This is injdeed a valuable work, both as to matter and manner, written generally, although not unexceptionably, in a correct and elegant style, and abounds in instruction and entertainment. Yet his partiality to Cicero forms a considerable objection to his veracity as a biographer. He has laboured every where to cast a shade over his failings, to give the strongest colouring to his virtues, and out of a good character to draw a perfect one; which, though Cicero was undoubtedly a great man, could not be applicable even to him. Perhaps, however, as a history of the times, it is yet more valuable than considered only as a life of Cicero. It was published by subscription, and dedicated to lord Hervey, who was much the author’s friend, and promised him a great number of subscribers. “His subscription,” he tells us, “was like to be of the charitable kind, and Tully to be the portion of two young nieces” (for he had no child living by any of his wives) “who were then in the house with him, left by an unfortunate brother, who had nothing else to leave.” The subscription must have been very great, which not only enabled him to portion these two nieces, but, as his biographers inform us, to purchase a small estate at Hildersham, about six miles from Cambridge, where he had an opportunity of gratifying his taste, by converting a rude farm into an elegant habitation, and where, from that time, he commonly passed the summer season. While engaged on his “Cicero,” he was called to London to receive the mastership of the Charter-house, having the interest of sir Robert Walpole, and some other great persons; but he found that the duke of Newcastle had been more successful, in procuring it for Mr. Mann. Why the duke opposed Dr. Middleton we know not; as in 1737 we find him strenuously recommending his proposals for the Life of Cicero, and soliciting subscriptions.

The same year came out a publication which laid the foundation of another controversy with the clergy, called, 21. “An introductory Discourse to a larger Work, designed hereafter to be published, concerning the miraculous powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian church from the earliest ages, through several successive centuries; tending to shew, that we have no sufficient reason to believe, upon the authority of the primitive fathers, that any such powers were continued to the church after the days of the apostles. With a Postscript, containing some Remarks on an archidiaconal charge, delivered last summer by the Rev. Dr. Chapman, to the clergy of the archdeaconry of Sudbury.” This undertaking justly alarmed the clergy, and all friends to religion, since it was impossible to succeed, without entirely destroying the reputation of the fathers; and many were also of opinion, that the miracles of the three first centuries could not be rejected as forgeries and impostures, without tainting in some degree the credit of the Scripture miracles. They thought too, that even the canon of Scripture must not be a little affected, if the fathers, on whose credit the authenticity of its books in Some measure depends, were so utterly despised. The “Introductory Discourse” was therefore immediately attacked by two celebrated controversial writers, Dr. Stebbing and Dr. Chapman; the former endeavouring chiefly to shew, that Dr. Middleton’s scheme was inseparably connected with the fall of Christianity; while the latter laboured to support the authority of the fathers. This attack Middleton endeavoured to repel by, 22. “Some remarks on both their performances,” 1748; and, in December the same year, he published his larger work, with this title, 23. “A free inquiry into the Miraculous powers which are supposed to have subsisted in. the Christian church from the earliest ages, through several successive centuries.” Innumerable answerers now appeared against him; two of whom, namely, Dodwell and Church, distinguished themselves with so much zeal and ability, that they were complimented by the university of Oxford with the degree of doctor in divinity.

Before Middleton thought proper to take notice of any of his antagonists, he surprised the public with, 24. “An Examination of the lord bishop of London’s Discourses concerning the use and intent of Prophecy: with some cursory animadversions on his late Appendix, or additional dissertation, containing a farther enquiry into the Mosaic account of the Fall, 1750.” He tells his reader in the beginning of this “Examination,” that though these discourses of Dr. Sherlock had been “published many years, and since corrected and enlarged by him in several successive editions, yet he had in truth never read them till very lately; or otherwise these animadversions might have made their appearance probably much earlier.” To this assertion, from a man so devoted to study, it is not easy to give credit; especially when it is remembered also that Midclleton and Sherlock had been formerly in habits of intimacy and friendship; were ofthe same university, and nearly of the same standing and that, however severely and maliciously Middleton treated his antagonist in the present Examination, there certainly was a time when he triumphed in him as “the principal champion and ornament of church and university.” Different principles and different interests separated them afterwards: but it is not easy to conceive that Middleton, who published his Examination in 1750, should never have read these very famous discourses, which were published in 1725*. There is too great reason, therefore, to suppose, that this publication was drawn from him by spleen and personal enmity, which he now entertained against every writer who appeared in defence of the belief and doctrines of the church. What other provocation he might have is unknown. Whether the bishop preferred, had not been sufficiently mindful of the doctor unpreferred, or whether the bishop had been an abettor and encourager of those who opposed the doctor’s principles, cannot be ascertained; some think that both causes concurred in creating an enmity between the doctor and the bishop f. This “Examination” was refuted by Dr. Rutherforth, divinity professor at Cambridge: but Middleton, having gratified his animosity against Sherlock, pursued the argument no further. He was, however, meditating a general answer to all the objections made against the “Free Inquiry;” when being seized with illness, and imagining he might not be able to go through it, he singledout Church and Dodwell, as the two most considerable of his adversaries, and employed himself in preparing a particular answer to them. This, however, he did not live to finish, but died of a slow hectic fever and disorder in his liver, on the 28th of July, 175O, in his sixty-seventh 1 year, at Hildersham. He was buried in the parish of St.

* “Sherlock told me that he pre- bably from the same authority, sented Dr. M. with this book when first f It is said by bishop Newton, that published in 1725, and that he soon when Middleton applied for the Charafterwards thanked him for it, and ex- terhouse. Sir Robert Walpole told him pressed his pleasure in the perusal.” that Sherlock, with the other bishops, ms note by Whiston the bookseller, in was against his being chosen. This to his copy of the first edition of this Die- a man who, as Warburton, his friend, ­tionary. The same fact occurs in the declared, “never could bear contraGent. Mag. 1773, 385, 387, but pro- diction,” was sufficient provocation. Michael, Cambridge. As he died without issue, he left his widow, who died in 1760, in possession of an estate which was not inconsiderable: yet we are told that a little before his death, he thought it prudent to accept of a small living from sir John Frederick, bart *. A few months after was published, his 25. “Vindication of the Free enquiry into the Miraculous powers, &c. from the objections of Dr. Dodwell and Dr. Church.” The piece is unfinished, as we have observed, but correct, as far as it goes, which is about fourscore pages in quarto.

In 1752, were collected all the above-mentioned works, except “The Life of Cicero,” and printed in four volumes, 4to, under the title of “Miscellaneous Works;” among which were inserted these following pieces, never before published, viz. 26. “A 'Preface to an intended Answer to all the objections made against the Free enquiry.” 27. “Some cursory reflections on the dispute, or dissention, which happened at Antioch, between the Apostles Peter and Paul.” 28. “Reflections on the variations, or inconsistencies, which are found among the four Evangelists, in their different accounts of the same facts.” 29. “An Essay on the gift of Tongues, tending to explain the proper notion and nature of it, as it is described and delivered to us in the sacred Scriptures, and it appears also to have been understood by the learned both of ancient and modern times.” 30. “Some short Remarks on a Story told by the Ancients concerning St. John the Evangelist, and Cerinthus the Heretic; and on the use which is made of it by the Moderns, to enforce the duty of shunning Heretics.” 31. “An Essay on the allegorical and* literal interpretation of the creation and fall of Man.” 32. “De Latinaruiri literarum pronunciatione dissertatio.” 33. “Some Letters of Dr. Middleton to his Friends.” A second edition of these “Miscellaneous Works” was afterwards published in

* The living was Hascomb, in Surrey, which I wholly dislike, yet while I amOneof Dr.Middleton’s biographers, and content to acquiesce in the ill, I should the most furious in railing at the cleri- be glad to taste a little of the good, and cat bigots who opposed his sentiments, to have so'me amends for the ugly ashas been so blinded by the doctor’s sent and consent which no man of sense virtues, as to inform us that his sub- can approve.“If Dr. Middleton had scription to the thirty-nine article?, his bigoted opponents, the present when he accepted of this living, was anecdote may surely be quoted as a purely political and gives the follow- proof that he had very impartial deing confirmation of the fact, from a fenders! British Biography, by foir­ms letter of Dr.Middleton’s:” Though ers, vol. IX. p, 337. there are many things in the churcU 5 vols. 8vo, but for many years there has been little or no demand for any of his works, except the “Life of Cicero.”

Dr. Middleton’s reputation as a man of great learning and splendid talents may still be supported by his writings, but in his personal character, little will be found that is amiable, dignified, or independent. His religion was justly suspected, and it is certain that his philosophy did not teach him candour. He had been opposed, without respect, by many of the clergy, and in revenge, he attacked the church, to which he professed to belong, and in which he would have been glad to rise, if he could.

With respect to his talents as a writer, he tells his patron, lord Hervey, in his dedication of “The Life of Cicero,” that “it was Cicero who instructed him to write your lordship,” he goes on, “who rewards me for writing for next to that little reputation with which the public has been pleased to favour me, the benefit of this subscription is the chief fruit that I have ever reaped from my studies.” Of this he often speaks, sometimes in terms of complaint, and sometimes, as in the following passage, in a strain of triumph: “I never was trained,” says he, “to pace in the trammels of the church, nor tempted by the sweets of its preferments, to sacrifice the philosophic freedom of a studious, to the servile restraints of an ambitious life: and from this very circumstance, as often as I reflect upon it, I feel that comfort in my own breast, which no external honours can bestow. I persuade myself, that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably, than in th$ search of knowledge, and especially of that sort which relates to our duty, and conduces to our happiness, &c.” This, however, was the philosophy of a disappointed man. It is true, indeed, that he felt the free spirit he describes, which was manifest in all his writings, yet from many of them it is no less clear that he felt anger and disappointment also, at not being preferred, according t;o his own internal consciousness of merit. So inconsistent are even the most able men. He made his preferment impossible, and then repined at not obtaining it. Some of his late biographers have endeavoured to prove what a “good Christian” he was; he had the same opinion of himself, but it is not easy to discover what, in his view, entered into the character of a good Christian. That he was an apostate, as some of his antagonists have asserted, may be doubtful, r perhaps easily contradicted. From all we have seen of his confidential correspondence, he does not appear to have, ever had much to apostatize from. As far back as 1733, he says, in one of his letters to lord Hervey, “It is my misfortune to have had so early a taste of Pagan sense, as to make me very squeamish in my Christian studies.” In the following year he speaks of one of the most common observances of religion in a manner that cannot be misunderstood: “Sunday is my only day of rest, but not of liberty; for I am bound to a double attendance at church, to wipe off the stain of infidelity. When I have recovered my credit, in which I make daily progress, I may use more freedom.” With such contempt for church and churchmen, it can be no wonder that Dr. Middleton failed both of preferment and respect.

, a public-spirited man, and a great benefactor to the city of London, by bringing in thither the New River, was a native of Denbigh in North Wales, and a citizen tind goldsmith of London. This city not being sufficiently supplied with water, three acts of parliament were obtained for that purpose; one in queen Elizabeth’s, and two in king James the First’s reign; granting the citizens of London full power to bring a river from any part of Middlesex and Hertfordshire. The project, after much calculation, w r as laid aside as impracticable, till sir Hugh Middleton undertook it: in consideration of which, the city conferred on him and his heirs, April 1, 1606, the full right and power of the act of parliament; granted unto them in that behalf. Having therefore taken an exact survey of all springs and rivers in Middlesex and Hertfordshire, he made choice of two springs, one in the parish of Am well near Hertford, the other near Ware, both about twenty miles from London; and, having united their streams, conveyed them to the city with very great labour and expence. The work was begun Feb. 20, 1608, and carried on through various soils, some oozy and muddy, others extremely hard and rocky. Many bridges in the mean time were built over his New River; and many drains were made to carry off land-springs and commonsewers, sometimes over and sometimes under it. Besides these necessary difficulties, he had, as may easily be imagined, many others to struggle with; as the malice and derision of the vulgar and envious, the many hindrances and complaints of persons through whose grounds the channel was to be cut, &c. When he had brought the water into the neighbourhood of Enfield, almost his whole fortune was spent upon which he applied to the lord mayor and commonalty of London but they refusing to interest themselves in the affair, he applied next to king James. The king, willing to encourage that noble work, did, by indenture under the great seal, dated May 2, 1612, between him and Mr. Middleton, covenant to pay half the expence of the whole work, past and to come; and thus the design was happily effected, and the water brought into the cistern at Islington on Michaelmas-day, 1613. Like all other projectors, sir Hugh greatly impaired his fortune by this stupendous work: for though king James had borne so great a part of the expence, and did afterwards, in 1619, grant his letters-patent to sir Hugh Middleton, and others, incorporating them by the name of “The Governors and Company of ttfe New River, brought from Chadwell and Am well to London” impowering them to choose a governor, deputy-governor, and treasurer, to grant leases, &c. yet the profit it brought in at first was very inconsiderable. There was no dividend made among the proprietors till the year 1633, when III. 195. Id. was divided upon ea^h share. The second dividend amounted only to 3l. 4s. 2d. and instead of a third dividend, a call being expected, king Charles I. who was in possession of the royal moiety aforesaid, re-conveyed it again to sir Hugh, by a deed under the great seal, Nov. 18, 1636; in consideration of sir Hugh’s securing to his majesty and his successors a fee-farm rent of 500l. per annum, out of the profits of the company, clear of all reprises. Sir Hugh charged that sum upon the holders of the king’s shares. He was at last under the necessity of engaging in the business of a surveyor, or what is now denominated a civil engineer, and in that capacity rendered essential services to his country, by various schemes of mining, draining, &c. In 1622 he was created a baronet, and he died in the year 1631; since which, the value of the shares in this New River, as it is still called, advanced so much as to create large fortunes to thje heirs of the original holders. A hundred pounds share, some years since, sold as high as fifteen thousand pounds. Of late, however, there have been several acts of parliament passed in favour of other projects, which have reduced the value of the New River shares full one half. It is the fashion now to decry the company as extravagant in their charges for supplies of water; but it should be remembered, that the shares of this corporation, like those of other commercial companies, are perpetually changing their masters; and it is probable that the majority of share-holders, when their value was even at the highest, had paid their full price, so as to gain only a maderate interest upon their purchase money.

, a celebrated Flemish painter of history, hunting and conversation pieces, was born in Flanders in 1599, and was first a disciple of Gerard Segers, in whose school his talents were much distinguished; but went to complete his studies in Italy, where he was distinguished by the name of Giovanrti delle Vite. He particularly studied and copied the works of the Caracci and Correggio, and was admitted into the academy of Andrea Sacchi, who would have employed him as an assistant to himself in some great works, had he not unfortunately preferred the familiar stvle of Bamboccio, to the elevated conceptions of Sacchi. His general subjects for his easel pictures, which are the finest of his performances, were of the familiar kind; but he also painted history, in a large size, in fresco, and in oil. His pictures of huntings are particularly admired; the figures and animals of every species being designed with uncommon spirit, nature, and truth. The transparence of his colouring, and the clear tints.of his skies, enliven his compositions; nor are his paintings in any degree inferior to those of Bamboccio, either in their force or lustre. His large works are not so much to be commended for the goodness of the design, as for the expression and colouring; but it is in his small pieces that the pencil of Miel appears in its greatest delicacy and beauty. His singular merit recommended him to Charles Emanuel duke of Savoy, who appointed him his principal painter, and afterwards honoured him with the cross of St. Mauriiius. He died in 1664, aged sixty-five.

, called Old Francis Miens, one of the most remarkable disciples of Gerard Dow, was born at Leyden, in 1635. He imitated his. master with great diligence, and has been thought in some respects to surpass him. Minute accuracy, in copying common objects on a small scale, was the excellence of this artist, with the same sweetness of colouring, and transparence that marks the paintings of Dow. In design he has been thought more comprehensive and delicate than his master, his touch more animated, with greater freshness and force in his pictures. His manner of painting silks, velvets, stuffs, or carpets, was so studiously exact, that the differences of their construction are clearly visible in his representations. His pictures are scarce, and generally bear a very high price. His own valuation of his time was a ducat an hour: and for one picture of a lady fainting, with a physician attending her, and applying remedies, he was paid at that ratio, so large a sum as fifteen hundred florins. The grand duke of Tuscany is said to have offered 3000 for it, but was refused. One of the most beautiful of the works of Francis Mieris, in this country, where they are not very common, is in the possession of Mr. P. H. Hope, and is known by the appellation of the “Shrimp Man.” Mieris died in 1681, at the age of forty-six. He left two sons, John and William, who were both eminent painters. John, however, died young; William is the subject of the ensuing article.

, called the Young Mieris, was born at Leyden in 1662, and during the life of his father made a remarkable progress under his instructions. When he lost this aid, which was at the age of nineteen, he turned his attention to nature, and attained still higher excellence by an exact imitation of his models. He painted history occasionally, and sometimes animals, and even landscapes; and modelled in clay and wax with so much skill, as to deserve the name of an excellent sculptor. In the delicate finishing of his works he copied his father, and also in the lustre, harmony, and truth of his paintings; altogether, however, they are not quite equal to those of the elder Mieris. He died in 1747, at the age of eighty-five. He left a son named Francis, who is called the Young Francis Mieris, to distinguish him from his grandfather. He painted jn the same style, but was inferior to his father and grandfather; yet there is no doubt that his pictures are often sold in collections under the name of one of the former.

, an historical and portrait painter, was born at Troyes, in Champagne, in 1610. He was the disciple of Vouet, but quitted his school at an early period of his life, and went to Rome, anxious to see and study the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and the Caracci. He there lived with Du Fresnoy, and they studied together the noble works of art which that city presented to them; they also travelled together to Florence and Venice, that they might leave no source of improvement unsought which the extraordinary talents of their great predecessors had prepared and left for their study and imitation. Mignard’s residence at Rome, which he prolonged for twenty- two years, and the style he acquired of composition and drawing by the imitation of the Roman masters, together, obtained for him the appeHation of the Roman; but to judge candidly, one would imagine that the former was the principal cause of that denomination; for his style of design savours too much of the flutter of the French school, instead of the chaste simplicity of Raphael and the best of the Romans. He enjoyed, however, a full share of favour and fortune during his life. He painted portraits of the popes Urban VIII. and Alexander VII. together with those of many of the nobility of Rome.

Louis XIV. hearing of his fame and abilities, sent for him to Paris, and is said to have sat to him for his portrait ten times. Almost all the illustrious nobles of the French court followed the example of their sovereign, and were painted by Mignard. His style of execution in these portraits is wrought up with all the false taste and pompous parade which distinguished that vicious period of the French nation; in his pictures every thing seems in motion; even. when the scene is laid in a close room, the draperies are flying about as in a high wind. With these and other defective points in his character as an artist, Mignard must be allowed to be the best portrait-painter of the French school. The king ennobled him; and, after Le Brun’s death, appointed him his principal painter, and the director of the manufactories of Seve and the Gobelins. He lived to the age of eighty-five, dying in 1695. He had an elder brother, whose name was Nicholas, a skilful painter, but who never rose to equality with him.

,or Minion (Abraham), a painter of Frankfort, was born in 1639, and celebrated for his delicate and accurate touch in painting flowers, insects, fruit, and still life. The insects introduced by him are exquisitely painted, and the drops of dew upon the fruits and flowers, have all the transparency of real water, and he would have been esteemed the first painter in this style had not Van Huysum appeared. Mignon died in 1679.

, a learned French canonist, was born at Paris, March 17, 1698. In his younger years he went through a complete course of education, and even then gave proofs of those talents in theology and general literature which constituted the reputation of his future life. After studying with care and success the Oriental languages, the holy Scriptures, the fathers, church history, and the canon law, he received his degree of doctor of divinity in April 1722. After this his attention was particularly directed to the history and antiquities of the laws and customs of his country, which made him often be consulted by political and professional men, and procured him the esteem and confidence, among others, of the celebrated chancellor D'Aguesseau. Mignot, however, amidst these advantages, which opened an easy way to promotion, indulged his predilection for a retired life, and was so little desirous of public notice that he seldom, if ever, put his name to his works; but he was not allowed to remain in obscurity, and, although somewhat late in life, he was elected a member of the academy of inscriptions, to whose memoirs he furnished some excellent papers on topics of ancient history. He died July 25, 1771, in the seventythird year of his age, leaving the following works, which were all much esteemed in France: 1. “Trait 6 des prets de commerce,” Paris, 1759, 4 vols. 12mo. To this he added a 5th vol. in 1767, that he might answer the abbé, La Porte, who had opposed his opinions respecting usurious interest. 2. “Les Droits de l'etat et du prince sur les biens du clerge,” 1755, 6 vols. 12mo. 3. “Histoire des demeles de Henry II, avec St. Thomas de Cantorbery,” 1756, 12mo, a work, if well executed, of some importance in English history. 4. “Histoire de la reception du Concile de Trente dans les etats catholiques,” Amst. 1756, 2 vols. 12mo. 5. “Paraphrase sur les Psaumes,” and some paraphrases on other parts of the Bible. He published also a few religious works, a Memoir on the liberties of the Gallican church, and “La Verite de l'Histoire de PEglise de St. Omer,” 1754, 4to, a work improperly attributed to the abbe de Bonnaire. There was another abbe* Mignot, who died in 1790, the nephew of Voltaire, and who, fearing that the remains of his uncle would not be allowed Christian burial, had him interred in his abbey of Selliere. He wrote a history of the Ottoman empire, and a translation of Quintus Curtius.

, a poetical writer of no very honourable reputation, was the son of a nonconformist minister, of both his names, a native of Loughborough in Leicestershire, who was ejected from the living of Wroxhal in Warwickshire. He died in 1667. Of his son, little seems to be known unless that he was educated at Pembroke hall, Cambridge, where he is said to have taken his master’s degree, but we do not find him in the list of graduates of either university. Mr. Malone thinks he was beneficed at Yarmouth, from whence he dates his correspondence about 1690. We are more certain that he was instituted to the living of St. Ethelburga within Bishopsgate, London, in 1704, and long before that, in 1688, was chosen lecturer of Shoreditch. Dryden, whom he was weak enough to think he rivalled, says in the preface to his “Fables,” that Milbourne was turned out of his benefice for writing libels on his parishioners. This must have been his Yarmouth benefice, if he had one, for he retained the rectory of St. Ethelburga, and the lectureship of Shoreditch, to his death, which happened April 15, 1720. As an author he was known by a “Poetical Translation of Psalms,” 1698, of a volume called “Notes on Dryden’s Virgil,” 1698 of “Tom of Bedlam’s Answer to Hoadly,” &c. He is frequently coupled with Blackmore, by Dryden, in his poems, and by Pope in “The Art of Criticism;” and is mentioned in “The Dunciad.” He published thirtyone single “Sermons,” between 1692 and 1720; a book against the Socinians, 1692, 12mo; and “A Vindication of the Church of England,” 1726, 2 vols. 8vo. A whimsical copy of Latin verses, by Luke Milbourne, B, A. is in the “Lacrymse Cantabrigienses, 1670,” on the death of Henrietta duchess of Orleans. Dr. Johnson, in the Life of Dryden, speaking of that poet’s translation of Virgil, says, “Milbourne, indeed, a clergyman, attacked it (Dryden’s Virgil), but his outrages seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by stronger resentment than bad poetry can excite, and previously resolved not to be pleased. His criticism extends only to the preface, pasturals, and georgtcks; and, as he professes to give this antagonist an opportunity of reprisal, he has added his own version of the first and fourth pastorals, and the first georgic.” Malone conjectures that Melbourne’s enmity to Dryden originally arose from Dryden’s having taken his work out of his hands as he once projected a translation of Virgil, and published a version of the first Æneid. As he had Dryden and his friends, and Pope and his friends against him, we cannot expect a very favourable account either of his talents or morals. Once only we find him respectfully mentioned, by Dr. Walker, who thanks him for several valuable communications relative to the sequestered divines.

, an eminent statesman of the sixteenth century, and founder of Emmanuel college, Cambridge, was the fourth son of Thomas Mildmay, esq. by Agnes, his wife, daughter of Read. He was educated at Christ’s college, Cambridge, where he made great proficiency in learning, and to which college he afterwards became a benefactor. In the reign of Henry VIII. he succeeded to the office which had been held by his father, that of surveyor of the court of augmentation, erected by statute 27 Henry VIII. for determining suits and controversies relating to monasteries and abbey-lands. It took its name from the great augmentation that was made to the revenues of the crown by the suppression of the religious houses. In 1547, immediately after the coronation of Edward VI. he was made one of the knights of the carpet. He had also in this reign the chief direction of the mint, and the management, under several special commissions, of the king’s revenues, particularly of those which arose from the crown lands, the nature and value of which he had made his chief study. In 1552 he represented the town of Maldon, Essex, in parliament, and was a burgess in the first parliament of Mary for the city of Peterborough, and sat afterwards as one of the knights for the county of Northampton. How he came co escape during this detestable reign we are not told, unless, as some think, that “he concealed his affection to the protestant religion*;” but that was probably well known, and he was afterwards not only a zealous protestant, but a friend, on many occasions, to the puritans. Q.ueen Elizabeth, on the lieath of sir Richard Sackville in 1566, gave him the otiice of chancellor of the exchequer, and he became a most useful, but not a favoured servant, for his integrity was too stiff to bend to the politics of that reign, and his consequent popularity excited the continual jealousy of his mistress: he was therefore never advanced to any higher post, though in one of the letters published by Mr. Lodge, he is mentioned as a candidate fof the seals. Honest Fuller, in his quaint way, thus expresses sir Walter’s conduct and its consequences: “Being employed by virtue of his place, to advance the queen’s treasure, he did it industriously, faithfully, and conscionably, without wronging the subject; being very tender of their privileges, insomuch that he once complained in parliament, that many subsidies were granted, and no grievances redressed; which words being represented with disadvantage to the queen, made her to disaffect him, setting in a court-cloud, but in the sunshine of his country, and a clear conscience.” In 1582 he was employed in a, treaty with the unfortunate queeo. of Scots, accompanied by sir William Cecil.

After retaining his post of chancellor of the exchequer for twenty-three years, he died May 31, 1589, and was buried in the chancel of the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, in West Smithfield, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. Sir Waiter married Mary, sister to sir Francis Walsinghana, by whom he had two sons, Anthony and Humphrey, and three daughters, Winifred, married to William Fitzwilliam, of Gainspark, in Essex, an ancestor of the present earl Fitzwilliam; Christian, to Charles Barret, of Avely, in the same county; and Martha, to William Brounker.

He was a very learned man, and an eminent encourager of literature, as appears by his founding Emmanuel college, Cambridge, which, by the additional assistance of other benefactors, arose gradually to its present flourishing state. Fuller tells us that the founder “coming to court, the queen told him,” Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a puritan foundation." No madam,‘ sayth he, c far be it from me to countenance any thing contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.’ ' He had so much of the puritan about him, however, as to make the chapel stand north and south, instead of east and west.

, many years principal engineer to the New river company, a man to whom the city of London and its environs have had many and great obligations, was the son of a gentleman, and nearly related to a baronet of that name. He was born in London, in or near Red Lion square, Holborn, soon after 1680. He had a liberal education, was for some time at one of the universities, and at a very early period of life displayed his skill in mechanics. Though we are unable to fix either his age, or the time, yet it is certain that he was very young when the New-river company engaged him as their principal engineer; in which station he continued, with the highest esteem, till his death. During this period they placed implicit confidence in him, and with the utmost reason; for through his skill and labours, their credit, their power, and their capital, were continually increasing. Mr. Mill also, among other undertakings of the kind, supplied the town of Northampton with water, for which he was presented with the freedom of that corporation; and provided an ample supply of water to the noble seat of sir llobert v Walpole, at Houghton, in Norfolk, which was before so deficient in that respect, that Gibber one day, being in the gardens, exclaimed, “Sir Robert, sir Robert, here is a crow will drink up all your canal” Mr. Mill, through age, becoming infirm, particularly from a paralytic stroke, an assistant was taken into the company’s service (Mr. Mylne, the late engineer), but without derogation to him; on the contrary, though he ceased to take an active part, he constantly attended on the board-days, his advice was asked, and his salary continued to his death. Mr. Mill was of a pleasing amiable disposition; his manners were mild and gentle, and his temper cheerful. He was a man of great simplicity of life and manners: in a word, it seemed to be his care to “have a conscience void of offence.” He was suddenly seized with a fit, Dec. 25, 1770, and died before the next morning. His surviving sister, Mrs. Hubert, erected a monument to his memory in the parish-church of Breemoore, near Salisbury.

, the learned editor of the Greek Testament, was the son of Thomas Mil!, of Banton or Bampton, near the town of Snap in Westmoreland, and was born at Shap about 1645. Of his early history our accounts are very scanty; and as his reputation chiefly rests on his Greek Testament, which occupied the greater part of his life, and as he meddled little in affairs unconnected with his studies, we are restricted to a very few particulars. His father being in indifferent circumstances, he was, in 1661, entered as a servitor of Queen’s college, Oxford, where we may suppose his application soon procured him respect. Bishop Kennet tells us, that in his opinion, he “talked and wrote the best Latin of any man in the university, and was the most airy and facetious in conversation — in all respects a bright man.” At this college he took the degree of B. A. in May 1666, and while bachelor, was selected to pronounce an “Oratio panegyrica” at the opening of the Sheldon theatre in 1669. In November of the same year he took his master’s degree, was chosen fellow, and became an eminent tutor. He then entered into holy orders, and was, according to Kennet, a “ready extempore preacher.” In 1676 his countryman and fellowcollegian, Dr. Thomas Lamplugh, being made bishop of Exeter, he appointed Mr. Mill to be one of his chaplains, and gave him a minor prebend in the church of Exeter. In July 1680 he took his degree of B. D.; in August 1681 he was presented by his college to the rectory of Blechingdon, in Oxfordshire; and in December of that year he proceeded D. D. about which time he became chaplain in ordinary to Charles II. by the interest of the father of one of his pupils. On May 5, 1685, he was elected and admitted principal of St. Edmund’s Hall, a station particularly convenient for his studies. By succeeding Dr. Crossthwaite in this office, bishop Kennet says he had the advantage of shining the brighter; but “he was so much taken up with the one thing, ‘his Testament,’ that he had not leisure to attend to the discipline of the house, which rose and fell according to his different vice-principals.” In 1704 archbishop Sharp obtained for him from queen Anne, a prebend of Canterbury, in which he succeeded Dr. Beveridge, then promoted to the see of St. Asaph. He had completed his great undertaking, the new editiuu of the Greek Testament, when he died of an apop'ectie fit, June 23, 1707, and was buried in the chancel of Blechingdon church, where, in a short inscription on his monument, he is celebrated for what critics have thought the most valuable part of his labours on the New Testament, his “prolegomena marmore perenniora.”

Of this edition of the Greek Testament, Michaelis remarks, that “the infancy of criticism ends with the edition of Gregory, and the age of manhood commences with that of Mill.” This work is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent publications that ever appeared, and ranks next to that of Wetstein, in importance and utility. It was published only fourteen days before his death, and had been the labour of thirty years. He undertook it by the advice of Dr. John Fell, bishop of Oxford; and the impression was begun at his lordship’s charge, in his printing-house near the theatre. But after the bishop’s death his executors were not willing to proceed; and therefore Dr. Mill, perhaps hurt at this refusal, and willing to shew his superior liberality, refunded the sums which trie bishop had paid, and finished the impression at his own expence. The expectations of the learned, foreigners as well as English, were raised very high in consequence of Dr. Mill’s character, and were not disappointed. It was, however, atacked at length by the learned Dr. Daniel Whitby, in his “Examen variantium lectionum Johannis Milli, S. T. P. &c. in 1710, or, an examination of the various readings of Dr. John Mill upon the New Testament; in which it is shewn, I. That the foundations of these various readings are altogether uncertain, and unfit to subvert the present reading of the text. II. That those various readings, which are of any moment, and alter the sense of the text, are very few; and that in all these cases the reading of the text may be defended. III. That the various readings of lesser moment, which are considered at large, are such as will not warrant us to recede from the vulgarly received reading. IV. That Dr. Mill, in collecting these various readings, hath often acted disingenuously; that he abounds in false citations, and frequently contradicts himself.” The various readings which Mill had collected, amounted, as it was supposed, to above 30,000; and this alarmed Dr. Whitby, who thought that the text was thus made precarious, and a handle given to the free-thinkers; and it is certain that Collins, in his “Discourse upon Free-thinking,” urges a passage out of this book of Whitby’s, to shew that Mill’s various readings of the New Testament must render the text itself doubtful. But to this objection Bentley, in his Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, has given a full and decisive answer, the substance of which will bear transcription “The 30,000 various lections then,” says Bentley, “are allowed and confessed and if more copies yet are collated, the sum will still mount higher. And what is the inference from this? why one Gregory, here quoted, infers, that no profane author whatever has suffered so much by the hand of time, as the New Testament has done. Now if this shall be found utterly false, and if the scriptural text has no more variations than what must necessarily have happened from the nature of things, and what are common, and in equal proportion, in all classics whatever, I hope this panic will be removed, and the text be thought as firm as before. If,” says he, “there had been but one ms. of the Greek Testament at the restoration of learning about two centuries ago, then we had had no various readings at all. And would the text be in a better condition then, than now we have 30,000 So far from that, that in the best single copy extant we should have had hundreds of faults, and some omissions irreparable: besides that the suspicions of fraud and foul play would have been increased immensely. It is good, therefore, to have more anchors than one; and another ms. to join with the first, would give more authority, as well as security. Now chuse that second where you will, there shall be a thousand variations from the first; and yet half or more of the faults shall still remain in them both. A third, therefore, and so a fourth, and still on, are desirable that, by a joint and mutual help, all the faults may be mended some copy preserving the true reading in one place, and some in another. And yet the more copies you call to assistance, the more do the various readings multiply upon you: every copy having its peculiar slips, though in a principal passage or two it do singular service. And this is a fact, not only in the New Testament, but in all ancient books whatever. It is a good providence, and a great blessing,” continues he, “that so many Mss. of the New Testament are still among us; some procured from Egypt, otheri from Asia, others found in the Western churches. For the very distances of the places, as well as numbers of the books, demonstrate, that there could be no collusion, no altering or interpolating one copy by another, nor all by any of them. In profane authors, as they are called, whereof one ms. only had the luck to be preserved, as Velleius Paterculus among the Latins, and Hesychius among the Greeks, the faults of the scribes are found so numerous, and the defects so beyond all redress, that notwithstanding the pains of the learnedest and acutest critics for two whole centuries, these books still are, and are like to continue, a mere heap of errors. On the contrary, where the copies of any author are numerous, though the various readings always increase in proportion, there the text, by an accurate collation of them, made by skilful and judicious hands, is ever the more correct, and comes nearer to the true words of the author. It is plain, therefore, to me, that your learned Whitbyus, in his invective against my dead friend, was suddenly surprised with a panic; and under his deep concern for the text, did not reflect at all, what that word really means. The present text was first settled almost 200 years ago out of several Mss. by Robert Stephens, a printer and bookseller at Paris; whose beautiful, and, generally speaking, accurate edition, has been ever since counted the standard, and followed by all the rest. Now this specific text, in your doctor’s notion, seems taken for the sacred original in every word and syllable; and if the conceit is but spread and propagated, within a few years that printer’s infallibility will be as zealously maintained as an evangelist’s or apostle’s. Dr. Mill, were he alive, would confess to your doctor, that this text fixed by a printer is sometimes, by the various readings, rendered uncertain; nay, is proved certainly wrong. But then he would subjoin, that the real text of the sacred writer does not now, since the originals have been so long lost, lie in any single ms. or edition, but is dispersed in them all. It is competently exact indeed, even in the worst ms. now extant: nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them; chuse as aukwardly as you can, chuse the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings. But the lesser matters of diction, and among several synonymous expressions, the very words of the writer must be found out by the same industry and sagacity that is used in other books; must not be risked upon the credit of any particular ms. or edition; but be sought, acknowledged, and challenged wherever they are met with. Not frighted therefore with the present 30,000, I for my part, and, as I believe, many others, would not lament, if out of the old manuscripts yet untouched, 10,000 more were faithfully collected; some of which without question would render the text more beautiful, just, and exact; though of no consequence to the main of religion, nay, perhaps, wholly synonymous in the view of common readers, t and quite insensible in any modern version,” p. 88, &c.

, professor of law in the university of Glasgow, was born in 1735, in the parish of Shotts, in Lanerkshire. He received his grammar-education at the school of Hamilton, whence he was removed, at the age of eleven, to the university of Glasgow. He was designed for the church, but having early conceived a dislike to that profession, and turned his attention to the study of the law, he was invited by lord Kames to reside in his family, and to superintend, in the quality of preceptor, the education of his son, Mr. George Drummond Home. Lord Kames found in young Millar a congenial ardour of intellect, a mind turned to philosophical speculation, a considerable fund of reading, and what above all things he delighted in, a talent for supporting a metaphysical argument in conversation, with much ingenuity and vivacity. The tutor of the son, therefore, became the companion of the father: and the two years before Millar was called to the bar, were spent, with great improvement on his part, in acquiring those enlarged views of the union of law with philosophy, which he afterwards displayed with uncommon ability in his academical lectures on jurisprudence. At this period he contracted an acquaintance with David Hume, to whose metaphysical opinions he became a convert, though he materially differed from him upon political topics. In 1760 Mr. Millar began to practise at the bar, and was regarded as a rising young lawyer, when he thought proper to become a candidate for the vacant professorship of law at Glasgow, and supported by the recommendation of lord Kames and Dr. Adam Smith, he was appointed in 1761, and immediately began to execute its duties. The reputation of the university, as a school of jurisprudence, rose from that acquisition, and although, says lord Woodhouselee, the republican prejudices of Mr. Millar gave his lectures on politics and government a character justly considered as repugnant to the well-attempered frame and equal balance of our improved constitution; there were few who attended those lectures without at least an increase of knowledge. He lectured in English, and spoke fluently with the assistance of mere notes only. By this method his lectures were rendered full of variety and animation, and at the conclusion of each he was accustomed to explain the difficulties and objections that had presented themselves to his pupils, in a free and familiar conversation. In 1771, he published a treatise on “The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, 17 in which he shews himself a disciple of the school of Montesquieu, and deals much in that sort of speculation which Mr. Dugald Stewart, in his Life of Smith, called theoretical or conjectural history. This work however was well received by the public, and has gone through several editions. His inquiries into the English government, which made an important part of his lectures, together with a zealous attachment to what he thought the genuine principles of liberty, produced in 1787 the first volume of an” Historical View of the English Government," in which he traces the progressive changes in the property, the state of the people, and the government of England, from the settlement of the Saxons to the accession of the house of Stuart. In this work we observe the same spirit of system, and the same partiality to hypothetical reasoning, as in the former: though resting, as may be supposed, on a more solid foundation of facts: and the less dangerous in its tendency, as being every where capable of scrutiny from actual history. It is impossible, however, to peruse this, or his other works, without meeting with much valuable information, and facts placed in those new lights which excite inquiry, and ultimately promote truth. Mr. Millar’s researches were by no means confined to politics, law, or metaphysics. His acquaintance with the works of imagination, both ancient and modern, was also very extensive, and his criticisms were at once ingenious and solid, resulting from an acute understanding and a correct taste. He died May 30, 1801, at the age of sixty-nine, leaving behind him several manuscripts, from which, in 1803, were printed, in two volumes, his posthumous works, consisting of an historical view of the English government from the accession of the house of Stuart, and some separate dissertations connected with the subject.

, a political and dramatic writer, the son of a clergyman who possessed two livings of considerable value in Dorsetshire, was born in 1703, and received his education at Wadham college, in Oxford. His natural genius and turn for satire led him, by way of relaxation from his more serious studies, to apply some portion of his time to the Muses; and, during his residence at the university, he composed great part of a comedy, called the “Humours of Oxford;” some of the characters in which being either designed for, or bearing a strong resemblance to, persons resident in Oxford, gave considerable umbrage, created the author many enemies, and probably laid the foundation of the greatest part of his misfortunes through life. On quitting the university, he entered into holy orders, and obtained immediately the lectureship of Trinity Chapel in Conduit-street, and was appointed preacher at the private chapel at Roehampton in Surrey.

The emoluments of his preferment, however, being not very considerable, he was encouraged, by the success of his first play, above mentioned, to have recourse to dramatic writing. This step being thought inconsistent with his profession, produced some warm remonstrances from a prelate on whom he relied for preferment, and who, finding him resolute, withdrew his patronage. Our author greatly aggravated his offence afterwards by publishing a ridiculous character, in a poem, which was universally considered as intended for the bishop. He then proceeded with his dramatic productions, and was very successful, until he happened to offend certain play-house critics, who from that time regularly attended the theatre to oppose any production known to be his, and finally drove him from the stage. About this time he had strong temptations to employ his pen in the whig interest; but, being in principle a high church-man, he withstood these, although the calls of a family were particularly urgent, and all hopes of advancement in the church at an end. At length, however, the valuable living of Upcerne was given him by Mr. Carey of Dorsetshire, and his prospects otherwise began to brighten, when he died April 23, 1744, at his lodgings in Cheyne-walk, Chelsea, before he had received a twelvemonth’s revenue from his new benefice, or had it in his power to make any provision for his family. As a dramatic writer, Baker thinks he has a right to stand in a very estimable light; yet the plays he enumerates are now entirelyforgotten. Besides these, he wrote several political pamphlets, particularly one called “Are these things so” which was much noticed. He was author also of a poem called “Harlequin Horace,” a satire, occasioned by some ill treatment he had received from Mr. Rich, the manager of Covent- Garden theatre; and was likewise concerned, together with Mr. Henry Baker, F. R. S. in a complete translation of the comedies of Moliere, primed together with the original French, and published by Mr. Watts. After his death was published by subscription a volume of his “Sermons,” the profits of which his widow applied to the satisfaction of his creditors, and the payment of his debts; an act of juctice by which t>he left herself and family almost destitute of the common necessaries of life.

As a man, says Baker, Mr. Miller’s character may partly be deduced from the foregoing relation of his life. He was firm and stedfast in his principles, ardent in his friendships, and somewhat precipitate in his resentments. In his conversation he was sprightly, chearful, and a great master of ready repartee, till towards the latter part of his Jife, when a depression of circumstances threw a gloom and hypochondria over his temper, which got the better of his natural gaiety and disposition.

, a celebrated gardener and botanist, was born in 1691. His father was gardener to the company of apothecaries afr Chelsea, and the son succeeded him in that otfice in 1722. His great skill in cultivation was soon evinced in a paper, communicated by himself to the Royal Society in 1728, and printed in the 35th volume of the Philosophical Transactions, on “a method of raising some exotic seeds,” which had been judged almost impossible to be raised in England; and two years afterwards, he made known, for the first time, the present popular mode of causing bulbous plants to flower in water. In 1730 he published anonymously, a thin folio, accompanied with twenty-one coloured plates, after the drawings of Van Huysum, entitled “A Catalogue of trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, both exotic and domestic, which are prepared for sale in the gardens near London.” The preface is signed by a society of gardeners, amongst whom the name of Miller appears. The work is much more than a mere catalogue, the generic characters being given in English, and many horticultural and ceconomical remarks subjoined.

In 1731 appeared the first edition of the “Gardener’s Dictionary,” in folio, the most celebrated work of its kind, which has been often translated, copied, and abridged, and may be said to have laid the foundation of all the horticultural taste and knowledge in Europe. It went through eight editions in England, during the life of the author, the last being dated 1768. This last, which forms a very thick folio volume, follows the nomenclature and style of Linnaeus; the earlier ones having beeo written on Touruefortian principles. A much more ample edition has been published within a few years, making four large volumes, under the, care of the rev. Prot. Martyn. In this all the modern botanical discoveries are incorporated with the substance of the eighth edition. Linnæus justly predicted “Non erit Lexicon hortulanorum, sed botanicorum,” and it has certainly been the means of extending the taste for scientific botany, as well as horticulture. This work had been preceded, in 1724, by “The Gardener’s and Florist’s Dictionary,” 2 vols. 8vo, and was soon followed by “The Gardener’s Kalender,” a single 8vo volume, which has gone through numerous editions. One of these, in 1761, was first accompanied by “A short introduction to a knowledge of the science of Botany,” with five plates, illustrative of the Linnaean system. Miller had been trained in the schools of Tournefort and of Ray, and had been personally acquainted with the great English naturalist, of which he was always very proud. No wonder, therefore, if he proved slow in submitting to the Linnaean reformation and revolution, especially as sir Hans Sloane, the Mecaenas of Chelsea, had not given them the sanction of his approbation. At length more intelligent advisers, Dr. Watson and Mr. Hudson, overcame his reluctance, and, his eyes being once opened, he soon derived advantage from so rich a source. He became a correspondent of Linnæus, and one of his warmest admirers. Although it does not appear that he had any direct communication with Micheli, he was chosen a member of the botanical society of Florence, which seems to indicate that they were known to each other, and probably communicated through Sloane and Sherard, as neither was acquainted with the other’s language. Miller maintained an extensive communication of seeds with all parts of the world. His friend Houston sent him many rarities from the West Indies, and Miller but too soon inherited the papers of this ingenious man, amongst which were some botanical engravings on copper. Of these he sent an impression to Linnæus and such of them as escaped accidents, afterwards composed the “Reliquiae Houstonianae.”

In 1755 our author began to publish, in folio numbers, his “Figures of Plants,” adapted to his dictionary. These extended to three hundred coloured plates, mating, with descriptions and remarks, two folio volumes, and were completed in 1760. They comprehend many rare and beautiful species, there exhibited for the first time. The commendable design of the writer was to give one or more of the species of each known genus, all from living plants; which as far as possible he accomplished. His plates have more botanical dissections than any that had previously appeared in this country. Miller was a fellow of the Royal Society, and enriched its Transactions with several papers. The most numerous of these were catalogues of the annual collections of fifty plants, which were required to be sent to that learned body, from Chelsea garden, by the rules of its foundation. These collections are preserved in the British Museum, and are occasionally resorted to for critical inquiries in botany. He wrote also on the poison ash, or Toxicodendrum, of America, which he believed to be the Japanese varnish tre of Koempfer; a position controverted by Mr. Ellis, who appears to have been in the right, and this may account for a certain degree of ill humour betrayed by Mr. Miller in the course of the dispute.

Miller continued to attend to his duties and his favourite pursuits to an advanced age, but was obliged at length, by his infirmities, to resign the charge of the garden. He died soon after, at Chelsea, December 18, 1771, in his eighty-first year, and was interred in the burying-ground in the King’s road, with his wife, by whom he had, if we mistake not, several children. One of them, Mr. Charles Miller, who spent some time in the East Indies, where he acquired a handsome fortune, made some experiments on the cultivation of wheat, an account of which was given by Dr. Watson to the Royal Society. They were intended to shew the wonderful produce to be obtained by division and transplantation, and have often been repeated. An account of the island of Sumatra, by Mr. C. Miller, is printed in vol. LXVIII. of the Philosophical Transactions. The sister of Philip Miller married Ehret, and left one son. In the course of his residence at Chelsea, Miller collected, principally from the garden, an ample herbarium, which was purchased by sir Joseph Banks.

, a very worthy and intelligent bookseller, and well known to men of literary curiosity for upwards of half a century, at his residence at Bungay in Suffolk, was born at Norwich, Aug. 14, 1732. He was apprenticed to a grocer, but his fondness for reading induced him, on commencing business for himself, to apportion part of his shop for the bookselling business, which at length engrossed the whole of his attention, time, and capital; and for many years he enlarged his stock so as to make it an object of importance with collectors in all parts of the kingdom, who were not more pleased with his judicious selection of copies, than the integrity with which he transacted business. About 1782 he published a catalogue of his collection of books, engraved portraits, and coins, which for interest and value exceeded at that time any other country collection? except, perhaps, that of the late Mr. Edwards of Halifax. Mr. Miller was a great reader, and possessing an excellent memory, he acquired that fund of general knowledge, particularly of literary history, which not only rendered him an instructive and entertaining companion, but gave a considerable value to his opinions of books, when consulted by his learned customers. At a period of life, when unfortunately he was too far advanced for such an undertaking, he projected a history of his native county, Suffolk, and circulated a well-written prospectus of his plan. His habits of industrious research, and natural fondness for investigating topographical antiquities, would have enabled him to render this a valuable contribution to our stock of county histories; but, independent of his age, his eye-sight failed him soon after he had made his design known, and he was obliged to relinquish it. In 1799 he became quite blind, but continued in business until his death, July 25, 1804. There is a very fine private portrait of Mr, Miller, engraved at the expence of his affectionate son, the very eminent bookseller in Albemarle-street, who lately retired from business, carrying with him the high esteem and respect of his numerous friends and brethren. In 1795, when it became a fashion among tradesmen in the country to circulate provincial half-pennies, Mr. Miller sen. had a die cast; but an accident happening to one of the blocks, when only twentythree pieces were struck off, he, like a true antiquary, declined having a fresh one made. This coin (which is very finely engraved, and bears a strong profile likeness of himself) is known to collectors by the name of “The Miller half-penny.” He was extremely careful into whose hands the impressions went; and they are now become so rare as to produce at sales from three to five guineas.

, Mus. D. younger brother of the preceding, was apprenticed to his father’s business, that of a paviour, in Norwich, but his dislike of the occupation became so great, that he absconded, and came to London. Soon afterwards he placed himself under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. Burney, with whom he continued in habits of intimacy and correspondence throughout his life. In 1756 he went to reside at Doncaster in Yorkshire, where he followed his profession with great reputation, and was organist of the church fifty-one years. He took his degree of doctor of music at Cambridge in 1786. Dr. Miller’s company was much sought after, as he was an agreeable, well-bred man, and his conversation abounded in anecdote and apt quotation. His only failing was an occasional absence of mind; which led him into several ludicrous mistakes that will long be remembered in the neighbourhood of Doncaster.

The latter years of his life were clouded by domestic calamities. He had a promising family of three daughters, who all died of consumptive complaints when they attained the age of maturity; of his two sons, one was lost by shipwreck on board the Halsewell Indiaman. His only surviving son is a popular preacher among the methodists, with whom his talents, zeal,- piety, and charity, have made him deservedly beloved. Dr. Miller died at Doncaster, Sept. 12, 1807.

Dr. Miller’s professional knowledge was very extensive, particularly in the theory of music; and his publications have been much valued. Among these are “The Institutes of Music,” intended to teach the ground-work of the science; and “The Elements of Thorough Bass and Composition.” But the most popular of his works was the “Psalms of David,” set to music and arranged for every Sunday throughout the year. This, which was expressly intended for the use of churches and chapels, met with very great encouragement from all ranks of the clergy, and the subscription, before publication, amounted to near five thousand copies. It is now regularly used in a great proportion of places of public worship. Dr. Miller also was somewhat of a poet, and somewhat of an antiquary. His first attempt in the former character was entitled “The Tears of Yorkshire, on the death of the most noble the Marquis of Rockingham.” He informs us himself, that so much was the marquis beloved, “that 600 copies of this literary trifle were sold in the course of a few hours, on the day of his interment in York minster. As an antiquary he published, two years before his death,” The History and Antiquities of Doncaster," 4to, in which he was assisted by many learned friends in that neighbourhood; but even with their help it bears many marks of advanced years and infirmities.

, an English divine and antiquary, was the grandson of the rev. Isaac Milles, rector of High Clear in Hampshire, probably by his second son Jeremiah. His eldest son was Dr. Thomas Milles, bishop of Waterford and Lismore, of whom it may be necessary to give some account, as Mr. Harris the editor and continuator of Ware has admitted a few mistakes, calling him Mills, and stating that he was the son of Joseph Mills. He was educated at Wadham college, Oxford, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1692, and that of M. A. in 1695. He was ordained by bishop Hough. In 1704 he took the degree of B. D. and in 1706 was appointed Greek professor of Oxford. In 1707 he attended the earl of Pembroke, lord lieutenant of Ireland, into that kingdom, and by him was promoted to the see of Waterford and Lismore. He died at Waterford May 13, 1740. He published a few controversial tracts, enumerated by Harris, but is best known by his valuable edition of the works of St. Cyril, published at Oxford in 1703, folio.

Bishop Milles left his fortune to his nephew, Jeremiah, who was born in 1714, and educated at Eton school, when he entered of Queen’s college, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, and took his degrees of M. A. in 1735, and B. and D. D. in 1747, on which occasion he went out grand compounder. He was collated by his uncle to a prebend in the cathedral of Waterford, and to a living near that city, which he held but a short time, choosing to reside in England. Here he married Edith, a daughter of archbishop Potter, by whose interest he obtained the united rectories of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas Aeon in Lombard-street, with that of Merstham, Surrey, and the sinecure rectory of West Terring, in Sussex. To Merstham he was inducted in 1745. From the chantorship of Exeter he was promoted to the deanery of that cathedral, in 1762, on the advancement of Dr. Lyttelton to the see of Carlisle, whom he also succeeded as president of the society of antiquaries in 176.5. He had been chosen a fellow of this society in 1741, and of the Royal Society in 1742. His speech, on taking upon him the office of president of the Society of Antiquaries, was prefixed to the first volume of the Archoeologia. In other volumes of that work are some papers communicated by him, one of which, “Observations on the Wardrobe Account for the year 1483, wherein are contained the deliveries made for the coronation of king Richard III. and some other particulars relative to the history,” was answered by Mr. Walpole, afterwards lord Orford, in a paper or essay, very characteristic of his lordship’s ingenuity and haughty petulance. In the early part of his life, Dr. Milles had made ample collections for a history of Devonshire, v*hich are noticed by Mr. Gough in his Topography. Ha was also engaged in illustrating the Da ish coinage, and the Domesday Survey, on both which subjects, it is thought, he left much valuable matter. His worst attempt was to vindicate the authenticity of Rowley’s poems, in an edition which he printed in 1782, 4to. After what Tyrwhitt and Warton had advanced on this subject, a grave answer to this was not necessary; but it was the writer’s misiortune to draw upon himself the wicked wit of the author of “An Archaeological Epistle,” and the more wicked irony of George Steevens in the St. James’s Chronicle. The dean died Feb. 13, 1784, and was buried in the church of St. Edmund, which, as well as his other preferments, he retained until his death, with the exception of the rectory of West Terring, which he resigned to his son Richard. His character is very justly recorded on his monument, as one conspicuous for the variety and extent of his knowledge, and for un remitted zeal and activity in those stations to which his merit had raised him; nor was he in private life less distinguished for sweetness of disposition, piety, and integrity.

, a late French historian, was born at Besanc,on, in March 1726, and belonged, for some time, to the order of Jesuits. He was one of those who were appointed to preach, and continued so to do after he had quitted that society. But the weakness of his voice, his timidity, and the embarrassed manner of his delivery, obliged him to relinquish that duty. The marquis of Felino, minister of the duke of Parma, founded a professorship of history, and Millot, through the interest ef the duke of Nivernois, was appointed to it. A revolt having arisen among the people of Parma, while he was there, in consequence of some innovations of the minister, Millot very honourably refused to quit him. It was represented that by so doing he risked his place. “My place,” he replied, “is to attend a virtuous man who is my benefactor, and that office I am determined not to lose.” After having held this professorship, with great reputation for some time, he returned into France, and was appointed preceptor to the duke D‘Enghien. He was still employed in this duty in 1785, when he was removed by death, at the age of fifty-nine. Millot was not a man who shone in conversation; his manner was dry and reserved, but his remarks were generally able and judicious. D’Alembert said of him, that he never knew a man of so few prejudices, and so few pretensions. His works are carefully drawn up, in a pure, natural, and elegant style. They are these: 1. “Elements of the History of France, from Clovis to Louis XV.” 3 vols. 12mo; an abridgment made with remarkable judgment in the selection of facts, and great clearness in the divisions and order. 2. “Elements of the History of England, from the time of the Romans to George II.” This work has the same characteristic merits as the former. 3. “Elements of Universal History,” 9 vols. 12mo. It has been unjustly said, that this is pirated from the general history of Voltaire. The accusation is without foundation; the ancient part is perfectly original, and the modern is equally remarkable for the selection of facts, and the judicious and impartial manner in which they are related. 4. “History of the Troubadours,” 3 vols. 12mo. This work was drawn up from a vast collection of materials made by M. de St. Palaye, and, notwithstanding the talents of the selector, has still been considered as uninteresting. 5. “Political and military Memoirs towards the History of Louis XIV. and XV. composed of original documents collected by Adrian Maurice, duke of Noailles, mareschal of France,” 6 vols. 12mo There are extant also, by Millot, “Discourses on Academical Subjects,” and, “Translations of some select ancient Orations, from the Latin Historians.” All these are written in French. Notwithstanding a few objections that have been made to him, as being occasionally declamatory, there is no doubt that Millot is a valuable historian, and his elements of French and English history have been well received in this country in their translations.

, a learned English divine, the second son of John Milner of Skircoat, near Halifax in Yorkshire, was born probably in Feb. 1627-8, as he was baptised on the 10th of that month. After being educated at the grammar-school of Halifax, he was sent at fourteen years of age to Christ’s college, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B. A. and M. A. at the regular periods. He was first curate of Midleton in Lancashire, but was forced thence, on sir George Booth’s unsuccessful attempt to restore king Charles II. a little before the fight at Worcester. After this he retired to the place of his nativity, where he lived till 1661, when Dr. Lake, then vicar of Leeds, and his brother-in-law, gave him the curacy of Beeston, in his parish. In 1662 he took the degree of B. D, and the same year was made minister of St. John’s in Leeds. He was elected vicar of Leeds in 1673, and in 1681 was chosen prebendary of Ripon. In 1688, not being satisfied about the revolution, he removed from his vicarage, and was deprived of all his preferments; on which he retired to St. John’s college, Cambridge, where he spent the remainder of his days, continuing a nonjuror till his death, which happened in St. John’s college, Feb. 16, 1702, in his seventy- fifth year. He left an only son, Thomas Milner, M. A. vicar of Bexhili in Sussex, who proved a great benefactor to Magdalen college, Cambridge. Dr. Gower, lady Margaret’s professor at Cambridge, gave the following character of Mr. John Milner to Mr. Thoresby “Great learning and piety made him really a great man he was eminent in both, and nothing but his humility and modesty kept him from being more noted for being so. I had the happiness of much of his conversation, but still desired more. He was a blessing to the whole society, by the example he gave in every thing good. He died beloved, and much lamented here, and his memory is honourable and precious among us, and will long continue so.”

His works are, 1. “Conjectanea in Isaiam ix. 1, 2. Item in parallela quaedam veteris ac novi testament), in quibus versionibus LXX interpretum cum textu Hebræo conciiiatio,” &c. Lond. 1673, 4to. Dr. Castel, the Arabian professor, called this “a most excellent essay, wherein the author shewed incredible reading and diligence, in perusing so many copies, versions, and various lections, with the best interpreters of sacred writ.” 2. “A collection of the Church History of Palestine, from the birth of Christ, to the beginning of the empire of Diocletian,” Lond. 1688, 4to. 3. “A short Dissertation concerning the four last Kings of Judah,” Lond. 1689, 4to. This was occasioned by Joseph Scaliger’s “Judicium de Thesi Chronologica,” &c. 4. “De Nethinim sive Nethinaeis, &c. et de iis qui se Corban Deo nominabant, disputatiuncula, adversus Steuch. Eugubinum, Card. Baronium,” &c. Camb. 1690, 4to. 5. “An Answer to the vindication of a Letter from a person of quality in the North, concerning the profession of John, late bishop of Chichester,” Lond. 1690, 4to. 6. “A Defence of the Profession of John (Lake) lord bishop of Chichester, made upon his death-bed, concerning passive obedience, and the new oaths; with some passages of his lordship’s life,” Lond. 1690, 4to. 7. “A Defence of archbishop Usher against Dr. Cary and Dr. Is. Vossius, with an Introduction concerning the uncertainty of Chronology, and an Appendix touching the signification of the words, &c. as also the men of the great Synagogue,” Camb. 1694, 8vo. 8. “A Discourse of Conscience, &c. with reflexions upon the author of Christianity not mysterious,” &c. Lond. 1697, 8vo. 9. “A View of the Dissertation upon the epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, &c. lately published by the rev. Dr. Bentley. Also, of the examination of that Dissertation by the hon. Mr. Boyle,” ibid. 1698, 8vo. 10. “A brief Examination of some passages in the Chronological part of a Letter written to Dr. Sherlock, in his vindication. In a letter to a friend.” 11. “A further Examination of the Chronological part of that Letter. In a second letter to a friend.” 12. “An Account of Mr. Locke’s religion, out of his own writings, and in his own words: together with observations, and a two-fold appendix,” Lond. 1700, 8vo. 13. “Animadversions upon Mons. Le Clerc’s Rejections upon our Saviour and his Apostles, &c. primitive fathers, &c.” Camb. 1702. He left also several manuscripts enumerated in our principal authority, on subjects of chronology, biblical criticism, &c.

, a pious and learned divine and ecclesiastical historian, was born in the neighbourhood of Leeds in Yorkshire, Jan. 2, 1744, and was educated at the grammar school of his native place, where he made great proficiency in Greek and Latin, in which he was assisted by a memory of such uncommon powers, that his biographer, the present dean of Carlisle, says that he never saw his equal, among the numerous persons of science and literature with whom he has been acquainted. This faculty which Mr. Milner possessed, without any visible decay, during the whole of his life, gained him no little reputation at school, where his master, the rev. Mr. Moore, often availed himself of his memory in cases of history and mythology, and used to say, “Milner is more easily consulted than the Dictionaries or the Pantheon, and he is quite as much to be relied on.” Moore, indeed, told so many and almost incredible stories of his memory, that the rev. Mr. Murgatroyd, a very respectable clergyman, at that time minister of St. John’s church in Leeds, expressed some suspicion of exaggeration. Mr. Moore was a man of the strictest veracity, but of a warm temper. He instantly offered to give satisfactory proof of his assertions. “Milner,” said he, “shall go to church next Sunday, and without taking a single note at the time, shall write down your sermon afterward. Will you permit us to compare what he writes with what you preach” Mr. Murgatroyd accepted the proposal with pleasure, and was often heard to express his astonishment at the event of this trial of memory. The lad,“said he,” has not omitted a single thought or sentiment in the whole sermon; and frequently he has got the very words for a long way together."

About the age of thirteen, there were few of young Milner’s years equally skilled in Latin and Greek, and none who were to be compared to him in the accurate and extensive knowledge of ancient history. His love of the study of history shewed itself as soon as ever he could read, and he employed his leisure hours in reading, as a weakly constitution, and early disposition to asthma, rendered him utterly incapable of mixing with his schoolfellows in their plays and diversions. This passion for the study of history continued strong for many years, and was his favourite amusement and relaxation to the last. With such acquirements, at so early an age, it cannot be thought wonderful if while among his poorer and more ignorant neighbours, he went by the name of the “learned lad,” his schoolmaster should feel some degree of vanity in producing such a scholar; but his regard for him was more sincere than mere vanity could have produced, and Mr. Moore now meditated in what way he could be able to send his pupil to the university, where talents like his might have a wider range, and lead to the honours he merited. In this benevolent plan he seemed at first to be obstructed by the death of Mr. Milner’s father, who had been unsuccessful in business, and htd little to spare from the necessary demands of his family*; but this event seemed rather to quicken Mr. Moore’s zeal in favour of his pupil, and as the latter had begun to teach grown-up children of both sexes, in some opulent families in Leeds, &c. there seemed a general disposition to forward the plan of sending him to the university. At the moment when the purses of the wealthy were ready to be opened in favour of this scheme, the tutor of Catherine hall, Cambridge, an old acquaintance of Mr. Moore, wrote to him to the following effect “The office of Chapel-clerk with us will soon be vacant and if you have any clever lad, who is not very rich, and whom you would wish to assist, send him to us.” Mr. Moore instantly communicated this proposal to several of the liberal gentlemen above alluded to, who all cheerfully concurred in it, and young Milner was thus enabled to go to Catherinehall in 1762, in his eighteenth year.

Here his biographer expresses his surprise that Mr. Milner should have obtained so high a situation as he did in the mathematical and philosophical list of honours; and the more so, as he most certainly had no peculiar relish for those studies. He was the third senior optime; but, perhaps he applied to these studies in order to be qualified for the honours bestowed on classical learning, in which he was more familiar. The chancellor’s two gold medals for the best proficients in classical learning, were announced, and none but senior optimes could be candidates. He became, therefore, in 1766, in which year he took his bachelor’s degree, one of a list of candidates uncommonly numerous and able, and the two prizes were adjudged to Dr.

following anecdote with a good deal succeeding Sunday’s dinner. It was

He would have now gladly remained at the university, and increased his literary reputation, so happily begun, but there was no opportunity of electing him fellow at Catherine-hall, and he was already somewhat in debt. During his first year’s residence at Cambridge, he had lost by a premature death, his affectionate schoolmaster, Mr. Moore; and the management of his slender finances was transferred from the hands of Mr. Moore to those of a careless and dissipated person. Mr. Milner was not old enough for deacon’s orders, and it became absolutely necessary that he should look out for some employment. He accordingly became assistant in a school, and afterwards in the cure of his church, to the rev. Mr. Atkinson of Thorp-Arch, near Tadcaster. Here, we are told, he completed an epic poem, begun at Catherine-hall, entitled “Davideis,” or Satan’s various attempts to defeat the purpose of the Almighty, who had promised that a Saviour of the world should spring from king David. The ms. is still in existence. His biographer pronounces it “a fine monument of the author’s learning, taste, genius, and exuberant imagination.” He submitted it to Dr. Hurd, who sent him a very complimentary letter; but he laid the poem aside, and it has not been thought proper to publish it.

When he had obtained deacon’s orders, he applied for the place of head-master of the grammar-school at Hull, and having obtained it, was soon after chosen afternoon, lecturer in the principal church in that town. Under his auspices, the school, which had decayed through the negligence of his immediate predecessors, soon acquired and retained very considerable celebrity, and as the master’s salary rose in proportion to the increase of scholars, his income now, on the whole, amounted to upwards of 200L a year. The first use he made of this great change of circumstances was to discharge those duties that arose from the situation of his father’s family. His pious affection instantly led him to invite his mother (then living at Leeds in poverty) to Hull, where she became the manager of his house. He also sent for two indigent orphans, the children of his eldest brother, and took effectual care of their education. At this time his youngest brother, Isaac, whose prospects of advancement in learning were ruined by his father’s death, was now humbly employed in the woollen manufactory at Leeds. From this situation his brother Joseph instantly removed him, and employed him as his assistant in teaching the lower boys of his crowded school at Hull. By his brother’s means also, he was sent to Queen’s college, Cambridge, in 1770, of which he is now master, professor of mathematics, and dean of Carlisle. Of the affection between those brothers, the survivor thus speaks, “Perhaps no two brothers were ever more closely bound to each other. Isaac, in particular, remembers no earthly 7 thing without being able to connect it, in some way, tenderly with his brother Joseph. During all his life” he has constantly aimed at enjoying his company as much as circumstances permitted. The dissolution of such a connection could not take place without being severely felt by the survivor. No separation was ever more bitter and afflicting; with a constitution long shattered by disease, he never expects to recover from That wound."

Mr. Milner’s labours as a preacher were not confined to the town of Hull. He was curate for upwards of seventeen years, of North Ferriby, about nine miles from Hull, and afterwards vicar of the place. At both he became a highly popular and successful preacher, but for some years, met with considerable opposition from the upper classes, for his supposed tendency towards methodism. His sentiments and mode of preaching had in fact undergone a change, which produced this suspicion, for the causes and consequences of which we must refer to his biographer. It may be sufficient here to notice, that he at length regained his credit by a steady, upright, preseveriog, and disinterested conduct, and just before his death, the mayor and corporation of Hull, almost unanimously, chose him vicar of the Holy Trinity church, on the decease of the rev. T. Clarke. Mr. Milner died Nov. 15, 1797, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and perhaps the loss of no man in that place has ever been lamented with more general or unfeigned regret. His scholars, almost without exception, loved and revered him. Several gentlemen, who had been his pupils many years before, shewed a sincere regard for their instructor, by erecting at their own expence, an elegant monument (by Bacon) to his memory in the high church of Hull. Mr. Milner’s principal publications are, 1. “Some passages in the Life of William Howard,” which has gone through several editions; 2. An Answer to Gibbon’s Attack on Christianity;“3.” Essays on the Influence of the Holy Spirit.“But his principal work is his ecclesiastical history, under the title of a” History of the Church of Christ,“of which he lived to complete three volumes, which reach to the thirteenth century. A fourth volume, in two parts, has since been edited from his Mss. by his brother Dr. Isaac Milner, reaching to the sixteenth century, and a farther continuation may be expected from the same pen. Since his death also, two volumes of his practical sermons have been published, with a life of the author by his brother, from which we have selected the above particulars. To his” History of the Church," we have often referred in these volumes, as it appears to us of more authority in many respects than that of Mosheim; and whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the view Mr. Milner takes of the progress of religion, he appears to have read more and penetrated deeper into the history, principles, and writings of the fathers and reformers, than any preceding English historian.

, the most illustrious of English poets, was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster. His grand-father was under-ranger of the forest of Shotover in Oxfordshire, and being a zealous Roman catholic, disinherited his son, of the same name, for becoming a protestant. This son, when thus deprived of the family property, was a student at Christchurch, Oxford, but was now obliged to quit his studies, and going to London became a scrivener. That he retained his classical knowledge appears from his son addressing him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems; he was also a great proficient in music, a voluminous composer, and, in the opinion of Dr. Burney, “equal in science, if not genius, to the best musicians of his age.” He married a lady of the name of Custon, of a Welsh family. By her he had two sons, John the poet, Christopher, and Anne. Anne became the wife of Mr. Edward Phillips, a native of Shrewsbury, who was secondary to the crown office in chancery. Christopher, applying himself to the study of the law, became a bencher of the Inner Temple, was knighted at a very advanced period of life, and raised by James II. first to be a baron of the Exchequer, and afterwards one of the judges of the Common-pleas. During the rebellion he adhered to the royal cause, and effected his composition with the republicans by the interest of his brother. In his old age he retired from the fatigues of business, and closed, in the country, a life of study and devotion.

John Miltcrti was born at his father’s house in Breadstreet, Cheapside, Dec. 9, 1608. From his earliest years his father appears to have discerned and with great anxiety cultivated his talents. He tells us himself that his father destined him when he was yet a child to the study of polite literature, and so eagerly did he apply, that from his twelfth year, he seldom quitted his studies till the middle of the night; this, however, he adds, proved the first cause of the ruin of his eyes, in addition to the natural weakness of which, he was afflicted with frequent headachs. Some part of his early education was committed to the care of Mr. Thomas Young, a puritan minister; and he was also placed for some time at St. Paul’s school, thea under the direction of Mr. Alexander Gill, with whose son, Alexander, Milton seems to have contracted a warm and lasting friendship. In February 1625, when in his seventeenth year, he was entered a pensioner at Christ’s-college, Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Mr. William Chappel, afterwards bishop of Cork and Ross. Of his conduct and the treatment which he experienced in his college, much has been made the subject of dispute. The most serious charge brought against him is, that he wasexpelledy for which there seems no reasonable foundation whatever. The register of the college proves that he regularly kept his terms, and as regularly took both his degrees. A charge of less consequence, that he had once received corporal punishment, seems scarcely worth the pains that have been bestowed in refuting it, if, according to the latest of his zealous apologists, no injury to his reputation would be the necessary result of its admission. It is allowed, however, to be probable that he might offend the governors of his college by the dislike, early instilled into his mind by his tutor Young, of the discipline of the church, or the plan of education then observed. Whateyer may be in this, he passed -seven years at the university, and after taking his master’s degree, retired to his father’s house, at Horton in Buckinghamshire.

During these seven years of college residence, his genius appeared in various attempts not unworthy of the future author of “Comus” and “Paradise Lost.” He was a poet when he was only ten years old, and his translation of the 136th psalm evinces his progress in poetic expression at the early age of fifteen. He renounced his original purpose of entering the church, for which he assigns as a reason, “that coming to some maturity of years, he had perceived what tyranny had pervaded it, and that he who would take orders, must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless h^ took with a conscience that could retch, he must either strain, perforce, or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.” These expressions have been supposed to allude to the articles of the church; but, as far as we know of Milton’s theology, there was none of those articles to which he had any objection. It seems more reasonable therefore to conclude, that he considered subscription as involving an approbation of the form of church government, which, we know, was his abhorrence.

He spent five years at his father’s house at Horton, and during this time exhibited some of the finest specimens of his genius. The “Comus,” in 1634, and the “Lycidas,” in 1637, were written at Horton; and there is strong internal proof that the “L'AIlegro” and “II Penseroso” were also composed here. The Mask of Comus was acted before the earl of Bridgwater, the president of Wales, in 1634, at Ludlow-castle: and the characters of the lady and her two brothers were represented by the lady Alice Egerton, then about thirteen years of age, and her two brothers, lord Brackley and Thomas Egerton, who were still younger. The story of this piece is said to have been suggested by the circumstance of the lady Alice having been separated from her company in the night, and havincr wandered for some time by herself in the forest of Haywood, as she was returning from a distant visit to meet her father. This admirable drama was set to music by Lawes, and first published by him in 1637, and, in the dedication to lord Brackley, he speaks of the work as not openly acknowledged by the author. The author surely had little to fear; it would be difficult to discover an age barbarous enough to refuse the highest honours to the author of a work so truly poetical. The “Lycidas” was written, as there is reason to believe, at the solicitation of the author’s old college, to commemorate the death of Mr. Edward King, one of its fellows, a man of great learning, piety, and talents, who was shipwrecked in his passage from Chester to Ireland. It formed part of a collection of poems, published on this melancholy occasion, in 1638, at the university press; and its being thus printed in a collection, may perhaps diminish the wonder expressed by one of Milton’s biographers, that a poem, breathing such hostility to the clergy of the Church of England, and menacing their leader with the axe, should be permitted to issue from the university press. There is no other way of accounting for this than by supposing that it had not been read before it went to press. “Lycidas” has been severely criticised by Dr. Johnson, and but feebly supported by Milton’s other biographers.

In 1638, on the death of his mother, he obtained his father’s leave to travel, and about the same time a letter of instructions from sir Henry Wotton, then provost of Eton, but who had resided at Venice as ambassador from James I. He went first tp Paris, where, by the favour of lord Scudainore, he had an opportunity of visiting Grotius, at that time residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. From Paris he passed into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, he staid two months at Florence, where he was introduced to the academies, and received with every mark of esteem. Among other testimonies may be mentioned the verses addressed to him by Carlo Dati> Erancini, and others, whicfe, prove that they considered a visit from Milton as no common honour. From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to cardinal Barberini; and he, on one occasion, at a musical entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. Here it is conjectured that Milton heard the accomplished and enchanting Leonora Baroni sing, a lady whom he has honoured with three excellent Latin epigrams. She is also supposed to have been celebrated by Milton in her own language, and to have been the object of his love in his Italian sonnets. While at Rome, Selvaggi praised Milton in a distich, and Salsilfl in a tetrastic, on which he put some value by printing them before his poems. The Italians, says Dr. Johnson, were gainers by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton’s favour.

He was now to have visited Sicily and Greece, but intelligence from England changed his purpose. “As I was desirous/' he says,” to pass into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence of the civil war recalled me; for I esteemed it dishonourable for me to be lingering abroad, even for the improvement of my mind, when my fellowcitizens were contending for their liberty at home." He therefore came back to Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the English Jesuits, for his free sentiments on religion; but he had sense enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning conversation. He now staid two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without molestation. From Florence he visited Lucca, and afterwards went to Venice, whence he travelled to Geneva, and there became acquainted with John Diodati and Frederic Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity. From Geneva he passed through France, and came home after an absence of a year and three months.

For some time after his arrival, he employed himself in the business of education, a circumstance on which some have dilated with unnecessary prolixity, as if there had been any thing degrading in the character or employment of a schoolmaster. Dr. Johnson has observed that this is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. Milton himself says, that he hastened home (and his haste, after all, was not great) because he esteemed it dishonourable to be lingering abroad while his fellow-citizens were contending for their liberty. This seems to imply a promise of joining them in their endeavours; but as, instead of this, he sets up a school immediately on his arrival, his biographers are puzzled to account for his conduct, and yet desirous of defending it. What can be said in his favour has been better said by Johnson than by any of his apologists, and in fewer words; “His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.” And we shall find that he very soon joined his fellow-citizens, and contributed his share to the controversies of the times.

As the mode of education which he introduced in his school has been given up by all his biographers, it may be sufficient here only to notice briefly that his purpose was to teach things more than words. Not content with the common school authors, he placed in the hands of boys from ten to fifteen years of age, such writers as were capable of giving information in some of the departments of science. Even in the selection of these he was unfortunate, as his most zealous advocates are willing to allow: the only part of his method which deserves general imitation, was the care with which he instructed his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he dictated a system to them founded on the principles of the Genevan divines. He also read and probably commented on a chapter in the Greek Testament. His first school was at his lodgings in St. Bride’s church-yard, but as the number of his scholars increased, he removed to a house in Alcjersgate-street.

The time, however, was now come when, as Johnson says, he was to lend “his breath to blow the flames of contention.” In 1641 he published a treatise of “Reformation,” in two books, against the established church; and soon after one, “Of Prelatical Episcopacy,” Against the learned Usher, who had written a confutation of “Smectymnuus,” which was intended as an answer to bishop Hall’s “Humble Remonstrance,” in defence of Episcopacy. His next work was “The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy,” 1642. In this book, says Johnson, he discovers, not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of his own powers; and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and honour to his country. “This,” says Milton, “is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to the eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.” From a promise like this, adds Johnson, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the “Paradise Lost.” He published the same year two more pamphlets on the same question, with which the controversy appears to have ended, and episcopacy was 'soon afterwards overwhelmed by the violent meanj for which the press had long prepared.

About the time that the town of Reading was taken by the earl of Essex, Milton’s father came to reside in his house, and his school increased. In 1643, his domestic comfort was disturbed by an incident which he had hoped would have rather promoted it. This was his marriage to Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, esq. a magistrate in Oxfordshire, and a loyalist. The lady was brought to London, but did not remain above a month with her husband, when under pretence of a visit to her relations, she wholly absented herself, and resisted his utmost and repeated importunities to return. His biographers inform us that the lady had been accustomed to the jovial hospitality of the loyalists at her father’s house, and that after a month’s experience of her new life, she began to sigh for the gaieties she had left, &c. Whether this will sufficiently account for her conduct, our readers may consider. Milton, however, appears to have felt the indignity, and determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and finding no court of law able to assist him, published some treatises to justify his intentions; such as “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce;” “The Judgment of Martin Bucer, concerning Divorce,” &c. In these he argued the point with great ingenuity, but made few converts, and the principal notice taken of these writings came in a very unfortunate shape. The Westminster assembly of divines procured that the author should be called before the House of Lords, who did not, however, institute any process on the matter; but in consequence of this attack, the presbyterian party forfeited his favour, and he ever after treated them with contempt.

As in these writings on divorce, he had convinced himself of the rectitude of his principles, his next step was to carry them into practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the daughter of one Dr. Davis, or Davies. This alarmed the parents of his wife, who had now another reason for wishing a reconciliation, namely, the interest of Milton with the predominant powers, to whom they had become obnoxious by their loyalty. It was contrived, therefore, that his wife should be at a house where he was expected to visit, and should surprize him with her presence and her penitence. All this was successfully arranged: the lady played her part to admiration, 1 and Milton not only received her with his wonted affection, but extended his protection to her family in the most generous manner. He was now obliged to take a larger mansion, and removed to Barbican. In 1644, he published his ^ Tractate on Education,“explaining the plan already mentioned, which he had attempted to carry into execution in his school. His next publication was his” Areopagitica, or a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing;" a treatise which at least served to expose the hypocrisy of the usurping powers, during whose reign the liberty of the press was as much restrained as in any period of the monarchy, nor perhaps at any time was Milton’s unbounded liberty less relished.

Though his controversial, and other engagements, had for some time suspended the exertion of his poetical talents, yet he did not suffer his character as a poet to sink into oblivion, and in 1645, he published his juvenile poems in Latin and English, including, for the first time, the “Allegro” and “Penseroso.” in 1646, Milton’s wife produced her first child, and in the following year, in which his father died, the family of the Powells returned to their own mansion, and his house was resigned once more to literature. In this house, in which his second daughter Mary was born, he did not continue long, but exchanged it for one of smaller cKmensions in High Holborn. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards till the king’s death, when finding that measure condemned by the Presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it. Of all Milton’s political works this reflects least credit on his talents, or his principles. Even those who have been most disposed to vindicate him against all censure, and to represent him invulnerable both as a politician and a poet, seem to shrink from the task of defending him in this instance, and candidly tell us, that they meet with an insuperable difficulty in the very title of the book “TheTenure of Kings and Magistrates proving, that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or wicked king: and after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it.” Here, therefore, the right to punish kings belongs to any who have the power, and their having the power makes it lawful, a doctrine so monstrous as to be given up by his most zealous advocates, as “a fearful opening for mischief:” but it was, in truth, at that time, what Milton intended it to be, a justification, not of the people of England, for they had no hand in the king’s murder, but of the army under Ireton and Cromwell. That Milton was also at this time under the strong influence of party-spirit, appears from his attack on the Presbyterians in this work, the avowed ground of which is their inconsistency. When, however, we examine their inconsistency, as he has been pleased to state it, it amounts to only this, that they contributed in common with the Independents and other sectaries and parties, to dethrone the king; but r wished to stop short of his murder. Every species of opposition to what they considered as tyranny in the king, they could exert, but they thought it sufficient to deprive him of power, without depriving him of life.

His next publication was, “Observations upon the articles of Peace, which the earl of Ormond had concluded at Kilkenny, on Jan. 17, 1643-9, in the king’s name, and by his authority, with the popish Irish rebels,” &c. The purport of this also was to render the royal cause more odious by connecting it with the Irish massacre; and that the sentiments of the nation might become yet more completely republican, he now employed himself in composing “A History of England.” Of this, however, he wrote only six books, which bring it no lower down than to the battle of Hastings. It presents a perspicuous arrangement of the fabulous, and less interesting part of our history; but, as he never resumed the task, it is impossible to say in what way he could have rendered the events of more recent times subservient to his purpose. His regicide performance evidently shews that his ideas of our constitution are totally at variance with the opinions of the most enlightened of our present writers; and he probably found that even in the favourite republic now established, there was but little that suited with the order of things he had projected.

The immediate cause, however, of the interruption given to his “History,” was his being appointed Latin secretary to the new council of state, which was to supply all the offices of royalty. He had scarcely accepted this appointment, when his employers called upon him to answer the famous book entitled “Icon Basihk^, or the portraiture of his cacred majesty in his solitudes and sufferings.” This was then understood to be the production of Charles I. and was published unquestionably with the view to exhibit him to the people in a more favourable light than he had been represented by those who brought him to the block. It probably too was -beginning to produce that effect, as the government thought it necessary to employ the talents of Milton to answer it, which he did in a work entitled “Iconoclastes,” or Image-breaker, In this he follows the common opinion, that the king was the writer, although he sometimes seems to admit of doubts, and makes his answer a. sort of review and vindication of all the proceedings against the court. This has been praised as one of the ablest of all Milton’s political tracts, while it is at the same time confessed that it did not in the least diminish the popularity of the “Icon,” of which 48,500 are said to have been sold, and whether it was the production of the king or of bishop Gauden, it must have harmonized with the feelings and sentiments of a great proportion of the public. The story of Milton’s inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” and imputing the use of it to the king as a crime, appears to have no foundation; but we know not how to vindicate this and other petty objections to the king’s character, from the charge of personal animosity.

Milton’s next employment was to answer the celebrated Salmasius, who, at the instigation of the exiled Charles II. had written a defence* of his father and of monarchy. Salmasius was an antagonist worthy of Milton, as a general scholar, but scarcely his equal in that species of political talent which rendered Milton’s services so important to the new government. Salmasius’s work was entitled “Defensio Kegia,” and Milton’s “Defensio pro populo Anglicano,” which greatly increased Milton’s reputation abroad, and at home we may be certain would procure him no small share of additional favour. That his work includes a very great portion of controversial bitterness, may be attributed either to the temper of the times, or of the writer, as the reader pleases; but the former was entirely in his favour, and his triumph was therefore complete. Of Salmasius’s work, the highest praise has been reserved to our own times, in which the last biographer of Milton has compared it to Mr. Burke’s celebrated book on the French revolution.

Milton’s eye-sight, which had been some time declining, was now totally gone; but, greatly felt as this privation must have been to a man of studious habits, his intellectual powers suffered no diminution. About this time (1652), he was involved in another controversy respecting the “Defensio pro populo Anglicano,” in consequence of a work published at the Hague, entitled “Regii sanguinis. clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos,” written by Peter du Moulin, but published by, and under the name of, Alexander Morus, or More. This produced from Milton, his “Defensio secunda pro populo Anglicano,” and a few replies to the answers of his antagonists. In this second “Defensio,” written in the same spirit as thq preceding, is introduced a high panegyric upon Cromwell, who had now usurped the supreme power with the title of Protector. It seems acknowledged that his biographers have found it very difficult to justify this part of his conduct. They have, therefore, had recourse to those conjectural reasons which shew their own ingenuity, but perhaps never existed in the mind of Milton, Their soundest defence would have been to suppose Milton placed in a choice of evils, a situation which always admits of apology. It is evident, however, that he had now reconciled himself to the protector-king, and went on with his business as secretary, and, among other things, is supposed to have written the declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. About this time (1652) his first wife died in childbed, leaving him three daughters. He married again, not long after, Catherine, the daughter of a captain Woodcock, of Hacktiey, who died within a year in child-birth, and was lamented by him in a sonnet, which Johnson terms “poor,” but others “pleasing and pathetic.” To divert his grief he is said now to have resumed his “History of England,” and to have made some progress in a Latin dictionary. This last appears to have engaged his attention occasionally for many years after, for he left three folios of collections, that were probably used by subsequent lexicographers, but could not of themselves have formed a publication.

He had praised Cromwell as the only person who could allay the contentions of parties, and the time was now come when the nation was to lose this protecting genius. Another Cromwell was not to be found, and general anarchy seemed approaching. Milton, somewhat alarmed, but not wholly dispirited with this state of things, took up his pen to give advice on certain urgent topics, and having as much dread of presbyterianism as of royalty, he published two treatises, one, “Of the civil power in ecclesiastical causes,” and the other, “Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the church.” In both these he shewed his sentiments to be unaltered on the subjects of civil and ecclesiastical government; and he urged them yet farther in “The present means and brief delineation of a free Commonwealth,” and “The ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth.” In this last his inconsistencies have been justly exposed by one of his recent biographers. “With the strongest prepossession of a party-zealot, he deserts his general principle for the attainment of his particular object: and thinks that his own opinions ought to be enforced in opposition to those of the majority of the nation. Aware also that a frequent change of the governing body might be attended with inconvenience and possible danger, he decides against frequent parliaments, and in favour of a permanent council. Into such inconsistencies was he betrayed by his animosity to monarchy, and his bigoted attachment to whatever carried the name of a republic.” These pamphlets were answered both in a sportive and serious way, but neither probably gave him much uneasiness. His last effort in the cause of republicanism was entitled “Brief notes” on a loyal sermon preached by Dr. Matthew Griffith, one of the late king’s chaplains: and with this terminated his political controversies.

Charles II. was now 'advancing, with the acclamations of the people, to the throne, and Milton, it was natural to snppose, might expect his resentment: for sometime, therefore, he secreted himself, but on the issuing of the act of oblivion, his name was not found among the exceptions, and he appeared again in public. Various reasons have been assigned for this lenity, but the most probable was the interest of his friends Andrew Marvel 1, sir Thomas Clarges, and especially sir William Davenant, whom Milton had once rescued from a similar danger. The only notice taken of him was by the House of Commons, who ordered his “Iconoclastes” and “Defence of the people of England” to be burnt by the hands of the hangman; and it appears that he was once, and for a short time, in custody, but on what pretext is not known.

In 1662 he resided in Jewin-street, and from this he removed to a small house in the Artillery-walk, adjoining Bunhill-fields, where he continued during the remaining part of his life. While living in Jewin-street, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, the daughter of a gentleman of Cheshire. He was now employed on “Paradise Lost,” to which alone, of all his works, he owes his fame. Whence he drew the original design has been variously conjectured, but nothing very satisfactory has been produced. It was at a very early period that he meditated an epic poem, but then thought of taking his subject from the heroic part of English history. At length “after long choosing, and beginning late,” he fixed upon “Paradise Lost:” a design so comprehensive, that it could, says Dr. Johnson, be justified only by success. We may refer to that eminent critic, and his other biographers, for a regular examination of the beauties and detects of this immortal poem, as well as for many particulars relative to the times and mode in which he composed. These it would have been delightful to trace, had our information been as accurate as it is various; but, unhappily, every step in Milton’s progress has been made the subject of angry controversy, and they who can take any pleasure in the effusions of critical irritation, may be amply gratified in the more recent lives of Milton.

The “Paradise Lost” was first published in 1667: and much surprize and concern have been discovered at the small pecuniary benefit which the author derived from this proud display of his genius. It must, in our view of the matter, and considering only the merit and popularity of the poem, seem deplorable that the copyright of such a composition should be sold for the sum of five pounds, and a contingent payment, on the sale of 2600 copies, of two other equal sums, making in all fifteen pounds, as the whole pecuniary reward of a poem which has never been equalled. It will not greatly diminish our wonder at this paltry sum if we add, upon the authority of his biographers, that this fifteen pounds purchased the bookseller’s right only to the several editions for which they were paid, and that Milton’s widow sold the irreversible copyright to the same bookseller, Samuel Simmons, for eight pounds. Here is still only a sum of twenty-three pounds derived from the work, to the author and his family. In defence of the bookseller, however, we are referred to the risk he ran from the publication of a work in all respects new, and written by a man under peculiar circumstances: and to the state of literary curiosity and liberality so different from what prevail in our own days. This is specious, and must be satisfactory for want of information respecting the usual prices of literary labour, which we cannot now easily acquire. We have seen a manuscript computation by the late John Whiston the bookseller, which would be valuable, as coming from a good judge of the article, if, unfortunately, he had been correct in the outset: but as he represents Jacob Tonson giving the author 30l. for the first edition, and lOl. more when it should come to a second, we know all this to be erroneous, and that the author’s family had disposed of the whole before the work became Tonson’s property* This, however, he calls “a generous price, as copies then sold;” and if this be true, we cannot suppose for a moment, that a scholar could in that a^e indulge any hopes of being rewarded by the public. In Milton’s case we hope he had no dependance on it, for the true way to ascertain how very paltry the sum was which he received, is by comparing it with his property, which, at his death, amounted to 3000l.

In 1671, Milton published his “Paradise Regained,” written on the suggestion of Elwood, the quaker, who had been one of his amanuenses. Elwood, after reading the “Paradise Lost,” happened to say, “Thou hast said much here on Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found” This poem was probably regarded by the author as the theological completion of the plan commenced in “Paradise Lost,” and he is said to have viewed it with strong preference; but in this last opinion few have been found to coincide. Its inferiority in point of grandeur and invention is very generally acknowledged, although it is not by any means unworthy of his genius. About the same time appeared his “Samson Agonistes,” a drama, composed upon the ancient model, and abounding in moral and descriptive beauties, but never intended or calculated for the stage.

To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that entitle this great author to our veneration, may be added, says Johnson, a kind of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature. The epic poet, the controvertist, and politician, having already descended to accommodate children with a book of elements, now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of Logic, for the initiation of students in philosophy: and published, in 1672, “Artis Logica? plenior institutio ad Petri Kami methodum concinnata.” In the following year he ventured once more to meddle with the controversies of the times, and wrote “A Treatise of true Religion, &c. and the best means to prevent the Growth of Popery.” The latter was become the dread of the nation, and Milton was among the most zealous of its opponents. The principle of toleration which he lays down is, agreement in the sufficiency of the scriptures, which he denies to the Papists, because they appeal to another authority. In the same year Milton published a second edition of his youthful poems, with his “Tractate on Education,” in one volume, in which he included some pieces not comprehended in the edition of 1645. In 1674 he gave the world his familiar letters, and some college exercises, the former with the title of “Epistolarum Familiarum Liber unus,” and the latter with that, of “Prolusiones quaedam oratoriae in Collegio Christ! habitae.” He is also said, but upon doubtful authority, to have translated into English the declaration of the Poles, on their elevating John Sobieski to their elective throne. With more probability he has been reckoned the author of “A brief History of Muscovy,” which was published about eight years after his death. With this work terminated his literary labours; for the gout, which had for many years afflicted him, was now hastening his end. He sunk tranquilly under an exhaustion of the vital powers on the 8th of November, 1674, when he had nearly completed his sixty-sixth year. His remains were carried from his house in Bunhill-fields to the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, with a numerous and splendid attendance, and deposited in the chancel near those of his father. No monument marked the tomb of this great man, but one was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, in 1737, at the expence of Mr. Benson, one of the auditors of the imprest. His bust has since been placed in the church where he was interred, by the late Samuel Whitbread, esq.

In the July preceding- his death, Milton had requested the attendance of his brother Christopher, and in his presence made a disposition of his property by a formal declaration of his will. This mode of testament, which is called nuncupative, was set aside, on a suit instituted by his daughters. By this nuncupative will he had given all his property to his widow, assigning nothing to his daughters but their mother’s portion, which had not yet been paid. On this account* and from exacting from his children some irksome services, such as reading to him in languages which they did not understand, a necessity resulting from his blindness and his indigence, he has been branded as an unkind father. But the nuncupative will, discovered some years since, shews him to have been amiable, and injured in that private scene, in which alone he has generally been considered as liable to censure, or rather, perhaps, as not entitled to affection. In this will, published by Mr. Warton, and in the papers connected with it, we find the venerable parent complaining of “unkind children,” as he calls them, for leaving and neglecting him because he was blind; and we see him compelled, by their injurious conduct, to appeal against them even to his servants. By the deposition of one of those servants, it is certain, that his complaints were not extorted by slight wrongs, or uttered by capricious passion on trivial provocations: that his children, with the exception of the youngest, would occasionally sell his books to the dunghill women, as the witness calls them. That these daughters were capable of combining with the maid-servant, and of advising her to cheat her master, and their father, in her marketings; and that one of them, Mary, on being told that her father was married, replied, “that was no news 1; but if she could hear of his death, that would be something.”

Of the three daughters of Milton, Anne, the eldest, married a master-builder, and died with her first child in her lying-in. Mary, the second, died in a single state: and Deborah, the youngest, married Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spitalfields. She had seven sons and three daughters; but of these she left, at her decease, only Caleb, who, marrying in the East Indies, had two sons, whose history cannot be traced; and Elizabeth, who married Thomas Foster, of the same business with her father, and had by him three sons and four daughters, who all died young and without issue.Mrs. Foster died in poverty and distress, on the ninth of May, 1754. This was the lady for whose benefit “Comus” was played in 1750, and she had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only 130l.; yet this, as Dr. Johnson remarks, was the greatest benefaction that “Paradise Lost” ever procured the author’s descendants.

Milton was in youth so eminently beautiful that he was called the lady of his college. His hair, which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He was rather below the middle size, but vigorous and active, fond of manly sports, and even skilful in the exercise of the sword. His domestic habits, as far as they are known, were those of a severe student. He was remarkably temperate both in eating and drinking. In his youth, as we have noticed, he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours, and became a very early riser. The course of his day was best known after he lost his sight. When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour then dined, then played on the organ, and sung or heard another sing studied to the hour of six, and entertained his visitors till eight then supped, and after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water went to bed. To his personal character there seems to have been little to object. He was unfortunate in his family, but no part of the blame rested with him. His temper, conduct, morals, benevolence, were all such as ought to have procured him respect. His religion has been a fertile subject of contest among his biographers. He is said to have been in early life a Calvinist, and when he began to hate the presbyterians, to have leaned towards Arminianism. Whatever were his opinions, no sect could boast of his countenance; for after leaving the church he never joined in public worship with any of them.

, an ancient Greek poet, was born either at Colophon, according to Strabo, or according to others at Smyrna, some time in the sixth century B. C. Strabo informs us that he was a musician, as well as a writer of elegies, which was his chief pursuit: and Nanno, the lady who passes for his mistress, is recorded to have got her livelihood by the same profession. There are but few fragments of his poems remaining, yet enough to shew him an accomplished master in his own style. His temper seems to have been as truly poetical as his writings, wholly bent on love and pleasure, and averse to the cares of common business. He appears to have valued life only as it could afford the means of pleasure. By some he is said to have been the inventor of the pentameter, but various specimens of that verse of older date are still extant. Mimnermus’s fragments are printed by Brunck, in his “Analecta,” and in the “Gnomici Poetae.”

, a physician of Augsburg, of the chemical sect, lived in the early part of the seventeenth century. He was eminent as a military physician, in which capacity he served several campaigns, and also rose to high reputation and practice in the courts of Vienna and Munich, where he was consulted by the principal nobility. He published the result of his experience relative to the diseases of armies, in the German language; and this work was translated into Latin, with the title of “Medicina Militaris, seu, Liber Castrensis, euporista et facilè parabilia Medicamenta continens,” Vienna, 1620, 8vo. This work was several times reprinted, and was also translated into English in 1674. He was likewise author of the following works “De Pestilentia Liber unus,” ibid. 1608 “Albedarium Marocostinum,” ibid. 1616, and afterwards republished “De Calcantho, seu Vitriolo, ejusque qualitate, virtute, et viribus,” 1617 “Threnodia Medica, seu, Planctus Medicinæ lugentis,” 1619. His chemical reputation is evinced by the connection of his name in the shops, even at this day, with the neutral salt, the acetate of ammonia, which is called Mindererus’ spirit.

, a Dutch grammarian, born at Rotterdam about 1625, was occupied for the chief part of his life in teaching the learned languages, and died about 1683. He published editions of Terence, Sallust, Virgil, Horace, Florus, Valerius Maximus, and most of the classics, with short notes, rather for the aid of mere schoolboys, than of any kind of utility to the learned. Most of these editions are also printed in a very incorrect manner, at least the republications of them, in this and other countries.

, an ancient English poet, who flourished in the fourteenth century, but appears to have been unknown to Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner, was lately discovered by Tyrwhitt, and edited by Mr. Ritson in 1794, 8vo. The discovery was owing to a remarkable circumstance. Some former possessor of the manuscript in which his poems are contained had written his name, Richard Chawser, on one of the supernumerary leaves. The compiler of the Cotton catalogue, printed at Oxford in 1696, converted this signature into Geoffrey Chaucer, and therefore described the volume in these words, “Chaucer. Exemplar emendate scriptum.” Mr. Tyrwhitt, whilst he was preparing his edition of the Canterbury Tales, consulted this manuscript, and thus discovered the poems of Laurence Minot. The versification of this poet is uncommonly easy and harmonious for the period in which he lived, and an alliteration, as studied as that of Pierce Plowman, runs through all his varieties of metre. He has not the dull prolixity of many early authors; nor do we find in his remains those pictures of ancient times and manners, from whica early writers derive their greatest value. In the easy flow of his language he certainly equals Chaucer but here the merit of Laurence Minot ends, although Mr. Ritson endeavours to carry it much farther.

, a father of the primitive church, flourished in the third century. He is said to have been an African by birth, but little is known of his history, except tiiat he was a proselyte to Christianity, resided at Rome, and followed the profession of a lawyer. He is now known by his excellent dialogue, entitled “Octavius.” At what time he wrote it is a contested point, but as he appears to have imitated Tertullian, and to have been copied by Cyprian in his treatise “De idolornm vanitate,” it may probably be referred to the reign of the emperor Caracalla. The speakers in this dialogue are Caecilius, a heathen, and Octavius, a Christian; and Minucins, as their common friend, is chosen to moderate between the two disputants. Octavius is made to encounter the arguments of Caecilius, and maintains the unity of God, asserts his providence, vindicates the manners of Christians, and partly attempts to explain their tenets, and partly refers a more ample consideration of them to some future opportunity of discourse. It is a learned, elegant, and ingenious performance, although critical objections may be made to the form of the dialogue, and to some of the sentiments. This work was, for a considerable time, attributed to Arnobius; but in 1560, Francis Baldwin, a learned lawyer, published it at Heidelberg, in 8vo, and made the discovery in a preliminary dissertation, that Minucius was its true author. It has, since that time, gone through many editions, of which the best is that printed at Cambridge in 1712, with the dissertation of Baldwin prefixed, and w Commodiani Instructiones adversus Gentium Deos," added in the way of appendix. We have likewise an excellent translation of it, with notes and illustrations, published by sir D. Dalrymple, lord Hailes, in 1781, from the preface to which part of the above account is taken.

, a learned man, who held the place of perpetual secretary to the French academy, was born in Provence in 1674, and lived to the age of eighty-six. He is chiefly known, as an author, by 1. “A translation of Tasso’s Jerusalem delivered,” which has gone through several editions, but has since been superseded by a better, written by M. le Brun. Mirabauu took upon him, rather too boldly, to retrench or alter what he thought unpleasing in his author, 2. “A translation of the Orlando Furioso,” which has the same faults. He wrote also a little tract entitled “Alphabet de la Fee Gracieuse,” 1734, 12mo. His eulogium at the academy was drawn up by M. de Buffon, and is full of high encomiums.

, well known both by his writings, and the active part he took in bringing about the French revolution, was born in 1749, of a noble family. Throughout life he displayed a spirit averse to every restraint, and was one of those unhappy geniuses in whom the most brilliant talents serve only as a scourge to themselves and all around them. It is told by his democratical panegyrists, as a wonderful proof of family tyranny, under the old government, that not less thau sixty- seven lettres de cachet had been obtained by Mirabeau the father against this son, and others of his rela-' tives. It proves at least as much, what many anecdotes confirm, that, for his share of them, the son was not less indebted to his own ungovernable disposition, than to the severity of his parent. The whole Course of his youth was passed in this manner. Extravagance kept him always poor; and this species of paternal interference placed him very frequently in prison. It may be supposed also, that the part taken by the government in these unpleasant admonitions, did not tend to attach young Mirabeau to that system. The talents of Mirabeau led him frequently to employ his pen, and his publications form the chief epochas of his life. His first publication was, 1. “Essai sur le Despotisme,” “An Essay on Despotism,” in 8vo. Next, in one of his confinements, he wrote, 2. a work “On Lettres de Cachet,” 2 vols. 8vo. 3. “Considerations sur Pordre de Cincinnatus,” 8vo; a remonstrance against the order of Cincinnatus, proposed atone time to be established in America. The public opinion in America favoured this remonstrance, and it proved effectual. 4. His next work was in favour of the Dutch, when Joseph II. demanded the opening of the Scheld, in behalf of the Brabanons. It is entitled, “Doutes sur la liberte* de PEscaut,” 8vo. 5. “Lettre a Pempereur Joseph II. sur son reglement concernant P Emigration,” a pamphlet of forty pages, in 8vo. 6. “De la Caisse d'Escompte,” a volume in 8vo, written against that establishment. 7. “De la Banque d'Espagne,” 8vo a remonstrance against establishing a French bank in Spain. A controversy arising on this subject, he wrote again upon it. 8. Two pamphlets on the monopoly of the water company in Paris, Soon after writing these hewent to Berlin, which was in 1786, and was there when Frederic II. died. On this occasion also he took up his pen, and addressed to his successor a tract entitled, 9. “Lettre remise a Frederic Guillaume II. roi regnant de Prusse, le jour de son avenement au trone.” This contained, says his panegyrist, “non pas des eloges de lui, mais des eloges du peuple; non pas des voeux pour lui, mais des vceux pour le peuple; non pas des conseils pour Jui, mais des conseils pour le bonheur du peuple.”

Mirabeau was still at Berlin when he heard of the assembly of notables convened in France, and then foretold that it would soon be followed by a meeting of the states. At this period he published a volume against the stockjobbing, then carried to a great height, entitled, 10. “Denonciation de Pagiotage au roi, et a Passemblee des notables,” vo. A lettre de cachet was issued against him in consequence of this publication, but he eluded pursuit, and published a pamphlet as a sequel to the book. His next work was against M. Necker. 11. “Lettre a M. de Cretelle, sur Padministration de M. Necker,” a pamphlet in $vo. 12. A volume, in 8vo, against the Stadtholdership “Aux Bataves, sur le Stadthouderat.” 13. “Observations sur la maison de force appellee Bicetre,” an 8vo pamphlet. 14. Another tract, entitled “Conseils a un jeune prince qui sent la nécessite de refaire son education.” 15. He now proceeded to a larger and more arduous work than any he had yet published, on the Prussian monarchy under Frederic the Great, “De la Monarchic Prussienne sous Frederic le Grand,” 4 vols. 4to, or eight in 8vo. In this work he undertakes to define precisely how a monarchy should be constituted. When the orders were issued for convening the states-general, Mirabeau returned into Provence, and at the same time published, 16. “Histoire secrette de la cour de Berlin,” two volumes of letters on the secret history of the court of Berlin. This work was condemned by the parliament of Paris, for the unreserved manner in which it delivered the characters of many foreign princes. As the elections proceeded, he was chosen at once for Marseilles, and for Aix; but the former being a commercial town, which seemed to require a representative particularly conversant in such business, Mirabeau made his choice for Aix.

In consequence of this appointment he went to Paris. The part he took there was active, and such as tended in general to accelerate all the violences of the revolution. He now published periodically, 17. his “Lettres a ses commettans,” Letters to his constituents, which form, when collected, 5 vols. 8vo. It is supposed that the fatal measure of the junction of the three orders into one national assembly, was greatly promoted by these letters. The public events of these times, and the part taken in them by Mirabeau, are the subject of general history. He lived to see the constitution of 1789 established, but not to see its consequences, the destruction of the monarchy, the death of the king, and the ruin of all property. He was accused, as well as the duke of Orleans, of hiring the mob which attacked Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789; but with him was also acquitted by the tribunal of the Chatelet. The dominion of his eloquence in the national assembly had long been absolute, and on the 29th of January 1791, he was elected president. At the latter end of March, in the same year, he was seized by a fever, and died on the second of April. The talents of Mirabeau will not be doubted; the use he made of them will be long lamented, and would probably have been regretted by himself, had he lived only a few months longer; unless we may believe that with a secret attachment to monarchical government, he would have been able to exert an influence sufficient to prevent the excesses which followed his death.

, a learned German, was born at Brussels in 1573; and was first almoner and librarian of Albert, archduke of Austria. He was an ecclesiastic, and laboured all his life for the good of the church and of his country. He died in 1640. His works are, 1.“Elogiaillustrium Belgii scriptorum,” 1609, 4to. 2. “Opera Historica et Diplomatica.” This is a collection of charters and diplomas, relating to the Low Countries. The best edition is that of 1724, 4 vols. in folio, by Foppens, who has made notes, corrections, and additions to it. 3. “Rerum Belgicarum Chronicon;” useful for the history of the Low Countries. 4. “De rebus Bohemicis,” 12mo. 5. “Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica.” 6. “Vita Justi Lipsii,” &c. Penetration, and exactness in facts and citations, are usually esteemed the characteristics of this writer.

, a distinguished lawyer, whose pleadings before the parliament of Paris in favour of the reformers, bear genuine marks of eloquence and ability, retired into England after the repeal of the edict of Nantes, where he became a strenuous assertor of the protestant religion. In 1687 and 1688, he went on his travels into Italy, in quality of governor to an English nobleman. An account of the country, and of the occurrences of the time in which he remained in it, was published at the Hague, in 3 vols. 12mo, under the title of “A New Voyage to Italy.” L'abbe du Fresnoy, speaking of this performance, observes, “that it is well written but that the author has shewn himself too credulous, and as ready to believe every insinuation to the disadvantage of the Roman catholics, as they generally are to adopt whatever can reflect disgrace upon the protestants.” The translation of this work into the English language has been enlarged with many additions: the original has been several times reprinted. Addison, in his preface to his remarks on the different parts of Italy, says, that “Mons. Misson has written a more correct account of it, in general, than any before him, as he particularly excelled in the plan of the country, which he has given us in true and lively colours.” He published, after his arrival in England, “The Sacred Theatre at Cevennes, or an account of Prophecies and Miracles performed in that part of Languedoc:” this was- printed at London in 1707 and, according to the Roman catholic writers, is full of fanaticism and ridiculous stories, He also left behind him “The Observations and Remarks of a Traveller,” in 12mo, published at the Hague, by Vanderburen. He died at London, Jan. 16, 1721.

, knight of the bath, and a distinguished ambassador at the court of Berlin, was the only child of the rev. William Mitchell, formerly of Aberdeen, but then one of the ministers of St. Giles’s, commonly called the high church of Edinburgh. The time of his birth is not specified, but he is said to have been married in 1715, when very young, to a lady who died four years after in child-birth, and whose loss he felt with so much acuteness, as to be obliged to discontinue the study of the law, for which his father had designed him, and divert his grief by travelling, amusements, &c. This mode of life is said to have been the original cause of an extensive acquaintance with the principal noblemen and gentlemen in North Britain, by whom he was esteemed for sense, spirit, and intelligent conversation. Though his progress in the sciences was but small, yet no person had a greater regard for men of learning, and he particularly cultivated the acquaintance of the clergy, and professors of the university of Edinburgh. About 1736 he appears to have paid considerable attention to mathematics under the direction of the celebrated Maclaurin; and soon after began, his political career, as secretary to the marquis of Tweedale, who Wc-s appointed minister for the affuirs of Scotland in 1741. He became also acquainted with the earl of Stair, and it was owing to his application to that nobleman that Dr. (afterwards sir John) Pringle, was in 1742 appointed physician to the British ambassador at the Hague.

Though the marquis of Tweedale resigned the place of secretary of state, in consequence of the rebellion in 1745, yet Mr. Mitchell still kept in favour. He had taken care, during that memorable period, to keep up a correspondence with some eminent clergymen in Scotland, and from time to time communicated the intelligence he received; which assiduity was rewarded wiih a seat in the House of Commons in 1747, as representative for the burghs of BamfF, Elgin, Cullen, Inverurie, and Kiiitore. In 1751 he was appointed his majesty’s resident at Brussels, where, continuing two years, he in 1753 came to London, was created a knight of the bath, and appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary at the court of Berlin. There, by his polite behaviour, and a previous acquaintance with marshal Keith, he acquired sufficient influence with his Prussian majesty to detach him from the French interest. This event involved the court of France in the greatest losses, arising not only from vast subsidies to the courts of Vienna, Petersburg!], and Stockholm, but also from the loss of numerous armies. Sir Audrew generally accompanied the great Frederick through the course of his several campaigns, and when, on the memorable 12th of August, 1759, the Prussian army was totally routed by count SoltikofT, the Russian general, it was with difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to quit the king’s tent, even while all was in confusion.

From a very recent writer, we have some account of his mode of living and general conduct while at Berlin, which was highly honourable to his sense and spirit. When he first arrived at Berlin, he had occasioned some perplexity to those who invited him to their houses, for he played no game of chance, so that his hosts constantly said to each other, “What shall we do with this Englishman, who never plays at cards” In a short time, however, the contest was, who should leave the card -table to enjoy the conversation of sir Andrew Mitchell, whose understanding, they discovered, was no less admirable than the virtues of his character. His bon-mots came into circulation, and were long retailed. Thiebault has recorded a few which, as he says, explain rather his principles than his understanding. On one occasion that three English mails were due, the king said to him, at the levee, “Have you not the spleen, Mr. Mitchell, when the mail is thus delayed r” “No, Sire, not when it is delayed, but often enough when it arrives duly.” This alludes to his being frequently dissatisfied with his own court. During the seven years’ war, in which, as we have already noticed, he constantly served immediately under Frederic, the English government had promised Frederic to send a fleet to the Baltic, for the protection of commerce, and to keep off the Swedes and Russians; but as this fleet never made its appearance, the Swedes were enabled to transport their army without interruption to Pomerania, together with all the necessaries for its support, and the Russians conveyed provisions for their troops by sea, and laid siege to Colberg, &c. All this could not fail to give umbrage to Frederic, and he incessantly complained to sir Andrew, who found himself embarrassed what reply to make. At length the ambassador, who had before been daily invited to dine with the king, received no longer this mark of attention; the generals, meeting him about the king’s hour of dinner, said to him, < It is dinner-time, M. Mitchell.“” Ah gentlemen,“replied he,” no fleet, no dinner“This was repeated to Frederic, and the invitations were renewed. Frederic in his fits of ill-humour was known to exercise his wit even at the expence of his allies; and the English minister at home expressed to sir Andrew Mitchell a wish that he would include some of these splenetic effusions in his official dispatches. Sir Andrew, however, in reply, stated the distinction between such kind of intelligence, and that which properly belonged to his office; and the application was not repeated, by which he was saved from the disgrace, for such he considered it, of descending to the littlenesses of a mere gossip and tale-bearer. We shall only add one more repartee of sir Andrew Mitchell, because, if we mistake not, it has been repeated as the property of other wits. After the affair of Port Mahon, the king of Prussia said to him,” You have made a bad beginning, M. Mitchell. What! your fleet beaten, and Port Mahon taken in your first campaign The trial in which you are proceeding against your admiral Byng is a bad plaister for the malady. You have made a pitiful campaign of it; this is certain.“” Sire, we hope, with God’s assistance, to make a better next year.“” With GocVs assistance, say you, Sir I did not know you had such an ally.“” We rely much upon him, though he costs us less than our other allies."

In 1765, sir Andrew came over to England for the recovery of his health, which was considerably impaired, and after spending some time at Tunbridge Wells, returned in March 1766 to Berlin, where he died Jan. 28, 1771. The court of Prussia honoured his funeral with their presence, and the king himself, from a balcony, is said to have beheld the procession with tears.

, was the son of a stone-cutter in North-Britain, and was born about 1684. Cibber tells us that he received an university education while he remained in that kingdom, but does not specify where. He quitted his own country, however, and repaired to London, with a view of improving his fortune. Here he got into favour with the earl of Stair and sir Robert Walpole; on the latter of whom he was for great part of his life almost entirely dependent. He received, indeed, so many obligations from that open-handed statesman, and, from a sense of gratitude which seems to have been strongly characteristic of his disposition, was so zealous in his interest, that he was distinguished by the title of “Sir Robert Walpole’s poet.” Notwithstanding this valuable patronage, his natural dissipation of temper, his fondness for pleasure, and eagerness in the gratification of every irregular appetite, threw him into perpetual distresses, and all those uneasy situations which are the inevitable consequences of extravagance. Nor does it appear that, after having experienced, more than once, the fatal effects of those dangerous follies, he thought of correcting his conduct at a time he had it in his power: for when, by the death of his wife’s uncle, several thousand pounds devolved to him, instead of discharging those debts which he had already contracted, he lavished the whole away, in the repetition of his former follies. As to the particulars of his history, there are not many on record, for his eminence in public character not rising to such an height as to make the transactions of his life important to strangers, and the follies of his private behaviour inducing those who were intimate with him, rather to conceal than publish his actions, there is a cloud of obscurity hanging over them, which is neither easy, nor indeed much worth while, to withdraw from them. His genius was of the third or fourth rate, yet he lived in good correspondence with most of the eminent wits of his time , particularly with Aaron Hill, who on a particular occasion finding himself unable to relieve him by pecuniary assistance, presented him with the profits and reputation also of a successful dramatic piece, in one act, entitled “The Fatal Extravagance.” It was acted and printed in Mitchell’s name; but he was ingenuous enough to undeceive the world with regard to its true author, and on every occasion acknowledged the obligations he lay under to Hill. The dramatic pieces, which appear under this gentleman’s name are, 1. “The Fatal Extravagance, a tragedy,” 1721, 8vo. 2. “The Fatal Extravagance, a tragedy, enlarged,” 1725, 12mo. 3. “The Highland Fair, ballad opera,” 1731, 8vo. The latter of these is really Mitchell’s, and is notwithout merit. This author died Feb. 6, 1738 and Gibber gives the following character of him “He seems to have been a poet of the third rate he has seldom reached the sublime his humour, in which he more succeeded, is not strong enough to last his versification holds a statd of mediocrity he possessed but little invention and if he was not a bad rhimester, he cannot be denominated a fine poet, for there are but few marks of genius in his writings.” His poems were printed 1729, in 2 vols. 8vo.

, a learned monk and historian of the order of the Camaldoli, was born at Venice Sept. 10, 1708, and after a course of study, during which he distinguished himself by arduous application, and acquired the fame of great learning, he became, in 1732, professor of philosophy and theology in the monastery of St. Michael at Venice. Being also appointed master of the novices, he remained in that office until 1747, when he removed to Faenza, as chancellor of his order. Here he first began to form the plan and collect materials for his celebrated work, the “Annales Camaldulenses,” in which he had the assistance of father Anselm Costadoni. In 1756 he was chosen abbe of his order in the state of Venice, and became, of course, head of the monastery of St. Michael. In 1764 he was appointed general of his order, and went to Rome, where he was received with every mark of respect by pope Clement XIII. He died at St. Michael’s Aug. 14, 1777. His annals were published in 1773, under the title of “Arinales Camaldulenses ordinis S. Benedicti ab anno 907 ad annum 1764, &c.” Venice, 9 vols fol. His other works were,. “Memorie del monistero della santissima Trinita irr Fv.erza,” Faenza, 1749. 2. “Ad scriptores rerum Itahcarum Cl. Mnratorii accessiones historicge Faventinae,” &c. Venice, 1771. 5. “De litteratura Faventinorum, sive de viris dociis, et scriptoribus urbis Faventinae (Faenza), appendix ad accessiones hist. Faventinas,” Venice, 1775. 6. “Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum monasterii S. Michaeiis Venetiaruhi, cum appendice librorum impressorum seculi XV.” ibid. 1779, fol.

, an ingenious French painter, born at Paris about 1688, was the pupil of Galloche. Though born without the least traces of a genius for painting, it is incredible what lengths his perseverance, and continual reflections on the theory and practice of his art, carried him. His manner of designing was never correct, but it was pleasing; and the heads of his women remarkably graceful. His best pictures are, the nativity at S. Roche; a transfiguration; the flight into Egypt; a St. John in the desert at St. Eustace’s; the assumption of the virgin, in fresco, at St. Sulpice; the conversion of St. Paul at St. Germain-des-Pres; the apotheosis of Hercules at Versailles, the saloon of which he was four years in painting, and, for reward, the king granted him a pension of 3000 livres. The end of his days was tarnished by the crime of suicide, which he committed in a melancholy fit June 4, 1737, aged 49 years.

, a very learned French minister of the Protestant religion, was born at Caen in 1624. He became extremely skilled in the Greek, Latin, and Oriental tongues, and professed divinity with high reputation at Leyden, in which city he died in 1689. Several dissertations of his are printed together, and entitled “Varia sacra,” in 2 vols. 4to; besides which, he wrote other works.

, a French poet, born at Chaumon in Bassigny in 1602, was admitted into the society and confidence of the Jesuits, and is said to have been the first Jesuit of France who acquired any fame by writing poetry in his native language. He was not, however, a poet of the first order; he was rather & college student, possessed of an ardent imagination, but devoid of taste; who, instead of restraining the hyperbolical flights of his genius, indulged them to the utmost. His greatest work was “Saint Louis, ou la Couronne reconquise sur les Infidelles,” an epic poem, in eighteen books. Boileau being asked his opinion of him, answered, “that he was too wrong-headed to be much commended, and too much of a poet to be strongly condemned.” He wrote many other poems of a smaller kind, and several works in prose, on divinity, and other subjects. He died at Paris, the 22d of Aug. 1672.

, warden of All Souls college, Oxford, was born in 1578 in Dorsetshire, and educated first at Brasenose college, whence in 1599 he was elected a fellow of All Souls, befng then four years standing in the degree of B. A. Afterwards he took his master’s degree, and entered into holy orders. He hecame domestic chaplain to archbishop Abbot, and in Dec. 1610 was instituted to the rectory of St. Clement’s, Eastcheap, which he resigned in December following. In 1611 he was made rector of St. Michael, Crooked-lane, but resigned it in June 1614, in consequence of having been in April preceding, elected warden of All Souls, on which occasion he took his degree of D. D. He held afterwards the rectory of Monks Risborow, in the county of Buckingham, and of Newington, near Dorchester, in Oxfordshire. He was one of the king' commissioners in ecclesiastical affairs, and died July 5, 1618, in the fortieth year of his age. Wood seems to insinuate that his death was hastened by the treatment his work received. This was a folio published at London in 1616, containing a Latin translation of the Liturgy, Catechisms, 39 articles, ordination book, and doctrinal points extracted from the homilies, to which he added, also in Latin, a treatise “de politia ecclesiae Anglicanac.” The design of this publication was to recommend the formularies and doctrines of the Church of England to foreign nations; but, according to Wood, there was such a leaning towards “Calvin’s Platform,” that the work was not only called in, but ordered to be publicly burnt. Heylin, who speaks highly of the author’s character and good intentions, thinks that the true cause of this work being so disgraced was, that in translating the 20th article, he omitted the first clause concerning the power of the church to decree rites and ceremonies, &c. His treatise “De Politia” was reprinted at London in 1683, 8vo, but the former edition we conceive is of rare occurrence, as we do not find it in the Bodleian or Museum catalogues.

, an eminent painter, was, according to some, born at Coldra, and to others, at Lugano, 1609. He was at first the disciple of Gesari d'Arpino, but formed a style of his own, selected from the principles of Albani and Guercino. He never indeed arrived at the grace of the former, but he excelled him in vigour of tint, in variety of invention, in spirited and resolute execution. He had studied colour with intense application at Venice, and excelled in fresco and in oil. Of the many pictures with which he enriched the churches and palaces of Rome, that of Joseph recognised by his brothers, on the Quirinal, is considered as the most eminent. If Mola possessed a considerable talent for history, he was a genius in landscape: his landscape every where exhibits in the most varied combination, and with the most vigorous touch, the sublime scenery of the territory in which he Was born. His predilection for landscape was such, that in his historic subjects it may often be doubted which is the principal, the actors or the scene; a fault which may be sometimes imputed to Titian himself. In many of Mola’s gallery-pictures, the figures have been ascribed to Albano. He reared three disciples, Antonio Gherardi of Rieti, who after his death entered the school of Cortona, and distinguished himself more by facility than elegance of execution Gia. Batista Boncuore of Rome, a painter at all times of great effect, though often somewhat heavy and Giovanni Bonati of Ferrara, called Giovannino del Pio, from the protection of that cardinal, who painted three altar-pieces of consideration at Rome, but died young. Mola died in 1665, aged fifty-six. He had a brother, John Baptist, who was born in 1620, and also learned the art of painting in the school of Albani. He proved a very good painter in history, as well as in landscape; but was far inferior to his brother, in style, dignity, taste, and colouring. In his manner he had more resemblance to the style of Albani, than to that of his brother; yet his figures are rather hard and dry, and want the mellowness of the master. However, there are four of his pictures in the Palazzo Salviati, at Rome, which are universally taken for the hand of Albani.

, viscount Molesworth of Swordes in Ireland, an eminent statesman and polite writer, was descended from a family, anciently seated in the counties of Northampton and Bedford in England; but his father having served in the civil wars in Ireland, settled afterwards in Dublin, where he became an eminent merchant, and died in 1656, leaving his wife pregnant with this only child, who raised his family to the honours they now enjoy. He was born in Dec. at Dublin, and bred in the college there; and engaged early in a marriage with a sister of Richard earl of Bellamont, who brought him a daughter in 1677. When the prince of Orange entered England in 1688, he distinguished himself by an early and zealous appearance for the revolution, which rendered him so obnoxious to king James, that he was attainted, and his estate sequestered by that king’s parliament, May 2, 1689. But when king William was settled on the throne, he called this sufferer, for whom he had a particular esteem, into his privy council; and, in 1692, sent him envoy extraordinary to the court of Denmark. Here he resided above three years, till, some particulars in his conduct disobliging his Danish majesty, he was forbidden the court. Pretending business in Flanders, he retired thither without any audience of leave, and came from thence home: where he was no sooner arrived, than he drew up “An Account of Denmark;” in which he represented the government of that country as arbitrary and tyrannical. This piece was greatly resented by prince George of Denmark, consort to the princess, afterwards queen Anne; and Scheel, the Danish envoy, first presented a memorial to king William, complaining of it, and then furnished materials for an answer, which was executed by Dr. William King. From King’s account it appears, that Molesworth’s offence in Denmark was, his boldly pretending to some privileges, which, by the custom of the country, are denied to every body but the king; as travelling the king’s road, and hunting the king’s game: which being done, as is represented, in defiance of opposition, occasioned the rupture between the envoy and that count. If this allegation have any truth, the fault lay certainly altogether on the side "of Molesworth whose disregard of the customs: of the country to which he was sent, cannot be defended.

In the mean time his book was well received by the public, reprinted thrice (and as lately as 1758), and translated into several languages. The spirit of it was particularly approved by the earl of Shaftesbury, author of the “Characteristics;” who from thence conceived a great esteem for him, which afterwards ripened into a close friendship. Molesworth’s view in writing the “Account of Denmark,” is clearly intimated in the preface, where he plainly give us his political, as well as his religious creed. He censures very severely the clergy in general, for defending the revolution upon any other principles than those of resistance, and the original contract, which he maintains to be the true and natural basis of the constitution; and that all other foundations are false, nonsensical, rotten, derogatory to the then present government, and absolutely destructive to the legal liberties of the English nation. As the preservation of these depends so much upon the right education of youth in the universities, he urges, also, in the strongest terms, the absolute necessity of purging and reforming those, by a royal visitation: so that the youth may not be trained up there, as he says they were, in the< slavish principles of passive obedience and jus divinum, but may be instituted after the manner of the Greeks and Romans, who in their academies recommended the duty to their country, the preservation of the law and public liberty: subservient to which they preached up moral virtues, such as fortitude, temperance, justice, a contempt of death, &c. sometimes making use of pious cheats, as Elysian fields, and an assurance of future happiness, if they died in the cause of their country; whereby they even deceived their hearers into greatness. This insinuation, that religion is nothing more than a pious cheat, and an useful state-engine, together with his pressing morality as the one thing necessary, without once mentioning the Christian religion, could not but be very agreeable to the author of the “Characteristics.” In reality, it made a remarkably strong impression on him, as we find him many years after declaring, in a letter to our author, in these terms: “You have long had my heart, even before I knew you, personally. For the holy and truly pious man, who revealed the greatest of mysteries: he who, with a truly generous love to mankind and his country, pointed out the state of Denmark to other states, and prophesied of things highly important to the growing age: he, I say, had already gained me as his sworn friend, before he was so kind as to make friendship reciprocal, by his acquaintance and expressed esteem. So that you may believe it no extraordinary transition in me, from making you in truth my oracle in public affairs, to make you a thorough confident in my private.” This private affair was a treaty of marriage with a relation of our author; and though the design miscarried, yet the whole tenor of the letters testifies the most intimate friendship between the writers.

Molesworth served his country in the House of Commons in both kingdoms, being chosen for the borough of Swordes in Ireland, and for those of Bodmyn, St. Michael, and East Retford in England; his conduct in the senate being always firm and steady to the principles he embraced. He was a member-of the privy-council to queen Anne, till the latter end of her reign when, party running high, he was removed from the board in Jan. 1713. This was upon a complaint against him from the lower, house of convocation, presented Dec.^2, by the prolocutor, to the House of Peers, charging him- with speaking these words, in the hearing of many persons: “They jhat have turned the world upside down, are come hither also;” and for affronting the clergy in convocation, when they presented their address to lord chancellor Phipps. Steele’s “Crisis” was written partly in vindication of Molesworth, and severely animadverted upon by Swift in his “Public Spirit of the Whigs.” But as Molesworth constantly asserted, and strenuously maintained the right of succession in the house of Hanover, George I. on the forming of his privy-council in Ireland, made him a member of it, Oct. 9, 1714, and the next month a commissioner of trade and plantations. His majesty also advanced him to the peerage of Ireland in 1716, by the title of Baron of Philipstown, and viscount Molesworth of Swordes. He was fellow of the Royal Society and continued to serve his country with indefatigable industry, till the two last years of his life when, perceiving himself worn out with constant application to public affairs, he passed these in a studious and learned retirement. His death happened on May 22, 1725, at his seat at Breedenstown, in the county of Dublin. He had a seat also in England, at Edlington, near Tickill, in Yorkshire. By his will he devised 50l. towards building a church at Philipstown. He had by his wife seven sons and four daughters; one of whom, Mary, married to Mr. Monk, an Irish gentleman, acquired some reputation as the authoress of poems published after her death, in 1715, by her father, under the title of “Marinda, Poems and Translations upon several occasions.” See Mo>Ik hereafter.

, the celebrated comic writer of France, whose original name was Pocquelin, was born at Paris about 1620. He was both son and grandson to valets de chambres on one side, and tapissiers on the other, to Louis XIII. and was designed for the latter business, that of a domestic upholsterer, whose duty was to take care of the furniture of the royal apartments. But the grandfather being very fond of the boy, and at the same time a great lover of plays, used to take him often with him to the hotel de Bourgogne; which presently roused up Moliere’s natural genius and taste for dramatic representations, and created in him such a disgust to his intended employment, that at last his father consented to let him study under the Jesuits, at the college of Clermont. During the five years that he resided here, he made a rapid progress in the study of philosophy and polite literature, and, if we mistake not, acquired even now much insight into the varieties of human character. He had here also an opportunity of contracting an intimate friendship with Chapelle, Bernier, and Cyrano. Chapelle, with whom Bernier was an associate in his studies, had the famous Gassendi for his tutor, who willingly admitted Moliere to his lectures, as he afterwards also admitted Cyrano. When Louis XIII. went to Narbonne, in 1641, his studies were interrupted: for his infirm father, not being able to attend the court, Moliere was obliged to go there to supply his place. This, however, he quitted on his fathers death; and his passion for the stage, which had induced him first to study, revived more strongly than ever. Some have said, that he for a time studied the law, and was admitted an advocate. This seems doubtful, but, if true, he soon yielded to those more lively pursuits which made him the restorer of comedy in France, and the coadjutor of Corneille, who had rescued the tragic Muse from barbarism. The taste, indeed, for the drama, was much improved in France, after cardinal de Richelieu granted a peculiar protection to dramatic poets. Many little societies now made it a diversion to act plays in their own houses; in one of which, known by the name of “The illustrious Theatre,” Moliere entered himself; and it was then, in conformity to the example of the actors of that time, that he changed his name of Pocquelin for that of Moliere, which he retained ever after. What became of him from 1648 to 1652 we know not, this interval being the time of the civil wars, which caused disturbances in Paris; but it is probable, that he was employed in composing some of those pieces which were afterwards exhibited to the public. La Bejart, an actress of Champagne, waiting, as well as he, for a favourable time to display her talents, Moliere was particularly kind to her; and as their interests became mutual, they formed a company together, and went to Lyons in 1653, where Moliere produced his first play, called “L'Etourdi,” or the Blunderer, and appeared in the double character of author and actor. I his drew almo_st all the spectators from the other company of comedians, which was settled in that town; some of which company joined with Moliere, and followed him to Beziers in Languedoc, where he offered his services to the prince of Co'nti, who gladly accepted them, as he had known him at college, and was among the first to predict his brilliant career on the stage. He now received him as a friend; and not satisfied with confiding to him the management of the entertainments which he gave, he offered to make him his secretary, which the latter declined, saying, “I am a tolerable author, but I should make a very bad secretary.” About the latter end of 1657, Moliere departed with his company for Grenoble, and continued there during the carnival of 1658. After this he went and settled at Rouen, where he staid all the summer; and having made some journeys to Paris privately, he had the good fortune to please the king’s brother, who, granting him his protection, and making his company his own, introduced him in that quality to the king and queen-mother. That company began to appear before their majesties and the whole court, in Oct. 1658, upon a stage erected on purpose, in the hall of the guards of the Old Louvre; and “were so well approved, that his majesty gave orders for their settlement at Paris. The hall of the Petit Bourbon was granted them, to act by turns with the Italian players. In 1663, Moliere obtained a pension of a thousand livres: and, in 1665, his company was altogether in his majesty’s service. He continued all the remaining part of his life to give new plays, which were very much and very justly applauded: and if we consider the number of works which he composed in about the space of twenty years, while he was himself all the while an actor, and interrupted, as he must be, by perpetual avocations of one kind or other, we cannot fail to admire the quickness, as well as fertility of his genius; and we shall rather be apt to think with Boileau,” that rhime came to him,“than give credit to some others, who say he” wrote very slowly."

His last comedy was “Le malade imaginaire,” or The Hypochondriac and it was acted for the fourth time, Feb. 17, 1673. Upon this very day Moliere died and the manner of his death, as it was first reported, must have been extraordinary, if true. The chief person represented in “Le ma'iade imaginaire,” is a sick man, who, upon a certain occasion, pretends to be dead. Moliere represented that person, and consequently was obliged, in one of his scenes, to act the part of a dead man. The report, therefore, was that beexpired in that part of the play, and the poets took hold of this incident to show their wit, in a ^variety of jeux d'esprit, as if it had been a legitimate subject for jesting. The only decent lines on this occasion were the following, evidently written by some person of a graver character:

But, according to the best accounts, Moliere was indisposed before the performance of the play. His wifr, and Baron the actor, urged him to take some care of himself, and not to perform that day. “And what then,” said he, “is to become of my poor performers I should reproach myself if I neglected them a single day.” The exertions which he made to go through his part, produced a convulsion, followed by a voiniting of blood, which suffocated him some hours after, in the fifty-third year of his age. The king was so extremely affected with the loss of him, that, as a new mark of his favour, he prevailed with the archbishop of Paris not to deny his being interred in consecrated ground. As Moliere had gained himself many enemies, by ridiculing the folly and knavery of all orders of men, and particularly by exposing the hypocrites of the ecclesiastical order, and the bigots among the laity, in his celebrated comedy, the “Tartuffe*,” they therefore took the advantage of this play, to stir up Paris and the court against its author; and if the king had not interposed, he had then fallen a sacrifice to the indignation of the clergy. The king, however, stood his friend now he was dead; and the archbishop, through his majesty’s intercession, permitted him to be buried at St. Joseph’s, which was a chapel of ease to the parish church of St. Eustace.

* This comedy was suppressed by prince of Conde, his wonder at the difthe hverest of 'he ecclesiastics, afier rent fates of these two pieces, and

was permitted to have a long run. ridiculed; but Moliere, in the Tar‘­When Lows XIV. expressed to the tuftV,’ has attacked even the priests.“required the players also to bring their children to the rehearsals, that he might form his opinion of different passages from the natural expressions of their emotions. Moliere, who diverted himself on the theatre by laughing at the follies of mankind, could not guard against the effects of his own weakness. Seduced by a violent passion for the daughter of La Bejart, the actress, he married her, and was soon exposed to all the ridicule with which he had treated the husbands who were jealous of their wives. Happier in the society of his friends, he was beloved by his equals, and courted by the great. Marshal de Vivonne, the great Conde*, and even Lewis XIV. treated him with that familiarity which considers merit as on a level with birth. These flattering distinctions neither corrupted his understanding nor his heart. A poor man having returned him a piece of gold which he had given him by mistake,” In what a humble abode,“he exclaimed,” does Virtue dwell Here, my friend, take another.“When Baron informed him of one of his old theatrical companions whom extreme poverty prevented from appearing, Moliere sent for him, embraced him, and to words of consolation added a present of twenty pistoles and a rich theatrical dress.” When he was in the height of his reputation, Racine, who was just then come from Languedoc, and was scarcely known in Paris, went to see him, under pretence of consulting him about an ode which he had just finished. Moliere expressed such a favourable opinion of the ode, that Racine ventured to shew him his first tragedy, founded on the martyrdom of Theagenes and Chariclea, as he had read it in the Greek romance. Moliere, who had an honest consciousness of superiority, which exalted him above envy, was not sparing either of praise or of counsel. His liberality carried him still farther: he knew that Racine was not in easy circumstances, and therefore lent him a hundred louis-d'ors; thinking it a sufficient recompence to have the honour of producing a genius to the public, which, he foresaw, would one day be the glory of the stage. The French have very justly placed Moliere at the head of all their comic authors. There is, indeed, no author, in all the fruitful and distinguished age of Lewis XIV. who has attained a higher reputation, or who has more nearly reached the summit of perfection in his own art, according to the judgment of all the French critics. Voltaire boldly pronounces him to be the most eminent comic poet of any age or country nor, perhaps, is this the decision of mere partiality for, upon the whole, who deserves to be preferred to him When Louis XIV. insisted upon Boileau’s telling him who was the most original writer of his time, he answered, MoHere Moliere is always the satirist only of vice or folly. He has selected a great variety of ridiculous characters peculiar to the times in which he lived, and he has generally placed the ridicule justly. He possessed strong comic powers he is full of mirth and pleasantry and his pleasantry is always innocent. His comedies in verse, such as his “Misanthrope” and Tartuffe,“are a kind of dignified comedy, in which vice is exposed, in the style of elegant and polished satire. His verses have all the flow and freedom of conversation, yet he is said to have passed whole days’ in fixing upon a proper epithet or rhime. In his prose comedies, though there is abundance of ridicule, yet there is never any thing to offend a modest ear, or to throw contempt on sobriety and virtue. Together with those high qualities, Moliere has also some defects, which Voltaire, though his professed panegyrist, candidly admits. He is acknowledged not to be happy in the unravelling of his plots. Attentive more to the strong exhibition of characters, than to the conduct of the intrigue, his unravelling is frequently brought on with too little preparation, and in an improbable manner. In his verse comedies, he is sometimes not sufficiently interesting, and too full of long speeches; and in his risible pieces in prose, he is censured for being too farcical. Few writers, however, if any, ever possessed the spirit, or attained the true end of comedy, so perfectly, upon the whole, as Moliere. His” Tartuffe,“in the style of grave comedy, and his” Avare," in the gay, are accounted his two capital productions.

At the time of his death, Moliere was intended for a vacant place in the French academy. More than a century afterwards the academicians placed his bust in their hall, the gift of D'Alembert, and from the many inscriptions proposed, the following was adopted:

And when the place of his interment was lately pulled down, his remains were removed to the garden of the Museum, and placed among the honorary monuments there, in 1799. Of the numerous editions of Moliere, the French bibliographers point out, as the best, that by Bret, 1773, 6 vols. 8vo, with the engravings of the younger Moreau, and a splendid one by Didou 1792, 6 vols. 4to.

, born in 1677, of a noble and ancient family at Tarascon, entered among aie lathers of the oratory, and was pupil to Malebranche. Quitting the oratory, after that celebrated philosopher’s death, he devoted himself wholly to physic and mathematics, in which he acquired great skill, and was appointed professor of philosophy at the royal college in 1723, and afterwards member of the academy of sciences, in 1729. His principal work is “Philosophical Lectures,” 4 vols. 12mo, in which he explains the laws, mechanism, and motions of. the celestial vortices, in order to demonstrate the possibility and existence of them in the system of the Plenum; his system is that of Descartes, but corrected by Newton’s principles. He also left “Mathematical Lectures,” 12mo, very incorrectly printed; and “La premiere partie des Elemens de Geometric,” 12mo. In his temper he shewed very little of the philosopher. In the maintenance of his principles he could bear no contradiction; and when some of his positive assertions provoked the smiles of the academicians, he fell into violent passions, and on one occasion this irritation was so great, as to bring on a fever, of which he died, May 12, 1742. In other respects his character was amiable; but, like some other mathematicians, he was liable in his studies to such absence of mind, as to appear almost wholly insensible to surrounding objects, and this infirmity becoming known, he was made the subject of depredations. A shoe-black, once finding him profoundly absorbed in a reverie, contrived to steal the silver buckles from his shoes, replacing them with iron ones. At another time, while at his studies, a villain broke into the room in which he was sitting, and demanded his money; Molieres, without rising frogi his studies, or giving any alarm, coolly shewed him where it was, requesting him, as a great favour, that he would not derange his papers.

, born of a noble family at Cuenca, entered the Jesuits’ order, 1553, at the age of eighteen, and taught theology with reputation during twenty years in the university of Ebora. He died October 12, 1660, at Madrid, aged sixty-five. His principal works are, Commentaries on the first part of the Summary of St. Thomas, in Latin, a large treatise “De Justitia et Jure,” a book on “The Concordance of Grace and Free-will,” printed at Lisbon, 1588, 4to, in Latin, which ought to have at the end an appendix, printed in 1589. It is an apology from Molina against those who called some propositions in his book heretical, and this last work was what divided the Dominicans and the Jesuits into Thomists, and Molinists, and raised the famous disputes about grace and predestination. Molina’s object was to shew that the operations of divine grace were entirely consistent with the freedom of human will; and he introduced a new kind of hypothesis to remove the difficulties attending the doctrines of predestination and liberty, and to reconcile the jarring opinions of Augustinians, Thomists, Semi- Pelagians, and other contentious divines. Molina affirmed, that the decree of predestination to eternal glory was founded upon a previous knowledge and consideration of the merits of the elect; that the grace from whose operation these merits are derived, is not efficacious by its own intrinsic power only, but also by the consent of our own will, and because it is administered in those circumstances, in which the Deity, by that branch of his knowledge which is called scientia media, foresees that it will be efficacious. The kind of prescience, denominated in the schools scientia media, is that foreknowledge of future contingents, that arises from an acquaintance with the nature and faculties of rational beings, of the circumstances in which they shall be placed, of the objects that shall be presented to them, and of the influence which these circumstances and objects must have on their actions.

In order to put an end to these ‘contentions, pope Clement VIII. instituted the celebrated congregation ’De Auxiliis, in 1597; but after several assemblies of counsellors and cardinals, in which the Dominicans and Jesuits disputed contradictorily during nine years before the pope and the court of Rome, the affair was still undecided. Pope Paul V. under whom these disputes had been continued, at length published a decree, Aug. 31, 1607, forbidding the parties to defame or censure each other, and enjoining the superiors of both orders to punish those severely who should disregard this prohibition.

, regular canon and procurator general of the congregation of St. Genevieve, and one of the most learned antiquaries of the seventeenth century, was born in 1620, at Chalons sur Marne, of a nohle and ancient family. He collected a large cabinet of curiosities, and placed the library of St. Genevieve at Paris in the state which has rendered it so celebrated. He died September 2, 1687, aged sixty-seven. His principal works are, an edition of the “Epistles of Stephen, bishop of Tournay,” with learned notes; “History of the Popes by Medals,” from Martin V. to Innocent XI. 1679, folio, Latin “Reflexions sur l'origine et Pantiquit6 des Chanoines séculiers et réguliers,” 4to “Dissertation sur ra Mitre des Anciens;” another “Dissertation sur une Tete d'Isis,” &c. “Le Cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Ste. Genevieve,” 1692, folio, a curious book. He was the author also of some dissertations in the literary Journals, and left several Mss. on subjects of history and antiquities. He was a man of vast research but, as his countrymen say, he was “plus rempli d'erudition que de critique,” and certainly in some cases took little pains to discriminate between the true and the fabulous.

, a Spanish priest, and by some reckoned the founder of the sect of Quietists, was born in the diocese of Saragossa in 1627, and appears to have resided mostly at Rome, where his ardent piety and devotion procured him a considerable number of disciples of both sexes. In 1675 he published his “Spiritual Guide,” -written in Spanish, which was honoured with the encomiums of many eminent personages, and was republished in Italian in several places, and at last at Rome in 1681. It was afterwards translated into French, Dutch, and Latin (the last by professor Franke at Halle in 1687), and passed through several editions in France, Holland, and Italy. It was at Rome, however, where its publication in 1681 alarmed the doctors of the church. The principles of Molinos, which, Mosheim remarks, have been very differently interpreted by his friends and enemies, amount to this, that the whole of religion consists in the perfect tranquillity of a mind removed from all external and finite things, and centered in God, and in such a pure love of the Supreme Being, as is independent of all prospect of interest or reward; or, in other words, “the soul, in the pursuit of the supreme good, must retire from the reports and gratifications of sense, and, in general, from all corporeal objects, and, imposing silence upon all the motions of the understanding and will, must be absorbed in the Deity.” Hence the denomination of Quietists was given to the followers of Molinos; though that of Mystics, which was their vulgar title, was more applicable, and expressed their system with more propriety, the doctrine not being new, but rather a digest of what the ancient mystics had advanced in a more confused manner. For this, however, Molinos was first imprisoned in 1685, and notwithstanding he read a recantation about two years afterwards, was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, from which he was released by death in 1696. Madame Guyon was among the most distinguished of his disciples, and herself no inconsiderable supporter of the sect of Quietists.

, descended from a very good family in the kingdom of Ireland, was born in the city of Dublin, and received part of his education at Trinity college there, of which he afterwards became a fellow. At his first coming to England he entered himself of the Middle Temple, and was supposed to have had a very considerable hand in the writing of a periodical paper, called “Fog’s Journal,” and afterwards to have been the principal writer of another well-known paper, entitled “Common Sense.” All these papers give testimony of strong' abilities, great depth of understanding, and clearness of reasoning. Dr. King was a considerable writer in the latter, as were lords Chesterfield and Lyttelton. Our author had large offers made him to write in defence of sir Robert Walpole, but these he rejected: notwithstanding which, at the great change in the ministry in 1742, he was entirely neglected, as well as his fellow-labourer Amherst, who conducted “The Craftsman.” Mr. Molloy, however, having married a lady of fortune, was in circumstances which enabled him to treat the ingratitude of his patriotic friends with the contempt it deserved. He lived many years after this period, dying so lately as July 16, 1767. He was buried at Edmonton, July 20. He also wrote three dramatic pieces, 1. “Perplexed Couple,” 1715, 12mo. 2. “The Coquet,” 1718, 8vo. 3. “Half-pay Officers,” 1720, 12mo. None of which met with any very extraordinary success.

Harris, in his edition of Ware’s “Writers of Ireland,” mentions another Charles Molloy, a native of the King’s County, and a lawyer pf the Inner Temple, who wrote “De Jure Maritime et Naval i, or a Treatise of Affairs Maritime, and of Commerce,” first published at London in 1676, and still known by many republications, the last of which was in 1769, 2 vols. 8vo. He died under fifty years of age, in 1690, at his house in Cranes-court, Fleet-street. Harris gives some account also of a Francis Molloy, of King’s County, professor of divinity in the college of St. Isidore at Home, who wrote “Sacra Theologia,” Rome, 1666, 8vo “Grammatica Latino-Hibernica compendiata,” ibid. 1677, 12mo. Edward Lluyd, who has made an abn stract of this in his “Archeeologia Britannica,” says that it was the most complete Irish grammar then extant, although imperfect as to syntax, &c. He says also, what is less credible, that Molloy was not the author of it; although the latter puts his name to it, and speaks of it in the preface as his own work. Molloy’s other work is entitled “Lucerna Fidelium,” Rome, 1676, 8vo, which although the title is in Latin, is written in Irish, and contains an explanation of the Christian religion according to the faith of the church of Rome.

an excellent mathematician and astronomer, was born April 17, 1656, at Dublin, where his father, a gentleman of good family and fortune, lived*. Being of a tender constitution, he was educated under a private tutor at home, till he was near fifteen, and then placed in the university of Dublin, under the care of Dr. PaJliser, afterwards archbishop of Cashell. He distinguished himself here by the probity of his manners as

office m the court of exchequer, was in 1696. His grandfather, Daniel, was

Pieces." It was printed on copper- was published, plates, and collected from a larger well as by the strength of his parts; and, having made a remarkable progress in academical learning, and particularly in the new philosophy, as it was then called, he proceeded at the regular time to his bachelor of arts degree. After four years spent in this university, he came to London, and was admitted into the Middle Temple in June 1675. He staid there three years, and applied himself to the study of the laws of his country, as much as was necessary for one who was not designed for the profession of the law; but the bent of his genius, as well as inclination, lying strongly to philosophy and mathematics, he spent the greatest part of his time in these inquiries, which, from the extraordinary advances newly made by the Royal Society, were then chiefly in vogue.

Thus accomplished, hfc returned to Ireland in June 1678, and shortly after married Lucy, daughter of sir William Domvile, the king’s attorney-general. Being master of an easy fortune, he continued to indulge himself in prosecuting such branches of moral and experimental philosophy as were most agreeable to his fancy; and astronomy having the greatest share, he began, about 1681, a literary correspondence with Flamsteed, the king’s astronomer, which he kept up for several years. In 1683, he formed a design of erecting a philosophical society at Dublin, in imitation of the royal society at London; and, by the countenance and encouragement of sir William Petty, who accepted the office of president, they began a weekly meeting that year, when our author was appointed their first secretary. The reputation of his parts and learning, which by means of this society became more known, recommended him, in 1684, to the notice and favour of the duke of Ormond, then lord lieutenant of Ireland; by whose influence he was appointed that year, jointly with sir William Robinson, surveyor-general of his majesty’s buildings and works, and chief engineer. In 1685, he was chosen fellow of the royal society at London; and that year, for the sake of improving himself in the art of engineering, he procured an appointment from the Irish government, to view the most considerable fortresses in Flanders. Accordingly he travelled through that country and Holland, and some part of Germany and France; and carrying with him letters of recommendation from Flamsteed to Cassini, he was introduced to him, and other eminent astronomers, in the several places through which he passed. Soon after his return from abroad, he printed at Dublin, in 1686, his “Sciothericum telescopium,” containing a description of the structure and use of a telescopic dial invented by him: another edition of which was published at London in 1700, 4to. On the publication of sir Isaac Newton’s “Principia” the following year, 1687, our author was struck with the same astonishment as the rest of the world; but declared also, that he was not qualified to examine the particulars. Halley, with whom he constantly corresponded, had sent him the several parts of this inestimable treasure, as they came from the press, before the whole was finished, assuring him, that he looked upon it as the utmost effort of human genius.

In 1688, the philosophic society at Dublin was broken up and dispersed by the confusion of the times. Mr. Molyneux had distinguished himself, as a member of it, from the beginning, by several discourses upon curious subjects; some of which were transmitted to the royal society at London, and afterwards printed in the “Philosophical Transactions.” In 1689, among great numbers of other Protestants, he withdrew from the disturbances in Ireland, occasioned by the severities of Tyrconnel’s government; and, after a short stay in London, fixed himself with his family at Chester. In this retirement he employed himself in putting together the materials he had some time before prepared for his “Dioptrics,” in which he was much assisted by Flamsteed; and, in August 1690, went to London to put it to the press, where the sheets were revised by Halley, who, at our author’s request, gave leave for printing, in the appendix, his celebrated theorem for finding the foci of optic glasses. Accordingly the book came out, 1692, in 4to, under the title of “Dioptrica nova: a Treatise of Dioptrics, in two parts; wherein the various Effects and Appearances of Spherical Glasses, both Convex and Concave, single and combined, in Telescopes and Microscopes, together with their usefulness in many concerns of Human Life, are explained.” He gave it the title of “Dioptrica nova,” not only because it was almost wholly new, very little being borrowed from other writers, but because it was the first book that appeared in English upon the subject. This work contains several of the most generally useful propositions for practice demonstrated in a clear and easy manner, for which reason it was many years much used by the artificers: and the second part it very entertaining, especially in his history which he gives of the several optical instruments, and of the discoveries made by them. The dedication of the “Dioptrics” being addressed to the royal society, he takes notice, among other improvements in philosophy, by building it upon experience, of the advances that had been lately made in logic by the celebrated John Locke.

Before he left Chester, he lost his lady, who died soon after she had brought him a son. Illness had deprived her of her eye-sight twelve years before, that is, soon after she was married; from which time she had been very sickly, and afflicted with extreme pains of the head. As soon as the public tranquillity was settled in his native country, he returned home; and, upon the convening of a new parliament in 1692, was chosen one of the representatives for the city of Dublin. In the next parliament, in 1695, he was chosen to represent the university there, and continued to do so to the end of his life; that learned body having, before the end of the first session of the former, conferred on him the degree of doctor of laws. He was likewise nominated, by the lord-lieutenant, one of the commissioners for the forfeited estates, to which employment was annexed a salary of five hundred pounds a-year; but looking upon it as an invidious office, and not being a lover of money, he declined it. In 1698, he published “The Case of Ireland stated, in relation to its being bound by Acts of Parliament made imEngland” in which he is supposed to have delivered all, or most, that can be said upon this subject, with great clearness and strength of reasoning. This piece (a second edition of which, with additions and emendations, was printed in 1720, 8vo,) was answered by John Gary, merchant of Bristol, in a book called, “A Vindication of the Parliament of England, &c.” dedicated to the lord-chancellor Somers, and by Atwood, a lawyer. Of these Nicolson remarks that “the merchant argues like a counsellor at law, and the barrister strings his small wares together like a shop-keeper.” What occasioned Molyneux to write the above tract, was his conceiving the Irish woollen manufactory to be oppressed by the English government; on which account he could not forbear asserting his country’s independency. He had given Mr. Locke a hint of his thoughts upon this subject, before it was quite ready for the press, and desired his sentiments upon the fundamental principle on which his argument was grounded; in answer to which that gentleman, intimating that the business was of too large an extent for the subject of a letter, proposed to talk the matter over with him in England. This, together with a purpose which Molyneux had long formed, of paying that great man , whom he had never yet seen, a visit, prevailed with him to cross the water once more, although he was in a very infirm state of health, in July this year, 1698; and he remained in England till the middle of September. But the pleasure of this long-wished-for interview, which he intended to have repeated the following spring, seems to have been purchased at the expence of his life; for, shortly after, he was seized with a severe fit of his constitutional distemper, the stone, which occasioned such retchings as broke a blood-vessel, and two days after put a period to his life. He died October 11, 1698, and was buried at Sr. Audoen’s church, Dublin, where there is a monument and Latin inscription to his memory. Besides the “Sciotbericum telescopicum,” and the “Dioptrica nova,” already mentioned, he published the following pieces in the “Philosophical Transactions.” 1. “Why four convexglasses in a telescope shew objects erect,” No. 53. 2. “Description of Lough Neagh, in Ireland,” No. 158. 3. “On the Connaught worm,” No. 168. -4. “Description of a new hygrometer,” No. 172. 5. “On the cause of winds and the change of weather, c.” No. 177. 6. “Why bodies dissolved swim in menstrua specifically lighter than themselves,” No. 181. 7. “On the Tides,” No. 184. 8. “Observations of Eclipses.” No. 164 185. 9. “Why celestial objects appear greatest near the horizon.” No. 187. 10. “On the errors of Surveyors, arising from the variation of the Magnetic-needle,” No. 230.

, son of the above, was born at Chester in July 1689, and educated with great care by his father, according to the plan laid down by Locke upon that subject. When his father died, he was committed to the care of his uncle Dr. Thomas Molyneux, an excellent scholar and physician at Dublin, and also an intimate friend of Mr. Locke;“who executed his trust so well, that Mr. Molyneux became afterwards a most polite and accomplished gentleman, and was made secretary to his late majesty George II. when he was prince of Wales. Astronomy and optics being his favourite study, as they had been his father’s, he projected many schemes for the advancement of them, and was particularly employed, in the years 1723, 1724, and 1725, in perfecting the method of making telescopes; one of which, of his own making, he had presented to John V. king of Portugal. In the midst of these thoughts, being appointed a commissioner of the admiralty, he became so engaged in public affairs, that he had not leisure to pursue these inquiries any farther; and gave his papers, to Dr. Robert Smith, professor of astronomy at Cambridge, whom he invited to make use of his house and apparatus of instruments, in order to finish what he had left imperfect. Mr. Molyneux dying soon after, in the flower of his age, Dr. Smith lost the opportunity; yet, supplying what was wanting from Mr. Huygens and others, he published the whole in his” Complete Treatise of Optics."

, The preceding William Molyneux had also a brother, Thomas, who was born in Dublin, and educated partly in the university there, and partly at Leyden and Paris. Returning home, he became professor of physic in the university of Dublin, fellow of the college of physicians, physician to the state, and physician- general to the army. He had also great practice, and in 1730 was created a baronet. He died Oct. 19, 1733. He had been a fellow of the royal society of London, and several of his pieces are published in the Transactions. He published, separately, “Some Letters to Mr. Locke,” Lond. 1708, 8vo.

, an eminent Italian and Latin poet, was born of a noble family at Modena, in 1489; and, after being educated at Rome, where he made extraordinary proficiency in the Greek and Latin languages, and even in the Hebrew, he was recalled to Modena, where, in 1512, he married, and intended to settle. The fame, however, of Leo X's court, led him about four years after, back to Rome, where he formed an acquaintance with many eminent scholars; but appears to have paid more attention to the cultivation of his taste than his morals, as he formed a licentious connexion with a Roman lady, in consequence of which he received a wound from the hand of an unknown assassin, which had nearly cost him his life. Even when, on the death of Leo X. he left Rome, he did not return to his family, but went to Bologna, where he became enamoured of Camilla Gonzaga, a lady of rank and beauty, and a warm admirer of Italian poetry. His life after this appears to have been wholly divided between poetry and dissipation; and he died of the consequences of the latter, in 1544. His Italian and Latin poems were for many years published in detached forms until 1749, when Serassi produced an entire edition at Bergamo.

, grand-daughter to the preceding, by Camillo, his eldest son, wa born at Modena in 1542. She was instructed in the classsics, in Hebrew, and in the belles lettres, became an adept in some of the abstruser branches of science, and was a proficient in music; and with all these, was distinguished by the graces and amiable qualities of her sex. She was married, in 1560, to> Paul Porrino, but never had any children; and after his death, in 1578, she passed her life in literary retirement at Modena, where she died in 1617. Her writings, consisting of Latin and Italian poems, translations from Plato, and other classics, were printed in the Bergamo edition of her grandfather’s works. This lady was the subject of numerous eulogies from contemporary writers; but the most extraordinary honour that she received, was that of being presented with the citizenship of Rome, by the senate and people of that city, in a patent reciting her singular merits, and conferring upon her the title of Unica. The honour is extended to the whole noble family of Molza.

, a native of Milan, who flourished in the fifteenth century, obtained considerable reputation for some Latin poems, particularly one on “The Passion,” but his most celebrated work was a collection of the “Lives of the Saints,” not a confused and credulous compilation, but which exceeded all preceding works of the kind, by the pains he took to distinguish truth from fable. This he was enabled to do by a judicious examination of all the existing authorities, and by availing himself of many Mss. which he discovered in public libraries, and carefully collated. In some instances he has admitted supposed for real facts, but in such a vast collection, a few mistakes of this kind are pardonable, especially as he brought to light much information not before made public. This work, which is of uncommon rarity and great price, is entitled “Sanctuarium, sive vitje Sanctorum,” 2 vols. fol. without date or place, but supposed to have been printed at Milan about 1479. Some copies want the last leaf of signature Nnnn, but even with that defect bear a very high price.

, an able mathematical and medical writer, was born at Rheims about 1536, of a family which possessed jthe estate of Monantheuil in the Vermandois, in Picardy. He was educated at Paris in the college de Presles, under Kamus, to whose philosophical opinions he constantly adhered. Having an equal inclination and made equal progress in mathematics and medicine, he was first chosen professor of medicine, and dean of that faculty, and afterwards royal professor of mathematics. While holding the latter office he had the celebrated De Thou and Peter Lamoignon among the number of his scholars. During the troubles of the League, he remained faithful to his king, and even endangered his personal safety by holding meetings in his house, under pretence of scientific conversations, but really to concert measures for restoring Paris to Henry IV. He died in 1606, in the seventieth year of his age. His works are, 1 “Oratio pro mathematicis artibus,” Paris, 1574, 4to. 2. “Admonitio ad Jacobum Peletarium de angulo contactus,” ibid. 1581, 4to. 3. “Oratio pro suo in Regiam cathedram ritu,” ibid. 1585, 8vo. 4. “Panegyricus dictus Henrico IV. statim a felicissima et auspicatissima urbis restitutione,” &c. ibid. 1594, translated into French in 1596. 5. “Oratio qua ostenditur quale esse debeat collegium professorum regiorum,” &c. ibid. 15&6, 8vo. 6.“Commentarius in librum Aristotelis Tt^I Tuv /x>i%avjv,” Gr. and Lat. ibid. 1599, 4to. 7. “Ludus latromathematicus,” &c. ibid. 1597, 8vo, and 1700. 8. “De puncto primo Geometriae principio liber, 7 ' Leyden, 1600, 4to. This was at one time improperly attributed to his son, Thierry. 9.” Problematis omnium quse & 1200 annis inventa sunt nobilissimi demonstratio," Paris, 1600. He left some other works, both ms. and printed, of less consequence.

, a Spanish physician, was born at Seville in the early part of the sixteenth century. He received his education at the university of Alcala de Henarez, and settled in practice at Seville, where he died in 1578. The first of his writings related to a controverted question, and was entitled “Desecanda venain Pleuritide inter Graecos et Arabes concordia,” Hispal. 1539. This was followed by a tract, “De Rosa et partibus ejus; de succi Rosarum temperatura,” &c. But his reputation was chiefly extended by his work, in the Spanish language, concerning the medicinal substances imported from the new world, entitled “Dos Libros de las cosas que se traen de las Indias Occidentales, que sirven al uso de Medicina,” Sevilla, 1565. It was reprinted in 1569 and 1580, and to the latter edition a third book was added. Charles PEcluse, or Clusius, translated this work into Latin, with the title of “Simplicium Medicamentorum ex novo orbe delatorum, quorum in Medicina usus est, Historia,” Antw. 1574, and improved it by his annotations, and by the addition of figures. This work was also translated into Italian, French, and English, the latter by Frampton, 1580, 4to. Although the descriptions are inaccurate, the work had at least the merit of exciting the public attention to medicines heretofore little known. Monardes also published three works in Spanish, which were translated into Latin by l'Ecluse, with the title of “Nicolai Monardi Libri tres, magna Medicinae secreta et varia Experimenta continentes,” Lugd. 1601. The first of these relates to the lapis bezoardicus; the second, to the use and properties of steel, which he was the first after Rhazes to recommend as a deobstruent, according to Dr. Freind; and the third, to the efficacy of snow. His name is perpetuated by the botanical genus Monarda, in the class diandria of Linnæus.

, was the son of sir Francis Monckton, knt. of Cavil Hall, and of Newbold, both in the East-riding of Yorkshire, and descended from an ancient family in that county, who possessed the lordship of Monckton before the place was made a nunnery, which was in the 20th Edward II. (1326). Sir Philip was born at Heck, near Howden, in Yorkshire, and was high sheriff for that county in the 21st Charles II. (1669). He served for some time in parliament for Scarborough, and had been knighted in 1643. His loyalty to Charles I. brought him under the cognizance of the usurpers, and for his loyal services he underwent two banishments, and several imprisonments during the course of the civil war; his grandfather, father, and himself, being all at one time sequestered by Cromwell. In consideration of these services and sufferings, king Charles II. in 1653, wrote a letter to him in his own hand (which was delivered by major Waters) promising that if it pleased God to restore him, he should share with him in his prosperity, as he had been content to do in his adversity; but he afterwards experienced the same ingratitude as many of his father’s friends, for when he waited on the lord chancellor Clarendon with a recommendation from the earl of Albemarle for some compensation for his services, he was treated with the utmost insolence, and dismissed with marked contempt. Sir Philip had been a prisoner in Belvoir castle, and was released on col. Rossiter’s letter to the lord general Fairfax in his favour. He fought at the several battles of Hessey Moor, Marston Moor, Aderton Moor, and at Rowton Heath, near Chester, where he was wounded in his right arm, and was forced to manage his horse with his teeth whilst he fought with his left, when he was again wounded and taken prisoner. He was likewise at the siege of Pontefract castle, and at York. He married miss Eyre, of an ancient family, of Hassop, in Derbyshire. His manuscripts are now in. the possession of his descendant, the lord viscount Galway.

, great grandson of the preceding, and a major-general in the army, was born about 1728, and was the son of John Monckton, the first viscount Galway, and baron of Killard, by his wife the lady Elizabeth Manners, daughter to John second duke of Rutland. He was sent with a detachment to Nova Scotia in 1755, and served under general Wolfe against Quebec. He dislodged a body of the enemy from the point of Levi, and formed a plan for landing the troops near the heights of Abraham, and assisted in the execution for conducting the right wing at the oattle of Quebec, where he was dangerously wounded. He received the thanks of the House of Commons, and afterwards went to New York, where he recovered of his wounds. He was also at the taking of Martinico, and was sometime governor of Portsmouth, where Fort Monckton was so called in honour of him. He died in 1782, leaving the character of a brave, judicious, and humane officer. In his account of the taking of Martinico in 1762, he mentions an attack made by the French troops from Morne Gamier on some of our posts, in which they were repulsed, and such was the ardour of our troops, that they passed the ravine with the enemy, seized their batteries, and took post there. It is also said that on this occasion the English party had no colours with them when they took possession of the batteries, and supplied the want of them by a shirt and a red waistcoat. From the many instances which have been given of General Monckton’s liberality, the following may be selected as deserving to be remembered. When the troops were sent to Martinico, general Amherst took away the usual allowance of baugh and forage- money. General Monckton, knowing the difficulties which subaltern officers have to struggle with in the best situation, felt for their distress, and in some degree to make it up to them, ordered the negroes which were taken, to be sold, and the money divided among the subalterns. On finding that it would not produce them five pounds a-piece, he said he could not offer a gentleman a less sum, and made up the deficiency, which was about 500l. out of his own pocket. He kept a constant table of forty covers for the army, and ordered that the subalterns chiefly should be invited, saying, he had been one himself; and if there was a place vacant, he used to reprimand his aid-de-camp.

, a celebrated traveller, was the son of the lieutenant-criminel of Lyons. After having studied philosophy and mathematics in his native city and in Spain, he visited the East in order to seek for the books of Mercurius Trismegistus and Zoroaster; but finding nothing to detain him, returned to France, and was esteemed by the learned, particularly the amateurs of chemistry and astrology. He died April 28, 1665. His travels have been printed under the title of “Journal de ses voyages en Portugal, Provence, Italic, Egypt, &c. &c. redige par le sieur de Liergues, son fils,” Lyons, 1665 6, 3 vols. 4to. They are ill-written, his style being loose and diffuse, but they contain many curious particulars. It appears that he was in England in 1663, as he gives several interesting anecdotes of the court of Charles II. and of the manners of the times. He travelled through various countries as tutor to the sons of noblemen, one of whom, the duke de Chevereuse, was with him in England. Brunet gives the title of what appears to be another work of travels by Monconys, “Voyage en divers endroits de l'Europe, en Afrique et au Levant,” Paris (Holland) 1695, 5 vols. 12mo.

, a member of the French academy, was born at Paris in 1687. He was a very elegant writer, and his works have gone through various editions. His principal performances are, “An Essay on the necessity and means of Pleasing,” which is an ingenious book of maxims. He wrote “Les Ames Rivales,” an agreeable romance, containing lively and just descriptions of French manners. He was also author of various pieces of poetry, small theatrical pieces, complimentary verses, madrigals, &c. Moncrif died at Paris in 1770, at the age of eighty-three, and left behind him a great character for liberality, and amiable manners.

, an ingenious and learned Frenchman, and one of the best writers of his time, was born at Paris in 1674. At sixteen he entered into the congregation of the fathers of the oratory, and was afterwards sent to Mans to learn philosophy. That of Aristotle then obtained in the schools, and was the only one which was permitted to be taught; nevertheless Mongault, with some of that original spirit which usually distinguishes men of uncommon abilities from the vulgar, ventured, in a public thesis, which he read at the end of the course of lectures, to oppose the opinions of Aristotle, and to maintain those of Des Cartes. Having studied theology with the same success, he quitted the oratory in 1699; and soon after went to Thoulouse, and lived with Colbert, archbishop of that place, who had procured him a priory in 1698. In 1710 the duke of Orleans, regent of the kingdom, committed to him the education of his son, the duke of Chartres; which important office he discharged so well that he acquired universal esteem. In 1714, he had the abbey Chartreuve given him, and that of Vilieneuve in 1719. The duke of Chartres, becoming colonel-general of the French infantry, chose the abbe* Mongault to fill the place of secretary-general made him also secretary of the province of Dauphiny and, after the death of the regent, his father, raised him to other considerable employments. All this while he was as assiduous as his engagements would permit in cultivating polite literature; and, in 1714, published at Paris;, in 6 vols. 12mo, an edition of “Tully’s Letters to Atticus,” with an excellent French translation, and judicious comment upon them. This work has been often reprinted, and is justly reckoned admirable; for, as Middleton has observed, in the preface to his “Life of Cicero,” the abbe Mongault “did not content himself with the retailing the remarks of other commentators, or out of the rubbish of their volumes with selecting the best, but entered upon his task with the spirit of a true critic, and, by the force of his own genius, has happily illustrated many passages which all the interpreters before him had given tip as inexplicable.” He published also a very good translation of “Herodian,” from the Greek, the best edition of which is that of 1745, in 12mo. He died at Paris, Aug. 15, 1746, aged almost seventy-two.

He was a member of the French academy, and of the academy of inscriptions and belles lettres; and was fitted to do honour to any society. In the first volume of the “Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions” there are two fine dissertations of his one “upon the divine honours paid to the governors of the Roman provinces, during the continuance of the republic;” the other, “upon the temple, which Cicero conceived a design of consecrating to the memory of his beloved daughter Tullia, under the title of Fanum.”

, duke of Albemarle, memorable for having been the principal instrument in the restoration of Charles II. to his crown and kingdoms, was descended from a very ancient family, and born at Potheridge, in Devonshire, Dec. 6, 1608. He was a younger son; and, n provision being expected from his father, sir Thomas Monk, whose fortune was reduced, he dedicated himself to arms from his youth. He entered in 1625, when not quite seventeen, as a volunteer under sir Richard Grenville, then, at Plymouth, and just setting out under lord Wimbledon on the expedition against Spain. The year after he obtained a pair of colours, in the expedition to the isle of Rhee; whence returning in 1628, he served the following year as ensign in the Low Countries, where he was promoted to the rank of captain. In this station he was present in several sieges and battles; and having, in ten years service, made himself absolute master of the military art, he returned to his native country on the breaking out of the war between Charles I. and his Scotish subjects. His reputation, supported by proper recommendations, procured him the rank of lieutenant-colonel, in which post he served in both the king’s northern expeditions; and was afterwards a colonel, when the Irish rebellion took place. In the suppression of this he did such considerable service, that the lords justices appointed him governor of Dublin but the parliament intervening, that authority was vested in another. Soon after, on his signing a truce with the rebels, by the king’s order, September 1643, he returned with his regiment to England; but, on his arrival at Bristol, was met by orders both from Ireland and Oxford, directing the governor of that place to secure him. The governor, however, believing the suspicions conceived against him groundless, suffered him to proceed to Oxford on his bare parole; and there he so fully justified himself to lord Digby, then secretary of state, that he was by that nobleman introduced to the king; but his regiment was given to colonel Warren, who had been his major. As some amends for this, the king made him major-general in the Irish brigade, then employed in the siege of Nantwich, in Cheshire; at which place he arrived just soon enough to share in the unfortunate surprisal of that whole brigade by sir Thomas Fairfax. He was sent to Hull, and thence conveyed in a short time to the Tower of London, where he remained in close confinement till Nov. 13, 1646; and then, as the only means to be set at liberty, he took the covenant, engaged with the parliament, and agreed to accept a command under them in the Irish service. Some have charged him with ingratitude for thus deserting the king, who had been very kind to him during his confinement, and in particular had sent him from Oxford 100l. which was a great sum for his majesty, then much distressed. It has, however, been pleaded in his favour, that he never listened to any terms made him by the parliamentarians while the king had an army on foot. Whatever strength may he in this apology, it is certain that when his majesty was in the hands of his enemies, he readily accepted of a colonel’s commission; and, as he had been engaged against the Irish rebels before, he thought it consistent with the duty he owed, and which he had hitherto inviolably maintained to the king, to oppose them again. He set out for Ireland, Jan. 28, 1646-7, but returned in April on account of some impediments. Soon after, he had the command in chief of all the parliament’s forces in the north of Ireland conferred upon him; upon which he went again, and for the following two years performed several exploits worthy of an able and experienced soldier. Then he was called to account for having treated with the Irish rebels; and summoned to appear before the parliament, who, after hearing him at the bar of the house, passed this vote, Aug. 10, 1649, “That they did disapprove of what major-general Monk had done, in concluding a peace with the grand and bloody Irish rebel, Owen Roe O'Neal, and did abhor the having any thing to do with him therein; yet are easily persuaded, that the making the same by the said major-general was, in his judgment, most for the advantage of the English interest in that nation; and, that he shall not be further questioned for the same in time to come.” This vote highly offended the major-general, though not so much as some passages in the House, reflecting on his honour and fidelity. He was, perhaps, the more offended at this treatment, as he was not employed in the reduction of Ireland under Oliver Cromwell; who, all accounts agree, received considerable advantage from this very treaty with O‘Neal. Monk’s friends endeavoured to clear his reputation his reasons for agreeing with O’Neal were also printed yet nothing could wipe off the stain of treating with Irish rebels, till it was forgotten in his future fortune.

About this time his elder brother died without issue male; and the family estate by entail devolving upon him, he repaired it from the ruinous condition in which his father and brother had left it. He had scarce settled his private affairs, when he was called to serve against the Scots (who had proclaimed Charles II.) under Oliver Cromwell; by whom he was made lieutenant-general of the artillery, and had a regiment given him. His services were now so important, that Cromwell left him commander in chief in Scotland, when he returned to England to pursue Charles II. In 1652, he was seized with a violent fit of illness, which obliged him to go to Bath for the recovery of his health: after which, he set out again for Scotland, was one of the commissioners for uniting that kingdom with the new-erected commonwealth, and, having successfully concluded it, returned to London. The Dutch war having now been carried on for some months, lieutenant-general Monk was joined with the admirals Blake and Dean in the command at sea; in which service, June 2, 1653, he contributed greatly by his courage and conduct to the defeat of the Dutch fleet. Monk and Dean were on board the same ship; and, Dean being killed the first broadside, Monk threw his cloak over the body, and gave orders for continuing the fight, without suffering the enemy to know that we had lost one of our admirals. Cromwell, in the mean time, was paving his way to the supreme command, which, Dec. 16, 1653, he obtained, under the title of protector; and, in this capacity, soon concluded a peace with the Dutch. Monk remonstrated warmly against the terms of this peace; and his remonstrances were well received by Oliver’s own parliament. Monk also, on his return home, was treated so respectfully by them, that Oliver is said to have grown jealous of him, as if he had been inclined to another interest, but, receiving satisfaction from the general on that head, he not only took him into favour, but, on the breaking out of fresh troubles in Scotland, sent him there as commander in chief. He set out in April 1654, and finished the war by August; when he returned from the Highlands, and fixed his abode at Dalkeith, a seat belonging to the countess of Buccleugh, within five miles of Edinburgh: and here he resided during the remaining time that he stayed in Scotland, which was five years, amusing himself with rural pleasures, and beloved by the people, though his government was more arbitrary than any they had experienced. He exercised this government as one of the protector’s council of state in Scotland, whose commission bore date in June 1655. Cromwell, however, could not help distrusting him at times, on account of his popularity; nor was this distrust entirely without the appearance of foundation. It is certain the fcing entertained good hopes of him, and to that purpose sent to him the following letter from Colen, Aug. 12, 1655.

However, Monk made no scruple of discovering every step taken by the cavaliers which came to his knowledge, even to the sending the protector this letter; and joined in promoting addresses to him from the army, one of which was received by the protector March 19, 1657, in which year Monk received a summons to Oliver’s house of lords. Upon the death of Oliver, Monk joined in an address to the new protector Richard, whose power, nevertheless, he foresaw would be but short-lived; it having been his opinion, that Oliver, had he lived much longer, would scarce have been able to preserve himself in his station. And indeed Cromwell himself began to be apprehensive of that great alteration which happened after his death, and fearful that the general was deeply engaged in those measures which procured it; if we may judge from a letter written by him to general Monk a little before, to which was added the following remarkable postscript: “There be that tell me, that there is a certain cunning fellow in Scotland, called George Monk, who is said to lie in wait there to introduce Charles Stuart; I pray you, use your diligence to apprehend him, and send him up to me.” It belongs to history to relate all the steps which led to the restoration of Charles II. and which were ably conducted by Monk. Immediately after that event, he was loaded with pensions and honours; was made knight of the garter, one of the privycouncil, master of the horse, a gentleman of the bedehamber, first lord-commissioner of the treasury; and soon after created a peer, being made baron Monk of Potheridge, Beauchamp, and Tees, earl of Torrington, and duke of Albemarle, with a grant of 7000Z. per annum, estate of inheritance, besides other pensions. He received a very peculiar acknowledgment of regard on being thus called to the peerage; almost the whole house of commons attending him to the very door of the house of lords, while he behaved with great moderation, silence, and humility. This behaviour was really to be admired in a man, who, by his personal merit, had raised himself within the reach of a crown, which he had the prudence, or the virtue, to wave: yet he preserved it to the end of his life: insomuch, that the king, who used to call him his political father, said, very highly to his honour, “the duke of Albemarle demeaned himself in such a manner to the prince he had obliged, as never to seem to overvalue the services of general Monk.*‘ During tRe remainder of his life he was consulted and employed upon all great occasions by the king, and a.t the same time appears to have been esteemed and beloved by his fellow-subjects. In 1664, on the breaking out of the first Dutch war, he was, by the duke of York, who commanded the fleet, intrusted with the care of the admiralty: and, the plague breaking out the same year in London, he was intrusted likewise, with the care of the city by the king, who retired to Oxford. He was, at the latter end of the year, appointed joint-admiral of the fleet with prince Rupert, and distinguished himself with great bravery against the Dutch. In September 1666, the fire of London occasioned the Duke of Albemarle to be recalled from the fleet, to assist in quieting the minds of the people; who expressed their affection and esteem for him, by crying out publicly, as he passed through the ruine’d streets, that,” if his grace had been there, the city had not been burned." The many hardships and fatigues he had undergone in a military life began to shake his constitution somewhat early; so that about his 60th year he was attacked with a dropsy; which, being too much neglected, perhaps on account of his having been hitherto remarkably healthy, advanced very rapidly, and put a period to his life, Jan. 3, 1669-7O, when he was entering his 62d year. He died in the esteem of his sovereign, and his brother the duke of York, as appears not only from the high posts he enjoyed, and. the great trust reposed in him by both, but also from the tender concern shewn by them, in a constant inquiry after his state during his last illness, and the public' and princely paid to his memory after his decease; for, his funeral was honoured with all imaginable pomp and solemnity, and his ashes admitted to mingle with those of the royal blood; he being interred, April 4, 1670, in Henry the Vllth’s chapel at Westminster, after his corpse had lain in state many weeks at Somerset-house.

The duke of Albemarle’s character has been variously represented, and some parts of it cannot, perhaps, be defended without an appeal to those principles of policy which are frequently at variance with morality. Hume, however, thinks it a singular proof of the strange power of faction, that any malignity (alluding to such writers as Burnet, Harris, &c.) should pursue the memory of a nobleman, the tenour of whose iife^was so unexceptionable, and who, by restoring the ancient and legal and free government to three kingdoms plunged in the most destructive anarchy, may safely be said to be the subject in these islands, w4io, since the beginning of time, rendered the most durable and most essential services to his native country. The means also, by which he atchieved his great undertakings, were almost entirely unexceptionable. “His temporary dissimulation,” continues Hume, “being absolutely necessary, could scarcely be blameable. He had received no trust from that mongrel, pretended, usurping parliament whom he dethroned therefore could betray none he even refused to carry his dissimulation so far as to take the oath of abjuration against the king.” Yet Hume allows that in his letter to Sir Arthur Hazelrig (in the Clarendon papers) he is to be blamed for his false protestations of zeal for a commonwealth.

This extraordinary man was an author: a light in which he is by no means generally known, and yet in which he did not want merit. After his death, was published, by authority, a treatise which he composed while a prisoner in the Tower: it is called, “Observations upon military and political Affairs, written by the honourable George Duke of Albemarle,” &c. London, 1671, small folio. Besides a dedication to Charles II. signed John Heath, the editor, it contains thirty chapters of martial rules, interspersed with political observations, and is in reality a kind of military grammar. We have, besides, “The Speech of general Monk in the House of Commons, concerning the settling the conduct of the Armies of Three Nations, for the Safety thereof;” another delivered at Whitehall, Feb. 21, 1659, to the members of parliament, at their meeting before the re-admission of their formerly-secluded members and “Letters relating to the Restoration,” London, 1714-15.

, daughter of Lord Molesworth, and wife to George Monk, esq. was celebrated for her poetical talents. She acquired by her own application a perfect knowledge of the Latin, Italian, and Spanish languages; and, from a study of the best authors, a decided taste for poetical composition. She appears to have written for her own amusement, rather than with any view to publication. Her poems were not printed till after her death, when they were published under the title of “Marinda; Poems and Translations upon several Occasions,” London, 1716, 8vo. A dedication'to Caroline, princess of Wales, was prefixed to them by lord Molesworth, the father of Mrs. Monk, who speaks of the poems as the production * c of the leisure hours of a young woman, who, in a remote country retirement, without other assistance than that of a good library, and without omitting the daily care due to a large family, not only acquired the several languages here made use of, but the good morals and principles contained in those books, so as to put them in practice, as well during her life and languishing sickness, as at the hour of her death; dying not only like a Christian, but a Roman lady, and becoming at once the grief and the comfort of her relations.“She died in 1715, at B^t 1. On her deathbed she wrote some very affecting verses to her husband, which are not printed in her works, but may be found in vol. II. of the” Poems of Eminent Ladies,“and in” Cibber’s Lives."

, an eminent French astronomer and mathematician, was born at Paris, Nov. 23, 1715. His education was chiefly directed to the sciences, to which he manifested an early attachment; and his progress was such that at the age of twenty-one, he was chosen as the co-operator of Maupertuis, in the measure of a degree of the meridian at the polar circle. At the period when the errors in Flamsteed’s catalogue of the stars began to be manifest, he undertook to determine anew the positions of the zodiacal stars as being the most useful to astronomers. In 1743 he traced at St. Sulpice a grand meridian line, in order to ascertain certain solar motions, and also the small variations in the obliquity of the ecliptic.

In 1746, he determined, after numerous observations, the great inequalities of Saturn, produced by the action of Jupiter; and his work served as a foundation for the paper of Euler on this subject, which gained the prize at the academy of sciences in 1748. Soon after this, Le Monnier published his “Astronomical Institutions,” a work which was so much the more useful, as it was then the only one in France that contained the first principles of astronomy. Having undertaken to determine the errors of the lunar tables, he directed his labours peculiarly to that satellite, which he observed with assiduity during the entire period of eighteen years, at the end of which the same errors should recommence. His principal works, besides the foregoing, are “Lunar Nautical Astronomy,” “Tables of the Sun,” and “Corrections of those of the Moon.” He took great pleasure in astronomical observations, and to him has been ascribed the great improvement that has taken place in France in practical astronomy.

During his long career he was considered among his friends as the soul of astronomy, and made numerous proselytes to this study by his advice, example, and instructions. It is to him we chiefly owe the early progress of two celebrated astronomers, Lalande and Pingre. Le Monnier died in 1799, in the 84th year of his age. He had a brother, Lewis William, a very able experimental philosopher, but who is not to be confounded with an abbe of that name who translated Terence and Persius into French, and who was the author of fables, tales, and epistles. The latter died in 1796.

, a learned French poet, was born in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, June 15, 1641, He was a man of parts and learning, had a decided taste for poetry; and, in 1671, had a fair opportunity of displaying his talents. The subject of the prize of poetry, founded by the members of the French academy at this time, was, “The Suppressing of Duelling by Lewis XIV.” As this was the first contest of the kind, the candidates were numerous and eager; but la Monnoye succeeded, and had the honour of being the first who won the prize Founded by the French academy; by which he gained a reputation that increased ever after. In 1673, he was a candidate for the new prize, the subject of which was, “The protection with which his Gallic majesty honoured the French academy;” but his poem came too late. He won the prize in 1675, on “The glory of arms and learning under Lewis XIV;” and that also of 1677, on “The Education of the Dauphin.” On this occasion, the highest compliment was made him by the abbe* Regnier; who said, that “it would be proper for the French academy to elect Mr. de la Monnoye upon the first vacancy, because, as he would thereby be disqualified from writing any more, such as should then be candidates would be encouraged to write.” It was indeed said, that he discontinued to write for these prizes at the solicitation of the academy; a circumstance which, if true, reflects higher honour on him than a thousand prizes. He wrote many other successful pieces, and was no less applauded in Latin poetry than in the French. Menage and Bayle have both bestowed the highest encomiums on his Latin poetry. His Greek and Italian poems are likewise much commended by the French critics.

But poetry was not la Monnoye’s only province: to a perfect skill in poetry, he joined a very accurate and extensive knowledge of the languages. He was also an acute critic: and no man applied himself with greater assiduity to the study of history, ancient and modern. He was perfectly acquainted with all the scarce books, that had anything curious in them, and was well versed in literary history. He wrote “Remarks on the Menagiana:” in the last edition of which, printed in 1715, in 4 vols. 12mo, are included several pieces of his poetry, and a curious dissertation on the famous book “De tribus Impostoribus.” His “Dissertation on Pomponius Laetus,” at least an extract of it, is inserted in the new edition of Baillet’s “Jugemens des Sgavans,” published in 1722, with a great nnmber of remarks and corrections by la Monnoye. He also embellished the “Anti-Baillet of Menage;” with corrections and notes. He was a great benefactor to literature, by his own productions, and the assistance which he communicatd very freely, upon all occasions, to other authors. Among others, he favoured Bayle with a great number of curious particulars for his “Dictionary,” which was liberally acknowledged. He died at Paris, Oct. 15, 1728, in his 88th year. Mr. de Sallingre published at the Hague “A Collection of Poems by la Monnoye,” with his eulogium, to which we owe many of the particulars given above. He also left behind him “A Collection of Letters,” mostly critical several curious “Dissertations” three hundred “Select Epigrams from Martial, and other Poets-, ancient and modern, in French verse;” and several other works in prose and verse, in French, Latin, and Greek, ready for the press. A collection of his works in 3 vols. 8vo, was published in 1769. He deserved that the French academy should admit into their list a person on whom they had so often bestowed their laurels, and he might, doubtless, have obtained that honour sooner, had he sued for it: but, as he declined sueh solicitation, he was not elected till 1713, on the death of abbe Regner des Marias. He married Claude Henriot, whom he survived, after living many years with her in the strictest amity; as appears from a copy of his verses, and also from the epitaph he wrote for himself and his wife. He had accumulated a very curious and valuable library, but was obliged, by the failure of the Missisippi scheme, to propose selling it, in order to support his family. This the duke de Villeroi hearing, settled an annual pension of 6000 livres upon him; for which he expressed his gratitude, in a poem addressed to that nobleman. It is said, however, that the duke did it only upon condition, that himself should inherit the library after the death of la Monnoye, who accepted the terms.

, an eminent anatomist, and the father of the medical school of Edinburgh, was descended both by his paternal and maternal parents from distinguished families in the north of Scotland. He was born in London, in September 1697, where his father, then a surgeon in the army of king William in Flanders, resided upon leave of absence in the winter. On quitting the army, Mr. Monro settled in Edinburgh; and perceiving early indications of talent in Alexander, he gave him the best instruction which Edinburgh then afforded, and afterwards sent him to London, where he attended the anatomical courses of Cheselden, and while here, laid the foundation of his most important work on the bones. He then pursued his studies at Paris and Leyden, where his industry and promising talents recommended him to the particular notice of Boerhaave. On iiis return to Edinburgh, in the autumn of 1719, he was appointed professor and demonstrator of anatomy to the company of surgeons, the joint demonstrators having spontaneously resigned in his favour, and soon after began also to give public lectures on anatomy, aided by the preparations which he had made when abroad; and at the same time Dr. Alston, then a young man, united with him in the plan, and began a course of lectures on the materia medica and botany. These courses may be regarded as the opening of that medical school, which has since extended its fame, not only throughout Europe, but over the new world. Mr. Monro suggested this plan; and by the following circumstance, probably, contributed to lead his son into a mode of lecturing, which subsequently carried him to excellence. Without the young teacher’s knowledge, he invited the president and fellows of the College of Physicians, and the whole company of surgeons, to honour the first day’s lecture with their presence. This unexpected company threw the doctor into such confusion, that he forgot the words of the discourse, which he had written and committed to memory. Having left his papers at home, he was at a loss for a little time what to do: but, with much presence of mind, he immediately began to shew some of the anatomical preparations, in order to gain time for recollection; and very soon resolved not to attempt to repeat the discourse which he had prepared, but to express himself in such language as should occur to him from the subject, which he was confident that he understood. The experiment succeeded: he delivered himself well, and gained great applause as a good and ready speaker. Thus discovering his own strength, he resolved henceforth never to recite any written discourse in teaching, and acquired a free and elegant style of delivering lectures.

In the same year, 1720, a regular series of medical instruction was instituted at Edinburgh, through the interest of Dr. Monro’s father: these two lectureships were put upon the university establishment, to which were soon, after added those of Drs. Sinclair, Rutherford, Innes, and Plummer. This system of medical education was, however, incomplete, without affording some opportunity to the students of witnessing the progress and treatment of diseases, as well as of hearing lectures. A proposal was, therefore, made to erect and endow an hospital by subscription; and Dr. Monro published a pamphlet, explaining the advantages of such an institution. The royal infirmary was speedily raised, endowed, and established by charter; and the institution of clinical lectures, which were commenced by Dr. Monro on the surgical cases, and afterwards by Dr. Rutherford, in 1748, on the medical cases, completed that admirable system of instruction, upon which the reputation and usefulness of the medical school of Edinburgh have been subsequently founded.

Dr. Monro, who was indefatigable in the labours of his office, soon made himself known to the professional world by a variety of ingenious and valuable publications. His first and principal publication was his “Osteology, or Treatise on the Anatomy of the Bones,” which appeared in 1726, and passed through eight editions during his life, and was translated into most of the languages of Europe. To the later editions of this work he subjoined a concise neurology, or description of the nerves, and a very accurate account of the lacteal system and thoracic duct.

Dr. Monro was also the father and active supporter of a society, which was established by the professors and other practitioners of the town, for the purpose of collecting and publishing papers on professional subjects, and to which the public is indebted for six volumes of “Medical Essays and Observations by a Society at Edinburgh,” the first of which appeared in 1732. Dr. Monro was the secretary of this society; and after the publication of the first volume, when the members of the society became remiss in their attendance, the whole labour of collection and publication was carried on by himself; “insomuch that after this,” says his biographer, c< scarce any other member ever saw a paper of the five last volumes, except those they were the authors of, till printed copies were sent them by the bookseller.“Of this collection, many of the most valuable papers were written by Dr. Monro, on anatomical, physiological, and practical subjects: the most elaborate of these is an” Essay on the Nutrition of the Foetus,“in three dissertations. Haller, speaking of these volumes as highly valuable to the profession, adds,” Monrous ibi eminet."

After the conclusion of this publication, the society was revived, at the suggestion of the celebrated mathematical professor, Colin Maclaurin, and was extended to the admission of literary and philosophical topics. Dr. Monro a<yain took an active part in its proceedings, as one of its vice-presidents, especially after the death of Maclaurin, when two volumes of its memoirs, entitled “Essays Physical and Literary,” were published, and some materials for a third collected, to which Dr. Monro contributed several useful papers. The third was not published during his life. His last publication was an “Account of the Success of Inoculation in Scotland,” written originally as an answer to some inquiries addressed to him from the committee of the faculty of physicians at Paris, appointed to investigate the merits of the practice. It was afterwards published at the request of some of his friends, and contributed to extend the practice in Scotland. Besides the works which he published, he left several Mss. written at different times, of which the following are the principal viz. A History of Anatomical Writers An Encheiresis Anatomica; Heads of many of his Lectures; A Treatise on Comparative Anatomy; A Treatise on Wounds and Tumours; and, An Oration de Cuticula. This last, as well as the short tract on comparative anatomy, has been printed in an edition of his whole works, in one volume quarto, published by his son, Dr. Alexander Monro, at Edinburgh, in 1781. This tract had been published surreptitiously in 1744, from notes taken at his lectures; but is here given in a more correct form.

In 1759, Dr. Monro resigned his anatomical chair, which he had so long occupied with the highest reputation, to his son, just mentioned; but he still continued to lecture as one of the clinical professors on the cases in the infirmary. His life was also a scene of continued activity in other affairs, as long as his health permitted. For he was not only a member, but a most assiduous attendant, of many societies and institutions for promoting literature, arts, sciences, and manufactures in Scotland; he was also a director of the bank of Scotland, a justice of the peace, a commissioner of high roads, &c. and was punctual in the discharge of all his duties. His character in private life was as amiable and exemplary as it was useful in public. To the literary honours, which he attained at home, were added those of a fellow of the royal society of London, and an honorary member of the royal academy of surgery, at Paris. Dr. Monro was a man of middle stature, muscular, and possessed of great strength and activity; but was subject for many years to a spitting of blood on catching the ieast cold, and through his life to frequent inflammatory levers. After an attack of the influenza, in 1762, he was afflicted with symptoms of a disease of a painful and tedious nature, which continued ever after, until it terminated his existence. This was a fungous ulcer of the bladder and rectum, the distress of which he bore with great fortitude and resignation, and died with perfect calmness, on the 10th of July, 1767, at the age of seventy.

Two of his sons became distinguished physicians: Dr. Alexander, his successor, and who has filled his chair since his death, is well known throughout Europe by his valuable publications. It was not until 1801 that to relieve himself from the fatigues of the professorship, he associated with himself, his son, the third Alexander Monro, who bids fair to perpetuate the literary honours of his family. Dr. Donald Monro, the other son of the first Alexander, settled as a physician in London, became a fellow of the royal college of physicians, and senior physician to the army. He wrote, besides several smaller medical treatises, “Observations on the Means of preserving the Health of Soldiers,” 1780, 2 vols. 8vo; a treatise on medical and pharmaceutical chemistry, and the Materia Medica, 1788, 4 vols. 8vo and the life of his father, prefixed to the edition of his works published by his son, Alexander, 1781, 4to. He died in July 1802, aged seventy one. It is from this life of the first Dr. Monro, that the preceding account is taken.

, an eminent physician, was descended from the ancient family of that name, in the county of Ross, in North Britain; and was born at Greenwich, in the county of Kent, on the 16th of November, 1715, O. S. His grandfather, Dr. Alexander Monro, was principal of the university of Edinburgh, and, just before the revolution in 1688, had been nominated by king James the lid, to fill the vacant see of the Orkneys; but the alteration which took place in the church-establishment of Scotland at that period, prevented his obtaining possession of this bishopric; and the friendship which prevailed between him and the celebrated lord Dundee, the avowed opponent of king William, added to his being thought averse to the new order of things, exposed him to much persecution from the supporters of the revolution, and occasioned him to retire from Edinburgh to London, whitber he brought with him his only son, then a child. James Monro, the son of Dr. Alexander, after taking his academical degrees in the university of Oxford, practised with much success as a physician in London; and, dedicating his studies principally to the investigation of that branch of medicine which professes to relie* e the miseries arising from insanity, was elected physician to the hospital of Bridewell and Bethlem.

Dr. John Monro was the eldest son of Dr. James, and was educated at Merchant-Taylors school in London, whence he was removed in 1723* to St. John’s college, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. In 1743, by the favour of sir Robert Walpole, with whom his father lived on terms of friendship, he was elected to one of the travelling fellowships founded by Dr. Radcliffe, and soon after went abroad. He studied physic, first at Edinburgh, and afterwards at Leyden, under the celebrated Boerhaave; after which he visited various parts of Europe. He resided some time at Paris in 1745, whence he returned to Holland; and, after a short stay in that country, he passed through part of Germany into England, carefully observing whatever merited the notice of a man of learning and taste. After quitting Italy he paid a second visit to France, and, having continued some time in that country, returned to England in 1751.

During his absence on the continent, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of doctor of physic, by diploma; and his father’s health beginning to decline soon after his arrival in England, he was, in July 1751, elected joint physician with him to Bridewell and Bethlem hospitals, and on his death, which happened in the latter end of 1752, he became sole physician thereof.

From this time he confined his practice entirely to cases of insanity, in which branch of the medical art he attained to a higher degree of eminence than was possessed by any of his predecessors or contemporaries. In 1758, Dr. Battie having published “A Treatise on Madness,” wherein he spoke, as Dr. Monro conceived, disrespectfully of the former physicians of Bethlem hospital, he thought it incumbent upon him to take some notice of the publication; and, in the same year, published a small pamphlet, entitled, “Remarks on Dr. Baltic’s Treatise on Madness.” His ideas of this, dreadful malady, as well as the motives which induced him to compose these remarks, are very concisely and elegantly expressed in the advertisement which is prefixed to the work. “Madness is a distemper of such a nature, that very little of real use can be said concerning it; the immediate causes will for ever disappoint our search, and the cure of that disorder depends on management as much as medicine. My own inclination would never have led me to appear in print; but it was thought neces’sary for me, in my situation, to say something in answer to the undeserved censures which Dr. Battie has thrown upon my predecessors.”

Dr. Monro defines madness to be a “vitiated judgment;” though he declares, at the same time, he “cannot take upon him to say, that even this definition is absolute and perfect.” His little work contains the most judicious and accurate remarks on this unhappy disorder; and the character which, in the course of it, he draws of his father, is so spirited, and so full of the warmth of filial affection, as to merit being selected. “To say he understood this distemper beyond any of his contemporaries is very little praise; the person who is most conversant in such cases, provided he has but common sense enough to avoid metaphysical subtilties, will be enabled, by his extensive knowledge and experience, to excel all those who have not the same opportunities of receiving information. He was a man of admirable discernment, and treated this disease with an address that will not soon be equalled; he knew very well, that the management requisite for it was never to be learned but from observation; he was honest and sincere, and though no man was more communicative upon points of real use, he never thought of reading lectures on a subject that can be understood no otherwise than by personal observation: physic he honoured as a profession, but he despised it as a trade; however partial I may be to his memory, his friends acknowledge this to be true, and his enemies will not venture to deny it.”

In 1753, Dr. Monro married Miss Elizabeth Smith, second daughter of Mr. Thomas Smith, merchant, of London, by whom he had six children. The eldest of these, John, was designed for the profession of physic, and had made a considerable progress in his studies, but died, after a short illness, at St. John’s college, Oxford, in 1779, in the 25th year of his age. The loss of his eldest son was severely felt by Dr. Monro, to whom he was endeared by his many amiable qualities and promising abilities; and this loss was aggravated by that of his only daughter, Charlotte, who was carried off in the 22d year of her age, by a rapid consumption, within four years afterwards. She was a young lady, who, to a native elegance of manners, added excellent sense, and an uncommon sweetness of disposition. It is not wonderful, therefore, that her loss should prove a severe blow to a father who loved her with the most lively affection. He was now in his 63th year, and had hitherto enjoyed an uncommon share of good health; but the constant anxiety he was under during his daughter’s illness, preyed upon his mind, and brought on a paralytic stroke in January 1783. The strength of his constitution, however, enabled him to overcome the first effects of this disorder, and to resume the exercise of his profession; but his vigour, both of mind and body, began from this time to decline. In 1787, his youngest son, Dr. Thomas Monro (who, on the death of his eldest brother, had applied himself to the study of physic,) was appointed his assistant at Bethlem hospital; and he thenceforward gradually withdrew himself from business, till the beginning of 1791, when he retired altogether to the village of Hadley, near Barnet; and in this retirement he continued till his death, which happened, after a few days illness, on the 27th of December, in the same year, and in the 77th year of his age.

Dr. Monro was tall and handsome in his person, and of a robust constitution of body. Though naturally of a grave cast of mind, no man enjoyed the pleasures of society with a greater relish. To great warmth of temper he added a nice sense of honour; and, though avowedly at the head of that branch of his profession to which he confined his practice, yet his behaviour was gentle and modest, and his manners refined and elegant in an eminent degree. He possessed an excellent understanding, and great humanity <>t disposition but the leading features of his character were disinterestedness and generosity; as he has said of his father, so may it, with equal truth, be said of himself “physic he honoured as a profession, but he despised it as a trade” Never did he aggravate the misery of those who were in want, by accepting what could ill be spared; whilst he frequently contributed as much by his bounty as his professional skill to alleviate the distress he was forced to witness. It was the remark of a, man of acute observation, who knew him intimately, “that he had met with many persons who affected to hold money in contempt, but Dr. Monro was the only man he had found who really did despise it.”

He possessed a very elegant taste for the fine arts in general, and his collection, both of books and prints, was very extensive. He was uncommonly well versed in the early history of engraving; and the specimens he had collected of the works of the first engravers were very select and curious. From these, as well as from the communications of Dr. Monro, the late ingenious Mr. Strutt derived great assistance in the composition of his history of engravers. Though he never appeared as an author, except in the single instance mentioned above, he possessed a mind stored with the beauties of ancient as well as modern literature. Horace and Shakspeare were his favourite authors and his notes and remarks on the latter were considerable these he communicated to Mr. Steevens, previous to his publication of the works of our immortal poet anxious to contribute his mite to the elucidation of those passages which time has rendered obscure. His fondness for reading was great, and proved a considerable resource to him in the evening of life; and fortunately he was able to enjoy his books till within a very few days of his death.

Dr. Monro was buried in the church-yard of Hadley and, of his children, three only survived him James, who commanded the ship Houghton, in the service of the East India company; Charles; and Thomas, who succeeded him, and still is physician to Bethlem and Bridewell hospitals. Besides these, and his son and daughter, whose deaths are mentioned above, he had a younger son, Culling, who died an infant.

, a brave English admiral, was the third son of sir John Monson, of South Carlton, in. Lincolnshire, and born in 1569. For about two years he studied at Baliol college, Oxford: but, being of an active and martial disposition, he soon grew weary of a contemplative life, and applied himself to the sea-service, in which he became very expert. In the beginning of queen Elizabeth’s war with Spain, he entered on board of ship without the knowledge of his parents; but in 1587 we find he went out commander of a vessel, and in 1588, he served in one of the queen’s ships, but had not the command of it. In 1589, he was vice-admiral to the earl of Cumberland, in his expedition to the Azores islands, and at the taking of Fayal; but, in their return, suffered such hardships, and contracted such a violent illness from them, as kept him at home the whole year 1590. “The extremity we endured,” says he, “was more terrible than befel any ship during the eighteen years’ war: for, laying aside the continual expectation of death by shipwreck, and the daily mortality of our men, I will speak of our famine, that exceeded all men and ships’ I have known in the course of my life. For sixteen days together we never tasted a drop of drink, either beer, wine, or water;and though we had plenty of beef and pork of a year’s saltirxg, yet did we forbear eating of it for making us the drier. Many drank salt water, and those that did, died suddenly, and the last words they usually spake, was, ‘drink, drink, drink’ And I dare boldly say, that, of five hundred men that were in that ship seven years before, at this day there is not a man alive but myself and one more.”

In 1591, he served a second time under the earl of Cumberland; and the commission was, as all the former were, to act against the Spaniards. They took several of their ships; and captain Monson, being sent to convoy one of them to England, was surrounded and taken by six Spanish gallies, after a long and bloody fight. On this occasion they detained him as an hostage for the performance of certain covenants, and carried him to Portugal, where he was kept prisoner two years at Cascais and Lisbon. Not discouraged by this ill-luck, he entered a third time into the earl’s service, in 1593; and he behaved himself in this, as in all other expeditions, like a brave and able seaman. In 1594, he was created master of arts at Oxford; in 151)5, he was married; in 1596, he served in the expedition to Cadiz, under Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, to whom he did great service by his wise and moderate counsel, and was deservedly knighted. He was employed in several other expeditions, and was highly honoured and esteemed during Elizabeth’s reign. Military men were not king James’s favourites: therefore, after the death of the queen, he never received either recompence or preferment, more than his ordinary entertainment or pay, according to the services he was employed in. However, in 1604-, he was appointed admiral of the Narrow Seas, in which station he continued till 1616: during which time he supported the honour of the English flag, against the insolence of the infant commonwealth of Holland, of which he frequently complains in his “Naval Tracts;” and protected our trade against the encroachments of France.

Notwithstanding his long and faithful services, he had the misfortune to fall into disgrace; and, through the resentment of some powerful courtiers, was imprisoned in the Tower in 1616: but, after having been examined by the chief justice Coke and secretary Winwood, he was discharged. He wrote a vindication of his conduct, entitled “Concerning the insolences of the Dutch, and a Justification of sir William Monson” and directed it to the lord chancellor Ellesmere, and sir Francis Bacon, attorneygeneral and counsellor. His zeal against the Dutch, and his promoting an inquiry into the state of the navy, contrary to the inclination of the earl of Nottingham, then lord high admiral, seems to have been the occasion of his troubles. He had also the misfortune to bring upon himself a general and popular odium, in retaking lady Arabella Steuart, after her escape out of England in June 1611, though it was acting agreeably to his orders and duty. This lady was confined to the Tower for her marriage with William Seymour, esq. as was pretended; but the true cause of her confinement was, her being too high allied, and having a title or claim to the crown of England. Sir William, however, soon recovered his credit at court: for, in 1617, he was called before the privy council, to give his opinion, how the pirates of Algiers might be suppressed, and the town attacked. He shewed the impossibility of taking Algiers, and was against the expedition; notwithstanding which, it was rashly undertaken by Villiers duke of Buckingham. He was also against two other undertakings, as ill-managed, in 1625 and 162$, namely, the expeditions to Cadiz and the isle of Rhee. He was not employed in these actions, because he objected to the minister’s measures; but, in 1635, it being found necessary to equip a large fleet, in order to break a confederacy that was forming between the French and the Dutch, he was appointed vice-admiral in that armament, and performed liis duty with great honour and bravery. After that he was employed no more, but spent the remainder of his days in peace and privacy, at ins seat at Kinnersley in Surrey, where he digested and finished his “Naval Tracts,” published in Churchill’s “Collection of Voyages.” He died there, Feb. 1642-3, in his seventy-third year, and left a numerous posterity, the ancestors of the present noble family of Monson, baron Monson of Burton, in the county of Lincoln.

, an eminent French historian, was descended of a noble family, but the names of his parents, and the period of his birth have not been discovered. The place of his birth was probably Picardy, and the time, prior to the close of the fourteenth century. No particulars of his 'early years are known, except that he evinced, when young, a love for application, and a dislike to indolence. The quotations also from Sallust, Livy, Vegetius, and other ancient authors, that occur in his Chronicles, shew that he must have made some progress in Latin literature. He appears to have been resident in Cambray when he composed his history, and passed there the remainder of his life. In 1436 he was nominated to the office of lieutenant du Gavenier of the Cambresis; the gavenier was the collector or receiver of the annual dues payable to the duke of Burgundy, by the subjects of the church in the Cambresis, for the protection of them as earl of Flanders. Monstrelet also held the office of bailiff to the chapter of Cambray from 1436 to 1440, when another was appointed. The respect and consideration which he had now acquired, gained him the dignity of governor of Cambray in 1444, and in the following year he was nominated bailiff of Wallaincourt. He retained both of those places until his death, which happened about the middle of July, in 1453. His character in the register of the Cordeliers, and by the abbot of St. Aubert, was that of “a very honourable and peaceable man;” expressions, says his biographer, that appear simple at first sight, but which contain a real eulogium, if we consider the troublesome times in which Monstrelet lived, the places he held, the interest he must have had sometimes to betray the truth in favour of one of the factions which then divided France, and caused the revolutions the history of which he has published during the life of the principal actors.

, an English statesman and poet, was born April 16, 1661, at Horton in Northamptonshire. He was the son of Mr. George Montague, a younger son of the earl of Manchester. He was educated first in the country, and then removed to Westminster, where, in 1677, he was chosen a king’s scholar, and recommended himself to the celebrated master of the school, Busby, by his felicity in extemporary epigrams. He contracted a very intimate friendship with Mr. Stepney; and, in 1682, when Stepney was elected to Cambridge, the election of Montague not being to proceed till the year following, he was afraid lest by being placed at Oxford, he might be separated from his companion, and therefore solicited to be removed to Cambridge, without waiting for the advantages of another year. He was now in his twenty-first year, and his relation, Dr. Montague, was then master of Trinity college in which he was placed a fellow-commoner, and took him under his particular care. Here he commenced an acquaintance with, the great Newton, which continued through his life, and was at last attested by a legacy.

In 1685, he wrote some verses on the death of king Charles, which made such an impression on the earl of Dorset, that he was invited to town, and introduced by that universal patron to the other wits. In 1687, he joined with. Prior in “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” one of his best compositions, which was intended as a burlesque of Dryden’s “Hind and Panther.” Commencing his political career, he signed the invitation to the prince of Orajge, and sat in the convention. He about the same time married the countess dowager of Manchester, and intended to have taken orders; but afterwards altering his purpose, he purchased for 1500l. the place of one of the clerks of the council.

In March 1691, Mr. Montague first displayed his abilities in the debates upon the bill for regulating trials in cases of high treason; the design of this bill, among other things, was to allow counsel to prisoners charged w4th that offence, while the trial was depending. Montague rose up to speak for it, but after uttering a few sentences, was struck so suddenly with surprise, that, for a while, he was not able to go on. Recovering himself, he took occasion, from this circumstance, “to enforce the necessity of allowing counsel to prisoners, who were to appear before their judges; since he, who was not only innocent, and unaccused, but one of their own members, was so dashed when he was to speak before that wise and illustrious assembly.”

In this year, 1691, he was made one of the commissioners of the treasury, and called to the privy council; and in 1694 was appointed second commissioner and chancellor of the exchequer, and under-treasurer. In 1695, he entered into the design of re-coining all the current money of the nation; which, though great difficulties attended it, he completed in the space of two years. In 1696, he projected the scheme for a general fund, which gave rise to the sinking fund, afterwards established by sir Robert Walpole. The same year, he found out a method to raise the sinking credit of the Bank of England; and, in 1697, he provided against the mischiefs from the scarcity of money, by raising, for the service of the government, above two millions in exchequer-notes; on which occasion he was sometimes called the British Machiavel. Before the end of this session of parliament, it was resolved by the House of Commons, that “Charles Montague, esq. chancellor of the exchequer, for his good services to the government, did deserve his majesty’s favour.” This vote, when we consider that the public affairs called for the skill of the ablest statesmen, and that he was at this time not more than thirty-six years of age, may be admitted as a proof of the high esteem entertained of his abilities.

In 1698, being advanced to the first commission of the treasury, he was appointed one of the regency in the king’s absence: the next year he was made auditor of the exchequer, and the year after created baron Halifax. He was, however, impeached by the Commons; but the articles were dismissed by the Lords.

At the accession of queen Anne he was dismissed from the council: and in the first parliament of her reign was again attacked by the Commons, and again escaped by the protection of the Lords. In 1704, he wrote an answer to Bromley’s speech against occasional conformity. He headed the inquiry into the danger of the church. In 1706, he proposed and negociated the union with Scotland; and wheu the elector of Hanover had received the garter, after the act had passed for securing the protestant successipr, he was appointed to carry the ensigns of the order to the electoral court. He sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell; but voted for a mild sentence. Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for summoning the electoral prince to parliament as duke of Cambridge. At the queen’s death he was appointed one of the regency, during her successor’s absence from his kingdoms; and, as soon as George I. had taken possession of the throne, he was created earl of Halifax, installed knight of the garter, and expected to have been appointed lord high treasurer; but as he was only created first commissioner, he was highly chagrined, nor was he pacified by the above honours, or by the transfer of the place of auditor of the exchequer to his nephew. Inflamed, says Mr. Coxe, by disappointed ambition, he entered into cabals with the tory leaders, for the removal of those with whom he had so long cordially acted; but his death put an end to his intrigues. While he appeared to be in a very vigorous state of health, he was suddenly taken ill, May 15, and died on the 19th, 1715.

As he was a patron of poets, his own works did not miss of celebration. Addison began to praise him early, and was followed or accompanied by other poets; perhaps by almost all, except Swift and Pope, who forbore to flatter him in his life, because he had disappointed their hopes; and after his death spoke of him, Swift with slight censure, and Pope in the character of Bufo with acrimonious contempt*.

He was, as Pope says, “fed with dedications;” and Tickell affirms that no dedication was unrewarded. Dr. Johnson’s remarks on this are too valuable to be omitted.

the “Epilogue” to the same, he says Swift’s dislike was founded on the same

in a note that Halifax was " a peer no cause as Pope’s, disappointment of

, eari of Sandwich, an English general, admiral, and statesman, was the only surviving son of sir Sidney Montague^ the youngest son of Edward lord Montague of Bough ton. He was born July 27, 1625, and after a liberal education was very early introduced into public life. His career may be said to have commenced at the age of eighteen; for in August 1643 he was commissioned to raise a regiment in the service of the parliament, and to act against Charles I. He then joined the army, and acquitted himself with great courage at the storming of Lincoln, the battles of Marston-moor and Naseby, and on other occasions, before he had arrived at his twentieth year. He sat also in the House of Commons as representative for Huntingdonshire before he was of age, and had afterwards a seat at the board of treasury under Cromwell. After the Dutch war he went from the army to the navy, had a command in the fleet, and Cromwell had so good an opinion of him, as to associate him with the celebrated admiral Blake in his expedition to the Mediterranean. In 1656 he returned to England with some rich prizes, and received the thanks of the parliament, as well as renewed instances of Cromwell’s favour. In the following year he was appointed to command the fleet in the Downs, the object of which was to watch the Dutch, to carry on the war with Spain, and to facilitate the enterprize of Dunkirk. After the death of Cromwell, he accepted, under Richard, the command of a large fleet which was sent to the North, on board of which he embarked in the spring of 1659. In April he wrote to the kings of Sweden and Denmark, and to the Dutch admiral Opdam, informing them that his instructions were, not to respect the private advantage of England by making war, but the general tranquillity of Europe, by engaging the Powers of the North to enter into an equitable peace; and in the negocrations which he carried on with other ministers to effect this purpose, he is said to have displayed the talents of a consummate statesman.

He appears, however, about this time, to have conceived a dislike against his employers for which two reasons are assigned the one, that previous to his sailing, the parliament had tied him down to act only in conjunction with their commissioners, one of whom was Algernon Sidney; and the other, that they had given away his regiment of horse. While thus employed, and with these feelings, Charles II. sent him two letters, one from himself, and the other from chancellor Hyde, the purpose of which was to induce him to withdraw from the service of parliament, and, as a necessary step, to return with the fleet to England, where it might be ready to act in conjunction with sir George Booth and others, who were already disposed to promote the restoration. He accordingly set sail for England, but had the mortification to find that sir George Booth was in the Tower, the parliament in full authority, and a charge against himself brought by Algernon Sidney. He set out, however, for London, and defended his conduct to parliament with so much plausibility, that the only consequence was his being dismissed from his command.

His retirement was not of long duration; and upon the nearer approach of the restoration, general Monk having procured him to be replaced in his former rank in the navy, he convoyed the king to England, who made him a knight of the garter, and soon afterwards created him baron Montague of St. Neots in Huntingdonshire, viscount Hinchinbroke in the same county, and earl of Sandwich in Kent, He was likewise sworn a member of the privy council, made master of the king’s wardrobe, admiral of the narrow seas, and lieutenant admiral to the duke of York, as lord high admiral of England. When the Dutch war 'began in 1664, the duke of York took upon him the command of the fleet as high admiral, and the earl of Sandwich commanded the blue squadron; and by his well-timed efforts, a great number of the enemy’s ships were taken. In the great battle, JuneS, 1665, when the Dutch lost their admiral Opdam, and had eighteen men of war taken, and fourteen destroyed, a large share of the honour of the victory was justly assigned to the earl of Sandwich, who also on Sept. 4, of the same year, took eight Dutch men of war, two of their best East India ships, and twenty sail of their merchantmen.

Soon after his return to England, he was sent to the court of Madrid, to negociate a peace between Spain and Portugal, which he not only effected in the most satisfactory manner, but also concluded with the court of Spain, one of the most beneficial treaties of commerce that ever was made for this nation. On the renewal of the Dutch war in 1672, his lordship embarked again with the duke of York, and commanded the blue squadron. The fleet came in sight of the Dutch about break of day, May 28, and in the subsequent engagement he performed such exploits as could not fail to have rendered the victory complete, had he been properly seconded by his squadron, but a Dutch fire-ship, covered by the smoke of the enemy, having grappled the Royal James (that on which the earl of Sandwich fought), set her in a flame, and the brave earl perished with several gallant officers. His body being found about a fortnight afterwards, was, by his majesty’s orders brought to London, and interred with great solemnity in Henry VII.'s chapel, Westminster-abbey. It was supposed by many, though unjustly, that the duke of York did not support him as he might have done towards the beginning of the action; but it was agreed by all, that sir Joseph Jordan, the earl’s vice-admiral, might have disengaged him. His loss occasioned great reflections on the duke; and in the parliament which met at Westminster in Oct. 1680, when the exclusion bill was in debate, soma members openly charged him in the House of Commons with the death of the earl of Sandwich.

Lord Orford, who has given this nobleman a place iri his “Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,” mentions of his writing, “A Letter to Secretary Thurloe,” in the first volume of “Thurloe’s State-papers;” -“Several Letters during his Embassy to Spain,” published with “Arlington’s Letters;” and “Original Letters and Negotiations of Sir Richard Fanshaw, the Earl of Sandwich, the Earl of Sunderland, and Sir William Godolphin, wherein divers matters between the three Crowns of England, Spain, and Portugal, from 1603 to 1678, are set in a clear light,” in 2 vols. 8vo. He was also the author of a singular translation, called “The Art of Metals, in which is declared, the manner of their Generation, and the Concomitants of them, in two books, written in Spanish by Albaro Alonzo Barba, M. A. curate of St. Bernard’s parish, in the imperial city of Potosi, in the kingdom of Peru, in the West Indies, in. 1640; translated in 1669, by the right honourable Edward earl of Sandwich,” 1674, a small 8vo. A short preface of the editor says “The original was regarded in Spain and the West Indies as an inestimable jewel but that, falling int the earl’s hands, he enriched our language with it, being content that all our lord the king’s people should be philosophers.” There are also some astronomical observations of his in No. 21 of the Philosophical Transactions.

, fourth earl of Sandwich, son of Edward Richard Montague, lord viscount Hinchinbroke, and Elizabeth only daughter of Alexander Popham, esq. of Littlecote in the county of Wilts, was born in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, Nov. 15, 1718. He was sent at an early age to Eton school, where, under the tuition of 'Dr. George, he made a considerable proficiency in the classics. In 1735, he was admitted of Trinity college, Cambridge, and during his residence there, he and the late lord Halifax were particularly distinguished for their college exercises; and were the first noblemen who declaimed publicly in the college chapel. After spending about two years at Cambridge, he set out on a voyage round the Mediterranean, his account of which has recently been published. Mr. Ponsonby, late earl of Besborough, Mr. Nelthorpe, and Mr. Mackye, accompanied his lordship (for he was now earl of Sandwich) on this agreeable tour, with Liotard the painter, as we have noticed in his article (vol. XX.) On his lordship’s return to England, he brought with him, as appears by a letter written by him to the rev. Dr. Dampier, “two mummies and eight embalmed ibis’s from the catacombs of Memphis a large quantity of the famous Egyptian papyrus fifteen intaglios five hundred medals, most of them easier to be read than that which has the inscription TAMttlN a marble vase from Athens, and a very long inscription as yet nndecyphered, on both sides of a piece of marble of about two feet in height.” This marble was afterwards presented to Trinity college, and the inscription was explained by the late learned Dr. Taylor, in 1743, by the title of Marmor Sandvicense.

Being now of age, he took his seat in the House of Lords, and began his political career by joining the party then in opposition to sir Robert Walpole. On the formation of the ministry distinguished by the appellation of broadbottom, he was appointed second lord of the admiralty, Dec. 15, 1744. In consequence of the active part which he took in raising men to quell the rebellion in 1745, he obtained rank in the army. His political talents must at this time have been acknowledged, as in 1746 he was appointed plenipotentiary to the congress to be holden at Breda, and next year his powers were renewed, and continued till the definitive treaty of peace was signed at AixJa-Chapel!e in Oct. 1748. On his return he was sworn of the privy- council, and appointed first lord of the admiralty; and on the king’s embarking for Hanover, he was declared one of the lords justices during his majesty’s absence. In. June 1751, he was displaced from the admiralty, and did not again hold any public office till 1755, when he became one of the joint vice-treasurers of Ireland. In April 1763, he was again appointed first lord of the admiralty; and the death of lord Hardwicke causing a vacancy in the office of high steward of the university of Cambridge, lord Sandwich became a candidate to succeed him, but failed, after a very close contest. In 1765 he was again out of office, but in 1768 was made joint-postmaster with lord Le Despencer. In Jan. 1771, under lord North’s administration, he was a third time appointed first lord of the admiralty, which he held during the whole stormy period of the American war, and resigned only on the dissolution of the ministry which had carried it on. His conduct in the admiralty was allowed to redound greatty to his credit. He reformed many abuses in the dock-yards; increased the establishment of the marines set the example of annual visitations to the dock-yards was the promoter and patron of several voyages of discovery; and upon the whole, his attention to and knowledge of the duties of the naval department, although sometimes the objects of jealous inquiry, had probably never been exceeded.

“The earl of Sandwich,” says his biographer, “was rather to be considered as an able and intelligent speaker, then a brilliant and eloquent orator. In his early parliamentary career, he displayed uncommon knowledge of the sort of composition adapted to make an impression on a popular assembly; and from a happy choice of words, and a judicious arrangement of his argument, he seldom spoke without producing a sensible effect on the mind of every impartial auditor. In the latter part of his political life, and especially during the American war, his harangues were less remarkable for their grace and ornament, than for sound sense, and the valuable and appropriate information which they communicated. His speeches, therefore, were regarded as the lessons of experience and wisdom. He was never ambitious of obtruding himself upon the house. He had a peculiar delicacy of forbearance, arising from a sense of propriety; which, if more generally practised, would tend very much to expedite the public business by compressing the debates, now usually drawn out to an immeasurable and tiresome length, within more reasonable bounds. If, after having prepared himself on any important question, when he rose in the house any other lord first caught the chancellor’s eye, he sat down with the most accommodating patience; and, if the lord, who spoke before him, anticipated the sentiments which he meant to offer, he either did not speak at all, or only spoke to such points as had not been adverted to by the preceding speaker. Whenever, therefore, he rose, the House was assured that he had something material to communicate: he was accordingly listened to with attention, and seldom sat down without furnishing their lordships with facts at once important and interesting; of which no other peer was so perfectly master as himself. During the period of the American war he was frequently attacked in both houses for his official conduct or imputed malversation. When any such attempts were made in the House of Peers, he heard his accusers with patience, and with equal temper as firmness refuted their allegations, exposing their fallacy or their falsehood. On all such occasions, he met his opponents fairly and openly, in some instances concurring in their motions for papers, which his adversaries imagined would prove him a negligent minister; in others resisting their object, by shewing the inexpediency or the impolicy of complying with their requests. In the parliamentary contest, to which the unfortunate events of the American war gave rise, he is to be found more than once rising in reply to the late earl of Chatham; whose extraordinary powers of eloquence inspired sufficient awe to silence and intimidate even lords of acknowledged ability. Lord Sandwich never in such cases suffered himself to he dazzled by the splendor of oratorical talents; or ever spoke without affording proof that his reply was necessary and adequate. In fact, his lordship never rose without first satisfying himself, that the speaker he meant to reply to was in error; and that a plain statement of the facts in question would dissipate the delusion, and afford conviction to the house. By this judicious conduct his lordship secured the respect of those whom he addressed, and commanded at all times an attentive hearing.”

In his private character, his biographer bears testimony to the easy politeness and affability of his manners his chearfulness and hospitality the activity of his disposition and his readiness to perform acts of kindness. Of his morals less can be said. He was indeed a man of pleasure, in all the extent of that character; his most harmless enjoyment was music, in which he was at once a man of taste, a warm enthusiast, and a liberal patron. He is said to have been the author of a pamphlet, entitled “A State of Facts relative to Greenwich hospital, 7 ' 1779, in reply to captain Baillie’s” Case of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich,“published in 1778. Since his death has been published,” A Voyage performed by the Earl of Sandwich round the Mediterranean, in the years 1738 and 1739, written by himself." This was edited by his chaplain the rev. John Cooke in 1799, with a memoir of the noble author, from which we have extracted the above particulars. This noble lord’s narrative is less interesting now than it would have been about the period when it was written, and is indeed very imperfect and unsatisfactory, but the plan and execution of such a voyage are creditable to his lordship’s taste and youthful ambition.

, an English lady of distinguished talent, by marriage related to the Sandwich family, was the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, duke of Kingston, and the laoy Mary Fielding, daughter of William earl of Denbigh. She was born about 1690, and lost her mother in 1694. Her capacity for literary attainments was such as induced her father to provide her with the same preceptors as viscount Newark, her brother; and under their tuition, she made great proficiency in the Greek, Latin, and French languages. Her studies were afterwards superintended by bishop Burnet, and that part of life which by females of her rank is usually devoted to trifling amusements, or more trifling “accomplishments,” xvas spent by her in studious retirement, principally at Thoresby and at Acton, near London. Her society was confined to a few friends, among whom the most confidential appears to have been Mrs. Anne Wortley, wife of the hon. Sidney Montagu, second son of the heroic earl of Sandwich. In this intimacy originated her connection with Edward Wortley Montagu, esq. the eldest son of this lady; and after a correspondence of about two years, they were privately married by special licence, which bears date August 12, 1712. Mr. Wortley was a man possessed of solid rather than of brilliant parts, but in parliament, where at different periods of his life he had represented the cities of Westminster and Peterborough, and the boroughs of Huntingdon and Bossiney, he acquired considerable distinction as a politician and a speaker. In 1714 he was appointed one of the lords commissioners of the treasury, and on this occasion his lady was introduced to-the court of George I. where her beauty, wit, and spirit were universally admired. She lived also in habits of familiar acquaintance with two of the greatest geniuses of the age, Addison and Pope; but it did not require their discernment to discover that, even at this time, she was a woman of very superior talents.

In 1716, Mr. Wortley resigned his situation as a lord of the treasury, on being appointed ambassador to the Porte, in order to negociate peace between the Turks and Imperialists. Lady Mary determined to accompany him in this difficult and, during war, dangerous journey, and while travelling, and after her arrival in the Levant, amused herself and delighted her friends by a regular correspondence, chiefly directed to her sister the countess of Mar, lady Rich, and Mrs. Thistlethwaite, both ladies of the court, and to Mr. Pope. Previously to her arrival at the capital of the Ottoman empire, the embassy rested about two months at Adrianople, to which city the Sultan, Achmed the third, had removed his court. It was here that she first was enabled to become acquainted with the customs of the Turks, and to give so lively and so just a picture of their domestic manners and usages of ceremony. Her admission into the interior of the seraglio was one of her most remarkable adventures, and most singular privileges, and gave rise to many strange conjectures, which it is not now necessary to revive. It is more important to record that, during her residence at Constantinople, she was enabled to confer on Europe a benefit of the greatest consequence; namely, inoculation for the small-pox, which was at that time universal in the Turkish dominions. This practice she examined with such attention as to become perfectly satisfied with its efficacy, and gave the most intrepid and convincing proof of her belief, in 1717, by inoculating her son, who was then about three years old. Mr. Maitland, who had attended the embassy in a medical character, first endeavoured to establish the practice in London, and was encouraged by lady Mary’s patronage. In 1721 the experiment was successfully tried on some criminals. With so much ardour did lady Mary, on her return, enforce this salutary innovation among mothers of her own rank, that, as we find in her letters, much of her time was necessarily dedicated to various consultations, and to the superintendence of the success of her plan. In 1722, she had a daughter of six years old, inoculated, who was afterwards countess of Bute and in a short time the children of the royal family, that had not had the small- pox, underwent the same operation with success then followed some of the nobility, and the practice gradually prevailed among all ranks, although it had to encounter very strong prejudices; and was soon extended, by Mr. Maitland to Scotland, and by other operators to most parts of Europe.

Mr. Wortley’s negociations at the Porte having failed, owing to the high demands of the Imperialists, he received letters of recall, Oct. 28, 1717, but did not commence his journey till June 1718; in October of the same year he arrived in England. Soon after, lady Mary was solicited by Mr. Pope to fix her summer residence at Twickenham, with which she complied, and mutual admiration seemed to knit these kindred geniuses in indissoluble bonds. A short time, however, proved that their friendship was not superhuman. Jealousy of her talents, and a difference in political sentiments, appear to have been the primary causes of that dislike which soon manifested itself without ceremony and without delicacy. Lady Mary was attached to the Walpole administration and principles. Pope hated the whigs, and was at no pains to conceal his aversion in conversation or writing. What was worse, lady Mary had for some time omitted to consult him upon any new poetical production, and even when he had been formerly very free with his emendations, was wont to say, “Come, no touching, Pope, for what is good, the world will give to you, and leave the bad for me;” and she was well aware that he disingenuously encouraged that idea. But the more immediate cause of their implacability, was a satire in the form of a pastoral, entitled “Town Eclogues.” These were some of lady Mary’s earliest poetical attempts, and had been written previously to her leaving England. After her return, they were communicated to a favoured few, and no doubt highly relished from their supposed, or real personal allusions. Both Pope and Gay suggested many additions and alterations, which were certainly not adopted by lady Mary; and as copies, including their corrections, were found among the papers of these poets, their editors have attributed three out of six to them. “The Basset Table,” and The Drawing Room,“are given to Pope and the” Toilet“to Gay. The publication, however, of these poems, in the name of Pope, by Curl, a bookseller who hesitated at nothing mean or infamous, appears to have put a final stop to all intercourse between Pope and lady Mary.” Irritated,“says her late biographer,” by Pope’s ceaseless petulance, and disgusted by his subterfuge, she now retired totally from his society, and certainly did not abstain from sarcastic observations, which were always repeated to him.“The angry bard retaliated in the most gross and public manner against her and her friend lord Hervey. Of this controversy, which is admirably detailed by Mr. Dallaway, we shall only add, that Dr. Warton and Dr. Johnson agree in condemning the prevarication with which Pope evaded every direct charge of his ungrateful behaviour to those whose patronage he had once servilely solicited; and even his panegyrical commentator, Dr. Warburton, confesses that there were allegations against him, which” he was not quite clear of."

Lady Mary, however, preserved her envied rank in the world of fashion and of literature until 1739, when her health declining, she took the resolution to pass the remainder of her days on the continent. Having obtained Mr. Wortley’s consent, she left England in the month of July, and hastened to Venice, where she formed many connexions with the noble inhabitants, and determined to establish herself in the north of Italy. Having been gratified by a short tour to Rome and Naples, she returned to Brescia, one of the palaces of which city she inhabited, and also spent some months at Avignon and Chamberry. Her summer residence she fixed at Louverre, on the shores of the lake of Isco, in the Venetian territory, whither she had been first invited on account of the mineral waters, which she found greatly beneficial to her health. There she took possession of a deserted palace, she planned her garden, applied herself to the business of a country life, and was happy in the superintendance of her vineyards and silk-worms. Books, and those chiefly English, sent by her daughter lady Bute, supplied the want of society. Her visits to Genoa and Padua were not unfrequent, but about 1758, she quitted her solitude, and settled entirely at Venice, where she remained till the death of Mr. Wortley in 1761. She then yielded to the solicitations of her daughter, and after an absence of twenty-two years, she began her journey to England, where she arrived in October. But her health had suffered much, and a gradual decline terminated in death, on the 21st of August, 1762, and in the seventy-third year of her age.

The year following her death, appeared “Letters of Lady M y W y M” in 3 vols. 12mo, of which publication Mr. Dallaway has given a very curious history. By this it appears that after lady Mary had collected copies of the letters which she had written during Mr. Wortley’s embassy, she transcribed them in two small quarto volumes, and upon her return to England in 1761, gave them to Mr. Sowden, a clergyman at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he thought proper. After her death, the late earl of Bute purchased them of Mr. Sowden, but they were scarcely landed in England when the above mentioned edition was published. On farther application to Mr. Sowden, it could only be gathered that two English gentlemen once called on him to see the letters, and contrived, during his being called away, to go off with them, although they returned them next morning with many apologies. Whoever will look at the three 12mo volumes, may perceive that with the help of a few amanuenses, there was sufficient time to transcribe them during this interval. Cleland was the editor of the publication, and probably one of the “gentlemen” concerned in the trick of obtaining the copies. The appearance of these letters, however, excited universal attention, nor on a re-perusal of them at this improved period of female literature, can any thing be deducted from Dr. Smollett’s opinion in the “Critical Review,” of which he was then conductor. “The publication of these letters will be an immortal monument to the memory of lady M. W. M. and will shew, as long as the English language endures, the sprightliness of her wit, the solidity of her judgment, the elegance of her taste, and the excellence of her real character. These letters are so bewitchingly entertaining, that we defy the most phlegmatic man on earth to read one without going through with them, or after finishing the third volume, not to wish there were twenty more of them.” Other critics were not so enraptured, and seemed to doubt their authenticity, which, however, is now placed beyond all question by the following- publication, “The Works of the right hon. lady M. W. M. including her correspondence, poems, and essays, published by permission (of the Earl of Bute) from her genuine papers,” London, 1803, 5 vols. 12mo, with Memoirs of her Life by Mr. Dallaway, drawn up with much taste and delicacy, and to which we are indebted for the preceding sketch. This edition, besides her poems, and a few miscellaneous essays, contains a great number of letters never before printed, perhaps of equal importance with those which have long been before the world, as they appear not to have been intended for publication, which the others certainly were, and we have in these new letters a more exact delineation of her character in advanced life. This if it be not always pleasing, will afford many instructive lessons. Her poetry, without being of the superior kind, is yet entitled to high praise, and had she cultivated the acquaintance of the muses with more earnestness, and had not disdained the scrupulous labour by which some of her contemporaries acquired fame, it is probable she might have attained a higher rank. She certainly was a woman of extraordinary talents, and acquired the honours of literary reputation at a time when they were not bestowed on the undeserving. It is, however, incumbent upon us to add, that the moral tendency of her letters may be justly questioned; many of the descriptions of Eastern luxuries and beauty are such as cannot be tolerated in an age of decency, and a prudent guardian will hesitate long before he can admit the letters from Constantinople among books fit for the perusal of the young. Her amiable relative, the late Mrs. Montague, represents Lady Mary as one who “neither thinks, speaks, acts, or dresses like any body;” and many traits qf her moral conduct were also, it is to be hoped, exclusively her own.

, only son of the preceding lady Mary, was born in October 1713, and in the early part of his life seems to have been the object of his mother’s tenderest regard, though he afterwards lost her favour. In 1716, he was taken by her on his father’s embassy to Constantinople, and while there, was, as we have noticed in her life, the first English child on whom the practice of inoculation was tried. Returning to England with his parents in 1719, he was placed at Westminsterschool, where he gave an* early sample of his wayward disposition, by running away, and eluding every possible search, until about a year after he was accidentally discovered at Blackwall, near London, in the character of a vender offish, a basket of which he had then on his head. He had bound himself, by regular indenture, to a poor fisherman, who said he had served him faithfully, making his bargains shrewdly, and paying his master the purchasemoney honestly. He was now again placed at Westminster-school, but in a short time escaped a second time, and bound himself to the master of a vessel which sailed for Oporto, who, supposing him a deserted friendless boy, treated him with great kindness and humanity. This treatment, however, produced no corresponding feelings; for the moment they landed at Oporto, Montague ran away up the country, and contrived to get employment for two or three years in the vintage. Here at length he was discovered, brought home, and pardoned but with no better effect than before. He ran away a third time after which, his father procured him a tutor, who made him so far regular that he had an appointment in one of the public offices and, in 1747, he was elected one of the knights of the shire for the county of Huntingdon but in his senatorial capacity he does not appear to have any way distinguished himself; nor did he long retain his seat, his expences so far exceeding his income, that he found it prudent once more to leave England, about the latter end of 1751. His first excursion was to Paris, where, in a short time, he was imprisoned in the Chatelet, for a fraudulent gambling transaction: how he escaped is not very clear, but he published a defence of himself, under the title of “Memorial of E. W. Montague, esq. written by himself, in French, and published lately at Paris, against Abraham Payba, a Jew by birth, who assumed the fictitious name of James Roberts. Translated into English from an authentick copy sent from Paris,” 1752, 8vo.

In the parliament which assembled in 1754, Mr. Montague was returned for Bossiney: and in 1759 he published his “Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the ancient Republics, adapted to the present state of Great Britain,” 8vo. This work contains a concise, and not inelegant, relation of the Grecian, Roman, and Carthaginian states, interspersed with occasional allusiotis to his own country, the constitution of which he appears to have studied with care. It is somewhat singular that Mr. Forster, the person whom his father had engaged as his tutor, endeavoured to claim the merit of this work; but not, as Mr. Seward remarks, until more than a year after Mr. Montague’s death, when he could receive no contradiction.

His father died in January 1761, at the advanced age of eighty, and by his will, made in 1755, bequeathed to his son an annuity of one thousand pounds a-year, to be paid to him during the joint lives of himself and his mother lady Mary; and after her death an annuity of two thousand pounds a-year, during the joint lives of himself and his sister lady Bute. By the same will he empowered Mr. Montague to make a settlement ou any woman he might marry, not exceeding eight hundred pounds a-year; and to any son of such marriage he devised a considerable estate in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It was this last clause which gave rise to a story that he had advertised for a wife, promising to marry “any widow or single lady, of genteel birth and polished manners, and five, six, seven, or eight months in her pregnancy.” Such an advertisement certainly appeared, but not sooner than 1776, within a few months of his death, and when he was abroad; all which render the story rather improbable.

His mother died in 1762, and left him only one guinea, he having offended her irreconcileably: but as he was now independent by his father’s liberal bequest, he once more took leave of his native country, and passed the remainder of his life in foreign parts, In 1762, while at Turin, he wrote two letters to the earl of Macclesfield, which were read at the Royal Society, and afterwards published in a quarto pamphlet, entitled, “Observations upon a supposed antique bust at Turin.” In the Philosophical Transactions are also, by him, “New Observations on Pompey’s Pillar,” and an account of his journey from Cairo in Egypt to the Written Mountains in the desarts of Sinai. It is said that he published “An Explication of the Causes of Earthquakes;” but it is not recollected where. His travels in the East occupied some years, and in the course of them he first abjured the protestant for the Roman catholic religion, and then the latter for Mahometanism, all the rite’s and ceremonies of which he performed with a punctuality which inclines us to think that he was in some degree deranged! He died at length at Padua in May 1776, and was buried under a plain slab, in the cloister of the HermitauTs, with an inscription recording his travels and his talents. The latter would have done honour to any character, but in him were obscured by a disposition which it would be more natural to look for in romance than in real life.

, a learned and ingenious English lady, was the daughter of Matthew Robinson, esq. of West Layton, in Yorkshire, of Coveney, Cambridgeshire, and of Mount Morris in Kent, by Elizabeth daughter and heiress of Robert Drake, esq. She was born at York, Oct. 2, 1720, but lived, for some of her early years, with her parents at Cambridge, where she derived great assistance in her education from Dr. Conyers Middleton, whom her grandmother had taken as a second husband. Her uncommon sensibility and acuteness of understanding, as well as her extraordinary beauty as a child, rendered her an object of great notice and admiration in the university, and Dr. Middleton was in the habit of requiring from her an account of the learned conversations at which, in his society, she was frequently present: not admitting of the excuse of her tender age as a disqualification, but insisting, that although at the present time she could but imperfectly understand their meaning, she would in future derive great benefit from the habit of attention inculcated by this practice. Her father, a man of considerable intellectual powers, and taste, was proud of the distinguished notice bestowed on his daughter, and contributed to increase in her the vivacity of wit with which she naturally abounded. In her early education, however, Mrs. Montague did not receive those strong impressions of the truth of divine revelation which she acquired at a later period, from her intimacy with Gilbert West and lord Lyttelton. It was reserved for the influence of the steady principles of Christianity, to correct the exuberant spirit of her genius, and to give the last touches of improvement to her character.

She had early a love for society, and it was her lot to be introduced to the best. In 1742, she was married to Edward Montague, esq. of Denton-hall in Northumberland and Sandleford priory in Berkshire, grandson of the first earl of Sandwich, and member of several successive parliaments for the borough of Huntingdon. By his connections and her own she obtained an extensive lange of acquaintance, but selected as her especial friends and favourites persons distinguished for taste and talents. By Mr. Montague, who died without issue in 1775, she was left in great opulence, and maintained her establishment in the learned and fashionable world for many years with great eclat, living in a style of most splendid hospitality. She died in her eightieth year, at her house in Portman-square, Aug. 25, 1800.

She had early distinguished herself as an author first by “Three Dialogues of the Dead,” published along with lord Lyttelton’s afterwards by her classical and elegant “Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakspeare,” ia which she amply vindicated our great poet from the gross, illiberal, and ignorant abuse, thrown out against him by Voltaire. This is indeed a wonderful performance, as all, who will examine it impartially, must admit. It is a ridiculous supposition that she was assisted by her husband, whose talent lay in mathematical pursuits, which indeed absorbed the whole of his attention. Many years after she bad received the approbation of all persons of critical taste on this performance, it fell into the hands of Cowper the poet, who, on reading it, says to his correspondent, “I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montague stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment:” “The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter.”

Few persons had seen more of life than Mrs. Montague, and of that part of mankind, who were eminent either for their genius or their rank; and for many years her splendid house in Portman-square was open to the literary world. She had lived at the table of the second lord Oxford, the resort of Pope, and his contemporaries she was the intimate friend of Pulteney and Lyttelton and she survived to entertain Johnson and Goldsmith, and Burke and Reynolds, till their respective deaths*. Dr. Beattie was frequently her inmate, and for many years her correspondent; and Mrs. Carter was, from their youth, her intimate friend, correspondent, and visitor. For the most learned of these she was a suitable correspondent and companion, as is evident from her letters, and was acknowledged by all who heard her conversation. It was, however, her defect that she had too great a regard to the manners and habits of the world, and damped her transcendant talents by a sacrifice to the cold dictates of worldly wisdom. Her understanding was as sound as her fancy was lively her taste was correct and severe and she penetrated the human character with an almost unerring sagacity but her love of popularity, and her ambition of politeness, controuled her expressions, and concealed her real sentiments from superficial observers. Since her death four volumes of her epistolary correspondence have been published by her nephew and executor, Matthew Montague, esq.; and when the series shall be completed, a just idea may be formed of Mrs. Montague’s genius and character, and the result, we may venture to predict, will be highly favourable.

, an eminent French, writer, was born at the castle of Montaigne, in the Perigord, Feb. 8, 1533. His father, seigneur of Montaigne, and mayor of Bourdeaux, bestowed particular attention on his education, perceiving in him early proofs of talents that would one day reward his care. His mode of teaching him languages is mentioned as somewhat singular at that time, although it has since been frequently practised. He provided him with a German attendant, who did not know French, and who was enjoined to speak to him in Latin, and in consequence young Montaigne is said to have been a master of that language at the age of six years. He was taught Greek also as a sort of diversion, and because his father had heard that the brains of children may be injured by being roused too suddenly out of sleep, he caused him to be awakened every morning by soft music. All this care he repaid by the most tender veneration for the memory of his father. Filial piety, indeed, is said to have been one of the most remarkable traits of his character, and he sometimes displayed it rather in a singular manner. When on horseback he constantly wore a cloak which had belonged to his father, not, as he said, for convenience, but for the pleasure it gave him. “II me semble m'envelopper de lui,” “I seem to be wrapped up in my father;” and this, which from any other wit would have been called the personification of a pun, was considered in Montaigne as a sublime expression of filial piety.