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, grandson of the preceding historian, was born in 1606, at Blois. He was bred a protestant, and became bailiff“of Baugency; but having afterwards abjured the Protestant religion, he entered the congregation of the Oratory, in which he distinguished himself by his learning. He understood Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, cultivated the belles lettres with success, and had a talent for Latin poetry, as appears from his paraphrases of some Psalms. He died November 14, 1661, at Paris, aged fiftysix. He left several works: among the principal are,” La Genealogie des Seigneurs d'Alsace,“1649, fol.; a very useful supplement to St. Augustine’s works, of which he found some Mss. at Clairvaux that had never been published.” A Harmony of the Gospels,“in French;” Stemma Austriacum,“1650, fol.; and” La Genéalogie des Comtes de Champagne.“He meant to have published a treatise, written by St. Fulgentius against Faustus, but was prevented by death, nor is it known what became of this treatise. Vignier found an ancient ms. at Metz, containing a relation of events in that city, and in which there was a long account of the famous Joan d‘Arc, better known by the name of the Maid of Orleans. According to this it appear,ed that she had been married to the Sire des Amboises, or D’Hermoises, descended from an illustrious house, and of the ancient knighthood. He also found in the treasury of Messrs, des Amboises, the contract of the above marriage, which imports” that in 1436, Robert des Amboises married Joan d'Arc, called the Maid of Orleans." But this fact is very generally doubted.

, an eminent architect and writer on the subject, was the son of Clement Barozzio, of one of the best families of Milan, but who being ruined by the civil wars, retired to Vignola, a small town in the marquisate of that name, situated in the territory of Bologna. It was there that his son, the subject of this article, was born, Oct. 1, 1507, and became afterwards generally known by the name of his native place. His father dying when he was almost in his infancy, and leaving him little provision, he wished to have recourse to painting; and having some knowledge of the first principles of the art, he went to Bologna to be farther instructed, but soon changed his mind, and determined to confine himself to architecture and perspective. He was no sooner known in this profession, than several persons applied to him for designs for buildings, and he executed some for the governor of Bologna, which were very much admired. On such occasions, in order to see the effect of what he laid down, he had models made in wood by Damien de Bergamo, a Dominican, who excelled in that species of ingenuity, and used to express, by means of coloured woods, every kind of material to be used in the building.

In order to acquire a greater knowledge of the principles of architecture, Vignola went to Rome, and at first returned to painting fora maintenance; but not reaping much profit, abandoned that art a second time, and procured employment as a draughtsman from Melighini, of Ferrara, then architect to pope Paul III. and who had established a school of architecture at Rome. Yignola was afterwards employed to make drawings, for the use of this academy, of the ancient edifices of the city, from which he derived great advantage in his studies. While here, about 1537, or J 540, he met with Primaticcio, who was employed by Francis I. king of France, to purchase antiques (See Primaticcio); and Vignola was of so much service in making casts for him, that Primaticcio engaged him to go with him to France. There Vignola assisted that celebrated artist in all his works, and particularly in making the bronze casts which are at Fontainebleau. He also made various architectural designs for the king, who was prevented from having them executed, by the wars in which France was then involved. After a residence of about two years, he was invited to Bologna, to undertake the new church of St. Petronius, and his design was allowed the preference, and highly approved by Julio Romano, the celebrated painter, and Christopher Lombard, the architect. At Minerbio, near Bologna, he built a magnificent palace for count Isolani, and in Bologna the house of Achilles Bocchi. The portico of the exchange in that city is also of his designing, but it was not built until 1562, in the pontificate of Pius IV. His most useful work at Bologna was the canal of Navilio, which he constructed with great skill for the space of a league. But happening to be ill rewarded for this undertaking, he went to Placentia, where he gave a design for the duke of Parma’s palace, which was executed by his son Hyacinth, who was now able to assist him in his various works. He afterwards built several churches and chapels in various parts of Italy, which it is unnecessary to specify. These, it is supposed, he had finished before his return to Rome in 1550, where Vasari presented him to pope Julius III. who appointed him his architect. While at Rome, he was employed in various works, both of grandeur and utility, the last of which, and reckoned his finest work, was the magnificent palace or castle of Caprarola, so well described and illustrated by plates in his works.

In his latter days, he succeeded Michael Angelo as architect of St. Peter’s, and was strongly solicited by Philip II. to assist in building the Escurial; but his age, and his numerous employments, prevented his accepting the offer. The only interval between this and his death, was employed in a commission from Gregory XIII. to settle the limits between the territories of the church, and those of the duke of Tuscany; on his return he was seized with a fever, which proved fatal, July 7, 1575, in his sixty-sixth year. He was solemnly interred in the church of St. Mary of the Rotunda.

, a learned chronologist, was born Oct. 29, 1649, at the castle of Aubais, in Languedoc, of a very ancient family, and received a liberal education. His preparatory studies being finished, he passed a year at Geneva, and heard a course of lectures ou divinity. His father had intended him for the army, but was unwilling to put any restraint upon his inclinations, and therefore permitted him to go to Saumur, and afterwards to England, to complete his divinity studies. In 1675 he returned to Aubais, and was appointed minister of that church, which he afterwards resigned for that of Cailar, and while he performed the functions of his order with great zeal, found leisure at the same time to indulge his taste for chronological researches. On the revocation of the edict of Nantz he returned to Geneva, and afterwards to Berlin, where he was appointed pastor of the church of Schwedt. When his merit became better known, he had the choice of many churches of more emolument, but ^ave the preference to that of Brandenburgh, on account of its vicinity to the metropolis, where he might enjoy opportunities of study. In the mean time he began to form an intimacy with many eminent men, as Lenfant, La Croze, Kirck, &c. and distinguished himself by some learned papers inserted in the iiterary journals. When the royal society of Berlin was founded in 1701, he was chosen one of the members, and at the suggestion of Leibnitz was invited to settle in Berlin, that the new society might profit by his communications. With this he appears to have complied, and on the formation of the society of the Anonymi was chosen their secretary. In 1711 he became one of the editors of the “Bibliotheque Germanique,” which he enriched with many valuable criticisms, and analyses of books. Amidst all these employments he did not neglect the duties of his profession, but was a very frequent preacher, and having obtained the cure of Copenick, near Berlin, he passed his summers there, and there composed his great chronological work, the plan of which he published in 1721, but the whole did not appear until some years afterwards. Its success did not answer the expectation of the author, or of his friends, and although one of the best which had appeared on the subject, sold so slowly, that tKe bookseller was obliged more than once to have recourse to the trick of a new title-page. Vignoles, however, satisfied with a moderate competence, a stranger to worldly ambition and passions, lived quietly and happily among his books, with the occasional conversation of a few agreeable and steady friends. His wife died in child-bed, and none of the children she brought survived him. He was, in his old age, on the point of losing his sight by two cataracts, the one of which was dissipated naturally, and the other removed by an operation, the particulars of which he published in the “Miscellanea Berolinensia,” vol. IV. The king and queen shewed him many marks of kindness. The latter, it appears from the dedication of his chronology, had at one time ordered the eve of his birth-day to be kept by an entertainment, at which her proxy expressed her royal wishes forthe continuance of his life. He died at Berlin, July 24, 1744, aged upwards of ninety-four. His principal work, already noticed, was published under the title of “Chronologic de l‘historie sainte et des histoires etrangeres depuis la sortie d’Egypte jusqu'a la captivite de Babylone,” Berlin, 1738, 2 vols. 4to, a work unquestionably of vast labour and extent, and consequently cannot be supposed altogether free from imperfections.

a learned Spanish Jesuit, was born at Cordova in 1552, and entered the society of the Jesuits in the twenty-sixth year of his age. We have very few particulars, even by Antonio, of his personal history, unless that he was distinguished for his extensive theological and mathematical knowledge, and for some time was associated with Jerome Prado in a commentary on Ezekiel. It would appear that Villalpando had the king’s orders for this undertaking, as far as respected the description of the Temple, and city of Jerusalem; and Prado, dying before the work was finished, Villalpando has the sole reputation of the whole. It was published under the title of “Explanationes in Ezechielem,” Rome, 1596 1604, 3 vols. fol. As a commentary, the catholic writers, Dupin, &c. assure us that it is one of the most learned. His skill in architecture gave him great advantages in endeavouring to trace the figure and dimensions of the temple of Solomon, but unfortunately he employed a sort of theory which was guided more by imagination than judgment. Having laid it down as a first principle, that the model of the temple, having been given by God himself, must be perfect, he therefore exhausted all the powers of conjecture and fancy to describe an edifice that should answer that character. This led him, among other errors, to introduce many embellishments and additions not mentioned in the sacred text; instead of three courts, for example, he has described no less than eleven. But the reader who is curious in the inquiry, may consult Calmet’s Dictionary, where there are engravings as well as a description, from Villalpando. He edited also a work of St. Remi, “Remigii Rhemensis in Epistolas S. Pauli tractatus,” Mentz, which was not, however, published until after his death, as the date is 1614, fol. He died at Rome, May 23, 1608.

, a Florentine historian of the fourteenth century, was the son of a native of that place, and is supposed to have been born about the end of the thirteenth century, as he was somewhat older than an infant in 1300, when he informs us he went to Rome to see the Jubilee, and young as he was, first formed, on that occasion, the design of writing his “Chronicle.” Before, however, he began this work, he visited various parts of Italy, France, and the Netherlands, and having collected much information, began to compile his history as soon as he returned home. His first intention was to write only the history of Florence, a city which he imagined would rise in splendour and prosperity as Rome declined, but he was induced to extend his plan to the events of other countries wherever they could be introduced. In the mean time the public employments to which his merit raised him, delayed the completidn of his history for many years. Tnrice, 1316, 1317, and 1321, he was one of the priors of Florence; he had also some office in the mint, and at various times was employed in the service of the republic. He died of the plague in 1348. He had written his history up to this period, and his brother Matthew Villani made a continuation till the year 1363, when he also died of the plague. The work then fell into the hands of Philip Villani, son to Matthew, who made a still longer addition to the labours of his father and uncle. The first edition was printed at Florence by the Junti in 1537, fol. and was often reprinted. The last, corrected from three ms copies, was printed at Milan in 1729, 2 vols. fol. The original part by John Villani, is, like most chronicles, mere compilation of fabulous history, until he comes to his own times, when he is allowed to be accurate and useful, and the same praise is due to his successors.

Philip Villani also composed the “Lives of the illustrious Men of Florence,” which Mazzuchelli published for the first time in 1747, not, however, the original text, which is Latin, but an ancient Italian translation, with copious and learned notes. Philip was appointed, in 1401, to give lectures on Dante in the chair which Boccaccio had filled. He was again appointed to the same office in 1404, and it is supposed he died soon after. He was the first author of a local literary history, and much use has since been made of his Lives of the celebrated Florentines.

, marshal of France, was born at Moulins in Bourbonnais in 1653. His father had served with ability and courage, both in the civil and military capacity, and the son very early shewed a zeal to excel in arms. He served first a& aid -de -camp to his cousin, the marshal de Belleforis, and signalized himself in several sieges and engagements, till 1702, when having defeated the prince of Baden at the battle of Friedlingen, he was appointed marechal of France, October 22, the same year. The following year he took the fortress of Kell, won a battle at Hochstet, 1703, and subdued the insurgents in the Cevennes, by negociating with their leader in a manner that did credit to his humanity; for ttiese services he was raised to the title of dukeofVillarsin 1706. His neM considerable action was forcing the lines at Stolhoffen, 1707, and obtaining more than eigtteed millions in contributions from the enemy. It was thought that he would have gained the battle of iMalplaquet, in 1709, had he not been dangerously wounded before the action finished. Such at least was his own opinion, towhich historians seem, not disposed to accede. But it is less doubtful that he afterwards acquired great glory from the stratagem by which he forced the entrenchments of Denain on the Schelde, July 24, 1712. This success was followed by the capture of Marchiennes, Douay, Bouchain, Landau, Friburg, &c. and by a peace concluded at Radstadt, between the emperor and France, May 6, 1714. Marechal de Villars, who had been plenipotentiary at the treaty of Radstadt, was made president of the council of war in 1715, and afterwards counsellor to the regency and minister of state. In 1733 he went into Italy as commander under the king of Sardinia, and his majesty declared him marshal general of his camps and armies; a title granted to no one, since the death of marechal de Turenne, who appears to have been the first person honoured with it. M. de Villars took Pisighitona, Milan, Novarra, and Tortona; but after having opened the following campaign, he fell sick and died at Turin, on his return to France, June 17, 1734, aged eighty-two, regretted as one of the greatest and most fortunate generals of France. He had been admitted into the French academy, June 23, 1714. M. the abbe Seguy spoke his funeral oration, which was printed in 1735. He was a man of undoubted courage, but he was vain and unaccommodating, and never beloved. “The Memoirs of M. de Villars” were published in Dutch, in 1734 36, 3 vols. 12mo; but the first volume only was written by himself. Another life was published by M. Anquetil in 1784, 4 vols. J2mo, which is said to contain more ample information and historical documents.

, a French abbe, related to the celebrated Montfaucon the antiquary, appears to have been a native, or to have been educated at Toulouse, whence he came to Paris, in hopes of recommending himself by his talents in the pulpit, which were of no mean kind, and by his lively conversation, which perhaps fully as much contributed to procure him friends. He also entertained the public with his pen, and published various works of imagination and criticism, written in a peculiar style of humour, one of which at least entitles him to the notice of the English reader. This, which was first published at Paris in 1670, was entitled “Le eomte de Gabalis, ou entretiens sur les sciences secrettes,” with an addition entitled “Les genies assistans et les gnomes irreconciliables.” D'Argonne, in his “Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature,” gives the following account of this singular work, as quoted by Dr. Warton: “The five dialogues of which it consists, are the result of those gay conversations in which the abbe was engaged with a small circle of men, of fine wit and kumour, like himself. When the book first appeared, it was universally read as innocent and amusing. But at length its consequences were perceived, and reckoned dangerous, at a time when this sort of curiosities began to gain credit. Our devout preacher was denied the pulpit, and his book forbidden to be read. It was not dear whether the author intended to be ironical, or spoke all seriously. The second volume, which he promised, would have decided the question; but the unfortunate abbe was soon afterwards assassinated by ruffians on the road to Lyons. The laughers gave out, that the gnomes and sylphs, disguised like ruffians, had shot him, as a punishment for revealing the secrets of the Cabala; a crime not to be pardoned by those jealous spirits, as Villars himself has declared in his book.” It was from this book that Pope took the machinery of the sylphs, of which he has made such admirable use in his “Rape of the Lock,” although it does not appear that he borrowed any particular circumstances relating to those spirits, but merely the general idea of their existence. The abbe* was killed in 1675, and it is said that the fatal shot came from one of his relations.

, a French biographer, was born December 24, 1652, at Paris, and was the son of James Bourgoin, king’s counsellor, and hereditary judge and warden of the mint in that city. He spent some years in the community of gentlemen established in the parish of St. Sulpice, with a view of concealing himself from the world, and having more leisure for study; but his merit discovered him, and he was admitted into the academy of inscriptions in 1706. In 1708, however, he voluntarily withdrew from this academy, alleging, as an excuse, that his health would not permit him to perform the duties of it. He retired afterwards to a small apartment in the cloisters of the Metropolitan church, and there passed the rest of his life, contented with a little, free from ambition, employed in study and prayer, and enjoying the society of a small number of select friends. He continued a layman, but neither married, nor held any office in the state. He died December 2, 1737, aged eighty-five, leaving a great number of biographical works, translations, and small pieces. His biographical productions are, “The Life of St. Bernard,” 4to; “The Lives of the Holy Fathers of the Deserts in the East and West,” 5 vols. 12mo; “The Life of St. Theresa,” with “Select Letters” of the same Saint, 4to, and 2 vols. 12mo; “Anecdotes and secret Memoirs concerning the constitution Unigenitus,” 3 vols. 12mo; but this work was suppressed by a decree of council, as well as the “Refutation” of it, written by M. Peter Francis Lafitau, bishop of Sisteron; “The Life of Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess de Longueville,” the best edition of which is Amsterdam, 1739, 2 torn. 8vo. M. de Villefore’s translations are, several of St, Augustine’s, St. Bernard’s, and Cicero’s works, all said to be faithfully executed.

, duke of Buckingham, and memorable in English story for having been the favourite of two kings, was born Aug. 20, 1592, at Brookesby in Leicestershire, and was the son of sir George Villiers, by a second wife of the ancient family of Beaumont. At an early age he was sent to a private school in that county, but never discovered any genius for letters; so that more regard was had in the course of his education to the accomplishments of a gentleman than those of a scholar. About eighteen, he travelled into France, where he made himself familiar with the French language, and with all the exercises of the noblesse; such as fencing and dancing, in which last he particularly excelled. Soon after his return to England, which was at the end of three years, his mother, who was a sagacious and enterprising woman, introduced him at court; concluding probably, and not without good reason, that a young gentleman of his fine person and accomplishments could not fail of making his fortune under such a monarch as James I. The king, about March 1614-15, went according to his custom to take his huntingpleasures at Newmarket; and the Cambridge scholars, who knew the king’s humour, invited him to a play, called “Ignoramus.” At this play it was contrived, that Viiliers should appear with every advantage of dress and person; and the king no sooner cast his eyes upon him than he became confounded with admiration; for, says lord Clarendon, “though he was a prince of more learning and knowledge than any other of that age, and really delighted more in books and in the conversation of learned men, yet, of all wise men living, he was the most delighted and taken with handsome persons and fine cloaths.” Thus he conceived such a liking to the person of Villiers, that he “resolved, as sir Henry Wotton says, to make him a masterpiece; and to mould him, as it were, Platonically to his own idea.”

The king began to be weary of his favourite, the earl of Somerset; and many of the courtiers were sufficiently angry and incensed against him, for being what they themselves desired to be. These, therefore, were pleased with the prospect of a new favourite; and, oat of their zeal to displace Somerset, did all they could to promote Villiers. Their endeavours, concurring with the inclinations of the king, made the promotion of Villiers advance so rapidly, that in a few days after his first appearance at court, he was made cup-bearer to the king. Soon after he was made a gentleman of the bed-chamber, and knight of the order of the garter. In a short time, “very short,” says lord Clarendon, “for such a prodigious ascent,” he was made a baron, a viscount, an earl, a marquis; he became lord high admiral of England, lord warden of the Cinque-ports, master of the horse; and entirely disposed of the favours of the king, in conferring all the honours and all the offices of the three kingdoms without a rival. In this he shewed the usual partialities of personal and family ambition, and raised almost all of his own numerous family and dependents, without any other merit than their alliance to him; which equally offended the ancient nobility and people of all conditions, who saw the flowers of the crown every day fading and withered, while the revenues of it were sacrificed to the aggrandizement of a private family.

In 1620, the marquis of Buckingham married the only daughter of the earl of Rutland, who was the richest heiress in the kingdom. Some have said that he debauched feer first, and that the earl of Rutland threatened him into the marriage: but this may reasonably be ranked with many other imputations of perhaps doubtful authority, which now began to be accumulated against him. In 1623, the marquis persuaded Charles prince of Wales to make a journey into Spain, and bring home his mistress the Infanta; by representing to him, how gallant and brave a thing it would be, and how soon it would put an end to those formalities, which, though all substantial matters were already determined, might yet retard her voyage into England many months. The king was greatly enraged at the proposal, and the event shewed that he had sufficient reason; but the solicitation of the prince and the impetuosity of the marquis prevailed. The marquis attended the prince, and was made a duke in his absence: yet it is certain, says lord Clarendon, that the king was never well pleased with the duke after this journey into Spain, which was totally against his will, and contrived wholly by the duke out of e^nvy, lest the earl of Bristol should have the sole management of so great an affair. Many were of opinion, therefore, that king James, before his death, was become weary of this favourite, and that, if he had lived, he would have deprived him at least of his large and unlimited power; but it did not openly appear that the king’s affection towards him was at all lessened.

Charles succeeded to the throne in 1625; and the duke continued in the same degree of favour at the least with the son which he had enjoyed so many years under the father. This greatly disappointed certain courtiers, who, recollecting the great jealousy and indignation which the prince had heretofore conceived against the duke, for having been once very near striking him, expected that he would now take revenge. But, on the contrary, the new king, from the death of the old, even to the death of the duke himself, discovered the most entire confidence in, and even friendship to, him. All preferments in church and state were given by him; all his kindred and friends promoted to the degree in honour, or riches, or offices, that he thought fit; and all his enemies and enviers discountenanced, as he appointed. But, whatever interest he might have in the prince, he had now none with the parliament and people. The parliament, which nad so rashly advanced the war with Spain upon the breaking of the match with the Infanta, and so passionately adhered to his person, was now no more; and the attachment which the major part had for the duke, was changed now into prejudice and animosity. All the actions of his life were scrutinized, and every unfavourable representation given of what he had said and done. Votes and remonstrances passed against him as an enemy to the nation; and his misconduct was made the ground of the refusal to give the “king a supply. This kind of treatment, however, had no effect in taming the duke’s great spirit, who expressed the utmost indignation upon finding, that they who flattered him most before, mentioned him now with the greatest bitterness and acrimony; and that the same men, who called him” our Saviour“for bringing the prince safe out of Spain, called him now” corrupter of the king, and betrayer of the liberties of the people," without being able to impute to him the least crime, committed since the time of that exalted adulation. He ventured therefore to manifest a greater contempt of them than he should have done; for he caused this and the next parliament to be quickly dissolved, and, upon every dissolution, had such as had given any offence, imprisoned or disgraced. He caused new projects to be every day set on foot for raising money; and bad defiance to temperate and conciliatory measures.

In this fatal conjuncture, and while the war with Spain was yet kept up, anew war was precipitately declared against France; for which no reasonable cause could ever be assigned. It has been said, that the king was hurried into this war, purely from a private motive of resentment in the duke of Buckingham, who, having bfeen in France to bring over the queen, had the confidence to make overtures of love to Anne of Austria, the consort of Lewis XIII.; and that his high spirit was so fired at the repulse he met with on this extraordinary occasion, as to be appeased with nothing less than a war between the two nations. Whatever was the cause, the fleet, which had been designed to have surprised Cadiz, was no sooner returned without success and with much damage, than it was repaired, and the army reinforced for the invasion of France. Here the duke was general himself, and made that unfortunate descent upon the Isle of Rhee, in which the flower of the army was lost. Having returned to England, and repaired the fleet and the army, he was about to sail to the relief of Rochelle, which was then closely besieged by the cardinal Richelieu; and to relieve which the duke was the more obliged, because at the Isle of Rhee he had received great supplies of victuals and some men from that town, the want of both which he laboured under at this time. He was at Portsmouth for this purpose, when he was assassinated by one Felton, on the 23d of August, 1628, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. The particulars of this assassination are well known, being related, at large by lord Clarendon, to whom we refer the reader; but we may subjoin another account, as being circumstantial and curious, and less known. This is given by sir Simonds D'Ewes, in a manuscript life of himself: “August the 23d, being Saturday, the duke having eaten his breakfast between eight and nine o‘clock in the morning, in one Mr. Mason-’ s house in Portsmouth, he was then hasting away to the king, who lay at Reswicke, about five miles distant, to have some speedy conference with him. Being come to the farthef part of the entry leading out of the parlour into the hall of the house, he had there some conference with sir Thomas Frier, a colonel; and stooping down in taking his leave of him, John Felton, gentleman, having watched his opportunity, thrust a long knife, with a white helfc, he had secretly ahout him, with great strength and violence, into his breast, under his left pap, cutting the diaphragm* and lungs, and piercing the very heart itself. The duke having received the stroke, and instantly clapping his right-hand on his sword-hilt, cried out ` God’s wounds! the villain hath killed me.‘ Some report his last words otherwise, little differing for substance from these; and it might have been wished, that his end had not been so sudden, nor his last words mixed with so impious an expression. He was attended by many noblemen and leaders, yet none could see to prevent the stroke. His duchess, and the countess of Anglesey (the wife of Christopher Villiers, earl of Anglesey, his younger brother), being in an upper room, and hearing a noise in the hall, into which they had carried the duke, ran presently into a gallery, that looked down into it $ and there beholding the duke’s blood gush out abundantly from his breast, nose, and mouth (with which his speech, after those his first words, had been immediately stopped), they brake into pitiful outcries, and raised great lamentation. He pulled out the knife himself; and being carried by his servants unto the table, tha,t stood in the same hall, having struggled with death near upon a quarter of an hour, at length he gave up the ghost, about ten o’clock, and lay a long time after he was dead upon the table.”

As to the character of this great man, Clarendon says, he was “of a noble and generous disposition, and of such other endowments as made him very capable of being a great favourite with a great king. He understood the arts of a court, and all the learning that is possessed there, exactly well. By long practice in business, under a master that discoursed excellently, and surely knew all things wonderfully, and took much delight in indoctrinating his young unexperienced favourite, who (he knew) would always be looked upon as the workmanship of his own hands, he bad obtained a quick conception and apprehension of business, and had the habit of speaking very gracefully anci pertinently. He was of a most flowing courtesy and affability to all men who made any address to him, and so desirous to oblige them that he did not enough consider the value of the obligation, or the merit of the person he chose to oblige; from which much of his misfortune resulted. He was of a courage not to be daunted, which was manifested in all his actions, and in his contests with particular persons of the greatest reputation; and especially in his whole demeanour at the Isle of Rhee, both at the landing and upon the retreat; in both which no man was more fearless, or more ready to expose himself to the highest dangers. His kindness and affection to his friends was so vehement, that they were as so many marriages for better or worse, and so many leagues offensive and defensive: as if he thought himself obliged to love all his friends, and to make war upon all they were angry with, let the cause be what it would. And it cannot be denied, that he was an enemy in the same excess $ and prosecuted those he looked upon as enemies with the utmost rigour and animosity, and was not easily induced to a reconciliation. His single misfortune was, which was indeed productive of many greater, that he had never made a noble and a worthy friendship with a man so near his equal, that he would frankly advise him for his honour and true interest against the current, or rather the torrent, of his passions; and it may reasonably be believed, that, if he had been blessed with one faithful friend, who had been qualified with wisdom and integrity, he would have committed as few faults, and done as transcendant worthy actions, as any man who shined in such a sphere in that age in Europe; for he was of an excellent disposition, and of a mind very capable of advice and counsel; he was in his nature just and candid, liberal, generous, and bountiful; nor was it ever known, that the temptation of money swayed him to do an unjust or unkind thing. If he had an immoderate ambition, with which he was charged, it doth not appear that it was in his nature, or that he brought it with him to the court, but rather found it there. He needed no ambition, who was so seated in the hearts of two such masters.” This is the character which the earl of Clarendon has thought fit to give the duke; and if other historians have not drawn him in colours quite so favourable, yet they have not varied from him in the principal features.

, duke of Buckingham, and a very distinguished personage in the reign of Charles II. was the son of the preceding, by his wife lady Catherine Manners, and was born at Wallingford-house, in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, January 30, 1627, which being but the year before the fatal catastrophe of his father’s death, the young duke was left a perfect infant, a circumstance which is frequently prejudicial to the morals of men born to high rank and affluence. The early parts of his education he received from various domestic tutors; after which he was sent to the university of Cambridge, where having completed a course of studies, he, with his brother lord Francis, went abroad, under the care of one Mr. Aylesbury. Upon his return, which was not till after the breaking-out of the rebellion, the king being at Oxford, his grace repaired thither, was presented to his majesty, and entered of Christ-church college. Upon the decline of the king’s cause, he attended prince Charles into Scotland, and was with him at the battle of Worcester in 1651; after which, making his escape beyond sea, he again joined him, and was soon after, as a reward for his attachment, made knight of the Garter. Desirous, however, of retrieving his affairs, he came privately to England, and in 1657 married Mary, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas lord Fairfax, through whose interest he recovered the greatest part of the estate he had lost, and the assurance of succeeding to an accumulation of wealth in the right of his wife. We do not find, however, that this step lost him the royal favour; for, after- the restoration, at which time he is said to have possessed an estate of 20,000l. per annum, he was made one of the lords of the bed-chamber, called to the privy -council, and appointed lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, and master of the horse. All these high offices, however, he lost again in 1666; for, having been refused the post of president of the North, he became disaffected to the king, and it was discovered that he had carried on a secret correspondence by letters and other transactions with one Dr. Heydon (a man of no kind of consequence, but a useful tool), tending to raise mutinies among his majesty’s forces, particularly in the navy, to stir up seditioa among the people, and even to engage persons in a conspiracy for the seizing the Tower of London. Nay, to sucii base lengths had he proceeded, as even to have given money to villains to put on jackets, and, personating seamen, to go about the country begging, and exclaiming for want of pay, while the people oppressed with taxes were cheated of their money by the great officers of the crown. Matters were ripe for execution, and an insurrection, at the head of which the duke was openly to have appeared, on the very eve of breaking-out, when it was discovered by means of some agents whom Heydon had employed to carry letters to the duke. The detection of this affair so exasperated the king, who knew Buckingham to be capable f the blackest designs, that he immediately ordered him to be seized; but the duke finding means, having defended his house for some time by force, to make his escape, his majesty struck him out of all. his commissions, and issued out a proclamation, requiring his surrender by a certain day. This storm, however, did not long hang over his head; for, on his making an humble submission, king Charles, who was far from being of an implacable temper, took him again into favour, and the very next year restored him both to the privy-council and bed-chamber. But the duke’s disposition for intrigue and machination was not lessened; for, having conceived a resentment against the duke of Ormond, because he had acted with some severity against him in the last-mentioned affair, he, in 1670, was supposed to be concerned in an attempt made on that nobleman’s life, by the same Blood who afterwards endeavoured to steal the crown. Their design was to have conveyed the duke to Tyburn, and there have hanged him; and so far did they proceed towards the putting it in execution, that Blood and his son had actuallyforced the duke out of his coach in St. James’s-street, and carried him away beyond Devonshire-house, Piccadilly, before he was rescued from them. That there must hare been the strongest reasons for suspecting the duke of Buckingham of having been a party in this villainous project, is apparent from a story Mr. Carte relates from the best authority, in his “Life of the duke of Ormond,” of the public resentment and open menaces thrown out to the duke on the occasion, by the earl of Ossory, the duke of Onnond’s son, even in the presence of the king himself. But as Charies II. was more sensible of injuries done to himself than others, it does not appear that this transaction hurt the duke’s interest at court; for in 1671 he was installed chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and sent ambassador to France, where he was very nobly entertained by Lewis XIV. and presented by that monarch at his departure with a sword and belt set with jewels, to the value of forty thousand pistoles; and the next year he was employed in a second embassy to that king at Utrecht. However, in June 1674, he resigned the chancellorship of Cambridge, and about the same time became a zealous partizan and favourer of the nonconformists. On February 16, 1676, his grace, with the earls of- Salisbury and Shaftesbury, and lord Wharton, were committed to the Tower, by order of the House of Lords, for a contempt, in refusing to retract the purport of a speech which the duke had made concerning a dissolution of the parliament; but upon a petition to the king, he was discharged thence in May following. In 1680, having sold Wallingfordhouse in the Strand, he purchased a house at Dowgate, and resided there, joining with the earl of Shaftesbury in all the violences of opposition. About the time of king Charles’s death, his health became affected, and he went into the country to his own manor of Helmisley, in Yorkshire, where he generally passed his time in hunting and entertaining his friends. This he continued until a fortnight before his death, an event which happened at a tenant’s house, at Kirkby Moorside, April 16, 1688, after three days illness, of an ague and fever, arising from a cold which he caught by sitting on the ground after foxhunting. The day before his death, he sent to his old servant Mr. Brian Fairfax, to provide him a bed at his own house, at Bishophill, in Yorkshire; but the next morning the same man returned with the news that his life was despaired of. Mr. Fairfax came; the duke knew him, looked earnestly at him, but could not speak. Mr. Fairfax asked a gentleman there present, a justice of peace, and a worthy discreet man in the neighbourhood, what he had said or done before he became speechless: who told him, that some questions had been asked him about his estate, to which he gave no answer. This occasioned another question to be proposed, if he would have a Popish priest; but he replied with great vehemence, No, no! repeating the words, he would have nothing to do with them. The same gentleman then askod him again, if he would have the minister sent for; and he calmly said, “Yes, pray seud for him.” The minister accordingly came, and did the office enjoined by the church, the duke devoutly attending it, and received the sacrament. In about an hour

after, he became speechless, and died on the same night. His body was buried in Westminster-abbey. As to his personal character, it is impossible to say any thing in its vindication; for though his severest enemies acknowledge him to have possessed great vivacity and a quickness of parts peculiarly adapted to the purposes of ridicule, yet his warmest advocates have never attributed to him a single virtue. His generosity was profuseness, his wit malevolence, the gratification of his passions his sole aim through life, his very talents caprice, and even his gallantry the mere love of pleasure. But it is impossible to draw his character with equal beauty, or with more justice, than iti that given of him by Dryden, in his “Absalom and Achitophel,” under the name of Zimri, to which we shall refer our readers. If he appears inferior to his father as a statesman, he was certainly superior to him as a wit, and wanted only application and steadiness to have made as conspicuous a figure in the senate and the cabinet as he did in the drawing-room. But his love of pleasure was so immoderate, and his eagerness in the pursuit of it so ungovernable, that they were perpetual bars against the execution of even any plan he might have formed solid or praise-worthy. In consequence of which, with the possession of a fortune that might have enabled him to render himself an object of almost adoration, we do not find him on record for any one deservedly generous action. As he had lived a profligate, he died a beggar; and as he had raised no friend in his life, he found none to lament him at his death. As a writer, however, he has very considerable merit. His poems, indeed, are very indifferent, but his memory will owe much to his celebrated comedy of “The Rehearsal,” 1672, which is a master-piece of wit, and every way an original.

Besides “The Rehearsal,” the duke was the author of some other dramatic pieces; as “The Chances,” a comedy altered from Fletcher; “The Restauration, or Right will take place,” a tragi-comedy; “The Battle of Sedgmoor,”' a farce; “The Militant Couple, or the Husband may thank himself,” a fragment. He was the author of some prose pieces, among which were “An Essay upon Reason and Religion,” in a letter to Nevile Pain, esq.; “On Human Reason,” addressed to Martin Clifford, esq.; “An account of a Conference between the duke and father Fitzgerald, whom king James’sent to convert his grace in his sickness;” and, “A short Discourse upon the reasonableness of men’s having a religion or worship of God.” This last was printed in 1685, and passed through three editions. The duke wrote also several small poems complimentary and satirical. One is entitled “The lost mistress, a complaint against the countess of” Shrewsbury, as is supposed; whose lord he killed in a duel on her account, and who is said to have held the duke’s horse, disguised like a page, during the combat. The loves of this tender pair are touched by Pope, in some well-known lines. Pope informed Spence, “that the duke’s duel with lord Shrewsbury was concerted between him and lady Shrewsbury. All that morning she was trembling for her gallant, and wishing for the death of her husband; and after his fall, 'tis said the duke lay with her in his bloody shirt.” The following account of this infamous affair, which Mr. Malone copied from a ms letter dated Whitehall, Jan. 10, 1673-4, affords but a sorry idea of the profligate reign in which such a tragedy could be acted vrith impunity.

“Upon Wednesday the 7th, the two Houses met. In the Lords’ House, immediately upon his majesty’s recess, the earl of Westmoreland brought in a petition against the ttuke of Bucks, in the name of the young earl of Shrewsbury, desiring justice against him, for murthering his father, making his mother a whore, and keeping her now as an infamous strumpet. To this the duke replied, 'tis true he had the hard fortune to kill the earl of Shrewsbury, but it was upon the greatest provocations in the world that he bad fought him- twice before, and had as often given him his life that he had threatened to pistol him, wheresoever he (should) meet him, if he could not fight him that for these reasons the king had given him his pardon. To the other part of the petition concerning the lady Shrewsbury, he said, he knew not how far his conversation with that lady was cognizable by that House; but if that had given offence, she was now gone to a retirement.” A day was appointed for considering the merits of the petition; but the parliament being prorogued on Feb. 25, nothing more appears to have been done in the business. Three clays before the duke was pardoned for killing lord Shrewsbury (Feb. 25, 1667-8), that nobleman’s second, sir John Talhot, received a pardon for killing the duke’s second, Mr. William Jenkins; for at that time the seconds in duels regularly engaged, as well as the principals. Andrew Marvell says, in one of his letters, that the duke had a son by lady Shrewsbury, who died young, and whom he erroneously calls earl of Coventry. The duke had no heirs by his duchess. What the duke meant by lady Shrewsbury’s going to a retirement, we know not. She afterwards married George Rodney Bridges, second son of sir Thomas Bridges of Keynsharn in Somersetshire, knt and died April 20, 1702.

, a very learned Frenchman, member oi the Institute, and of all the academies and learned societies of Kurope, was born at Corbeille-sur- Seine, March 5, 1750. His family was originally of Spain, but had settled in France in the early part of the seventeenth century. His father, as well as others of his ancestors, had served in the army. He began his stiuiies at a very early age at the college of Lisieux, from which he removed to that of Du Plessis, and in both was distinguished by a decided taste for the ancient languages, especially the Greek, for the sake of which he again removed to the college of Des Grassis, that he might attend the Greek lectures of M. le Beau. Under his tuition he distanced all his fellow-students, and gained all the prizes destined to those who proved the superiority of their taste in Homer. He afterwards attended the lectures of Capperonier, Greek professor in the royal college of France,' which were adapted to a more advanced state of proficiency, and soon made such progress as to need no other instructor than his own study. And such was the extent of his application, that he had already, although scarcely fifteen years of age, perused almost all the writers of antiquity, poets, orators, historians, philosophers, and grammarians. Having thus exhausted the usual stores of printed works, he sought new treasures in manuscripts; and having foil' 1 i in the library of St. Germain-des-Pres, a collection of inedited Greek lexicons, among which was that of Homer by Apollonius, he formed the design of publishing this last, which accordingly appeared in 1773, preceded by ample prolegomena, and accompanied by notes and observations, the extensive and profound erudition of which appeared very extraordinary in a young man of only twenty-two. The academy of inscriptions and belles lettres, to which Villoison submitted his work before it was printed, had admitted him a member during the preceding year, after having obtained a dispensation on account of his age, without which he could not be elected. The reason assigned was extremely honourable to him: “that having anticipated the age of profound knowledge, it was just that he should enjoy its advantages earlier than other men; and that he should outstrip them in a career of honours, as he had in that of learning.”

The fame he had so justly acquired involved him now in a literary correspondence with the most eminent men of his time, who were desirous of his communications, and he soon became an authority in what regarded the Greek language. This, however, he did not permit to give any serious interruption to his studies; and the value he set on his time and labour appeared in the offence he took at the conduct of the academy. He had communicated several memoirs, of which they published only extracts, and therefore he desisted for several years from making any farther communications. His next publication was an edition of the pastoral of Longus, which appeared in 1778, and would have been an enormous volume if one of his learned friends had not prevailed on him to retrench half of his remarks, and even then its “superfluity of erudition” was objected to; “a charge,” says his biographer, “which did no injury to that species of reputation of which M. de Villoison was ambitious.”

He was not however fully satisfied with its success, and thought with reason that he might be more usefully employed in publishing some valuable work, not before given to the world. He had examined the libraries of France for this purpose ineffectually, and formed a project of going to Venice, to search the library of St. Mark, to which he knew that cardinal Bessarion had left his numerous manuscripts. He accordingly set out in 1781, under the patronage of the king, who appointed that the expenses of his journey and residence (to which no limits were fixed) should be defrayed by the government. His researches were not fruitless. In that depository, he soon discovered several inedited works of the rhetoricians and philosophers, and especially grammarians, which he deemed worthy of publication, either entire or in extracts; and these form the celebrated collection which was printed the same year, in 2 vols. 4to, under the title of “Anecdota Graeca e regia Parisiensi et e Veneta 8. Marci bibliotheca deprompta,” Venice. Of this some copies were taken off“in folio, and two on vellum. It was however unfortunate that publication followed so hastily on discovery, for Villoison soon found, but found too late, that a considerable proportion of the first volume of these” Anecdota“had already been given to the public. He made however a very important discovery in the library of Mark, of a ms. of Homer, which he judged to be of the 10th century, and consequently anterior by two centuries to the commentator Eustathius. This precious volume, which does not appear to have been before examined, contained the whole Iliad, enriched with the scholia of the most eminent grammarians of antiquity. The margins also were filled with various marks by which these grammarians distinguished the verses of Homer, which they judged to be supposititious, corrupted, or transposed, from those whose genuineness was universally recognized. He immediately prepared an edition of this valuable treasure, which was published in 1788, fol. accompanied by learned prolegomena, and was regarded as one of the most valuable presents made to the literary world during the last century, and every scholar hastened with his congratulations. But, says his biographer,” the satisfaction which this brilliant success must have given to M. de Villoison was not long unmixed. He could not see, without sentiments of pain, the spirit of system abusing his discoveries to attack the glory of the father of poetry: and perverting the critical marks affixed to a great number of verses in the Iliad, in support of the darling position, that parts of this poem, even entire books, were the work of ancient rhapsodists, and the first editors, &c. and the idea that he had unintentionally furnished the basis on which these conjectures were constructed, and the weapons by which their authors pretended to defend them, troubled him so much, that he almost repented of having published his work.“He had advanced but a little way in printing the Iliad, when he yielded to the invitation of the duke and duchess of Saxe-Weimar, who honoured him with their particular esteem, and quitting Venice, repaired to their capital. While here, he formed the collection of critical letters, printed at Zurich in 1783, under the title of” Epistolse Vinarienses, in quihus multa Graecorum scriptorum ioca emendantur ope librorum Ducalis bibliothecte,“4to. Having found in the library of St. Mark a very liberal translation of part of the Old Testament, made by a Jew in the ninth century, he laboured, during his stay at Weimar, to put it into a state fit for publication; and on his return to France in 1784, he remained some time at Strasburgh for the purpose of having it printed there under his own inspection. He soon after set out for Greece, in quest of other ancient Mss.; but after a tour of two years, found nothing of that description. He had made, however, many observations, and intended, with the aid of these, to have composed a history of ancient and modern Greece, For the same purpose he determined on a fresh perusal of all the Greek and Latin authors extant, and as Paris had now become the scene of the revolution, and all its enormities, he removed to Orleans, in the public library of which he executed his extensive plan of reading, and its fruits were fifteen large quarto volumes of extracts and observations, which were to contribute to his history of Greece. He also prepared during his retreat at Orleans, materials for a new edition of Montfaucon’s” Palasographia Graeca," all of which are now in the royal library.

After the last storms of the revolution, he returned to Paris with his treasures; and his property of other kinds having been lost in the general confusion, he endeavoured to supply his wants by a course of lectures on the Greek language, but either had few scholars, or was unable to level himself to their capacities. A professorship of modern Greek had just been founded, which was bestowed on him, but soon suppressed by Bonaparte, who, however, created for him a professorship of ancient and modern Greek in the college of France. On this he scarcely entered, when a malady, which at first he regarded as very slight, but the force of which was aggravated by degrees, put an end to his life, April 26, 1805.

“Nature,” says his biographer, “had gifted Villoison with a quick and penetrating mind, but his memory, which was, in truth, a prodigy, and which he had perhaps exercised too exclusively, appears in. some degree to have checked the developement of his other intellectual faculties, and to have prevented them from reaching their perfect growth. Insatiably desirous of knowledge, he had never too much time for reading, and he rarely appropriated any to thought and reflection; hence the incoherence, the sudden digressions, the want of proportion and integrity which are to be remarked in some of his works; hence the want of consistency and steadiness in conduct and conversation of which he sometimes incurred the charge. But these imperfections (adds his biographer) disappear before the splendour of his great and useful qualities: if he always remained young in judgment, taste, and sense of propriety, in erudition he condensed the acquisition of centuries, with all the vigour of manly age; and learned societies might esteem themselves happy if they possessed many members possessed of similar excellence, though mingled with similar alloy.”

, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, was reader to St. Louis, king of France, and tutor to his children. He compiled a summary of varions knowledge, called the “Speculum Majus,” containing matters of a natural, doctrinal, moral, and historical kind, which contains the opinions of authors that are not now extant, and on that account is an object of some curiosity. In other respects it serves only to shew the ignorance and superstition of the age. It was first printed at Strasburgh in 1476, and has often been reprinted, as low as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Vincent died in 1264, as some assert, but, according to Dupin, this is a matter of great doubt. He left some other works.

, a saint of the fifth century, was a native of France, and originally a soldier; but determining to forsake the world, retired to the monastery of Lerins in Provence, and became a priest. The time of his death is uncertain, but after that event he was canonized, He wrote a work to which he is supposed to have owed this honour, entitled “Commonitorium adversus Hsereticos,” in which he proposes to confute heretics by two authorities: first, that of the Holy Scriptures; and secondly, that of the church, and he advances many arguments that have at least the appearance of ingenuity. There have been many editions of this work abroad, and one at Cambridge, in 1687, 12mo. Mosheim calls it an excellent treatise, but his translator says he sees nothing in it but that blind veneration for ancient opinions, which is so fatal to the discovery and progress of truth, and an attempt to prove that nothing but the voice of tradition is to be consulted in fixing the sense of the holy scriptures.

, a nonconformist divine of great popularity, courage, and piety, was born in the month of May 1634, in Hertford. He was the eldest son of the rev. John Vincent, who died possessed of the valuable living of Sedgfield in the county of Durham, but who was so often troubled on account of his nonconformity, that although he had a numerous family, it is said that not two of his children were born in the same county. This son, Thomas, was educated at Westminster-school, whence he was, in 1647, elected to Christ Church, Oxford. There he made such proficiency, that, after taking h'is degree of M. A. in 1654, the dean, Dr. Owen, chose him catechist, an office which, Wood says, usually belongs to a senior master. On leaving Oxford he became chaplain to Robert, earl of Leicester, and afterwards succeeded to the living of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk-street, London, from which he was ejected for nonconformity in 1662. He then taught school for some time with another famous nonconformist, the rev. Thomas Doolittle, at x lslington, and occasionally preached when it could be done with safety. In 1665 the memorable and last-plague with which this kingdom was visited, broke out in the metropolis with uncommon fury, and Mr. Vincent informed his colleague that be now thought it his duty to relinquish his present employment, and devote himself to the service of the sufferers in this great calamity. Doolittle endeavoured in vain to dissuade him, and Mr. Vincent, that he might not seem obstinate, agreed to refer the case to the city ministers, who, after hearing his reasons, and admiring his courage and humanity, gave all the approbation that such an act of self-devotion could admit, and Mr. Vincent came to lodge in the city, and throughout the whole continuance of the plague preached constantly every Sunday in some parish church. This was not ouly connived at by government, but he was followed by persons of all ranks. He also visited the sick whenever called upon, and yet aontinued in perfect health during the whole time, although seven persons died of the plague in the house where he resided. This remarkable instance of courage and humanity probably reconciled many to him who disapproved of his nonconformity; for although he preached afterwards at a dissenting meeting at Hoxton, and was the founder of another at Hand-alley, Bishopsgate-street, we do not find that he was molested. He died Oct. 15, 1678, in the forty-fourth year of his age. He was the author of several pious tracts, which went through many editions in his life-time, and afterwards; and had some controversy with Penn the quaker, and with Dr. William Sherlock. The most popular of his tracts were his “Explanation of the Assemblies Catechism,” which still continues to be printed; and his “God’s terrible voice to the city by Plague and Fire,” in which are some remarkable accounts of both these fatal events. This work, which was first printed in 1667, 12mo, went through thirteen editions before 1671. He published a work of the same kind, occasioned by an eruption of Mount Etna, entitled “Fire and Brimstone,” &c. 1670, 8vo. He had a brother, Nathanael, also educated at Christ Church, who was ejected from the living of Langley-march, in Buckinghamshire, in 1662, and afterwards was frequently prosecuted for preaching in conventicles. He was also imprisoned, as being concerned in Monmouth’s expedition, but nothing was proved against him. He died in 1697, and left several practical treatises, and funeral sermons. Wood attributes to him more Cl brisk and florid parts“than belong to his fraternity, and adds, that he was” of a facetious and jolly humour," which certainly does not correspond with the other characters given of him.

, the late learned dean of Westminster, was born in London, Nov. 2, 1739. His father was a citizen of London, in commercial business, first as a packer, and afterwards as a Portugal'merchant, in which last concern he acquired opulence, but was impoverished by the failures consequent upon the great earthquake at Lisbon, in 1755. He lost also his second son, Giles, in that terrible catastrophe^ He was for twenty-seven years deputy of Lime-street Ward, London. His eldest son, Francis, continued the business of a packer, and prospered in it; and by him William was assisted in his expenses at college. His school education, excepting a mere infantine initiation at Cavendish, in Suffolk, was received entirely at Westminster; and from fourteen years old, when he entered the school, to the day of his death, he was never unconnected with that seminary, nor long personally absent from its precincts, except for the five years in which he was pursuing his academical studies. Passing through every gradation in the school, and collegiate foundation, he was thence elected scholar of Trinity college, Cam.­bridge, in 1757. In 1761 he took his first degree in arts, and was chosen a fellow of his college; soon after which (1762), he returned to Westminster, as usher, or assistant in the school. In that capacity he proceeded from, the lowest to the highest situation, so justly approved, in all respects, by the patrons of the school, that, on the resignation of Dr. Lloyd, the veteran second master in 1771, he was appointed to that office. In the same year he was nominated one of the chaplains in ordinary to his majesty.

The place of second master at Westminster schoqi is a situation of much labour and responsibility. Besides the daily business of the school, which, if not arduous, is at least fatiguing, the person who holds that office has the whole care and superintendence of the scholars on the foundation when out of school; that is, of forty boys, rapidly growing up into men, and yearly drafted off, by elections of from eight to ten, to the two universities. Yet in this much occupied situation it was, that Mr. Vincent was prosecuting those studies which gradually established his reputation at home as a scholar, and a man of research; and finally extended his celebrity over the whole continent of Europe. What is much to his honour, he studied under a natural disadvantage, which to a less ardent and persevering spirit would have served as an excuse for idleness. From an early period of life h was subject to a weakness of the eyes, attended with pain and inflammation, which never suffered him to read or write with impunity by artificial light. These attacks were so severe, that, to avoid yet more formidable consequences, he found himself compelled altogether to relinquish evening studies. But zeal can always find resources,. As he could not read at night he formed the habit of rising very early. Before the hours of school, in the intervals between morning and evening attendance, and after both, when the length of the days permitted, he was generally employed in his study. Of exercise, properly so called, he took very little, but his constitution was robust; and of a man who completed seventy-six years, we can hardly say that his days were shortened by his habits of life, of whatever kind they might be.

He had three principal objects of pursuit; theology, classical learning, and history in all its branches. Historical research was his peculiar delight, including geography, navigation, commerce, and even the military art, as illustrating the history of men, and connecting the memorials of remote periods. To this taste, perseveringly indulged, we owe his various works, particularly those on ancient commerce and navigation, on which his reputation chiefly rests. Yet he was no impatient candidate for fame. During the whole period of his being under-master, which was no less than seventeen years, he published nothing that was at all considerable. One small publication was a letter to Dr. Watson, then professor of divinity at Cambridge (afterwards bishop of Llandaff) on the subject of a sermon preached by him in 1780; a production neither then nor afterwards publicly avowedi; though far from being unworthy of his principles or talents, being a very clear and able argument against such theories as tend to overturn governments, and against the spirit of opposition in those times. The, other tract was entitled “Considerations on Parochial Music” (1787); not written as pretending to any knowledge of the science, or talent for it, which he had not; but byway of improving its rational and devotional effects in parish churches. He had then become a parish priest, and it was natural for him to attend to every thing relating to that office.

It was apparently on becoming second master of Westminster, that he thought himself authorised to marry; and obtained the hand of miss Hannah Wyatt of that city. This union proved uniformly happy; and was productive of two sons; the rev. W. St. Andrew Vincent, now rector of Allhallows; and George Giles Vincent, esq. chapter clerk of Westminster; who became his effectual comforters, when their mother was at length taken from him, in 1807. But from his appointment in 1771, he remained without clerical preferment till 1778, when he obtained the vicarage of JLongdon, in Worcestershire, by the gift of the dean and chapter of Westminster. This living he resigned in about six months, on being collated, by the archbishop of Canterbury, to the rectory of Allhallows the Great and Less, in Thames-street, London.

No man could be better qualified to enjoy and to promote domestic happiness. Easy of access, friendly, social, without any of the reserve of a student, or any of the pride of wisdom, real or assumed, he was always ready to take an active part in the innocent gratifications of society. With the learned, equally ready to inquire and to communicate, but never ostentatious of knowledge; with the ignorant and even the weak, so very indulgent that they hardly suspected their inferiority; certainly were never made to feel it painfully. Never ashamed to ask for information, when he found he wanted it; and most frankly ready to confess ignorance, if consulted upon any subject to which his mind had not been particularly applied. Never, perhaps, was “I know nothing of it,” so often said by one who knew so much. His entire contempt for every species of affectation produced these sometimes too sweeping declarations, in which he was hardly just to himself.

But neither his amusements nor his studies were ever suffered to interfere with his public or professional duties. In the church, in the school^ among his parishioners, or among his boys, he was always active and assiduous: fully prepared for the task of the day, whether to preach or teach; to illustrate the classics, or expound the Scriptures. His mode of instructing the boys on the foundation at Westminster, is admirably described by a well-informed writer in the Gent. Mag. 1815. “The under-master,” he says, “has the care of the college; and in his hands are the preservation of its discipline, the guardianship of its morals, and the charge of its religious instruction. With a steadiness and fidelity rarely equalled Dr. Vincent discharged these difficult functions; but perhaps there never existed a man who rivalled him in the art of attracting from boys attention to his lectures. Four times a year, each week preparatory to receiving the sacrament, Dr. V. explained the nature of that religious rite; its institution, its importance, and its benefits. And we believe, such was his happy mode of imparting instruction, that there never was known an instance of any boy treating the disquisition with levity, or not shewing an eagerness to be present at, and to profit by, the lesson. A clear sonorous voice, a fluent, easy, yet correct delivery, an expression at once familiar and impressive, rendered him a delightful speaker. These advantages he possessed in common conversation, but he displayed them more especially on. public occasions, and never to greater advantage than in the pulpit.”

Never was an eulogium more just. Nor did these serious and habitual occupations of his mind preclude its more lively excursions. In all those instances, at Westminster of periodical occurrence, when the talents of the masters are called frib, to give example and encouragement to the scholars, Pi prologues and epilogues at the plays, exercises and epigrams at the elections, &c. the compositions of Vincent were sure to be distinguished. He had not, indeed, nor did he rlatter himself that he had. that strong and original determination to poetry, which is denominated genius; but he possessed that lively relish for its genuine beauties, which, a-sisted by a familiar and exact knowledge of the best models, will always qualify a strong and versatile iniinl to think poetically, and to express its thoughts, always witn propriety, often with felicity. In many different styles he proved his talent for Latin composition in verse and prose; and what he produced of any kind, it was not easy to surpass. On these multifarious objects was his assiduity employed throughout the seventeen years in which he continued under-master.

At length, on the death of Dr. Smith in 1788, Dr. Vincent (who had taken his doctor’s degree in 1776), was nominated to succeed him r.s head-master an appointment which gave great satisfaction to the friends of the school, though the whole extent and force of his talents were far from being completely known. Particular attention seems to have been first paid to a sermon he preached at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, for a charity-school. This was in 1792, a period of great political turbulence and danger; and this sermon, being remarkable for the clear and powerful statement of principles favourable to social order, and for explaining the necessity of the gradations of rich and poor, was welcomed on its publication by all the zealous friends of the Britisu constitution, and to render it more serviceable, the patriotic association against republicans and levellers obtained leave from the author to reprint the principal part of it, for circulation among the people; and twenty thousand copies were thus distributed in London, and throughout the country, probably with excellent effect. We have seen already that the first publication of Dr. Vincent, though anonymous, was a defence of sound principles, against factious measures and artifices: and, as that tract was never afterwards owned, there cannot be any possible suspicion that the author wrote it with a view to praise or emolument; or otherwise than from the honest impulse of his heart, and the clear conviction of his mind. The principles which he there discovered, remained unaltered through life; and were felt with particular force when the movements of faction called for opposition. It cannot be floubted, therefore, that he must have felt the liveliest satisfaction in having his discourse thus circulated, in a, more attractive form than a sermon might have borne, for the general instruction of the people.

But the fruits of his long studies were now about to appear in a manner more conspicuous, or at least more conducive to his credit as a scholar, A small tract, in quarto, which he published in 1793, marked him to the learned world as a diligent investigator of historical facts, and an acute, though modest, verbal critic. This publication, which tends to clear up an almost desperate passage in Livy, was, with very good judgment, written in Latin, that it might be submitted not only to domestic but to foreign critics. It is entitled, “De Legione Manlian&, Quicstio ex Livio desumta, et Rei militaris Romanae studiosis proposita.” Subjoined to it is what the author has termed * An Explanatory Translation' in English. Polybius, in his description of the construction of the Roman legian, has given an account of it, which seems entirely irreconcileable with what Livy has said, in the eighth book of his History, of a manoeuvre of the great general Manlius in the management of his own army against the Latins. As both authors must have been perfectly well acquainted with the subject, the difficulty was to reconcile the difference between them, without supposing a mistake on either side.

In the attempt to do this, neither Lipsius, Fabricius, nor even Drakenborch, the most famous editor of Livy, appeared to have succeeded; and their conjectures for the purpose could not be admitted, without considerable violence to the text. How well Dr. Vincent succeeded appeared by the generous approbation of the illustrious Heyne on the continent, and of the no less acute Porson at home. The few points in which these critics differed from him, the author fairly states in a short preface, and endeavours to answer but leaves the ultimate decision to the reader. Two successive years produced two publications, the result of our author’s long and careful study of the analysis of languages. The first of these, entitled “The Origination of the Greek Verb, an Hypothesis,” appeared in 1794; and was followed, in 1795, by “The Greek Verb analyzed, an Hypothesis, in which the source and structure of the Greek language in general is considered.” The latter of these was principally a sequel to the first, and an extension of its theory. Sagacity and learning are eminently displayed in both these publications; nor is it easy to say which quality is most conspicuous in them, sagacity in sug* gesting probable reasons for the various inflections of verbs in the Greek, and afterwards in other languages; or learning, in the production of proofs or illustrations in support of every fact assumed. The principal notion is, that such inflections were derived from some simple and very short original verb, signifying to do or to exist, which being afterward subjoined to radicals denoting various actions or modes of being, formed their tenses, modes, and other variations. The idea was happy, and it is astonishing how far it may be pursued; and nothing can more fully prove its foundation in probable conjecture, than that it had occurred, nearly at the same time, to a writer at Edinburgh, who published it in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica:” the time of composition so exactly coincided, that neither author could possibly have seen or heard of the theory of the other. In both it was equally original.

It is observable, that in both these tracts, Dr. Vincent terms his doctrine only “An Hypothesis.” A more presumptuous author would have called it a discovery. But it would have been perfectly unlike him to assume a particle of merit more than he had an undoubted right to claim; and the manly passage, in the second of these tracts, in which he repels every charge and suspicion of plagiarism, while it strongly marks the character of the writer, proves also how long the subject had been considered and revolved in his mind. “I have been accused,” he says, “of appropriating to myself the discoveries of others, without due acknowledgment, but I must say, in my defence, that, wherever I was sensible of an obligation, I have owned it. I wished to defraud no writer of his honours; but, in treating a subject, which had long been in contemplation, I could not always say from whence the source of my opinion was derived. In a course of years, I have consulted more authors than Fean readily enumerate; and I am still, on the other hand, accused of not consulting a sufficient number. There is no end to this; and I am equally indifferent to the charge on either side. If what I have said is true, it will support itself; if otherwise, it cannot be bolstered up by authorities.” The speculations of lord Mon bod-do, and other metaphysicians, at home and abroad, had probably led both Dr. Vincent and the northern grammarian, into this train of investigation.

Dr. Vincent had long been diligently employed upon a much more arduous task, and more connected with the studies, to which he was by preference attached. In 1797, he published the result of those labours r in his celebrated commentary on Arrian’s “Voyage of Nearchus,” which formed the basis of our author’s reputation. On a work so well known, it is not necessary that we should expatiate at any great length. Nearchus’s voyage is related by Arrian of Nicomedia (See Arrian), and is comprised in his “ludica,” or general account of India, and is professedly taken from the journal of Nearchus himself. The authenticity of the narrative had indeed been questioned by some learned men; but it is so victoriously defended by Dr. Vincent, in the concluding section of his preliminary Disquisitions, that Schmieder, the latest editor of Arrian, has translated the whole of his arguments into Latin; and has subjoined them to the objections of Dodwell, as a complete and satisfactory refutation. So strongly was Schmieder himself of the same opinion, that in his preface to the Indica he says, that “they who deny the genuineness of this account are hardly worth refuting.”

Two most sagacious and diligent inquirers, M. D'Anville and Major Kennel, had already traced“Nearehus down the Indus, and up the Persian Gulf; but the whole intermediate line, extending through ten degrees of longitude direct, besides the sinuosities of 4he coast, they had, from whatever cause, abandoned altogether; though, as Dr. Vincent observes,” the merit of the commander depends upon the difficulties he surmounted, in this part of his voyage more especially; and the clearing up of the geographical obscurity was an object worthy of the talents of two such masters of the science."

If this obscurity could have been completely removed by any sagacity or patience, it would undoubtedly have yielded to the labours of Dr. Vincent. His researches extended to every possible source of information, ancient and modern, rist excepting the oral intelligence of individuals who had recently visited those coasts, and whom he was always anxious to see and to consult. Dr. Horsley, then dean of Westminster, a man who had tew if any superiors in learning and sagacity, was often his adviser on difficult points. He admired the zeal and talents of the author, and strongly marked his regard for him and his work, by furnishing uvo very profound dissertations on astronomical subjects. To Mr. Wales he sometimes resorted for similar information; candidly confessing his own want of skill in that branch of knowledge. But his most abundant source of original information was found in the friendly kindness of Mr. Dalrymple, then hydrographer to the admiralty, who opened to him, without reserve, all the stores of his vast geographical collections, and documents of every kind. Of this indulgence he was most happy to avail himself, and often refers to charts and journals, so communicated, to which there were no other means of access.

Dr. Vincent persevered with such vigour, that the first part of “The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, containing an account of the Navigation of the ancients, from the sea of Suez, to the coast of Zanguebar: with dissertations,” was published in 1800, only three complete years after the Nearchus. It cannot be doubted that the chief researches, necessary for this continuation of the author’s great design, were already made, and much of the materials prepared; otherwise, the interval could not have been sufficient, even for a man who had no other occupation, to produce so elaborate a volume. The appendix alone contains more matter of curious information than many bulky works; particularly the copious alphabetical list of Grecian armies of export and import; and the dissertation of the Adulitic inscription: matters collateral to the general inquiry, and illustrative of the whole work.

“The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,” though usually called Adrian’s, is confessedly not the work of the author of the Voyage of Nearchus. This is avowed by Dr. Vincent, in entering upon the subject. It had probably been imputed to Arrian in later times, from his having written the Periplus of the Euxine Sea. Whether ewn i<<e name properly belonged to this writer is altogether uncertain; and the probability is rather against it: but, from the most accurate examination of the work, Dr. Vincent thinks that the author, whatever was his true name, was a Greek merchant of Alexandria, between the times of the emperors Claudius and Adrian, in the first or second century, and probably by near a century prior to Arrian of Nicornedia. The author was certainly a man who had sailed ora board of a Greek fleet from Egypt to the Gulph of Cambay, if not beyond it. Those who had assigned a different age or character to his author, Dr. Vincent has answered in a manner the most satisfactory.

The “Second Part of the Periplus,” which completes the whole design, appeared in 1805, making a larger volume than the first, furnished with further dissertations, and an additional appendix of commercial articles, thus completing the knowledge of oriental commerce and oriental geography, as they existed among the ancients. Both parts of the Periplus were dedicated to the king. Throughout this work Dr. Vincent followed the same plan which he had formed for his Nearchus: not translating his author, but supplying a continual commentary upon his text, the sections of which are formed by the stations of the navigator, or the geographical divisions of the coast. This plan was here even more necessary than it had been in the former work, since in this the account of each place consists frequently of little more than a mere invoice of the usual exports and imports, very curious when explained, but very unsatisfactory, because unintelligible to a common reader in the original form. He has said, therefore, very properly, in his first disquisition, “of this work no adequate idea could be formed by a translation; but a comparison of its contents with the knowledge of India, which we have obtained, since Gama burst the barrier of discovery, cannot but be acceptable to those who value geography, as a science, or delight in it, as a picture of the world.”

All these volumes are furnished with maps, and other illustrations, from original materials, collected from various sources, by the author’s own researches, or with the aid of friendly communication. One or two charts, in defect of direct authorities, were made out by himself, on the basis of his own reasonings and proofs. For these he has condescended to apologize, as not deeming himself regularly a practical geographer; which others will probably consider as the more meritorious exertion. But his care was, in all cases, not to assume too much to himself, and to err, if at all, on the opposite side. One important map, that by De la Rochette, he greatly wished to have added, but as the proprietors would neither consent to have it copied, nor accommodate him with a sufficient number for an edition, on such terms as he could prudently accept, he unwillingly gave up the thought. Into a very few copies of Nearchus he inserted it, for the benefit of particular friends, but the public was deprived of the advantage.

Soon after the appearance of the first part of the “Periplus,” Dr. Vincent, being then past sixty, began to feel the effects of constant exertion and confinement in the deteriorated state of his health. He had been, at that time, eleven years head master of Westminster, and thirty-nine years in his various situations in the school, and very naturally began to entertain a wish for retirement; and having been presented in 1801 to a stall in the church of Westminster, he immediately determined to carry hi* wish into effect at a very early period. But he was first to render an essential service, not only to Westminster, but to all dur public schools. These schools, whose plans and regulations have been matured by the practice of ages, had lately been the subject of attack by two very eminent divines, who complained that religion was neglected in the systems and conduct of our publicschools. Dr. Vincent was naturally roused at this alarming accusation unjust as he felt it to be, and unfounded as he immediately undertook to prove it, with respect, at least, to the great school over which he so honourably presided; and for which alone he thought himself responsible. He published almost immediately “A Defence of Public Education,” addressed to a learned prelate, whose attack upon it had 'been most conspicuous. Confining himself to such facts as he could assert upon his own knowledge, he took little notice of other schools than his own; but his defence was conducted with such manly plainness, and at the same time with such becoming zeal for religion as well as for education, that -its effect was irresistible. It passed through three editionsj in a period surprisingly short, and taught him, for tb first time, what it is to be a popular writer. It was, in fact, the only publication from which he ever derived pecuniary profit; and that profit, as the first fruits of his authorship, he good-huroouredly presented to Mrs. Vincent. Compliments upon his defence were now poured in from various quarters; and he had the gratificatioa afterwards of knowing that the king, whose judgment rarely erred in matters to which he seriously applied it, was particularly pleased to have his public schools defended, and still more with the spirit and effect of the defence.

But the author was still very far from anticipating the further advantage that he was to derive from it. Among the persons most highly gratified by this tract, was lord Sidmouth, then Mr. Addington, the friend and ornament of another illustrious school, Winchester. It powerfully recalled his attention to the various merits and long public services of the author; and with that promptness and liberality of decision, of which his short administration furnished more instances than many of the longest, he recommended Dr. Vincent to his majesty, as successor to his friend bishop Horsley, in the deanery of Westminster. The king did not fail to express his satisfaction in giving the appointment; and, at a subsequent opportunity, was pleased even to express regret, that the see of Rochester had not. as in many former instances, gone with the deanery. This appointment vacated of course the inferior situations of prebendary and master of the school, the latter of which he left, accompanied by the most gratifying marks of affection from those who had been under his care.

The first use made by the dean of his higher advancement was to obtain the presentation of a living, for a curate who had been his assistant at Allhallows twenty-four years. His own eldest son was then in orders, and totally unbeneficed; but he paid, what he considered as a debt of gratitude, before he would consent to think of his own more immediate concerns. For this forbearance he was soon rewarded; and in the second year after his promotion, the rectory of St. John’s, Westminster, came to his choice, and when he accepted it for himself, he had the satisfaction of obtaining the living of Allhallows for his son. He might have continued to hold it, but he preferred resigning it in that manner. He held St. John’s only about two years, when he exchanged it for the rectory of Islip, in Oxfordshire, which is also in the patronage of the church of Westminster. He was presented to it by the chapter in 1805.

The acquisition of this living formed another fortunate epoch in his life. He had always been accustomed to pass his summer holidays in the country; a change quite necessary for his health, while confined to the school; and desirable, when he'had no longer that tie. But hisonly resource on these occasions had hitherto been in temporary lodgings. He had now a country residence of his own, to which he could at any time retire, and which had the additional recommendation of being in the vicinity of Oxford. At Westminster, the noble fabric of his church was a principal object of his care, and he happily succeeded in effecting great repairs, removing considerable deformities, and promoting the most important improvements. The most remarkable instances were the very effectual and substantial repair, which he caused to be made after the alarming fire in 1803; and that beautiful work, now so far advanced, the restoration of Henry VII. 's chapel, of which he was the first adviser and most zealous promoter.

But all these various objects could not estrange him from his great pursuit, the investigation of ancient commerce and navigation. He continued assiduous in extending his inquiries; and was most scrupulous in acknowledging and correcting every error which his unremitting diligence could detect. Attentive more especially to the remarks of those wko had visited the places described, he anxiously sought their conversation, as well as their writings, and was highly gratified to learn, that several very intelligent men had carefully compared his books with the situations to vrhich they alluded, and expressed in general extreme surprise, that a recluse scholar, quietly seated in his study, could possibly have arrived at suchaccuracy of conjecture or discovery. When they thought him mistaken, he readily resumed the inquiry, and, weighing all the reasons, quitted it not till he had brought it to a satisfactory result. Truth was his sole object, and whether it was brought to light by himself or others, he was equally ready to embrace it-; abandoning the most favoured opinion, without hesitation, if not without regret, when he discovered its foundations to be unsound. As his materials were thus increased, and his work improved, he prepared for a second edition -, which, with more view to the propriety of the measure, than any hope of advantage from it, was published in 1807.

In the new edition, the three former publications were formed into two handsome and uniform volume*; with the geui-nil title of “The Commerce and Navigation of the Aucieuts in the Indian Ocean, by William Vincent, D. D. dean of Westminster.” Each volume had also a second till the first for the voyage of Nearchus, the second for the Peripius. Gratitude now demanded the introduction of lord Sidmouth’s name, to whose unsolicited patronage the author owed so much. To him, therefore, the whole work was now dedicated, in. a sincere and manly strain of acknowledgment; retaining, however, the two dedications to the king, which had introduced the two parts of the Periplus. It was afterwards translated into German and French, the latter by M. Billecoq, under the express authority of Buonaparte. At that period of inveterate enmity on his part, it would not have been safe, perhaps, to translate an English work, on any subject, without that sanction. Approbation so undeniably impartial gave the author a pleasure, which he avowed as frankly as he did his other sentiments; and that satisfaction was complete, when, in 1814, a degree from Goitingen, conferred upon him by diploma, was transmitted to him, with the most honourable testimony borne to the merit and value of his works. Though far from anxious for fame, he was much above affecting an insensibility to it, which no man ever felt who was capable of deserving it.

While the second edition of his great work was passing through the press, he suffered a domestic loss, which they only who are equally attached to their home can justly estimate. Mrs. Vincent died early in 1807: and his sense of her merits has been strongly expressed in a Latin inscription, which he wrote to be placed over her grave at Westminster. But the heaviest evils that would otherwise have followed upon this destitution were happily prevented by the interposition of his nearest relatives. His eldest son, with his truly amiable wife, and a growing family, immediately relinquished house-keeping, alid became his constant inmates, both in town and country; omitting no possible attention that duty and affection could suggest, to make his home again delightful to him. They succeeded, as they deserved, to the utmost of their wishes. The dean recovered his spirits, resumed his usual labours and his usual relaxations, and persevered in both, to almost the latest hour of his life.

But though he continued his remarks and additions to the Ancient Commerce, as his further reading enabled him, he had in truth dismissed all thoughts of further publication on that subject. But the opinion of his friend, Mr. archdeacon Nares, after some time prevailed upon him to add a supplemental volume, for the sake of adding to his work the Greek text of Arrian’s Indica, (including the Journal of Nearchus) with that of the Pseudo-Arrian, which was before too scarce for scholars in general to obtain. This volume concluded the dean’s separate publications. He printed, indeed, afterwards, a letter in French to a M. Barbié (as he chose to write himself, but more probably Barbier) du Bocage, who had very unhandsomely attacked his voyage of Nearchus; but this he never published. It contained a dignified remonstrance, without asperity, with a man whom the writer treats with a respect, little merited by the mode of the attack.

The principal works of Dean Vincent have now been distinctly enumerated; as forming an important part of his history, as a literary man; but he wrote occasionally in periodical works, in which he had no other interest, but such as arose from the general wish to promote the progress of sound literature, both sacred and profane; or to benefit the editors of works whose design was of that nature. His communications to the “Classical Journal” were not many, but va|uable, and regularly signed with his name. They were these 1. On Ancient Commerce No. v. p. 60. 2. On China, as known to Classic Authors No. xiii. p. 32. 3. On Theophilus, an African Bishop No. xiv. p. 382. 4. On the Geography of Susiana; Suppl. to No. xviii. p. 449. 5. Correction of an Error in the Periplus; No. xx. p. 322. The contributions of Dr. Vincent to the “British Critic” commenced at a very early period of that publication, and were never entirely discontinued till the close of the first series. The friendship with which he honoured the original editor of that work, together with his entire approbation of the design and principles, with which it was undertaken and conducted, made him at all times ready to give his aid to it, when his other occupations and studies would permit. As he was always completely a volunteer, so the choice of his subjects, as well as of his opportunities, was left entirely to himself. These communications were not marked with his name, because it was not suitable to the practice of the Review, but he had no particular wish to be concealed, and his biographer has accordingly given a list of his articles, with useful remarks, for which, on account of its length, we must refer to our authority.

He continued to assist in this Review until 1812 or 1813, when the close of his career was more nearly approaching than his friends were willing. to believe, or any visible decay appeared to indicate. It was not, however till the Spring of 1815, that the powers of the stomach began to fail, so much as to create alarm. But the apprehensions then excited were soon too fully justified. Imperfect efforts towards recovery were constantly followed by relapses, each more formidable than the former. He remained at Islip, to his usual period of removal in the autumn, when he returned to Westminster, infirm, but not despaired of by the faculty; sound in mind, which he continued to the last, and not materially impaired in his external organs. But he felt within, that his complaints were beyond the reach of medicine, and calmly rejected all attempts to persuade him to rely upon it. At length, with the least possible disturbance from bodily suffering, he placidly obeyed the inevitable call; and died on the 21st of December, 1815, having passed his seventy-sixth year, by rather more than a month.

“Of the character and talents of Dr. Vincent,” says his biographer, “a tolerably correct notion may be collected from the foregoing narrative *. That he was benevolent, charitable, generous, and placable, should undoubtedly be added to that view. That which, perhaps, would be least conceived, by those who had no personal knowledge of him, is the ease with which he could, on fit occasions, and without the smallest impropriety, sink the man of learning and research, in the cheerful friend and unassuming companion.”

In tracing the steps of dean Vincent’s progress through life, no notice has been taken of those temporary offices, which he held in consequence of his other situations such as being president of Sion-college in 1793, and prolocutor to the Lower house of Convocation in Nov. 1802, and perhaps some others. When such services were required, there can be no doubt that he undertook them readily, and was studious to perform the part allotted to him with punctuality and propriety.

, an illustrious Italian painter, and universal genius, was the natural son of one Piero, a notary at Florence, and was called Da Vinci from the place of his birth, a small burgh or castle of Valdarno di Sotto. He was born in 1452, and was placed under Andrea Verrochio, a painter of some note in that city; but soon surpassed him, particularly in a piece which that painter had made of St. John baptizing our Saviour, and in which Da Vinci, by his order, had painted an angel, holding up some of the vestments. This appeared so much the finest figure, that it visibly discredited all the rest: which so hurt Verrochio, that he relinquished painting ever after.

Da Vinci now set up for himself; and executed many pictures at Florence of great credit, and the universality of his genius soon appeared. He had a perfect knowledge of the theory of his art. He was, by far, the best anatomist and physiologist of his time, the first who raised a spirit for anatomical study, and gave it credit, and certainly the first man we know of who introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings. His first attempt, according to Vasari, was a book of the anatomy of a horse; he afterwards applied with more diligence to the human anatomy, in which study he reciprocally received and communicated assistance to Marc. Antonio della Torra, an excellent philosopher, who then read lectures in Pavia, and wrote upon this subject. For him Da Vinci made a book of studies, drawn with red chalk, and touched with a pen, with great diligence, of such subjects as he had himself dissected: where he made all the bones, and to those he joined, in their order, all the nerves, and covered them with the muscles. And concerning those, from part to part, he wrote remarks in letters of an ugly form, which are written by the left hand, backwards, and not to be understood but by those who know the method of reading them. These very drawings and writings are now in his majesty’s collection of drawings. After inspecting them some years ago, Dr. Hunter expressed his full persuasion that Da Vinci was the best anatomist, at that time, in the world , Lionardo was also well skilled in optics and geometry, almost every branch of literature, and the arts. He was a good architect, an able carver, and extremely well versed in the mechanics: he had a fine voice, and understood music, and both played and sang with taste and skill. Having also the advantage of a well-formed person, he excelled in all the manly exercises. He understood the management of a horse, and took delight in appearing well mounted: and he was very dextrous in the use of arms’. His behaviour also was polite, and his conversation so engaging, that no man ever partook of it without pleasure, or left it without regret.

His reputation soon spread itself all over Italy, and Lewis Sforza, duke of Milan, invited him to his court, and prevailed with him to be a director of the academy for architecture he had just established, where Lionardo restored the simplicity and purity of the Greek and Roman models. About this time, the duke having formed a design of supplying the city of Milan with water by a new canal, the execution of the project was deputed to Lionardo. In order to accomplish this vast design, he spent much time in the study of philosophy and mathematics; applying with double ardour to those parts which might give him light into the work he had undertaken. To these he joined antiquity and history; and observed, as he went along, hoiy the Ptolemies had conducted the waters of the Nile through the several parts of Egypt; and how Trajan had opened a commerce with Nicomedia, by rendering navigable the lakes and rivers lying between that city and the sea. At length, he happily achieved what some thought next to impossible, by rendering hills and valleys navigable with security. The canal goes by the name of Mortesana, being above 200 miles in length; and passes through the Valteline and the valley of Chiavenna, conducting the waters of the river Adda to the very walls of Milan.

After Lionardo had been labouring some years for the service of Milan, in quality of architect and engineer, he was requested by the duke to adorn it by his paintings; and be painted, among other things, his celebrated “Last Supper.”. Francis I. was so charmed with this, that, finding it impracticable to have it removed into France, he ordered a copy to be taken, which was placed at St. Germains; while the original, being painted in oil, and upon a wall not sufficiently secured from moisture, has been defaced long ago. The wars of Italy began how to interrupt him; and his friend and patron duke Lewis being defeated and carried prisoner to France, the academy was destroyed, the professors dispersed, and the arts effectually banished out of Milan. In 14^9, the year before duke Lewis’s defeat, Lionardo, be'ing at Milan, was desired, by the priucipals of the place, to contrive some new device for the entertainment of Lewis XII. of France, who was just then ready to make his entrance into that city. Lionardo consented; and accordingly made a very curious automaton of the figure of a lion, whose inside was so well furnished with machinery, that it marched out to meet the king; made a stand when it came before him; reared up its hinder legs; and, opening his breast, presented a scutcheon, with fleurs-de-lis quartered upon it.

The disorders of Lombardy, and the misfortunes of his patrons the Sforzi, obliging Lionardo to quit Milan, h retired to Florence, where he flourished under the patronage of the Medici. In 1503 the Florentines resolving to have their council- chamber painted, Lionardo, by a public decree, was elected to the office and got Michael Angelq to assist him in painting one side of it, while he himself painted the other: Michael Angelo was then but a young man, yet had acquired a great reputation, and was not afraid to vie with Lionardo, but jealousy arose between them; an.d each having his partizans, they became open enemies. About this time, Raphael was led by Lionardo’s reputation to Florence; the first view of whose works astonished him, and produced a change in his style, to which all the glory he afterwards acquired has been ascribed by some. Lionardo remained in Florence till 1513, and then is stated to have. gone to Rome, which it is said he had never seen. Leo X. received him graciously, and resolved to employ him; upon which, Lionardo set himself to the distilling of oils, and the preparing of varnish, to cover his paintings with. Leo, informed of this, said smartly enough, that “nothing could be expected from a man, who thought of finishing his works before he had begun them.” There seems, however, some reason to doubt, whether Lionardo ever was at Rome in Leo’s time. It seems more certain that about this time, having an invitation from Francis I, he removed into France. He was above seventy years of age when he undertook this journey; and it is probable that the fatigues of it, together with the change of climate, contributed to the distemper of which he died. He languished several months at Fontainebleau; during which time the king went frequently to see him: and one day, as he was raising himself up in bed to thank the king for the honour done him, he was at that instant seized with a fainting fit; and, Francis stooping to support him, he expired in the arms of that monarch. He died in 1520.

The second period is that which he spent at Milan in the service of Lodovico Sforza. There he staid till 1499, with little exertion in painting, if we except the most capital as the most celebrated of his works, perhaps the compendium of his powers, the Last Supper, in the refectory of the Dominicans. Of this performance, which the whole history of painting agrees to class among the first products of art, three heads only remain by Lionardo’s own hand, and those rather delineated than coloured. Had he contented himself to paint it in distemper instead of oil, we should now be in the possession of a work, which was already found half decayed by Armenini, fifty years after it had been finished, and is spoken of by Scannelli, who examined it in 1642, as evanescent, and a thing tfcut once was.

The third period dates from the return of Lionardo to Florence, after the fall of Francesco Sforza. The thirteen years of his stay there produced some of his best works; the celebrated portrait of Mona Lisa, a labour of four years, though still declared unfinished; the cartoon of St. Anna, prepared for an altar-piece at the church A'Servi, which never was coloured; the other cartoon of the battle of Niccolo Piccinino, in competition with Michael Angelo, and likewise never made use of, because his endeavour to paint it in oil on the wall had failed. He employed perhaps anpther method in a Madonna with the child, at St. Onofrio of Rome, a Raffaelesqne picture, but peeling in many places off the pannel. To this period probably belongs his own portrait in the ducal gallery, in an age which does not disagree with these years, a head whose energy leaves all the rest in that room far behind; and that other, in a different cabinet, which is called the portrait of Raffaello; and that half-figure of a young nun in the palace Niccolini, so much celebrated by Bottari. Christ among the doctors, formerly a picture of the Doria palace; the supposed portrait of queen Gioyanna with architecture; and Vertumnus with Pomona, commonly called vanity and modesty, a work as often copied as inimitable, in the Barberini; seem to coincide with this epoch; and we may count with them the Madonna begging the lily of the infant Christ in the Albani, a picture full of graces, and considered by Mengs as the masterpiece of the collection. It would however be too bold a conjecture to decide the date of every picture painted by an artist whose life was spent in search of new methods, and who too often dropped his work before it had received its finish.

The fourth period of this great man’s lift* terminates likewise the career of his art. Lionardo appears to have bid farewell to painting about his sixty-third year. When in 1515 Francis I. had failed in the attempt of having the picture of the last supper sawed from the walls of the refectory, for its transportation to France, he attempted to possess’himself of the author. He invited him to his court, and Vinci accepted the invitation without much regret at leaving Florence, where, since his return from Rome, he had met in young Buonarroti with a rival already preferred to him in the disposal of commissions; because, if we believe Vasari, he gave works where Lionardo gave often only words. It is known that there was anger between them, and Vjnci, consulting his own quiet, passed over to France, where, before he had touched pencil, he died in the arms of Francis I.

Lionardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour which eclipsed all his predecessors: made up of all the elements of genius, favoured by form, education, and circumstances, all ear, all eye, all grasp painter, poet, sculptor, anatomist, architect, engineer,chemist, machinist, musician, philosopher, and sometimes empiric he laid hold of every beauty in the enchanted circle, but, without exclusive attachment to one, dismissed in her turn each. Fitter to scatter hints than to teach by example, he wasted life insatiate in experiment. To a capacity which at once penetrated the principle and real aim of the art, he joined an inequality of fancy that at one moment lent him wings for the pursuit of beauty, and the next flung him on the ground to crawl after deformity. We owe to him chiaroscuro with all its magic, but character was his favourite study; character he has often raised from an individual to a species, and as often depressed to a monster from an individual. His notion of the most elaborate finish, and his want of perseverance, were at least equal. Want of perseverance alone could make him abandon his cartoon designed for the great council-chamber at Florence, of which the celebrated contest of horsemen was but one group; for to him who could organize that composition, Michael Angelo himself might be an object of emulation, but could not be one of fear. His line was free from meagreness, and his forms presented beauties; but he appears not to have been very much acquainted with the antique. The strength of his conception lay in the delineation of male heads; those of his females owe nearly all their charms to chiaroscuro; they are seldom more discriminated than the children they follow; they are sisters of one family.

Da Vinci composed a great number of discourses upon several curious subjects, among whichwere, “A Treatise of the Nature, Equilibrium, and Motion, of Water” “A Treatise of Anatomy” “The Anatomy of a Horse” “A Treatise of Perspective” “A Treatise of Light and Shadows” and, “A Treatiseof Painting.” None of these have found their way to the press, but the “Treatise of the Art of Painting;” a noble edition of which was published by R. du Fresne at Paris in 1651, with figures by Nicholas Poussin. It was also published in English in 1721, 8vo, and reprinted in 1796, with a life of the author prefixed; from which we have extracted chiefly this account of him.

, an eminent benefactor to the study of law, is introduced here in that character, although we have scarcely any memorials of his personal history. He died at his house at Aldershot, Hampshire, June 5, 1756, at what age we are not told, nor have we heard of any particulars of his life having been then or since collected, or published. That he was of the profession of the law may be supposed from his having dedicated a considerable portion of his life to the Herculean labour, which will long preserve his name, and which he executed at his house at Aldershot, under the title of “A general and complete Abridgment of Law and Equity,” 1741—1751, 24 vols. fol. It was not only printed under his own inspection (by agreement with the law patentees) at his house, but the paper also was manufactured under his direction, as appears by a peculiar water-mark, describing the number of the volume or the initials of C. V. He began at the title Factor, where D'Anvers left off, and published to the end of the alphabet; he then proceeded to the title Abatement, but by his Index he directed the volumes to be placed in alphabetical order.

This work, on which, Blackstone informs us, he employed above half a century, is styled by Mr. Hargrave an immense body of law and equity, and that learned gentleman recommends it, notwithstanding all its defects and inaccuracies, as a necessary part of every lawyer’s library. He further says, it is indeed a most useful compilation, and would have been infinitely more so, if the author had been less singular and more nice in his arrangement and method, and more studious to avoid repetition; faults which proceeded in a great measure from the author’s error in judgment, in attempting to engraft his own very extensive judgment on that of Mr. Sergeant Rolle. This stupendous work vras reprinted in 1792 and 1794, 24 vols. royal 8vo; it was followed by six supplemental volumes, undertaken by James Edward Watson, Samuel Corny n, James Sedgwick, Henry Alcock, John Wyatt, James Humphreys, Alexander Anstruther, and Michael Nolan, esqrs. who laid them before the public in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1805, and 1806, each gentleman having taken up his own apportioned burthen of the task.

But this was not the only* obligation Mr. Viner conferred on the profession. Having resolved to dedicate his learned labours, to use his own words, “to the benefit of posterity, and the perpetual service of his country,” he bequeathed by his will (dated Dec. 29, 1755) about 12,000l. to the university of Oxford, to establish a professorship, and endow such fellowships and scholarships of the common law in that university as should be adequate to the produce of his estate. Dr. Blackstone was appointed the first professor, and it is a sufficient praise of this foundation that it produced his celebrated “Commentaries.” The excellent management of the estate has since enabled the university to increase the number of the scholarships and fellowships. Mr. Viner was afterwards, by decree of convocation, enrolled among the public benefactors of the university. The sense, says Blackstone, which the university entertained of this ample and most useful benefaction, must appear beyond a doubt, from their alacrity and unexampled dispatch in carrying it into execution, and above all, from the laws and constitutions by which they have effectually guarded it from the neglect and abuse, to which such institutions are liable.

, a learned and excellent divine, a popular and laborious preacher, and a most industrious and useful man in his college, was born at Blaston in Leicestershire, and educated in Magdalen college, Cambridge, where he commenced M. A. and was remarkable for his sober and grave behaviour, not being chargeable even with the venial levities of youth. From the university he was elected (most probably at the recommendation of his contemporary Thomas Cleiveland) school-master at Hinckley; where he entered into holy orders, and (as appears by an extract from the register of that parish) married, and had at least one child. After remaining some time in the faithful discharge of his office at Hinckleyschool, he obtained the rectory of Weddington, in Warwickshire; and, at the beginning of the civil war, was driven from his parish, and forced to take shelter in Coventry. When the assembly of divines which established the presbyterian government in 164 1 was called, Mr. Vines, who was a good speaker, was unanimously chosen of their number; and, as Fuller says, was the champion of the party. While he was at London he became the minister of St. Clement Danes, and vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry; afterwards he removed to Watton, in Hertfordshire; and was appointed master of Pembroke Hall, in Cambridge, in 1645, by the earl of Manchester, on the ejection of Dr. Benjamin Lavey; but resigned that and his living of St. Lawrence Jewry in 1650, on account of the engagement. He joined in a letter from the principal ministers of the city of London (presented Jan. 1, 1645, to the assembly of divines sitting at Westminster by authority of parliament), complaining against the independents. He was a son of thunder, and therefore compared to Luther; yet moderate and charitable to them that differed from him in judgment. The parliament employed him in all their treaties with the king; and his majesty, though of a different judgment, valued him for his ingenuity, seldom speaking to him without touching his hat, which Mr. Vines returned with most respectful language and gestures. This particular was the more remarkable, as no other of the parliament commissioners ever met with the same token of attention. Dr. Grey, in his answer to Neal, relates that when Mr. Vines returned from this treaty, he addressed one Mr. Walden, saying, “Brother, how hath this nation been fooled We have been told that our king is a child, and A foot- but if I understand any thing by my converse with him, which I have had with great liberty, he is as much of a Christian prince as ever I read or heard of since onr Saviour’s time. He is a very precious prince, and is able of himself to argue with the ablest divines we have. And among all the kings of Israel and Jndah, there was none like him.”

When sentence of death was pronounced on this unhappy sovereign, Mr. Vines came with the other London ministers to offer their services to pray with his majesty the morning before his execution. The king thanked them, but declined their services. Vines was an admirable scholar; holy and pious in his conversation, and indefatigable in his labours, which wasted his strength, and brought him into a consumption when he had lived but about fifty -six years. He was a very painful and laborious minister, and spent his time principally amongst his parishioners, in piously endeavouring “to make them all of one piece, though they were of different colours, and unite them in judgment who dissented in affection.” In 1654 he was joined in a commission to eject scandalous and ignorant ministers and schoolmasters in London. He died in 1655, and was buried Feb. 7, in the parish-church of St. Lawrence Jewry, which having been consumed in the general conflagration of 1666, no memorial of him is there to be traced. His funeral-sermon was preached Feb. 7, by Dr. Jacomb, who gave him his just commendation. He was a perfect master of the Greek tongue, a good philologist, and an admirable disputant. He was a thorough Calvinist, and a bold honest man, without pride or flattery. Mr. Newcomen calls him “Disputator acutissimus, Concionator felicissimus, Theologus eximius.” Many funeral poems and elegies were made upon his death.

Mr. Vines was frequently called forth to preach on public solemnities; particularly before the House of Commons, at a public fast, Nov. 30, 1642; on a thanksgiving, before both Houses, July 13, 1644; at another fast, before the Commons, March 10, 1646; and before the House of Peers, at the funeral of the earl of Essex, Oct. 22, 1646. Thirtytwo of his “Sermons” were published in 1662.

, a classical editor, translator, and critic, was born at Vinets, a small village in Saintonge, in 1507. He studied first at Barbesieux, where Thuanus, by mistake, says he was born, and went thence to Poitiers, where he took his degree of master of arts. On his return to Barbesieux, he employed himself for some time in teaching, that he might acquire enough to bear his expences at Paris, where he wished to acquire a greater knowledge of the belles lettres and mathematics, to both of which he had already in some measure applied. In 1541, however, Andrew Govea, principal of the college of Bourdeaux, hearing a very advantageous character of him, invited him thither to a professorship, which he held about six years, and then accompanied Govea to Portugal to assist in founding the college of Coimbra on the model of that of Eourdeaux. In the following year, 1548, on the death of Govea, he returned to Bourdeaux, and continued to teach belles lettres and mathematics, until the death of Gelida, the principal, in 1558, whom he was chosen to succeed. He filled this office with great assiduity and reputation for twenty-five years, at the end of which his infirmities obliged him to resign the active part, and he was permitted to retire upon his salary, holding also the title of principal. He died at Bourdeaux May 14, 1587, in the eightieth year of his age, according to Saxius; but Niceron gives 1519 as the date of his birth, and 1587 as that of his death, and yet says that he died aged seventy-eight.

Vinet was a man of indefatigable literary labour, and of great learning. Scaliger says he never knew a more learned man, “Nullum novi doctiorem Vineto;” and it appears the practice of many laborious scholars was also his, “nulla dies sine linea.” He always read with his pen in his hand. We have a list of twenty-eight publications by him, most of them editions of the classics, or ancient authors. Among them are editions of Theognis, Sidonius Apollinaris, Julius Solinus, Proclus, Eutropius, Persius, Florus, Censorinus, Pomponius Mela, and some historical and mathematical works, translations, &c.

, an able assistant in the reformation, was born at Orbe, a little town in the canton of Berne, in 1511. He studied at Paris, and became acquainted there with Farel, whose fellow-labourer he afterwards was in establishing the reformation in some towns of Swisserland. He went with him to Geneva in 1534, and seconded him with great vigour in every thing necessary to be done for the abolition of popery. The city of Lausanne having embraced the reformation in 1536, it was thought proper that Peter Viret should exercise the ministerial function there, and he soon gained the affection and esteem of the inhabitants. This appears from the reluctance, with which they were brought to consent that he should go to the church of Geneva for six months, during Calvin’s absence at the conference at Worms in 1541, and afterwards at Ratisbon. During that time Viret became so useful and popular, that Calvin, being restored to his flock, was extremely desirous of having him for his colleague; but could not prevail on him, as he was determined to return to Lausanne, where he remained until the French reformed churches overcame his repugnance, and prevailed with him to go to the church at Lyons, where in the midst of the civil wars, and the plague which followed, he and his colleagues continued to preach and to propagate the doctrines of the reformation with equal courage, prudence, and success.

Their tranquillity was at length disturbed by an edict of Charles IX. artfully procured by the Jesuits, which forbad the French churches from having any preachers who were not natives of France. Viret then, in 1563, retired to Orange, whence the pious Jeanne D'Albret, queen of Navarre, invited him to Beam. He preached also some time at Ortez, and died in that country in 1571, in the sixtieth year of his age. He had always been of a weakly constitution, and his health had been much injured by two attempts on his life by the enemies of the reformation, once when he was nearly poisoned at Geneva, and a second time when he received a stab from a knife, and was left for dead. He was a man of a meek and gentle disposition^ but of such winning eloquence, that many of his hearers conceived a kind of attachment to him, although they did not subscribe to his doctrines. Of the three great contemporaries in the church of Geneva, Calvin, Farel, and Viret, it was said that Calvin was admired for his profound erudition, Farel for his zeal and warmth, and Viret for his persuasive eloquence. Viret also, in his writings at least, had a happy talent in turning the superstitions he opposed into ridicule, and this he did with such effect that Dupin and other catholic biographers of later date cannot forgive him.

the most excellent of all the ancient Roman poets, was born Oct. 15, U. C. 684, B. C. 70, in the consulship of Pompey and Crassus, at a village called Andes, not far from Mantua. His father was undoubtedly a man of low birth and mean circumstances; but by his industry so much recommended himself to his master, that he gave him his daughter, named Maia, in marriage, as a reward of his fidelity. Our poet, discovering early marks of a very fine genius, was sent at twelve years old to study at Cremona, where he continued till his seventeenth year. He was then removed to Milan, and from thence to Naples, then the residence of several teachers in philosophy and polite learning; and applied himself heartily to the study of the best Greek and Roman writers. But physic and mathematics were his favourite sciences, which he cultivated with much care; and to this early tincture of geometrical learning were owing probably that regularity of thought, propriety of expression, and exactness in conducting all subjects, for which he is so remarkable. He learned the Epicurean philosophy under the celebrated Syro, of whom Cicero speaks twice with the greatest encomiums both of his learning and virtue: his acquaintance with Varus, his first patron, commenced by his being fellow-student with him under this philosopher. After Virgil had completed his studies at Naples, Donatus affirms, that he made a journey to Rome; and relates some marvellous circumstances concerning his being made known to Augustus, which, like many other particulars in his account of this poet, breathe very much the air of fable. The truth is, we have no certain knowledge of the time and occasion of Virgil’s going to Rome, how his connexions with the wits and men of quality began, nor how he was introduced to the court of Augustus.

We cannot however imagine, that such an extraordinary gemus could lie long inactive and unexerted. It is related that, in the warmth of early youth, he formed a noble design of writing an heroic poem, “On the wars of Rome;” but, after some attempts, was discouraged from proceeding by the roughness and asperity of the old Roman names, which not only disgusted his delicate ear, but, as Horace expresses it, “quse versu dicere non est.” He turned himself, therefore, to pastoral; and, being captivated with the beauty and sweetness of Theocritus, was ambitious to introduce this new species of poetry among the Romans. His first performance in this way is supposed to have been written the year before the death of Julius Caesar, when the poet was in his twenty-fifth year: it is entitled “Alexis.” Possibly “Palaemon” was his second, which is a close imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus. Dr. Warton places “Silenus” next: which is said to have been publicly recited on the stage by Cytheris, a celebrated comedian. Cicero, having heard this eclogue, cried out in an extasy of admiration, that the author of it was “magna3 spes altera Romae;” esteeming himself, say the commentators, to be the first. But the words may be understood in a very different sense, and more honourable to Cicero. The subject of this eclogue, we should remember, was an account of the Epicurean philosophy, both natural and moral, which had been but lately illustrated by Lucretius, an author, of whom Cicero was so eminently fond, as to revise and publish his work. Upon hearing therefore the beautiful verses of Virgil upon the same subject, Cicero exclaimed to this purpose: “Behold another great genius rising up among us, who will prove a second Lucretius.” Dr. Warton at least has suggested this very ingenious and natural interpretation. Virgil’s fifth eclogue is composed in allusion to the death and deification of Cassar. The battle of Philippi, in the year 7 12, having put an end to the Roman liberty, the veteran soldiers began to murmur for their pay; and Augustus, to reward them, distributed among them the lands of Mantua and Cremona. Virgil was involved in this common calamity, and applied to Varus and Pollio, who warmly recommended him to Augustus, and procured for him his patrimony again. Full of gratitude to Augustus, he composed the “Tityrus,” in which he introduces two shepherds; one of them complaining of the distraction of the times, and of the h.avock the soldiers made among the Mantuan farmers; the other, rejoicing for the recovery of his estate, and promising to honour the person who restored it to him as a god. But our poet’s joy was not of long continuance: for we are told, that, when he returned to take possession of his farm, he was violently assaulted by the intruder, and would certainly have been killed by him, if he had not escaped by swimming hastily over the Mincio. Upon this unexpected disappointment, melancholy and dejected, he returned to Rome, to renew his petition; and, during his journey, seems to have composed his ninth eclogue. The celebrated eclogue, entitled “Pollio,” was composed in the year 714, upon the following occasion. The consul Pollio on the part of Antony, and Maecenas on the part of Caesar, iiad made up the differences between them; by agreeing, that Octavia, half sister to Caesar, should be given in marriage to Antony. This agreement caused an universal joy; and Virgil, in this eclogue, testified his. Octavia was with child by her late husband Marcellus at the time of this marriage; and, as the Sibylline oracles had foretold, that a child was to be born about this time who should rule the world and establish perpetual peace, the poet ingeniously supposes the child in Octavia’s womb to be the glorious infant, under whose reign mankind was to be happy, the golden age to return from heaven, and fraud and violence to be no more. In this celebrated poem, the author with great delicacy at the same time pays his court to both the chiefs, to his patron Pollio, to Octavia, and to the unborn infant. It is dedicated to Pollio by name, who was at that time consul, and therefore we are sure of the date of this eclogue, as it is known he enjoyed that high office in the year 714. In the year 715, Pollio was sent against the Parthini, a people of Illyricum; and during this expedition Virgil addressed to him a beautiful eclogue, called “Pharmaceutria.” His tentti and last eclogue is addressed to Gallus. These were our poet’s first productions; and we have been the more circumstantial in our account of some of them, as many particulars of his life are intimately connected with them.

Being in his thirty-fourth year, he retired to Naples, and laid the plan of his inimitable “Georgics,” which he undertook at the entreaties of Maecenas, to whom he dedicated them; not to rival and excel Hesiod, as he had lately done Theocritus, but on a noble and political motive, and to promote the welfare of his country. Great was the desolation occasioned by the civil wars: Italy was almost depopulated: the lands were uncultivated and unstocked: a famine and Insurrection ensued; and Augustus himself hardly escaped being stoned by the people, who attributed this calamity to ambition. His wise and able minister therefore resolved, if possible, to revive the decayed spirit of husbandry, to introduce a taste for agriculture, even among the great; and could not think of a better method to effect this, than to recommend it by the insinuating charms of poetry. Virgil fully answered the expectations of his polite patron; for the “Genroics” contain all those masterly beauties that might be expected from an exalted genius, whose judgment and imagination were in full maturity and vigour, and who had leisure to give the last polish and perfection to his incomparable workmanship. They are divided into four books; and the subjects of them are particularly specified in the first lour lines of the first book. Corn and ploughing are the subject of the first book, vines of the second, cattle of the third, and bees of the fourth.

He is supposed to have been in his forty-fifth- year when he began to write the “Æneid;” the design of which is thus explained by an able master in classical literature. Augustus being freed from his rival Antony, the government of the Roman empire was to be wholly in him; and though he* chose to be called their father, he was, in every thing but the name, their king. But the monarchical form of government must naturally displease the Romans: and therefore Virgil, like a good courtier, seems to have laid the plan of his poem to reconcile them to it. He takes advantage of their religious turn, and of some old prophecies that must have been very flattering to the Roman people, as promising them the empire of the whole world. He weaves these in with the most probable account of their origin, that of being descended from the Trojans. He shews, that ^neas was called into their country by the express order of the gods; that there was an uninterrupted succession of kings from him to Romulus; that Julius Ca;sar was of this royal race, and that Augustus was his sole heir. The result of which was, that the promises made to the Roman people in and through this race, terminating in Augustus, the Romans, if they would obey the gods, and be masters of the world, were to yield obedience to the new establishment under that prince. The poem, therefore, may very well be considered as a political work: Pope used to say, “it was evidently as much a party-piece, as Absalom and Achitophel:” and, if so, Virgil was not highly encouraged by Augustus and Maecenas for nothing. The truth is, he wrote in defence of the new usurpation of the state; and all that can be offered in his vindication, which however seems enough, is, that the Roman government could no longer be kept from falling into a single hand, and that the usurper he wrote for was as good a one as they could have. But, whatever may be said of his motives for writing it, the poem has in all ages been highly applauded. Augustus was eager to peruse it before it was finished; and entreated him by letters to communicate it. Macrobius has preserved to us part of one of Virgil’s answers to the emperor, in which the poet excuses himself; who, however, at length complied, and read himself the sixth book to the emperor, when Octavia, who had just lost her son Marcellus, the darling of Rome, and adopted son of Augustus, made one of the audience. Virgil had artfully inserted that beautiful lamentation for the death of young Marcellus, beginning with “O nate, ingentem luctum ne quaere tuorum” but suppressed his name till he came to the line “Tu Marcellus eris:” upon hearing which Octavia could bear no more, but fainted away, overcome with surprise and sorrow. When she recovered, shfc made the poet a present of ten sesterces for every line, which amounted in the whole to above 2OOO/.

The “Æneid” being brought to a conclusion, but not to the perfection our author intended to give it, he resolved to travel into Greece, to correct and polish it at leisure. It was probably on this occasion, that Horace addressed that affectionate ode to him “Sic te Diva potens Cypri,” &c. Augustus, returning victorious from the East, met with Virgil at Athens, who thought himself obliged to attend the emperor to Italy: but the poet was suddenly seized with a fatal distemper, which, being increased by the agitation of the vessel, put an end to his life as soon as he landed at Brundusium. He died Sept. the 22d, in his fifty-second year. He had ordered in his will, that the “Æneid” should be burnt, as an unfinished poem; but Augustus forbade it, and had it delivered to Varius and Tucca, with the strictest charge to make no additions, but only to publish it correctly. He died with such steadiness and tranquillity, as to be able to dictate his own epitaph, in the following words:

Parthenope cecini Pascua, Kura, Duces." His bones were carried to Naples, according to his earnest request; and a monument was erected at a small distance from the city. He was of a swarthy complexion, tall, of a sickly constitution, afflicted with frequent head-aches and spitting of blood, very temperate, sober, and chaste, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary. That he wrote in his youth some indecent verses is not to he doubted, since the younger Pliny, who had done the same, justifies himself by his example; and, in his “Bucolics,” he relates very criminal passions; but it does not thence follow that he was tainted with them. On the contrary, it is delivered down to us as a certain truth, that the inhabitants of Naples gave him the name of Parthenias, on account of the purity of his words and manners. He was so very bashful, that he frequently ran into the shops, to prevent being gazed at in the streets; yet so honoured by the Roman people, that once, coming into the theatre, the whole audience rose, out of respect to him. He was of a thoughtful and melancholy temper, spoke little, loved retirement and contemplation. His fortune was not only easy, but affluent: he had a delightful villa in Sicily, and a fine house and well furnished library near Maecenas’s gardens on the Esquiline-hill at Rome. He revised his verses with prodigious severity, and used to compare himself to a she-bear, which licks her cubs into shape. He was so benevolent and inoffensive, that most of his contemporary poets, though they envied each other, agreed in loving and esteeming him. Among Caligula’s follies we may undoubtedly reckon his contempt and hatred of Virgil; who, he had the confidence to say, had neither wit nor learning, and whose writings and effigy he endeavoured to remove out of all libraries. The emperor Alexander Severus, on the contrary, called him the Plato of the poets, and placed his picture with that of Cicero in the temple in which he had placed Achilles and other great men. So did Silius Italicus the poet, when he kept Virgil’s birthday, as Pliny relates, with greater solemnity than his own; and so did our sir William Temple, who did “not wonder that the famous Dr. Harvey, when he was reading Virgil, should sometimes throw him down upon the table, and say, `He had a devil'.” With regard to the characteristical difference between Virgil and Homer, so much disputed, it may with truth be affirmed, that the former excelled all other poets in judgment, and the latter in invention; the former is the greater genius, the latter the most correct writer. “Methinks the two poets,” says Mr. Pope, “resemble the heroes they celebrate. Homer, boundless and irresistible as Achilles, bears all before him, and shines more and more, as the tumult increases Virgil, calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the action, disperses all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. Or, when we look on their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling with the gods, Jaying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his whole creation.”

, an ancient English historian, was born in 1075, and was the son of Odelinus, chief counsellor of Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury. He was first educated at Shrewsbury, and at the age of ten was sent over to Normandy to the monastery of St. Ercole’s and in his eleventh year became a member of the order of that society. In his thirty-third year he was admitted into the priesthood. His history is entitled “Histories ecclesiasticae libri XIII in tres partes divisi, quarum postremae duae res per Normannos in Francia, Anglia, Sicilia, Apulia, Calabria, Palestina, pie streneque gestas, ab adventu Rollonis usque ad annum Christi 1124 complectuntur.? Nicolson, in his Historical Library, gives but an inclifferent opinion of the merits of this historian; but baron Maseres, who has lately republished a part of Vitalis, along with other historical collections of ancient times, 4to, from Duchesne’s” Scriptores Normanni," estimates him more highly, and recommends the publication of the whole. There is no other book, he thinks, that gives so full and authentic an account of the transactions of the reign of William the Conqueror. Orderic was living in 1143, but how much longer is uncertain.

, or Vitello, a Polish mathematician of the 13th century, flourished about 1254. We have of his a large “Treatise on Optics,” the best edition of which is that of 1572, fol. Vitello was the first optical writer of any consequence among the modern Europeans. He collected all that was given by Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolomy, and Alhazen; though his work is but of little use now.

, an eminent and learned protestant divine, was born May 16, 1659, at Leuwarden, in Friesland. He took a doctor’s degree in divinity at Leyden, July 9, 1679, and was successively professor of oriental languages, divinity, and sacred history at Franeker, in which city he married, 1681, and died March 3, 1722, of an apoplexy. His works are, 1. an excellent “Commentary on Isaiah,” 2 vols. fol. in Latin. 2. “Apocalypseos anachrisis,” 1719, 4to. 3. “Typus Theologiae Practices,” 8vo, 4. “Hypotyposis Historiae et Chronologies sacra,” 8vo. 5. “Synagoga vetus,” 4to. 6. “Archisynagogus, 4to. 7.” De Decemviris otiosis Synagoga?,“4io. 8.” Observationes sacrae,“17U,4to, &c. Campegius Vitringa, one of his sons, born March 23, 1693, was also professor of divinity at Franeker, and died nine months after his father, January 11, 1723, aged thirty-one, leaving an ”Abridgment of natural Theology,“1720, 4to, and” Sacred Dissertations," which do him honour.

, was a celebrated Roman architect, of whom however nothing is known but what is to be collected from his ten books “Do Ardiitectura,” still extant. In the preface to the sixth book he informs us that he was carefully educated by his parents, and instructed in the whole circle of arts and sciences; a circumstance which he speaks of with much gratitude, laying it down as certain, that no man can be a complete arr chitect, without some knowledge and skill in everyone of" them. And in the preface to the first book he informs us that he was known to Julius Cicsar that he was afterwards recommended by Octavia to her brother Augustus Cæsar, and that he was so favoured and provided for by this emperor, as to be out of all fear of poverty as long as he might live.

It is supposed that Vitruvius was born either at Rome or Verona; but it is not known which. His books of architecture are addressed to Augustus Csesar, and not only shew consummate skill in that particular science, but also very uncommon genius and natural abilities. Cardan, in his 16th book “De Subtilitate,” ranks Vitruvius as one of the twelve persons, whom he supposes to have excelled all men in the force of genius and invention; and would not have scrupled to have given him the first place, if it could be imagined that he had delivered nothing but his own discoveries. These twelve persons were, Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius Pergaeus, Aristotle, Archytas of Tarentum, Vitruvius, Achindus, Mahomet Ibn Moses the inventor or improver of Algebra, Duns Scotus, John Suisset surnamed the Calculator, Galen, and Heber of Spain.

The Architecture of Vitruvius has been often printed: first at Rome, about 1486. There is a very excellent edition of Amsterdam in 1649, and of late there have been two very fine ones, that by Augustus Rode, Berlin, 1800, 4to, and 'that by Schneider, at Leipsic, 1808, 4 vols. 8vo. The finest manuscript of Vitruvius is in the library at Franeker. Perrault also, the celebrated French architect, gave an excellent French translation of the same, and added notes and figures: the first edition of which was published at Paris in 1673, and the second, much improved, in 1684. There are also various Italian translations. Mr. William Newton, an ingenious architect, and late surveyor to the works at Greenwich hospital, published in 1780 1791, 2 vols. fol. curious commentaries on Vitruvius, illustrated with figures; to which is added a description, with figures, of the military machines used by the ancients.

, one of the revivers of literature, was born at Valentia, in Spain, in 1492. He learned grammar and classical learning in his own country, and went to Paris to study logic and scholastic philosophy, the subtleties and futility of which he had soon the good sense to discover, and when he removed from Paris to Louvain, he there published a book against them, entitled “Contra Pseudo-Dialecticos.” At Louvain he undertook the office of a preceptor, and exerted himself with great ability and success in correcting barbarism, chastising the corruptors of learning, and reviving a taste for true science and elegant letters. This so raised his reputation that he was chosen to be preceptor to William de Croy, afterwards archbishop of Toledo, and cardinal, who died in 1521. In July 1517 he was made, though then at Louvain, one of the first fellows of Corpus Christi college, in Oxford, by the founder; his fame being spread over England, as well on account of his great parts and learning as for the peculiar respect and favour with which queen Catherine of Spain honoured him. In 1522 he dedicated his “Commentary upon St. Augustin de Civitate Dei” to HenryVlII; which, says Wood, was so acceptable to that prince, that cardinal Wolsey, by his order, invited him over to England; but this must be a mistake, for in a letter of the cardinal’s to the university in 1519, mention is made of his being then reader of rhetoric, and that by the cardinal’s appointment. He was also employed to teach the princess Mary polite literature and the Latin tongue: it was for her use that he wrote “De Ratione studii puerilis,” which he addressed to his patroness queen Catharine, in 1523; as he did the same year “De institutione fceminae Christiance,” written by her command. During his stay in England he resided a good deal at Oxford, where he was admitted doctor of law, and read lectures in that and the belles lettres. King Henry conceived such an esteem for him, that iie accompanied his queen to Oxford, in order to be present at the lectures which he read to the princess Mary, who resided there: yet, when Vives afterwards presumed to speak and write against the divorce of Catherine, Henry considered his conduct as criminal, and confined him six months in prison. Having obtained his liberty, he returned to the Netherlands, and resided at Bruges, where he married, and taught the belles lettres as long as he lived. He died in 1537, or, according toThuanus, 1541.

Vives was one of the most learned men of his age; and with Budaeus and Erasmus, formed a triumvirate which did honour to the republic of letters. Their admirers have ascribed to each those peculiar qualities in which they supposed him to exceed the other; as, wit to Budaeus, eloquence to Erasmus, judgment to Vives, and learning to them all. Dupin’s opinion is somewhat different: Erasmus, he says, was doubtless a man of finer wit, more extensive learning, and of a more solid judgment than Vives; Budaeus had more skill in the languages and in profane learning than either of them; and Vives excelled in grammar, in rhetoric, and in logic. But although Dupin may seecn to degrade Vives, in comparison with Erasmus and Buda?us, yet he has not been backward in doing justice to his merit. “Vives,” says he, “was not only excellent in polite letters, a judicious critic, and an eminent philosopher; but he applied himself also to divinity, and was successful in it. If the critics admire his books ‘ de causiscorruptarum artium,’ and * de tradendis disciplinis,‘ on account of the profane learning that appears in them, and the solidity of his judgment in those matters; the divines ought no less to esteem his books * de Veritate Eidei Christiana;,’ and his commentary upon St. Augustin f de Civitate Dei,' in which he shews, that he understood his religion thoroughly.”

, a celebrated Italian mathematician, was born at Florence in 1621, or, according to some, in 1622. He was a disciple of the illustrious Galileo, and lived with him from the seventeenth to the twentieth year of his age. After the death of his great master he passed two or three years more in prosecuting geometrical studies without interruption, and in this time it was that he formed the design of his Restoration of Aristeus. This ancient geometrician, who was contemporary with Euclid, had composed five books of problems “De Locis Solidis,” the bare propositions of which were collected by Pappus, but the books are entirely lost; which Viviani undertook to restore by the force of his genius. He discontinued his labour, however, in order to apply himself to another of the same kind, which was, to restore the fifth book of Apollonius’s Conic Sections. While he was engaged in this, the famous Borelli found, in the library of the grand duke of Tuscany, an Arabic manuscript, with a Latin inscription, which imported, that it contained the eight books of Apollonius’s Conic Sections; of which the eighth however was not found to be there. He carried this manuscript to Rome, in order to translate it, with the assistance of a professor of the Oriental languages. Viviani, very unwilling to lose the fruits of his labours, procured a certificate that he did not understand the Arabic language, and knew nothing of that manuscript: he was so jealous on this head, that he would not even suffer Borelli to send him an account of any thing relating to it. At length he finished his book, and published it 1659, in folio, with this title, “De Maximis et Minimis Geometrica Divinatio in quintum Conicorum Apollonii Fergsei.” It was found that he had more than divined; as he seemed superior to Apollonius himself. After this he was obliged to interrupt his studies for the service of his prince, in an affair of great importance, which was, to prevent the inundations of the Tiber, in which Cassini and he were employed for some time, though nothing was entirely executed.

In 1664, he had the honour of a pension from LouisXIV. a prince to whom he was not subject, nor could be useful. In consequence, he resolved to finish his Divination upon Aristeus, with a view to dedicate it to that prince; but he was interrupted in this task again by public works, and some negotiations which his master entrusted to him. In 1666, he was honoured by the grand duke with the title of his first mathematician. He resolved three problems, which had been proposed to all the mathematicians of Europe, and dedicated the work to the memory of Mr. Chapelain, under the title of “Enodatio Problematum,” c. He proposed the problem of the quadrable arc, of which Leibnitz and l'Hospital gave solutions by the Calculus Differentialis. In 1669, he was chosen to fill, in the Royal Academy of Sciences, a place among the eight foreign associates. This new favour reanimated his zeal; and he published three books of his Divination upon Aristeus, at Florence in 1701, which he dedicated to the king of France. It is a thin folio, entitled “De Locis Solidis secunda Divinatio Geometrica,” &c. This was a second edition enlarged; the first having been printed at Florence in 1673. Viviani laid out the fortune which he had raised by the bounties of his prince, in building a magnificent house at Florence; in which he placed a bust of Galileo, with several inscriptions in honour of that great man; and died in 1703, at eighty-one years of age.

Viviani had, says P'ontenelle, that innocence and simplicity of manners which persons commonly preserve, who have less commerce with men than with books; without that roughness and a certain savage fierceness which those often acquire who have only to deal with books, not with men. He was affable, modest, a fast and faithful friend, and, what includes many virtues in one, he was grateful in the highest degree for favours.

, an eminent Dutch divine, and the founder of a sect, if it may be so called, who were in opposition to the Cartesian philosophy, was born at Heusden, March 3, 1589, of an ancient and considerable family. His education commenced in the schools of his native place, and was greatly promoted by a memory of more than common retention, which he displayed to the astonishment of his teachers and friends, while he was learning Greek and Latin, rhetoric, arithmetic, and logic. It is said that he could repeat without book three entire comedies of Terence, as many of Plautus, the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the first book of Horace’s Odes, &c. and many other extensive parts of the authors he read. After finishing his classical course, he was sent in 1604 to Leyden, where he passed seven years, increasing his knowledge of the Greek language, but particularly employed on the study of the belles lettres, philosophy, and theology. In general science he had made such progress, as to be able to give lectures on logic, during his divinity course, and had among other pupils the celebrated Burgersdicius, afterwards professor of philosophy at Leyden. Voetius was also solicited to take the degree of doctor, but some particular reasons prevented him at this time. Having completed his academical studies in 1611, he returned to Heusden, and became a candidate for the ministry. He had also a design to have visited Germany, France, and England, but was long confined by an illness; and on his recovery was appointed to officiate in the church of Vlymen, a village between Heusden and Bois-le-Duc. He preached also occasionally at Engelen, about a league from Vlymen, and in both places with great ability and reputation, for about six years. In 1617 he accepted a call to Heusden, where he settled for seventeen years, although repeatedly invited to superior situations in Rotterdam and other parts of the United Provinces. In 1619, he assisted for six months at the synod of Dort, and during this time, along with three of his brethren, preached at Gouda against the Arminians or Remonstrants, to whom he was always a decided enemy, and was as zealous a friend to the doctrines of Calvin. While at Heusden, he preached occasionally at other places, and in 1629 to the army which besieged Bois-le-duc, and after the capture of that city he officiated there for about nine months alone with three other ministers. During his residence here, he and his brethren published a sort of manifesto, inviting all the inhabitants, and particularly the clergy, to a conference, either public or private, on the points in dispute between the reformed and the Romish church. Jansenius answered this manifesto in a work entitled '“Alexipharmacum civibus Sylvsc-ducensibus propinatum ad versus mi nistrorum suorum fascinum,” Brussels, 1630, This produced a controversy, of whicu we have already given an account. (See Jansen, p. 470——471).

In 1634, Voetius was invited to Utrecht, where an intention was to found a school for divinity and the oriental languages, and he was at the same time appointed one of the ministers of the city. Two years afterwards, when this school was made an university, Voetius thought proper now to take the degree of doctor of divinity, and for that purpose went to Groningen, where Gomarus, his old master, was professor. In 1637, during the vacation he paid a visit to England, became acquainted with many of the literati, and inspected the public libraries. During three years, after his return, he executed the office of divinity professor at Utrecht, giving eight public lectures a week, besides private ones, and taught also Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. He was always indefatigable in his studies and duties, and when a preacher, long before he came to Utrecht, he used to preach eight times in a week.

It was in 1639 that he began to attack Des Cartes, and although upon this account Mosheim chooses to accuse him of want of a philosophical spirit, it may be seen from our account of Des Cartes, that men of acknowledged philosophical spirit had much reason to suspect that if impiety was not expressed, it might be inferred from some of the principles of Des Cartes. All that can be said against Voetius, if according to the dogmas of modern liberality he must be blamed, is, that he evinced a degree of zeal and warmth which was proportioned to the serious conse^­quences he expected from the spread of Cartesianisrn. Several works were published on both sides, the titles of which may be found in any of our authorities. Des Cartes defended his principles, and the disciples and followers of Voetius being obliged to assist their master, the controversy became extensive. Mosheim allows that Voetius was not only seconded by those Belgic divines who were the most eminent at this time for their learning, and the soundness of their theology, such as Rivet, Des Marets, and Maestricht, but was also followed and applauded by th greatest part of the Dutch clergy. The controversy was also augmented by the proceedings of certain doctors, who applied the principles and tenets of Des Cartes to the illustration of theological truth. The followers of Voetius were called Vyetians, and the division between them and the Cartesians long subsisted in Holland, and was the cause of much tlisnnion, petty animosity, and controversy.

Notwithstanding the controversies and writings which occupied a considerable part of the life of Voetius, and his academical and pastoral duties, he lived to a very advancvd age, dying Nov. 1, 1676, in his eighty-eighth year. The most valuable of the works he left, not of the controversial kind, is his “Select Disputationes Theolegicce,” or Theses, 1648, &c. 5 vols. 4to. Voetius had two sons, Daniel and Paul, who also left several works the former died in 1660, the latter in 1667. John Voet, son of Paul, was doctor and professor of law at Herborn, and died 1714, leaving a “Commentary on the Pandects,” Hagse, 1734-, 2 vols. fol. which is valued, and some other works on law.

, an ingenious doctor, and one of the most learned men of the seventeenth century, in Hebrew and the Oriental languages, was a native of Bourdeaux, descended from a respectable family of distinction in the law. He at first held the office of counsellor to the parliament in his native city; but having afterwards chosen the ecclesiastical profession, was raised to the priesthood, and became preacher and almoner to Armand de Bourbon, prince of Conti. M. de Voisin was extremely well skilled in rabbinical learning, and the ecclesiastical authors. He died 1685. His principal works are, a “System of Jewish Theology,” 1647, 4to, in Latin; a treatise “On the Divine Law,” 8vo another “On the Jubilee of the Jews,” 8vo, both in Latin learned notes on Raymond Martin’s “Pugio Fidei” 1651; “Defense du Traite de M. le Prince de Conti centre la Comédie et les Spectacles,” 1672, 4to a French " Translation of the Roman Missal, 4 vols. 12mo, which made much noise, and was suppressed, yet it has nevertheless been printed and sold since, &c. His enemies accused him of intending to have mass said in French, but L'Avocat maintains that he never had such an idea.

, once celebrated as an elegant French writer, was the son of a wine-merchant, and born at Amiens in 1598. His talents and taste for the Belles Lettres gave him considerable celebrity, and easily introduced him to the polite world. He was the first in France distinguished for what is called a bel esprit; and, though this is all the merit of his writings, yet this merit was then great, because it was uncommon. His reputation opened his way to court, and procured him pensions and honourable employments. He was sent to Spain about some affairs, whence out of curiosity he passed over to Africa. He was mightily caressed at Madrid, where he composed verses in such pure and natural Spanish, that every body ascribed them to Lopez de Veo;a. It appears by his “Letters,” that he was in England in 1633. He made two journeys to Rome, where in 1633 he was admitted a member of the academy of Humoristi; as he had been of the French academy in 1634. He was the person employed to carry the news of the birth of Lewis XIV. to Florence; and had a place in the household of that monarch. He had several considerable pensions from the court; but the love of play and women kept him from being rich. He died in 1648. He wrote verses in French, Spanish, and Italian; and there are some very fine lines written by him, but they are but few. His letters make the bulk of his works; and have been often printed in 2 vols. 12mo. They are elegant, polite, and easy; but, like the genius of the writer, without nerves or strength. Boileau praises Voiture excessively; and doubtless, considered as a polisher and refiner in a barbarous age, he was a writer to be valued; yet his letters would not now be thought models, and are indeed seldom read. Voiture, ( says Voltaire, gave some idea “of the superficial graces of that epistolary style, which is by no means the best, because it aims at nothing higher than pleasantry and amusement. His two volumes of letters are the mere pastime of a wanton imagination, in which we meet not with one that is instructive, not one that flows from the heart, that paints the manners of the times, or the characters of men: they are rather an abuse than an exercise of wit.” With all this insignificance, Voiture’s letters cost him much labour: a single one took nearly a fortnight, a proof that his wit came slower in writing than in conversation, otherwise he would never have been the delight of every company. Pope appears to have had a good opinion of these letters, as he thought them a suitable present for Miss Blount, and never seems to have suspected that this was not paying that lady’s delicacy any great compliment.

, the Garrick of Russia, whose talents for the stage were as great as those of Snmorokof for dramatic composition, was a tradesman’s son at Yaroslaf. This surprising genius, who was born in 1729, having discovered very early proofs of great abilities, was sent for his education to Moscow, where he learnt the German tongue, music, and drawing. His father dying, and his mother marrying a second husband, who had established a manufacture of saltpetre and sulphur, he applied himself to that trade; and, going upon the business of his fatherin-law to Petersburg!) about 1741, his natural inclination for the stage led him to frequent the German plays, and to form an intimate acquaintance with some of the actors. Upon his return to Yaroslaf, he constructed a stage in a large apartment at his father-in-law’s house; painted the scenes himself; and, with the assistance of his four brothers, acted several times before a large assembly. Their first performances were the scriptural histories composed by the archbishop of Rostof; these were succeeded by the tragedies of Lomonozof and Sumorokof; and sometimes satirical farces of their own composition against the inhabitants of Yaroslaf. As the spectators were admitted gratis at every representation, his father-in-law objected to the cxpence. Accordingly Volkof constructed in 1750, after his own plan, a large theatre, partly by subscription, and partly at his own risk: having supplied it with scenes which he painted himself, and dresses which he assisted in making, and having procured an additional number of actors, whom he regularly instructed, he and his troop performed with great applause before crowded audiences, who cheerfully paid for their admission. In 1752 the empress Elizabeth, informed of their success, summoned them to Petersburg, where they represented in the theatre of the court the tragedies of Sumorokof. In order to form the new troop to a greater degree of perfection, the four principal actors were placed in the seminary of the cadets, where they remained four years. At the conclusion of that period a regular Russian theatre was established at the court, three actresses were admitted, Sumorokof was appointed director, and 1000l. was allowed for the actors. Beside this salary, they were permitted to perform once a week to the public, and the admission-money was distributed among them without deduction, as the lights, music, and dresses, were provided at the expeoce of the empress. The chief performances were the tragedies and comedies of Sumorokof, and translations from Moliere and other French writers. The company continued to flourish under the patronage of Catharine II.; and the salaries of the actors were gradually increased to 2200l. per annum. Volkof and his brother were ennobled, and received from their imperial mistress estates in land: he performed, for the last time, at Moscow, in the tragedy of Zemira, a short time before his death, which happened in 1763, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. He equally excelled in tragedy and comedy; and his principal merit consisted in characters of madness. He was tolerably versed in music, and was no indifferent poet.

, the greatest literary character which France produced in the last century, was born at Paris, February 20, 1694. His father, Francis Arouet, was “ancien notaire du Chatelet,” and treasurer of the chamber of accounts; his mother, MaryMargaret Daumart. At the birth of this extraordinary man, who lived to the age of eighty-five years and some months, there was little probability of his being ‘reared, and for a considerable time he continued remarkably feeble. In his earliest years he displayed a ready wit and a sprightly imagination: and, as he said of himself, made verses before he was out of his cradle. He was educated under Father Por6, in the college of Louis the Great; and such was his proficiency, that many of his essays are now existing, which, though written when he was between twelve and fourteen, shew no marks of infancy. The famous Ninon de l’Enclos, to whom this ingenious boy was introduced, left him a legacy of 2000 livres to buy him a library. Having been sent to the equity-schools on his quitting college, he was so disgusted with the dryness of the law, that he devoted himself entirely to the Muses. He was admitted into the company of the abb< Chaulieu, the marquis de la Fare, the duke de Sully, the grand prior of Vendo;ne, marshal Villars, and the chevalier du Bouillon; and caught from them that easy taste and delicate humour which distinguished the court of Louis XIV. Voltaire had early imbibed a turn for satire; and, for some philippics against the government, was imprisoned almost a year in the Bastile. He had before this period produced the tragedy of “Oedipus,” which was represented in 1718 with great success; and the duke of Orleans, happening to see it performed, was so delighted, that he obtained his release from prison. The poet waiting on the duke to return thanks: “Be wise,” said the duke, “and I will take care of you.” “I am infinitely obliged,” replied the young man; “but I intreat your royal highness not to trouble yourself any farther about my lodging or board.” His father, whose ardent wish it was that the son should have been an advocate, was present at one of the representations of the new tragedy: he was affected, even to tears, embraced his son amidst the felicitations of the ladies of the court, and never more, from that time, expressed a wish that he should become a lawyer. About 1720, he went to Brussels with Madam de Rupelmonde. The celebrated Rousseau being then in that city, the two poets met, and soon conceived an unconquerable aversion for each other. Voltaire said one day to Rousseau, who was shewing him “An Ode to Posterity,” “This is a letter which will never reach the place of its address.” Another time, Voltaire, having read a satire which Rousseau thought very indifferent, was advised to suppress it, lest it should be imagined that he “had lost his abilities, and preserved only his virulence.” Such mutual reproaches soon inflamed two hearts already sufficiently estranged. Voltaire, on his return to Paris, produced, in 1722, his tragedy of “Mariamne,” without success. His “Artemira” had experienced the same fate in 1720, though it had charmed the discerning by the excellence of the poetry. These mortifications, joined to those which were occasioned by his principles of imprudence, his sentiments on religion, and the warmth of his temper, induced him to visit England, where he printed his “Henriade.” King George I. and particularly the princess of Wales (afterwards queen Caroline) distinguished him by their protection, and obtained for him a great number of subscriptions. This laid the foundation of a fortune, which was afterwards considerably increased by the sale of his writings, by the munificence of princes, by commerce, by a habit of regularity, and by an ceconomy bordering on avarice, which he did not shake off till near the end of his life. On his return to France, in 1728, he placed the money he carried with him from England into a lottery established by M. Desforts, comptroller-general of the finances; he engaged deeply, and was successful. The speculations of finance, however, did not check his attachment to the belles lettres, his darling passion. In 1730, he published “Brutus,” the most nervous of all his tragedies, which was more applauded by the judges of good writing than by the spectators. The first wits of the time, Fontenelle, La Motte, and others, advised him to give up the drama, as not being his proper forte. He answered them by publishing “Zara,” the most affecting, perhaps, of all his tragedies. His “Lettres Philosophiques,” abounding in bold expressions and indecent witticisms against religion, having been burnt by a decree of the parliament of Paris, and a warrant being issued for apprehending the author in 1733, Voltaire very prudently withdrew; and was sheltered by the marchioness du Chatelet, in her castle of Cirey, on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine, who entered with him on the study of the “System” of Leibnitz, and the “Principia” of Newton. A gallery was built, in which Voltaire formed a good collection of natural history, and made a great many experiments on light and electricity. He laboured in the mean time on his “Elements of the Newtonian Philosophy,” then totally unknown in France, and which the numerous admirers of Des Cartes were very little desirous should be known. In the midst of these philosophic pursuits, he produced the tragedy of “Alzira.” He was now in the meridian of his age and genius, as was evident from the tragedy of “Mahomet,” first acted in, 174-1 but it was represented to the “procureur general” as a performance offensive to religion and the author, by order of cardinal Fleury, withdrew it from the stage. “Merope,” played two years after, 1743, gave an idea of a species of tragedy, of which few models have existed. It was at the representation of this tragedy that the pit and boxes were clamorous for a sight of the author; yet it was severely criticised when it came from the press. He now became a favourite at court, through the interest of madam d'Etoile, afterwards marchioness of Pompadour. Being employed in preparing the festivities that were celebrated on the marriage of the dauphin, he attained additional honours by composing “The Princess of Navarre.” He was appointed a gentleman of the bed-chamber in ordinary, and historiographer of France. The latter office had, till his time, been almost a sinecure; but Voltaire, who had written, under the direction of the count d'Argenson, the “History of the War of 1741,” was employed by that minister in many important negociations from 1745 to 1747; the project of invading England in 1746 was attributed to him and he drew up the king ofFrance’s manifesto in favour of the pretender. He had frequently attempted to gain admittance into the academy of sciences, but could not obtain his wish till 1746 , when he was the first who broke through the absurd custom of filling an inaugural speech with the fulsome adulation of Richelieu; an example soon followed by other academicians. From, the satires occasioned by this innovation he felt so much uneasiness, that he was glad to retire with the marchioness du Chateletto Luneville, in the neighbourhood of king Stanislaus. The marchioness dying in 1749, Voltaire returned to Paris, where his stay was but short* Though he had many admirers, he was perpetually complaining of a cabal combined to filch from him that glory of which he was insatiable. “The jealousy and manoeuvres of a court,” he would say, “are the subject of conversation; there is more of them among the literati.” His friends and relations endeavoured in vain to relieve his anxiety, by lavishing commendations on him, and by exaggerating his success. He imagined he should find in a foreign country a greater degree of applause, tranquillity, and reward, and augment at the same time both his fortune and reputation, which were already very considerable. The king of Prussia, who had repeatedly invited him to his court, and who would have given any thing to have got him away from Silesia, attached him at last to his person by a pension of 22,000 livres, and the hope of farther favour . From the particular respect that was paid to him, his time was now spent in the most agreeable manner; his apartments were under those of the king, whom he was allowed to visit at stated hours, to read with him the best works of either ancient or modern authors, and to assist his majesty in the literary productions by which he relieved the cares of government. But this happiness was soon at an end; and Voltaire saw, to his mortification, when it was too late, that, where a man is sufficiently rich to be master of himself, neither his liberty, his family, nor his country, should be sacrificed for a pension. A dispute which our poet had with Manpertuis, the president of the academy at Berlin, was followed by disgrace . It has been said that the king of Prussia dismissed him with this reproof: “I do not drive you away, because I called you hither; I do not take away your pension, because I have given it to you; I only forbid you my presence.” Not a word of this is true; the fact is, that he sent to the king the key of his office as chamberlain, and the cross of the order of merit, with these verses:

But the king returned him the key and the ribbon. Things assumed a different aspect when he took shelter with the duchess of Saxe Gotha. Maupertuis, as Voltaire himself related, took the advantage of misrepresenting him in his absence; and he was detained by the king’s order, at Francfort on the Maine, till he had given up a volume of“Royal Verses.” Having regained his liberty, be endeavoured to negociate a return to Paris; but this he was not able to accomplish, since one of his poems, the “Pucelle D' Orleans,” which was both impious and obscene, had begun to make a noise. He was resident for about a year at Colwar, whence retiring to Geneva, he purchased a beautiful villa near that city, where he enjoyed the homages of the Genevans, and of occasional travellers; and for a short time was charmed with his agreeable retirement, which the quarrels that agitated the little republic of Geneva compelled him soon to quit. He was accused of privately fomenting the disputes, of leaning towards the prevailing party, and laughing at both. Compelled to abandon Les Delices (which was the name of his countryhouse), he fixed himself in France, within a league of Geneva, in Le Pays de Gex, an almost savage desert, which he had the satisfaction of fertilizing. The village of Ferney, which contained not above 50 inhabitants, became by his means a colony of 1200 persons, successfully employed for themselves and for the state. Numbers of artists, particularly watchmakers, established their manufactures under the auspices of Voltaire, and exported their wares to Russia, Spain, Germany, Holland, and Italy. He rendered his solitude still more illustrious by inviting thither the great niece of the famous Corneille, and by preserving from ignominy and oppression Sirven and the family of Calas, whose memory he caused to be restored. In this retirement Voltaire erected a tribunal, at which he arraigned almost all the human race. Men in power, dreading the force of his pen, endeavoured to secure his esteem. Aretin, in the sixteenth century, received as many insults as rewards. Voltaire, with far more wit and address, obtained implicit homage. This homage, and some generous actions, which he himself occasionally took care to proclaim, either with a view that they should reach posterity, or to please the curious, contributed as much to extend his reputation as the marks of esteem and bounty he had received from sovereign princes. The king of Prussia, with whom he still maintained an uninterrupted correspondence, had his statue made in porcelain, and sent to him, with the word Immortali engraven on its base. The empress of Russia sent him a present of some magnificent furs, and a. box turned by her own hands, and adorned with hi& portrait and 20 diamonds. These distinctions did not prevent his sighs for Paris. Overloaded with glory and wealth, he was not happy, because he never could content himself with what he possessed. At length, in the beginning of 1778, he determined to exchange the tranquillity of Ferney for the incense and bustle of the capital, where he met with the most flattering reception. Such honours were decreed him by the academies as till then had been unknown; he was crowned in a full theatre, and distinguished by the public with the strongest enthusiasm. But the philosopher of fourscore soon fell a victim to thi* indiscreet officiousness: the fatigue of visits and attendance at theatrical representations, the change of regimen and mode of living, inflamed his blood, already too much disordered. On his arrival, he had a violent haemorrhage, which greatly impaired him. Some days before his last illness, the idea of approaching death tormented him. Sitting at table with the marchioness de Villette, at whose house he had taken up his abode, after a solemn reverie, he said, “You are like the kings of Egypt, who, when they were at meat, had a death’s head beTore them.” On his arrival at Paris, he said, “he was come to seek glory and death;” and to an artist, who presented him the picture of his triumph, replied, “A tomb would be fitter for me than a triumph.” At last, not being able to obtain sleep, he took a large dose of opium, which deprived him of his senses. He died May 30, 1778; and was buried at Sellices, a Benedictine abbey between Nogent and Troyes; Many accounts have been published respecting his behaviour when in the nearer view of death. Some of these are so contradictory, that it is difficult to attain the exact truth. His infidel friends, Diderot, D'Alembert, and others, took every pains to represent that he died as he had lived, a hardened infidel, and a blasphemer; but they have not been credited, and it is more generally believed that he was visited on this awful occasion with the remorse of a man, whose whole life had been a continued attempt to erect vice and immorality on the ruins of revealed religion. The mareschal cle Richelieu is said to have fled from the bed-side, declaring it to be a sight too terrible to be sustained; andTronchin, the physician, asserted that the furies of Orestes could give but*a faint idea of those of Voltaire.

While he had the vomiting of blood, he confessed himself, and even made a sort of profession of faith: this was supposed to be policy and illusion, and served only to shew the suppleness of this singular man; who was a freethinker at London, a Cartesian at Versailles, a Christian at Nancy, and an infidel at Berlin. In society, he was alternately an Aristippus and a Diogenes. He made pleasure the object of his researches: he enjoyed it, and made it the object of his praise; he grew weary of it, and turned it into ridicule. By the natural progress of such a character, he passed from a moralist to a buffoon, from a philosopher to an enthusiast, from mildness to passion, from flattery to satire, from the love of money to the love of luxury, from the modesty of a wise man to the vanity of an impious wit. It has been said, that by his familiarity with the great, he indemnified himself for the constraint he was sometimes under among his equals; that he had sensibility without affection; that he was voluptuous without passions, open without sincerity, and liberal without generosity. It has been said, that, with persons who were jealous of his acquaintance, he began by politeness, went on with coldness, and usually ended by disgust, unless perchance they were writers who had acquired reputation, or men in power, whom he had adroitness enough to attach to his interests. It has been said that he was steadfast to nothing by choice, but to every thing by irregular starts of fancy. “These singular contrasts,” says M. Pelisson, “are not less evident in his physical than in his moral character. It has been remarkable, that his physiognomy partook of those of an eagle and an ape: and who can say that this contrast was not the principle of his predominant taste for antithesis? What an uncommon and perpetual change from greatness to meanness, from glory to contempt! How frequently has he combined the gravity of Plato with the legerdemain of Harlequin!” Hence the name of Micromegas, the title of one of his own crudities, which was given him by La Beaumelle, has been confirmed by the public voice. This is the portrait of an extraordinary personage; and such was Voltaire, who, like all other extraordinary men, has occasioned some strong enthusiasts and eccentric critics. Leader of a new sect, having survived many of his rivals, and eclipsed, towards the end of his career, the poets his contemporaries; he possessed the most unbounded influence, and has brought about a melancholy revolution in wit and morals. Though he has often availed himself of his amazing talents to promote the cause of reason and humanity, to inspire princes with toleration, and with a horror for war; yet he was more delighted, more in his element, and we are sorry to add more successful, when he exerted himself in extending the principles of irreligion and anarchy. The lively sensibility which animates his writings pervaded his whole conduct; and it was seldom that he resisted the impressions of his ready and overflowing wit, or the first feelings of his heart. Voltaire stands at the head of those writers who in France are called Beaux Esprits; and for brilliancy of imagination, for astonishing ease, exquisite taste, versatility of talents, and extent of knowledge, he had no superior, scarcely an equal among his countrymen. But, if genius be restricted to invention, Voltaire was deficient. His most original pieces are, his “Candide,” a tissue of ridiculous extravagancies, which may be traced to Swift; and his infamous poem, the “Pucelle,” for which he was indebted to Chapelain and Ariosto. His “Henriade” is the finest epic poem the French have; but it wants the sublimity of Homeric or Miltonic invention. The subject, indeed, could not admit supernatural machinery. It is, as lord Chesterfield said (who did not mean to depreciate it) “all good sense from beginning to end.” It is an excellent history in verse, and the versification is as harmonious as French versification can be, and some of his portraits are admirably touched; but as a whole, as an epic, it sinks before the epics of Greece and Rome, of Italy and England.

Voltaire was a voluminous writer, and there is in his works, as perhaps in those of all voluminous writers, a very strange mixture of good, bad, and indifferent. Whether many of them will long survive his living reputation, may be doubted. Of late, we understand, that few of his separate pieces have been called for, except the Henriade, which will always be considered as a national work, and his plays. There have been lately some splendid editions of his whole works, for libraries and men of fortune and now we hear that the French editors and booksellers find their interest in offering the public only his “CEuvres choisies.” When the misery he so largely contributed to bring on his country shall be more accurately estimated, and a reverence for revealed religion is revived, Voltaire will probably be remembered chiefly, as a terrifying example of the prostitution of the finest talents to the worst of purposes.

We shall conclude with the titles of his principal poetical performances: 1. “The Henriade, in ten cantos.” 2. A great number of tragedies, of which the first was “Oedipus,” in 1718, the last “Irene,” in 1778. 3. Several comedies of which the best are, “L'Indiscret,” “L'Enfant Prodigue,” and “Nanine.” 4. Several operas, in which he did not particularly excel. 5. An endless variety of fugitive pieces in verse. His principal prose works are, 1. “Essai sur l'Histoire General,” which with “Les Siecles de Louis XIV. et de Louis XV.” make 10 vols. 8vo. 2. “L'Histoire de Charles XII.” 3. “L'Histoire de Czar Pierre I.” 4. “Melanges de Litterature,” in many volumes. 5. “Dictionnaire Philosophique,” “Philosophic de l'Histoire,” and several other works of the same impious tendency. 6. “Theatre de Pierre et Thomas Corneille, avec des mor^eaux interessans,” 8 vols. 4to. 7. *‘ Commentaire Historique sur les Oeuvres de l’Auteur de la Henriade, avec les Pieces originates et les preuves;“a monument raised by Voltaire to his own vanity. He had indeed before this placed himself at the head of all the French writers in his” Connoissance des beautes et des defauts de la Poesie et de P Eloquence," 1749.

, whose family name was Ricciarelli, but who is better known by the name of his birth-place, Volterra, where he was born in 1509, was the reputed pupil of Peruzzi and Razzi at Siena, and the assistant of Perino del Vaga at Rome. He acquired the best part of his celebrity from a decided adherence to the principles, style, and subsequent patronage and assistance, of Michael Angelo, who accelerated his progress, enriched him with designs, and made him his substitute in the works of the Vatican. For proofs of actual assistance we need not recur to his frequent attendance on Daniele whilst he painted in the Farnesina, and the tale of the colossal head which he is said to have drawn with a coal on the wall during his absence, and which is still left to exhibit its questionable lines; the best evidence of that assistance was the fresco of the Trinita del Monte, now a ruin of the revolution: if that wonderful performance, the first of the three that were considered as the master- pieces of the art in Rome, evinced in composition and style the supenntendance, advice, and corrections, of Michael Angelo, its principal parts could only be considered as the work of his own hand; that master-hand alone could embody the weight of death in the sinking figure of the Saviour, and point the darts of woe that pierced the mother’s breast in the face and dereliction of the Madonna, without destroying the superhuman beauty of either. The remainder emulates, but arrives not at the same degree of perfection. The male assistants have more labour than energy, and, though with propriety subordinate, proportions scarcely equal to the task. In the female group, so beautifully contrasted, gesture seems to prevail over sentiment; even the figure of St. John, with all its characteristic excellence, by the fear it expresses, rather interrupts than assists the sublime pathos and sacred silence of the scene.

Under this picture, which with the completion of some inferior ones in the same chapel had cost him seven years, Daniele placed two basso-relievos, to express nis gratitude to Michael Angelo and his contempt of public cavil. One represented Michael Angelo contemplating himself in a mirror, to indicate that the picture was a reflection of his powers; the other shewed a group of satyrs weighing the detached figures of the picture in a balance, and chasing away an inimical group of other satyrs; with the addition of some Greek words, implying that those wiio had laughed at the slowness of his progress, were now become a laughingstock themselves.

Under the pontificates of Paolo and Pio IV. Daniele was employed to cover the nudities of some of the figures in the last judgment of Michael Angelo, and, according to a tradition sufficiently authentic, with the master’s own consent. An invidious task, more of necessity than choice, and perhaps merely complied with to save the work from a more sacrilegious hand, but for which he was ever afterwards branded by the ludicrous appellation of Braghettuue. Volterra died in Rome in 1566, at the age of fifty -seven.

, a very celebrated Dutch poet, was born Nov. 17, 1587. He was bred an anabaptist; afterwards joined the Arminians, for whose defence he employed his pen with great zeal; and in his old age turned Roman Catholic. His verses, it is said, would have equalled those of the greatest poets, had he been acquainted with the ancients; but he had no other master than his own genius, and did not begin to learn Latin till he was near thirty. Vondel married Mary de Wolf in 1610, and opened a hosier’s shop at Amsterdam, leaving however all the care of it to his wife, while he was wholly occupied with poetry. The profligacy of his son having at length deranged his affairs, he obtained a place worth 650 livres yearly, but discharged the business of it so negligently, that in compassion to his situation he was permitted to keep the place as a sinecure. He died February 5, 1679, in his ninety-second year. Vondel’s poems have been collected in 9 vols. 4to. The most celebrated are, “The Park of Animals;” “The Heroes of God;” “The Destruction of Jerusalem,” a tragedy; “The Grandeur of Solomon;” Jl1 Palamede, or Innocence oppressed,“a celebrated tragedy, which he wrote while an Arminian. By Palamede he meant the famous Barneveldt, who was condemned to death by prince Maurice. Vondel exclaims in this piece against both the prince and the synod of Dort, in terms which sufficiently point them out, and was near being carried to the Hague, and tried in consequence of it; but some magistrates saved him, and he escaped by paying a fine of 300 florins. He wrote also satires against the protestant ministers, full of passion and invective; and a poem in favour of the catholic church, entitled” The Mysteries, or Secrets of the Altar," &c. He translated one of Grotius’s tragedies into Dutch, on which that celebrated writer expressed a high sense of Venders friendship, in condescending to translate his works, when he could write much better of his own.

, one of those Latin historians who are usually denominated “Historiae Augustas Scriptores,” flourished as the others did in the time of Dioclesian and Constantine, about the beginning of the fourth century. He was a native of Syracuse, and a believer in Apollonius Tyanacus, whose life he intended to write. He is reckoned superior to the rest of the Hist. Aug. Scriptores in the elegance of his style and in the perspicuity of his manner; though far inferior in both to the writers of the Augustan age. He wrote the life of Aurelian, Tacitus, Florianus, and others.

, an eminent divine of the Arminian persuasion, was born at Cologn, July 19, 1569. His father, who was a dyer, had not yet renounced popery, and caused him to be baptised in the forms of that religion, but he afterwards secretly joined the protestants. He had ten children, and designing Conrade for a learned profession, had him taught grammar at a school in the village of Bedberdyk, whence he sent him, in 1583, to Dusseldorp, and there he continued his classical studies till 1586. He afterwards removed to St. Lawrence’s college in Cologn, but was prevented from taking his degrees in philosophy by two impediments, which are so dissimilar that it is difficult to say which predominated. The one was because he could not conscientiously take an oath to submit to the decisions of the council of Trent; the other, because on account of the declining state of his father’s affairs, it became necessary for him to give up his studies, and go into trade. Whether he would have refused the oaths, if this had not been the case, is left to conjecture, but he now employed two years in acquiring arithmetic, the French and Italian languages, and such other knowledge as might be useful in trade. He was soon after, however, enabled by some circumstances, not related in our authority, to resume his more learned studies, and going to Herborn in 1589, studied divinity under Piscator, who from a Calvinist had become an Armiriian. Vorstius also, probably for a maintenance, took pupils, and accompanied some of them to Heidelberg in 1593, where the following year he was admitted to the degree of D. D. In 1595 he paid a visit to the universities of Switzerland, and that of Geneva. At Basil, he twice maintained two theses, the one on the Sacraments, the other on the causes of Salvation. He was preparing a third dispute against Socinus* “De Christo servatore” (concerning Christ the saviour); but being desirous of concluding his journey, he did not finish this

piece; and leaving the original with Grynaeus, took it back when he returned to Basil. The first work ascribed to him is, a collection of theses, containing upwards of twenty maintained at various times, beginning at 1594. He prefixed to this collection the theses concerning the Holy Trinity, that is, concerning God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and the theses concerning the person and office of Christ, which he pleaded some time after as an apology to such as charged him with shewing a tendency to Socinianism in those two articles; but this was a suspicion he never could eradicate, and was the foundation of all the hostility he had afterwards to encounter. While at Geneva, however, no suspicion of the kind existed, otherwise we may be certain that Beza would not have requested him to lecture on divinity, which he did with so much ability, that the professorship was offered to him, but to this he preferred the offer of the same chair at Steinfurt, which was made to him, by letter, while at Geneva.

Having accepted this office, he acquired so much reputation in discharging the duties of it, that other universities became desirous of obtaining such a teacher, but he declined a change for the present. While here, however, his principles became again suspected, and this reaching the ears of count de Bentheim, his great patron, in 1599, he ordered Vorstius to clear himself immediately, by going to the university where he had received his doctor’s degree, and convincing them of his being orthodox. Accordingly Vorstius went to Heidelberg, where he gave an. account of his faith; and returned, cleared, to his abode. The faculty of divines admitted him to the kiss of peace, and gave him tesseram hospitalitatis (the mark or token of hospitality) after signifying to him, that he had been in the wrong to advance certain particulars which favoured the Socinians, and making him promise that he would thenceforward refrain from employing such phrases as might give occasion for suspicion. He also was forced to make a protestation that he abhorred Socinus’s opinions; and was very sorry the fire of youth had made him employ certain expressions, which seemed to favour that heretic, and clash with the doctrine of the protestant churches.

In 1605, he was appointed minister at Steinfurt, and he was also made president of the court for trying matrimonial causes, and was principal examiner of young candidates for the ministry. In consideration of these various employments, an extraordinary stipend was allowed. In 1610, he was invited to Leyden, to succeed the celebrated Arminius. This invitation was of the most flattering kind, being approved both by the States of Holland and by prince Maurice; yet his biographer is of opinion, that had he not been most strongly solicited by the chiefs of the Arminians he would never have embarked on so stormy a sea. He was beloved and honoured in Steinfurt; there he enjoyed the utmost tranquillity, and was in the highest reputation; and he doubtless foresaw that, in the state in which the controversies of Arminius and Gomarus were at that time, he should meet with great opposition in Holland. But he was tempted by the glory he should gain in supporting a party which was weakened by Arminius’s death. To this were added motives pretended to be drawn from conscience; for they represented to him, that he would one day be accountable for the ill use he should make of his talents, in case too great a fondness for ease should make him neglect so happy an opportunity of establishing the truth, in a country where it had already taken root. However this be, he was induced to leave count de Bentheim, and go to Holland, where he found, or made innumerable enemies.

In 1611, he went to Leyden, with his family, and, although he brought with him the most authentic testimonials of his being orthodox, and prudent in his conduct and manner of life, the Calvinistic clergy became alarmed at having the divinity professorship filled by one who promised to perpetuate the errors of Arminius; and therefore represented, in the strongest terms, the danger that might accrue from the appointment of Vorstius. They even called to their aid the opinions of foreign universities and potentates. Among the latter, our king James I. who had caused Vorstius’s book “De Deo” to be burnt at London and the two universities, and now had drawn up a catalogue of the several heresies he had found in that work, commanded his resident at the Hague to notify to the States, that he greatly detested those heresies, and those who should tolerate them. The States answered, that, if Vorstius maintained the errors laid to his charge, they would not surfer him to live among them. Tin’s answer not being satisfactory, he again pressed them with greater earnesiness to banish Vorstius, though he should deny the errors laid to his charge; but, if he should own and persist in them, he was firmly of opinion, that burning was too miiJ a punishment for him. He declared, that, if they did not use their utmost endeavours to extirpate this rising heresy, he should publicly protest against such abominations; in quality of defender of the faith, should exhort all Protestant churches to join in one general resolution to extinguish these abominable newly-broached heresies; and, with regard to himself, would forbid all his subjects to frequent so pestilential a place as the university of Leyden. To his menaces he added the terrors of his pen, and published a book against Vorstius; who replied in the most respectful terms but at fast, through the influence of the king’s deputies, was declared unworthy of the professorship, divested of his employment, and sentenced to perpetual banishment by the synod of Dort. He lay concealed two years, until at length he found an asylum in the dominions of the duke of Holstein, who took the remains of the Artninians under his protection, and assigned them a spot of ground for building a city. He died atToningen, Sept. 29, 1622. His body was carried to Fredericstadt, the newly-raised city of the Arminians, where he was buried with considerable splendour. He wrote many things against the Roman Catholics, as well as his own particular adversaries.

The quarrels, says Bayle, into which he was drawn were doubtless mixed with a greaf deal of passion; but after all, the suspicion of his having a great tendency towards Sociniaiiism is not very unjustly grounded; and he possibly might have professed it openly, had he not followed the maxim which the Roman Catholics object to the Reformers, viz. that when a person is persuaded that the church stands in need of being reformed, he ought to continue in communion with it, to labour more effectually to cure it. The same author adds, that he did great prejudice to the Arminian party. “The prevailing so far as to get Vorstius to succeed Arminius in the professorship of Leyden, was thought to be a master-stroke, and yet nothing could be more advantageous to the adversaries of the Remonstrants. Vorstius furnished them with so many pleas, by his new manner of dogmatizing on the attributes of God, and it was so easy to raise the suspicions of the people against him, that it was no difficult matter to make him become odious.” Sandius, the biographer of the Socinians, after perusing the confession of faith which Vorstius signed on his death-bed, had no scruple as to admitting him among that sect. His son, William Henry Vorstius, is also recorded in the same class in Sandius’s “Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum.” His principal works were on Rabbinical literature.

, a Flemish painter of the sixteenth century, was born at Antwerp in 1520, and was first entered in his profession under his father. Having made himself somewhat eminent in Flanders, he travelled to Venice, Home, and Florence, where he made a collection of curious drawings of several sorts of vases made use of by the old Greeks and Romans at their entertainments, funerals, and sacrifices. At his return into Flanders he painted some of these old festival-solemnities, in which the disposition and lively representation of these vases were very ornamental to his performance. He excelled in most branches of the art, but his drawings in particular, were reckoned some of the best and most serviceable for beginners. His colouring was strong and lively; his design natural and free, and his disposition judicious. He had so much fame in his profession, that, when the prince of Parma made himself master of Antwerp, he made De Vos a visit, and sat to him. He died at Antwerp in 1604, being eighty-four years of age.

There was a Simon de Vos, born at Antwerp in 1603, who painted history equally well in large and in small sizes, with a free pencil, and a touch light and firm; his colouring being in general lively and agreeable, produced a good effect. His figures were well designed, although sometimes a little too much constrained in the attitudes; and he often wanted elegance and dignity in his ideas, as well as grace in the airs of his figures. But he shewed extraordinary force and nature in his pictures of the chase; and one of his compositions in that style is in the cabinet of the Elector Palatine. Houbraken says that Simon de Vos was alive in. 1662. At Antwerp, there is a picture by him of St. Norbert receiving the sacrament, in v.hich are introduced a great number of portraits extremely well painted. De Vos, sir Joshua Reynolds remarks, particularly excelled in portraits. In the poor-house at Antwerp, there was, when sir Joshua visited it, his own portrait by himself, in black, leaning on the back of a chair, with a scroll of blue paper in his hand, so highly finished, in the broad manner of Corregio, that nothing could exceed it.

, a very learned writer, was born in Germany, at a town in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg, in 1577. His father was a native of Ruremond; but, upon embracing the reformed religion, left that place, and went into the Palatinate, where he studied divinity, and became a minister in 1575. He removed to Leyden the year after this son was born, and was admitted a member of the university there, but finally settled at Dort; where he buried his first wife, married a second, and died about three months after. Gerard John Vossius was only in his eighth year when he lost his father; and the circumstances in which he was left not being sufficient to procure an education suitable to his very promising talents, he endeavoured to make up for this defect by assiduity and unwearied application. He began his studies at Dort, and had Erycius Puteanus for his school-fellow; with whom he ever afterwards lived in the closest intimacy and friendship. Here he learned Latin, Greek, and philosophy; and in 1595, went to Leyden, where he joined mathematics to these studies, and was made master of arts and doctor in philosophy in 1598. He then applied himself to divinity and the Hebrew tongue; and, his father having left him a library well furnished with books of ecclesiastical history and theology, he early acquired an extensive knowledge in these branches. The curators of the academy were upon the point of choosing him professor of physic, when he was invited to be director of the college at Dort; which would have been thought a place of too much importance for so young a man, if there had not been something very extraordinary in his character.

In Feb. 1602, he married a minister’s daughter of Dort, who died in 1607, having brought him three children. He married a second wife six months after, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. This fertility in Vossius, which was at the same time attended with a wonderful fertility in his pen, made Grotius say, with some pleasantry, that he did not know whether Vossius had a better knack at producing children or books; “scriberetne accuratius, an gigneret felicius.?” These children were educated with the utmost care, so that his house was called the habitation of Apollo and the Muses; but he had the misfortune to survive them all, except Isaac Vossius. One of his daughters, a very accomplished young lady, was drowned while sliding, according to the custom of the country, upon the canals near Leyden. In 1614, an attempt was made to draw him to Steinfurt, to be divinity-professor there; but the university of Leyden having named him at the same time to be director of the theological college which the States of Holland had just founded in that town, he preferred the latter situation; and his office of professor of eloquence and chronology, which was conferred upon him four years after, was peculiarly agreeable to his taste. Though he took all imaginable care to keep himself clear from the disputes about grace and predestination, which then ran high among the ministers of that country, yet his precautions did not avail, for he was entangled in spite of them. He had rendered himself suspected and obnoxious to the Gomarists, who had prevailed in the synod of Dort held in 1612, because he had openly favoured the toleration of the Remonstrants, and because, in his history of the Pelagian controversy, printed in 1618, he had affirmed, that the sentiments of St. Augustin upon grace and predestination were not the most ancient, and that those of the Remonstrants were different from those of the Semi-Pelagians. And although he did not separate himself from the communion of the Anti-Remonstrants, yet they, knowing well that he neither approved their doctrines nor their conduct, procured him to be ejected from his professorship at the synod of Tergou, held in 1620. The year after, another synod was held at Rotterdam; where it was ordered, that he should be received again, provided he would promise neither to do nor say any thing against the synod of Dort, and would also retract the errors advanced in his history of Pelagianism. It was with great reluctance that he consented to these terms, but the loss which he would suffer by resistance, induced him in 1624 to make such promises as appeared satisfactory.

But of whatever detriment his Pelagian history might be to him in Holland, it procured him both honour and profit from England, where it was by some exceedingly well received. Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, whose great object was to establish Arminianism, admired Vossius’s work so much, that he procured him a prebend in the church of Canterbury, while he resided at Leyden; but he afterwards, in 1629, came over to be installed, took a doctor of law’s degree at Oxford, and then returned. While at Oxford he discovered and encouraged the talents of Dr. Pocock, as we have already noticed in our account of that celebrated orientalist. In 1630, the town of Amsterdam having projected the foundation of an university, cast their eyes upon Vossius, as one likely to promote its reputation and credit. The literati, magistrates, and inhabitants of Leyden, complained loudly of this design, as injurious to their own university; which, they said, 'had had the preference assigned to it above all the other towns of Holland, because Leyden had sustained in 1574 a long siege against the Spaniards; and they were still more averse to it, on account of their being likely to lose so great an ornament as Vossius. Amsterdam, however, carried its purpose into execution; and Vossius went thither, in 1633, to be professor of history. He died there in 1649, aged seventy-two years; after having written and published as many works as, when they came to be collected and printed at Amsterdam in 1695 and the five following years, amounted to 6 vols. in folio. The principal of them are, “Etymologicon Linguae Latinae;” “De Origine & Progressu Idololatriae;” “De Historicis Græcis;” “De Historicis Latinis;” “De Arte Grammatica;” “De vitiis sermonis & glossematis Latino-Barbaris;” “Institutiones Oratoriae;” “Institutiones Poetica;” “Ars Historica,” the first book of the kind ever published; “De quatuor artibus popularibus, Grammatice, Gymnastice, Musice, & Graphice;” “De Philologia;” “De universa Matheseos natura & constitutione;” “De Philosophia;” “De Philosophorum sectis;” “De veterum Poetarum temporibus.” Most of these, particularly his account of the Greek and Latin historians, poets, have always been considered as works of authority and accuracy. He was an indefatigable student, and wrote with considerable rapidity. Granger, in an anecdote perhaps not worth repeating, says that our wonder at the number of Vossius’s works will be somewhat abated when we consider the following circumstance in a ms. of Mr. Ashmole, in his own museum. He says he had it from Dr. John Pell. “Gerard Vossius wrote his Adversaria on one side of a sheet of paper, and joined them together, and would so send them to the press, without transcribing.” Our wonder may be more rationally abated by considering that he employed the greater part of the day and even of the night in study, and was a most scrupulous ceconomist of time. When his friends came to pay him visits, he never allowed any of them more than a quarter of an hour. On one occasion, when Christopher Schrader, who knew his custom, had staid out his quarter, and was about to leave him, Vossius kept him another quarter, after which he pointed to the hour-glass which was always before him, and said, “You see how much time I have given you.”

, a man of great parts and learning, was the son of Gerard John Vossius, and born of his second wife at Leyden, in 1618. The particulars of his life will be comprised in a short compass: he had no master but his father in any thing; and his whole life was spent in studying. His merit having recommended him to the notice of Christina of Sweden, the queen submitted to correspond with him by letters, and employed him in some literary commissions. He even made several journeys into Sweden by her order, and had the honour of teaching her majesty the Greek language: but, being there in 1662 with M. Huet and Bochart, she refused to see him, because she had heard that he intended to write against Salmasius, for whom she had at that time a particular regard. In 1663, he received a handsome present of money from Lewis XIV. of France, and at the same time the following obliging letter from Mons. Colbert. “Sir, Though the king be not your sovereign, he is willing nevertheless to be your benefactor; and has commanded me to send you the bill of exchange, hereunto annexed, as a mark of his esteem, and as a pledge of his protection. Every one knows, that you worthily follow the example of the famous Vossius your father; and that, having received from him a name which hath rendered him illustrious by his writings, you will preserve the glory of it by yours. These things being known to his majesty, it is with pleasure that he makes this acknowledgment of your merit,” &c. After the death of his father, he was offered the history-professorship, but refused it; preferring a studious retirement to any honours. In 1670 he came over to England, and was that year created doctor of laws at Oxford; “after he had been,” says Wood, “with great humanity and friendship entertained by some of the chief heads of colleges, as his father had been before in 1629.” In 1673, Charles II. made him canon of Windsor, assigning him lodgings in the castle, where he died Feb. the 10th, 1638. He left behind him the best private library, as it was then supposed, in the world; which, to the shame and reproach of England, was suffered to be purchased and carried away by the university of Leyden.

M. des Maizeaux, in his life of St. Evremond, has recorded several particulars relative to the life and character of Isaac Vossius, which are certainly not of a very favourable cast. St. Evremond, he tells us, used to spend the summers with the court at Windsor, and there often saw Vossius; who, as St. Evremond described him, understood almost all the languages in Europe, without being able to speak one of them well; who knew to the very bottom the genius and customs of antiquity, yet was an utter stranger to the manners of his own times. He expressed himself in conversation as a man would have done in a commentary upon Juvenal or Petronius. He published books to prove, that the Septuagint version was divinely inspired; yet discovered, in private conversation, that he believed no revelation at all: and his manner of dying, which was far from being exemplary, shewed that he did not. Yet, to see the frailty of the human understanding, he was in other respects the weakest and most credulous man alive, and ready to swallow, without chewing, any extraordinary and wonderful thing, though ever so fabulous and impossible. This is the idea which St. Evremond, who knew him well, has given of him. If any more proofs of his unbelief are wanting, Des Maizeaux has given us them, in a note upon the foregoing account of St. Evremond. He relates, that Dr. Hascard, dean of Windsor, with one of the canons, visited Vossius upon his death-bed, and pressed him to receive the sacrament; but could not prevail, though they begged of him at last, that, “if he would not do it for the love of God, he would at least do it for the honour of the chapter.” Des Maizeaux relates another fact concerning Vossius, which he received from good authority; namely, that, when Dr. Hascard pressed him to take the sacrament, he replied, “I wish you would instruct me how to oblige the farmers to pay me what they owe me: this is what I would have you do for me at present.” Such sort of replies are said to have been common with him; and that once, when a brother of his mother was sick, and a minister was for giving him the communion, he opposed it, saying, “this is a pretty custom enough for sinners; but my uncle, far from being a sinner, is a man without vices.” As to his credulity and propensity to believe in the most implicit manner any thing singular and extraordinary, Mons. Renaudot, in his dissertations added to “Anciennes Relations des Indes & de la Chine,” relates, that Vossius, having had frequent conferences with the father Martini, during that Jesuit’s residence in Holland for the printing his “Atlas Chinois,” made no scruple of believing all which he told him concerning the wonderful things in China; and that he even went farther than Martini, and maintained as a certain fact the antiquity of the Chinese accounts above that of the books of Moses. Charles II. who knew his character well, used to call him the strangest man in the world for “there is nothing,” the king would say, “which he refuses to believe, except the Bible;” and it is probable, that the noble author of the “Characteristics” had him in his eye while he was writing the following paragraph. “It must certainly be something else than incredulity, which fashions the taste and judgment of many gentlemen, whom we hear censured as Atheists, for attempting to philosophize after a newer manner than any known of late. I have ever thought this sort of men to be in general more credulous, though after another manner, than the mere vulgar. Besides what I have observed in conversation with the men of this character, I can produce many anathematized authors, who, if they want a true Israelitish faith, can make amends by a Chinese or Indian, one. If they are short in Syria or the Palestine, they have their full measure in America or Japan. Histories of Incas or Iroquois, written by friers and missionaries, pirates and renegadoes, sea-captains and trusty travellers, pass for authentic records, and are canonical with the virtuosos of this sort. Though Christian miracles may not so well satisfy them, they dwell with the greatest contentment on the prodigies of Moorish and Pagan countries.” This perfectly corresponds with the nature and character of Isaac Vossius, although lord Shaftesbury might have more than one in his eye when he wrote it.

His works, though very numerous, are yet neither so numerous nor so useful as his father’s. His first publication was “Periplus Scylacis Caryandensis & Anonymi Periplus Ponti Euxini, Græce & Latinæ, cum notis.” Amst. 1639, 4to. Although he was only a youth of twenty-one when he published this, James Gronovius judged his notes worth inserting in the new augmented edition which he gave of these authors at Leyden 1697, under the title of “Geographia antiqua,” in 4to. The year after, 1640, he published “Justin,” with notes, at Leyden, in 12mo, also a juvenile production, but of no particular value. “Ignatii Epistolæ, & Barnabæ Epistola, Græce & Latinæ, cum notis,” Amst. 1646, in 4to. He was the first who published the genuine epistles of Ignatius, from a Greek manuscript in the library at Florence, which was found to agree exactly with the ancient Latin version which archbishop Usher had published two years before. His notes have been inserted in Le Clerc’s edition of the “Patres Apostolici.” “Pomponius Mela de situ orbis, cum observationibus,” Hagse Com. 1648, 4to. Salmasius is the subject of his animadversion in these notes. “Dissertatio de vera estate mundi, &c.” Hagae Com. 1659, 4to. This dissertation, in which it is attempted to establish the chronology of the Septuagint upon the ruin of that of the Hebrew text, was attacked by many authors, and particularly by Hornius, to whom Vossius replied in “Castigationes ad Scriptum Hornii de ætate Mundi,” Hagse Com. 1659, 4to. Hornius defended what he had written, the same year; and Vossius, the same year, replied to him again in “Auctarium Castigationum, &c.” 4to. Hornius was not however to be silenced, but published another piece, still in the same year; and then father Pezron adopted and maintained the opinion of Vossius, in his book, entitled “L'Antiquite de temps retablie,” 1661. Vossius published “De Septuaginta Interpretibus, eorumque translatione & chronologia Dissertationes;” and, in 1663, “Appendix ad hunc librum, seu Responsiones ad objecta variorum Theologorum:” both in 4to. His next publications were upon philosophical subjects, as “Deluce,” “De motu marium & ventorum,” “De Nili & aliorum fluminum origine;” which are not thought of much consequence. "De Poematum Cantu et Viribus Rythmi, Oxon. 1673,“in 8vo, in which are some curious remarks.” De Sibyllinis aliisque, quae Christi natalem præcessere, Oraculis,“Oxon. 1679: reprinted in” Variarum Observationum Liber.“”Catullus, & in eum Isaaci Vossii Observationes,“Lond. 1684, 4to, and Leyden, 1691. There is a great deal of erudition in these notes of Vossius, mixed with gross indelicacies. The greatest part of a treatise by Adrian Beverland,” De prostibulis veterum,“the printing of which had been prohibited, was inserted in them; but this being discovered, the press was stopped from proceeding any farther; and the edition, the first of those mentioned above, though begun and carried on in Holland, was brought over to England to be finished; as may appear from the different characters of the end, the title, and the preface. In 1685, he published a thin quarto volume at London, entitled,” Variarum Observationum Liber,“in which are contained the following dissertations:” De Antiquae Romae & aliarum quarundam urbitnn magnitudine; De Artibus & Scientiis Sinarum; De Originæ & Progressu Pulveris Bellici apud Europaeos; De Triremium & Libnrnicarum constructione; De emendatione Longitudinum; De patefacienda per Septentrionem ad Japonenses & Indos navigatione; De apparentibus in Luna circulis; Diurna Telluris coriversione omnia gravia ad medium tendere;“to which are subjoined,” De Sibyllinis Oraculis, Responsio ad Objecta nupera: Criticae Sacræ,“and” Ad iteratas P. Simonii objectiones altera Responsio.“Vossius’s propensity to the marvellous, and his prejudices for antiquity, appear from the first page of this book of various observations; where he tells us, that ancient Rome was twenty times as large as Paris and London put together are at present; and assigns it fourteen millions of inhabitants; which however is nothing in comparison of the single town of Hanchou in China, whose inhabitants, he assures us, amount to twenty millions, besides the suburbs. This” Variarum Observationum Liber,“however, as well as Isaac Vossius’s works in general, all shew ingenuity and learning, and there are in them some singular and striking observations; but yet very little knowledge is to be drawn from, and very little use to be made of them. Thirlby says very justly of him, that he was a man of great learning, had excellent parts, and sufficient judgment, but never troubled his head about what was the truth in any question whatever. If criticism, or philosophy, or theology, was the subject, it was, says Thirlby,” quite enough for him to cast about for and invent things new, out of the way, and wonderful; but whether these strange and newly-discovered things were true or false, was a point which he left to be examined by those who might think it worth their while.“The last of his works we shall notice is,” Observationum ad Pomponium Melam appendix: accedit ad tertias P. Simonii objectiones Responsio, c.“Lond. 1686, 4to. James Gronovius, having used Vossius ill in his edition of” Mela,“at Leyden, 1685, in 8vo, is in this appendix paid in kind; Humphrey Hody is also answered, in a short piece contained in this publication; who had advanced something against Vossius’s notions of the Septuagint version, in his” Dissertatio contra Historiam Aristeae de LXX. Interpretibus,“printed at Oxford,” 1685.

The journalists of Trevoux have contrasted the different merits of Gerard and Isaac Vossius, by drawing a parallel between them, which very well illustrates the character of each, and may form a proper conclusion to this article. Nothing,“say they,” can be more opposite than the characters of this father and son; nothing more different than the make of their understandings. In the father, judgment prevails; in the son, imagination: the father labours slowly; the son goes on with ease: the father distrusts the bestfounded conjectures; the son loves nothing but conjectures, and those bold and daring: the father forms his opinions upon what he reads; the son conceives an opinion, and then reads: the father endeavours to penetrate the sense of the author he cites, and pays a proper deference to their authority, as to masters; the son imposes his own sense on these authors, and regards them as slaves, who ought to give testimony as he would have them: the father’s aim was to instruct; the son’s to parade and make a noise: truth was the father’s darling object; novelty the son’s. In the father, we admire vast erudition, orderly arranged and clearly expressed; in the son, a dazzling turn of style, singular thoughts, and a vivacity, which even pleases in a bad cause: the father has written good books; the son has written curious books. Their hearts also were as unlike and different as their heads. The father was a man of probity and regular in his manners; was unhappily born a Calvinist, yet had the service of religion always in his view , and approached as nearly to the true faith as mere reason could enable him. The son was a libertine both in principle and practice, made religion the object of his insults, and only studied to find out the weak sides of it: his indelicate and shameful notes upon Catullus, printed at the close of his life, shew also plainly enough what kind of man he was.“Of Gerard John Vossius’s other sons, who did not survive him, we may notice Dionysius Vossius, who was born at Dort, and became learned in the Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee, Arabic, French, Italian, and Spanish languages. He wrote, among other small things,” Maimonides de Idololatria, cum Latina versione et notis,“printed at the end of his father’s work” de origine et progressu Idololatrire;“and some notes upon Cæsar’s Commentaries, to be found in the edition of Graevius, at Amsterdam, in 1697. Francis Vossius, another son, published a Latin poem in 1640, upon a naval victory gained by Van Tromp. Gerard, a third son, was the editor of Paterculus, the Elzevir of 1639, 12mo: and Matthew, a fourth son, published at Amsterdam, in 1635,” Annalium Hollandise Zelandiseque libri quinque," 4to.

, a very learned man, whom some have confounded with John Gerard Vossius, was born in the diocese of Liege, some say at Berchloon, and others at Hasselt, but he does not appear to have been related to the family of Gerard. He was an ecclesiastic of the church of Rome, employed in some considerable offices under the popes, and died at Liege in 1609. He published a Latin commentary upon “Cicero in Somnium Scipionis,” at Rome, 1575; and all the works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ephrem Syrus, and some pieces of John Chrysostom and Theodoret, with Latin versions and notes.

, a French painter, very celebrated in his day, was born at Paris in 1582, and bred up under his father, who was a painter also. He knew so much of his art, and was in such repute at twenty years of age, that Mons. de Saucy, who was going ambassador to Constantinople, took him with him as his painter. There he drew the picture of the grand signer; and, though it was impossible to do it otherwise than by the strength of memory, and from a view of him at the ambassador’s audience, yet it proved a great likeness. Thence he went to Venice; and afterwards, settling himself in Rome, became so illustrious* in his profession, that, besides the favours which he received from pope Urban VIII. and the cardinal his nephew, he was chosen prince of the Roman academy of St. Luke. He staid fourteen years in Italy; and then, in 1627, Lewis XIII. who, in consideration of his capacity, hatl allowed him a pension all the while he was abroad, sent for him borne to work in his palaces. He practised both in portrait and history; and furnished some of the apartments of the Louvre, the palaces of Luxemburg and iSt. Germains, the galleries of cardinal Richelieu, and other public places, with his works. His greatest perfection lay in his colouring, and his brisk and lively pencil; otherwise he was but tery indifferently qualified. He had no genius for grand compositions, was unhappy in his invention, unacquainted with the rules of perspective, and understood but little of the union of colours, or the doctrine of lights and shadows. Yet France was indebted to him for destroying the insipid and barbarous manner which then reigned, and for beginning to introduce a better taste. The novelty of Vouet’s manner, and the kind reception he gave all who came to him, made the French painters, his contemporaries, follow it, and brought him disciples from all parts. Most of the succeeding painters, who were famous in their profession, were bred up under him, as Le Brun, Perrier, Mignard, Le Sueur, Dorigny, Du Fresnoy, and several others, whom he employed as assistants in a great number of pictures he drew, and from his instructions they well knew how to execute his designs. He had the honour also to instruct the king himself in the art of designing.

He died, rather worn out with labour than years, in 1641, aged fifty-nine. Dorigny, who was his son-in-law, as well as his pupil, engraved the greatest part of his works. He bad a brother, whose name was Auhin Vouet, who painted after his manner, and was a tolerable performer.

, a distinguished French statesman, of a very ancient and honourable family, was born at Venice in 1652, where his father then resided as ambassador from France, and was so much respected that the senate gave him and his descendants permission to add the arms of the republic <o his own, with the lion of St. Mark as his crest. The senate also, as sponsor for his son, gave him the additional name of Mark. He was brought up to the law, and after filling the place of master of the requests, was promoted by the king to the place of lieutenant-general of the police of Paris, and conducted himself in this office with so much ability and propriety, that it is said that city never enjoyed more plenty, quiet, and security, than under his administration. In times of scarcity or commotion on any other account, and during fires or other calamities, he displayed the talents of a humane and enlightened magistrate, and by address only, and sharing in every danger, and listening to all reasonable complaints, he succeeded, in preventing or allaying popular tumults, without having recourse to extremities. His ability in this office recommended him to a superior rank in the administration, and accordingly, after being made a counsellor of state, he was in 1718 promoted to be keeper of the seals, president of the council of finance, and in 172() minister of state; but of these offices he was almost immediately deprived, we are not told why, and died May 8, 1721. He was attached to literature, and was a member of the French academy and of that of sciences. His character has been variously represented. We have given the most favourable account, but it must not be concealed that he was accounted by many as a friend to despotic authority, and as meanly subservient to the tyranny of the court or its ministers. He is said to have obliged the Jesuits by persecuting the Jansenists, but neither ioved or hated the one or the other, unless as they might promote or obstruct his ambition. In private life he was a more amiable character. Some of his descendants made a considerable figure in the latter French history.

, a Dutch painter, was born at Haerlem in 1566. In a voyage to Spain, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Portugal. Relating at Lisbon the danger he had escaped, a portrait-painter there engaged him to draw the storm he described, in which he succeeded so happily, that it was sold to a nobleman for a considerable price. Vroon continued to be employed; and improved so much in sea-pieces, that having got money, and returning home, he applied himself entirely to that style oi: painting. At this period, the great earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral of England, whose defeat of the Spanish armada had established the throne of his mistress, being desirous of preserving the detail of that illustrious event, had bespoken a suit of tapestry, describing the particulars of each day’s engagement. Vrobn was engaged to draw the designs, and came to England to receive instructions. The excellence of the performance, obvious to the public eye, makes encomiums unnecessary. It was chiring the republic that this noble trophy was placed in a temple worthy of it, the House of Lords, which was then used for committees of the Commons. Mr. Walpole, from whom the above extract is taken, has not certified the date of Vroon’s death.

, an extraordinary artist, was born at Schafhausen, in May 1650. He travelled and resided long at Rome and Venice. On his return he married Elizabeth Ott, and died in April 1717. This is nearly all the information which the attention and the taste of his country has preserved of a man, who, on the evidence of his few remaining works, commands a place among the best artists of his time. Some anecdotes indeed are told, relative to his circumstances, which were as ludicrously penurious as Brauwer’s. At Berne and Basle, they still shew his Adieu and death of Adonis, and the Adultress in the Temple. Schafhausen possesses the Rape of the Sabines, the judgment of Paris, Scipio and the Celtiberian princess, the death of Cleopatra, and that of Cato; and at Geneva there are yet some subjects painted by him from the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Veyth’s style of design is an imitation of the forms of Michael Angelo, but not a compilation from his figures. His method of drawing is wild and great: seldom he makes use of the pen; dashes of white on stained paper mark the lights, the paper the middle tints, and a little black the shade. In composition he sometimes sacrificed the main subject to the episodic part, if it happened to invite by picturesque allurements. In~ colour, though he followed the Venetian principle, especially Bassan, he had a characteristic and varied tone drawn from the nature of the subjects.

, an Anglo-Norman poet, whose works are esteemed the most ancient monuments of French literature, was born in the isle of Jersey, in the early part of the twelfth century. Huet, bishop of Avranches, assures us that his Christian name was Robert, and this opinion has generally prevailed, although Ducange calls him Mathew. From the poet himself, nothing can be determined, for in none of his works does he once mention his Christian name, calling himself generally Maitre Wace, Clerc-lisant, or Clerc de Caen. Wace commenced his studies at Caen, a city which at that time had many celebrated schools, and afterwards travelled in France to complete his education, hut under what tutors, or in what places, does not appear. Whether however from being dissatisfied with his situation, or from the natural predilection of his countrymen in favour of the English government, it is certain that he returned to Caen, and there made his first essay.

It is difficult to ascertain the first specimen he exhibited of the literature of his time. We know that he had composed many works, that he translated others into the language of his country, and that he particularly applied himself to the composition of light poetry and romances, in which last he excelled. He assures us that he composed a great number of romances; and, as most of them have been preserved, it is natural to conclude that they were held in the same estimation by his contemporaries as they have been by posterity. But it is proper to remark in this place, that the word romance is not always to be understood as applicable to those chimerical tales which have no other basis than the imagination of the inventor. During the twelfth, thirteenth, and even the fourteenth centuries, every thing that was written in French or Romance, or that was translated into that language, was generally termed a romance. Philip de Than, the most ancient of the Norman poets, and William, another poet of the same country, composed in verse a work upon the natural history of animals, and each of them called his works a romance. Richard d'Annebaut, likewise a Norman poet, translated into verse the institutes of Justinian, which he says he has romanced. Samson de Nanteuil versified the proverbs of Solomon; Helie de Winchester, Cato’s distichs; and both of them call their translations a romance.

That work of Wace’s which his learned biographer places first, was composed in 1155. It is his translation in verse of the famous “Brut of England,” so called from Brutus the great grandson of Æneas, and first king of the Britons. It contains the history of the kings of Great Britain, almost from the destruction of Troy to the year 689 of the common sera. Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, had imported the original from Armoric Britain, Geoffroy of Monmouth translated it into Latin, and Wace into French verse. Several copies of this work are in the British Museum, one at Bene't college, Cambridge, and one, at least, a very superb one, in the royal library at Paris, supposed to be coeval with the author. The verses of this poem are always masculine of eight syllables, and feminine of nine; by which circumstance the error of attributing this work, as Fauchet has done, to a Huistace, or Wistace, is detected; for, by substituting Wace, as is found in the ancient ms. the verses acquire their necessary measure. Warton has fallen into this mistake by depending upon Fauchet; and the same error is repeated by several French writers. The learned Tyrwhitt was the first person who attempted to clear up a subject which from time to time became more involved in darkness, and to vindicate our author from the errors or injustice of modern writers. By means of sound criticism, the authority of the manuscripts in the British Museum, and the testimony of Layamon and Robert de Brunne, he proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that Wace was the author of the translation of the “Brut” into French verse. Lastly, Dr. Burney, in, his < c History of Music," by means of the rules of French poetry alone, demonstrated the want of fidelity in the manuscripts which had misled Fauchet and all other writers, who, as he had done, drew their materials from faulty and imperfect copies.

The second production of Wace is the history of the irruptions into England and the northern provinces of France, written in verses of eight syllables. His third work is the famous Roman du Rou, composed in 1160, in verses of twelve syllables. Raoul, or Rollo, is the hero of this poem. His fourth piece is the romance of William Longsword, the son of Rollo, written in verses of twelve syllables. It is to be found in the royal library at Paris, at the end of the Roman du Rou; and his fifth work, or the romance of Richard I. duke of Normandy, composed in the same measure, may be seen in the same repository. His sixth work contains, in 12,000 lines, the history of the Norman dukes, from the time of duke Richard I. to the sixth year of Henry I. and was composed after 1170. A copy is in the British Museum, Bib. Reg. iv. c. xi. His seventh performance is an abridged chronicle of the history of the dukes of Normandy, beginning with Henry II. and going upwards to Rollo.

Such a multitude of works from the pen of the same author engaged the attention of Henry II. who, to reward his merit, bestowed on him a canonry in the cathedral of Bayeux. Monsieur Lancelot, in his explanation of the tapestry of queen Matilda, preserved in the treasury of that cathedral, has contended that Wace borrowed several facts which he could not have found elsewhere from that valuable monument, but for this there seems very slight foundation. Dumoutier in his.“Nenstria pia” says that Wace was canon of Caen, but it is certain there was no chapter established in that city. That of St. Sepulchre, which still remains, was not founded till 1219. It is true, that in March 1152, Philip de Harcourt, bishop of Bayeux, founded three new canonries in his cathedral church, and to endow them, annexed the parish churches of Notre Dame, St. John, and St. Peter, belonging to the city of Caen; perhaps Wace being afterwards provided with one of these benefices, might have been called canon of Caen, because the chief place of his prebend was situated in that city; this conjecture acquires the greater probability on account of a practice still existing in Normandy of describing every canon by the name of the place appropriated to his canonry.

Huet, and almost every one of those who have spoken of our poet, have maintained that he had been clerk of the chapel to king Henry II. Wace, however, mentions nothing concerning this dignity, although he minutely describes all the favours which that monarch conferred upon him; he is even so attentive upon this subject, that he assures us the king gave him many things, but had promised him more. Besides, as the title of clerk of the King’s chapel was a very honourable one, which generally led the way to a bishopric, we may presume from his silence that he was not invested with it. Monsieur Huet has certainly been misled by the description of clerk, which Wace often assumes; but he should have remarked, that he never calls himself clerc du roi, but always clerc de Caen, or clerc lisant, a title which then signified nothing more than a learned man, and which was even given to laymen, since Henry I. was surnamed Beauclerc.

, an eminent Irish Roman catholic, and reckoned a great ornament to his country, was born at Waterford, Oct. 16, 1588. His first studies were begun at home under the tuition of his brother Matthew, who took him to Portugal in the fifteenth year of his age, and placed him in a seminary established for the Irish at Lisbon, where he applied to philosophy for six months under the direction of the Jesuits. In 1605, after having passed his noviciate, he was admitted among the Franciscans, and afterwards continued his studies at their convents at Liria, at Lisbon, and afterwards at Coimbra, in all which places he was admired for the diligence and success of his application. After being admitted into priest’s orders he removed to Salamanca, where he continued some time, and was made superintendant of the students, and lecturer in divinity, in both which offices he gave great satisfaction. In 1618, when Anthony a Trejo, vicar-general of the Franciscans, was advanced to the bishopric of Carthagena, in Spain, and appointed legate extraordinary to pope Paul V. upon one of those disputes which frequently agitated the Romish church, respecting the immaculate conception, the bishop, although he had the choice of many men of the Spanish nation, eminent for learning and talents in business, yet preferred Wadding to be chaplain of this embassy, although then but thirty years old, and a foreigner.

Accordingly, having introduced our divine at court, the bishop took him with him to Rome, where they were lodged in the palace of cardinal Gabriel a Trejo, the bishop’s brother, who employed Wadding in compiling or composing from the libraries and archives of Rome such arguments and proofs as related to the question before them; and he even visited Assisi, Perugia, Naples, and many other places fr the same purpose. Besides this, at the request of some who had perused what he had brought together with great satisfaction, he was induced to write a history of that legation, not indeed with a view to publication, but having intrusted the ms to some who were of opinion it ought not to be concealed, it was at last published by Maximilian de Bouchorne, at Louvaine, under the title “Legatio Philippi III. et IV. Hispaniae regum, ad sanctissimos D. D. Paulum V- et Gregorium XV. et Urbanum VIII. pro definienda controversia conceptions B. Mariae Virginia; per illustrissimum, &c. Anthonium a Trejo,” &c. Lonvain, 1624, folio.

But while this legation was going on, he removed from the cardinal’s palace, as enjoying there a course of life which he thought incompatible with his profession of Franciscan, and took up his residence at the Franciscan-convent of St. Peter, where he was honoured with the respect of many of the dignified ecclesiastics of Rome; and on the departure of the bishop to Spain, when the care of the legation was entrusted to the duke of Albuquerque, the Spanish ambassador at Rome, Wadding was appointed his assistant, and was, says his biographer, the life of the whole negotiation. He wrote three pamphlets on the subject of the immaculate conception, the titles of which we may be excused from giving. During the time he could spare from the business of this legation, he published an edition of some works of St. Francis, from Mss. in the public libraries, under the title of “Opusculorum St. Francisci Libri tres,” Antwerp, 1623. Before this time he performed what will probably be thought a more acceptable service to theological studies, in undertaking to print Calasio’s Concordance (see Calasio). Calasio died at Rome, wliile Wadding was there, leaving this large work in manuscript. Wadding, who saw its merits, regretted that it should be lost; and being unable of himself to defray the expence of printing, applied to pope Paul V. and to Benignus a Genua, the general of the Franciscans, by whose encouragement the whole was published at Rome in 1621, 4 vols, folio, under the inspection of Wadding, who prefixed to it a learned treatise “De Hebraic lingoos origine, praestaiitia et militate.” Pope Paul dying while the work was in the press, he dedicated it to his successor, Gregory XV. He published also, from original Mss. the works of some other Spanish divines, and wrote a life of Thomasius, patriarch of Constantinople, “Vita B. Petri Thomce Aquitani Carmelitse,” &c. Lyons, 1637, 8vo. But the most labourius effort of editorship was his rescuing from obscurity all the manuscript copies of Duns Scotus’s works, transcribing, collating, and correcting, and afterwards publishing the whole, in twelve folio volumes, at Lyons, in 1639.

In the mean time, his reputation had so much increased that in 1630, he was appointed procurator for the Franciscans at Rome, which he held until 1634. In 1645, he was appointed vice-commissary of his order, which it appears he resigned in 1648. He was also, in 1625, the founder of the college of St. Isidore, for the education of Irish students of the Franciscan order, of which he was the first guardian or head. The expenses of this college, the chapel, library, &c. were defrayed by contributions from the people of Rome, out of regard to the founder. He also persuaded cardinal Ludovisius to found a secular college there for six Irish students; and this, and some other institutions, suggested and promoted by him, he lived to see well endowed. His influence, from whatever cause, appears to have been very great; but the worst, and, as his biographers say, the only stain on his character, is the encouragement he gave to the Irish rebellion and massacre in 1641. He died Nov. 18, 1657, and was buried in the chapel of St. Isidore. Not long before his death he had refused the promotion to the rank of cardinal.

, esq. of Edge and Merrifield, in Somersetshire, in which county he was born, the founder of Waclham-college, Oxford, was a descendant of the ancient family of YVadhams of Devonshire; but the period of his birth is not known, nor have we many particulars of his personal history. According to Wood, he was a gentleman-commoner either of Christ-church, or CorpusChrist! college, where he is supposed to have been admitted about 1548. He inherited an estate which he increased to more than 3000l. a-year, and accumulated about 14,000^. in money. A large portion of this property he resolved to devote to some foundation of public utility. His first intention is said to have been to found a college at Venice for such Englishmen of the Roman catholic persuasion as might wish to enjoy their education and religion, now no longer tolerated in England. From this it may be inferred, that he was himself attached to popery; but his adherence could not be inflexible, as he was soon persuaded by his friend Mr. Grange to erect a college in Oxford, in imitation of the others, where the established religion was now cultivated with zeal. His, or rather his wife’s, appointing, that the warden should not be married, may be thought a part of the old persuasion; but it must be remembered, that the marriage of the clergy was one of the last changes of opinion to which the nation was completely reconciled. Queen Elizabeth was always against it; and it was prohibited by the statutes of Jesus-college. A more ridiculous reason has been traditionally assigned for Mrs. Dorothy Wadham’s injunction against marriage; she is said to have been refused by the first warden; but she was at this time seventy-five years old, and he considerably advanced, which renders this story highly improbable. As Mr. Wadham died before this design could be carried into execution, he bequeathed the management of it to his wife, the daughter of siv William Petre, secretary of state, who so often occurs as a benefactor to the university of Oxford. This lady, assisted by trustees, and with a zeal proportioned to her husband’s spirited design, completed the necessary purchases, buildings, and endowment. She survived her husdand nine years, died May 16, 1618, aged eighty-four, and was buried with her husband in the north transept of the church of Ilminster in Somersetshire, under a stately monument of alabaster, on which are their figures on brass plates; but the whole is considerably decayed.

This was once a place of great fame in the university, and may be traced to very high antiquity. In 1251, pope Innocent IV. granted a power to the friars eremites of St. Austin, to travel into any countries, build monasteries, and celebrate divine service. With this permission, they first established a house in London, but deputed some of their number to go to Oxford, where they hired an obscure bouse near the public schools. Acquiring some reputation for their skill in philosophy and divinity, or at least what were then so called, they attracted the attention of sir John Handlove, or Handlow, of Burstall in Buckinghamshire, a very opulent gentleman, who purchased for them a piece of ground, enlarged afterwards by a gift from Henry III. On this tney built a house and chapel in a sumptuous form, and held schools for divinity and philosophy of such reputation, that, before the divinity school was built, the university acts were kept, and the exercises in arts were performed in this place. It was in particular enjoined that every bachelor of arts should once in ea^h year dispute, and once answer, at this house, and this continued until the dissolution, when the disputations were removed to St. Mary’s, and afterwaids to the schools. Alter the dissolution, the premises were let, on a lease of twenty-one years, at 3l. yearly, to Thomas Carwarden, or Carclon, esq. who appears to have demolished the whole, and carried off the materials. In 1552, king Edward VI. sold the site to Henry duke of Suffolk, and Thomas Duport, gentleman, who almost immediately conveyed it to Henry Baylie, M. D. formerly a fellow of New college, for forty-five shillings yearly. In 1553, Baylie sold it to his father-in-law, Edward Freere, of Oxford, who left it to his son William, by whom, in 1587, it was again sold to the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty of Oxford lor the principal sum of 450l.

In 1609, Mrs. Wadham made proposals to the city for the purchase of this site, which, after many consultations, was agreed to, with this condition, that they might have the first nomination of one fellow, and two scholars of the new college. This being agreed to, the site was conveyed to Mrs. Wadham, May 29, 1610, for the sum of 600l. Of the old priory, nothing at this time remained except parts of the walls, which were immediately removed, and the foundation stone of the college laid July 31. On this occasion, the vice-chancellor, doctors, proctors, &c. came in procession from St. Mary’s church, and met the mayor and aldermen on the spot. Dr. Ryves, warden of New college, delivered an oration in praise of the founders, and the first stone was then laid on the east part where the chapel now stands.

The king’s licence, bearing date Dec. 20, 1611, empowered Mrs. Wadham to found a college for the studies of divinity, canon and civil law, physic, the arts and sciences, and classical languages; the society to consist of a warden, sixteen fellows, and thirty scholars, graduate or not graduate, or more or less, as the statutes might prescribe. The act of parliament for the confirmation of Wadham college was passed on the 16th of August, 1612. The statutes of the foundress, thus confirmed, specified the college to be for a warden, fifteen fellows, fifteen scholars, two chaplains, two clerks, with college servants. The warden was to be a native of Great Britain, master of arts at least, and be incapacitated from holding his situation, either if he married, or was promoted to a bishopric; but the condition respecting marriage was annulled by act of parliament, July 1806. The fellows, after completing eighteen years from the expiration of their regency, are to resign their fellowships. The scholars, from whom the fellows are to be chosen, are to be, three of the county of Somerset, three of Essex, and the rest of any other county in Great Britain.

, an eminent nonconformist, was born in St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1630, and educated in Christ’s college, Cambridge, where he was under the tuition of Dr. Owtram, a tutor of eminence. In 1652 he was appointed minister of Newington Butts, where he not only spent his time, but a great part of his fortune in works of piety and charity. He distributed Bibles among the poor, and constantly visited his parishioners, and instructed them from house to house. There was a singular circumstance, very creditable to him in this appointment to St. Mary’s Newington. Our readers perhaps need not be told that at this- time the elections to churches were popular; and it so happened that the parishioners were divided into two parties, each of which, unknown to the other, presented its petition at Westminster to the committee who determined church preferments; and when these petitions were opened, they were found to be both in favour of Mr. Wadsworth. He also lectured occasionally in various city churches, and at last was chosen to the living of St. Lawrence Pountney, whence he was ejected at the restoration. He afterwards preached privately at Newington, Theobalds, and Southwark. He received nothing Tor his labours, but was content to spend and be spent in his great master’s service. His diary, printed at the end of his life, contains the strongest proofs of his being an excellent Christian; and it is no less evident, says Granger, from his practical works, that he strove to make others as good Christians as himself. He died of the stone, the 29th of October, 1676, aged forty-six. His funeral sermon was preached by Mr. Bragge. He published various pious treatises, enumerated by Calamy, few of which have descended to our times.

, a Dutch historian, and historiographer to the city of Amsterdam, was born there in 1709, and died in 1773. His principal work is a “History of Holland,” from the earliest times to 1751, in 21 vols. 8vo, the first two of which appeared in 1749. There was a second edition published at Amsterdam in 1752—1759, with many engravings, maps, and portraits by Houbraken. It appears to have been the merit of this work which occasioned his being honoured with the title of historiographer to the city of Amsterdam in 1758. In it he is said to display profound research, sound political principles, and elegance and precision of style; and the Dutch esteem it one of the greatest ornaments to their literature. Wagenaar wrote many other works: 1. “The present state of the United Provinces,” Amst. 1739, 12 vols. 8vo. 2. “Description of the city of Amsterdam,” ibid. 1760, 3 vols. fol. 3. “The character of John de Witt placed in its true light.” He published also some tracts on topics of divinity.

, a very learned German, was the son of a reputable tradesman, and born at Nuremberg in 1633. He was sent early to a school at Stockholm; whence he was taken at thirteen, and placed in the university of Altorf. The distinction, to which he there raised himself by his abilities and learning, recommended him to some nobility as a proper tutor to their children; and, after continuing five years at Altorf, he was taken into the family of the count de Traun. He not only performed the office of an instructor to the sons of this nobleman, but accompanied them in their travels to France, Spain, England, Holland, several parts of Germany, and Italy. He contracted an acquaintance with the learned wherever he went, and received honours from several universities: those of Turin and Padua admitted him into their body. In France, he experienced the liberality of Lewis XIV. and was received doctor of law, at Orleans, in June 1665. Several places would have detained him, but the love of his native country prevailed; and, after travelling for six years, he arrived at Nuremberg in 1667. He was immediately made professor of law and history in the university of Altorf; but, about eight years after, changed his professorship of history for that of the Oriental tongues. In 1676, Adolphus John, count Palatine of the Rhine, committed two sons to his care, and at the same time honoured him with the title of counsellor. The princes of Germany held him in high esteem; and the emperor himself admitted him to private conferences, in 1691, when he was at Vienna about business. In 1697, the town of Nuremberg gave him marks of their esteem, by adding to his titles that of doctor of canon law, and by committing the university-library to his care. He was twice married; the first time in 1667, the second in 1701. He died in 1706, aged seventy-two.

, a learned nonjuring divine and able writer, was of a gentleman’s family in Warwickshire, and was born February 15, 1645. He was educated at the Charterhouse school under Mr. Wood. In Lent-­term 1660, he was admitted commoner of New-Inn at Oxford, where he took the degree of bachelor of arts October 15, 1664, and that of master June 20, 1G67. He was ordained deacon by Dr. John Hacket, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, June 6, 1669; and priest by Dr. Joseph Henshaw, bishop of Peterborough, November 19, 1669. He was instituted to the rectory of Martins-Thorpe in the county of Rutland, by Joseph, bishop of Peterborough, November 19, 1669. After that he lived in the family of sir Richard Temple at Stow, in the county of Bucks, and entered upon the curacy of that church April 12, 1676. In December 1684, he was presented by king Charles II. and instituted by William, archbishop of Canterbury, to the chancellorship of the cathedral church of Lichfield, together with the prebendary of Alderwas in the same church. In March 1684 he was presented by Henry, bishop of London, to the rectory of St. Margaret Pattens in London. Upon the revolution, being deprived of his preferments for not taking the new oaths, he practised physic for many years afterwards in the City of London with good success, and wore his gown all the while. In February 1693 he vvas consecrated bishop by Dr. William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich, Dr. Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, and Dr. Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, at the bishop of Peterborough’s lodgings, at the reverend Mr. Giffard’s house at Southgate, at which solemnity Henry earl of Clarendon was present Mr. Wagstaffe was consecrated suffragan of Ipswich, and Dr. Hickes at the same time suffragan of Thetford. Mr. Wagstaffe died October 17, 1712, in the sixty- seventh year of his age. He published few sermons, but wrote many pieces in defence of the constitution both in Church and State, with great strength of reason and perspicuity.

Among these are, 1. “A Letter to the author of the late Letter out of the country, occasioned by a former Letter to a member of the House of Commons, concerning the bishops lately in the Tower, and now under suspension.” 2. “An Answer to a late pamphlet entitled Obedience and Submission to the present Government demonstrated from bishop Overall’s Convocation Book: with a postscript in answer to Dr. Sherlock’s Case of Allegiance,” London, 1690. 3. “An Answer to Dr. Sherlock’s Vindication of the Case of allegiance due to sovereign powers, which he made in reply to an Answer to a late pamphlet entitled Obedience and Submission to the present government demonstrated from bishop Overall’s Convocation book, with a postscript in answer to Dr. Sherlock’s Case of Allegiance, &c,” London, 1692. 4. “An Answer to a Letter to Dr. Sherlock written in vindication of that part of Josephus’s History, wtiicb gives the account of Jaddas’s submission to Alexander, against the Answer to the piece entitled Obedience and Submission to the present Government,” Lond. 1692. 5. “A Letter out of Suffolk to a friend in London, giving some account of the late sickness and death of Dr. William Sancroft late lord archbishop of Canterbury,” London, 1694. 6. “A Letter out of Lancashire to a friend in London, giving some account of the tryals there. Together with some seasonable and proper remarks upon it; recommended to the wisdom of the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament,” London, 1694. 7. “A Letter to a gentleman elected a knight of the shire to serve in the present parliament,” London, 1694. 8. “Remarks on some late Sermons, and in particular on Dr. Sherlock’s sermon at the Temple December the 30th, 1694, in a letter to a friend. The second edition, with additions. Together with a letter to the author of a pamphlet entitled A Defence of the archbishop’s Sermon, &c. and several other Sermons, &c.” London, 1695. 9. “An account of the proceedings in the House of Commons, in relation to the recoining the clipped money, and falling the price of guineas. Together with a particular list of the names of the members consenting and dissenting; in answer to a Letter out of the country,” London, 1696. 10. “A Vindication of king Charles the Martyr; proving that his majesty was the author of ' Eixav BawiAjw, against a memorandum said to be written by the earl of Anglesey, and against the exceptions of Dr. Walker and others. To which is added a preface, wherein the bold and insolent assertions published in a passage of Mr.JBayle’s Dictionary relating to the present controversy are examined and confuted. The third edition, with large additions together with some original letters of king Charles the First, &c.” Lond. 1711, in 4to. The two former editions were in 8vo, the first printed in 1693, and the second in 1697. 11. “A Defence of the Vindication of king Charles the Martyr; justifying his majesty’s title to Efxcuv 'BacriMw, in answer to a late pamphlet entitled Amyntor,” London, 1699. Mr. Wagstaffe also wrote prefaces before, I. “Symmons’s Restitutus: containing two epistles, four whole sections or chapters, together with a postscript, and some marginal observations, &c. which were perfectly omitted in the first edition of Mr Symmons’s book, entitled” A Vindication of king Charles I. and republished by Dr Hollingworth,“London, 1693. 2.” The devout Christian’s Manual, by Mr. Jones,“London, 1703. 3.” A Treatise of God’s Government, and of the justice of his present dispensations in this world. By the pious, learned, and most eloquent Sulvian, a priest of Marseilles, who lived in the fifth century. Translated from the Latin by R. T. presbyter of the church of England,“London, 1700. These two pamphlets are also of Mr. Wagstaffe’s writing, 1.” The present state of Jacobitism in England,“ibid. 1700;” A second part in answer to the first“which was written by the bishop of Salisbury, &c. &c. Wagstaflfe derived most credit from his endeavours to prove the” Eikon Basilike“to be the genuine production of king Charles; but on this subject we must refer our readers to the life of bishop Gauden, and especially the authorities there quoted. Mr. Wagstaffe had a son who resided at Oxford in the early part of his life, but afterwards went abroad, and resided at Rome many years in the character of protestant chaplain to the chevalier St. George, and afterwards to his son. He was there esteemed a man of very extensive learning. Dr. Townson was acquainted with him at Rome, both on his first and second tour in 1743 and 1768. He lived in a court near a carpenter’s shop, and upon Dr. Townson’s inquiring for him, the carpenter knew of no such person.” He did live somewhere in this yard some years ago.“” I have lived here these thirty years, and no person of such a name has lived here in that time.“But on farther explanation, the carpenter exclaimed,” Oh, you mean // Predicatore; he lives there,“pointing to the place. This Mr. Wagstaffe died at Rome, Dec. 3, 1770, aged seventy-eight. Mr. Nichols has preserved some jeux d‘esprits, and some epitaphs written by him, and there is a letter of his to Tom Hearne, in the ’.' Letters written by Eminent Persons,” lately published at Oxford, 1813, 3 vols. 8vo.

, a physician, whose writings, as well as his indolent habits of life, seem to have very strongly resembled those of the facetious Dr. William King of the Commons, was related to the preceding Wagstaffes, and descended from a very ancient family, who were lords of the manor of Knightcote in Warwickshire. He was born in 1685, and being the only son of his father the rector of Cublington in Buckinghamshire, he was educated with great care, and sent early to school at Northampton. In his sixteenth year he was removed to Lincoln college, Oxford, where he was soon distinguished, not only for talents and learning, but for a facetious humour which made his conversation very acceptable to persons of superior rank and standing in the university. After taking his degree of B. A. in 1703, he had some, thoughts of entering into the church, from no better motive, however, than the hopes of being preferred by a relation; but after taking his degree of A. M. in 1707, he left the university, and coming up to London, visited another relation, the rev. Thomas Wagstaffe, who then was a physician; and marrying this gentleman’s daughter some time afterwards, resolved on medicine as a profession, in which his wife’s relations did their utmost to assist him. After her death, he formed a second eligible union with the daughter of Charles Bernard, esq. sergeant-surgeon to queen Anne. Not long after this marriage, he completed his degrees in physic, in 1714, and returning to town was admitted fellow both of the college of physicians, and in 1717 of the Royal Society. Business gradually increasing, he was chosen one of the physicians of St. Bartholomew’s hospital, which trust he discharged with great reputation, as to skill and humanity. He appears, however, to have been a man of indolence, and of some irregular habits, which brought on lowness of spirits, and decay of health. In hopes of recovery he went to Bath in March 1724-5, but died there May 5, in the fortieth year of his age. His works were the same year collected under the title of “The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. William Wagstaffe, physician to St. Bartholomew’s hospital,” &c. 8vo. Their contents are characteristic of the author’s peculiar humour, and his opinions of his contemporaries. 1. “A comment upon the History of Tom Thumb,” in ridicule of Addison’s papers on “Chevy Chase.” 2. “Crispin the Cobler’s confutation of Ben H(oadly), in an. epistle 10 him.” 3. “The Story of the St. A(lba)n’s ghost,” &c. 4. “The testimonies of the citizens of Fickleborough, concerning the life and character of Robert Huish, commonly called Bob, &c.” 5. “The representation of the loyal subjects of Albinia.” 6. “The character of Richard St(ee)le, esq.:” not a very just one. 7. “The state and condition of our Taxes considered.” 8. “The Plain Dealer,” 16 numbers. 9. “Preface to the complete history of the treaty of Utrecht.” 10. “A Letter from the facetious Dr. Andrew Tripe, at Bath, to his loving brother the profound Greshamite, &c.” Most of these tracts were written in his early years, and without his name. He was also the author of two scarce little volumes, called “Annotations on the Tatler,” frequently quoted in the variorum editions of that periodical paper.

, a learned politician, was the son of Arthur Wake, rector of Billing, in Northamptonshire, master of the hospital of St. John at Northampton, and canon of Christ Church; and was born, it is supposed, at Billing, about 1575. He became a member of the university of Oxford in 1593, and in 1598 was elected probationer-fellow of Merton college. In 1604 he was chosen public orator, and in that capacity had frequent opportunities, sometimes before the king and court at their visits to the university, of delivering speeches in a pure and eloquent style. In 1609 he travelled in France and Italy, and after his return was made private secretary to sir Dudley Carleton, one of the chief secretaries of state, and discovering, in this situation, talents which might qualify him for diplomatic commissions, his majesty (James I.) employed him as ambassador to Venice, Savoy, and other courts. Previous to his setting out for Savoy in 1619, he received the order of knighthood. In 1625 he sat as member of parliament for the university of Oxford, and his speeches added considerably to his reputation. His accomplishments likewise, both as a scholar and a gentleman, were greatly admired. He died in 1632, while at Paris, in the service of Charles I. and his body being brought to England, was interred in the chapel at Dover castle. His funeral, which was very magnificent, was expressly at the charge of the king, who had intended him for the place of secretary of state had he lived.

His most celebrated work was his “Rex Platonicus, sive de potentiss. principis Jacobi regis ad Acad. Oxon. adventu, anno 1605,” Oxon. 1607, 4to, of which courtly publication there were at least six editions. There is a passage in this work from which Shakspeare is conjectured to have derived the plot of his “Macbeth.” Sir Isaac’s other works are, 1. “Oratio funebris habita in Templo B. Mariae Oxon. quum mo2sti Oxonienses, piis manibus Johannis Rainoldi parentarent,” Oxon. 1608, 12mo, translated by Fuller in his “Abel Redivivus.” 2. Another on sir Thomas Bodley, priated by Bates in his “Vitse selectorum aliquot virorum,” &c. 3. “Discourse of the Thirteen Cantons of the Helvetical league,” Lond. 1655, 8vo, with two others on Italy and Sweden, under the general title of a “Threefold help to political observations.” He left some Mss. and there are several of his letters in the “Cabala,” and in the Harleian collection.

, an eminent English prelate, descended from an ancient family, was born in 1657, at Blandford, in Dorsetshire, where his father, of the same names, was a gentleman of considerable property. He was probably educated at first at home, whence his father carried him to Oxford, with a view to place him in Trinity college, but an accidental interview with Dr. Fell, dean of Christ Church, determined him in favour of that college, of which he was accordingly admitted a student in 1672. Having taken his degree of A. B. in 1676, and that of A. M. in 1679, he fixed his choice on divinity as a profession, rather against the intention of his father, who wished to provide for him in the clothing business. He then entered into holy orders, and in 1682 accompanied, in quality of chaplain, lord viscount Preston, also of Christ Church, who was appointed envoy extraordinary to the court of France.

While in France he is said to have made a considerable figure in the learned world, and was applied to by Dr., now bishop Fell, to procure the collation of some valuable Greek Mss. of the New Testament at Paris, for the use of Dr. Mill, whose edition Dr. Fell patronised. In the beginning of the reign of James II. he returned home with lord Preston, and was soon after chosen preacher to the honourable society of Gray’s Inn. This, it would appear, was against the wish of the king, who, on the death of his predecessor, Dr. Claget, sent a message to the society, desiring them not to proceed to an election until they heard from him, but they returned an answer that they bad already chosen Dr. Wake. During his residence in France an incident occurred which occasioned his first appearance as an author, and his being known as an able writer both at home and abroad. Bossuet, the bishop of Meaux (See Bossuet) had now published his very artful “Exposition of the Roman Catholic Faith,” a copy of which came into the hands of Mr. Wake, who, in the preface to his Answer, gives a very curious account of the different alterations the work had undergone, in order to answer the real purposes for which it was written. He observes, that “the first design of monsieur de Meaux’s book was either to satisfy or to seduce the late mareschal de Turenne. How far it contributed thereunto I am not able to say, but am willing to believe that the change that honourable person made of his religion was upon somewhat better grounds than the bare Exposition of a few articles of the Roman faith; and that the author supplied either in his personal conferences with him, or by some other papers to us unknown, what was wanting to the first draught, which we have seen of this. The manuscript copy which then appeared, and for about four years together passed up and down in private hands with great applause, wanted all those chapters of the Eucharist, Tradition, the Authority of the Church and Pope, which now make up the most considerable part of it; and in the other points which it handled, seemed so loosely and favourably to propose the opinions of the church of Rome, that not only many undesigning persons of that communion were offended at it, but the protestants, who saw it, generally believed that monsieur de Meaux durst not publicly own what in his Exposition he privately pretended to be their doctrine. And the event shewed that they were not altogether mistaken. For in the beginning of 1671 the Exposition being with great care, and after the consideration of many years, reduced into the form in which we now see it, and to secure all, fortified with the approbation of the archbishop of Rheims, and nine otheV bishops, who profess that ‘ having examined it with all the care which the importance of the matter required, they found it conformable to the doctrine of the church, and as such recommended it to the people which God had committed to their conduct,’ it was sent to the press. The impression being finished and just ready to come abroad, the author, who desired to appear with all advantage to himself and his cause that was possible, sent it to some of the doctors of the Sorbonne for their approbation to he joined to that of the bishops, that so no authority, ordinary or extraordinary, might be wanting to assert the* doctrine contained in it to be so far from the suspicion the Protestants had conceived of it, that it was truly and without disguise Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman. But, to the great surprise of monsieur de Meaux, and those who had so much cried up his treatise before, the doctors of the Sorbonne, to whom it was communicated, instead of the approbation that was expected, confirmed what the Protestants had said of it; and, as became their faculty, marked several of the most considerable parts of it, wherein the Exposition by the too great desire of palliating had absolutely perverted the doctrine of their church. To prevent the open scandal, which such a censure might have caused, with great industry and all the secrecy possible the whole edition was suppressed, and the several places, which the doctors had marked, changed; and the copy so speedily sent back to the press again, that in the end of the same year another much altered was publicly exposed, as the first impression that had at all been made of it. Yet this could not be so privately carried on, but that it soon came to a public knowledge; insomuch that one of the first answers that was made to it, charged monsieur de Meaux with this change. I do not hear, that he has ever yet thought fit to deny the relation, either in the advertisement prefixed to the later editions of his book, wherein yet he replies to some other passages of the same treatise, or in any other vindication: whether it be that such an imputation was not considerable enough to be taken notice of, or that it was too true to be denied, let the reader judge. But certainly it appears to us not only to give a clear account of the design and genius of the whole book, but to be a plain demonstration, how improbable soever monsieur de Meaux would represent it, * that it is not impossible for a bishop of the Church of Rome, either not to be sufficiently instructed in his religion to know what is the doctrine of it; or not sufficiently sincere, as without disguise to represent it.' And since a copy of that very book so marked, as has been said, by the doctors of the Sorbonne, is fallen into my hands, I shall gratify the reader’s curiosity with a particular view of the changes that have been made, that so he may judge whether of the two was the cause of those great advances which the author in that first edition had thought fit to make towards us.” Such was part of the preface to Mr. Wake’s “Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England,” 1686, 4to, which he was induced to undertake, by having observed that the French catholics with whom he had conversed, had, from ignorance, or the misrepresentations of their instructors, entertained very false notions of the points in controversy between the Churches of Rome and England.

This tract, which is generally called Wake’s “Catechism,” was answered in “A Vindication of the bishop of Condom’s Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church, in answer to a book entitled, An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, &c. With a Letter from the said bishop,” 1686, 4to. To this our author replied in a book entitled, “A Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England against the exceptions of Monsieur de Meaux, late bishop of Condom, and his Vindicator,” London, 1686, 4to. This occasioned, “A Reply to the Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England; being a farther Vindication of the Bishop of Condom’s Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church. With a second Letter from the Bishop of Meaux,” 1687, 4to. In answer to which Mr. Wake published “A second Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, against the new Exceptions of Monsieur de Meaux and his Vindicator. Part I. in which the Account, which hath been given of the Bishop of Meaux’s Exposition, is fully vindicated; the distinction of old and new Popery historically asserted; and the doctrine of the Church of Rome in point of image-worship more particularly considered. Part II. in which the Romish doctrines concerning the nature and object of religious worship, of the Invocation of Saints, and worship of images are considered, and the charge of Idolatry made good against those of the Church of Rome upon the account of them,” Loudon, 1638, 4to. While the second part of this treatise was writing, there was published “A full Answer to the second Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England. In a Letter to the Defender.”

Mr. Wake afterwards wrote several tracts in the controversy against popery, which was carried on with great zeal during the latter part of tbie reign of James II. Among these we may mention, 1. “A Discourse of the Holy Eucharist, in the two gretu points of the Real Presence and the Adoration of the Host,” 1687, 4to. 2. “A Discourse concerning the nature of Idolatry, in which a late author’s true and only notion of Idolatry is considered and confuted,” 1688, 4to. This was written against the “Reasons for abrogating the Test,” by Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford. 3. “Sure and honest means for the conversion of all Heretics,” &c. 1688, 4to. This is a translation from the French, with a preface by our author. 4. “An historical treatise of Transubstantiation, wherein is made appear, that, according to the principles of that Church, this doctrine cannot be an article of Faith,” 1687, 4to. This was written by a member of the Church of Rome, and published by our author. 5. “Two Discourses of Purgatory and Prayer for the Dead,” 1688, 4to. 6. “A Continuation of the present State of the Controversy between the Church of England and the Church of Rome; being a full account of the books published on both sides,” 1688, 4to.

In Oct. 1688, he married Miss Ethelred Hovel, daughter and coheiress of sir William Hovel, of Illington, in the county of Norfolk, knight. As he was a favourer of the revolution, he was, after that event, appointed deputy clerk of the closet to king William. In July 168.9, according to Wood, he accumulated his degrees in divinity at Oxford, but another account says that he was created D. D. having been the preceding month preferred to a canonry of Christ-church, in the room of Dr. Aldrich, appointed dean. With a view to contribute to a defence of the doctrine and government of the church of England, against the adversaries of its hierarchy, be published in 1693, “An English Version of the genuine Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers, with a preliminary discourse concerning the use of those Fathers.” Of this excellent volume he published a new edition in 1710, with so many improvements, as almost to make it a new work, and a fourth edition appears about the time of his death, in 1737. The reasons why he lays great stress on the authority of these fathers are; “that they were contemporary with the apostles, and instructed by them that they were men of an eminent character in the church, and therefore could not be ignorant of what was taught in it; that they were careful to preserve the doctrine of Christ in its purity, and to oppose such as went about to corrupt it: that they were men not only of a perfect piety, but of great courage and constancy, and therefore such as cannot be suspected to have had any design to prevaricate in this matter; that they were endued with a large portion of the Holy Spirit, and as such could hardly err in what they delivered as the gospel of Christ; and that their writings were approved by the church in these days, which could not be mistaken in its approbation of them.” In July of the same year, he was preferred to the rectory of St. James’s Westminster.

He took a very active part in that memorable controversy with regard to the Convocation, which we shall only notice so far as he was concerned, something having been already said upon it under the article of Atterbury. In 16i>7, there was published an anonymous pamphlet, entitled, “A Letter to a Convocation man, concerning the Rights, Powers, and Privileges, of that Body:” to which an answer was published the same year, by Dr. Wake, under this title, “The Authority of Christian Princes over their ecclesiastical Synods asserted, with particular respect to the Convocations of the Clergy of the realm and Church of England,” 8vo: and, this being attacked, the doctor vindicated himself in “An appeal to all the true members of the church of England, in behalf of the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy, as by law established; by our convocations approved; and by our most eminent bishops and clergymen stated and defended, against both the popish and fanatical opposers of it, 1698,” 8vo. In 1700, the celebrated Atterbury entered into this dispute with great vigour and resolution, and published an answer to Dr. Wake’s book, entitled, “The Rights, Powers, and Privileges, of an English Convocation, stated and defended,” 8vo: reprinted in 1701, with additions. The controversy novr grew warm, and several writers of considerable note engaged in it. Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, and Kennet, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, wrote animadversions upon Atterbury’s work; and Kennet’s piece against it was a particular reply to it, written under the countenance of archbishop Tenison. Hody, Gibson, Hooper, were concerned in it: Hooper was on the side of Atterhury; Hody and Gibson against him. But the most considerable and decisive answer to Atterbury was Dr. Wake’s large work, entitled, “The State of the Church and Clergy of England, in their Councils, Synods, Convocations, Conventions, and other public assemblies, historically deduced from the conversion of the Saxons to the present times, 1703,” in folio. This work was esteemed not only a full and sufficient answer to Atterbury, but decisive with regard to the controversy in general.

In 1701, two years before the publication of the lastmentioned work, he was installed dean of Exeter, whence in 1705, he was promoted to the bishopric of Lincoln. In the House of Peers he first distinguished himself by a long and learned speech in favour of a comprehension with the dissenters, a measure which other well-meaning divines of the church had fondly adopted; and expressed himself with equal zeal against the intemperate writings of Sacheverell. In Jan. 1715-16, on the death of archbishop Tenison, he was translated to the metropolitan see, and as he had lived to see the folly of giving way to the enemies of the hierarchy by way of reconciling them to it, he both voted and spoke in the House of Lords against the repeal of the schism and conformity bill in 1718. Among other things, he remarked, that “the acts, which by this bill were to be repealed, were the main bulwark and supporters of the established church; that he had all imaginable tenderness for all the well-meaning conscientious dissenters; but he could not forbear saying, that some amongst them made a wrong use of the favour and indulgence that was shewn them upon the revolution, though they had the least share in that event.” From the same experience he was led to oppose the design entered into by some very powerful persons, the year following, to repeal the corporation and test acts. It was well known that Hoadly was at the bottom of this design, and that his famous sermon on “The nature of Christ’s kingdom” was a preparatory step. The archbishop therefore thought it proper to declare his dislike of the measure, as Hoadly had proposed it, in an indirect way, and wrote a Latin letter addressed to the superintendant of Zurich, which was published there under the title of “Oratio historica de beneficiis in ecclesiam Tigurinum collatis.” In this he took occasion to remark, that “The church of England, broken in pieces with divisions, and rent with schisms, is distracted with so many and such various sorts of separatists from her communion, that they want proper names to distinguish themselves from one another, and to describe themselves to other men. And I wish this was our greatest matter of complaint. But that which the spirit of God foretold should come to pass, must be fulfilled,” Even among ourselves men have arisen, speaking perverse things,“But why do I say men? Even pastors and bishops themselves pull down with their own hands the church, in which they minister, and to whose doctrine they have more than once subscribed. They, to whom the preservation of the church is committed, and whose duty it is to watch against her enemies, and to reprove, restrain, and punish them according to their demerits; even these endeavour to overthrow the authority of that church, for which they ought not only to contend, but upon occasion even to lay down their lives. What the pleas and tenets of these innovators are, you may in some measure know from two pamphlets lately written in the French tongue. Let it here suffice to s.ay in a word, that these men are highly displeased with all confessions of faith, and with all subscriptions to articles; and would have a liberty, or rather a license granted for all men, not only to believe^ but to speak, write, and preach, whatsoever they think fit, though the grace of the holy spirit, the divinity of Christ, and all other fundamental articles of our religion should thereby be overturned. What Christian is not amazed, that those things should be said of any men that bear but the name of Christians? Who can but lament, that those grievous wolves are not only not driven away from the sheepfold, but received even within the walls of the church, and admitted to her honours, offices, and government? But so it is, that while we regard only the things of this world, we wholly forget those that concern another. And because by the toleration and advancement of such men, some (who have nothing more at heart than to keep themselves in their places and power) hope to ingratiate themselves with the populace, they are not at all solicitous what becomes of the church, of the faith, of religion, or in short of Jesus Christ himself and his truth. Pardon me, most worthy sir, that giving way to a just grief, I express rny resentment against these enemies of our religion more sharply than my manner is. 1 should think myself guilty of betraying the faith, if I did not, whenever occasion serves, anathematize these heretics.”

In the same spirit archbishop Wake joined the earl of Nottingham in bringing a bill into parliament in 1721, levelled at the Arian heresy, and entitled “A Bill for the more effectual suppression of blasphemy and profaneness,” which, however, was rejected in the House of Lords, and brought on the archbishop the charge of inconsistency, because in the cases of Whiston and Clarke, in 1711 and 1712, he had spoken with moderation of their Arianism. Whiston wrote a very angry letter to the archbishop on this occasion, which is printed in his life, but to which the archbishop thought, and probably most of those who read it will think, no answer necessary.

That for which archbishop Wake appears to have been most blamed, was the share he had in a scheme of union between the English and Gallican churches; but in this, as in other parts of his conduct, the blame seems to have arisen principally from misrepresentation, at the same time that we are willing to allow that the scheme itself was a weak one, and never likely to produce any good. The outline of the affair, which is related more at large in the Appendix to the last edition of Mosheim’s History, No IV. is this. In 1717 some mutual civilities had passed between the archbishop and the celebrated ecclesiastical historian Dupin, as men of letters, by means of the rev. Mr. Beauvoir, then chaplain to lord Stair, the English ambassador at Paris. In the course of these civilities, Dupin wrote to the archbishop a Latin letter in Jan. 1718, in which, having congratulated the church of England on the enjoyment of so eminent a prelate for its metropolitan, he took occasion to express his desire for an union between the two churches of England and France, and wished to enter into a correspodence with his grace with that view. The archbishop, in return, after thanking him for his compliment, observed, that it was full time both for himself (Dupin) and the rest of his brethren of the Sorbonne, to declare openly their true sentiments of the superstition and ambition of the court of Rome; that it was the interest of all Christians to unmask that court, and thereby reduce it to those primitive limits and honours which it enjoyed in the first ages of the church. In some farther correspondence, the archbishop explained the belief, tenets, and doctrine of the chuch of England, the manner of its beginning to reform and shake off all foreign power and superstition both in church and state, and its acknowledgment that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only founder, source, and head of the church. In all his letters both to Dupin and others, he insisted constantly on this article, and always maintained the justice and orthodoxy of every individual article of the church of England, without making the least concession towards any approbation of the ambitious pretensions of the church of Rome. Some of the doctors of the Sorbonne readily concurred in this scheme, and Dupin drew up an essay towards an union, which was to be submitted for approbation to the cardinal de Noailles, and then to be transmitted to his grace. This essay, which was called a “Commonitorium,” was read by, and had the approbation of the Sorbonne, and in it was ceded the administration of the sacrament in both kinds, the performing of divine service in the vulgar tongue, and the marriage of the protestant clergy; and the invocation of saints was given up as unnecessary. The project engrossed the whole conversation of the city of Paris, and the Engiish ambassador was congratulated upon it by some great personages at court. The regent duke of Orleans himself, and the abbe Du Bois, minister of foreign affairs, and De Fleury, the attorney general, at iirst seemed to acquiesce, or at least not to interfere; but, after all, no considerate person could expect much from the scheme, which was entirely prevented by the Jesuits, who sounded the alarm, and represented the cardinal de Noailles and his friends the Jansenists as about to make a coalition with the heretics.

The court being now sufficiently roused, Piers de Gerardin, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and one of the archbishop’s correspondents, was sent for, and ordered to give up all the letters he had received from the archbishop of Canterbury, and a copy of all his own. Having complied, these letters were immediately sent to Rome, where it is said pope Clement XI. so admired those of our archbishop, that he declared it was a pity the author of such profound letters was not a member of their church.

The author of No. IV. of Mosheim’s Appendix deduces from the whole of this transaction, and particularly from the entire correspondence given in that Appendix, that Wake was invited to this correspondence by Dupin, the most moderate of all the Roman jcatholic divines; that he entered into it with a view to improve one of the most favourable opportunities that could be offered, of withdrawing the church of France from the jurisdiction of the pope; a circumstance which must have immediately weakened the power of the court of Rome, and, in its consequences, offered a fair prospect of a farther reformation in doctrine and worship, as the case happened in the church of England, when it happily threw off the papal yoke; that he did not give any of the doctors of the Sorbonne the smallest reason to hope that the church of England wpuld give up any one point of belief or practice to the church of France; but insisted, on the contrary, that the latter should make alterations and concessions, in order to be reconciled to the former; that he never specified the particular alterations which would be requisite to satisfy the rulers and doctors of the church of England; but only expressed a general desire of an union between the two churches, if that were possible, or at least of a mutual toleration: that he never flattered himself that this union could be perfectly accomplished, or that the doctors of the Gallican church, would be entirely brought over to the church of England; but thought that every advance made by them, and every concession, must have proved really advantageous to the. protestant cause.

Thus much it has been thought necessary to advance, in vindication of the character of Dr. Wake, which, after long enjoying the good opinion of mankind, was at last, with equal fury and falsehood, attacked by the author of the “Confessional,” who does not scruple to say, speaking of the archbishop, that “this pretended champion of the Protestant religion had set on foot a project for union with a Popish church, and that with concessions in favour of the grossest superstition and idolatry.” Nothing could be farther from Wake’s purpose, and nothing more at variance with the whole tenour of his public life or private sentiments; and, in truth, the whole of the above correspondence with the popish doctors was a matter of private sentiment, and neither party appears to have been authorized by, or to have consulted the church to which they respectively belonged. Had that been done, it is not quite clear that the plan, even as far as it has been divulged, would have been more acceptable in England than in France. The best part of it, the best object at which it aimed, was the separation of the church of France from the jurisdiction of the pope.

Wake was of a pacific spirit: this appears in all his correspondence; and his correspondence appears to have extended to the leading men of every ecclesiastical community in Europe. He shewed a great regard to the foreign protestant churches, notwithstanding the difference of their discipline and government from that of the church of England; and blames those who would not allow their religious assemblies the denomination of churches, and who deny the validity of their sacraments. He declared, on the contrary, those churches to be true Christian churches, and expresses a warm desire of their union with the church of England. We must particularly notice his correspondence in 1719 with Mr. Jablonski of Poland, be-' cause it has a direct reference to that part of his character which the author of the “Confessional” has so unwarrantably misrepresented. Jablonski, from a persuasion of Dr. Wake’s great wisdom, discernment, and moderation, had consulted him as to a proposed union between the Lutherans and the church of Rome. In his answer, the archbishop gives the strongest cautions to the Polish Lutherans against entering into any treaty of union with the Roman catholics, except on a footing of perfect equality, and in consequence of a previous renunciation, on the part of the latter, of the tyranny, and even of the superiority and jurisdiction of the church of Rome and its pontiff; and as to what concerns points of doctrine, he exhorts them not to sacrifice truth to temporal advantages, or even to a desire of peace.

Of archbishop Wake’s kindness to father Courayer we have taken some notice in our account of that divine. His grace towards the end of his life became so much disabled by age and infirmities, that some part of the care of the church was transferred to Dr. Gibson, bishop of London. The archbishop lingered on in a very enfeebled state for a considerable time, and at length expired at Larnbeth palace, Jan. 24, 1737, and was interred in a private manner at Croydon. He was in the seventy-ninth year of his age, but the inscription on his tomb erroneously fixes his death in 1733.

Archbishop Wake was a man of a pacific, gentle, and benevolent spirit, and an enemy to feuds, animosities, and party-prejudices, which divide the professors of religion, and by which Christianity is exposed to the assaults of its virulent enemies, and wounded in the house of its pretended friends. Dr. Richardson says justly of him, that his accurate and superior knowledge of the Romish hierarchy, and of the constitution of the church of England, furnished him with victorious arms, both for the subversion of error, and the defence of truth. He was a man of great liberality, and munificent in his charities and expences. Of the latter Exeter, Bugden, Lambeth, and Croydon can bear testimony. He is said to have expended about 11,000l. in the repairs of the two palaces of Lambeth and Croydon. He bequeathed his excellent and copious library of printed books and Mss. with his coins, the whole valued at 10,000l. to Christ Church, Oxford. His lady died in 1731; by her he had six daughters, who all survived him, and were married into families of note.

Besides the works already mentioned, Dr. Wake published “A preparation for death, being a letter to a young gentlewoman in France,” the fourth edition of which was published in 1688; and three volumes of his “Sermons and Charges” have since appeared.

, a distinguished classical scholar and critic, was born at Nottingham, Feb. 22, 1756, in the parsonage-house of St. Nicholas, of which church his father, the rev. George Wakefield, was then rector. An uncommon solidity and seriousness of disposition marked him from infancy, together with a power of application, and thirst after knowledge, which accelerated his progress in juvenile studies. At the age of seven he went to the free school in Nottingham, where the usher, Mr. Beardmore (afterwards master of the Charter-house), threatened upon one occasion to flog him, which Mr. Wakefield speaks of with great indignation. At the age of nine, he exchanged this school for that of Wilford near Nottingham, then under the direction of the rev. Isaac Pickthall, and afterwards was placed under the tuition of his father’s curate at Richmond, whom he characterises with great contempt. At the age of thirteen he was placed under the rev. Richard Woodeson, at Kingston-upon-Thames, to which parish his father was then removed; but we are told he was used to lament that he had not possessed the advantages of an uniform education at one of those public schools which lay a solid foundation for classical erudition in its most exact form. About the age of sixteen he was admitted of Jesus college, Cambridge. Here he resumed his classical studies, but the lectures on algebra and logic were, he tells us, “odious to him beyond conception;” and he is perhaps not far wrong in thinking that “logic and metaphysics are by no means calculated for early years.” Few incidents occurred during the first two years of his residence at college. He pursued his mathematical and philosophical studies with a stated mixture of classical reading, through the whole of this interval, except when interrupted by fastidiousness, which he thus describes: “A strange fastidiousness, for which I could never account, and which has been a great hindrance to my improvement through my whole life, took a bewildering possession of my faculties. This impediment commonly recurred in the spring of the year, when I was so enamoured of rambling in the open air, through solitary fields, or by a river’s side, of cricket and of fishing, that no self-expostulations, no prospect of future vexation, nor even emulation itself, could chain me to my books. Sometimes, for a month together, and even a longer period, have I been disabled from reading a single page, though tormented all the time with the reflection, without extreme restlessness and impatience.”

In the third year of his residence at college he was a candidate for one, or all, of Dr. Browne’s medals. His Latin ode was allowed to possess merit, but was unsuccessful, from partiality, as he insinuates; but he allowed that his Greek and his epigrams were deservedly rejected. In his life he introduces the Latin ode with “variations,” which, although he calls them “trivial,” give a suspicious alteration of character to the production. In 1776 he took his degree, and had the honour of nomination to the second post. About the same time he gained the second of the duke of Newcastle’s classical medals. Dr. Forster gained the first; Mr. Wakefield allows him superior merit, buf still endeavours to insinuate partiality in the allotment of the prizes.

In 1776 he was elected fellow, and continued the prosecution of his classical and theological studies through that and the following year. The first of his publications appeared in 1776, a small collection of Latin poems, with a few notes on Horace. In 1777 he gained the second of the bachelor’s prizes, a gold medal given by the chancellor. On the 22d of March, 1778, he was ordained a deacon by the bishop of Peterborough, and takes occasion from this event to declare that “he was so little satisfied with the requisition of subscription, and the subjects of that subscription themselves, that he afterwards regarded this acquiescence as the most disingenuous action of his whole life.” He then accepted a curacy at Stockport in Cheshire, whence he afterwards removed to a similar situation at Liverpool. Here he complains that the clergy, both conformist and nonconformist, paid little attention to him, and at the same time his dissatisfaction with the doctrine and worship of the church continued to increase. His dislike of the church was indeed now becoming inveterate, and devoid of all candour. Among his anecdotes when at Liverpool, he gives one of a church clergyman, who purloined the sacrament money; this clergyman had once been a dissenter, and Mr. Wakefield imputes his committing this crime to his having left the dissenters and conformed to the church.

In 1779 he vacated his fellowship by marrying Miss Watson, niece of the rector of Stockport. This was soon followed by an invitation to undertake the post of classical tutor at the dissenting academy at Warrington, with which he complied; and he was regarded as a very valuable acquisition to this institution. He was exemplary in the discharge of his duty, and equally gained the attachment of his pupils, and the friendship and esteem of his colleagues; but the academy was at this time on the decline, and Mr. Wakefield, though accused of precipitating its downfall, has assigned sufficient reasons for that event without his agency. While here, he began his career as a theological controversialist, with an acrimony of style which was lamented by his friends, and which laid him open to the reproach of his enemies, or it would be more proper to say, created those enemies. Among his tracts now published were, “A plain and short account of the nature of Baptism according to the New Testament, with a cursory remark on Confirmation and the Lord’s Supper;” “An Essay on Inspiration;” and “A new translation of the first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Thessalon'tans.” This was followed in the next year by “A new translation of St. Matthew, with notes, critical, philological, and explanatory,” 4to; a work which displayed the extent of his reading, and the facility with which his memory called up its reposited stores for the purpose of illustration or parallelism. At this time he likewise augmented his fund for“Scripture interpretation by the acquisition of various oriental dialects. After quitting Warrington, at the dissolution of the academy, he took up his residence successively at Bramcote in Nottinghamshire, at Richmond in Surrey, and at Nottingham, upon the plan of taking a few pupils, and pursuing at his leisure those studies to which he became continually more attached. While in the first of these situations, he published the first volume of” An enquiry into the opinions of the Christian writers of the three first centuries concerning the person of Jesus Christ, 1 * which did not meet with encouragement sufficient to induce him to proceed in the design. A painful disorder in his left shoulder, with which he was attacked in 1786, and which harassed him for two years, interrupted the course of his employments; and he did no more during that period, than to draw up some remarks upon the Georgics of Virgil and the poems of Gray, which he published with editions of those respective works. As his health relumed, his theological pursuits were resumed, and he again engaged in the field of controversy. He also, in 1789, made a commenceaient of a work, which was to exhibit “Au union of theological and classical learning, illustrating the Scriptures by light borrowed from the philology of Greece and Rome.” Under the title of “Silva Critica,” three parts of this performance issued from the university press of Cambridge.

The formation of a dissenting college at Hackney, which, it was hoped, by the powerful aid of the metropolis, would become both more considerable and more permanent than former institutions of a like kind, produced an invitation to Mr.Wakefield to undertake the classical professorship. With this he thought proper to comply; and accordingly, in 1790, he quitted his abode at Nottingham, and removed to Hackney, upon the plan of joining with public tuition the instruction of private pupils; but, as he says, “both of these anchors failed him, and left his little bark again afloat on the ocean of life.” The share which he had in the disunion that finally proved fatal to the academy at Hackney, is thus candidly related by one of his biographers:

"Although Mr. Wakefield’s principles had induced him to renounce his clerical office in the church of England, and he had become a dissenter from her doctrine and worship, yet he was far from uniting with any particular class of those who are usually denominated dissenters. He had an insuperable repugnance to their mode of performing divine service; and he held in no high estimation the theological and philosophical knowledge which it has been the principal object of their seminaries of education to communicate. It has already been observed, that the basis of his own divinity was philology. Classical literature, therefore, as containing the true rudiments of all other science, was that on which he thought the greatest stress should be laid, in a system of liberal education. This point he inculcated with an earnestness which probably appeared somewhat dictatorial to the conductors of the institution.

“Further, in the progress of his speculations, he had been led to form notions concerning the expediency and propriety of public worship, extremely different from those of every body of Christians, whether in sects or establishments; and as he was incapable of thinking one thing and practising another, he had sufficiently made known his sentiments on this subject, as well in conversation, as by abstaining from attendance upon every place of religious assembly. They who were well acquainted with him, knew that in his own breast piety was one of the most predominant affections; but the assembling for social worship had for so many ages been regarded as the most powerful instrument for the support of general religion, that to discourage it was considered as of dangerous example, especially in a person engaged in the education of youth. Notwithstanding, therefore, his classical instructions in the college were received by the students almost with enthusiastical admiration, and conferred high credit on the institution, a dissolution of his connection with it took place in the summer of 1791.”

The subsequent publication of his pamphlet on public worship deprived him (as he says) of the only two private pupils he expected. From that period he continued to reside at Hackney, employing his time partly in the education of his own children, partly in the composition of his works. His “Translation of the New Testament, with notes,” 3 vols. 8vo, appeared towards the close of 1791, and was very respectably patronized. In language it preserves as much as possible of the old version, but along with many bold innovations. He printed also two more parts of his “Silva Critica.” He gave a new edition, much corrected, of his “Translation of the New Testawent;” and besides, enlarged a former work “On the Evidences of the Christian Religion,” and published a reply to Paine’s attack upon it in his “Age of Reason.”

To the works of Pope, our English poet, Mr. Wukefield paid particular attention, and designed to have given an edition of his works; but after he had published the first volume, the scheme was rendered abortive by Dr. Warton’s edition. He printed, however, a second volume, entitled “Notes on Pope,” and also gave a new edition of Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey. As a classical editor he appeared in a selection from the Greek tragedians, in editions of Horace, Virgil, Bion and Moschus, and finally his superb edition of Lucretius, which, after all, must decide his character as a critic. Many eminent scholars, both at home and abroad, have given their opinion of this edition, but their decision is not uniform. We would refer the reader to a vry learned and impartial view of Mr. Wakefield’s critical character by Mr. Elmsley, in one of the numbers of the “Classical Journal.” Among Mr. Wakefield’s publications, prior to this, we omitted to mention the “Memoirs” of his own life, in one volume 8vo, which appeared in 1792, and contained an account of his life nearly to that period. We have followed it partly in the preceding account, as to facts, but upon the whole are inclined to apply to him what he has advanced of a Mr. Mounsey. He is one “on whose abilities his numerous acquaintance will reflect with more pleasure than on his life.”

Entering at length into the dangerous path of politics, he published “Remarks on the General Orders of the Duke of York,” in which he arraigned the justice of the war with France in terms which are supposed to have exercised the utmost forbearance of the ministry. But in his “Reply to some parts of the bishop of Lanclaff’s Address,” he passed those limits, and a prosecution being commenced, he was sentenced, upon conviction, to a two years imprisonment in Dorchester gaol. While here, his sufferings were as much as possible alleviated by the zeal of his friends, who raised a subscription of 5000l., which eased his mind as to a future provision for his family, and probably far exceeded what he could ever have been able to leave them, under any probable circumstances.

During his confinement, he composed several pamphlets, and planned some works of greater magnitude; among the former were a series of “Essays from Dio Chrysostom;” an imitation in English iambic rhyme, of Juvenal’s first satire; and a small volume entitled “Noctes carcerarise” among the latter were an edition of an English and Greek Lexicon, which failed for want of sufficient encouragement; and a series of classical lectures, to be given in London after his liberation, and the first course of which, consisting of observations on the second book of Virgil’s Æneid, he lived to complete. These lectures occupied him almost immediately on his release; but towards the end of August, 1801, he was attacked by a typhus fever, and died Sept. 9, in the forty-sixth year of his age.

"Gilbert Wakefield was a diligent, and, we believe, a sincere inquirer after truth but he was unhappily so framed in temper and habits of mind, as to be nearly certain of missing it, in almost every topic of inquiry. Knowing his own assiduity, and giving himself ample credit for sagacity, he thought that he was equal to the decision of every possible question. Conscious also of integrity, he never suspected that he could be biassed by any prejudices, and, therefore, had no doubt that his conclusions were always right. But unfortunately he had prejudices of the most seductive kinds. He was prejudiced, in the first instance, against every established opinion, merely because it was established; and, very sparingly allowing to others the qualities for which he thought himself distinguished, he was always perfectly ready to believe, that all inquirers, who formed different conclusions, were either weak or dishonest. In this strange error he was invincibly confirmed by the very sacrifices he had made, early in life, to his own opinions. He must be honest, he thought, because he had sacrificed his interest to his judgment: others must be dishonest because their interest happened to coincide with their opinions. He loved a notion the more, for having made himself a martyr to it; and would probably have given it up, if ever it had become the opinion of the majority. He never seems to have suspected that his mind might be biassed to maintain these notions, for which he had once solemnly pledged his sagacity, or sacrificed his advantages; and thus he became bigotted to almost every paradox which had once possessed his very eccentric understanding. This was not only the case in religious questions, but equally so in critical doctrines. He was as violent against Greek accents, as he was against the Trinity; and anathematized the final v, as strongly as Episcopacy; though in these questions he stood in opposition to professou Person, and all the best Greek scholars of modern as well as ancient times; no less than in his faith, or rather lack of faith, he contradicted the majority of the profoundest theologians and wisest men.

“That he was strictly and enthusiastically honest, ought, we think, to be allowed, in the fullest sense of the terms; and his mind, naturally ardent, soon became so enamoured with this consciousness (which is undoubtedly, to a mind capable of relishing it, abundantly delightful) that he seems to have acquired even a passion for privations; as witnessing to himself an integrity which could cheerfully sacrifice inclination to conviction. These feelings, added to his pride of independent thinking, led him, we doubt not, to abstain from wine; to have relinquished in part, and to be tending entirely to give up, the use of animal food; with various other instances of peculiarity. Not even the Creator, who ordained that animals should afford sustenance to each other, could obtain credit with him, against his private opinions: nor would he see even the obvious truth, that if the use of animal food were abandoned, a small number would be produced, to die by miserable decay, while whole classes and genera would gradually become extinct. In all things it was the same with G. W. Whatever coincided not with his ideas of rectitude, justice., elegance, or whatever else it might be, was to give way at once, and be rescinded at his pleasure, on pain of the most violent reprehension to all opponents: whether it were an article of faith, a principle of policy, a doctrine of morality, or a reading in an ancient author, still it was equallycut and slash, away it must go, to the dogs and vultures. These exterminating sentences were also given with such precipitancy, as not to allow even a minute for consideration. To the paper, to the press, to the world, all was given at once, frequently to the incurring of most palpable absurdity. Thus the simple elegance of” O beate Sexti“in Horace, was proposed, in an edition of that author, to be changed to” O bea Te, Sexti," though the alteration, besides being most bald and tasteless, produced a blunder in quantity so gross, that no boy even in the middle part of a public school could have been thought pardonable in committing it. It may easily be judged, whether a man of such precipitance, and so blind a self-confidence, was likely to be successful as an investigator of truth. So very far was he from it, that though no man of common sense perhaps ever literally exemplified the latter part of Dryden’s famous line on Zimri——

“But why, it may be asked, should we thus mark the character of a man, who can no longer offend, and of whom therefore, as a trite maxim of candour pretends, nothing but good should be said. The folly of the maxim has been recognized by many men of sense; because if ever a man’s character can with propriety be scrutinized, it is when any exposure of his faults can no longer injure his interests, or wound his feelings. In the present instance, it becomes necessary, because, in the volumes now before us, (his Life in 2 vols. 8vo), an attempt is made to hold him up to an admiration, which might be hoped to give currency to some of his most pernicious opinions. The admirers oi him and of his notions are complimented as the only lovers of truth and freedom; and he is endeavoured to be represented as a martyr, of which character, if he had much of the constancy, he had proportionably little of the other estimable qualities. Instead of exhibiting him as a model, we should rather lament him as a strong example of human imperfection; in which some great qualities of soul and understanding were rendered pernicious to himself and others, by faults original or habitual, which perverted them in almost every exertion. Thus his sincerity became offensive, his honesty haughty and uncharitable, his intrepidity factious, his acuteness delusive, and his memory, assisted by much diligence, a vast weapon which his judgment was totally unable to wield. In such a picture, notwithstanding some fine features, there is more to humble than to flatter the pride of man; and to hold it up to almost indiscriminate admiration is neither prudent nor useful.”

Mr. Wakefield’s brother, the Rev. Thomas Wakefield, appointed minister of Richmond, by his father in 1776, and who died Nov. 26, 1806, was a man peculiarly distinguished by benevolence of disposition, benignity of manners, and liberality of sentiment. A memoir of him, in which his virtues and his benevolent disposition are described much at large by the Rev. Dr. Charles Symmons, wa.s printed and circulated soon after his death. The poignant regret occasioned by his loss caused others of his friends to employ their pens in the delineation of his amiable character, particularly the Rev. Edward Patteson, of Richmond, who preached his funeral sermon, and John May, esq. who inserted a character of him at considerable length in the parish register.

, a learned divine in the reign of Henry VIII. was born in the north of England, and educated at the university of Cambridge, whence, after taking his degrees in arts, he went abroad to study the Oriental languages. In a few years he made a considerable progress in the Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac; and taught those languages both in Paris and in Germany. In 1519 he was Hebrew professor at Louvain, but after holding that office only a few months, he returned home, and became chaplain to Dr. Pace, then dean of St. Paul’s, who recommending him to the king as an able linguist, he was sent to Cambridge, and there honoured with the degree of B. D. which qualified him for ecclesiastical preferments. When the controversy relating to king Henry VIII.'s divorce commenced, Wakefield is said to have been of the queen’s party, and thought the divorce unjustifiable, but was afterwards induced to be of the king’s opinion. Dodd says that the reason he gave for changing sides was the circumstance of prince Arthur’s having consummated the marriage, of which he was not before aware; and Dodd adds, that “as the world is apt to judge the worst of things of this nature, Mr. Wakefield was represented as a mercenary writer, especially by those that maintained the queen’s cause.” We have, however, the evidence of another Roman catholic biographer that the world was not much to blame for its unfavourable opinion. Phillips, in his Life of cardinal Pole, assures us, that a letter is extant, “to Wakefield’s eternal infamy,” addressed by secretary Pace to the king, in which he informs him, that “he had treated with Dr. Wakefield of the divorce, and that the doctor was ready to solve the question, either in the negative or affirmative, just as the king thought proper, and in such a manner as all the divines in England should not be able to make any reply.” This letter is dated 1526. Accordingly he soon after wrote a work in favour of the divorce; and in 1530, the king sent him to Oxford, and made him public professor of Hebrew; by which means he had an opportunity of being more serviceable to his majesty. In 1532, he was made a canon of Wolsey’scollege, and incorporated bachelor of divinity. He appears to have been a lover of learning, and when, in 1536, the lesser monasteries were dissolved, he took care to save from destruction several valuable books and Mss. especially such as were in Greek and Hebrew; and, among others, several curious Mss. in Ramsay-abbey, particularly a Hebrew dictionary, which had been lodged there by Robert Holbeach, a monk of that monastery in the reign of Henry IV. Wakefield died at London, Oct. 8, 1537. He left some learned works, as, 1, “Oratio de laudibus et militate trium linguarum, Arabics, Chaidaicae, et liebraicae, atque id -viaicis qua- ii utfoque Testajnr- io niveniuntur,” 15^4, 4to. Thepmuei w. Wynix lie Worde; and the author complains, that he was obliged to omit his whole third part, because the printer had no Hebrew types. Some few Hebrew and Arabic characters, however, are introduced, but extremely rude, and evidently cut in wood. They are the first of the sort used in England. 2. “Koster Codicis,” &c. the same mentioned by Bale and Pits, with the title “De non ducenda fratria,” and is the book he wrote in favour of king Henry’s -divorce, Lond. 1628, 4to. Tanner and Wood attribute other pieces to him, but they are probably in ms. except “Syntagma de Hebraeorum codicum incorruptione,” 4to, without date; and " Paraphrasis in Hbrum Koheleth (Ecclesiasticen) succincta, clara, et fidelis, 4to.

, a very eminent Protestant divine, was born October 3, 1573, at Ghent, of an ancient family, which has produced many distinguished magistrates. He officiated as pastor at several different places; declared in favour of the Counter-remonstrants, enjoyed the friendship and confidence of prince Maurice, and was one of those who drew up the canons of the famous synod of Dort. Walæus became afterwards professor of divinity at Leyden, and died July 9, 1639, leaving “Compendium EthicaeAristotelicae,” Leyden, 1636, 12mo. The greatest part of the Flemish translation of the Bible, made by order of the States, and which first appeared in 1637, was executed by him, and almost the whole of the New Testament. John Walæus his son, was professor of medicine at Leyden, where he died in 1649. He made some discoveries on the circulation of the blood, and taught Harvey’s system, although not without some attempt to deprive him of the honour of being the original inventor. His principal publication was “Epistolas de motu chyli et sanguinis,” Leyd. 1641.

, a Carmelite monk of great learning in the fourteenth century, was born at Walden in Essex, about 1367. His father’s name was John Netter, but he chose to be denominated, as indeed was very commoil then, from the place of his nativity. He was educated among the Carmelites in London, whence he removed for the farther prosecution of his studies to Oxford. Here he continued some years, and received the degree of doctor in divinity, after which he returned to London, and took the habit of the Carmelites. Being introduced at the court of Henry IV. he became a favourite with the king, and was appointed the principal champion of the church against heretics, and especially those who had adopted the tenets of Wickliff, Huss, or Jerome of Prague. In 1409 he was sent by the king to the grand council at Pisa, where he is said to have been much admired for his eloquence and learning. After his return to England, he was made provincial of his order; and Henry V. admitted him of his privy-council, and appointed him his confessor. In 1415 he was sent to the council of Constance, and about 1419, was employed to negociate peace between Uladislaus, king of Poland, and Michael, general of the Teutonic order. In 1422 the king died in the arms of Waldensis, at Vincennes in France. He became afterwards a favourite with the young king Henry VI. and was appointed his confessor. In 1430 he attended the king to France, and at Roan was seized with an acute disease, of which he died Nov. 2, and was buried in the convent of Carmelites in that city. He appears to have been a man of abilities; Pits says that he was master of the Greek and Hebrew languages, and in general a polite scholar. His principal work, the only one printed, is his “Doctrinale antiquum fidei ecclesias catholicse,” Paris, 1521—1523, 3 vols, folio, and reprinted at Saumur, Venice, and Paris. Mr. archdeacon Churton, in his valuable Lives of the founders of Brasenose-college, informs us, that the bishop of Lincoln, Russel, being harassed and fatigued, as he feelingly complains, with the multitude of heretics at Oxford in 1491, met with this book of Waldensis, and resolved to make extracts from it (vol. III. “de sacramentalibus”), for the more speedy and effectual refutation of the “insane dogmas, with which, he says, so many of his countrymen were infected.” Having framed his compendium with great care, by a written injunction under his own hand he ordered it to be preserved in the registry of the see, for the benefit of his successors in their examinations of “heretical depravity;” pronouncing an anathema at the same time against any one who should obliterate the title, expressive of the design of the performance and the name of the compiler. The original copy of this “touchstone of error,” which was completed at Woburn on the feast of the Epiphany 1491-2, is still extant in the library of University-college, Oxford.

, one of the earliest reformers of the church from Popery, but erroneously said to be the founder of that body of reformed Christians called the Waldenses, was an opulent merchant of Lyons in the twelfth century. The first time when he appears to have opposed the errors of the religion in which he was educated, was about 1160, when the doctrine of transubstantiation was confirmed by pope Innocent III. with the addition that men should fall down before the consecrated wafer and worship it as God. The absurdity of this forcibly struck the mind of Waldo, who opposed it in a very courageous manner. It does not appear, however, that he had any intention of withdrawing himself from the communion of the Romish church, or that in other respects he had any very serious notions of religion. The latter appears to have been produced first by the sudden death of a person with whom he was in company. This^lett very serious impressions on his mind, and he betook himself to reading the scriptures. At that time the Latin vulgate Bible was the only edition of the Scriptures in Europe; but that language was accessible to few. Waldo, however, from his situation in life, had had a good education, and could read this volume. “Being somewhat learned,” says Reinerius, “he taught the people the text of the New Testament.” He was also now disposed to abandon his mercantile pursuits, and distributed his wealth to the poor as occasion required, and while the latter flocked to him to partake of his alms, he also attended to their spiritual instruction, and either translated, or procured to be translated the four gospels into French; and thus the inhabitants of Europe were indebted to him for the first translation of the Bible into a modern tongue, since the time that the Latin had ceased to be a living language.

As Waldo became more acquainted with the scriptures, he discovered that a multiplicity of doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, which had been introduced into the national religion, had not only no foundation, but were most pointedly condemned, in the Bible. On this ground he had no scruple to expose such errors, and to condemn the arrogance of the pope, and the reigning vices of the clergy, while at the same time he endeavoured to demonstrate the great difference there was between the Christianity of the Bible and that of the Church of Rome. Such bold opposition could not long be tolerated. The archbishop of Lyons accordingly prohibited the new reformer from teaching any more on pain of excommunication, and of being proceeded against as a heretic. Waldo replied, that though a layman, he could not be silent in a matter which concerned the salvation of his fellow-creatures. Attempts were next made to apprehend him; but the number and affection of his friends, the respectability and influence of his connections, many of whom were men of rank, the universal regard that was paid to his character for probity and religion, and the conviction that his presence was highly necessary among the people whom he had by this time gathered into a church, and of which he became the head, all operated so strongly in his favour, that he lived concealed at Lyons during the space of three whole years.

But pope Alexander III. had no sooner heard of these proceedings than he anathematized the reformer and his adherents, commanding the archbishop to proceed against them with the utmost rigour. Waldo was now compelled to quit Lyons; his flock, in a great measure, followed their pastor, and hence, say the ecclesiastical historians, a dispersion took place not unlike that which arose in the church of Jerusalem on the occasion of the death of Stephen. The effects were also similar. Waldo himself retired into Dauphiny, where he preached with abundant success; his principles took deep and lasting root, and produced a numerous body of disciples, who were denominated Leonists, Vaudois, Albigenses, or Waldenses; for the very same class of Christians is designated by these various appellations at different times, and according to the different countries, or quarters of the same country in which they appeared. From the name Waldenses, a corruption of Vallenses, or Vaudois, i. e. those xvho inhabited the valleys of Piedmont, occasion was taken to prove that these ancient churches had no existence till the time of Waldo. Waldo appears to have visited Picardy, propagating his doctrines, and finally, according to Thuanus, settled in Bohemia, where de died in 1179.

, a mathematician and astronomer of great talents, was born about 1734, and rose from a low situation, little connected with learning, to some of the first ranks in literary pursuits. His early labours contributed to the “Ladies Diary,” a useful little work which has formed many eminent mathematicians. In 1761) he was deemed a fit person to be sent to Hudson’s Bay to observe the transit of Venus over the sun; and the manner hi which he discharged that trust did honour to his talents.

On his return he communicated to the royal society an excellent paper of observations made at that station, which was inserted in their Transactions; and the year following, his general observations made at Hudson’s Bay were published in a large quarto volume. He next, in the character of astronomer, accompanied capt. Cook in his first voyage. 1772 1774, and again iti his other voyage of 1776 1779. In 1777 appeared his “Observations on a Voyage with captain Cook;” and in 1778, “Remarks on Dr. Fovster’s Account of the Voyage,” in which he showed considerable talents as a controversial writer. Soon after his return from his last voyage he was elected a fellow of the royal society, and proved a very useful member; and on the death of Mr. Daniel Harris he was appointed mathematical master to Christ’s Hospital, London, and some years after, secretary to the board of longitude, both which offices he held till the time of his death, which happened in 1798, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. In 1781 he published an “Enquiry into the state of the Population in England and Wales,” and in 1794 his treatise on the longitude by time-keepers. He published also an ingenious restoration of one of the lost pieces of Apollonius; and it has been said, was author of one of the dissertations on the achronical rising of the Pleiades, annexed to Dr. Vincent’s Voyage of Nearch us. Besides these he wrote some ingenious papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and in various periodical publications, particularly the “Ladies Diary,” sometimes signed with his own name, and sometimes under certain fictitious signatures. T

, author of the “History of Independency,” was born at Clifte in Dorsetshire, and is said to have been educated at Christ’s church, Oxford, in which however, Wood could find no memorial of him. Afterwards leaving the university without a degree, he retired to an estate he had at Charterhouse near Wells in Somersetshire, where he lived in good repute especially for his loyalty and hatred of the puritans, in both which respects he appears soon after to have changed his mind. Before the civil wars, he had been made usher of the exchequer, but, says Wood, when “the puritans or presbyterians were like to carry all before them, he closed with them,” and was elected member of parliament for the city of Wells in 1640. Afterwards he became a zealous covenanter, and had a considerable share in the violent measures of the times, until the independents began to acquire the superiority, whom he resisted as much as lay in his power, especially in his “History” of that sect, which had a very considerable influence, as he was not only a man of abilities, but had acquired a character for disinterestedness. When the second part of this work was published in 1649, he was discovered to be the author, and imprisoned by Cromwell in the Tower. There having allowance of pen, ink, and paper, he wrote the third part of his history, but was never released. He died in the Tower in Oct. 1651, to the great grief, Wood says, of the presbyterian party. He was interred in Allhallows Barking, near the Tower. Walker wrote several temporary pamphlets, enumerated by Wood, arising out of the circumstances of the times, but none of any consequence, unless what he has incorporated in his “History of Independency,” published in three parts, 1648 1651, 4to, to which a fourth part by T. M. was added in 1660. “It is written,” says Warbnrton, “in a rambling vvay, and with a vindictive presbyterian spirit, full of bitterness but it gives an admirable idea of the character of the times, parties, and persons.” Within the last tweitty years, the price of this work, when complete, has risen from shillings to guineas.

, an useful historical writer and herald, was son of Edward Walker, of Roobers, in Neiherstowey in Somersetshire, gent by Barbara, daughter of Edward Salkerid, of Corby-Castle in Cumberland, esq.; and his grandfather, John Walker, was son of Edward, second son of Humphrey Walker, of Staffordshire, esq. He was originally a domestic servant to the earl of Arundel, and was appointed by him secretary at war, in the expedition into Scotland in 1639. There is little doubt but that his father’s being a Roman catholic recommended him to that nobleman’s notice. From this peer’s service it is easy to suppose he went into that of the sovereign, because he had shewn himself equally faithful and dexterous. Charles I. gave him the same post, to which, in June 1644, he added that of clerk extraordinary of the privy council. He steadily adhered to the king in all his misfortunes. After the battle of Cropredy Bridge, in 1644, being desired to wait upon sir William Waller, one of the parliament generals, with a message of grace, he requested that a trumpet might first be sent for a pass, because “the barbarity of that people was notorious, so that they regarded not the law of arms or of nations.” His precaution was not unnecessary, the trumpeter being sent back with the most marked eontempt.

Whilst he remained at Oxford with his majesty, the university conferred upon him the degree of master of arts, November 1, 1644. He received the honour of knighthood, February 2, 1644-5, in that city. In 1648, he sent a letter to the parliament, during the conference for peace, requesting more persons might be permitted to attend upon the king; but the House declined doing any thing in it, unless his maje’sty, or their commissioners, wrote for that purpose. As he had been true to the father, so he was equally faithful to the son, whoso court he joined at Brussels. He attended his royal master into Scotland, in 1651: but the covenanters refused their permission for him to come near the person of his sovereign. After the unfortunate event of that expedition, and Charles’s subsequeat escape to the continent, he again joined the exiled monarch, serving him in the same capacities he had the late king. He was so odious to the commonwealth and the protectors, that he was accounted, on this side the channel, “a pernicious man.” His abilities, and the office he filled, made him so great an object of jealousy, that he had spies placed over his conduct. From these wretches we learn, that June '26, 1654, he was at Amsterdam, probably upon some public service: in 1656, he was at Bergen, within six leagues of Calais, mustering the king’s little arrny, which did not amount to 700 men. These, however, were with difficulty kept together, mutinies happening every day; nor can it be wondered at, the privates having only four, the gentlemen no more than six stivers a day. As garter king at arms, in which he succeeded sir William Dusfdale, after holding other offices in the heralds’ college, we must suppose he had not much employment during the usurpation; but as the only herald in Charles’s little court, he was sometimes applied to as such. In 1658, he granted an honourable augmentation to the arms of Stephen Fox, esq. afterwards knighted.- Sir Stephen is well known for his distinguished abilities as a statesman, for his longevity, and as progenitor of the Foxes earls of llchester and barons Holland. At the restoration he received the reward of his distinguished loyalty, and was, among other promotions, made one of the clerks of the privy council. He died suddenly, at Whitehall, February 19, 1676-7, deservedly lamented as a man of tried integrity and very considerable abilities. He published “Iter Carolinum, being a succinct account of the necessitated niarches, retreats, and sufferings of his majesty, king Charles I. from January 10, 1641, to the time of his deatli in 1618, collected by a daily attendant upon his sacred majesty during all that time.” Much of this work may be made more useful by comparing it with Oudart’s diary in Peck’s “Desiderata,” which supplies sir Edward’s omissions. His “Military Discoveries” were printed in 1705, in folio. He assisted lord Clarendon in that part of his History of the Rebellion which relates to military transactions. He was buried in the chapel of the blessed Virgin, in Stratford upon Avon church, where is an inscription to his memory.

, an eminent Puritan divine, was born at Hawkshead in Lancashire, in 1581, and was educated at St. John’s-college, Cambridge. After completing his studies there he went to London, and in 1614 became rector of St. John’s the Evangelist in Watling-street, where he continued nearly forty years, refusing every other offer of preferment. About the same time he became chaplain to Dr. Felton, bishop of Ely, who made choice of him the very morning of his consecration. He distinguished himself in the popish controversy; and, in 1623, held a public disputation with a priest of the name of Smith, before a very large assembly, and by consent of both parties, an account of it was afterwards published. He had likewise some encounters with Fisher, the celebrated Jesuit, and others who were deemed the most able disputants on the side of the church of Rome. In 1635 he was brought into trouble, for having preached a sermon in favour of the sacred observance of the Sabbath; archbishop Laud was so unwise as to admonish him for thjs, and afterwards had hitn prosecuted in the Star-chamber, fined and imprisoned. The parliament reversed this sentence, and condemned the whole proceedings against Mr. Walker, and he was restored to his living of St. John’s. In 1643, he was chosen one of the assembly of divines, and was also one of the witnesses against archbishop Laud, and one of those who took upon them to swear that the unfortunate prelate had endeavoured to introduce popery. In his sermons, too, before the parliament, he made use of those expressions, which tended to lessen the king in the eyes of the people; and although he was one of those who afterwards petitioned against his majesty’s death, he was also one of those who did not reflect how much their violent harangues and sermons had contributed to that event. He died in 1651, aged seventy years, and was interred in his own church in Watling-street. Fuller gives him a high character, as a man “well skilled in the Oriental languages, and an excellent logician and divine. He was a man of a holy life, an humble spirit, and a liberal ham!, who well deserved of Zion college library and who, by his example and persuasion, advanced a thousand pounds for the maintenance of preaching ministers in his native country.” He published, 1. “The sum of a Disputation between Mr. Walker, pastor of St. John the Evangelist, and a Popish priest, calling himself Mr. Smith, but indeed Norris,” 1623. 2. “Fisher’s folly unfolded, or the vaunting Jesuit’s challenge answered,” 1624. 3. “Socinianism in the fundamental point of Justification discovered and confuted.” 4. “The doctrine of the Holy Weekly Sabbath,” 1641. 5. “God made visible in all his Works,” 1644; besides several sermons preached before the parliament. We shall have occasion to mention another publication of Mr. Walker’s, when we come to speak of Anthony Wotton.

, an Irish divine, celebrated for his military courage, was born of English parents in the county of Tyrone in Ireland, and educated in the university of Glasgow in Scotland. He became afterwards rector of Donoghmore, not many miles from the city of London* derry. When king James II. after the revolution, landed in Ireland, Mr. Walker, alarmed at the danger of the prctestaut religion, raised a regiment at his own expence to defend the cause he was bound to espouse. Apprehensive that James would visit Londonderry (for he had taken Coleraine and Kilmore), he rode full speed to Lundee, the governor, to apprize him of the danger. That officer at first slighted the information, but was soon convinced h'ow much he was indebted to him. Walker, returning to Lifford, joined colonel Crafton, and by Lunclee’s direction, took post at the Long Causeway, which he defended a whole night; but at length, obliged to give way to a superior force, he retreated to Londonderry, where he endeavoured to inspire the panic-struck governor with -courage to brave the storm, but in vain; he left the place either through fear or treachery. Walker, however, bravely united with major Baker to defend the place, which would have appeared bordering upon rashness, if they had been able generals. James commanded a numerous army in person, which was well supplied with every requisite for a siege. The besieged had no means for a long defence; they were men who, flying from their houses, had taken shelter in this place; they had not more than twenty cannon, nor more than ten days’ provision, and had no engineers, nor horses for foraging parties or sallies. Still resolved to suffer the greatest extremities rather than yield, they did all that desperate men could effect. They sent to king William to inform him of then-determination, imploring speedy relief. Major Baker dying, the command devolved chiefly on Walker, who exercised it with a stoic philosophy that has few parallels. Horses, dogs, cats, rats, and mice, were devoured by the garrison, and even salted hides were used as food. Mr. Walker suffered in common with his men, and even prompted them to make several sallies; and as the Irish constantly fled, the officers suffered dreadfully. Londonderry having a good harbour, he hoped that the king might be enabled to raise the siege that way, for by land there were no hopes of succour. But the fatality which frustrated every attempt of James, prevented him from storming the place, which might at any time have been done; on the contrary he determined on a blockade, and to starve the garrison into a surrender. With this view he had a bar made across the arm of the sea, which, as be supposed, would prevent vessels from entering the town. This succeeded, and all hope to the besieged seemed to be destroyed. Walker, perceiving the danger of a general defection, assembled his wretched garrison in the cathedral, and endeavoured to inspire them with a reliance on Providence. In this he was so successful, that they returned to their labours invigorated, and immediately had the happiness to discover three ships, under the command of major-general Kirk, who had sent a message to Walker before, intimating that when he could hold out no longer, he would raise the siege at the hazard of himself, his men, and his vessels. Whilst both parties were preparing for the dreadful trial, Kirk sailed round the bar, under a heavy discharge from the enemy, and succeeded in crossing it, by which the siege was raised in the night of July 21, 1689.